Thanks for the inspiration:
1.8 percent GDP growth in the face of massive stimulus is the equivalent of your car sputtering down the highway at 45 miles per hour while you have the gas pedal floored.
Read more from Henry Blodget here.
Thursday, April 28, 2011
After Two Years, Bear David Rosenberg Finally Throws in the Towel
“This is not about throwing in the towel; it is an acknowledgement of what the market internals are flashing at the current time from a purely tactical and technical standpoint.”
“The (US dollar) is on a one-way ticket south and so far has been orderly—will that be sustained is anyone’s guess."
“For now it is being viewed as fodder for the global liquidity and risk-on trades.”
"[The tech rally] is a clear sign that the big boys are putting money to work."
“Market internals are too strong to ignore right now—NYSE advancers beat decliners by a 3-to-1 ratio (Tuesday); the Dow transports soared 1.9 percent; and the small caps beat their major benchmarks."
“My overall macro concerns have not gone away, but these market facts on the ground are tough to ignore.”
-- David Rosenberg, quoted here
Q1 2011 Advance Estimate of GDP Slows to 1.8 Percent
From 3.1 percent in Q4 2010. Yikes.
So reports the BEA here.
In 2009 we were down 2.6 percent, in 2010 up 2.9 percent on the federal intravenous drip.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
In 2009 we were down 2.6 percent, in 2010 up 2.9 percent on the federal intravenous drip.
Drip. Drip. Drip.
Rush Limbaugh Can't Think Before 1913
"Look, in a classic sense, Trump's not a conservative, folks. You don't promise to raise tariffs on the ChiComs 25%. That's not conservative. (interruption) People understand this, Snerdley. You remember when George W. Bush threatened to raise tariffs on imported steel, there was an outcry. No, you don't raise taxes, period. That's not the way to deal with it. That's protectionism. Smoot-Hawley. It's a death wish. This is why I'm always worried about populism. Populism is not conservatism."
-- Rush Limbaugh, 27 April 2011 (here)
"Tariffs were the largest source of federal revenue from the 1790s to the eve of World War I, until it was surpassed by income taxes."
-- "Tariffs in United States History" (here)
"The magnitude of the tariff shock in the Smoot-Hawley legislation . . . was simply not large enough to trigger the kind of economic contraction experienced after 1930."
-- Douglas A. Irwin (quoted here)
The baneful influence of doctrinaire libertarianism on conservatism continues . . . in the voice of Rush Limbaugh.
America's Biggest Pair of Boobs
 |
| the left one is bigger |
 |
| the right one just thinks it is |
Notice the wide
cleavage→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→→
Wednesday, April 27, 2011
May We See The Certificate Of Live Birth Number Now On The Certification?
Ask Snopes.
A Certificate of Live Birth has been released by The White House. Shouldn't the Certification above reference this by its number? Did it match? Let's see it. Let's authenticate it.
61-10641?
61-10641?
Government Aid Swells to 18.3 Percent of Income in 2010
Dennis Cauchon reports for USA Today, here:
A record 18.3% of the nation's total personal income was a payment from the government for Social Security, Medicare, food stamps, unemployment benefits and other programs in 2010.
Wages accounted for the lowest share of income — 51.0% — since the government began keeping track in 1929. ...
From 1980 to 2000, government aid was roughly constant at 12.5%.
Tuesday, April 26, 2011
33 Percent of Voters Have Ties to Tea Party
As of early April, per Rasmussen, here, which also says that percentage hasn't moved since December.
Monday, April 25, 2011
Our Enemy, David Stockman, Wants Higher Taxes on the Middle Class
We already know David Stockman wants to turn home owners into renters.
Now his first words out of the box for The New York Times, here, call for raising taxes on the middle class, as if the middle class had any money:
IT is obvious that the nation’s desperate fiscal condition requires higher taxes on the middle class, not just the richest 2 percent.
Mr. Stockman affects displeasure with class warfare in others while himself engaging in it, on behalf of the speculators who enriched themselves for years at the expense of Americans' primary store of wealth: their homes.
But our world is not shaped by the top 2 percent of earners, and everyone else below them "the middle class." This sort of nonsense plays as well at a White House prayer breakfast as it does at the country club, where everyone is middle class for purposes of public discussion, which is why The Times is happy to put up a former (was he ever one?) conservative to say what it doesn't have the courage to say openly.
Having screwed us out of our housing wealth, they're next target is our declining American paycheck.
And unless the Fed wants to ruin the value of the dollar . . . Mr. Stockman tellingly opines later in the piece, revealing how miserable is his grasp of the utter failure of The Federal Reserve since its inception. What do you mean, "unless?" The 1913 dollar is today worth about 4 cents. I'm sure Americans will be happy to surrender 100 percent of their paychecks to the government when the dollar goes to zero.
No, the middle income quintile in America is just 35 million tax returns strong, with a paltry $1.7 trillion in adjusted gross income. To eliminate our annual budget deficits under the big spending liberals like Obama, Pelosi and Reid, Mr. Stockman would have to confiscate 100 percent of this middle class money. Comrade David Stalin might as well starve us all to death, or line us up against the wall and shoot us.
Is there enough money below them?
Where the two lowest income quintiles dwell there are 70 million tax returns with even less money: $1.1 trillion in AGI.
At the top in America are 35 million tax returns with $5.6 trillion in AGI resting on these 105 million with $2.8 trillion in AGI. The 105 million are getting crushed.
The very top 14 million carry the most weight, with $3.8 trillion in AGI.
Even if we imagined raising taxes on the middle class meant we increased taxes on the 21 million tax returns in the upper middle and lower upper class, the pile of money available there for Mr. Stockman's extraction efforts barely beats that available in the real middle class at $1.8 trillion in AGI.
The big money is concentrated at the top, for a multitude of reasons, despite the on-going lies from The Wall Street Journal, Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, and now David Stockman. That's why President Obama's rhetoric about increasing taxes on the wealthy plays so well with the American people. It's the secret of his success.
By overwhelming numbers Americans support increasing taxes on "the rich." Despite all the success of the Tea Party in the US House, the American people obviously still haven't made the connection between the president and the Democrats and the massive revenue shortfalls. The shortfalls exist not because taxes aren't high enough. They exist because of massive new overspending.
That Mr. Stockman attempts to exploit the failed connection, perceiving that an opening yet remains, to confuse, obfuscate and lie, tells you all you need to know about him. Like the rest of our elites, he hates the Tea Party.
Right back atcha, David.
Sunday, April 24, 2011
Senator Lindsey Graham: Advocate of International Terrorism
(1) the term "international terrorism" means activities that -
(B) appear to be intended -
(iii) to affect the conduct of a government by mass
destruction, assassination, or kidnapping;
Friday, April 22, 2011
Radiation Posts NW of Fukushima Still Registering Above 10 Microsieverts Per Hour
Monitoring posts 31-33, and posts 79 and 83: 10.1, 21.6, 16.5, 12.0, and 43.5 microsieverts per hour, respectively, per the map, today:
Normal is more like 0.11 microsieverts per hour.
Trotsky Lives! At EmpireStrikesBlack.com
Oh the things you run across out here.
This is by one Barry Grey, a true believer of the Fourth International variety who rather dislikes that Stalinist, Barack Hussein Obama:
In the United Auto Workers union and the AFL-CIO and Change to Win union federations the Obama administration and the corporate elite have accomplices whose only concern is to secure for the union bureaucracy a cut in the spoils of the class war being waged against working people.
The Socialist Equality Party urges workers to carry out a rebellion against these corrupt, right-wing organizations and establish independent and democratic rank-and-file action committees to fight against layoffs, plant closures and wage cuts. These committees should spearhead the struggle to unite all sections of workers and young people and mobilize the power of the working class.
This is a political fight against the Obama administration, both big business parties and the capitalist system which they defend.
Very nice website, though. And clever name!
The International Committee of the Fourth International (ICFI) is the name of two Trotskyist internationals; one with sections named Socialist Equality Party which publishes the World Socialist Web Site and another linked to the Workers Revolutionary Party in Britain.
So Wikipedia, here.
Barry Grey sits on the international editorial board of the World Socialist Web Site.
Thursday, April 21, 2011
One Man's Austerity is Another Man's Tax Increase
When it comes to "austerity," most people with common sense think "frugality," "reduced spending," and generally going on a diet of lower consumption.
Louis Woodhill reminds us here that what people without economic common sense mean by it is tax increases. Which is why Obama, and some Republicans, want to raise yours.
Woodhill knows we're already in the toilet, and thinks raising taxes now is tantamount to flushing it.
He makes a good case for repatriating capital by lowering corporate income tax rates. In view of the fact that corporations contributed only about $300 billion to federal revenues in 2008, he might very well be right: most of their money is "over there," escaping taxation.
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