The Cynical Economist

You Paid for It! Stimulus Dollars Fund Studies into Sexual History and Erectile Dysfunction

The NBC Investigative Unit has raised questions about two grants totaling nearly $1.5 million dollars distributed to the University of California San Francisco. The money was part of the federal stimulus program and went to studies into the erectile dysfunction of overweight middle aged men and the accurate reporting of someone’s sexual history.

HHS Sends $5.9 Million to Program Run by Obama Buddy

The Department of Health and Human Services last week announced it had awarded a $5.9 million grant to a University of Chicago Medical Center program tied to Michelle Obama and run by Eric Whitaker, one of President Obama’s closest friends.

The Urban Health Initiative, which received the award, was originally based on a smaller program launched during the last decade by Michelle Obama, who was an executive at the University of Chicago Medical Center before she departed to become first lady. The UHI is headed up by Obama basketball and golf buddy Whitaker, who has known the president since Obama’s days in law school and who also vacations with the first family

Barack Obama’s convenient Wall Street hypocrisy

PUBLIC EMPLOYEES SECOND ONLY TO FINANCIAL PROS IN FRAUD, STUDY SHOWS

Government workers are among the employees most likely to cheat their employers, according to a new study.

The Association of Certified Fraud Examiners (ACFE), the world’s largest anti-fraud organization, found that public-sector administration employees are responsible for more than 10 percent of fraud cases, ranking behind only financial professionals. In 141 cases examined, the group found that a crooked employee costs taxpayers a median loss of $100,000.

Union Bosses’ Hypocrisy

The leaders of America’s unions have been very vocal lately in their criticism of Republicans and of business. According to them, Republicans care only about the wealthy and are unfairly targeting the workers of America with their reforms. These union leaders insist that only they can speak for regular Americans. In fact, their own salaries suggest that they have nothing in common with the average citizen. Here is a short list of some of the highest-earning, and most hypocritical, union presidents:………

DEVASTATING GRAPH REVEALS OBAMA’S UNEMPLOYMENT ECONOMY

Of the 13.3 million Americans who were unemployed in the first quarter of 2012, a staggering 29.5% have been out of work for 52 weeks or more (the official definition of long-term unemployment).   As the Pew Charitable Trusts point out, that works out to roughly 3.9 million people, or more than the population of Oregon.

The Fraud Of Austerity

When the current economic crisis began — largely caused by a government-created housing bubble — we were told that if the government spent an extra trillion dollars or so and ran up the deficit, all would be well. Did it work as advertised in the United States? No. In the United Kingdom? No. In France? No. In Italy? No. In Spain? No. And not even the left wants to talk about Greece.

The chart below shows that rather than the austerity the left is whining about, government spending has risen as a share of gross domestic product (GDP) in all of the major economies. Again, the left said unemployment rates should have come down by now, but the opposite is happening. The U.S. “official” unemployment rate has come down slightly, but the percentage of the labor force at work continues to decline, so the real unemployment rate is approximately 15 percent.

50 Years Of Government Spending, In 1 Graph

Of each dollar the federal government spends, how much goes to defense? How much goes to Social Security? How much goes to interest on the debt? And how has this sort of thing changed over time?

The graphic below answers these questions. It shows the major components of federal spending 50 years ago, 25 years ago, and last year.

Florida says 180,000 non-citizens may be on voter rolls

Florida election authorities are examining about 180,000 people who they say may not be U.S. citizens but are registered to vote in the state, an official said on Friday.

Project Veritas exposes non-citizens, dead people registered to vote in NC 

Federal Workers’ 2011 Salary Data Exposed Online

Can California Be Fixed?

To sum up why California has yet another deficit — this time a $16 billion whopper — is pretty easy: The number of demonized one-percenters who pay over 10 percent in their salary to the state has been shrinking, as thousands flee with their ideas, energy, business, and capital to nearby no-tax states, and others make less money due to more and more costs and regulations — while the number of those receiving all sorts of state housing, food, medical, education, and legal support is soaring

GEORGIA WELFARE DOLLARS SPENT AT CASINOS, LIQUOR STORES, SIX FLAGS

Obama’s Budget Would Double the Interest Rate on Student Loans–After the Election

President Obama’s fiscal 2013 budget proposal would double the interest rate on federally backed student loans from 3.4 percent to 6.8 percent–eight months after the November presidential election.

The White House fiscal year 2013 plan calls for maintaining the current 3.4 percent interest rate for federally guaranteed student loans, but only through July 1, 2013, at which point it would automatically increase to 6.8 percent. Neither the president’s plan nor the Democrats’ legislation would extend the low rate beyond another year.

Be sure to watch to the end. Explains in part why we are in such a mess now.

The crooks and liars got legit one way or another…The rest of the American people… well sucks to be us.

It seems, that the majority of our society is already dumbed down way too much to figure out how to stop their reign over us.

Yep, we let all the politicians, crony capitalists, banksters, the “exceptional intellectuals”, and corrupted bureaucrats to control and screw our and our kids lives.

BTW after watching the video just think of who is going to pay for the “mistake” of underestimating the cost of Obamacare with almost a TRILLION DOLLARS.

And who is going to be held accountable for such a HUGE number? For sure not the a$$#@!*s who passed that thing into law…

And since when a project that the government handles cost as much as it was planned?

NEVER!

The CBO would have done a better estimation by multiplying everything by factor of at least  X5

Who had interest of passing that law? The common man? Um hum…

Or are they the same people who had interest of installing the naked scanners at the airports, or got the bank bailouts because they were sure they knew what they were doing BETTING billions of dollars, or start green businesses so they were to get millions in grants, or the politicians that deliberately made us debt slaves by giving to their friends our money?

Or all of the above?

Step by step the elite and their puppets are legitimizing their crimes against the rest of us.

Ehhhhhhhhhh, what do they care….. After them …the deluge…

Obama’s Top Campaign Bundlers Among State Dinner Guests (after the jump there is a list with names and companies)

The list include Hollywood producer Harvey Weinstein, Vogue editor-in-chief Anna Wintour, media mogul Fred Eychaner, Pfizer executive Sally Susman, Stoneyfield Farms president and CEO Gary Hirschberg,  and Microsoft executives Suzi Levine and John Frank.  Several have each raised more than half a million dollars for 2012, according to estimates provided by Obama’s campaign.

From Money Morning

BY DAVID ZEILER, Associate Editor, Money Morning

Never mind the $15 trillion national debt; the government blew $592,000 on a study last year to figure out why chimpanzees throw poop.

That’s just one example of government waste described in a recent book by Sen. Tom Coburn, R-OK. His “Wastebook 2011″ features 100 examples of needless or ill-advised government spending.

It adds up to $6.9 billion that America can’t afford. And while such waste is just a fraction of the federal government’s $3.8 trillion budget, a country that needs to borrow 36 cents of every dollar it spends should not be throwing money away on non-essential research.

Like why chimps throw poop.

Here are 17 other things the government wasted tax dollars on last year:

17 Ways Government Wastes Your Money

1. Exporting Elmo: The U.S. Agency for International Development provided $10 million to a Pakistani arts organization to adapt “Sesame Street” for Pakistani toddlers. The money will also help pay for the creation of 130 episodes of the show.

2. Dragon Robots for Preschoolers: The National Science Foundation spent $131,000 on robot dragons designed to mimic human responses to help teach preschoolers language skills. Apparently interaction with real humans was deemed inadequate.

3. Virtual Mummies: Thanks to a $25,000 federal grant, visitors to the Milwaukee Public Museum will now be able to experience a “3-D high-definition, full-color true holographic or holographic-like exhibit of a virtual mummy unwrapping.”

4. Dead Man’s Party: Those who complain federal employment benefits are already too generous won’t be pleased to learn that many government workers keep receiving payments long after they’ve died. The Inspector General for the U.S. Office of Personnel Management says “the amount of post-death improper payments is consistently $100-$150 million annually, totaling over $601 million in the last five years.”

5. Cowboy Poetry: It’s hard to recall John Wayne reciting verse in any of the many Westerns he made, but cowboy poetry is a big enough phenomenon to have its own annual celebration. And this year taxpayers helped pay for it courtesy of a $50,000 contribution from the U.S. government.

6. Promiscuous Quail: The National Institute of Health gave the University of Kentucky $176,000 to determine if Japanese quail are more likely to have sex when high on cocaine. The study is scheduled to last through 2015.

7. Happiness is … Social Media: Another National Science Foundation grant for $198,000 paid for a University of California-Riverside study of “motivations, expectations and goal pursuit in social media.” Among the questions the study seeks to answer: “Do unhappy people spend more time on Twitter or Facebook?”

8. Guilty Pleasure: The federal government gave the Hawaii Department of Agriculture $50,000 to help pay for the 2nd Annual Hawaiian Chocolate Festival. The goal is to “highlight the culinary talents and products specifically linked to Hawaii’s chocolate industry.”

9. O Christmas Tree: The U.S. government spent $74,000 last year to help the state of Michigan “increase awareness about the role Michigan plays in the production of trees and poinsettias.” Michigan’s $40 million Christmas tree industry already ranks third in the nation.

10. High on Pizza: A private company was given $484,000 by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development to build a Mellow Mushroom pizzeria in Arlington, TX. Mellow Mushroom is a national chain known for its use of hippie and drug themes.

11. Tips for India: The National Science Foundation wants to help politicians in India do a better job. So it is awarded a $426,000 grant for research to determine the effectiveness of communications to citizens from officeholders. The U.S. sent $126 million in aid to India last year, even though it is one of the fastest growing economies in the world.

12. Art for Italians: The State Department contributed $350,000 for the United States to be part of the 54th International Art Exhibition in Venice, Italy. No word on how much the exhibit enhanced U.S. international relations.

13. Jobs for Barbados: The mixed success the government has had creating jobs here in America did not discourage the U.S. Agency for International Development from spending $1.35 million on an “entrepreneurship initiative” for the Caribbean island nation of Barbados. The U.S. unemployment rate has been over 8% for three years.

14. Video Game Powerups: A video game promotional organization in Massachusetts landed $100,000 to help developers create intellectual property and help businesses get access to capital. Video game development is a $2 billion industry in Massachusetts.

15. What Were They Smoking: The Virginia Commonwealth University received $55,000 in 2011 (part of a larger $170,000 grant) to study changes in the hookah smoking habits of students in the nation of Jordan. Among other things, the study sought to answer the question: “How many Jordanian students believe that water pipe tobacco smoking is more harmful than cigarettes smoking?” (Answer: 62.2 percent).

16. Chinese Puzzle: The Chinese economy is second only to that of the United States. And China holds billions of dollars in U.S. debt. So the U.S. government sent $17.8 million in aid to China last year to improve the Asian giant’s social services and clean up its environment. That makes sense, right?

17. Do You Believe in Magic: Did you know there is an American Museum of Magic in Marshall, MI? Well, the magic museum made $147,000 of your tax dollars disappear last year. The purpose of the federal largesse was to help the museum “better understand its various audiences and their potential interest in the history of magic entertainment.”

By the way, the researchers studying why chimps throw poop have theorized that it’s a form of communication. Maybe they’re trying to send a message to Washington.

 Welcome to our brave new world, where we will live in  a repressive and controlled state, where the authority will be monitoring our every move, where nowhere is going to be safe from the big brother’s eye, where the thought police can treat us as a criminals…

 FBI warns of threat from anti-government extremists - 

 Anti-government extremists opposed to taxes and regulations pose a growing threat to local law enforcement officers in the United States, the FBI warned on Monday.

These extremists, sometimes known as “sovereign citizens,” believe they can live outside any type of government authority, FBI agents said at a news conference.

The extremists may refuse to pay taxes, defy government environmental regulations and believe the United States went bankrupt by going off the gold standard.

Never Let A Crisis Go To Waste: Holder Uses Fast And Furious To Push Congress For Stricter Gun Control Laws… - 

Attorney General Eric Holder attributed the difficulty preventing gun-trafficking into Mexico to weak gun controls laws, when he blamed on the U.S. House, with particular reference to the House investigators asking him about Operation Fast and Furious.

Drones over U.S. get OK by Congress - 

Look! Up in the sky! Is it a bird? Is it a plane? It’s … a drone, and it’s watching you. That’s what privacy advocates fear from a bill Congresspassed this week to make it easier for the government to fly unmanned spy planes in U.S. airspace.

“There are serious policy questions on the horizon about privacy and surveillance, by both government agencies and commercial entities,” said Steven Aftergood, who heads the Project on Government Secrecy at the Federation of American Scientists.

The Electronic Frontier Foundation also is “concerned about the implications for surveillance by government agencies,” said attorneyJennifer Lynch.

The provision in the legislation is the fruit of “a huge push by lawmakers and the defense sector to expand the use of drones” in American airspace, she added.

According to some estimates, the commercial drone market in the United States could be worth hundreds of millions of dollars once the FAA clears their use.

The agency projects that 30,000 drones could be in the nation’s skies by 2020.

LONDON MAN OBSERVED BY CCTV & WARNED BY LOUDSPEAKER

Spying on Europe’s farms with satellites and drones - 

Farmers who claim more EU subsidies than they should, or who break Common Agricultural Policy rules, are now more likely to be caught out by a camera in the sky than an inspector calling with a clipboard. How do they feel about being watched from above?

Imagine a perfect walk in the country, a few years from now – tranquillity, clean air, birdsong in the trees and hedgerows, growing crops swaying in the breeze.

Suddenly a model plane swoops overhead.

But there is no-one around manipulating radio controls. This is not a toy, but a drone on a photographic mission.

Meanwhile, hundreds of kilometres up in space, the same patch of land is being photographed by a satellite, which clearly pinpoints individual trees and animals.

What is there to spy on here? No secret military installations, just farmland.

Dependency Index Surges 23% Under President Obama - Soon the government will own us…

The American public’s dependence on the federal government shot up 23% in just two years under President Obama, with 67 million now relying on some federal program, according to a newly released study by the Heritage Foundation.

The conservative think tank’s annual Index of Dependence on Government tracks money spent on housing, health, welfare, education subsidies and other federal programs that were “traditionally provided to needy people by local organizations and families.”

The two-year increase under Obama is the biggest two-year jump since Jimmy Carter was president, the data show.

The rise was driven mainly by increases in housing subsidies, an expansion in Medicaid and changes to the welfare system, along with a sharp rise in food stamps, the study found.

Apple and Foxconn: Who made your iPhone? -  In China the Government already owns the citizens

1984 George Orwell Movie Trailer - “A nation at war, where terrorism is exploited by the state, where media is controlled, a total surveillance society and every citizen is a property of the state…”

Equilibrium – Citizen:”You can”t do this, you can not do this”….

Government Agent(cleric): “There is nothing, that we can not do”

Demolition Man - Citizen Edgar  Friendly: “I am the enemy, cause I like to think, I like to read, I am in for freedom of speech and for freedom of choice…”

Iron maiden - Brave new world - 

Dying swans twisted wings, beauty not needed here
Lost my love, lost my life, in this garden of fear
I have seen many things, in a lifetime alone
Mother love is no more, bring this savage back home

Wilderness house of pain, makes no sense of it all
Close this mind dull this brain, Messiah before his fall
What you see is not real, those who know will not tell
All is lost sold your souls to this brave new world

A brave new world, in a brave new world
A brave new world, in a brave new world
In a brave new world, a brave new world
In a brave new world, a brave new world

Dragon kings dying queens, where is salvation now
Lost my life lost my dreams, rip the bones from my flesh
Silent screams laughing here, dying to tell you the truth
You are planned and you are damned in this brave new world

Motörhead - Brave New World - 

So this a new beginning, as the new century dawns
The world’s a better place for you and me
Shouldn’t smoke or drink or watch that evil filthy porn.
Be Christian and God will set you free.
But being poor is worse than having AIDS,
The homeless live in boxes at our feet
Living in a constant state of dull frustrated rage,
The innocent shot daily in the street

Brave new world, brave new world, brave new world

The government has always been your pal, as you well know
Absolute corrupted power play,
If we all wipe each other out, it only goes to show
While the bureaucrats get richer by the day,
Smoking dope will get you more than murder one,
And even worse than statutory rape,
Don’t understand your children, so you send them all to jail,
Believe me, you will never make a worse mistake.

The government is coming and it wants to be your friend,
It wants to show you how to be a snitch
Inform upon your children, the inevitable end,
Is everyone’s a victim but the filthy fucking rich,
And religion, like the monster that it is
Keeps telling you to turn the other cheek
God is on your side, but I don’t think that you’re on his,
If Jesus showed up now he’d be in jail by next week.

LOL…

Cop chases himself after being mistaken for burglar by CCTV operator

AN undercover cop “chased himself round the streets” for 20 minutes in a town in southern England after a surveillance camera operator wrongly identified him as a suspect.

Jobless rate at 3-year low as payrolls surge - Really? LOL. The report is a bad joke. I just cannot believe that such a spinning and twisting of the truth are done by the government and the media that once were hold as world wide example of freedom and democracy. We are really witnessing the fall of our great nation.   

More pistons in the economic engine have begun to fire, pointing to accelerating economic growth. One of the happiest persons reading this job report is President Obama…

Jobs Preview 2012: The Year of the Missing Worker - 

• There are over 3 million “missing” workers who should be in the labor force, but are not.
• If labor force participation were in line with demographic projections, the unemployment rate would be above 10 percent.
• The possibility of large numbers of people reentering the labor force makes it very difficult for the unemployment rate to fall below 8 percent by Election Day.

Top five regrets of the dying - On the other hand…

A nurse has recorded the most common regrets of the dying, and among the top ones is ‘I wish I hadn’t worked so hard’. What would your biggest regret be if this was your last day of life?

The ‘Financial Recession’ Excuse - Happy days are here again heh? Nope! All “good” economic news are lies 

Never before in postwar America has either real per capita GDP or employment still been lower four years after a recession began. If in this “recovery” our economy had grown and generated jobs at the average rate achieved following the 10 previous postwar recessions, GDP per person would be $4,528 higher and 13.7 million more Americans would be working today.

Earning Less – Why The Poor Get Poorer - Do they have a choice?

Working longer hours but earning less — the plight of the average American continues.

Getting Nowhere, Very Fast - 

California has a huge state debt and Washington has a huge national debt. But that does not discourage either Governor Jerry Brown or President Barack Obama from wanting to launch a very costly high-speed rail system.

Someone once said that government is the illusion that we can all live off somebody else…

Streetcar work begins, total cost rises - 

The city of Atlanta launched work on a new, 12-stop downtown streetcar line Wednesday — and officials disclosed that the project’s estimated price tag has risen by more than $12 million. Much of that increase is paid for by outside grants.

Local and federal leaders at a kickoff event said the money will be well-spent, despite critics’ doubts that ridership will justify the costs.

“This is about jobs,” said Ray LaHood, U.S. Secretary of Transportation. “This is about creating an economic corridor. … This will be a magnet for tourism.”

Critics, however, say the project will not draw enough traffic to justify its cost.

Reid: Senate will not pass a budget this year - Ha! Who needs a budget, if they have control over all of the other people’s money?

“We do not need to bring a budget to the floor this year — it’s done, we don’t need to do it,” Reid said, according to The Hill.

“We Are Blessed To Have Someone Of Barack’s Intellectual Caliber”… - 

“Since the day that I’ve met my husband, I’ve watched him work tirelessly to try make a difference in other people’s lives. He does that because for him, all of this is all very personal. You know Barack’s story,” the first lady said. “Barack and I both watched our families work hard to make ends meet.”

“That has been the direction of his choices through out his life,” Obama said. “How can he use his blessings and his gifts to help as many people as possible.”

“We are blessed to have someone not just of his intellectual caliber but with such a strong grounding of values that all of us identify with — these basic American values that have made our country great and will continue to make us the strongest country in the world,” the first lady said.

 What If Barack Obama And Paul Krugman Ran A Business? - 

This winter has brought a useful tutorial on capitalism courtesy of the media, the Democratic party and President Obama. They have illustrated for us how the depredations of profit-seekers crush American aspirations.

Parents Snared in $100 Billion College Debt Trap Risk Retirement - 

Terry Williams borrowed about $7,000 to earn a degree from Spelman College 38 years ago. For her youngest child, a sophomore at Belmont University in Nashville, she will take on almost $40,000 in parental loans.

Bloomberg warns of budget deficits in coming years - Another one realizes that you cannot spend indefinitely more than you take in…

Mayor Michael Bloomberg says his budget plan for the coming fiscal year has closed a $2 billion budget gap. But he says the city is facing deficits in following years.

Ontario faces decade of deficits - Time to implement Obama-care in Canada. According to our White House, Obama-care will reduce the cost of healthcare …

And the Ottawa-based economic think-tank says the province will need to rein in health-care cost increases if it wants to balance the books by 2022.

Be sure to watch those 3 videos carefully, very carefully, to their end…

THE VOTE PUMP

A GUIDE TO AMERICAN FEDERAL DEBT MADE EASY

LOSING IT ON AIR

As I told many times, banksters and the bureaucrats have learned nothing  from the 2008′s collapse.

I think that is, because they expect to be bailed out again by the taxpayers. 

From NPR
by CHRIS ARNOLD

Freddie Mac, based in Northern Virginia, says its job is to purchase “loans from lenders to replenish their supply of funds so that they [the lenders] can make more mortgage loans to other borrowers.” That’s one reason why Freddie has a gigantic portfolio containing loans that generate income from mortgage payments. Critics say this investment portfolio has been allowed to grow far larger than necessary to further Freddie’s policy mission.

Plus, in 2010 and 2011, Freddie didn’t just hold a simple pile of loans. Instead, for hundreds of thousands of home loans, it used Wall Street alchemy to chop these loans up into complicated securities — slices of which were sold in financial markets.

This hypothetical example may help explain what happens:

1) Freddie Mac takes, say, $1 billion worth of home loans and packages them. With the help of a Wall Street banker, it can then slice off parts of the bundle to create different investment securities, some riskier than others. The slices could be set up so that, say, $900 million worth are relatively safe investments, based upon homeowners paying the principal on their mortgages.

2) But the one remaining slice, worth $100 million, is the riskiest part. Freddie retains that slice, known as an “inverse floater,” which receives all of the interest payments from the entire $1 billion worth of mortgages.

3) That riskiest investment pays out a lucrative stream of interest payments. But Freddie’s slice also has all the so-called “pre-payment risk” associated with that $1 billion worth of loans. So if lots of people “pre-pay” their old loans and refinance into new, cheaper ones, then Freddie Mac starts to lose money. If people can’t refinance, then Freddie wins because it continues to receive that flow of older, higher interest payments.

If the homeowner is unable to refinance, the Freddie Mac portfolio managers win, Simon says. “And if the homeowner can refinance, they lose.”

more here

By the way, how many homeowners will refinance a mortgage?

A lot of them will try

But how many of them will succeed?

Very few.

You see the banks now days are very reluctant to refinance mortgages with zero or negative equity.