Cirrus Industries Inc., parent company of Cirrus Aircraft, has been sold to China Aviation Industry General Aircraft Co. (CAIGA) of Zhuhai, China, but it appears the company will continue to build parts in Grand Forks, N.D., and assemble airplanes in Duluth, Minn.We can all have a good laugh when our granddaughters are hiding in cargo holds to sneak into China and work in massage parlors. Blonde girls good price--sucky sucky!
The recoil in 2010 against the Obama Democrats' vast expansion of the size and scope of government seems to have a cultural or a moral dimension as well. It was a vote, as my Washington Examiner colleague Timothy P. Carney wrote last week, expressing "anger at those unfairly getting rich -- at the taxpayer's expense."
Those include well-connected Wall Street firms like Goldman Sachs that got bailed out and giant corporations like General Electric that shape legislation so they can profit. They include the public employee unions who have bribed politicians to grant them pensions and benefits unavailable to most Americans.
A government intertwined with the private sector inevitably picks winners and losers. It allows well-positioned insiders to game the system for private gain. It bails out the improvident and sticks those who made prudent decisions with the bill.
Modest-income Americans think this is wrong. They want it fixed more than they want a few more bucks in their paychecks.
If you look at the combination of higher rates and energy prices, we are really now running at levels that we haven't seen since just going into the financial meltdown. To quantify it, over the past six months, wage income is up $111 million, and outlays on food and energy are up $116 billion.
[...]
It is delicious in its irony, in a way, that QE is really the driver of this commodity bubble, because, obviously, when the Fed started putting rates to artificially low levels, everyone in the U.S. looked somewhere for higher yields. And the obvious place to go was emerging markets, and all the capital flowing into emerging markets fueled their economies and increased their demand for resources. At the same time, debasing the dollar obviously enhanced the allure of holding hard assets, which also benefited commodities. You can find any number of reasons why QE really drove the commodity boom. So if I'm correct that the Fed is going to have to continue this program to protect the U.S. recovery from these threats of higher rates, and food and energy prices, it is kind of ironic that they are going to be pursuing more aggressive quantitative easing, even though that is really what's driving higher rates and commodities.
[...]
If we pursue this logic to its natural conclusion, and the Fed continues with QE, it begets more of the same result, which is just to continue to inflate commodities. Then what happens is that we see commodity prices rise until they reach the point that something breaks. And my thesis is that, during my lifetime, interest rates have always been the catalyst for crisis. Rates backed up to the point that some weak link in the chain broke. This time, however, higher commodity prices will be the catalyst. But, again, it is deliciously ironic that these higher commodity prices are a function of overaggressive, easy monetary policy. In times past, it has always been tight monetary policy that has precipitated the crisis.
[...]
Q. What about the argument that Bernanke and his team had to do something or the economy was going to fall off a cliff, and that they had to create liquidity?
It is easy to sit back and say this. But had the Fed not had that attitude back in 2000, we wouldn't have been in this predicament. The problem is that we serially try to reflate our way out of these problems, rather than taking the pain and letting the economy actually cleanse itself.
According to McCurley [city finance director], the city faces a fiscal crunch because revenue in several areas has fallen short of projections. Collections from traffic tickets are $819,000 below what was budgeted, and ambulance billing collections are $200,000 under budget, he said.
Seriously have these municipalities and those running government lost their minds? You penalize people to STOP BAD BEHAVIOR. If you are successful, if what you did worked, you succeed in making the world a better place and the reward is no revenue because there are no violators. That's what you want! You do not count on bad behavior as A REVENUE STREAM, especially when it entails hoping people run red lights! In accounts of the political unrest sweeping through the Middle East, one factor, inflation, deserves more attention. Nothing can be more demoralizing to people at the low end of the income scale—where great masses in that region reside—than increases in the cost of basic necessities like food and fuel. It brings them out into the streets to protest government policies, especially in places where mass protests are the only means available to shake the existing power structure.
[...]
About the only one failing to acknowledge a problem seems to be the man most responsible, Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke. In a recent question-and-answer session at the National Press Club in Washington, the chairman said it was "unfair" to accuse the Fed of exporting inflation. Other nations, he said, have the same tools the Fed has for controlling inflation.
Well, not quite. Consider, for example, that much of world trade, particularly in basic commodities like food grains and oil, is denominated in U.S. dollars. When the Fed floods the world with dollars, the dollar price of commodities goes up, and this affects market prices generally, particularly in poor countries that are heavily import-dependent. Export-dependent nations like China try to maintain exchange-rate stability by inflating their own currencies to buy up dollars.
Dick Lugar used to be OUR US Senator.
Now, according to MSNBC, Lugar is “Barack Obama’s Favorite Republican.”
Why?
Dick Lugar voted for Obama’s liberal supreme court nominees — Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan.
Senator Dick Lugar appeared in a 2008 Obama campaign commercial.
Lugar co-sponsored Obama’s DREAM Act that would provide amnesty for illegal immigrants.
Lugar recently expressed support for banning legal firearms in response to the shooting in Tucson.
Dick Lugar voted against earmark reform.
Dick Lugar helped ram the START Treaty through the lame duck session so that newly elected Republican senators couldn’t even consider it.
Simply put, Obama loves having Republican Senator Dick Lugar on his side. But we Republicans in Indiana need someone who will speak for us. Not Barack Obama.
Teachers in Wisconsin make more than double the Wisconsin per capita income -- plus benefits!"Ending dues deductions breaks the political cycle in which government collects dues, gives them to the unions, who then use the dues to back their favorite candidates and also lobby for bigger government and more pay and benefits," Mr. Siegel told me. After New York City's Transport Workers Union lost the right to automatic dues collection in 2007 following an illegal strike, its income fell by more than 35% as many members stopped ponying up. New York City ended the dues collection ban after 18 months.
Myron Lieberman, a former Minnesota public school teacher who became a contract negotiator for the American Federation of Teachers, says that since the 1960s collective bargaining has so "greatly increased the political influence of unions" that they block the sorts of necessary change that other elements of society have had to accept.
If you are familiar with the Times's swindle, you will recognize its method of supplying a brief out-of-context quote, and you will suspect that the quote in context is actually far less invidious than the Times's description would lead you to believe. You will be right.The Krugman quote in context is "The usual suspects will, of course, go wild over suggestions that global warming has something to do with the food crisis; those who insist that Ben Bernanke has blood on his hands tend to be more or less the same people who insist that the scientific consensus on climate reflects a vast leftist conspiracy."
[...] But a veritable mountain of evidence indicates that when it comes to Wall Street, the justice system not only sucks at punishing financial criminals, it has actually evolved into a highly effective mechanism for protecting financial criminals. This institutional reality has absolutely nothing to do with politics or ideology — it takes place no matter who's in office or which party's in power.
[...] You want to win elections, you bang on the jailable class. You build prisons and fill
them with people for selling dime bags and stealing CD players. But for stealing a billion dollars? For fraud that puts a million people into foreclosure? Pass. It's not a crime. Prison is too harsh. Get them to say they're sorry, and move on.
Oh, wait — let's not even make them say they're sorry. That's too mean; let's just give them a piece of paper with a government stamp on it, officially clearing them of the need to apologize, and make them pay a fine instead. But don't make them pay it out of their own pockets, and don't ask them to give back the money they stole. In fact, let them profit from their collective crimes, to the tune of a record $135 billion in pay and benefits last year. What's next? Taxpayer-funded massages for every Wall Street executive guilty of fraud?
The mental stumbling block, for most Americans, is that financial crimes don't feel real; you don't see the culprits waving guns in liquor stores or dragging coeds into bushes. But these frauds are worse than common robberies. They're
crimes of intellectual choice, made by people who are already rich and who have every conceivable social advantage, acting on a simple, cynical calculation: Let's steal whatever we can, then dare the victims to find the juice to reclaim
their money through a captive bureaucracy. They're attacking the very definition of property — which, after all, depends in part on a legal system that defends everyone's claims of ownership equally. When that definition becomes
tenuous or conditional — when the state simply gives up on the notion of justice — this whole American Dream thing recedes even further from reality.
I would expect neither Obama administration Jedi mind tricks or secret deals to yield real budget solutions. Explicit outside pressure, from bond markets, will yield deals. And that pressure is not yet forthcoming.
"Could the next Facebook revolution be brewing in Iran"
Cotton prices are near their highest level in more than a decade, after adjusting for inflation, and leather and polyester costs are jumping as well. Copper recently hit its highest level in about 40 years, and iron ore, used for steel, is fetching extremely high prices. Prices for corn, sugar, wheat, beef, pork and coffee are soaring. Labor overseas is becoming more expensive, meanwhile, and so are the utility bills to keep a factory running.
“There are cost pressures from virtually everywhere,” said Wesley R. Card, the chief executive of the Jones Group, whose brands include Nine West and Anne Klein. After trying to keep retail prices flat or even lower during the recession, Jones says prices for its brands will climb 15 to 20 percent by autumn.
WASHINGTON (Reuters) - President Barack Obama proposed a budget on Monday that would cut the deficit by $1.1 trillion over the next 10 years, but Republicans said it did not curb spending deeply enough to meet their demands.
Conservatives say Obama, a Democrat, is a tax-and-spend liberal, and they aim to make the 2012 presidential election a referendum on his fiscal track record.
Details of the proposal provided by the White House before its official release described a $3.729 trillion budget in which the deficit rose to $1.645 trillion in fiscal 2011, then fell sharply to $1.101 trillion in 2012.
Well, let me tell you what it looks like from out here: you are living in a prison. It’s a nice prison, a big prison—so large you can’t see the walls when you are inside—but surrounded, as it is, by (sometime virtual, sometimes real) barbed wire, armed guards and towers bristling with machine guns, it is a prison, nonetheless.Read on...
An important advance indicator of leading conservative frontrunners for the presidency was won by Criminal Reserve archnemesis Ron Paul. [...] Now since the mere prospect of "President Paul" sends shivers of mortal terror down the spine of every self-respecting member of the criminal Wall Street syndicate, does this mean that in order to guarantee 4 more years of Teleprompting, JPM and GS will send the Russell to 36,000,000, the unemployment rate to -15%, and the labor participation rate to -100%, just to make sure that the peasantry is content enough and chooses 4 more years of unmitigated dollar debasement and what is rapidly becoming a weekly iPad cadence? With the popularity of American Idol plunging to record lows, the mission to brainwash America for 4 more years may be just that more difficult. Add 15% inflation and the vassals may actually stir for once.
Gov. Scott Walker said Friday that thousands of state workers would be laid off if the Legislature does not adopt his budget fix that cuts public worker benefits and takes away almost all union bargaining rights from public workers.
[...]
Speaking at a Capitol news conference, the governor also said the National Guard is ready to take control of state prisons if correctional officers illegally strike or obstruct work. Union officials said they had no such plans.
I do this because I love to share. I dream about what I'm going to write all night, then get up at 6AM and hit the keyboard at 6:30AM and don't stop till my wife pulls me off.
The Securities and Exchange Commission today charged three former senior executives at IndyMac Bancorp with securities fraud for misleading investors about the mortgage lender’s deteriorating financial condition.
The SEC alleges that former CEO Michael W. Perry and former CFOs A. Scott Keys and S. Blair Abernathy participated in the filing of false and misleading disclosures about the financial stability of IndyMac and its main subsidiary, IndyMac Bank F.S.B. The three executives regularly received internal reports about IndyMac’s deteriorating capital and liquidity positions in 2007 and 2008, but failed to ensure adequate disclosure of that information to investors as IndyMac sold millions of dollars in new stock.
The SEC’s complaint against Perry and Keys seeks permanent injunctive relief, an officer and director bar, disgorgement of ill-gotten gains with prejudgment interest, and a financial penalty.
The irony is that without some sort of GSE reform, we will be a nation of renters. What is an underwater homeowner but a renter? How can you be a home “owner” if you have no equity? And who is either issuing or guaranteeing virtually all of the mortgages these days? That’s right, the GSEs. Let’s reform them and let folks own their own homes again.
Paying off government debt by printing more money. Leads to inflation
(1) To convert government debt from interest-bearing securities into money. Although both the securities and the money are considered government debt, the latter can be used to purchase goods and services. Thus, monetizing the debt is considered an inflationary process and, although it may temporarily depress interest rates, it is likely to result in higher interest rates and lower bond prices in the long run.
(2) In government, to print money in order to repay the national debt. For example, suppose a government is $1 trillion in debt. Theoretically, the government can simply expand the money supply by $1 trillion and reduce the national debt to zero. It is not uncommon for governments monetize their debts, but because it increases the amount of money in circulation, it is considered highly inflationary.
expansion of bank deposits through purchases of government securities by commercial banks
The woman says she cut off contact when she searched for Lee online and concluded he'd lied about his age and occupation. Then she forwarded us the correspondence.
Research shows that every $5 in new SNAP [food stamp] benefits generates as much as $9 in economic activity, the USDA says.
To boost the number of Ventura County residents receiving food stamps, the Board of Supervisors has OK'd spending almost $770,000 to recruit and enroll them over the next 12 months.
The Obama administration is proposing short-term relief to states saddled with unemployment insurance debt, coupled with a delayed increase in the income level used to tax employers for the aid to the jobless.
The administration plans to include the proposal in its budget plan next week. The plan was confirmed to Fox News late Monday by a person familiar with the discussions on the condition of anonymity because the budget plan is still being completed.
Rising unemployment has placed such a burden on states that 30 of them owe the federal government $42 billion in money borrowed to meet their unemployment insurance obligations. Three states already have had to raise taxes to begin paying back the money they owe. More than 20 other states likely would have to raise taxes to cover their unemployment insurance debts. Under federal law, such tax increases are automatic once the money owed reaches a certain level.
Under the proposal, the administration would impose a moratorium in 2011 and 2012 on state tax increases and on state interest payments on the debt.
Over the next decade, the United States is facing a potential shortage of criminal justice and security professionals, Search for "United Forensic College"
Let me say that the "United Forensic College" is the friendliest, most helpful and accessible college out there right now. The Criminal Justice curriculum isn’t going to overwhelm you.
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So here we have a corporation that advertises itself as a "grassroots organization" while exercising its First Amendment rights to advance the position that corporations do not have First Amendment rights, only individuals do. Some individuals, participating in the corporation's "grassroots" rally, exercise their First Amendment rights in ways that harm the corporation's image. The corporation responds by exercising its First Amendment rights to denounce those individuals for having exercised their First Amendment rights. And it does in its capacity as a faceless corporation, by issuing a statement for which no individual--not even CEO Bob Edgar--takes responsibility.
Anchors Susan Roesgen and LeBron “LBJ” Joseph will sit on bar stools as they introduce and comment on stories in mostly unscripted conversations. There will be a cocktail of the day, as concocted by a local bartender, and each broadcast will conclude with a mini-commentary called “Last Call.”
Clearly, stories will be on the lighter side, and with an emphasis on New Orleans culture. “Kind of a slice of what’s happening today in the city,” WGNO news director Rick Erbach said, citing news-talk radio and the syndicated news-and-entertainment “P.M. Magazine” program of the late 1970s and ’80s as influences on the new half-hour. “Our mantra is, ‘It’s not a traditional newscast.’ ”
[...]
During the November “sweeps” ratings period, WGNO averaged a 1.4 rating (with each rating point representing 1 percent of total TV households, or about 6,360 homes) with its 6 p.m. newscast, which Erbach described as a placeholder until the station could mount “News With a Twist.” That’s down from the 1.9 rating earned in November 2009 by the syndicated game show, “Deal or No Deal.”
To rebalance debt loads and re-equitize financial institutions that should have known better, central banks and policymakers are taking money from one class of asset holders and giving it to another. A low or negative real interest rate for an “extended period of time” is the most devilish of all policy tools. And the asset class holder that it affects, or better yet, “infects,” is the small saver and institutions such as insurance companies and pension funds that hold long-term fixed income assets.
[...] credit spreads, or emerging market returns, or currencies with positive and high real interest rates are more attractive than those old-fashioned gilts and Treasury bonds offering 2–3%. Those are markets that need to be “exorcised” from model portfolios and replaced with more attractive alternatives both from a risk and a reward standpoint. It is still possible to produce 4–5% returns from a conservatively positioned bond portfolio – you just have to do it with a different mix of global assets.
You used to earn an interest rate roughly inline with nominal GDP growth, even slightly better. Since the Fed started manipulating interest...
