GeoPolitical Economic Financial Trends in Perspective
[…]
This is shorter than it is sweet, yet it should be just as easy to serve to connect the dots …as it is easy to see how higher priced commodities (…namely escalating oil and gasoline prices) represent a significant quasi tax-like burden. So, in the same light, what I am about to discuss should be equally easy to see how such (like rising oil and gas prices) also poses a significant threat to drag down a healthy economic recovery …all the more …along with the detrimental affects which are associated with a rise in commodity prices.
So, in like fashion, what I am discussing today, will only serve to highlight the exasperating affects of the above commodity-driven affects’ drag on the economy and …moreover …do so in an additive fashion …rather much like explaining and warning of a more real, clear and present danger’s approach.
Taken together these two real threats pose a significant real punitive tax which is now …as it has been …currently working to threaten recovery …pretty much undetected and unchecked …right under our very noses.
And whether or not these threats are taken separately or aggregately …both, when taken together …will combine to form and work together …as a single matter’s impact …forming a double taxation whose hikes, which …when combined will essentially threaten to erode and reduce expendable discretionary personal income …hampering a badly needed healthy economic recovery.
I do not mean to be pessimistic, but the cards have already been stacked against those who have pretty much have chosen to ignore the facts at the …city, county and state-wide levels of government …that is of course …until recently …as can be evidenced by the forces aligning themselves for the real clash in 2012.
Yet, in spite of what appears to be two eight hundred pound gorillas in the room, Americans have been unwilling to take up the conversation at, in and upon the stages of more locally oriented state-wide levels …and; as such, sadly …a less prudent reason has more than all but avoided a more sobering conversation whose time is long over due.
The Demise of QE-2
Oh, Really?
Speculation and QE-2 Go together like a horse and buggy.
Or was that …like a 1.64 Trillion Dollar deficit and a rather conflicted Federal Reserve?
Or was that like a 3.7 Trillion Dollar Budget and a rather conflicted Congress?
In view of the administration’s disdain for the express will of the people such as became manifest and more than abundantly clear last November…the question remains as to whether or not QE-2 is to go …or stay and become supplanted by what may become QE-3 is anybody’s question …or is it?
Unlike what would otherwise be like a deep black secret …the demise of QE-2 is anything but …beyond top-secret.
Instead, whether QE-2 is to stay or go …is something which Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is not surprisingly …now, more than less …obligated to disclose openly to the likes of Congress …namely, to satisfy the likes of a more than entitled curiosity …the itchy ears …of the likes of those of Senator Ron Pall not withstanding.
The following are two crisis words.
And …if there ever were two words today which have crisis written all over them …they are those uttered in Congress today!
The following two words which were those spoken loud, strong and clear.
The words were part of an address which characterized U.S. Public Debt as “…unsustainable debt …â€
These two words came from The chairman of The Federal Reserve …Ben Bernanke today as the chairman spoke before members of The Senate Banking Committee.
Curiously, what I personally find as being less than sad is Congress’ lack of regard and esteem for tens of millions of voters who …last November, went to the pools to voice their collective, unified singleness of purpose.
By this Ben Bernanke was merely reaffirming the validity of the American voters who sent this massage earlier this last November.
Why should either the President and or Congress need one more man’s word to make the spirit of America’s will any more exact and any more unmistakably clearer?
As such, these two word’s stark reason and reality stand as a slap in my face …all in light of the light-weight approach to this administration’s budget proposal and the Republican-sponsored meager spending cut’s initial proposals.
Such as November’s voice was, such a will can not be allowed to be summarily swept under the rug …dismissed and otherwise marginalizing the will of the American people.
The three year anniversary marking the release and launch of Obama campaign slogan rhetoric; “Yes We Can!” is quickly approaching and one thing America has realized is…
No We Can’t!!!
Take note then, in America’s continued embrace of fiscal irresponsibility …equity markets will experience returns to higher volatility …providing the Treasury the better opportunity it both will be seeking and needing to raise cash …making it easier when it must beat money out of domestic and foreign managed stock market indexes.
Bond markets will not be fooled though, and like recent rises …yields will climb beyond expectations …at alarming rates of change …further squeezing equities at times least expected, or …when treasury needs a fresh infusion …as it will always will become the case …with commodity prices rising in step and then falling according to each and every treasury and European bond auction which will …in turn send waves through international currency markets like a skipping rock’s ripples in an otherwise calm pond.
However, the XLB materials’ index and its components will be anything but calm …and may very well be the rock which is being launched by the likes of artificial programs …the likes of QE-4 QE-5 or 6.
I don’t know; but it kind of looks like a girl.
Sort of reminds me of Ozzy Osbourne’s latest telephone commercial …4G …5G, 6G?
What’s the next greatest thing being flung into the pond Ozzy?
Will it be a fiscally responsible Congress …or just another beaver …er; I mean …Bieber?
To understand the inside joke: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RIKW-3cdDPY
The following is the result of looking for data to support and build my case in a recent real estate tax protest I have filed.
Before you open the link below, read the following short explanation below first.
The following is a look at one of the 20 Metropolitan components which make up the Case-Shiller SPCS20R Housing Price Index. The SPCS20R is a 20-city composite index comprised of 20 major metropolitan areas in the U.S.
The index reflects upon the overall movement of housing prices across the nation in these twenty areas.
Today, I am taking a look back at a letter I wrote Friday, November 21, 2008 dealing with a principal commonly used in bankrupcy proceedings called Cram-Down.
It seems fitting to revisit it to achieve some degree of perspective in view of communities whose municipal bonds’ bond ratings are at risk in the face of of dwindling tax revenue.
And taken in perspective of TARP and various stimulus programs which have been walked through Congress under the pretext that their purpose is aimed at saving community jobs and services, I have to ask; as what point will America become like Germany …less than willing to support the pigs of Europe …those like Portugal Ireland/Italy Greece and Spain?
After all, are the PIGS …all that much different than any number of the hardest hit states here in America?
Without a doubt, The Germans have had to pay an exacting price to pay for reunification …not to mention what the PIGS’ bail-out may wind up costing the quality of their return on social investments.
So, tonight is an opportunity to visit the letter below while asking what are state and local governments doing to maintain tight budgets and exercise fiscal withstraint?
It seems to me that in the face of lowered property values …rising property taxes are a sad social commentary …one in which state and local community governance has thrown away prudence and reason in favor of the opportunity to ignor reality and the consequences of neglect …hoping that no one would take notice.
In that respect, I will introduce my letter by saying; “…pay no attention to the man behind the curtain …” You better pay your taxes, or they might just cram them higher property taxes down your throats.
Cram Down? vs. Higher Property Appraisals & Property Taxes?
Go Figure!
How does that translate to …Spending Cuts?
It doesn’t, does it!?
The following post is a revised form of a short letter that I sent out by e-mailed on Saturday, November 22, 2008.
At the time I originally wrote this, the VIX was at a 15 year high levels …if not, indeed …at an all-time high.
See: investopedia for a definition of the index called …The VIX.
This look back, perhaps is more relavent today than it was then in terms of what world economies are doing now to cope and struggle with how to service their respective sovereign debts and the debt loads which to a degree impinges upon and impacts a government’s annual budgets.
Among the factors mentioned above …there are considerable other weights associated with debt, spending and taxation …which must be juggled and ballanced symulteneously …in order to achieve a measure of responsible fiscal accountability.
To this end, these issues beg the questons as to how to deliver and reduce domestic spending while, at the same time …increase notable measures of austerity in a way so as to adequately address and alliviate the mess of bebt’s growing stresses..
Taking the osterich approach in “WHATEVER” is no longer a healthy option.
And we have to realize that we no longer can ill-afford to; “…have your cake and eat it too …”
Certainly, these difficult tasks conflict more and more withn the frameworks of a social system …one in which a more European public mind-set is historically conditoned …one which became strongly dependant upon looking to the government to deliever publicly chartered, socially mandated, obligatory goods, services and easy hand-out-like solutions.
One needs only look to the riots in Greece to realize what impact austerity has upon a socially conditioned mind-set.
Spare the rod and see what happens to a spoiled child …uh huh.
Yet, austere measures add to the challenge the questions as to how a socialist form of government can deal with its debt issues …while maintaing a grip on the means to coax their economies back to healthy recovery.
So, today in view of the change in leadership in our House of Representatives …I choose to go back into my archives …particularly because, we here in America …have an increasingly wonderful and new opportunity to embrace the new Speaker of the House Mr. John Boehner John Boehner – 8th District of Ohio in all the potential of promise which Mr. Boehner’s acceptance speach holds for America.
For, if he is indeed a man of his words …and I truly believe that he is all that and more; America is now on a track to a more certain properity.
As Representative Boehner declared strongly …he made spending cuts an express matter of America’s top priority.
This primary expression is a credible real opportunity which is cause for cheer and hope in that it brings to the forefront of the national conversation …for the first time …in a long time …the preimenence of an order for a matter of urgent priority …the order of spending cuts …not merely paultry reduced soending.
Mr. Boehner’s deliberate choice characterize this single matter in a recognition of its detrimental nature …and thus, Mr. Speaker declared spending cuts America’s number one matter of extreme urgency.
Therefore, it is refreshingly fitting that his game plan also receive its due recognition as an urgent priority …a plan, which …when placed in motion …will have the wieght, and the substance to produce massive …badly needed inertia.
And this is the sort of potential power …by a measure of which will posses the kenetic energy nesessary to lift heavy burdens off the shoulders of “…We the People …” possibly for the first time in perhaps …over thirty years.
Prosperity is on the way in this sort of game plan people.
And although spending cuts are not an end-all means by allbeit by itself; it is none-the-less …a good front end beginning from which and with which to compliment an approach of a whole host of other private sector incentives.
Public solutions …we just can not afford …nor the time which we have already squandered.
Such private sector combinations …are those solutions which will fill the nation’s tax coffers with needed tax revenue …not generated by debt sources …but by fertile domestic rich resources …organicly derived from an economicly revived incentivized economy.
This kind of approach is full of promise …in ways and means to organically produce hightened economic velocity …robustly grown and aided by offering a cultivated fertile ground …prepared with the fertilzer of favor which efficiently stimulates gowth environments with ecouragement rather than penalty.
In order to grow the economy …the mentality of any sucessful environment condusive of growth …is one which understands the values of attitude and principals of patience …those requiring time between when one sows and the season when one reaps.
Make no doubt, there are cycles and seasons in such.
But they are according to an order which has a priority in a time-honored purpose.
Therefore, make no mistake about the priority of what is esteemed in this order which involves patience and perserverance; in that …he which sows debt …shall reap also sparingly …in that debt, and he which sows bountifully …being a cheerful sower …doing so without necessity …and without obligation (in and with an understanding of incentive) …he shall reap also bountifully.
So let us give by sowing …by planting our seed into our fertile life-giving domestic field’s …into prepared soil …our seeds …seeds which produces return domestically …rather than reward our creditors abroad …those who have been lining up to strip us of ours …an otherwise rightful prosperity and the abundance of all our necessity.
To Speaker Boehner I say; Be not weary in well in well doing Sir, for we know that in due season …we shall reap …if we faint not.
…good measure …press down …shaken together and running over shall men give unto your bossom …
Take heart and enjoy the following look back to November 2008 ….and faint not!!!
Cheers!
Written: November 22, 2008 …partially revised January 06, 2011
> Since when did it become pc for Uncle Sam to believe …that it is in the public’s better interest for the public to shoulder this mess …leaving the tax-payer with the burden to carry …the impact of those its deemed NOT too-big-to-fail?
>
> I would suppose it impossible to expect that the Obama administration would call for an anti-trust suit to break up their ballance sheets.
>
> But maybe the Tea Party could take up the call and make a charge to assail both parts (both sides of the isle in Washington) whose lesser wills have promoted this mess.
>
> After all, if our major body politic won,t take up the fight for “…We the People …” Maybe that which is least willwash our feet instead.