Make Mommy, Daddy, Gramps and Grammy Oh So Proud!

That's the message from AARP.  The Obamacare loving propagandists who were instrumental in forcing confiscatory health insurance rates on young adults are now launching a fresh misinformation campaign.  AARP is following through to make sure you don't miss a chance to ensure sticking it to your children, your grandchildren and your nieces and nephews. 

AARP says,

NUDGE YOUR KID ABOUT GETTING HEALTH INSURANCE

Send an e-card today.

En español

Starting Oct. 1, your big kid(s) will have new health insurance options. Remind them to check out their choices. And they’ll make Mom, Dad, even Grammy oh so proud!

Ready to nudge? Please select an e-card below

Oh so kind!  AARP offers oh so many options.

Meism runs rampant through the AARP membership. Join now so you can officially shrug off responsibility, get behind passing on prodigious debt and support adding tens of trillions of dollars of unfunded retirement liabilities to the next generation's burden -- you too can be part of the munificent crowd.

Not to Worry, Your Purveyor of Fraud Will Write You a Check

I remember when I put myself on the circulation list for the daily multi-volume set of the Federal Register. I would scan the publication to see what kind of mischief the agencies were up to and to prepare my employer to respond accordingly. It was dull and boring, but every once in while I would come up with a gem that made the effort worthwhile.  Thank God, some are still engaged in that enterprise.

A lot of people were wondering how Obama would continue to enforce the individual Obamacare mandate while dropping the employer mandate. Well, the fraudmeister in chief has spoken. The answer was snuck into the Federal Register last Friday afternoon, a classic holiday weekend sneak tactic (when we played that game the Wednesday before Thanksgiving or the Friday after were favored target dates).

If you thought the delay in the employer mandate was bad news for Obamacare, just wait. On Friday, Sarah Kliff and Sandhya Somashekhar of the Washington Post discovered that the Obama administration had buried in the Federal Register the announcement that the government won’t be able to verify whether or not applicants for Obamacare’s insurance exchange subsidies are actually qualified for the aid, in the 16 states that are setting up their own exchanges. Instead, until at least 2015, these states will be able to “accept the applicant’s attestation [regarding eligibility] without further verification.”

If you’ve been following the latest news around Obamacare, you know that on Tuesday evening, just before the Independence Day holiday, the White House announced that it would be delaying the implementation of the health law’s employer mandate—requiring all firms with more than 50 employees to provide health coverage to their workers—until 2015.

I, and several others at the time, said “wait a minute.” According to the law, you aren’t eligible for Obamacare’s subsidies if your employer has offered you what the government considers “affordable” coverage. But if employers are no longer going to report whether or not they’ve offered “affordable” coverage, how can the government verify whether or not workers are eligible for subsidies?

Now we know the answer. The government is going with what Kliff and Somashekhar call “the honor system.” “We have concluded that the…proposed rule is not feasible for implementation for the first year of operations,” say the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. “The exchange may accept the applicant’s attestation regarding enrollment in an eligible employer-sponsored plan…without further verification, instead of following the procedure in §155.320(d)(3)(iii).

And it’s not just there. The feds will also allow people to gain means-tested subsidized coverage on the exchanges without having to…test their means. “For income verification, for the first year of operations, we are providing Exchanges with temporarily expanded discretion to accept an attestation of projected annual household income without further verification.”

We have seen what happens when income checks are lax or non- existent with the Obama phones -- 40 percent unjustified or unverifiable. Much larger sums are at stake with Obamacare.  This is fraud, this is budget busting and deficit skyrocketing insanity.   I never thought I would live to see anything so outrageous.  

Please Do Not Feed the Animals

My old friend, colleague and one-time boss sent me this.

Today's lesson in irony.

The Food Stamp Program, administered by the U.S. Department of Agriculture, is proud to be distributing this year the greatest amount of free Meals and Food Stamps ever, to 46 million people. 

Meanwhile, the National Park Service, administered by the U.S. Department of the Interior, asks us "Please Do Not Feed the Animals." Their stated reason for the policy is because "The animals will grow dependent on handouts and will not learn to take care of themselves. 

Thus ends today's lesson in irony.

Just think how dependent people would be if we weren't into the fourth year of Obama's economic recovery.  Thank you John!

Mainstream Media -- Handmaiden of Government Distortion and Deception

Here's the lead from The Bozeman Chronicle page 1 AP story published Tuesday of this week.

Despite what you may have heard, China isn't the country's biggest creditor. America is. The bulk of the national debt - soon to exceed a staggering $17 trillion - is held by the Federal Reserve, Social Security system, various pension plans for civil service workers and military personnel, U.S. banks, mutual funds, private pension plans, insurance companies and individual domestic investors.

Now think about what the AP scribe has said -- the three biggest holders of U.S. government debt are the Federal Reserve (the U.S. government), the Social Security system (the U.S. government), and various pensions plans for civil service workers and military personnel (the U.S. government). How can the U.S. government owe the U.S. government? Are there trust funds set up where surpluses are deposited and segregated from other government assets? No. The AP story is telling us to find comfort from phony balancing entries in spreadsheets, a system Bernie Madoff would be proud of -- nothing else. 

Think of it this way. You set up a fund for your children's education. You don't actually deposit money in that fund, but every month you increase the balance in that fund by the flick of a switch or an entry of a number. Your kid starts high school. She wants to know how her college education will be paid for. You say to your kid, "Don't worry, I am fully funding your college education." You say, "Young lady, look at these numbers, they are growing every month." What do you do when the kid says, "But Dad there is no real money there and you have spent your income on other things, what are you actually going to do when I start college? Tuition, room and board need to be paid with actual money -- not entries on spreadsheet."  You could be honest, and say, "I don't know. I just created an artifice. It's a fraud. I'm sorry. I'll start fixing this right away." Or you could tell your daughter "Don't worry, that fund is backed up by my promise. I really, really want to pay. I'll figure it out somehow, even if ultimately you are the one who pays and we have to borrow from strangers who charge exorbitant interest rates. Don't worry it will work out, even though I won't tell you how." Then you could go to work for the U.S. government or write for the AP and sign up with the Democratic party.

The reality is every penny of the almost $7 trillion the government owing the government debt will eventually have to be funded by going out to the financial markets and asking, more like begging, the likes of China et. al. to pony up the resources.  The burdens and repayment responsibility will be passed on to our children and grandchildren.

It so happens, the financial press came out later in the week with the following lead,

Foreigners now hold more than $13 trillion in American securities, a record set as the U.S. seeks to assert itself as the safest port in troubled global waters.

China and Japan combined owned more than $3.4 trillion, including $2.4 trillion in debt, a number that has grown since the data set was compiled.The total value of U.S. stocks and bonds under foreign ownership rose 6.5 percent in 2012, with stocks actually rising more on a percentage basis, according to the most recent data from the U.S. Treasury.

Foreign holdings have more than doubled since 2005 and are getting close to the $15 trillion total size of the U.S. economy.

The CNBC story points out that 52 percent of marketable treasury securities are owned by foreign interests, painting a real and complete picture totally different from the AP's biased and distorted big government political, don't worry view, that debt is only 7 percent China issue. 

Outstanding U.S. Bond Debt, Source:

http://www.freddiemac.com/investors/pdffiles/investor-presentation.pdf

Also, the AP story only treats treasury debt as U.S. government debt when that is barely half of total marketable U.S. debt (i.e., the non-accounting gimmick stuff). Total U.S. debt includes agency debt as well the Freddie, Fannie, FHA and Ginnie Mae portions of Mortgage Backed Securities (MBS or what was known as CDO's during the financial crisis), totalling $10.3 trillion, compared to $10.9 trillion in marketable treasury securities referenced in the AP story.  AP is off by half. How would you like to wake up some day and find your $250k mortgage was really a $500k?  The AP would say, no problem because you can set up a fund to pay yourself.  Don't worry, party on, borrow more.  The AP has told me it is all Okay. 

Your children and grandchildren will pay for the fraud and the excesses, more than you will ever know.

Politidumb of the Week

Sequester is the gift that keeps on giving. 

This week's Politidumb honor is awarded to no less than Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid (D-Nev.), Barack Obama's chief lieutenant in the United States Senate.  Ignoring, for example, expenditures on the stream of million dollar bus stops that could be stopped, Reid fear mongered Tuesday this week that the sequester could "cost this country - and humankind - a cure for AIDS or Parkinson's disease or cancer." 

Sadly, this is not a stand-up comic routine.  Reid's continuing incredulous crusade builds on House Democratic Whip Steny Hoyer's (D - Mary.) claim last week that the Boston bombings were result of the sequester.  Last month Reid himself had linked unimplemented sequester cuts to the unfortunate accidental death of 7 marines during a training exercise in Nevada.

In early March House Democrat Maxine Watters (D - Mich.) claimed the sequester would cost the US economy 170 million jobs, which is about half again as many jobs as there are in the entire United States economy.   In February, Obama Education Secretary Arnie Duncan falsely claimed the sequester was costing 40,000 teaching jobs, when not a dime had been cut or a single pink slip issued. Hawaii Governor Neil Abercrombie (D - Haw.) sounded an early phony sequester alarm, "the plain fact is, that will undermine our capacity for readiness at Pearl Harbor." The reign of sequester horrors started on February 19 when Barack Obama warned your house will burn down, your home will be burglarized, your children will be abandoned, the economy will fall apart and you will be unemployed if the federal government is forced to go ahead with 2 point something percent in spending cuts.

Thank you Harry Reid for keeping the tradition alive!

Explosive Growth in Disability Rolls

Nothing is broken.  Nothing is out of control.  Here is the report,

The nation's disability rolls continued to climb sharply, as 76,983 workers enrolled in the Social Security Disability Insurance program in April, according to new data from the Social Security Administration.

More than 300,000 have joined the program so far this year. The number of workers on permanent disability is now a record 8,865,586, a net increase of one million in just three years.

Today, 6.5 workers are on disability for every 100 who have a job. That's double the ratio from two decades ago. The number of people on disability has climbed almost sixfold since 1970. 

That influx has caused SSDI costs to climb faster than its dedicated payroll tax revenues. The program has been running a deficit since 2009, and will be insolvent by 2016, according to the program's administrators.

"The Social Security Disability Insurance program is growing at an unsustainable pace," Richard Burkhauser, an economist at Cornell University and an adjunct scholar at the American Enterprise Institute, told a congressional panel. 

Last year, the federal government paid $135 billion in disability benefits, which is more money than it devoted to food stamps and welfare combined.

Do not be concerned. Your elected, victim loving, bleeding heart leadership has a handle on this.  Move on.

The Obama Economy -- $$$, $$$$ and $$$$$

“For we, the people, understand that our country cannot succeed when a shrinking few do very well and a growing many barely make it. We believe that America’s prosperity must rest upon the broad shoulders of a rising middle class."
Barack Obama's second Inagural address, January 21, 2013.

There is a fool born every minute.  Obama thanks God for that.

It is shocking how foolish the American people are. They support Barack Obama and his policies because he supposedly promotes middle class values and has the interests of the 99 percent at heart.   The reality is totally different.  I am befuddled, perplexed, dumbfounded and dismayed by the ignorance and the gullibility of the average American. 

Obama's Money Printing Regime Works Overtime

The Pew Research Center released a new study this week which reveals the obvious – that Obama’s print (money), borrow (money) and spend (money) policy triad favors people with money -- the uppercrust. Obama is a money lever guy, not an economic leader. The money changer in chief doesn't understand or promote a value driven economy. Real exchanges of actual goods and genuine services drive value and build a strong, broad based and resilient economy and sustainable economic growth. The demand and production led economy that we should be building has attributes that reach into every household.

You don’t have to be a rocket scientist to understand that what money leveraging does is help people with money!  Let me repeat, Obama’s policies help people with money!  It’s a rich guy’s game playing paradise.  You don’t have to believe me.  Look at the data.

 Pew studied the first two years (2009 through 2011) of the Obama recovery.   Pew's top line report breaks down the recovery between the lower 93 percent and the wealthiest 7 percent. 

During the first two years of the nation’s economic recovery, the mean net worth of households in the upper 7% of the wealth distribution rose by an estimated 28%, while the mean net worth of households in the lower 93% dropped by 4%, according to a Pew Research Center analysis of newly released Census Bureau data. 

From 2009 to 2011, the mean wealth of the 8 million households in the more affluent group rose to an estimated $3,173,895 from an estimated $2,476,244, while the mean wealth of the 111 million households in the less affluent group fell to an estimated $133,817 from an estimated $139,896. 

In other words the people who had money now have a helluva a lot more, while ordinary folk are deeper in the hole.

We can see more discretely who has benefited from Obama's recovery by looking at Pew's tabular report.  

There is a clear breakpoint between the 13 percent of households that have a net worth of $500,000 or greater and everyone else.  The upper crust's average net worth increased by $335 thousand dollars in the first two years of the Obama regime while every other group fell back.   Those that were in the hole fell back even further.  Money, money, money – you have it Obama enriches you.  If you don't, best of luck.

In the world of Obama wealth disparity has not merely skyrocketed among economic groups, disparities have also soared to record highs levels between whites and blacks, and whites and Hispanics. And those poor old seniors, the folks on whose behalf that AARP incessantly whines, they are gaining dramatically compared to the young people who actually work, and incomprehensibly vote for and support Obama.

The bottom line is clear.  I hope all the Obama supporters out there are feeling prosperous, because the data show, unless you were already rich, you are not. 

Welfare State Grows Uncontrollably

That pesky recession thing ended four years ago.  And in the meantime, the baby boomers, whose aging numbers will swell the social security and medicare rolls, have barely begun to retire.  Who is left to work and support the system?   Sure as can be, progressive politics are undercutting our prosperity and will ultimately destroy our country's economic base.

Progressive Triple Header: No Responsibility Nation Surges Forward

Progressives Got Their Way, 
Bless Them!

Congratulations Barack and the progressives!  You are surging forward on three fronts.

First, hundreds of thousands (half a million in March) of people moved out of the labor force (i.e., they don't even bother looking for a job) on top of the millions of labor force participants that Barack's entitlement nation has already suckered out.   Labor participation rates are back to what they were in the Jimmy Carter era -- you know back in the days when women didn't work -- that's progress.

Second, now in the fourth year of economic recovery, food stamp rolls continue to swell to record levels month after month, up 70 percent during the Obama administration.  I know, I know, it's just not fair to ask people to feed themselves when they have so many other uses for their disposable incomes. 

Third, young adults are more clever than ever.   In record numbers people who are not old enough to retire are working the disability system to receive lifetime social security payment annuities, in many cases, decades before they have contributed their fair share.  I know, I know, that poor dude who shows up for work at the Costco everyday in his wheel chair, checking membership cards and receipts -- that's asking way too much -- cut him a check.  

And that's just the news in the last week.  Mr. President and your progressive supporters, you are breaking the bank and brokering away the future.   Social and economic justice are wonderful things.  You are running a hell of a show!

Seventy Percent Waste

The HUD Inspector General reports that $700 million out of a billion dollars granted to New Orleans "victims" of Hurricane Katrina were wasted. As befits the mission of the Department of Housing and Urban Development, that money was specifically channeled to homeowners to retrofit their homes, increasing elevations to protect from future floods.  The aid recipients cared not at all about the contracts they signed and aid stipulations; they did as they pleased. For all practical purposes the money has disappeared, just like sands laying in the path of an oncoming storm. And when the storms come again their homes will be as vulnerable as ever. 

We live in a nation of irresponsibility and dishonor fed by progressive enablers, big government power brokers and brain dead bleeding heart liberals who continue to build up the burden of prodigious debt that will break the backs of our children and grandchildren.

You Paid for It

We blogged last week on the million dollar bus stop in my old neighborhood in Arlington, Virginia, pulling material from local news media, my old neighborhood listserv and a CBS news report.  Now CNN reports.  CNN points out federal funds paid for $800,000 of the $1.1 million, sequester or no sequester.

I hope you like it because there are 23 more of these coming -- with Arlington County's inside the Beltway mavens hoping to limit per stop costs to $800 or $900K for stops that the riders don't really want. 

The editor of the local weekly (the Sun Gazzette) rag reported on the bus stop as follows, 

The Washington Post was a smidge late to the game – no surprise there –but had a feature yesterday about the nearly $1 million spent by the Washington Metropolitan Area Transit Authority on a new “Super Stop” bus shelter on Columbia Pike near South Walter Reed Drive.

It’s the first of nearly two dozen such modern bus shelters planned by the county government, using $20 million that is a mix of local, state and federal funds. (Not to mention Chinese yuan, as they’re the ones funding our federal government these days.)

A friend of mine, who shall go nameless to protect the guilty, was so incensed upon reading the Post story that she got in her car and – those of you in 22207 will shudder – toodled south of Route 50 just so she could see what all the hullabaloo was about.

She was, to put it mildly, not impressed with what the nearly $1 million purchased. Profanity ensued.

In Arlington we referred to Route 50 as the DMZ.  Nobody, none of the limousine liberals in the north, travelled from the north to south (where I and the majority of the black and Hispanic population lived) except under extreme duress.

It's appropriate that this fleecing of the taxpayer (and our children and grandchildren who will assume the prodigious debt) is occurring on Columbia Pike, named such because the road leads to the District of Columbia, where the leadership is ensconced whose senseless and undisciplined spending is driving our country into fiscal oblivion.  When Columbia Pike was originally built it was a turnpike, a revenue raiser.  In the world of Obama and the progressives it is a revenue sink.  My, how far we have fallen.

We the Feds Part V -- AARP’s Got US by the Balls

It's not just corporate cronies that liaison with the Feds to garner outsize benefits and special favors.  The old folks, courtesy of AARP, are the highest practitioners of the art.

The next time Republicans (or anyone else for that matter) put forward a proposal calling for budget discipline that limits the growth of benefits to senior citizens, and Democrats put out a commercial showing the Republicans throwing granny over the cliff, call the bastard protesters out on their ageism.  Reality is that seniors are the best off segment of the United States population.   One hundred percent of seniors are looking for a subsidy* even though less than ten percent fall beneath the poverty line.  Poverty rates are much higher for working age adults (13.7 percent), and more than double for children (21.9 percent).

 

Poverty Status of the Granny Group



Source:  http://www.census.gov/hhes/www/poverty/data/historical/people.html

 

AARP and the baby boomers have grabbed the government by the balls and are using their leverage to burgle our childrens' fiscal house.  They aren’t letting go anytime soon. 

*  Under charitable assumptions (including that the net proceeds of Medicare taxes were actually saved and invested in high yield government bonds) today's retiring baby boomers and their employers contributed only 30 to 40 percent, more or less, of the cost of the benefits they will receive under current Medicare rules.

Millions face sticker shock when 'open enrollment' begins

So says the headline. 

(I)t is too soon to tell whether these bold creations of the Affordable Care Act will actually bring “affordable” care to consumers. Some observers say that escalating health care costs will still find ways to tap and drain the bank accounts of small businesses, individuals and families.

But it's not too soon to answer if you are a young person, who has essentially no need for prepaid medical services (which medical insurance has been regulated into) that you won't use.

Among the 2,500-page law’s myriad provisions, individuals with pre-existing conditions who have been unable to purchase health insurance no longer will be excluded for chronic illness or a history of medical claims. Insurers won’t be able to drop coverage when someone gets sick. Plans will have to offer more generous benefits, such as capping out-of-pocket expenses and providing free preventive care. Premiums for older consumers cannot be more than three times the cost for younger consumers.

Everything is set up to lessen costs for the old folk who haven't committed themselves to plans and employment throughout their lives that would have provided continuous coverage.  Then pass the costs along to the younger generation.  AARP is an extraordinary lobby.  The baby boomers are quite the selfless crowd.

On top of that, young people, you are going to be paying for the subsidies too.  Good luck!

Cross Generational Subsidy Growth Under Obamacare

We are learning what's in it.

Remember the Alamo!

History repeats itself.  Pearl Harbor is vulnerable to attack! Man all battle stations. Cancel shore leave. Some Pearl Harbor DOD civilian employees might have to take a day off every week or so (FYI, most of those employees earn 39 days of leave each year; with flextime options they are not at their work stations more than a day a week as is). Hawaii Democratic Governor Neil Abercrombie is sounding a phony sequester alarm,

The plain fact is, that will undermine our capacity for readiness at Pearl Harbor. And if that doesn't symbolize for the nation that, far from overstating anything, it is zeroing in on a graphic example of what happens when we fail to meet our responsibilities congressionally. You don't want to undermine that capacity to be able to respond.

Good thing Rick Perry is the Governor of Texas. If some pin-headed progressive Democrat were leading the Lone Star state during this anniversary of Santa Ana's murderous siege, we would not only be remembering the Alamo, there would be an impassioned plea for militarizing and rearming the mission.

Stop Bitching

I just posted this on my Facebook page.

To think, there was a time when people cared more about their children's future than they actually cared about themselves.

Obama's War Against Children

Bozo Barack is back.

Obama stood in front of his union-organized police and firefighter mannequins this morning. The liar-in-chief deceives. Your house will burn down, your home will be burglarized, your children will be abandoned, the economy will fall apart and you will be unemployed if the federal government is forced to go ahead with 2 point something percent in spending cuts. You are insane to support this prevaricator. When Obama says we need to balance tax increases and spending cuts he carries on the legacy of Ken Lay, Jeffrey Skilling and Andy Fastow by using Enron style accounting -- tax increases are actual increases that will burden our children and grandchildren, while spending cuts are reductions in the rate of real spending increases on the self-centered, egocentric Baby Boomer generation. Let me be clear, progressives hate our children.  I for one will not stand for it, not for one second.

NBC news says "The speech featured no new, concrete proposal from the president detailing how he would prefer for Congress to replace the sequester." 

My 2013 Predictions

A blog I once frequented regularly when I lived in Virginia invited readers and commentators to prognosticate last month about Obama’s second term.  

I bit, as follows, with my responses italicized and edited a bit for clarity.

1] & 2] Unemployment and GDP: There will be a recession in the 2nd term, Obama will blame it on Bush, Romney and Republican led House; imbecilic hero worshiping populous will believe Obama.   Unemployment will vacillate around 8 percent.   Labor participation rate will drop into the low sixties, food stamps users will grow to 55 million (food stamp recipient growth under Obama averaged 11,133 per day), and Romney’s 47 percent takers will rise to 52 percent, in other words everything will be wonderful on the progressive front – with more taking and less working we will be closer than ever to progressive utopia where it is what you grovel for, not what you earn, that counts.

3] Debt: $22 trillion.

4] Deficit: We’ll have our first $2 trillion annual deficit after a head fake just below a trillion dollar deficit in FY 2013 (courtesy of accelerated tax minimization asset sales).

5] Obamacare: We’ll now begin to learn what’s in the law, to wit, claims about lower cost and increased private sector coverage were fatuous lies.  Obamacare will be under assault by the right and the left, with the left moving full bore in support of government monopoly, purveying the lie that it will produce more and cost less.

This or That

I didn't know whether to write a post on Pravada on the Potomac's (aka the Washington Post) gullible reporting on Sarah Palin's supposed contract with Al Jazerra America or to tip off one the Post's reportorial wizards using one of my posts on Jon Tester.  With Tester, who is actually a sitting United States Senator making decisions that screw up our lives and destroy our children's future every day, it really is hard to distinguish between fact and fiction.  Or is it the other way around? 

On the Road to Bathgate Act 2: Funny Money

Running the printing presses to monetize debt, in whatever form that takes, drives the boom cycle before it spectacularly bursts.  During the Roaring Twenties bank notes, traded and accepted as currency, were the prime mechanism for inducing the boom before becoming the means of destruction during the Great Depression.  Virtually every small town had a national bank empowered to issue notes secured against its capital base.  This is a Series 1929 bank note, issued in my Dad’s hometown, by the National Bank of Bathgate, North Dakota.  This 1929 note barely survived Black Monday (October, 28, 1929); it was worthless by 1930 when the National Bank of Bathgate liquidated.  The Depression hit quick, it hit hard and it hit without warning, wiping out virtually everyone and everything that laid within its path, regardless of merit, history or accountability.   Tens of millions of lives were destroyed or ended.  Yet the progressives remember the Great Depression as a wonderful time because it gave rise to President Franklin Delano Roosevelt and evolved into the biggest war induced economic surge ever known.  They laud the fruits of currency devaluation fomented by excessive issuance of debt.  It’s a lesson for all mankind to avoid, but it's a lesson unknown to the progressive political pipsqueaks who drive the political show today.   

Treasury Inflation Protected Securities

It’s curious they are called securities because they are about as secure as a leaky boat.

I was paging through the Wall Street Journal and came across a table, in the Key Interest Rates section, displaying yields for Treasury Inflation Protected Securities (TIPS), as follows:

             TIPS Yields                                                                                                  

5-Year                  -1.40%

7-Year                  -0.99%

10-Year                -0.55%

Yes, these are negative returns, as in you get to pay the government to hold on to your money.  Seldom are your elected representatives and the entrenched bureaucracy so honest.

The US Treasury Department recommends you purchase TIPS to: 

• Diversify your investment portfolio
• Supplement retirement income 

Safely Negative

Thanks but no thanks, all you smart Lord of the Universe Treasury officials, but I'll pass.  I'll look to find investments for my retirement portfolio that actually generate  income.

Peeling away the onion, whatever portion of your money is in a traditional interest-paying government treasury bond, in a bank or credit union checking, savings, or money market account, invested in a CD or in a government securities bond fund, stashed in cash brokerage accounts or stuffed under a mattress, is also suffering from the very same negative real returns.  Negative real returns are the cost, a hidden tax imposed on somnolent unsuspecting public, of the Ben Bernanke currency printing, Tim Geithner borrowing and Barack Obama spending sprees.  Spend now.  

Party hard.  Don’t look to the future and save and invest, there’s no payoff in it.  That’s the world of Obama.  The children say thanks.