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What Is Going On With Washington and Our Money?

The financial system has stopped functioning because no one trusts anyone else. The rules are changed by the Treasury and Federal Reserve on a daily basis. It seems like every company in America has converted into a bank so they can acquire a slice of the taxpayer funded pie called TARP. The government has been using all the tools at their disposal to dig the country out of this hole. If they dig too far, the stimulus could blow up in a torrent of inflation.

Which Assets Are Toxic?

In the last nine years U.S. financial institutions became extremely creative with their financial "products”. They were encouraged by Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan who was sure that any regulation other than self-regulation would be counterproductive. In the bully pulpit was our first Harvard MBA President George Bush, proclaiming the benefits of free market capitalism while not being able to pronounce or spell derivative, let alone understand them.

Watching over the creative bankers was the eagle eyed SEC, which had just received accolades for the Enron and WorldCom scandals. This trusting bunch of morons, hoping to one day get cushy jobs on Wall Street, decided that the investment bankers should be allowed to leverage their assets 30 to 1, rather than the overly restrictive 12 to 1 that had been in place for decades. Their models, created by cock sure MBAs, assured them that nothing could go wrong. 

The final piece of the puzzle was obtaining a AAA rating for these new "products” from the staid old rating agencies Moody's and S&P. These two companies had a very predictable boring revenue stream. Their CEOs wanted a little excitement in their lives, and maybe just maybe, big bonuses and stock options. They decided to jump head first into rating the new indecipherable products. They also had their cock sure MBAs creating models which assured them that all was well. Surprisingly, after being paid billions in fees, the rating agencies provided AAA ratings across the board to all of the new investment products.

The Wall Street geniuses peddled MBSs, CDSs, and CDOs, to pension plans, cities, states, foreign banks, foreign villages, and anyone else who wanted to get in on the easy money. With AAA ratings, no one bothered to conduct due diligence and understand what could go wrong. The amount of derivatives outstanding rocketed from $40 trillion in 2000 to $684 trillion in 2008. It has been reported that 80% of all Credit Default Swaps outstanding in 2008 were speculative. 

There was no hedging going on. Wall Street had become a Las Vegas casino. Credit default swaps totaling $440 billion were written by AIG. These were pure speculative bets and the American taxpayer is still paying off. The bill is up to $160 billion so far. The executives at AIG must have exceeded their loss goals, because the American taxpayer is paying $165 million in retention bonuses to executives of the unit that nearly collapsed the worldwide financial system. Why would anyone want to retain these executives? If these people were asked, "How do you sleep at night?” they would respond, "On a big pile of cash”. 

The economy juiced by low interest rates, mortgage brokers handing out loans like candy, investment banks packaging thousands of worthless subprime loans into AAA products, auto companies putting deadbeats in Cadillac Escalades with no money down, and consumers sucking $3 trillion of equity from their ever increasing home values, appeared unstoppable. Home values doubled in five years. The Dow Jones reached 14,000 in October 2007, Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson was touting the fundamentally sound American economy, and Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke said there might be a minor blip from slight weakness in the housing market. As the economy was sailing along at seventy miles per hour it hit something in the middle of the road. A Bear Stearns hedge fund blew up. The Wall Street gurus and government bureaucrats assured the public that all was well.

Congress, the Treasury, the Federal Reserve, and two Presidents have tried to convince Americans that the financial system is no longer infected with toxic germs. They have committed $11.6 trillion of your tax dollars to try and make the system kissable again. It hasn't worked. They can pour another $11 trillion into the system, and probably will, but the trust in gone. 

The American public will no longer trust anything they are told by Wall Street, the Treasury, the Federal Reserve or Congress. We've been lied to, fleeced of our retirement savings, and now told to foot the bill for the criminals on Wall Street - for the good of the country. Enough is enough. The ruling elite from government and big business urgently want Americans to regain confidence and return to borrowing and spending. They again missed the train. Saving, frugality and living within your means are back. This will destroy entire industries built upon a foundation of overspending and debt. Too bad. Good old fashioned American individuality and love of liberty will revive the country, not TARP, TALF and whatever other programs the government tries to peddle.

We know what has happened in the last eighteen months. We still don't know what toxic assets still remain in the system we don't know about. The banks' balance sheets are a black box, they have billions in off-balance sheet "assets”, and the commercial real estate market is just starting to collapse. The ever optimistic cheerleaders on CNBC would rather extrapolate four up days in a row into a new bull market, than examine the facts staring them in the face. No wonder Jon Stewart had such an easy time obliterating Jim Cramer and the whole network.  Banks were handing out construction and land development loans between 2004 and 2007 at twice the rate of residential mortgage loans. With Americans losing jobs at a record pace, corporate bankruptcies soaring, and retailers bearing the brunt of consumer deleveraging, commercial real estate loans will begin to go bad late in 2009 and through 2010.

The dramatic rise in net worth coincided with the biggest debt bubble in history. Home ownership reached an all-time high of 68% in 2005. Stock ownership is still in the 50% range, so the downturn in housing values is affecting many more people than the 2000-2001 dot.com collapse. As you can see, home values fall but the debt remains the same. With at least another year of falling home prices, the number of people underwater on their home mortgages will reach 25 million, or one-third of all the houses in the United States. You won't hear Mustard Seed Kudlow or Mad Money Cramer telling you this.

President Obama and Democrats in Congress passed a $787 billion pork filled calamity that will contribute to an explosion of our financial system. Very little of this socialist's dream will help the U.S. economy in 2009. Vast sums will be allocated to unnecessary make work projects throughout the country. Picture thousands of Ralph's taking their time on construction projects while six guys stand around watching one guy using a  jackhammer. Every construction project in the country will be a union job. This means 40% more expensive and a 40% longer timeline. When the majority of this stimulus hits in 2010 and 2011, along with Bernanke's humungous printing of dollars we will hear a rumble before inflation erupts across the globe.

Oh The Humanity!!!

The American economy hit debris in the road years ago. Instead of pulling over and taking care of the problems before they became a crisis, our leaders ignored the problems. Government overspending, ignoring $56 trillion of unfunded liabilities, funding over-expenditures with money borrowed from foreigners, not addressing crumbling infrastructure, not creating a cohesive energy policy, and over-reaching in empire building were the fuel that led to our economy bursting into flames before our very eyes. President Obama and his minions in Congress scream, "Oh the humanity”, and take your hard earned money and redistribute it to the fools who created the tragedy.

It's My Life

Tomorrow's getting harder make no mistake
Luck ain't even lucky
Got to make your own breaks

It's my life
And it's now or never
I ain't gonna live forever
I just want to live while I'm alive
(It's my life)
My heart is like an open highway
Like Frankie said
I did it my way
I just want to live while I'm alive
'Cause it's my life

Better stand tall when they're calling you out
Don't bend, don't break, baby, don't back down

                                                It's My Life - Bon Jovi

The American people are at a crossroads. It's our lives, not the governments. The country is headed on a path toward government running everything in our lives. Now is the time to stand tall. Barack Obama, Ben Bernanke, and Nancy Pelosi can not make us spend money we don't have. We can force the painful restructuring of our economy on our politician leaders. They can stimulate, print, and urge you to spend, but we don't have to listen. We can throw them out of office in 2012. If the new set of clueless morons doesn't do what is right, we can throw them out too. We must heed the warning of Founding Father Thomas Jefferson.

"A government big enough to give you everything you want, is strong enough to take everything you have.”

With the help of famed financial blogger Rob Mulligan, I've pulled together a list of practical ideas to restructure your life:

• Bring your lunch to work. Savings of $1,000 to $2,000 per year.
• Buy 2 lbs of Maxwell House coffee for $6 at Wal-Mart and make a pot of coffee per day for a month rather than buying a $4 cup at Starbucks and save $1,000 per year.
• Stop buying things.
• Keep your appliances until they stop working.
• Realize that it isn't a competition with your neighbor to die with the most stuff.
• Mow your own lawn. Better yet, if you have kids, make them do it.
• Learn to embrace dandelions and crabgrass. Who cares?
• Wash your car in the driveway. Better yet, if you have kids, make them do it.
• Buy your next car and drive it for 10 years or 150,000 miles, whichever comes first.
• Buy a car that gets at least 30 mpg, as $200 a barrel oil is a certainty in the next decade.
• Tell your kids they are lucky to have whatever you give them.
• When you walk into a room and CNBC is on TV, switch immediately to When Animals Attack.
• Don't answer the phone - it's someone asking for something.
• Don't throw out your old sneakers - you can use them to cut the lawn.
• Turn the heat down to 60 degrees at night.
• Go to the poor man's Disney World, Wildwood, N.J. and save $4,000 for a weeks vacation.
• Eat out once per month rather than three times a week and you'll magically save $3,000 to $4,000 per year.
• Contribute into your 401k until it hurts. Picture yourself handing out yellow smiley stickers at the age of 80 in a Wal-Mart as motivation.
• Buy some gold, just in case.
• Plant a vegetable garden, just in case.
• Instead of spending $40 at the movies, go for a hike in a National Park like Valley Forge.
• Have a catch with your son.
• Understand the motivation of anyone who is telling you anything. Most people have an angle.
• When the guy in the Mercedes or BMW in front of you is wearing their hat sideways, your taxes are probably making their car loan payment.
• When you see that same guy pushing a cart with a 52 inch HDTV out of Best Buy, your taxes are probably making the payment to Capital One.