Reflections From a Murky Pond

Toxic assets has become a popular term for certain types financial assets whose value has fallen significantly and for which there is no longer a functioning market, so that such assets cannot be sold at a price satisfactory to the possessor of those assets which leaves those possessors in a very bad position since they’re holding assets that often cannot be sold except at a significant loss.

To-date this term has mostly been used to describe a subset of securities that were based upon mortgage-based derivatives. I wonder though if people should start thinking of America’s debt in similar terms, at least in the longer term.

The US government, especially the bloated federal government, is and has been living well beyond its means. Expenditures consistently outpace revenues and it’s reached the point where the government and the pundits are all claiming that, if we don’t borrow more money we’ll default on the debt that we already have. Hence, the brouhaha over the current debt ceiling argument in Congress.

In the near-term it would be ridiculously hyperbolic to describe the American government’s debt as a toxic asset but that doesn’t mean that it should objectively be considered a sinecure for investment either. Moody’s, Standard & Poor, and the International Monetary Fund would be right to downgrade US Treasury Bonds and all US Denomination backed debt. A continued AAA credit rating is unwarranted given the ongoing fiscal irresponsibility of America’s government.

However, if the American government doesn’t rediscover fiscal responsibility it’s debt may well in the years to come be classed as a toxic asset. That’s happened to plenty of other nations through the course of even recent history.

Tags: America | Debt | Debt Ceiling | Deficit | Economics | Economy | Employment | Globalism | Politics | TARP | Taxes | Toxic Assets | Unemployment

This entry was posted on Wednesday, July 27th, 2011 at 10:53 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

There’s more than a little rancor over the fact that many large corporations don’t pay what is seen as their “fair share” in taxes to the government.

This fallacy is being promulgated by America’s domestic enemies, the Liberals, their minority tenants, and their pet “lamestream” media.

This tactic of fostering class warfare works well upon the weak-minded eaters.

Of course these looters won’t tell the eaters or anyone else that America taxes its corporations at a punitively high rate in an effort to fund the various Liberal-sponsored, demanded, and installed entitlement programs that have gone a long way towards beggaring our nation.

2010 Combined Federal-State Corporate Tax Rates in OECD Nations

The United States’ top combined federal and state tax burden on corporations was the 2nd highest in the world in 2010 and 33.7% above the average (26.20%) for developed nations according to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD).

Money is much like water; it will flow best with less restrictions. As things stand now it is flowing from America to foreign nations’ coffers largely, though not entirely, because corporations will not willingly invest in profit garnering enterprises in America under the current tax burden.

In this global economy what happens is that the larger corporations, mostly being trans-national, move their profit centers to other, less repressive nations and leave their cost centers such as research and development in America. This means that the bulk of the jobs, especially the middle-class jobs, end up in other countries.

If people want employment in America to improve then we need to encourage corporations to develop operations in America instead of taxing corporations away to foreign lands.  If people want to destroy America’s economy then we can just continue on with the looters’ and eaters’ “Eat The Rich” pogrom.

Tags: America | Class Warfare | Corporations | Economics | Economy | Employment | Globalism | Liberals | Politics | Taxes | Unemployment

This entry was posted on Tuesday, April 12th, 2011 at 9:19 am and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

There is a belief that “beautiful” is “White” that many girls and women around the world subscribe and adhere to. The media portrayal of images that support this ideal has promulgated the American and European beauty ideal; pale to fair skin, long straight hair – blond is best – light eyes, slim nose, and a skinny figure.

Even highly paid Black fashion models such as: Iman, Naomi Campbell, Tyra Banks, Liya Kebede, Jourdan Dunn, and the ill-fated Katoucha Niane, tended towards having a slim figure, fair skin, and straight or, at least, smooth hair.

In other words, Black models have to be an exotic twist upon normative White features in order to be considered beautiful and employable.

For the most part even the “passable” Black models are consigned to double bookings with a White model and/or to modeling exotica and “urban” fashion.

This has naturally led to Black girls and women being presented with a beauty ideal that they are genetically and physical incapable of fully meeting, though many people were willing to make money selling them “treatments” to get them a little closer to it.

In the U.S. specifically, many Black women were faced with a beauty ideal that did not resemble the reflection in the mirror. Many entrepreneurs began and sustained successful businesses based on selling the white ideal to the Black woman. Skin lightning became a common practice in the Black community

— Kathy Russel
The Color Complex:
The Politics of Skin Color Among African Americans

That’s a crying shame since – leaving all the societal ills caused by cultural self-image problems aside for now – there’s many, many different roads to beauty and/or sexiness and Black women who look like any of the myriad varieties of Black women can and have traveled many of them.

Tags: Babes | Beauty | Blacks | Breasts | Butts | Fashion | Globalism | Hip-Hop | Media | Prejudice | Society | Whites | Women

This entry was posted on Saturday, March 26th, 2011 at 1:45 pm and is filed under Society. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

Will Caterpillar, Inc. be the first of major manufacturing corporations to emigrate from the United States in the wake of ObamaCare? Or will they just layoff a significant fraction of their employees and cut salaries as much as possible in order to accommodate ObamaCare’s negative impact on their already weakened bottom line?

Caterpillar Feels The Crushing Weight Of Obama’s Agenda

Caterpillar will, if ObamaCare is made the law of the land, be faced with significant increases to their labor costs in the form of increased mandatory health insurance benefits and increased Medicare taxes – amongst other new or increased taxes. This would make them vulnerable to their foreign competition such as Japan’s Komatsu.

From Dow Jones Newswires via Chicago Breaking Business News:

Caterpillar Inc. said the health-care overhaul legislation being considered by the U.S. House of Representatives would increase the company’s health-care costs by more than $100 million in the first year alone.

In a letter Thursday to House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) and House Republican Leader John Boehner of Ohio, Caterpillar urged lawmakers to vote against the plan “because of the substantial cost burdens it would place on our shareholders, employees and retirees.” Caterpillar, the world’s largest construction machinery manufacturer by sales, said it’s particularly opposed to provisions in the bill that would expand Medicare taxes and mandate insurance coverage. The legislation would require nearly all companies to provide health insurance for their employees or face large fines.

The Peoria-based company said these provisions would increase its insurance costs by at least 20 percent, or more than $100 million, just in the first year of the health-care overhaul program.

“We can ill-afford cost increases that place us at a disadvantage versus our global competitors,” said the letter signed by Gregory Folley, vice president and chief human resources officer of Caterpillar. “We are disappointed that efforts at reform have not addressed the cost concerns we’ve raised throughout the year.”

Business executives have long complained that the options offered for covering 32 million uninsured Americans would result in higher insurance costs for those employers that already provide coverage. Opponents have stepped up their attacks in recent days as the House moves closer toward a vote on the Senate version of the health-care legislation.

A letter Thursday to President Barack Obama and members of Congress signed by more than 130 economists predicted the legislation would discourage companies from hiring more workers and would cause reduced hours and wages for those already employed.

Caterpillar noted that the company supports efforts to increase the quality and the value of health care for patients as well as lower costs for employer-sponsored insurance coverage.

“Unfortunately, neither the current legislation in the House and Senate, nor the president’s proposal, meets these goals,” the letter said.

Caterpillar has already laid off 20,000 workers – 10% of the company’s regular employees and 8,000 contract workers – and froze the salaries of most of its remaining employees. They also took the sadly unusual step of significantly cutting the total compensation packages of executives and senior managers.

They don’t have much room left to work with, not if they plan to continue to base the manufacturing operations in the US. ObamaCare’s taxes, penalties, and employer-funded entitlements may be the straw that breaks the camel’s back and sends Caterpillar over the border or into bankruptcy.

If this happens, Caterpillar may be the first major manufacturer to emigrate its operations overseas in response to ObamaCare, but I doubt that they’ll be the last.

Tags: Caterpillar | Economy | Emigration | Employment | Globalism | Healthcare | Labor | Obama | Politics | Taxes | Unemployment

This entry was posted on Friday, March 19th, 2010 at 1:27 pm and is filed under Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.

In a surprising move, but one that adheres to the ideology of Globalism and the “World Village,”  Congress has decided to outsource the American Presidency to India starting in March of 2011.

According to Congress the move to outsource the office of POTUS is purely a business decision forced upon America by the current economic conditions.  It is being made in order to save the President’s $500k annual salary and the $750 billion in deficit expenditures and related overhead expenses Obama’s office has incurred in the last quarter.

Congress estimates that outsourcing the office of the President to India will realize a $7 trillion savings over the course of the remainder of the POTUS’ term.

~*~

A grateful H/T to Robomonkey for this gem to start of the new year.

Tags: Congress | Economy | Globalism | Humor | India | Obama | Outsourcing

This entry was posted on Friday, January 1st, 2010 at 8:31 am and is filed under Humor, Politics. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.