99 Comments

1. sgi:

The commentators at his site are almost as good as at the Belmont Club.

The following comment is only one of many that paints a sinister portrait of the Obama administration and it’s deliberate attempts to take advantage of the collapse to advance socialism.

# March 1st, 2009 at 2:40 pm Duke responds:

@K T Cat, oh, you’re right in the sense that this administration really “doesn’t care” per se regarding equity/Treasury values as long as the end results are achieved: control & management of the economy’s income/assets.

Ultimately, it’s all abut acquiring the means of production at a steep discount (banks are the means of production in a FIRE economy) without the normally messy processes associated with nationalization/confiscation. You know, like people getting shot, sent to gulags, etc.

Actually, you’ve got to hand it to them – their timing couldn’t be more impeccable. Drive down the equities markets with announcements of huge tax increases and massive debt projections, then acquire F50 assets for pennies on the dollar with the resulting cheap debt, (as money flees to the safety of Ts), then ramp up the printing presses to produce inflation.

DC is gonna show NYC hedge funds & SV venture funds how it’s really done: 10-20x bangers with **$trillions** deployed. People will be so happy with the government’s investing acumen that they will give a fig regarding how it was achieved.

The only fly in the ointment that I see is if the recession isn’t managed just right (ie the Goldilock’s recession), and the economy contracts so much that they must begin printing before all their positions are staked out, then we may get societal disorder without any big payback to show for it.

That’s when the new minority (47%) might get a little pissed.

Mar 4, 2009 - 2:30 am 2. ridgerunner:

The most obvious way to shorten the feedback loop is for major financial institutions to believe in, and act upon, overbought-oversold oscillators. The publicly available VIX serves such a function, as do other proprietary technical analysis techniques.

Mar 4, 2009 - 3:02 am 3. weSwinger:

So much good could be accomplished by the banks restating their balance sheets (for assets they originate) to book value. Assets aquired through trading have to be marked to market, but Brian Wesbury is right: Original cost accounting would settle down the banking systems balance sheets quickly. Maybe we should hold back on helpful suggestions: because Rush is right: we need O to fail, but not so badly that he takes all of us down with him.

The Warner Brothers cartoons were the greatest things when I was a kid. When I got older it was even funnier to see Mel Blanc on the Tonight Show, absolutely slaying Johnny Carson with all his voices. That man was a genius!

Mar 4, 2009 - 3:13 am 4. buddy larsen:

today’s Geithner trial balloon was a variation on ‘bad bank’ — “public/private partnerships, fed to buy the toxic assets, ‘private managers’ to break ‘em up and sell them”. Geithner relayed this brightly demeanored, eyes full-wide, brow full-furrowed, yes-i-understand-your-fears-of-government-takeover sympathy tics breaking out like a busby berkeley kick line, all emphasis on “private managers” –as the key to the people’s retaining their liberty. God, what an echo-chamber they have going. I can hear ‘em now, “Hey, let’s just grab us some *private managers* –that’ll fool the rubes –i mean, gain public support!”

hell, how can ya be anything but disgusted when they won’t even say the words mark-to-market ? As if we don’t all know by now their weaponized (in November 2007) regulation. Loosed on us at the same meeting where allowable leverage was TRIPLED and the protections against massed naked short-selling were (*poof*) removed.

Mar 4, 2009 - 3:51 am 5. Doug:

“hell, how can ya be anything but disgusted when they won’t even say the words mark-to-market ?
As if we don’t all know by now their weaponized (in November 2007) regulation.
Loosed on us at the same meeting where allowable leverage was TRIPLED and the protections against massed naked short-selling were (*poof*) removed.”
—
I was just waiting for mark-to-market.
Really, isn’t it a bit cruel to proceed to the piling on stage?
We don’t want the POTUS to FAIL, do we?
Even the Queen has clothes, and sleeveless not only counts, but gets extra credit.

Mar 4, 2009 - 4:29 am 6. lc:

What about the unknown-unknowns? If I understand Taleb aright, its what we don’t know we don’t know (Black Swans) which shape the “topography” of the markets over the long haul. My sense of this is there is information we are just not able to know; the best we can do is understand that the lack exists and act more cautiously. It is inherent in the complexity, and “non-linearity” of the economic system that it is impossible to know all possible/likely outputs.

And can anyone give me an idiot’s (that would be me) explanation of what mark to market is?

Thanks.

Mar 4, 2009 - 4:32 am 7. Doug:

Davey Brooks is shocked, SHOCKED!
That a former member of the Socialist Party, who has spent almost his entire adult life around socialists, communists, black liberationists, Muslim Arabists, and domestic terrorists, might not govern as a CENTRIST!
…took Joe all of 5 minutes to learn that BHO is a committed redistributionist.
But Joe’s “Just a Plumber.”

Op-Ed Columnist – A Moderate Manifesto – NYTimes.com

The president issued a read-my-lips pledge that no new burdens will fall on 95 percent of the American people.
All the costs will be borne by the rich and all benefits redistributed downward.

Those of us who consider ourselves moderates — moderate-conservative, in my case — are forced to confront the reality that Barack Obama is not who we thought he was.

His words are responsible; his character is inspiring. But his actions betray a transformational liberalism that should put every centrist on notice. As Clive Crook, an Obama admirer, wrote in The Financial Times, the Obama budget “contains no trace of compromise. It makes no gesture, however small, however costless to its larger agenda, of a bipartisan approach to the great questions it addresses. It is a liberal’s dream of a new New Deal.”

Moderates now find themselves betwixt and between. On the left, there is a president who appears to be, as Crook says, “a conviction politician, a bold progressive liberal.”
On the right, there are the Rush Limbaugh brigades.
The only thing more scary than Obama’s experiment is the thought that it might fail and the political power will swing over to a Republican Party that is currently unfit to wield it.

Mar 4, 2009 - 4:51 am 8. buddy larsen:

ic, say you sell fried chicken out of a basket, say. Say you were selling it outside a busy restaurant serving fried chicken all-you-can-eat special. ok, you can’t sell much chicken.

Now say next day you bring another basketful to the same place full of the same people but this day the restaurant is serving hamburgers. ok you sell your chicken pretty easily.

Mark-to-market makes you take to market on day 2 no more chicken than you sold on day 1.

Mar 4, 2009 - 5:03 am 9. wretchard:

Offhand, what strikes me about this reaction to Limbaugh is three things. First, the almost religious prism through which political persons and events are viewed. People are apt to see theocrats, Manchurian candidates, concentration camps and other archetypes in the other (almost symmetrically) camp the way people whispered darkly about child sacrifice and unnatural practices in other religions. Liberals and conservatives are related but divided like the Sunnis and Shi’as are loosely related but divided.

Second, the Republican party leaders are finding themselves marching behind a variety of grassroots movements which they don’t fully represent or control, caught between the temptation to ride the wave and fear of what the wave will do.

Thirdly, the real insurgent force is paradoxically the conservative grassroots. To be a Marxist today is essentially to be a reactionary. You would be welcome at court in places ranging from Robert Mugabe’s palace to 10 Downing Street and at every international organization in between. State control is the orthodoxy of the moment. “Don’t tread on me” is seditious.

To David Brooks, Rush Limbaugh must be like one of those popular medieval peripatetic Holy Men who drew huge crowds where ever he went. The Republican Party leaders are analogous to the town Bishops who had to outwardly welcome the Holy Man, while secretly hoping he would go away. And the crowds weeping at the spellbinder’s sermon was the only thing everybody feared. The message was normally, “repent for the end is near”. The end of something, truth to tell, was always near.

You can listen to a person like Rush and accept that he’s channeling something without buying into the channel himself. Personally, I think there’s a wind blowing through the world that is shaking the old order. And I do include the international left in the phrase. My own hunch is we’re approaching a discontinuity and I think many people suspect this. Limbaugh is a storm petrel, but not the storm.

Mar 4, 2009 - 5:19 am 10. ridgerunner:

Technical analysis obviates the concept of black swans. Everything needed to make good decisions is available in price vs. time and indicators based on that relationship. There were clear signs of a top in October, 07, and clear signs in August, 08, that there would be a downward resolution. If everyone based decisions on technical analysis, the result would be less volatility and hence stocks would reflect more accurately long term earnings potential. But of course that won’t happen because it takes too much attention.

Mar 4, 2009 - 5:20 am 11. Moneyrunner:

Mark to market simply means that if you own asset “X” and someone else just sold asset “X” at price “Y”, you have to value your asset “X” at price “Y.”

This seems to make sense until the “market” disappears. Let’s use your house as an example. You have a perfectly nice 3 bedroom ranch in a development which you bought for $250,000. The value appreciated over the years to $350,000 in a reasonably liquid real estate market, which means that houses were bought and sold in a relatively short time at pretty much what we will call “reasonable” prices.

Your neighbors who have a house just like yours have a nasty divorce and put their house on the market at auction for whatever they can get for it. Meanwhile the entire community loses its Ford plant and everybody puts their homes up for sale and there are no buyers. The house is auctioned off for $25,000.

Mark to market means that your house now has an assumed value of $25,000 ever if you have no intention of selling it at that price. In other words there are no willing buyers and sellers around but your neighbors’ “fire sale” determines your net worth.

Mark to market works in theory when there is a liquid market. It fails utterly when the market freezes up and sellers and buyers are so far apart that there are literally no transactions except for the outliers (like your neighbors in my example).

For a much better explanation of the mess the government created for us, click here.

Mar 4, 2009 - 5:20 am 12. lc:

Ok, buddy, I sorta see your point. In your example, it seems that mark-to-market works against me (selling chicken); is it some kind of regulation or just a “rule”, like supply and demand?

It seems sort of artificial, or against common sense – that is, the “market” tells me that I should only have available to sell that amount of chickens that history says I can sell, but reality/common sense tells me that you shouldn’t sell chickens in front of a busy, discount chicken restaurant.

Mar 4, 2009 - 5:21 am 13. Moneyrunner:

Planned Impoverishment?
We have all heard about planned obsolescence. The auto industry does it with annual model changes. Intel does it with computer chips; Microsoft does it with every change in Windows. Hell, even razor blade manufacturer so it.

But planned impoverishment? To what end?

OK, how about this? Total dependence on Government.

The US stock market has dropped 20% since the beginning of the year, and it’s only the beginning of March. This is on top of the 40% drop last year. People are watching their savings and investments evaporate before their eyes. Plans for retirement, education, a home are being abandoned. The wolf is creeping closer to the door.

And what is our “Hope and Change” leadership doing about it? Having announced that Tim Geitner is in charge of the economy, they act as if that fixed the problem. And having proposed spending over three trillion dollars on pork this year, Team Obama has decided it’s priorities are nationalizing health care, making the world one, ending all war, freezing the earth’s climate and making Arabs and Jews love each other.

If I were a suspicious man, I would suspect that Team Obama is not unhappy that people are losing their financial independence. It’s much easier to control people when they don’t have “go to hell” money.

Mar 4, 2009 - 5:25 am 14. outa my league:

A dizzy, disoriented “Which way did he go, George?” from Buggs Bunny was a literary reference to “Tell me about the rabbits, George.” George was the big super-dumb and super-strong depression era laborer who was Lennie’s companion in John Steinbeck’s “Of Mice and Men.” Lennie would often soothe George with their fantasy of having a farm of their own someday, including plenty of rabbits for George to pet and raise.

The gag was later used in the 1960’s “Rocky and Bullwinkle”. Bullwinkle the Moose is knocked loopy, and says to Rocky, “Tell me about the rabbits, George.”

Mar 4, 2009 - 5:31 am 15. Moneyrunner:

IC, Buddy has it wrong. Mark to market is a pricing formula, not a supply formula.

Mar 4, 2009 - 5:31 am 16. outa my league:

Oops, I may have gotten that backwards. I believe it was Rocky who was decked and said the line to Bullwinkle.

Mar 4, 2009 - 5:36 am 17. Mongoose:

I think we can now fairly say that this is indeed a case of “Planned Impoverishment”.

It is not too late, however, to turn it around. The momentum has to be stopped.

This has to be called to the attention of the American people. We need to remember though that it is not just Obama that is behind this, it is the whole trazi Nomenklature starting with our local, Democrat branch. Getting control somehow of the Hill in 2010 is crucial, but so is getting the fear of the electorate into the Democrats before then. It may well be that we have to form an across the aisle coalition for 2010 that is focused on just saving the Republic, as opposed to one that pushes a conservative agenda. The goals shout be 10 Stop the momentum, 20 Throw the bums out, 3) Turn this economy around, and 4) dismantle anything that Obama has set up. One we get things back to normal we can duck it out on ideology.

Moreover, we have to keep at it no matter what happens. It could be a long fight. Hoever, if you see what is happening in the EU, the fight might just last a couple of decades, not generations.

As to the poster above who say that technical analysis obviates black swans: That is why they call them black swans; black swans stand outside of parameters and algorithms of the Technical Analysis. Such faith placed in the mind of man to see all things is not wise. You miss the point.

Should Israel bomb Iran or we seem massive unrest in China (and I mean massive unrest with 20 million plus in the streets), or a series of attacks in the USA similar to those in Mumbai we will well see what black swans are.

Our tranzi elites have shown no evidence that that are half as clever as they hold themselves to be.

They are acutaly living in the past.

Mar 4, 2009 - 5:50 am 18. Mongoose:

tazi-tranzi

Mar 4, 2009 - 5:52 am 19. Mongoose:

duck=duke

Mar 4, 2009 - 5:52 am 20. lc:

Moneyrunner #11
Thanks for the link – I will plow through it when I have more time….I may be misunderstanding buddy on the mark-to-market formula.

Wretchard #9
Excellent comments – my hunch is your hunch is on to something. I keep thinking about those graphs you posted shortly before the election which showed that the “liberal” (I’m being imprecise here but I’m working from memory) methods were in fact becoming more in disfavor (in spite of appearances). You were asking in this post for some sense of what the future (indicators) would bring. Something of what you said keeps nagging at me – what you were saying was true, in spite of the huge power grab in the, it seems, radical, fascist agenda that the current administration is rushing through, with very little official opposition. Obama’s election has the whiff of the coup-de-etat to me.

This is kind of off topic, my apologies, but something else has been nagging me -
a fine review by John Bolton on a Brookings Institute publication.
Can’t get the link to work. It was in Commentary magazine (online) “The Coming War on Sovereignty”.
Links in the article to Brookings piece.

I suspect some of this will find its way (if not already there) into the current administration’s foreign policy narrative/”guiding philosophy”. I read bits of it – I just think anybody who thinks we (Bush) squandered international good will post 9/11 is an idiot (a bigger one than me).
Cheers.

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:05 am 21. Doug:

“You can listen to a person like Rush and accept that he’s channeling something without buying into the channel himself.”
—
I see Limbaugh as a man (flawed like all the rest of us) blessed with a father and grandfather that gave him a priceless education, and a mother that gave him a common sense, and a connection to the “common man” almost unique to rural dwellers of the “show me state,” who was then blessed further in the same way others are who find a way to make a living doing what they most love to do.

Obama followers, otoh, seem to buy into the man himself, seeing him as someone radically different from what one would normalLy expect him to be, given the nightmare that was his mother, father, grandfather, and others in his formative years.
…they see him as who he SAYS he is.
(and who they WANT him to be.)

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:08 am 22. Mongoose:

great link, moneyrunner.

Say, here are some interesting variations on our new Politburo’s spiffy insignia.

http://michellemalkin.com/2009/03/03/obamas-new-mark-of-the-porkulus-beast/

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:12 am 23. Doug:

Too good, Mongoose!
…we need every little smile we can wring out of this nightmare!

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:16 am 24. Mongoose:

Doug: I especially like the one with Soros on it.

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:19 am 25. ridgerunner:

Of course there are black swans, like 9-11. But nothing in the late 07-present bear market was not predicted by my personal version of technical analysis. I don’t have faith in the mind of Man, but I have plenty of faith in the mind of this man. I have been short since November, 07.

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:24 am 26. Mongoose:

The comments on the CFR China equity purchase are worth reading.

Again, I assert that the tranzis have no idea wat they are up to they are just pulling levers frantically in order to stave off a train wreck.

Should wreck be avoided, they will just as frantically try to figure out what levers they pulled in order to avoid the next one. Th obvious and sad fact is that it is their lever pulling that is the problem.

I think that W. was right before. This is, or can be viewed, as a crisis of Globalism.

As someone mentioned above, the tranzis will react with a move toward global government, with them in charge, naturally. Perhaps that is what this is all about. It will not work, but it will cause a whole lot of misery before it is done and over with.

I hope Classical Liberal Western Civilization survives. I hope the republic survives. It will be a close run thing I fear.

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:26 am 27. peterike:

“Which way did he go, George?” is, indeed, a reference to “Of Mice and Men.” And lest we forget how the good, simple-minded Lennie ends up, let me remind you. He kills Curley’s wife by accident — I guess I don’t know my own strength — and George has to shoot him in the back of the head so Lennie isn’t set upon by a lynch mob.

I don’t know what any of that has to do with anything other than I feel like we normal folk out here are just a bunch of Lennies, with our only options being a bullet or the noose.

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:35 am 28. RWE:

“That likely explains why China reversed course and fled to safety this fall. China got burned.”

An additional factor is what the politcial response to the crisis will be.

China has taken over so much manufacturing not just because they have a very large workforce that will work cheap but also because they government there has enacted polices relative to depreciation of manufacturing plants that would be decried as “stealing from the poor” in the West.

One could reasonably expect that the financial crisis would lead to the US government revisiting its tax laws as well as removing laws such as CRA from the books. That would mean bad news for China in manufacturing and good news for the health of the banking industry.

But “reasonably expect” does not apply in the Obamaverse. So the Chinese must be thinking – like everyone else with an IQ above that of a ‘58 Caddy – “What the F are these idiots gonna do next?”

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:38 am 29. Mongoose:

RWE: The whole world is sitting around waiting to discover if Obama truly is a sea change or just a electoral anomaly. And so are we.

I am heartened though that doubts have set in so soon. It is interesting as well that the administration is so ham-fisted. It seems like a blunder a day so far. It leads one to think that they do not have the smarts to successfully pul off their coup.

Perhaps we will wise up yet. If the public does get it, it will be interesting 4years for it will mean that they get the notion of a major political party trying to actually destroy the middle class for their own personal gain. Who knows where that insight will lead?

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:46 am 30. Mongoose:

RWE: Oh, I actually found a link to how the NSA emblem was created

http://findarticles.com/p/articles/mi_qa3926/is_200204/ai_n9062529

The point to carry away from this is that Marshall Cater just went off and did this, and sprung it on the government as a fiat accompli.

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:53 am 31. DocBill:

Ok Richard, I’ll bite. What is your prognostication as to what is coming. You have seen a lot of weird social stuff around the world and have better insights than most in blog land.

Personally I think it will be a roaring refutation and end of the unmasked American Marxist movement. An end to the 60’s radicals. Also maybe a very real racial flareup as many are angry with the blacks for embracing victomhood and refusing to become part of the productive classes.

Tell us Richard, what do you really think!

Mar 4, 2009 - 7:31 am 32. Mongoose:

http://www.americanthinker.com/2009/03/us_companies_pay_the_highest_t.html

Mar 4, 2009 - 7:46 am 33. buddy larsen:

ic, the important thing to know is that it is a reg, and it is artificially discounting bank asset values, meaning banks in order to maintain reserve requirements have to hoard cash, rather than lend it. this frozen money stops spending and raises unemployment (inventory backs up and workers are let go) and the circle spirals another round down. what’s weird about that ordinary economic recession is the violence and velocity it hit –there was too much debt in the sysytem so insufficient flexibility. M to M is fun in a bull mkt, banks ‘make’ money with it –but it kills in a downturn. FDR suspended it in 1938 and it stayed suspended until mid-2007. a different model was used all that time, a cash model of the asset value, and there’s no reason we can’t go back, it would take a word. instantly the sysem would start limbering up. it is becoming PAINFULLY clear to some that the gov’t wants to control the banking system and is leaving M-to-M in place until it can get a monster discount on an expropriation of all those assets –in the name of the “taxpayer” –an entity with which these socialists are cementing themselves and their friends and families into permanent power and control. that the country’s workers and savers are getting their savings murdered doesn’t seem to bother them. this is getting people very very very very upset.

Mar 4, 2009 - 8:01 am 34. programmer:

buddy,

All political implications aside, mark-to-market seems like a good thing to me. Most things are worth only what someone is willing OR able to pay for them.

Mar 4, 2009 - 8:32 am 35. RWE:

Mongoose: Well, that is interesting about the NSA seal. A friend of mine is the head lawyer for the NSA and is married to a guy who is expert in signals intelligence for a well-known university/think tank.

I once created a “seal” for the NRO, back before you could say that. Back before I could even say that. Envision one of the Mad Magazine Spy Vs Spy characters, but wearing a mask, and you would come pretty close. It got a big laugh at an Air Force briefing.

I think another way to look at all of this is to explain the Left’s view of the Design Margin concept. What got us in such big trouble is the CRA and its effects came on top of all the other things the Left had piled on the mule of the economy’s back for the last 75 years. The Left just never thought it would ever run out of Design Margin. And example of this is the repeated assumption they make that they can just pile on higher taxes and more regulations and people will work just as hard.

Now, the Uber-Left, represented by the Obamatrons, think that the very idea of Design Margin is evil. There should not be any margin above what is needed to run the country. The part not needed to run the country should be part and parcel of what is needed to run the country. That way you can’t tell the difference, and Sturgeon’s Relevation that 90% of everything is crap does not appear to apply because the crap is so spread around over the good stuff it can’t be separated.

For example, this is what the Space Shuttle program was all about. By tying the essentially useless practice of putting humans in Earth orbit over and over to the highly important business of launching essential payloads, no one would mind paying for the crap. It was an utter disaster and everyone knows that now.

Mar 4, 2009 - 8:35 am 36. programmer:

buddy,
Never mind! As soon as pressed submit, I saw a couple leeetle flaws in my overly simplistic view.

Mar 4, 2009 - 8:37 am 37. Mongoose:

Have a look at this:

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/business/04penny.html?_r=1&hp

Mar 4, 2009 - 8:41 am 38. buddy larsen:

yeh –that’s happening to everybody, programmer, forgetting the far side of the future perfect tense. jeez, speaking of tense.

Mar 4, 2009 - 9:04 am 39. Triton'sPolarTiger:

Hey Mongoose, I responded to one of your comments on the subprime thread, but with the advent of the current thread drawing everyone away, I think you may have missed it.

Perhaps it’s not too OT to repost, however, as it is somewhat pertainent to your comment #17:

@9 Mongoose

“Wrong, wealth has increased in the last 20 years. Obama is purposefully destroying wealth at the moment. It need not be.”

I agree that Obama and company are deliberately destroying wealth.

The question is why… my guess is that he and his leftist cohort understand that the greatest obstacle to the full implementation of his socialist vision is our vast, somewhat affluent, unflappable, self-reliant middle class. If they were anything like me in August of 2008, they had nice homes, well-paying jobs, self-funded health care, kids in private schools… and staggeringly large private investment accounts (retirement income) awaiting them when they hit 65.

Not the sort of person willing to give up any freedoms to the federal government in exchange for being “taken care of” by that government, because it’s against their very nature and they don’t need the “help”. Therefore, if BHO intends to fully implement his socialist vision, he must make a significant portion of the middle class dependent on govt for their very survival.

Tell me if this sounds familiar: I’ve been maxing my 401(k) contributions for over two decades now into a very aggressive portfolio… had the stock market not tanked, but rather continued to produce the same steady returns that it has averaged for decades, I would have found myself sitting on over 8 million bucks by 65. Besides living well in retirement, I had planned to endow each of my children with a gift of a million dollars when they reached the age of 30, in hopes that they would use it to start a business, etc…

Now, unless something happens whereby the market stages a rally as big as its present collapse has been, that goal will never be realized. And I’m quietly mad as hell about it, since the collapse represents the sort of theft for which there is no suitable compensation. Twenty years of playing by the rules, gone.

So, Strike One, billions saved by millions for retirement are gone. Hello, Social Security.

Strike Two, home values crash, leaving many owing more than their homes are subsequently worth.

Strike Three, confiscatory taxation goes ballistic, taking a significant portion of what’s left over…

Strike Four, single payer health care, a part of which will be a govt bureaucracy that decides if and when you get that vital MRI… guess who will be kissing whose @ss when that comes around…

There are probably more strikes I could note here, but it’s late and I’ve got to call it a night… but you get the picture.

A vast, somewhat affluent, unflappable, middle class, that neither wanted nor needed any “help” from the government now finds itself on the road to a paycheck-by-paycheck existence, extremely vulnerable to even the slightest ill wind… and, no doubt as these socialists intended, so freaked out that many will practically beg the government to do whatever is needed to protect then from further loss, even if it means surrendering some God-given freedoms to do so… and becoming dependent on the government as a result…

We are in danger, people – bigtime. Serfdom lies down this pathway.

God save us…

Triton

Mar 4, 2009 - 9:20 am 40. Mongoose:

Triton: No, I saw it. I completely agree with you. I really have nothing to add.

Sorry if I did not respond.

I think the only hope is that enough Americans will come to understand what the democrats are up to and reject it.

The Democrats are really arrogantly attacking the Nation. I personally have seen nothing like this ever before. They do not bother to even mask it. I pray that we can throw it off in time.

As I said somewhere we have to find a way to make common cause across party lines to stop this. The sooner the better.

It is an extremely scary moment we are in now.
For my part, I think that this all is manufactured. I just hope that they overreach, and soon.

Mar 4, 2009 - 9:26 am 41. Armeggedon Rex:

Mongoose #17 & #29:
In comments on this post, and others here at Belmont Club, you’ve mentioned stopping the momentum of the Obamassiah and the statist changes his apparatchiks are implementing at a breakneck pace. You are correct, in that it needs to stop, but I believe your thinking a little behind the putsch curve.
Now that they have power, they have no intention of giving it up, or slowing their further consolidation of power just for some niggling inconveniences like an election or two. We’ve already seen the legislation to fund ACORN.
With the collusion of the main stream media, election fraud on an a previously unimaginable scale, here in the U.S., will probably deliver solid return majorities of Democrats in both houses of congress.
As if this weren’t enough, the ace up Obamassiahs sleeve is the 20 to 40 million illegal alien Mexicans residing in the U.S. These are people accustomed to relying on government handouts and other patronage both here and back in Mexico.
By making them citizens, he adds 15-30 million new socialists to the voter rolls. This will ensure that conservatives, libertarians, and moderates are completely shut out of the political process in the U.S. for at least the next two generations.
By the time these immigrants descendents are ready to move up the educational and economic ladder, and become interested in personal liberty and personal financial freedom / responsibility, socialism will be fully ingrained in the national psyche.

Look for legislation giving them citizenship to become law before the 2010 federal elections. I seriously doubt Pelosi, Reid, or Obamassiah will miss the opportunity to ensure socialist control of government for the next fifty years. This will drive a stake through the heart of our Constitution, as the founders understood it, once and for all.

Mar 4, 2009 - 10:41 am 42. hdgreene:

The problem isn’t the amount or quality of the information but the mental process. I’ve often encountered people who think quite rationally about their own personal lives and careers but tend to be quite dreamy-schemie when they think about the future, especially on a less personal level.

It’s a kind of nostalgia for the future. When we look to the past we can often idealize it — make the good better and forgot or magnify the problems, according to our whim. Same with our schemes for the future: the problems can be minimized and the benefits exaggerated. We simply don’t use our critical faculties. This is often a good thing for humanity because some irrational risks pay of big time for all time (the first guy to impale a mammoth on a sharp stick might be an example).

The dreamier and schemier the future, the more we disrespect the present and past to justify the risks getting there.

Right now the big scheme involves centralizing power in Washington DC. They will turn it into Las Vegas on the Potomac with Democrats loading the dice for the benefit of the rest of us — and they sincerely believe it is for the benefit of the rest of us. Dreamy-schemie.

Of course now we have a different type of nostalgia for the future: the future ain’t what it use to be — and it’s somebody else’s fault.

Mar 4, 2009 - 11:04 am 43. Triton'sPolarTiger:

Oh heavens, Mongoose, no apologies necessary – just wanted to make sure you’d heard my “AMEN!” from the back pew!

Mar 4, 2009 - 11:11 am 44. Mongoose:

I am fully aware of all of this. What do you propose, letting them roll over us?

BTW, I will say, AR, that you do have a tendency toward pessimism (nothing personal).

Every day we can brake them, is a plus.
We are in a horse race here.

Socialism will not work, if they succeed at this coup the country will be a living hell. As I said before, our only hope is that there is enough of the old spirit of the American people left in us. If it is there it needs some time to build up to critical mass.

So I do not think I behind the “putsch curve”, i think that you are behind on theh “spirit and faith curve”. What are we to do, tell me? Give up?

Here is something from Sen. Bayh:
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/03/04/business/04penny.html?_r=1&hp

It could just be a smoke screen, but it could show that we are not lost yet.

The truth is, at this moment we do not know what the American people are made of any more .

On the positive side, what they are trying to do has never been done before, ever. To take the most prosperous and freest nation in history, and turn it into a corrupt socialist third world dump in a matter of months, really, and to do this through no other agency than lies and duplicity. Are we really so weak? Are we really this stupid?

If so then we deserve to go down. If we can let this noble legacy slip through our hands so easily, is the anything left to preserve?

The truth is that we do not know what the true character of the American people is at this point.

What is galling is that we seem to have no leadership at this point. So we must each do what we can to stop the momentum until that changes.

That is my point. This is no time to retreat.

We cannot not be like they are. Our while case rest on the notion that people can and should govern themselves. We believe the the central notion of the country is that liberty is the highest political value, and that America;s greatness stems from the Liberty of the Common Man. We must have faith in our principles, and that means we have to avoid cynicism about our fellow citizens. It is all that we have working for us.

We have to fight a rearguard action until this idea is either proven or not.

We just do not know if there are yet enough Americans who feel this are left to turn the tide.

I will say one thing though, neither the nature of Obama, the democrats or the times are such that we are going to see a cushy, Euro style socialist state come into place that will lull people into accepting a complete change of the order. It will be rough. This is over for the EU too, or will be presently.

It will get tough. They will have to become extremely oppressive, much worse than the antics of Labour in the UK. It all will be obvious. It will not be a case of trading freedom for security, it will just be a case of fighting it or being enslaved.

So I still think that there is hope. We just must fight, fight and fight. It is up to all of us in our daily lives to do this right now. It is all that we have until leadership emerges and the tide turns.

Mar 4, 2009 - 11:13 am 45. Mongoose:

triton: Yes I hear it. We all have to speak out now. I am with you.

Mar 4, 2009 - 11:15 am 46. Pips:

It seems a bit hard to believe that even with an adviser as experienced and shrewd as Rahm Emanuel the Magic Negro would try to pull of a coup as complex as this. More likely there are several players mostly but not always acting in concert. Whatever the case, the game being played is as delicate and perishable as a boxing match held on the end of a toothpick. Such a game takes more than cojones and more than mere ruthlessness. I think there is an element of coincidence in play here, mixed with some good old fashioned incompetence.

Mar 4, 2009 - 11:20 am 47. buddy larsen:

Pips, think of a team of burglars in a high-rise hotel, walking the corridors trying every doorknob. The plan is to grab as grab can. bad analogy as what they’re after right now is legal agency to take the next step, which will be enforcement of the new laws and regs.

But just this howling of the Tea Parties is adjusting downward the velocity of the takings, you can be sure. And we’re probably doing some good deconstructing their war game here on the net –people will read it and maybe talk to others. It’s a start, and it shows we ain’t gonna shut up, nor take the extended corpse hand smiling pastily and claiming we love it. When the time comes, many, many will do more than write blog comments. i can feel it –the mask is off these birds. It’s a terrible shame tha our first black president is a marxist and is telling such whoppers and disrespecting his oppo so comprehensively, because the coming elections are going to find a white bloc vote for the first time ever. And it’ll be a big turnout –everyone. What we need to do is as mongoose says, find a decent and honest leader, not a race-based leader. A Constitutionalist leader. maybe mongoose’ll run–?

Mar 4, 2009 - 11:50 am 48. Triton'sPolarTiger:

@45 Mongoose

Agreed – now is no time to shrink from the fight. I forget the verse, but it goes something like “as gentle as doves and as wise as serpents…”

Some of my neighbors need a dose of that from me.

Now, as for the local dude from ACORN… forget the gentle part.

Mar 4, 2009 - 11:57 am 49. Mongoose:

Oh no one would elect me. I can only be who I am. But thanks a lot there buddy.

BTW, sorry I if I ruffled your feathers over that kerfuffle with M. Simon, but I was offended by it all. Sorry if I offended.

Mar 4, 2009 - 11:58 am 50. maineman:

Mongoose,

44 is a wonderful and stirring summary of what many have been saying here. I thought about copying it and sending it out as a viral — er, antibody — email. These things can travel all over, very quickly.

Why don’t you clean it up so it’s a little better packaged? Call yourself Tom Payne or something, and we can all send it out, get things rolling. People should be bombarded with this stuff all over the country right away. No time for fancy-pants presentations and conventions, and lots of little things like this could be important.

(And I still like my idea of “Impeach Obama” bumper sticker showing up on stop signs everywhere.)

Mar 4, 2009 - 12:04 pm 51. Mongoose:

triton: it is from Matthew 10.

Some of the following verses are worth repeating too:

16 Behold, I send you forth as sheep in the middle of wolves: be you therefore wise as serpents, and harmless as doves.
17 But beware of men: for they will deliver you up to the councils, and they will whip you in their synagogues;
18 And you shall be brought before governors and kings for my sake, for a testimony against them and the Gentiles.
19 But when they deliver you up, take no thought how or what you shall speak: for it shall be given you in that same hour what you shall speak.
20 For it is not you that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaks in you.

(King James version)

Mar 4, 2009 - 12:07 pm 52. ridgerunner:

Anyone not inclined to dismiss the predictive power of price-time plots might be interested by Barton Biggs’ book “Wealth, War, and Wisdom.” It’s message was highly relevant in 2007, and will be again.

Mar 4, 2009 - 12:15 pm 53. Mongoose:

maineman, always feel free to use my comments. I have no ego invested in any of this, just a partiots passion. If I get time maybe I will clear up my thinking a little. Perhaps I will post it to a thread sometime soon.

This seems to be what I have to offer these days, synthesizing thoughts around here.

I cannot contribute much on these complex technical matters of finance.

But, again, what it is more important that we all speak in our daily lives, and that we each do it in our own ways with sincerity of mind, heart and spirit.

We should not be afraid to make mistakes, just get it out there and keep adapting.

Sometimes an honest expression of emotion and thought is the best thing to sway another person, and this includes blog psoting and comments. You never know who reads them.

But thanks for the compliment.

Mar 4, 2009 - 12:18 pm 54. ridgerunner:

It’s = Its

Mar 4, 2009 - 12:19 pm 55. Mongoose:

Maineman: as to bumperstickers, I was think of some like

“Hey Obama, Just Resign. Now.”

or

“Hey Obama, Oh No You Can’t. Not Ever.”

or somethin’

Mar 4, 2009 - 12:25 pm 56. maineman:

That’s it: “No You Can’t”

Come to think of it, that’s what I’ll use as the topic for your viral comment, which I’ll pare down myself.

Mar 4, 2009 - 12:32 pm 57. Armeggedon Rex:

Mongoose #44:
Yes, I have a tendency to be pessimistic. A lot of tax payer funded training and education helped shape my worldview, and looking under rocks in foreign countries and finding lot’s of disgusting stuff hasn’t helped. Perhaps I’m suffering, like a cop, from thinking about and dealing with filth so much that I’ve become suspicious of people in general, their motives, and the chance for any human endeavor to produce “good” results instead of lining the pockets and consolidating the power of the elites. A lot of that happens in the turd world, and regrettably, our tax dollars had more to do with it in many instances than I would have liked. On the other hand, The Soviet Union is gone. Thank God! It really was the lesser of two evils in most cases. Yup, I’m definitely a cynic when it comes to human nature. If I weren’t, I might have voted for the Lightworker. All adult humans are suspected selfish dirtbags until they prove otherwise. I generally give children a break until they beclown themselves. At that point, they clearly need guidance and education, but many adults are more trouble to educate than they’re worth.

One reason I am so disturbed with the rapid slide the U.S. seems to be making into the pit of socialism is that I’ve seen the nasty downside in great detail before. Many Americans haven’t. They apparently, won’t bother to educate themselves until it’s too late.

I am certainly not advocating giving up. Quite the opposite in fact. As patriotic Americans, we need to exercise our rights to assemble, speak out, and redress our government with our “grievances”. We need to hold peaceful public demonstrations, and write to our congress weasels. We need to contribute time and money to back politicians and political causes in order to increased individual liberty, and support limited government as our founders intended.

It’s the cynic in me, combined with experience, that has reached the conclusion that we’re not dealing with a government of the people, by the people, and for the people any longer. We need to pursue all manner of peaceful political activities, but at this point I think we should be prepared if our efforts are all for naught because our government is no longer playing by the rules, or changes the rules in order to gain / retain power.

I point out the pessimistic scenarios because I’m used to being paid to present those possibilities. I guess I’m a one trick pony in that respect. But I also want the thoughtful patriots, the deep thinking planners and successful professionals who hang out here at the Belmont Club to start thinking about the steps they plan to take when, or if, one of these nasty situations develops and political activities as usual are no longer effective.

Mar 4, 2009 - 12:39 pm 58. Doug:

“The anger of grassroots conservatives continues unabated at the weak-kneed, spineless, earmark –loving Republicans.”

Viguerie – Rushification is inevitable result of GOP leaders’ incompetence

Manassas, VA – Broadcasters and commentators such as Rush Limbaugh, Sean Hannity, Laura Ingraham, Mark Levin, Glenn Beck and Michael Savage are seen as the de facto leaders of the Republican Party for a simple reason, Richard A. Viguerie said today: “It’s because no one else is acting like a Republican leader.”

“The ‘Rushification’ of the GOP is the natural and inevitable result of the fact that those who are supposed to provide leadership – Republican elected officials and party officers – are doing little to bring the party back,” said Viguerie, chairman of ConservativeHQ.com.

“Nature abhors a vacuum, and there is no vacuum in nature as empty as the leadership of the Republican Party today.”

Said Viguerie: “The GOP absolutely refuses to replace the Congressional leaders who helped get the party and the country into this mess. There are many Republican governors campaigning for the Obama ’stimulus’ plan that is wrecking the economy and will push America deeper into socialism. Governor Jindal’s speech was technocratic, without passion and toothless, and Michael Steele’s foolish attack on Rush Limbaugh will, I’m sure, cost the party many millions in contributions.”

“The anger of grassroots conservatives continues unabated at the weak-kneed, spineless, earmark –loving Republicans.“

Mar 4, 2009 - 12:40 pm 59. peterike:

“Now you can’t”!! I love it! Start the printing presses!

And let’s recall this bit of Dylan Thomas for inspiration in dark times.

Do not go gentle into that good night,
Old age should burn and rave at close of day;
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Though wise men at their end know dark is right,
Because their words had forked no lightning they
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Good men, the last wave by, crying how bright
Their frail deeds might have danced in a green bay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Wild men who caught and sang the sun in flight,
And learn, too late, they grieved it on its way,
Do not go gentle into that good night.

Grave men, near death, who see with blinding sight
Blind eyes could blaze like meteors and be gay,
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

And you, my father, there on that sad height,
Curse, bless, me now with your fierce tears, I pray.
Do not go gentle into that good night.
Rage, rage against the dying of the light.

Mar 4, 2009 - 12:50 pm 60. peterike:

“Now you can’t” = “No you can’t,” of course. It sucks getting a slogan wrong.

Mar 4, 2009 - 12:51 pm 61. Mongoose:

AR: I hear you. I have spent some time overseas and in the 3rd world , and the 2nd one too, when there was one, and I have lived in the communist countries, and harsh totalitarian regimes.

I harbor no illusions at all about this–that is why I so insist that we fight.

And yes we need to also think about the next step should we go done.

As Wretchard said a while ago, we should be cautious in taking the counsel of our fears. We still can turn this around. We must try. It could be seen as an opportunity.

Otherwise we here ourselves are not worthy of our Heritage.

Perhaps you should use your experiences of these places to sway people. Americans in general have no idea what it wold be like to lose the freedoms that they are so accustom too. If they get a taste of it, all hell could break loose. At least that is what I am hoping. We must resist. We must not be slow boiling frogs.

Doug:Viguerie is right, of course. The GOP has to grow a pair, pronto.

Mar 4, 2009 - 12:52 pm 62. Triton'sPolarTiger:

Saw a bumper sticker @ Powerline:

One Big Ass Mistake America (the first letter of each word MUCH larger than those following). Was LOL funny.

Mar 4, 2009 - 1:20 pm 63. buddy larsen:

>>”Yes We Can’t”<<

They said it couldn’t be done,
but with a smile Obama went to it.

He tackled that job that ‘couldn’t be done’
–he couldn’t do it!

Mar 4, 2009 - 1:29 pm 64. buddy larsen:

i once had a small biz that developed slogans for clients in small biz. my own biz slogan was “you need a slogan”.

Mar 4, 2009 - 1:39 pm 65. Mongoose:

What was your tagline?

Mar 4, 2009 - 1:43 pm 66. RWE:

Mongoose: “Socialism will not work, if they succeed at this coup the country will be a living hell.”

It will be a living hell only to those who recall what it used to be and believe they know what it could have been.

There will be no other example in the world where people will be able to compare their own lives to those of others and decide that something is not quite right.

They will be “happy” with their daily bowl of gruel, waiting 3 years to get those pesky cataracts removed, cars that can go all the way up to 50 miles a day, and electricity as reliable as that of Baghdad in 2004 for only three times the price we pay today. And that all will be true only if socialism works pretty well.

The reason Rush wants Obama to fail is that the Obamas succeeded in the USSR, over and over again, every time, for 80 years, until the country fell apart. And it is still a basket case. I concluded, and also heard it said by Americans who went to Russia for work-related activities that if the US and USSR had gone at it hammer and tongs in 1958, they would have hurt us but we would have blown the hell out of them – and today they would be far better off for it.

Mar 4, 2009 - 1:59 pm 67. shropshirelad:

Hi Peterike,

I love that Dylan Thomas poem. It is a great piece to remember in dark times. I remember reciting it silently to myself when I was 19, changing soiled diapers, and watching my grandfather die of cancer.

And yet, as much as I love that piece, I think a different kind of resolution is called for under the present circumstances.

This morning I was reading something by Tennyson in between cases and coffees a work. You probably know the poem, so I won’t bother with the title, and just excerpt it.

Tho’ much is taken, much abides; and tho’
We are not now that strength which in old days
Moved earth and heaven, that which we are, we are–
One equal temper of heroic hearts,
Made weak by time and fate, but strong in will
To strive, to seek, to find, and not to yield.

I am always drawn to that line, “that which we are, we are–.” What are we, I wonder? What have we become? I am constantly asking myself these questions each time I turn to the news.

The West is not what it was, clearly, even in our imaginations. Nor is America. Nor sadly, am I. We must work with the materials we have in hand: our cunning, our families, our friends. Dark as things seem to get, whenever I visit this site I am encouraged by what I read. I always go back to my coffee and cases a bit more determined:

Some work of noble note, may yet be done,
Not unbecoming men that strove with Gods.

For that, I would like to say thanks.

Mar 4, 2009 - 2:09 pm 68. Walt:

Buddy says mark to market has to do with selling chickens
Mongoose says be careful boys, the tranzi plan just thickens
Cannoneer says mark to market seems to be all good
Then back a little later says he just misunderstood
Triton says his 401 has gone down with the crash
And we all know just which big lefty he would like to bash
Wretchard in his quiet way is wondering ‘bout the rabbits
While most of us are cutting back on our old spending habits
Belmont Clubbers bye and large bring comment to an art
So hats off to all Clubbers, boys, from this old rhyming fart

Mar 4, 2009 - 2:13 pm 69. In the Industry:

These are serious problems that afflict China’s sovereign wealth funds. But I have to wonder if their greater problems are domestic. They have attempted to build capital intensive industries when what they have their biggest relative surplus of is labor, hundreds of millions of rural folk on the move. Trying to have higher-wage jobs when global demand is plummeting and they have lots of unemployed seems bound for disaster in flesh and blood. In contrast, the problems they have with their investments don’t seem so bad. They have lots of dollar-denominated assets at a time in which the dollar is still the best bet, even under Obama, when you compare to the yen, or the endangered euro. Even if the Dow goes to 5K, I’m not sure that holding US equities is the worst thing in the world. Hell, if their risky assets are asset-backed securities, they may be getting a bailout, courtesy of you and me. Now, if those risky assets are in Europe or the developing world, then all bets are off.

Mar 4, 2009 - 2:19 pm 70. blert:

Walt, you have a gift.

Mar 4, 2009 - 2:43 pm 71. Bob Murphy:

I haven’t had time to follow this thread correspondence but here is a very good article from WSJ on The Obama Economy.
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB123604419092515347.html#

Mar 4, 2009 - 2:44 pm 72. Ashcat:

In giving “the little guy” power, the Internet has overturned every other entrenched institution it has so far faced.

I wonder whether this crisis that we are witnessing is, in the abstract, really a response on the part of centralized/top-down social institutions (including government, newspapers) to the encroachment of a vast army of free individuals acting through the Internet. A circling of the wagons around what has historically constituted real power, and the apparent increase in centralized power we are currently witnessing may prove to be temporary in the face of increasingly powerful and free individuals.

Some observers, such as George Gilder, have noted that established technology that is facing disruptive threats from below often appear initially to be unaffected by the threat and at the absolute peak of market power when it is dealt its fatal blow. For an example, think about IBM mainframe computers when minicomputers/workstations disrupted them; or the subsequent prominence of workstation provider Digital Equipment Corporation in the early 1980s, and what happened to them subsequently when the seemingly less powerful personal computer came to the fore. Both companies minimized the threat from below, with fatal consequences. My hope is that the same will be true of an increasingly dominant, centralized federal government. It appears to be more powerful than ever at present. On a more concrete level, there is a palpable and growing and healthy cynicism on the part of common men and women; a refusal to swallow whole what we are told by those who place themselves above us—whether in government or the media. The individual has new and substantial powers to communicate and organize in ways unprecedented in human history. This thing ain’t over yet.

Mar 4, 2009 - 4:26 pm 73. geoffgo:

hdgreene@42,

“— and they sincerely believe it is for the benefit of the rest of us. Dreamy-schemie.”

And, what if they don’t sincerely believe that? Talking about acting in the “public good” has always been a sham to conceal theft from the individual.

What do we owe our children, if they are just aiming to enrich themselves and their friends, cronies and cohorts at our expense?

“Of course now we have a different type of nostalgia for the future: the future ain’t what it use to be”

This is insight or vision, not nostalgia.

Mar 4, 2009 - 4:29 pm 74. steeple:

In the industry, I think that you are right on. They have overinvested in so many industries to the point where most of them weren’t returning a profit before everything went to hell. They effectively “bought” business from other manufacturing economies by pricing so low, either via their overinvestment or lack of production discipline, that they destroyed a tremendous amount of wealth along the way.

So the question I have is how big their pot of write-offs look relative to the quality liquid investments that they still have. I would suspect that most of their entrepreneurs are in worse shape than ours are. Can’t imagine that the bank balance sheets look very good; they never really did before. But at least they don’t face the prospect of a govt that will raise taxes on them in these economic times.

Mar 4, 2009 - 4:35 pm 75. geoffgo:

mongoose@#44,

And, if we find that there aren’t enough of US to turn the tide (I’m assuming you mean at the ballot box in 2010), what then?

Remember, them crafty Lefties are working full bore tween now and then, with no budget constraints. So, if we can’t win the majority back by 2010, are we doomed to just docile up? That would mean they’d have won without a real fight, no? That’s how they see it, at least for now.

Mar 4, 2009 - 4:39 pm 76. Mongoose:

Chesterson had some word he coined for “worship of the future”

Melenolotry?

I cannot remember exactly.

He considered it a form of idolatry.

Mar 4, 2009 - 4:45 pm 77. blert:

Steeple @74…

China has a fourteen year overhang of Class A office space.

China has shot her wad on useless military hardware.

China still has a completely shot ‘legal system’.

China never left crony capitalism.

China is going to find Madoff/Stanford clones within her own ranks.

Collapsing expectations will not be limited to the West.

Mar 4, 2009 - 4:46 pm 78. buddy larsen:

agree with Blert –walt you is a “talent”.

Mar 4, 2009 - 5:08 pm 79. geoffgo:

AShcat@72,

I wonder whether this crisis that we are witnessing is, in the abstract, really a response on the part of centralized/top-down social institutions (including government, newspapers) to the encroachment of a vast army of free individuals acting through the Internet.

No Ashcat, it’s not; but they are certainly aware of the encroachment by US. You’ll be seeing their considered response soon enough via the “Fairness Doctrine” and more laws of that ilk, restricting what they will label “hate speech.” See 0’s attack on Rush.

Mar 4, 2009 - 5:25 pm 80. Whitehall:

Seems to me the CRITICAL people are the Blue Dog Democrats in Congress. They are the swing votes needed to stop Obama. That’s who needs to be contacted and demonstrated before.

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:21 pm 81. maineman:

Mongoose,

Here is what I did with your comment. I put it in an email titled NO YOU CAN’T and sent it into cyberspace. If people like it, maybe others will copy and send it out, too. Too long, I suppose for short attention span theater, but I thought it worth a try:

Time to wake up, America.

It seems we may finally be pulling our attention away from “Survivor” and “American Idol” long enough to notice that we have lost 2/3rds of our wealth since the Obama economy got underway. As the silent majority stirs, there is a whiff of anger in the air over the Administration’s repeated statements to the effect that we must now become a country characterized by dependency and selfishness rather than individual freedom, self-sufficiency and teamwork.

Discredited socialist ideas like “sharing the wealth” have been tossed about like casual, benign phrases rather than the prescription for destruction and enslavement that they have always proven to be. As recently as March 3, Obama and Gordon Brown met to discuss a global system that would effectively destroy our sovereignty, reversing the American Revolution and returning us to a dependent enmeshment with foreign governments.

And for awhile it looked like we would just sit there, like lobsters in a pot, not noticing what was happening until it was too late. But things have started to change.

What follows is an example of what is being written on internet comment threads around the country. It’s by an anonymous contributor, so let’s just call him Thomas Paine. It’s being sent around because we need to share these thoughts with one another, get focused on what we’re up against, and get rolling. Time to wake up, America.

Some Common Sense, from an American Patriot:

What do you propose, letting them roll over us?
Every day we can brake them is a plus.
We are in a horse race here.
Socialism will not work; if they succeed at this coup the country will be a living hell. As I said before, our only hope is that there is enough of the old spirit of the American people left in us. If it is there, it needs some time to build up to critical mass.
What are we to do, tell me? Give up?
The truth is, at this moment we do not know what the American people are made of any more .
On the positive side, what they are trying to do has never been done before, ever. To take the most prosperous and freest nation in history, and turn it into a corrupt socialist third world dump in a matter of months, really, and to do this through no other agency than lies and duplicity.
Are we really so weak? Are we really this stupid?
If so then we deserve to go down. If we can let this noble legacy slip through our hands so easily, is there anything left to preserve?
The truth is that we do not know what the true character of the American people is.
What is galling is that we seem to have no leadership at this point. So we must each do what we can to stop the momentum until that changes.
That is my point. This is no time to retreat.
We cannot not be like they are. Our case must rest on the notion that people can and should govern themselves. We believe that the central notion of the country is that liberty is the highest political value, and that America;s greatness stems from the Liberty of the Common Man. We must have faith in our principles, and that means we have to avoid cynicism about our fellow citizens. It is all that we have working for us.
We have to fight a rearguard action until this idea is either proven or not.
We just do not know if there are yet enough Americans who feel this left to turn the tide.
I will say one thing though, neither the nature of Obama, the Democrats or the times are such that we are going to see a cushy, Euro style socialist state come into place that will lull people into accepting a complete change of the order. It will be rough. This is over for the EU too, or will be presently.
It will get tough. They will have to become extremely oppressive, much worse than the antics of Labour in the UK. It all will be obvious. It will not be a case of trading freedom for security, it will just be a case of fighting it or being enslaved.
So I still think that there is hope. We just must fight, fight and fight. It is up to all of us in our daily lives to do this right now. It is all that we have until leadership emerges and the tide turns.

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:26 pm 82. maineman:

I will add, that the email’s layout was much better. More spacing in between paragraphs and bold for the title of your comment.

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:29 pm 83. In the Industry:

Steeple 74,

I also suspect that Chinese banking is not in such hot shape. I remember even 2 years ago seeing Stratfor items on the bad loans clogging Chinese banks. It would be difficult to imagine that with China adopting one stimulus package after another that their banks are better in 2009 than in 2007 or 2006. This could get uglier there than here.

Mar 4, 2009 - 6:42 pm 84. Eggplant:

RWE said:

“The reason Rush wants Obama to fail is that the Obamas succeeded in the USSR, over and over again, every time, for 80 years, until the country fell apart.”

The hypnotic appeal of socialism is a basic human weakness. Chickens have a similar basic weakness. You can hypnotize a chicken by holding its head down to the ground and drawing a straight line away from its beak. Socialism proves that human beings are more complicated than chickens.

Mar 4, 2009 - 7:18 pm 85. Ashcat:

Geoffgo #79: IMO you dismiss this possibility too readily. Take your own example of the Fairness Doctrine: such a rule makes sense only in a BROADCAST model of information dissemination. They are always fighting the last battle, and this is another example. The Fairness Doctrine loses meaning in a Multicast world. When one person makes one comment to a friend, that cannot be legislated against with the Fairness Doctrine. If he has a modem and chooses to make that statement public, for the first time in human history potentially every person in the world could get the message. Such information exchange can’t be prevented with the Fairness Doctrine. Rush is a fair target for 0 because he exists in a broadcast world.

Mar 4, 2009 - 7:42 pm 86. Unsk:

A.R.

The institution the constitution created to prevent the coup we are now seeing now is the Supreme Court. There will be a series of law suits in the near future against the new Obama inspired unconstitutional limits on freedom. We can reasonably count on four votes for liberty. Whether Anthony Kennedy supports liberty or not may determine the future of America.

Mar 4, 2009 - 8:13 pm 87. geoffgo:

Ashcat:

If you constrain the Left’s aspirations for control to only broadcast media, you might be temporarily correct. I am less sanguine about constraining their “insatiable appetite” for control. Are you unaware of the on-going battle over control of speech on the Web, and for control of the Internet itself by the UN and other world bodies?
Why would the UN (with its majority of fascist members) want to control the Internet? To tax it of course.

Mar 4, 2009 - 8:23 pm 88. Armeggedon Rex:

Unsk #86:

You’re not reassuring me when you remind me about the current supreme court make up. And I’m even less comfortable when I know Obamassiah will appoint the next judges.

There is one additional fallback “institution” put in place by the founders. In their wisdom they understood human frailty well, and added the following to the constitution, after the fact, just incase the system of checks and balances broke down, resulting in eventual tyranny:

“A well regulated militia being necessary to the security of a free State, the right of the People to keep and bear arms shall not be infringed.”

I pray it doesn’t come to that, but only time will tell.

Mar 4, 2009 - 8:38 pm 89. Ashcat:

geoffgo 87; You mentioned the Fairness Doctrine, so I commented on it as it related to the point I made above. Of course, the can can be kicked farther down the road to address other attempts to maintain government control. You and I agree that the appetite for social control (including taxation) is insatiable. I was merely commenting that, by virtue of its distributed nature, the internet may be difficult to control and thereby may play some role in preserving freedom/resisting tyranny.

Mar 4, 2009 - 9:01 pm 90. peterike:

Whether Anthony Kennedy supports liberty or not may determine the future of America.

Good luck with that one. Can anybody check to see if he’s been on the guest list at all the parties Obama has been throwing?

I think Kennedy is easily flattered and rolled.

Mar 4, 2009 - 9:02 pm 91. Pips:

The wake up should have happened the day following Sept. 11, 2001 — the wake up that would bring us to clear sense of ourselves as a nation under physical threat. Clearly the event was not big enough. Thanks to the press even this new alarm clock, come to us in the form of a major financial threat, isn’t big enough either. It looks like we are going to need some hard core bank FAILURES not bailouts before we are brought to the point of shedding our sheeps clothing…..

Mar 4, 2009 - 9:03 pm 92. M. Simon:

This only strengthens the argument for shortening the feedback loop in any attempts to “shift out of the current dynamic” because the steps we can rationally take can never drastically exceed our information holdings.

Shortening the feedback loop (mark to market) is exactly what caused the problem. What is really wanted is more integration: averaging over longer time periods. That damps out oscillation – unless the gain is too high.

Mar 4, 2009 - 9:32 pm 93. OldNeocon:

It is worse than we think.

Fewer young people every year are conservative. That means conservatism is closer to dying out every year. We cannot win this struggle unless conservatism quickly regains a majority. And stays a majority. But unless that majority includes a majority of each oncoming cohort of young people, it will be overthrown in just a few more years. If we are already too late, this is why. So what can we do?

We have to take back our kids! They are leftist mostly because of the leftist indoctrination of the government schools. (Sure, because of the media and entertainment too, but mostly the schools.)

We’ve been trying for 30-odd years to fix that. We’ve tried running for school boards and changing things from there. But as soon as we were voted out, it just changed back again. We even learned not to do it politically, because it can all be lost at the next election – including the next PTA election. We tried public charter schools. We tried home schooling. We tried vouchers. And these have gone a long way. But it has not been on a big enough scale. Neither has it had staying power.

The best answer I see is church-based schools. Churches, first and foremost, are not the government! There are about 350,000 of them, scattered all over. They have staying power. Churches last a long time, even through many changes of members and staff. They have facilities that are mostly unused during weekdays. Also, most churches are hard to control from above and hard to take over. Besides, motivating them to each have a school is not terribly hard. They just need the money.

It is an option that can start quickly, given the right motivation. This year! Many kids could be pulled from the government schools THIS YEAR and put into hastily-started church-based Christian schools. There is so much fine curriculum out there, so many great models! No re-inventing the wheel here.

If we could ever get about half of all our kids into church-based schools, using scholarships for poor kids, the country would change permanently like you would not believe! In about 15 years, big time!

We should not be surprised. The Founders said that our new constitution and nation would work “only for a religious and moral people.” Doh. Such people make up the great base of the conservative movement. The bigger that group gets, the more democracy and public common decency we have. The smaller it gets, the less.

Unless it gets bigger, and stays bigger, we are lost. Oh, we might win a bit here and there, for awhile. But we couldn’t keep it.

We conservatives look back to the Constitution, as we ought. But we have forgotten about its essential foundation on the Judeo-Christian tradition, massively followed by the population of that time.

Without it, we have been skating on thin ice. It had to start cracking sometime.

(See Niall Ferguson’s thoughts on this, even though he is a “materialist.” At http://www.gerrycharlottephelps.com/2005/07/christianize_fa.html.)

Mar 4, 2009 - 10:53 pm 94. buddy larsen:

“Spread the wealth” is what what upward mobility will do –unless gov’t policy blocks free enterprise.

The statistical poor skew young. Young people, since building wealth takes time, are going to be poor.

Transfer payments won’t spread wealth anyway –they spread consumption. What spreads wealth is investment in for-profit production of goods & services.

Mar 5, 2009 - 12:52 am 95. buddy larsen:

Yep, they’re not reading the papers again. this bunch is so carter-like, it’s a herpes simplex in the body politik.

Mar 5, 2009 - 1:15 am 96. milton:

Old tricks can still work, go back to where it all began, Africa. I have been watching and analysing the perfomance of various financial institution especially in East Africa and to my suprise, they are growing intern of capitalization and product innovation. I am not sure at the moment whether there is a linear relationship between the global financial crisis and African corporate sector. It might be inversly proportion or some one has to prove otherwise.
Financial result for the year 2008 of some corporate has been market with positive profit especially the banking sector and this what makes me make this hypothesis.
Every thing looks set as a future opportunity to invest in future, Infastructure, Agriculture, Health care the list is endless. Africa is not an emerging market it is an investment Zone with returns.

Mar 5, 2009 - 4:32 am 97. richard:

I would like someone to explain what happen on September 15, 2008. Who and/or what caused the run on the money markets. I was told that a CIO at a large Internet company that what he saw that day terrified him. What was it?

Mar 5, 2009 - 6:02 am 98. Leo Linbeck III:

The self-absorbed band of G7
Thought that debt was the stairway to heaven

They lived in denial
So kept turning the dial

Because this one, it goes to eleven.

——

L3

Mar 5, 2009 - 6:13 am 99. Mark:

Milton #96 re. Africa: I’ve heard the same thing about growth prospects in Africa from informed sources.

Leo Linbeck III: Smell the glove on that one! Eleven! You really must set up a site for your collected postings, limericks, and sonnets.

Mar 5, 2009 - 7:09 am

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