Goverment is stupid

I believe that we all recognize that government is a stupid entity. However as I times goes by I am consistently floored by the degree to which government is stupid. Lets take the TARP that we just so recently got. They set aside 700 Billion dollars to buy up bad assets of the banks so that the banks could go on about their business of lending money to people again. The government in turn would hope that those bad assets would eventually turn good, or at least better, and they wouldn't lose too much money on them. This was an admirable plan.

The reality was that this money was used to buy stock in the banks. What the hell. The thing is that the banks don't need more money. The problem with banks is that they made bad loans, these bad loans are weighing in on their solvency. WE CANNOT PUMP ENOUGH STRAIGHT CASH INTO THESE TROUBLED BANKS TO MAKE THEM SOLVENT. This is a fact.

The reason that we did not buy the bad assets that are destroying the banks solvency is that they were going to be to cheap. We would have purchased them for about 20 cents on the dollar. For that price the banks go out of business. If the government pays more for these assets it artificially inflates them and is essentially creating inflation. If the banks take the money they right down the costs until they are broke.

So we recognized that the TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Program) wouldn't work the way we wanted it to.

What do we do next? That's right we come up with a Bad Bank program. Basically the Bad Bank program would purchase all these bad assets that the bank has that is crippling them and making it so that they aren't able to lend money to people... wait a second. Isn't that what the TARP was? No that couldn't be right. We couldn't possibly be coming up with the exact same program, we already wasted 350 Billion bucks on this how could we set aside a different 900 Billion to do the same thing that we already recognized wont work, that would be silly.

But anyway, what about this stimulus plan. Seems like a good idea right. That seems like it ought to help us fix the underlying issues that are affecting us in this recession. You see the reason that we are in a recession is that the house prices fell out the bottom, which dropped the value of the loans the bank had, which made lending difficult to do when the banks recognized that they wouldn't be able to make current big loans, which meant that companies couldn't get loans for payroll, which meant that people would have to get laid off, which drops the GDP because people tend to spend less money when they don't have income.

So the stimulus plan which will help us get out of this recession- sod the lawn. Wait what was that, what does sod the lawn mean, that must be a metaphor, that we will sod the lawn of the american industry hoping that with time and appropriate moisture it will take root and our economy will flourish again. No they are going to literally sod the lawn of the Washington Mall.

What the hell.

Oh that ought to fix the root problems that stem from the problems in the housing area. $980 Billion dollars of spending for contraceptives, yard work, food stamps, and various and sundry other solutions that DO NOT address the problems we face today. Thats like loading up on tea and honey during an influenza out break rather than vaccines. Lets address the symptoms of the problem rather than the cause, shall we? Thats all I got.

PAX

It has begun...again.

So here we are. Its the new year and I am placing my first posting upon the virgin internet of 2009. I have decided to begin working on my novel again, I spent way too much time away from it and have only been doing a little bit on it here and there, and almost nothing for the last six months. My decision is that to keep myself fresh I am going to make sure that I write something everyday, and when I work on the novel I will be sure that I write three pages on it at a time, at that rate I should be able to finish it in the next six months. Of course just because its finished doesn't mean that I will be done working on it. I still have to go over it a few times, makes sure the grammar and language are appropriate and make any changes to the story that need to take place.
Additionally I have not been involved in doing anything to exciting recently. I think thats a lie actually. I have been working pretty hard at Edward Jones for the last 9-ish months. Talking with people who have been in this industry for a while and they have told me with a great deal of certainty that this has been the most difficult market that they have ever experienced. That being said I have managed to meet the goals that have been set for me and from time to time actually exceed expectations. I would have to say that I did the most work during the month of December, and interestingly that was the month that I had the least amount of results. When January came around I reaped the rewards from last months work.
I don't really have very much clever insight to provide on any of the various and sundry topics that I usually like to write about, but I will have to make sure that I come up with some clever and witty prose with which to spill upon the empty screen before me. Additionally I am going to try and type on this ol blog here from time to time. With that I bid you Adieu.