Thanks for nothing, Jim Cramer

Flashback to Jim Cramer, Monday, 10/06/2008 ("Take Your Money Out Right Now"):

“Whatever money you may need for the next five years, please take it out of the stock market right now, this week. I do not believe that you should risk those assets in the stock market right now.”

-- Jim Cramer, Monday morning, October 6, 2008 (before the market open)

The Friday before that outrageous, irresponsible advice was nationally televised on NBC's Today Show, the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSMX) had slumped to 26.62 from 30.90 two weeks before, not quite 14%. After his Monday call, however, the fund, a proxy for the whole market, dropped nearly 18% in that one week alone, to 21.85, on its way to its 16.60 low in March 2009. TARP, by the way, was signed into law also on that Friday before Jim opened his BIG mouth the next Monday morning.

Four years and four months since that fateful day in October 2008, VTSMX has bounced back to reach a new all time high of 38.13 as of Friday, February 8, 2013.

Your $36,700 in early October 2008 would be worth $57,300 today, a gain of 56%, if you had ignored Jim's advice.

THANKS FOR NOTHING, JIM. Not only did I need the $36,700, I needed the $20,600 gain.

Of course, Jim technically has until October of this year to be vindicated, but that presupposes a market crash from here of at least 36% to start cutting into that original pile of money I needed. But hey, I needed it, so it's not there, so no worries, right?

And what's Jim saying last week?

“We have a genuine, honest to goodness, bona fide bull market here,” Cramer said Tuesday.   

Look out below.

Gov. Snyder Is Nuts: Gas Taxes In Michigan Are Already 6th Highest In America

Michigan in January 2013 had the SIXTH highest overall gasoline taxes in the nation, and Gov. Snyder is talking about raising them higher still to fix the roads. He is quite clearly nuts.

The excise tax on gasoline is already double the rate you would pay in sales tax on a box of Kleenex or a roll of toilet paper and is one of the most regressive taxes in the state and in the country. The excise tax on gasoline penalizes the working poor the most who depend on their cars to get to their crummy jobs, if they are lucky enough to have one. And Governor Snyder only wants to make it worse.

Here are the top six states for combined federal, state, and local gasoline taxes as of January 2013:

New York:   69.0 cents per gallon

California:   67.1 cents

Hawaii:        65.5 cents

Connecticut: 63.4 cents

Illinois:         57.5 cents

Michigan:     57.1 cents.

The federal portion EVERYWHERE is fixed at 18.4 cents per gallon, so that means Michigan already takes 38.7 cents out of your pocket every time you put a gallon of gas in your car.

Today's average price for gasoline in Michigan is $3.743, meaning the base price at the pump is $3.172, including all profits and costs before the taxes are applied. That means the federal tax of 18.4 cents represents a federal excise tax on gas of 5.8%, and that your Michigan excise tax on gasoline is a whopping 12.2%, more than twice the sales tax rate of 6%. The average sales tax nationwide is just 5.04%.

Michigan is one state which bears the full brunt of the Davis-Bacon Act of 1931, resulting in road workers getting top dollar. Funny how we have some of the worst roads in the country in exchange for that. Maybe the governor should spend more time trying to figure that out before picking the taxpayers pockets again.

If the country needs anything, it is a tax cut on gasoline. The national average tax is 48.8 cents a gallon. Backing out the federal portion, that means the states on average are taking 9.3% on gasoline, a tax rate 85% higher than the average state sales tax rate.

Poverty Guidelines 2013

As shown here.

Poverty Thresholds 2012

As shown here.

In Bond Debacles Of 1994/1999, Net Asset Values Fell About 10%

In the bond debacle of 1993-1994, the Vanguard Total Bond Market Index fund saw a decline in the net asset value of 11.6%, falling from 10.35 to 9.15.

In a similar episode between 1998 and 2000, the net asset value plunged from 10.43 to 9.46, a decline of 9.3%.

The Model For All American Authoritarians Is Pres. Lincoln

So Ralph Peters, here:

"But no president should murder American citizens. Tell it to Abe Lincoln, Hollywood’s celebrity-president of the season, who invaded the South (which had not even threatened acts of terror). The result? Perhaps 750,000 dead Americans. I believe Lincoln was our greatest president after Washington, but he wasn’t just about emancipation."

Funny how emancipation for 4 million black people required the deaths of 750,000 and the repression of liberties of millions ever after.

Well, at least he's honest about The War of Northern Aggression. And Lincoln was a murderer. I'm glad we cleared that up.

One key to surviving in the future will be making sure we don't all move to the same geographic location. Another is refusing to wear the Star of David. You know a third.

Bush Paved The Way For Obama's Insane Imperial Claim He Can Kill You

If you still harbor the slightest loyalty to either George Bush or Barack Obama after reading this withering, eviscerating critique of what's happened to our liberties under these two ne'er-do-wells by noted American lefty Glenn Greenwald for The UK Guardian here, then the future truly is hopeless.

From the concluding paragraph:

"[W]e have the current president asserting the power not merely to imprison or eavesdrop on US citizens without charges or trial, but to order them executed - and to do so in total secrecy, with no checks or oversight. If you believe the president has the power to order US citizens executed far from any battlefield with no charges or trial, then it's truly hard to conceive of any asserted power you would find objectionable."

He must know that when the purge starts under a future American Caesar, his ilk will be among the first to go.

Good Grief, Bulgaria Grew Better Than The US Last Quarter

h/t TradingEconomics.com

Liberals Everywhere (and libertarian elites) Sneer With Doyle McManus: How Dare You Live In A Bigger House?

 

 

 

 

 

Today's liberal sneer comes from Doyle McManus for, you guessed it, The LA Times, here:

But don't take it from me. Take it from the economists at the Mercatus Center, a mostly conservative think tank at Virginia's George Mason University. ... "Recent empirical research suggests that the mortgage interest deduction increases the size of homes purchased but not the overall rate of homeownership," they wrote. ... You can be sure that home builders and Realtors, whose businesses thrive on big houses and high prices, will push back hard against any proposal for change. ... The mortgage interest deduction subsidizes big houses and bigger mortgages, but that's not a good use of tax dollars. Its benefits flow disproportionately to the wealthy and do nothing for the working poor.

In other words, God forbid that modestly incomed people with big families should live in the same comfortable digs as the elites. No, the only thing suitable for them is something small and cramped in keeping with their station in life. The "Realtors" is a nice touch, with a capital "R", the evil purveyors of this excess and offense against the crabbed liberal view of life. We have met the enemy, and he works for Remax. Puritanism still lives, my friends, in the indignant hearts of the America's liberals.

George Mason University, for its part, is a libertarian bastion, not a conservative one, and being socially liberal, libertarians are ever helpful to one side and one side only: liberalism. Make no mistake about it, the societal decision long ago to subsidize home ownership is a by-product of the conservative consensus of yesterday. That consensus recognized that the basic social unit was the family, defined as a husband, wife and children, the incubator for the transmission of the values of our civilization, and that shaping tax policy to support it materially was not only in the best interests of the present, but of the future.

The people who attack that now are either dimwits, or enemies. 

Theoretical Oil Investing Years Since 1980 According To The Gold/Oil Ratio

Theoretically according to the gold/oil ratio, oil investing years might include any year when the gold/oil ratio rose above 15, that is, when the price of an ounce of gold was "more expensive" than 15 barrels of oil, say about 25 barrels as in 1998, indicating that the price of oil was a bargain relative to gold:

1980  16.37

1986  25.10

1987  25.51

1988  29.39 ($14.87/barrel)

1989  20.81

1990  16.54

1991  17.94

1992  17.86

1993  21.49

1994  24.52

1995  22.91

1996  18.95

1997  17.45

1998  24.71 ($11.91/barrel)

1999  16.86

2009  18.17

2010  17.20

2011  18.06

2012  19.76
2013  15.71

You'll notice very few ads on the radio, on the internet, or generally, for oil. You don't have to sell something that's on sale. Gold ads proliferate for a reason: Gold is too expensive, but the mother of idiots is always pregnant, providing another customer.  

Theoretical Gold Investing Years Since 1980 Using Gold/Oil Ratio

Theoretically according to the gold/oil ratio, gold investing years might include any year when the gold/oil ratio dipped below 15, that is, when the price of oil was more expensive, making an ounce of gold "cheaper" than 15 barrels of oil, say 9 barrels instead of 15 as in 2005 and 2008:

1981  13.13

1982  11.91

1983  14.63

1984  13.11

1985  11.97

2000  10.19

2001  11.78 (gold $271.04/ounce, lowest average annual price for gold since 1980 to date)

2002  13.58

2003  13.12

2004  10.95

2005    8.91 (gold $444.74/ounce)

2006  10.35

2007  10.83

2008    9.53.

Not coincidentally, Vanguard launched both its energy fund, VGENX, and its precious metals fund, VGPMX, on May 23, 1984 when it was time to invest in gold and avoid oil. But if you had invested $10,000 in the energy fund that year, by May 31, 2008 you'd have in excess of $352,000. The precious metals fund did much less well, almost reaching $107,000 over the same period.

Charting The Dollar And The Gold/Oil Price Ratio

Create a graph

Is it just me or is there no real correlation going on between any of these?

A Rationale For Ending The Tax On Corporate Profits

John Steele Gordon provides a helpful survey of the history of American taxation, here, including the chronically avoided topic of how the tax on corporate profits (ruled constitutional as an excise tax "on the privilege of doing business as a corporation") was meant to be a temporary tax on the rich:

In the first decade of the 20th century, the stock of corporations was owned almost entirely by the rich. So taxing corporate profits was, in a very real sense, taxing the rich. Congress passed the legislation and in 1911 the Supreme Court ruled unanimously that the tax was constitutional. ...

Unfortunately, the [subsequent] personal income tax did not replace the corporate income tax that had originally been intended only as a stopgap. Nor did Congress integrate the two taxes so that income, whether corporate or personal, was only taxed once. The two taxes simply ignore each other as if corporations are owned by Martians, not people.

At the tax levels of the early 20th century, the harm was inconsequential. But when tax levels rose dramatically to fund the great wars that soon followed the personal income tax, the pressure to legally avoid taxes rose equally. As a result, the two separate, uncoordinated tax systems became a uniquely powerful engine of complexity as accountants and lawyers have played the two systems off each other and Congress has tried, unsuccessfully, to close or regulate the resulting “loopholes.” ...

The two income taxes have been the main reason that the tax code has exploded to a 4-million-word incomprehensible mess.

Global Warming Skepticism Bothers CNBC More Than Calling ObamaCare Fascist?

For quite some time now CNBC has chosen to showcase Whole Foods' co-founder John Mackey for his global warming opinions rather than for his characterization of ObamaCare as fascist. So many targets, so little room in a headline.

From the story:

As for regulation to reduce global warming, he said, “We can probably eliminate poverty on the planet earth in the next 50 years if we will just continue to follow the tenets of free enterprise capitalism to the greatest extent possible. So I just don't want to see that change.”

Mackey’s taken some heat for some of his other publicly stated opinions. In a recent interview on NPR, he characterized President Obama’s health care legislation, ‘Obamacare’ as “more like fascism.” He backpedaled in subsequent interviews.

This Is A Depression, Says Dem. Billionaire Mort Zuckerman

"We believe we live in more normal times—and we do not. Millions of people today are experiencing exactly the same struggle as the millions did in the Great Depression. They can't find work. They depend on government and philanthropy. They live on hope denied. ...

"The reality is, we are experiencing a modern-day Depression. It is harder to find work than it has been in any previous economic recovery period. ...

"The Pew Research Center reports that for the first time in the post-World War II era, middle-class families finished the decade significantly poorer in terms of household net worth—which is down almost 40 percent since 2007—and with lower incomes than a decade earlier. This has hit the middle class harder than any other group. According to Pew, one third of Americans now identify themselves as lower class or lower middle class, a deterioration since 2008 when one quarter identified themselves that way. ...

"We are living through a breakdown of the great American jobs machine. This is not a recovery. Annual GDP growth in 2010 and 2011 averaged a mere 2.4 percent; in 2012, GDP growth slowed to 1.8 percent. In other words, cumulative growth for the last 11 quarters was just 6.8 percent, less than half the 15.2 percent average growth in GDP after previous recessions over a similar period of time. This is the slowest growth rate following all 11 post-World War II recessions. ...

"No recession since the end of World War II has been as deep or as long as this one, severely testing the optimism, confidence, and animal spirits that typify the temper of America. The question of the hour is how can we find a way to avoid becoming a low-wage, part-time country."

Read the full story, "How We Can End Our Modern-Day Depression," from Mort Zuckerman, here. 

Wily Democrats Ramped Up Spending Baseline Almost 18% In 2009

The Tax Policy Center here provides a useful history in pdf format of federal outlays and revenues going back to 1940.

After taking complete control of the federal purse strings in January 2009 with the election of President Obama, the Democrat-controlled House and Senate proceeded to ramp up federal spending almost 18% in 2009 compared to 2008, from $2.98 trillion to $3.52 trillion. You can see from the chart that expenditures have continued at that new, higher level ever since, despite the fact that revenues have not recovered. Is this the height of irresponsibility, or what? It certainly is one of the more baneful consequences of one party Democrat rule. Now you understand why Democrats won't pass budgets. Continuing this excess using continuing spending resolutions keeps their names out of the papers.

You'll notice on the revenue side for 2008 and 2009 that the government's income from taxes of all sorts declined almost 17% while these expenditures were being dramatically increased at nearly the same rate, opening up a gigantic fissure in the government fiscal landscape. Revenues declined by $419 billion between 2008 and 2009 while expenditures increased $535 billion. The revenues declined due to the bursting of the housing bubble, the ensuing financial panic and the massive unemployment which followed. Nearly 11.31 million Americans lost their full time jobs between November 1, 2007 and December 1, 2009. People who don't work don't pay taxes. With federal outlays already running over $450 billion in excess of revenues, you can understand why the deficit in 2009 swelled to over $1.4 trillion, and continues elevated at that level every year since. Deficits for fiscal years 2009-2012 will top well over $5 trillion in the end. At the Bush-level of deficit spending, the number would have been closer to $3.5 trillion.

In exchange for that astounding liability we have fat bankers not prosecuted for their crimes; bigger banks more dangerous than ever; fat government salaries at every level compared to the private sector; crony capitalism in banking, autos and healthcare; 5 million homes repossessed in seven years; over 12 million officially unemployed; over 2 million per year leaving the labor force for Social Security disability, reduced lifestyles, poverty, or retirement; nearly 48 million on food stamps; GDP struggling to average 1% per year under Obama, the worst performance in 65 years; interest rates near zero destroying returns on retirement capital; an exploding wave of reduced work in the form of impermanent contract and part-time labor; and on and on.

And what's hot on the web right now?

"Where's my refund?" 

High Taxes On Imports A Chief Cause Of The Civil War

So says Michael Sivy for Time, here:

The income tax has always been hated – but so were the taxes it replaced. In Colonial America and the early U.S., taxes were typically on goods like sugar, tea, or whiskey (which triggered the Whiskey Rebellion in 1791). Other taxes were on land or were poll taxes (which was a flat amount per person and had nothing to do with voting). Later on, there were high custom duties on imports, which were one of the chief causes of the Civil War because they pushed up the prices of manufactured goods, helping the North but hurting the agrarian South. Real estate taxes were always extremely unpopular and still are.

It wasn't until 1863 when The War of Northern Aggression was going badly for Lincoln that it became officially about slavery.

Under Obama 2.1 Million/Year Left Labor Force, Under Bush 1.3 Million/Year

Those not in the labor force reached a new record high level on January 1, 2013: 89.008 million. On 1-1-01 there were 70.008 million not in the labor force. On 1-1-09, 80.507 million. What that all means is that under Bush people left the labor force at a rate of 1.302 million per year, but under Obama it rose dramatically to a rate of 2.125 million per year, 63% higher than under Bush.

Believe it or not, under Ronald Reagan, whose unemployment record had been the worst in the post-war period until Obama, just 147,000 left the labor force ANNUALLY, for a TOTAL of only 1.176 million in eight years. Under Clinton the rate rose almost four times that, to 566,000 annually.

Personal Defense Weapon

Department of Homeland Security says so, here.

The Obamas Are Sweet Potato Lovers

From Boston.com, here:

The first lady has described her family as sweet potato lovers. This fall, she harvested the potatoes from the White House Kitchen Garden, sometimes with the help of children from the Bancroft and Kimball elementary schools in Washington.