Bill Clinton’s program had such promise, a pair of $200 sneakers and some cool moves…

The U.S. economic recession has taken a particularly heavy toll on young Americans, with a record one out five black men aged 20 to 24 neither working nor in school, according to research released on Tuesday.

Teenagers have found it significantly harder to get a job since the recession began in late 2007, with black youths and young people from low-income families faring the worst, wrote Andrew Sum of Northeastern University in Boston, a employment researcher commissioned by the Chicago Urban League and the Alternative Schools Network. [snip]

Joblessness was particularly rife among high school dropouts aged 16 to 24 who were neither in school nor holding a job, the report said. Family income also had a influence on joblessness. [snip]

Among the proposals the report supported were government-funded jobs programs directed at the young, additional funding to help re-enroll school dropouts, and government-funded expansions of work internships.

Guess the high scores in mid-night basketball and great self-esteem didn’t induce the NBA to call.
Liberal scumbags lied again!

How about requiring all students to actually learn to read and do math instead of feeling good. Dump the social engineering crap from the schools; track students so that the smart ones are challenged and the slower ones get the help. Perhaps, schools will become places of learning once again, not indoctrination pits.

You won’t need to worry about THIS CRAP on the plane.
The new methods will shut down the airlines! Where are they going to screen this baggage, at HOME?

First, find some local radicalized jihadist to load up his rolling suitcase with go-boom material and walk into the screening area. Far more than can be taken on the plane.
Push the button and…

BANG!

Since freight (FedEx, UPS and other shippers don’t get heavily screened, shipping neat GO-BOOM items this way will definitely put a damper on the mail, business and travelers who send baggage ahead to avoid the hassles at check-in; plus the baggage on the airlines doesn’t get the attention it should because of time. Ship 15 or 20 packages at one time-you’ll get planes and terminals costing millions of dollars plus countless casualties.

Let us see what Baracky Obozo does with that scenario.

Jamie Gorelick, working with the idiots in Clinton Justice Department, did more to enable these terrorist acts to continue…

Gannon also pushed a story about how Republicans felt a Democratic member of the 9/11 had “personal baggage”–that she had written a memorandum while working for the Clinton Justice Department advocating a wall between the law enforcement and intelligence communities.

On April 29, 2004, Gannon asked White House Press Secretary Scott McClellan asking if the president shared an opinion that “the
work of the 9/11 Commission won’t be complete until and unless Jamie Gorelick testifies before the commission on her role in building the wall between intelligence and law enforcement.” [snip]

Clinton Administration

Bill Clinton and his administration systematically undermined America’s national security by emasculating the U.S. military and the nation’s intelligence agencies [snip]

You wonder why we have the problems we have?
Look no further than the clowns in charge in DC. 

Paulson started this massive theft of taxpayer money with TARP.
You can thank the current empty suit in the Oval Office for doubling down on a sucker bet (not to him, it’s not his money) that will prove to bury future taxpayers for years to come.

The Cash for Clunkers boondoggle cost $24,000 per car and removed vehicles from the road that low income families could afford to buy.
CIT files bankruptcy which WAS on the hook to the taxpayers for $2.3 billion ± a few cents. Now Bernanke and Geithner can help their buds on the street without shame. They’ll tell folks they’re signing them up for food stamps.

Subprime Mortgages
[snip]
Peek, 62, who joined CIT in 2003 after failing to land the top job at Merrill Lynch & Co., pushed the lender into subprime mortgages and student loans to pump up growth.
[snip]

Sniff–sniff–sniff, does this smell like a Frank, Dodd, Conrad Congress Donkey mess?

If you think the Obama/Biden Economic Recovery Miracle Medicine Show plays to rave reviews,read the important critical columns.

Mother of all carry trades faces an inevitable bust

By Nouriel Roubini
Published: November 1 2009 18:44 | Last updated: November 1 2009 18:44
[snip]
This recovery in risky assets is in part driven by better economic fundamentals. We avoided a near depression and financial sector meltdown with a massive monetary, fiscal stimulus and bank bail-outs. Whether the recovery is V-shaped, as consensus believes, or U-shaped and anaemic as I have argued, asset prices should be moving gradually higher.

But while the US and global economy have begun a modest recovery, asset prices have gone through the roof since March in a major and synchronised rally. While asset prices were falling sharply in 2008, when the dollar was rallying, they have recovered sharply since March while the dollar is tanking. Risky asset prices have risen too much, too soon and too fast compared with macroeconomic fundamentals. [snip]

But one day this bubble will burst, leading to the biggest co-ordinated asset bust ever: if factors lead the dollar to reverse and suddenly appreciate – as was seen in previous reversals, such as the yen-funded carry trade – the leveraged carry trade will have to be suddenly closed as investors cover their dollar shorts. A stampede will occur as closing long leveraged risky asset positions across all asset classes funded by dollar shorts triggers a co-ordinated collapse of all those risky assets – equities, commodities, emerging market asset classes and credit instruments.

Why will these carry trades unravel? First, the dollar cannot fall to zero and at some point it will stabilise; when that happens the cost of borrowing in dollars will suddenly become zero, rather than highly negative, and the riskiness of a reversal of dollar movements would induce many to cover their shorts. Second, the Fed cannot suppress volatility forever – its $1,800bn purchase plan will be over by next spring. Third, if US growth surprises on the upside in the third and fourth quarters, markets may start to expect a Fed tightening to come sooner, not later. Fourth, there could be a flight from risk prompted by fear of a double dip recession or geopolitical risks, such as a military confrontation between the US/Israel and Iran. As in 2008, when such a rise in risk aversion was associated with a sharp appreciation of the dollar, as investors sought the safety of US Treasuries, this renewed risk aversion would trigger a dollar rally at a time when huge short dollar positions will have to be closed. [snip]

Of course your own personal piece of the pie is here: The National Debt Clock.

Here you can see just how well and truly this government has screwed you!

When Kim Jong Il released those reporters, I would have bet big money that Bill Clinton sweetened the deal for him. Unless I miss my guess, we got confirmation of that today:

The US shifted its policy today, saying it is now willing to meet one on one with North Korea if that is helpful to bring Pyongyang back to the nuclear negotiations.

Just call this foreign policy done the Chicago way.  You scratch President Obama’s back, and he’ll return the favor. 

Of course, all this gamesmanship won’t amount to anything.  The simple fact is that Kim has far more power with his nukes than without.  They aren’t going to give them up.

Humorous economics

The dismal science is not supposed to have lead characters as buffoons. Reading this interview in Fortune Magazine leaves one with total incredulity. It will however, go to an astonishing degree in explaining that conclave of clowns leading banking and investing since FDR.
Here’s a “Master of the Universe” telling us he didn’t know what was going on. Who is this maven? Does the name Robert Rubin ring a bell? After reading this, the only place you’ll think he’s qualified to work is Notre Dame as, you guessed it…

The reluctant chairman tells Fortune’s Carol Loomis why Citi didn’t see the subprime mess coming.

Keep a barf bag handy.

Here is another video that shows how democrat policies, including the actions of Barack Obama, led us to the current financial crisis. Ed Morrissey breaks it down here.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ivmL-lXNy64

Forward it along to all of your friends. Previous videos are here, here, and here.

“It is to be regretted that the rich and powerful too often bend the acts of government to their selfish purposes.”
Andrew Jackson

Have a good look at what is happening in DC now.

This is the mess you get when the balance isn’t. It isn’t Donks and Republicants.It is Liberals and RINO’s voting to spend like drunks on social programs with no accountability; robbing one program to pay for another.

Now that Congress put the taxpayer out to dry, from where comes the money to pay for Medicare which is in the hole now. Social Security which is teetering on the edge and the prescription drug plan, you remember the one EVERYBODY clamored for, is in the red zone from the start.
Liberals and RINO’s, tell me your plan to pay the interest on T-Bills held by other countries? What are you going to do if they wish to cash in to ease their problems?
Now to the banking mess.

The fiasco we face does have a beginning and a time line of a perceptibly short duration.
We only look back to 1988, to a Democrat controlled congress. There is some Republican complicity too, in the FED by Greenspan and in Treasury. We need some names at which to point fingers; here is an ample supply. For the chimpy Loveable Liberal ALL are annotated to save you calling out bias, racist or liar. Makes the info easy for you, links to the WaPo, which as we know, is NOT biased.
Here’s the progression.

In 1990, the Fed, under former J.P. Morgan director Alan Greenspan, permitted guess who–J.P. Morgan–to become the first bank allowed to underwrite securities. [snip]
Four legislative attempts were made to weaken or repeal parts of Glass-Steagall from 1988-1996. One reason they failed is because smaller banks feared that opening the doors to allow banks to trade in securities would lead to the domination of larger banks–a fate that has come to pass.
The biggest change came in 1996 when Alan Greenspan issued a ruling allowing bank investment affiliates to have up to a quarter of their business in investments. [snip]

In 1986 a young man named Sanford Weill grew bored with Wall Street and purchased one of these subprime lenders, Commercial Credit, a loan company based in Baltimore. In his paper “Banking on Misery Citigroup, Wall Street, and the Fleecing of the South,” Michael Hudson notes Weill drove employees to sell more. [snip]
This kind of practice resulted in multiple lawsuits that surfaced in the late 1990s and early 2000s. Hudson cites one example:

Jackson, Miss., attorney Chris Coffer says, he obtained confidential settlements for about 800 clients with claims against Commercial Credit or its successor, CitiFinancial.

Starting with Commercial, Weill began wheeling and dealing until a little over a decade later he would head the largest financial institution in the world.

The Repeal of Glass Steagall

In the background of the go-go economy, the feeling grew among some economists and the financial community that Glass-Steagall hampered America’s financial competitiveness. Among the many voices favoring this was Alan Greenspan along with former Goldman Sachs partner Robert Rubin, Bill Clinton’s Treasury Secretary. In a 1995 speech and testimony to Congress Rubin signaled the Clinton Administration was ready to repeal Glass-Steagall:

“The banking industry is fundamentally different…[]…domestically, the separation of investment banking and commercial banking envisioned by Glass-Steagall has eroded significantly.”

Anyone who thinks the repeal of Glass-Steagall was forced on an unwilling Bill Clinton need only read Rubin’s testimony. A year later Sandy Weill set in motion the forces that would finally end Glass-Steagall. [snip]

Of course a NY Times photo of the event is with Clinton smiling is worth how many words?

Weill proposed the most audacious financial merger of in American history: he would merge one of the largest insurance companies (Travelers), one of the largest investment banks (Salomon Smith Barney), and the largest commercial banks (Citibank) in America. The problem was the merger was illegal in terms of Glass-Steagall. Independent Community Bankers of America CEO Kenneth Guenther captured the audacity of the deal in an interview with Frontline:

Here you have the leadership — Sandy Weill of Travelers and John Reed of Citicorp — saying, “Look, the Congress isn’t moving fast enough. Let’s do it on our own. …[]… And they pulled this off with the blessings of the president of the United States, President Clinton; the chairman of the Federal Reserve system, Alan Greenspan; and the secretary of the treasury, Robert Rubin.
And then, when it’s all over, what happens? The secretary of the treasury becomes the vice chairman of the emerging Citigroup.

Talk about a sinecure.
Then we have this marvelous statement from the bozo Rubin;

Curiously, one of those converts is none other than Robert Rubin who has stated:

If Wall Street companies can count on being rescued like banks, then they need to be regulated like banks.

Since it was Rubin who played a major role in the deregulation this statement is nothing short of incredulous.
As the record shows, Rubin had a great deal to regret. [snip]

(The link in the quote goes to Paul Krugman who has an antenna full of pigeons)
Before you say it, yes, Gramm was the Chairman of McCain’s committee since tossed off the campaign.

Senate Banking Committee Chair Phil Gramm, House Banking Committee chair James Leach, and Virginia Representative Thomas Bliley introduced bills in the Senate and House under the benign-sounding name of the Financial Services Modernization Act of 1999, becoming the key sponsors of the bill as the Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act,
The Senate voted on this and it passed. Biden voted for the repeal, McCain didn’t vote. 90-8 was the roll call in favor.
Finishing up, here are some questions I’d like answered.
Obama has already stated he would not reinstate Glass-Steagall. When asked Barack Obama notes:
Well, no. The argument is not to go back to the regulatory framework of the 1930’s because, as I said, the financial markets have changed substantially.
Also, four of Obama’s top six contributors include Goldman Sachs, J.P. Morgan and–guess who–Citigroup. Another biggie, Fannie Mae fat cat Franklin Raines chatting up the Obamoe although the Obamoe lies about it. (Get it here in the WaPo)

This mess is getting tougher, not easier and still may crush the economy. While we wait, perhaps Hillary might tell us what she thinks of the repeal of Glass-Steagall; Would she roll back the repeal? It is a toss up between Monica and this for the greater ignominy.

Boston Mayor Thomas Menino:

Mayor Thomas M. Menino said that Hillary Clinton should not run for vice president on a ticket with Barack Obama because her husband, former president Bill Clinton, could cause problems for the new administration.

“If she got back into the White House, she’d bring along Big Daddy, and he would overshadow the president,” Menino said in an interview.

That must be the first time I have ever agreed with Menino.

The media can’t explain Bill Clinton’s fall from grace:

It’s going to be tougher for her husband. The most talented and resilient politician of this generation has damaged his standing with gaffes, political miscalculations and a series of paranoiac, volcanic eruptions.

A common question these days among political heavyweights — including longtime Clinton devotees — is this: How can a guy this smart act so dumb?

The “most talented” politician of his generation never exceeded 50% of the popular vote in either of his presidential runs. And that was with Ross Perot undermining the Republicans on both occasions. His presidency is largely devoid of any long-term, legacy building policy wins. He faced few real challenges, and the major decisions he did make, like ignoring bin Laden and terrorism, were completely incorrect. At best, he was a philanderer, and at worst, he was a rapist. His campaign took money from the Chinese and provided the technology corridor through which their nuclear capabilities soared. And all the while his administration and wife aimlessly bounced from one scandal to another.

The media built the Clinton mystique not on fact, but their own thankfulness that he’d delivered them from 12 years of Republican presidents. Bill Clinton didn’t wake up stupid yesterday. He’s always been this way. It just wasn’t convenient to admit it then.

The media is far to busy building castles in the clouds for Barack Obama to be bothered with Bill Clinton. That explains Bill’s bitterness at the press far more than anything else.  It’s tough going from number one to also ran.

This doesn’t show a great track record of Progressive largess. True to form however, they talked about it so that’s what matters.
Take note that the Clinton’s filed an extension; this allows for “corrections” to the tale if she wins the nomination. If not, no more forms see the light of day! I wonder if the underwear deduction is there?

Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton and former President Bill Clinton released tax data Friday showing they earned $109 million over the last eight years, an ascent into the uppermost tier of American taxpayers…[snip]

The idea that charity begins at home seems to be the Clinton motto.

During that time, the Clintons paid $33.8 million in federal taxes and claimed deductions for $10.2 million in charitable contributions. The contributions went to a family foundation run by the Clintons that has given away only about half of the money they put into it, and most of that was last year, after Mrs. Clinton declared her candidacy. [snip

“Now don’t get me wrong, I have absolutely nothing against rich people,” she said. “As a matter of fact, my husband, much to my surprise and his, has made a lot of money since he left the White House, by doing what he loves doing most — talking to people. But we didn’t ask for George Bush’s tax cuts. We didn’t want them, and we didn’t need them.”

But they made sure they took the deductions. Much akin to Warren Buffet belief Americans should pay more taxes. He didn’t write any extra checks either.
Like most Liberals, when it comes to action, the only part moving is the mouth.

The length of the Democratic Primary is forcing them to stay honest.  In a normal primary, the Democratic candidate would be masking their far left-wing agenda by running to the center.  For example, Bill Clinton promised a middle class tax cut during the ’92 campaign.  Once elected, that tax cut turned into the largest increase in history.

But this election season they don’t have that luxury.  For example, Barack Obama would never be this honest about his disdain for tax cuts if he weren’t still pandering to left-wing voters in the primary: 

“You got a problem with health care: tax cuts. You got problem with education: tax cuts. You got a problem with the economy: tax cuts. Poverty: tax cuts. That’s not a policy, it’s a dogma, a tired and cynical philosophy,” Obama told a crowd of over 17,000.

Hold on to your wallets during an Obama presidency.  Every “solution” he offers on the campaign trail includes more spending, which means less money for you and your family because of higher taxes.  Just replace “tax cuts” with “more taxes” in his quote to get an even more accurate picture of where Barack is coming from.

Barack is going to “unite” us by making us poor.  It’s certainly what you’d expect from the nation’s most liberal senator.

‘Great Distaste’ in Belgrade

Our Embassy Is Burned Over Kosovo

[snip]
Yesterday, as the American Embassy in Belgrade burned, the Associated Press reported that vigilantes set afire a U.N. vehicle in the Serb minority province of Mitrovica on the border between Kosovo and Serbia. Meanwhile, a United Nations-run court building in the province came under attack again from protesters throwing rocks, in what could be an effort from the Serb minority to impose a de facto secession from the newly independent Albanian majority country. [snip]

The street protests are a bitter irony for Mr. Clinton’s foreign policy team especially, considering that the last time protests of that size were seen in Belgrade was in 2000, when Prime Minister Kostunica led marches on the parliament that ultimately forced Milosevic to give up power.

In 2000, Mr. Kostunica was praised as a liberal visionary in Washington. Today he is leading crowds of Serbs in Belgrade insisting that Kosovo remain part of Serbia. [snip]

Maybe we should send in the Archduke to settle this mess.

The flood of articles extolling the virtues of civility and bipartisanship are starting to make me ill.  The last “shamnesty” bill was a bipartisan effort that stopped just short of making the nation of Mexico eligible for welfare.  But hey, some dopey Republicans supported it, so it was “bipartisan”.

But I don’t vote for Republicans so they can get friendly with Ted Kennedy.  I want principled people who know how to fight.  I want stark contrasts and choices.  Make it a choice between a 100% beef hamburger and a veggie burger I say. 

However, homogenized, flavorless politics are all the rage today.  Well, at least the media is in love with the idea.  Of course, the media’s idea of bipartisan is RINOs voting with Democrats. 

And speaking of RINOs, Bill Clinton thinks that John McCain has the bipartisan bug too: 

“She and John McCain are very close,” Clinton said. “They always laugh that if they wound up being the nominees of their party, it would be the most civilized election in American history, and they’re afraid they’d put the voters to sleep because they like and respect each other.”

Those Clintons sure are nice people.  Just ask Barack Obama how “civilized” they are when somebody stands between them and elective office.  Their idea of civilized is hitting someone upside the head with a 2 x 4.  John McCain won’t know what hit him when these 2 smack him during the general election. 

And although I don’t admire the Clintons, I certainly do admire their tenacity, and wish we had some stronger conservatives on our team.  Look at the Democratic choices for just a second and you see 3 committed socialists.  I don’t see one committed conservative on the Republican side.

US braces for baby boom retirement wave

The first of the vast US baby boom generation goes into retirement in January, setting off a demographic tidal wave with wide-ranging economic, political and social implications. [snip]

The cost for government-funded social security and medical care for the boomers leaves a funding gap of between 40 and 76 trillion dollars for next 75 years, according to various estimates. [snip]

Leonard Steinhorn, an American University professor and author of “The Greater Generation: In Defense of the Baby Boom Legacy,” says the generation often wrongly maligned as latte-sipping Yuppies has transformed most of American society.

They sure fooled the rest of the world, didn’t they? Wasn’t the Bonfire of the Vanities their signature piece?

He wrote that boomers have led or sustained most of “the great citizen movements that have advanced American values and freedoms — the environmental movement, the consumer movement, the women’s movement, the civil rights movement, the diversity movement, the human rights movement, the openness in government movement.”

For the civil rights movement, they cannot have credit. They didn’t do that. As for the enviro and women’s movement they can have these, no one else wants credit for those debacles.

He told AFP he expects this transformation to continue as boomers age. “It’s not going to be a generation that’s going to go off to the golf courses and do nothing.”

Of course not, with tanning salons, fern bars and of course spinning classes, there will be no time for the golf course. Tossing  in the requisite nail wrap and the odd Botox shot gives quite a grueling day. How will they ever cope with that schedule?

He said boomers will push politics to a more progressive bent even though that has not yet happened because the more conservative over-60 generation still carries much weight in the electorate.

“Once younger voters begin to replace them, the socially conservative vote will dwindle,” he said. [snip]

The boomer generation is hardly monolithic. For the left side, Hillary is the guidon, so can you spell passé?