Can you feel Tea Party fever of fiscal discipline sweeping over the GOP, where it's out with the old and in with the new?...
... Um, except it's not. The all-powerful House Appropriations Committee will be chaired by 30-year veteran Rep. Hal Rogers of Kentucky, who brought home $252 million in earmarks between 2008 and 2010.
The Honorable Mr. Rogers will now be in charge of -- don't laugh! -- enforcing the GOP's pledge to ban legislative earmarks, aka "pork" projects.
That's kind of like (choose your poison)...
... the DEA being run by Pablo Escobar
... PETA being run by Michael Vick
... the SEC being run by Bernie Madoff
... the State Dept. being run by Julian Assange
... or the Int'l Atomic Energy Agency being run by Mahmoud Ahmadinejad
But hey, that "hopey changey thing" could always work out for ya teabaggers, yeah?
Hal Rogers, 'Prince Of Pork,' To Be Appointed GOP Chairman Of House Appropriations Committee
December 7, 2010 | AP/Huffington Post
URL: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/12/07/hal-rogers-appropriations-committee_n_793529.html
Thursday, December 9, 2010
Tuesday, December 7, 2010
Army Times: 'Ethical' troops fight & die to pay underwater mortgages
Gee, I guess we can call this "supporting our troops" ... with financial advice.
But wouldn't it be more supportive to give our troops assistance in meeting their mortgage payments? After all, we bailed out the bankers -- who risk nothing except a papercut at work -- holding their mortgages with more than $9 trillion.
Instead of lecturing our troops about the "ethical" and financial hazards of walking away from their underwater mortgages -- not to mention threatening to revoke their security clearance for unpaid debts! -- why can't Uncle Sam find some cash under Wall Street's couch cushions to help our men & women in uniform?
What indeed our are troops fighting for? Not for a rigged financial system like this, I hope.
Consumer Watch: Walking away from your mortgage
By Karen Jowers
December 6, 2010 Army Times
URL: http://www.armytimes.com/money/financial_advice/offduty-walking-away-from-your-mortgage-120610w/?source=patrick.net
But wouldn't it be more supportive to give our troops assistance in meeting their mortgage payments? After all, we bailed out the bankers -- who risk nothing except a papercut at work -- holding their mortgages with more than $9 trillion.
Instead of lecturing our troops about the "ethical" and financial hazards of walking away from their underwater mortgages -- not to mention threatening to revoke their security clearance for unpaid debts! -- why can't Uncle Sam find some cash under Wall Street's couch cushions to help our men & women in uniform?
What indeed our are troops fighting for? Not for a rigged financial system like this, I hope.
Consumer Watch: Walking away from your mortgage
By Karen Jowers
December 6, 2010 Army Times
URL: http://www.armytimes.com/money/financial_advice/offduty-walking-away-from-your-mortgage-120610w/?source=patrick.net
Poll: Afghans want somebody to deliver the goods
"Twenty-seven percent of Afghans polled said the attacks can be justified. Last year, the number was just 8 percent as former NATO commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal issued strict guidelines limiting the use of force in an effort to reduce civilian casualties.
"The number of Afghan civilians killed or injured soared 31 percent in the first six months of the year, but they were largely caused by Taliban attacks, according to the United Nations.
"Just 36 percent of those polled expressed confidence in the U.S. and NATO to bring stability, down by 12 percentage points from last year and down by 31 percentage points since 2006. The survey also said 73 percent favor a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, up by 13 percentage points since 2007."
In other words, even though Americans are killing fewer Afghan civilians, and the Taliban are killing more civilians, the Afghan people are more likely to see attacks on the U.S. as justified and want a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. Why? Because the U.S. is not delivering on its promise of peace and stability. Afghans are ready to accept anybody -- including the Taliban -- who can. If America can't deliver then it is just an occupying enemy, reason notoriously xenophobic Afghans.
Our debates in the U.S. about whether to commit to a long-term occupation of Afghanistan will be overtaken by events on the ground: our presence cannot be open-ended if it doesn't lead to significant improvements very soon, because more of the population will turn against us. Their patience is reaching its limit.
Poll: More Afghans See Insurgent Attacks As Justified
December 6, 2010 AP
URL: http://www.npr.org/131845975
"The number of Afghan civilians killed or injured soared 31 percent in the first six months of the year, but they were largely caused by Taliban attacks, according to the United Nations.
"Just 36 percent of those polled expressed confidence in the U.S. and NATO to bring stability, down by 12 percentage points from last year and down by 31 percentage points since 2006. The survey also said 73 percent favor a negotiated settlement with the Taliban, up by 13 percentage points since 2007."
In other words, even though Americans are killing fewer Afghan civilians, and the Taliban are killing more civilians, the Afghan people are more likely to see attacks on the U.S. as justified and want a negotiated settlement with the Taliban. Why? Because the U.S. is not delivering on its promise of peace and stability. Afghans are ready to accept anybody -- including the Taliban -- who can. If America can't deliver then it is just an occupying enemy, reason notoriously xenophobic Afghans.
Our debates in the U.S. about whether to commit to a long-term occupation of Afghanistan will be overtaken by events on the ground: our presence cannot be open-ended if it doesn't lead to significant improvements very soon, because more of the population will turn against us. Their patience is reaching its limit.
Poll: More Afghans See Insurgent Attacks As Justified
December 6, 2010 AP
URL: http://www.npr.org/131845975
Monday, December 6, 2010
Brooks: Today's GOP won't accept 99% success
It sounds like Obama may be wising up to the zero-sum extremists he's up against, but don't hold your breath. He thinks he's transformational, while they say he's a socialist, "and never the twain shall meet," goes the Barack-room balad.
The GOP is going to eat Obama's lunch if he doesn't immediately grow a spine.
David Brooks Slams GOP Obstructionism: 'If You Offered Them 99-1, They'd Say No'
By Alex Seitz-Wald
December 2, 2010 Think Progress
Yesterday, the entire Senate Republican caucus signed a letter vowing to block every piece of legislation unless the body holds a vote on the extension of the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. This came after two years of a concerted GOP effort to "obstruct, delay, obstruct, delay," as Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid (D-NV) said yesterday. This morning, at a debate with Rep. Paul Ryan (R-WI) at the American Enterprise Institute, conservative New York Times columnist David Brooks slammed the GOP's reflexive obstructionism and demand for ideological purity, saying their "rigidity" harms "governance" and is based on a false world view that progressives are a "bunch of socialists":
BROOKS: And my problem with the Republican Party right now, including Paul, is that if you offered them 80-20, they say no. If you offered them 90-10, they'd say no. If you offered them 99-1 they'd say no. And that's because we've substituted governance for brokerism, for rigidity that Ronald Regan didn't have.
And to me, this rigidity comes from this polarizing world view that they're a bunch of socialists over there. You know, again, I've spent a lot of time with the president. I've spent a lot of time with the people around him. They're liberals! … But they're not idiots. And they're not Europeans, and they don't want to be a European welfare state. … It's American liberalism, and it's not inflexible.
Friday, December 3, 2010
MB360: Fed bailout report reveals 'con of the century'
The con of the century – Federal Reserve made $9 trillion in short-term loans to only 18 financial institutions. Since 2000 the US dollar has fallen by 33 percent. The hidden cost of the bailouts.
Posted by mybudget360 December 3, 2010
The Federal Reserve released a stunning report showing the details of bailouts that occurred during the peak of the credit crisis. They won't call it "bailouts" but giving money when others won't is exactly that. What the report shows is that the Fed operated as a global pawnshop taking in practically anything the banks had for collateral. What is even more disturbing is that the Federal Reserve did not enact any punitive charges to these borrowers so you had banks like Goldman Sachs utilizing the crisis to siphon off cheap collateral. The Fed is quick to point out that "taxpayers were fully protected" but mention little of the destruction they have caused to the US dollar. This is a hidden cost to Americans and it also didn't help that they were the fuel that set off the biggest global housing bubble ever witnessed by humanity. A total of $9 trillion in short-term loans were made to 18 financial institutions. Still think the banking bailout didn't happen or cost us nothing? Let us first look at the explosion of assets on the Fed balance sheet.
The Fed is still carrying longer term debt on its books that shouldn't be there:
The Fed typically would carry under $900 billion in high quality government Treasuries on its balance sheet. But today it is carrying roughly $2.4 trillion in "assets" and the biggest part of this is made up of questionable mortgages:
Over $1 trillion of mortgage backed securities sit on the Fed balance sheet and QE2 is only starting. Other tens of billions of dollars are sitting in the balance sheet as well that include failed commercial real estate projects and defunct shopping centers around the country. Of course the Fed would like to give the appearance that all is well but no one makes $9 trillion in short-term loans without undergoing serious problems. And doesn't it bother the public that an institution that represents our banking system essentially bailed out the world at the expense of US taxpayers (without asking by the way) and now taxpayers are having to deal with a toxic banking system and a jobs market that is hammered into the ground?
This concern was raised:
"(NY Times) But Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, who wrote a provision in the law requiring the disclosures by Dec. 1, reached a different conclusion.
"After years of stonewalling by the Fed, the American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America," he said. "Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations."
Senator Sanders is absolutely right. Did you also know that billions of dollars went to foreign central banks as well? We all know the issues going on with the European Zone today but the Fed never mentioned this during the bailout frenzy. Don't be fooled when the Fed says there is no cost associated. 26 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed and 44 million Americans are on food assistance. The US dollar has done the following in the last decade:
Yet this is the response:
"In a statement accompanying the disclosure, the Fed said it had fully protected taxpayers. "The Federal Reserve followed sound risk-management practices in administering all of these programs, incurred no credit losses on programs that have been wound down, and expects to incur no credit losses on the few remaining programs," it said."
Sound risk-management? The entire purpose is to destroy the currency in a slow methodical process and inflate away the debt. Yet there is a cost to this born by the many for the few. Over the last decade it has meant the depreciation of the dollar by 33 percent. That is a real cost. It might not be a big deal if you hold money in foreign countries but most Americans only have a paycheck that is issued in US dollars. The actual amount of Fed loans is simply jaw dropping:
"At home, from March 2008 to May 2009, the Fed extended a cumulative total of nearly $9 trillion in short-term loans to 18 financial institutions under a credit program.
Previously, the Fed had only revealed that four financial firms had tapped the special lending program, and did not reveal their identities or the loan amounts.
The data appeared to confirm that Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley were under severe strain after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. All three tapped the program on more than 100 occasions."
Keep in mind that unemployment insurance will cost roughly $4 billion per month and most of this money will go back into the economy. Congress is stalling on this yet the media is completely silent on the $9 trillion in Federal Reserve loans? This should be the headline story over and over until people realize how big the bailout was (and how this false dichotomy is being used as propaganda in the media as if $4 billion a month is going to bankrupt the system). The banking elites just want to shift the blame to "poor" people while ignoring the elephant in the room which are the trillions of dollars in Fed loans.
Everyone got in the game:
"Big institutional investors, like Pimco, T. Rowe Price and BlackRock, borrowed from the TALF program. So did the California Public Employees Retirement System, the nation's largest public pension fund, and several insurers and university endowments."
Source: New York Times
Every big player got into this and you will recall the rhetoric that it was for small businesses and the American consumer. None of that happened. Banks are still sitting on incredibly large excess reserves:
The Fed is operating without any checks and balances from Congress and another trillion dollar exposure has come out with the mainstream media channels like ABC, CBS, and NBC all remaining silent. Can't interrupt Wheel of Fortune right?
Posted by mybudget360 December 3, 2010
The Federal Reserve released a stunning report showing the details of bailouts that occurred during the peak of the credit crisis. They won't call it "bailouts" but giving money when others won't is exactly that. What the report shows is that the Fed operated as a global pawnshop taking in practically anything the banks had for collateral. What is even more disturbing is that the Federal Reserve did not enact any punitive charges to these borrowers so you had banks like Goldman Sachs utilizing the crisis to siphon off cheap collateral. The Fed is quick to point out that "taxpayers were fully protected" but mention little of the destruction they have caused to the US dollar. This is a hidden cost to Americans and it also didn't help that they were the fuel that set off the biggest global housing bubble ever witnessed by humanity. A total of $9 trillion in short-term loans were made to 18 financial institutions. Still think the banking bailout didn't happen or cost us nothing? Let us first look at the explosion of assets on the Fed balance sheet.
The Fed is still carrying longer term debt on its books that shouldn't be there:
The Fed typically would carry under $900 billion in high quality government Treasuries on its balance sheet. But today it is carrying roughly $2.4 trillion in "assets" and the biggest part of this is made up of questionable mortgages:
Over $1 trillion of mortgage backed securities sit on the Fed balance sheet and QE2 is only starting. Other tens of billions of dollars are sitting in the balance sheet as well that include failed commercial real estate projects and defunct shopping centers around the country. Of course the Fed would like to give the appearance that all is well but no one makes $9 trillion in short-term loans without undergoing serious problems. And doesn't it bother the public that an institution that represents our banking system essentially bailed out the world at the expense of US taxpayers (without asking by the way) and now taxpayers are having to deal with a toxic banking system and a jobs market that is hammered into the ground?
This concern was raised:
"(NY Times) But Senator Bernard Sanders, independent of Vermont, who wrote a provision in the law requiring the disclosures by Dec. 1, reached a different conclusion.
"After years of stonewalling by the Fed, the American people are finally learning the incredible and jaw-dropping details of the Fed's multitrillion-dollar bailout of Wall Street and corporate America," he said. "Perhaps most surprising is the huge sum that went to bail out foreign private banks and corporations."
Senator Sanders is absolutely right. Did you also know that billions of dollars went to foreign central banks as well? We all know the issues going on with the European Zone today but the Fed never mentioned this during the bailout frenzy. Don't be fooled when the Fed says there is no cost associated. 26 million Americans are unemployed or underemployed and 44 million Americans are on food assistance. The US dollar has done the following in the last decade:
Yet this is the response:
"In a statement accompanying the disclosure, the Fed said it had fully protected taxpayers. "The Federal Reserve followed sound risk-management practices in administering all of these programs, incurred no credit losses on programs that have been wound down, and expects to incur no credit losses on the few remaining programs," it said."
Sound risk-management? The entire purpose is to destroy the currency in a slow methodical process and inflate away the debt. Yet there is a cost to this born by the many for the few. Over the last decade it has meant the depreciation of the dollar by 33 percent. That is a real cost. It might not be a big deal if you hold money in foreign countries but most Americans only have a paycheck that is issued in US dollars. The actual amount of Fed loans is simply jaw dropping:
"At home, from March 2008 to May 2009, the Fed extended a cumulative total of nearly $9 trillion in short-term loans to 18 financial institutions under a credit program.
Previously, the Fed had only revealed that four financial firms had tapped the special lending program, and did not reveal their identities or the loan amounts.
The data appeared to confirm that Citigroup, Merrill Lynch and Morgan Stanley were under severe strain after the collapse of Lehman Brothers in September 2008. All three tapped the program on more than 100 occasions."
Keep in mind that unemployment insurance will cost roughly $4 billion per month and most of this money will go back into the economy. Congress is stalling on this yet the media is completely silent on the $9 trillion in Federal Reserve loans? This should be the headline story over and over until people realize how big the bailout was (and how this false dichotomy is being used as propaganda in the media as if $4 billion a month is going to bankrupt the system). The banking elites just want to shift the blame to "poor" people while ignoring the elephant in the room which are the trillions of dollars in Fed loans.
Everyone got in the game:
"Big institutional investors, like Pimco, T. Rowe Price and BlackRock, borrowed from the TALF program. So did the California Public Employees Retirement System, the nation's largest public pension fund, and several insurers and university endowments."
Source: New York Times
Every big player got into this and you will recall the rhetoric that it was for small businesses and the American consumer. None of that happened. Banks are still sitting on incredibly large excess reserves:
The Fed is operating without any checks and balances from Congress and another trillion dollar exposure has come out with the mainstream media channels like ABC, CBS, and NBC all remaining silent. Can't interrupt Wheel of Fortune right?
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