CFOs DON'T CARE ABOUT MONETARY POLICY

CFOS ARE LESS OPTIMISTIC
We received a "gift" from the Federal Reserve yesterday that included unending monthly mortgage bond purchases.  I have another post in the works to help examine the decision by the Fed and uncover what the impact will be on the economy and the market.  Before we delve in the Fed action, I wanted to highlight a new piece of information brought to us by the Fuqua School of Business at Duke University.

As usual, I present to you the quarterly release of the CFO Sentiment Survey.  The survey is important because it provides us a global and domestic examination of what CFOs think about the economy and also their own firm's growth outlook.  I like the CFO angle because these company leaders often have a more realistic assessment of true industry and market direction and how that will impact them financially and operationally.  I often suggest that CEOs can't help but spin and sell a positive outlook because they are wired to promote and push and therefore are often glass half-full (or sometimes glass all the way full) and CFOs tend to just look at what is in the glass.

Let's examine what the most recent survey stated.


SEPTEMBER CFO SURVEY - http://www.cfosurvey.org/12q4/PressRelease.pdf
CFOs admitted in this quarter's results that they are more negative than previous reporting periods.  The financial managers suggest that they have curtailed hiring plans and have reduced their spending budgets as well.  The executives also stated that their capital spending plans would not change even if interest rates fell another percent or two, which suggests that Fed policy to lower rates would have little impact on real companies.  CFOs also stated that they would not change any of their investment plans even if interest rates ROSE 1% which further underscores that the Fed's work is not really going to have a material impact in a traditional business environment.  Clearly the Fed is targeting housing and also attempting to provide banks with more liquidity.

TOP CONCERNS
I like the CFO Survey because it also asks the finance chiefs to list their major concerns.  This survey noted that profit margins, health care cost, maintaining employee morale, and finding qualified employees were their greatest worries.  Europe's recession is also an issue on their radar and very importantly we find that companies are concerned about governmental regulations.



DETAILED RESULTS HERE
I've cut and pasted an image here to examine the survey results.  You can see that this quarter's growth estimates have been reigned in significantly.  If you'd like to examine the pdf, simply click this link - PDF OF SURVEY RESULTS

JOBS AND THE FOOLISH FED
Ultimately, companies are slowing their growth and that includes their capital spending and hiring.  While we keep hearing that the Federal Reserve is acting to support "full employment" it seems like that is a "fool's errand".  Company leaders are stating quite clearly that interest rates don't matter and lower or higher rates won't impact their decision to add more headcount!

Recessionary concerns are important as US firms look across the pond and worry about economic slowdowns visiting our shores.  While the Fed continues to try to work magic, domestic firms are trying to figure out how to balance the powerful impact of greater governmental regulations and cost requirements with the ability to actually run their businesses.  FIRMS ARE NOT HIRING BECAUSE THE REGULATORY OUTLOOK AND MANDATED COSTS ASSOCIATED WITH HIRING IS UNCERTAIN.  The Fed can buy mortgage bonds all they want, but until government gets out of the way, regulatory uncertainty will be a critical barrier to employment growth in the next year.

GOATMUG

Goatmug is an investor that cares about you and your family. Goatmug's Blog - Financial Perspectives From The Mountain Top is a collection of thoughts on our economy and how it impacts the lives of investors and average people. While several specific investments are named in many of his posts, these articles are simply invitations for you to do your own research and reference to these securities does not constitute financial advice. Your situation is complex and unique and you should seek professional assistance with your trading and investing. Please visit Goatmug and share your comments athttp://www.goatmug.blogspot.com/

WHAT IS IT LIKE TO BE POOR?

WHAT'S FAIR?
I've been thinking about how our President continually describes people in the US as though they are treated unfairly and they don't receive everything they deserve.  Mr. Obama often suggests that "those people should pay their fair share", and I guess the assumption by folks that listen and believe his comments must believe that the "fair share" will somehow be spent on funding services for others, perhaps even themselves.

As readers know, I am absolutely fine with wealthy people paying taxes, I just want someone to tell me where the limits of "fair share" are and then make a constitutional amendment to mandate that taxation cannot ever exceed "fair share".  What I'm getting at is that Obama's "fair share" today may be 50% of earned income or 60%, but we all know that the amount will go up in time as entitlement programs and benefit services skyrocket and the need for revenue increases dramatically in the future.  In other words, without some cap, there will always be someone that thinks those rich folks don't contribute enough to the poor people.

WHAT'S IT LIKE?
I often wonder about the lives of the needy in our country as I tend to pay attention to the amount of services that are available to low income earners because my health insurance business often allows me to speak with desperate people that have no income that need medical care.  In my practice I am able to guide them to services and programs in our state that are available at low or no cost to provide medical care.  As I educate myself on these topics, I often find other services that are made available to our poor and down on their luck citizens.

WHAT CAN YOU GET FOR BEING POOR?
A recent article I found summarizes one program that I've known about for some time called the Lifeline program where people below the poverty level can obtain cell phones or phone lines.  The "grant" provided in this plan will cover about 250 cell phone minutes per month for free to the qualified user.  I found this program because I saw a commercial on television that was advertising to seniors and suggested that they could qualify for a free cell phone!

WASHINGTON FOOTS THE CELL PHONE BILL FOR OUR POOR

Obviously a program like this was started with great intentions, but as you read the article, you will find that there is some segment of the recipients of the program that have the services, but don't qualify, or have obtained cell phones at multiple carriers, therefore abusing the free system.  Ultimately those in either camp are stealing from the US taxpayer and our government oversight is clearly lacking.  As a cell phone or land line user, you pay significant taxes each month to fund this program, you should know about it and should be pissed off that the government assumes there is about $200 million in theft or mismanagement going on in this $1.6 billion program.

Ok, cell phones are paid for and we know that food stamps are available through the SNAP Program that I report on monthly. (See the most recent post where I outline that 46 million of our fellow citizens are receiving benefits - WHAT'S UP WITH THE PO' FOLK?).  We know that states offer Medicaid services for health insurance for low income earners.  We also have heard about housing benefits for those that live in low-income housing (section 8 housing).  Essentially, I'm painting the picture here that many of the basic and not-so basic needs of a person are being met for individuals and families that are below the poverty line in the USA.

Let's dig a bit deeper then and examine the life style of our poor.  I recently found a book that reveals several key statistics about our poorest and highlights while they are "relatively poor" they do live quite comfortable lives.  The life-style of many of these people is not quite like the poverty-stricken, dirty, and hunger-ridden life we might expect.  Scott Rasmussen's book, "The People's Money: How Voters Will Balance The Budget and Eliminate the Federal Debt", highlights some facts that illuminate just how well off our poor really are. - WHAT IS POVERTY IN THE US?

FOOD PROGRAMS -

• Parent report they have kids that go hungry  - (only .25% of US homes)

• 1% of households report that they miss a meal in the day

CAR OWNERSHIP -

• 70% report they own a car

• 30% report they own two or more cars!

CABLE TV

• 63% state that they have cable tv or some other tv service

Rasmussen highlights other items like the fact that 23% use TIVO, 50% have a computer, and 53% have a gaming system.  I guess where he is going here is that these are absolutely not necessary and they are considered luxury items....if you are really poor.  I don't really get to worked up about these, but I do get fired up about cable tv subscriptions.  Both car ownership and cable tv come along with monthly costs.  Clearly car insurance is expensive, but you can use a car to work and pull yourself out of poverty.  Unfortunately, cable tv expenses for our least fortunate is not defensible and is really the thing that makes me the most angry.  Cable bills can range from $50 to $200 a month and this service has become a "right" for our poor.  I've met and counseled many struggling families that need assistance with budgeting and debt management.  One of the first items I challenge them to cut is cable and you can't believe the resistance that I receive.  Perhaps I am nuts, but people that are poor don't "deserve" cable television, it is a luxury and that income could be spent wisely on anything else!

WANT THE BOOK?
Buy the book by Scott Rasmussen from our Amazon Link - The People's Money
(Oh yes, and if you buy anything from Amazon, please go through our search box at the upper right hand of our page!)

US POVERTY RATES BY RACIAL MAKEUP - http://ardd.sph.umich.edu/about_diabetes_disparities.html

• 25.9 percent for American Indians
• 25.8 percent for African-Americans
• 25.3 percent for Hispanics
• 9.4  percent for non-Hispanic whites.

CORPORATE PROFIT MAXIMIZATION
Unfortunately, we are a nation of entrepreneurs.  (I don't really mean unfortunately in that sense, I mean that we are so good at it we tend to over do it).  Because we have a system where the great big generous government will meet our poor's needs, we have created an incentive for corporations and organizations to try to maximize sales to the beneficiaries of these governmental services, that often could care less if there is waste or fraud involved.  We've seen this example with the Scooter Store, a Texas wheel chair company that misled senior citizens and filed many false Medicare claims.
http://www.justice.gov/opa/pr/2007/May/07_civ_344.html  Ultimately the Scooter Store paid millions to the federal government and the cause of the problem comes back to the fact that the users of the services didn't pay for them!  When you are spending your own money, you actually care how much things cost.

By creating programs that are paid for and "monitored" by the federal government, cell phone companies advertise heavily and attempt to maximize the number of folks using the "free" system.  This is why the Lifeline program is full of waste, companies are marketing to the user, not the payer, and in this case the payer has no limit on how much they will spend.  While I expect more from businesses and owners, you can't help but to admire a firm that recognizes there is an untapped opportunity to harvest gains in the business landscape by exploiting the demands of users who will not pay for the services.

MEETING ALL NEEDS WILL MAKE KEEP SOME PORTION OF PEOPLE.....POOR FOR EVERMORE
Is the welfare life a good life?  I don't think so, but maybe it is compared to working hard and receiving little or no incremental benefit for your labor.  In other words, if I find a job paying $8 an hour and I have to pay for my own cell phone, food, rent, and other basics by myself with no assistance, I may have a bit more money, but I'm worn out and haven't made any real growth.  I can imagine that this is the logical exercise that many participants go through when evaluating their decision to find a job or two or three.  If you are killing yourself and you are worse off compared to receiving benefits and not working, you'd probably make the rational choice to make less or give less effort.  I think this is the problem with making benefits so generous, it clouds the decision making process and makes the decision less clear cut.

The killer here is that if you provide just enough subsistence benefit to placate some people you will create generations of poor that learn to "work the system" and never get out.  I think the best example of this was New Orleans before Hurricane Katrina.  There were many families with three and four generations receiving benefits from governmental agencies providing for all of their needs.  This corruption of the system ultimately hurt an entire city of people that were stuck in a system of poverty for years and years.  Rather than changing the system and educating the public there, we created a legion of benefit experts that could exploit all of the provisions of social security benefits, welfare benefits and all other types of assistance.  Ultimately, the creation of an entire class of people in the USA that receive subsistence help forever was not the design of the safety net system.

BEING POOR....SHOULD SUCK
Finally, I know that this post may be perceived as a "rich goat" not wanting to share his money with the poor guy, and frankly it isn't.  What this post is about is that we as a nation need to determine what level of life-style we will support for our poorest men, women, and children.  If we decide that at x-income level we will provide food, shelter, healthcare, cellphone, cable television, and a car, we are going to actually attract a whole lot of people that decide that level of "minimum life-style" seems quite fine.  Bad incentives often result in poor outcomes.  For example, if we pay women more section 8 housing allowances, SNAP dollars, and other benefits based on the number of children they have, we'll probably end up with more poor children!

I'm attacking the notion that poverty should be comfortable.  Being poor sucks,.....and it should stink enough to prod the marginally poor to improve, work hard, and strive to become productive.  The problem with an ever-increasing demand for the rich to provide their "fair-share" through taxation is that government mechanism for that payment process is inefficient and sucks away a large amount of resources in waste (federal government cost, fraud, and time).  Federal programs have a tendency to get larger and larger and the aim of the programs should be to be so successful that their use declines.

Unfortunately we don't see declining participation in these programs as free money usually only attracts more and more free money takers.  I'd have less of a problem with many of these programs if they were tied to technical and vocational job training certification programs.  We hear from our large manufacturing employers that the skills they need are not met here in the USA and therefore they go to emerging countries to set up plants to find that skilled labor force.  Why not make technical job training programs mandatory to receive housing, SNAP, cellphone, or medicare benefits?  Why not make the poor life-style with paid housing, healthcare benefits, two cars, cable, a DVD player, game system, VCR, and monthly food payments a temporary program that lifts people up into the next group of earners and make a life long stay in an impoverished state a little less attractive?

GOATMUG

Goatmug is an investor that cares about you and your family. Goatmug's Blog - Financial Perspectives From The Mountain Top is a collection of thoughts on our economy and how it impacts the lives of investors and average people. While several specific investments are named in many of his posts, these articles are simply invitations for you to do your own research and reference to these securities does not constitute financial advice. Your situation is complex and unique and you should seek professional assistance with your trading and investing. Please visit Goatmug and share your comments at http://www.goatmug.blogspot.com/ 

CALLS FOR STIMULUS BEGIN AGAIN

EVERYTHING LOOKS LIKE A NAIL TO A HAMMER
Larry Summers, former advisor to President Obama in his role as Director of the National Economic Council, wrote a couple of articles this weekend stating that the answer to all of our problems must be "more stimulus". 

Unfortunately, economists and government leaders have this infatuation with the government and believe that the only answer for every question is "more government and more of my money". 


NOT SO ORIGINAL
Summers came up with two brilliant ideas that are absolutely not original;
1)  Increase the payroll tax holiday and expanding it a bit
2)  Greater spending on public works projects!

Personally, I don't agree with Summers that the payroll tax could have an impact in this environment.  Small business owners are scared to death of the potential for tax increases and more regulatory interference.  These worries all prevent them for taking steps to hire more and especially hire a person that would throw their company over the 50 headcount threshold.  Some readers may say that I'm over doing it and going too far.  I would simply reference the study on Health Care from McKinsey released last week that stated that as many as 30% of employers would drop health coverage and force their employees to use a government option in 2014.

ANY REASON NOT TO HIRE
What does health insurance have to do with a hiring decision?  A lot.  Health insurance costs are just one more justification for not taking additional risk in this scary environment.  Note also something that didn't get much play in the fervor after the study release.  When employers were extremely informed of the ramifications of Obamacare on their business, they stated that they were MORE LIKELY to drop coverage for their employees.  50% of these informed employers reported they'd make this decision.
This is pretty damning and will undermine the stated goals of the Patient Protection Act, the foundations were based on employers continuing to offer coverage, not shifting the burden to the government plan and exchanges.

Finally, our President quipped yesterday that we haven't seen as much job growth in the US because "shovel ready" jobs weren't really shovel ready.  The excuse made was that government regulations held up many of the projects that were slated to have amazing impact on the jobs markets.  Clearly, this acknowledgement rebuts Summers' notion that government projects could be a boon for the jobs market.  What we do know is that government stimulus and jobs does little in the long run to change the employment landscape.  We also know that too much government crowds out private sector jobs, and finally we see that the threat of more government keeps employers from hiring and providing benefits for new and existing employees.

Let's just stop the stimulus and get back to solid fiscal management of government and our out of control spending.  Many of the absurd policies made by the Fed and US Treasury are made in an effort to obscure our reckless deficit spending, let's not give them more reason to create inflation and unrest.

GOATMUG 

 

Goatmug is an investor that cares about you and your family. Goatmug's Blog - Financial Perspectives From The Mountain Top is a collection of thoughts on our economy and how it impacts the lives of investors and average people. While several specific investments are named in many of his posts, these articles are simply invitations for you to do your own research and reference to these securities does not constitute financial advice. Your situation is complex and unique and you should seek professional assistance with your trading and investing. Please visit Goatmug and share your comments at http://www.goatmug.blogspot.com/.   Please check in often as we are updating stories daily.

THE FALL

I am collecting my thoughts on what occurred last evening. I can only simply state that things are not what they seem and we have forcibly had our liberty taken from us. Once again I fear Americans have allowed freedom to be exchanged with "good feelings" and catchy slogans. Health care is not about health care, it is about taxation, revenue building, and growing government power. The size of our government is reaching the point where it will collapse on itself. It is not as though we don't have examples in our midst. Look no further than Europe to Greece, Spain, and the United Kingdom. The government cannot be the answer to all of your needs and desires without the cost of your freedom.

Large organizations only know that they need to be bigger. As a budget analyst for a large firm many years ago, I never heard a manager suggest cut backs and ways to efficiently use their resources. Managers always want more headcount. Is it odd to see that government acts the same way? Unfortunately we have leadership in this country that believes it can know what is best for all people despite years of data and outcomes that show they don't and cannot deliver on their promises.

Please read the following excerpt;

The story of the republic's fall (ROME) is one of the great lessons of history. It is one that Americans should pay special attention to; for the same permissive spirit, sensuality, and apathy have appeared in our midst today. Americans should consider the extent to which we have been unthinkingly cultivating our own destruction. "Surely, then," wrote Cicero after Caesar's assassination in the Roman Senate, "our present sufferings are all too well deserved. For had we not allowed outrages to go unpunished on all sides, it would never have been possible for a single individual to seize tyrannical power." At the end of this passage, Cicero concludes: "Here in the city nothing is left -- only the lifeless walls of houses. And even they look afraid that some further terrifying attack may be imminent. The real Rome has gone forever." [Michael Grant translation, On Duties]

This post taken from a great article by Jeffrey R. Nyquist - http://www.strategiccrisis.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=197:the-fall-of-the-roman-republic&catid=36:social-issues&Itemid=67

Goatmug

THE BEST CUP OF COFFEE EVER

I have to admit, the older I get, the more spoiled I am. When I was younger (college) I lived on a diet of Taco Bell, Top Ramen, and Keystone Light. You might be able to discern with that line up that I paid for college myself and you'd be right on. Fortunately, those items contain just enough of the four food groups to sustain me. I didn't eat or drink any of these things because they were awesome, they were simply life sustaining and served their purpose.

As I earned my undergrad degree, I became a coffee fiend as well. I often tried drinking coffee black, but found that coffee with a bit of that white powdered gluten laden non dairy creamer improved the taste. As I've aged, I developed a taste for better quality beverages and I often won't even drink coffe when half and half is not available. I've learned that I don't care for the manufactured taste of the powdery drink additive.

Why do I take this trip down memory lane? Yesterday I took a new leap. In the quest to create the perfect brew of coffee I purchased hand roasted whole bean coffee from a local roaster. I purchased organic turbino sugar, and also organic half and half. Why such a special concoction? I was celebrating the completion of several major work projects I've been tackling for months. (By the way, I would have never dreamed of making a cup of coffee like this in college). After grinding the beans, brewing the coffee, adding the sugar, and adding the half and half, I realized something was horribly wrong. Something was not as it should be. Flakes of creamy white rotten half and half floated to the top of my "perfection in a coffee cup". A few explicatives and a drive down to the corner grocery quickly rectified the situation, but as you can see I was clearly scarred by the experience.

What is the purpose of relating this story? Easy, things are not always what they seem. I bought the best of the best in all of the ingredients in my coffee. Unfortunately, organic, rotten half and half is still just as nasty as non-organic rotten half and half. While the packaging was prettier, the marketing better, the price tag greater, the end results were disappointing. In fact, after the entire ordeal, the results were probably more tragic!

I think that is a great starting point for our story of the marketing job our Fed, Treasury, world central banks, and two Presidential Administrations have served up. Recall that the problems over the last 18 months started in the following manner;

1) The Federal Reserve attempted to restart our economy after the tech wreck by lowering interest rates to stimulate spending. As usual, low cost money for a prolonged period spurred irrational exuberance, and a mis-pricing of risk. American investors felt that real estate was the new "money tree" and either gobbled up investment properties or used their home equity as an ATM for rampant consumption of stuff they didn't need or access to additional debt to buy other investments.

2) As more Americans borrowed and spent, more and more less qualified borrowers were wooed by President Bush's goal that 70% of Americans could own homes despite that the long term average percentage of home ownership in the US is 63%.

3) Realtors, mortgage brokers, mortgage lenders, and Wall street were more than happy to oblige these lower tiered borrowers and like a drug pusher helping an addict they continued to offer their wares.

4) As home prices continue to go higher the merry go round had all of the kids on board and so therefore there was no one left to keep pushing. Sub-prime borrowers began defaulting as mortgage resets hit them with higher interest rates and caused them to lose their undeserved homes.

5) As the tidal wave of defaults hit, Wall Street became a victim of its own success. Bear Stearns and Lehman Brothers exploded bringing down Wachovia and Washington Mutual. All of these firms were involved in lending to marginal borrowers or the securitization of pools of these loans. Merrill Lynch, AIG, and more also were involved in this mess.

6) The Federal Reserve and Treasury along with other world central banks stepped in and offered their fiscal support and immediately lowered rates again to near zero. Remember, these are front month rates and are the interest rates the government charges banks for overnight money. The Fed also bought toxic securities outright from troubled financial institutions and traded those assets for treasuries. Our government offered the TARP funds to help institutions and even made outright purchases of banks and insurance companies. (AIG, Citbank, etc.) We even used these to buy and lend stakes to great car companies like GM!

7) In concert with these actions our government also looked to perform direct support (cynics would call it manipulation) in the mortgage market and the treasury market. By guaranteeing and supporting the FHA the US taxpayer became the lender/insurer to 80% of the post-collapse mortgage market. With the announcement of quantitative easing by the Fed we began buying our own treasuries to try to keep prices low and contain rising interest rates.

8) The Obama administration got in the act and began programs like the Housing Tax rebate for first time home buyers, Cash for Clunkers, and now Cash for Caulkers. In addition, the federal government has continued its payment of extended unemployment benefits. In addition, as a country we are now running a huge fiscal deficit (nothing new, just the magnitude of it is) and our government's expansion has required us to raise the debt ceiling (allowable debt of the country) to $1.8 Trillion Dollars! This doesn't even account for the addition of any new health care program or new stimulus.

9) The accounting standards board (FASB) bowed to pressure from financial institutions and our government by suddenly recommending that accounting standards be thrown out the window. Clearly they were pressured and threatened that if they did not create new "rules" for accounting for troubled assets and balance sheet holdings economic collapse would surely follow. A better translation for this should be, "If you don't allow banks and financial institutions to continue reporting false values and lie the whole ponzi scheme will collapse". You know what, that is exactly what would have happened. Am I amazed that FASB suspended its own rules and took a break from truth telling? NO, NOT A BIT! Am I amazed that for a while I was duped to believe that there was ever any truth in the markets, truthfully, yes. What these accounting standards amount to now is that they are standards as long as they are convenient. When accounting standards are not, they are no longer required.

THIS SHOULD BE A WARNING TO ALL OF US! WHEN OUR FREE MARKETS AND FREEDOM ARE CONVENIENT, THEY WILL BE FREE. WHEN THEY ARE NOT CONVENIENT, YOU WILL HAVE YOUR FREEDOM AND FREE MARKETS SUSPENDED.

10) Finally, as we saw in the previous October post that was published in http://www.slopeofhope.com/ we see that the Fed unleashed its last desperate weapon, Dollar Devalution. I've posted that blog article here if you missed it PUBLIC ENEMY NUMBER ONE . This speech given in 2002 highlights all of Bernanke's contingency plans for a bust cycle. Guess what - he's done it all and now the bullets are expended.

Now don't get me wrong if you are reading this and saying that "Goatmug sure does hate prosperity and the government!", the truth is that would be absolutely wrong! What I do hate is waste, entitlement, theft, and intentional distraction and lying. I admire honesty, consequences, discipline, entrepreneurialism, and nationalistic pride.

My aggravation with the government's scheme is that it avoids almost all of the things which I've highlighted as worthy of admiration. As I've mentioned before, I believe that the government has done unprecedented acts and while it appears to have done amazing things, in reality has accomplished little but to raise asset prices of stocks, bonds, and commodities. We have not addressed the underlying asset destruction on the balance sheet of banks and in fact it has not forced them to write bad loans down at all. The FASB's actions simply reinforced that our approach would be to "extend and pretend" rather than taking a disciplined approach and closing these Too Big to Fail Institutions. We've allowed Goldman Sachs and others to literally use the US balance sheet and make billions while it would have been more economically reasonable to cut a check to each American family for $200,000 or more.

As usual, this post is way longer than I thought it would be, and I haven't even gotten to the main point. Therefore, I will highlight in the next post what has changed for the US economy due to the actions of our government and how they are simply surface level improvements. I'll outline how the global economy and its linkage will ultimately lead to a double dip recession or worse despite our best efforts.

I found this quote in a piece done last week by Chris Pulplava, who is also one of my favorites. If you are not reading him weekly on Wednesdays you are missing out. (By the way, he is quite bullish now, so please know that I read all perspectives and don't dismiss them when they don't agree with my point of view). http://www.financialsense.com/Market/daily/wednesday.htm

FDR’s Secretary of the Treasury, Henry Morgenthau came to in 1939 after initially being a proponent in massive fiscal stimulus to cure the depression and employment. His comments are provided below:


"We have tried spending money…We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started… And an enormous debt to boot!”

I wonder if that sounds familiar? We'll discuss what improvements have been seen in the economy and how they have been manipulated and engineered to create them. We'll also discuss how these improvements will abate in the next several months as counter-vailing forces moving to limit and undo the positive moves of the last 9 months. In other words, we'll put the economy to the "Best Cup of Coffe Ever" test and see if it really pans out to be as good as we envison it.

By the way, I no longer drink, I haven't eaten Taco Bell in 5 years, but MSG addictions and bad habits are hard to break. I must admit that I have a stack of Top Ramen Roasted Chicken Soup in my cabinets. God, family, great coffee, Tabasco, and Top Ramen are essentials for a fulfilled life. You might pick up a packet, heck even with inflation a packet is still 20 cents! (Remember when it was 12 cents?)