Friday, April 12, 2013

SAR #13102

"Chained CPI is just a fancy way to say cut benefits for seniors, the disabled, and orphans.” Elizabeth Warren

May I? The democratic process comes to this: It takes a 'yea' vote by 61 senators just to get the chance to actually discuss legislation – to do the people's business.

Imagine... Obama has again shown that he does not understand the process. Obama is willing to reduce or eliminate social insurance for many, if not quite yet most, people, to show his reasonableness. The Republicans will reject his budget out of hand, just to show they're serious. Republicans don’t want a compromise, they want to make most of America suffer for the benefit of the few. That's what will bring that smug look to their faces.

Pick A Number: The question was “How high should our top income tax rates be?” Higher. Much, much higher.

Perception: French borrowing costs are plunging, not because France's economy is picking up – it isn't – but because it has become obvious that the EU/ECB/IMF cannot let France go under. No France, no euro. Too big to fail and quite possibly too big to flail, so they'll just have to keep propping it up somehow. Thus the 'improvement' in the perceived soundness of French bonds.

Down The Up Staircase: The administration claims that chained CPI is a more accurate measure of the inflation experience of Americans because when we can't afford what we want, we buy something cheaper. Think about that for a moment: The government wants you to shop at Walmart, in the pet food aisle. But there is not a pet food version of housing or health care – and that's where a large share of the elderly's income goes. Research shows that the prices for the things the old folks buy increase about 0.2% faster than the CPI, while Chained CPI lags CPI by 0.3%. So using Chained CPI for Social Security is actually giving recipients 0.5% less than their experienced inflation. Party on.

Bait & Switch: The price of the Cypriot economic suicide is going to cost them another 6 billion euros, . And the ECB/EU/IMF are not going to chip in any more funds, so something's got to give. Well, in Cyprus 'give' isn't quite the word for it.

Exceptionalism: The Fed says that the crimes committed by the financial industry in defrauding millions of home owners are trade secrets, and that protecting the crooks and their modus operandi is more important than letting the public know the extent of the malfeasance. The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency agreed and said that not even Congress should be told of the nature or extent of these financial crimes because the crooks were never going to stand trial.

Fine Print: Back in 2009 the IRS happily decided their agents could (and should) read your emails, text messages and other electronic communications without bothering to get warrants, because you don't really have an expectation of privacy - not from them.

Quantities of Quantitative Easing: While the real economy and the real people who live and work there continue to suffer, the stock markets are soaring to new highs, home sales are increasing as investors snap up houses to rent to their former owners, and Freddie booked $11 billion in profits, Fannie got $17 billion, the Fed booked $90 billion in profits, Apple made $41 billion and Google added $10 billion to the bottom line. US median household income dropped 1.5% and the economy still has a couple of million fewer jobs than when Bernanke got his job. Way to go Ben.

Message In A Bottle: Goldman Sachs would like you to know that, despite Obama's cowering in front of the GOP deficit hawks, “the federal budget deficit is shrinking rapidly.”

Republican Of The Day: Today's Best Buffoon award goes to OK's Senator Inhofe (who is far from okay), for his revelation that Al Gore, the UN, George Soros, MoveOn.org and Michael More got together and made up the global warming hoax.

The Parting Shot:

130412 

Spring.

4 comments:

Anonymous said...

regarding "...Today's Best Buffoon award goes to OK's Senator Inhofe (who is far from okay), for his revelation that Al Gore, the UN, George Soros, MoveOn.org and Michael More got together and made up the global warming hoax.

---

i dont agree that inhoff is just a baffoon...i fear the disfunction runs deeper... i fear he and many others in DC have been "influenced" (or should i say bought?) by the oil, coal and nat gas industry, and get lots of campaign money from them and probably knows damn well that the burning fossil fuels is wrecking the planet

when global warming shuts down of the gulf stream sending northern europe into a mini ice age, destroying their agriculture...

when months of triple digit temperatures across the great plains and mountain states make growing grain and cattle farming impossible, and

the sage brush burns from the texas panhandle to nebraska and beyond,

and when the ogallala aquifer is sucked dry and huge expanses of fresh water in alberta and saskatchewan are poisoned

and big south west cities like vegas, los angeles etc demand water from the great lakes

great hordes of people will try to migrate across states and national boundaries as the life giving monsoons flood and wash agriculture away, or fail to appear at all,

and the rich with their oodles of money will buy and militarize some least affected place, probably uraguay and turn that country into a big gated community for the oligarchs and their favorite shills, d prostitutes and henchmen

they know that are destroying the planet...but like a crack addict they can not resist the awesome power and money that flows from "smoking the fossil fuel pipe"

sadly
mock turtle

Anonymous said...

Exceptionalism: The Fed says that the crimes committed by the financial industry in defrauding millions of home owners are trade secrets....

More and more trade and proprietary secrets daily. I challenged my Property Tax years ago (and am also doing so this year) and asked for all the calculations used to determine my property tax. I was told this was "proprietary" information and they would not tell me.

The Appeal Board agreed with the assessor. So, you are not even entitled to know how they calculate your Property Tax. Imagine buying your groceries and getting an unitemized bill on your way out because their billing is "proprietary". This is the way the world is going as more and more computer generated financial material is accepted as correct by the State and its enforcers. I call this BLACK BOX TAXATION or TAXATION WITHOUT CALCULATION.

Anyone wishing to give their children a good founding in how the State operates should challenge their Property Tax and use that as a learning tool in Reality.

Anonymous said...

CKM, as you enjoy the Big Picture and making connections, you should be aware of these comments by Stephen Hawking appearing in, of all places, FOX NOT THE NEWS:

"Still, we need to act and act fast, Hawking stated. "It will be difficult enough to avoid disaster in the next hundred years, let alone the next thousand or million. Our only chance of long-term survival is not to remain inward looking on planet Earth but to spread out into space. We have made remarkable progress in the last hundred years. But if we want to continue beyond the next hundred years, our future is in space.""

http://www.foxnews.com/scitech/2010/08/09/abandon-earth-face-extinction-warns-stephen-hawking/

Like to hear your comments, particularly as regards what parts of Humanity will be spread about the Universe and whether a species that cannot even manage a rational and equitable Financial System, among many other deficiencies, should survive at all. Will the Escape Vehicle be called the SOCIOPATH EXPRESS?

Charles Kingsley Michaelson, III said...

mt - from way above: I don't think we need look too far into Inhofe's closet to discover his inbuilt bias. After all, he's from Oilklahoma - and one of the first rules of electoral politics is getting the backking of the rich in your area and in that area it's the oil biddness.