A follow up on Milton Friedman discussing inflation

A continuation of my previous post on Milton Friedman explaining inflation.  Here Milton Friedman discusses the intrinsic relationship of stimulus to inflation.

The supply chain woes continue, unabated

There are supply chain issues, no doubt.  They have have not been fixed. They are not the biggest factor in creating inflation, that would be money printing.  But supply chain issues do shift the supply curve and fewer goods, mean higher prices.  That's fundamental economics.  But so too is money printing leading to inflation.  

The point here is that the Let's Go Brandon administration has left the supply chain issue in a terrible state,  and the apparently progressive federal reserve has kept the minting of more currency going (they keep threatening to taper the monetary stimulus but have yet to do so, and are also erroneously keeping interest rates low allowing inflation to surge).  Meanwhile the administration is trying to push for trillions more in spending that supposedly is 'free'. They are wrong on all counts and as long as this continues, inflation will only get worse.

NOTE: I know these explanations are all too brief, but the underlying truths are still valid. A fiscal policy of spend, spend spend, and a very loose monetary policy are a deadly combination. They will turn America into Turkey or Venezuela if they are not stopped. The thin wall against it right now is Democrat Joe Manchin. We cannot rely on his steadfastness and resoluteness to go on indefinitely.

Stimulus fiscal profligate spending instead of planning.

Seems about accurate

What a difference 2 weeks makes.On March 2nd the Dow Jones (DJIA) was at 26,703.  Right now it's at 19,856 as I write.  On March 1st Bernie Sanders was a 53.2% favorite in the RCP Betting Odds tracking to win the Democratic nomination for president while Joe Biden was at 33% and Bloomberg was at 15%.  Now Biden is over 90%, Hillary Clinton is in 2nd place at 6%, and Sanders is barely above Bloomberg's 0% at 3.7%.  Only 2 weeks ago the United States wasn't on lock down and it was not panicked, not closed for business and the government had a lot less debt than it will have after today's more than $1 trillion stimulus bill passes.  

I get the situation, Republicans don't want to be seen as doing nothing and unresponsive.  So too it is true for president Trump.  Democrats have seized the opportunity to stuff irrelevant things into the bill.  And it's going to pass.

Money for nothing and your handouts for free.  As a fiscal conservative, I hated the bailout in 2008/2009 and I'm not a fan of this one either. I get that there is a need to do something because a national lock down will have negative financial impacts.  It already has.  But have we learned nothing from 2008?  We did not have a plan for this?  No contingencies?  I am not bashing president Trump here, he's had plenty of B.S. on his plate to deal with thanks to the Democrats over the past 3+ years.

No, I'm talking about the bureaucracy that employs hundreds of thousands of people and yet had no plan, by department for various types of national emergencies.  Ridiculous does not cover it.  Throwing money at the problem is a mere political expediency, not a solution.  Where is the NTSB plan? Homeland Security plan? DoD plan? Department of Commerce plan?  You get the idea.  These departments have not shown anything productive to address the situation.  Even the CDC seems to have been mostly reactionary.  

Twice in just over a decade the United States has been caught flat footed and unprepared.  It does not auger well for war planning or a terror attack. Prevention is only half the battle, preparedness and contingency planning are important too. Let's hope there is some learning this time and the next disaster is handled far better than this one and the last one.  

Solyndra 2: Green Restated

$0.00

Remember Solyndra?  Half a billion in loans before the solar panel company went belly up?  CBS is highlighting what looks like an early sequel to the stinkulus bonanza;

A company whose subsidiary received $118 million in stimulus grant money from the U.S. Department of Energy to build new electric car batteries has now been removed from trading on NASDAQ.

EnerDel got an Energy Department grant in early 2010 for battery manufacturing in Indiana but the stock of EnerDel's parent company, Ener1, fell from $4.04 in 2010 to just 9 cents on Thursday. By Friday NASDAQ had pulled the company from its listing leaving the stock at $0.00.

Wow. B-O-O-N-D-O-G-G-L-E.   Good thing the Obama administration is scandal-free.

Help for Obama's coming jobs plan

We all know that beyond rhetorically, the president has had a really hard time pivoting to a jobs focus.  He's supposedly pivoted to jobs a few times now, but there's been no evidence that he's actually done anything beyond his original free-for-all stimulus known as ARRA (or porkulus).  There's also little evidence that what he's done has accomplished anything - except for more debt that is.  So with him ready to deliver a new jobs plan with all the appearance of him having gone away to work on a high school project in time for a due date (including the typical high school minimal and haphazard effort), he's not likely to come up with anything new, or good.

Quick question on Washington Monument damages

Is somebody going to fix this, or is there no money left in that infrastructure stimulus money to bother? The Washington Monument is a national treasure is it not?  It should be repaired, as soon as possible immediately.

Somewhere in there the irony of the symbolism of a cracked Washington Monument got lost on many in D.C.

Obama's economy is a failure

These are just bumps on the road to recovery.  Really?

President Obama, it's your economy now.  You've been President for nearly two and a half years.  The lack of success is your own.  You own it.  You can't go back to blaming Bush or the Republicans.  For two of those two and a half years, you've had free reign with friendly Democrat legislative branches.You've not only not pulled the economy out of a major slump, you've managed to lengthen it and threatened to cause a double dip recession.  In the process, you've managed to demoralize a large segment of the business sector. You've managed to choke off your chances of a solid recovery before 2012. Congratulations.

Unemployment up. That’s good news. Wait, what?

The numbers from BLS for April have come out and unemployment rose back up to 9% from 8.8% percent the previous month.  That’s good news apparently.  Wait what?  How on earth do you spin that one?  It sounds like the climate change arguments that a colder planet is a result of global warming (or rather, ‘climate change’).

President Obama blowing smoke

From, of all places, MSNBC;

WASHINGTON — The Obama administration is crediting its anti-recession stimulus plan with creating up to 50,000 jobs on dozens of wind farms, even though many of those wind farms were built before the stimulus money began to flow or even before President Barack Obama was inaugurated.

Out of 70 major wind farms that received the $4.4 billion in federal energy grants through the stimulus program, public records show that 11, which received a total of $600 million, erected their wind towers during the Bush administration. And a total of 19 wind farms, which received $1.3 billion, were built before any of the stimulus money was distributed. ( See a list of the projects here.)

Yet all the jobs at these wind farms are counted in the administration's figures for jobs created by the stimulus.

Why is MSNBC breaking this story? One of two reasons, I suspect.  Either they are closest to the green base and they know their audience will be interested in it or (2) nobody watches MSNBC, so it minimizes the damage to the President in the pre-election climate.

What are the odds Keith Olbermann talks about this story tonight? And if a tree falls in a forest, does anyone hear it? I mean, besides Al Gore.

8 Reasons the newest stimulus stinks on ice

President Obama has a new plan to save the economy.  Guess what, it's another spending stimulus. Wait, THIS stimulus will solve the problem? $787 billion was spent last year on a stimulus bill that was supposed to keep the unemployment rate below 8%. Didn't work.  Now the President, just in time for the mid-term election wants to spend another $50 billion to kick start the economy.  How many ways is that wrong?

Existing home sales 'unexpectedly' plummet.

No doubt this comes unexpectedly to the mainstream media.  Existing Home Sales have hit a 15 year low.  To be fair to the MSM, analysts were expecting a drop of 12%.  The actual drop came in at 27.2%;

The housing market is also being hampered by the weakening economic recovery. Unemployment remains stuck at 9.5 percent and many potential buyers worry they might not have a job to pay the mortgage.

Prices have fallen in part because foreclosures are running about 10 times higher than before the housing bust. Though the average rate for a 30-year fixed mortgage has sunk to 4.42 percent, many people can't qualify because banks have tightened their lending standards.

To sum up - high unemployment, lack of faith in a recovery, high foreclosure rates, banks tightening lending (apparently they have to keep everything available to lend to the government now, to cover those 1+ trillion dollar deficits).

There's a recipe for success! Perhaps the Democrats should have a "recovery summer" tour and tout the effects of the crap sandwich formerly know as the stimulus.

ARRA Stimulus Failure

[NOTE: I'm only posting today quick posts as a result of my schedule, more detailed posts are sure to return at some point.]

$787 billion buys you not much of a recovery.  Let's get that into the history books.  In fact let's put it in there that that level of stimulus as a percentage of GDP, as put forward in the details of the ARRA will net you an unemployment rate 2 percentage points higher than promised, a quarter or two if GDP spike and then a drop off to tepid GDP growth after the money fades, and perhaps even a double dip recession (it remains to be seen).

Democrat Governor Inadvertently Accurate on Stimulus

Pennsylvania Governor Ed Rendell (D) was on Fox News this morning talking about the possibility of another stimulus and whether or not he supports it.

He stated that he didn't think it was time just yet for another stimulus but if there were to be one, it should focus on infrastructure projects instead of social programs. But that's not where he is right. Governor Rendell was speaking directly to his constituents in a state where unemployment is 'only' 8.6%. That's below the national average, but Pennsylvania is a state that could be impacted by the President's apparent hatred for coal. The rate could get worse. The Governor does have to factor in his own political survival, and the facts on the ground in his home state of Pennsylvania cannot be ignored when he speaks to a national audience.

But on that point, Governor Rendell is at least half right. A spending stimulus in the past has focused on shovel-in-the-ground projects. Roads. Dams. Bridges. At least they provide a tangible societal benefit down the road. Whether they have a stimulating effect on the economy is another thing. Social programs do not put people back to work.

Where Governor Rendell is right, albeit unintentionally, is - get ready for this - in his defense of the previous stimulus effort by Democrats.

What???

Let me explain that.

Governor Rendell claimed that the term stimulus has gotten a bad name/reputation of late. He's right. But his intended point is not. He was implying, being on Fox and trying to play to (and convert) the audience, that a stimulus isn't as bad as conservative media portrays it. Never mind that it has failed on every measurement including the President's own 8% unemployment cap.

But it HAS gotten a bad reputation and it's as a result of the Democrats' choice method of trying to stimulate the economy. A stimulus effort in and of itself is not a bad thing, but the devil is in the details.

When the economy is in trouble, the government has many levers it can pull: stimulus spending, tax cuts, interest rate reductions, and managing the money supply (wisely) are some of those options. There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the government trying to reduce the impact of a recession. The question is "how". Prudent, incremental, unobtrusive steps that recognize the government's role as one to facilitate of business, not demonize it, would have been applauded by most.

But the Democrats have chosen some very wasteful if not destructive options as their stimulus package. It should have been named a spending package because they've sullied the term stimulus for a generation to come. Governor Rendell was right. A stimulus isn’t what it used to be. It has become synonymous with deceit, waste, and pork. Nice going Democrats.

By the way, the first round of stimulus was dubbed porkulus although I tried hard to call it stinkulus.  I say the next one down the pipe we call "stinkulus" rather than "prokulus 2". It sounds better, and less derivative.  It has nothing to do with ego, I swear...

EXIT Question: Does the fact that Rendell and other Democrats are willing to appear on Fox News, unlike the President, give away their hand on the 2010 elections? Will they take a good cop / bad cop approach that allows local incumbents to distance themselves from the President and come of looking good locally? Given the President's approval slide, particularly among independents, I bet that's the play they are going to run in many states.

Fox News should ask every elected official that comes on whether or not they support the President's position on Fox. What a way to out them. It doesn't matter if they answer truthfully or not - No means the President is wrong: Yes means they are self-serving hypocrites; anything in between will come off as disingenuous. If it results in an all out Democrat boycott, then the Democrats will come across as more partisan than Fox, not the other way around.

The GOP is getting some things right

The GOP is getting some things right on health care, this succinct video is tough to dispute.

And on Obama versus Obama on the stimulus;

But being the party of NO, is only part of the solution. The GOP needs to come up with it's own alternative plans. The good news is, it has. Here's an example;




The Bad News?

Nice videos. Too bad only 200,000 views or so for those 3 videos combined.

The bad news is that while putting these videos on youtube, the GOP is merely trying to expand their listening audience. The problem is that in reaching out to the American audience they are nowhere near aggressive or proactive enough. There needs to be a big push from the GOP that matches the Tea Parties and Town halls of the grassroots conservatives in middle America. "Good videos - shame about the web hits" won't cut it. Where's the GOP town halls and community speaking engagements? Where's the church functions? Where's the community outreach on these points?

News flash: If you don't reach out to untapped constituencies they'll never learn your position and they will continue to vote while uninformed or misinformed. The Obama administration and the mainstream media are counting on that.

Michael Steele, the GOP chair, needs to get the GOP in uninterested voters' faces, in a kinder, gentler way than say the Obama SEIU thugs would approach it. There's still time, but so far it seems to be lacking as part of the overall plan.

Obama is Moving the Goal Posts on Recovery

Remember the Democrats complaining that President Bush had supposedly moved the goalposts when the focus of the Iraq invasion 'switched' from weapons of mass destruction to countering an Axis of Evil regime and liberating the country? Supposedly. My rhetorical question is this; why wouldn't they bother to applies the same standard to President Obama, who has recently done some real re-definitions of his own?

The stimulus tour surprise

I finally get how the stimulus package is meant to work, and I have to admit I'm quite surprised by it.

Politico is reporting that Team Obama has travelled to 66 events to promote the stimulus package and it's wondrous and amazing brilliance at saving 72 million jobs (hey, there's no way of measuring how many jobs were saved, it's an asinine argument, so why not go with an asinine and outlandish number?).

No surprise.

They're out there on the taxpayers' dime trying to promote the amazing job they've done so far, even though it's too early to see any of those effects. Even though unemployment has risen to the worst levels since 1983. Even though any recovery that's happened since the apparent bottom this year are either illusory or else happening pre-stimulus impact. Never let a good news story go to waste either, right Rahm Emanuel? Party on Wayne! Party on Garth!

No surprise that they want to take credit for the stock market rally, even if the layoffs are worsening. (After all, the link above has Yahoo painting it as things getting better with 'but job losses slow' in the headline).

The Team has travelled predominantly to states that Obama won in 2008;

But the numbers tell the tale: 52 of the 66 events were in states that backed Obama. And taken together, the itineraries amount to a veritable map of Obama’s election-night victories — big-money states like California and New York, swing states like Ohio and Colorado that Obama turned blue and other solidly Democratic states Obama kept in his column.

The events were weighted to big cities that provided Obama some of his biggest election-night margins: Cleveland, Boston, Detroit, Los Angeles, Chicago and Philadelphia.

Of the other 14 events, Vice President Joe Biden and Cabinet officials often touched
down in places where Obama lost narrowly and that Democrats hope to pull into their column by 2012, such as Missouri, Arizona, Montana and North Dakota.

Only two Southern states were visited by Cabinet officials for stimulus-related trips: Georgia and Kentucky, according to information provided by the White House and an examination of news releases from all 21 Cabinet-level agencies.

Again, no surprise. Politics as usual.

The Team denied the location of the trips were political;

And the White House sharply denied that there was any political motivation to the travel. “Politics plays no role in implementation of the Recovery Act or highlighting its successes. Period,” said Liz Oxhorn, press secretary for the Recovery Act.

Yep, again no surprise.

But then it hit me. They've toured and toured but the stimulus money has barely begun to trickle out the door. Sure enough, Politico confirmed my surprise;

Still, the stimulus bill has the potential to be a publicity bonanza for the Obama administration for years to come — through the 2010 midterm elections and beyond. As of mid-May, the administration had spent only 6 percent of the money Congress allotted for the program, and the White House says officials will continue to travel the country until all of the money is spent.

[Emphasis added.]

6%? Really? Anyhow, what's the surprise? It seems like their plan to spend the stimulus money is just to tour the country until all the money is used up - apparently to be used up by the tour itself. That should be good for a dozen years. They're going to have to ramp up the trips, the Obama date nights and Hollywood galas to get all that money spent any sooner.

It will be like a Motley Crue tour by the end of it with debauchery and an out of control party atmosphere, but with the added bonus of Biden gaffes. It'll be a real hoot...

[NOTE: For those of you who don't understand parody or sarcasm, please disregard the entire above post. Clearly the stimulus money is not to be used for an Obama party tour. It's being used to pay off liberal sycophants and cronies. We all get that.]

Obama wants on Mt. Rushmore

I'm convinced of it now. President Obama sees himself as the next face on Mt. Rushmore. Critics of the President, myself included, have spent a lot of time looking at the minutia of the his Presidency but we've been myopic with respect to his master plan that's been going on right under our noses. Either we're looking at individual wrongs - bailouts, national security issues, corporate takeovers etc. - or we're looking at his methods of achieving those goals (divide and conquer strategies, juxtaposing his Presidential addresses with GOP in-fighting).

Obama's Big Dreams

Underlying everything he's doing is something bigger though. The far left used to claim President Bush was going to impose marshal law and declare himself President for life. They didn't seem to understand the Constitution, then nor do they now. On the right we know better - Obama will max out at eight years, or if we're lucky, only four. But President Obama understands that too. Hence his outlook is extended beyond his 8 year maximum window.

He gives great speeches and he's playing political games quite well, but it's all to serve a single goal. He wants to affect a tidal shift leftward for the country. He sees himself as the left's Ronald Reagan. Everyone on the right can see that his goal is to re-establish and expand socialism and governmentalism in America.

What is President Obama trying to achieve? A more liberal court, a more liberal and involved government, and a left leaning Democrat majority that he sees lasting for generations - with himself as it's founding father. He knows that a real legacy has to outlast his own term, by a long time. Reagan did that for conservatives and for the country. Had there been no Reagan, Clinton would not have even considered welfare reform. Reagan's greatness echoed beyond his terms. Obama seeks the same.

Another tactic - compartmentalization

Whether it's yet another clever tactic or the myopia of conservatives focused on single aspects of the President's moves, the things the President is doing, the issues are being effectively compartmentalized. Borrowing from Alinsky, President Obama is isolating not people but rather issues. By making each issue small and isolated, the bigger picture gets lost. We can't see the socialist forest for the liberal trees.

Motivation not the issue though

Whatever his aim, how he seeks achieve this is what we have rightly concerned ourselves with. We need to try to stop socialized health care. We need to investigate the federal domination of Chrysler's bankruptcy (more on that in a subsequent post). We need to keep the Tea Parties going and keep the pressure on. We need to fight tooth and nail on everything, because collectively they amount to the Sweden-ification of America. Say what you might about ABBA, Sweden was never an economic or military superpower, nor were they ever a paragon of individual liberty the way the U.S. Constitution is.

If however each incremental little thing is viewed as not worth major resistance, then each little step gets passed that much easier. The President charged out of the gate with big ticket items and look where it got him. Everyone is still in shock and awe from the massive stimulus bill and omnibus bill that together combine for over 1 trillion in spending. We're numb. So how big a deal is a Supreme Court Justice Sotomayor when it's just replacing a liberal with a liberal? It doesn't seem worth the effort.

The GOP, taken aback by the floating Presidential approval ratings, have seemingly acquiesced to the nomination. Yes they'll ask the tough questions they say. And they will probably vote against her in decent numbers. But will they obstruct the process the way President Bush's nominees were obstructed? Will they try to force the Democrats to go for the nuclear option - a rule change the GOP considered themselves before backing down? I'm not convinced.

The point here is not to fight against Obama's legacy. The point is that the leftward shift of the country is no solution to the problems facing America. In fact his solutions will only exacerbate the problems. Obama talks about the problem coming from Medicare and Medicaid. Indeed they are problems. But the solution is not to ADD to the burden by socializing health care.

The real solutions are painful - those promised benefits are simply to expensive and must be made to go away. At best the government can hope to privatize these issues and hope that individuals look after their own futures. The yoke of socialism does not raise the bar for everyone, it lowers it and the achievers either leave or get dragged down to the lower levels. You end up with a second rate country and Americans deserve better than that if they can just pull their collective heads out of...well you get the picture.

Without a grassroots movement to stop this President, America could be dooming itself. I've always believed the country is bigger than just one man. The USA survived Clinton albeit under more favorable circumstances. There are two big strikes against the country at this point in time. Firstly a Democrat supermajority is pretty much in place. Secondly, with respect to the massive unfunded liabilities of Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (and soon possibly health care aka Obama-care), the clock is running out really fast (and it's a clock strapped to an economic bomb). The leading age of the baby boomers set to retire is now at age 64. We are LESS THAN one year from the start of socialism's Armageddon.

If that happens, the only way that Obama could get on Mount Rushmore is if it gets sold to China to pay for it.

For the rest of America, there's no time to spare. If the GOP won't fight tooth and nail to do something about this, the Tea Parties will need to become a weekly event, and perhaps daily

Tick, tick, tick....

Stimulus Parody

From www.Funnyordie.com, a parody on the effects of the stimulus, uh package.

Stimulis: Because all economies have performance issues - watch more funny videos

Republican Governors have backbone

Republican Governors are refusing stimulus money. People are trying to paint this as cynical political staking out of claims for 2012. While that may be true in the sense that it helps their primary chances in 2012, I think each of these governors can be regarded as refusing stimulus money based on principle and concern for the strings that are attached. Conservatives KNOW there is no such thing as a free lunch.

Great work Governors, you deserve credit for your stand!

Jindal:



Sanford:



Also refusing; Haley Barbour and Sarah Palin.

Well, then there's this;



One can only sigh at that.

Apologists pounce.

Apologists for Obama go after Santelli for his earlier tirade. Santelli does an admirable job staying calm and continuing to hammer home his point.

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

One can't fault MSNBC for trying to capitalize on the feedback by putting Santelli back on the air, especially in a potentially volatile situation with two apologists who think he's wrong. It's actually a good business decision to play off the buzz over Santelli's outburst on CNBC - something I though had long since lost the ability to do with it's news divisions.

Here's the BUT: MSNBC, clearly in the tank for Obama, allowed Santelli to make his point again. The fallout - MSNBC has put itself in a position where sound business decisions contravene it's political bent. Don't cry any tears for MSNBC. Their ratings are in the tank, because they are in the tank, and it looks good on them.