Shocking Revalations about Giant Ponzi Scheme

The financial world is reeling from another body blow delivered by native son, Bernie Maddof , who stands accused of orchestrating a record breaking Ponzi scheme. 

A Ponzi scheme involves paying established “investors” with money taken from new investors to perpetuate a ”business” that does not actually generate promised returns. The only way to prolong the scheme  is to continually bring in new investor money. The sham collapses when “management” can no longer bring in new “investors.”

President Bush  announced today that he will usurp the  ”power of the purse”  given to Congress by the Constitution, by giving  $14 Billion to the auto industry.

Bush  will take money from taxpayers ( investors ) and use the money to sustain two sham companies, GM and Chrysler, which, like Madoff Securities, exist not to enrich shareholders but to sustain the parasitic UAW. In 4 months they will need more cash or they will be forced to declare bankruptcy.

Absent the halo of government benevolence that accompanies all extra constitutional redistribution of wealth these days, what exactly is the difference between White House actions today the actions Bernie Madoff was arrested for?

Obama Disappoints the Left – by Rich

Obama is now backing away from his plan to repeal the Bush tax cuts.  His campaign promise to pay for $4 trillion in new spending by squeezing the filthy rich (aka those making more than $250k a year) and repealing Bush’s modest tax cuts to the rest of us seemed sound.  Astonishingly though, It turns out that raising taxes on anyone in the middle of a recession is not such a hot idea.  Reality intrudes and the tax cuts stay.

This actually seems to be part of a larger pattern as Obama transitions into office and, as a conservative, I couldn’t be more pleased.  As he fills out his cabinet and makes other appointments, I get the distinct feeling that we could possibly have done worse in some ways if McCain had won.  Don’t get me wrong: I fully expect my conservative sensibilities to be deeply offended before long.  But it’s interesting that the guy who ran around the world talking about bankrupting the coal industry, raising a civilian army (?), closing Gauntanamo, and causing the oceans to recede appears to be preparing to govern from the center.  Funny how things change when you actually have to make the decisions that effect 300 million people’s lives.

Which brings me to President Bush.  Liberals love to pronounce him the “Worst President In The History Of Our Country.”  And possibly in the history of the universe!  Of course history will be the judge of that.   And history’s judgment will be based in part on the fact that our country hasn’t been attacked in more than seven years.  I was thinking of this as I was reading Mark Steyn’s excellent column on the intricately planned terrorist attack in India this week. 

As Steyn points out, there is a reason why this hasn’t happened in America recently.  And it’s because when he’s not shredding copies of the constitution and listening in on my phone calls, President Bush is making the hard decisions that are necessary to protect our country.  Obama will have to decide if he is going to honor every promise he’s made to those on his far-left flank, or if he’s going to make the same difficult decisions that President Bush has made in order to keep us safe. 

It’s probably too much to expect Obama to keep Guantanamo open, but I look forward to the reaction from his multitudes of liberal fans when they discover that his foreign policy is not the ”change” they were hoping for.  Faced with out current reality, liberal dreams of “hope” and “change” will likely be dashed.  And many of President Bush’s decisions will be validated as Obama decides he has no choice but to continue with the status quo.

The Axis of Socialism

Politicians, especially liberals, always say “it’s not a slippery slope” when it really is.

Recent government interference in the markets aimed at supressing  the inevitable effects of our collective financial excess,  offer a shocking example of this principle in practice.

Members of Congress were apparently deluged with opposition to the initial $700 billion government “bailout” of the credit markets.  Just days later and incredibly hundreds of billions of dollars in additional spending later, the bills passed; our outrage exhausted.   

A few more days of bad fianncial news spawned a new plot to make banks part of the Federal Government for a mere $250 billion; an awesome amount of money to which the public had in the course of a few days become completely desensitized.

Whatever pillar of the economy the Bush, Paulson, Bernanke, Axis of Socialism next propose to annex, expect disinterested yawns from a tired and numb middle class.