MAD AS HELL AND...

As the Idiocy continues in Washington DC with the Democratic Party singling out ONE American industry’s special tax and subsidy goodies. “Big Oil’s” tax breaks (Vote to hike taxes on oil faces in Senate), while EVERY other corporation in America that has bought and sold OUR “Elected Leaders” skate by without hardly a look and we can only wish that someone in OUR nation’s capital would make the following speech…

From Mark Perry’s blog Carpe Diem via Daily Markets:  Carp Diem, Mark Perry

Weekly Address: Taxpayer Subsidies For Farms Are Neither Right, Nor Smart, And They Should End

“Here’s a weekly presidential address I’d like to see, based on President Obama’s address last week on “Taxpayer Subsidies for Oil Companies Farms are Neither Right, nor Smart, and They Should End.”

WASHINGTON – “As oil and gas companies American farms make tens of billions in profits and the government scours the budget for savings, President Obama called on Congress to stop handing them $4 billion $12 billion annually in taxpayer subsidies.

After the worst recession since the Great Depression, our economy is growing again, and we’ve gained almost 2 million private sector jobs over the last 13 months. But I also know that a lot of folks aren’t feeling as positive as some of those statistics might suggest. It’s still too hard to find a job. And even if you have a job, chances are you’re having a tougher time paying the rising costs of everything from groceries to gas. In some places, gas ground beef is now more than $4 a gallon $3 per pound and milk is more than $3.50 per gallon meaning that you could be paying upwards of $50 or $60 to fill up your tank  $500 or $600 per month to feed your family.

Of course, while rising gas food prices mean real pain for our families at the pump grocery store they also mean bigger profits for oil companies America’s farms. This week, the largest oil companies U.S. Department of Agriculture announced that they’d made more than almost $25 billion in the first few months of 2011 – up about 30 20 percent from last year.”

Oh, that’s Rich and So Very Damn True because ALL of these corporations that spend Millions of Dollars lobbying OUR “Elected Leaders” to give them Billions of Dollars of tax breaks, subsidies and even direct access to the American People’s hard-earned money are part of the real problem in America not just “Big Oil,” but then it takes “Real Leaders” and not the demagogues that now dominate Washington DC that care little about anything but trying to gain advantage for the next election….while the American People be DAMNED of course!

Bastards!

Mark Perry also points out a TRUTH in his Carpe Diem blog about Oil Industry Profit Margins:

Oil Industry Profit Margin Ranks #114 out 215

“The table below shows industry rankings for net profit margin (profits / sales) of the top 114 industries out of 215 total industries during the most recent quarter, from Yahoo!Finance.

The top five oil companies (Chevron, Shell, BP, ExxonMobil and ConocoPhillips) are part of the “Major Integrated Oil and Gas” industry, and the CEOs of the “Big Five” are appearing today before the Senate Committee on Finance, to get grilled about the “taxpayer subsidies” and “tax breaks” they receive, explain why they deserve to earn record “windfall” profits, and explain the role they play in higher oil and gas prices.

As the table below shows, the Integrated Oil and Gas industry made an average profit of 6.2 cents per dollar of sales, which ranks #114 out of 215 industries by profit margin, and puts oil companies right in the middle of industries by profitability.”

Yes, STOP THE IDIOCY in Washington DC and instead of just focusing on “Big Oil” which is not the reason why Crude Oil prices are high….

(If you want to know the REAL REASON why Crude Oil prices are around $100 Dollars a barrel don’t call “Big Oil” before the US Senate, but get Uncle Ben Bernanke and his Federal Reserve buddies up to The Hill to explain why there is a DIRECT correlation with all their money printing (QE2), the decline of the US Dollar and the rise of ALL commodity prices include Crude Oil.)

US Dollar Chart – May 2010 – May 2011 – Finviz.com

And now the Crude Oil chart for the last year:

Crude Oil Chart – May 2010 – May 2011 – Finviz.com

….do away with ALL the subsidies, tax breaks and direct payments to corporations and let’s actually go back to REAL CAPITALISM in America!

What an Idea!  REAL CAPITALISM without Idiots in the Congress favoring one company, corporation or industry because they stuffed a few bucks in his/her pocket and a group of Morons that haven’t done an honest day’s work in their lives, Uncle Ben and his buddies at the Fed, propping up their Wall Street Masters to the detriment of the rest of America.

Oh, the vast majority of “banks” and people on Wall Street wouldn’t last five seconds in the Real World with Real Capitalism?

Yes, you would be right, but then capitalism doing what it does best, flushing out failures and letting the cream to rise to the top, would be a Very Good Thing for the American Economy and with Real Capitalism most of these Wall Street Bastards would be picking oranges, apples and strawberries for a living because most of these SOBs couldn’t turn Dollar One if they didn’t have the US Government and Federal Reserve backing them up and cashing out their bad gambling debts.

Let’s get America back to being America and that means that members of Congress need to kick the lobbyists and influence peddlers to the curb and the Federal Reserve needs to get out of the business of bailing out the Ivy League flunkies on Wall Street.

Since most of the US Congress has been bought and sold many times over and Uncle Ben Bernanke can’t go to the bathroom without calling Wall Street first don’t hold your breath on any of the above happening!

Tags: Uncategorized by Joe
Comments Off

For all of those economists, traders, commentators on TV and other lackeys that don’t believe the value of the US Dollar relative to other world currencies does not have a DIRECT affect on the price of commodity prices that are of course priced in US Dollars we invite you to join the rest of the people with IQs over room temperature in the REAL WORLD!

In the last week, no doubt due to some very strange doings or rather the folks over at the Federal Reserve and US Treasury realizing that their quiet and misguided program to drive down the value of the US Dollar and the inevitable rising of prices for commodities that happened DIRECTLY BECAUSE of the falling US Dollar was starting to hit Americans in the pocketbook causing someone woke the Hell up and said:

“Stop the US Dollar from falling before gas goes to $5 Dollars a gallon and we have a Second American Revolution on our hands!”

Yes, there is nothing that focuses the mind of an “Elected Official” or “Government Appointee” than the chance they might lose their cushy job, except of course for the government officials that have an even cushier job lined up in the private sector with one of the companies they have been shilling for while in government!

Here are the FACTS instead of the Absolute Nonsense you hear out of economists like Uncle Ben Bernanke that must have a real liking for the word “transitory” as in rising commodity prices are “transitory” (“transitory” if the value of the US Dollar quits falling that is which is the US Treasury’s job to monitor!)

Let’s look at two very simple charts and we can see not only how the recent stabilization of the US Dollar has calmed down commodity markets, but that commodity prices have been trading in a DIRECT inverse way for the past year:

US Dollar Chart – May 2010 – May 2011 – Finviz.com

CRB Index (Commodity Price Index) – May 2010 – May 2011 – Barchart.com

1. Notice in the above two charts of the US Dollar and the CRB Index that when Uncle Ben Bernanke started talking about cranking up the printing presses in June 2010 that the value of the Dollar began falling and the prices of commodities started rising.

2. Also, note that in November 2010 that the value of the US Dollar rallied for a few weeks and the CRB Index that tracks the prices for commodities went down over the same timeframe.

3. Next note at the beginning of 2011 that the value of the US Dollar started to fall again the prices of commodities started to go up.

4. Finally, note that since early May that the value of the US Dollar has stabilized in the 74 to 76 range that commodity prices have stabilized as well and even started to come down as traders and investors around the world look to see if the US Government is serious about holding the line on the US Dollar around its current value.

Yes, as the value of the US Dollar falls due to the out-of-control money printing at the Fed, of course commodity prices that are priced in Dollars would go up.  DUH!

That is Economics 101, something that most everyone at the Federal Reserve forgot long ago, but then the Fed and US Treasury were after something else when it comes to all this money printing and devaluation of the US Dollar and that was goosing the stock market in hopes that companies and the American People would think that everything is now “fine and dandy,” the economy is back on track and all of the unwashed masses could go back to watching American Idol….NOT!

Now, let’s look at that US Dollar chart again:

US Dollar Chart – May 2010 – May 2011 – Finviz.com

And now the Crude Oil chart for the last year:

Crude Oil Chart – May 2010 – May 2011 – Finviz.com

Surprise, Surprise as Gomer Pyle would say looking at the above two charts!  The value of the US Dollar and the price of Crude Oil are DIRECTLY RELATED and anyone that would deny that is either Liar, a Cheat, a Buffoon, an Idiot or a shill for the Federal Reserve and Wall Street which makes a fortune when there is a lot of volatility in the currency markets and thus they hate more than anything in the world a stable US Dollar.

Guess what 99.9 percent of businesses in America, especially one’s that sell products overseas want as it pertains to the US Dollar?

A STABLE US Dollar!

Yes, the Chinese are holding down the value of the Yuan, but then the Chinese are playing multi-level Chinese Checkers while the idiots in OUR government are playing Go Fish and taking a nap in the afternoon because they are sleepy after attending that cocktail party in Georgetown where the swilled wine with media types from Washington DC and New York that do a lot of things but do precious little of real news coverage of their buddies at the Georgetown and Upper West Side cocktail parties!

Yes, the value of the US Dollar is no longer just a thing that is of interest to central bankers and various other central planners around the world that rather enjoy thinking they are doing BIG things when they are often just making life very difficult and miserable for hard working folks (Cue the Federal Reserve in this spot with their interest rate and money printing lunacy).

The US Dollar affects EVERYTHING that the American People buy because the commodities that go into making EVERYTHING that the American People buy are priced in US Dollars and when the value of the US Dollar goes down the prices of commodities go up and the prices of EVERYTHING the American People buy goes up as well! (Except of course for IPads which are made in China for what we consider to be slave wages which makes any Federal Reserve Bank member bragging about the price of IPads going down a complete moron!).

Again, that is Economics 101 or rather in the case of the Federal Reserve:

The Idiot’s Guide to the Affects that Stupid Monetary Policy has on Commodity Prices

Value of US Dollar Goes Down = Commodity Prices Go Up!

Is that simple enough Uncle Ben?  If not, then Uncle Ben needs to retire to the farm with his HP calculator and count the number of eggs his chickens are laying….at least doing that will not destroy the lives of millions of Americans like the Fed’s current money printing policy is….see above simple definition on why commodity prices have been going up.

Here is another very interesting side-affect of the value of the US Dollar that must seem very odd to any American that invests in U.S. stock markets.

As the Value of the US Dollar goes down:

US Dollar Chart – May 2010 – May 2011 – Finviz.com

U.S. Stock Prices go up!

S&P Chart – May 2010 – May 2011 – Finviz.com

Do you see the DIRECT correlation again, this time with the value of the US Dollar and the prices of U.S. stocks?  Yes, it is very easy correlation to see and Nicholas Santiago of In the Money Stocks explains what is really going on here with the US Dollar, the Federal Reserve the “trap” that Uncle Ben Bernanke has put himself, the Fed and the United States of America in with all the money printing they have been doing and the debt that Congress and US Presidents have been creating:

“Look at what happens when the U.S. Dollar Index is let out of its cage and allowed to trade. The major commodities are plummeting today just as they did last week on May 5, 2011. The Federal Reserve and the current administration are starting to feel the heat from other countries, and many of the citizens that are living on fixed incomes in the United States, therefore, they are letting the dollar rally higher. When you think about all of the debt problems in the European Union regarding Greece, Ireland, Portugal, Italy, Belgium, Spain, and others nations it is still amazing that the U.S. Dollar Index is not much higher.

Since the middle of last year, the Federal Reserve has created about $500 billion worth of cash reserves. This is insane when you think about it. Money created out of thin air so that the stock markets can be propped higher. There is no question that the Federal Reserve will try and kill the U.S. Dollar again sometime down the road. That seems to be Ben Bernanke’s way of keeping the economy afloat. You see, the last time the Federal Reserve let the dollar trade was in the first half of 2010. At that time the dollar surged higher from November 2009 to June 2010. This dollar rally caused the stock markets to have their first severe correction. Then Ben Bernanke, pulled out the QE-2 ($600 billion U.S. Treasury purchasing program) and the major stock indexes started to soar right back up. What ever happened to supply and demand? Trading and investing for the long term now simply depends on the amount of money the Federal Reserve will create.

The problem that the Federal Reserve ran into recently was that commodities such as gasoline, and food prices have just become too expensive. People that know very little about economics are demanding that prices for things people need such as gasoline, and food, need to come down as they are no longer affordable.

Recently, Ben Bernanke, said that commodities were higher due to supply and demand. What planet is this guy living on? This is planet Earth, not planet Fed. What is this guy thinking? Doesn’t he know that a falling dollar, the world’s reserve currency, will lead to inflated prices for goods that people need to survive? Of course he knows, however, now he is trapped. Therefore, he will now allow the dollar to bounce a little and have these prices deflate before he drops the dollar again in order to inflate the markets back up. It has been a game of yo-yo for the Fed. When the U.S. Dollar goes down the major stock markets go up and vice versa. We can only wonder, how long will this game last?”

Well, if Uncle Ben Bernanke wants U.S. stocks to continue to go up in the short term then the Federal Reserve will have to return to doing more money printing after the Fed’s QE2 program ends in June and that money printing will again drive down the value of the US Dollar and drive up the price of commodities.

That is the “trap” that Uncle Ben and the Federal Reserve now finds themselves in, but when the Federal Reserve which is supposed to be running monetary policy and focusing on the dual mandate of inflation and employment gets involved in trying to drive up the overall price of stocks they not only have wandered far off the reservation and their mandate, but they are down to trying to pull rabbits from a hat without a hat in sight.

If Ben Bernanke and the Federal Reserve really wanted to help the American People then they would end their focus on the stock market and instead focus on stabilizing the value of the US Dollar which will then lead to commodity prices stabilizing which will then allow both businesses and consumers to look out beyond a month or two and be comfortable with what the future holds for them and their families.

Right now US monetary policy is being run by people at the Federal Reserve that are focused on one thing:  Serving their masters on Wall Street instead of doing what is best for the country and what is best for America is a stable US Dollar, not so much a strong US Dollar, but a stable Dollar that will lead to predictability, stability and finally confidence from Americans because they will know that another meltdown or big spike in gas or food prices is not on the way.

The BIGGEST problem facing America and the American People today is that We the People and our employers do not have confidence about the future and that is only natural after all of the Absolute BS that has happened over the last decade that was DIRECTLY caused by many people that are still in positions of power in our country today.  No, the people that F-up the country did not get tossed into jail, but instead got bailed out and are now the defacto runners of US monetary policy with their hands on the printing presses of the American Republic via their toady in Washington DC, Uncle Ben “I just love it when bankers get big bonuses because then they can buy big homes in The Hamptons” Bernanke.

Yes, it is time….No, it is past time for the Federal Reserve to focus on stabilizing the value of the US Dollar which means a complete end to all the money printing, which means a bump-up in the Fed Funds rate, which means a return to the core goals of the Federal Reserve which are low inflation and a reasonably low unemployment (with adjustments for the folks in America that just don’t want to work anymore for whatever reason which is a group that is growing in numbers everyday we are sorry to say:  The Missing Fifth, David Brooks, New York Times).  That is what will lead to a stable US Dollar and what will then lead to a prosperous American Republic.

Once the Federal Reserve ends all of the money printing and the US Treasury commits to a stable US Dollar then commodity prices will start to stabilize, the American People and American companies will start to become more confident about the future and somewhere down the road the value of the US Dollar and the price of U.S. stocks correlation will end and U.S. stocks will go back to being valued on their fundamentals instead of being valued on how much money a bunch a morons in a room in Washington DC decide to print.

End the Madness!  The Idiots in Washington DC need to commit to stable value for the US Dollar and demand that the Congress and President get their act together on all this debt that is being piled up in the name of the American People.

That is what will get the American Economy going again…and with real growth this time instead of growth created by lots of Funny Money printing by the Uncle Ben Bernanke “Green Ink” Gang!

Tags: Uncategorized by Joe
Comments Off

Please, can everyone just hold their cries of disgust and river of tears about Arnold Schwarzenegger and the “Love Child” that he fathered with the maid for the Schwarzenegger/Shriver household?

Arnold Schwarzenegger’s end, Politco.com

Most people with working brains knew that Arnold has been running around on Maria for years and if Maria didn’t know about Arnold’s “activities” then she is dumber than the sand on beach in southern California.

In the last decade several of us here at Mad As Hell And… got to see Schwarzenegger up-close and personal at various events, cocktail parties, political fund-raisers and other places where people like Schwarzenegger and Shriver tend to show up and our impression of Arnold long ago formed around the principle that Arnold will do or say anything to promote Arnold and that Maria Shriver is no different than the other Kennedy women that have let their husbands make fools of them for years now….all in the name of protecting future political ambitions of course!

The Kennedys, going back to good ole’ Joe Kennedy in the early part of the last century have been running around on their wives for going on almost ten decades now and Arnold is just another man in a long line of men in or attached to the Kennedy family that were having a great time with little concern for the impact it might have on their wives and children.

Everyone just needs to understand one basic FACT about Arnold Schwarzenegger:  Arnold Schwarzenegger cares about only ONE thing on Planet Earth:

Arnold Schwarzenegger

And unfortunately there were a few of us here at Mad As Hell And… that looked past Schwarzenegger’s faults where there were other solid Republicans in California that would have been great replacements for the hapless Gray Davis as Governor of California.  Gray Davis, as much as anyone else is responsible for the spiraling out-of-control pension costs in the now Broken State of California after he cut a sweetheart deal a decade ago with the public employee unions that care little about anything but getting their union members more money so more money can be sent into the union which will then get elected more Wacko Liberal Nuts which will cut even bigger sweetheart deals for the public employee unions…and the Wheels on the Bus Goes Round and Round until California is destroyed.

Arnold Schwarzenegger tried for about a year after he was elected Governor of California to try and reform what is an incredibly broken government system, but after his proposals were rejected at the polls to reform the state in 2005 (with lots of money being spent by the public employee unions that could care less if California is bankrupted or not, just as long as the union dues keep coming in) Arnold basically gave up trying do any heavy lifting to get California back on track but instead turned his attention to something that would get him lots of cheers from the Global Warming/Climate Change Nuts and their champions in Hollywood: the AB 32 the Global Warming Solutions Act, which will end up being the biggest job killer since Adam and Even were tossed out of the Garden of Eden.

Arnold Schwarzenegger was in the end a disaster as Governor of California…

(Columnist Steve Lopez of the LA Times has an interesting and very accurate take on Arnold in his latest Arnold Schwarzenegger’s lies have a familiar ring)

….and for the Republican Party in the state because the debt on the books was doubled, the yearly budget deficits continued to grow and the most basic things that a government is supposed to do well, education and infrastructure continued to crumble.

California needed a high-quality leader to replace Gray Davis as Governor of California and instead it got someone with a high sex drive, an insatiable appetite for applause and someone whose ego is centered around his latest poll popularity rating.

Arnold Schwarzenegger fathered a child with the maid of the Schwarzenegger/Shrive household?

Gambling in Casablanca?  “We’re shocked, shocked….!”

No, it just can’t be!  Please, either Maria Shriver was the last person on Planet Earth that knew Arnold was running around on her and was a first-class heel to boot or Maria Shriver is just like all of the other Kennedy women that talk a good game on feminism and women’s rights, but when you get right down to it they are nothing more than a modern day version of Tammy Wynette:

Now that Arnold Schwarzenegger’s political career is over Maria has no more reason to be Standing by Arnold and thus she is gone but please save us the tears and outrage from women everywhere because it was Maria that enabled Arnold’s behavior and if she really “cared about the kids” she would have been gone long ago……but then she wouldn’t have been the wife of a movie star or First Lady of California…would she?

Sound familiar?  Why yes it does!

Now if you want women that are real feminists and strong believers in women’s rights just date or marry a conservative women that will toss your ass out the door if she found out you were sleeping with the maid or having sexual trysts at the office and yes, she would have found out because she would not have been the last person on Planet Earth to realize that her husband was running around on her….or be stupid enough to hang around while it was going on!

As for our opinion of Arnold Schwarzenegger after seeing him close-up over the past decade several times and watching him perform, or rather not perform, as Governor of California, we would not trust Arnold to watch our dogs and since we were never big fans of his movies before he got into politics we rather doubt we would waste 5 cents on anything he does in the future  (Ironically, Schwarzenegger’s  True Lies movie with Jamie Lee Curtis was an entertaining movie, with Jamie Lee playing the wife of Arnold Schwarzenegger that was running around on the husband!  Oh that is Rich!).

Uhhh, now that everyone knows about Arnold’s lovechild with the maid (right under Maria’s nose without her knowing….right!) can the news media in America go back to covering REAL news that actually affects millions of Americans everyday…like unemployment, all the debt, the price of gasoline, food prices skyrocketing, the Middle East….anything but Arnold and the “lovechild!”

Is that too much to ask?  Oh, this is the American news media….forget that request, because there is “gossip” to talk about and maybe Arnold and Maria can get back together…..well, if Arnold decides to get back into politics….then there’s always a chance!

Cue Tammy Wynette!

Tags: Uncategorized by Joe
Comments Off