The sun was sinking beneath the sandhills of Burgard on the evening of a fine day. Scorching daggers etched through the fading sky, and cut their way across the horizen, settling within the cotton wisp of clouds. Slowly, they melted together, like painted swirls on a sheer blue canvas. Then as the seconds passed by and the desert sands waited for nightfall, a myriad of birds and nameless creatures, flew up against the withered trees to catch the last rays of sunset.
Please help me with this sentence?
The sun was sinking beneath the sand hills, the sun will never sink under the sand-hills., what is your question, what help you need.
tax credit
Monday, April 13, 2009
Now that fox folk have got the nomination secured for the crooks they are willing to talk about how right Ron?
is
http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/
Time to Listen to Ron Paul?
By Elizabeth MacDonald
Time to listen to Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the lone voice of reason in Congress today who’s got to feel like he’s shouting into a field of cotton with his repeated warnings about the dangers of a collapsing dollar, while the administration goes AWOL on the problem.
The dollar just hit a record intraday low against the euro on reports that consumer confidence levels have dropped to levels not seen since the post-Watergate era. It is down 7% year to date against the Chinese renminbi, it’s weaker than the Japanese yen and the Canadian loonie.
The joke is the greenback is now only stronger than the Mexican pesos and the Zimbabwe dollar, an overstatement for dramatic effect, to be sure.But since hitting a peak in 2002, the dollar has lost about a quarter of its value against a trade weighted basket of currencies.
A weak dollar acts as an anvil around the neck of the US economy and consumers. Rising inflation is essentially a tax on consumers, so are rising energy prices, and that double whammy threatens to undermine the purchasing power of the rebate checks due out in May–backed by printing even more dollars.
A bellwether event of significant import to our nation’s finances happened this past January 1 with little notice. That’s the day the first baby boomer was allowed to retire. A new federal report wearily warns once again for the umpteenth time that the nation faces some $60t in Social Security and Medicare unfunded liabilities alone.
We’ve heard time and again conservatives say deficits don’t matter. To say that deficits don’t matter is like saying ketchup is a vegetable or trees cause pollution.
The $406b we pay annually in interest on the $9t in federal debt alone would rank as the world’s 30th biggest economy.
That annual interest cost surpasses the gross domestic product of Belgium, and is bigger than the GDP of Denmark and Hungary combined. The $406b would cover the annual cost of investigating Medicare fraud.
Stack all those one dollar bills making up our $9t deficit (and that doesn’t include the $60t in unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security) and you would reach the moon and back. “Printing money cannot create wealth, if it could counterfeiting would be legal,” economist Brian Wesbury has said.
Even Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and a forceful advocate for laissez-faire economics, got so sick of the way central bankers were willy nilly printing money in the ‘70s, he advocated that the government should replace the Federal Reserve with a computer. “Money is too important to be left to central bankers,” he quipped.
Broad zoom: The US economy has spent all of a year and four months in a downturn over the last two and a half decades. During that time we’ve seen a market crash of 22% in 1987, the S%26amp;L crisis, four wars, three financial crises (Mexico, Asian flu and Russian debt crises), the blow up of the hedge fund Long Term Capital, two asset bubbles (dot com and telecom). Since the Bush tax cuts of 2003, the US economy added the equivalent of China’s GDP–and government spending has boomed.
Now Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has both cut rates at a breakneck speed and pumped a massive amount of monetary stimulus into the markets to cure the credit crisis. I still think he is doing his level best to fix a crisis not entirely of his own making. The question now is, will Bernanke yank the liquidity punch bowl when the economy returns to trend growth in 2010 or 2011 as the central bank projects?
Let’s hope so, because the case for a weak dollar is, to me, well, weak. Namely, that a lame greenback softens the housing and credit crises as it fuels profits at US exporters whose goods are now dirt cheap in the eyes of foreign customers. Strong foreign sales at places like Boeing and Caterpillar reportedly added 1.4% to US growth in the second quarter of 2007. But exports make up just 13% of GDP. Consumers make up a larger 70%.
It’s no surprise consumer confidence is as weak as it was in the ’70s. LBJ had promised this country it could have both guns and butter in the ‘60s, so the Federal Reserve gunned the printing presses to pay for spending on entitlement programs and for the Vietnam war. For the first time, too, politicians got their mitts on taxpayers’ Social Security funds, after Democrats passed a so-called “unified budget” in the late ‘60s.
All that spending caused the dollar to nosedive in the 1970s amidst an oil embargo that sent oil costs, priced in dollars, soaring. Paul Volcker, then Fed chairman, enacted rapid rate hikes hitting 21% by 1979, and the Treasury went so far as to sell $6.4b in “Carter bonds,” largely denominated in Deutschemarks, to prop up the dollar. Gold got ripped off its mooring of an average $35 an ounce in the ‘70s, and in 1980 it hit a record $835 an ounce, around $2,250 in today’s prices.
Gold acts as a dew line for inflation. We essentially have a good handle on how much gold there is in the world and potentially below ground. When gold rises in price, it signals we are printing too many dollars, which indicates a concurrent drop in the greenback’s value. Over the last seven years, gold and oil prices have risen in lockstep, up 239% and 267% respectively. If the dollar had also risen in value at the same rate, oil would be selling at about $30 a barrel.
But now central bankers say that because of the weak dollar, they’ve seen capital losses carved out of an estimated $3.34t worth of US dollars they hold in foreign currency reserves; Japan holds the most dollars, China is second. The fear is they may unload these plunging greenbacks en masse to cut their losses and run–which would really tip the US into a protracted recession. Already reports out of China show government officials there willing to rotate future planned investments out of US treasurys into other investments.
Countries pegged to the dollar are rightly saying, too, that we are exporting inflation to their shores. Saudi Arabia is a land that has had nearly zero inflation since 1998, but recently inflation soared to 7% annually, despite the fact the country is flush with petrodollars.
Congressman Paul rightfully warns us when he says the US government has “systematically undermined” the US dollar by expanding “the money supply at will for financing war or manipulating the economy with little resistance from Congress–while benefiting the special interests that influence government.”
It’s not just the US gunning the mints. Goldman Sachs figures that three-fifths of the world’s broad money supply growth came from emerging economies over the past year or so. Three-fifths. That’s gigantic.
Goldman Sachs says the growth in Russia’s M3 measure of broad money grew 51% over the last year or so, India by 24%, and by 20% in China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Brazil. That’s three times as fast as the US and the rest of the developed world, and it’s faster than their GDP growth rates. It’s the fastest pace in decades.
All that loose money is pouring into commodities, stock exchanges around the planet as well as bond markets–it’s largely why our long-term bond yields have been historically low, spurring a dramatic increase in mortgage borrowing, as mortgage rates typically track the 10-year Treasury note.
Watch out here–emerging economies are just as susceptible to minting lots of money due to political pressures, including things like paying for wars, or calming local populations clamoring for higher pay and more jobs.
What can be done stateside?
The administration needs to state more emphatically that it supports a strong dollar. A stronger dollar would draw liquidity back into the credit markets, lower inflation risks, cut oil prices and restart economic growth, notes Bear Stearns economist David Malpass.
Presidential candidates vilify NAFTA and free trade, when the weak dollar is partly to blame for problems like jobs lost to overseas operations, Malpass adds.
“Empires fail because they run out of money, or more accurately, run out of the ability to spend or inflate,” Congressman Paul warns. “We need to control spending, immediately, before it is too late.”
Now that fox folk have got the nomination secured for the crooks they are willing to talk about how right Ron?
The %26quot;Revolution%26quot; is dead. Get over it.
Reply:not a snowball%26#039;s chance in h***
Reply:The nomination isn%26#039;t secured yet. McCain doesn%26#039;t have enough BOUND delegates to take the nomination on the first ballot, and particularly if he can%26#039;t get out from the FEC spending caps MANY may consider Ron Paul a better choice by convention.
Reply:He is completely correct and we are stupid for letting the media shut him out of this race. Shame on this country and the corrupt that are destroying us from the inside; the federal government that is spending our way in to debt with all these socialized programs.
Reply:You are still talking about Ron Paul. It really is time to get over it dude. Ron Paul was even more naive than the democrats on foreign policy. I agree with him on alot of domestic issues but could not vote for him because I believe his foreign policy would lead this country to ruin. Alot of other people felt the same way so it is not just because of the media that Ron Paul did not get more votes.
Reply:This Message was inspired and approved by King DEAN.
Reply:I am shocked at how the election is turning. I guess the media really does influence voters that much.
Reply:God answers ad agree with david, too bad cnn is not even mentioning it. Take care. No one knows what the cards have in store for them. Gore/Blitzer?
beauty
http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/
Time to Listen to Ron Paul?
By Elizabeth MacDonald
Time to listen to Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the lone voice of reason in Congress today who’s got to feel like he’s shouting into a field of cotton with his repeated warnings about the dangers of a collapsing dollar, while the administration goes AWOL on the problem.
The dollar just hit a record intraday low against the euro on reports that consumer confidence levels have dropped to levels not seen since the post-Watergate era. It is down 7% year to date against the Chinese renminbi, it’s weaker than the Japanese yen and the Canadian loonie.
The joke is the greenback is now only stronger than the Mexican pesos and the Zimbabwe dollar, an overstatement for dramatic effect, to be sure.But since hitting a peak in 2002, the dollar has lost about a quarter of its value against a trade weighted basket of currencies.
A weak dollar acts as an anvil around the neck of the US economy and consumers. Rising inflation is essentially a tax on consumers, so are rising energy prices, and that double whammy threatens to undermine the purchasing power of the rebate checks due out in May–backed by printing even more dollars.
A bellwether event of significant import to our nation’s finances happened this past January 1 with little notice. That’s the day the first baby boomer was allowed to retire. A new federal report wearily warns once again for the umpteenth time that the nation faces some $60t in Social Security and Medicare unfunded liabilities alone.
We’ve heard time and again conservatives say deficits don’t matter. To say that deficits don’t matter is like saying ketchup is a vegetable or trees cause pollution.
The $406b we pay annually in interest on the $9t in federal debt alone would rank as the world’s 30th biggest economy.
That annual interest cost surpasses the gross domestic product of Belgium, and is bigger than the GDP of Denmark and Hungary combined. The $406b would cover the annual cost of investigating Medicare fraud.
Stack all those one dollar bills making up our $9t deficit (and that doesn’t include the $60t in unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security) and you would reach the moon and back. “Printing money cannot create wealth, if it could counterfeiting would be legal,” economist Brian Wesbury has said.
Even Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and a forceful advocate for laissez-faire economics, got so sick of the way central bankers were willy nilly printing money in the ‘70s, he advocated that the government should replace the Federal Reserve with a computer. “Money is too important to be left to central bankers,” he quipped.
Broad zoom: The US economy has spent all of a year and four months in a downturn over the last two and a half decades. During that time we’ve seen a market crash of 22% in 1987, the S%26amp;L crisis, four wars, three financial crises (Mexico, Asian flu and Russian debt crises), the blow up of the hedge fund Long Term Capital, two asset bubbles (dot com and telecom). Since the Bush tax cuts of 2003, the US economy added the equivalent of China’s GDP–and government spending has boomed.
Now Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has both cut rates at a breakneck speed and pumped a massive amount of monetary stimulus into the markets to cure the credit crisis. I still think he is doing his level best to fix a crisis not entirely of his own making. The question now is, will Bernanke yank the liquidity punch bowl when the economy returns to trend growth in 2010 or 2011 as the central bank projects?
Let’s hope so, because the case for a weak dollar is, to me, well, weak. Namely, that a lame greenback softens the housing and credit crises as it fuels profits at US exporters whose goods are now dirt cheap in the eyes of foreign customers. Strong foreign sales at places like Boeing and Caterpillar reportedly added 1.4% to US growth in the second quarter of 2007. But exports make up just 13% of GDP. Consumers make up a larger 70%.
It’s no surprise consumer confidence is as weak as it was in the ’70s. LBJ had promised this country it could have both guns and butter in the ‘60s, so the Federal Reserve gunned the printing presses to pay for spending on entitlement programs and for the Vietnam war. For the first time, too, politicians got their mitts on taxpayers’ Social Security funds, after Democrats passed a so-called “unified budget” in the late ‘60s.
All that spending caused the dollar to nosedive in the 1970s amidst an oil embargo that sent oil costs, priced in dollars, soaring. Paul Volcker, then Fed chairman, enacted rapid rate hikes hitting 21% by 1979, and the Treasury went so far as to sell $6.4b in “Carter bonds,” largely denominated in Deutschemarks, to prop up the dollar. Gold got ripped off its mooring of an average $35 an ounce in the ‘70s, and in 1980 it hit a record $835 an ounce, around $2,250 in today’s prices.
Gold acts as a dew line for inflation. We essentially have a good handle on how much gold there is in the world and potentially below ground. When gold rises in price, it signals we are printing too many dollars, which indicates a concurrent drop in the greenback’s value. Over the last seven years, gold and oil prices have risen in lockstep, up 239% and 267% respectively. If the dollar had also risen in value at the same rate, oil would be selling at about $30 a barrel.
But now central bankers say that because of the weak dollar, they’ve seen capital losses carved out of an estimated $3.34t worth of US dollars they hold in foreign currency reserves; Japan holds the most dollars, China is second. The fear is they may unload these plunging greenbacks en masse to cut their losses and run–which would really tip the US into a protracted recession. Already reports out of China show government officials there willing to rotate future planned investments out of US treasurys into other investments.
Countries pegged to the dollar are rightly saying, too, that we are exporting inflation to their shores. Saudi Arabia is a land that has had nearly zero inflation since 1998, but recently inflation soared to 7% annually, despite the fact the country is flush with petrodollars.
Congressman Paul rightfully warns us when he says the US government has “systematically undermined” the US dollar by expanding “the money supply at will for financing war or manipulating the economy with little resistance from Congress–while benefiting the special interests that influence government.”
It’s not just the US gunning the mints. Goldman Sachs figures that three-fifths of the world’s broad money supply growth came from emerging economies over the past year or so. Three-fifths. That’s gigantic.
Goldman Sachs says the growth in Russia’s M3 measure of broad money grew 51% over the last year or so, India by 24%, and by 20% in China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Brazil. That’s three times as fast as the US and the rest of the developed world, and it’s faster than their GDP growth rates. It’s the fastest pace in decades.
All that loose money is pouring into commodities, stock exchanges around the planet as well as bond markets–it’s largely why our long-term bond yields have been historically low, spurring a dramatic increase in mortgage borrowing, as mortgage rates typically track the 10-year Treasury note.
Watch out here–emerging economies are just as susceptible to minting lots of money due to political pressures, including things like paying for wars, or calming local populations clamoring for higher pay and more jobs.
What can be done stateside?
The administration needs to state more emphatically that it supports a strong dollar. A stronger dollar would draw liquidity back into the credit markets, lower inflation risks, cut oil prices and restart economic growth, notes Bear Stearns economist David Malpass.
Presidential candidates vilify NAFTA and free trade, when the weak dollar is partly to blame for problems like jobs lost to overseas operations, Malpass adds.
“Empires fail because they run out of money, or more accurately, run out of the ability to spend or inflate,” Congressman Paul warns. “We need to control spending, immediately, before it is too late.”
Now that fox folk have got the nomination secured for the crooks they are willing to talk about how right Ron?
The %26quot;Revolution%26quot; is dead. Get over it.
Reply:not a snowball%26#039;s chance in h***
Reply:The nomination isn%26#039;t secured yet. McCain doesn%26#039;t have enough BOUND delegates to take the nomination on the first ballot, and particularly if he can%26#039;t get out from the FEC spending caps MANY may consider Ron Paul a better choice by convention.
Reply:He is completely correct and we are stupid for letting the media shut him out of this race. Shame on this country and the corrupt that are destroying us from the inside; the federal government that is spending our way in to debt with all these socialized programs.
Reply:You are still talking about Ron Paul. It really is time to get over it dude. Ron Paul was even more naive than the democrats on foreign policy. I agree with him on alot of domestic issues but could not vote for him because I believe his foreign policy would lead this country to ruin. Alot of other people felt the same way so it is not just because of the media that Ron Paul did not get more votes.
Reply:This Message was inspired and approved by King DEAN.
Reply:I am shocked at how the election is turning. I guess the media really does influence voters that much.
Reply:God answers ad agree with david, too bad cnn is not even mentioning it. Take care. No one knows what the cards have in store for them. Gore/Blitzer?
beauty
Now that the real problems facing america can't be so easily hiden,?
should ron paul run as a independent.
even fox is talking about how right he is
Time to Listen to Ron Paul?
By Elizabeth MacDonald
Time to listen to Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the lone voice of reason in Congress today who’s got to feel like he’s shouting into a field of cotton with his repeated warnings about the dangers of a collapsing dollar, while the administration goes AWOL on the problem.
The dollar just hit a record intraday low against the euro on reports that consumer confidence levels have dropped to levels not seen since the post-Watergate era. It is down 7% year to date against the Chinese renminbi, it’s weaker than the Japanese yen and the Canadian loonie.
The joke is the greenback is now only stronger than the Mexican pesos and the Zimbabwe dollar, an overstatement for dramatic effect, to be sure.But since hitting a peak in 2002, the dollar has lost about a quarter of its value against a trade weighted basket of currencies.
A weak dollar acts as an anvil around the neck of the US economy and consumers. Rising inflation is essentially a tax on consumers, so are rising energy prices, and that double whammy threatens to undermine the purchasing power of the rebate checks due out in May–backed by printing even more dollars.
A bellwether event of significant import to our nation’s finances happened this past January 1 with little notice. That’s the day the first baby boomer was allowed to retire. A new federal report wearily warns once again for the umpteenth time that the nation faces some $60t in Social Security and Medicare unfunded liabilities alone.
We’ve heard time and again conservatives say deficits don’t matter. To say that deficits don’t matter is like saying ketchup is a vegetable or trees cause pollution.
The $406b we pay annually in interest on the $9t in federal debt alone would rank as the world’s 30th biggest economy.
That annual interest cost surpasses the gross domestic product of Belgium, and is bigger than the GDP of Denmark and Hungary combined. The $406b would cover the annual cost of investigating Medicare fraud.
Stack all those one dollar bills making up our $9t deficit (and that doesn’t include the $60t in unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security) and you would reach the moon and back. “Printing money cannot create wealth, if it could counterfeiting would be legal,” economist Brian Wesbury has said.
Even Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and a forceful advocate for laissez-faire economics, got so sick of the way central bankers were willy nilly printing money in the ‘70s, he advocated that the government should replace the Federal Reserve with a computer. “Money is too important to be left to central bankers,” he quipped.
Broad zoom: The US economy has spent all of a year and four months in a downturn over the last two and a half decades. During that time we’ve seen a market crash of 22% in 1987, the S%26amp;L crisis, four wars, three financial crises (Mexico, Asian flu and Russian debt crises), the blow up of the hedge fund Long Term Capital, two asset bubbles (dot com and telecom). Since the Bush tax cuts of 2003, the US economy added the equivalent of China’s GDP–and government spending has boomed.
Now Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has both cut rates at a breakneck speed and pumped a massive amount of monetary stimulus into the markets to cure the credit crisis. I still think he is doing his level best to fix a crisis not entirely of his own making. The question now is, will Bernanke yank the liquidity punch bowl when the economy returns to trend growth in 2010 or 2011 as the central bank projects?
Let’s hope so, because the case for a weak dollar is, to me, well, weak. Namely, that a lame greenback softens the housing and credit crises as it fuels profits at US exporters whose goods are now dirt cheap in the eyes of foreign customers. Strong foreign sales at places like Boeing and Caterpillar reportedly added 1.4% to US growth in the second quarter of 2007. But exports make up just 13% of GDP. Consumers make up a larger 70%.
It’s no surprise consumer confidence is as weak as it was in the ’70s. LBJ had promised this country it could have both guns and butter in the ‘60s, so the Federal Reserve gunned the printing presses to pay for spending on entitlement programs and for the Vietnam war. For the first time, too, politicians got their mitts on taxpayers’ Social Security funds, after Democrats passed a so-called “unified budget” in the late ‘60s.
All that spending caused the dollar to nosedive in the 1970s amidst an oil embargo that sent oil costs, priced in dollars, soaring. Paul Volcker, then Fed chairman, enacted rapid rate hikes hitting 21% by 1979, and the Treasury went so far as to sell $6.4b in “Carter bonds,” largely denominated in Deutschemarks, to prop up the dollar. Gold got ripped off its mooring of an average $35 an ounce in the ‘70s, and in 1980 it hit a record $835 an ounce, around $2,250 in today’s prices.
Gold acts as a dew line for inflation. We essentially have a good handle on how much gold there is in the world and potentially below ground. When gold rises in price, it signals we are printing too many dollars, which indicates a concurrent drop in the greenback’s value. Over the last seven years, gold and oil prices have risen in lockstep, up 239% and 267% respectively. If the dollar had also risen in value at the same rate, oil would be selling at about $30 a barrel.
But now central bankers say that because of the weak dollar, they’ve seen capital losses carved out of an estimated $3.34t worth of US dollars they hold in foreign currency reserves; Japan holds the most dollars, China is second. The fear is they may unload these plunging greenbacks en masse to cut their losses and run–which would really tip the US into a protracted recession. Already reports out of China show government officials there willing to rotate future planned investments out of US treasurys into other investments.
Countries pegged to the dollar are rightly saying, too, that we are exporting inflation to their shores. Saudi Arabia is a land that has had nearly zero inflation since 1998, but recently inflation soared to 7% annually, despite the fact the country is flush with petrodollars.
Congressman Paul rightfully warns us when he says the US government has “systematically undermined” the US dollar by expanding “the money supply at will for financing war or manipulating the economy with little resistance from Congress–while benefiting the special interests that influence government.”
It’s not just the US gunning the mints. Goldman Sachs figures that three-fifths of the world’s broad money supply growth came from emerging economies over the past year or so. Three-fifths. That’s gigantic.
Goldman Sachs says the growth in Russia’s M3 measure of broad money grew 51% over the last year or so, India by 24%, and by 20% in China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Brazil. That’s three times as fast as the US and the rest of the developed world, and it’s faster than their GDP growth rates. It’s the fastest pace in decades.
All that loose money is pouring into commodities, stock exchanges around the planet as well as bond markets–it’s largely why our long-term bond yields have been historically low, spurring a dramatic increase in mortgage borrowing, as mortgage rates typically track the 10-year Treasury note.
Watch out here–emerging economies are just as susceptible to minting lots of money due to political pressures, including things like paying for wars, or calming local populations clamoring for higher pay and more jobs.
What can be done stateside?
The administration needs to state more emphatically that it supports a strong dollar. A stronger dollar would draw liquidity back into the credit markets, lower inflation risks, cut oil prices and restart economic growth, notes Bear Stearns economist David Malpass.
Presidential candidates vilify NAFTA and free trade, when the weak dollar is partly to blame for problems like jobs lost to overseas operations, Malpass adds.
“Empires fail because they run out of money, or more accurately, run out of the ability to spend or inflate,” Congressman Paul warns. “We need to control spending, immediately, before it is too late.”
Now that the real problems facing america can%26#039;t be so easily hiden,?
Ron Paul cannot garner more than 4% in Republican Primaries. He will get less than that in the General Election.
Reply:Ron Paul will lose the election.
Why not concentrate on a Republican who can win the election?
I recommend that you spend your time working for John McCain.
John Mccain is a Republican who can win.
Ron Paul has no chance.
Reply:Unfortunately, the average American doesn%26#039;t understand the broad scope of our economic system. Most won%26#039;t even attempt to unless they have been directly impacted. In our en devour to have %26quot;hope%26quot; many close their minds to such information and others still will dismiss it as just another %26quot;fear tactic.%26quot;
I applaud and encourage you to keep the message alive.
Reply:Why should Ron Paul run as an independent, when the Libertarian Party would be more than happy to allow him to run on their ticket? The Libertarian Party already is mostly through the process of getting on the ballot in every state, whereas any independent candidate would have to go through the whole petitioning process for all 50 states, which is often fails (I believe Ralph Nader has never been on all state ballots, not even under the Green Party%26#039;s ticket.)
The only significant policy difference is on immigration: Libertarian%26#039;s do not believe in building fences on the border .. they can say it%26#039;s purpose is to keep people out, but not too long ago, the Berlin Wall was there to keep people IN.
But even on immigration there is a lot of overlap .. Ron Paul and Libertarians believe the first step in dealing with immigration is to improve the US economy and END the free lunch of social services to these people.
Really surprised to see a poster here asking Ron Paul supporters to vote for McCain .. c%26#039;mon. The BIG issue here, McCain is a strong advocate for the Iraq War (and other such ideas) while Ron Paul was against this from day #1.
The Republican establishment all but brushed off Ron Paul%26#039;s candidacy as unacceptable because of this very issue, and so likewise the Republicans should not be shocked that Ron Paul Republicans will refuse to support their candidate against Obama.
Reply:A strong dollar will hurt American exports. Without careful management all that powering the dollar up will do is to increase the deficit by making it more expensive for people in foreign countries to purchase American products.
Money will leave the country but less will come back in.
beauty
even fox is talking about how right he is
Time to Listen to Ron Paul?
By Elizabeth MacDonald
Time to listen to Texas Congressman Ron Paul, the lone voice of reason in Congress today who’s got to feel like he’s shouting into a field of cotton with his repeated warnings about the dangers of a collapsing dollar, while the administration goes AWOL on the problem.
The dollar just hit a record intraday low against the euro on reports that consumer confidence levels have dropped to levels not seen since the post-Watergate era. It is down 7% year to date against the Chinese renminbi, it’s weaker than the Japanese yen and the Canadian loonie.
The joke is the greenback is now only stronger than the Mexican pesos and the Zimbabwe dollar, an overstatement for dramatic effect, to be sure.But since hitting a peak in 2002, the dollar has lost about a quarter of its value against a trade weighted basket of currencies.
A weak dollar acts as an anvil around the neck of the US economy and consumers. Rising inflation is essentially a tax on consumers, so are rising energy prices, and that double whammy threatens to undermine the purchasing power of the rebate checks due out in May–backed by printing even more dollars.
A bellwether event of significant import to our nation’s finances happened this past January 1 with little notice. That’s the day the first baby boomer was allowed to retire. A new federal report wearily warns once again for the umpteenth time that the nation faces some $60t in Social Security and Medicare unfunded liabilities alone.
We’ve heard time and again conservatives say deficits don’t matter. To say that deficits don’t matter is like saying ketchup is a vegetable or trees cause pollution.
The $406b we pay annually in interest on the $9t in federal debt alone would rank as the world’s 30th biggest economy.
That annual interest cost surpasses the gross domestic product of Belgium, and is bigger than the GDP of Denmark and Hungary combined. The $406b would cover the annual cost of investigating Medicare fraud.
Stack all those one dollar bills making up our $9t deficit (and that doesn’t include the $60t in unfunded liabilities for Medicare and Social Security) and you would reach the moon and back. “Printing money cannot create wealth, if it could counterfeiting would be legal,” economist Brian Wesbury has said.
Even Milton Friedman, the Nobel Prize-winning economist and a forceful advocate for laissez-faire economics, got so sick of the way central bankers were willy nilly printing money in the ‘70s, he advocated that the government should replace the Federal Reserve with a computer. “Money is too important to be left to central bankers,” he quipped.
Broad zoom: The US economy has spent all of a year and four months in a downturn over the last two and a half decades. During that time we’ve seen a market crash of 22% in 1987, the S%26amp;L crisis, four wars, three financial crises (Mexico, Asian flu and Russian debt crises), the blow up of the hedge fund Long Term Capital, two asset bubbles (dot com and telecom). Since the Bush tax cuts of 2003, the US economy added the equivalent of China’s GDP–and government spending has boomed.
Now Federal Reserve chairman Ben Bernanke has both cut rates at a breakneck speed and pumped a massive amount of monetary stimulus into the markets to cure the credit crisis. I still think he is doing his level best to fix a crisis not entirely of his own making. The question now is, will Bernanke yank the liquidity punch bowl when the economy returns to trend growth in 2010 or 2011 as the central bank projects?
Let’s hope so, because the case for a weak dollar is, to me, well, weak. Namely, that a lame greenback softens the housing and credit crises as it fuels profits at US exporters whose goods are now dirt cheap in the eyes of foreign customers. Strong foreign sales at places like Boeing and Caterpillar reportedly added 1.4% to US growth in the second quarter of 2007. But exports make up just 13% of GDP. Consumers make up a larger 70%.
It’s no surprise consumer confidence is as weak as it was in the ’70s. LBJ had promised this country it could have both guns and butter in the ‘60s, so the Federal Reserve gunned the printing presses to pay for spending on entitlement programs and for the Vietnam war. For the first time, too, politicians got their mitts on taxpayers’ Social Security funds, after Democrats passed a so-called “unified budget” in the late ‘60s.
All that spending caused the dollar to nosedive in the 1970s amidst an oil embargo that sent oil costs, priced in dollars, soaring. Paul Volcker, then Fed chairman, enacted rapid rate hikes hitting 21% by 1979, and the Treasury went so far as to sell $6.4b in “Carter bonds,” largely denominated in Deutschemarks, to prop up the dollar. Gold got ripped off its mooring of an average $35 an ounce in the ‘70s, and in 1980 it hit a record $835 an ounce, around $2,250 in today’s prices.
Gold acts as a dew line for inflation. We essentially have a good handle on how much gold there is in the world and potentially below ground. When gold rises in price, it signals we are printing too many dollars, which indicates a concurrent drop in the greenback’s value. Over the last seven years, gold and oil prices have risen in lockstep, up 239% and 267% respectively. If the dollar had also risen in value at the same rate, oil would be selling at about $30 a barrel.
But now central bankers say that because of the weak dollar, they’ve seen capital losses carved out of an estimated $3.34t worth of US dollars they hold in foreign currency reserves; Japan holds the most dollars, China is second. The fear is they may unload these plunging greenbacks en masse to cut their losses and run–which would really tip the US into a protracted recession. Already reports out of China show government officials there willing to rotate future planned investments out of US treasurys into other investments.
Countries pegged to the dollar are rightly saying, too, that we are exporting inflation to their shores. Saudi Arabia is a land that has had nearly zero inflation since 1998, but recently inflation soared to 7% annually, despite the fact the country is flush with petrodollars.
Congressman Paul rightfully warns us when he says the US government has “systematically undermined” the US dollar by expanding “the money supply at will for financing war or manipulating the economy with little resistance from Congress–while benefiting the special interests that influence government.”
It’s not just the US gunning the mints. Goldman Sachs figures that three-fifths of the world’s broad money supply growth came from emerging economies over the past year or so. Three-fifths. That’s gigantic.
Goldman Sachs says the growth in Russia’s M3 measure of broad money grew 51% over the last year or so, India by 24%, and by 20% in China, Saudi Arabia, South Africa and Brazil. That’s three times as fast as the US and the rest of the developed world, and it’s faster than their GDP growth rates. It’s the fastest pace in decades.
All that loose money is pouring into commodities, stock exchanges around the planet as well as bond markets–it’s largely why our long-term bond yields have been historically low, spurring a dramatic increase in mortgage borrowing, as mortgage rates typically track the 10-year Treasury note.
Watch out here–emerging economies are just as susceptible to minting lots of money due to political pressures, including things like paying for wars, or calming local populations clamoring for higher pay and more jobs.
What can be done stateside?
The administration needs to state more emphatically that it supports a strong dollar. A stronger dollar would draw liquidity back into the credit markets, lower inflation risks, cut oil prices and restart economic growth, notes Bear Stearns economist David Malpass.
Presidential candidates vilify NAFTA and free trade, when the weak dollar is partly to blame for problems like jobs lost to overseas operations, Malpass adds.
“Empires fail because they run out of money, or more accurately, run out of the ability to spend or inflate,” Congressman Paul warns. “We need to control spending, immediately, before it is too late.”
Now that the real problems facing america can%26#039;t be so easily hiden,?
Ron Paul cannot garner more than 4% in Republican Primaries. He will get less than that in the General Election.
Reply:Ron Paul will lose the election.
Why not concentrate on a Republican who can win the election?
I recommend that you spend your time working for John McCain.
John Mccain is a Republican who can win.
Ron Paul has no chance.
Reply:Unfortunately, the average American doesn%26#039;t understand the broad scope of our economic system. Most won%26#039;t even attempt to unless they have been directly impacted. In our en devour to have %26quot;hope%26quot; many close their minds to such information and others still will dismiss it as just another %26quot;fear tactic.%26quot;
I applaud and encourage you to keep the message alive.
Reply:Why should Ron Paul run as an independent, when the Libertarian Party would be more than happy to allow him to run on their ticket? The Libertarian Party already is mostly through the process of getting on the ballot in every state, whereas any independent candidate would have to go through the whole petitioning process for all 50 states, which is often fails (I believe Ralph Nader has never been on all state ballots, not even under the Green Party%26#039;s ticket.)
The only significant policy difference is on immigration: Libertarian%26#039;s do not believe in building fences on the border .. they can say it%26#039;s purpose is to keep people out, but not too long ago, the Berlin Wall was there to keep people IN.
But even on immigration there is a lot of overlap .. Ron Paul and Libertarians believe the first step in dealing with immigration is to improve the US economy and END the free lunch of social services to these people.
Really surprised to see a poster here asking Ron Paul supporters to vote for McCain .. c%26#039;mon. The BIG issue here, McCain is a strong advocate for the Iraq War (and other such ideas) while Ron Paul was against this from day #1.
The Republican establishment all but brushed off Ron Paul%26#039;s candidacy as unacceptable because of this very issue, and so likewise the Republicans should not be shocked that Ron Paul Republicans will refuse to support their candidate against Obama.
Reply:A strong dollar will hurt American exports. Without careful management all that powering the dollar up will do is to increase the deficit by making it more expensive for people in foreign countries to purchase American products.
Money will leave the country but less will come back in.
beauty
Speaking veganistically . . .?
where can I find vegan underwear? I%26#039;m sure the elastic contains animal products in the chemical composition even though the rest of it is cotton.
I%26#039;ve tried going without underwear but I leave skidmarks in my hemp pants. I%26#039;m trying to save trees so I use only one square of toilet paper per %26quot;sitting%26quot; which doesn%26#039;t help the skidmark problem. Any suggestions would be helpful.
Speaking veganistically . . .?
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHAHAAH
your awesome.
Reply:**** out in the woods and use leaves.
Reply:We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves. ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld
(To those unaware, he%26#039;s posing as the real veganconscript)
Reply:Dude, if your that drunk, how did you find your computer?
Reply:This person is an imposter.
This is the profile of the real veganconscript:
http://answers.yahoo.com/my/profile;_ylt...
Reply:maybe you could try girls panties with no elastic, they are also soft and silky to give you added comfort, and a lot of them have that cotton patch in them, that will help with the skid mark problem.
Reply:switch to FRUIT-of-looms
Reply:honestly? all i can say is that i hope you are joking!! lol
Reply:Ha ha ha ... very amusing.. but how about just wearing a fig leaf ? ........ very environmental
Reply:The real question here is how to stop leaving skid marks in the hemp pants. The answer is obvious. It Depends.
Reply:?
Reply:IMPOSTER!
UR A IMPOSTER!
skin disease
I%26#039;ve tried going without underwear but I leave skidmarks in my hemp pants. I%26#039;m trying to save trees so I use only one square of toilet paper per %26quot;sitting%26quot; which doesn%26#039;t help the skidmark problem. Any suggestions would be helpful.
Speaking veganistically . . .?
HAHAHAHAHHAHAHAHHHAHAAH
your awesome.
Reply:**** out in the woods and use leaves.
Reply:We are so accustomed to disguise ourselves to others that in the end we become disguised to ourselves. ~François Duc de La Rochefoucauld
(To those unaware, he%26#039;s posing as the real veganconscript)
Reply:Dude, if your that drunk, how did you find your computer?
Reply:This person is an imposter.
This is the profile of the real veganconscript:
http://answers.yahoo.com/my/profile;_ylt...
Reply:maybe you could try girls panties with no elastic, they are also soft and silky to give you added comfort, and a lot of them have that cotton patch in them, that will help with the skid mark problem.
Reply:switch to FRUIT-of-looms
Reply:honestly? all i can say is that i hope you are joking!! lol
Reply:Ha ha ha ... very amusing.. but how about just wearing a fig leaf ? ........ very environmental
Reply:The real question here is how to stop leaving skid marks in the hemp pants. The answer is obvious. It Depends.
Reply:?
Reply:IMPOSTER!
UR A IMPOSTER!
skin disease
I want to run away and do whatever l like and do what I have always wanted to do... anyone want to join me?
LOL
I want to climb trees again, skip stones on a pond.... stay up all night eating smores and pop corn.... making hand puppets.... having a picnic on the roof and counting the stars and making fairy tales about them.... I want to pig out on pizza, fondue.... lasagna, spaghetti and mac and cheese.... I want to chase fireflies and row down a grassy knoll and laugh till my tummy hurts... I want to believe that there is only good in the world... and a smile is authentic and genuine... I want to eat cotton candy and carmel corn balls... I want to play hide and seek in the dark and play kick the can. I want to look for where the rainbow ends and find the treasure is marked on my heart.... I want to sing silly and not care whom is listening... I want to jump off a wall and not be afraid of scratching my knees and that I might fall.... I want to run as fast as I can so that when I leap I can feel like flying.... I want to lay on the grass and look up at the clouds above and believe again..
I want to run away and do whatever l like and do what I have always wanted to do... anyone want to join me?
While reading this, I promise you..I had tears in my eyes. I want to run away with you and do all that! Come pick me up PLEASEEEE
Reply:Me too lol! I want to belive that dreams DO come true...that I`m going to have a happy ending.....but the which who sent me to your new york world this place never has a happly ever after.. :( ohh, are you sad? oh no...*sobs* this is just so sad..
Reply:To quote Bon Jovi %26quot; I haven%26#039;t had a bad day since the doctor spanked my a**%26quot;
LIVE........Like you only have 1 life
LAUGH...Till your belly hurts
LOVE......Unconditionally
It%26#039;s already there.
Reply:I DO BELIEVE IN FAIRYS! I DO BELIEVE IN FAIRYS!
Reply:I do too!*!*!*! :*)
Reply:I wish I could join u in all these moments....but would it be really possible...can we leave all our responsiblities and go for a life where we can do all we wish without caring for anything and anybody?
Reply:So what did your parents punish you for this time?
Reply:Why don%26#039;t you do those things? There is no age limit in childish pleasures!
Reply:please take me with you. im ready to leave now.
Reply:i know what you mean, i feel the same way.
Reply:Sounds like that Twilight Zone episode %26quot;Kick The Can%26quot;. It was the one where folks at a senior citizens complex started playing a version of hide and seek and got younger with each time they did it. Maybe returning to some of the things that we did when younger can help us all age slower? I%26#039;m over fifty and remember simpler times. A camping trip with family/friends seemed to do the trick. We didn%26#039;t need loads of money, drug-induced stupor or exotic destinations to achieve happiness. There is too much emphasis on %26quot;growing up%26quot;, competing in the workplace and instant gratification
(financial and otherwise) today. We have all become slaves to the technology we have created! People need to get back to the basics and to simplify their lives.
TO REBECCA: You are my kind of gal!
computer
I want to climb trees again, skip stones on a pond.... stay up all night eating smores and pop corn.... making hand puppets.... having a picnic on the roof and counting the stars and making fairy tales about them.... I want to pig out on pizza, fondue.... lasagna, spaghetti and mac and cheese.... I want to chase fireflies and row down a grassy knoll and laugh till my tummy hurts... I want to believe that there is only good in the world... and a smile is authentic and genuine... I want to eat cotton candy and carmel corn balls... I want to play hide and seek in the dark and play kick the can. I want to look for where the rainbow ends and find the treasure is marked on my heart.... I want to sing silly and not care whom is listening... I want to jump off a wall and not be afraid of scratching my knees and that I might fall.... I want to run as fast as I can so that when I leap I can feel like flying.... I want to lay on the grass and look up at the clouds above and believe again..
I want to run away and do whatever l like and do what I have always wanted to do... anyone want to join me?
While reading this, I promise you..I had tears in my eyes. I want to run away with you and do all that! Come pick me up PLEASEEEE
Reply:Me too lol! I want to belive that dreams DO come true...that I`m going to have a happy ending.....but the which who sent me to your new york world this place never has a happly ever after.. :( ohh, are you sad? oh no...*sobs* this is just so sad..
Reply:To quote Bon Jovi %26quot; I haven%26#039;t had a bad day since the doctor spanked my a**%26quot;
LIVE........Like you only have 1 life
LAUGH...Till your belly hurts
LOVE......Unconditionally
It%26#039;s already there.
Reply:I DO BELIEVE IN FAIRYS! I DO BELIEVE IN FAIRYS!
Reply:I do too!*!*!*! :*)
Reply:I wish I could join u in all these moments....but would it be really possible...can we leave all our responsiblities and go for a life where we can do all we wish without caring for anything and anybody?
Reply:So what did your parents punish you for this time?
Reply:Why don%26#039;t you do those things? There is no age limit in childish pleasures!
Reply:please take me with you. im ready to leave now.
Reply:i know what you mean, i feel the same way.
Reply:Sounds like that Twilight Zone episode %26quot;Kick The Can%26quot;. It was the one where folks at a senior citizens complex started playing a version of hide and seek and got younger with each time they did it. Maybe returning to some of the things that we did when younger can help us all age slower? I%26#039;m over fifty and remember simpler times. A camping trip with family/friends seemed to do the trick. We didn%26#039;t need loads of money, drug-induced stupor or exotic destinations to achieve happiness. There is too much emphasis on %26quot;growing up%26quot;, competing in the workplace and instant gratification
(financial and otherwise) today. We have all become slaves to the technology we have created! People need to get back to the basics and to simplify their lives.
TO REBECCA: You are my kind of gal!
computer
How do I get birds to nibble on my nut sacks?
It%26#039;s not what you think!
I have put up some bags of nuts n seeds for the little birds. No birds have cottoned on yet and my sacks are still full. How do i attract them to have a nibble?
They are on a young tree and the branches tend to sway easily.
How do I get birds to nibble on my nut sacks?
I find the best bird feed is sunflower hearts,click link below to see pictures of birds in my garden.
http://s154.photobucket.com/albums/s277/...
Reply:sprinkle some bread crumbs round the bottom
...................of the tree
Reply:what in da hell iz you talkin bout??
yo ballz
Reply:Haha I dont care bout the details, thats funny as f**k
Reply:coat them with suet
Reply:rub peanut butter on your nads
Reply:buy her half of lager
Reply:it seems that the birds in my hood only like sunflower seed. the will not eat anything else.
Reply:I think it depends a lot on the birds. I had 5 budgies at one time and old one of them was adventurous enough to try new treats.
Reply:I don%26#039;t have an answer, but OMG that%26#039;s friggen hilarious!! I%26#039;m sure every man would like to know the answer if you find one! LOL Good luck! ;)
PS: Have you tried buying suet instead?
Reply:Put them on a higher branch away from cats
Reply:get them drunk
Reply:put a little peanut butter on the bags. peanut butter attracts them at times because of the fatty content. birds need all the fat they can get because of their scrawny diet. you might want to move the bags to a sturdier branch. the movement of the bags might not encourage the birds%26#039; interest in eating from them.
Reply:first spread the branches wide then apply a generous amount of honey on the sacs
Reply:hmmmm take off your pants
dental
I have put up some bags of nuts n seeds for the little birds. No birds have cottoned on yet and my sacks are still full. How do i attract them to have a nibble?
They are on a young tree and the branches tend to sway easily.
How do I get birds to nibble on my nut sacks?
I find the best bird feed is sunflower hearts,click link below to see pictures of birds in my garden.
http://s154.photobucket.com/albums/s277/...
Reply:sprinkle some bread crumbs round the bottom
...................of the tree
Reply:what in da hell iz you talkin bout??
yo ballz
Reply:Haha I dont care bout the details, thats funny as f**k
Reply:coat them with suet
Reply:rub peanut butter on your nads
Reply:buy her half of lager
Reply:it seems that the birds in my hood only like sunflower seed. the will not eat anything else.
Reply:I think it depends a lot on the birds. I had 5 budgies at one time and old one of them was adventurous enough to try new treats.
Reply:I don%26#039;t have an answer, but OMG that%26#039;s friggen hilarious!! I%26#039;m sure every man would like to know the answer if you find one! LOL Good luck! ;)
PS: Have you tried buying suet instead?
Reply:Put them on a higher branch away from cats
Reply:get them drunk
Reply:put a little peanut butter on the bags. peanut butter attracts them at times because of the fatty content. birds need all the fat they can get because of their scrawny diet. you might want to move the bags to a sturdier branch. the movement of the bags might not encourage the birds%26#039; interest in eating from them.
Reply:first spread the branches wide then apply a generous amount of honey on the sacs
Reply:hmmmm take off your pants
dental
Where Should I move?
I really like winter, and fall seasons. I absolutely hate the summers in Chico, we get up into the hundreds. I%26#039;m a tweed skirt, cotton stockings, scarf, and clogs kinda girl. I don%26#039;t really like snow but it would be better than this. I want to live somewhere with lots of trees and old houses. I don%26#039;t like the city. I just want to move somewhere where I can live in an old house surrounded by fall leaves and cold weather while I teach. But I don%26#039;t want to move too too far from my family in California is Oregon the right place for me? Or are there any other places you can think of that fits that description?
thanx
Where Should I move?
Eugene, OR...Beautiful, laid back, safe...Check it out.
Reply:the only place i can think of is southern ky and tenn. it is so pretty in the mountains in fall i love it but you said you dont want to move away from your family
Reply:It%26#039;s expensive for rent but Palo Alto, Mountain View Sunnyvale or Los altos in the SF Bay Area. Lots of trees, cool weather almost year round and very safe. There are some historic houses and old neighborhoods there as well.
Reply:I was going to suggest Virginia but it might be a little far for you.
Payday Loan
thanx
Where Should I move?
Eugene, OR...Beautiful, laid back, safe...Check it out.
Reply:the only place i can think of is southern ky and tenn. it is so pretty in the mountains in fall i love it but you said you dont want to move away from your family
Reply:It%26#039;s expensive for rent but Palo Alto, Mountain View Sunnyvale or Los altos in the SF Bay Area. Lots of trees, cool weather almost year round and very safe. There are some historic houses and old neighborhoods there as well.
Reply:I was going to suggest Virginia but it might be a little far for you.
Payday Loan
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