RELIGION: Evolution losing ground in U.S.

Let’s switch topics for a while and talk EVOLUTION and the state of the American mind about that subject.

This month is the 200th anniversary of the birth of Charles Darwin so the media is taking the opportunity to see where we and the world stand on the THEORY OF EVOLUTION. I have blogged extensively in the past, in the defense of evolution but today I will simply say that evolution is a fact that is proven on a daily basis and to somehow not treat it as a scientific fact is just plain stupid and a denial of reality.

I was pleased to read today that many churches here in Michigan were planning on celebrating Darwin and his scientific work by sermonizing on the way religion and science (evolution) can harmoniously coexist in our lives. Many of these clergymen want to defuse the belief that religious people are dumb, ignorant and hostile to science.

Obviously there is a way to work evolution into your belief system but that would entail treating the Bible as a story and not scientific fact; some religions can do that and others obviously cannot. There are also people that just cannot wrap their minds around a concept like evolution and for those there just isn’t any hope.

The statistics on the belief in evolution in 2009 is a little disheartening. In the U.S. the percentage of people believing evolution to be a scientific fact actually went down from 45% to 40% in the last 20 years and that is just hard to fathom.

62% of Americans actually believe that humans were created by god just as we are now with no evolutionary development. That fact is downright scary since physical evidence exists that humankind evolved over millions of years. Just today I was reading about DNA found from Neanderthal remains will help us know more about this “different” race of humans? These guys lived just 30,000 years ago and we have proof!

The U.S. ranked next to last (Turkey was last) in percentage of people NOT believing in evolution; how embarrassing is that!

It is interesting to also see which religions accept evolution and which do not. It is interesting to see that JEWS (77%) accept evolution and it is their Bible that is the biggest obstacle to belief in science. Buddhist (81%), Hindus (80%) and Catholics (58%) also accept evolution but not all of their members do. I believe that these religions just don’t make a big deal out of it and allow members to believe what they want to.

The real dumb-as-dirt religious people are the Jehovah’s Witnesses, Mormons and Evangelical Christians and I guess they make up the bulk of the American population.

I guess the only reason for us being so far behind other nations in accepting scientific facts as facts is due to our educational system; schools are just not allowed to teach scientific facts as they are in other countries. This is due to societal pressures in local communities that cannot be overcome. Wanting our government to step in is a joke when we see what Bush did with religion and state.

We cannot force people to become enlightened so we must just keep plugging along hopefully making a difference in the small part of society that we can influence; our kids being the biggest part.

ECONOMY: Stmulus good or bad or just wasteful

OK, now that I have that Right-Wing stuff off my chest, let’s get to the stimulus package itself.

As mentioned countless times before, I am a capitalist and I firmly believe in the capitalist system which allows the free market system to guide the economy. I have also said that we, as an economic society, have corrupted the system to the point where it needs to be cleaned and re-established even though the process might be painful. We must never forget why we are the mightiest and richest nation in the world, how we got here and how we will stay here!

The question with the Obama / Democratic Stimulus Package is will it stimulate the economy to return to normality or is this just an extension of our welfare program. Mark Sanford, the Republican governor of South Carolina called it the “Savior Based Economy”.

We know that economic sins have been committed. We have overextended ourselves and do not live within our means. We are basically consumers and our whole economy is based on our insatiable consumer appetite. We know how we got here and the proper thing would be to change our behavior and get back to economic reality BUT our government does not want to allow that.

Our government wants the banks to lend more money out even to people with questionable credit – again. They want us to start buying new cars even though we can’t afford to; the government will give you a tax credit if you do. Basically, our government wants everything to go back to the way it used to be and I find that idiotic and irresponsible; things need to change dramatically, they cannot remain the same or nothing will be fixed for the long term.

Tax cuts will help eventually but not immediately. As a business owner, I will not spend tax cut money to immediately grow my business; I will be cautious and stay low for a while until I feel confident again. Regular tax payers will probably feel the same and will pocket the money (at least the sane ones will).

The rest of the stimulus package appears to me to be more of a welfare check to institutions and individuals that are suffering and I agree that some in our society need help but I question that help coming through a stimulus package.

The infrastructure jobs will create temporary employment and perform projects that are needed like bridge building, etc. I especially like the money going to make our whole health system electronic. That will fundamentally change how things are done in our health system reducing costs and errors and making the system very efficient BUT it will not create jobs or demand.

The capitalist system must be allowed to do its job as painful as it may be for the short term. GM is a good example. I mentioned before that it should have been allowed to go bankrupt with the government stepping in with bankruptcy financing. Bailing out a sinking ship only postpones the inevitable and this week the inevitable needs to happen. GM will come out stronger, leaner and viable, something it is not currently.

The banks should have been handled in the same fashion and Paulson and Bernake should have not been allowed to scare everyone to handing out nearly a trillion dollars with no supervision or accountability going along with the handouts – stupid!

We have already made some horrendous mistakes with our economy, let’s slow down and take a breath of reason.

Democrats are flaming socialists but I don’t believe Obama is. I think he has a good grasp of the economic issues in front of us and will act responsibly; the stimulus package was not altogether a responsible act in my estimation and I hope it doesn’t make things worst or last longer than they have to like in the Great Depression.

More later…………….

I am going to IXTAPA, MEXICO next week; can’t wait!!!!!!!!!

ECONOMY: The politics of the STIMULUS PKG.

I have been bombarded from the Left and the Right about the recently passed STIMULUS PACKAGE. The bulk of the criticism is coming from the Right as expected but I noticed the Democrats using it to attack sitting Republican Congressmen that voted NO on the package as most of them did.

I received a political phone message telling me to call my representative (McCotter – R) and urge him to support the stimulus package because it is good for us, etc……assuming that all in Michigan are FOR the stimulus package and therefore want to throw all anti-stimulus Republicans out of office.

I have written at length about our economic crisis and what can and cannot be done to bring us out of it but I don’t like some of the “politics” behind the current discussion.

I noticed on the Daily Show with Jon Steward that the show’s guest John Sununu, a former Republican Congressman, was railing against the deficit that the stimulus package will create and all the democratic pork in the package BUT he fell silent when the host asked him about the billions spent on a failed Iraq War and why is there no outrage about that? He asked why he supported helping Iraq with billions and billions of taxpayer dollars but somehow cannot support bailing out his own country?

I think Republicans and other right-wing nuts that supported Bush and all the shit he caused, should be reminded EVERY DAY that they fucked up big time and that the new administration now has to fix their screw-ups so their credibility is a big issue and maybe they should not talk so loud!

Another issue I find troubling in some of the Right-wing diatribes making it into my reading pile, is the bringing up non-economic issues like religion and abortion. I may agree with a conservative view of the economy and what should be done BUT I am not a social Neanderthal spouting Dark Age bullshit. When I see that in an otherwise semi-intelligent view of our economy; it negates the entire argument.

Even though I may eventually oppose the Stimulus Package as a Welfare Package, I don’t feel comfortable in the group that agrees with my view. There has to be a place between the Right and the Left that will allow common sense, secularism and a progressive mind set. I will keep looking.

ECONOMY: Cato Institute & Libertarianism

Another full page ad in the new York Times this Sunday caught my eye. It was an ad by the CATO INSTITUTE, a libertarian think tank that believes in open market capitalism with limited government intervention.

The ad was signed by what appears, thousands of academics from all over the country. In the ad, they take President Obama to task for insisting that we need action by our government to help jumpstart the economy.

The CATO institute disagrees with president Obama and do does not believe that government spending is the answer out of our financial dilemma. They cite correctly, that Presidents Hoover and Roosevelt and their massive spending, did nothing to alleviate or end the Great depression. In fact, historians feel their actions really prolonged the Great Depression, like I have been reporting.

They also mention Japan and the “lost decade” in the 1990s where no amount of spending by the government made a difference.
The CATO Institute believes lower taxes, less regulation and the reduction of the national debt, will boost growth.

President Obama mentioned this stance in his first press conference and that he disagreed with doing nothing and allowing capitalism to just work its way out of this mess.

When people ask me if I think the stimulus package will do the trick for us, I have to demure because I don’t really know (no one does) and history tells us that it probably will not do what we want it to do; even Obama hedges his bets and says that we must try something just like Roosevelt did.

The projects in the stimulus package will perform necessary tasks (for the most part) and will help in the long run but will not create the JOBS and the DEMAND generated by those jobs to jumpstart our economy.

I will also add that I disagree wholeheartedly with removing regulations that CATO feels impede progress. I feel we allowed capitalism to be corrupted by unscrupulous people to the point that it no longer was an economic philosophy. If you twist the fundamental rules of an economic system, you no longer can count on that system getting back to health on its own; the basic rules of capitalism must be enforced or we have economic anarchy.

ECONOMY: Some bank CEOs just don't get it!

I happened to notice in Sunday’s new York Times that the bank called WELLS FARGO took out a full page ad that must have cost them (and taxpayers) a pretty penny titled “ The Value of Team Member Recognition”.

In the ad, they decry how financial institutions that receive taxpayer bailout money have to cancel their so called “Team Member Annual Recognition” events where they recognize outstanding employees and party as hell!

Wells Fargo feels that these employee recognition party events are valuable and are not being understood by the regular taxpayer who feels if you are earning a salary, you are getting compensated enough for the job you are paid to do.

I have always felt that extra effort and success should be rewarded BUT Wells Fargo is receiving bailout taxpayer money so the company and its employees apparently did not do such a good job and for that maybe they should all get punished and not rewarded?

The CEO of Wells Fargo, John Stumpf, seems like just another clueless CEO that just does not get it. Taking out an expensive ad to tell employees that they would normally get their party in Hawaii or wherever it was supposed to be this year BUT for the nasty ole’ taxpayers who feel the company needs to pay back the taxpayer’s money before it decides to fund a party for itself.

It is for this reason and many more like that , that I cannot view these financial CEOs as responsible adults. They know what this country is facing, what workers are facing in this new depression and they cry about having to cancel their annual party?

BITE MY ASS BOZO, since the government is the owner of these banks, it should fire these childish morons and appoint a serious adult to run the place BUT I am not sure there are any responsible adults on Wall Street.

ECONOMY: Union labor prolonged the Great Depression

I was disappointed but not surprised when President Obama signed an executive order giving contractors that use higher cost union labor on the construction projects which will be generated by the stimulus package, an edge over non-union contractors.

His flies in the face of economic logic which a few editorials voiced because using cheaper non-union labor would mean the creation of more jobs and after all, Obama is trying to create as many jobs as possible. This is nothing more than political payback even though unions DON’T CONTROL VOTES!

With the unions feeling their oats under the Obama administration, I have to once again point out what made the Great Depression last longer than it had to. Although there were a number of factors a huge one was labor and unionism.

FDR allowed unions to set high wage demands and enforce them through sit-down strikes. FDR also set and controlled prices at higher than normal levels. His policies were totally anti-free market.

FDR felt free market competition was the cause of the depression so he set out to eliminate competition by setting up rules under his “fair competition” policies. His National Industrial Reconstruction Agency told businesses what they could and could not do - Communism anyone?

President Obama, by insisting on union labor in all recovery efforts is following FDR’s footsteps which kept unemployment sky high during the Great Depression because businesses could not hire labor on their own terms. Labor statistics from 1933-1939 show a huge drop in weekly hours worked from that of 1929. Let me repeat; in trying to create more jobs, FDR actually was instrumental in eliminating jobs because of his union stance and control over business.

Obama says he wants to create more jobs but he is going about it the wrong way and may end up hurting the job market by insisting on union labor. Union labor is expensive and in no way faster or more efficient than non-union labor.

OBAMA SHOULD HAND OUT MONEY FOR PROJECTS TO THE BEST BIDDER AND NOT TO A UNION-ONLY BIDDER IF HE WANTS TO STIMULATE OUR ECONOMY.

Learn from history, please………………………………................

SCIENCE: New team in town

To me, this cartoon says it all about the Bush approach to medicine & science and for that matter, the approach of all the conservative, Christians that supported Bush.

Bush and his advisors did not listen to scientists because what the hell do scientists know; its all in the Bible so you don't need to listen to no stinkin' scientists.

I feel eight (8) years have been wasted due to the backward and down right stupid religious views of science that Bush and his crew held.

Onwards I say...

ECONOMY: Toxic securities, where did they come from?

A quick word about SECURITIZATION and how it got financial institutions in trouble when securitization turned TOXIC.

Simply put, the 1970 financial tool invention bundled assets that produced a cash flow (mortgages) into securities called “asset backed securities” ; securities / bonds backed by actual homes / buildings. These financial instruments were also called “collateralized debt obligations” CDOs - I hope you get the picture.

It is better to explain this with an example.

In the old days (pre-1970) banks made loans (mortgages) to home buyers for a specified interest amount and held those loans until they were paid off (30 years). The bank made a profit off the interest it collected which usually amounted to quite a sum. Obviously, the banks wanted to make sure they got their principal and interest back so they made sure the borrower was and would be able to pay the mortgage off without trouble and that was why it was so damn hard to get a loan in those days.

After 1970, led by government example (Ginny Mae/Freddie Mac) some banks were taking a bunch of these mortgages and pooling them into a single, lets call it a BOND or SECURITY which they then sold to investors as shares in a cash flow producing, asset backed investment.

This financial instrument delivered a number of benefits for the bank. The bank would get its original principal investment back together with a small interest profit on top of the fees the bank charged to originate the mortgage. So the bank made a smaller amount of money than if it held the mortgage to maturity (30 years) but it got the mortgage off its books which freed up funds to make more loans with. A bank could do very well if it had a high mortgage loan turnover.

The investors buying shares in the asset backed security or CDO would get a steady stream of money (cash flow) which consisted of the monthly principal and interest payment minus a small servicing fee to the institution collecting the money. Since these securities were backed by hard assets (homes), they were considered extra safe because, after all, real estate in America always goes up and up in price.

If you’re a long time mortgage payer as I am, you will remember how your mortgage would get sold to some other institution and you had to send your payments to a new address. Sometimes my mortgage was sold days after I signed on the dotted line; a million times.

I guess, at the beginning and for many years after that, mortgage securitization made a lot of sense and benefited the regular guy on the streets by making more money available for home loans in general and secure investment securities for investors.

As bank and lending regulations became softer and softer, trouble was bound to follow. Please remember that it was our government that believed “EVERY AMERICAN SHOULD OWN HIS /HER OWN HOME”; It is the American dream so by golly, lets make the dream come true.

The hard reality we now know is that some Americans can never own a home and should never be allowed to own a home BECAUSE THEY CANNOT AFFORD A HOME AND PROBABLY WILL NEVER BE ABLE TO AFFORD A HOME.

Do you remember the time when you did not have to go to a bank to get a home loan but could go to all sorts of places (non-banks) that offered home loans and get really good deals that you could never get before and the deals kept getting better as time moved on?

I can also remember when friends and neighbors were quitting their regular day jobs to go into mortgage writing (originating); it was a hot field to be in.

All you had to do is find someone wanting to buy a house or re-mortgage an existing home, do the paperwork and sell the mortgage to an investment house who would bundle these mortgages into securities and sell them as shares which could also be split and resold. The loan originators made their money on the sale of the mortgage so the more loans they could close, the more money they would make.

The path to becoming rich was to write as many mortgages as possible. This mad rush to write as many mortgages as possible because someone was waiting to buy them from you eventually degenerated into writing BAD loans or loans to people that did not qualify. The rationale behind giving loans to people that did not qualify was that at least, there was a hard, valuable asset (house) backing the loan which could always be sold to recoup money from bad loans.

To understand the ENORMITY of this SECURITIZATION world we are told that in the United States alone, asset-backed securities now total 10.2 TRILLION DOLLARS with about 2.5 TRILLION sold overseas. Let me write a trillion out so you can see:
$1,000,000,000,000.

When people started defaulting on their home loans as was inevitable, the cash flow started stopping and because so many people were in foreclosure and there were so many homes on the market, the long term rise in real estate prices leveled and then started coming down.

As our economy soured and more and more people lost their jobs and with that their ability to pay their mortgage obligation, more and more homes were abandoned, flooding the market making home prices fall even lower BUT no one was buying because they were afraid of what the future may hold and were going to just sit on any money they had.

What about the trillions of dollars worth of asset backed securities in investors hands that now were not producing a cash stream AND could not be sold to anyone because their value was undeterminable.

Because mortgages were BUNDLED into securities that issued shares; it is hard to actually find who or what owns individual mortgages. AND SO THE SECURITIES SIT - WAITING… FOR WHAT?

These securities are what is choking the system; nothing is moving.
Equity loans are dead. Securitization is dead. Home loans go to only to people with perfect credit scores and bright earning futures.

NOW YOU KIND OF SEE WHERE A GOOD THING TURNED REALLY, REALLY BAD.

ECONOMY: tax cuts will not work this time!

The Republicans in Congress are attacking Obama’s stimulus package as pork; all they want is tax cuts.

The Republicans feel tax cuts are the fastest, surest way to get money into people’s hands to spend and therefore start the economy back on the road to health.

Normally, I would agree that tax cuts are a smart way to jump-start the economy or at least give a little boost but these are NOT NORMAL TIMES and the Republicans are NOT THINKING!

Remember Bush sending out CASH to the taxpayers. What did that do - ABSOLUTELY NOTHING!

Why did it not do what was predicted it would do? People did not spend that money. They paid bills or stuck it into their bank account - so much for stimulating the economy.

The same damn thing will happen again if the stimulus package has nothing but tax cuts in it; the money will not be spent.

The Republicans must realize that people are scared shitless; they are losing their jobs, their homes, they don’t know what will happen tomorrow but they think it will just get worst. SO THEY WILL SIT ON ANY AND ALL MONEY THEY HAVE OR WILL GET.

This is not rocket science boys; just use your noggin or at least listen to someone with one.

ECONOMY: Banking de-regulation a huge factor

Many economists are analyzing the financial data from the Great Depression in an effort to glean some knowledge as to what worked and what didn’t during that time so as to avoid making the same mistakes when dealing with our new great depression.

They all agree that “poorly designed regulations governing our financial systems including our banks, led to our current crisis”. People that follow the historical development of our financial dilemma can point to legislation that kept loosening regulations, especially the regulations limiting risk taking by banks and other financial institutions, to the point where banks felt free to take on risk to an unwise and irresponsible level.

This was allowed by both political parties that just wanted the good economic times to keep on rolling along; objections were quickly suppressed.

During the Great Depression is when most of the banking regulations came into being. They came into being because unregulated banks in the 1930s failed in mass numbers with no insurance for depositors who basically just lost all their life savings.

It is ironic that our government felt safe in relaxing those Depression era safeguards and here we are, victims once again of an unregulated banking system. We should be grateful to FDR for at least setting up the FDIC so life savings were not lost this time (at least to $100,000).

Henry Paulson, Treasury Secretary under Bush was a big proponent of relaxing banking regulations. Alan Greenspan, Fed chairman under Bush did not want hedge funds regulated. No wonder they went crazy when the economic shit hit the fan under their watch and because of their regulation laxness.

In the past, banks took in deposits at lets say 2% and lent it out at 7%. The banks were limited what they could lend by the amount of deposits they had on hand. Deregulation during our time allowed the banks to loan out money without specifically tying those loans to actual deposits and this is where things got totally out of hand as banks became banks built on air!

ECONOMY: Protectionism can hurt us bad!

I have sounded this warning before; if we engage in PROTECTIONISM such as the BY AMERICAN bill included in the Obama stimulus package we will invite retaliatory actions which will make global economic recovery much harder to achieve.

I have mentioned this before because economists and historians have emphatically stated that trade barriers that were erected as a form of job protectionism were to blame for extending the Great Depression for up to eight (8) years more that the Depression was calculated to last.

We are not the only ones going in the direction of protectionism; France and England have already endured strikes by workers that want their jobs protected. This is the natural, logical emotion that the public feels. Governments are hard pressed to preach free trade when their people are screaming for job protection BUT if they give in to the demands of the public, the public will suffer even more.

I am at a loss to say how this issue should be handled since we are not a dictatorship that can just ignore the cries of the people and it is these people that vote their leaders in or out of office if they feel ignored.

Our governor, Jennifer Granholm, just gave the State of the State speech and urged all Michiganians to BUY MICHIGAN. OK, I can understand that and people should be more aware of where products they buy are made and if they have a choice and the products are similar, why not support the product made right here?

What I object to is when people are compelled to purchase home products either through rules and regulations or because of the unavailability of competing (foreign) products.

Right now, we are importing much less than we were just a few months ago. In fact, all countries are importing less because their people are buying less - period! This hurts the countries that rely on their exports to power their economies. We don’t need to raise barriers to trade; the free market will do that naturally BUT if we raise artificial barriers to trade just to appease the public (unions), we will invite retaliation worldwide and then what…

I have heard Obama acknowledge the fact that protectionism is bad for the world economy and bad for the U.S. but he is a politician; can he convince Americans to trust in his economic judgment? - Gee, I hope he can or else we are in for a rough ride.

OBAMA: Pay more attention to detail!

Just a few words about the tax cheats running for Obama’s cabinet.

TIM GEITHNER for Treasury Secretary: Should have been eliminated from consideration once it was known that he DELIBERATELY avoided paying taxes when he knew he should have. This appointment is a joke and will remain a joke because of his irresponsible behavior EVEN THOUGH HE IS RICH AS HELL.

This character flaw is troubling and I just don’t trust him to make the right decisions about our economy mainly because he obviously does not know the value of a dollar and what it takes to earn one.

Geithner was a Paulson student and I think Paulson made some serious mistakes with our financial system and Geithner supported his decisions - not smart!

Also, the appointment of Geithner reflects badly on Obama. He campaigned on a principle of honesty with no exceptions and he is already making excuses why he needs to circumvent his own principles.

TOM DASCHLE is a slightly different story. I checked out his tax mistakes and they were honest mistakes as far as I can see BUT after Geithner, he never had a chance; one tax cheat is enough. Today another appointee stepped aside because of a tax issue of less that $1,000; should have done a better job at vetting the candidates.

Obama MUST pay more attention to details because if he doesn’t, his message will be lost in partisan bullshit and the Republicans will start looking like they are protecting the country from greedy Democratic tax cheats.

ECONOMY: The Chinese example?

The economic crisis we are in right now is also a global crisis. Recently, the presidents of Russia and China blamed the U.S. for the crisis and in many respects, they were correct but I will get into that a little later. Now let me talk a little about China.

China has the fastest growing economy in the world. Just look at anything that you recently bought in a store and you will see that in all probability, it was made in China and that is both good and bad for China.

The U.S. has been importing a ton of goods from China for quite a few years now and that has undoubtedly helped China’s economy. In our present economic crisis, those imports have plummeted; Americans are scared to purchase anything these days. Also, tainted toys (lead) and milk products from China have also contributed to a loss of exports for China.

If you read the Chinese news today you will read that many factories have closed and millions of workers are now unemployed. This could be a very volatile situation for China since they have such a huge population (>1.0 billion).

Chinese economists have known that their rapid growth is mainly due to exports. It appears that they have been thinking of what to do if those exports dry up. Economic fundamentals still apply here as they do in the U.S. and so a DEMAND for goods and services must arise if their economy is to get better. Since the world is not buying so much from China anymore, the demand has to come from within China.

The Chinese people are known “savers” just like the Japanese are. The Chinese hoard all their money because they do not have a good health insurance system and have to pay cash for any medical care they need or may need in the future.

So the Chinese government has just announced a massive outlay of money to form a solid national health system to care for the huge population. The Chinese people will not longer have to worry about paying for needed health care AND SO THEY CAN START SPENDING ALL THAT MONEY THEY WERE HOARDING FOR POSSIBLE HEALTH CARE EXPENSES.

I think this is a brilliant maneuver by the Chinese government. People will feel safe in buying that refrigerator they need or the washing machine or a new TV. That demand will spur domestic production and therefore employment and this will get the economic wheels to start turning again.

In the U.S., people are starting to save their money instead of spending it. Americans have never been known as savers, we just spend and spend and when we run out of money, we borrow and spend some more.

Americans are scared they will lose their jobs as many have already. Many are scared that the supply of available jobs is dwindling and so they better save every penny they earn now, just in case.

So here we are, we know we need to create DEMAND to start the economy up again - how do we do it?