HOPE AND CHANGE?

Remember the chant by the Democrats during the 2006 elections? Are you better off than you were six years ago? Well , I ask today, are you better off than you were two years ago? What happened to all the hope and change? Here is what I have found and the change doesn't offer much hope. You decide!

HOPE AND CHANGE?

Is your home, or your market investment, or your retirement account worth more today than it was last November, when the election of BHO ushered in the era of "hope 'n' change"?

For some reason, both the housing and equity markets began declining after Democrats regained control of the Senate and House in 2006. Since Obama's election, the bottom has dropped out. We as Americans have not only lost income and jobs, but also some 35 percent of the value of our homes and market/retirement accounts.

MORE CHANGE WE CAN DO WITHOUT

What I'm looking at is not the day-to-day gyrations of the stock market but the long-term, uh, ability for the United States and the entire world economy, uh, to regain its footing. Uh, and, y-y-you know, the stock market is sort of like a tracking poll in politics. It bobs up and down day to day, uh, and if you spend all your time worrying about that, you're probably going to get long-term strategy wrong. ... What you're now seeing is profit and -- and earning ratios are -- are starting to, to get to the point where buying stocks is a potentially good deal if you've got a long-term perspective on it. Uhhh, I think that consumer confidence, as they see the American, uh, Recovery and Reinvestment Act taking root, uh, businesses are starting to see opportunities for investment, uh, and potential hiring." --Barack Obama

"The comparison to daily tracking polls is ... inapt. Whereas those polls serve only a predictive function, stock values (and dividends, which are also plummeting) do measure real wealth. Further, if a candidate's performance in tracking polls had been declining steadily for three months, surely it would be time to change strategy or drop out of the race. A 30% decline is a heck of a fit, and Wall Street hasn't had anything that can be called a start since before Obama's election. ... As for the so-called stimulus as confidence booster, suffice it to note that the Industrial Average closed at 7933 on Feb. 12, the day before Congress passed the bill. [Thursday] it closed at [6594], a decline of [17%] in ... three weeks." --The Wall Street Journal's James Taranto

STILL THINKING HOPE AND CHANGE?

According to the Associated Press, "The number of people who were late making their mortgage payments shot up 53 percent in the fourth quarter of 2008 from the same period in 2007." We're sure this is unrelated to Obama's plan, but we thought it was worth a mention.

Also noteworthy is that Obama failed to save 651,000 jobs in February, hampering his efforts to "save or create" 3.5 million jobs. The monthly loss was the worst since 1949. The economy has now lost 2.5 million jobs since Obama's election and 4.4 million since December 2007. The unemployment rate is 8.1 percent. So this is hope and change?

How Reassuring - NOT

Back in the Great Society era, Social Security was expanded to include Medicare. When the program was introduced, Americans were assured that it would not become a costly drain on the federal budget. But almost every year for the past 40, the cost of Medicare has increased at a faster rate than the cost of private insurance. The federal government now is responsible for 47 percent of all health care costs. The $634 billion promised by they Chief Occupier, to pay for his ambitious health care plan won't cover its estimated $1 trillion cost over the next decade. And as we have seen before with both Medicare and Medicaid, projected revenues and cost savings are viewed by federal bean counters with the rosiest-tinted glasses available.

STILL LOOKING FOR CHANGE?

Cap-and-trade is a bad idea

The Lieberman-Warner cap-and-trade approach to greenhouse gases makes us think derivatives. Analogous in more ways than one to the vaporous quality of financial derivatives, this new "market" depends on the underlying "value" of carbon and the ability to trade it as an "offset." One difference is that we already know this sort of program is an economic nightmare in Europe.

If undeterred by Europe's failure, our congressional best and brightest should note the impact as determined by a recent report by the Marshall Institute: The new regulations would be the equivalent of a permanent tax increase for the average American household, estimated to be $1,100 in 2008, rising to $1,437 by 2015, and $2,979 by 2050. Hundreds of thousands of jobs would be lost, while electricity and natural gas prices would increase by anywhere from five to 50 percent over the next five years. Gasoline could increase as much as 145 percent. So much for President Obama's promise of "a tax cut for 95 percent of working Americans." “There will be those who will be disappointed” Barrack Hussein Obama

In summary, Congress and the Obama administration have proposed a program that addresses an unproven climate change problem by implementing a program proven to bring higher energy costs, job losses, and is every bit the financial scam that many financial derivatives have proved to be. The "underlying asset" is nothing but a government-imposed regulatory scheme designed to enrich the traders, depress Western economies and promote the myth of man-made climate change.

NOT YET – MORE OF THE SAME

After three "bailouts" for AIG since September totaling nearly $180 billion in squandered taxpayer funding, all the taxpayers have to show for their purchase is a company locked in a death spiral. So, naturally, the Federal Reserve is throwing more money at the problem. Now that the government owns 78 percent of AIG, there is no end in sight for the ever-declining insurer. On Monday, AIG reported a $61.7 billion fourth-quarter loss, all of which was incurred under the new federalized stewardship. And yet some still believe that the government can run anything when the truth is they can sure RUIN anything they touch.

Hat Tip Patriot PostUS