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The Under 40 crowd has been screwed.

by Rodan ( 10 Comments › )
Filed under Conservatism, Economy, Elections 2012, Republican Party, Special Report, The Political Right at August 8th, 2012 - 12:33 am

Far too many Conservatives have given up on younger voters. The sad part is, it is people under 40 (myself included) who will really be screwed by the Obama’s regime’s policies. The Right has an opening with younger voters with the fact. Yet too many are dismissive of going for younger voters. They seem to forget Ronald Reagan in 80 and 84 won the under 40 crowd.

I worry about the future — not mine but that of my three children, all in their 20s. It is an axiom of American folklore that every generation should live better than its predecessors. But this is not a constitutional right or even an entitlement, and I am skeptical that today’s young will do so. Nor am I alone. A recent USA Today/Gallup poll finds that nearly 60 percentof Americans are also doubters. I meet many parents who fear the future that awaits their children.

The young (and I draw the line at 40 and under) face two threats to their living standards. The first is the adverse effect of the Great Recession on jobs and wages. Even if this fades with time, there’s the second threat: the costs of an aging America. It’s not just Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid — huge transfers from the young to the old — but also deferred maintenance on roads, bridges, water systems and power grids. Newsweek calls the young “generation screwed”; I prefer the milder “generation squeezed.”

Already, batteries of indicators depict the Great Recession’s damage. In a Pew survey last year, a quarter of 18-to-34-year-olds said they’d moved back with parents to save money. Getting a job has been time-consuming and often futile. In July, the unemployment rate among 18-to-29-year-olds was 12.7 percent. Counting people who dropped out of the labor market raises that to 16.7 percent, says Generation Opportunity, an advocacy group for the young.

[....]

But the calculus will be selective. To aid the young, we could tighten Social Security and Medicare, raising eligibility ages and reducing payouts for wealthier retirees. Unlikely. Younger voters seem clueless about advancing their economic interests. In 2008, 18-to-29-year-olds supported Barack Obama by 34 percentage points. They love his pseudo-youthfulness. Or his positions on other issues (immigration, gay rights) trump economics. As president, Obama has done nothing to improve generational fairness.

If the young won’t help themselves, their parents and grandparents might. They might champion revising retirement programs. Dream on. Parents and grandparents may be worried about their offspring’s prospects, but they’re not so worried as to sacrifice their own. There are real conflicts between the young and old; so far, the young are losing.

The truth is my generation and the one after is being screwed. Yet too many Conservatives would rather bash us, then win our votes. They seem to forget they were young once also. Republicans if they push economic freedom, without attacking the culture can attract younger voters. The future of our nation is at stake and Conservatives need to get as many people possible to remove the regime of the god-king

 

 

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Posted in Conservatism, Economy, Elections 2012, Republican Party, Special Report, The Political Right | 10 Comments »

Mitt Romney calls US Fiscal problems a prairie fire

by Rodan ( 4 Comments › )
Filed under Economy, Elections 2012, Headlines, Mitt Romney at May 16th, 2012 - 12:13 am

While Obama goes on the View and claims his name is why the election is close and keeps talking about Gay Marriage, Mitt Romney keeps hammering away. Romney discusses the US fiscal situation and compares it to a prairie fire. In the speech, he reminds people that although Obama inherited a mess, he made things worse fiscally.

Mitt Romney needs to keep up the pressure. The Obama Regime is trying social issues distractions. Romney just needs to keep focusing on economic and fiscal issues.

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Posted in Economy, Elections 2012, Headlines, Mitt Romney | 4 Comments »

David Stockman on the Economy

by coldwarrior ( 52 Comments › )
Filed under Business, Economy, Misery Index, Regulation, taxation, unemployment at February 24th, 2012 - 12:00 pm

IT’S THE ECONOMY STOOPID!!!! (Not contraceptives)

 

Feb. 23 (Bloomberg) — David Stockman, former director of the Office of Management and Budget in the Reagan administration, and Josh Bivens of the Economic Policy Institute, talk about the Obama administration’s stimulus programs and the outlook for the U.S. economy. They speak with Trish Regan on Bloomberg Television’s “Street Smart.” (Source: Bloomberg)

“The Stock Market is Delusional!”  Please watch the vid here and really hear what he says. It is very much worth your attention.

 

Stockman gets it right!

 

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Posted in Business, Economy, Misery Index, Regulation, taxation, unemployment | 52 Comments »

Team Jackass™ does it again. Will they ever learn?

by Bob in Breckenridge ( 90 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Business, Democratic Party, Economy, government, History, Progressives at October 3rd, 2011 - 2:00 pm

The answer is no, they won’t. Is there anything on this planet more stupid and ignorant than liberals? I doubt it. Seriously. Ever notice that every single time these morons try to solve a problem, they end up making it worse, and in the end hurting those they’re “compassionately” trying to help? Me too.

Take, for instance, the Dodd/Frank act (I personally don’t want anything to do with any act that Barney Frank is involved in, but I digress), which included an amendment from Little Dick Durbin™, which was meant to keep all those mean and e-v-v-v-v-v-il banks from making too much profit at the expense of “the little guy” (I guess that’s you and I), by the capping the transaction fees that those mean and evil banks can charge retailers for accepting our debit and credit cards.

These debit/credit card fees are how I make a living, and have since 1986, so I do know what I’m talking about.

What this act was intended to do, was, in the end, save middle and lower income Americans money, by forcing those mean and evil banks to lower their fees. The (warning: oxymoron alert) libs’ thinking was that these lower fees would eventually trickle down to you and I by lowering the cost of what we buy, since the retailers would obviously pass on some of these savings to the unwashed masses (again, you and I).

Don’t you all feel warm and fuzzy knowing that these all-caring, compassionate libs are looking out for you? Me neither.

In the end (which is usually where those who these clowns try to help usually get it), it will end up costing us more money, and the banks will end up making more money. So it’s just another misguided liberal attempt meant to help us that will harm us. But that’s okay, since it’s their intentions that matter, not their results, which were obviously predictable.

In a nutshell, here’s how Visa/Mastercard processing works. Visa and Mastercard issue the cards to their member banks. They charge each bank a fee, which is called the interchange rate, every time their card is used by the bank’s customers. Then the issuing bank charges the merchant accepting the card a small fee called a discount rate to accept it. The total of these fees is usually less than two cents on the dollar, but with millions of transactions each day, it’s billions of dollars each year.

Forbes Magazine had a great article on this very subject, and how you and I end up getting screwed. Again, don’t you love all those caring, compassionate liberals?

Bank of America’s New $5 Debit Card Fee? Blame Dodd-Frank

The inevitable happened today. Bank of America said it will start charging customers a $5 monthly fee on debit card purchases.

Where’s this coming from? Well, anyone paying attention to the Durbin Amendment (which came out of the Dodd-Frank Act) as it was moving through Congress would have seen this fee coming. The Durbin Amendment essentially limits the amount of money banks collect from merchants, like Target for instance, each time you use your debit card there.

Back in June I said that that while placing a cap on those debit card fees might be great news for retailers it would be bad news for customers. Why? Because now that the Durbin Amendment goes into effect October 1 banks will have less money coming into their pockets from the retailers. Where do you think they are going to make up for that lost revenue? You got it–me and you.
Read: Cap On Debit Swipe Fees Will Hurt Consumers

That’s exactly what BofA is doing today with that $5 fee. It’s making up for lost revenue. A report from RBC Capital Markets estimated that banks will take an 80% hit to the fees they once collected from retailers. For a bank like JPMorgan Chase, which RBC says generated $537 million in fees from retailers in the 1Q 2011, that translates into a quarterly revenue loss of $430 million.

As much as I want to hate BofA (disclosure: I’m BofA customer by way of Fleet) for charging me $60 a year so I can deposit my scrappy journalist’s salary I can’t blame it for making the decision to do so.

BofA and every other major bank is simply making up for lost revenue that it would otherwise lose because of a new regulation stemming from Dodd-Frank.

Now, I’m no financial-regulations hater but nothing about the Durbin Amendment is good news for the consumers Dodd-Frank was trying to protect. I’d be singing a different tune if Senator Dick Durbin pushed for the cap on swipe fees for the sake of consumers but let’s face it–the Durbin amendment benefits no one except for retailers. It is completely infuriating (and probably shouldn’t be surprising) that one of the few rules to go into effect from the Dodd–Frank Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act has nothing to do with protecting consumers.
Click here to read the rest…

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Posted in Barack Obama, Business, Democratic Party, Economy, government, History, Progressives | 90 Comments »

Federal Reserve to do Operation Twist

by Rodan ( 53 Comments › )
Filed under Economy, Misery Index, unemployment at September 21st, 2011 - 5:00 pm

Ben Bernanke and his gang of criminals called the Federal Reserve still haven’t learned their lesson. QE2 was a slick way of devaluing the US currency, hence our living standards has been a disaster. Now there is word the Fed will do “Operation Twist.”. They plan to move their portfolio from short term securities, into longer term debt. What this will accomplish, I can only dread.

 WASHINGTON (AP) – The Federal Reserve is running out of options to try to boost a slumping economy and lower unemployment. So policymakers are expected to reach 50 years back into their playbook for their next move.

Most economists expect the Fed to announce a plan Wednesday to shift money in its $1.7 trillion portfolio out of short-term securities and into longer-term holdings.

The plan could lower Treasury yields further. Ultimately, it could reduce rates on mortgages and other consumer and business loans, too.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke is expected to advocate the move despite criticism from within the Fed and from Republican lawmakers and presidential candidates.

On Monday, the four highest-ranking Republicans in Congress sent Bernanke a letter cautioning the Fed against taking further steps to lower interest rates. Their letter suggested that lower rates could escalate the risk of high inflation.

The plan the Fed is considered most likely to unveil Wednesday has been dubbed “Operation Twist” and dates to the early 1960s. The Fed used a similar program then to “twist” long-term rates lower relative to short-term rates.

Read the rest:  Fed is expected to take new action to lift economy

The best thing for the economy is for the Federal Reserve to do nothing. They have damaged the living standards of the American people. The solution to our problems must be solved by a new President and a more Conservative Congress. Nothing that Ben Bernanke does can solve anything.

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Posted in Economy, Misery Index, unemployment | 53 Comments »

Essential VDH: Progressives use WWII as an example to defend Massive Spending

by Rodan ( 118 Comments › )
Filed under Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Liberal Fascism, Progressives, Socialism, Tranzis, World War II at August 24th, 2011 - 1:00 pm

After a decade of sub par economic growth compared to the 80′s and 90′s, the economy collapsed in 2008. There were many reasons why this occurred. Subprime mortgages that defaulted, the collapse of the housing bubble, outsourcing of good paying jobs, lack of wage increases, deficit spending and the doubling of the debt.  It was a perfect storm and the collapse of Lehman Brothers broke the camel’s back.

When Obama came to power in 2009 he decided we needed to increase the debt via his so called stimulus. In reality this was a payoff to the unions and other Progressive cronies. Where did the money go? No one has a clue although I suspect some bank accounts in the Caymans and Switzerland were stimulated. Progressives defended this boondoggle as the only way to get out of the recession. They used WWII as an example that massive borrowing is not bad. The Left even claims our Post WWII Economic Boom 1945-1973 was due to this. This is nonsense and Victor Davis Hanson debunks their claims.

Since 2009, the example of the economic boom following World War II has been used by Keynesians to justify their record “peacetime” levels of borrowing intended to lift the U.S. out of the doldrums. Indeed, the more the contemporary borrowing fails, the more the vast indebtedness of the war years is invoked to reassure us. On occasion a wry lament follows that if only a spaceship full of dangerous aliens were to appear, we might have the requisite excuse to follow our grandfathers into a new collective frenzy of economic stimulus and public debt.

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For decades the liberal argument was that the New Deal cured the Depression. But in a new twist, the war has suddenly been reinvented to support the current arguments of the new Keynesians — despite the irony in the embrace of the old right-wing argument that it was the World War II defense spending, not FDR’s New Deal, that finally got America out of a near-decade-long depression.

In ingenious fashion, the new argument insists that the second downward spiral of 1937–38 — formerly ostensible proof that five years of the New Deal and of anti-business rhetoric had not worked — should be attributed only to FDR’s lacking the will or political muscle to stay the course and accelerate deficit spending, redistribute more income, and grow far bigger government. Then luckily the war came along. That crisis provided the necessary political landscape, which had been lacking during the supposed Keynesian backsliding of Roosevelt’s second term, to force through the long-awaited New New Deal. At last, the really big scare allowed the really big borrowing, and the result was the really big prosperity for the next half-century.

Read the rest: The False WWII Analogy Obama’s America is more like Attlee’s Britain than Truman’s America.

It’s funny how by claiming that WWII debt based spending got us out of the Great Depression, Progressives are admitting the New Deal failed. With the massive amounts of debt we have incurred the last 11 years, now reaching 100% of GDP, we would be unable to fight another World War.

Our debt and deficit are economically unstable. If we don’t do something about it the US will go the way of other great powers. They all fell due to debt and economic mismanagement. It’s still not too late for America but we are running out of time. As Hanson put it best, we are 1945 Great Britain not 1945 Truman’s America.

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Posted in Barack Obama, Democratic Party, Liberal Fascism, Progressives, Socialism, Tranzis, World War II | 118 Comments »

Felonious Munk rips Obama

by Rodan ( 108 Comments › )
Filed under Economy at August 13th, 2011 - 11:30 am

Felonious Munk rips Obama a new one. He goes after Obama over the whole debt mess.

(Hat Tip: rightymouse)

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Posted in Economy | 108 Comments »

Mitt Romney’s 2004 S&P sales pitch included tax increases

by Rodan ( 136 Comments › )
Filed under Economy, Elections 2012, Mitt Romney, Progressives, Republican Party at August 11th, 2011 - 2:30 pm

Mitt Romney brags about how S&P raised Massachusetts credit rating when he was governor.  What Mittens doesn’t say is what his sale pitch was. He used the previous governors tax increases as part of the sales pitch to Standard and Poors. Mitt Romney did cut spending but left the tax increases intact. Clearly he was for in 2004, what he is against now! Sound famailair? It should, another Massachussets politician was known to be for things before he was against him.

The claim was part of a presentation to the ratings agency obtained by POLITICO under a state freedom of information law from the Massachusetts Executive Office of Administration and Finance. The Nov. 4 presentation, stamped “confidential,” helped persuade S&P to raise the state’s grade and handed Romney the perfect talking point for last week’s humiliating national downgrade by the same agency.

But Romney’s case to S&P is a far cry from the anti-tax absolutism of the Republican Party he hopes to lead. Indeed, it bears a far closer resemblance to the right-of-center grand compromise rejected by House Republicans this year — dismissed because it would include new taxes and end tax breaks President Barack Obama described as “loopholes” — or the more modest compromise that passed, than to the Cut, Cap, and Balance plan Romney “applauded.”

The presentation to the ratings agency reveals that Romney’s administration made the case to Standard & Poor’s that his state was creditworthy because of both spending cuts — the current preferred GOP method — and new revenues, including fees he imposed and tax “loopholes” he closed. The presentation also prominently cited a controversial set of tax increases in the summer of 2002, which Romney, then a candidate, had opposed.

Read the rest:  Taxes key to Mitt Romney’s ’04 pitch to Standard & Poor’s 

John Kerry’s flip flopping sure has rubbed off on Mitt Romney. The fact that Romney used tax increases as part of his sale pitch to increase Massachusetts credit rating will be used against him by the Obama Regime. Between Romneycare, his flip flops, Bain Capital and now this S&P sales pich, he’s toast!

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Posted in Economy, Elections 2012, Mitt Romney, Progressives, Republican Party | 136 Comments »

German Economy begins to slow

by Rodan ( 2 Comments › )
Filed under Economy, Europe, Germany, Headlines at August 10th, 2011 - 12:15 pm

Germany has been behind the bailout of Greece and propping up the corrupt and crypto-Fascist European Union. Now there are signs their economy is slowing down. If Germany enters recession or has anemic growth, this will have political implication for the EU. Should Germany be unable to assist Italy, Portugal or Spain, then the whole EU might collapse.

Germany’s robust economy is showing signs of a slowdown, raising fears that the linchpin holding together Europe’s fragile financial health could be weakening.

On Tuesday, the country revealed that its exports in June rose by only 3.1 percent, compared with a 20.1 percent increase in May, marking the smallest increase in 16 months. A few days earlier, an index of German manufacturing activity dropped from 54.6 in June to 52 in July — the lowest level since October 2009, marking the third consecutive month of declines.

“The fact that [the German economy is] showing signs of faltering and sources of domestic demand aren’t manifesting itself — people are worried,” said Tu Packard, a senior analyst for Moody’s Analytics.

Germany has built its economic strength on exports to China and other developing countries. As the global slowdown reduces demand in those economies, Germany could pay the price.

This bears watching.

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Posted in Economy, Europe, Germany, Headlines | 2 Comments »

Roubini proclaims the end of the Obama Boom

by Rodan ( 190 Comments › )
Filed under Economy, unemployment at August 8th, 2011 - 11:30 am

 

The greatest economic recovery since the colonization of Earth by the Pleiadeans 150,000 years ago is coming to a halt. About a year ago, Dr. Doom: Nouriel Roubini, who in 2005 predicted the economic collapse of 2007-2008 made a bold prediction. He claims that the Obama Boom was fragile and weak. Roubini also predicted that the US would fall back into recession due to unsustainable Debt. Recent data is showing that once again, Dr. Doom appears to be correct!

Influential economist Nouriel Roubini has warned hopes that the recent slowdown was temporary have been dashed and predicted the US and other advanced economies will have a second “severe recession  ”.

Writing in Monday’s Financial Times, the founder of Roubini Global Economics said: “America’s recent data have been lousy: there has been little job creation, weak growth and flat consumption and manufacturing production. Housing remains depressed. Consumer, business and investor confidence has been falling, and will now fall further.”

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“Since this is a crisis of solvency as well as liquidity, orderly debt restructuring must begin,” said Roubini.

Read the rest:  Soft Patch Delusion Is Dashed: Roubini

Two years ago the Obama Boom was declared. Media financial writers like Daniel Gross claimed this would be the greatest economy ever. The media kept pushing the Obama Boom theme to create false confidence. It appears their efforts couldn’t change the reality. Debt was what got us into this crisis, incurring more debt would not get us out.  Dr. Doom warned everyone a year ago about the weakness of the Obama Boom, and the media dismissed and attacked him. Now reality will kill the Obama Boom lie and it us that will suffer!

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Posted in Economy, unemployment | 190 Comments »

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