Arkady's Thoughts

Watch this!!! GOP Sen. Jim Inhofe ’s S. 3683 As you watch this, ask yourself the following questions. 1) Do you disagree with him? If so, why? 2) Are you angry? If so, write to YOUR congressman. 3) Since the first bailout, has our economy improved? The thought process is very simple here. America is on the brink of performing the most atrocious anti-free market, anti-capitalist hari - kari in it's history. While government has never demonstrated it's aptitude in handling the functions of private industry, it has on the contrary demonstrated corruption, fraud, mismanagement and waste. Instead of letting the market take it's natural course - like we have done 98% of the time - we instead rely on intervention out of fear and ignorance. This has the potential to create an economic devastation beyond any that we have seen before. As citizens, do what you can to ensure this bill passes.

The way I saw the Obama victory - well after the initial shock wore off- was that of a very strong potential to be beneficial to the conservative cause. As I have mentioned in a post-election video, approaching from a very macro viewpoint there are two major possibilities. 1) Obama drops the change/hope mantra and due to his inexperience governs without governing. Most of his policies will simply fall on deaf ears and many of this proposals will never be implemented due to a slew of factors; economy, partisanship, change of mind, etc. This will lead to massive disappointment and frustration among his loyal constituency and anger over the moderates who were looking for a change of pace. 2) Obama governs just like his campaign slogans and with the aid of the most liberal congress leadership in history implements social program galore. While these programs generally take time to decay and eat away at infrastructure and can often go unnoticed in times of prosperity, but with today's e...

I have done quite a bit of research on the matter, but this is a nice piece from Cato that does a pretty good summary of what happened. It is about 7 pages of condensed column text, should be easy reading - but remember, the housing crisis is NOT complicated. There are nuances here and there, but overall the explanation is straight forward. I am including my video as well that is about 2 months old - and for a time was quite popular on YouTube . Cato article: http://cato.org/pubs/bp/bp110.pdf My video: I will continue adding on this page as information becomes more available and it will be inked from the main page for convenience.

A Yahoo! news story discusses the abysmal rankings of US Officials on a civics test. Civics! As in, the one thing politicians are supposed to know and understand. Here is a blurb: Asked about the electoral college, 20 percent of elected officials incorrectly said it was established to "supervise the first televised presidential debates." In fact, the system of choosing the US president via an indirect electoral college vote dates back some 220 years, to the US Constitution. The question that received the fewest correct responses, just 16 percent, tested respondents' basic understanding of economic principles, asking why "free markets typically secure more economic prosperity than government's centralized planning?" Lovely. Furthermore the average public did not fare much better, read the full article for details. What I find to be most striking however is the fact that so much emphasis has been placed on higher education degrees and intelligence of elected ...

A rather disappointing piece of news this morning, apparently our government is hell bent on nationalizing every bank out there. Newest loser to join the bailout crew? Citigroup ! "First, the U.S. Treasury and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC) will backstop some losses against more than $300 billion in troubled assets. Second, the Treasury will make a fresh $20 billion investment in the bank. The government has already injected $25 billion into Citigroup as part of the $700 billion bailout passed by Congress in October. " So not only did Citi ALREADY get 25 billion earlier, but now their losses are guaranteed. 300 billion of them!? So much for that 700 billion price tag. This is precisely what happened to Fannie/Freddie despite Barney Frank promising it would never happen. So my hope that this absolutely reckless venture of saving companies that were irresponsible would stop with our first massive failed bailout of AIG , Fannie, Freddie, BSC . Appar...