Time to Throw Da Bums Out!

I had promised to give the new Congress & Administration one year to settle in and ‘get the hang of things’. But the more fumbling international diplomacy I see, the bigger the spending bills get, and the more entitlement plans that are presented, I just don’t think we can afford to wait anymore. Let’s get them all out! - Out of office and out of D.C.
Members of Congress were never meant to have tenure; the more anti-Federalist of the founders wouldn't have wanted a government that required full-time, much less lifelong, service. Lawmakers usually pitched in for a few years upholstering the work of the framers, then went back to their plantations or law practices. This model of the citizen-legislator held for about 100 years, until government began to expand after the Civil War and the realignments of the 1890s made for safer seats where lawmakers could tuck in for a long ride.
Maybe it is time to kick all the incumbent ‘good ole boys and girls’ out and start over with some fresh faces and ideas. While we are at it, let’s get them out of the beltway and put them back into the states and districts were they are from. Why do we need them in D.C.? With all the technological marvels we have to today they can teleconference, blueberry, phone, fax, mutilate and staple to their hearts content. And they can stay where the people who put them in office have access to them and have the ability to keep an eye on them. You know, like are they really showing up for work, and who is that going into the office continually?
They could eliminate having to buy or rent homes ‘away from home’, and we could turn all the perks like the Congressional Golf Course, dining rooms, and other facilities over to public use. Nancy wouldn’t even need the Gulfstream on a weekly basis. How many billions could be saved?

A man's got to know
his limitations!

Obama orders cuts by Cabinet

Boston Globe - ?5 hours ago? AP And Globe Staff / April 21, 2009 Convening his first Cabinet meeting yesterday, President Obama ordered his agency chiefs to join many American families in penny-pinching, but acknowledged that slicing at least $100 million in administrative costs ...

President Obama has asked his cabinet to come up with 100 million in savings over a 90 day period. This sure sounds good on the surface, until you realize our budget is running around 200 billion per month or 600 billion in 90 days. If this is broken down to be understandable to most of us, it looks like this: 600,000,000,000/100,000,000 To put it another way it amounts to one dollar in savings for every six thousand spent.
Wow, I feel better already!
President Obama promised the country a sharp knife in dealing with the budget, but it seems like he got the butter knife out instead.
"To put those numbers in perspective, imagine that the head of a household with annual spending of $100,000 called everyone in the family together to deal with a $34,000 budget shortfall," Harvard University economist N. Greg Mankiw, a Bush administration official, wrote on his blog. "How much would he or she announce that spending [be] cut? By $3 over the course of the year -- approximately the cost of one latte at Starbucks. The other $33,997? We can put that on the family credit card and worry about it next year."

I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the
government from wasting the labors of the people under
the pretense of taking care of them.
Thomas Jefferson

Mortgage Primer 101

President Obama has just released his latest plan to keep people in their homes. I have a flash for his cast at Treasury.
PEOPLE WANT TO SELL THEIR HOMES! We went down this road of 0% down 125% financing thanks to Bill Clinton, Chris Dodd and Barney Frank. We had to close the housing gap! There were people out there who could not afford to buy a house! Of course more affluent people used the plan to buy a $730,000 dollar home when they could only afford maybe a modest little $600,000 dollar home.
The point is that three or four years down the road, they still have no equity and are still upside down on the mortgage. They are upside down because they took that extra 25% and paid off credit card debt or other personal debt or maybe added a pool to their new digs that they couldn’t afford in the first place.
Now, in order to sell, they have to find someone willing to take on that extra mortgage amount. Even if we were in the housing market of the last decade, the homes value would not have appreciated enough to make up that 25%. We do not need a plan to re-write these mortgages and “keep people in their homes”. We need a plan to bring liquidity and mobility back in the market. That will only happen if we return to the basic premise that equity builds value. Let’s get the intellectuals and social engineers out of business.

Geithner's choice for deputy secretary withdraws

International Herald Tribune - ?12 hours ago? AP WASHINGTON: Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner's top pick to be his deputy has withdrawn from consideration. Annette Nazareth, a former senior staffer and commissioner with the Securities and Exchange Commission, withdrew after several interviews ...

At the SEC, Nazareth was a driving force in urging a merger of the NASD, an industry-funded regulator of U.S. brokerages, with most of the New York Stock Exchange’s regulatory arm. The SEC approved the consolidation, which formed the Financial Industry Regulatory Authority, in July 2007. That group has come under fire on Capitol Hill for not spotting the $50 billion Ponzi scheme allegedly masterminded by Bernard Madoff.

Before becoming a commissioner in 2005, Nazareth was the staff member in charge of overseeing brokerage firms, market surveillance and stock exchanges. She led the division in 2004 when it designed a program to monitor whether Wall Street’s biggest securities firms had adequate capital and liquidity.
SEC Inspector General David Kotz faulted the program in a September report, saying the SEC failed to respond to “numerous, potential red flags” at Bear Stearns Cos., which collapsed a year ago. Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. went bust in September.

Prior to joining the Commission staff, Ms. Nazareth held several positions in the financial services industry. As a Managing Director of Smith Barney from 1997 to 1998, she was deputy head of the capital markets legal group. As a Senior Vice President and Senior Counsel of Lehman Brothers, Ms. Nazareth was the chief legal advisor to the fixed income division from 1994 to 1997. From 1986 to 1994, she served as Managing Director and General Counsel of Mabon Securities Corp. and its predecessor business, Mabon, Nugent & Co.
Some might remember that Mabon, Nugent & Company invested 40 million dollars in the failing Global Motors that had brought us the famed Yugo.

Remember that catchy phrase?

Yugo, I go, we all go!