Wow! Dow futures down over 200 points!
Friday, December 28, 2012
Thursday, December 27, 2012
Stocks Crater; More Americans On Welfare Than Working In 11 States
Dow down 140 now!
In 11 different U.S. states, the number of government dependents exceeds the number of private sector workers. This list of states includes some of the biggest states in the country: California, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Maine, Kentucky, South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, New Mexico and Hawaii. It is interesting to note that seven of those states were won by Barack Obama on election night. In California, there are 139 “takers” for every 100 private sector workers. That is crazy! The American people have become absolutely addicted to government money, and it gets worse with each passing year.
Aetna CEO Says Obamacare to Double Insurance Premiums
Yesterday on CNBC, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini said that health
insurance premiums could as much as double if Obamacare comes into full
effect:
To provide all Americans with health insurance, premiums will
have to rise to pay for it, Aetna CEO Mark Bertolini told CNBC’s
“Closing Bell” on Wednesday.
Bertolini said that insurance premiums could double in some places just on the basis of what types of policies people buy today.
Anticipating a criticism, Bertolini said that higher premiums wouldn’t mean higher profit margins for insurance companies. The reason is that it will actually be more expensive to insure people due to some of the Obamacare mandates.
Sad Summary of America From a Canadian Perspective
On
this lackluster Boxing Day dominated by illiquid moves in every asset
class, we thought a few succinct minutes spent comprehending the US and
European government policies of social welfare and their outcomes was
time well spent. Canadian MP Pierre Poilievre delivers a rather epic
speech destroying the myths of US and European ‘wealth’ noting that
“Once the US citizen is in debt, the US government encourages them to stay in debt,”
noting that “the US government encouraged millions of Americans to
spend money they did not have on homes they could not afford using loans
they could never repay and then gave them a tax incentive never to
repay it.” His message, delivered seamlessly, notes the inordinate rise
in the cost of all this borrowing, adding that “through debt interest
alone, soon the US taxpayer will be funding 100% of the Chinese Military
complex.” From Dependence to Debt to the Welfare State and back to
Dependence, this presentation puts incredible context on the false hope
so many believe in the US and Europe. Must watch.
“By 2020, the US Government will be spending more annually on debt interest than the total combined military budgets of China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey, and Israel.”
“Through government spending the indulgence of one is the burden of another; through government borrowing, the excess of one generation becomes the yoke of the next; through international bailouts, one nation’s extravagance becomes another nation’s debt”
“Everyone takes, nobody makes, work doesn’t pay, indulgence doesn’t cost, money is free, and money is worthless.”
More Welfare Recipients Than Workers In 11 States
Interesting perspective from Investmentwatchblog.com:
America is rapidly becoming a nation of takers. An increasing number
of Americans expect the government to take care of them from the cradle
to the grave, and they expect the government to dig into the pockets of
others in order to pay for it all. This philosophy can be very
seductive, but what happens when the number of takers eventually
outnumbers the number of producers? In 11 different U.S. states,
the number of government dependents exceeds the number of private
sector workers. This list of states includes some of the biggest states
in the country: California, New York, Illinois, Ohio, Maine, Kentucky,
South Carolina, Mississippi, Alabama, New Mexico and Hawaii. It is
interesting to note that seven of those states were won by Barack Obama
on election night. In California,
there are 139 “takers” for every 100 private sector workers. That is
crazy! The American people have become absolutely addicted to
government money, and it gets worse with each passing year. If you can
believe it, entitlements accounted for 62 percent of
all federal spending in fiscal year 2012. It would be one thing if we
could afford all of this spending, but unfortunately we simply cannot.
We are drowning in debt,
and we are stealing more than a hundred million more dollars from
future generations with each passing hour. No bank robber in history
can match that kind of theft.
Yes, we will always need a safety net. There are many people out
there that simply cannot take care of themselves. We certainly don’t
want to see anyone sleeping in the streets or starving to death.
But if the number of people jumping on to the safety net continues to
grow at the current pace, the net will break and it will not be
available for any of us.
For example, the number of Americans on food stamps grew from about
17 million in 2000 to more than 47 million today. It nearly tripled in
just 12 years.
What will happen if it nearly triples again over the next 12 years?
The federal government even has a website (benefits.gov) that guides people through the process of figuring out what welfare programs they can take advantage of.
Overall, the federal government runs nearly 80 different “means-tested welfare programs” and more than 100 million Americans are already enrolled in at least one of those programs.
Yes, I realize that figure is very hard to believe. I had a hard time believing it when I first came across it.
And it is even more shocking when you realize that the figure of 100
million Americans does not even include those who only receive Social
Security or Medicare.
Today, there are 56.76 million Americans on Social Security.
To support all of those Americans on Social Security, there are only about 94.75 million full-time private sector workers.
So there are just 1.67 full-time private sector workers to support each American that is on Social Security.
Medicare is also growing like crazy. As I wrote about the other day, the number of Americans on Medicare is expected to grow from 50.7 million in 2012 to 73.2 million in 2025.
How much farther can we push things before the entire system collapses?
In order to support this exploding entitlement system, we need a lot more Americans to be working good paying jobs.
Unfortunately, millions of good paying jobs continue to be shipped overseas and they aren’t coming back.
We are even losing good jobs to our own prisoners. The United States
has the largest prison population in the world by far, and the
exploitation of that low wage labor pool has become a boom industry in
America. Even Microsoft and Boeing are using prison labor now. Just
check out this video.
Meanwhile, there are millions upon millions of law-abiding Americans that cannot find jobs and that cannot take care of their families.
So poverty and dependence on the government are absolutely exploding. We have a system that is so messed up that it is hard to even put it into words. The middle class is being viciously shredded, and most Americans just continue to applaud the politicians from both parties that are doing this to us.
Our economy is being gutted at the same time that the welfare state is experiencing unprecedented growth. Instead of giving us real answers, our “leaders” just continue to borrow, spend and print more money. We are about to hit the debt limit again, and the Obama administration is saying that we should just do away with the debt limit permanently.
Most of our politicians don’t seem to understand that they are systematically destroying our economy and the bright futures that our children and our grandchildren were supposed to have.
But there are some politicians out there that get it. Unfortunately, many of them live in other countries. For example, Canadian MP Pierre Poilievre seems to have a firm grasp on what debt is doing to the United States. The following are some excerpts from one of his speeches…
“By 2020, the US Government will be spending more annually on debt interest than the total combined military budgets of China, Britain, France, Russia, Japan, Germany, Saudi Arabia, India, Italy, South Korea, Brazil, Canada, Australia, Spain, Turkey, and Israel.”You can see his entire speech right here.
“Through government spending the indulgence of one is the burden of another; through government borrowing, the excess of one generation becomes the yoke of the next; through international bailouts, one nation’s extravagance becomes another nation’s debt”
“Everyone takes, nobody makes, work doesn’t pay, indulgence doesn’t cost, money is free, and money is worthless.”
And if we continue down this path it is most definitely true that our money will eventually become worthless at some point. Just today I was down at the grocery store, and a can of chili that I was able to get on sale for 75 cents a couple of years ago now has a “sale price” of $1.69. If the Federal Reserve keeps recklessly printing dollars, eventually we will be fortunate to get a can of chili for 10 bucks. Things cost too much already, and the Fed seems absolutely determined to cut the legs out from under the U.S. dollar.
Unfortunately, printing money is the only way that we are going to be able to service the gigantic amounts of debt that we are accumulating.
According to Chris Cox and Bill Archer, two men who served on Bill Clinton’s Bipartisan Commission on Entitlement and Tax Reform, there is no way in the world that we could raise taxes high enough to pay for all of the obligations that we are currently taking on. They say that even if we taxed all corporations and all individuals at a 100% tax rate on all income over $66,193, “it wouldn’t be nearly enough to fund the over $8 trillion per year in the growth of U.S. liabilities.”
Are you starting to get an idea of how much trouble we are in?
We don’t have enough money to pay for all of this.
We are broke.
Our current economy is a debt-induced illusion, and we will soon be waking up to a tremendous amount of pain.
Are you ready?
Stocks Drop Following Still More Bad News
The Dow is holding above 13,000, and the S&P 500 is holding above 1400. Both are precarious, at best, but I expect them to hold. And just as we were being told that housing had finally bottomed! I think Wall St will dismiss then as one day's news.
Here are the headlines, none of which are good:
"Today's Consumer Confidence data missed by its biggest margin in 7 months, dropped below the year's average, and saw the largest 2-month drop in over 15 months. All age cohorts lost confidence with the eldest most and it appears those earning over $35k are also beginning to worry (as those between $35k and $15k seem more confident). Over 40% expect stock prices to decline and it is expectations that have plummeted from a hope-filled 80.9 to a 13-month low of 66.5. In other news, we got the November New Homes Sales report from the Census Bureau. On the surface the number was good, but like the initial claims dats, below the surface its not as pretty - on an unadjusted, unannualized basis, November saw a tiny 27K houses sold - lowest since Feb 2012. In fact, the only thing that really did soar was the number of homes for sale at the end of the period which rose to 151K: the highest since November of 2011."
Wednesday, December 26, 2012
Worst Christmas for Retailers In Four Years
Stocks, after opening higher early this morning, have now gone negative.
Monday, December 24, 2012
Over the Cliff, and Through the Woods...
...to Grandmother's house we go...
Fiscal Cliff Dead Ahead
But it's only going to be temporary, of course!
"...it seems likely that the U.S. will briefly go over the “fiscal cliff,”
which will automatically kick in a rash of spending cuts and
across-the-board tax increases, which Congress will then likely reverse
a few days later with an agreement to both cut spending and also
reduce the then-higher taxes for various income groups. Frankly, we’ll
be surprised if the GOP agrees to vote for tax hikes before year-end
when they can wait a few days and get the identical result by voting
for tax cuts in January." -- John Hussman
Over the Fiscal Cliff We Go
...and into the economic abyss!
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
