Summer’s Withdrawal – No Surprise
QUESTION: You said all along Yellen would be in. Why?
ANSWER: The markets have cheered the news that Larry Summers would not replace outgoing Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke. On the Hill, both the Republicans and Democrats were deeply skeptical of Summers because of his connection with the bankers and many blamed him for the 2007-2009 financial crisis because he was behind the repeal of Glass-Steagall during the Clinton Administration being buddy-buddy with Robert Rubin. Summers in his letter to Obama addressed this issue by simply stating that many challenges confronted him during the confirmation process. There would have been pointed questions about his ties with the New York Bankers so from the info I was getting there was no way his confirmation hearing would be anything less than a circus.
There was NO WAY Summers would have made it to the post and he would have to be insane to even put himself in that line-of-fire. The sentiment toward the bankers on the Hill has been changing. We see BAIL-INS now emerging because the politicians will not write a check like that again. Summers was the bankers pick and Obama does what they say. He is their boy.
As far as the markets rallying because he withdrew, right. That is just an explanation attached by the domestic obsessed pundits. The rally is being driven by capital flows with questions rising about the German elections and what kind of coalition will there be when Merkel gets at best 40% of the votes. Then there is the Syrian war. These are just two international issues more important than Summers.
Obama Repeals Law Against Funding Terrorists For Himself
Obama has waived the ban on arming terrorists to allow aid to Syrian opposition. How much money has been confiscated in the USA for allegations of funding terrorists? When Obama wants to fund a pipeline through Syria, then he will fund the worst or the worst when he imprisons others for doing so and confiscates billions in the country claiming some terror connection. Look in the mirror Obama. Equal Justice for ALL should include the government as well.
Government – Designed by Geniuses – Run by Morons
We cannot escape the fact that people have lost their faith in government. The latest polls show the approval rating of the US Congress has fallen to 11%. When the USA started bombing Libya, even support for Muammar Muhammad al-Gaddafi was at 85% and at its lowest point it was 15%. Today, 57% of voters not affiliated with either major party disapprove of the job Obama is doing. The world at large regards Edward Snowden as a hero and have depicted him as a crusader against a nefarious surveillance state reminiscent of the East German Stasi. Obama will not prosecute any banker and will protect them only because Goldman Sachs was his biggest contributor. Obama considers collaboration and conscience among free thinking people as treason, science is considered a matter of opinion when it does not support the desires of government, immigration is considered a threat, and every solution is a suboptimal compromise enacted at midnight and where every day we see proof of the theory that America is a country that is nothing like its design.
In Europe, the latest polls show that the majority of Germans want Brussels to return powers to the nation states. For citizens to speak to the parties in the Bundestag from their distrust. A survey has also shown that the Bundesbank has lost much of its authority.
Government has fallen into the hands of a dying generation with old Marxist ideas that are destroying society. They cannot see that raising taxes and shoveling tone of cash out to bankers is screwing the younger generation. They are protesting everywhere. That will eventually turn violent next year. You cannot keep raising taxes and hunting down the rich and expect to create jobs for the youth. The higher their unemployment, the less there is to pay pensions and the who system is imploding. It will crumble to dust and fall to the floor.
Anti-Union Propaganda
COMMENT: ”You should stop this anti-union propaganda nonsense. Before unions, children used to work in dangerous factories at 12 years old and their fathers died at 30 from cancer if they had the chance not to get crushed by the machines themselves. Before unions, life wasn’t better:
if was far worse. You should stop the propaganda right now. You should look at History and see how people lived before unions. It was a miserable life. And you can’t say now that people are more happy without unions; nobody is happier working for half the wage and living in a slump. Please look at yourself in a mirror and be honest with your readers.”
REPLY: It does not matter if it is government or unions. Everything is cyclical and it continually moves for greater and greater power. Unions began because as the industrial revolution evolved, working conditions in factories were unknown since people never worked in factories. There had to be several tragedies that gave birth to unions for just causes. People died as the Industrial Revolution developed.
On March 25th, 1911, a fire broke out at the Triangle Shirtwaist Factory in New York City. The employer had locked the doors to ensure the workers could not leave early unnoticed since they were paid hourly. However, when the fire broke out, this policy created a death trap. Within 18 minutes, 146 people died. This certainly was a profound tragedy that contributed greatly to the trend toward safe working conditions legally.
But unions, like small government, once formed for one purpose, quickly kept expanding looking for things to do. They pushed wages higher and then payroll taxes were added in 1937 starting at 2% and are now 12.4% to pay for socialism. That further increased the COST of labor and illustrates the point that unions or government continually expand their domain of power. Unions may have begun about working conditions but they moved into demanding higher wages fixed ignoring the economy, business cycle, or international competitiveness.
I had an old school friend who was a staunch union guy out of work in the ’70s because his Steam Fitters Union priced itself too high and then there was the crash of 1973-1975. Unions will NEVER lower wages to move in sync with the economy and thus they increase unemployment. In this wages are “sticky” and do not rise and fall with the economy. Yet at the same time while clinging to unions, when he shopped, he bought the best deal that was non-union or imported goods.
Foreign cars took a lion share of the market with the Germans doing quality and the Japanese providing price. The American quality declined as unions inspired confrontation and the Japanese were able to undercut American prices with higher productivity. They would never have gotten off the ground had it not been for the confrontations with unions. The demands for pensions wiped out jobs as it is sending the cost of government through the roof and causing municipal government to collapse as is the case in Detroit where about 50% of taxes go to pay pensions not services.
The workers in the United States Japanese plants who were non-union came from Detroit unions. They did well because the Japanese had a cord that any worker could pull to stop the assembly production if there was something wrong. They placed in the hands of that worker the same power to shut the plant down for a POSITIVE reason where as that power in the hands of unions became DESTRUCTIVE. The issue was NOT that Americans were lazy – it was the union to justify their dues and high salaries extracted unreasonable concessions and reduced productivity – remember Jimmy Hoffa? The unions often became criminal organizations. Their demands were so absurd in New York that no shipping goes there any more because the unions chased the jobs out. That is a fact of life.
The original purpose of the unions was to safeguard workers and working conditions. But this has been surpassed by law making unions irrelevant in those areas. Now it is all about extracting higher wages for the same job and reducing productivity.