It's just my opinion, I could be wrong

Today, the US House of Representatives passed the "American Clean Energy and Security Act", by a vote of 219-212. This historic legislation not only represents a sweeping change which will mean lots of things to lots of people, and will no doubt be fiercely debated in the Senate (and where I, as someone who is rooting for America to return to prosperity in spite of the Democrats, hope it is killed), but it also is a great example of exactly how politics in this country works today, and pretty much everything which is horribly corrupt and broken with the current system and most of its participants. As such, I figured it would make a good specific case study to examine, in hopes that future governmental systems can be crafted to avoid every single thing involved in coming to this point with this bill. First, let's look at the official name: broad, sweeping, and sounds nice, like something everyone would be in favor of; after all, who doesn't like clean energy and secur...

So I thought this would be a topical post, with the $1,000,000,000 "cash for clunkers" subsidization government waste provision being added to the bill funding our troops overseas (the topic of "riders" on bills will have to wait for another day, although it's probably the single most destructive problem in our government system at the moment). Instead of just saying why this bill is dumb, though (in a departure from my usual rhetoric style), I'd like to examine the effects of government subsidization programs in general, and see if the reader can surmise what I think of this latest effort. First, let's clarify what I mean by a subsidization. In general, this is whenever the government spends money, directly or indirectly, to help offset the cost of something. Usually the government does this for policy purposes (overt or otherwise), and there are a variety of mechanisms typically used. Some examples are direct payments, tax rebates, subsidized loans, e...

Yes, it's time once again for one of those posts which will no-doubt be ridiculed for being "racially insensitive" and not PC. Seriously, though, we need to find a better term to describe people who are in the country illegally, working or not, with or without the intention to "immigrate" permanently (and by that, I mean establish roots in the US). This article talks about settlements for workplace injuries for illegal workers, which is not by itself offensive (although getting a $2.5 million payout seems pretty ridiculous); however, referring to people in the country illegally as simply "undocumented workers" is stupid and potentially inflammatory. Why is it dumb? Well, it's kinda like claiming I'm the uninnaguated President of the United States. The description of "undocumented" is intentionally misleading: the implication is that other than some simple paperwork, they would be normal workers. The term "illegal alien" is ...

I know I've said this before, and I'll likely say it again, but California legislature has some of the most worthless scum the government has to offer. They are beyond incompetent, beyond idiotic to the point of dangerous, beyond corrupt, and into full-on maliciously destructive. I wouldn't wish personal harm on anyone, but if there was a karmic line, they would be ahead of ambulance-chasing civil lawyers for some karmic retribution for all the damage they have done, and continue to do, to the once-great state of California. Not all of the legislatures are bad, to be sure, but the bad ones are bad enough to give all of them a bad name, by reputation alone. Take, for example, just the latest end-run around the will of the people . As a refresher for readers not in or too familiar with California recently, the state has a budget problem, to the tune of roughly $26B this year (based on optimistic estimates, no doubt). The most recent attempt to "confront" the massive...

This article , by Andy Xie, former Morgan Stanley economist and current board member of Rosetta Stone Advisors (and found from this blog ), is a pretty interesting analysis of what's going on right now with US economic policy, and what could potentially happen in the near future. I'm just going to include a small section I found interesting: Stagflation in the 1970s spawned the development of rational expectation theory in economics. Monetary stimulus works by fooling people into believing in money's value while the central bank cheapens it. This perception gap stimulates the economy by fooling people into demanding more money than they should. Rational expectation theory clarified the underpinning for Keynesian liquidity theory. However, as they say, people can't be fooled three times. Central banks that tried to use stimuli to solve structural problems in the '70s saw their stimuli didn't work. People saw through what they tried again and again, and began beha...

Joe Biden, the man next in line in the Party succession, spewing BS about the stimulus. I mean really, how stupid is the audience his handlers are writing his speeches for? I'm not going to go through an exhaustive list of the inaccuracies and insults to non-vegetative listeners, but here are a couple highlights that stood out: - Biden claims that nobody could have predicted that the $800B waste bill wouldn't create the utopia of economic activity and job creation that was promised... I guess he's not counting everyone outside of the Party who pointed out exactly that . Talk about living in a bubble, kinda like being hooked up to a machine to help you breathe because your brain is too stupid to even form the thoughts to keep bodily functions going. - Then he spews some BS about preserving jobs for teachers and police; it's a common tact, claim your corrupt wasteful spending was necessary to help the children, and/or keep you safe. I guess he could have a point, I mean...

So this post is kinda an exploration of inflation and deflation, what causes each, and why you can have economists proclaiming that we needn't fear inflation despite the fact that the government is printing and spending record amounts of money out of thin air (at last count, roughly 4x the record deficits during the Bush administration, which itself was criticized for out-of-control spending). I don't think I have all the answers; I'm not an economist, or a financial planner, and I didn't even really take an economics course in school (I did econ on independent study in HS, which mainly consisted of playing games on the computer between acing the trivial tests). Nonetheless, I'm going to take the opportunity to explain my thoughts on the subject, educated or not, and perhaps they will be enlightening. To begin, the value of goods/services (which I'll call goods) in currency generally varies with two factors: the supply of the goods, and the supply of currency. B...

This chart shows the recast dates for various loans over the next five years, based on the current rate of negative amortization (copied from CalculatedRisk ). I think it would be fair to assume that most of these are going to be defaults, as soon as (or slightly after) the recast time; almost everyone who can afford their house is either already in a fixed-rate mortgage (and thus not appearing on this chart). This virtual tidal-wave of defaults represents roughly $25,000,000,000 worth of housing inventory being added to the market, per month, for the next five years . For reference, the NAR's latest statistics indicate there are only about $66B in sales of existing homes, per month, total, in the whole US. That lines up pretty well with the latest estimations of total home sales which are foreclosures, which is around 45% (REO's are selling slightly better than non-REO's, cause they are more realistically priced). Most people agree that the housing market is not likely to...

Fair warning: I suspect this post will be offensive to many PC/liberal type people. If you're one of those people, feel free to skip this post; you're probably not rational enough to understand the debate, much less the position I have. Moving on... I think English should be the official language of the United States. I don't think this only because I speak only English, although I admit that the more standardized on English the world becomes, the slightly better it will be for me personally. No, the primary reason I hold this opinion is because it makes it possible for everyone to communicate with each other, which is one of the primary barriers to understanding, acceptance, interaction, and integration. ... ok, that got kinda mushy sounding. Seriously, though, America is supposed to be a melting pot of cultures and ideas, a place where people of different backgrounds and beliefs can come together and make a better society by taking the good ideas and rejecting the bad one...

Anybody seen or heard the new commercials for Chrysler and/or GM? You really should; after all, you paid for them . I mean, you could have spent those billions on civic works, or keeping more hard-working American's from losing their jobs, or putting a slight dent in the massive future obligation our government is creating for us and our children (well, only until the country's currency collapses, which will likely be within one generation or so); instead, though, you spent it on propping up colossal failures of non-competitive business, union largess, management greed and incompetence, and models of private sector failure. Do you feel good about that? If you've spent the last few months trying to ignore the looming socialist take-over of the country, and/or trying to rationalize the thought of spending a truly enormous amount of money on the utter wastes that the US auto companies have become, then this wave of commercials is just for you. Not only are the now nationalized...

This may come as a shock to anyone immersed in the mainstream news media reporting (hopefully it won't come as too much of a shock to readers of this blog), but foreclosure is not the end of the world if you are a home "owner" who bought more house than you could afford. In essence, you took a risk, a gamble, bought a lottery ticket to let yourself live above your means for a while and maybe strike it rich quickly and easily in the crazy world of real estate. If you're facing foreclosure now, your gamble didn't pay off, and now you need to move on; maybe try an honest living instead of the get-rich-quick approach. However, it's not like it's the worst thing that could happen. In a less forgiving capitalist society, you might be required to pay off the entire loan amount you borrowed (as you would for a normal loan), and process which might effectively leave you in debt for a long time. Worse, in less lenient societies, you could be thrown in prison for def...

How to Fix Social Security Just cause I've been thinking about it more recently, in a "well duh, of course that's what they should do" sort of way. Welcome to people's comments, pro or con, here or on the other post. I figured rather than rant about how we, the taxpayers, purchased the majority share in a failed enterprise with no hope of actual recovery, and how that just solidifies the decline into socialism in the Obamanation, I should focus mental effort on something productive, which brought me back to fixing the largest Ponzi scheme in human history. Comments welcome. :)