Economic recovery underway - a cruel deception
By Devvy
Exclusively for The US ~ Observer
September 4, 2009
"The New Deal will bring the Communist Party within striking distance of overthrow of the American form of government. ..." Arthur Henning, Chicago Tribune (1935), "... The New Deal is to America what the early phase of Nazism was to Germany." Mark Sullivan of the Buffalo Evening News (1935)
While Democrats hold FDR up as an icon, nothing could be further from the truth. FDR prolonged the "Great Depression" by at least a decade because of the wasteful, unconstitutional programs he implemented. Bush and Congress pulled off the biggest heist of century one year ago with the unconstitutional bail outs of private banks. They should all go to jail because any member of Congress who voted for those bail outs is an outlaw. If you legislate outside the supreme law of the land, the U.S. Constitution, you are no better than an outlaw.
The usurper in the White House has pushed through the same flavor programs as FDR with the blessing of the crooks in Congress. One of the most unconstitutional New Deal swindles was the National Industrial Recovery Act (NIRA). This Act was passed in June 1933. It created another gigantic bureaucracy, like a fat hog giving birth, called the National Recovery Administration. Under the NRA, most manufacturing industries were abruptly and illegally forced into government-mandated cartels.[1]
The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 (ARRA), passed earlier this year and dubbed the 'mother of all stimulus packages,' is just a duplication of the failed policies of FDR. Not only has it done nothing to stop the hemorrhaging of jobs, the phony "stimulus" will make any recovery impossible for many more years to come. Why? Because we the people will be taxed into poverty to pay for it and have nothing left to spend into the economy. The only thing these unconstitutional bail outs and insane, massive spending bills have done is rob we the people of the fruits of our labor to fund nonsense, filth, more welfare and fill the coffers of Wall Street bankers and cronies of the poltroons in Congress. Here are a few examples (CNN Money):
"The U.S. Army Corps of Engineers has spent $51,500 of stimulus money on nine mascot costumes and robots, including Bobber the Water Safety Dog, Coastie the Water Safety Education Seaboat and Seamoor the Sea Serpent Robot. They'll be used in parks in Kentucky, Ohio, Indiana and Utah to teach children about safe boating and swimming.
"The Army Corps of Engineers used $455 of Recovery Act money to rent two ice machines and 300 bags of ice for the Melvin Price Lock and Dam auxiliary gate repair modification project in East Alton, Ill.
"The National Park Service purchased an electric golf cart for $8,223 to distribute oyster shells at the DeSoto National Memorial in Bradenton, Fla. The memorial commemorates the Spanish exploration of Florida. There are several walking trails around the site, and one happened to be made from crushed oyster shells.
"The General Service Administration's Public Buildings Service bought a reach-in freezer for the cafeteria at the Robert J. Dole Courthouse in Kansas City, Kan., for $2,655.
"The Department of Energy is spending $3.3 million of stimulus funds on lawyers to support the $25 billion Advanced Technology Vehicle Manufacturers Loan Program."
Columnist John Nolte, combed through the expenditures and found this:
"The NEA was given $80 million of the government's $787 billion economic stimulus bill to spread around to needy artists nationwide … [I]ncluding a $50,000 infusion for the Frameline film house, which recently screened Thundercrack, “the world's only underground kinky art porno horror film, complete with four men, three women and a gorilla.” … [T]he weekly production of “Perverts Put Out” at San Francisco’s CounterPULSE, whose “long-running pansexual performance series” invites guests to “join your fellow pervs for some explicit, twisted fun.” … [A]n additional boost from a $25,000 stimulus grant [will go to] “The Symmetry Project,” … The show depicts “the sharing of a central axis, [as] spine, mouth, genitals, face, and anus reveal their interconnectedness and centrality in embodied experience[.]”In the flesh — and there's a lot of it — it amounts to two people writhing naked on the floor, a government-funded tango in the altogether."
Is this what you go to work everyday for, worrying about your job and feeding your family? To fund the above? This is the biggest rape of the American people in my life time. I've been a full time activist for twenty years; the grand larceny of we the people is breath taking.
No "new" jobs have been created since the lies and greed were exposed a little over a year ago when creative banking shell games finally burst at the seams. Remember the usurper's campaign promises? As I wrote nine months ago in one of my columns:
"Oh, I know. Comrade Obama is going to create two million new jobs. Dec. 6, 2008: "President-elect Barack Obama said Saturday he has asked his economic team for a recovery plan that saves or creates more than 2 million jobs, makes public buildings more energy-efficient and invests in roads and schools."
"Wait! It's three million new jobs with 600,000 of them paper pushers for the government. Jan. 3, 2009: "The president-elect says he wants to "create three million new jobs" -- this is a change from a few weeks ago, when he said he wanted the plan to create OR SAVE two million jobs."
"Wait! It's 3.5 million new jobs. Jan. 10, 2009: "Facing growing criticism of his economic recovery plan, President-elect Barack Obama made public Saturday a detailed analysis by his economic advisers that estimates the $775 billion plan of tax cuts and new spending would create 3.5 million jobs over the next two years."
"Wait! It's 4.1 million new jobs. January 10, 2009: "President-elect Barack Obama countered critics with an analysis Saturday by his economic team showing that a program of tax cuts and spending like he's proposed would create up to 4.1 million jobs, far more than the 3 million he has insisted are needed to lift the country from recession." [2]
Almost three million jobs have been lost since the usurper took office and the same Congress went back into session.
Here's the reality of the unstoppable freight train
The "broader" unemployment figures nationwide is 16.8% [3]. The reality is you have unemployment rates in cities much higher than being reported; many double digits. Congress has refused to implement solutions, i.e., stopping the scam called withholding tax, which would immediately inject the economy with millions of spending dollars.[4] As long as people continue to hoard what money they have left after losing half their income to taxes, the worse it will get for the economy. Can you blame people who are shell shocked by what's going on? They've seen their 401(k)s bleed with more coming. Now they're in panic mode as they watch the insanity continue in Washington with these massive, unconstitutional bills, i.e., "cap and trade" to support the massive hoax called global warming.
In a land so rich in natural and human resources, food stamp assistance has now soared to 35 million recipients. The states of the Union cannot keep up with unemployment claims or the massive cost of social welfare programs like food stamps. It will get worse. All of this spending is going to shock Americans come April 15, 2010 because this pillaging of the fruits of our labor has to be paid for and that means more of your paycheck.
The U.S. Treasury, the people's purse, is now over drawn just under $12 TRILLION dollars with $99 TRILLION dollars in unfunded mandates. Every check being written by Congress is hot. No funds in the bank. This Ponzi scheme is killing America. It is turning your dreams to ashes while enriching foreign countries. $800 MILLION dollars a week is paid to the communist Chinese just for the interest alone on our debt! These thieves in Congress must continue to borrow BILLIONS everyday from someone (communist Chinese, Japanese or Saudi's) to buy more of our debt created to fund all these unconstitutional cabinets and phony "stimulus" bills. It's being paid for from the dozens of federal taxes we pay everyday, including what's filched out of your paycheck and more on April 15th.
The sweat of your labor is being stolen to fund more borrowing to pay for the money being borrowed with the principle never being paid down. Is that sinking in yet? What happens when the commies decide they don't want any more worthless confetti (Federal Reserve Notes) and decide to call our loans in hard real estate assets instead? Think it can't happen? Ask the victims of Ponzi scheme king, Bernie Madoff.
Eighty-seven banks have closed this year (as I write this article). Every Friday night you can go to www.fdic.gov and see the latest list. Each time one of these banks is taken over, the FDIC must find another bank with enough assets to absorb the zombie banks bad paper. What happens when you run out of banks to absorb the bad paper of all these banks being seized? The FDIC is broke. Next will be yet another bail out.[5] As reported by the WSJ, Sept. 1, 2009:
"Through more than 50 deals known as “loss shares,” the FDIC has agreed to absorb losses on the detritus of the financial crisis -- from loans on two log cabins in the woods of northwestern Illinois to hundreds of millions of dollars in busted condominium loans in Florida. The agency's total exposure is about six times the amount remaining in its fund that guarantees consumers' deposits, exposing taxpayers to a big, new risk."[6]
Where will that "money" come from? You, me, our children and grand children in higher taxes. The number of bleeding banks isn't about to slow down. Predictions are that another 1,000 will close in the next two years.[7]
Do you know what derivatives are? The shortest explanation is a con game that has grown to such numbers, it's a joke to even try to make someone believe that big thermo nuclear bomb will simply disappear by some magic trick:
The $531 Trillion Dollar Derivatives Time Bomb. "What are derivatives? Some investors describe them as “dormant economic weapons of mass destruction”. They essentially are large leveraged bets on top of stocks, bonds and commodities. Money can be made within months or seconds by betting if a stock will go up, down or even remain the same. With no credit rating you can place a bet worth double your account balance. Big time investors get greater leverage with these instantaneous loans.
"The New York Times, Oct 8th 2008: “The derivatives market is $531 trillion, up from $106 trillion in 2002?. This market is setup with odds similar to a racetrack. Trillions are won and lost (transferred) every second. But unlike a racetrack the big players have ultimate control. The $531 trillion dollars derivatives market contains a mind-boggling amount of high-risk credit in the hands of a small few that could completely finish off the collapse of the current global economy (for a new global replacement)."[8]
Remember the unconstitutional $182 BILLION dollar bail out of AIG? How much in stinky derivatives are they holding?[9] Take your pick from institutions, but listen to an expert well known in financial circles for his accuracy:
"Mr Markopolos apparently does not appreciate my little joke, and neither laughs nor names names, but "predicted major scandals [would] soon be revealed about the unregulated, $600 trillion, credit-default swap market".....And when combined with all the other hundreds of trillions of dollars in other derivatives around the world, we are talking about more than a quadrillion dollars in various bets and hedges, a figure that I figure must be more than the total value of everything in the whole world because even $1 quadrillion comes out to...
"The worst part is that the real, in-your-face nominal total of global derivatives may actually be several quadrillion, or even the hundreds of quadrillions of dollars, as has been previously estimated..." The Mogambo Guru, Sept. 3, 2009
Next, is retail dying faster than you can drive from one closed store to another:
"In the Tank Forever": U.S. Consumers, Retailers in a "Death Spiral" -- "Retail maven Howard Davidowitz paid another visit to Tech Ticker this week. And despite signs of improvement in consumer confidence and retail stocks rising, Davidowitz is steadfast in his belief the consumer is dead. Rather than summarize, let me just highlight some of his best one-liners. On retail: "The retail business is terrible... It's almost all negative. We're going to close hundreds of thousands of stores."
On the consumer: "They're still over leveraged, they're losing jobs, their credit has been cut back." On America: "We are in the tank forever. As a country we are out of control, we're in a death spiral."
Davidowitz isn't exaggerating. The American consumer is broke and buying only essentials after scrapping together the rent or mortgage money. Forget using the old plastic: Credit Card Delinquency Wave Reaching Tidal Force - August 19, 2009 [10]
"So far in 2009, the data surrounding credit card charge offs and mortgage delinquencies has not been pretty... at all...Credit card delinquencies (payments more than 30 days late) rose to 6.7% up from 6.68%. Charge-offs (listed as 'uncollectable' by the banks) rose to 9.55%, up from 7.64%. The scary thing here is that this trend is accelerating.
"An acceleration in charge-offs and delinquencies obviously means bad things for financial institutions and the economy in general. Much like the impending (and already current) problems in commercial real estate, we've likened credit card charge-offs as a 'second wave' in this economic crisis. The first tidal wave came through and washed out a whole lot in the economy. As people begin to lose work and fall behind on their massive debt repayments, they drown. This creates a second wave of write downs for financial institutions and another set of problems for an economy trying desperately to recover. The initial tidal wave hits and knocks America down. Then, when America starts to get enough strength to stand up, they will be washed away again with a whole new slew of problems.
"This is due to the delayed effect the first wave had on the consumer. After people are laid off, they scramble to find new jobs and dwindle what little savings they have left. (Remember, America's savings rate has not been the best and we've concluded that it needs to rise in order to help get out of this mess). And, the fact that the unemployment rate keeps rising is not helping things either. Once their savings is gone, they rely on credit cards as a flotation device. And, this scenario is only the people who don't already have credit card debt. Those already suffering under this burden begin to bear an even heavier load until they simply can't make payments at all. This effectual lag has slowly but steadily been building for months and the latest charge-off and delinquency data has begun to spike."
This year we saw a mass return to lay aways at stores like K-Mart and Wal-Mart -- to buy pencils, paper and notebooks for school children. Why? Because Americans have no credit left. They are tapped out. Christmas will be the death knell for thousands of retail stores and that means devastation for your local economies. It is the classic "trickle down" effect and it is hitting cities and towns hard all across America. However, I would rather know the truth than be fed lies that will hurt my family down the road. These professional liars out in Washington, DC., aided by the reckless, irresponsible "mainstream media," are despicable.
What we saw last year with the sub prime housing crash isn't over by any stretch of the imagination. The second wave of mortgages that could go into foreclosure will hit next year and it's going to be very, very bad. Put this into a search engine: Alt-A, Option ARM California Zombie Mortgage State. The numbers don't lie.
By 2011, roughly 50% of all home mortgages in this country will be "underwater." That means a house that was sold for $405,000 in June 2005, in Natomas Park, Sacramento, California is now worth $238,000. The people who bought that house will never be able to sell it for anywhere near what they paid. That is why so many have simply turned in the keys to the bank and walked away.
Add into the equation property taxes. As these properties go under water, tax revenues drop across the board. This is one of the reasons the states are drowning along with the serious disaster just waiting to explode: state pension funds. Type this into a search engine and be sure you're sitting down when you read these two columns: 'P.E.R.S.: The Greatest Swindle in American History' and 'Financial Rape: Pers of Oregon'. Check your own state pension fund and try not to keel over. With the states going bankrupt, where do you think the money is going to come from to fund the hundreds of billions due out in pensions? IOUs?
It isn't just Oregon. CalPERS Admits California "Pension Costs Unsustainable" August 18, 2009: " The CalPERS chief actuary says pension costs are "unsustainable," and the giant public employee pension system plans to meet with stakeholders to discuss the issue. "I don't want to sugarcoat anything," Ron Seeling, the CalPERS chief actuary said as he neared the end of his comments. "We are facing decades without significant turnarounds in assets, decades of -- what I, my personal words, nobody else's -- unsustainable pension costs of between 25 percent of pay for a miscellaneous plan and 40 to 50 percent of pay for a safety plan (police and firefighters) ... unsustainable pension costs."
Additionally, banks are losing in the courts because they can't prove they own the houses they funded with mortgages. In the rush for greed, billions in loans got bundled, the paper work wasn't done properly and now the banks are in trouble. Since the banks can't prove they own the property, the courts are saying, "Well, better luck next time." The buyers are living in the houses, but no longer make payments to the bank. More write offs. More debt for the banks.
The price of gas is going up again, which will hurt everyone across the board. All this spending like drunken sailors over the past 12-14 months is going to come back and kill off what's left of the middle class and drive lower income families into abject poverty. During the "Great Depression," farming was the one sector that kept America fed, but that is not the case today. Once again, Congress continues to destroy family owned farms by refusing parity so they can compete in the open market. If you read one book on this issue, read The Fed and The Farmer. That book is available for free on the Internet. Just type the title; my column will pop up. The link to the book is in the column. What's being done to our farmers and land owners is a national tragedy and yet, Americans continue voting the same crooks and nitwits back to the U.S. Congress.
What about savings to help Americans as they lose their jobs? 34 Percent of U.S. workers have one week or less of savings. One paycheck from disaster. Even those who are working hard, husband and wife or just single folks can't find a nickel to save because we are being driven into poverty by more and more taxes. As the states continue to slide into bankruptcy, state legislatures and local municipalities are passing new taxes for everything including the air you breathe in an effort to stave off collapse. An ugly picture. The reality is just now sinking in and that's one of the reasons for the tea parties.
What I've covered in this article is just the tip of the iceberg. Adding injury to insult as Americans lose their jobs faster than can be counted, Congress continues to flood our job market with foreign workers. Type this into a search engine: '125,000 brand new foreign workers with work permits each month — Here's the proof' by Roy Beck (Numbers USA organization) While Americans stand in unemployment lines desperate for work, Congress makes sure they don't get the jobs. They go to foreigners instead.
What can be done? The states of the Union must pass what is called an honest money bill; see banner on my web site for Committees of Safety. If your state doesn't adopt a parallel money system to pay the bills, the collapse will be beyond anything in your worst nightmares. Washington, DC., is a wasteland of corruption that is going down under its own weight of rot. A nation cannot spend itself out of debt by incurring TRILLIONS more in paper debt. Inflation is going to hit and your "dollar" will be worth nothing. I don't write this to scare readers, but to get your attention. History is repeating itself and it's going to accelerate by the second quarter of 2010.
Prepare yourself and your family for very hard times ahead. My columns focus on constitutional solutions that should have been implemented decades ago. I hope you will find time to read or listen to them (in the audio section) by going to my web site: www.devvy.com
Writing for a newspaper is a little more challenging than for the Internet. Therefore, I have used foot notes for my references. Below they are listed exactly as the captions are so you can simply type them into a search engine and bring them up.
[1] Great Myths of the Great Depression by Lawrence W. Reed
[2] The Hell with Bipartisanship/Newswithviews
[3] WSJ: Broader Unemployment Rate Hits 16.8% in August (September 4, 2009)
[4] Why an income tax is not necessary to fund the U.S. government
[5] The Coming FDIC Bail Out
[6] Raft of deals for failed banks puts U.S. on hook for billions
[7] 1,000 Banks to Fail In Next Two Years: Bank CEO
[8] The $531 Trillion Dollar Derivatives Time Bomb
[9] Treasury Document Called AIG Investment ‘Highly Speculative’
[10] Credit Card Delinquency Wave Reaching Tidal Force
Devvy Kidd authored the booklets, Why A Bankrupt America and Blind Loyalty; 2 million copies sold. Devvy appears on radio shows all over the country and is a highly sought after public speaker.
She left the Republican Party in 1996 and has been an independent voter ever since. Devvy isn't left, right or in the middle; she is a constitutionalist who believes in the supreme law of the land, not a political party. Her web site contains a tremendous amount of information, solutions and a vast Reading Room.