I can't help it...It's the truth!

"The U.S. government has never succeeded in collecting more than about 20% of GDP in taxes.... Our GDP is roughly $14 trillion today. So no matter how you organize the tax base, you end up with $2.8 trillion to spend. And you can't spend that much, because you've got interest payments and (gasp!) debt repayments to make.

Yes, that's right, America: You borrowed all this money, and our creditors actually expect to be repaid. Interest payments and principal reductions of our debt will have to come first and should total around $500 billion each year. If interest rates go up, we'll have to spend more than this. Sorry. That's the price we have to pay if we expect to maintain control of our economy and not allow our children to end up as house-boys and maids in Shanghai. That leaves us with roughly $2 trillion to spend.

Here are our current expenses: Medicare and Social Security are now spending $1.5 trillion and, if left alone, will quickly grow to far more than the entire tax base. The military spends over $700 billion (that we know of) each year. Domestic social programs (food stamps, Department of Education, etc.) cost $500 billion. Federal pensions cost more than $200 billion a year. So... we've got $2 trillion to spend... but our bills are running to $3 trillion per year, and they're scheduled to increase, substantially.

Thus, we will have to cut at least $1 trillion from the budget – immediately – and be prepared to continue cutting on discretionary spending and the military for at least the next decade. That will mean cutting about one out of every three dollars the government spends today. Unless we balance this budget, there's no longer any doubt our currency will be destroyed, our savings lost, and the assets of our country stripped by foreign creditors."

Porter Stansberry, The S&A Digest, April 22, 2011
  

Unsustainable!

"For the first time in modern history, the government is paying out more money, in cash, to citizens, than it is taking in taxes. We spent $2.3 trillion on direct benefits to taxpayers last year, while the government's total income was only $2.2 trillion. Roughly 60% of all Americans now receive some significant financial benefit from the government. Meanwhile, less than 50% of all people pay any federal income taxes. And roughly 10% of all taxpayers foot virtually all the significant income taxes levied."

Porter Stansberry, The S&A Digest, April 22, 2011

Gold, the New Currency

“Central banks are printing more money than they ever have, so what’s the value of money in terms of purchases of goods and services,” Bass said yesterday in a telephone interview. “I look at gold as just another currency that they can’t print any more of.”


~Kyle Bass, a Dallas hedge fund manager and member of the University of Texas Investment Management Co., the second-largest U.S. academic endowment’s board. Bass made $500 million on the U.S. subprime-mortgage collapse.

Three Coins Versus The Counterfeiter

"At one time in American history, the benefits of sound money and the risks of easy credit were completely understood. It was during the founding of our country… just after the Constitution was ratified.

The Second Congress of the United States passed the Coinage Act of 1792. The act established the dollar as the currency of the United States and defined precisely what a dollar was: 24.1 grams of pure silver.

To ensure the quality of America's money, three coins were taken from every major batch minted. Each year on the last Monday in July, the chief justice of the Supreme Court, the secretary of the Treasury, the secretary of State, and the attorney general witnessed these coins being assayed.

If the sample coins did not meet legal standards, the officers of the mint would be dismissed and the $10,000 surety bonds they posted would be seized. Further, if any officer of the mint was found guilty of embezzlement or of debasing the coins, the penalty was death.

Compare that system – where the most senior members of the federal government are in charge of maintaining the soundness of our money – with today's system. Under the current system, the federal government has become the biggest counterfeiter in the world.

Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke has tripled the monetary base of the United States in only two years. The dollar lost 50% of its purchasing power under Alan Greenspan. And since the dollar was taken off of the gold standard in 1971, it's lost 90% of its purchasing power."

Porter Stansberry, A Precious Metals Chart the Government Won't Ever Show You, April 19, 2011 

Gravity Wave Measurement

I watched Head Games on the Science Channel about LIGO's inability to measure gravity waves using light, even for years.

It just seemed to me obvious.

What if light is not a valid measurement of gravity waves?

What if light were affected by gravity waves also so that no change would be noticed by an increase or decrease in distance measured by such light?

Why do you believe that light is not affected by gravity waves, and, therefore, making it not a valid measurement of gravity waves?

http://www.ligo.caltech.edu/LIGO_web/other_gw/theorygroups.html

Retirement Diary

My intuition screams at me today.  I am not going to live past 70 years of age, whether voluntarily or involuntarily.

My family history of grandfathers dying at 57 and 62 years of age, and a grandmother who apparently died around 30, leads me to believe that I will not live to 70.  My present rate of physical and mental decline corroborates this.

I further rationalize that living in a continually declining state depresses me.  It is better not to stick around too long.  Maybe I will make myself the public example of the desirability of ending one’s life at age 70, if it has not already ended, regardless of how many years of declining life may yet be had . . . for the sake of me and the sake of my society.

Society and the environment cannot afford to have nonproductive persons hanging around for decades.  Something has to give.  We, the old, have to give up at the appropriate time and make way for the young and new persons.

Having brought clarity to my life in this way, this liberates and motivates me.  First, I do not have to work for others.  I have just enough to make it to age 70 with what I have earned and received fortuitously.  Second, I can get selfish and do what I want to do, since I do not have indefinite periods of time remaining.  There is my book, my website, my other business schemes and projects.  Who knows, maybe if I do what I want to do, I will end up making a lot more money in spite of not working.


 

Maybe we should love global warming...

We seem to have waited until the precise time that the Earth will be cooling down for 25 years to spend billions of dollars to take the very compounds out of the atmosphere that we need to stay warmer.

We humans learn what is going on after it is already changing.

Beality

Cut government spending or shut it down and go home!

Right now, Congress is at an impasse over $60 billion in "cuts" to an already bloated budget that will saddle our children with more than $1.6 trillion in additional debt this year alone.

But the fact is, these "cuts" represent just 1.6% of this year's federal budget which has skyrocketed 10.5% since last year and 40% in just four years!

These miniscule "cuts" would be like the average American family ONLY adding about $49,000 in unpaid credit card debt this year instead of $51,000 and then bragging about "cutting" spending!

Penny Nance, Concerned Women for America Legislative Action Committee