The Changing Values of Paper Currencies

In the past year the value of the Australian Dollar measured in gold is unchanged.
In the past year the value of the Japanese Yen measured in gold has declined 17%.

Which do you think is volatile, the value of the currency or the value of the metal?

The High Cabal Profits While You Lose Your House

The Alan Greenspan induced housing bubble was most prevalent in which geographic markets?  I seem to remember something about prices soaring in Vegas, Phoenix, Miami and California.  Could this be right?  

Bloomberg tells us that Blackstone Group is buying tens-of-thousands of single-family homes in the following markets:

"Blackstone is buying in Atlanta, Chicago, Las Vegas, Phoenix, Northern and Southern California; Miami, Orlando and Tampa, Florida"

How are they doing this?  Isn't housing a terrible investment?

"Blackstone has been purchasing through foreclosure auctions and short sales, in which banks agree to accept less than is owed on the mortgage, after more than 5 million homeowners lost their homes since the market’s peak in 2006."

This makes sense, Stephen Schwarzman is part of the U.S. government (he happens to be Chairman of Blackstone) so he gets special benefits and influence with bankers, Congress and the White House.  When was the last time you partied with the President of the U.S.?  Even better, when was the last time a sitting U.S. President visited your home for dinner?    

Before the financial collapse all you needed was $1.2 M to buy major influence in the White House.  A pretty fair price to pay for $500,000,000 worth of discounts on real estate purchases.  Schwarzman's timing was terrific, having the President over for dinner in 2007.  That was an ideal place to conspire to pop the housing bubble and coordinate how the cabal will profit from the coming housing bust and economic collapse.   

Schwarzman happens to serve on the JP Morgan Chase National Advisory Board with other major players in the real estate business, Samuel Zell, Mortimer Zuckerman and David Rubenstein.  Things are working out very well for these conspirators.  They devised a wonderful plan to collect your down payment, some of the principal and most importantly your mortgage interest payments for 5 years before engineering the crash and getting you laid off.  Once that was over they could buy your house at a below market rate and now you get to rent it back from them while they mint a tidy profit.  

The Real American Dream!   

Guns Are Well Behaved in Switzerland

So how do other advanced countries deal with high rates of firearm ownership by citizens?  Ironically Bloomberg of all places gave us a little insight.   

From Bloomberg: Shooter Kills Three Women in Swiss Mountain Village Spree

Of course this is a tragedy but read down to the final three paragraphs of the story...

"There were 241 deaths in Switzerland by shooting in 2010, compared with 408 in 2001, Ninety-two percent of those deaths in 2010 were suicides."

Murder is declining steadily in Switzerland, and...

"In February 2011, Swiss voters rejected in a referendum a proposal to ban citizens from keeping guns at home and require all guns to be registered."

To sum up the situation in Switzerland, a country of 8 million people:

1. 3,610,300 guns owned by citizens
2. 20 murders by shooting in 2010

To sum up the situation in New York, NY, a city of 8 million people:

1. 57,300 guns owned by citizens
2. 237 murders by shooting in 2012

There are 63X as many firearms in Switzerland as in New York City yet gun murders are 12X higher in NYC than in Switzerland.  

Why do the guns in North America have to cause so much trouble when their cousins in Europe mostly keep to themselves?  

 

Teachers Will Be Carrying Guns to School...

Add this to the long list of important civil rights issues that the U.S. is falling behind the rest of the world, the security of teachers and students in government detention centers schools.   Shooters may think twice before entering a school building in Thailand.  Here is the story about the recent fatal school shootings from the Bangkok Post:

"Over the past few months, teachers have been singled out for attacks by insurgents, with five teachers shot in less than a month, four of them fatally."

In response to this security breach in government schools the NSC responded, see this from the Post:

"National Security Council secretary-general Lt Gen Paradorn Patthanathabutr said the council could hand out bulletproof vests to teachers straight away.

Mr Sermsak added that each of the three southernmost provinces had been granted the authority to consider issuing gun licences to teachers so that they may legally carry them in public.

The strengthened security measures have improved morale among southern teachers, Mr Sermsak said."

Teachers the world over (especially those employed by the State) should follow in Thailand's footsteps and move to protect students in the classroom.  

A Simple Suggestion for Governor Christie

"Citizens in New York and New Jersey were pawns on a political chess board last night...that's why people hate Washington D.C." 

-NJ Gov. Chris Christie

In lobbying the U.S. Congress for $60 Billion in relief aid for the damage caused by Hurricane Sandy, the Governor of New Jersey has harped on one very important point.  But, first he is upset about two things:

1 - His own party is preventing him from bringing back taxpayer dollars to his state.  This will cost him votes in future elections for any post he seeks.
  
2 - The hurricane hit 66 days ago which is much longer than victims of previous storms had to wait for federal funds (really just feeds into item #1).

The Governor has repeated a key point that NJ residents pay more in federal income taxes to Washington than they ever get back in federal spending.  As governor of New Jersey he should be even more upset that his constituents are getting ripped off every day to support the political machine in Washington.    

He stresses that he has "a job to do".  We assume that he means rebuilding the shore and other areas hard hit by Sandy.  One simple way to achieve this end is to direct the 4 million federal taxpayers of New Jersey to suspend all federal income tax payments immediately.  This would free vast amounts of resources that the residents of New Jersey could then use to rebuild their state.  They could handle the rebuilding on a local level and bypass Trenton entirely.  

If Christie was truly representing the people of NJ he would have promoted this solution during his news conference today.  He had 38 minutes to speak to reporters and answered a dozen questions yet never once did he mention the obvious solution of NJ taxpayers using their funds for their own rebuilding effort instead of sending their hard earned money off to Washington for war making efforts and interest payments on U.S. treasury bonds.

An honest governor who was sent to Trenton with "a job to do" would be protecting the private property of his state's residents from the bandits in Washington.

U.S. Senator admits the Bill of Rights no longer applies

An almost enlightening statement of honesty from Sen. Dianne Feinstein:

“I was saddened and disappointed that we could not take a step forward to ensure at the very least American citizens and legal residents could not be held in detention without charge or trial," Feinstein said. "To me that was a no-brainer.”

The Fifth Amendment of the Bill of Rights is pretty clear:

Amendment V

No person shall be held to answer for a capital, or otherwise infamous crime, unless on a presentment or indictment of a Grand Jury, ...nor be deprived of life, liberty, or property, without due process of law;

When U.S. Senators admit they have reneged on their oath to uphold The U.S. Constitution (and The Bill of Rights) then we have officially lost Ben Franklin's republic. 

From the Huffington Post   

Medicaid is a Subsidy for the Healthcare Industry

In August The Weekly Standard published a report from the U.S. Senate Budget Committee about "welfare" recipients.  They wrote:

Food stamps and Medicaid make up a large--and growing--chunk of the more than 100 million recipients. "Among the major means tested welfare programs, since 2000 Medicaid has increased from 34 million people to 54 million in 2011...

54 million is a highly misleading figure as sick people are not the recipients of medicaid.  Health care providers are the recipients and beneficiaries of medicaid.  For-profit hospitals, universities, non-profits, churches, doctors, nurses, medical equipment suppliers, technology companies and hospital administrators are the primary recipients of medicaid payments.  

The medicaid program is really welfare for the upper-middle income families who work in the health care profession.  Notice that the unemployment rate for nurses is the lowest of all professions in the entire U.S. (just 1.5%).  This is not to bash people who work in health care, I have much respect for them in fact.  Let's just come to the conclusion that the profession is thriving thanks to transfer payments from federal, state and local taxpayers.  

If medicaid really benefited poor families then the U.S. Treasury would simply write a check to low-income earners when they become sick.  The primary reason they write the checks to the medical profession is because very poor people often don't vote and almost never organize politically.  Upper income groups like doctors, nurses, religious groups and university employees almost always vote and vote logically to continue the welfare they receive from U.S. taxpayers.