How to re-start the American Economy

Everybody has ideas. Here’s mine.

Step 1: Pass legislation that temporarily allows 62-69 year-old people to retire with maximum Social Security payments. Put a one-year take-it-or-leave-it program expiration. It is conditional that retirees cannot work at another job for 12 months. If they violate this condition, their benefits revert to standard early retirement levels. This will add jobs to the economy and significantly create promotions in every industry. It moves full-time producers to full-time consumers of goods and services.

Step 2: Pass legislation that suspends FICA taxes for businesses whose net employee gain in 2021 is 5% or more for a period of 12 months. This will motivate businesses to hire FTEs rather than outsource work, automate their work, or shrink their workforce.

Step 3: Create a two-year Blue Collar training fund that pays adult men and women to achieve training certificates in the trades: electrical, mechanical, utilities, logistics, manufacturing, and computer-related. Pay 50% of the tuition up front upon registration/acceptance and the other 50% upon successful completion. This ensures there are skilled tradesmen available to take those vacant jobs. There could be an additional business bonus for those who hire and train employees for trade work.

If your country is going into debt, you might as well make a better economy than the one you had before.

Unum Supra Multa

The Treasury Department has ordered President Trump’s name be printed on stimulus checks the Internal Revenue Service is rushing to send to tens of millions of Americans…

It will be the first time a president’s name appears on an IRS disbursement, whether a routine refund or one of the handful of checks the government has issued to taxpayers in recent decades either to stimulate a down economy or share the dividends of a strong one.

If I were a Trump loyalist, I might pee my pants over seeing his name on my  stimulus check.

This is only on checks, not on direct deposits, and will be under a line that says “Economic Impact Payment”.

As the greatest President ever (ROFL), I imagine he will one day want his face carved into Mt Rushmore and perhaps replace the Washington Monument with the Trump Monument.

I predict this check will become a symbol for the moment when America lost its way in the world. No longer a nation of laws and moral convictions, this check will mark the turning point in which American government serves the President…instead of an America in which the President supports the government of America as established by the Constitution.

When the President’s name appears on the check, you can forget “E Pluribus Unum” (Out of many, One). Instead it can be changed to “Unum supra multa” (One over Many).

God help us.

 

 

Shopping on Thanksgiving? You betcha!

My wife and I decided to shop Thanksgiving night.

I just read that 20% of people (in an unofficial poll) said they would shop Thursday night. We will be two of them.

Let me see if I get this right: We can either go shopping Black Friday with tens of thousands of other shoppers seeking special deals OR we can shop Thursday night for the same discounts and have 80% less people around grabbing our goodies.

Guess what we picked…..

A stock market melt-up?

Sheesh.

“We’re in a bull market, and I think it can continue for the next few years,” he said in an interview last week. But what’s striking about his perspective is that while he remains a steadfast market bull, he finds himself increasingly preoccupied by a cloud on the horizon: the growing complacency of his fellow investors.

They keep bidding prices higher and higher, with a speed and consistency that troubles him. In a word, he is worried that we may hurtling into a trajectory that cannot be sustained — what he calls a market “melt-up.”

“The bull market would be more sustainable if investors fretted about all sorts of possible bearish problems,” he said. The economy isn’t all that strong, for example, and it might be much weaker if the Federal Reserve were not holding interest rates artificially low and buying bonds at a relentless pace. The Fed decided on Wednesday to continue its easy monetary policy, but it will have to tighten up eventually, perhaps causing stresses in the markets.

So he is not worried about Euphoria but he is worried that we might have Euphoria at some time in the future which will curtail the Bull market?

Well, I guess we should be pleased that pre-Euphoria is being talked about now…’The Economic Curse of pre-Euphoria’ sounds like a book title.

This man makes no sense whatsoever.

Death by China, assuredly so

Was it by Chinese design or by American greed that China is destroying America from within?

I watched the documentary Death by China and was struck by its message. I remember the news media reporting about Bill Clinton’s Chinese donations to his presidential campaign fund. Plus, I recall some of the obligatory political photo ops of Chinese delegations shaking hands with Americans.

If this was some Nixonian plan that engaging China in commercial trade would cause them to be less communistic , it has not worked. If this was some corporate plan to access Chinese markets with products made in America, it has not worked. If this was some Conservative notion that access to China might make them more Christian, it has not worked. And it it was some liberal notion that industrializing China might make them less oppressive, it has not worked. And if it was Bill Clinton’s idea that no harm would come from selling America out in this small way, he was wrong.

Instead it has destroyed manufacturing in the US. There is a symbiotic relationship when mfr-ing companies are in proximity to each other and we have lost that. Imagine a campfire. It burns brightest when the wood is close together; when the wood is spread out, the heat escapes and the fire gets colder. That’s what is happening in the US right now.

When Walmart began to buy Chinese, our mfg capability began to fade. The two are linked in time if not by cause and effect.

I think the industrial decay of America can be blamed on Republican Free Trade, Clinton presidential ambitions, and corporate greed working and acting opportunistically if not in concert.

So what do you and I do?

We buy locally whenever we can. If  a product or a retailer is unique to your community then support them by buying locally. Independent hardware stores, fruit stands, cheese makers, and anybody who sells anything locally. It is better for your money to be spent upon each other locally rather than be extracted to someplace else. It makes others stronger and you weaker.

What 2013 Stock Market Euphoria ?

The market rose 25-30% this year so far and there was no “Euphoria”.

The topic has been broached every month in a different business magazine since January. It started in January with Money News reporting this:”The stock market is going through a bout of irrational exuberance that spells trouble, says Marc Faber, publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom.”

In February, CITI reports:

Simply put, when investors are panicking, then it’s probably a good time to buy.  If investors are euphoric, then it’s probably time to sell.”The Panic/Euphoria Model has spiked to near its highs over the past three years, suggesting frothy levels have ensued,” writes Citi’s Tobias Levkovich. “While a variety of other factors are constructive for equity indices, this proprietary gauge is starting to get perilously close to euphoria, cutting above the complacency readings seen in April/May 2012. In the past, when the model reached such levels, the equity markets experienced some modest consolidation. “

Then it moved to this in April: Amid Stock Market Euphoria, The Smart Money Is Fading – Minyanville

May followed with this from The Market Oracle: “The levitating stock markets continue to seductively entrance traders, powering to new nominal record highs day after day after day.  No one believes a meaningful selloff is even possible anymore, thanks to the vast deluge of central-bank monetary inflation.  Sheer euphoria has set in as all perception of risk has vanished.  This makes these stock markets extraordinarily dangerous, they are truly at topping extremes.

And August, September, and October had the same read. You can simply run your own search to find that evidence.

I got caught up in that also. When my stock doubled, I sold, when another one rose 25%, I sold that, too. I figured that 25 and 30% gains in the market should trigger some type of correction. But there was none.

Sure, I could say ‘not yet’ but what’s the point? Fed Policy is to keep wealthy people wealthy and the QE will continue for some period of time. Why in the world would the Fed change anything until the new Chairperson Yellen is in place?

Deficits don’t matter to the Fed. They print the money; they aren’t accountable for how much is spent. They are there to keep wealthy people wealthy through one simple control: monetary policy.

I have come to believe that the US economy is an elephant and that the pundits are simply blind men who feel different parts of it and come up with different conclusions. ‘This stock is going up based upon the strength of the legs’, ‘this sector is going down because the elephant is not eating enough’, and, of course, some one is analyzing the poop of the stock market and making predictions like “the sturdiness of the poop indicates that the elephant is being fed correctly and should live a long life’  exactly at the time the elephant stumbles off a cliff and dies or is shot by a hunter who wants its tusks.

The economists try to predict how the amount of food and shade and predators are at hand to determine the size of the herd and they act like game wardens trying to control trouble if an Elephant Walk occurs.

My thoughts now are that in a weak economy and globalization (fancy term for US businesses take over the world) and a strong stock market, that the driver right now is how stock market people feel. There is no euphoria yet. The people who do this for a living are optimistic but markedly so.

The issue that the new Fed Chairperson has is how to keep wealthy people wealthy. The Sec’y of the Treasury has to figure out how to borrow money so his political party can reward the people who put them in power. The President has to figure out how to get re-elected and keep the military happy with weapons programs and military bases. The Vice President has to go to funerals and celebrate St. Patricks Day. And Congressmen have to get re-elected to keep their party in power so they can collect and grant favors to others.

It is a sucky process now. Time for change. We need a government for the people and not the politicians, a government for you and me and not the multinational corporations, and finally, we need a government for the Have Nots and not the Haves.

Whose Congress is it anyway ?

There is a comedy show that gets its humor from impromptu skits. It is called Whose Line Is it Anyway?The opening remarks are: ….where the lines are made up and the points don’t matter….

Our Congress is now a version of that comedy show because this morning Tom Coburn came out and made up a line by saying that the Debt Limit does not matter ( ergo, deficits do not matter)

After all the years of raising the debt limit and al the drama from both parties about it, Senator Tom Coburn of Oklahoma told the national TV audience that the Debt Limit and deficits do not matter.

(ROFL…..What a joke that Debt Limit was, on the people and the stock markets of the world, the last time it almost tanked. Ha ha. LOL.)

Sheesh, we sure have a government of lesser men, don’t we?

The Fed no longer manages the credit and money supply….

…it manages the stock market now.  Playing a game by making money available at super low rates continues the Fed role in boosting the stock market. It is criminal how the Fed is colluding with investment banking plus the market to keep money flowing into stocks instead of other investments.

From the Plunge Protection Team to interest rate manipulation to dollar redemption, the Fed is doing whatever it takes to keep the US stock market afloat. We don’t know why. Probably never will but there will come a time when no one will care that the Fed is doing anything at all. Then we will all suffer.

There are many people talking about the coming world depression cycle. It will not be pleasant. One cannot have low growth in the economy and a growing Dow Jones without a large correction. Part of this game is to say “What else are you going to invest your money in to make more money? Gold? Ha, the methods to reduce the price of gold and silver from their highs have been very successful. It is down almost a third now. Oil? Ha! The frack oil from the Central Plains will be driving the price of a barrel of oil even lower than the hybrid auto industry has driven it down. If it weren’t for the minor inflation of the dollar, oil would be less today than ten years ago. In Business? Ha. Investments mean buying brick and mortar and machinery. You won’t find a safe haven for cash in those area in America. Buy stocks, sit on your butt and watch them grow. As long as the Fed can get away with it, the stock market will prosper and become increasingly disconnected from the worth of some companies.

So the Fed will continue to pump money into the world but not into anyone’s economy. The cash will be held by banks and others. The market will rise until someone says “ENOUGH”!

The War on Middle Men

The Internet is a potent weapon for wiping out the middle man. If there is a distribution process, the internet is working to go direct and save some money in the process.

When the middle man goes so goes the middle class and customer service. When goods become commodities, business becomes hardened.

We are losing the war  more every day

Why is a government official accountable for economy?

Well, I am now up to HERE with these snide comments that some government official is “responsible” for economic ( read “business”) performance in his geographic area.

President Coolidge said “After all, the chief business of the American people is business. They are profoundly concerned with buying, selling, investing and prospering in the world.”

Please know that President Coolidge never said, and did not intend to say, that the business of America (the country) is business, as many have misquoted.

There is no excuse (save one) in which you can think that a government official is responsible for the economy. That one excuse is if you live in a Socialist or Communist system. Oh, I know that it is very trendy to say what this state or that state is doing to provide opportunities for successful businesses to be more successful but the truth is that adversity breeds competence and an easy way to financial ruin is be handed success on a platter. Just look at President Obama’s business give-aways and you will see what I mean.

So when you read that some politician is destroying the economy or that another is really making it work, just say “malarkey”. It is not true. One cannot legislate success in business.(Except in a communist society)