Vehicle sales may have been up, but only because manufacturers are cutting profits. Lower profits mean lower earnings and a lower stock market. Auto and truck production have been in a bear market for 4 years and only giving vehicles away has kept assembly lines open. Lower profits lead to lower tax revenues and ever-higher deficits, both federal and state. Holding the dollar higher with higher interest rates is a lose-lose proposition. The rates allow the Fed to have some semblance of control in a market it no longer can totally control. The current account deficit is not going down, it is still going up and the Fed well knows that if that $3 billion doesn’t arrive every day the dollar is toast. That forces the Fed to buy more Treasury paper, monetizing those dollars and driving inflation higher immediately. As inflation increases so do wages and interest rates as well as gold and silver. Unfortunately, that is accompanied by a downward spiral into recession. That is then followed by a further spiral into deflation and depression exacerbated by unparalleled debt.
While all this is transpiring we are losing the wars of occupation in Iraq and Afghanistan; Lebanon is in flames as its civilian population is exterminated and as the elitists plan to invade Iran and Syria. Anyone who doesn’t believe gold and silver are going much higher is just plain dumb.
The Department of Labor program does little to fund job training for the hundreds of thousands of workers affected by auto-industry layoffs and plant closings. What the Labor Department is doing is called “career advancement accounts” offering experimental grants to several states affected by the upcoming GM and Ford plant closings and shift reductions. This is so we can cut unemployment in India, China and Mexico. Under the grant program, workers would get $3,000 each, renewable once after a year, for job-related training and education. What a laugh - $3,000 isn’t nearly enough to move workers into quality long-term jobs, and would further erode an already weak system for reintegrating workers into the hollowed out economy. This is as cynical as it gets. Government simply washes their hands of a problem, which is part they fostered and created via free trade and globalization. What is even sleazier is that the announcement of the $3,000 payoffs comes just before the election. These people need counseling and re-education. They need a new trade or profession, not $3,000. What we are seeing is a play to dismantle established workforce-investment programs and slash $515 million for starters or 13% of their budget. This administration never ceases to amaze us. They are totally without feeling.
More than 2/3’s of the Army National Guard’s 34 brigades are not combat ready, most because of equipment shortages that will cost $21 billion to correct. The domestic readiness rating is C-1 and our units at home are under the worst rating of C-4. A Senate amendment was offered by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK) to add $7.8 billion for the Army and $5.3 billion for the Marines to the 2007 defense-spending bill.
Freddie Mac has complied with a request by federal regulators to limit the size of its portfolio in a bid to install greater financial controls. It will cap the size of its portfolio to 2% of the level at the end of June as they make a 3-year overhaul of their financial reporting system. The limit will remain until they begin releasing quarterly statements again. Fannie Mae is under similar constraints.
The Fed has to have competitive interest rates to continue to draw $3 billion a day from foreigners to keep the US solvent. It was expected that the ECB would raise rates, but not the Bank of England. Those quarter point increased lend further weight to a ¼% Fed increase this month.
What happens to a general who turns a military detention camp into a center for the torment of prisoners and then keeps exporting those vile practices to other US prisons until their exposure sickens the world? If the general works under President Bush, he is whitewashed of any blame, protected from even the mildest reprimand, and, finally, retires honorably with the military’s highest non-combat medal pinned to his chest.
This is what happened to Major General Geoffrey D. Miller, the Guantanamo Bay commandant who helped organize centers in Afghanistan, Abu Ghraib and a score of other secret prisons. These were centers of torture, abuse, rape and murder. The general should really be proud of himself for carrying out orders written up and executed by George and the neocons. What a horrible state of degradation our government is in. We recoiled in disgust when this human slime was given a medal for “exceptionally meritorious service to the government. What a perversion of our once proud nation; a nation now run by perverts and madmen.
This honor demeans and dishonors our real heroes. Perhaps we should build a statue to this snake with him attaching electrodes to the genitals of his male and female victims. America can never be the same again, we have lost our soul.