Digital Tulipomania?

Posted on November 22, 2013 by MN Gordon

“Quis furor, o cives!” – Lucan.

What a Hoot!

Can you recall a time in living memory when public life was so comically ignoble?  Everyday we’re greeted with a rib-tickling revelation about the nation’s number one man.  We don’t know how many more laughs we can take.

Not since Tricky Dick Nixon held high office has the American emperor suffered the wrath of a more frenzied pig pile.  However, Nixon was only partially responsible for his own fall from grace.  No doubt, President Obama owns all of his.

For instance, just this week we learned HealthCare.gov still doesn’t have a way to make payments to insurance companies.  From what we gather, this amounts to about 30 to 40 percent of the sites ultimate operation…and it still needs to be built.  What a hoot!

But the much larger, gut busting, knee slapper was the admission the Census Bureau fabricates the unemployment rate.  According to The New York Post, a fellow named Julius Buckmon has faked the survey results.  What’s more, “he was told to make up information by higher-ups at Census.” Continue reading →

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Playing with Fire

Posted on November 19, 2013 by MN Gordon

The great default is rapidly approaching.  Time is running out.  Like a runaway freight train…there’s no stopping it.

To start, the U.S. government is broke.  The only thing keeping the lights on in Washington is $1 trillion per year of Fed debt monetization.  Without it the Treasury could not pay the bills.

What’s more, it’s impossible for taxpayers to make up the funding gap.  The clowns in Congress have made too many promises, to too many people, for far too long.  They can’t significantly cut the budget or raise taxes…their reelection depends on spending money they don’t have on programs the people can’t afford.

Regrettably, things are much more grave and dire than most Americans know.  They’ve been told they could have a free lunch.  What we mean is Americans have been actively misled by the institutions that are supposed to keep the government in check.

Take the Congressional Budget Office, for instance.  Its official budget forecasts are mere propaganda for Congress.  They’re not doing their job.  They are blatantly misleading American taxpayers. Continue reading →

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Where Does the Money Come From?

Posted on November 15, 2013 by MN Gordon

This week revealed fresh evidence that things may get worse for the economy before they get better.  Obviously, this is not the direction we’d wish to see things go.  But rarely do we get what we wish for.

This new insight into the economy is provided courtesy of small business owners.  If you recall, small businesses are the lifeblood of the economy.  That’s why, when small business owners reveal their outlook on where things are headed we take notice…even if we don’t like what they see.

According to the National Federation of Independent Business’s Optimism Index, “small-business optimism dropped from 93.9 to 91.6, largely due to a precipitous decline in hiring plans and expectations for future small-business conditions.  Of the ten Index components, seven turned negative, falling a total of 27 percentage points.”

‘“Small employers are not fooled by headlines announcing record high stock market indices; everyday they live the economic realities of overregulation, increased taxes, weak sales and a government without any direction or plan for the future,’ said NFIB chief economist Bill Dunkelberg. Continue reading →

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Tomato Economics

Posted on November 12, 2013 by MN Gordon

No one quite understands what’s going on with the economy as far as we can tell.  Looking to government reports for answers doesn’t help much either.  In fact, the government’s economic data actually generates more questions than answers.

For instance, last Friday the Labor Department reported 204,000 new jobs were created in October.  Not bad, at first glance.  But what were these jobs comprised of, really?  And will they result in a boost to household incomes?

From what we gather, 53,000 of these jobs were in leisure, hospitality, and restaurants.  Obviously, more new jobs are better than less or no new jobs.  But, unfortunately, these are not the jobs people make careers of or can rely on to build family wealth.

What’s more, even with the addition of these jobs the unemployment rate rose from 7.2 to 7.3 percent.  Huh?  How did that happen?

According to The International Business Times the rise had to do with the difference between the payrolls tally and the household tally.  The payrolls tally considered furloughed federal employees as employed. Continue reading →

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