Economy @ MindSay

I hate feeling as though I am just spinning my wheels sometimes. Today I worked at my parents' store from about 8-4, redecorating and taking photos of the displays to update the website and design some ads. It is just heartbreaking to see so few people in the store this past year. This has been the worst year since my parents opened it 11 years ago. And- although some people may disagree, it really became most noticeable when the news started throwing around the word "recession." People may blame the gas problems or the war, but its all about perception and how people think the economy is. Granted- not all- because when people ignore the warning signs of a weakening economy and overspeculate, it causes hardship, as seen in the housing market in Florida. The media wields so much power... it is scary at times. With so many people relying on the evening or morning news for their information, a lot is not brought to light and other stories are re-hashed so many times. It is ridiculous. And those who don't realize the amount of information that is ignored or the bias in the news are being nieve.

Is it horrible that my suggested taglines included "hate my parents" and "people killing people".

I am going with a non-suggested tag...

The country I live in, the country I was born in, the country I love and keep coming back to, is a lie.

We have billboards up all over the place: "Keep our country green and pristine!" "This is our land! Keep it Clean!" Great words, good show. We have those fancy enviriomental acts and agencies and private companies and charities, all aimed at making a 'greener' world. The vast majority of citizens here believe in this and commend these wonderful people for what they're doing. But don't recycle or limit themselves.

We have protests and riots all the time of the economical situation and trials. People running their mouths about how the government isn't giving them enough money. Government officials put forward bills that might cost us a little in the short term but could really help. And our people praise them! But don't give any money.

We have parenting groups running around screaming about the number of children born out of wedlock never knowing who their father is. Complaining how they don't have money for school supplies and the like. But don't stop popping out the babies.

And its not just here. I've lived in the States. We are a Bare Minimum society. We blame our government but rarely do our parts. Its almost like we all believe, for ourselves, that the 'great' idea to try to conserve fuel, reuse what we can and recycle is all for someone else to do. For the government to do. But if the government did try to limit our gas or whatever, we'd have hissy fits. If the government doesn't do that and we all fall further into the economic hole and waste our natural resources, its the government's fault.

Its a two-way street people.  And in countries as large as the US, its more like a highway.

Hey, here's another article that nobody will read. Damn, I guess I should go get a part-time job instead of posting articles and videos that no one looks at. Just keep telling yourself that everything is going to be okay...

By Lew Rockwell

Ludwig von Mises had a theory about interventionism. It doesn't accomplish its stated ends. Instead it distorts the market. That distortion cries out for a fix. The fix can consist in pulling back and freeing the market or taking further steps toward intervention. The State nearly always chooses the latter course, unless forced to do otherwise. The result is more distortion, leading eventually, by small steps, toward ever more nationalization and its attendant stagnation and bankruptcy.

When you think about the current Fannie Mae-Freddie Mac crisis, you must remember Mises's theory of intervention. Reporters will not, but you must, provided you want to understand what is going on. President Bush is considering a fateful step in a 60-year-old problem: the nationalization of these mortgage companies. He wants to guarantee the $5 trillion (that's trillion with a "t") in debt owned by these companies. Another option would be to put these monstrosities under "conservatorship," which means that you and I will pay for their losses directly.

Either way, it turns out that there is no magic way to put every American citizen, regardless of financial means or credit history, in a 3,000 square foot home. Someone, somewhere, sometime has to pay. No matter what rescue plan they are able to cobble together, that someone is you.

The heck of it is that any option would be devastating to the already-suffering housing market. The reason this sector was so wildly inflated is that banks knew that Fannie and Freddie were capable of buying any mortgage debt created by the banking industry. For these companies to be nationalized would effectively end their capacity to do this on a market basis. That means banks would suddenly have to act responsibly.

Now, you might say, if that's true, the real blame is with the individual bankers that had been making irresponsible loans under the condition that these government-sponsored enterprises would absorb them. But that's not right. Put yourself in the shoes of a banker over the last twenty years. You have competitors. You have a bottom line. If you don't extend these loans, you come off as a fool. Your competition eats your breakfast. To stay ahead of market trends means that you have to play the game, even though you know it is rigged.

They were created by FDR in 1938 to fund mortgages insured by the Federal Home Administration. They were used by every president as a means to achieve this peculiar American value that every last person must own a home, no matter what. So they were given the legal permission to purchase private mortgages and make them part of their portfolios. Still later, under LBJ and Nixon, they became public companies and sold stock. People called this privatization, but that isn't quite right. They had access to a guaranteed line of credit creation with the U.S. Treasury. They had lower borrowing costs than any private-sector equivalent.

Government-sponsored enterprises are not subject to market discipline like regular private sector companies. Their securities are listed as government securities, so their risk premiums were not dictated by the free market. They could leverage themselves at 50-, 75-, 100-1, pyramiding debt on a tiny foundation of equity. The financial markets have long believed that the GSEs would be bailed out no matter what. And so this put them in a completely different position from a company like Enron, which the markets watched closely. What's causing the current panic is that the markets have wised up and started evaluating these institutions by market standards. Freddie and Fannie have collapsing market prices, and their bonds are carrying ever-higher risk premiums.

In other words, we are not talking about market failure. If you have a housetop you can shout that from, please do so, because the press and the government are going to make every effort to blame private borrowers and lenders for this calamity. But the origin of both these outfits is with federal legislation. They are not market entities. They have long been guaranteed by you and me. No, they have not been socialist entities either because they are privately owned. They occupy a third status for which there is a name: fascism. Really, that's what we are talking about: the inexorable tendency of financial fascism to mutate into full-scale financial socialism and therefore bankruptcy.

Mr. Bush might have prevented this meltdown by curbing the privileges of Freddie and Fannie long ago. But no, he had another plan, one which was assisted by the Republican think tanks in Washington (the curious can Google it up). The idea was a new slogan called the "ownership society."

Sounds nice, doesn't it? Sounds like free enterprise. But if you think about it, there is nothing particularly free market about the demand that everyone should own anything in particular. The idea of free markets is that your rights to own justly are not to be infringed by public or private criminals. The suggestion that everyone should own some particular thing, by whatever means, can only be funded through financial socialism or mass theft. The claim on the part of a government that it will create an "ownership society" can prove to be highly dangerous.

As for the future, Mises's theory that the government will always favor more government seems wholly sound. Here is John McCain: "Those institutions, Fannie and Freddie, have been responsible for millions of Americans to be able to own their own homes, and they will not fail, we will not allow them to fail…we will do what’s necessary to make sure that they continue that function." Not a single Democrat disagrees.

As with the S&L fiasco from years ago, the case of the housing bust followed by the trillions in taxpayer liabilities for the disaster will again be cited as a case of "the shock doctrine" and "disaster capitalism" in which the elites make fantastic amounts of money at the expense of the little guy. The critique will be mostly solid but for the one most important point: this kind of fiasco would not happen in a free market. It happens because government, through credit creation and guarantees, makes it possible.

Look down the road a bit here. What happens when banks won't lend for houses anymore? What will government do then? We might as well prepare for a future in which applying for a housing loan will have similar features to getting an SBA loan. This is where we are headed.

Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet
Tuesday, July 15, 2008

Former Governor Jesse Ventura slammed the weak dollar policy as part of a war being waged on the middle class in America by the U.S. government as the greenback collapsed to an all time record low against the euro today.

Ventura made the comments before his appearance on Larry King Live last night, during which he announced he would not be running for the U.S. Senate.

“The dollar has fallen through the floor, there’s half a dozen countries now that have a higher value and more than that than us,” Ventura told The Alex Jones Show.

The former Minnesota Governor identified two key factors behind dollar devaluation - the war in Iraq and the ballooning national debt.

“It’s the exact two things that I’ve been harping on for the last 2 months and a half….we must do something about the $9 trillion dollars plus of debt we owe throughout the world,” said Ventura, adding that most people in America were unconcerned about the greenback’s spectacular plummet.

Asked why the establishment were not going to reverse the destruction of the dollar, Ventura responded, “Because I don’t think they really care, they’re making their money and they’re in their position.”

“To me it’s clear there is a war on the middle class in America today being waged by our own government - they’re out to destroy what was the American dream and the American dream was the middle class, we were the country where you could get a job and you could support your family….that’s being extinguished greatly today and it seems our illustrious elected officials don’t have a problem with it,” said Ventura.

The dollar fell to an all time record low against the euro today on the back of mortgage giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac being bailed out by the U.S. government.

The dollar declined to $1.6038 per euro, the lowest since the euro’s inception in 1999, and was at $1.6004 as of 11:13 a.m. in London, from $1.5908 in New York yesterday. The greenback also hit a 25-year low versus the Australian dollar.