Category: Economy

The President recently signed his new Wall Street regulations into effect. Huffington Post cheered Obama’s self-congratulatory words as he put his signature to paper;

Reveling over a new milestone in his presidency, a triumphant Barack Obama on Wednesday signed into law the most sweeping overhaul of lending and high-finance rules since the Great Depression, adding safeguards for millions of consumers and aiming to restrain Wall Street excesses that could set off a new recession.

So who is paying for it? Well over the last few months, every investment company which I use, save one, has jacked up my fiduciary fees, which means less of my money is being invested and I’ll have less money when I finally use it.

I’m not surprised and you can hardly blame those companies, after all they have to pay employees, but this another burden on the economy and another unnecessary burden on tax payers.

I only mention this because I just got another notice from a company I thought would avoid jacking up my fees and they didn’t.

Last month I wrote that Big Business is afraid to hire new employees because of the climate Washington has created in the business world. Today, the Washington Post announces that Big Business is sitting on a huge mound of cash – pretty much because of the reasons I mentioned in the earlier post;

The answer to that question has become a political flash point between the White House and big business groups such as the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which held a jobs summit Wednesday and accused the Obama administration of dumping onerous regulations on businesses. That has created an environment of “uncertainty,” which is causing firms to hold back on hiring as the unemployment rate has hovered near 10 percent, the Chamber said.

The White House countered that companies are wary of hiring not because of new regulations but because they’re still waiting for consumer demand to return. The administration also claimed credit for 3.5 million jobs created by the stimulus bill from last year.

Big Business is waiting for those taxes to hit on January 1st. They’re also waiting for the new higher healthcare premiums that they’ll have to pay for their employees. And who knows what else will be streaming down the pike when the Democrats lose in November and they only have a month to jam through more anti-prosperity legislation through to the President’s desk.

As for those three million jobs the White House claims they’ve created, the Wall Street Journal says this;

This is called a counterfactual: a what would have happened scenario that can’t be refuted. What we do know is what White House economists at the time said would happen if the stimulus didn’t pass. They said the unemployment rate would peak at 9% without the stimulus (there’s your counterfactual) and that with the stimulus the rate would stay at 8% or below. (See the nearby chart.) In other words, today there are 700,000 fewer jobs than Ms. Romer predicted we would have if we had done nothing at all. If this is a job creation success, what does failure look like?

That’s what I’m thinking.

The NASDAQ or S&P 500 doesn’t look any better – trust me. Manufacturing has slowed, as well as home sales. We’re out here on a ledge while Greenspan tells us this is normal and tries to talk us in.

A year and a half into this administration and they’re telling us that they need more government spending to fix it. More taxes for all working Americans and more debt. More regulation. More uncertainty.

Me? I’m still plowing my money into stocks – I’m buying cheap shares and it has has to recover sometime in the next 10 years. I hope.

I’ve kept my mouth shut about unemployment, giving the President the benefit of the doubt – one can only wish the media would do the same sometimes instead of falling on their swords for him. Yes, jobless claims rose AGAIN this week, another 12,000 people on the unemployment line. But the media is calling it “unexpected”;

New claims for jobless insurance benefits in the United States rose unexpectedly for the second straight week, the government said Thursday on concerns unemployment may derail the economic recovery.

Claims climbed to 472,000 in the week to June 12, an increase of 12,000 from the previous week’s revised figure of 460,000, the Labor Department said.

Most economists had expected claims to fall to 450,000.

You know why God created economists? To make palm readers look accurate in their predictions.

What can you really expect when employers are worried about the tax coming for their health care plans and coverage. When everyone is expecting their utility bills to jump because of Cap and Tax and the oil spill in the Gulf. When everyone’s income taxes are making a leap in six months. Do you really think that employers are going to hire in a climate like that?

And, oh, I filed my income taxes in February and still haven’t got my $5000 refund – I wonder what the Hell that’s about. I sure could use that money to pay some contractors to do some work on this house – you know, employ some people.

You probably heard the little bit from the President yesterday when he said he expected a “Thank You” for all of the wasteful and unnecessary spending he’s inflicted upon us in the last year or so. Our buddies at No Sheeples Here put together this video to illustrate the problem;

I’m a single issue voter – besides veterans and defense – and that’s on taxes. I’ll admit that I did good on taxes this year, but only because I paid cash for a new first house and a new car after saving my pennies thanks largely to the Bush tax cuts. Those tax cuts end this year and it’ll hit mostly low income earners who will pay taxes for the first time in ten years. Other low income earners will have their income taxes increase by 50% – from their 10% marginal rates to 15%.

That is tax increase anyway you look at it. Of course, that paltry $16/month tax break we got last year won’t cushion the income reduction we’ll all feel next year. And the President is somehow “amused” about that.