Category Archives: Government

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: Obama And Bush: Partners In Government Giganticism

Barack Obama, Bush, Economy, Fascism, Foreign Policy, Government, IMMIGRATION, Justice, Law, Political Economy, Regulation, Republicans, States' Rights

The following is from “Obama And Bush: Partners In Government Giganticism,” now on WND.Com:

“Sean Hannity wants to know how Arlen Specter could go from ‘supporting George Bush, in some years 80-90 percent of the time, to supporting Barack Obama 96 percent of the time, considering the two men’s principles – their core values, their belief system – are in diametrical opposition.’

They are? How so? …

Bush pursued wars that have contributed to the bankrupting of this country and the death of thousands of innocents. Obama has sustained the same momentum in those far-flung occupied lands. The gabbers on television who coo and kvetch nostalgic about Bush’s virtues should console themselves thus: Yes, The Decider was the originator; Obama nothing but a second-hander. But give Barack a break. The 44th president may not be as blessed with killer core values as the 43rd. But he’s doing his best. Has he not expanded the one theatre (Afghanistan) to compensate for drawing down in the other (Iraq)? …

Moocher Obama has pulled ahead of Looter Bush with respect to deficits and debt. The Bush budget for 2009 was a trivial $3 trillion, while Obama’s 2010 budget was a respectable $3.5 trillion. According to “Bankrupting America,” “Bush doubled the debt to almost $6 trillion and Obama’s plans would leave us with an IOU of an additional $8.5 trillion by 2020.”

C’mon. Six trillion; 8 trillion: the act of racking up such financial liabilities exists on a continuum of criminality ? it does not constitute a difference in kind (or in “core values”).” …

Barack’s tidal wave of regulation is hard to beat … But a second-best to BHO The Regulator is not to be sneezed at. The Decider is still in the running for America’s Best Enforcer (a very bad thing indeed). …”

The complete column is “Obama And Bush: Partners In Government Giganticism.

Read my libertarian manifesto, Broad Sides: One Woman’s Clash With A Corrupt Society.

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UPDATE (Aug. 6): DICK’S DOCTOR. I mentioned Dick Cheney in the column:

“Barack’s tidal wave of regulation is hard to beat – in particular the financial-reform bill, which goes beyond Dick Cheney’s wildest dreams in increasing the overweening powers of the executive branch. (Barack will be able to seize a firm he designates as systemically risky.)”

Even Dick’s doctor is a mini-dictator. My ears perked up. I heard someone talk about federal law preempting state law. No, this was not a discussion of Arizona’s SB 1070. There was more muttering about compelling drug stores, at the pains of punishment (for that is what a new law means) to carry defibrillators. I was, in fact, listening to a snippet from an interview cardiac surgeon to Mr. Cheney was giving to Liz, daughter to the dictator. In case Dick dropped while shopping in their aisles, the good doctor wanted the feds to compel certain outlets (not sure which) to carry the life-saving defibrillator.

Liz nodded.

UPDATE II: Bill Getting Brave

Barack Obama, Conservatism, Government, Healthcare, Intelligence, Private Property, Race, Racism, The State, Welfare

Black and white Americans are divided over President Obama, says Bill O’Reilly, pointing to a Gallop poll according to which 88% of Black Americans support Obama; but only 38% of whites.

“A fifty point differential.”

Whites, of course, are barred from expressing racial affinities; but not blacks. Although O’Reilly neglects the black-racism element (he knows that very many blacks are racists), he nevertheless zeroes in on another important reason blacks go with Obama. White Americans fear the expansion of government and the bankrupting of the nation. [I’m not so sure of the first.] This attitude was on display, says O’Reilly, in Missouri, where 71% of the voters rejected the individual mandate to purchase insurance that ObamaCare would have imposed on them.

O’Reilly goes on to clearly state that black America has a different view of politics, in particular, blacks want a bigger federal government for the purpose of imposing social justice and carrying out distributive policies.

Blacks want a central authority “to redistribute income from the white establishment to their precincts” is how O’Reilly, rather directly, describes what black support for “what BHO is doing” is all about.

Fifty four percent of Hispanics support Obama, down 9 points since April. Here too the social justice issue is in operation, says O’Reilly.

O’Reilly recognizes that there are two Americas. It’s hard to decipher his solution—not when he says he support “strict oversight and fair rules,” but not the imposition of entitlements. Oversight over what? To whom a private property owner rents, sells; and who he hires and fires?

And whose property is it anyway to dispense with?

And what about “Thou Shall Not Covet”?

“Thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s house, thou shalt not covet thy neighbor’s wife, nor his manservant, nor his maidservant, nor his ox, nor his ass, nor any thing that [is] thy neighbor’s.” (THE 10th COMMANDMENT, Exodus 20:17)

UPDATE I (Aug. 6): We doffed a hat to Bill’s first show of whatever it was that rolled off Sarah’s word-salad producing tongue, HERE.

UPDATE II: With Bill it’s one step forward, two steps back. Why do African-Americans lag so far behind, asked one of O’Reilly’s viewers in a letter to The Factor today. Because of 100 years of slavery, replied The Sage. Pray tell, Bill, what is the reason Africa is centuries behind the West, China, Singapore, etc?