More Proof (that should be "solid proof") That Private Industry Creates Jobs...and not the government!

"The private sector is the seedbed for jobs." The Seattle Times

 

ABC News via Kaltura Open Source Video

And the following from The Seattle Times

The fallacy of who creates jobs and the 2012 presidential election

Guest columnist Alex Alben suggests the breathless commentary of how the economy will affect the 2012 presidential election misses several nuanced points. Among them is that private industry creates most of the jobs and that government policy influence, while important, is limited.

By Alex Alben

Special to The times

PRESIDENT Obama and the Democrats have a problem in the 2012 elections relating to the fallacy that the party in power "creates jobs" and therefore should be punished for a high national unemployment rate.

We can trace the roots of this rhetorical canard to the Clinton era, when Democrats boasted that 23 million new American jobs were created in an eight-year span from 1993-2001. Bill Clinton can rightfully claim that fiscal decisions made in the early years of his administration, symbolized by the 1994 budget and tax increases, set a stage for private investment and economic growth. However, job growth of that era had more to do with global business expansion, a booming technology sector and gains in workplace productivity than the decisions made by the man in the Oval Office.

A president has certain economic levers to shape fiscal and monetary policy. Deficit spending by the federal government pumps money into the economy, but doesn't directly lead to sustainable economic growth. The Federal Reserve sets interest rates between banks and can work to expand money supply and restrain inflation, tuning the environment for investment.

The private sector, however, is the seedbed for jobs. Of 153.7 million American workers, according to the Department of Labor, only 2.8 million are federal workers, 3.8 million have state government jobs, and 11.1 million are employed by cities and counties. More than 88 percent of all American jobs are in the private domain.

Many factors influence economic health and hiring decisions in both small and large businesses. Consumer spending, the housing market, foreign shocks, such as wars and terrorist attacks, and the invention of compelling new products all combine to form the soup of economic activity. Job creation reflects the confidence of hiring managers that consumers will continue to buy their products and that more people engaged in making products and services will lead to long-term profit, justifying the additional costs of expanding the labor force.

Yet if job creation is an economic bet made by many thousands of firms trying to assess future economic conditions, why do politicians persistently claim that they are responsible for job growth?

Quite simply, the job creation claim worked for President Clinton in his 1998 re-election campaign and for candidate Barack Obama in 2008. We should note that the U.S. economy also expanded under George W. Bush and 3 million net jobs were created in his two terms, but the country also suffered from 22 months of recession in his 96 months in office.

Obama ran on a platform of job creation, even with the headwinds of the business cycle and the economic meltdown precipitated by the financial crisis at the close of 2008. Asking to be measured by net job creation during any four-year period is a dangerous game and it has come back to haunt our 44th president.

The topic of a president's influence on the U.S. economy begs for a long and lucid discussion rather than the ridiculous banter served up by media pundits, who opine that Obama can't win re-election if the unemployment rate stays above 9 percent heading into November 2012.

Measuring presidential performance by a single statistic ignores both the good and bad decisions made by the Obama administration regarding our auto industry, payroll-tax cuts, unemployment benefits, the bank bailout (and repayment), and stepping in to keep the global financial system from spinning out of control in early 2009.

Historian Thomas Carlyle dubbed economics "the dismal science," yet the field covers the interactions between consumers, companies, traders, bankers, markets, merchants, unions, inventors and laborers that constitute the wonderfully complex set of relationships that make the world go 'round.

If we continue to indulge the overblown claims by politicians that they can do anything more than tinker around the edges of global economic forces, then we only have ourselves to blame for misplaced expectations.

Alex Alben, a Seattle consultant, has served as a senior executive for high-tech companies. His email is alexalben99@yahoo.com

_________________________

The danger to America is not Barack Obama but a citizenry capable of entrusting a man like him with the presidency. It will be easier to limit and undo the follies of an Obama presidency than to restore the necessary common sense and good judgment to an electorate willing to have such a man for their president.

The problem is much deeper and far more serious than Mr. Obama, who is a mere symptom of what ails us. Blaming the prince of the fools should not blind anyone to the vast confederacy of fools that made him their prince. The republic can survive a Barack Obama. It is less likely to survive a multitude of fools such as those who made him their president. ~ Author Unknown

__________________________________________

 

______________________________

"A nation can survive its' fools, and even the ambitious. But it cannot survive treason from within.  An enemy at the gates is less formidable, for he is known and he carries his banners openly. But the traitor moves among those within the gate freely, his sly whispers rustling through all the galleys, heard in the very hall of government itself. For the traitor appears not a traitor--He speaks in the accents familiar to his victims, and wears their face and their garment, and he appeals to the baseness that lies deep in the hearts of all men. He rots the soul of a nation--he works secretly and unknown in the night to undermine the pillars of a city--he infects the body politic so that it can no longer resist. A murderer is less to be feared." Cicero, 42 B.C., Roman Statesman, orator, and author.

This message is still current...

An elephant never forgets...neither does a U.S. Marine

The Marines were wrong. Give them a maximum punishment under field grade level Article 15 (non-judicial punishment), place a General Officer level letter of reprimand in their personnel file, and have them in full dress uniform stand before their Battalion, each personally apologize to God, Country, and Corps videotaped and conclude by singing the full US Marine Corps Hymn without a teleprompter.   As for everyone else unless you have been shot at by the Taliban shut your mouth, war is hell.

Or...
Or why not give them an award?
The Golden Stream Award ?  ...sounds good to me!

See also...
1.  Allen West Comments on Marines Peeing on Dead Taliban Controversy
2.  I love these Marines. Pamela Geller
3.  Video of Marine Atrocities Highlights Split Between Right Wing and Our Military by Jon Soltz

Perhaps Jon Soltz should read about the objectives of Islam

Here's just a bit... 

The Covenant
of the
Islamic Resistance Movement

18 August 1988

In The Name Of The Most Merciful Allah

"Ye are the best nation that hath been raised up unto mankind: ye command that which is just, and ye forbid that which is unjust, and ye believe in Allah. And if they who have received the scriptures had believed, it had surely been the better for them: there are believers among them, but the greater part of them are transgressors. They shall not hurt you, unless with a slight hurt; and if they fight against you, they shall turn their backs to you, and they shall not be helped. They are smitten with vileness wheresoever they are found; unless they obtain security by entering into a treaty with Allah, and a treaty with men; and they draw on themselves indignation from Allah, and they are afflicted with poverty. This they suffer, because they disbelieved the signs of Allah, and slew the prophets unjustly; this, because they were rebellious, and transgressed." (Al-Imran - verses 109-111).
Israel will exist and will continue to exist until Islam will obliterate it, just as it obliterated others before it" (The Martyr, Imam Hassan al-Banna, of blessed memory).
"The Islamic world is on fire. Each of us should pour some water, no matter how little, to extinguish whatever one can without waiting for the others." (Sheikh Amjad al-Zahawi, of blessed memory).

In The Name Of The Most Merciful Allah

_________

And study the Quran...it might help dispel any doubts in your mind about what the Muslims want besides world domination!  I don't know about you but I'm pretty much satisfied with our Judeo-Christian way of life and don't want to be beheaded for not converting to Islam.~ NEH

Where have all the mortgages gone? Can you find yours?

"Not only has the system destroyed county title records, but it is highly vulnerable to bank runs and systemic collapse."

Why All the Robo-Signing? Shining a Light on the Shadow Banking System

by: Ellen Brown, Truthout | News Analysis

 

The Wall Street Journal reported [6] on January 19 that the Obama administration was pushing heavily to get the 50 state attorneys general to agree to a settlement with five major banks in the "robo-signing" scandal. The scandal involves employees signing names not their own, under titles they did not really have, attesting to the veracity of documents they had not really reviewed. Investigation is revealing that it did not just happen occasionally, but was an industry-wide practice, dating back to the late 1990s; and that it may have clouded the titles of millions of homes. If the settlement is agreed to, it will let Wall Street bankers off the hook for crimes that would land the rest of us in jail - fraud, forgery, securities violations and tax evasion. To the president's credit, however, he seems to have shifted his position on the settlement in response to protests before his State of the Union address. In his speech on January 24, President Obama did not mention the settlement, but announced instead that he would be creating a mortgage crisis unit to investigate wrongdoing related to real estate lending. "This new unit will hold accountable those who broke the law, speed assistance to homeowners and help turn the page on an era of recklessness that hurt so many Americans," he said.
The Deeper Question Is, Why?
Whether massive robo-signing occurred is no longer in issue. The question that needs to be investigated is why it was being done. The alleged justification - that the bankers were so busy that they cut corners - hardly seems credible given the extent of the practice.
The robo-signing largely involved assignments of mortgage notes to mortgage servicers or trusts representing the investors who put up the loan money. Assignment was necessary to give the trusts legal title to the loans. But assignment was delayed until it was necessary to foreclose on the homes, when it had to be done through the forgery and fraud of robo-signing. Why had it been delayed? Why did the banks not assign the mortgages to the trusts when and as required by law?

Here is a working hypothesis, suggested by [8] Martin Andelman: securitized mortgages are the "pawns" used in the pawn shop known as the "repo market." "Repos" are overnight sales and repurchases of collateral. Yale economist Gary Gorton explains [9] that repos are the "deposit insurance" for the shadow banking system, which is now larger than the conventional banking system and is necessary for the conventional system to operate. The problem is that repos require "sales," which means the mortgage notes have to remain free to be bought and sold. The mortgages are left unendorsed so they can be used in this repo market.
The Evolution of the Shadow Banking System
Gorton observes that there is a massive and growing demand for banking by large institutional investors - pension funds, mutual funds, hedge funds, sovereign wealth funds - which have millions of dollars to park somewhere between investments. But FDIC insurance covers only up to $250,000. FDIC insurance was resisted in the 1930s by bankers and government officials and was pushed through as a populist movement: the people demanded it. What they got was enough insurance to cover the deposits of individuals and no more. Today, the large institutional investors want similar coverage. They want an investment that is secure, that provides them with a little interest and that is liquid like a traditional deposit account, allowing quick withdrawal.
The shadow banking system evolved in response to this need, operating largely through the repo market. "Repos" are sales and repurchases of highly liquid collateral, typically Treasury debt or mortgage-backed securities - the securitized units into which American real estate has been ground up and packaged, sausage-fashion. The collateral is bought by a "special purpose vehicle" (SPV), which acts as the shadow bank. The investors put their money in the SPV and keep the securities, which substitute for FDIC insurance in a traditional bank. (If the SPV fails to pay up, the investors can foreclose on the securities.) To satisfy the demand for liquidity, the repos are one-day or short-term deals, continually rolled over until the money is withdrawn. This money is used by the banks for other lending, investing or speculating. Gorton writes [9]:

This banking system (the "shadow" or "parallel" banking system) - repo based on securitization - is a genuine banking system, as large as the traditional, regulated banking system. It is of critical importance to the economy because it is the funding basis for the traditional banking system. Without it, traditional banks will not lend and credit, which is essential for job creation, will not be created.

All Behind the Curtain of MERS
The housing shell game was made possible because it was all concealed behind an electronic smokescreen called MERS (an acronym for Mortgage Electronic Registration Systems, Inc.). MERS allowed houses to be shuffled around among multiple, rapidly changing owners while circumventing local recording laws. Title would be recorded in the name of MERS as a placeholder for the investors and MERS would foreclose on behalf of the investors. Payments would be received by the mortgage servicer, which was typically the bank that signed the mortgage with the homeowner. The homeowner usually thinks the servicer is the lender, but in fact it is an amorphous group of investors.
This all worked until courts started questioning [10] whether MERS, which admitted that it was a mere conduit without title, had standing to foreclose. Courts have increasingly held that it does not.
Making matters worse for the servicing banks, Fannie Mae sent out a memo telling servicers that in order to be reimbursed under HAMP - a government loan modification program designed to help at-risk homeowners meet their mortgage payments - the servicers would have to produce the paperwork showing the loan had been assigned to the trust.
The hasty solution was a rash of assignments signed by an army of "robo-signers," to be filed in the public records. But the documents are patent forgeries, making a shambles of county title records.
Complicating all this are tax issues. Since 1986, mortgage-backed securities have been issued to investors through SPVs called REMICs (Real Estate Mortgage Investment Conduits). REMICs are designed as tax shelters; but to qualify for that status, they must be "static." Mortgages can't be transferred in and out once the closing date has occurred. The REMIC Pooling and Servicing Agreement typically states that any transfer significantly after the closing date is invalid. Yet, the newly robo-signed documents, which are required to begin foreclosure proceedings, are almost always executed long after the trust's closing date. The whole business is quite complicated [11], but the bottom line is that title has been clouded not only by MERS, but because the trusts purporting to foreclose do not own the properties by the terms of their own documents.
John O'Brien, register of deeds for the Southern Essex District of Massachusetts, calls it a "criminal enterprise." On January 18, he called for a full-scale criminal investigation [12], including a grand jury, to look into the evidence. He sent to Massachusetts Attorney General Martha Coakley, US Attorney General Eric Holder and US Attorney Carmen Ortiz over 30,000 documents recorded in the Salem Registry that he says are fraudulent.
From Lending Machines to Borrowing Machines
The bankers have engaged in what amounts to a massive fraud, not necessarily because they started out with criminal intent, but because they have been required to in order to come up with the collateral (in this case real estate) to back their loans. It is the way our system is set up: the banks are not really creating credit and advancing it to us, counting on our future productivity to pay it off, the way they once did under the deceptive but functional façade of fractional reserve lending. Instead, they are vacuuming up our money and lending it back to us at higher rates.
"Instead of lending into the economy," says British money reformer Ann Pettifor, "bankers are borrowing from the real economy." She wrote [13] in The Huffington Post in October 2010:

[T]he crazy facts are these: bankers now borrow from their customers and from taxpayers. They are effectively draining funds from household bank accounts, small businesses, corporations, government Treasuries and from e.g. the Federal Reserve. They do so by charging high rates of interest and fees; by demanding early repayment of loans; by illegally foreclosing on homeowners and by appropriating and then speculating with trillions of dollars of taxpayer-backed resources.

Not only has the system destroyed county title records, but it is highly vulnerable to bank runs and systemic collapse. In the shadow banking system, as in the old, fractional reserve banking system, the collateral is being double counted: it is owed to the borrowers and the depositors at the same time. This allows for expansion of the money supply, but bank runs can occur when the borrowers and the depositors demand their money at the same time. And unlike the conventional banking system, the shadow banking system is largely unregulated. It doesn't have the backup of FDIC insurance to prevent bank runs.
That is what happened in September 2008 following the bankruptcy of Lehman Brothers, a major investment bank. Gorton explains that it was a run on the shadow banking system [14] that caused the credit collapse that followed. Investors rushed to pull their money out overnight. LIBOR - the London interbank lending rate for short-term loans - shot up to around 5 percent. Since the cost of borrowing the money to cover loans was too high for banks to turn a profit, lending abruptly came to a halt.
Fixing the System
The question is how to eliminate this systemic risk. As noted by The Business Insider [15]:

Regulate shadow banking more tightly and you probably have to also provide government backstops. Shudder. Try to shut the thing down or restrict it and you suck credit out of the system, credit which much of the non-financial "'real" economy uses and needs.

Interestingly, countries with strong public-sector banking systems largely escaped the 2008 credit crisis. These include the BRIC countries [16] - Brazil, Russia, India and China - which contain 40 percent of the global population and are today's fastest growing economies. They escaped because their public-sector banks do not need to rely on repos and securitizations to back their loans. The banks are owned and operated by the ultimate guarantor - the government itself. The public-sector banking model deserves further study.
Whatever the solution, a system that requires the slicing and dicing of mortgages behind an electronic smokescreen so they can be bought and sold as collateral for the pawn shop of the repo market is obviously fraught with perils and is unsustainable. Please contact your state attorney general and urge him or her not to go through with the robo-signing settlement, which will be granting immunity for crimes that are not yet fully known. Phone numbers are here [17]. The surface of this great shadowy second banking system has barely been scratched. It needs a very thorough investigation.

There "is" a war going on... This is not a religious issue, this is a political issue, its a military system, its a legal system, its a dietary system, its a social system,...

----- Original Message -----

From: Ben

To:

Sent: Wednesday, January 25, 2012 3:31 AM

Subject: [victory_for_our_troops] [Take Our Country Back] Pamela Geller Reams Them a New Orifice

Pamela Geller Reams Them a New Orifice. Pamela Geller is fast, frustrated & furious in this 40 minute video she reams indolent society a badly needed new orifice. She has much more than she can say in such a short time, but she gives us a very good outline, drawing her points together to form a circle which encompasses the globe full of issues.
Its war, and you are an army of one. Pamela is your General. She gives you your orders: learn and teach others. If you do nothing more, at least watch this video and share it with everyone who will listen. Thanks and a tip of the hat to Front Page Magazinehttp://frontpagemag.com/2011/09/23/pamela-geller-wednesday-morning-club/ (Note: For your convenience I've posted the video below. ~ Norm)

Reading the Qur'an is not easy because it is archaic, redundant and jumbled, lacking context & chronology. The Noble Qur'an, translated by Hilali & Khan, is reputed to be 95% accurate and contains parenthetical expressions from tafsirs and the translator's footnotes. Several Surahs are essential to understanding the malignantly militant nature of Islam: 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 33, 47, 48, 49 & 61. You can select them from a pick list at the top of the page.
Hadith are sayings of Muhammad, passed down from mouth to ear by his companions. They have been collected by several scholars, the most widely accepted collection being that of Bukhari. Like the Qur'an, hadith collections suffer from redundancy. Begin with Books 52, 53 & 59, then read the others if you have sufficient patience.
Tafsir are scholarly explanations of the Qur'an. They use parallel verses and relevant ahadith to clarify the verses. Tafsir Ibn Kathir is fairly complete and easily accessible. You can select the Surahs listed above and read them instead of the Qur'an & hadith to save time and effort.
Islamic biography and history are also important, but less easily accessible than the Qur'an, hadith and tafsir. Craig Winn compiled selections of the canon into a 1000 page book with the quotes compiled into handy appendices "The Prophet of Doom".
For those lacking the time, patience and ambition to tackle the large tomes, there is a short book which encapsulates the most essential information: Suhas Majumdar's "Jihad: The Islamic Doctrine of Permanent War".
Pamela Geller raises the issue of Shari'ah: Islamic law based on the Qur'an & hadith. Much of it is arcane, dealing with matters of prayer & ritual purity. The really important parts deal with "justice", marriage & divorce. It will be easier for you go go to Amazon and buy a hard copy of Reliance of the Traveller. If you can tolerate a low resolution scan and large, pdf, this link will get you into Chapter 9 of Book O; "Justice".You can scroll up to Books N & M.
If you delve deeply into Reliance, you will discover that divorce is affected by the husband's thrice repeating "I divorce you". You will discover that a father can force his virgin, pre-pubescent daughter to marry the man of his choice. You will learn that a Christian woman married to a Muslim can not obtain child custody in divorce.