SEC Staffers Spend Their Workday Watching Porn

So how did Bernie Madoff pull off the biggest Ponzi scheme in history?
Why have American’s retirement funds lost so much value?
How are people in the stock market still getting away with insider trading?

It’s simple.

Instead of keeping an eye on the financial markets, employees of the Securities And Exchange Commission were keeping their eyes on porno websites.

The Securities and Exchange Commission may have found the real reason it missed giant frauds such as Bernie Madoff’s $65 billion Ponzi scheme: Its employees were too busy trying to access porn at their desks.

About two dozen employees over the past two years have been caught using SEC computers to try to access porn Web sites, including one regional supervisor who made 1,800 attempts over a 17-day period but was denied access by monitoring software.

The situation became a big enough problem that the SEC’s inspector general has sent four internal reports on the topic to Congress over the past two years, according to The Washington Times, which first reported on the sex-starved SEC workers after obtaining information on the computer abuse through a Freedom of Information Act request.

Read the rest of this entry

Obama’s Bank Reforms Won’t Reform Anything

Except in the case of making things, the economy in particular, even worse.

 

Of course, just about everything has gotten worse since Obama became President.

And he’s not done yet.

 

Barack Obama calling himself a financial reformer is kind of like a drug dealer calling himself an unlicensed pharmacist.

 

 

 

After the Democrats’ disaster in Massachusetts last Tuesday, President Obama appears to be flailing. Gone is the cool and measured demeanor that made him look presidential when the financial crisis struck during the 2008 campaign. Instead, the financial reform proposals he advanced later in the week seem to reflect political panic—a desperate attempt to appeal to the populist sentiment against Wall Street. Unfortunately, they also reflect a limited understanding of good financial or banking policy.

First, Mr. Obama has proposed to limit the size of banks or their holding companies, or both. The trouble with limiting the size of these institutions is that no one has the faintest idea what the right size is. What’s more, if the purpose of the size limit is to prevent a bank or bank holding company from being or becoming too big to fail, we have to know what size would cause a failed institution to cause a financial train wreck. No one knows that, either. Under these circumstances, it’s hard to take such a proposal seriously.

Second, Mr. Obama says that some firms should be prohibited from engaging in “proprietary trading.” The White House announcement seems to apply to both banks and bank holding companies, but there is a huge difference between them. A bank is chartered by the government, its deposits are insured, it can participate in the U.S. payment system, and it has access to the Fed’s discount window. None of these things is true of a bank holding company—which is an ordinary corporation that controls a bank.

Read the rest of this entry

Employment Situation News Release

The latest Employment Situation news release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://bls.gov:

The unemployment rate edged down to 10.0 percent in November, and nonfarm payroll employment was essentially unchanged (-11,000). In the prior 3 months, payroll job losses had averaged 135,000 a month. In November, employment fell in construction, manufacturing, and information, while temporary help services and health care added jobs.

October Mass Layoffs

The latest Mass Layoffs news release from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, http://bls.gov:

In October, employers took 2,127 mass layoff actions involving 217,182 workers. Mass layoff events decreased by 434 and associated initial claims by 30,824 from September. Over the month, the number of manufacturing events, at 619, decreased by 237, and associated initial claims, at 70,572, decreased by 26,494.

The national unemployment rate was 10.2 percent in October 2009, seasonally adjusted, up from 9.8 percent the prior month and from 6.6 percent a year earlier. In October, total nonfarm payroll employment decreased by 190,000 over the month and by 5,504,000 from a year earlier.

Quarterly Extended Mass Layoffs

Courtesy of the Bureau of Labor Statistics: http://bls.gov

Employers initiated 1,776 extended mass layoff events that resulted in 277,924 job separations in the third quarter of 2009. The total number of events reached a record high for any third quarter. Nine major industry sectors had a record high number of events for a third quarter.

News And Views 10-10-09

All the news you need to know.
The only place you need to go.

Fighting starts over Obama prize

DNC humor Czar has no sense of humorFinally,someone speaks out in defense of Glenn Beck

Wht the GOP should give O a prize

Dems change stance on miltary and Afghanistan

Unemployment Hits 9.8%

The Bureau of Labor Statistics released the early numbers for the September job situation today:

Nonfarm payroll employment continued to decline in September
(-263,000), and the unemployment rate (9.8 percent) continued to trend up. The largest job losses were in construction,
manufacturing, retail trade, and government.

9-12 March On Washington Recap

Yesterday’s demonstration in Washington D.C. was a thunderous statement to “the powers that be” (as John Conyers calls them) that the people are not happy with the way the country is being run since Democrats took over power in 2006.

As much as the pundits and government-run media outlets try to downplay or propagandize what happened yesterday, they just will not be able to keep the citizen patriots quite or discourage them. And President Obama better be paying attention because the people who marched down Pennsylvania Avenue on September 12th represent the majority of this country. A majority who has decided it will be silent no longer.

I was fortunate enough to travel to D.C. yesterday on one of the buses that the local Tea Party organization put together yesterday for the march. Yes, I had to pay my own way to get on the bus as did everyone else. Dick Armey didn’t pick up the bill for any of us. It was an unforgettable experience and I am so proud to have been part of it. The people I talked and marched with were regular folks, many of whom have never been politically active before in their lives, but who just could not stand allowing the government to shove their policies down our throats without being heard.

There were people of all ages, races, and political backgrounds at the event which was entirely peaceful and orderly. I saw no signs of Obama as Hitler and I did not feel that the tone of the demonstration was angry, although the folks were angry at their representatives who are not listening to them. So the Associated Press’s report of the event is pretty flawed and most likely was just made up by someone who didn’t even attend.

Here are some pictures I took while in D.C. yesterday:

My favorite part of the march was when people started chanting “You lie, You lie!” showing solidarity to Rep. Joe Wilson who called President Obama out during his speech before Congress last Wednesday.

There was a HUGE biker contingency there. Gotta love having the bikers on our side.

The main topics of discussion yesterday were obviously government-run health care and “cap and trade”, but perhaps the most discussed topic was how the media would be covering the event, if they covered it at all.

People everywhere were getting reports from family and friends on what the news was reporting and shouting it out so everyone around them could hear. Whenever we heard that the media was saying 10’s of thousands of people were there, it resulted in an outburst of laughter from the crowd. That’s because at any given time during the day there were 10’s of thousands of people in line for the bathroom! There was clearly a momentous crowd of people that showed up.

For those who still don’t believe it, you can see pretty much the entire crowd that showed up in this time lapse video that I found on Michelle Malkin’s blog:

You tell me if that is 60,000 people or millions.

Obama Declares war On The Middle Class

(I wish some of these millionaire liberals who want to tax everyone to “help out the less fortunate” would send me a few bucks.)

Like a PacMan gobbling up everything in sight, going after folks making more than $250,000 a year is not enough to satisfy Obama’s insatiable appetite for money and power. He wants more. Although it means breaking a campaign promise to only tax the “rich,” Obama’s mad rush for revenue to fund his social engineering has transformed his agenda into a war against the middle class.

While Obama rides his luxury 747 around the globe, glad-handing with other world leaders discussing “healing the planet” and other grandiose plans, the average American is struggling to find work. As Michelle Obama totes around a $6,000 Italian alligator-skin clutch, the only thing most Americans are “clutching” is their wallets, trying to figure out how to get by this month. Obama is out of touch with Middle America. However, even worse than his overt elitism…Read the rest of this entry

Obama’s Health Scare Tactics Won’t Work This Time

Back when we “absolutely needed” the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 to save us from impending doom in the financial markets, I wrote that the crisis was being overblown in order to shove that enormous spending bill down the voters’ throats. That analysis has held up to this point and I believe history will show this is exactly what happened.

President Obama is now trying to cash in on his remaining political capital with a health care bill that will enable the federal government to take over one fifth of the U.S. economy. Beat that Hugo Chavez!

Predictably, President Obama with his chief-of-staff Rahm “never waste a crisis” Emanuel, are looking for some new imminent disaster they can use to scare the public into backing their health care plan before fully understanding what it involves and what the alternatives are.

Many people have been asking of the president, “Why the rush?”  If we are going to pass a health care bill that allows for government takeover of 20% of the economy, shouldn’t politicians be taking their time to make sure they get it right? The public should know up front what it is that the government is proposing, what it will cost, and what the alternatives are in order to make an informed decision on whether or not to support it. Members of Congress and the president will at least have time to read the bill, right?

The question has prompted radio talk show host Rush Limbaugh to speed up all of his sound bites of politicians trying to get a health care bill pushed through the Congress. I guess if the politicians are in such a hurry, Rush wants to make sure that all of their sound bites are played in time to inform the public as much as possible before the president’s deadline for legislation (now up in the air). If you tuned in to Rush over the past week and didn’t know any better, you’d get the sense that Alvin and the Chipmunks really want health care reform passed, but they can’t logically explain how it will be paid for and why it is better than health insurance reform. What is clear now, however, is what the president has chosen to be the pressing crisis that is prompting the momentous health care move.

Obama has long whined that he “inherited” a trillion dollar annual deficit. A false statement that denies his and the Democrat controlled Congress’s responsibility for the deficit. The $1.3 trillion deficit that Obama is “inheriting” this year is due to the enormous bailout bill, mentioned above, that Obama lobbied for during the presidential elections and that was pushed through the Democrat Congress to be signed by President Bush. That is Obama’s definition of inheriting a deficit. He scares the hell out of the citizens – who lobbied Congress to vote down the first bailout bill – and pushes the bailout bill to the president’s desk. Then when Bush signs the bill, Obama says now he has “inherited” the deficit the bailout bill caused.

But if you listen to Obama you would think that health care costs are somehow responsible for this year’s deficit and that “rising costs of health care” will lead to a projected deficit increase of $9.3 trillion between 2010 and 2019. To get an understanding of how the Obama Administration explains this, you can read Peter Orszag’s column in the Wall St. Journal. The basic gist of their claim is that Medicare and Medicaid expenses stand to increase from 5% of GDP – where it is now – to 20% of GDP by 2050. Ok, but that just says to me that Medicare and Medicaid are failed entitlement programs that should be ditched. It says that these programs are part of the problem in the health industry and expanding them to generally cover the entire population is NOT the answer to our problems.

In addition to the claim of health care costs being the principle driver of the skyrocketing deficit, Obama has also decided to scare people into supporting him by claiming that if we don’t pass this legislation now, our health insurance premiums will double over the next ten years. Those numbers are likely coming from Obama’s Ministry of Truth.

The real problem here is that consumers of health care never see what they are being charged in the first place. The bill goes to the insurance company, they decide what they are responsible for and what the consumer is responsible for and the consumer gets their bill. Consumers never see an itemized bill showing what they and the insurance company paid for. There is almost zero ability for consumers to bargain and shop around for their health care. The health care industry is the only industry in our economy that behaves this way.

Not to mention the desperate need for tort reform in the medical industry. But instead of addressing these issues, Obama would rather just control the whole thing and force out private insurance companies.

If Obama cannot get anything passed through Congress without using scare tactics, then Senator Jim DeMint could very well be right. This could be Obama’s last stand. The citizens do not appear to be falling for the scare tactics and sob stories this time, which is a very good sign. It looks like the deadline will be pushed back on this legislation for now, but make no mistake; when Congress is back in session Obama and Emanuel will be right back in their faces trying to get a bill through. We all need to stay on top of our Reps and Senators to make sure they do not cave and sacrifice our country for their own political ambitions. And we need to show Obama that we will not be fooled into believing that the end of the world is around the corner if we don’t do what he wants us to do anymore.

Next Page »