Adding Insult to Injury: Obama Settles With The Bankers

As one who was affected by the mortgage banking crisis (and other unconstitutional property "laws") in my home state of Arizona way back in 2006, I was amazed to hear this afternoon that Barack Obama held a rather large news conference in order to announce that the federal government has come to a "settlement" with many of the major banking concerns (primarily located in the West) whose practices led to the loss of untold thousands of American's homes these last five to six years.

First of all, I'm scratching my head wondering just where in the Constitution it affords a president to act as a lawyer on behalf of the American people in this "class action?" It does seem rather odd to me, and don't remember a time in our history when a President has exercised such "authority."

Prosecuting and putting some of those individuals sitting on those Boards of Directors or CEOs and CFOs in jail for a very long while on charges of fraudulent lending practices, or other clearly criminal charges, yes.

But engineering a settlement outside Congressional authority even?

Just where is that duty of office in our Constitution?

It was bad enough when during the honeymoon phase of Mr. Obama's presidency he appointed the former CEO of Countrywide in charge of negotiating refinances for homeowners who were still in danger of losing their homes back in 2009.

Part of the terms of this deal is the payment of a few billion in fines, which apparently is going to be earmarked to offer to homeowners who were foreclosed on "inappropriately" $2,000 as repayment for the loss of their home.

More money also will be set aside for refinancing.

Of course, if the terms of those loans remain the same as the ones which led to this travesty I just wonder how this is going to help most of those homeowners who are still receiving those foreclosure notices.

If non-judicial foreclosures remain the rule of law in many states throughout the nation, just what power does the average homeowner in default due to the continuing joblessness and piss poor economy have against the banking industry still, and their lawyers?

Let me get this straight.

The Federal Reserve who owns all of these banks (created by Congress) poured billions of dollars into these banks during the bank bailouts in 2008-9, which was to be used to ease up credit (which never really happened, but simply afforded the big box banks to buy out the smaller banks) - and now Obama has orchestrated the return of SOME of those monies in order to pay to fund more refinances, and payment of $2,000 to those for which it is "too late" and lost their homes this past five years.

Don't get me wrong. Mr. Romney's "solution" of letting the foreclosures hit bottom so that investors or corporate limited partnerships can scam some of those hot properties for rentals was far, far worse.

Talk about socialism and shifting the wealth around to the politically fortunate.

But I guess it played well for those in the Beltway in the room when he made this much publicized announcement.

But seems to me the current market conditions and all those still empty homes across America are demonstrating a vote of "no confidence" on Main Street.

Fox's Huckabee Hilarity: Facts vs. Spins

Last night I had a few moments to watch briefly several segments from Fox's newest addition to its "conservative" line up on the evening edition of "Huckabee." It was eye-opening, to say the least, as one who is and has always been an American Conservative.

"Governor" Huckabee was introduced (hasn't he left office?), and began the show with an ad and promotion for Gulf shrimp and wisting the Gulf coast this summer since the cleanup has been completed, and the beaches are open and the shrimp simply mouth-watering.

Interspersed with a few comic moments regarding all the ways you can cook or barbeque shrimp, were promptings to "visit the Gulf" and such.

Then the "political" commentary began.

"Governor" Huckabee then went on to lambast Washington on its providing funding to the tune of over a half million dollars to "study shrimp" and their exercise habits using shrimp confined to a hamster's wheel to see just how that might improve, apparently, the taste and fitness of this seafood. Now, don't get me wrong Washington does and has spent outrageously in those earmarks for ridiculous and frivolous expenditures.

But does any American truly believe that those earmarked sums actually did go to provide for the scientific study of shrimp and their exercise capabilities, or rather their friendly campaign donor and his needs instead under the guise of this "study?"

Later in the show, the "Governor" then ran a segment with an old country singer, Ray Stevens, doing a little ditty that demonstrated just how he and his family could get out of debt using Washington's methods for balancing the budgets and providing for its needs in its "administrative" costs.

One such line when referenced printing whatever what was needed and then went on to call these sums "Obama money" and then referenced all the global corporate bailouts, and stimulus monies which have been provided by merely Obama (Congress actually) for such economic expenditures.

What was left out, however, during all the hilarity and pans to the studio audience laughing their literal butts off was that it was George Bush, and not Obama, that started the "stimulus" and bailout money train.

Does Fox and Mr. Huckabee actually believe that Americans memories are truly that short, or that easily propagandized.

Amazing how these ex-NeoCon Republican "entertainment" and political entities continue to get jobs on Fox such as Mr. Huckabee, Mr. Rove, and the like.

Not American Conservatives in any respect, but simply representatives of Washington and their respective self-interests in the name of "fair and unbalanced" reporting. I mean, I just wonder how their positions would jive with our Constitution since Mr. Huckabee is a hawk or was last election, although a represented "Christian" ex-pastor.

Whose only true contribution to last race was his oft-quoted remark that "Jesus would not run for political office."

Definitely not in 21st century America, or as one of the "New Age" Global Republican branch of the Global Socialist Party.

He wrapped up the show with an interview with three young Americans (less than 35) who had suffered during this economic disaster in the U.S., and lost their businesses, or saw the end clearly coming for their particular small businesses. All turned their personal tragedies and disasters into golden eggs by founding new businesses (and where did they get the funding for them, I wonder, since small business loans are almost non-existent for start ups in this economy?) - and did not hold their hands out, as Governor Mike pointed out, during their loss and new ventures for public "golden egg" assistance.

I wonder if Governor Mike has visited the local unemployment offices, and seen that most all in those centers are over the age of his "buck up" and become productive examples? And it never was disclosed just where their assistance and sums for their new ventures came from, or even their moving costs to start businesses in other states or markets?

Maybe Governor Mike should just stick to his food segments.

Since it does appear those are the only pieces with even a shred of research, or truth rather than just more political spin doctoring.

AP Reports Traffic Deaths At Lowest Levels Since 1949

It was announced by the AP and National Transportation and Safety Administration that traffic deaths last year were at the lowest levels since 1949.

Many factors were attributed to this statistic heralded by the NTSA Director, such as seat belt use and raising drinking ages, safer cars and so forth.

But to this writer none of those statistics I feel are primarily responsible in the decreasing levels since '49.

The largest factor would appear to be that there are fewer drivers really on the highways progressively also traveling since air travel has become the preferred method since that time for most business travel and families, due to less time to get from here to there as also a consequence of our increasingly higher stress lifestyles, and also the fact that the boomers, the largest segment of the population, are aging and thus don't appear to be drag racing anymore on the streets and highways.

They are the ones most often getting the finger from the more aggressive drivers still left on the roadways.

Primarily, of course, our youth or even the police who seem to exceed the speed limit in most metro cities far more than those boomers driving their grandkids or themselves to the nearest work force center, many of whom after vast years of experience are still seeking work for which they are more than qualified even given the excessively tech focused job scene and market and all those jobs they formerly held lost due to the advent of the computer age.

While, of course, they are being interviewed by their children or those even younger than their children for many of those few jobs.

It was announced once again that there was a gain in the available jobs, and the unemployment rate had decreased.

Not surprising given that most of those benefits have run out for many, and the jobs which have been created most likely are those now tied into expanding our even increasing military due to the recent headlines in our involvement now in Libya and its civil war.

Those statistics also fail to recognize all the monies poured into expanding our highway and freeway systems since '49, so it would not appear that this statistic would be surprising in the slightest since there are better roadways also for those truckers and cars to traverse from state to state.

But ignoring the obvious does appear also to fit the agendas once again of those whose hold those questionably Constitutional jobs and functions, which also does not explain then the higher and higher insurance rates which are now off the charts in most parts of the country.

Maybe the biggest factor is also the progressively higher and higher gasoline rates and those ever increasing taxes, such as the recent 35% plus increase in the cost of gasoline, which has left quite a few Americans with the only remaining transportation left to them.

Walking to their next job interview.

Mr. Obama: More Jobs In December? Duh!

Gearing up once again (already) for the 2012 run for the roses, Barack Obama announced from a politically determined location in the hard hit industrial north that the economy is improving and December saw the unemployment rate "dip" to 9.4% from 9.8% the month before.

Since December is a month when there are additions of lower paying temporary retail jobs in the private sector for the holiday season, this announcement should come as no surprise to most Americans whose reaction most likely was similar to mine.

A "duh" moment.

Mr. Obama credits the recently passed legislation reducing tax burdens on capital expenditures for businesses, and other perks which were included in the extension of the Bush tax cuts, including those for the wealthy and large, global corporate conglomerates, as the source rather than the obvious.

Of course, with little monies earmarked for American small businesses and start ups, this new job growth can only be a political maneuver on the part of Washington since nothing really has changed at all in the housing market, banking industry or Wall Street to address the actual problems which created this depression/recession to begin with.

Absolutely nothing.

Except pass more and more backdoor taxes in the form of those global carbon taxes, and health care taxes favoring global industry at the cost of the average American which have not kicked in as of yet, but will impact each and every American on a massive basis in just a few short months, or years.

There has been little, if any, of the promised redlining of our huge bureaucratic public sector jobs and their costs, especially in that newly created massive drain on the public post 9-11, Homeland Security, which also has increased the costs and time for most Americans to even travel in all those new airport taxes for all those body scanners that are now being utilized, while our southern and northern borders remain open and the hugely expensive Middle Eastern war continues.

But what can you expect from a so out of touch Washington that is so far left leaning that the Constitution is not only a "thing of wax" but has been utterly destroyed progressively, and never more so than since the 1960's under both political parties' leadership.

Get ready for more spins, since it appears it is "looks" and "lies" that will once again be a major factor in the next election cycle.

Some things NEVER change.

America Subdivided: Washington Politicos Selling Off America?

While Barack Obama spends this last week after the disastrous election last Tuesday in India posing in front of some of India's architectural wonders, a country who has gained immeasurably by the generosity of both Republicans and Democrats in jobs and industries sold off bit by bit to foreign interests in order to "balance" the global economy at the cost of America's own, perhaps it is time to reflect on just what other industries, and America's own natural resources have been sold off to foreigners or foreign countries also progressively:

1. Our banks and currency regulation - Great Britain (London) through the Federal Reserve
2. Our oil reserves - Great Britain
3. Our gold mines - South Africa, Canada and Great Britain
4. Our independently owned or franchised hotels - India
5. Our auto industry - Mexico, Canada and China
6. Our state and national forests - now "controlled" or "wildfire" burned, in order to then honor those free trade agreements and import more Canadian lumber and timber domestically.
7. Our nuclear reactors - now foreign owned through various globally traded holding companies
8. Our clothing, apparel and durable goods (including those sovenirs) - China
9. Our cattle ranches - Korea, Japan
10. The Port of New Orleans - Great Britain
11. The Garden District and French Quarter real estate post Katrina - primarily BP execs, Britain
12. Our construction industry workforce - Mexico
13. Our agricultural workforce - Mexico
14. Our tech workforce - India
15. Our medical doctors and surgical staffs - more and more, India and South America
16. Our airlines - all globally traded, thus foreign owned
17. Our private hospitals - many "networks" globally traded, thus foreign owned

Does it really take an economist to calculate just why the American economy is continuing to spiral ever downward? Are there any American economists employed by this administration or the last several, or are they all "foreign" experts also more concerned with the world's economy than this country's, and has that industry also been "outsourced" as has been much of our television and print media?

This also does not factor in the contribution that other political branch and benefactor, the judiciary, have in their increased wealth as globalism believers in all the "corporate friendly" laws and statutes which have given "privileges and immunities" to not simply U.S. domestic global corporations, but even those foreign owned banks, insurance companies and financial institutions, PROGRESSIVELY under both Republican and Democratic administrations.

Protectionism does work for America, and always has in providing both jobs, and new industry, and in removing the personal income tax per those founder's intent on domestic production and labor in order to protect this country's economy, and placing it back on foreign production and labor, it can work again.

If an American citizen or American corporation wants to hire foreign workers or buy foreign goods, so be it, and those prices will be higher as a result, but if an American citizen or domestic corporation wants to outsource they SHOULD have to pay more for those goods and services, and would also result in domestic products and services being on par or at least more competitive in the process.

THAT would actually BE a global market based economy domestically, rather than one that we have now run by the foreign Global Governors in that G-20 who are for the most part Europeans and driving this country into the ground in the process, and bankrupting the American citizenry for their ultimate dominion and gain due to their also primarily regulating and controlling through those globally also traded U.S. banks our currency rates.

And in the mortgage banking and educational loans, imposing even their own currency (the British LIBOR) on those sums through the U.S. banks, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac even.

The Chinese definitely are not the only problem, America.

These are allies?

Euro-scavengers is more like it.

Subdividing America during those Global Governor's meetings.

AP Reports Unemployment Claims Down, Economy Up?

The AP (American Propaganda) press reported today that due to a perceived reduction in the amount of unemployment claims for the "4th straight month" as reported to them by the U.S. Department of Labor, signs that employers have stopped laying off some of their employees.

And reaffirms the economists prediction that this "recession" ended in July.

Although the amount of "new" jobs reported by and large have been government jobs under this and the previous administration and simply funded through the general public's taxes by the taxpayers instead of those unemployment benefits by those major corporations.

And I would not hesitate to question whether the true number of jobless has decreased. During this entire recession/depression there has been no figures published of the amount of new businesses that have gone under, owners of which are not eligible for unemployment benefits nor any other type of social welfare benefits.

And if my experiences have been any indication, most of those government agencies are simply directing the homeless and jobless to the social service government grant civic organizations and churches to assist them, rather than the welfare offices, SSI or the unemployment offices.

So those figures are not at all indicative of just how many remain without a job, or have lost their businesses during this manipulated meltdown. Nor has the mortgage and foreclosure mess been addressed adequately in that arena, and from all indications it does appear that the housing market is not improving since absolutely nothing has been done in order to address the loans and terms under which most of those homes were sold which also led to the foreclosure tsunami.

Namely, loans that were "creatively" sold and marketed that were not even based on the U.S. currency, but the British LIBOR, and upfront fees and costs even in order to get those loans which now make purchasing a home more of a liability, than an asset.

This is, after all, the third banker/Washington market manipulation in housing in my lifetime, as a former resident of one of the states most affected - Arizona. And those 50+ page loan documents that are now part and parcel of this major purchase have put many a potential homeowner alone off purchasing a home at this point, not to mention any and all that have been affected this last cycle who are now both wiser, and have warned their posterity about the changes in the housing market which make that foreclosure "steal" nothing more than an instrument in which during the next cycle, it will be their home on the auction block.

Seems the distant AP press is as clueless as this Administration, and the last.

I wonder if they have walked into any of those unemployment offices lately, or are simply phoning their articles in on their iPhones?

Obama and Congress Throw Citizens A Bone

With the increasing joblessness and homelessness now increasing across the nation, and outrage of an increasingly dissatisfied electorate with both mainstream political parties and their agendas bypassing both Constitutional provision and restraint, Congress and the Obama Administration threw the American people another bone.

Unemployment benefits checks will be reinstituted.

And just how much is unemployment - about a third of most citizens former take-home pays, over another third less than their former paychecks even after withholding?

Although, of course, this does nothing for the small businesses that have gone under during this banker, Wall Street and political economic recession, or those homeowners who are still in danger of losing their homes due to the illegal loans which were sold in the West and Southwest primarily, since nothing has been done to address the causes of the foreclosure tsunami, just the symptoms.

Loans which have no fundamental basis in our Constitution, based on foreign currencies (the British LIBOR) which were sold to unsuspecting homeowners during the boom who were forced into refinances due to rising costs of ownership.

Especially in the border states which had also seen increases in insurance rates for both autos and homes go off the charts, and whose property taxes were tied into their home valuations.

The predatory lending practices of these banks have simply been promoted by this Administration, pushing Americans to refinance into these same "foreign" based loans, and now even kids for college tuition increases which also have gone off the charts.

Sallie Mae's funding is weighted toward also promoting these London banking index rate loans, and seems to be that this is why Mr. Obama has been on the "get re-educated" and "refinance" bandwagon - to trap the American people who thus far have not been affected and still have their homes, and now even our youth then also into these adjustable foreign based loans.

Seems the "change" which has occurred has been a "change" in the face behind the podium, but not at all the agenda.

Wall Street, the "global" economy and New York profits at the cost of the rest of the country and citzenry.

Since due to those excessive salaries of our "misrepresentatives," they seem to be the heaviest investors in this "global" economy which is being promoted at the cost of America's own.