Tuesday, July 31, 2012

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.

24 comments:

  1. it matters only because I'd rather watch and hear Mitt Romney spew the BS than Valerie Jarrett, err, Barack Obama.

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  2. I cringed when Clinton spoke because it was BS, I cringed when Bush spoke because of his delivery style (never got to substance), I cringe when Obama speaks because of lack of substance, an I'll cringe when Romney speaks waiting for some sort of gaffe.

    If we are gonna get a front man, let's at least get a real good one.

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  3. michael schumacherTuesday, 31 July, 2012

    There are still so many people who don't or will not understand your last paragraph. That fact will allow the PTB to continue the charade....until we have armed revolution (fat chance!) nothing will change and we will be stuck with a system that is doing nothing more than controlling (trying to) the rate of our societal decay.

    MS

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  4. This is God's universe, thank you very much, and His word says the nations are as "a drop in the bucket". It also says that he chooses the king of the nation based on their hearts. We have gotten what we deserve. And, if we were to kill all those in power; because we are so divided as a people, we would never be able to agree on a replacement!

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    1. Editor's note: I posted this in the spirit of free speech, but I'm an atheist and an anarchist. I advocate revolution.

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  5. What's your definition of anarchy, Dave? Seriously. I'm all for as little government as possible since government is nothing more than a politically correct term meaning "organized crime" (with all due apologies to real organized criminals reading this post, since you fellows definitely have better tastes in clothing, food and women), but isn't anarchy a complete lack of government, and thus chaos? I would be interested in hearing you expound upon this subject a bit more since the vision I have of anarchists, rightly or wrongly, is one of bearded Rasputin look-a-likes with wild eyes and bombs in their hands.

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    1. We need anarchy for now in order to get the "reset" button pushed. The entire Govt needs to be burned to the ground and rebuilt using the model used by the founding fathers.

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    2. I'll supply the matches. Thanks for your answer, Dave.

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    3. The fool has said in his heart, "There is no God".
      It seems a little contradictory to rebuild using the model of the founding fathers seeing as their foundation was God. Are you going to leave that part out?

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    4. LOL. Let's clarify: most of the famous founding fathers were deists. They didn't subscribe to any religion per say and many of them believed that a "higher power" manifest itself through nature. Certainly not the loving, caring "god" that christianity embraces.

      I don't believe there is a god as it's conceptualized in the major religious dogmas. There may be some sort of "higher power" but it's certainly not anything that keeps track of or gives a shit about youa and me or this country or this planet.

      This country was founded on the principle of religious freedom. Your tone is one of oppression and control.

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  6. Ouch .... I think burning this Government to the ground may not turn out so well.

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  7. REPORT: ABC, NBC Evening News Shows Ignore Massive Banking Scandal For
    More Than A Month

    http://mediamatters.org/blog/2012/07/31/report-abc-nbc-evening-news-shows-ignore-massiv/189032

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  8. Crime and Mayhem in the USA

    http://www.huffingtonpost.com/janet-tavakoli/crime-and-mayhem-in-the-u_b_1727927.html

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  9. The Cartel Behind the Scenes in the Libor Interest Rate Scandal

    Libor, Anchor of the Financial World

    The Libor and Euribor (Euro Interbank Offered Rate) are used worldwide as the benchmark rates for financial transactions worth hundreds of trillions of euros. When a savings bank issues a loan to a business at a variable interest rate, the loan agreement is based on the Euribor. "In many cases, the Euribor is even the key guideline for the structuring of call money," says Falko Fecht, a professor at the Frankfurt School of Finance, referring to overnight and other such short-term loans. In Spain, in particular, tens of thousands of construction loans are based on the Euribor, while millions of mortgage loans in the United States are pegged to the Libor rate.

    But the bankers in the cartel initially had their sights set on a completely different business. They wanted to influence the giant market for interest rate and foreign currency derivatives in their favor. The volume of outstanding transactions in this area amounted to €567 trillion at the end of 2011 alone. Changes of as little as 0.01 percentage points can translate into hundreds of millions in profit or loss for some banks. This makes the lax approach to the calculation of rates taken for years by banks and regulators alike seem all the more astonishing.

    http://www.spiegel.de/international/business/the-libor-scandal-could-cost-leading-global-banks-billions-a-847453.html

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  10. Dave,
    I would suggest to check (the real history) regarding our founding fathers and their religious beliefs …. I’m sure that you will find that most were not deists. Dig deep and read their own words not some history book(s) that were published in the last seventy five years.

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    1. I would suggest that you drop the religion thing. It's a personal matter and I'm not posting any more comments with religion in them on this blog. This is an a-religious zone.

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    2. A bumper sticker I wish I had bought-
      If you want to live in a nation where religion runs the country, MOVE TO IRAN!
      The founding fathers decided to leave each to his or her own faith. They did Not want America dragged into religious wars that raged in Europe at the time. Some of the founding fathers left Europe to find religious freedom and escape from persecution.
      (The golden rule is great, too bad so many religious fanatics think it applies only to their own faith and not to all mankind)

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  11. Uh oh...the religious sect is trying to drag this blog down. Dave, I suggest a throwback Glenn Beck reference to flush all of the lunatics out!

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    Replies
    1. LOL. I like to post a couple now and then so that everyone can see how dogmatic and hypocritical the god-zealots are.

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  12. Surely if any week or day should be the marker for lost confidence it should be this week. Immaterial if Governments henceforth will maybe print at some stage. How long can this blah blah carry on. By now everyone must realize that this is it! And where does one turn to?

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    Replies
    1. Turn to gold, silver, guns, canned goods if you want to get through to "the other side."

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    2. Here we are. This is the type of stuff we should be reading now, more and more. Hedge funds giving back their capital and this kind of thing. This is the snowball which will get bigger - is that what the Bankers want??

      http://goldsilver.com/news/why-i-am-selling-every-stock-i-own-and-putting-most-into-gold-and-cash/

      And he is absolutely correct that big American companies will now be boycotted all over the world. Coca Cola, McDonalds, Monsanto, etc - all this "patented" shit.

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