With my recent European travels, my television exposure to US news is limited to CNN International, but I did catch one of those "news" shows hosted by Wolf Blitzer with this asshole Jack Cafferty last night. Jack proceeded to sound-off about the "foolishness" of Phil's comments. Personally, I wanted to jump through the TV and beat some sense into him. I'm by no means a fan of Phil Gramm, but his statements were dead on. The situation is almost a chicken or egg scenario, but the "recession" as people are calling it is totally mental and driven by the perceptions and actions of the consumers in our country. If people perceive that our nation's economy is in trouble, they will behave in a manner that is aligned to that perception.
The housing bubble, foreclosures and related economic turmoil with our financial institutions is all horse shit. The banks knew what they were doing by extending risky loans to deadbeats. The deadbeats knew (or should have known) what they were doing when they agreed to terms they couldn't fulfill. We need to stop helping these losers and let them fail. They need to reap the rewards of their actions. As for housing prices, stop your damn bitching! Historically, housing and real estate prices have grown an average of 3% per year. Over the last 15 years, we’ve seen returns far greater than that. We have a slight correction, and it’s “pandelerium”. According to a leading national real estate marketing group (NAR), the average prices across the United States are still more than 80% higher than they were in 2000. That’s an average growth rate of 8%. Has anyone shared this with the great masses? Has this fact made it to any of the headlines???
The “energy crisis” is all bullshit. I can go for hours on this, but suffice it to say, the mighty arm of government and the inaction and outright sabotage by Democrats over the last 30+ years has resulted in our localized situation. The global aspect of this would be a non-issue if we had opened up ANWR, the Gulf of Mexico and the Atlantic shelf 10-15 years ago. We have untold numbers of capped oil and gas wells in regions that have now been declared off-limits by the government. We know that the extraction and processing costs of these fuel sources are substantially (>50%) below the $140/150 cost per barrel that is on the global market, but the time it would take to mobilize and begin processing these fuel stores is 7-10 years away. And, how are those food prices working out? Anyone can see how energy prices affect food, but government mandates and subsidies on corn/rice-squeazins (ethonal) on fuel has a compounding affect on basic food prices. You can thank the Democrats and other glo-bull whining alarmists!
Combine those two leading issues with the negativity espoused by the Democrat’s in their run for the White House; you have exactly what we have today. The Republicans are unreasonably quiet on the topic, and their leadership is failing to counter the negativity with the facts that are overwhelmingly obvious. We have more opportunity right now than ever before. Interest rates are at all time lows. Unemployment? What are these bitches whining about??? Take a look at the historical averages throughout our nation’s history. Since 2000, the average unemployment rate has been less that that of the 90s, and the unemployment rate of the 90s was even less than that of the 80s. Take a look at the historical averages and the current situation across Europe. We’re still at the top of the food chain. Western Europe has been averaging above 8% for the past several years, and Eastern Europe has been close to twice that number. And, don’t get me started on our standard of living! How many TVs do you have? How many TV stations do you have? What about VCRs and DVRs? How many cars do you have? How many refrigerators do you have? How big is your house compared to the house where you were raised??? (You should see the Cracker Jack shacks these people live in Europe… They can hear and smell their neighbor’s farts through their paper-thin walls in their little tiny houses, but they’re so much better than us. I love picking on the Euro-trash elite.)
Speaking of Euro-trash, I did get into a somewhat heated discussion with one of these European elitists the other day. He used this term in front of me that set me off, Ameristocracy. What the fuck is that? He brought up things like racism, sexism and wealth. All of which I shot down and showed how Europeans are even more elitist and prejudice than Americans in those areas. He seemed to agree with me. I still don’t understand everything that he was trying to say in his broken Euro-English, but I politely put him in his place. When he spoke poorly of the US dollar, I explained how Europe had to unify it’s currency and establish common economic policies across borders to compete on the global markets. Europe also has the advantage of expansion and profiteering into developing nations that are right down the street. Of course, I’m speaking of the former Communist Block nations like Poland and Czech Republic. Companies that are expanding into those markets are seeing 30% growth in their investments. He actually agreed with me.
By the way, I learned that you shouldn’t bring up the French in these discussions. He couldn’t say a nice thing about the French. I thought that we only we hated the French, but that’s not true at all. Apparently, everyone hates the French. The rest of the evening was filled with French bashing which turned out to be a lot of fun…
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