Consumer Confidence Continues To Fall

For months now, we have been hearing that the worst of America’s financial crisis is over, the President’s economic stimulus package is creating millions of new jobs, we are pulling out of the recession, and so forth.

We will come back to the lies about job creation for another time.

Unemployment figures continuing to hover around ten percent show that we are still losing more jobs than are being created.

In a sign that we ar far from being out of the woods yet, Wal Mart just posted it’s first ever drop off in quarterly sales.

In the important holiday quarter ending on January 31, net sales at Walmart’s 3,400-plus US stores fell 0.5 per cent year-on-year.

The first three quarters were good for Wal Mart, largely due to the fact that it was attracting a new class of budget-minded shoppers who had not previously been part of their lower-income customer base.

Now even those folks are cutting back.

Not a positive sign.

The Broken Promises Of Barack Obama

Recently, one of our reader’s asked if we would do an article outlining how many of his campaign promises President Obama has already broken.

Being responsive to our reader’s wishes is one of our top priorities, but we did ask her to give us some time to compile the information, as chances are it would prove to be quite a task.

We had no idea what an understatement that was.

To list them all would cause you to lose your eyesight before you finished reading them, so we will list, in no particular order, what we consider to be the major ones.

1. Reforming Of “Earmarks.”
Obama said “When I am President, I will go through a spending bill line-by-line to make sure we are not spending money unwisely.”
I guess the hundreds of millions of dollars in the “Porkulus” economic stimulus package failed to catch his eye.
He also missed the almost 7 billion dollars in earmarks in the 2009 Omnibus spending bill for 2009 that he signed.

2. No Jobs For Lobbyists.
“Lobbyists have not funded my campaign,  and they will not run my White House.”

Well, they may not be running it, but there are quite a few former lobbyists working there. Just a few are:
Attorney General Eric Holder
Mark Patterson, Chief of Staff for Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner.
Cecilia Munoz, Director of Intergovernmental Affairs
Ron Klain, Chief of Staff for Vice-President Joe Biden
Mona Stuphen, Deputy White House Chief of Staff

The list goes on. Click here to see more former lobbyists that are members of the Obama administration

3. Sign the “Freedom of Choice” Act
This is one all of us here at the Freedom Medium are glad he hasn’t followed through on.
However, keep in mind that, although he hasn’t mentioned this legislation since he took office, he did appoint a pro abortion advocate, Kathleen Sebelius, Secretary of Health and Human Services.

4.”I Will Eliminate Capital Gains Taxes For Small Business Investment.”

This is one, with the economy being the way it is, should have been one of the first items on Obama’s agenda.
Instead of doing something to encourage the small firms that are making it through the recession to expand and create jobs, Mr. Obama seems to be more focused on laying the groundwork fo a job as a service manager at a General Motors dealership once he leaves office.

5. The Rescue Plan For The Middle Class.

This one was going to eliminate penalties for early withdrawals from 401k retirement accounts.
This would have allowed people to withdraw up to $10,000 from their 401’s to meet everyday expenses.
There are two problems with this one.
The first one is that this is another one that should have been at the top of the list, given the state of the economy.
The second one is, despite promises of HOPE and CHANGE, in spite of promises after promise of the creation of new jobs, and fleecing the American taxpayer out of almost 800 billion dollars in a hair-brained scheme to make it happen, our economy, as well as the stock market, is still in the toilet.

Perhaps it doesn’t matter that he broke this one.
Regardless of Obama’s vow to turn the economy around, most people probably don’t have ten grand left in their 401k.

We could keep going on and on with this, but I think you get the idea.
However, we did save the best for last.

6. “When I am President, when a piece of legislation reaches my desk, you will have days to examine it online to see what is in it before I sign it.”

That quote may not be the exact wording, but the bottom line is that he did promise the American public the chance to look at a bill before he signed off on it.

There is a logical expanation as to why Obama dropped the ball on this one.

Number one, if the members of Congress aren’t given enough time to read a piece of legislation before voting on it, why the hell should we, the average taxpayers, expect to be treated any better?

The second one is, given the nonsense that is being signed into law, if most of us had a chance to look at it first, we would probably cause the White House switchboard to melt from the amount of irate phone calls we would be making.

Move Over, MoveOn: Tea Parties Spark Conservative Insurgency Online

Conservatives may be catching up with their liberal counterparts in building a Web-driven, grassroots campaign to push their agenda.

The online insurgency-in-the-making revolves around the so-called tea parties, the anti-tax protests popping up around the country that they expect to culminate Wednesday — tax day — with hundreds of rallies nationwide.

The movement, which expanded over the last two months via the Web, is now relying heavily on independent media Web sites to track and cover the campaign.

The digital evolution of conservative activists comes too late to help John McCain, whose new media arm was left in the dust by President Obama’s campaign. But organizers are holding out hope that this movement has juice.

“It’s thoroughly viral,” said Glenn Reynolds, the Instapundit.com blogger who hosts an online news show for the Web site Pajamas TV.

Pajamas TV is on the frontlines of new media…Read the rest of this entry

Peter Schiff Was (And Is Still) Correct on the Financial Crisis

I am man enough to admit I was wrong about Peter Schiff. I thought he was a “doom and gloomer” who was incapable of being optimistic about the economy for whatever reason. Boy was I wrong.

The problem was that I wanted Schiff to be wrong, and I wanted his warnings to be exaggerations like many of the people you will see in this video. I did not want to believe that the money I had in the market was in danger because of a coming financial crisis from the mortgage industry. And seeing smart people like Ben Stein and Neil Cavuto downplaying or dismissing Schiff’s statements was the only excuse I needed to dismiss him myself.

I wish I could have that one back, but I can’t.

What I can do though is heed what Schiff is saying now, and I suggest everyone in the country do the same.

In the following video Schiff directly addresses the problems from 2005 through 2008 that have resulted in the current recession. Those problems were government interference.

Schiff explains that for too long the government was borrowing and spending too much because of cheap cash coming primarily from China. (China has loads of cash from selling products to wealthy consumers in the US. To increase their wealth, China invests that cash in US Treasury Bonds to gain interest. These interest rates are relatively low, but China gains because of the enormous amount of cash they are investing at what is supposed to be no risk. The result is China essentially finances US debt.)

Not investing cheap Chinese cash responsibly, the federal government promoted a culture of consumer borrowing and spending to keep our new service based economy growing. This was facilitated by the Federal Reserve who kept interest rates artificially low, which incentivized more and more borrowing and consumption.

Schiff argues that this cycle was not free market, capitalist economics and therefore was not sustainable. The market should have been determining interest rates all along and the government should have acted more responsibly, promoting savings and production. It is the government’s interference in the free market that caused the problem, and their increased interference will only make the current problems even worse.

Schiff argues that our deflationary recession will soon become an inflationary depression if the government does not reverse the course it is taking. The enormous increases in the money supply (printed by the Fed) and government borrowing and spending (Obama’s budget with a $1.8 trillion deficit) will no doubt result in inflation. In fact that is the desired result to combat the current deflation. But since this kind of government intervention has never worked in the past, the prospects of future experiments do not instill much confidence.

Schiff’s recommendation does not require the government do nothing though. If the government starts promoting savings and reduction of debt again while reallocating resources back to sectors of the economy that produce goods, the recession will be much shorter lived. However, if they continue to promote consumer borrowing and spending, as they currently are, our problems could and probably will get much worse.

As you watch the video, you will see that in spite of how correctly Schiff has called it in recent years, people are still reluctant to adopt his views. Mark Haines of CNBC is a perfect example, unprofessionally poking fun at Schiff at the end of the video. Not sure where Haines, a reporter and lawyer, thinks he gets authority from on these things. I will defer to Schiff on subjects of economics.

Socialism We Can Believe In

How is your day going?

Feeling pretty good, fairly cheerful?

Proud to be an American?

Me too.
The only question, as the video below shows, is how long is the America we have grown to know and love going to be around with these chuckleheads in charge?

So How In The Hell Are You Going To Declare Martial Law NOW?

If you were paying close attention, you might be able to recall that the possibility of declaring martial law in the U.S. has been raised more that a few times.
America’s current economic turmoil has been used as the reasoning behind such a scheme.
The people who raise the possibility claim that we may see runs on banks, food riots, or plain old civil unrest as justification for such an action.
Then you have the folks like me, who reason that such a scenario would be a perfest excuse to try and disarm law-abiding American citizens.

But the zealots behind this scheme have, as usual, overlooked one small but vital detail.
In order for such a plan to work, you need the active cooperation of both law enforcement and the U.S. military.
A bunch of overweight, video game playing high school kids from a “Civilian Defense Corps” aren’t going to get the job done, even if you do dress them in brownshirts.

The bad news for these power-hungry mainiacs is a group that calls themselves the Oath Keepers.
Tens of thousands of members of the military have already signed on, with thousands more joining each day.
The following is a declaration of what the members of the Oath Keepers have pledged:

1. We will NOT obey any order to disarm the American people.

2. We will NOT obey any order to conduct warrantless searches of the American people, their homes, vehicles, papers, or effects – such as warrantless house-to house searches for weapons or persons.

3. We will NOT obey any order to detain American citizens as “unlawful enemy combatants” or to subject them to trial by military tribunal.

4. We will NOT obey orders to impose martial law or a “state of emergency” on a state, or to enter with force into a state, without the express consent and invitation of that state’s legislature and governor.

5. We will NOT obey orders to invade and subjugate any state that asserts its sovereignty and declares the national government to be in violation of the compact by which that state entered the Union.

6. We will NOT obey any order to blockade American cities, thus turning them into giant concentration camps.

7. We will NOT obey any order to force American citizens into any form of detention camps under any pretext

8. We will NOT obey orders to assist or support the use of any foreign troops on U.S. soil against the American people to “keep the peace” or to “maintain control” during any emergency, or under any other pretext. We will consider such use of foreign troops against our people to be an invasion and an act of war.

9. We will NOT obey any orders to confiscate the property of the American people, including food and other essential supplies, under any emergency pretext whatsoever.

10. We will NOT obey any orders which infringe on the right of the people to free speech, to peaceably assemble, and to petition their government for a redress of grievances.

I have to tell you that #8 is my particular favorite.

And there is one other thing to keep in mind.
There are literally MILLIONS of us average, everyday citizens who will stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the members of the Oath Keepers in order to keep America the land of the free and the home of the brave.

Click here to learn more about the Oath Keepers

Is Barack Obama Putting The National Security Of America At Risk?

You know, these mind-numbed robots that blindly take in every announcement from President Obama as if it came straight from the Bible are really starting to annoy me!

I won’t even buy Kool-Aid anymore.  Anyway, to answer the question I posed in the title of this piece, the answer is:

DUH!

Consider the Prsident’s plans on closing Gitmo without any idea on where to put the “detainees” (Obama-speak for enemy combatants), to banning the use of the politically incorrect term “war on terror”, and on and on and on.

But perhaps the biggest threat to our county’s security comes from the trillions of dollars of reckless spending the Obama administration has embarked upon.

China, which leave us not forget is a communist country, is America’ largest creditor.
And Obama is making the Chinese a little nervous also.
Recently, Chinese Premier Win Jinbao demanded that the Obama administration guarantee the safety of the 1 trillion dollars in U.S. Treasuries that China holds.
He was further quoted as saying “We have lent a large amount of money to the United States. Of course we are concerned about the safety of our assets. To be honest, I am definitely a little worried.”

This is just dandy.
On the one hand we now have a President that is leaving America wide open to further acts of terrorism, given the fact that he is so worried about offending the very groups that are hell bent on causing the deaths of even more of America’s citizens.

And on the other hand he is leaving us open to economic blackmail if the Chinese decide to sell off the Treasury bonds they hold, or at the very least China could demand concessions on a number of trade issues, further weakening the U.S. economy.

Either way, this isn’t the kind of CHANGE that I’m looking forward to.

We The People Stimulus Package

I like this guy!

And he makes a lot of sense, when you listen to what he has to say.

And one of his opening statements really touches a nerve with me.

Where is the outrage over Attorney General Holder’s statement that “America has become a nation of cowards” ?

It’s obvious that Mr. Holder has never visited my neighborhood.

Or else he never would have made such a dumb ass remark.

Milton Friedman…Other People’s Money

Once again, I present our good friend Milton Friedman.
Friedman is a favorite of all of us here at Freedom Medium.
Sadly, it would seem that no one at the White House or in the halls of Congress have  ever heard of him.
And it isn’t as though it takes an economic genius to understand the point that Friedman is trying to make.
It simply takes common sense.
Another commodity that seems to be in short supply in our nation’s Capitol.

Shocking Video Unearthed! Democrats in Their Own Words Covering Up The Fannie Mae, Freddie Mac Scam That Caused Our Economic Crisis

Yesterday I did a posting, The New York Times Sees The Future, which contained an article from 2003 showcasing how Republicans in Congress were calling for greater oversight of lending giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.
Now that the Democrats control the House, the Senate, and the White House, they are trying to lay the blame for the ongoing decline of our economy on the backs of everyone except those who are truly responsible.
Are Democrats incapable of telling the truth?
Or are they suffering from short-term, very selective memory lapses?
Some of us don’t forget.

Next Page »