After the Bust

Ok, now I understand why this healh care plan is going to be so expensive.  12 million foriegn aliens are going to get free coverage, yes, that makes sense.  If we buy some additional printing presses the U.S. Mint can run the ones that we already have and the new ones faster, and we can print enough money to cover everyone with health insurance in both North and South America.  Why not?  It’s a great idea.  Talk about good international relations!

I guess not guarding the borders well will now be a whole lot more expensive than it used to be.  For every undocumented alien who gets into the U.S., the health care cost will just keep on going up.  I have to say that if I were thinking about moving back to the U.S. given the proposed coverage I would do it for that alone.

It used to be that being a citizen of the U.S. meant something, but I guess that now it does not.  I can hardly wait to hear what happens when they turn away veterans and people who are paying massive taxes because the services are being soaked up by those who are here illegally.  That should turn out to be an interesting sight.

I don’t know about you, but I think this is a terrible proposal that has been added to the plan.  Health care coverage was never supposed to be about taking care of everyone, it was about taking care of U.S. citizens who could not afford coverage.  If we do not know who is a citizen, that is a failure that must be fixed before we move forward.

Popularity: 8% [?]

The Wall Street Journal had an interesting article today authored by Stan Leibowitz entitled  New Evidence on the Foreclosure Crisis

it’s an eye opener because the article identifies negative equity as the main cause for mortgage foreclosure, not mortgage rate changes or unemployment, which many thought were the reasons. 

It is important to understand that foreclosure are happening because people are finding themselves in debt holes that are so deep that it would take them decades to get out of them, and rather than spend every dollar that they earn trying to make it right (pay it back), people are just walking away.

I imagined that most of the defaults were being made by individuals who were being forced into foreclosure because they could not make their mortgage payments, but negative equity foreclosures are made by people to proactively elect to default.  They are simply trying to better their financial situation.

I can identify with people who don’t want to be straddled with hundreds of thousands of dollars of mortgage debt.  It was fun buying the Mercedes and touring Europe, but when property values dropped and you find that you have to pay it all back, that is just downright brutal, right? 

Based on this new found knowledge, I will again speculate that the American people will elect to default on their large mult-trillion dollar debt in the next several years rather than pay for it via huge tax increases.  California is effectively defaulting its 24 billion budget shortfall via its I.O.U. program.  They should be starting from scratch with a zero based budget, and kill progarms that they just can’t afford, but in the American tradition they would rather default that accept the fact that they simply could not afford them.

Popularity: 8% [?]

I read an article by Martin D. Weiss, PhD entitled “California Collapsing” on the Internet, it is located at http://www.moneyandmarkets.com/california-collapsing-34271 and it is an eye opening report.  I knew there were some serious problems going on in the state but an 11.5% unemployment rate and a $ 24.3 billion dollar budget deficit were surprising numbers to discover.

With a mind numbing budget crisis, crushing debt, high unemployment, commercial real estate defaults increasing and a new wave of mortgage resets with 50% to 80% defaults likely in the home mortgage market, it is going to be a rough ride in the short-term future and in Dr. Weiss’s opinion there is ” a very HIGH probability that California will default.”

It has been my opinion that we would inflate our way out of our massive debt, but a default by a major state like California would solve their problem and possibly others much quicker.  Sure it would devastate a lot of people’s lives, but the government has already decided that a California bail out is not as important as the Wall Street bail outs since it has repeatedly turned California down flat after several requests for additional funds.

I have not been in favor of any bail-outs, so the near trillion dollars that was set aside for them has always seemed more than a bit unfair.  Many have asked, why bail out Wall Street and not states?  The default of a huge state government would bring with it an extremely bad precedent that may be followed by a number of smaller defaults.  I expect that the default of California would bring a number of other defaults, a virtual “house of cards,” that would be even worse for the general public than that which came from the Chrysler failure.

Popularity: 9% [?]

As many of you are already aware David Letterman and his CBS handlers took their shot at pumping up Letterman and his show’s ratings by performing a rape “joke” about Sara Palin’s daughter the other day. It was one in a series of vile and condescending Palin comments that Mr. Letterman has made of late. After being called on the “joke” he subsequently made an excuse that he did not know that Sara Palin was accompanied by her 14-year old daughter and not her 18-year old daughter. The excuse was insincere, if Mr. Letterman and CBS did not know who was with Mrs. Palin they should have known before doing the “joke.” Personally I don’t think the “joke” was appropriate even if it had been directed at the older Palin daughter.

Thirty years of being a comedian means that you have been privileged, it doesn’t give you license to destroy personal lives to increase your popularity. I’m sure that everyone important at Mr. Letterman’s CBS Show sat down in a big office and decided that the Letterman Show and Mr. Letterman himself would survive the firestorm that would follow the “joke.” Negative publicity is better than no publicity, isn’t that the saying? . . . the end justifies the means? I’m sure that it was all about ratings and garnering the biggest share of the audience in a competitive late night time slot.

Personally I think it was one of those low blows that will follow Mr. Letterman to the end of his days. When you become so desperate for continued fame that you will do anything for it, you won’t be remembered for being a great entertainer, great entertainers don’t have to viciously attack others to remain popular.

I hope that Mr. Letterman has ignited a fire under a big enough group of public protestors that he feels the heat from his sponsors. Since money is apparently the only thing that he cares about, maybe the loss of a sponsor or two will ring his bell.

Popularity: 10% [?]