2008 Presidential Campaign
Religion – In or Out?
We have “In God We Trust” on our money. Most of the country follows Judeo/Christian traditions for our western legal codes and morality.
Most of us do not think that Islamic political figures and countries should be given preference over any other religious persuasions. Perhaps Christian political figures and countries should be granted some preferential treatment as they are our roots. More importantly, most of the President’s support comes from citizens who agree with the section of the constitution which makes a very definite separation between Church and State.
How does that work when their choice for President sends out a message to the Islamic nations of the world as almost his first act as President. He ignores one of our prime allies – Israel. He is disrespectful of British leaders and their Queen. Then he apologizes for our behaviour as a nation – as being overly aggressive, imperalistic, and disrespectful – all this during two wars waged within Islamic nations – one of which he is winding down and one of which he is escalating. Why was Bush’s war so vile? Why is Obama’s war so righteous?
It’s as easy as A, B, C
Our republic was designed with checks and balances. The purpose of this design was to make change take time. Time allowed for a healthy debate with all sides having a voice. Also no precipitous changes could be made in the very fabric of our land except in the case of a dire emergency.
It was certainly not the intention of this design to attack all facets of our republic – finance, environment, major industries (brokerage, cars, insurance), health care, and so on. I understand that President Obama has his vision of our country. Perhaps he forgot that it is not his country, it belongs to all of us. Perhaps he should try to fix one thing at a time. To my reckoning, he has not fixed anything.
Several catch phrase have emerged…
This administration is like the dog who barks at the passing car, when he catches the car he has no idea what to do with it.
Life is made up of 3 steps
- A – identify the problem
- B – present solutions and solve the problem
- C – enjoy life with the problem solved.
Our President needs to work on B.
I guarantee that our Founding Fathers did not envision a speed reader zipping through thousands of pages of legislation so that a committee vote could be called.
Furthermore, tabling over 500 pages of amendments to a bill with numerous place markers (will be filled in later?????) at 3 AM to try to avoid legal and revealing debate on a bill which will cost our country millions of manufacturing jobs in coming decades.
Hope, change, transparency – more like bs.
The Art of Bowing
First – our President is helping out the janitorial staff by picking up something from the floor in front of the King of Saudi Arabia.
Next time around – the White House suggests that our President is bending over to make a two handed handshake with the King of Saudi Arabia.
When video angles show this is not true, the White House asks – why this is important?
What it looks like to everyone who has seen the video and all of those attending the conference is … President Obama bowed to the King and kissed his ring.
As both the King and our President are Heads of State, neither should be bowing or kissing rings.
This is not the end of the world if our politicians would just fess up and be transparent (careful now that word is only allowed during campaigns and as it applies to President Bush or other Republican and their activities.)
The shame is that our White House does not do its home work. Approximately a year ago, the King suggested that bowing and kissing of rings should be reserved for God not mortals. I am only guessing but I suggest that was a shot at the Pope…
Then does President Obama believe that the King of Saudi Arabia is God? Or is this just another pothole in the road of governing – wasn’t campaigning so much easier?
Gibbs calls out Santelli
Gibbs called out Santelli of CNBC for his tirade re the mortgage fix program of the Obama government. Claims he is irresponsible. I guess he did not hear the comments of Senator Dobbs re the nationalization of banks. No comments of the irresponsibility of Dobbs even though Gibbs clearly stated that bank nationalization was not on the agenda of the Obama government.
The campaigning continues, when does the governing begin?
Big 3 auto Beg For Help.
GM, Ford and Chrysler are currently begging for money from your government. If you do not want to give, underscore give, them any money, then write, call or email your congressman and senator.
On a very simplistic plane, we have 3 remedies to failure in this country. Legal remedies which have been in place and served us well for many years.
As an individual you have the right to file for Chapter 13 bankruptcy. This allows you to negotiate better payment terms with your personal debt holders – credit cards, mortgages, car loans whatever. The idea is here is time will heal a temporary problem.
As a corporation you have two options. If you just want to quit, then you can file Chapter 7 and the system will sell all your assets and distribute the sale results among your creditors per their ranking. The second option is Chapter 11. This is more of a restructuring. It again is in the vein of time heals all. The system will allow you time to renegotiate both amounts and terms with your creditors, labor supply, material suppliers, customers and so on. After you operate on a stable level, then you can emerge from this type of bankruptcy. This assumes that you believe that your company just made some mistakes and the overall idea and business model is sound.
Excuse me. For 40 years the government and the marketplace have wanted a fuel efficient personal vehicle. For 40 years we have wanted an alternative to the internal combustion engine so that we could escape our dependency on oil or oil related products. Does no one remember the shortage in the early 70’s. How about the one in the 80’s.
Recently a representative of the UAW was on TV telling the country that the UAW developed the middle class in this country. This was said because it looks like the auto companies are going to bankrupt shortly (within weeks or months – not years). It is assumed that it will be chapter 11. It is also assumed the first thing to go will be the UAW contract and pension claims.
There are two very significant points to be made here.
First – if you ever did business as a supplier to the big 3 you know that they were arrogant to say the least. They demanded impossible delivery schedules, lower prices, higher quality components than were reasonable. The good side was volume. There is an old joke about ‘making up for losses with volume’. More and more companies are deciding that the correct volume is ZERO when dealing with the current management and executives of the big 3.
Second. Simple arithmetic will answer the bail out question. The market cap ( the total value of all of the shares of all 3 of the big 3) is less than $7 billion at today’s market prices. Why would you give someone $25 billion when you could buy all 3 companies for $7 billion? Maybe because you can’t run them efficiently and thereby maintain their market presence and the associated employment. Do you think you could do any worse?
Why doesn’t the government just buy all 3 companies and give them to ACORN to run. They seem to be able to get things done and no one dares to bother them.
Bailout or Rescue?
I am intrigued by the details of this subprime bailout.
The mechanism of the bank foreclosure is critical to understanding what is likely to happen to our $700,000,000,000.
Banks (any financial institution holding the mortgage) incur a large number of negative cash flow items when they move to foreclose on a property:
- property taxes
- home insurance
- hazard insurance
- grounds maintenance (lawns etc.)
- home maintenance (cosmetic repairs and functional repairs)
- lawyers fees to file motion to foreclose and evict
- removal of items left in the vacated home.
- utilities (prevent freeze in winter)
- real estate fees
- lawyer fees to transfer title etc.
This is a double whammy because in normal times all of these items are zero cash flow items from the bank’s perspective. They receive positive cash flow from the monthly payments – double trouble.
With the large number of at risk mortgages in any one bank’s portfolio, it was almost impossible for most banks to follow a normal timeline for foreclosure. Not because they were being compassionate, but because they could not afford the costs of executing the foreclosure (listing above).
We were sold the idea of “rescue” versus “bailout”. It was implied that the reason for the bailout was to keep people in their homes. BS.
Did anyone ever mention any limits on the type of home or homeowner that would be eligible for this special treatment? And it was special. The law allows for past forgiveness, payment initiation period, reduced principle and reduced interest rates. Does this mean that someone with a $1,000,000 subprime, no principal, mortgage could have the principal of that mortgage reduced to say $500,000. Could the owner of this home be someone making $250,000 per year? I did not see any limiting conditions, do you?
Could the property involved be a set of 6 townhouses? Maybe the owner did not do the math on the investment properties correctly? Could the Treasury Secretary decide to reduce his principal and interest rate?
Wait, it gets better. To simplify and expedite the bailout, it has been suggested that the Treasury just write a check to the banks. Let them deal with the individual properties. But if this happens, then the banks will just proceed with the foreclosures. Use our money to cover the out of pocket foreclosure expenses. Wait a year or whatever until the housing market rebounds. Then flip the houses for a profit. It is “pay off your friends in the banking industry” time.
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