Cuba Vows to Remain Impoverished

With the appointment of new supreme leader Miguel Diaz-Canal by the unelected Cuban National Assembly this week the last last gasp of the second longest reigning Communist nation can be heard.

Comrade Diaz-Canal, described lovingly in the Huffington Post article I read as "A consensus builder" and as "an approachable, efficient manager".  As if anyone is going to disagree with this new Cuban "President" when he is predictably "elected" during a national election. I believe we won't need to send former U.S. President Jimmy Carter over to the island to see if the vote is legitimate or not.

And as if any Socialist system is efficient. Because we know from mountains of history that it isn't and can't be. There is no efficiency in having nothing. I suppose you don't have much trash in such a situation since if you have nothing, you also have nothing to waste.

Cuba has nothing to waste most certainly.

And it looks like that trend will continue. The decorative reforms that have been carefully marketed to the rest of the world and lovingly trumpeted by the left-leaning media have amounted to nothing at all since, heaven forbid, anybody gets anything for their efforts. That just wouldn't be sporting. Gain is only for the Dictatorship, nobody else ever gets too much.

I heard on the radio that el Presedente elect Diaz-Canal will exert his efforts on "Perfecting Communism". Stop me if you've heard that one before. All the American Socialists have been saying that for decades now. "Just wait, one of these days we'll get it right, you'll see!" they declare but they never do. They can't. It's not possible with the State calling all the shots. We have a Stock Market in this country that's built on people investing their own money into products and enterprises they think will bring them a handsome return on their investment and there are loads and loads of very smart people who have gone bust thinking they knew what direction the Market was going. So how the hell is a bunch of indoctrinated revolutionaries going to figure it out?

Answer:They haven't and they won't!

Year after dreadful year the Cuban central planners have made the decision of where best to put the country's resources, what crops to grow and what products to produce. And they haven't even accidentally got it right. All those 1956 Chevrolet automobiles the Cuban people are still driving around in aren't going to get an upgrade any time soon.

Cuba has no infrastructure, no shining buildings of glass and steel and now even the old city buildings, built by a more advanced civilization now gone and with no one of knowledge or resources left to maintain them, are collapsing and burying their unfortunate inhabitants in the ruble of their past glory.

Cuba has a whole lot of nothing and the people who have the least know the most about what it would take to bring prosperity to this nation of pure Want. They don't believe anything will change with the continuation of Fidel Castro's "Plenty of Nothing for You" brand of government. They don't expect anything and to a world watching from the outside, it's a shame that they won't be pleasantly surprised. They won't EVER be pleasantly surprised. Not as long as these Commies run the place.

"We don't need no stinkin' Capitalism" declares the soon-to-be elected Cuban President, "We'll show everybody how much the Cuban people can suffer! You think people suffered under 74 years of Russian Communism? Just wait, we'll beat that and then some!"

Don't expect too much applause.

Fed Chairwoman Yellen Knows Economy is Shit

Nobody believes the economy, after 8 years of stumbling along since the Federal Government driven housing market crash of 2007, is even close to a full scale recovery. Nothing has changed and nothing will change until the government structures that lead to the Bernie Madoff-like Ponzi scheme crash, burn and are blown away to scatter and disappear on the winds of history.

Barack Obama’s delusions of a robust economy are just that, the rantings of a rabid ideolog who will never take a step back even as the White House burns to the ground and the American people come for him with torches and pitchforks. Everything is just fine in Obama’s world. Fine for him and his apparatchiks perhaps but not so fine for everybody else who has to deal with his confiscatory regulations, taxation, illegal alien give-a-ways and dictatorial executive orders. 

With bad news for business everywhere as a back drop, Federal Reserve Chairwoman Janet Yellen has issued her notice that an interest rate hike could, perhaps, may, be on the table come the end of the year.

With the murmurs of criticism still ringing in her ears from the Feds back-tracking on raising the interest rates in early September, the pressure builds upon Ms. Yellen to do SOMETHING. Banks, especially the small ones, are getting killed by the low rates. There is no money to be made in the lending of money and if things suck this bad with rates at zero, how is lowering them to a negative rate going to do anything? It’s a step in the wrong direction.

So why has the Fed been keeping rates so low for so long?

Because they see what the rest of us know. The economy is lousy. The leftist Democrats are lousy for business. The leftist Republicans are lousy for business. The Government is lousy for business. They take too much and give to the undeserving. It’s the Robin Hood principle gone mad.

So in such a climate, businesses and people pull in their horns. They aren’t going to take risks with their capital and will only pay to maintain what they have and struggle to do that. There is no confidence in things getting better any time soon with the gang of grasping power mongers running the nation right now. Companies continue to retool and shed jobs, cut costs and budget down. As market efficiencies increase, they are offset by additional costs. Glad talk it all you want but Obama's perceived economic recovery isn't happening. It's more like economic anemia. It ain't dying but it's not feeling too great. 

One year left.

One of the Fed’s jobs, besides doing the bidding of the big banks, is to make the present President of the United States look good. Yellen, like Greenspan before her, is trying to keep the economy from crashing under the current President/Dictator. But this time it will be a race to the finish-line. Yellen is under pressure of the present economic malaise to raise rates and under pressure from banking and government lobbyists not to raise them.

Look for her, despite the rumblings to the contrary, not to raise rates this year and we will continue to bumble about towards the 2016 election as the burdens of increasing costs for things like housing, healthcare, college tuition and government overhead continue to eat away at the American standard of living.

Trump 2016!

Allan Greenspan Won't Go Away!

Allan Greenspan has become the “Go to” sage of the economy. Bloomberg media has interviewed him recently and in this insightful report confirms that Mr. Greenspan believes: The economy remains sluggish.

He also said until companies start spending money and the housing market comes back the economy will remain sluggish.

We had to go to Allan Greenspan for this?

The BBC also has run an interview with Mr. Greenspan concerning the national debt and how both U.S. political parties are ignoring the problem and how the nation is "heading for a fall" to sum up the situation. He sites a lack of "Political Will".

Mr. Greenspan certainly ought to know about a lack of political will; he played a major role in the destruction of the U.S. economy these seven going on eight long years ago with the crash of the American housing market. Had he done his job and stood his ground on interest rates, we would not have crashed and burned the economy in the first place but instead Allan Greenspan, the Chairman of the Federal Reserve, the protector of the American Banking industry played politics and continued to lower the borrowing rates until they hit the floor and basically just giving away money for loans. To this day we don't know how much money Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac has cost the American taxpayer.

And when we hit the wall at 100 mph what did Mr. Greenspan say? "Oh, sorry, my mistake." and took his retirement millions and flew off on a private jet.

But he didn't fly away far enough.

Allen Greenspan failed us. He favored his big business buddies and kept the credit flowing right to the end even though he was warned in 2004 by a Republican committee. Now at 88, what has this guy have to say that anyone will listen to? He has a lot of gall to stand out in the media and preach economic reason. Why would he even show his face after the chaos he has wrought? 

But very much like disgraced plagiarizing historian and National Public Radio & Public Broadcasting Service darling Doris Kearns Goodwin who is still writing and promoting books on history regardless of the fact that nothing in them can now be believed, Mr. Greenspan is still out there attempting to cover his tracks and the national media is still pretending that anybody really gives a shit about what this fraudster has to say about anything.

Why does anybody ask this man's opinion anymore? Is there really no such thing as bad publicity? Will people tune in just to hate the guy? Perhaps but I’d be mindful to be aware of what outfits are advertising on the article and remind myself not to buy anything from them. This is the only power we beleaguered taxpayers have left.

The generalities in which the government media speaks to the public just glosses over the real issues. Sure the housing market is slow because people need good credit again, duh!

There is also a lack of inventory…but WHY?

Because people are WORRIED!

Why are they worried, isn't the economy coming back?

If people believed that, they wouldn't be worried.

But the consumer confidence index has risen!

Says who, the national media?

When people are worried they don’t move. They don’t buy up to a new house, they make do with the one they have. If the housing market is any indication, people aren't moving. Quite the opposite, they're staying put.

If people aren't worried about the future they take risks with their resources. I don’t see much risk taking. There are plenty of empty storefronts that tell me people aren't risking their jobs or finances to start a new enterprise and if you have a job right now, you holding onto it with BOTH hands. I know I am.

If I were to lose my job, I don't have a lot of confidence that I will find another one anytime soon. Nobody's leaving where I work and we don't pay that great for the most part. Nobody I know is seriously looking for another job either.

So, how are YOU feeling?

Exactly.

I do see the costs of doing business continuing to rise. The cost of medical insurance rose. The taxes taken out of our checks this year was far more than last year. Property taxes have risen. My auto insurance has gone up. I received a notice that for the first quarter at least, my gas utilities will cost more.

People have become more expensive to hire in the private sector and the public sector has not decreased at nearly the rate of the private sector. This is bad news.

The public sector does not produce wealth; it spends it and regardless of what Nancy Pelosi says, public sector jobs do not constitute a gain to the economy. They have a negative impact because the money that goes to the public sector first has to be earned privately and then transferred, by other people in the public's employ who also expect a paycheck, to the public "trust". That's called "overhead" and there's a pant-load of that in government. That's Japan's problem and that's our problem. Did I mention the pension benefits?

It stands to reason that for the private citizen to move the economy by their conscious choices in what they purchase, they first must get their money back into their pocket. The government can't make their purchasing choices for them and be successful. Here they have failed by trying to pick our doctors and our schools to name but two things they have dictated to the people. The Public Sector must be cut for the economy to move forward. Right now they take too much but it's just easier politically to keep raising taxes and fees until we're all out in the street.

Right now the only municipalities doing anything about their public sector overhead are the ones which have already declared bankruptcy.

So what is a "job" really? Is it a result of government putting up someone else's money to fund a program? No. It is people risking their own resources to start an enterprise and working to grow it. And from this work, this risk, the government takes a piece of their production and puts it towards their programs.

So, no, that job "created" by the public sector does not add to the economy. The money would have gone farther and done more good had it remained in the pockets of the people who first earned it. Then THEY could support the businesses of THEIR choosing.

This of course would have cut out the "middleman" of government and we can't have that, can we?

So a viable reason for the "Sluggish" economy could be: Fear of the future.

"Oh, but Wal Man, you have such a Pie in the Sky approach to this issue, there is no Utopia you naive Son of a Bitch!"

No there isn't but since things have gone SO WELL the way it’s been going, we might as well stick with what the government is doing, yes?

You don't see what COULD HAVE been done or created had the money remained with the taxpayer. All you get to see is what government did with it and for the most part, they have squandered it inefficiently amongst their pet vote-buying projects like the drug war, foreign interventions and welfare give-a-way programs that help nobody in the long run.

It’s certainly time for a different approach.

I wish Greenspan could have said this but would anybody have believed him?

How can we miss you Mr. Greenspan if you won't go away?