Readers
ONLINE EXCLUSIVE
Relief spending should include buying pols a clue
One of former President George W. Bush’s biggest mistakes was signing into law the $700 billion Troubled Asset Relief Program’s corporate welfare bill.
You would think the dismal performance of the stock market and the economy since then would clue folks into the fact that government meddling in the economy harms the economy.
Yet, here we have the Democrats, led by President Obama and House Speaker Nancy Pelosi, eagerly pushing an even larger bill for more corporate welfare and pork.
You would think with all that money, these politicians could afford to buy themselves a clue.
Mark Kalinowski
New York, N.Y.
Index manufactures unpalatable scenario
The elected class likes smart people from academia in “brain trusts” to tell them what to do in language they do not understand, but believe. If your success is built on perception instead of reality, you will be prone to such folly.
Meanwhile, there are people who may not have the training, lisps, or arrogance of Harvard elites, but they make very good livings predicting trends in markets. These are the street-smart guys and gals on the floors and pits of equities and commodities exchanges.
Some don’t have degrees, many have ethnic names and accents, but as long as they could sit at a table, they got a nightly seminar on the markets and their indicators. It rang in their genes.
One of the more esoteric, yet fundamental, indicators is the Baltic Dry Index. This measures bookings for 26 major shipping channels handling world commerce in raw materials, grains, ores, steel, iron, cement: manufacturing components.
While we do little production in the U.S., it has to happen somewhere or finished goods will not be. The index is not traded and cannot be manipulated by speculators. It is as pure an indicator of world commerce as can be found.
Since June 2008 when it appeared Democrats would win, the BDI went into decline. The Democrat marching song, “The worst economy in 50 years,” while a lie, was heard. By the day of the election, the BDI had dropped 94 percent and there it remains.
This index predicts bare shelves in virtually every store and runaway prices within six months. The irony is that Mormons are prepared for severe food shortages and our voters rejected the one man running for president who understands the markets because he is a Mormon.
The tree of hate bears bitter fruit, but we will be eating it in desperation.
Adrian Vance
Lakeport, Calif.
America’s beauty lost on too many citizens
I am very grateful to former President George W. Bush. After the attacks of 9/11, there were no more terrorist attacks in the United States while he was in power.
Many people in America take their life for granted. Some have a great life and some have a life that is not so great.
My life in the United States is great. I cannot complain because the liberty I have is like having good health: You feel great and don’t appreciate it until you lose it.
I come from a country where dictatorships and government corruption is to a level that people are tortured and sometimes murdered for simply disagreeing with the government. We were not allowed to say or write anything that may offend the dictatorship.
I left that country a long time ago, in 1959, and I thank God every day. I am fed up with people who complain all the time and blame Bush for everything. Go home or someplace else to find out what freedom and liberty really mean.
I am proud of President Bush. He was the bravest and most determined president when faced with dealing with the most devastating attack on American soil which started an unconventional war with terrorists and criminals who do not abide by the Geneva Conventions rules of war.
Denise Borno Breton
Oceanside, Calif.