Joseph L. Shaefer

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

"House Speaker Nancy Pelosi suggested recycling leftover funds from the $700B TARP fund to create jobs and boost some salaries."

And who decides which workers in which industries get a salary boost? The imperial (imperious) monarchy headed by the Queen Bee? Ah, yes, I can hear it now: "When I am Queen, *I* shall decide who gets the goodies and who has displeased me..."

Here's an alternate plan: give the "leftover" money back to the people who provided it -- the taxpayers. There is no law that says just because it was collected or extorted for one purpose, The Monarchy now gets to dispense it to some other group or for some other purpose.

And here's an even more radical thought: why not let the marketplace determine the value of goods, services and labor, while the Queen Bee hatches eggs or whatever it is Queen Bees do when they aren't devouring worker bees...

Wall Street Breakfast: Must-Know News

"The European Commission warned nine countries, including Germany and Italy, that their budget deficits are too large" and "Europe contracts more than expected." So much for the notion that there is a stable currency out there with which to replace the current reserve currency.

The US Dollar is a pale imitation of the solid currency we grew up with in which, while traveling behind the Iron Curtain or in China, locals would sidle up to us and try to get us to exchange our dollars at double and triple the official exchange rates.

But I think the country song "Don't Take Her She's All I Got," is the only reasonable response of the world's central bankers when contemplating replacement of the dollar. Sure, they may hedge a little around the periphery, but would you rather trust Vladimir Putin or King Abdullah to make certain the ruble or the riyal maintain their value when either decide to unilaterally devalue by 50%? That might leave the Yen and the Euro, but one represents an economy mired in denial and the other is a "union" that is comprised of nations bound only by geography, not shared loyalties.

Wow, having the EU bureaucrats tell Germany its budget deficit is too large. Is that like having the school nerd / hall monitor tell you to get back in class?

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Brave New World...

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Mr. Paczkowski, this is not your first article, so I imagine you already know that 99.9% of the SA readers who choose to read the topics on which you post will be both interested and interesting; interested in your perspective and interesting in their discussion points.

There are also a small sad number of nattering nabobs of negativism (NNNs) whose spiteful comments have earned them downbeat comment rankings from the community. These fringe types hide behind their anonymity and just like to see their words in print, knowing that only on the Internet can their words appear as if they had some value. Their comment rankings reflect the value others place on them.

As I said to one of these recently: “If you don’t like it, don’t read it.” But still he returns. That’s OK. Every time one such NNN comments, it adds to your ranking on SA. The more they sputter and stammer, the more it helps you build readership that is honestly interested in Socratic discourse…

I agree with Larry House. If I haven’t seen it, it’s new to me. If I have, I can simply read your next posting instead. Thanks for being willing to contribute and suffer the slings and arrows of outrageous four-flushers.

Best regards,
JS