Category Archives: Debt

Paying Freddie & Fannie To Hoard Homes

Business, Debt, Government, Political Economy, Socialism

If there’s one thing you need to know about President Barack Obama so-called financial-regulatory overhaul it is that, predictably, it didn’t touch the Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae money pits. Freddie, a government owned mortgage-finance company, has cost taxpayers (or China) $63.1 billion, and it has “asked the U.S. Treasury to provide [it with an additional] $1.8 billion infusion.” “Fannie last week asked the government for $1.5 billion, bringing the total tab for the companies’ rescue to $148 billion.”

You will recalled that in May of this year, the thieves in charge of the Treasury handed over another $8.4 billion to “Fannie Mae and sister company Freddie Mac.” And that “The Obama administration had pledged to cover unlimited losses through 2012 for Freddie and Fannie, lifting an earlier cap of $400 billion.”

WSJ:

The U.S. took over Freddie and Fannie two years ago through a legal process known as conservatorship and has pledged to inject unlimited sums of aid over the next three years to keep the companies afloat.

Freddie is being propped up by taxpayers (read China) until eternity or until the US collapses, whichever comes first. This, despite the fact that these mortgage sinkholes should have long since been liquidated.

As a bankrupt and bankrupting state-run entity, Freddie and Fannie are responsive to political masters, not to markets. This would explain why these entities are hoarding houses when they should be getting rid of them at fire-sale prices.

As political players, they are expected to avoid “putting further pressure on home values.” “The inventory of homes owned by the companies has doubled over the past year, to a combined 191,000, up from 97,000 a year ago.”

Freddie and Fannie forever.

UPDATED: Pimp My FLOTUS

Barack Obama, Debt, Economy, Ethics, Etiquette, Government, Politics, Pop-Culture

I can’t bring myself to break a sweat over Michelle Obama’s lavish vacation. The First Lady and daughter took along to Spain “68 Secret Service agents from the US,” and for “her entourage she had reserved 60 of the 129 rooms.”

The comparison to Marie Antoinette, down to the wave, is flattering, of course—to Michelle. But how stupid is it to suggest that individuals so privileged as these—who have set themselves and their offspring up for life by working the political process (i.e., by pelf)—could, by “toning down the flash,” humanise themselves “and signify that they sympathise with the setbacks of the people they were elected to serve.”

That was New York Daily News columnist Andrea Tantaros’s much-publicized criticism and attendant advice.

Yes, precisely: if the Obamas and their hangers-on tone down, I’ll feel so much better about them and their undeserved riches.

Dumb.

Besides, the metaphor is all wrong. This sojourn to Spain, the “sedate” soiree for Mexican President Felipe Calderon, down to the pelvis-shaking Beyonce—this is out of the MTV series, “Pimp my Ride.” Or Pimp my president.

UPDATE (Aug. 9): The Idiocracy at large has taunted Michelle and her posse by saying that the American economy could have done with their dollars. The royal party should have spent its money stateside.

The American cognoscenti knows so little about the money in their society. Government workers are paid out of taxes. In other words, the money they spend is money confiscated from taxpayers. Productive activities were suspended in order to fund these parasite. It’s a zero-sum game. The BHO family doesn’t produce anything; it consumes wealth. All told, even if Michelle vacationed in the US, the money she blows has already resulted in less economic activity somewhere unseen. It’s Bastiat’s elegant argument about ‘What Is Seen and What Is Not Seen’ all over again.

UPDATED: Gold Is Bad For Government Health (Remember Executive Order 6102)

Business, Debt, Economy, History, Individual Rights, Inflation, John McCain, Regulation, Rights, Socialism, The State

The health scare bill is the gift that just keeps giving—giving-up individual freedoms to government. From a “TAX ON INDIVIDUALS WITHOUT ACCEPTABLE HEALTH CARE COVERAGE” to a “SURCHARGE ON HIGH INCOME INDIVIDUALS” to “STUDENT LOAN REFORM”; it’s all there, designed to leave little room for voluntary, peaceful exchanges. But we missed another provision among the thousands of sections the H.R.4872 Reconciliation Act of 2010 sports:

A “tack-on provision to the law that puts gold coin buyers and sellers under closer government scrutiny.”

Gold is a necessary financial hedge in the survival on the road to serfdom.

UPDATE (July 24): Gold Confiscation coming? FDR, idolized by BHO and McMussolini alike—by almost all offshoots of the duopoly, in fact—forbade “the Hoarding of Gold Coin, Gold Bullion and Gold Certificates” at pains of punishment: a fine of “not more than $10,000, or “imprisoned for not more than ten years or both.”

To Spend Or Not To Spend: That’s The American Question

Debt, Economy, Labor, Political Philosophy, Republicans, Socialism, Welfare

Can there be a real intellectual debate with respect to spending money not your own, which you don’t have a snowball’s chance in hell of repaying? Sure there can. In the US, that’s what goes for a serious debate of political philosophy. The country carries upwards of $100 trillion of debt, counting its unfunded promises. Yet here we are, bickering again about extending unemployment benefits.

In June, in what was his finest hour, Jim Bunning held up a vote on a $10 billion spending bill to extend unemployment benefits. Instead of standing tall and explaining the principle of not committing theft, he spent his days ducking a hand bagging from the bug-eyed Dana Bash of CNN.

A month on, and we’re clearly overdue for a repeat performance (this is, after all, the “Age of the Idiot”).

Can we hope that Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell (R., Ky.) will remain steadfast? So far he has been “defiant.” After President Barack Obama accused the Republican leadership Saturday of obstructionism, … McConnell told CNN’s ‘State of the Nation’ that the administration needed to end its ‘incredible spending spree.'”

I repeat, “the welfare state is intractable. The pigs outnumber—or are stronger electorally than—the productive. The first are feeding off the second and will not let up. Try to put distance between the state’s dependents and their Big Teat, and they’ll tear you to pieces.”