Whitley County Patriots

From Big Government:

Panic has gripped stock markets worldwide over the Greek debt crisis and the threat of a debt-deflation contagion through banks in Europe (primarily) and the U.S. that own the bonds of Greece, Portugal, Spain, and so forth. If these bond asset prices collapse totally, lending facilities would be badly crimped for both the short and long term. And that, in turn, would damage prospects for economic recovery.

The Dow closed yesterday off nearly 350 points. Earlier in the day the Dow was down 850 points, though there is talk of computer glitches and technical problems that may have temporarily undermined trading. Either way, the market is getting creamed as a result of the Greek story.

The real winner? Gold. It’s up about $25, to $1,200. People want real money. They do not trust the debt-laden currencies of Europe and the United States. Or for that matter Japan. Gold is fast becoming, once again, a reserve currency of choice.

Meanwhile, the EU/IMF bailout package for Greece, which does include draconian budget cuts, contains a 2 percentage point increase in the VAT tax that is anti-growth. Steve Forbes correctly said Wednesday on CNBC that the Greeks should be slashing spending and should move to a flat tax, just like the countries in Eastern Europe. I gave him a Nobel Prize for that.

Read the rest at Big Government.

From The Heritage Foundation:

Today the Labor Department’s Bureau of Labor and Statistics released its monthly jobs report showing that the nation’s unemployment rose to 9.9% in April despite the addition of 290,000 jobs, 66,000 of which were temporary Census 2010 jobs. The rise in unemployment was driven by the entrance of 195,000 previously discouraged Americans reentering the workforce. In total, the U.S. economy has now lost a net of 2.6 million jobs since President Barack Obama signed his $862 billion stimulus plan. We are 7.6 million jobs short of the 137.8 million he promised the American economy would support by 2010.

It is encouraging to see the American economy beginning to recover, but these numbers again indicate that the Obama administration’s heavy government hand has retarded and deformed what otherwise would have been a more robust recovery. The White House may tout Congressional Budget Office (CBO) reports showing their $862 billion stimulus created jobs, but the CBO has also admitted their computer simulation didn’t take any actual new real world data into account. To the contrary, an independent study of real world stimulus facts found: 1) no statistical correlation between unemployment and how the $862 billion was spent; 2) that Democratic districts received one-and-a-half times as many awards as Republican ones; and 3) an average cost of $286,000 was awarded per job created. $286,000 per job created.

And what kind of jobs were created? According to Gallup the federal government is hiring at a significantly faster pace than the private sector. And data from BLS confirms that governments are increasing public sector pay at far faster rates than the private sector. None of this should be a surprise. President Obama specifically designed his stimulus to preserve government union jobs.

Read the rest at The Heritage Foundation.

Some information from Dr. Richard Leo:

For all of you who feel that things are rough now read these links:

 From the United States Joint Forces Command, the 2010 Joint Operating Environment study.  Pay special attention to the comments on the Dollar and Federal spending (page 21-26) and on demographic population changes in the US forecast for 2030.   (page 17).

Also pay attention to the balance of trade data from the CIA and note the postion of the U.S. (dead last of 190 countries) and on the ranking of public debt by governments (% of GDP)   What is interesting is that the U.S. data is from 2008 while most of the countries with higher debt ratios are based on 2009.   It will be interesting to see how the data compares with the U.S. 2009 figures in light of the massive deficit spending by the administration.

RJL