"I fought the Fed, and the Fed won. I fought the Fed, and the Fed WON."
I am a battered and worn deflationist. I was CERTAIN that the Fed could not re-inflate to the extent they have... there is an old maxim on Wall Street: "Do not fight the Fed."
UGHGHGHGH!
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I am not sure which is worse: The hypocrisy of age or the arrogance of youth. Since I am right in the middle I expect I show a touch of each...
I received this in an email today, it is going around the Web fairly briskly:
YOU WANT TO GET MAD? We had eight years of Bush and Cheney, but now you get mad! You didn’t get mad when the Supreme Court stopped a legal recount and appointed a President. You didn’t get mad when Cheney allowed Energy company officials to dictate energy policy. You didn’t get mad when a covert CIA operative got ousted. You didn’t get mad when the Patriot Act got passed.. You didn’t get mad when we illegally invaded a country that posed no threat to us. You didn’t get mad when we spent over 600 billion(and counting) on said illegal war. You didn’t get mad when over 10 billion dollars just disappeared in Iraq. You didn’t get mad when you found out we were torturing people. You didn’t get mad when the government was illegally wiretapping Americans. You didn’t get mad when we didn’t catch Bin Laden. You didn’t get mad when you saw the horrible conditions at Walter Reed. You didn’t get mad when we let a major US city drown. You didn’t get mad when we gave a 900 billion tax break to the rich. You didn’t get mad when, using reconciliation; a trillion dollars of our tax dollars were redirected to insurance companies for Medicare Advantage which cost over 20 percent more for basically the same services that Medicare provides. You didn’t get mad when the deficit hit the trillion dollar mark, and our debt hit the thirteen trillion dollar mark. You finally got mad when the government decided that people in America deserved the right to see a doctor if they are sick. Yes, illegal wars, lies, corruption, torture, stealing your tax dollars to make the rich richer, are all okay with you, but helping other Americans… oh hell no. AND NOW YOU’RE MAD?I have been a stone cold capitalist and registered Republican all of my life, even moved from Pro-Choice to Pro Life sometime in early adulthood. That does not mean I cannot recognize some legitimate criticism when I see it (not that there aren't a number of issues that were bi-partisan efforts within the aforementioned). People on both sides really, really, really need to recognize when their political leaders are FOS. BTW, note to Lefties... not every Republican/Conservative/Libertarian - whatever you want to call us - supported the illegal and immoral War in Iraq or an intractable War in Afghanistan against some truly, truly bad people that have probably worn out their welcome on this earth (but what's that got to do with War?). Not every one of us believes that the Military budget of the U.S. should equal 50% of the total military expenditures on the planet. Not every one of us wants to continue the "War on Drugs".
There are quite a few of us that want all of us to accept personal responsibility, shrink government (including the military and law enforcement/prison industrial complex budgets... not just the social programs), and firmly believe that the Right to Life should extend to fetuses, Bedouin tribesmen, Iraqi goat herders, Israelis, and American Service Personnel, and people working in the Twin Towers on 9/11. This is not to say that criminals should not be brought to justice, but it is to say that a cost/benefit analysis brought to bear long ago would have yielded fantastic dividends. Unfortunately, we do not have a Department of Cost/Benefit Analysis (though we really should).
What we have is an unending manipulation of the American people by special interest groups and their contacts in the media. Let me give you a couple of examples:
We've all heard that the folks at the SEC were watching PORN when they should have been policing Wall Street, right? Is there any difference, as far as their not doing their duty, if they were watching "Little Oral Annie" or "Little House on the Prairie"? Believe me, there were plenty of folks at the SEC, and every other government agency, using their computers to access the Home Shopping Network, YouTube, Ebay, The American Energy Crisis... (hell, a urologist I know told me that men my age should watch Porn to up their testosterone and keep their prostate from going Chernobyl.... just saying.) What's the difference?
When the war mongering jag offs want to do something really dumb, and they can't get the populace to go along with sending their sons off to death and dismemberment they trot out the "rape story". It worked in Afghanistan , Iraq, Somalia.... and if you watch closely, "they" will use it again. Sometimes they call it "subjugation of women". I wonder how it is that an American mom goes from being unwilling to lose her son in some pointless conflict to being willing to do so over an alleged crime half a world away.
You saw it when the Feds raided that FLDS compound in Arizona a couple of years back. Yep. "RAPE"!!! Cried the authorities, and so 500 families had to be seized and broken up. I watched as my wife cursed the TV... it worked on her. Have you heard anything about those "Rapes!" since? No, they needed to cover their goose-stepping, invasion of Poland style storm trooping. The retraction was on page 17 in very small type right under the ads for "used microwaves"..., and never mind that if you took ANY random 500 family sampling in the US you would likely find far more child abuse at first blush than these jag-offs found by taking the entire community hostage.
When the government needs an excuse to engage in immoral or unpopular wars, or to crush an unpopular church, out comes the tried and true "Rape"!
I am sure that I would be outraged at the way the Afghani's treat their women - does that mean my son has to go to war to right the world's wrongs? What about the "collateral damage" folks? I'll pass, thanks.
We are under constant manipulation by the MSM, and if you find my thoughts have any basis in fact, it would seem that the MSM is being manipulated pretty effectively, too.
Oh, and I don't want to pay government workers to do ANYTHING but work when they are at work. I don't care if its Porn or Christian Outreach... do it on your own time.
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So... prosecutors are investigating Goldman Sachs... what a surprise. I am not suggesting that there is not a good chance that some laws might have been broken - just not what you might think or where you might think. Besides, what the U.S. needs is a revamped banking system. The current system has been dominated by the same old/same old, group think cronyism B.S., for so long this was the completely expected outcome. I mean, come one... anybody notice the one school that nearly every top exec of the bailed out firms had in common? You mean there are no smart people anywhere else?
More on this and the real issue... the reason Credit Default Swaps REALLY exist... coming soon.