Pigs eating at the government trough

Listening to Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke talk to the Congress is like listening to a used car salesman trying to sell someone an untested used car the consumer does not need.

Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson sounds the same way. These two unelected bureaucrats have never found a problem they did not think they could solve. Their hubris has no limit.

Their friends on Wall Street call Ben and Henry and say, "The economy is going in the tank unless 'YOU' do something." So Ben and Henry saddle up and get on their white horse and start the ride to make their legacy one that will be remembered and talked about in all the future economic classes where monetary "theory" is discussed ad nauseum.

It is amazing that King Henry Paulson wants to print money the taxpayers will pay for later to buy mortgages from his friends on Wall Street that his friends cannot sell. Paulson thinks he can get the mortgages for 60 cents on the dollar and make money for the taxpayers by holding these mortgages until they are serviced later when the economy improves.

Why does Paulson think these mortgages are worth 60 cents on the dollar? Maybe they are worth only 30 cents on the dollar. If they are worth anything the market will buy them. The problem is the sellers of these "Junk" mortgages, some call them "Sub Prime", want a higher price than the market thinks they are worth. Who else to go to than the government feeding trough when you want something for nothing.

Paulson was the Chairman of Goldman Saks in 1999 when the Glass-Segal act was changed. The Wall Street crowd lobbied for this. They lobbied for easy credit to unqualified home buyers so the bankers could sell the junk mortgages to firms like Goldman Saks so they could sell them to your IRA managers. Now he wants us to believe he can solve this problem.

Chairman Bernanke was correct when he said the economy might go into a recession and cause government tax revenues to shrink. This is what they are all concerned about in Washington, D.C. If tax revenues shrink, the pigs feeding at the government trough will have to look for food elsewhere. The pigs will be angry if someone does not feed them.

One of the biggest enablers of the drive to bail out Wall Street is the media. Newspaper and TV news conglomerates get their revenue from advertising. They are already hurting from the Internet competition. If there is a recession there will be less advertising revenue for the media. This is why you hear pundits that work for the media calling the bad financial investments by overpaid Wall Streeters, a "crisis". If the media and other businesses' profits decline, their pay bonuses will disappear. To these senior executives this is why they are frightened, and why they try to frighten us with words like "collapse".

CBS evening news anchor Katie Couric asked VP Nominee Sarah Palin if she thought there was a risk of the U.S. facing a "Great Depression" if congress does not act. Palin answered, it may.

The U. S. economy is a 14 trillion dollars economy. The financial crisis will take 10% out of the GDP. This will leave an economy of 13 trillion dollars and millions of people working.

If the government really wanted to promote the economy, during the next two years they should; repeal the minimum wage laws for any new hire, repeal all EEOC rules, eliminate the employer's share of the payroll tax for the new hire, and eliminate any EPA or OSHA rules for any new business.

The States and cities can expand the economy if during the next two years they will remove all licensing requirements to start a new business.

When people blame the free market for the financial crisis I reply, "There is no free market to blame. The market is too regulated to be called free."

Warren Buffet said to invest only in something you understand. I doubt if congress understands what they are buying. Of course they are not using their money. They are using your money. If it goes bad the most they will lose is an election, where they will collect a nice retirement check and take a higher paying job with somewhere within the kleptocracy.

God bless the Federal Reserve and the U.S. Treasury.

Rapture me up, Scotty!

Charles Tolleson

Privatize the Post Office

If FedEx or UPS could deliver private letters to compete with the USPS there would be better and cheaper service.

Lysander Spooner provided private mail in 1844. In 1851 the government passed legislation that prohibited private mail. The government wants to know all about the citizens, and it does not want competition. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/American_Letter_Mail_Company Spooner was effective in getting the price of a first class stamp reduced to 5 cents from 12 cents, a 58% reduction! Imagine how it would look today to get a 58% deduction in postage.

At the present time the USPS has a monopoly on cards and letters, and your mail box. The United States Postal Service will not let anyone else deliver anything to your mail box. Fed Ex can deliver a letter, to your door, but it will cost more than 42 cents. Fed Ex cannot leave the letter in your mail box. The USPS owns your mail box. If you don't believe this, try to relocate it closer to your front door and see what the USPS says.

When you address a letter to someone's home address you must put the street name and number. You do not have to put a name on the letter. However, if more than one person lives there you should put a name on the letter. You are divulging where you or your family lives by placing a name with a street address.

Not so with your email address. You do not have to give your name or your home/office location. It would be nice to have your personal residence as private as your email address. This could be accomplished by privatizing the USPS and allowing private "service providers" to deliver your paper mail, like private service providers deliver your email. What privacy would you have if the only service provider for your email was the government? Fed Ex could assign your residence as, mailto:bibag@FedEx. FedEx would know where that address was by an internal code.

When another private service provider picked up a letter addressed to me, from one of their customers, that provider would simply drop it into a FedEx box, like an email goes from Comcast to AOL.

A letter shipped by private mail would be cheaper because the providers would collect revenue by selling envelopes with advertising on the front and back. No stamp would be required. Only a small monthly service fee, thank you. For an additional monthly fee you could have all of your mail delivered to your front door. Thank you, free enterprise.

The government would not like this. They could not track correspondence as easy if private providers delivered your mail. As it stands now if the government mob hit men want to look at who I get mail from, or who I correspond with, they can simply have the sorter at the post office "sort" my mail.

Update 1/28/2009 The Post Office is asking congress to eliminate the requirement they deliver mail 6 days per week. The Post Office wants to reduce delivery to 5 days per week. UPS and FedEx will continue to deliver 6 days per week, to your door.

Bilbo Baggins

Social Security Solution

One solution to the Social Security problem is to freeze the cost of living increases for the younger ages each year; age 62 one year, age 63 the next year, and so on. This would lead to a steady raise for recipients as they age. The younger people entering will still get the raises as they age.

The differences between what one receives at age 62 and 85 would be significant.

Charles Tolleson

The Worker and the Consumer

The worker who works a 40 hour week is always looking for a way to get by with less work or easier work for more pay. The worker will join a union in an attempt to get more for her production. If he cannot join a union he will use the union we all have access to, the US Congress. There he will lobby his union and ask that his employer be forced to provide him with health care, rest breaks, vacation, family leave, a minimum wage, and anything else he can extract from his employer. His employer will not be allowed to force anything from him.

What is seen in the socialist legislation that tries to improve the lives of the workers is a minimum wage, health care, vacation, etc. But, what is not seen? For every piece of socialist legislation that interferes with the market place there are numerous unseen affects.

People fail to realize the worker who works 40 hours per week is also a consumer. The worker, as a consumer, consumes things, even while working; clothes, food, medicines, etc. The worker, as a consumer, drives to work in a car she purchased as a consumer. She uses gasoline in her car, as a consumer.

There are another 128 hours during the week when the worker is not working and is a full time consumer. He is a consumer using pajamas to sleep in a bed he bought as a consumer.

He cooks on a stove he bought as a consumer. He plays with items he bought as a consumer. She dresses with clothes she bought as a consumer. She reads books she bought as a consumer.

We are all consumers. Even the old and the young who are not workers. We all benefit by the unseen market that helps production become efficient at providing all of us, as consumers, with the best product at the least price.

We consumers benefit from competition. Competition drives improved production. A computer today has more computing power for less money than a computer 10 years ago. This improved production efficiency is caused by competition. As consumers we love and benefit from this competition.

But, as a worker? Ah, there's the rub. As workers we hate competition. We must realize and understand that in the long run, even as workers we benefit from competition. Our retired parents and our children benefit from competition.

We should reward hard work and savings by DECREASING the tax rates on additional earned income and income from savings. Our current tax rates increases the more one earns. Our current tax rates punish hard work, risky investments, and savings. The next time you see a man or woman working two jobs to earn extra money, ask yourself why you want to tax their extra earnings at a higher rate.

By allowing workers to keep a higher percentage of their higher earnings you would create fierce competition among workers. This competition would greatly improve productivity, which would greatly improve the lifestyle of the consumers.

Allowing workers to keep a higher percentage of their higher earnings would also help eliminate the sloth that is infecting our society.

Charles Tolleson