Deficiency at the Deficit Commission

What is the huge missing piece in the proposal of the Deficit Commission?

Leadership is making the all Federal employees bear a fair share of austerity. Including Congress. Had the commission had a majority of persons from outside the DC Ruling Class, you can be certain it would have included something like a 20% pay & benefits cut for Federal employees with the cuts concentrated at the top of the pay scale. They are grossly overpaid, having received years of inflation and step increases while the common man & woman have borne pay stagnation or cuts, and large benefit cuts.

The same applies to Federal contractors. When a company has troubles, it goes to suppliers and demands price cuts. The Federal government has huge purchasing power - why didn't the Deficit Commission propose cuts in all contractor costs?

The answer to these glaring failures is simple: the Commission was almost all DC insiders, they are part of the problem.

Create a truly independent commission - with a supermajority of persons outside of government and outside of DC (and NYC and LA and Chicago). Get people who have experience in cutting costs.

And require ALL spending cuts come before ANY tax increases. Otherwise we will simply see the same old shell game: more taxes, no spending cuts implemented.

More

Is anyone amazed that with almost 10% unemployment and 17% underemployment, that a Democratic President has NO plan or program to help create jobs? Barry is a complete cluster FUBAR, with no ideas or leadership. The People chose badly. Remember who touted him as the great savior, and disregard them in the future.

And More

Uh ... with all the handwringing and anguish over QE2, has anyone bothered to look at the FACT that the monetary base is LOWER than it was a year ago. That's tightening, not easing. Battleship Ben: your shells are falling short, add more powder. Accelerate the buying of those Treasury securities.

Actions

Krypto wants me to sell some gold; that sector is now overinvested due to recent gains. I'll do it via a gold stocks fund. Proceeds to cash to await better bond prices.

Word of the Day

"Irrefragable" - adjective [$10] an Eliot word (i. e., from readings of T. S. Eliot)
Irrefragable means 1. (of a statement, argument or person) unanswerable, indisputable; 2. (of rules, etc.) inviolable.
Sentence: That the Deficit Commission was poorly and fatally constructed by Barry is irrefragable as it was dominated by the Congressmen who are part of the problem.

The Key Number

To assess the strength or weakness of the US economy, you need only look at one number every week: the new unemployment claims. This is a rather hard number as it is based on real people filing real claims from layoffs. If does not capture failures of small sole proprietorships, but not much else does that.

IF-WHEN that number falls under 300,000, then one can say the US economy is growing well - fast enough to absorb new graduates and labor force re-entrants. Until then, it's a muddle.

Don't waste time on the forest of other data - just watch that one big tree.

Today we get another data point. I expect another poor number - around 450,000. Ugh.

Word of the Day

"Churl" - noun [$10]
Churl means 1, a medieval peasant; 2. rustic, countryman; 3. a rude, ill-bred person; a stingy, morose person.
Sentence: Has not Barry become quite a churl by his slang comments about BP and what he would do to them ?