March, 2016, Part 1, Political Class Insanity: A Sampling of Government and Political Insults to the American Taxpyer and Citizens

It is the beginning of another month which means it is time again to review the latest political class insanity from the American political class. Each month it takes us multiple posts to cover the wasteful spending, incompetent government organizations and employees, government programs that usually make a problem worse than resolving it, inane and idiotic politician comments, etc.

To review past posts on this insanity and idiocy, just click on the first few posts in each month listed to the right of this page. After reviewing just a handful of these insanity posts we think you will agree that we are currently being served by the worst set of American politicians ever to hold office in our entire history.

To kick off this month’s insanity, we reference a recent article on the website of the Washington Weekly News. They recently put together a hall of shame for the corruption and insults to the American taxpayer that many of the Federal government have incurred over the past couple of years. 

After going through the list, I think you will have a much better understanding of 1) why nothing ever gets successfully and efficiently accomplished by the Federal government bureaucracy, the employees involved with that useless bureaucracy and the politicians that are supposed to oversee that bureaucracy and 2) how we have gotten to a whopping national debt of $19TRILLION and have nothing to show for it.

The original article can be accessed at:

http://washingtonweeklynews.com/long-long-list-of-lies-how-corrupt-is-the-american-government-see-for-yourself/#

At that article you can click on other links that verify that the corruption that is being listed actually happened. 

Trust me, you will need a strong stomach and low blood pressure to survive the following insults to your wallets and intelligence:

Senior SEC employees and officials were caught surfing the Internet for pornography 8 hours a day on government computers during work hours rather than cracking down on financial illegalities.

Nuclear Regulatory Commission workers were also caught watching Internet pornography on the job rather than protecting us from nuclear plant accidents and meltdowns.

An EPA employee was caught after he had downloaded 7,000 computer files filled with pornography and who also spent upwards of 6 hours a day watching it. This behavior had been going on for years but he never got fired.

Another EPA official harassed at least 16 EPA female co-workers but rather than getting fired he was promoted to a higher paying job where he continued to harass female employees at his new location.

While illegally spying on ordinary Americans and shredding their Fourth Amendment rights, NSA employees passed around sex video and pictures that they had illegally collected from Americans’ computers.

NSA employees were also caught using their expensive, taxpayer funded surveillance equipment and power to spy on girlfriends, mistresses, former wives and others besides eavesdropping on the intimate conversations of overseas American soldiers and their wives back home.

A TSA employee admitted that airport agents regularly share and laugh at nude scans of airport passengers.

Another TSA employee claims that TSA airport screeners make excuses so that they can grope and fondle air travelers that they are attracted to.

The Treasury Department’s inspector general found that Treasury employees surfed erotic websites while on the job, hired prostitutes, and accepted gifts from bank executives, the very people they were supposed to be overseeing and regulating.

The Minerals Management Service, the agency supposedly in charge of protecting us from oil spills, was found to be infested with “a culture of substance abuse and promiscuity” which extended to “sex with industry contacts.”

Drug Enforcement Agency agents had dozens of sex parties with prostitutes who were hired by the drug cartels that DEA agents are supposed to be taking down.

Those same DEA agents were found to also having received money, gifts, and weapons from those same drug cartels.

DEA agents also operated a New Jersey strip club using illegal and undocumented girls, an operation that also included a prostitution operation.

Pentagon employees used government credit cards to pay for prostitutes and to gamble using taxpayer money.

The IRS promoted IRS employees who were also tax cheats or delinquents.

Commodity Futures Trading Commission employees conspired with big banks to manipulate commodities prices.

The SEC has been shredding Wall Street bank documents for decades to help big banks cover up criminal activities.

Former Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner allegedly was involved in Lehman Brothers' accounting fraud.

The former chief SEC accountant claims that at least two former Treasury secretaries, Ben Bernanke and Henry Paulson, broke the law.

Different government agencies (The Fed, SEC, FBI, DOJ, and others) and high ranking government officials knew about massive banking fraud long before the Great Recession hit but did nothing about it.

Paulson and Bernanke lied when the said that the big banks receiving TARP money were financially healthy but in truth, were not.

The Washington political class bailed out the banks that caused the Great Recession, sending none of the law breaking bankers to jail, but did nothing for the homeowners that ended up losing their homes as a result of big bank policies and strategies.

A high-level Federal Reserve official claims that the Fed’s quantitative easing programs were "the greatest backdoor Wall Street bailout of all time." 

Another high ranking American government official in charge of the bank bailouts claimed: “Americans should lose faith in their government. They should deplore the captured politicians and regulators who distributed tax dollars to the banks without insisting that they be accountable. The American people should be revolted by a financial system that rewards failure and protects those who drove it to the point of collapse and will undoubtedly do so again.”

The supposedly non-partisan Government Accountability Office called the Federal Reserve “corrupt and riddled with conflicts of interest.”

Congress audaciously told the courts that Congress cannot be investigated for insider trading.

Congress exempted itself from Obama Care rules even though it was illegal to do so according to the legislation.

The Federal government allegedly covered up health risk and dangers to New Orleans residents as a result of tainted water as a result of Hurricane Katrina.

The Centers For Disease Control allegedly covered up lead poisoning of children in Washington D.C.

The Obama administration went after honest whistleblowers in many cases including an FDA/GE scandal, an FBI anthrax scandal, a Dow Chemical scandal, and a Bank Of America scandal.

$8.6 TRILLION in taxpayer money allocated to the Pentagon has never been accounted for. 

The Obama administration has gone after more whistle blowers than all previous Presidential administration COMBINED.

These are just a sample of the government screw ups and insults to the American taxpayer covered in the article. Again, go to the link above to see all of the instances of insults and corruption along with the links to find the original stories. 

This should get us started on this month’s political class insanity. It just gets worse and worse every month as the Washington political class continues to undermine our liberty, financial, and economic stability right in front of our faces. Buckle up as the insanity continues over the next week or so.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.bankruptingamerica.org
http://www.conventionofstates.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

The Corurption and Hunger Games Mentality of the Political Class, Part 4:Skimming Taxpayer Wealth in Newark and The EPA, Using The Fed As A Stairway To Wealth

This is our fourth post in this series where we are looking at the twin and intertwining themes of political class corruption and the Hunger Games mentality of most American politicians. The Hunger Games’ books and films are centered around the concept that politicians in the capital city live lavish and opulent lifestyles while the people outside of the capital city suffer through tough times and tough lives even though they are the ones that make the political class life style possible.

As a guide for reviewing political class corruption, we have been relying on the multi-level definition of corruption that the Webster online dictionary provides:

a : impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle : depravity

b : decay, decomposition 

c : inducement to wrong by improper or unlawful means (as bribery) 

d : a departure from the original or from what is pure or correct

Keep these definitions of corruption in mind as today we review a hodgepodge of corruption stories from different sectors of the political class. We started the hodgepodge yesterday with tales of a boozed up political class in Washington, illegal campaign fund raising activities, and greed and corruption at the state and local government levels. Today you will see more examples of integrity and moral impairment, depravity, decay, unlawful inducement, etc., along with good old basic greed.

EPA greed and wasteful spending corruption

On March 4, 2014, the inspector general (IG) at the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) reported that because of a severe lack of oversight, EPA Federal employees misused company credit cards:

• EPA employees spent taxpayer funds on items such as gym memberships, gift cards and food expenses. 
• The total scope of the greed, misspending, and waste was estimated at $29 million in purchases that occurred just during fiscal year 2012, according to stories carried in both The Washington Post and The Washington Examiner.
• The IG sampled $152,600 in “high risk” purchases and found that nearly 52% were in violation of the EPA’s mandatory review of payment management, which occurs at least every two years. 
• All in all, the IG discovered $79,300 in “prohibited, improper and erroneous” charges including $17,235 for “fitness” or gym memberships, $8,163 spent on gift certificates, $7,500 in “split purchases,” purchases were split to stay under the EPA’s allotted threshold for the expenses, $7,129 in purchased hotel rooms, $4,001 spent on food, and $1,596 spent on office supplies.

Despite being in existence for decades, apparently the executives at the EPA still have no concept on how to prevent EPA employees from corrupting the rules and using taxpayer wealth for their own benefit and personal use.

Cashing in on government service corruption

I do not know how to prevent the following example of impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle corruption but it certainly does not sit right from a morality perspective. A recent Wall Street Journal article reviewed the fact former Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke had a speaking engagement in Abu Dhabi at the Emirate’s Palace. 

It was coordinated by the National Bank of Abu Dhabi with the major sponsor, Citibank, hosting the affair. As Fed chairman, Bernanke had a major, major say on how Citibank would be treated relative to government policies and bailout funding back during the Great Recession and afterwards.

According to the article, he was paid $250,000, a whopping quarter of a million dollars, for just a 40 minute speech. For those forty minutes of talking, he made more money than what he made in all of 2013 when he was the Fed chairman, a government position that paid him $199,000. In other words, he earned over $6,000 per minute to justify to the audience his questionable Fed policies and actions taken over the past five or six years by the Fed.

If Bernanke gives just three more speeches this year and gets paid like he did in Abu Dhabi, he will have made a million dollars, 5 years worth of his government salary in less than three speaking hours. Not too shabby work if you can get it. 

I have always felt that government service should not be a pathway to making you rich. But the political class, from Congress to the White House to the Fed, has rigged the game that those fortunate enough to be in those political class positions can leverage those positions and the American government to their personal enrichment. That, to me, is the very definition of corruption and impairment of integrity, virtue, or moral principle.

Skimming money from government agencies corruption

This is another example of a more general problem and deceit when political figures find a way to divert government and taxpayer funds to themselves or their accomplices (which eventually gets back to them). If this alleged story is true, then New Jersey Senator Cory Booker is merely not smart enough to get away with the corruption and swindle, he is not an isolated case.

Some background. Cory Booker used to be the mayor of Newark, New Jersey, capping a long political career within that city. He was recently elected to the U.S. Senate. According to a March 8, 2014 report from the Western Center For Journalism, since the 1970’s, a long line of crooked Newark politicians have been skimming millions of dollars from The Newark Watershed Conservation Development Corporation (NWCDC), the agency that is the major supplier of water to Northern New Jersey. 

A recent New Jersey State Comptroller’s report outlined the depth of the criminal activity related to this agency during the last several years of Booker’s term as Newark’s mayor. It alleges that NWCDC’s chief, Linda Watkins-Brashear, once a close political ally of Senator Booker, spent most of her time lining her pockets and those of her friends with money siphoned from the budget of the agency.

The Comptroller’s report alleges that:

• Watkins-Brashear wrote unreported checks to herself for about $200,000 and collected another $700,000 in severance pay. 
• She diverted a million dollars to her ex-husband and other friends.
• She lost about $500,000 in “dubious stock ventures.”
• The Comptroller’s report also alleges that when Newark laid off 160 police officers in 2010, Watkins-Brashear, acting like a Hunger Games elite, treated herself and 20 guests to a lavish feast in an Atlantic City restaurant costing $1,400, dining on “… lobster, king crab, and filet mignon, washed down with martinis, cognac, and wine,” according to the Comptroller’s analysis and report.
• Watkins-Brashear insisted she should not be blamed for her actions since she “… acted at all times with the knowledge and approval of then Mayor Cory Booker’s administration.”

So, a member of the political class, Watkins-Brashear, readily admits to being loose and abusive with taxpayer wealth but seems to think it was okay since another member of the same political class, Cory Booker, approved the corruption of her actions. Not much of a defense but certainly a problem for the good Senator from New Jersey if true.

This is how fall our politicians have fallen from an integrity based culture: as long as another criminal politician approves the corruption, it is okay. And according to the article from Western Journalism, Booker is not the first one to abuse taxpayer funds via this agency, it has been going on for decades, he is just the latest one to allegedly continue the tradition of corruption.

That will do it for today. Three cases of the political class making themselves wealthy at three different levels of the government structure and political class: Federal EPA employees treating themselves with taxpayer wealth, a Fed chairman leveraging his dubious time as head of the Fed to get rich quick, and the continuing tradition of Newark political corruption, now being justified by citing the approval of other corrupt politicians.

We will finish up this corruption and Hunger Games theme tomorrow with an essay from an African-American journalist where he passionately and correctly calls out the greed and corruption, financial and moral, of the Obamas and other politicians in true Hunger Games fashion.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

Term Limits Now: http://www.howmuchworsecoulditget.com
http://www.reason.com
http://www.cato.org
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

Obama and Bernanke's Artificial Economy - Ready To Break At Any Time

Note: before reading today's post may I suggest that we all send our prayers and support to the suffering people in Boston who experienced a horrorific terror attack yesterday afternoon at the hands of unknown assailants. And also give thanks to the brave, experienced, and professional police, fire, and EMT folks who ran towards the carnage and likely saved many lives with their heroism and skills.

The stock market has been hitting record highs recently. Is that making you feel wealthier? Before answering that question, consider the latest economic statistics (much of the following information and analysis comes from an organization and individual who is much smarter than me, The Project To Restore America, "Is An Artificial Economy Sustainable?" By Scott S. Powell Monday, April 08, 2013):

• The U.S. unemployment rate fell slightly to 7.6% in March and 88,000 jobs were created during the month.
• However, these are not reasons to celebrate since the 88,000 new jobs created represented the slowest job growth in almost a year.
• The drop in the unemployment rate was largely the result of roughly half a million people leaving the workforce.
• The European statistical agency said the Eurozone's 12% unemployment rate was the highest since record-keeping began in 1995.
• U.S. manufacturing grew more slowly in March with the Institute for Supply Management's (ISM) index falling almost 3 points to 51.3% (any figure above 50% indicates growth).
• The latest Commerce Department figures showed February factory orders up 3%, driven largely by orders for commercial aircraft; excluding transportation-related orders, new orders were up just 0.3%.
• The ISM's gauge also showed slowing growth in the services sector as the index fell from 56% to 54.4% in March.
• The business production and new orders components of the index fell even more, dropping 5.4% and 6.4% respectively.
• Construction spending continued to provide some of the only good news; the Commerce Department said construction spending was up 1.2% in February, with private construction responsible for most of the increase. February's figure also is nearly 8% higher than the previous February's but last February's level was at very low levels.
• The Bank of Japan under its new governor announced a massive expansion of its quantitative easing efforts to try to push that country’s comatose economy out of the deflation that has plagued it for years and toward a 2% annual inflation target.
• Higher exports helped shrink the U.S. trade deficit in February by 3.5%, but the deficit is still an atrocious to $43 billion PER MONTH.
• More than four years since the market bottom in March 2009, the U.S. economy as measured by the labor-force participation rate, which captures the percentage of working age people in the labor force, has just dropped to a new 34-year low at 63.3%.
• GDP growth from the market bottom has averaged 1.94% annually, the worst post-recession rebound in the last 70 years.
• This subpar economic performance has been achieved despite record stimulus spending by Washington and record low interest rates by the Fed.
• During the last four years, deficit spending has been averaging $1.24 trillion annually, while the Fed has been frantically injecting trillions of dollars into the banking system—the most aggressive monetary policy ever resulting in anemic economic growth, consistently high unemployment, record low employment rates, and crushing national debt.
• The economy has grown less than 8% in four years while national debt has grown by more than 50%.
• Every week, around 350,000 Americans have to file for first time unemployment benefits because of the lack of jobs.

These are the facts and trends, it is not pretty. But this economic horror show goes way beyond these negative economic results. The political class, in cahoots at least philosophically, with the Federal Reserve Board have distorted the reality of our economic system and processes in the following ways:

• Prior to the 2008 crisis it was universally unacceptable for the Fed to monetize government debt because it would lead to inflation.
• It was also unfathomable for government deficit spending to exceed 5% of GDP or reach a trillion dollars in a year.
• Now, some deniers and economic ignoramuses in Washington say there's no problem because the deficit is falling, notwithstanding the likelihood of a fifth consecutive year of near trillion dollar deficits.
• While the Federal Reserve's balance sheet has grown to $3.2 trillion, few call it the debt monetization that it certainly is.
• Rather it's referred to as Quantitative Easing, or simply QE—a term that sounds both sophisticated and helpful but is still misleading since it creates artificial wealth out of thin air.
• The purpose of QE, we are told, is to lower interest rates and stimulate the economy.
• Or is it the political class and Fed conspiring to keep the cost of the Government's deficit spending artificially low, thus hiding the real cost of government's out of control spending.
• Most dangerously, the U.S. economy is now rigged and no longer operating as a free market system.
• When the most important price factor—the cost of credit—has been artificially depressed by the central planners at the Federal Reserve for more than four years, distortions and abnormalities impede the private sector investment and job creation that drive a normal recovery.
• Socialism fails because its politically driven central planning interferes with incentives, responsibility and the pricing system.
• Prices are essential carriers of information that facilitate the efficient allocation of resources, including risk capital for new technologies and new industries.
• When the market pricing system fails, inevitably there is a misallocation of resources.
• The best example has been the unequivocal disaster alternative energy investments by the Obama administration (Joe Biden actually called these "investments" bets).
• Of the 12 largest companies in the renewable energy sector that were collectively provided $6.5 billion in Federal loan guarantees by the Obama Energy Department, six have filed for bankruptcy and most, if not all, of the others are business fiascoes.
• Solyndra has proven to be more the rule than the exception of distorting the market's reality.
• Up until about five or six years ago, U.S. Treasury auctions were watched carefully and considered important carriers of information about the outlook for the economy.
• Now they are largely meaningless as the Federal Reserve effectively sets the prices and buys up some 60% the U.S. Treasuries debt issuance.
• Fed Chairman Bernanke has said that a primary purpose of QE is to lift stock prices so as to help people feel wealthier so they spend more.
• This is another way of saying that the Fed and Washington are basing the country's financial and economic future only on hope, hope that Americans will feel wealthier, and not solid economic principles.
• Corporate profits are being driven by government deficit spending and the stock market is discounting expected inflation, the QE "wealth effect" may be as illusory as it is risky since it is not based on solid market and economic fundamentals.

Thanks again to Mr. Powell's insightful analysis and explanantion showing that we are in far worse shape than just what we see in the latest economic statistics, we are seeing the mass distortion of an orderly economic process.

So, even if you are feeling wealthier, it also might be an illusion. The market indicators are out of control, skyrocketing debt will crush not only existing Americans but future generations of Americans, inflation will explode once the trillions of dollars of artificial Fed wealth breaks out into the economy, and the already high level of unemployment will jump substantially.

It is truly an artificial economy and like anything artificial, it will break much sooner than the real thing. All of the indicators of a ravaged and disintegrating economy are there, papered over by politicians and the Fed that have disconnected the economy from reality.

It is just a question of when it will break and how painful the breakage will be. Given the smoke and mirrors these folks have constructed, we will never see it coming until it hits us in the face. Those in charge are hoping their desperate measures will make things right. But hope is not a strategy, it is just wishful thinking with little basis in reality, an economic  reality that is about to get very nasty.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at:

www.loathemygovernment.com

It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.reason.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=08j0sYUOb5w

 

In Case You Were Starting To Feel Good About The Economy...More Bad News

Earlier this week we discussed how the economy was still in very bad shape even though there had been a smattering of good economic news recently (http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/03/in-case-you-were-feeling-good-about.html). Unfortunately, it appears that we did not cover all of the bad news, trends, and economic scenarios that are going on right now:


1) Federal reserve Board Charmian Ben Bernanke spoke recently at George Washington University. Highlights/low lights of his perspectives include the following:

• According to Bernanke, there is still not enough spending and investment to sustain the economic recovery.
• He said consumer demand still remains weak relative to its level before the Great Recession.
• He also noted that major contributors to economic growth, borrowing and trade, have declined.
• He feels that consumer spending, the major driver in our economy, has not recovered and is still very weak relative to where it was before the Great Recession. As a result,  "We lack a source of demand to keep the economy growing."
• In his view, household income growth is barely keeping up with inflation and that trend is being aggravated by high gas prices.
• And finally, he owned up to the fact that the Fed was a major enabler of the Great Recession, stating he believes the central bank made mistakes in supervision and regulation that did play a role in banks making unsound mortgage loans.

Oh boy. Bad news on the horizon from what is supposed to be the head of the biggest and most powerful government organization the world, the Fed. Demand is weak, trade is down, spending is down, income growth anemic. This from the person with the most power to make the economy strong but who just admitted the Fed was a contributor to the situation we are in today. Nice job, Mr.Chairman.

2) Yesterday, the government announced that just under 350,000 Americans filed for unemployment benefits last WEEK, a typical volume over the past six months or so. Since the economy has averaged only about 245,000 jobs created per MONTH over the past few months, the math for an economic recovery is still looking bad.

3) According to David Rosenberg, an economist at Gluskin Sheff, this post recession recovery is the weakest recovery ever. Among his other conclusions:

• The current recovery is being driven by warm weather, not by fundamental improvements taking place in the economy.
• In his view, deficit spending and the Fed's loose monetary policies have propped up the economy, which is much weaker than otherwise improving economic indicators would suggest: "We've got four years of trillion-dollar-plus deficits, we have a Fed balance sheet that's tripled in size, zero policy rates for three years. Of course you're going to get some growth."
• As with other analysts, he believes it is an artificial or illusion of economic growth, not real, sustainable economic growth.
• His analysis shows that a lot of the recent favorable economic statistics are due solely to the good weather enjoyed across the country this winter since construction jobs started up sooner rather than later and consumer spending on heating fuel was less than average, which provided more disposable income for other economic activity.

4) Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago President Charles Evans recently told Bloomberg News that the Fed "needs to further ease monetary policy to fuel the U.S. economic expansion." In other words, keeping interest rates at record lows for years and adding about a TRILLION dollars into the banking system via two previous "quantitative easing" programs, (i.e. also known as printing money) did not work. This would seem to indicate that the Fed really has no clue on how to get the economy moving again, not very reassuring.

5) Famed international investor Jim Rogers warns that investors should enjoy 2012, as economic stimulus measures and illusions will prop up markets for this election year. However, he believes that world economies will tank in 2013 and in 2014 when they can no longer grow on ultra-loose monetary policies and government borrowing and government debt burdens will weigh heavily on economic growth.

6) The February 27, 2012 issue of Business Week magazine had a depressing article regarding student loans. Apparently recent college graduate are coming into the workforce, assuming they can find a job, with very high student loan balances, averaging about $25,000.

This debt load makes it difficult for them to attain a home mortgage which in turn depresses the already depressed real estate market which depresses the already depressed economy. According to the article, a Federal Reserve Board study found that only about 9% of 29-34 year olds obtained a home mortgage from 2009 to 2011. This compares to 17% who had obtained a mortgage by this age ten years earlier.

Also depressing, the article reports that 25 to 34 year olds made up 27% of all home buyers in 2011, the lowest share in the past ten years. This 27% is six percentage points less than the same measure in 2001, according to the National Association of Realtors.

Without a higher influx of first time, younger buyers into the home ownership market, those families that currently own a home but want to move into a bigger home cannot since they are having a harder time selling their smaller, current home which normally would have been easier to sell to younger workers. A vicious cycle that will not go away until the current crop of college graduates significantly work down their student loan debt in order to qualify for a mortgage. Since this cycle will not be broken soon, help for the housing market will not be immediate.

7) The average price for a gallon of gas this past week was still very high $3.88, double what it was at the start of the Obama administration.

Not a pretty picture, esepcially when you combine this new bad news with the old bad news from our post earlier this week. Our economic hole is even deeper than we thought just a few days ago. However, the recommendations on how to fix this mess are still the same:

1. This November, vote out all incumbents. They are only as good as their lousy fiscal and economic record and it is time to start anew with fresh people in Washington. New faces could at least give us a hope of true economic change, a reality we will not get with the incumbents who are "only as good as their abysmal record."


2. Longer term, we need to implement Step 39 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." Step 39 would implement term limits for all Federal politicians. Allowing our current politicians to stay in Washington ten, twenty, thirty years or more is obviously not working. (note: please visit the following site and sign our petition demanding term limits for all Federally elected politicians:
http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/united_states_of_purple_015.htm)


3. We also need to implement Step 1 from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government." This step would reduce government spending by 10% a year for five years in order to quickly reduce out of control government spending in an orderly way. We have previously shown how to get $9 TRILLION (see the following link for the details: http://www.loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/02/united-states-of-purple-presidency-plan.html) of debt out of our lives so 10% reduction a year is very doable. Unless we get our economic and fiscal affairs in order and reduce our debt, the country's demise is all but determined. (what could happen under this plan already happened after World War II and it was prosperity, details at http://loathemygovernment.blogspot.com/2012/03/why-obamas-economic-policies-are-dead.html)


4. And finally, we need to implement an independent audit of the Federal Reserve Board. The Fed is basically accountable to no one, a situation that could certainly be abusive to the concept of freedom, a government agency answerable to no one. We need to more fully understand the workings and secrets of the Fed since their actions probably have the most potential for disaster, especially in the area of inflation.

Have a nice weekend.

We invite all readers of this blog to visit our new website, "The United States Of Purple," at:

http://www.unitedstatesofpurple.com/

The United States of Purple is a new grass roots approach to filling the office of President of The United States by focusing on the restoration of freedom in the United States, focusing on problem solving skills and results vs. personal political enrichment, and imposing term limits on all future Federal politicians. No more red states, no more blue states, just one United States Of America under the banner of Purple.

The United States Of Purple's website also provides you the formal opportunity to sign a petition to begin the process of implementing a Constitutional amendment to impose fixed term limits on all Federally elected politicians. Only by turning out the existing political class can we have a chance of addressing and finally resolving the major issues of or times.

Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment/

Clueless In Washington

Rather than talk about the hit movie light hearted "Sleepless In Seattle," today we will talk about heavy handed "Clueless In Washington," the continuing saga of how our political class in D.C. continues to cluelessly wander through life. Our politicians waste our wealth, oversee government programs that often counteract each other, and apparently have no clue on how to resolve the major issues facing Americans today:

- An article from the September 5, 2011 issue of Business Week was one of the most obvious examples of government cluelessness. It revealed how two major government entities actually admitted that it did not know how to do their job. The government organizations are Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, the two dysfunctional government housing giants that support the majority of  home mortgages in this country.

As a result of their responsibilities, the Federal government now owns about one third of the country's 800,000 repossessed homes. This makes Fannie and Freddie the largest owners of foreclosed home properties and all of the property tax bills and other expenses that come with home ownership.

The obvious, desired solution is to have the government get rid of these properties as quickly and effectively as possible in order to stop using taxpayer dollars to maintain these properties. However, they apparently do not have a clue on how to reach this happy solution. This past August, Fannie, Freddie and the Federal Housing Authority issued a joint plea to ANYONE in the country who had an idea of how to get rid of these properties, basically admitting that they did not know what to do with all of these properties and hoping maybe an American citizen might have an idea.

The article reviews how everything the Obama administration has tried to date to remedy the situation has been a disappointment, probably leading to this desperate call for ideas. What do experts think about this public cry for ideas:

• Karen Shaw Petrou, managing partner of Federal Financial Analytics: "They're (Freddie and Fannie) stuck. They do not know what to do."
• Mark Wiseman, former director of Cleveland's foreclosure-prevention program: "It's almost like having the captain of the Titantic go on the public address system and say, does anybody have an idea? It's not a confidence builder."

As usual, the taxpayer gets the short end of the stick for this mismanagement and lack of creativity and problem solving skills.  It is now clear, at least two Federal government  organizations, Fannie and Freddie, are clueless in Washington.

- We have reviewed the many examples of the failing American  public education system. U.S. kids always score lower than kids in dozens of other countries around the world in standardized tests. There are reports that almost 50% of U.S. kids entering community colleges have to take high school remedial courses before starting their college classes. There are reports that almost 25% of hopeful armed forces recruits cannot pass basic reading and math proficiency tests.

The latest evidence of this disgrace comes from a Washington Post article that was summarized in the September 30, 2011 issue of the The Week magazine. According to the Washington Post, the average SAT reading score of American kids who graduated in 2011 was 497. This is the lowest performance since 1972.

The Federal Department of Education was formed in the early 1980s and has spent over a trillion dollars over the past thirty years or so in support of public education. Thus, there really is no better example of D.C. cluelessness, spend a trillion dollars and get results that deteriorate to levels not seen since 1972.

- A USA Today article, that was summarized in the September 30, 2011 issue of The Week, reviewed the latest drug usage estimates from a Federal study. One of the major findings showed that the number of marijuana users in the country had grown about 20% from 2006 to 2010, going from 14.4 million users to 17.4 million users in 2010. These 17.4 million users are almost 7% of the adult population in this country.

But the Federal government continues to wage a lost war on drugs, a war that obviously includes marijuana users that choose to smoke marijuana. Would it not be a better plan to re-examine our war on drugs, at least marijuana, since users are a sizable chunk of the population, that chunk has grown steadily over the past few years, and the illicit market for marijuana is a major revenue stream for the Mexican drug cartels?  Somebody in D.C. does not have a clue to see that this business-as-usual view of marijuana use is an escalating problem.

- A September 5, 2011 article in Business Week discussed how some Russian interests were trying to establish a Silicon Valley-like technology center in  Russia. The article reviewed other, failed efforts to do the same thing around the world. Around the world included the state of Nevada. Senate majority leader Senator Harry Reid of Nevada wanted to create the UNLV Harry Reid Research And Technology Park which would be a place for technology entrepreneurship, similar to Silicon Valley.

Unfortunately, Mr. Reid apparently does not have a clue on how to replicate Silicon Valley since, according to the article: "In the works for six years, and with $2 million of Federal funding, the 122 acre site in Las Vegas remains an empty plot of desert with some very nice front entrance signage and landscaping." Great, first the clueless in Washington waste over half a billion dollars on the disaster that is Solyndra that creates no jobs, and now we end up paying $2 million for some flowers and an entrance sign in the middle of the Nevada desert. Clueless.

- But nowhere in Washington D.C. does cluelessness come to mind as clearly as when discussing high finance. Bloomberg News reported on September 26, 2011 that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is embarking on a new program to try and spark the economy. The effort is nicknamed "Operation Twist" and has not been attempted since 1961. The strategy involves the Federal Reserve buying back $400 billion worth of existing, long term Treasuries that have remaining maturities of six to 30 years. The repurhase program will be completed by June, 2012. The plan is to somehow to replace this $400 billion of long term Treasuries with $400 billion of short term Treasuries.

The intent of this switcheroo is to further drive down long term interest rates and in the process, drive down home mortgage rates. Lower rates, the logic goes, will result in more people buying homes and the increase in home purchasing will lead to a growing economy. By the way, when this was done in 1961, the mortgage rates dropped .15%, hardly a dramatic or effective way to drive down mortgage rates.

But besides the potential for only a minimal impact from this effort, the bigger issue is that the U.S. Treasury Department is about to embark on a strategy that sees it focused on selling longer term maturity Treasury bills in the near future. Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner went to this strategy so that the Treasury Department would reduce the amount of Federal government debt that the Treasury has to rollover and refinance each month to minimize the opportunity of the country bouncing up against its debt ceiling as often. This move, selling Treasuries with long maturities, has been endorsed by the 14 member Treasury Borrowing Advisory Committee.

Here we have a classic example of being clueless, also known as "the left hand does not know what the right hand is doing." The Federal Reserve will be busy buying up existing, longer term maturities of Treasuries over the next eight months in order to, hopefully, reduce home mortgage rates.

At the same time, the Treasury Department will be actively selling long term maturity Treasuries to settle down the management of the national debt. One arm of the government working hard to reduce the volume of longer term Treasuries in the market and another arm of the government working hard to increase the volume of longer term Treasuries in the market. Clueless in Washington.

But this classic gets even worse. Bloomberg News reported on September 27, 2011 that Dallas Federal Reserve Bank President Richard Fisher has publicly stated that this "Operation Twist"  may prove ineffective and may actually hurt job creation, the exact opposite of what Bernanke is hoping the effort will do. His view is that this latest effort from the Fed, reducing interest rates, indicates that the government has no faith in the future of the economy and this may cause consumers and businesses to save rather than invest in the economy, in light of an expected forthcoming sour economy.

But Mr. Fisher is not alone. Kansas City Federal Reserve Bank President Thomas Hoening, who left office on October 1, 2011, has stated that "when you encourage consumption by inhibiting your interest rates from rising to their equilibrium level, you will in fact buy problems, and we have in fact bought problems." Great, the Fed Chairman is trying to reduce rates and his own support staff are criticizing the Chairman's policies as being ineffective at best, counterproductive at worse. Left hand, right hand level of cluelessness again.

"Clueless In Washington," a bad movie that never ends.



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available, at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.


Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com/

Doesn't Anyone Here Know How To Run An Economy? Part 1, The Federal Reserve Board

We have extensively reviewed the many failed attempts by the Obama administration to fix what ails the economy. By almost any benchmark you can imagine and track, every program failed to deliver on its objectives. The list is impressive in its breadth and its degree of failure:

1. Cash For Clunkers
2. Cash For Caulkers
3. Cash For Appliances
4. Economic Stimulus Program ($830 billion worth of  non-stimulus)
5. Small Business Incentive Progam
6. First Time Home Buyer Rebate Program
7. HAMP Mortgage Adjustment Program

All failures. Which raises an interesting question: is there anyone in government or the political realm who knows how to fix an economy since the people currently in the American political class wings of the U.S. Congress and The White House are at least 0 for 7 in their attempts to do so.

One would have thought the Federal Reserve Board might be able to launch some sort of a successful economic recovery plan. The Fed is staffed by highly educated and experienced economic-types. The Fed itself has been around for decades so one would hope they have some institutional memory and experience to draw on to help the economy.

Unfortunately, it does not appear that the Fed is much better than, Obama, Reid, Pelosi, and the rest of the DC denizens. Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has been busy trying to do some economic repair via his Quantitative Easing (QE) programs. The latest interation of  of his QE program involved the Fed creating about $600 billion out of thin air to buy back Treasury bonds. According to an article in Moneynews on June 30, 2011 by Forrest Jones, the intent of QE was to spur on the economic recovery that is currently slogging along very slowly.

Mr. Jones noted that the latest QE round did have some limited success:

• It probably pumped up stock prices since the S&P is up 25% since the program started in August of 2010. However, it is impossible to know how much of that increase was due to QE since other economic factors were also changed during the past eleven months (e.g. suspension of some Social Security payments to put more cash in the hands of consumers).
• QE may also have diverted the economy from deflation which would have further crimped any economic recovery. However, it remains to be seen if deflation was a real threat, given it has never before been a real threat to the U.S. economy.

Two possible, but shaky positives from the process. However, there were some definite negatives to arise from QE:

• The value of the dollar is down 10% over the past 11 months, not surprising since the latest versions of QE put an additional $600 billion into the economy to compete with the existing wealth and dollars already in the economy.
• Gasoline, food, and other products are more expensive since the weakened dollar means it takes more dollars to buy the same products and services than it did a year ago.
• Consumer spending was basically unchanged during the QE buyback period.
• Jobless rates have been virtually unchanged since the program started.

Thus, if QE was supposed to spur the economy it has done a pretty poor job, not increasing spending, not decreasing joblessness, and quite possibly igniting inflation in the process of accomplishing nothing.

Don't believe these results? Consider the opinions of some so-called experts quoted in the article:

• Michael Gapen, senior U.S. economist at Barclay's Capital: "If you look at it from the point of view that you wanted to make the recovery stronger and more durable, you would have a lingering bad taste in your mouth."
• John Ryding, chief economist of RDQ Economics: "QE2 was a terrible mistake, and I think it has been counterproductive for economic growth."
• Guido Mantega, Brazilian Finance Minister: "It serves no purpose to go throwing money from a helicopter."
• Lou Crandall, Wrightson ICAP: " The damage to the Fed's reputation as a bastion of financial stability is irreparable."
• Ethan Harris, Bank Of America: QE2 was "merely better than for the Fed to announce 'we are giving up.'"
• Vladimir Putin, former Prime Minister of Russia, denounced QE2 as "hooliganism."
• Sean Snaith, University of Central Florida: This was like Vick's Vapor Rub for markets. No cure, but it eased the symptoms."

Wow, a two-for-one deal. Your economic program did very little good but in the process you destroyed your organization's reputation. Thus, add Mr. Bernanke's name to the others in Washington who cannot find a way to fix an ailing economy.

Maybe it is time to simplify life and get back to basics. No more massive government intrusion into the economy. Let the economy work the kinks out on its own as people create products and services that others want to purchase and consume. At the most basic level, isn't that only what an economy is?

No more massive government interference, managed by people that we now have confirmed have no idea what they are doing in the economic realm.

No more $600 billion currency manipulations by the Fed, who we now also know has no idea how to fix things.

No more uncertainty in the marketplace created by politicians who do not know how to put any kind of long term plan together and stick to it, whether it is taxes, depreciation, energy, infrastructure, health care, etc.

Let us just get back to basics, working people and businesses creating wealth to be shared with other working people and businesses. In the process, we may find that the economy heals itself, better and quicker, than Cash For Clunkers and QE could ever do. Because if Cash For Clunkers and QE are your benchmarks, it is obviously a pretty low bar to get over.



Our book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at http://www.loathemygovernment.com/. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Please visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.loathemygovernment.com/
http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.repealamendment.com

The Latest Silliness and Insanity From Our Political Class

If you follow our political class and their inane actions and antics long enough and close enough, you are continually amazed about what they do and how much time, resources, and taxpayer money they waste without ever really accomplishing anything worthwhile. Their actions range from just outright waste to wasting time on issues and topics that have very little to do with the average American's daily life.  Consider some of the latest examples:

- Outgoing Governor Charlie Crist of Florida just got whooped in his bid to become the next U.S. Senator from Florida. This has caused him to be out of the office a lot lately while the Florida economy continued to be a basket case with high unemployment, high foreclosure rates on homes, and no immediate prospects for an economic upturn. Florida schools, while improved, are still not where they should be. Thus, now that he is back to being a full time Governor with limited time in office, one would have hoped he could have finished out his terms vigorously on some of these major issues.

No chance. According to an Associated Press article on November 17, 2010, Governor Crist has decided he wants to work on getting a state pardon for Jim Morrison of the Doors, who was convicted of exposing himself at a concert in Miami 41 years ago. Mr. Morrison died in Paris 39 years ago. According to the article the Governor will need the support of at least two Cabinet members and even then it might be a problem to pardon a dead guy from almost 40 years ago because the state has no procedures and law in place to do so. Talk about a waste of time and effort, does anyone, anywhere really think this is a pressing issue except for Mr. Crist?

- According ot a short blurb in the November 12, 2010 issue of The Week magazine, California Governor Arnold Schwarenegger has recently banned the use of state government-issued welfare debit cards at psychics, medical marijuana shops, bingo parlors, tattoo parlors, and cruise lines, all of which have shown up as locations where welfare recipients are spending the state taxpayer dollars. I think it is a great idea that the Governor is shutting down this gross misuse of taxpayer dollars but why was this behavior not forbidden from the first day the debit cards were issued? A rational human being would have initially restricted the use of the cards to food stores, medical establishments, clothes stores, etc.

- This example falls into that wonderful category of : "Why didn't they do the math upfront?" Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke spoke to Senators today to explain his plan for printing about $600 billion of U.S. money to buy back Treasury notes from the public domain in an attempt to lower interest rates, resulting in more economic growth and more employment.

He told the Senators that his plan would result in 700,000 new jobs created over the next two years. Let's do the math: the Chairman is going to flood $600 billion into the market and create 700,000 jobs which comes out to about $857,000 to create a single job. Hardly sounds like an efficient way to create jobs. Last I saw was that there were about 14 million unemployed Americans so at this rate the Chairman would have to float about $12 TRILLION to get everyone a job, which is a ridiculous idea and number.

But this type of silly thinking is not much different than the Obama administration job claims. It claimed to have created over 3 million jobs by implementing its $800 billion stimulus program. However, more simple division shows that the $800 billion total program cost resulted a per job created cost of over $250,000. Don't these people in Washington ever to the math?

- With the Federal government spending out of control and the national debt skyrocketing, one would have hoped that sanity would prevail and that the Feds would be looking for non-painful ways to cut spending. That does not appear to be the case, at least according to a Heritage Foundation report from October 4, 2010, a report that cited the New York Times as its source. According to their information, the Federal government's National Science Foundation will award $700,000 of taxpayer money to a New York theater troupe to produce and stage a show entitled "The Great Immensity" which will look into "the emotional and psychological aspects of the current environmental crisis," i.e. global warming. Number of insanity aspects to this action:

• First, the Foundation was founded in 1950 "to promote the progress of science, to advance the national health, prosperity and welfare, and to secure the national defense." Personally, I find it difficult to connect their charter to a local play about global warming. As did the New York Times which called the grant a rare gift, recognizing that the Foundation usually funds research that involves math, science and engineering, not emotional and psychological aspects of anything.
• Second, while many think global warming is a man made problem, many others do not hold that belief. The article cites experts that would dispute the notion of global warming. Would not this money have been better spent in hard science areas to actually get more proof, one way or another, on what the root cause of the problem is and what possible solutions are out there?
• Rather than fund local plays that will be seen by very few people and have an impact on even fewer, would not this money have been better spent to reduce taxes, pay down the national debt, hire a few more good teachers, treat a few more drug addict Americans? The Federal government should not be in the theater subsidy business.

- Staying in the area of global warming, consider an article on the rash of new electric car models that will be hitting markets around the world soon. In a review of these new models and their impact on the environment, an article in the October 9, 2010 issue of The Economist magazine worried that although the electric cars would reduce harmful emissions, those reductions might be offset by the additional fossil fuels that would have to be burned to create the electricity that runs the new electric cars.

Skeptics quoted in the article doubted that the electric cars would have much of an impact at all and would waste taxpayer money in the subsidies the political classes in all countries are throwing at, and possibly wasting, on electric care purchases. The article quotes Richard Pike's work as chief executive of the Royal Society of Chemistry. He estimated that replacing all of Britain's cars with subsidized electric cars, and using Great Britain's current electric generation fuel mix, would cost 150 billion British pounds and would reduce carbon emissions by only 2%. With that subsidy money, according to Mr. Pike, Britain could replace its entire power generation capacity with solar cells and cut carbon emissions by one third.

Is Mr. Pike correct in his analysis? I have no idea but given his position in the science world, would not it be a good idea to take a comprehensive look at the value of electric cars in general and the value of their subsidies? A 2% reduction in carbon emissions vs.  a 30% reduction certainly merits a little better subsidy legislating beforehand, i.e. do the math first.

- A Wall Street article by Jonah Lehrer was summarized in the November 12, issue of The Week magazine and was entitled: "Proof That Pundits Are Clueless." The main thrust of the article was that the future is impossible to predict. It cites a long term University of California study that actually monitored the predictions of pundits and experts in a variety of fields. Of the 82,000 predictions from the experts that the study documented and tracked, the accuracy rate was below 50%. In other words, a simple coin flipping decision process probably would have done a better job than what the experts predicted. The study found that the results were consistently bad across the political spectrum and the most famous experts were usually the worst predictors. Thus, given this study's results, one needs to be very skeptical when a Federal Reserve chairman tells you that his actions will create 700,000 jobs or a President tells you that unemployment will never go above 8% if his economic stimulus package is passed, or an economist tells you they know the future when very few of them, along with our politicians, never saw the coming of the "Great Recession" until it smacked them in the face.

- And finally, some very sad and serious insanity. According to an article in the Chronicle Of Higher Education that was summarized in the November 12, 2010 issue of  The Week magazine, in the United States more than 5,000 janitors and more than 8,000 waiters and waitresses have earned Ph.Ds or the equivalent before settling into their current job. In total, 17 million working Americans have received college degrees but are employed in jobs that do not require a bachelor's degree. What a waste. We have allowed the political class to steer us into an economic situation where millions of people are not using their full capabilities, capabilities that could find cures for diseases, make factories more efficient, teach our kids better, invent better products and services, etc.

Funny, sad, wasteful, ridiculous, you pick your own adjective to describe this behavior. I could quote from "Love My Country, Loathe My Government" on how implementing term limits, holding Congressional committee members accountable or reducing the size of government would help eliminate some of these inane acts of our politicians. These steps would probably all help.

However, we need to do a better job as an electorate in selecting capable candidates who are smart, problem solving oriented, and courageous enough to take unpopular stands, even if it might harm their political career. We should not accept people in office that actually want a political career, we need people in office who want a leadership career.



Our recent book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.



Please visit the following sites for freedom:


http://www.cato.org/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/
http://www.reason.com/

Is The Federal Reserve System Nohting But A Wild Guess?

Sorry about that last post, hit the send button prematurely. I was intrigued by an article written by Al Lewis that appeared in the Wall Street Journal insert to last Sunday's Tampa Tribune. He was talking about the Federal Reserve Board and System and had some interesting observations.

But before we see what Mr. Lewis was talking about, I decided to do some back ground on the Federal Reserve Board. From various online sources I came up with the following information:

• The Federal Reserve System was formed by an act of Congress, the Federal Reserve Act, in 1913 after a serious of severe bank panics.
• The Board appears to have four major functions:

1. Conduct the nation's monetary policy.
2. Supervise and regulate banking institutions.
3. Maintain stability of the financial system.
4. Provide financial services to depository institutions, the U.S. Government and others.

• Monetary policy usually involves manging the supply of money through interest rate manipulation to achieve a set of economic goals, which usually include low unemployment and stable prices.

Given these functions and background information, how well has the Federal Reserve System performed:

• Given that it was formed in 1913, it apparently did not perform very well in the 1930s, the time of the Great Depression, or the past few years, the time of the Great Recession.
• It does not appear that it has historically done a great job at regulating and supervising banking institutions since the high number of bank failures and banking instruments were the prime causes of both the Great Depression and Great Recession.
• It obviously did not do a good job at maintaining the stability of the financial system since it belatedly forced Congress to quickly pass the poorly written, poorly implemented and very expensive TARP legislation because the Federal Reserve did not foresee the gathering storm clouds leading up to the Great Recession.
• Regarding monetary policy, while prices have been relatively stable in the U.S., unemployment continues to be very high, earning the Fed a failing grade in this area of its responsibility. The scary aspect of their monetary policy management is the fear from both sides of the economic spectrum, those that say inflation will explode at some point in time and those that say we are facing a deflationary period. In either case, the Fed could be very close to missing on their stable prices responsibility.

Thus, I always felt that the Federal Reserve Board and System performed just as poorly as every other government entity when it came to the latest recession (FDIC, HUD, Fannie Mae, Freddie MAC, the Treasury Department, House of representatives banking and housing committees, Senate banking and housing committees, SEC, etc.). When you look at what we have been through over the past two years and compare it to the charter responsbilities of the Federal Reserve Board, you see that they have indeed been less than stellar in managing the economy.

But Mr. Lewis' column this past Sunday puts it all in perspective. He reviewed the following timeline in the Federal Reserve's position on our economic condition:

• In January, the Fed said that"economic activity has continued to strenghten and... the deterioration in the labor market is abating."
• In March, the Fed said that"activity has continued to strenghten ... and the labor market is beginning to improve."
• In April, "the labor market is beginning to improve."
• In June, "economic recovery is proceeding and...the labor market is improving gradually."
• But in August, "the pace of recovery in output and employment has slowed in recent months."

What does this all mean? Let Ben Bernanke, the Fed Chairman explain to us, according to Mr. Lewis: "My best guess is we will have a continued recovery but it will not feel terrific." The key words in the Chairman's statement is "my best guess." Given that the economy has continued to get worse since the fourth quarter of 2009 and the unemployment rate is just as bad now as it was in January, nothing has strenghtened, nothing has improved, nothing has abated, nothing. And now, the leading economist and bank regulator in the country has been reduced to giving his best guess as forecasts. We are not paying high taxes for guesses, we need foresight. I can get someone to guess for far less money that what we are paying the Fed.

Just another government entity that has not done its job. Whether it was the SEC staffers that were surfing the Internet for porn during the lead up to the Great Recession, the Interior Department employees that did not do their required due diligence in supervising oil drilling rigs in the Gulf, Federal consumer safety organizations that missed the Toyota and lead laced toys problems, etc., we pay high taxes for low performance across the board when it comes to the Federal government.

That is why Step 1 and Step 34 from "Love my Country, Loathe My Government" are so important. Step 1 would start downsizing government by reducing its size and reexamining the entire government structure to find ways to make it more effective, including the semi-independent Federal Reserve Board. Step 34 would remove those politicians that sit on Congressional committees from their post if those committees allow lax or sub par performance from government functions to continue. We can all do better than guessing when it comes to the business of the nation.

Our new book, "Love My Country, Loathe My Government - Fifty First Steps To Restoring Our Freedom And Destroying The American Political Class" is now available at www.loathemygovernment.com. It is also available online at Amazon and Barnes and Noble. Please pass our message of freedom onward. Let your friends and family know about our websites and blogs, ask your library to carry the book, and respect freedom for both yourselves and others everyday.

Also visit the following sites for freedom:

http://www.cato.org/
http://www.reason.com/
http://www.robertringer.com/
http://www.realpolichick.blogspot.com/
http://www.flipcongress2010.com/