Friday, September 21, 2012

"The Man with the Golden Voice"

I don't like Barack Obama.

I don't hate him, in fact from what I hear he is a very nice person, good husband, and father. But I don't like what he has done to this country. The economy is in ruins, the USA has become a debtor nation, almost 50% of our population is receiving government support of some kind, 23 million are unemployed or underemployed, the world is in chaos, and this country's citizens are more divided than any period in my lifetime.

These are very complex problems; Obama did inherit a crashing economy but he also proceeded to make it worse; the $16 trillion that has made us a "debtor nation" is the responsibility of both political parties but Obama "threw gasoline on the debt fire"; most of the unemployed or underemployed sincerely want to work - but there are no jobs; the chaos in the world is not due to a stupid video - it is due to stupid foreign policy by both political parties, and I cannot remember when we were so hated around the world. So with such a complex array of problems what is the solution?

This country needs a leader.

Is Romney that person?  I don't know, but Obama has proven he is not that person, so maybe we need to make a change. Clint Eastwood put it very well at the republican convention: "If he is not up to the job, we need to let him go".

Thursday, September 13, 2012

"Sanity vs the Fed"

The Federal Reserve  is supposed to be independent, I am beginning to wonder. In addition to Obama's stimulus of almost $900 billion, in the past few years the Federal Reserve has had two rounds of "quantitative easing", yet nothing has changed in the economy.  Quantitative easing is a fancy name for printing money to buy government bonds so the government can pump more money into the economy. During the past several years the Fed has "printed" almost a trillion dollars, unfortunately the stimulus and none of this quantitative easing has had any effect; the poor economy is the same as it was two years ago.

Although the Fed is supposed to be "independent", today they announced a third  round of "quantitative easing" to help the economy,  I am beginning to wonder if this isn't political. The fed will start "printing" money and  buy $40 billion in US bonds every month until the economy "begins improving".  This is a farce and in my opinion purely political less than 60 days before the election.

Between the media, the unions, the entertainment industry, and now the Fed, there is a full scale effort to get Obama re-elected. It didn't help the Republicans when Romney said if he was elected he would fire Bernanke the Chairman of the Fed.

Most people don't even understand what the Fed is, I didn't myself when I was younger. Currency is only useful if it can maintain its ability to act as a temporary storage vehicle for wealth, and be exchanged for a good or service. So the Fed "supposedly" was established to make sure banks were honest, the economy was stabilized, etc. That is a sham.

Printing unlimited money destroys the value and usefulness of currency and can be a precursor of hyperinflation. I am not a fan of Ron Paul but he is right; "The Fed should be abolished and we should go back to the gold standard".


This is such a confusing issue most Americans ignore it (like many readers of this Blog will probably do).  But here is the bottom line - when the Fed simply prints money out of thin air your buying power is reduced -  it's called inflation and sooner or later when you pay $10 for a gallon of gas or $10 for a loaf of bread you will understand that when the Fed "creates" money we all lose, and ironically the middle and lower classes lose the most - the "folks" the Democrats claim to protect. .