movealready's Blog

Here's what the Congress would have you believe.

Spending a trillion dollars to revive our slumping economy is a good thing.

Thats analagous to a homeowner , on the verge of bankruptcy, deciding to take out as many credit cards and loans as possible and maxing them out ....in order to get through the tough times. Makes sense to me(sarcasm), particularly since government revenue is down due to the slowed economy. Does this make sense to you???

Furthermore, a large portion of this trillion dollar stimulus package will go towards infrastructure.....how will this translate to you and I?????

We'll get to sit in massive traffic jams caused by road construction which will give us plenty of time to consider how ,we as individuals, will cover the massive tax increase  that is coming down the "newly" paved pike

A trillion dollars is equivalent  to $ 4,000.00 per american. Being as there are only 50 million people employed and only 40% of them pay taxes and of  that 2% pay 60% of the taxes, where is this trillion coming from. Does anybody recall what happened to the USSR in the 80's. Anyone at all???

that the U.S economy is dead and it's the Republicans fault. Read on:

The Sky May Be Lower But It Isn't Falling

 

by BRIAN HAMILTON

 

January 05, 2009

 

There is probably something in every generation that makes us think the problems we face are uniquely difficult. 

 

 

Much has been written about the economy and, if you accept certain assumptions from what you read, you might think that we are in the midst of a global depression.

 

 

 Yet it is important to put the current economy in perspective. We might even try reviewing and analyzing some objective data.

 

 

 In the most recently reported quarter, the third quarter of 2008, GDP fell at a rate of 0.5%, which means that the total value of goods and services produced in the U.S. fell by a half of one percentage point from the previous quarter.

 

 

 For the first two quarters of last year, GDP grew by 0.9% and 2.8%, indicating that economic growth was relatively flat last year, but that it is not falling off a cliff.

 

 

 This isn't the first time GDP has fallen, and it won't be the last. The last decrease in GDP was in the fourth quarter of 2007 and before that was in 2001.  A decrease in GDP after almost six years of increases is not positive, but almost predictable.  

 No economy grows indefinitely and consistently; there are always temporary lapses.

 

 

 In fact, if you consider the media coverage of the economy over the past year and the consequent way people have been scared, it's remarkable that anyone is buying anything.

 

 

 But we can't just look at GDP, some would say. So let's look at other factors.

 

 

 Interest rates remain at historically low levels. This means that if you want to borrow money, you can borrow money inexpensively as a business or as a person.

 

 

 Loan volume in the country, according to the FDIC and contrary to what you read about the credit crisis, actually increased last quarter compared to the same quarter a year earlier. Someone is getting loans, and they are not paying excessive interest rates for them.

 

 

 How about employment? According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics, unemployment sits at 6.7%. At this time last year, unemployment was 4.7%. The decrease in employment is not favorable, but historically an unemployment rate of 6.7% is not close to devastating. The 50-year historical rate of unemployment is 5.97%.

 

 

 Most economists agree that the natural rate of unemployment, which is the lowest rate due to the fact that people change jobs or are between jobs, is around 4%. So, today we sit at 2.7% above that rate. Once again, the very recent trend is not good but it is certainly not horrifying.

 

 

 I have noticed many recent media references to the Great Depression (the period between late 1929 and 1938 or so, depending upon the definitions used and personal inclinations). It might be illuminating to note that by 1933, during the height of the Depression, the unemployment rate was 24.9%. During that same period, GDP was falling dramatically, which created a devastating impact on the country.

 

 

 Americans have good hearts and empathize with those who are unemployed. Yet it would be easy to go too far in assuming how the working population is currently affected in aggregate. If 6% of the people are unemployed, 94% of the people are working.

 

 

 We should always shoot for full employment, but why would we view our efforts as poor when we don't quite make that mark? A good student might try to get straight "A's," but getting an occasional "B" or "C" won't end the world.

 

 

 Look at personal income, or that received by individuals from all sources, including employers and the government. It was up last quarter compared with a year earlier, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis. Compared with five years ago, personal income has risen by 32.1%. Even considering that inflation was 18.13% over this period, people are generally making more money than they used to.

 

 

 This is another one of those statistics that can easily get bent to fit a story. You often hear things like "personal income fell last month by 23%," but writers tend to leave larger and more important statistics out. In this case, would you be more interested in trends over a quarter or a year? Using isolated statistics to fit your view is something that has become accepted.

 

 

 Then there's inflation. The inflation rate measures the strength of the dollar you hold today as compared to a year ago. It is currently 3.66%. Over the past 50 years, the inflation rate has averaged about 4.2%. Inflation remains well within control. Yet, would you be surprised to read a story next month citing an X% jump in inflation over the last month? I wouldn't be.

 

 

 Skeptics reading this will point to other (and, I believe, far lesser) statistics that validate their gloomy view of the economy and the direction of the country. But if people are employed, are making good wages, can borrow inexpensively, hold a dollar that is worth largely what it was worth a year or five years ago, and live in a country where the value of goods and services is rising, tell me exactly where the crisis is?

 

 

 No doubt the economy has slowed, but slowness does not equal death. It's true that the financial markets are a mess (and the depreciation of equities is both scary and bad). But analysts typically go too far in ascribing the fall of the financial markets to the fall of a whole economy.

 

 

 The markets are an important component of the economy, but they are not the totality of the economy. No one can say if conditions will worsen in the future. However, we've learned that the American economy has been tremendously resilient over the past 200 years and will probably remain so, as long as the structural philosophies that it has been built upon are left intact.

 

Do Facts Matter? Not to Democrats by Thomas Sowell October 03, 2008 
Abraham Lincoln said, "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all the time, but you can't fool all the people all the time."

Unfortunately, the future of this country, as well as the fate of the Western world, depends on how many people can be fooled on election day, just a few weeks from now.

Right now, the polls indicate that a whole lot of the people are being fooled a whole lot of the time.

The current financial bailout crisis has propelled Barack Obama back into a substantial lead over John McCain-- which is astonishing --in view of which man and which party has had the most to do with bringing on this crisis.

It raises the question: Do facts matter? Or is Obama's rhetoric and the media's spin enough to make facts irrelevant?

Fact Number One: It was liberal Democrats, led by Senator Christopher Dodd and Congressman Barney Frank, who for years-- including the present year-- denied that Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac were taking big
risks that could lead to a financial crisis.

It was Senator Dodd, Congressman Frank and other liberal Democrats who for years refused requests from the Bush administration to set up an agency to regulate Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

It was liberal Democrats, again led by Dodd and Frank, who for years pushed for Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac to go even further in promoting subprime mortgage loans, which are at the heart of today's financial crisis.

Alan Greenspan warned them four years ago. So did the Chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers to the President. So did Bush's Secretary of the Treasury, five years ago.

Yet, today, what are we hearing? That it was the Bush administration "right-wing ideology" of "de-regulation" that set the stage for the financial crisis. Do facts matter?

We also hear that it is the free market that is to blame. But the facts show that it was the government that pressured financial institutions in general to lend to subprime borrowers, with such things as the Community Reinvestment Act and, later, threats of legal action by then Attorney General Janet Reno if the feds did not like the statistics on who was getting loans and who wasn't.

Is that the free market? Or do facts not matter?

Then there is the question of being against the "greed" of CEOs and for "the people." Franklin Raines made $90 million while he was head of Fannie Mae and mismanaging that institution into crisis.

Who in Congress defended Franklin Raines? Liberal Democrats, including Maxine Waters and the Congressional Black Caucus, at least one of whom referred to the "lynching" of Raines, as if it was racist to hold him to the same standard as white CEOs.

Even after he was deposed as head of Fannie Mae, Franklin Raines was consulted this year by the Obama campaign for his advice on housing!

The Washington Post criticized the McCain campaign for calling Raines an adviser to Obama, even though that fact was reported in the Washington Post itself on July 16th. The technicality and the spin here is that Raines is not officially listed as an adviser. But someone who advises is an adviser, whether or not his name appears on a letterhead.

The tie between Barack Obama and Franklin Raines is not all one-way. Obama has been the second-largest recipient of Fannie Mae's financial contributions, right after Senator Christopher Dodd.

But ties between Obama and Raines? Not if you read the mainstream media.

Facts don't matter much politically if they are not reported.

The media alone are not alone in keeping the facts from the public. Republicans, for reasons unknown, don't seem to know what it is to counter-attack. They deserve to lose.

But the country does not deserve to be put in the hands of a glib and cocky know-it-all, who has accomplished absolutely nothing beyond the advancement of his own career with rhetoric, and who has for years allied himself with a succession of people who have openly expressed their hatred of America.  

Informative,intelligent concise. A 9 minute documentary regarding the dynamics of politics and greed in our financial system.

http://www.metacafe.com/watch/1809993/real_reason_f
or_financial_crisis_for_obama_supporters/

This bail out plan is a complete farce. They(government) somehow believes that they can back a trillion dollars of high risk debt with tax payer dollars and all of the sudden these bad risks will somehow become responsible borrowers. LOL!!!!!! We are throwing good money after bad. This will come back to bite us ..........and much harder. Does anybody recall why the Soviet Union is no longer??? That's right, they went bankrupt. Here's how deluded our government has become, they actually believe that they will actually make a profit (for the tax payer) dealing in high risk loans. The Government is pi$$ing on your leg and telling you it's raining.