Tuesday, October 28, 2008

The 17th Amendment

The 17th Amendment,
and the rise of Special Interests

There is another date other than 7 December 1941 that will live in infamy. The other date is 8 April 1913, the date that the Seventeenth Amendment was ratified. On that date the Congress and states changed Article 1, Section 3 of the Constitution that required each State Legislature to select two Senators for representation in the United States Senate. The Amendment requires instead that each Senator be elected by popular vote of the people rather than be selected by their respective State Legislators, to wit, “The Senate of the United States shall be composed of two Senators from each state, elected by the people thereof, for six years, and each Senator shall have one vote”…….. The 16th, 17th, 18th (Prohibition) and 19th (Woman right to vote) Amendments were conceived during the “Progressive” movement that was gaining influence at the time and you will of course recall that the 16th Amendment allowed the Congress to lay and collect taxes on incomes. The “Progressive” movement has morphed into the “Liberal” movement of today and these two terms have come to mean that force is required to change people’s actions for the good of all, and Brothers and Sisters, as I have said on many occasions before: Taxes Are Power and the 16th is the single most important enabler of the power requirement that can force change. This Amendment was the legal basis for enacting legislation that began the collection of payroll taxes in 1937 for the Social Security Program. The 16th Amendment eventually enabled Franklin D. Roosevelt to sign into law the Payroll Withholding Tax Act in 1943, another date that infamy should lay claim to. But I digress. The importance of the original Constitutional requirement for Senator selection cannot be overstated because the Article 1, Section 3 requirement was carefully crafted to complement the Bicameral organization of the legislative branch of Government. I really don’t think I command enough of the reader’s respect to provide the reason for this, but perhaps one of the Country’s founding fathers could. I’m referring to James Madison and in the Federalist Paper No 10 he explained the reason for Bicameralism, “Before taking effect, legislation would have to be ratified by two independent power sources: the people’s representatives in the House and the State legislatures’ agents in the Senate.” This requirement would not only provide the means to ensure the concept of Federalism but would thwart the influence of special interests because of the requirement of satisfying two separate constituencies. Mr. Madison further explained the concept in Federalist Paper No 51: “In republican government, the legislative authority, necessarily predominate. The remedy for this inconveniency is, to divide the legislature into different branches; and to render them by different modes of election, and different principals of action, as little connected with each other, as the nature of their common functions and their common dependencies on the society, will admit.” You may be surprised to learn that the original method of Senator selection was so important that it was one of the few principals that enjoyed nearly unanimous approval by the founding fathers. Because of the Seventeenth Amendment, the authority of each State has been greatly reduced and due to the power of incumbency, each Senator has become a Potentate instead of a representative in a Senate that is coming to resemble the Senate of Rome in its last days. Also, because the Senators are now elected, special interests have a corruption avenue equal to that in the House of Representatives to funnel money and power to ensure election and satisfy plain old greed in exchange for favors in the legislative process. Indeed, the current financial catastrophe we find ourselves in can be traced directly to the influence of special interests in causing the Gramm-Leach-Blily (GLB) act in 1999 to become law. That law was enacted in spite of repeated warnings by knowledgeable and responsible people that its enactment would produce a financial crisis of Biblical proportions. The GLB act repealed part of the Glass-Steagall act of 1933 that was enacted to prevent the kind of financial crisis that produced the great depression. The GLB act removed most all restrictions and separations between commercial banks and all other investment and financial entities. Viola, financial crisis circa 2008, and all because special interests have gained a foothold that the founding fathers tried with all of their wisdom to prevent. I could even make the case that Article 1, Section 3, of the Constitution addressed the most fundamental special interest problem indigenous to a mature society. The special interest that I’m referring to is the special interest of the Cities versus the rest of the country. The cities always attract the most intellectual and financial capital and this concentration of wealth always demands more and more resources from the rest of the country. The ever-increasing demands of the Cities always causes a schism to develop between the whole of the people because one cannot exist without the other yet the cities keep making demands that would cause the rest of the country to fall into ruin (much like Rome in its final days). The cities can do this because there have the greater population concentration and can easily overwhelm the rest of the country with superior political power especially within a “one man, one vote” system. I refer you to the USA Today 2004 Presidential Election map down to the county level (commonly referred to as the “Red/Blue map) that clearly shows the cities (population areas) voting one way and the rest of the country another. The requirement that Senators be agents of the State instead of being directly elected by the people addressed the City/Country schism in a remarkable and effective way. I invite you to consider other areas that the 17th Amendment ratification may have influenced upon but suffice to say, the consequences of the 17th Amendment are far reaching and quite possibly damaging to our country as well.

Monday, October 20, 2008

Credit-Default Swaps

One World Eggheads
And
Credit-Default Swaps

It has been a surprise to me how the banking and capital generation system works in the real world. To say I am ignorant about the finer points of the current financial system that is in such disarray today would be a colossal understatement, however, with a little research and in simple terms that normal people can understand, I believe this is how it works. You deposit one ($1.00) dollar in your local bank, get your receipt, and feel good about putting a little away for a rainy day. Your bank is now authorized to provide a loan to a credit worthy person in the amount of ten ($10.00) dollars for every one ($1.00) the bank has on deposit of the real money real people deposited. Where did this $10.00 of “artificial” money come from to lend to a credit worthy person desiring a loan? A very good question Holmes. The $10.00 is borrowed from the Central Bank at the “discount rate” to provide the money for the loan. The Central Bank is part of the U.S. Federal Reserve System and the money it supplies is printed-up money based on some esoteric reasoning usually influenced by political reality. The Federal Reserve System was created for a number of good reasons but the main reason was its ability to provide for an “elastic currency”. The Federal Reserve officially defines “elastic currency” as: “currency that can, by the actions of the central monetary authority, expand or contract in amount warranted by economic conditions” or in everyday terms, it can print-up money or take money out of the system. Now if the loan originated by your bank happened to be a large amount backed by a physical asset as collateral, such as your home mortgage, the bank will sell the loan to another financial entity, like Fannie May or Freddie Mac for a fee and the fee received now provides more “real money” the bank can then leverage into even more loans. Fannie May and Freddie Mac (or other financial entities) takes your loan and bundles it with other loans it bought (some made to not so good credit risks and distributed within the bundle to hid them) and then sells the investment bundle to investors at a profit, of course, for its stockholders. It should be noted that Fannie May and Freddie Mac had the implicit backing of the Federal Government to “insure” that the investment package being sold was safe so the investment bundles being sold are very marketable. Other financial entities also buys bundled investment packages but they lacked the implicit government guarantee of safety so companies, like AIG, issued “Credit-default Swaps” policies for a big profit-making fee to insure the bundled investment instruments and the “Credit-default Swaps” insurance policy made the investment packages marketable to all investors. “Credit-default Swaps” is just one of many so called “derivatives” offered to investors (like your local government, IRA accounts, insurance companies, ad infinitum) by various financial institutions that are, in reality, instruments that further leverage money on top of leveraged money in order that everyone in the food-chain can continue to make a handsome profit without ever providing something tangible in return that would provide real value in exchange for the money earned. You may be surprised to learn that some financial entities have leveraged already leveraged money up to 30 or 40 times (not just the 10 times your bank did) to sell investment “derivatives” for big profits to “Hedge Funds” and other really smart people who then leverage the money that the “derivative instruments” represent to buy real companies that make things and provide jobs to real people. A case in point, Carlyle Capital, a division of the Carlyle Group, loaned out leveraged money at a ratio of from 20 and 30 to 1 and has, of course, failed. If all of this sounds vaguely familiar, it should. There are a large number of criminals in the slammer serving time for concocting such schemes as these and these schemes, when done on an individual basis, is call a Ponzi or Pyramid scheme. A Ponzi scheme is a fraudulent investment operation that involves promising or paying abnormally high returns (“profits”) to investors out of the money paid in by subsequence investors, rather than from real net revenues generated by real business (it was named after Charles Ponzi). Well if it looks like a duck, quacks like a duck, waddles like a duck, what the hell, it really must be a duck. If all of this hasn’t started to make your stomach churn, I know something that will turn you into a fetal ball. Christopher Cox, Chairman of the United States Securities and Exchange Commission, wrote in a 19 October 2008 New York Times article that there are $55 Trillion Dollars in outstanding “Credit-default Swaps” out there right now. Oh by the way, $55 Trillion Dollars is more money than all of the GNPs (Gross National Product) of all of the nations on earth combined. I’ll just pause here a moment to let that fully sink in. So what does this have to do with One World Eggheads? Thomas L. Friedman writes in the same New York Times issue that the current leveraged mess is indeed a Global mess and only a fully connected Global economy and regulations can properly “fix” the mess. The One World Eggheads are dancing in the streets.

Monday, October 13, 2008

John McCain

John McCain




Have you ever decided to do something with the feeling that if you go ahead and do it, there is a good likelihood you will eventually regret that having done it? Has that ever happened to you? Trying to decide if I should vote for John McCain leaves me with that kind of conflicted feeling. But of course there is another option and that is, I could abstain from voting and avoid this whole decision conflict thing altogether. However, lets think about trying to decide whether to vote or not to vote. On the one hand, if I vote for John McCain, I will be voting for the lesser of two evils and I have grown weary of always voting for the lesser of two evils because it somehow violates my sense of dignity to keep doing something that is contrary to my real beliefs and values. On the other hand, if I do not vote at all, I will, in effect, enable those who do vote to multiply their vote due to my abstention by increasing twofold the value of their vote should they vote for the greater of two evils. Why are real life decisions like these always so complicated? Why even ask why. I believe John McCain is the lesser of two evils because there are a number of times I do not agree with the positions taken by him or agree with a large number of his votes cast over the years while serving in the United States Senate even though he has identified himself as being a Republican. I believe there are those who call John McCain a RINO (Republican In Name Only) because of his positions taken and votes cast. Nevertheless, Senator McCain wistfully celebrates his record as being proof that he is in reality a “Maverick” and not a prisoner of any particular dogmatic persuasion and that is the reason his record does not coincide with any one party philosophy or another. His position is that his Maverick record should be celebrated and not condemned because he is beholding to no one or any one party. When I reflect about this notion of being a potential “Maverick” leader, one has to consider the value of a leader who does not adhere to any particular philosophy to guide his decisions other than his own notion of what is fair and right. I’m not so sure what we need is a “Maverick” in our complicated world full of nukes, religious fanatics, ideologues, greed hustlers and tree-hugging raised to a religion notwithstanding the everyday complications of governing the most powerful country in the world. Having said all of this, one cannot help but admire the man who has served his country so unselfishly and endured what would break the resolve of most any man. I could even make the case that being mistreated and tortured during his captivity as a prisoner-of-war has made him hypersensitive about the treatment of people to such an extent that it is very likely that his judgment ability is impaired (witness his calling Obama a good and decent man and his refusal to condemn Obama’s nefarious associations and actions). Even though he may be the lesser of two evils in my mind, John McCain is certainly not the greater of two evils that the other potential President represents. So on November 4th, the dilemma of voting for the lesser of two evils or not voting at all requires all of the wisdom that Solomon could ever muster up. This voting dilemma can be placed squarely at the feet of John McCain because he is in reality, just the lesser of two evils.

Monday, October 6, 2008

Expediency

Expediency, Expediency
Hurry me down to Calamity.


I wish I knew who was responsible for maintenance of the Seven Deadly Sins list because I would waste no time in lobbying for an addition to that deadly list. The most urgently needed addition that should be added to the malevolent list of deadly sins would be the most pervasive sin of all, Expediency. Those of us who have bought and paid for all of the gray hair that has so graciously adorned our bowed heads know exactly what I am talking about when we consider the ramifications of Expediency. You know, when we do something in a hasty manner because it is more convenient to do so and the supposed need is so great and urgent that there is no time to carefully consider all aspects of the decision. For example, who among us has not rationalized a quick decision to buy that 60inch flat screen television because we really did not want to invest the time or effort to consider the worth, value or necessity of the 60 easy payments because, after all, it was extremely important that the Colts versus the Patriots game be viewed in a manner befitting the august nature of the contest. And now we, as a collective people, are faced with all of the ramifications of a Governmental decision to “Bail-out Wall Street” that was done with all of the haste and urgency that Expediency could ever demand. Never mind that we will print $700 billion new dollars to enable the “bail-out” and that those printed-up dollars will be added to the currency now in circulation and further devalue our already shrinking dollar value. I believe when that happens it is called inflation and inflation is the cruelest tax of all. That’s right, we will not only pay for that printing press money someday (make that our children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren who will do the paying) but we will be taxed tomorrow to pay for this spending by the most cruelest tax of all, Inflation. And never mind that greed and irresponsibility is being rewarded by the “bail-out” while those who acted responsible and played by the rules will once again get slapped in the face as a reward for their prudence. Have we all not been appalled by the lady dressed to the nines getting out of her new SUV to buy the finest cut of meats with food stamps while sneering at us poor dopes for working two jobs to pay for the whole thing. This “bail-out wall street” thing just keeps the disincentives coming for the good productive citizens while the leaches and gamers keep on getting rewarded with other peoples hard earned money. Not only will we have the welfare professionals sneering at us dopes as they buy their choice cuts of meat with food stamps, we will now suffer the indignity of the wall street fat-cats sneering at us dopes for being too dumb to play in the new economics game and for not getting on the gravy train with the rest of the smart people. Expediency is also being employed to justify many other things today, for example, the supposedly global warming “crisis”. There is no doubt that human activity is causing some perturbation of earth’s climate, but how much and is the effect positive or negative for humankind? I direct your attention to a Scientific American article by William F. Ruddiman (a marine geologist and professor emeritus of environmental sciences at the University of Virginia) published in March 2005 to help answer the question. The article is entitled “How Did Humans First Alter Global Climate?” and suggests, backed-up with scientific evidence, that human activity may have well prevented an ice age that all scientific evidence suggests was due several thousand years ago. If the predicted ice age had occurred and was not prevented by human activity warming up the climate modern human society, as we know it today, would not even exist. Here are some additional facts to factor in when considering the question of Global climate change having either a positive or negative effect for mankind. The only time humankind has ever advanced is when there has been a climate warming. The reason for this is, of course, obvious. Also, which is more catastrophic for human society, a mile-deep ice sheet over our heads or a 12inch rise in the oceans? The reason this question is so important is because before all of this Global climate change became the expedient cause du jour, science was predicting that a modern ice age was coming upon us. So perhaps, global warming due to human activity can once again prevent another major ice age and save mankind. The Lord surely does work in mysterious ways. So the burning question is: Why all of the expediency to act to prevent global warming from continuing? My theory is that the One World Eggheads, along with other ideologues, have co-opted the Global Warming issue to advance their goal of one world government by proclaiming only world government can address a global problem. Also, why all of the expediency to bailout wall street with printed-up money? I don’t think we will truly know until all of the facts are fully known but what I do know is that when Expediency is employed calamity is usually along for the ride. Why? Because used car salesmen and government always use expediency to cloak the real reason for acting urgently.