Dates That Destroyed America

Chuck Baldwin
March 24, 2010

The decision by Congress to socialize medicine in the US ranks among the most draconian, most egregious, most horrific actions ever taken by the central government in Washington, D.C.
Passage of the so-called “health care reform” bill in the House of Representatives this past Sunday, March 21 (I won’t even address the inferred unconstitutionality of Congress doing business on the Lord’s Day. See Article. I. Section. 7. Paragraph. 2.) drove yet another stake into the heart of America. For all intents and purposes, it is the health of the United States that is in dire need of healing. In fact, the US has been on extended life-support for decades. With its condition being rendered critical, and absent major surgery, its days are numbered. The passage of this bill only serves to further weaken an already frail Constitution.

In fact, this one may prove to be the fatal blow. Lady Liberty may never recover.

The decision by Congress to socialize medicine in the US ranks among the most draconian, most egregious, most horrific actions ever taken by the central government in Washington, D.C. This bill rocks the principles of liberty and constitutional government to the core. It changes fundamental foundations; it repudiates historical principle. Oh! The same flag may fly on our flagpoles, the same monuments may grace our landscape, and the same National Anthem may be sung during our public ceremonies, but it is not the same America. The Congress of the United States has now officially turned America into a socialist state.

On March 23, 2010, President Barack Obama signed the health care bill into law, and as such, this date–along with March 21–joins a list of dates that have each inflicted unconstitutional, socialistic, and sometimes even tyrannical action against the States United and have, therefore, contributed to the destruction of a free America.

April 9, 1865
This is the date when General Robert E. Lee surrendered the Army of Northern Virginia to U.S. Grant at Appomattox Court House, Virginia. Regardless of where one comes down on the subject of the Civil War, one fact is undeniable: Abraham Lincoln forever destroyed the Jeffersonian model of federalism in America. Ever since, virtually every battle that free men have fought for the principles of limited government, State sovereignty, etc., have all stemmed directly from Lincoln’s usurpation of power, which resulted in the subjugation and forced union of what used to be “Free and Independent States” (the Declaration of Independence). In fact, the philosophical battles being waged today regarding the recent health care debacle (and every other encroachment upon liberty and State power by the central government) have their roots in Lincoln’s tyranny.

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Paul B Farrell
Wall Street War Zone
March 12, 2010

Yes, Wall Street wins, again. Wall Street’s control America is a drama right out of a Scorsese film about the mafia and crime in New York. They bought off Chris Dodd, who’s capitulated to the darkside while “interviewing” for a million dollar job as a lobbyist. They bought off, President Obama. Turns out he’s no Luke Skywalker, no ”game-changer,” not even much of a Chicago politican. They spent $400 million to kill financial reforms in Congress, to make absolutely sure the American public gets screwed, again … and in the process, they are setting up the next collapse. The big one. The dotcom crash didn’t do it. The subprime credit meltdown didn’t do it. What will? Another, bigger event … a combo of the “Collapse of the American Empire,” plus the “Great Depression II.”
If financial reform ain’t dead, it’ll end up watered down to nothing. That was obvious in a recent Charlie Rose interview with financial reformer Elizabeth Warren in Bloomberg/BusinessWeek: Outrage and Financial Reform. Warren’s a Harvard Law School Professor chairing of the Congressional Oversight Panel. The panel was ”created in 2008 to monitor the Treasury’s bank bailout and to review the regulation of financial markets.” Wall Street hates any reform that would expose their insatiable greed fighting all financial reforms in America, especially the Consumer Financial Protection Agency (CFPA). So Wall Street doesn’t like Warren much. Here are a few clips summarizing why she’s an Eliot Ness character they’d like to eliminate:

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GUERILLA UNION and HIP HOP OFFICIAL PRESENT PAID DUES “INDUSTRY

PAID DUES FESTIVAL | MySpace Music Videos

Posted on 03/09/10 at 8:28am by Roger Nusbaum
The crew over at Wall Street Cheat Sheet posted a quick interview they conducted with Jim Rogers. There was one line in there that really resonated with me and was something new (to me anyway) in terms of his usual message. More like an addition to his usual message.

Interviewer Damien Hoffman asked Jim what countries he watches to make sure the Greece situation doesn’t get out of control. Jim gave an answer that was broader than the intent of the question in saying…

I’m trying to watch the whole world. We cannot be very successful investors if we don’t know what’s going on everywhere. All of a sudden you’ll see something like Iceland will show up and you’ll get killed because you didn’t know that Iceland even existed.

He went on to note that often events start in places no one pays attention to. If you have been reading this site for a while you know that I try to ‘watch the whole world’ and write about that some. In the past I’ve mentioned some countries that are off the beaten path and obviously I devote a fair bit of time on trying to learn about certain narrow market segments where I think value can be added either through performance or dampening volatility.

The potential portfolio benefit should be obvious. As one example the troubles in Latvia caught my eye early on (read about it either in the FT or in Jyske Bank’s research) and it became clear that Swedish banks were very heavily exposed to Latvia through loans made into the country. Part of Latvia’s trouble came from unrealistically trying to maintain a peg to the euro. But now it is possible that they pulled off an internal devaluation (A Fistful of Euros has had a post or two about this) but that remains to be seen.

Every holding in a portfolio is risks but often those risks are not obvious without casting a wider net in what you study. The Latvia story might have steered you away from the the risks in Swedish banks.

Speaking of casting a wider net John Hussman had some interesting comments this week on the extent to which you can count on investor myopia resulting in behavior that is ultimately self destructive. He notes “it is impossible to ignore the rise over that same period of widely-viewed financial programming that is equally riddled with cartoonish content that encourages short-term thinking and speculation” all but mentioning Jim Cramer by name.

I don’t watch Cramer or Fast Money (the afternoon version but I often see the 15 minute version during Power Lunch) but I can see where the shows might influence people to trade more frequently than is right for them. During that halftime report they go around the panel and call the close. I don’t know but I have to think that the people who would be inclined to speculate on what the stock market might do in the last couple of hours in its day have no interest in what the Fast Money people think will happen. I also doubt that too many people really need to buy puts if the stock goes down another $0.50.

I also wonder how many people “have” to trade a stock ahead of the earnings, based on the earnings or based on the conference call. There is nothing wrong with this sort of trading on its face but there are not too many individual for whom this sort of thing is suitable. There are plenty of people engaged in exactly this type of thing who do not realize it is unsuitable for them and that is a problem in the making.

Another form of myopia; I guarantee that stock Medivation (MDVN) that dropped from $40 down into the teens on bad news from the FDA wiped out some person somewhere who owned only that name fully margined. In a less dramatic example, the next time emerging market stocks or commodity stocks go down a whole bunch there will be people that learn the hard way they had way too much exposure compared to what they should have had.

His point, I think, is that people do not learn from the mistakes they make. Everyone makes mistakes, you don’t stop making mistakes but the repeating of the same mistakes hinders reaching the long term goal. Despite how obvious this should be, trust me when I tell you many folks lack the introspection to see this.

Washington’s Blog
March 5, 2010

Nobel Prize-winning wconomist Joseph Stiglitz
Joseph Stiglitz – former head economist at the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and a nobel-prize winner – said yesterday that the very structure of the Federal Reserve system is so fraught with conflicts that it is “corrupt” and undermines democracy.
Stiglitz said:
If we [i.e. the IMF] had seen a governance structure that corresponds to our Federal Reserve system, we would have been yelling and screaming and saying that country does not deserve any assistance, this is a corrupt governing structure.
Stiglitz pointed out that – if another country had presented a plan to reform its financial system, and included a regulatory regime that copied the makeup of the Federal Reserve system – “it would have been a big signal that something is wrong.”
Stiglitz stressed that the Fed banks have clear conflicts of interest, since the banks are largely governed by a board of directors that includes officers of the very banks they’re supposed to be overseeing:
So, these are the guys who appointed the guy who bailed them out … Is that a conflict of interest?
They would say, ‘no conflict of interest, we were just doing our job. But you have to look at the conflicts of interest”…
The reason you talk about governance is because in a democracy you want people to have confidence … This is a structure that will undermine confidence in a democracy.
Indeed, by all objective measures, the Fed has performed horribly (and see this).

As 6 congressmen wrote last November, there are at least 4 reasons to demand full transparency of the Federal Reserve, and a change in the Fed’s structure:

First … how effective a regulator can the Federal Reserve be if it is unwilling to strive for good public policy through its regulatory powers?
Second, there is an inherent conflict in the manner in which regional reserve branch presidents are selected – in that representatives of the member banks select the regional president. It seems counterproductive, yet the banking system has provided case after case of regulated entities selecting their own regulator.
Third, the Federal Reserve has continually resisted efforts to engage in discussion on structural and governance reform at the System. Most recently, Bloomberg reported yesterday that the Federal Reserve has rejected a White House request that [the Federal Reserve] conduct a public review of its structure and operations.
Despite a request from the administration that provided ample opportunity for the Federal Reserve to have input into its own reforms, the central bank has simply refused. It is because of this attitude that I argue that real financial regulatory reform cannot occur without an examination into the structure of this entity.
Fourth, and most importantly, the Federal Reserve has shown a repeated unwillingness to accept efforts to improve transparency for the System.