The stimulus comes full circle
Entries Tagged as 'money'
Top ten signs gas is expensive
10. It’s so expensive, gas stations now have a concierge service
9. It’s so expensive, oil companies have actually started inspecting their offshore rigs
8. It’s so expensive, SUV now stands for Stationary Unused Vehicle
7. It’s so expensive, drivers are shooting themselves instead of each other
6. It’s so expensive, Oprah’s audience gave their cars back
5. It’s so expensive, if you ask for five dollars worth, the attendant will just fart, and then ask if you want a receipt
4. It’s so expensive, clowns are now cramming themselves onto a bicycle
3. It’s so expensive, a gallon of Starbucks is cheaper
2. It’s so expensive, the Indy 500 is now a foot race
1. It’s so expensive, the Amish are carrying signs that say “We Told You So!”
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
Great American challenge
The United States of America, except for a short run during Clinton’s second term, has been running deficits and accumulating debt for decades. As Fareed Zakaria points out in this week’s issue of Time (“The Debt Deal’s Failure“) Ronald Reagan was the first modern President to cut taxes dramatically without accounting for proportionate cuts in spending. George H. and Bill Clinton raised taxes and curtailed spending to minimize debt and even create a budget surplus, but W. came in and slashed taxes, secured a drug benefit, and started two foreign wars. Still the deficit to GDP ratio W. ran before the financial collapse of 2008 was modest compared to his predecessors. When he left office the national debt was roughly $10 trillion dollars, $4 trillion more than when he took office. [Read more →]
Will America go into default?
The debt ceiling, the debt ceiling, everybody says the debt ceiling. Apparently Obama has to raise it if Uncle Sam is to pay his bills. The big issue is the question of how to get more money so America doesn’t have to keep borrowing cash from foreigners: cut spending and cut taxes? Or keep spending and raise taxes? The answer depends on which baseball team you support. I mean, political party.
Well anyway for a long time I dismissed all this debt ceiling talk as the usual shenanigans from the plutocrats in Congress. But then I read that if an agreement could not be reached between the Blue Team and the Red Team then America would default on its loans. Pensions would go unpaid! Babies would be forced to shovel coal! And so on! Apparently Moody’s – an organization possibly related to the burger joint of the same name at the end of my street – is threatening to downgrade America’s “Triple A rating” (which I believe describes the quality of its hotels). [Read more →]
The year that wasn’t
They say two thousand and thirteen party over, oops!
Fucked ourselves!
So for now we oughta party like its two thousand and twelve!
Since licensing and copyrights are as doomed to imminent collapse as the rest of civilization I will appropriate my soundtrack from Prince and he can come collect if he wants. That’s not just me talking, with the collapse stuff. Not anymore. Ben Bernanke publicly declares mystification that his voodoo economics have come a-cropper. Bill Clinton and Al Gore are driven to public denunciations by their disappointments with the President, each of which are cataclysmic one way or the other. The most damning news comes from the Great Man’s own mouth in his brief (for a change) address of last night. Obama arrives to disclaim the actions and events of the last two years excepting only the Abbottobad triumph. You remember that, when the President headbutted Osama and snapped his neck like so much celery? But no fear, he’s now on the job; rested, ready, with a four handicap and prepared to tackle the crapulent legacy that is America. [Read more →]
Smartphones: Bad for the economy?
The amount of knowledge and ability a smartphone offers on the move ranks it as one of the most influential breakthroughs since the internet. But, in a stunted economy, has anyone considered that maybe smartphones are too good, versatile, and convenient? [Read more →]
Left behind
Rapture is postponed. Good thing. Not that I was going anywhere, but I assume a good fraction of the tough guys who make the toilets flush and the internets flow would have been gathered at the Final Call. They’re here. We’re queer. Let’s get started.
Fresh Air…. what an insipid and presumptuous bit of condescencion that logism contains. You know these skunks; their position in so-called Public Broadcasting and Murphy’s Law assures that, wherever you drive, the subsidized voices of liberal salvation will always come through the radio clearer than anything but the spanish stations. These cats are defininitely Left Behind under any recognized scenario. They are as adamantly against rapturees as they are for perfectly modulated saccharine tumbling out of their oh-so-well compensated pie holes.
The doof on the pyre today is the unlikely named Dave Davies, although really, he is of little consequence except as an exemplar. And his fulfillment of that duty pales compared to the object of his recent interest; a pair of Registered Genii, financial reporters for the New York Times no less. They have written a book, well titled Reckless Endangerment that explains the hows and whys of our financial meltdown.
Let’s go to the audio. [Read more →]
The importance of helping Americans “hold themselves in line”
Back in 2005, while attending a live Bob Dylan show, I encountered the country stylings of his opening act, Merle Haggard. This artist’s simple songs of soil people touched me in a surprising way, and I was glad I didn’t follow my first instinct, which was to skip his act altogether. Later, I actually purchased his box set, “Down Every Road,” which features a number of his classic songs, among them the haunting lament, “I Can’t Hold Myself in Line.” This song was written in 1968, but its expression of melancholia in a world that gives humans too many choices for his own good could easily be torn from the diary — or, if you prefer, blog — of any Four Loko-drinking, Big Mac-eating, Sport Utility Vehicle-driving, Camel-smoking iPad-user today.
Hey, my weakness is stronger than I am
Guess I’ve always been the losin’ kind
Now I’m full speed ahead down the wrong road of life
And I can’t hold myself in line
Newt
The former Speaker of the House and longtime Georgia celebritician Newt Gingrich has announced that he will run for the Presidency in ’12. Well, he hasn’t actually announced it, he has announced that he will announce it in a few days. This is classic Gingrich, for those too fortunate to remember much about Bill Clinton’s famous antagonist. Even long out of office he routinely conducts himself as if he had the media footprint of Justin Bieber, or back in da day, Clinton himself. Newt is always certain that we have been waiting for word from him, on our politics and economics or on his plans for either a new novel or a national campaign. Once he has his tie snugged up, then we may all begin. And he certainly has some claim to a swelled opinion of his own importance. He is (as his suspiciously friendly wiki reflects) a college professor, author and historian which does at least set him apart from other Legislators who are almost 100% attorneys. [Read more →]
Speculations
So what else happened Wednesday? Believe it or not, there was a tiny smudge of good news revealed at another of the historical firsts that are coming so fast and furious that the day’s incidence of historical firsts is itself a historical first. This first was the first ever press conference by the Federal Reserve. Sure, you’ve seen Ben Bernanke on the news before squawking about this or that but this was the first time the Fed apparatus has ever had a presser just like Barack Obama or Orly Taitz where it is convened for the communication of specific info with questions attending. This might seem to be a rather threadbare “first” until you understand that the Chairman of the Federal Reserve and even the dozens of lesser figures who make monetary decisions have a power to influence markets that, believe me, they often wish they did not. The business press is always rumbling with the seismic analysis of Bernanke’s footsteps. How does he look? Chipper? Dour? Conscious? Did he get the thai chicken or a steak? Is he out shopping for new suits? Custom? Please god, tell me he’s not buying off the rack!
Fortunes are made and lost by the labors of the business paparazzi because Bernanke’s whims make dollars worth more, or less. Overnight. Like Midas, he turns things to gold. And also kills. [Read more →]
The HOPE
Helping Outstanding Pupils Educationally. No one could object to that, could they? This beast is not exactly a milestone in the history of the acronym but it contains much that is typical and objectionable in anything that goes by sentimental initials. The HOPE is famous around here, enjoying an existence as a sacred cow nearly as holy at the State level as, say, Social Security is at the Fed. It is a program (or scheme) to fund college education for Georgia students. Financed completely by lottery revenue, it was the reason the lottery was ever able to be born in this bible-belt state. Hardly anyone can remember now that there was serious opposition both moral, religious and practical when the firecracker Democrat Zell Miller rode his idea into the Governor’s Mansion in ’91 and today nearly every Georgian is touched someway by HOPE.
It seems like a fantasy now but believe it or not, in days of yore, if someone running for office proposed a new multi-billion dollar entitlement program some objection was sometimes made to the cost. Just how will this be paid for? As the gentleman said, the path to victory in any election is to not tax you and not tax me but to tax that fellow behind the tree. Miller did an end run around this dilemma. HOPE would not touch Georgia tax revenues, not a dime. Instead the State would go into a business that was otherwise illegal, basically the numbers racket. [Read more →]
The Stuntmen
Four spending/taxing proposals came before the House last week. The Ryan plan, the RSC (Republican Study Committee) plan, the Obama plan and the most colorfully named, People’s Budget presented by the CPC, the Congressional Progressive Caucus. Friday the Capitol saw a robust display of car chases, explosions and kung fu fighting that signified nearly nothing. Paul Ryan was the star of this show if you do not count the background figure of the President. Mr. Ryan exploded into his dreamy-eyed prominence with his budget plan which, as he loves to announce first off, ignores entitlements in large measure and in any case will not have any reduction of any sort on benefits for those 55 or over. It is refreshing if depressing that Ryan states right out the reason for the double-nickel. It is political. As the man says, and no one can deny, that demographic just won’t stand for any cuts and won’t sit still for them either. This truism, held by all sensible folks, explains the heat and passion demonstrated on the floor by Ryan and all the paunchy suits one would recognize as the Republican leadership during a twisted bit of stagecraft surrounding this weighty vote. [Read more →]
Top ten excuses for filing your taxes late
10. My dog ate my tax form
9. My accountant was recommended by Nicholas Cage
8. I’ve decided to make my own stimulus package
7. Sarah Palin claims paying taxes contributes to Big Government Socialism
6. Math hurts my head
5. I got an April first e-mail saying we didn’t have to pay any taxes this year
4. Lindsay Lohan stole my 1040
3. I’m protesting the fact that our ‘theater of war’ has become a multiplex
2. After I claimed all the voices in my head as deductions, it turned out the government owed me money
1. I just woke up from my New Year’s Eve party
Bob Sullivan’s Top Ten Everything appears every Monday.
One man’s ceiling is another man’s floor
Crisis averted! I guess this one will go to waste. Both Boehner and Obama have departed on insipid victory laps. Boehner takes his at a conference declaring to all those who lament that he was rolled that he will presently roll back. Obama puts on an Abercrombie windbreaker and does a more literal lap around the Washington monuments, encouraging the moppets to thank HIM that they will get to sit on Lincoln’s knee today. Well, not that, but they are going to get in. I suppose all is well then. Everyone incensed and outraged yesterday can just stick your toes in the pool over the weekend, we’ve got it all worked out.
And how is that exactly? We’ve got a budget for the half of this fiscal year that remains and it cuts some $31b, while preserving the Cherry Blossom Festival and Cowboy Poetry Slams as well as paying the GIs, somewhat important, but mostly this deal, a beatific demonstration of the bipartisanship the nation called out for last November, preserves our dignity. Lovely. Except for one thing. It didn’t happen. Allegedly the deal is “in place”, a state of affairs not really contemplated by the Constitution. What was actually passed, signed off on by all necessary parties, was just another Continuing Resolution for another week’s daily expenditures. The deal on the budget that is “in place” awaits yet more wrangling of this or that issue, meaning it is NOT a done deal which suggests to me that next week will be exactly like this week with an identical non-outcome. But it’s only Sunday so we can dream for 72 hours or so, can’t we? [Read more →]
Closing Time
Yes, there is much to do. There is much more to be stopped. How can this not be obvious to anyone who funds, rather than milks, the government? As a former corporate type now painting houses under the table for ten dollars an hour, I do neither so offer a disinterested viewpoint.
The other day the President employed a domestic metaphor, saying that anyone who was married could understand the state of negotiations on the budget, the continuing resolutions underwhich the gub has run for months and the emergency funding proposals. Negotiating, we are informed, requires compromise and we Democrats, says Steny Hoyer, Charlie Rangel and O, have already conceded seventy-five percent from our opening position and so they have. Unsaid is that their opening position, was for an increase of spending of some $41b. So what we have here, by analogy, is not a couple squabbling over who brownbags their lunch and who gets to go to McDonald’s. Rather it is between one spouse who wants to take out a third mortgage for their own trip to Vegas and another who wants a divorce. Yes, Mr President, that does bring it home to us.
The food pyramid
Enjoying that Big Mac? You should. For many years the leading publication on economics, The Economist, has used the relative prices of the Big Mac in whatever currency as a way of discovering the true value ratio between, say, a dollar and a peso. Of course there are many more official and formal ways to do the same thing. Armies of statisticians, flacks and hacks on the payrolls of government and business labor to find those proportions and fortunes are made or lost in the fray. But the Big Mac Index has proven itself among the most accurate measures. Perhaps Numero Uno. Why? Because unlike lira, greenbacks, gold or rare stamps, you can eat a Big Mac and in the end, that is the foundation for all value. Consumption. [Read more →]
The Six Tenths Compromise
I ask a simple question for the first guy that I met. And I said, ‘What about the eleventh year? You guys constructed this health care bill with six years of costs and ten years of revenue. What about the eleventh year?’ And the guy looks at me and says, ‘I’m eighty!’ Sam Zell
Yes, this is the fact of the matter by the admission of reformists themselves; six years of spending supported by ten years of revenue. Mr Zell is actually quite generous here as the fly in the ointment surfaces in the seventh year, not the eleventh. By the eleventh year, even on its own terms, the whole operation will be five years in arrears. And the anonymous Senator presumes he will then be dead and happily so. Well, we assume this is a fellow who knows his own worth. If he is happy we should be happy. But what if his date with eternity stands him up? What if death disappoints? [Read more →]
Scott Walker is no spelunker!
In other words, he ain’t cavin’. Apologies to the Gov for the last column and its presumptions as to his character. Given his RINO-esque whitewashing of the protests as “civil and nonviolent” when they were anything but, I thought he might be looking for an out, especially one that could deliver all of his legislativegoals immediately just not permanently. It looks like Walker has no interest in such a maneuver even though it could relieve the assault on Madison today while tripping up the Democrats at a crucial point two years from now.
A world without Borders: saying goodbye to the corporation that shaped me
In the ever-turbulent economic climate, hearing about the demise of yet another big box store is not that surprising, or even that unsettling. In fact, seeing storefronts shuttered until the next box chain moves in and breathes recycled air in that space until its life cycle ends, is now more common — and more expected — than seeing a chain or department store last the duration of one’s lifetime.
Keeping that in mind, along with the knowledge from following their ups and downs in the news, I was not surprised to read that Borders had finally filed for Chapter 11. But it didn’t make it any less sad to see. [Read more →]
