Freedom Fan

IndexIQ: A Whole New Commodity ETF

"For example, between the beginning of 2009 and the end of October, spot prices on West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude oil increased by about 67%, while the United States Oil Fund (USO) gained only about 10% over that period."
-Michael Johnston

According to Google Finance, USO gained 18.79% from January 2 through October 30, 2009.
www.google.com/finance...

Are Reports of the Dollar's Death Premature?

Your worldview has warped your understanding of simple facts:

"Trickle down didn’t really work but the deficit ballooned as tax cuts to the wealthy reduced government revenues."
-Babak

Actually the Reagan-Thatcher economic policies broke the back of inflation and socialism, and produced a dramatic bull market with historical levels of wealth creation for everyone for a generation.

His "tax-cuts for the wealthy" were actually across-the-board cuts in tax rates which resulted in more -- not less-- more government revenue, as well as more job creation and economic growth. The problem was that Congress kept spending money even faster which produced the deficits; at least one or both houses of Congress were controlled by the Democrat party for Reagan's entire two terms as President.

"The US dollar regained 50% of its value during Clinton’s presidency. You could argue that it was due to the balanced budgets and the elimination of the federal deficit. Or that it was due to the increase in the tax burden on the wealthy. "
-Babak

This is what I will argue: Again, look who controlled Congress. Gingrich swept into power in 1994 with his Contract For America, which allowed Republicans to control both houses of Congress for the first time in 40 years. Look at charts of the S&P; the point at which Congress got adult supervision, is the exact point at which the market took off like a rocket shooting upward for 6 years, yet Clinton gets all the credit.

However, the "elimination of the federal deficit" never happened. Although there was a "budget surplus" in 2000, it never materialized in reality, and was consumed by yet more government spending. Thus in no year did the national debt ever go down under Clinton, nor did he leave President Bush with a surplus.

If you seriously think that Obama-Bush-Bernanke is good for the dollar, then you can make a lot of money ... just buy a few hundred thousand dollars' worth of UUP. Good luck wit dat; smart money will be doing the exact opposite.

American Austerity Is About to Begin

The only thing we have to fear is Liberalism. The Libs have declared war on prosperity in the U.S., so investors have sent their capital elsewhere, and businessmen have postponed all risky decisions related to hiring and expansion.

Why should China be kicking our butts economically? It's Communist CHINA for crissakes.

We have enough cheap, clean energy to last 100 years, right here in the U.S. -- it's called natural gas.

This is still America, and our most valuable resource -- the sleeping animal spirits, appetite for risk and innovation will eventually erupt in a tsunami, once we are free again.

If Washington can just stop spending our grandkids' future, and crush the life out of the global warming canard, then we will grow our way out of this liberal malaise.

The Tea Party movement will gather steam. Hundreds of thousands sent a message to D.C. on 9/12. Hopefully the group organized by Katherine Bachman will be successful today too.

If Peter wins the Senate seat and Congress adopts a new Contract For America, a la Gingrich, there will be a dramatic, sustained economic expansion just like we had in 1994-2000.

Hawkishness Prevails in Government Policy

Naturally all you folks, who are not worried about inflation nor incontinent government spending, will be loading up on dollars by buying UUP, which has fallen over 14% since March 1, 2009.

As for myself, I will be holding UDN, GLD and SLV; we'll compare notes in 12 months...

Volcker Sounds Off

"Among them, Volcker suggests that it’s time to look at either a carbon tax or VAT to solve the long term problem with deficits."

Interesting that someone on the Obama team finally admits that the carbon tax has nothing to do with "global warming".

The only purpose for "Cap-And-Trade" is to impose a stealth tax so the corrupt politicians can keep up their incontinent spending.

Volcker Sounds Off

"Among them, Volcker suggests that it’s time to look at either a carbon tax or VAT to solve the long term problem with deficits."

Interesting that someone on the Obama team finally admits that the carbon tax has nothing to do with "global warming".

The only purpose for "Cap-And-Trade" is to impose a stealth tax so the corrupt politicians can keep up their incontinent spending.

How Can We Regain Confidence in Financial Professionals?

“We need Congress to pass a law establishing the basic principle that money managers are there to serve their shareholders,” Mr. Bogle said. “And the second part of the demand is that fiduciaries act with due diligence and high professional standards. That doesn’t seem to be too much to ask.”
-Bogle

This is insane. This would not protect shareholders. This is would merely be a bonanza for lawyers, while encouraging money managers to be unreasonably timid and useless.

No one knows the future. Even money managers who saw the coming financial problems still lost money because virtually every asset class fell in 2008. It was a once-in-a-lifetime black swan.

The government's responsibility for the financial collapse is massive. Barney Fwank's encouragement of reckless lending by Fannie and Freddie continues even today.

Bernanke, the guy now in charge of monetary policy is one of the culprits who kept his foot on the pedal of easy money even as commodities and house prices went through the roof. He is determined to cause hyperinflation.

The SEC failed to bother to investigate Made-off despite repeated entreaties from one individual in particular.

Bogle is wrong. The government does NOT need to pass yet more boneheaded laws.

All the liberal politicians need to be fired in order to prevent them from irreparably ruining our free market economy and killing millions more jobs.

California's Pension Problem: Shockingly Irresponsible

"We are wallowing in the Prop 13 collateral damage to the physical and education infrastructure."
-UbuTranscen

How many more times must we hear this egregious liberal lie?

"California's state/local tax burden percentage stands at 6th highest nationally, above the national average of 9.7%. Californians pay $5,028 per capita in state and local taxes. "
-www.taxfoundation.org/...

As with the Reagan tax cuts and W's tax cuts, which actually increased revenue, the problem is NEVER LACK OF REVENUE.

It is the insatiable appetite of corrupt politicians for wasteful spending, and strangulation by the lazy public employee union bullies.

Here's a way to stop this travesty: Cut their pay and send them home! The less time they have, the less damage they will be able to do to the citizens of California.

Sign the petition to return California to a PART TIME legislature: www.reformcal.com/cms

Why Economic Dogma Threatens Our Future Prosperity

I agree. The biggest threat to our economy is that people have selfishly kept too much of their own earnings from government.

Government is always much more efficient and much wiser than the private sector in spending money, because the private sector is concerned about taking risks and making icky profits, while government is concerned about everyone's welfare and happy children.

So what we need are bigger and more powerful public sector unions with larger pensions and more middle management. We need card-check legislation to force all workers to join unions.

Yes, California is now bankrupt because prop 13 kept the politicians from taking more taxes and requiring a 2/3 majority to raise more taxes. True California has the second highest income tax in the country, some of the highest sales taxes, and high business taxes, but its property taxes are only average. This is wrong because our public servants need more money so that they can continue to enjoy the sensible, lavish lifestyles to which they have become accustomed. This will keep our public servant bureaucrats happy and more productive so they can retire at age 50 with 100% salaries and full medical care. If only we could hire more unionized bureaucrats who work 40-hour weeks while charging 10 hours of overtime, then California will return to fiscal health.

If only the government would tax me more, I know I would immediately become more productive and prosperous.

I'm sure that government bureaucrats will spend my money and my grandchildrens' money much better than we ordinary citizens ever could. So please, please raise my taxes.

This is an excellent article and you are obviously a genius.

U.S. Economy: Is the Fed Predicting Stagnation?

"Economist" Paul Krugman says that if only Obama would give us another "stimulus" and raise our taxes then everything would be fine.

Balancing California's Budget: The Home Game

California needs to renegotiate all union contracts and ban public sector unions. Roll back all government salaries to the same level as the year when we last had a balanced budget.

Get rid of all the fat bureaucrat salaries and pensions. Replace 'defined benefit' pensions with 'defined contribution' like the private sector.

Get rid of teaching tenure. Fire the army of fat-cat education administrators. Implement education vouchers and reduce the per-pupil cost of education to the same level as the rest of America.

Fire all the prison guards; out-source this and every possible function to the non-union private sector.

Trim the bloated welfare rolls so that they comply with federal standards like the rest of America.

Deport all illegal aliens, starting with the prisoners.

Stop wasting 30% of all California fresh water by letting it flow into the ocean to save the stoopid delta smelt. Let the farmers grow crops and pay taxes again.

Get rid of all the red-tape regulations on business, starting with the egregious worker compensation insurance. Get rid of all the green regulations starting with the draconian auto emissions standards.

Lower taxes on everybody to attract the productive folks back into the state.

Fire all the liberals. Voters need to focus on the principal miscreants responsible for this mis-management disaster:

Karen "Largemouth" Bass- CA Assembly Speaker
Darrell "Loser" Steinberg- CA Senate President
Noreen "I refuse to live within our means" Evans- Budget Conference Committee Chair

Fire. Them. All.

Since this can not be done quickly, just cut everything across the board by a certain percentage for now.

Ahnold needs to use his line item veto. If not now, when? Do it you girly-man or we will bring back a real grown-up like Tom McClintock.

Gee, I don't think any of these options are available in the little L.A. Times game.

6 Ways to Short the Obama Health Plan

Nothing will be so expensive as "free" government health care.

But why should Obama not take over the American health care industry? He already has taken over or plans to take over automobile manufacturing, banking, insurance and energy.

King Obama has the "calm" confidence of an elitist who has never failed at anything because he has never actually accomplished anything in the real world. But I agree he is "masterful" at spending other people's money ... plus earnings of their unborn children.

Maybe Libs will not like it when he takes over their own business and snuffs out their liberty, but by then it will be too late.

I agree, short anything to do with U.S. health care. But also short all U.S. companies which are subject to the whims of King Obama and his Marxist minions. Short the U.S. dollar and Treasuries.

Buy China and India which will leave the U.S. in the dust as Obama shackles us with his job-killing Crap-and-Tax and various intentional wealth destruction policies. Buy commodities and gold because your currency will be worthless soon.

Live Discussion: The Dollar, Inflation and Protecting Your Portfolio

Let's see. Opposite views ... whose to choose? How about the guy who swallows all the government CPI statistics and believes that all Obama's policies will help the economy? Nah nah nah.

/Is that really his name? Bwahahaha.

Try your hand at closing California's budget deficit, or check out Mish Shedlock's take on it.

The unions have destroyed California just like they destroyed GM and Chrysler, and will eventually destroy us all.

It doesn't really matter how much more taxes you forcibly confiscate from Californians as they suffer through the worst recession in modern history. The voracious unions will just gobble it all down, burp then demand: More please.

Our public "servants" have extorted the highest pay and fringes for the least amount of work in the country, yet average folks in other states will soon end up "bailing out" California's lazy, unionized fat cats, or guaranteeing their debt so they can keep borrowing like Fannie and Freddie.

Their obscene defined-benefit pensions and fringes allow these union thugs to pretend to work a short while, charge fake overtime, then "retire" and continue to draw their full salary and health insurance benefits for life. Any attempt to rein in their greedy compensation or privatize any services will be shouted down, as oblivious taxpayers are glued to baseball and American idol.

America as a whole is even more economically decadent than CA, but for now has the luxury of being able to print funny money to fool the gullible foreigners.

We have the intentional over-extension of benefits to the "poor" as an excuse to ruin our free enterprise system and replace it with "utopian" socialism. For more details see Obama's Cloward-Piven strategy for rapid national impoverishment and decades of egalitarian squalor.

Watch California's demise as a preview of what King Obama, Acorn, and his Chicago union thugs have planned for the fate of the entire U.S.

The smart money has already moved their investments out of any exposure to the U.S., its bonds and its currency.

Why Did Bernanke Say What He Said?

The inflation vs. deflation debate is only confusing if you equate dollar bills with wealth. The government and its go-fer, the Fed, cannot create wealth, but it can easily create dollar bills, which it is doing daily by the truckloads.

For a time, people can be fooled into believing that dollar bills are wealth. But Bernanke hears the laughter of the Chinese, and sees the bond market start to demand higher interest rates, and realizes that he is rapidly running out of suckers, so he is trying to insulate himself from the rapidly approaching tsunami of U.S. currency collapse and squalor which may persist for a generation.

To believe that hyperinflation is impossible is to believe that politicians only have the best interests of the people at heart. One needs only look at the intractable out-of-control spending by the California legislature, or the demands by the UAW even as they face bankruptcy, to realize that Liberals will never reign in spending until we are all insolvent like Zimbawe.

If you believe that merely by printing money we can rescue the economy, then you were not paying attention when the stagflation of the 1970s discredited Keynesian economics "forever".

Prosperity is created by the private sector when encouraged to produce real wealth and manufacture products suitable for export. But King Obama is not trying to create prosperity, he is doing his utmost to destroy wealth and punish its producers. He welcomes the economic crisis as an opportunity to "save" us with eternal dependence upon big government, run by corrupt Chicago machine politicians, eagerly supported by Keynesian "economists" like Paul Krugman and Marxist tools like Keith Olbermann.

Our current out-of-control spending is not being done to fix the economy. Rather, it is a remarkably swift and brutal implementation of the Cloward-Piven strategy to buy votes and power and replace the free market system in the U.S. with socialism.

That is why massive spending will continue long after the destructive end game is apparent to even the dimmest bulbs among us.

So Bernanke soon will step down, honor intact, and let Summers take the hit in the history textbooks.