ConservativeINC

In this story from the Wall Street Journal we find out that the average guys is not completely out on his a$$.

A survey by the Mortgage Bankers Association found that mortgages on properties that aren’t occupied by the owner — mostly investment homes — account for between 21% and 32% of the defaults on prime-quality home loans in Arizona, California, Florida and Nevada, states where overdue payments are mounting fast.

This is something that is definitely sad for those investors but it does show that the market does (surprise, surprise) work. These people bid up the prices for homes because they thought they would continue to make money indefinitely. Well, that party ended and now one would have to assume they have all gotten jobs.

What worries me about this news is that politicians will seize in on this because these were investment properties. These investment properties were probably acquired with little, maybe nothing, down. This represents a huge amount of leverage. For those of you who already know why the stock market crash that spurred the Great Depression happened then you can stop reading and eat a cookie. For those of you who don’t know the answer read on and whip yourself afterwards for being ignorant.

It was leverage then that caused the crash. When you buy stocks on leverage you agree to pay the lender money if your stocks fall past a certain point. This point, known as a margin call, is suppose to guarantee the lender you have a sufficient amount of money left over to pay back the loan. Well, back in the good ol’ days people were allowed to leverage their stock buying significantly more than the fifty percent today (i.e. fifty percent borrowed fifty percent your money). Back then positions could be 90% borrowed money.

When the stock market started to go down people with leverage started selling their stocks significantly increasing the amount of supply and dragging the prices of stocks down. This lead to many people defaulting on their loans and banks losing out with many going under.

I would like to think we are a more savvy nation after that happened but, sadly, some things don’t change. Politicians are going to grab onto this data and use it to put restrictions on who can buy homes and for what purposes. Instead of allowing lenders the ability to straighten themselves out our betters are going to come to the rescue to save us from ourselves.

Once congress gets around to having hearings on the sub-prime collapse we will begin to see what they plan on doing. Before this happens I hope that the big lenders band together and create standards of their own that will limit the possibility of something like this happening again; but I doubt it. We can hope though. BigT

If Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Fidel Castro, Hugo Chavez, Daniel Ortega, Robert Mugabe, Kim Jong-il, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, and every other thug in the world were dead the world would be a better place. These men represent the worse that there is and are responsible for a large amount of the suffering that goes on in this world.

Killing these men would be the moral thing to do because it would make the world a safer and healthier place to live. If we had killed Hitler, Tojo, Mussolini, and Stalin before WWII started, say in 1935, we would have avoided the deaths of millions during the war and tens of millions that resulted due to the spread of communism afterwards. Why is it that no widely read historian I have heard about points this out?

Killing some or all of these men and others like them will prevent them from raising armies and partisans who will work for them. They will no longer be able to take whole countries and peoples over the deep-end and throw the world into chaos. Assassinations are called for in these situations because these “leaders” are hell-bent on destroying the world we live in for another they like better.

If Bill Clinton had acted on the opportunities he had to kill or capture Osama maybe 9-11 would not have happened. Using the predator drone to shoot a missile at that funeral in Afghanistan some time ago could have seriously disrupted al-Qaeda’s operations and saved some lives. If Kennedy had supported the revolutionaries at the Bay of Pigs maybe Cuba could have been a better place to live and one of our allies.

We do not live in a world where we can sit back and live in secure isolation. That has never really been the case throughout history even. If you are the big dog on the scene you automatically have extra responsibilities. We are the international version of Shane.

The morality question regarding assassinations has never swayed me much. And unlike all the Bourne movies (The Bourne Identity and The Bourne Supremacy) I don’t think the assassins would have much a problem with it either. Furthermore, killing the 1,000 people who are part of the ruling class would seem to be a lot more palpable than killing tens of thousands of civilians, military personnel, and the assorted human shields who would have to be killed when the tin-pot thought he was strong enough to expand his kingdom.

Either we pay the price now and kill these people or we will pay a much steeper price later on. BigT

When it comes to the markets you can count on two things liberals will always do: punish companies that are too big by prosecuting them under antitrust laws and trying to create government run monopolies. Each of these moves increases their control over the average person. Where the government already has a monopoly is in the retirement arena with social security and I have seen that the sense of entitlement is palpable.

The whole reason for enacting antitrust laws was to “protect” the population from one massive provider of a single good or a group of like goods. One of the biggest examples of this in recent time would be the breaking up of the phone companies. The theory goes that having one producer will allow that producer to have total control over the supply and the price of the goods so as to maximize the amount of revenue they will get. Without the competition required to make capitalism work they can continue to make a product that has no need to improve and they will have no need to try and reduce prices.

In actuality, famous monopolists (or robber barons) did nothing of the sort. The monopolists of yore did not have a carte blanche to do anything they desired and what they ended up accomplishing was significantly reduced prices for staples like wood and steel. It was liberals natural socialistic tendencies that moved them to enact antitrust laws because these scions of American industrial mite were just getting too big for their britches.

But the government can never get too big. No! The government needs control of the health care system because it is too important to leave up to greedy capitalists. We need to use the profits that are created in the health system to improve health care for all and not just the rich few who get adequate health care now. That’s the argument anyways.

Whereas there is a remote possibility that a monopoly could ever form in a capitalist system there is no doubt that a monopoly will form whenever the government gets involved. Why not the outrage and indignation over a state run monopoly that should run into the same problems as a private monopoly? Well, duh, they have the control now.

A state run health mega-monopoly will have horrible affects on our country because everything the government touches in the market turns to dust. No competition will allow, neigh, force existing companies into not focusing on production of their goods and away from innovation. That would mean very few new drugs, any new innovation of operating procedures, or, for that matter, many new brilliant doctors, surgeons, or nurses. Why bother with a system where you, by law, cannot make much of a profit?

What needs to be done is systematic deregulation of the insurance industry and allow for the same tax incentives that employers currently enjoy to be transfered to individuals. This will create a more robust market for insurance that would create a better system for all. Now, instead of having to rely on your employer picking a plan allowed by your state you could pick your own insurance (tax deductible) from any company in any state. How is that not better for you? BigT