Lowering taxes
Deregulation of industry
Cutting government spending

All of these will increase jobs

In short, we need LESS GOVERNMENT. Obama wants to push more government down our throats and increase spending. All of this increased spending is bankrupting our country.

An article over at Yahoo is exactly what I’ve been talking about for years.

Housing: The mantra behind every successful real-estate sale has always been “location, location, location.” But in the current recession, that “location” has turned out to be the reason home prices are circling the drain. However, there are tentative signs that the hardest-hit spots may be turning around.

Florida, California and the Las Vegas area are well-known as the ground zeroes of the housing bust. But BusinessWeek is reporting that home sales in some of these areas are actually surging as first-time buyers are taking the plunge, thanks to plunging home prices and low interest rates. Speculators looking to invest are also snapping up foreclosed properties.

Employment: Yes, unemployment has hit its highest level in more than two decades, but more and more employers are looking to the long-term and doing everything they can to avoid layoffs. In order to cut costs, companies are freezing salaries, cutting back hours or temporarily halting 401(k) matching. But some employers are recognizing that laying people off will actually cost them more down the road when they have to replace those workers. From AP:

“If you overshoot on the downside and lay off workers, it puts the company at a disadvantage when the economy comes back to life,” said Sean Snaith, economics professor at the University of Central Florida.

But if you do get laid off and you just bought a home, you might actually be in (a little) luck. Some builders are now offering “layoff insurance” to new home buyers. AP reports that Lennar Corp., a major U.S. builder, will cover the mortgage payments for up to six months if a buyer loses his or her job within two years of purchasing their home.

The perks: Now is definitely a good time to be a consumer. As retailers and businesses are forced to tighten their belts, many are doing everything they can to get people to buy buy buy. Can’t afford happy hour anymore? One enterprising D.C. clothing store is luring customers with free beer, scotch or soft drinks while they shop. Even colleges are getting in on the game: Some private colleges are now slashing their tuition to compete with much-cheaper public universities.

Southwest Airlines, known for its “cattle call” seating and cheap flights, announced it will now be flying in and out of New York’s LaGuardia Airport. JetBlue’s “Promise Program” will refund airline tickets if you lose your job after booking a flight. Mainstreet.com reports that many businesses — gyms, cable companies, even automakers — are offering refunds or reduced fees for the recently unemployed.

But before we get to excited, economists estimate that at least three years would pass before full employment returned and output rose enough for the economy to operate at full throttle.

While stock market investors have embraced tentative signs of improvement in the mortgage market and elsewhere, even a sharp pickup in demand for products and services will take considerable time to play out.

The mathematics are daunting. The shortfall is running at more than $1 trillion in annual sales and other transactions. Only once since the Great Depression has there been such a severe loss of output — in the 1981-82 recession — and after that downturn, it was seven years before the economy regained the lost production.

Recovery from the current recession could be similarly sluggish. New occupants have to be found for empty stores. Factory owners who are hesitant to ramp up production will wait until they are sure of demand. Hiring the right people for an operation will take time. And imports, entering the country in ever greater quantities, will slow any expansion by siphoning sales from domestic producers.

Then there is the growth rate itself. In the six years of recovery from the 2001 recession to the current one, the economy grew at an average annual rate of only 2.5 percent, adjusted for inflation. If that growth rate were to resume, just $350 billion a year would be added back, requiring three years to restore the $1 trillion in lost capacity. But getting the economy to grow at all after so much output has been lost, and so many jobs, is no easy task.

It shows up everywhere. Lawyers are booking fewer hours. Retail space goes begging. Tourism is down. So is cellphone use, airline bookings, freight traffic and household borrowing, which is less than half what it was on the eve of the recession, the Federal Reserve reports.

With orders dwindling, manufacturers are using less than 68 percent of the nation’s factory capacity, the lowest level since records were first kept in 1948. And while entrepreneurs are as inventive as ever, they may not be able to get venture capitalists to bankroll their creations.

President Obama’s solution was the recently enacted stimulus package that spreads $787 billion over two years. So even if every dollar of spending restored a dollar of output, President Obama would be nearing the end of his first term before output approached the level achieved just before the start of the recession in December 2007 according to Robert J. Gordon.  Mr. Gordon, an economist at Northwestern University,  specializes in tracking the gap between actual output and potential output, a k a full capacity.

Now here is a real bright idea!  Subprime borrowers may now be able to get a car loan through GMAC thanks to federal bailout money, according to The Detroit News.   This is exactly what happens when your beloved government doesn’t let these companies file for bankruptcy, but instead handout billions upon billions of your hard earned income to these companies so they can make idiot decisions.

On 24 December 2008, the Federal Reserve accepted GMAC’s application to become a bank holding company in order to gain access to billions of dollars in government aid, a crucial attempt to ensure the survival of the company. GMAC is in discussions with the Federal Reserve on accessing TARP related funding to resume providing auto financing to the American consumer, as reported by the Wall Street Journal.

I guess we haven’t learned our lesson yet.  You don’t give dirtbags any type of loans!  This is like going back to the future with the lowered lending standards that got us in trouble in the first place across so many credit markets.

Applicants with credit scores of less than 620 will now be considered. Of course, if you have terrible problems with credit, it’s probably not a good idea to take on a long auto loan.

It’s clear this is happening right now because car sales were absolutely decimated last month. GM sales were down 45%; Chrysler was down 39%; Toyota was down 39%; and Honda was down 36%. The auto market overall was down an average of 37%.

So the nearly $6 billion made available by the government is being used to make loans to people who may not be able to pay them back — all in an effort to try to move cars that aren’t selling off dealer lots.

This is a really bad freaking idea.  The answer to the lack of demand for these cars is not to go to the subprime market because these people in a very short time will not be able to make the payment and these cars will be coming back through repossession.

No single answer to the question of value proposition

There are some new signs emerging about just how badly retail is suffering through the economic downturn.

First, Moody’s Investors Service downgraded the debt of Macy’s and J.C. Penney to junk-grade status. That means there are questions about whether their bonds will ever be paid off. It’s a sure sign of financial instability in these veteran retailers.  Read the full story.

The funeral industry requests a bailout!

On April 1, Clark saw a Washington Post article that he thought for sure was a put-on.

In our continuing saga of bailouts, the funeral industry is now asking for its own bailout. “We recognized that there may be a situation where a lot of folks who were displaced or unemployed might need some help in paying for their funerals,” a lobbyist for the National Funeral Directors Association said in the report. “We had some preliminary discussions about providing some stimulus payments to the states [for funerals.]“  Read the full story.

Money market fund guarantee extended through Sept. ‘09

Savers can breathe a temporary sigh of relief now that government coverage on money market funds has been extended through Sept. 18, 2009.

Money-market funds have long been considered just about the safest place to stash cash. During the nearly 30 years of their existence, no one had ever lost a single penny in a money market fund.  Read the full story.

There are already too many people living on Planet Earth, according to one of most influential science advisors in the US government.

Overpopulation is more dangerous than that stupid hoax called global warming caused by humans.   This is something that I have always thought about and that is human population growth and the dangers it can cause the planet.  Just think about this, the more humans there are the more we’re going to need and use of these precious resources of Earth:  water, food, land and energy resources.  Then comes our waste: garbage and pollution.  Now granted we have come along way with recycling and reusing materials, but not enough has been done yet.

How about water, land and food?  The more humans that are born, the more we are going to have to spread out and take out valuable crop space.  We need water and lots of states in the U.S. have major droughts.  The funny thing is that Earth 70% water, of course most of it is salt water but there is a way to desalinate salte water.  Unfortunately here in the U.S., EPA regualtions will not allow the process of reverse osmosis of ocean water.

One of the main environmental considerations of ocean water desalination plants is the impact of the open ocean water intakes, especially when co-located with power plants. Many proposed ocean desalination plants initial plans relied on these intakes despite perpetuating ongoing impacts on marine life. In the United States, due to a recent court ruling under the Clean Water Act these intakes are no longer viable without reducing mortality, by ninety percent, of the life in the ocean; the plankton, fish eggs and fish larvae.

And what about food?

A National Medal of Science laureate (America’s highest science award), the professor of molecular biology believes part of that better land management must include the use of genetically modified foods.

“We have six-and-a-half-billion people on the planet, going rapidly towards seven. “We’re going to need a lot of inventiveness about how we use water and grow crops,” she told the BBC.

Check out these other effects of overpopulation

• Inadequate fresh water for drinking water use as well as sewage treatment and effluent discharge. Some countries, like Saudi Arabia, use energy-expensive desalination to solve the problem of water shortages.
• Depletion of natural resources, especially fossil fuels^.
• Increased levels of air pollution, water pollution, soil contamination and noise pollution. Once a country has industrialized and become wealthy, a combination of government regulation and technological innovation causes pollution to decline substantially, even as the population continues to grow.
• Deforestation and loss of ecosystems that sustain global atmospheric oxygen and carbon dioxide balance; about eight million hectares of forest are lost each year.
• Changes in atmospheric composition.
• Irreversible loss of arable land and increases in desertification^. Deforestation and desertification can be reversed by adopting property rights, and this policy is successful even while the human population continues to grow.
• Mass species extinctions. from reduced habitat in tropical forests due to slash-and-burn techniques that sometimes are practiced by shifting cultivators, especially in countries with rapidly expanding rural populations; present extinction rates may be as high as 140,000 species lost per year. As of 2007, the IUCN Red List lists a total of 698 animal species having gone extinct during recorded human history.
• High infant and child mortality. High rates of infant mortality are caused by poverty. Rich countries with high population densities have low rates of infant mortality.
• Increased chance of the emergence of new epidemics and pandemics^. For many environmental and social reasons, including overcrowded living conditions, malnutrition and inadequate, inaccessible, or non-existent health care, the poor are more likely to be exposed to infectious diseases.
• Starvation, malnutrition or poor diet with ill health and diet-deficiency diseases (e.g. rickets). However, rich countries with high population densities do not have famine.
• Poverty coupled with inflation in some regions and a resulting low level of capital formation. Poverty and inflation are aggravated by bad government and bad economic policies. Many countries with high population densities have eliminated absolute poverty and keep their inflation rates very low.
• Low life expectancy in countries with fastest growing populations^.
• Unhygienic living conditions for many based upon water resource depletion, discharge of raw sewage and solid waste disposal. However, this problem can be reduced with the adoption of sewers. For example, after Karachi, Pakistan installed sewers, its infant mortality rate fell substantially.
• Elevated crime rate due to drug cartels and increased theft by people stealing resources to survive^.
• Conflict over scarce resources and crowding, leading to increased levels of warfare^.

There are two things that can slowly ease this problem and that is higher abortion rates and governments allowing for euthanasia or assisted suicide.   We could try to do everything humanly possible to solve problems like the global warming hoax or a real threat to civilization which is over population.  But, the bottom line is that you can’t stop nature, you can contain it for a little while, but all things come to an end.  The Earth has gone through six mass extinctions, and guess what?  We’re number seven and there isn’t a damn thing you can do about it!

Check out these statistics on overpopulation.

Outrage over government backing GM, Chrysler warranties

It’s now been almost one year ago to the day that Clark made some comments about Chrysler that provoked heated response.

In short, the consumer champ questioned the company’s viability (while expecting them to go bankrupt) and predicted that their warranties would be worthless back in April 2008.  Read the full story.

Cul-de-sac bans as a new money-saving measure for gov’t?

The state of Virginia is banning the building of new neighborhood developments with cul-de-sacs. North Carolina and parts of Oregon are also seeking to do the same, according to The Washington Post.  Read the full story.

REOs remain the good news in a down housing market

CLARKONOMICS: The news on the housing market continues to be bleak, bleak, bleak. In just one example, the latest numbers from the Case-Shiller index show that home values in Phoenix are down almost 50% from their peak in July 2006.   Read the full story.

An early look at the price of gas in summer 2009

Where will gas be as we begin slowly approaching the summer of 2009? $3/gallon? $4/gallon?! How about between $2.25 and $2.35! That’s the latest word from The Houston Chronicle, which closely follows the oil industry.  Read the full story.

Everyone from President Barack Obama on down to fans has criticized how college football determines its top team. Now senators are getting off the sidelines to examine antitrust issues involving the Bowl Championship Series.

Yeah and this is going to affect your life how?  Is this going to provide an income for you so you can provide a roof over your families head and food on the table?  I guess government is really concerned about you and your family.