Day: June 17, 2010

From Rep. Ryan: GOP Spending Reduction Proposal

From the Scriptorium

Federal Budget Deficit Reduction:

Paper #1

There are not many in the Congress that I think should be there because most or inept at governing past their own interests….however….I appreciate Wisconsin’s Rep. Paul Ryan, a Repub…he is young and sharp on financial and budgetary issues…..he has authored a couple of proposals for cutting the budget deficit, while some are good and others I differ with what he see…..I will analyze these proposals…there are 8, I believe….I will give my take on each of his proposals…..(I know you did not ask, but you will get it anyway)

First up is his Cancel Unused TARP Funds and it reads like this:

The proposal would prohibit the Treasury Dept. from exercising authority under the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act to disburse funds for new commitments.  Only those funds pursuant to legally binding contracts entered into on or before enactment the enactment of this legislation will be disbursed.

All TARP Funds returned to the Treasury–including dividends, interests or other payments–will go tp deficit reduction and will not create headroom for the Treasury to exercise additional authority.

All this sounds all to simple, huh?  While I may agree with Ryan somewhat, I cannot jump on this bandwagon…..this part is just a political game being played now that auto makers are fairly stable, I will agree that the fund was basically a blackmail payment to AIG, Goldman and the other Banksters….but there are still banks that are in real trouble, banks that have people’s lives deposited in them and they may need some help secure the people’s savings and other personal things.

I will agree that using the TARP fund for other spending is not doing us any good and that part of it can be shut down……but to totally shut it down while the banks are in trouble, about 700 so far, is just irresponsible and NOT in the best interests of the country.  But all this seems suspect to me….why?  Now that the gamblers on Wall Street have gotten there money from the taxpayers it is some how good policy to start trying to cutting spending.

Deficit spending was originally used to generate demand, not liquidity…..this plan did the opposite….since it is NOT being used for what it was designed to do…then I will agree with Rep. Ryan….reluctantly……

GOP Has Yet Another Plan

From the VOMITORIUM

For the past year and half the GOP has been pissing and moaning about the destruction of our country at the hands of Obama and the Dems……first it was health reform and then it was the FinReg and now it is the oil spill and the steps taken or not taken by the White House…….Repub after Repub has gotten up in front of anyone with a mic or a webcam to bitch about the lack of measures taken by the president…..

All in all it is for political gain…they seem to care nothing for the people that are being totally screwed by the spill…oh, they mention the American people but fail to come up with an idea….even a bad idea…..but all that is about to change…they now have a plan to stick it to BP….(Yeah and I am a Mexican gardener)…….

House Minority Leader John Boehner went on the record this weekend in support of lifting the $75 million cap on BP’s liability for damages caused by the catastrophe, he and his party for weeks had opposed Democratic efforts to retroactively and permanently lift that cap so that BP ponies up for this spill and so that damages from future spills are the full responsibility of the oil companies that cause them.Last week, as controversy over the GOP’s position on BP raged, Boehner’s office suggested that a better way to hold the oil giant accountable for the current spill would be to pass legislation sponsored by Sen. David Vitter (R-LA) who proposes lifting the cap on BP, but leaving the $75 million cap in place — punting for now on the question of what to do about future spills.

Vitter’s bill, they say, doesn’t require BP to do anything, doesn’t address the systemic problem of the liability cap, and may not even be constitutional — all things the Democratic alternative, pushed by Rep. Rush Holt (D-NJ) and Sen. Bob Menendez (D-NJ), would address.

“This bill has massive loopholes that BP could walk right through, and it leaves in place the liability limit for every future oil spill,” Menendez spokesman Afshin Mohamadi tells me. “Protecting oil companies is a political albatross around the necks of Republicans, so they are using this bill as a talking point. But it’s nothing more that — it has no teeth.”

This is just pure bunk…..BP, if this bill is adopted, could just walk away from their responsibility with little or NO penalty……I would like to see a list of Vitter’s campaign donors…bet we would find a oil company or two in there….

There is already a precedent set by the Supreme Court on the Valdez thing and I would bet that the lawyers for BP are already looking at it for future reference….

Banksters Find New Life

Daily Agitator

The collapse of the American economy in 2008 , all eyes were focused on the derivative trading markets, where these banksters gamble and if they lose they stick the taxpayer with the bill and if they win they keep all the profit…..good gig if you can get it…..

But now with everyone watching the Banksters a new trick is being employed……(from moneymorning.com)

Well, here’s the secret: They’ve found a new way to skim more of the cream off the top of U.S. economic activity. It’s called “High-Frequency Trading” (HFT).

High-frequency trading uses the speed of supercomputers to trade faster than a human trader ever could. Human owners of the supercomputers program them to take advantage of information milliseconds faster than other computers, and whole seconds faster than ordinary human traders.  This is not a minor development; HFTs now represent about 70% of the trading volume in the U.S. equity market.

HFT computer servers are able to beat other computers because they are located at the exchanges. They take crucial advantage of the finite speed of light and switching systems to front-run the market. They also gain information on orders and market movements more quickly than the market as a whole. They operate not only on the New York Stock Exchange (NYSE), but also on the electronic trading exchanges such as the NYSE hybrid market.

Predatory algorithmic traders take advantage of the institutional computers that chop up large orders into many small ones. They make the institutional trader that wants to buy bid up the price of shares by fooling its computer, placing small buy orders that they withdraw. Eventually the “predatory algo” shorts the stock at the higher price it has reached, making the institution pay up for its shares.

The bottom line for us ordinary market participants is that insiders are using computers to game the system, extracting billions of dollars from the rest of the market. While it is illegal to trade on insider knowledge about company financials, these people are trading on insider knowledge about market order flow. That’s how Goldman Sachs and the other biggest houses make so much from trading. By doing so they are rent-seeking, not providing value to the market.

See….did not take these thieves long to find a way to replace all the profits they would losing with government money intervention…these a/holes learned nothing from their past practices or the anger of the American people…the taxpayer is NOT ever protected from these predators and the fragile economy is being gamed….AGAIN!

As long as the system is based on GREED…we will always be at the mercy of these criminals….when will we ever learn?  ( a rhetorical question)