Unpossible! (sic)

Shocking! Sequester Wasn't The End Of The World!

—DrewM.

Unpossible! If the government spends a tiny bit less we were told there'd be riots and DC/NoVa residents would have to resort to cannibalism. Apparently not.

In the months since the automatic federal spending cuts known as the sequester took effect, the Washington area has added 40,000 jobs. Income-tax receipts have surged in Virginia, beating expectations. Few government contractors have laid off workers....
“The surprise is that the economy is as good as it is,” said Stephen S. Fuller, the economist who directs the Center for Regional Analysis at George Mason University. “We’ve done better than I expected.”
In January, Fuller predicted that the sequester, if enacted, would be an “end-of-the-world kind of hit” to the regional economy. He wrote an analysis of the cuts in March concluding they would kill more than 325,000 jobs in Virginia, the District and Maryland combined.
That estimate included both direct and indirect effects — that is, layoffs not just among federal workers and contractors, but also the workers, such as waiters or car salespeople, whose jobs depend on spending from federal paychecks.

So what's the lesson to be learned? Cut MOAR!

I can't say I'm surprised that the economic impact on the DC area hasn't been greater but I am disappointed. I think it's very unhealthy for the capital to be protected from the economic realities of the country as a whole. 

http://www.ace.mu.nu/

Is the Dollar Dying? Why US Currency Is in Danger

Is the Dollar Dying? Why US Currency Is in Danger
By: Jeff Cox

The U.S dollar is shrinking as a percentage of the world's currency supply, raising concerns that the greenback is about to see its long run as the world's premier denomination come to an end.

When compared to its peers, the dollar has drifted to a 15-year low, according to the International Monetary Fund, indicating that more countries are willing to use other currencies to do business.

While the American currency still reigns supreme -- it constitutes $3.72 trillion, or 62 percent, of the $6 trillion in allocated foreign exchange holdings by the world's central banks -- the Japanese yen, Swiss franc and what the IMF classifies as "other currencies" such as the Chinese yuan are gaining.

"Generally speaking, it is not believed by the vast majority that the American dollar will be overthrown," Dick Bove, vice president of equity research at Rafferty Capital Markets, said in a note. "But it will be, and this defrocking may occur in as short a period as five to 10 years."

Bove uses several metrics to make his point, focusing on the dollar as a percentage of total world money supply.That total has plunged from nearly 90 percent in 1952 to closer to 15 percent now. He also notes that the Chinese yuan, the yen and the euro each have a greater share of that total.

"To the degree that China succeeds in increasing its market share of the world's currency market, the United States is the loser," Bove said. "For years, I have been arguing that the move of the Chinese makes perfect sense from their point-of-view but no sense for the Americans."

For a country with a budget deficit in excess of $1 trillion a year, the consequences of losing standing as the world's reserve currency would be dire.

"If the dollar loses status as the world's most reliable currency the United States will lose the right to print money to pay its debt. It will be forced to pay this debt," Bove said. "The ratings agencies are already arguing that the government's debt may be too highly rated. Plus, the United States Congress, in both its houses, as well as the president are demonstrating a total lack of fiscal credibility."

Bove is not the only one sounding the reserve currency alarm, though the issue has fallen off the front pages as hopes for a sustained U.S. recovery have taken hold and the stock market has surged to near-record highs.

But the looming battle over budget sequestration in Washington could revive long-standing fears of fiscal stability.

"If (dollars) no longer offer the safety that investors have come to expect, they will not function as the stable collateral required by bank funding markets," Barry Eichengreen, a professor at the University of California, Berkley, warned in a Financial Times commentary late last year. "They will not be regarded as an attractive form in which to hold international reserves. And they will not be seen as a convenient vehicle for merchandise transactions."

To be sure, the markets at this point are not acting like the dollar is in severe trouble. The greenback has maintained its position as a general safe haven in times of trouble.

"Longer term, of course, countries are going to diversify away from the dollar if they can. There are more favorable investment opportunities out there if you can catch yield," said Christopher Vecchio, currency analyst at DailyFX, a trading firm. "Despite the increase in risk to the U.S. dollar and Treasury, investors still feel safest at home."

But the Federal Reserve's successive quantitative easing programs, which have created $3 trillion in new greenbacks, continue to spur worry over the dollar's status.

"The No. 1 security issue we have as a nation is the preservation of the U.S. dollar as the world's reserve currency," said Michael Pento, president of Pento Portfolio Strategies. "It's a thousand times more important than a nuclear bomb being tested by North Korea. It's a thousand times more important that we keep the dollar as the world's reserve currency, and yet we are doing everything to abuse that status."

The dollar's seemingly precarious status is why Pento remains bullish on gold and believes the dollar's demise as the premier reserve currency could end even sooner than Bove predicts -- perhaps by 2015.

"Five to 10 years -- that would be an outlier," he said. "I would say 2015, 2016, that would be the time when it becomes a particularly salient issue. When we're spending 30 to 50 percent of our revenue on debt service payments, we enter into a bond market crisis. The dollar starts to drop along with bond prices. That would set off the whole thing."

http://www.cnbc.com/id/100461159

The re-election of Barack Obama is the End

Barack Obama and the End of an Era
By Steve McCann

The re-election of Barack Obama is the high water mark and the end of an era.  The period 1960 to 2014 will go down in American history as the era of never-ending crusades leading to the decline and potential downfall of the United States.   During this time frame America has been inundated with one cause after another.   The essential civil rights movement and the tragically successful Viet Nam protests spawned numerous causes, among them: feminism, environmentalism, global warming, and gay rights.

 For each generation born after 1940 it has been a rite of passage to take up the mantle of protest concurrent with mindless dedication to oftentimes absurd and erroneous beliefs, which have, in nearly all cases, resulted in disastrous societal and economic consequences.

 With the backdrop of unimaginable prosperity and lack of any national adversity since the end of the Great Depression, far too many have sought so-called meaning in their lives and for a cause to wholeheartedly and fervently embrace.  To countless Americans these movements became their religion and reason for being.  This mindset is unique among western democracies and it has been easily exploited by the American left -- a major factor in their rise to power and domination of the culture and government.  

As the left stealthily hijacked these causes, they were able to convince the True Believers in all these various movements that they stood with them; but more important was their ability to ingrain the conviction that anyone who opposed any of these evolving crusades was the incarnation of evil and must be defeated at all costs.  Political Correctness and its companion, unrestrained demonization of political opposition, was born.

The Civil Rights movement begun with best of intentions, and long overdue, achieved many of its original goals in breaking down the barriers to equality; however it soon degenerated into a battering ram as the liberals, in order to create a vast national dependency class, demanded, in the name of civil rights, innumerable and ever-expanding welfare programs as well as unending affirmative action for ever-evolving "minorities" (including women, a numerical majority).  The nation now faces a tsunami of unsustainable welfare and entitlement spending emanating from programs begun in the 1960's.

The Viet Nam war protests, while perhaps justified in light of the ham-handed manner in which the war was prosecuted, unleashed far more than just a demand for an end to the war.  Those that blamed America for all manner of alleged sins in the past and determined to transform the United States into a socialist nirvana were able to step out from behind the shadows and enter the mainstream of national legitimacy.  This swarm of locusts soon enveloped the higher levels of academia spawning countless clones to further infiltrate all levels of society -- most notably the mainstream media and entertainment complex as well as primary and secondary education.   These vital segments of the culture are now instruments of indoctrination and propaganda.

The feminist movement originally initiated to ensure workplace equality was quickly taken over by the self-described "Progressives" and transformed into a vehicle to alter American society primarily through the legitimization of abortion on demand under the rubric of "women's rights."   Since 1973 the nation has witnessed the killing of over 54.5 million children, which has eventuated in a grotesque disregard for human life, as exemplified by Kermit Gosnell in Philadelphia.  This catastrophic erosion in respect for the uniqueness of each individual has resulted in American society inexorably losing its moral compass.  Thus the people have become more susceptible to accepting deviancy and abandoning all pretexts of honor and integrity in themselves and in particular their national leaders.

As with other causes, the environmental movement began with the best of intentions: to clean up the air and water polluted through years of neglect.  However, it quickly evolved into an anti-capitalist crusade with the avowed intent of promoting socialist big government as the savior of the planet and the only means of curbing the evil and greedy capitalists.  Man-made global warming, perhaps the greatest hoax ever perpetrated on mankind, became the penultimate dogma to those dedicated to things "bigger than themselves" and who turned out to be ideal useful idiots for the left.   Today the free market is shackled by a Niagara Falls of regulations, mandates, taxes and oversight thus devastating the ability of the economy to create wealth and jobs.

While the nation slumbered, content in its prosperity, the American left, during the past fifty plus years of never-ending crusades, has succeeded in creating:

A)   a vast army of voters made up of:  1) those dependent on government largess, 2) low-information voters -- the natural outgrowth of the current education system, and 3) the easily manipulated and myopic single issue zealots.  The election of Barack Obama is a testament to the success of this strategy.
B)    national leadership devoid of character and integrity who, in their determination to seize and hold power, are guided by only one principle: the end justifies the means.
C)    an entrenched and unrestrained de facto oligarchy in Washington D.C.
D)   economic circumstances wherein, for the first time in American history, a succeeding generation will be far worse off than the one preceding it.   Meanwhile the ruling class is insistent on adding untold millions to the labor force by legitimizing, for political purposes, those in the country illegally.
E)    a deliberately ill-educated and fractured society destined for internal strife and chaos.

The prosperity that allowed this stealth war on United States to occur is no more.  This nation is subsisting on the residue of its past glory with no hope of regaining its former lofty status as long as it is governed by the most dangerous and radical regime in its history.  The American people, as their day to day lives continue to deteriorate, are becoming increasingly aware of the nation's precarious situation.

Beginning in 2014, as Benghazi and a myriad of other scandals combined with a rapidly declining standard of living for a vast majority of Americans marginalizes the Obama cabal, the focus of the nation will no longer be on bumper sticker platitudes and movements.  Instead it will, by necessity, be on individual survival as well as desperately finding a way, before the nation descends into chaos, to recreate what made the United States the most successful nation in the history of mankind.

http://www.americanthinker.com/2013/05/the_re-election_of_barack_obama.html