HR3200 Bill - America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009 - Email Your Representatives Today With This Message

Please email your representatives:

http://www.whitehouse.gov/contact/

For Massachusetts:
https://writerep.house.gov/writerep/welcome.shtml
http://kerry.senate.gov/contact/email.cfm
http://kennedy.senate.gov/senator/contact.cfm

If this Bill HR3200 is to be enacted then it must REQUIRE THE CONGRESS AND SENATE TO USE THE SAME UNIVERSAL HEALTH CARE SYSTEM as the American Public, and not allow them or any other Americans to purchase extra care outside of the system at any lower cost than fees for services that are salary+bonus adjusted % for the average American, to ensure that citizens can also do so as easily, and the special subsidized hospital in DC I read about for congress and senate members (if it exists) should be somehow factored in to fairness of access and use relative to the American public - no exceptions except perhaps US citizen War Veterans and the President of the United States who has a personal doctor.

This will help ensure that our Congress and Senate will work for their best interest which is exactly our best interest, after all, people earning a lot of money or having special resources available to them can afford to get specialized and fast no-waiting-line Health Care, as many MRIs, CTs, ultrasound, colonoscopy, specialists visits, etc. as they want.

If this bill passes without REQUIRING THE CONGRESS AND SENATE TO USE THE SAME HEALTH CARE SYSTEM then it proves that the bill is not designed in fairness and is not framed in the interest of equality for the individuals in the Congress and Senate and citizens alike.

HR3200 Bill - America's Affordable Health Choices Act of 2009

To provide affordable, quality health care for all Americans and reduce the growth in health care spending, and for other purposes.

Overview

Sponsor:	Rep. John Dingell [D-MI15]show cosponsors (8) Cosponsors [as of 2009-07-22] Rep. Robert Andrews [D-NJ1] Rep. Dale Kildee [D-MI5] Rep. Carolyn Maloney [D-NY14] Rep. George Miller [D-CA7] Rep. Frank Pallone [D-NJ6] Rep. Charles Rangel [D-NY15] Rep. Fortney Stark [D-CA13] Rep. Henry Waxman [D-CA30]
Text:	Full Text
Status:	Introduced Jul 14, 2009 Referred to Committee View Committee Assignments Reported by Committee Jul 17, 2009 House Vote ... Senate Vote ... Signed by President ... This bill was considered in committee which has recommended it be considered by the House as a whole. Although it has been placed on a calendar of business, the order in which legislation is considered and voted on is determined by the majority party leadership. Keep in mind that sometimes the text of one bill is incorporated into another bill, and in those cases the original bill, as it would appear here, would seem to be abandoned. [Last Updated: Jul 22, 2009 12:36PM]
Last Action:	Jul 21, 2009: House Energy and Commerce: Committee Consideration and Mark-up Session Held.
Related:	See the Related Legislation page for other bills related to this one and a list of subject terms that have been applied to this bill. Sometimes the text of one bill or resolution is incorporated into another, and in those cases the original bill or resolution, as it would appear here, would seem to be abandoned.

Letter to President Obama, Senators Kennedey and Kerry, and Representative Frank

Dear President,

I must air our recent thoughts to your staff:

Goldman Sachs has not paid back the 13 Billion it received in indirect bail out through AIG at the end of 2008, and they claim to be paying back TARP - this is insulting to your taxpayers. Not only were they made a bank over night, they continue their old model of high risk investment, not conservative banking services. They continue to engage in high frequency trading manipulating the markets unfairly, and unlawfully,

when will you investigate them?

By now the incriminating emails and memos have likely been destroyed, and Goldman will run roughshod over Congress to do as they please, with one caveat , they have complete control AND

- they will take everything they can from our economy but won't destroy it because the only country they could get away with their practices as headquarters is the USA, no European country or nation would allow their actions to commence and continue;

we are TIRED OF SEEING NO ACTION TO START INVESTIGATIONS ON GOLDMAN SACHS that would certainly lead to indictments.

The control Goldman and other banking firms has over our Congress is appalling and an insult to free trade and commerce, fair capitalism, and our Constitution; otherwise the small banks and firms would be condoned and allowed to practice the same behaviors and share the same Congressional favoritism.

This is NOT A COMPLEX ISSUE THAT THE COMMON PEOPLE DO NOT UNDERSTAND, I am not alone, ALL of my colleague scientists and engineers share this opinion.

We believe you may be turning the other way when it comes to facing these issues because of the amount of money and power involved, we hope this turns out to not be true.

Sincerely, I voted for you

High-Frequency Traders Say Speed Works for Everyone (Update1)

About 46 percent of daily volume is handled through high- frequency strategies, according to estimates by NYSE Euronext, the world’s largest owner of stock exchanges. The transactions are made by about 400 of the 20,000 firms trading stocks in the U.S., according to Tabb Group LLC, a New York-based financial services consultant. Each makes bets in hundredths of a second to exploit tiny price swings in equities and discrepancies in futures, options and exchange-traded funds.

Animal Farm - 2009

by James Quinn
July 27, 2009

“All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.”
George Orwell – Animal Farm

The United States has gradually degenerated from a Republic based on individual liberties to a socialized oligarchy run by an exclusive few. The country was founded upon the platform of individual rights. We declared our independence from Great Britain because of excessive regulation and taxation. Americans fought for the right to live their lives free from the subjugation of an overbearing governmental body. The Founding Fathers declared our independence with these immortal words:

We hold these truths to be self evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness. That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government, laying its foundation on such principles and organizing its powers in such form, as to them shall seem most likely to effect their Safety and Happiness.

Since the administration of Franklin Delano Roosevelt, the United States has gone from taking personal responsibility for our own lives to dependence on government to make all decisions in our lives. There are 306 million Americans and we have defaulted on our responsibility for governing this nation to 535 corrupt politicians, 10 “too big to fail” banks, a secretive Central Bank, 17,000 corporate lobbyists, and thousands of government bureaucrats. Essentially 306 million citizens are managed by a few thousand elitist rulers. George Orwell’s classic novel Animal Farm was inspired by the a scene he witnessed:

“I saw a little boy, perhaps ten years old, driving a huge carthorse along a narrow path, whipping it whenever it tried to turn. It struck me that if only such animals became aware of their strength we should have no power over them, and that men exploit animals in much the same way as the rich exploit the proletariat.”

Orwell wrote the novel during World War II and published it in 1945. It was a contemptuous indictment of Joseph Stalin and the Soviet Union. He recognized that propaganda and abuse of language could smoothly control the opinions of enlightened intellectuals in democratic countries. He saw through the prism of Soviet propaganda to the true evil of Stalin and his KGB Dogs. Intellectuals in Great Britain’s Ministry of Information attempted to censor his right to publish the book because it would offend their supposed ally Joseph Stalin. He knew the truth, while intellectuals were horribly wrong. Stalin murdered 700,000 Russian citizens during the Great Purge of the 1930s.

The plot of Orwell’s Animal Farm is quite simple. It follows the Russian Revolution from 1917 through 1944. Three pigs—Snowball (Leon Trotsky), Napoleon (Joseph Stalin), and Squealer (Vyacheslav Molotov) formulate Old Major’s (Vladimir Lenon) principles into a philosophy called Animalism. The animals defeat the farmer Mr. Jones (Czar Nicholas II) in a battle, running him off the land. They rename the property Animal Farm (Soviet Union). The cart-horse Boxer (Russian working class) devotes himself to the cause with particular passion, committing his great strength to the prosperity of the farm and adopting as a personal axiom the affirmation “I will work harder.” Napoleon (Stalin) and Snowball (Trotsky) increasingly argue over the future of the farm, and they begin to struggle with each other for power and influence among the other animals. After a speech, nine attack dogs (KGB) burst into the barn and chase Snowball (Trotsky) from the farm.

Napoleon (Stalin) assumes leadership of Animal Farm (Soviet Union) and declares that there will be no more meetings. From that point on, he stresses, the pigs alone will make all of the decisions for the good of every animal (Workers). Napoleon (Stalin) begins expanding his powers, rewriting history to make Snowball (Trotsky) a villain. Napoleon (Stalin) also begins to act more and more like a human being—sleeping in a bed, drinking whisky, and engaging in trade with neighboring farmers. The original Animalist principles strictly forbade such activities, but Squealer (Molotov), Napoleon's propagandist, justifies every action to the other animals, convincing them that Napoleon (Stalin) is a great leader and is making things better for everyone despite the fact that the common animals are cold, hungry, and overworked. Looking in at the party of Pigs and Farmers through the farmhouse window, the common animals can no longer tell which are the Pigs and which are the human beings.

The perversion of founding principles is not limited to communist countries. On the farm there were the Seven Original Commandments:

1. Whatever goes upon two legs is an enemy.
2. Whatever goes upon four legs, or has wings, is a friend.
3. No animal shall wear clothes.
4. No animal shall sleep in a bed.
5. No animal shall drink alcohol.
6. No animal shall kill any other animal.
7. All animals are created equal.

All of the Seven Commandments are eventually broken by the pigs for their own gain. Squealer (Molotov) constantly changes the Commandments to the pigs' benefit, taking advantage of the other animals. Through the manipulation of language, the Pigs accumulate more power and privileges:

• No animal shall sleep in a bed with sheets;
• No animal shall drink alcohol to excess
• No animal shall kill any other animal without cause.

Ultimately, all the commandments are boiled down to one commandment:

• All animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others.

Could this degeneration of founding principles happen in the United States? The distressing answer is that it already has. It has accelerated at a breakneck pace since 2000. Orwell’s themes are as true today as they were in 1944.

Corruption

“All political thinking for years past has been vitiated in the same way. People can foresee the future only when it coincides with their own wishes, and the most grossly obvious facts can be ignored when they are unwelcome. Political language... is designed to make lies sound truthful and murder respectable, and to give an appearance of solidity to pure wind.” George Orwell

Our elected officials are supposed to represent the wishes of the citizens that elected them. They derive their just powers from the governed. In the early days of our Republic, citizens could freely enter the White House without hesitation. Federalist Papers 55 and 56 explicitly promised, without qualification, that there would beone Representative for every thirty-thousand inhabitants. The framers of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights intended that the total population of Congressional districts never exceed 50,000 to 60,000. Currently, the average population size of the districts is nearly 700,000 and, consequently, the principle of proportionally equitable representation has been abandoned. Our elected officials no longer represent the people. They represent the 17,000 corporate lobbyists who spend $3.3 billion per year to “persuade” them what is best for their special interests. This is why a Congressperson can receive 9 to 1 calls from their constituents against a $700 billion banker bailout bill and still vote for the bill. The ideals of our fledgling Republic have been corrupted by politicians who have sold their souls to corporate and banking interests.

The corruption became more insidious with the creation of the Federal Reserve and the institution of the Federal income tax in 1913. The levers of money printing and raising taxes gave the select few (Pigs) the wherewithal to control and manipulate the working class population. Debt and taxes are the friends of a corrupt politician. The Cabal of bankers who control the Federal Reserve has been printing money for 96 years to such an extent that the U.S. dollar has lost 96% of its purchasing power versus gold. But, with Orwellian irony our government leaders proclaim a “strong dollar policy”. This is a lie. The only way out of the current colossal debt dilemma is by allowing our currency to depreciate even more so that the debt becomes less burdensome in dollar terms. The National Debt is now $11.6 trillion. The National Debt in 1913 was $2.9 billion. Therefore, the National Debt has gone up by 400,000% in 96 years. FOUR HUNDRED THOUSAND PERCENT! I had to go back and check my calculation three times. The people we elected to Congress have spent $11.6 trillion more than the government has generated in revenues, with $10 trillion of it accumulated since 1981.

Despite this “investment” spending by our elected officials, the country’s infrastructure is crumbling, we import 66% of our energy supplies versus 28% in 1982, our public education system is on par with a Third World country, our healthcare system is bloated, expensive and corrupt, and we have racked up another $56 trillion of future liabilities for unfulfillable promises made by our myopic leaders. The Bills passed by Congress (written by lobbyists) exceed 1,000 pages, with payoffs and pork to constituents, corporate contributors and other influential allies. These Bills are not even read by our leaders before being passed. Hundreds of pages of amendments are added at 3:00 am. As the ruling pigs in Animal Farm are slowly corrupted, they take the spoils while the working class proletariat toil for nothing. Congress and the bankers are the ruling Pigs, we are the overworked common animals. Talk is cheap and lies are expensive.

Class Oppression

If you want a vision of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face - forever.
George Orwell

The American Revolution was fought for the ideals that “All men are created equal” and we had the right to “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness”. The Russian Revolution of 1917 was based upon Karl Marx’ idealistic Communist Manifesto which pitted the oppressors against the oppressed. Communism was supposed to be a system in which goods were owned in common and available to all as needed. The ten conditions for a transition to Communism are:

1. Abolition of property in land application of all rents of land to public purposes.
2. A heavy progressive or graduated income tax.
3. Abolition of all right of inheritance.
4. Confiscation of the property of all emigrants and rebels.
5. Centralization of credit in the hands of the State, by means of a National Bank with State capital and an exclusive monopoly.
6. Centralization of the means of communication and transport in the hands of the State.
7. Extension of factories and instruments of production owned by the State; the bringing into cultivation of waste-lands, and the improvement of the soil generally in accordance with a common plan.
8. Equal liability of all to labor. Establishment of industrial armies, especially for agriculture.
9. Combination of agriculture with manufacturing industries; gradual abolition of the distinction between town and country, by a more equal distribution of the population over the country.
10. Free education for all children in public schools. Abolition of children’s factory labor in its present form. Combination of education with industrial production.

George Orwell’s 1984 and Animal Farm were biting condemnations of the Soviet Union, its perversion of the revolution’s ideals and class tyranny that ultimately widened in its society. The American Republic was constructed upon the individual and their freedom and liberty. After reading the above list of conditions, the United States is at least 50% of the way to a perverted form of communism as our leaders have instituted a progressive income tax, restricted the right of inheritance through taxes, centralized credit in the hands of the State, allowed corporate farms to dominate agriculture along with providing tax breaks and protective tariffs, gotten into bed with the Military Industrial Complex, banking industry, and auto industry, provide free public education to the working classes while they send their privileged children to private schools. By satiating the poor working classes with bread and circuses like welfare programs, easy credit, no income taxes, cable TV, fast food, cheap liquor, and drugs, the ruling classes are able to reap obscene riches through the systematic raping of the American public through the use of inflation and taxes on the middle class.

There are some ideas so wrong that only a very intelligent person could believe in them.
George Orwell

The success of any system of government is ultimately dependent upon the integrity, honesty and honor of its leaders. If they become corrupted by power and money, the system will ultimately collapse. It may be a natural progression in all societies that intellectuals with superior intelligence will take advantage of those who perform physical labor. The intelligentsia in Animal Farm is the Pigs, who learn to walk on two legs, wear clothes, sleep in beds, drink alcohol and consider animals that walk on four legs as their inferiors. They perverted the founding principles of the revolution. The intelligentsia of the United States has perverted the founding principles that all men are created equal and we are each entitled to our individual liberty. The ruling elite constitute the 1% richest Americans and the politicians they have bought. The top 1% own 35% of all the net worth in the country. They own as much as the bottom 90% of Americans. They “earn” 22% of the income and pay 40% of the taxes in the U.S. I would contend that the majority of the intelligentsia has utilized their private education, Washington and Wall Street connections and ability to manipulate the financial and political system to further enrich themselves at the expense of the average American.

Source: CNN Money

Gullible Working Class

It is almost universally felt that when we call a country democratic we are praising it; consequently, the defenders of every kind of regime claim that it is a democracy, and fear that they might have to stop using the word if it were tied down to any one meaning. George Orwell

The definition of democracy is: government by the people. Today, the United States is democratic in name only. The political class, which supposedly represents the citizens, has perverted the original concept of a representative democracy. Our representatives were supposed to personally sacrifice by taking time off from their everyday professions to do what was best for the country. After performing this noble duty they would go back to their original vocations. Instead 40% of Congress is lawyers, their goal is to make a career in Washington DC and after leaving Congress they seek riches as lobbyists. Once elected, they utilize the power and money gained from the position to maintain that position permanently. This is why incumbents win elections 95% of the time. In 2004, incumbents spent $700 million to get re-elected, while challengers spent $200 million. These obscene sums of money have perverted the original intention of the Founders.

Candidate Status	U.S. House	U.S. Senate
Incumbents	$456,859,509	$223,964,295
Challengers	$112,498,172	$79,852,117
Open-Seat Candidates	$127,051,491	$238,890,389
TOTAL	$696,409,172	$542,706,801
SOURCE: Federal Election Commission

The combination of a permanent political class with an undereducated, uninterested, gullible, naïve electorate has permitted the few to wield immense power over the majority. In Animal Farm, the working class is represented by Boxer the workhorse. He is a hard working non-thinking animal that repeats over and over that “Napoleon (Stalin) is always right”. He is representative of those who believe everything that Barack Obama says is gospel. Ultimately, Boxer is sacrificed so that the Pigs can live more luxuriously. A highly educated involved electorate would be dangerous to those in power. An atrocious public education system is actually beneficial to the Pigs. There are 34 million Americans without a high school degree, constituting 15% of those over 18 years old. Another 112 million have graduated high school without progressing any further with their education. Many of these people are functionally illiterate, can’t add, can’t spell, don’t know when World War II happened, or who is the Vice President. Only 69% of entering 9th graders in the public school system graduate high school. The graduation rates and educational achievements of minorities are dramatically worse than these numbers. Only 26% of the population has a bachelor’s degree, with only 6% possessing a master’s degree.

Source: Wikipedia

The proliferation of drugs among the poor keeps them dazed and sedated. Various welfare programs and easy credit keep them from rioting as they can “purchase” luxury cars and electronic gadgets enjoyed by the upper classes. The bad debts are picked up by the taxpayers. As a further control, those in power have put 2.3 million people in prisons, most of whom are poor and 60% who are minorities. By distracting the majority of people in the country with cable TV entertainment, the internet, Twitter, cell phones, sports, movies, and shopping malls, the Pigs who run the show are able to oppress and control the masses. The highly educated use the idiocy and naïveté of the oppressed to their advantage by using the rigged financial system to generate ever more riches for themselves. The banker gods peddled fraudulent mortgage schemes throughout the world in order to enrich themselves. When it blew up in their faces, they turned to their government co-conspirators (Hank Paulson, Ben Bernanke, and most of Congress) to keep their riches. Their Congressional benefactors have obliged by stealing trillions from the taxpaying classes and redistributed it to the Pigs running Goldman Sachs, Citicorp, and Bank of America.

Abuse of Language

George Orwell’s most pointed criticism of political leaders was their misuse of language to further their wicked agendas. He exposes the outrageous abuse of words in 1984 and Animal Farm. The ruling elite manipulate the language as an instrument of control over the masses.

“The great enemy of clear language is insincerity. When there is a gap between one's real and one's declared aims, one turns, as it were, instinctively to long words and exhausted idioms, like a cuttlefish squirting out ink.” George Orwell

The intelligentsia understands that the masses can be manipulated with convincing talking points and misleading slogans. Politicians never tell their constituents they are doing some pork barrel spending. Every dollar of new spending is spun as “investment spending”. We have evidently made $11.6 trillion of “investments” in our National Debt. Somehow we enacted “campaign finance reform” and still manage to spend $1.3 billion on political campaigns. Our beloved numbskull Vice President Joe Biden said last week, “We have to go spend money to keep from going bankrupt”. President Bush said, “I’ve abandoned free-market principles to save the free market system”. President Obama insisted that the only way to save our country from catastrophe caused by excessive debt was to borrow $700 billion and spend it on infrastructure projects, of which only 3.5% was allocated to our crumbling infrastructure. During the Vietnam War a U.S. Major declared, “It became necessary to destroy the village in order to save it.” In 1947 the government changed the name of the Department of War to the Department of Defense, as we today have garrisons of 100,000 troops in 117 foreign countries. The Department of Homeland Security, Patriot Act, and War on Terror are all deceptive titles and slogans purposely meant to hoodwink Boobus Americanus.

“In our age there is no such thing as 'keeping out of politics.' All issues are political issues, and politics itself is a mass of lies, evasions, folly, hatred and schizophrenia. The very concept of objective truth is fading out of the world. Lies will pass into history." George Orwell

President Obama and his cronies hammer away that 47 million Americans are uninsured. It is a lie, but that does not deter them from continuing to make the claim. The latest Census report says that within the borders of the United States as of 2007 there were 45.65 million people without health insurance. But this number included 9.73 million foreigners, leaving only 35.92 Americans who were uninsured. Among the uninsured in the United States there were also 9.1 million people making more than $75,000 per year who did not choose to purchase health insurance. Therefore, we are imposing a trillion dollar solution for 28 million people who are poor and uninsured. That is $36,000 per person while imposing a huge invasive bureaucracy on the lives of the other 278 million Americans. The masses believe the lies.

Green Extremists have convinced children and dullards that global warming is destroying the planet. They state their position as fact, when their thesis does not meet the scientific method criteria as fact. Their contentions are based on computer models. Our financial system was also based on financial models that said that worthless mortgages were really gold. We know how that worked out. The facts are that the earth has warmed prior to the industrial revolution and has cooled. The sun, water vapor, earth's orbit, volcanoes, interstellar clouds, cosmic rays, tectonic plates, land use, CO2, sunspots, gravitational pulls, ocean currents and solar flares all impact earth. It is far too complex to declare that we know what is happening. Let’s get tomorrow’s weather forecast right first. Men plan and God laughs.

Must have been a lot of cows farting in the 1400s

The Orwellian language of Big Government turns people into pliable subjects. It lulls us into passively accepting ever-increasing taxes while encouraging our reliance on an embedded and mutating bureaucracy administered by corrupt career politicians and backed by corporate sugar daddies. Wall Street shysters have mastered the art or twisting and distorting reality to benefit themselves. Subprime loans, which triggered the worldwide financial crisis, were called “nonprime”. The billions of worthless toxic loans that still sit on the books of our biggest banks at original cost are now referred to as “legacy loans”. How quaint. The lowest rated bonds of the worst companies are referred to as “high yield debt”, not junk bonds. We describe our economy as “free market”. There is nothing further from the truth. Bailouts for corporate failures and rewarding the excess risk takers are not hallmarks of free market capitalism. Government takeovers of banks, insurance companies, and auto companies are not free market capitalism. It is a warped form of corporate fascism – the intermingling of the State and corporations for the benefit of a few. Kevin Depew from Minyanville.com described the Orwellian lies of Hank Paulson as he sat before Congress explaining his criminal actions last Fall.

“Paulson asserted throughout his testimony that he, almost single-handedly, averted an "economic collapse" and, moreover, that we should actually be thanking him for it. The ugly assemblage of half-truths, obfuscations, smarmy evasiveness and prickly showboating would have embarrassed Bernie Madoff. But it wasn't Bernie Madoff. It was a former United States Treasury Secretary.”

Myopia

“Enlightened people seldom or never possess a sense of responsibility.” George Orwell

Animal Farm represents any human society whether it be capitalist, socialist, fascist, or communist. Leaders are capable of being corrupted by power within any form of government. The myopic thinking of the Pigs in Animal Farm will eventually destroy the farm. Orwell ends the novel with the animals watching the Pigs mingling with farmers through a window. They couldn’t tell the difference between the supposed revolutionaries and those they had fought against. If he had looked into the future he would have seen that the Soviet Union would decay from the inside as the corrupt few eventually came to believe their own lies and propaganda. It collapsed 44 years later as a corrupt, bankrupt, shell of a country. The combination of myopia, greed, wickedness, ignorance and indifference are a brew that are leading the United States down the same path. As the Pigs in our society have enriched themselves, the average American has seen their real standard of living stagnate over the last 40 years. The Pigs have manipulated government inflation statistics so the masses think they are getting ahead.

The myopia of our politicians has put the country into a predicament that we can’t escape without tremendous pain and suffering. In order to keep their positions of power they have passed bills for decades that promise trillions more in goodies than we can possibly pay for. They have paid no thought to the long-term consequences of their actions because they don’t care. Future generations are of no concern to gluttonous power hungry Pigs. During the eight years of the Bush presidency the ruling class used fear tactics and propaganda to ram through laws which allow Government to monitor the movements and communications of every American. Liberties have been stripped and freedoms have been restricted. Now President Obama is attempting to take control over the few aspects of our lives that remain relatively free. The Orwellian phrase “Cap & Trade” sounds much more innocuous than an energy tax of $1,500 on every household in America that will drive manufacturers out of the country, along with millions of jobs. “America’s Affordable Health Choices Act” is the Orwellian name for a bill that will create a massive new bureaucracy, cost at least $1 trillion, cost small businesses billions more in health costs, give government the final decision on whether you are worth saving, and provide more freebies to poor Americans. This will keep the poor sedated and less likely to cause trouble for the ruling class.

Bill of Frights
Amendment I
Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the government for a redress of grievances except when the Department of Homeland Security determines that you are a domestic terrorist who is a member of the Libertarian Party and attend Tax Day Tea Parties.
Amendment II
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 except when the government fears you will use those arms against them.
Amendment III
No soldier shall, in time of peace be quartered in any house, without the consent of the owner, nor in time of war, but in a manner to be prescribed by law.
Amendment IV
The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized unless we suspect that you are a terrorist or anti-government activist.
Amendment V
No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a grand jury, except in cases arising in the land or naval forces, or in the militia, when in actual service in time of war or public danger; nor shall any person be subject for the same offense to be twice put in jeopardy of life or limb; nor shall be compelled in any criminal case to be a witness against himself, nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law; nor shall private property be taken for public use, without just compensation unless politicians decide that a shopping mall would be a better use for your private property.
Amendment VI
In all criminal prosecutions, the accused shall enjoy the right to a speedy and public trial, by an impartial jury of the state and district wherein the crime shall have been committed, which district shall have been previously ascertained by law, and to be informed of the nature and cause of the accusation; to be confronted with the witnesses against him; to have compulsory process for obtaining witnesses in his favor, and to have the assistance of counsel for his defense unless we classify you as a non-combatant and put you in prison for two years without charging you or providing counsel.
Amendment VII
In suits at common law, where the value in controversy shall exceed twenty dollars, the right of trial by jury shall be preserved, and no fact tried by a jury, shall be otherwise reexamined in any court of the United States, than according to the rules of the common law after you wait for two years for your speedy trial.
Amendment VIII
Excessive bail shall not be required, nor excessive fines imposed, nor cruel and unusual punishments inflicted unless approved by Dick Cheney.
Amendment IX
The enumeration in the Constitution, of certain rights, shall not be construed to deny or disparage others retained by the people unless activist judges determine otherwise.
Amendment X
The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the states, are reserved to the states respectively, or to the people except that all these powers have been usurped by the Federal government.

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act.” George Orwell

As we look through the window at the raucous party between the Pigs and the farmers it is impossible to distinguish between the imperial monarchists who taxed the colonies to such an extreme that it caused a revolution and the revolutionaries that have adopted the same characteristics and traits of those they revolted against. The American people are like sheep being led to slaughter. Our Founding Fathers declared that the common people were in control. Whenever any form of government becomes destructive of these ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or to abolish it, and to institute new Government. The time has come to abolish the corrupt system and institute a new Government.

Harmlessly passing your time in the grassland away;
Only dimly aware of a certain unease in the air.
You better watch out,
There may be dogs about
I’ve looked over Jordan, and I have seen
Things are not what they seem.

What do you get for pretending the dangers not real.
Meek and obedient you follow the leader
Down well trodden corridors into the valley of steel.
What a surprise!
A look of terminal shock in your eyes.
Now things are really what they seem.
No, this is no bad dream.
Have you heard the news?
The dogs are dead!
You better stay home
And do as you’re told.
Get out of the road if you want to grow old.
Pink Floyd – Sheep

© 2009 James Quinn
Editorial Archives

Bio: James Quinn is a senior director of strategic planning for a major university. These articles reflect the personal views of James Quinn. They do not necessarily represent the views of his employer and are not sponsored or endorsed by his employer. He can be reached at quinnadvisors@comcast.net.

Contact Information
James Quinn
(215) 573-5404 Phone | Email | Website

Bernanke Feared a Second Great Depression - WSJ

Taking His Case to the People, Fed Chairman Defends Aggressive Actions to Stem Financial Crisis, Calls for Regulatory Overhaul

"I don't think that's consistent with independence," he said. "I don't think people want Congress making monetary policy."

After appearing before lawmakers three times last week, Mr. Bernanke broke little new ground in explaining the state of the economy. He said

WHAT THE FLYING FUCK IS HE TALKING ABOUT? THE CONSTITUTION WAS OVERTHROWN SUBVERSIVELY BY THE FEDERAL RESERVE ACT BY THE CROOKED BANKERS AND POLITICIANS OF THE TIME; CONGRESS SHOULD BE MAKING MONETARY POLICY FOR BETTER OR WORSE:

ENFORCE the original
United Sates Constitution:

PREAMBLE

We the people of the Untied States, in order to form amore
perfect Union, establish justice, insure domestic Tranquility,
provide for the common defense, promote the general
Welfare, and secure the Blessings of Liberty to ourselves
and our Posterity, do ordain and establish this Constitution
for the United States of America.

ARTICLE I

All legislative Powers herein granted shall be vested in
a Congress of the Untied States, which shall consist of a
Senates and House of Representatives.

Section 8

The Congress shall have power to lay and collect taxes, duties, imposts and excises, to pay the debts and provide for the common defense and general welfare of the United States; but all duties, imposts and excises shall be uniform throughout the United States;

Clause 5:

Coinage, weights and measures.
To coin Money, regulate the Value thereof, and of foreign
Coin, and fix the Standard of Weights and Measures.

Overthrown by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913: By the
Oligarchy of private Bankers and purchased US Politicians.

Goldman Sachs' recipe to rob the public & Al Gore carbon scam

Monthly Payment: $5,848

Dr housing bubble

This home is a perfect example of the mortgage equity withdrawal machine. Let us assume they try to sell this home for $900,000. What would your mortgage look like? We should assume that you will have 20 percent to buy this place:

Down Payment: $180,000

Mortgage: $720,000

PI: $4,911 (assuming 7.25 percent jumbo 30 year financing)

TI: $937

Monthly Payment: $5,848

Who caused the economic crisis?

Economist Simon Johnson and "Obamanomics" author John Talbott say there's plenty of blame to go around

By Simon Johnson and John Talbott

Editor's note: This is the first installment in a three-part conversation between Johnson and Talbott. Read Part 2 on Thursday and the conclusion on Friday.

---

Jul. 22, 2009 |

John R. Talbott is a former investment banker with Goldman Sachs and the author of "The 86 Biggest Lies on Wall Street," "Contagion," "Obamanomics," and "The Coming Crash in the Housing Market." His books predicted the housing market crash, the financial crisis and the election of Barack Obama when Obama was still a little-known underdog. Talbott is currently engaged in trying to build what he calls "a grass-roots movement of ordinary Americans who want to take back the government from lobbyists and corporate interests." Anyone interested in learning more can e-mail him at johntalbs (at) hotmail (dot) com.

Simon Johnson, the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), is the cofounder of BaselineScenario.com, a Web site tracking the ongoing financial crisis. He is also the Ronald A. Kurtz professor of entrepreneurship at the MIT Sloan School of Management, a member of the Congressional Budget Office's Council of Economic Advisers and a senior fellow at the Peterson Institute for International Economics in Washington, D.C. He is one of the most visible public commentators on the ongoing financial crisis and its causes and on what role the government and regulatory policy will play in moving the economy forward.

From June to July of 2009, Talbott and Johnson held an e-mail conversation on the following topic:

"The economic crisis: Who caused it? Was it preventable? Was criminal activity involved in bringing it about? And is it over?"

The exchange below is the first of three sets of e-mails. The second pair will be published Thursday, and the final pair will appear Friday.

From: John Talbott

To: Simon Johnson

Subject: A Vast Criminal Enterprise

Simon,

I believe economists are doing a very poor job of explaining to the American people who and what caused the current economic crisis. I think the reasons for this are threefold.

One: Economists and media pundits -- themselves mostly gentlemanly elites anxious to please corporate America -- are slow to make the accusation that what happened here was truly criminal, and so miss the real story. The American people understand that when a group of bankers shuffle some paper unproductively and get away with hundreds of billions of dollars in bonuses, yet cause a loss of $40 trillion in global wealth and cause approximately 100 million people to become unemployed worldwide, there is only one word to describe it: criminal. We don't have to argue about whether their actions were technically illegal or violated existing statutes, as in this conspiracy the crooks were writing their own regulations and legislation through their control of the government through lobbying.

Two: There has been no criminal investigation to date, so evidence supporting criminality has not been uncovered -- no one is looking for it. Liberals hate to think that Obama, led by Geithner and Summers, is part of a grand cover-up scheme, but that is exactly what is going on. How else can you explain the lack of criminal investigations? Why isn't the FBI breaking down the doors of the commercial and investment banks and grabbing computers so as to preserve incendiary e-mails that will most definitely implicate executives? Why are managements that caused this still in their jobs and still receiving bonuses? Are the bonuses paid to the folks at AIG that caused its collapse nothing more than hush money? How can the rating agencies still be in business? Why don't we make one arrest and lean on the bankster to see if he will fold like the cheap suit that he is and name other conspirators? The FBI spends more time investigating $2,000 drug buys than they have to date investigating the biggest heist in the history of the world: $40 trillion, that's trillion with a T, that's 40 million bags each containing $1 million.

The third reason that we have not had an easy-to-understand explanation from economists as to the cause of this mess: I think we're all trying to fit the facts as we know them into one simple story of causation. I believe there are actually three different storylines occurring contemporaneously, and all of them criminal. It is similar to what Winston Churchill said about trying to forecast Russia's next moves in 1939: "It is a riddle, wrapped in a mystery, inside an enigma."

So what are these three criminal storylines? The first, and the smallest (if you can believe it) at approximately $10 trillion, is the housing crash and the mortgage meltdown. Totally criminal, as its primary cause was banksters stuffing worthless mortgage paper into CDOs [securities known as collateralized debt obligations] and calling them AAA. Criminal at every level, as real estate agents were convincing their buyers to pay more, not less, to "earn" their fees through a winning bid, appraisers were offering non-independent and completely tainted appraisals, mortgage brokers were altering loan documents and changing income data to qualify buyers, bankers were paying rating agencies to call junk paper AAA, and principal investors like pension funds, insurance companies, and sovereign governments failed to perform even the minimum levels of due diligence demanded by their fiduciary duties.

But the second story is even bigger and extends far beyond mortgages to the entire banking system. The banks had found a way to avoid the regulation that everyone knew they needed ever since they were given federally backed depositor insurance to prevent bank runs back in the '30s. They became one of the biggest lobbyists and campaign contributors to your Congress and your presidents. Then, amazingly, they just asked that all limitations on their activities be removed -- and they were. If I paid you $2 for your vote, it would be illegal, but somehow these banks could pay hundreds of millions to our congressmen and presidents for their votes and it was all perfectly legal. Completely nuts!

So what did banks do that was criminal? Well, first they paid your government to eliminate bank restrictions, then they overleveraged, knowing they could not honor contracts with such leverage, then they lied to their shareholders about the risks and magnitudes of their positions, hid their positions illegally off balance sheet, and through the use of derivatives managed to violate minimum capital requirements on an almost daily basis. They took bank debt leverage from 8:1 to over 30:1, thus assuring that the banking system could not survive even a modest credit tightening or recession. They made crazy bets in the credit default swap market that they could never honor in a downturn. They loaned money to anyone who could fog a knife because they knew they were going to stuff it to others through securitization and CDOs. If we had a criminal investigation, we would have access to the incriminating phone calls and e-mails in which the banksters disclosed what they really thought of the assets they were pawning off on others. To see how traders incriminate themselves, watch "The Smartest Guys in the Room," about Enron's collapse.

The final storyline of criminality is the biggest of all. It is bigger than the current financial crisis. It is corporate America's complete control of our nation's elected officials, especially our Congress, through lobbying and campaign donations. Yes, the banks played this game, but the game was much bigger than just the financial industry. Coal-fired utilities have so watered down impending legislation concerning global warming that they have now come out in favor of it in the House vote. TARP money went to banking friends of Hank Paulson, although 97 percent of congressional correspondence from the American people was against it. The credit card industry took a minor slap on the wrist, but faces no limitation on the egregious interest rates it can charge its customers. Pharmaceutical and hospital corporations are fighting hard to keep Americans from having a public alternative to their healthcare, and right now are winning that fight. The transportation industry is at the government trough trying to pass a $500 billion windfall. The AARP prevents any meaningful reform of Social Security; the teachers' union does the same for education reform. Is it crazy to think that defense companies like Dick Cheney's Halliburton (which saw its stock price increase 700 percent during the Iraq war, thanks to no-bid contracts) may be promoting U.S. aggression around the world?

The American people understand that their government is corrupt; that is why they don't want to rely solely on more government regulation to solve this crisis. No, if we are to ever to see positive growth again in this country, we need to make the fundamental reforms that are necessary without relying on regulation which is so often co-opted or captured by those we are trying to regulate. This suggests we need to find a way to get corporations out of our government and ensure they never become either too big to fail or so big that they improperly influence markets and our government.

John

From: Simon Johnson

To: John Talbott

Subject: Re: A Vast Criminal Conspiracy

John

You make many good points, but I think the situation may actually be worse.

You stress that criminal acts must have been committed, and I'm sure this is right at the level of individual lenders or investment banks that packaged and resold dubious mortgages, for example. As you point out, when and if prosecutors get their hands on the right e-mails, we'll see evidence for a great deal of intentional deception (of consumers, investors, regulators and everyone else).

Given that we have a relatively decentralized criminal justice system, within which prosecutors have an incentive to build a tough reputation, and given that it takes time to build these kinds of cases, I suspect we will see more such prosecutions in the near future. Also, civil cases now under way may well uncover evidence of criminal wrongdoing -- and this will presumably be referred to prosecutors.

The bigger problem, however, is that much of what has severely damaged our economy and still jeopardizes our future is completely legal. Take, for example, campaign contributions. You rightly rail against these and the power that they confer on big donors -- primarily lobbies of various kinds. And we're all against direct favor buying that is presumably illegal. But much of what was done -- for example, in terms of financial market deregulation since the early 1990s -- was surely completely legal, but a very bad idea.

Bad ideas in public policy, of course, are always with us. What worries me most about our situation at this moment is that while our current leadership on economic strategy issues now talks about the mistakes of their (and our) past, their policies are pointing us back in the same direction. The latest evidence in this regard is the regulatory plan released by the Treasury this June.

This plan is a long list of technocratic tweaks. But when you dig through all the details, it is hard to find anything that will really make a difference to the functioning of our financial system. Most importantly, we will still have banks that are perceived as "too big to fail," and these institutions will have access to government bailouts under vague and completely open-ended terms. In what way will this encourage responsible lending in the future?

The administration does propose to add an agency protecting consumers against financial products -- and this is an implicit recognition that you are right, that the finance industry has long been ripping off consumers in various ways. But beyond that, there is nothing currently on the table that would make our banking system and -- by implication -- the world's financial system better run.

What happened? The finance industry has captured, intellectually, both public policy and a wide range of public intellectuals. People really believe that we need something like today's financial sector in order to resume reasonable growth in this country. This is despite the fact that financial innovation has added little to productivity in the past two decades, and it flies in the face of the obvious damage done recently by overborrowing at various levels.

You point out specifically that economists have not done a good job in terms of explaining the deeper causes of the crisis, and I would agree with that. But again I think this is due to the wrong mental model more than anything else. Most economists think that if we're talking about Indonesia or Korea or Russia, considerations of political economy -- i.e., who has power, what they are trying to do, etc. -- are first order. But as soon as we start to talk about the United States, many reasonable people think that the same special interest politics are second order and that the real action comes from more technical considerations, such as the "business cycle" (whatever that really means).

Implicitly, many economists see the U.S. as quite different from those middle-income countries often called "emerging markets." If these economists allow politics into their view of the world, they consider how altruistic policymakers try to balance conflicting objectives. The U.S., supposedly, is not about the competition for power and influence between strong interest groups.

My own view is that we should be dubious whenever someone says or assumes that "the U.S. is different." Most countries have powerful groups -- almost always including the financial sector, and big banks in particular -- and they are always trying to slant things their way. The U.S. may in fact have a worse problem, as our financial sector made a great deal of money in the early deregulation years of the 1980s and plowed that back into further financial influence.

Big finance, of course, was helped by two major waves of innovation: lower communication costs meant that global investing became cheaper, and lower computing costs meant that more complicated trading strategies (i.e., involving derivatives) became more profitable. Of course, to really take advantage of these changes the finance industry needed new rules: lower barriers to capital flows across borders and no regulation for derivatives trading. When they got both, by the mid-1990s, it was off to the races -- the unsustainable rise of the financial sector since that time is what has really pulled us into our current predicament.

And the way in which the Obama administration is attempting to extricate us from the crisis -- with unconditional support for big banks, regardless of costs -- is not addressing the fundamental imbalance of power that favors the financial sector. If anything, the big banks that survive in this sector have now become more powerful -- the political market share of JP Morgan Chase or Goldman Sachs has increased because Lehman and Bear Stearns are out of business.

Private equity and hedge funds, which could have been brought on board with a more reformist agenda (as they have no great love for supersized big banks), instead are lining up with everyone else for government subsidies of various kinds (e.g., through the toxic asset purchase programs organized by the Treasury). And small banks -- who have considerable potential clout through their access to the Senate -- devote most of their time to shooting down sensible changes to more general financial rules (e.g., about whether mortgages can be modified in personal bankruptcy), rather than helping to rein in big banks.

In some sense, the administration's political strategy in this area is not going at all well. But in another more profound sense, the political strategy of Big Finance is proving incredibly effective. They survived the crisis essentially intact, they will keep the rules that have served them (but not us) well, and their day-to-day influence in the corridors of Washington power has never been higher.

There will be a continuing struggle for reform -- after all, we've seen overbearing financial power reined in before in this country (e.g., by FDR and Congress, following the Pecora Hearings in the early 1930s). But it's going to be a long struggle. There is nothing on the immediate horizon that will address our fundamental problems; in fact, the economic recovery will further strengthen the hand of the largest banks, as they will argue that we should now "move on."

But as long as people like you keep writing about the deeper issues at stake, and -- by all means -- pushing everyone to look for and expose criminal wrongdoing, we will eventually move in the right direction. The battle to control finance is really an argument about ideas. What is the right way to organize the economy? How should big banks be effectively brought under control? How do we prevent anyone from exercising disproportionate influence in our open political system?

Keep at it.

Thanks,

Simon

Snubbed !!

Deep Thoughts From A 0.925 Batting Average Posted by Tyler Durden at 6:24 PM

Goldman Sachs always gets its way

The clue may come from a February 5 letter by the Federal Reserve to Goldman CAO Sarah Smith. The letter had come in response to GS requests for “temporary exemptions from the application of certain aspects of the Board’s Market Risk Rules for state member banks and bank holding companies and the Board’s general risk-based capital rules for bank holding companies.” Basically through the end of 2009 Goldman is basically using non-traditional. SEC approved VaR models as can be seen here:

via Why Does Goldman Need A Fed Exemption For VaR Calculations? | zero hedge.

Is Goldman Screwing Taxpayers in TARP Negotiations?

Alas, no one would tell me what the government is asking for the warrants or what Goldman is offering for them. “We are in discussions with the Treasury on the buyback of the warrant,” said Goldman spokesman Lucas VanPraag. “The purchase price has yet to be determined…. We believe that taxpayers should get a decent return, and we hope that our discussions with the Treasury will do just that.” The Treasury declined comment.

My estimate — okay, my SWAG (for scientific wild-assed guess) — is that the Treasury is asking for $1 billion to $1.5 billion and Goldman is offering $500 million or so.

Under the law, Goldman, like other early TARP repayers, has the right to force the Treasury to sell back the warrants after a lengthy set of price arbitrations.

via Goldman Sachs pulls a dumb move by squabbling over TARP - Jul. 17, 2009.

Bernanke Gets Top Marks as Investors Say Economy Is Past Worst

By Rich Miller

July 22 (Bloomberg) -- Global investors give Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke top marks for combating the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression and overwhelmingly favor his reappointment amid optimism that the world economy is on the mend.

Sixty-one percent of investors surveyed in the first Quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll say the world economy is stable or improving and almost 75 percent take a favorable view of the 55-year-old chairman. By almost a three-to-one margin, they say Bernanke has earned another four-year term when his current one expires in January.

“He’s the best, maybe around the world,” said Wallace Lin, an investment manager with Euro Asset Management in Hong Kong, who participated in the poll. Investors ranked Bernanke higher than his counterparts at other major central banks, including European Central Bank President Jean-Claude Trichet.

The vote of confidence strengthens Bernanke’s hand as he faces congressional criticism that the Fed overstepped its authority by helping to rescue failing financial institutions in the midst of the crisis. It also gives his bid for another term a boost. President Barack Obama has praised Bernanke’s performance atop the central bank without saying whether he wants him to stay.

Market Repercussions

“If he weren’t renominated, it could have potentially very serious and severe repercussions on the stock market and the economy,” said Jack Liebau, a poll participant and president of Pasadena, California-based Liebau Asset Management Co.

Investors consider recession a bigger threat to the U.S. economy than rising prices over the next two years, the poll showed. Sixty-one percent cite recession as the greater risk, compared with 37 percent who name inflation.

Martin Feldstein, a professor of economics at Harvard University who was considered for the position of Fed chairman before Bernanke took over in 2006, praised the policy maker. Bernanke has “done a very good job and I think he should be reappointed,” Feldstein said in an interview yesterday on Bloomberg Television.

The first Quarterly Bloomberg Global Poll is a survey of investors and analysts on six continents. It is based on interviews from July 14 to July 17 with a random sample of 1,076 Bloomberg subscribers, who represent leading decision makers in markets, finance and economics.

Trichet, King, Zhou

The poll showed Trichet received a favorable rating of 54 percent, while Bank of England Governor Mervyn King garnered 50 percent approval and China’s central-bank governor, Zhou Xiaochuan, received 42 percent. Bernanke outpolled the other central bank chiefs even in their own regions.

Bernanke also received a higher rating than U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, who formerly ran the New York Federal Reserve Bank. The Treasury secretary got a 57 percent rating worldwide -- even though a majority of investors in the U.S. view him unfavorably. More than 52 percent of American respondents take a negative view of Geithner, compared with about 32 percent in Europe and 24 percent in Asia.

Bernanke has countered the credit crisis with actions unprecedented in the central bank’s 95-year history. He cut the benchmark lending rate to as low as zero and expanded credit to the economy by $1.1 trillion over the past year.

U.S. Banks Recovering

More than three-quarters of investors expect U.S. financial institutions will be in better shape a year from now, though only 2 percent say they will be back to full health. Just 10 percent think they will be in worse shape.

Respondents aren’t as sanguine about European banks, with 23 percent saying their condition will deteriorate in the next year.

Investors in Asia are more optimistic than those in the U.S. and Europe about the outlook for the global economy, the poll showed. More than three-quarters of Asian investors say the world economy is stable or improving, compared with 62 percent in Europe and 50 percent in the U.S.

Regional differences in the global outlook “may be a matter of what they see around them,” said J. Ann Selzer, president of Selzer & Co. of Des Moines, Iowa, which conducted the poll for Bloomberg. Half of Asian investors “say the economy in their region is improving -- more than three times as many as say that in the U.S.,” she said.

The International Monetary Fund said July 8 that emerging- market economies including China will help pull the world out of the deepest contraction in six decades.

China’s Recovery

China’s gross domestic product grew 7.9 percent in the second quarter, the government reported last week in Beijing, making the nation the first major economy to rebound from the global recession.

“Fiscal policy and monetary stimulus have been introduced around the world, and we are seeing signs, particularly in China, that they are beginning to work,” Jim Owens, chief executive officer of Caterpillar Inc., said in a statement yesterday. Peoria, Illinois-based Caterpillar, the world’s largest maker of construction equipment, reported second-quarter profit that exceeded analysts’ forecasts.

More than half the investors polled expect long-term interest rates to rise over the next six months as global growth picks up. Among equity investors, 52 percent foresee higher yields, compared with 49 percent of fixed-income investors.

Higher Long-Term Rates

“I don’t see them going anywhere but up,” said David Jaderlund, municipal bond portfolio manager with Jaderlund Investments in Albuquerque, New Mexico. Currently, he said, Treasury securities “aren’t paying anything.”

Benchmark 10-year notes yielded 3.48 percent at 5:15 p.m. yesterday in New York, compared with an average 4.56 percent over the last decade.

Investors expect short-term interest rates to be little changed over the next six months, the poll showed. Almost three quarters say central banks will hold rates near current levels to support growth.

“Monetary policy remains focused on fostering economic recovery,” Bernanke said in his semi-annual report to Congress yesterday. The Fed intends to maintain a “highly accommodative” monetary policy for “an extended period,” he said.

“The U.S. economy may be ailing,” said Selzer. “But these financial leaders agree the man at the helm of the economy is the right guy for the job, for now and for another term.”

Depression 2010

It’s simply human nature to hope for the best. We would much rather find a silver lining in every dark cloud than to simply accept that there is no hope.

In the Spring of 2009, after the first round of the financial crisis had passed in the Fall of 2008, there was a groundswell of optimism that we had weathered the storm, and that the worst of the crisis was behind us.

Nothing could be further from the truth, but since it is human nature to avoid pain, the “hopeful” stories about “green shoots” and economic recovery were an easy sell to the public.

If given the choice, we will always choose to believe that the bad times are behind us, rather than the worst lies ahead.

Back in the Depression of the 1930’s, a similar false hope permeated society, as the following quotes clearly illustrate:

"We will not have any more crashes in our time."

- John Maynard Keynes in 1927

"There will be no interruption of our permanent prosperity."

- Myron E. Forbes, President, Pierce Arrow Motor Car Co., January 12, 1928

"There may be a recession in stock prices, but not anything in the nature of a crash."

- Irving Fisher, leading U.S. economist , New York Times, Sept. 5, 1929

"I expect to see the stock market a good deal higher within a few months."

- Irving Fisher, Ph.D. in economics, Oct. 17, 1929

"This crash is not going to have much effect on business."

- Arthur Reynolds, Chairman of Continental Illinois Bank of Chicago, October 24, 1929

"We feel that fundamentally Wall Street is sound, and that for people who can afford to pay for them outright, good stocks are cheap at these prices."

- Goodbody and Company market-letter quoted in The New York Times, Friday, October 25, 1929

"This is the time to buy stocks. This is the time to recall the words of the late J. P. Morgan... that any man who is bearish on America will go broke. Within a few days there is likely to be a bear panic rather than a bull panic. Many of the low prices as a result of this hysterical selling are not likely to be reached again in many years."

- R. W. McNeel, market analyst, as quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929

"Buying of sound, seasoned issues now will not be regretted"

- E. A. Pearce market letter quoted in the New York Herald Tribune, October 30, 1929

"Some pretty intelligent people are now buying stocks... Unless we are to have a panic -- which no one seriously believes, stocks have hit bottom."

- R. W. McNeal, financial analyst in October 1929

"...despite its severity, we believe that the slump in stock prices will prove an intermediate movement and not the precursor of a business depression such as would entail prolonged further liquidation..."

- Harvard Economic Society (HES), November 2, 1929

"... a serious depression seems improbable; [we expect] recovery of business next spring, with further improvement in the fall."

- Harvard Economic Society (HES), November 10, 1929

"The end of the decline of the Stock Market will probably not be long, only a few more days at most."

- Irving Fisher, Professor of Economics at Yale University, November 14, 1929

"Financial storm definitely passed."

- Bernard Baruch, cablegram to Winston Churchill, November 15, 1929

"I see nothing in the present situation that is either menacing or warrants pessimism... I have every confidence that there will be a revival of activity in the spring, and that during this coming year the country will make steady progress."

- Andrew W. Mellon, U.S. Secretary of the Treasury December 31, 1929

"I am convinced that through these measures we have reestablished confidence."

- Herbert Hoover, December 1929

"[1930 will be] a splendid employment year."

- U.S. Dept. of Labor, New Year's Forecast, December 1929

"For the immediate future, at least, the outlook (stocks) is bright."

- Irving Fisher, Ph.D. in Economics, in early 1930

"...there are indications that the severest phase of the recession is over..."

- Harvard Economic Society (HES) Jan 18, 1930

"There is nothing in the situation to be disturbed about."

- Secretary of the Treasury Andrew Mellon, Feb 1930

"The spring of 1930 marks the end of a period of grave concern...American business is steadily coming back to a normal level of prosperity."

- Julius Barnes, head of Hoover's National Business Survey Conference, Mar 16, 1930

"... the outlook continues favorable..."

- Harvard Economic Society (HES), Mar 29, 1930

"... the outlook is favorable..."

- Harvard Economic Society (HES), Apr 19, 1930

"While the crash only took place six months ago, I am convinced we have now passed through the worst -- and with continued unity of effort we shall rapidly recover. There has been no significant bank or industrial failure. That danger, too, is safely behind us."

- Herbert Hoover, President of the United States, May 1, 1930

"...by May or June the spring recovery forecast in our letters of last December and November should clearly be apparent..."

- Harvard Economic Society (HES), May 17, 1930

"Gentleman, you have come sixty days too late. The depression is over."

- Herbert Hoover, responding to a delegation requesting a public works program to help speed the recovery, June 1930

"... irregular and conflicting movements of business should soon give way to a sustained recovery..."

- Harvard Economic Society (HES), June 28, 1930

"... the present depression has about spent its force..."

- Harvard Economic Society (HES), Aug 30, 1930

"We are now near the end of the declining phase of the depression."

- Harvard Economic Society (HES), Nov 15, 1930

"Stabilization at [present] levels is clearly possible."

- Harvard Economic Society (HES), Oct 31, 1931

Clearly, human nature doesn’t change. Just as the populace of the early 1930’s wanted to believe that the worst of the crisis was behind them, so too, the populace of the 2009’s wants to believe that the worst of the crisis is behind them.

The problem is, the populace wasn’t correct then, and neither are they correct now.

Setting aside emotions and just rationally looking at the facts presents a very dire economic outlook.

My thesis is that an economic depression next year is just about assured. The problems that caused Round One of this financial crisis have not been corrected.

Round Two of this crisis is rapidly approaching. While this is very clear to me, it may come as a complete shock to most people.

Why can’t we believe the mass media that the worst is over?

The answer to that question is rather lengthy. A short while ago I did a webinar to answer that very question. Below in blue is the transcript to that webinar.

It is by no means complete. There are more pieces to the puzzle that are not covered in this webinar. It literally would fill a large book. What is presented below is merely some of the bigger pieces of the puzzle.

These pieces alone should be enough to convince anyone with an open mind that more financial pain lies ahead. If the presentation of the facts below is not convincing enough, it is likely that no amount of facts would be sufficient.

Remember the old saying. “A man convinced against his will is of the same opinion still.” And therein lies the heart of the matter: emotions.

No matter what picture the facts paint, if you emotionally do not want to believe that this recession will be turning into a depression in the next 12 months, a mountain of evidence as high as Mount Everest will be insufficient proof in your mind.

The key for you is to set aside your emotions and simply examine the facts. If you can do that, you are much more likely to find the truth.