Tuesday, May 25, 2010

When Something's Wrong in Your Neighborhood Who Ya Gonna Call ? Headbusters!

While you might expect, no, make that take for granted, the thuggish display put on by the 500 strong SEIU Goon Squad who showed up recently at the home of a Bank of America senior attorney to terrorize his teenage son, shouldn't we at least expect the police to obey and enforce the law?

I've got two questions for the Goon Squad and their protectors in Blue. The first is: Who do you think you are? The second is: Who do you think you're fooling?

Let’s start with the D.C. Police who provided the escort for the 14 bus loads of SEIU Goons beyond the limits of their jurisdiction. Is it possible to escort someone if you don't know where they are going? I don't think so! Are we supposed to believe the Police don't know the boundaries of Washington D.C.? Do you supposed to believe that when the patrolmen reached the city limits they just continued on because they didn't know what to do next? Does anyone to believe they acted on their own? No! Someone in authority gave the DC patrolmen, who were present at the demonstration, an order to escort the Union protesters outside D.C. city limits and their jurisdiction, or else the DC Police department has a rogue unit that acts not on orders from their superiors but instead do the bidding of the SEIU. Either way it’s a problem, and someone needs to get to the truth.

Their actions were wrong, and we need to know who is responsible. What if you find yourself in Montgomery County and have an Emergency don’t you want to know who to call? Do you call the local police, the D.C. police or should you call the guys who are really giving the orders the SEIU?

The DC police who are backpedaling at light speed trying to deny any part in this outrageous behavior, are not putting forth a coherent argument. In an interview yesterday a spokesperson for the D.C. Police said they escorted the SEIU protesters only to the city limits, which they noted were only several blocks from the executives’ home and called the MCPD to meet them there in order to give them the “heads up” about the protest. A Captain from the MCPD says that after meeting with the DC Police at the city line they then responded to the incident at the home but did not witness anyone trespassing or disturbing the peace as the crowd was already dispersing. The Police officer’s story doesn’t add up! Is it possible that 500 union intimidation specialists filed out of 14 busses, marched several blocks, held their protest rally and did it in such short order that by the time the MCPD had completed their own journey of several blocks with their lights flashing and sirens blaring the rally was over and the peaceful union thugs were heading back to the Union Hall for some milk and cookies? Well no, not really, not according to the MCPD’s own 911 tapes which say that the DC police were on the scene and were in fact speaking with the person who had made the 911 call and was still on the line with the operator. Talk about not getting your story straight.

If any other organization, like maybe the Tea Party, had tried to dump 500 protestors in a suburban neighborhood, the MCPD would have been there in advance asking to see their permit and when they couldn’t produce what they didn’t have they would have sent them back to where they came from. Why the special treatment for SEIU? Why don’t the laws apply to them? Thankfully no one was sent to the hospital as a result of this rally. It’s not always the case when these goons show up in public; for some reason beatings seem to break out. Ask Kenneth Gladney, or Ken Hamidi or Dianne Feeley if you don't believe me.

It’s not like this was a spontaneous gathering of folks in the neighborhood, the Union knew well in advance that there would be a protest that day as one SEIU protester had bragged about flying in from California to join the merry band of Social Justice Merchants for the day’s festivities. He told his personal story of woe about how he lost his job and his house is in foreclosure. What was his purpose for being there? What was the Union’s real purpose for being there? What did he expect the general counsel of Bank of America would do for him? The last time I checked the bank was not unionized, so this slug wasn’t there for a job and he couldn’t possibly have been there for another loan, as his foreclosure status provides all the evidence one needs to determine he is a deadbeat when it comes to honoring his debts, and besides everyone knows the loan dept isn’t open on Saturdays.

These modern-day shakedown artists seemed to have taken a page from Willie Sutton, a notorious bank robber from the thirties who is quoted as having said, "You can't rob a bank on charm and personality," as there was certainly none of that on display that day. What we saw was arrogance and the ultimate in chutzpah. The SEIU went to intimidate a bank official from a bank that holds millions of dollars of the Union’s outstanding debt and they brought their own police escorts. That’s extremely rich, don’t you think?

Friday, May 14, 2010

A Good Dollar Bill Makes For A Sound Currency

It has been nearly 4 decades since President Nixon, in an attempt to win re-election, cut the US dollar loose from it's golden anchor in order to manage the economy towards a higher GDP number. Win he did, but for the rest of us that move has turned out to be a failure of epic proportions. Each market blow up and bust is accompanied by the usual frenzy of Congressional finger pointing that always leaves it's ten regulatory thumb prints on the economy,but never fingers the co-conspirators most responsible for creating the chaos, the current and former Secretaries of the Treasury and the Chairmen of the Federal Reserve.

While Bernie Madoff cools his heels in a jail in Butler, North Carolina for bilking the public out of billions, a much brighter future awaits those men responsible for causing trillions of dollars in damages to both private and public sector balance sheets the world over. They become highly sought after advisers, earning seven and eight figure paydays from banks ( Robert Rubin , Citi Group,) Hedge Funds ( Alan Greenspan, Deutche Bank, PIMCO and Paulson&Co,) and Private Equity firms (John Snow, Cerebus Capital Management,) a strange payoff for the economic havoc they have wrought with their calamitous monetary policies. The media who understand monetary policy even less sing their praise, bestowing upon them monikers like "The Maestro," while ex presidents exalt them, even going as far as calling one former Secretary of the Treasury the "Greatest Secretary of the Treasury since Alexander Hamilton." Comparing any of these monetary undergraduates to Alexander Hamilton, the man who defined the value of the US Dollar, is to slander Hamilton.

The idea that the US Dollar, the reserve currency of the world used in measuring the value of billions of transactions every day, should to rise and fall as erratically as an amusement park theme ride in order to manage economic growth is nonsensical. Those who preach that markets should set the value of the dollar fail to understand that this is not a monetary policy but is instead a lack of a policy. Finally the Pols who endlessly argue that a weaker dollar will make our exports more competitive should go back to washing cars or organizing communities or whatever other brainless endeavor they previously preformed. If they truly wanted to make not only our nations exporters but our entire economy more competitive there are any number of policies they could pursue, including but not limited to the following: reducing corporate tax rates, promoting free trade, reducing unnecessary regulation, oh and lest I forget,the most important of them stabilizing the value of the dollar.

The dollar is but a measuring tool used to determine if transactions make economic sense. The dollar's role is to translate the value of dissimilar products and services into money values called prices in order to enable comparison. Allowing large swings in the value of the dollar (from 35 dollars for an ounce of gold in 1970 to $800 in 1980 back to $250 in the late 90's and the over $1200 dollars needed to purchase a single ounce of the shiny metal in today's market, a five fold increase in the last ten years,) as has been our policy merely adds another level of risk to all but spot transactions. Infusing longer dated contracts, whether they be for goods and services or the use of capital as in bonds or equities with additional risk, serves only to increase the price of those transactions, causing many more of them to fail than would be the case with a stable dollar. This results in fewer transactions, less investment, slower economic growth and fewer jobs.

Congress needs to take back it's responsibility and once again ensure the soundness of the dollar. Congressman Ted Poe from Texas has a bill to make that happen. Read it here and show your support.