Obama, Chrysler, & Market Instability

This week, president Obama scolded hedge fund managers in the Chrysler deal that lead to the company’s bankruptcy.

Here is a video and an audio clip presenting the hedge fund managers’ side:

 

Audio:

Audio interview with the Lawyer representing the hedge fund managers

Its absolutely astounding to me that our president would attack investors in this manner.   This abuse of executive power should be cause for concern for everyone.

Aside from the constitiounal issues,  actions precisely like this promote market instability and “credit freeze”.

Who is going to be willing to lend in an environment like this?  These hedge fund managers have a contractual agreement to get their money back before all other creditors.  And now the President of the United States is stepping in and scolding them for not taking 29¢ on the dollar!  

If investors cannot even rely on safe investments such as this, how can we possibly “stabilize” markets? Who would ever want to invest in a system where they were assured they’re investment was secure, only to have the executive branch of the government dictate otherwise?

As long as the government keeps fiddling with the rules of the game, the participants are going to sit on the sidelines until they know its safe to play again.

Buy Mexican Pepsi!

One of the blogs I read just directed to this article about PepsiCo suing a Mexican company for distributing Pepsi made in Mexico to American consumers.  It almost reminds me of the coke zero commericial where they are trying to sue coke for “taste infringement” even though they belong to the same company.  I’m not really sure what the deal is with this lawsuit, but I would bet the Mexican Pepsi is much better than the American Pepsi.  Unfortunately, I have not had Mexican Pepsi, but I have had Mexican Coke, and it  is WAY better than American Coke.  

Mexican soda is better than American soda because they use cane sugar rather than high fructose corn syrup.  The only reason American soda producers use high fructose corn syrup is because of the huge tariffs on sugar and subsidies our government provides to corn growers. 

I’m not a health expert, but I have heard from articles like this that high fructose corn syrup is worse than sugar for our health.  

You have to love a government that cares so much about its citizens that it will tax and subsidize a healthier, cheaper, tastier  alternative out of the market.  And when it still comes to the market at a higher price, good-old fashion litigation comes to the rescue to prevent us from having any choice whatsoever.

Anyways, if you can, please check the ethnic foods aisle at your grocery store and pick up some Mexican Pepsi (or Coke if there is no Pepsi), and tell the government just how grateful you are that they can effectively dictate which soda you are allowed to drink

$15,000 for each American taxpayer

I ran across a staggering post at reason.com today:  It references another article that tallies up our government’s attempts to “save” the economy:

 

$29 billion for Bear Stearns

$143.8 billion for AIG (thus far, it keeps growing)

$100 billion for Fannie Mae

$100 billion for Freddie Mac

$700 billion for Wall Street, including Bank of America (Merrill Lynch), Citigroup, JP Morgan (WaMu), Wells Fargo (Wachovia), Morgan Stanley, Goldman Sachs, and a lot more

$25 billion for The Big Three in Detroit

$8 billion for IndyMac

$150 billion stimulus package (from January)

$50 billion for money market funds

$138 billion for Lehman Bros. (post bankruptcy) through JP Morgan

$620 billion for general currency swaps from the Fed

Rough total: $2,063,800,000,000

 

The top 25% of income earners will foot 86.27% of this bill.  Leaving $283,359,974,000 for the rest of us, which is on average $2,698.66 per taxpayer earning less  $64,702 a year.

Keep in mind AIG spent $440,000 on spa treatments for executives with their bailout money.

For $2,698.66, I could have had one hell of a spa treatment for myself.

FDR’s New Deal (“ill-conceived stimulus policies”)

Here’s a great article from some enonomists at UCLA about the effects “New Deal” programs had on the Great Depression.

“Why the Great Depression lasted so long has always been a great mystery, and because we never really knew the reason, we have always worried whether we would have another 10- to 15-year economic slump,” said Ohanian, vice chair of UCLA’s Department of Economics. “We found that a relapse isn’t likely unless lawmakers gum up a recovery with ill-conceived stimulus policies.”

Hold on to your wallets!  A government-induced prolonged economic slump could be on the horizon!

Prophetic Paul

5 years ago Ron Paul introduced a bill to help prevent the massive housing bubble and subsequent economic downturn.  In the speech he gave when introducing the bill, he predicts with incredible accuracy the exact situation we are faced with today.

About 6 years ago, Paul predicted, again with incredible accuracy, our current quagmire in Iraq.  Below is Paul explaining the situation to Bill Moyer’s

Another stubborn fact for John McCain to ignore

4th quarter fund raising numbers just came out: Here is an interesting fact:

Total Military Member Donations to McCain, Romney and Huckabee Donations Combined: 732

Ron Paul Total Military Member Donations: 931

So I guess some want to “Win” as John McCain suggests….But it certainly looks like a lot more want to come home!

Addendum:

I guess Paul got more donations from military members than all of his opponents combined, including Obama and Clinton

War on citizens

The “War on Drugs” is supposed to be a figurative phrase indicating how serious our government is about ending drug abuse. Unlike the “War on Poverty” or the “War on Obesity”, the “War on Drugs” has real casualties…

Here is a page showing the “collateral damage” of the “War on Drugs”.

What scares me about this map is that there is absolutely nothing to prevent my house from becoming another pin on the map. Many of these pins are innocent people, who suddenly have an armed SWAT team invading their homes.

To add insult to injury, in many of these cases there is no apology, compensation, or justice given to those whose homes are falsely invaded.

Sadly, it is not difficult to find a truly tragic story about someone whose life has been ruined by the very people that were supposed to protect him

If abortion were illegal…

Try Clicking here if the video doesn’t play.

According to abortionno.org, There are approximately 46 million abortions worldwide each year. Nearly 20 million of them are performed in countries where it is illegal: so roughly 43% are illegal.

In the US, there are around 1.3 million abortions per year. If abortions were illegal, I think it is a reasonable estimate that between 1% to 10% of women would still have an abortion, which would be approximately 13,000 to 130,000 illegal abortions a year. So the question is….what should the penalty be for women that have illegal abortions?

I think the video above demonstrates the knee jerk reaction to criminalize behaviors that some people find immoral. Few even consider what making something illegal means.

Criminalizing abortion would create a black market for the service and make the procedure vastly more hazardous and life-threating for women. The horrors of coat-hanger abortions and unwanted children forced into volatile living environments would become far more commonplace.

In the end, I think even if someone disagrees with abortion morally, pragmatically he or she should not advocate its prohibition.

Penn Says!

I’m a huge Penn Jillette fan…and what better way to satisfy my insatiable appetite for penn rantings this this new video service set up by Sony. Basically, they gave Penn a few cameras and he talks about whatever the hell he wants whenever something comes to his mind:

Here is a sample:

From Crackle: Penn Says – Bill Gates and Global Warming

republicans & democrats = same shit

“The smart way to keep people passive and obedient is to strictly limit the spectrum of acceptable opinion, but allow very lively debate within that spectrum – even encourage the more critical and dissident views. That gives people the sense that there’s free thinking going on, while all the time the presuppositions of the system are being reinforced by the limits put on the range of the debate.”

Noam Chomsky

I like this quote from Noam Chomsky.

Considering the voter turnout for most elections is roughly 50% or less; this seems to be an accurate portrayal of American society that lives under the presupposition that politicians should run our lives and spend our money. The lively debate between the republicans and democrats is then simply the specifics of how they should control our behaviors….which makes the idea that we run our own lives “kooky” or “radical”, and certainly outside the current spectrum of accepted political discourse.