TheHill.com - Dems seek a further $56 billion.

I knew it… I knew it.  The spigot has only begun to be opened.  Now the auto industry wants their piece of the pie.  Now, $756 Billion is wanted.. soon another hundred billion here another hundred billion there and before you know it, we will be indebted for hundreds of TRILLIONS of dollars.

This stinks to high heaven and I bet you that come this weekend Congress will pass a bill, probably behind closed doors, that will indebt this nation, its people and their offspring for generations to come. God help us all!

JPMorgan Chase buys WaMu assets after FDIC seizure: Financial News - Yahoo! Finance.

This isnt over by a long shot folks… hold on for the ride!

This is a letter from one of the last true patriots serving in the U.S. Congress and someone I admire for sticking to his convictions, even in the face of severe adversity and ridicule. All during the presidential candidates debates he was constantly looked at as “second rate” and laughed at when he talked about financial responsibility.  Im wondering who is left laughing now?

Dear Friends:

The financial meltdown the economists of the Austrian School predicted has arrived.

We are in this crisis because of an excess of artificially created credit at the hands of the Federal Reserve System. The solution being proposed? More artificial credit by the Federal Reserve. No liquidation of bad debt and malinvestment is to be allowed. By doing more of the same, we will only continue and intensify the distortions in our economy - all the capital misallocation, all the malinvestment - and prevent the market’s attempt to re-establish rational pricing of houses and other assets.

Last night the president addressed the nation about the financial crisis. There is no point in going through his remarks line by line, since I’d only be repeating what I’ve been saying over and over - not just for the past several days, but for years and even decades.

Still, at least a few observations are necessary.

The president assures us that his administration “is working with Congress to address the root cause behind much of the instability in our markets.” Care to take a guess at whether the Federal Reserve and its money creation spree were even mentioned?

We are told that “low interest rates” led to excessive borrowing, but we are not told how these low interest rates came about. They were a deliberate policy of the Federal Reserve. As always, artificially low interest rates distort the market. Entrepreneurs engage in malinvestments - investments that do not make sense in light of current resource availability, that occur in more temporally remote stages of the capital structure than the pattern of consumer demand can support, and that would not have been made at all if the interest rate had been permitted to tell the truth instead of being toyed with by the Fed.

Not a word about any of that, of course, because Americans might then discover how the great wise men in Washington caused this great debacle. Better to keep scapegoating the mortgage industry or “wildcat capitalism” (as if we actually have a pure free market!).

Speaking about Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the president said: “Because these companies were chartered by Congress, many believed they were guaranteed by the federal government. This allowed them to borrow enormous sums of money, fuel the market for questionable investments, and put our financial system at risk.”

Doesn’t that prove the foolishness of chartering Fannie and Freddie in the first place? Doesn’t that suggest that maybe, just maybe, government may have contributed to this mess? And of course, by bailing out Fannie and Freddie, hasn’t the federal government shown that the “many” who “believed they were guaranteed by the federal government” were in fact correct?

Then come the scare tactics. If we don’t give dictatorial powers to the Treasury Secretary “the stock market would drop even more, which would reduce the value of your retirement account. The value of your home could plummet.” Left unsaid, naturally, is that with the bailout and all the money and credit that must be produced out of thin air to fund it, the value of your retirement account will drop anyway, because the value of the dollar will suffer a precipitous decline. As for home prices, they are obviously much too high, and supply and demand cannot equilibrate if government insists on propping them up.

It’s the same destructive strategy that government tried during the Great Depression: prop up prices at all costs. The Depression went on for over a decade. On the other hand, when liquidation was allowed to occur in the equally devastating downturn of 1921, the economy recovered within less than a year.

The president also tells us that Senators McCain and Obama will join him at the White House today in order to figure out how to get the bipartisan bailout passed. The two senators would do their country much more good if they stayed on the campaign trail debating who the bigger celebrity is, or whatever it is that occupies their attention these days.

F.A. Hayek won the Nobel Prize for showing how central banks’ manipulation of interest rates creates the boom-bust cycle with which we are sadly familiar. In 1932, in the depths of the Great Depression, he described the foolish policies being pursued in his day - and which are being proposed, just as destructively, in our own:

Instead of furthering the inevitable liquidation of the maladjustments brought about by the boom during the last three years, all conceivable means have been used to prevent that readjustment from taking place; and one of these means, which has been repeatedly tried though without success, from the earliest to the most recent stages of depression, has been this deliberate policy of credit expansion.

To combat the depression by a forced credit expansion is to attempt to cure the evil by the very means which brought it about; because we are suffering from a misdirection of production, we want to create further misdirection - a procedure that can only lead to a much more severe crisis as soon as the credit expansion comes to an end… It is probably to this experiment, together with the attempts to prevent liquidation once the crisis had come, that we owe the exceptional severity and duration of the depression.

The only thing we learn from history, I am afraid, is that we do not learn from history.

The very people who have spent the past several years assuring us that the economy is fundamentally sound, and who themselves foolishly cheered the extension of all these novel kinds of mortgages, are the ones who now claim to be the experts who will restore prosperity! Just how spectacularly wrong, how utterly without a clue, does someone have to be before his expert status is called into question?

Oh, and did you notice that the bailout is now being called a “rescue plan”? I guess “bailout” wasn’t sitting too well with the American people.

The very people who with somber faces tell us of their deep concern for the spread of democracy around the world are the ones most insistent on forcing a bill through Congress that the American people overwhelmingly oppose. The very fact that some of you seem to think you’re supposed to have a voice in all this actually seems to annoy them.

I continue to urge you to contact your representatives and give them a piece of your mind. I myself am doing everything I can to promote the correct point of view on the crisis. Be sure also to educate yourselves on these subjects - the Campaign for Liberty blog is an excellent place to start. Read the posts, ask questions in the comment section, and learn.

H.G. Wells once said that civilization was in a race between education and catastrophe. Let us learn the truth and spread it as far and wide as our circumstances allow. For the truth is the greatest weapon we have.

In liberty,

Ron Paul

Republican anger at “financial socialism”?

You know.. if they had expressed some of this outrage when passing all of those spending bills, their pay raises, or any other number of ways that they spent “our” money, maybe we wouldnt be in this position in the first place. Personally, I am against this bailout and think it is a blatant abuse and misuse of public funds and should not have ever seen the light of day much less gotten to the level it currently is. We need to contact our senators and congressmen and let them know that we oppose this socialistic view that we are all now being potentially subjected to before we dont have the chance to express those viewpoints.

269 tie: An electoral college ‘doomsday’?

I read this article and didnt realize that the Constitution of the U.S. provided for this many scenarios during the Presidential election!

If there truly is a tie come November, we could be in for a Obama-Palin Presidency!

Lord help us all if this scenario comes true.  Very good read and highly recommended!

Democratic Congress May Adjourn, Leave Crisis to Fed, Treasury

Looks like Congress has decided that the best strategy is to hide their head in the sand and ignore the economic situation, rather than sit in session and try to figure out exactly how to navigate us out of this mess which, oh by the way *they created in the first place!!!*

To quote “Lawmakers say they are unlikely to take action before, or to delay, their planned adjournments — Sept. 26 for the House of Representatives, a week later for the Senate. While they haven’t ruled out returning after the Nov. 4 elections, they would rather wait until next year unless Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben S. Bernanke, who are leading efforts to contain the crisis, call for help.”

Haven’t ruled out returning?  This country is in one of the most trying fiscal periods in its’ history and they are “thinking” about returning??? I would think that these people should sit there until such time as all of this crap is figured out and they have a plan in place to guide us out of this quagmire that has become our economy!!

To quote the Majority Leader Harry Reid (who is a democrat by the way): “no one knows what to do at the moment.” Wow.. color me surprised, the elected leaders of this country have no idea about what to do to resolve this.  They sure as hell have no problem when it comes time to vote themselves a raise or vote to adjourn while the country is rolling in turmoil, do they?

Hold on folks.. with the $85B loan (read BAILOUT) of AIG, the purchase of Lehman by foreign investors (supposedly Barclays, based in the UK) and the accquisition of Merrill by Bank of America, things are going to get really interesting here in a very short while folks.

While Barack Hussein Obama and John “P.O.W” McCain fight it out over inconsequential bullcrud, our country falls deeper and deeper into the crevasse of failed monetary policy and injections of hundreds of billions of dollars which will drive up inflation, devalue the dollar and continue to drag this country deeper and deeper into the clutches of recessions and, gasp, potentially a depression the likes of which has never been seen before.

Wake up people… learn about your government and the people who are working behind the scenes. You will be amazed at what you will find when you look behind that curtain!

After Hurricane Ike, huge search-and-rescue under way

You know.. after all the warnings from the governor, the national weather service and who knows who else.. these idiots chose to stay and *then* when they decided things were getting to dicey they called for a rescue.

What would I have done?  I would leave them there and tell them that since you didnt heed the warnings, there isnt anything we can do for you.  Now, how many thousands of dollars or hundreds of thousands of dollars will be spent “rescuing” these idiots.  If they were so smart and decided to stay, then they should be made to fend for themselves.

Driving around tonight I noticed that just about EVERY gas station was out of regular and mid-grade.  The ones that did have regular were charging $4.30.  Just a day ago has was at $3.58.

You mean to tell me that in ONE DAY gas prices jumped almost one dollar??? and the supplies have dried up?!?!?

These oil companies, or proprietors of the gas stations themselves sure know how to manipulate the market. “There is a hurricane.. oh noes!” RAISE THE PRICES!!!

This is ridiculous.  That combined with the buffonery I witnessed this morning really makes me think about trying to establish my citizenship rights in Italy.  This country is not the country I grew up in any longer.  We are now, as a McCain aide said (I believe), a “nation of whiners.”

We run to the government at the first sign of trouble instead of trying to work it out on our own.  We have become dependent, as a nation, on the almighty (sarcasm) government.  No wonder people can’t make decisions in their own lives anymore, they dont have too!

Even corporations dont have to worry anymore.  Seeing as how we just privatized (read socialized) the mortgage industry, cant it be far behind before we start seeing the government morons in D.C. making a grab for anything they can get their hands on.. oh wait, they already have started.  Since when was Congress involved with Major League Baseball and steroids? Since when did they (Congress) become the standard bearers for “fair play?”  Please, that like giving the fox the keys to the henhouse and asking him to stand watch.

The slope is getting steeper and more slippery every day folks.. when are you going to wake up and see what this country is becoming?

Palin’s town used to bill victims for rape kits

I got this article sent to me in an email. I’m actually laughing that the dems, while criticizing the depths that the GOP will go to (making a big deal about the “lipstick on a pig” outrage) that they would bring this to light.

From my reading of the article it appears that the police chief was the one that was annoyed by this and that the police force were the ones who were billing the victims.

I fail to see how a police chief’s views are in any way associated with the views of the mayor. Granted that the mayor is his boss that still doesnt give her the right to dictate his beliefs. It also seems like this was a common practice throughout Alaska and not just in Wasilla which means that many more mayors besides Sarah Palin didn’t do anything about this practice. “Until the 2000 legislation, local law enforcement agencies in Alaska could pass along the cost of the exams, which are needed to obtain an attacker’s DNA evidence.”

So, after reading this article, I fail to see where Sarah Palin specifically was made aware of this and sanctioned the practice of charging victims.  Sounds like more rhetoric by the left in an attempt to divert the attention away from the issues and onto a personal level which they themselves have been screaming about the right not doing. In addition I would also say that since the Congress has now passed legislation against this throughout the United States that this is now a null issue.

I would much rather hear about how they are both going to fix the economy, get rid of a $438B national debt, keep the housing market from crashing completely while nationalising the mortgage industry and, lastly but most definitely not least, get our troops home safely in an expeditious manner.

Flight attendants ask American to filter porn sites | ajc.com.

Are you serious?  Porn on flights?  You really think this is an issue? You dont think people could load up porn on their laptops without the internet? Maybe they can load some porn on their iPod and whack off under the blanket if they were really that determined to?

Give me a break.  Worry about why I have to purchase water, a pillow, a blanket and a snack now when ticket prices are growing at an exponential rate, they are cramming more people than ever into their flying cattle cars and then they have flight attendants who feel that it should be *your* honor to be served by them.

Part of me can’t wait to see these airlines fail miserably.  Maybe then they will understand that people can only be stretched so far before they fight back.