President Obama’s first press conference – Question segment 1
Obama: I Thought FDR-New Deal Argument Was Resolved
Yes it was resolved that FDR intervention in the economy with massive federal government spending did not work in getting the economy out of the Great Depression.
The depression lasted until the start of World War II.
Stop misleading the Amercian people Mr. President.
Uncommon Knowledge: The Great Depression with Amity Shlaes
Tom Woods on Glenn Beck “Meltdown” 02/09/2009
Obama’s New New Deal: As bad as the old new deal?
Ayn Rand — “This Country is Moving Towards Socialism”
Liberate, Don’t Stimulate, the Economy – Ayn Rand Institute
President Franklin D. Roosevelt’s economic policies were a failure and prolonged the recession unnecessarily–hurting millions upon millions of Americans that remained unemployed for years.
FDR also had a justified reputation for being a notorious liar and manipulator of people.
Not exactly a President one should emulate for economic policies, character and integrity.
President Doom and Panic Obama advocates the quick passage of a “stimulus package”–the American Recovery and Investment Plan–largely more Federal Government spending to pay off many of his Democratic supporters-government workers, union members and illegal aliens in the construction industry.
This stimulus bill is based upon the failed economic theories of John Maynard Keynes and is referred to by economists as Keynesian Economics:
Truth: More Government Spending Does Not Usually Work
Keynesian Economics Is Wrong Bigger Gov’t Is Not Stimulus CATO’s Dan Mitchell
Inhofe on Kudlow and Company
Inhofe Remarks on “1.2 Trillion Mistake”
Repeatedly President Doom and Panic Obama said that tax cuts do not work, this is a lie and is rewriting economic history.
Truth: Most Tax Cuts Do Work
Cutting the U.S.’s Corporate Tax Rate
The Laffer Curve, Part I: Understanding the Theory
The Laffer Curve, Part II: Reviewing the Evidence
The Laffer Curve, Part III: Dynamic Scoring (Corrected)
President Obama also misleads the American people as to what happened in Japan in the 1990 and the United States in 1930 when Keynesian economics and massive government spending was tried and only prolonged the recession/depression for many years.
One of the worst recession in US economic history was faced by a new President Warren G. Harding in 1921.
President Harding cut Federal government spending by about 40% and taxes were reduced.
The worse recesssion was also one of the shortest and resulted in an economic boom in the 1920s.
“…The recession of 1921-1923 recession proved to be the sharpest economic downturn since the emergence of the business cycle in the early 19th century, but it also was one of the shortest reversals. The government intervened to a greater extent, but wage rates were permitted to fall, and government expenditures and taxes were reduced. The recession was over in one year. …”
Wage Adjustment and Aggregate Supply in the Depression of 1920-1921: Extending the Bernanke-Carey Model
Bryan Caplan
“… In one crucial respect, the depression of 1920-21 was actually more severe than the Great Depression itself: there was a rapid decline in the price level of between forty and fifty percent within the course of a single year. As Friedman and Schwartz (1963) explain, “From their peak in May [1920], wholesale prices declined moderately for a couple of months, and then collapsed. By June 1921, they had fallen to 56 per cent of their level in May 1920. More than three-quarters of the decline took place in the six months from August 1920 to February 1921. This is, by all odds, the sharpest price decline covered by our money series, either before or since that date and perhaps also in the whole history of the United States.” (1963, pp.232-233.) The wholesale price index during the Great Depression took about three years to fall by the same amount.
Employment and output were however not as severely affected as in the Great Depression. Of course precise unemployment data are not available for this period, but one representative estimate (Lebergott, 1957) puts civilian unemployment at 2.3% in 1919, 11.9% in 1921, and back to 3.2% in 1923. Output figures tell a similar story: one aggregate index (Mills, 1932) indexes production at 125.3 in 1919, 99.7 in 1921, and rebounding to 145.3 in 1923. As these stylized facts indicate, the second unusual feature of the depression of 1920-21 was the rapid recovery in employment and output, in sync with a swift adjustment of the real wage to its new equilibrium position. …”
“…So what to do? President Warren Harding first ignored his commerce secretary, Herbert Hoover, who wanted, naturally, to increase government further. Then he slashed federal spending – imagine! – cut taxes, paid down debt and, voila, the economy roared. Unshackled businesses reinvested. Factories rumbled back to life. Unemployment fell to 1.8 percent.
Hoover and then FDR tried a tack in precisely the opposite direction when the economy later slipped again, and the result was the Depression, exacerbated by the New Deal and ended by a wartime production boom.
What Harding understood that FDR and Hoover did not is that recessions, however painful, are necessary evils in a free-market economy, and not so evil at all when compared to totalitarian alternatives. The recession of 1920 to 1921, as historian Paul Johnson explained, “sorted out the sheep from the goats, liquidated the unhealthy elements in the economy and turned out the parasites … business downturns serve essential purposes. But they need not be long because they are self adjusting.” …”
“…Harding inherited from the comatose Wilson regime one of the sharpest recessions in American history. By July 1921 it was all over and the economy was booming again. Harding and Mellon had done nothing except cut government expenditure by a huge 40 percent from Wilson’s peacetime level, the last time a major industrial power treated a recession by classic laissez-faire methods, allowing wages to fall to their natural level. Benjamin Anderson of Chase Manhattan was later to call it ‘our last natural recovery to full employment.’ The cuts were not ill-considered but part of a careful plan to bring the spending of the monster state which had emerged under Wilson back under control. The Budget and Accounting Act (1921) created a Bureau of the Budget, to subject authorizations to systematic central scrutiny and control. Its first director, Charles Dawes, said in 1922 that, before Harding, ‘everyone did as they damn well pleased,’ Cabinet members were ‘comanchees,’ Congress ‘a nest of cowards.’ Then Harding ‘waved the axe and said that anybody who didn’t cooperate his head would come off.’ The result was ‘velvet for the taxpayer.’
~Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, page 708
Well President Obama how many Federal Government employees are being let go–any?
Start with your 1700 plus White House staff.
As I recall President Obama said that he was going to go over the budget line by line.
If President Obama and his staff cannot reduce Federal Government spending by at least 5% , they are not really trying.
President Harding and not Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt should be the role model President Obama emulates.
As an economist, I agree with President Obama that the American economy does need a stimulus package.
I know of no economist that advocates doing nothing, although it would be a better alternative course of action then massive government spending and massive increases in the money supply–an economic catastrophe in the making bythe Obama Administration and the Federal Reserve.
However, instead of the Federal Government deciding what to spend taxpayer money on, here is one economic plan that will at least let the American people make the spending and saving decision:
“Harding’s funeral train moving east was the occassion of extraordinary demonstrations of public affection for the man who, unlike Taft and Wilson, ‘looked like a president.’ In Cheyenne immense crowds stood in a dust-storm, in Chicago they filled the freight-yards until the train could not move: Harding was the kind of president American people of all classes love–kind, genial, decent, ordinary, human, one of them.”
~Paul Johnson, A History of the American People, page 710
Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian 1
Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian 2
Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian 3
Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian 4
“…Plenty of observers, including me, have criticised the media for being too gloomy. I am now beginning to believe that they have not been gloomy enough, if they want to reflect the true consequences of our profligacy and past conceit.
After all, who wants to face up to the bleak reality that confronts us? The experts say we will not suffer a repeat of the 1930s slump. Indeed, we have to contend with fresh issues. Like the fact that there are 1.5bn recent additions to the capitalist workforce in China and India – hard-working, increasingly well-educated people, all keen to better themselves. Meanwhile, modern logistics and communications mean trade and production can take place almost anywhere if it makes economic sense.
So why should industrious Asians earn a tiny fraction of what citizens in the west earn? Especially when they have so much of the cash and productive resources, while we have deficits, high costs and poor demographics.
Prepare for a wrenching, unstoppable redistribution of wealth – and I am not talking about domestic taxes. For too long it has been more profitable in the west to finance consumption rather than production. That cannot continue. I am afraid that the west’s credibility – and luck – has run out.
This vast reordering of our economic system has only just begun. We shall have to cancel all the self-indulgence of endless welfare spending and cultivate rather more of a work ethic and a sense of self-sufficiency. Expectations must be modified and attitudes altered profoundly. Expect years of negligible growth, permanent high unemployment, declining property prices, higher taxes, crumbling currencies and falling living standards.
We shall look back on the last decade and think: we never realised what we had until it was gone.”
“The 1921 recession was an extremely sharp deflationaryrecession following World War I. It lasted until 1923. The extent of the deflation was not only large, but large relative to the accompanying decline in real product.
The National Bureau of Economic Research dates the 1921 recession from a general business peak in January 1920 to a trough in July 1921. The recession in the United States was brief relative to the Great Depression later that decade, but it included a very sharp price deflation. The decline in the GNP price deflator from 1920 to 1921 is the largest one-year percentage decline in the series in the more than 120 years covered.
Various estimates show that one-year deflation figures were 18 percent, 13.0 percent, and 14.8 percent, respectively. The closest comparator is the 11.5 percent deflation recorded for 1931-32, the third year of the Great Depression. Wholesale prices declined by 36.8 percent for 1920-21, the largest one-year decline on record, going back at least to the American Revolutionary War period. The 1921 deflation contains another striking feature. Not only was it sharp, it was large relative to the accompanying decline in real product. The ratio of the percentage decline in the GNP deflator for 1920-21 to the percentage decline in real GNP is 2.6 using the Department of Commerce figures. By contrast, during 1929-30, the first year of the Great Depression, the GNP deflator declined by 2.7 percent and real GNP by 9.4 percent, for a ratio of 0.3. The ratios of the percentage decline in GNP prices to the percentage decline in real GNP for 1930-31, 1931-32, 1932-33, and 1937-38, the other Great Depression years in which real GNP declined, were 1.0, 0.9, 1.2, and 0.3, respectively, all well below the 1920-21 figures.
Deflation was so sharp, both in itself and in relation to the decline in real product, because the deflation was produced by a sharp decline in aggregate demand combined with an increase in aggregate supply, a supply increase in which deflationary expectations played a prominent role.
As usual, a buoyant expansion followed the severe contraction of 1920-1921. In the 22 months after the depression bottom, industrial production rose 63%, the money stock expanded by 14%, and wholesale prices rose by 9%. Net national product rose 23% in the corresponding two calendar years. …”
The Great Depression then 1929, & now 2008/09. PART 1:
The Great Depression then 1929, & now 2008/09. PART 2:
The Great Depression then 1929, & now 2008/09. PART 3:
The Great Depression then 1929, & now 2008/09. PART 4:
The Great Depression then 1929, & now 2008/09. PART 5:
The Great Depression then 1929, & now 2008/09. PART 6:
The Great Depression then 1929, & now 2008/09. PART 7:
The Great Depression then 1929, & now 2008/09. PART 8:
The Great Depression then 1929, & now 2008/09. PART 9:
The Great Depression then 1929, & now 2008/09. PART 10:
The Great Depression then 1929, & now 2008/09. PART 11:
The Great Depression then 1929, & now 2008/09. PART 12:
Keynesian Economics
“In economics Keynesianism (pronounced /ˈkeɪnziən/, also Keynesian economics and Keynesian Theory), is based on the ideas of twentieth-century British economist John Maynard Keynes. According to Keynesian economics the state should stimulate economic growth and improve stability in the private sector — through, for example, adjusting interest rates and taxation and funding public projects.
The theories forming the basis of Keynesian economics were first presented in The General Theory of Employment, Interest and Money, published in 1936.
In Keynes’s theory, some micro-level actions of individuals and firms can lead to aggregate macroeconomic outcomes in which the economy operates below its potential output and growth. Many classical economists had believed in Say’s Law, that supply creates its own demand, so that a “general glut” would therefore be impossible. Keynes contended that aggregate demand for goods might be insufficient during economic downturns, leading to unnecessarily high unemployment and losses of potential output. Keynes argued that government policies could be used to increase aggregate demand, thus increasing economic activity and reducing high unemployment and deflation.
Keynes argued that the solution to depression was to stimulate the economy (“inducement to invest”) through some combination of two approaches :
a reduction in interest rates.
Government investment in infrastructure – the injection of income results in more spending in the general economy, which in turn stimulates more production and investment involving still more income and spending and so forth. The initial stimulation starts a cascade of events, whose total increase in economic activity is a multiple of the original investment.[1]
A central conclusion of Keynesian economics is that in some situations, no strong automatic mechanism moves output and employment towards full employment levels. This conclusion conflicts with economic approaches that assume a general tendency towards an equilibrium. In the ‘neoclassical synthesis’, which combines Keynesian macro concepts with a micro foundation, the conditions of General equilibrium allow for price adjustment to achieve this goal.
The New classical macroeconomics movement, which began in the late 1960s and early 1970s, criticized Keynesian theories, while New Keynesian economics have sought to base Keynes’s idea on more rigorous theoretical foundations.
“…There’s a big mystery at the heart of Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father: A Story of Race and Inheritance. What was Barack Obama doing seeking out Marxist professors in college? Why did Obama choose a Communist Party USA member as his socio- political counselor in high school? Why was he spending his time studying neocolonialism and the writings of Frantz Fanon, the pro-violence author of “the Communist Manifesto of neocolonialsm”, in college? Why did he take time out from his studies at Columbia to attend socialist conferences at Cooper Union?
And there is more mystery in the book. Why does Obama consider working in a consulting house for international business like being “a spy behind enemy lines?” Why does he repeatedly find it so hard to explain his political views to others? Why was he driven to become a left-aligned political organizer? It’s a question Obama again and again can’t seem to answer to the satisfaction of the interlocutors in his own memoir.
If there is a mystery at the heart of Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father, one thing is not left a mystery, the fact that Barack Obama organized his life on the ideals given to him by his Kenyan father. Obama tells us, “All of my life, I carried a single image of my father, one that I .. tried to take as my own.” (p. 220) And what was that image? It was “the father of my dreams, the man in my mother’s stories, full of high-blown ideals ..” (p. 278) What is more, Obama tells us that, “It was into my father’s image .. that I’d packed all the attributes I sought in myself.” And also that, “I did feel that there was something to prove .. to my father” in his efforts at political organizing. (p. 230) …”
More and more Federal government interventions and more and more bailouts–this is national socialism/fascism–not capitalism!
The cost to the American people will be unemployment rates of between 15% to 20% within two years and inflation rates of between 25% to 50% within four years.
Let the markets work!
Do not do business with any bank or business that needs or takes a bailout or capital from the Federal government.
Always remember it was the Federal government insisting that banks make mortage loans to people they would not normally lend to that started this mess in the first place.
(Part 1/2) Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Announces Economic Recovery Plan
(Part 2/2) Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner Announces Economic Recovery Plan
Inside Look – Financial Stability Plan – Bloomberg
Reaction to Geithner Speech – Bloomberg
Inside Look – Geithner’s Financial Rescue Plan – Bloomberg
LET THEM FAIL ! NO BAILOUT ON MY BEHALF JIM ROGERS
Thomas Sowell – Obama’s Vision
Thomas Sowell – The Vision of the Anointed
Ron Paul on Socialism, Inflationism and the Death of the Dollar
Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian 1
Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian 2
Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian 3
Why Nazism Was Socialism and Why Socialism Is Totalitarian 4
First, some background information as to how did we get into this financial crisis in the first place:
Deconstructing the Subprime Crisis
subprime derivatives
Second, what lessons can we learn from the financial crisis:
Franklin Allen on Lessons from the Subprime Crisis
Third,the investment banks got greedy,arrogant, and stupid:
Jeremy Siegel on the Resilience of American Finance
Fourth, how do we get out of this massive failures of both the Federal government and securities market?
Please note which foreign country bought significant amounts of agency or Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac securites–Communist China!
Wall Streets Day of Reckoning: Turmoil in the Global Market
Wharton Faculty Teach-In October 21, 2008
Finally, here comes the mother of all bailouts to recapitalize the financial institutions:
Obama: More Bank Failures Likely
The rush to getting the so-called stimulus bill through Congress with or without any Republican support was noticed by many commentors.
Why?
Hang on to your wallets and watch the dollar depreciate some more.
The Treasury Secretary, Tim Geithner, will be asking for between 2 to 3 trillion dollars for creation of either (1) a “bad bank” to aggregate all those toxic investments or troubled assets to get them isolated from all US financial institutions so that lending can be rebooted or started again or more likely or (2) recapitalize the financial institution by investing money in exchange for preferred stock and warrants to be repaid sometime in the next five to ten years.
Creating A ” Bad Bank”?; Cleaning Up Toxic Assets – Bloomberg
Soros Says Bad Bank Plan Won’t Solve Lending Woes
Bad Bank Loses Favor – Bloomberg
Jim Lacamp on CNBC’s Kudlow & Co Feb 5, 2009 Part 1
Bernanke on Fed’s Future: More capital injections & guarantees – setup “”bad banks”
I agree with Eric, if a “bad bank” is what Secretary Geithner is going to recommend to Congress, just say no way pal.
Nobody is going to agree as the valuation or price for a troubled toxic asset.
Once was enough on the job training or OTJ for a Treasury Secretary.
Jim Rogers was right, why does anybody listen to Geithner?
Shame on you Glenn Beck – Telling the Truth about Timmy Geithner
Tax Cheat
Geithner Is Sworn in As Treasury Secretary
Who were some of the biggest campaign contributors to President Obama and the Democratic Party?
Follow the money–the executives and employees of the bailedout financial institutions.
No surprise there–the Chicago Way–pay for play.
Getting it right is more important than doing it fast.
When the new Treasury Secretary comes to Congress to report on TARP and then asks for another 2-3 trillion ($2,000,000,000,000–$3,000,000,000,000) for additional authority to purchase toxic or troubled assets or recapitalize the financial institutions in trouble, the American People are going to go ballistic.
Inside Look – Banks Urge Quick Release of TARP 2 – Bloomberg
“Dr. Doom,” Nouriel Roubini about banking nationalisation and moral hazard
Jim Rogers: The fundamentals of Commodoties are IMPROVING!
It is abundantly clear that the American elites of both political parties are not telling the American people what is really going on or the scope of the problem.
What the American political class does not understand is the American People are very mad and about to revolt.
The American people will stop calling and e-mailing their Representative, Senators, and President.
Instead the American people will start marching.
So what will the Treasury Secretary recommend.
Yes, you got it, back to Treasury Secretary Paulson’s second plan to recapitalize the banks.
Again, how much is this going to cost the American people for providing a capital infusion now to be paid back latter, say in five to ten years, if not sooner.
Stay tuned.
Background Articles and Videos
New Bank Bailout Could Cost $2 Trillion
By DEBORAH SOLOMON, DAVID ENRICH and JON HILSENRATH
“Government officials seeking to revamp the U.S. financial bailout have discussed spending another $1 trillion to $2 trillion to help restore banks to health, according to people familiar with the matter.
President Barack Obama’s new administration is wrestling with how to stem the continuing loss of confidence in the financial system, as it divides up the remaining $350 billion from the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program launched last fall. The potential size of rescue efforts being discussed suggests the administration may need to ask Congress for more funds. Some of the remaining $350 billion of TARP funds has already been earmarked for other efforts, including aid to auto makers and to homeowners facing foreclosure.
The administration, which could announce its plans within days, hasn’t yet made a determination on the final shape of its new proposal, and the exact details could change. Among the issues officials are wrestling with: How to fix damaged financial institutions without ending up owning them.
The aim is to encourage banks to begin lending again and investors to put private capital back into financial institutions. The administration is expected to take a series of steps, including relieving banks of bad loans and distressed securities. The so-called “bad bank” that would buy these assets could be seeded with $100 billion to $200 billion from the TARP funds, with the rest of the money — as much as $1 trillion to $2 trillion — raised by selling government-backed debt or borrowing from the Federal Reserve. …”
Roubini Predicts U.S. Losses May Reach $3.6 Trillion (Update1)
“…U.S. financial losses from the credit crisis may reach $3.6 trillion, suggesting the banking system is “effectively insolvent,” said New York University Professor Nouriel Roubini, who predicted last year’s economic crisis.
“I’ve found that credit losses could peak at a level of $3.6 trillion for U.S. institutions, half of them by banks and broker dealers,” Roubini said at a conference in Dubai today. “If that’s true, it means the U.S. banking system is effectively insolvent because it starts with a capital of $1.4 trillion. This is a systemic banking crisis.”
Losses and writedowns at financial companies worldwide have risen to more than $1 trillion since the U.S. subprime mortgage market collapsed in 2007, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
President Barack Obama will have to use as much as $1 trillion of public funds to shore up the capitalization of the banking sector, following the $350 billion injection by the Bush administration, Roubini told Bloomberg News. Congress last year approved a $700 billion rescue fund, of which half remains to be disbursed. …”
“In unveiling its bank-share purchase program, the Treasury Department required nine of the nation’s largest financial-services companies to sell a total of $125 billion in preferred stock to the government, and said an additional $125 billion in stock could be bought from other firms on a voluntary basis. Below, see a list of participating companies. Click the headers of the columns to sort by company, state and amount.
Last updated: 02/04/2009 …”
posted at 12:35 pm on January 20, 2009 by Allahpundit
“…No, not the stimulus. Another monster bailouton top of the stimulus. If the timeline here is right, Team Barry could be asking for it by mid-February, which would mean the $700 billion in TARP I lasted … five months.
Ever get the feeling like we’re just buying time?
[P]ersons close to the situation in Congress told Politico that the deteriorating economic situation leaves little breathing room. Bank losses are up and auto sales down. A top Hill staffer predicted Obama could be forced to seek more money even before the President’s Day recess in mid-February.
If so, this would be a nightmare political scenario for the incoming administration, which has focused on using the next month to muscle through its economic recovery plan…
But Obama gets one honeymoon as a new president, and waiting is not without risks. Financial newspapers reflect a growing concern that the government must do more to buy up the bad investments that hang over financial markets; with more bad earnings reports due this week, there is sense that this is a crisis that can’t be avoided…
“Congress isn’t going to step up and say, ‘Hey, can we give away another $700 billion?’” said an aide to a second Democratic House member. “But there’s a growing sense among people who are really watching this closely, I think, that it is entirely possible, six months from now, maybe even less, the administration is going to come back and say, ‘We need more; we need … more of the same.’”
“Timothy Franz Geithner [pronounced /ˈgaɪtnər/] (born August 18, 1961) is the 75th and current United States Secretary of the Treasury, serving under U.S. President Barack Obama. He was previously the president of the Federal Reserve Bank of New York and a tax chiseler.
Geithner will be directing the nation’s economic recovery from the worst financial crisis in three generations, a task that could define the first two years of Obama’s term. Specific duties include directing how $350 billion of already existing Wall Street bailout money is to be spent, then making the case to the United States Congress and the public if more is needed. In addition, Congress is working on an $825-billion economic recovery package that dedicates about two-thirds to new government spending and the rest to tax cuts. Geithner will be playing a big role in disbursing that money.[2]
Geithner’s nomination came under fire due to his failure to pay over $30,000 in taxes in the past. Geithner was able to receive Senate confirmation but he remains under deep criticism for not following the rules of the agency he now oversees.[3]
“James Beeland Rogers, Jr. (born October 19, 1942) is an American investor and financial commentator. He is co-founder, along with George Soros, of the Quantum Fund, and is a college professor, author, world traveler, economic commentator, and creator of the Rogers International Commodities Index (RICI).
Rogers, whose full name is James Beeland Rogers, Jr. was born in Wetumpka, Alabama. Rogers grew up in Demopolis, getting started in business at the age of five, picking up bottles at baseball games. He got his first job on Wall Street, at Dominick & Dominick, after graduating with a bachelor’s degree from Yale University in 1964. Rogers then acquired a second BA degree from Balliol College, Oxford University in 1966. After Oxford, Rogers returned to the U.S. and enlisted in the army for a few years.
In 1970, Rogers joined Arnhold & S. Bleichroeder, where he met George Soros. That same year, Rogers and Soros founded the Quantum Fund. During the following 10 years the portfolio gained 4200% while the S&P advanced about 47%.[1] It was one of the first truly international funds.
In 1980, Rogers decided to “retire”, and traveled on motorcycle through China. Since then, he has been a guest professor of finance at the Columbia University Graduate School of Business.
In 1989 and 1990, Rogers was the moderator of WCBS’ The Dreyfus Roundtable and FNN’s The Profit Motive with Jim Rogers. From 1990 to 1992, he traveled through China again, as well as around the world, on motorcycle, over 100,000 miles (160,000 km) across six continents, which was picked up in the Guinness Book of World Records. He tells of his adventures and worldwide investments in Investment Biker.
In 1998, Rogers founded the Rogers International Commodity Index. In 2007, the index and its 3 sub-indices were linked to exchange-traded notes under the banner ELEMENTS. The notes track the total return of the indices as an accessible way to invest. …”
“Pay to Play, sometimes pay for play, is a phrase which has been used for a variety of situations in which money is exchanged for services or the privilege to engage (play) in certain activities. Some uses refer to illicit activities, such as the exchange of money for influence in politics, while others can be normal, even expected, practices. An example of the latter is the concept of No Pay No Play in auto insurance law: an uninsured driver is not permitted to recover money for property damage or bodily injury damages caused by an auto accident, even if the uninsured driver is not at fault, because the lack of pay into the system results in the revocation of the uninsured driver’s right to play when compensation is collected.
In politics, pay to play refers to a system, akin to payola in the music industry, by which one pays (or must pay) money in order to become a player. The common denominator of all forms of pay to play is that one must pay to “get in the game,” with the sports analogy frequently arising.[1]
Typically, the payer (an individual, business, or organization) makes campaign contributions to public officials, party officials, or parties themselves, and receives political or pecuniary benefit such as no-bid government contracts, influence over legislation,[2][3] political appointments or nominations,[4][5] special access[6] or other favors. The contributions, less frequently, may be to nonprofit or institutional entities,[7] or may take the form of some benefit to a third party, such as a family member of a governmental official.[8]
The phrase, almost always used in criticism, also refers to the increasing cost of elections and the “price of admission” to even run[9] and the concern “that one candidate can far outspend his opponents, essentially buying the election.”[10]
While the direct exchange of campaign contributions for contracts is the most visible form of Pay to Play, the greater concern is the central role of money in politics, and its skewing both the composition and the policies of government.[11][12] Thus, those who can pay the price of admission, such as to a $1000/plate dinner or $25,000 “breakout session,” gain access to power and/or its spoils, to the exclusion of those who cannot or will not pay: “giving certain people advantages that other[s] don’t have because they donated to your campaign.”[13] Good-government advocates consider this an outrage because “political fundraising should have no relationship to policy recommendations.”[14] Citizens for Responsible Ethics in Washington called the “Pay-to-Play Congress” one of the top 10 scandals of 2008.[15]
Incumbent candidates and their political organizations[16] are typically the greatest beneficiaries of Pay-to-Play. Both the Democratic and Republican parties have been criticized for the practice. Many seeking to ban or restrict the practice characterize pay-to-play as legalized corruption. …”
“Webster Griffin Tarpley is an author, journalist, lecturer, and critic of US foreign and domestic policy. Tarpley maintains that the events of 9/11 were engineered by a rogue network of the military industrial complex and the CIA. His writings and speeches describe a model of false flag terror operations by a rogue network in the military/intelligence sector working with moles in the private sector and in corporate media, and locates such contemporary false flag operations in a historical context stretching back in the English speaking world to at least the “gunpowder plot” in England in 1605. …”
“In January 2008, Tarpley became one of the first critics to assert that Barack Obama is actually managed by right-wing powerbrokers. Tarpley claimed that a shift in power had taken place in the ruling class, with the Zbigniew Brzezinski faction and its presidential candidate Obama ascendant over the lame-duck neocons. The targets of US imperialism would now be Russia, China and its ally Pakistan, instead of Iraq, Iran and Syria. He developed these themes in his two books on Obama.
Tarpley is also a tough critic of free market, particularly the Austrian School and Chicago School economics [12]. …”
“Elizabeth Warren is the Leo Gottlieb Professor of Law at Harvard Law School, where she teaches contract law, bankruptcy, and commercial law. Warren graduated from the University of Houston with a B.S. in 1970 and received her J.D from Rutgers Law—Newark in 1976.
Warren is a member of the FDIC’s Committee on Economic Inclusion. She is the former Vice-President of the American Law Institute and a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. She served as the Chief Adviser to the National Bankruptcy Review Commission. Warren is a popular teacher, winning awards from her students at Harvard, the University of Pennsylvania, the University of Michigan, and the University of Houston Law Center.
Warren has testified several times before House and the Senate committees on financial issues. The National Law Journal has repeatedly named Professor Warren as one of the Fifty Most Influential Women Attorneys in America, and she has been recognized for her work by SmartMoney magazine, Money magazine, and Law Dragon. …”
“On November 14, 2008 Ms. Warren was appointed by United States Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid to chair the five-member Congressional Oversight Panel created to oversee the implementation of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act.[5] The reports of the Panel are available at http://cop.senate.gov. …”
Elizabeth Warren Introduces COP’s Valuation Report
In this video, Chairperson Elizabeth Warren introduces COP’s third oversight report: Valuing Treasury’s Acquisitions. This report features a deal-by-deal analysis of the value Treasury received in exchange for the taxpayer dollars it spent on the ten largest TARP transactions.
Obama and Democrats are Responsible: Fannie Mae/Freddie Mac
The Democrats and Obama caused the financial crisis of 08 by supporting Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and covering up their bad books.
Obama and Fannie Mae
Spendulus Alert: $50 billion for “mandatory mortgage modifications”
By Michelle Malkin
“I uploaded the entire Sellout Substitute Amendment championed by the Turncoat Caucus this weekend. Did you read through to the very end of the 778-page legislative text? Did your Senator? If you did, then you saw this: ….
“…Yes, you read that correctly. $50 billion more of your money made available to tax cheat/bailout failout architect Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner to force banks to do loan modifications with homeowners deep under water on their mortgages. That’s in addition to the $20 billion already allocated by the House last month for the same purposes.
Banks have been engaged in these “mo mod” programs over the past year. The Democrats want to accelerate the pace and use the power of government to essentially provide a blanket amnesty for borrowers and lenders who made bad financial decisions. Yes, I know there are many responsible borrowers out there having trouble negotiating loan modifications. I’ve heard from some of you. But this $50 billion giveaway to the banks — the brainchild of unscrupulous borrower Chris Dodd – is exactly the wrong way to go. …”
Pronk Palisades 
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