Some of us like living out in the country, I know I do. If our government has its way that is likely to change in the future. (HT The Examiner)
If you like living in the suburbs, having your own little piece of God's green Earth, and being part of the community schools, churches and civic groups, well, too bad because the "Smart Growth" progressives in Congress and the National Reseach Council have anew report that shows how much better things would be if instead you and your family lived in an urban high rise.
According to a news alert from the NRC, the report examines "how suburbanization -- made possible largely due to the prevalence of automobiles and the extensive U.S. highway system -- impacts the number of miles we drive, our reliance on petroleum fuel, and the percent of greenhouse gas emissions from transportation.
"The report looks at studies on compact, mixed-use development where people live in denser environments with jobs and shopping close by, to determine whether a shift to this type of land use could lessen vehicle use, energy consumption, and CO2 emissions."
Why would living in "denser environments" be better? Well, for you and your family, it wouldn't be, but it would be for Smart Growth progressives in and out of govenment because it would be so much easier for them to control how you and your family live.
Why? Well, just to take the first example that comes to mind: Instead of relying upon a private car that can take you wherever you decide to go, you will have to use government-owned mass transit that only takes you where the government thinks you should be able to go.
And without independent mobility, you won't have nearly as much freedom to do things, like send your kids to a school you prefer instead of the government school closest to your high rise.
Also, you probably will have to get a job working at one of those massive bureaucratic institutions that thrive in the close-in urban sky scraper environment. So your future economic opportunities will be much more limited than they are now.
You can also forget about making trips to the grocery store and Wal-Mart to take advantage of the lower prices that come with economies of scale, just-in-time delivery, and consumer-driven product offerings. The big chain grocery stories and retailers won't be able to offer either the lower prices or product variety they do now because there won't be nearly as many of their stores around.
Thanks to mass transit, it will be hard to get to those that do survive, and even when you manage to get there, you won't be able to carry home nearly as many items riding on mass transit than you could in your own private car. So it will be more trips for fewer items, on a daily or every other day basis, just like your great grandmother and great grand father lived back in the 19th century.
And that is what this is all about. You may have read about the 19th century in school. That was when people living in crowded, smelly, crime-ridden big cities like Philly, New York and Cleveland began fleeing to the suburbs. They did so to get some room for their families to grow, to get away from the daily dangers of the big city, and to live the American Dream of better jobs, better schools, more freedom.
Kind of makes you wonder what the Smart Growth progressives have against people living the American Dream in the suburbs, doesn't it?
And by the way, why do we need a federally funded National Research Council study to tell us people who live in cities drive less than people who live in the suburbs?
I just have some articles and links I would like to share with you. I put them all together so you do not have to search the Internet for the information. You can make an informed decision as to whether or not to be in the Stock Market right now.
You have to wonder when you see statistics like this (through 9:30 this morning):
Remove SPY, ETFC and LEHMQ (none of which trade on the NYSE) from the list and you get 606 million shares.
How many shares have traded in total with one hour in?
1.491 billion.
Forty percent of the volume is comprised of four used dogfood stocks, just as we've seen for the last couple of weeks - all people passing shares back and forth among each other, many of it being "computer HFT games."
The other used dog-food stocks (LEHMQ and ETFC) are really no better; they just don't trade on the NYSE. Lehman is particularly ridiculous as that's a formally-bankrupt company!
Fannie and Freddie are two of the most outrageous abuses I've seen in a long time, second only to AIG. All three of these should be delisted as their equity value is quite literally bupkis.
This just goes to illustrate - the market is currently being levitated on literal trash. Again today we see the Casino trying to suck in people; I got emails from two more associates over the weekend telling me that their "advisors" are telling them "you have too much cash allocated; now is the time to buy."
Now is the time to buy, after a 50% move?! Where the hell were these so-called "advisors" at SPX 666!
Nobody - and I do mean nobody - is talking about what this sort of volume pattern means. Well, I will: this is the sort of pattern that precedes an all-on equity market collapse. It strongly implies that the only volume support that the market has is from "hot money" speculators. Lest you think this is sustainable let me point out that just a few weeks ago the very same so-called "commentators" said the same thing about China's market. Here's what happened:
The white box down below is the target on the break downward out of that flag last night - the top of the box is the critical "must hold" level from the first retrace off the bottom and the bottom of the box being the the start of the entire move. If they're lucky the market holds around the 250-275 level, but I wouldn't bet on it.
That's nasty - The Shanghai market has already lost roughly 25% from its recent peak, and it took just three weeks to lose what required roughly three months to put on.
How do you like those odds folks? Pay close attention to the lessons from the East, least you get to learn them the hard way right here.
A 25% loss from the recent highs on the SPX places the S&P 500 around 775.
I smell a repeat of 2001/2002, when the very same "analysts" said the bear market was over and everyone jumped back into the pool going into the end of 2001, only to get destroyed in the collapse that followed and took out the 2001 low.
Heh, I might be wrong on this, but those who "believed" in the Shanghai market are missing 1/4 of their money - so far.
AND THIS
European shares fell Monday after Chinese stocks plunged nearly 7 percent and Japanese shares weakened after that nation's opposition party came to power in a landslide victory.
TrimTabs Investment Research reported that selling by corporate insiders in August has surged to $6.1 billion, the highest amount since May 2008. The ratio of insider selling to insider buying hit 30.6, the highest level since TrimTabs began tracking the data in 2004.
"The best-informed market participants are sending a clear signal that the party on Wall Street is going to end soon," said Charles Biderman, CEO of TrimTabs.
Investors bracing for Sept. correction: strategist
After a powerful rally in stocks from the March lows, "investors are wondering if September will live up to its reputation as the month in which the S&P 500(SPX1,016, -12.56, -1.22%) posts its worst price performance and frequency of decline," said Sam Stovall, chief investment strategist at Standard & Poor's Equity Research, on Monday. He said investors "may have a reason to fear a setback in September" considering the month's dismal historical performance.
Never in modern times has there been such a flat contradiction between the euphoria of markets and the stern warnings of officialdom at central banks and financial watchdogs.
"It has certainly alarmed US retail tycoon Howard Davidowitz. “As a country we are out of control, we’re in a death spiral,” he said."
Raft of Deals for Failed Banks Puts U.S. on Hook for Billions
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According to a recent article on Reuters, on Saturday Lou Jiwei, the chairman of the CIC, China’s sovereign wealth fund, said at a conference on Saturday in response to a question about his expected performance: “It will not be too bad this year. Both China and America are addressing bubbles by creating more bubbles and we’re just taking advantage of that. So we can’t lose.”
Well YOU can lose! That admission that our governments are creating "Bubble's" should be a signal to END THE FED!
You don't even have to be a cynic like me to understand that it is not a good idea to be buying at the same time your broker is selling.
The CDC's report, released Monday, may well create some level of hysteria. It said 1.8 million Americans could become seriously ill this fall and as many as 90,000 could die.
In truth, America's national pandemic response plan has been shaped by lessons from the 1918 Spanish flu epidemic, which killed millions globally and did include gun-point quarantines. If the circumstances are deemed dire enough, the government's "Pandemic Influenza Plan" allows for strong measures, such as banning public gatherings and calling in the military to help with law enforcement.
I believe many are now becoming interested and educated about the corruption taking place in regards to our financial markets so in this post I will concentrate on the other side of the coin by linking examples into the writers commentary. You should read in its entirety since at first glance you would assume he is lobbying for lobbyists. In regards to Paul Farrell's story Democracy is dead Lobbyists Rule America he could learn a thing or two since first we are a REPUBLIC with a Representative Democracy and secondly he fails to consider the following. The Article...
I would like to elaborate on some of the points made by Thomas Wark in his Aug. 24 column. He says that the candidate who raises the most money always wins.
But Wark focuses his column on the topic of government corruption: "legislation is written by people called lobbyists, who are paid handsomely to shape the law of the land to the will of the oligarchs who really run the country." People complain about lobbyists who basically bribe elected officials, but never stop to question why lobbyists exist in the first place.
The fact is, if the government and its legislators would not interfere in the lives of private citizens, there would be no "need" for lobbyists. But because the government engages in unconstitutional meddling in the market, lobbyists are hired to make exemptions from the rules.
When the government interferes with business, is it any surprise business will interfere with government? And it's not just corporations. Unions also spend millions onlobbyists; Greenpeace, and nonprofits like ACORNandPlannedParenthood receive massive amounts of taxpayer money and also corrupt the law-making process. The point of bribingthegovernment in exchange for favors is to have an unfair advantage over the competition.
This is notcapitalism. This is fascism(a tactic perfected by Benito Mussolini.) When corporations team up with government, it is not a free market; it is the opposite of capitalism and free-market economics.
Wark scrounges up the old quote by Eisenhower that warns us of a "military-industrial complex." But as most people do, Wark leaves out the rest of Eisenhower's warning: "a government contract becomes virtually a substitute for intellectual curiosity ... The prospect of domination of the nation's scholars by Federal employment, project allocations, and the power of money is ever-present." Eisenhower makes the point (50 years ago) that government interference leads to corruption and to a greed more powerful than any corporate greed, which is the greed of government. Congressmen accept the lobbyists' bribes because they themselves wish to stay in office and mooch off the taxpayer for as long as possible.
Whether it's Goldman Sachs bailouts or Universal Welfare, unconstitutional schemes rack up the deficit for future generations. As Eisenhower also predicted, "our government must avoid the impulse to live only for today, plundering for our own ease and convenience the precious resources of tomorrow. We cannot mortgage the material assets of our grandchildren without risking the loss also of their political and spiritual heritage."
Wark spends a lot of time telling us that the lobbyists are really in charge of making laws, but then he demands that they make some of the most sweeping laws in the form of health care. He again cites a cliche statistic, "46 million... don't have health care because they can't afford it." But this is a false claim.
That number comes from the U.S. Census, which breaks it down further. Ten million uninsured are legal residents who chose to come to America and are not citizens. Nine million are people who make $75,000 a year or more and choose not to pay for insurance. Many more are young people like myself who also choose to spend insurance money on something else. In fact, only 5 million to 10 million Americans are chronically uninsured compared to at least 300 million Americans who are covered. And if you account for those who qualify for Medicaid, Medicare, Social Security, SCHIP, WIC, Americorps, PeaceCorps, and literally dozens of other taxpayer- funded government-run programs that are available, why do we need to corrupt government even more in the name of universal health care?
Wark says that health industries have spent $300 million to lobby against HR 3200. Maybe it's because the health-care bill states on Page 16, "Limitation On New Enrollment:" "the individual health insurance issuer offering such coverage does not enroll any individual in such coverage if the first effective date of coverage is on or after the first day of the year the legislation becomes law." In other words, you cannot change your insurance once the bill goes through. If you leave your job for whatever reason, you cannot get private coverage again, and like myself, if you have no insurance when the bill becomes law, you cannot buy private insurance; you are forced to enroll in the government "option." This is a violation of your right to property.
The constitution was designed to protect individual liberty from the federal government. If the government passes this law, it will be illegal for insurance companies to sign up new customers. A company cannot exist if it cannot sign up customers. Such a law does not protect individual rights, it denies individual rights. Lobbyists are a huge problem, but the root of the problem is unconstitutional government.
Wark brings to our attention an important issue: government corruption. But by only focusing on the corporate side of that corruption, we continue to letcrooked politicians off the hook. Perhaps Wark and I can agree that term limits will diminish the ability of politicians to spend 30 or more years living off the taxpayer. Perhaps we can agree thatGoldman Sachswon't be able to fleece the taxpayer if we limit the amount of money the government takes from your paycheck. Maybe we can agree that if we repeal unconstitutional laws, which only empower the oligarchy we both distrust, then we, the people can restore our American republic to our founders' vision.
Look who is calling for a new global currency! Washington Post...
Joseph E. Stiglitz, the 2001 Nobel Prize winner in economics, is a professor of economics at Columbia University and former chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers during the Clinton administration.
The United States has resisted these changes, but they will come regardless, and it's better for us to participate in the construction of a new system than have it happen without us. The United States has seen great advantages with the dollar as the world's reserve currency of choice, particularly the ability to borrow at low interest rates seemingly without limit. But we haven't seen the costs as clearly: the inevitable trade deficits, the instability, the weaker global economy. The benefits to us are likely to shrink, and rapidly so, as countries shift their holdings away from the dollar.
It is happening already, and the process is likely to accelerate. Chinese authorities, for example, have openly expressed concerns about the value of the country's vast dollar reserves. Not surprisingly, China and other nations holding lots of U.S. debt support efforts to build a new system.
In its interim report in June, the commission described a number of alternatives. Some involve building on the International Monetary Fund's "special drawing rights," or SDRs -- a kind of "IMF money" -- but making the issuance of this global reserve money annual and more predictable. (Currently, issuances of SDRs are small and episodic.) Other proposed reforms are more complex and ambitious, such as issuing new global reserves in ways and amounts that could be used to stabilize the world's economy or to invest in "global public goods," such as helping developing nations reduce greenhouse gas emissions.
America should show leadership in helping shape this new structure and managing the transition, rather than burying its head in the sand. We may have preferred to keep the old system, in which the dollar reigned supreme, but that's no longer an option.
And who does he think he is to tell us it is no longer an option? Is it because they have helped Crash the United States Economy? Setting us up?
The Chinese are noticing even more dangerous developments, such as ineffective official stimulus, unproductive rescue of dead banks, endless credit derivative covered costs (AIG and Fannie Mae), entirely new programs with staggering price tags (health care), refused disclosure of disbursed Congressional funds, and tremendous waste, all of which not only result in gargantuan government deficits, but add risk to the USDollar from a failure standpoint.
If this surprises you obviously you do not understand who have been the major players in trying to take us down the road to a New World Order where the Elites control every thing you do!
