The Obama Welfare State

If voting made any difference they wouldn't let us do it  - Mark Twain

Facebook stock hit a new low today.  It's currently trading at $21.68, 43% below its IPO price, in less than 2 1/2 months since going public.  I know there must be an example of a worse performing new IPO, but I can't think of one in the 33 years in which I've been following/studying/trading the markets.  What blows my mind even more is that the Obama Justice Department AND SEC are not investigating Morgan Stanley for this.   It just goes to show you the degree to which Wall Street controls Obama.  If anyone has a financial adviser who tried to get them into FB stock, they should change advisers immediately.

As everyone knows by now, the employment numbers/unemployment rate metric is manipulated by an extraordinary degree and in a way which enables the Government to release headline statistics that make the employment situation in this country appear far stronger than it is in truth.  It's Orwellian manipulation at its finest.

The statisticians in the Obama administration have discovered a neat trick to help along the manipulation of the unemployment rate.  If you can move people out of the labor force as defined - those working plus those not working but looking for a job - then you can significantly improve the unemployment rate statistic because you can substantially reduce the size of the labor force by substantially reducing the number of people who don't have a job but would have to look for a job and take anything they can get if they had to worry about eating.  To accomplish this, Obama has significantly expanded the welfare, food stamp and disability social security rolls.

Here are some awesome charts prepared by zerohedge.com to illustrate (please click on the charts to enlarge).  The first chart shows the number of households participating in the food stamp program since Oct 2009.  It's increased by 29% since October 2009, which is 8 months after Obama took office officially:

A 29% increase in households receiving food stamps is not the sign of a healthy system.  The second chart  shows number of individuals who receive food stamps.  This has gone up 33% since early 2009:

Again, not the type of data point that one would associate with an economic recovery.  It's certainly not something that is sustainable considering that it is largely paid for using borrowed/printed money.

Finally, social security disability.  While I don't have the time to read through the documentation in order to prove it, it is pretty clear that Obama has liberalized the requirements to qualify for social security disability.  I say this because in the past few months there has been an incredible number of people applying for this benefit.  While general welfare payments are not sustainable, the stress put on social security by including liberalized benefits in general will blow up social security sooner than any Government or Wall Street genius has forecast.  Here's the chart:

Any measure which establishes legal charity in a permanent basis and gives it an administrative form, thereby creates an idle and lazy class, living at the expense of the industrial and working class.  - Alexis de Tocqueville

I don't know what else to say about this matter because welfare plus the military complex are going to bring about the complete collapse of our system.  All the corruption, fraud, and imperialism abroad are symptoms of a system in collapse and a Government that is controlled by people who serve no purpose other than to benefit from the transfer of middle class wealth using the welfare system, banking system fraud and the military complex as the conduits.

One last point.  It won't make a difference which political party gets the White House or control of Congress in the next election.  It just doesn't matter any more and if you think it does, then you are sadly ignorant of the facts, hopelessly naive or tragically stupid.