FoxBusiness ANOTHER Positive Blog

[tajitj]

Before I get to the week that was, I want to thank all of you who weighed in about my blog about listening to presidential candidate and Congressman Ron Paul. I am so deeply appreciative and grateful for all of your comments, I read them all and I am impressed with and admire your knowledge and passion.

I came here to Fox Business, the sister network to Fox News, just last October, and Fox Business gave me the honor of starting this blog this year. One thing rings through all of your responses–you deeply love this country and you are deeply worried. I hear you. Again, I thank you.

Please be aware that I am a flawed individual who is aware of my many limitations (on an hourly basis), please tell me when I am off the rails. I will do my level best. Know that I listen to everybody. I try to think things through, as I get an allergic skin reaction to knee-jerk, autopilot thinking.

I would like to see Dr. Paul debate all of the presidential candidates, not just John McCain (should Dr. Paul run as a third party candidate?). Though I may not agree with everything he says, I also don’t agree with what the other candidates say as well. Dr. Paul deserves a fair hearing, this country ought to hear what he has to say, especially about monetary and fiscal policy........ Go read the rest!

http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/

Comment on this blog. Thursdays "Time to Listen To Ron Paul" had over 300. She talked about all the comments on air. Only 30 comments from Fridays blog. This is all part of spreading the message. We seem to have made a friend on the inside.

Go ask her about the new Fed regulation or deregulation, whatever they want to call it.

[mello]

I'm getting a broken link when I click on it.

[Fields]

Link broken mate.

[Phantom]

Use this link until tajitj fixes the one above: Link (http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2008/03/28/the-reality-check-that-bounced/#comment-973)

[tajitj]

Link Fixed.

[angelatc]

Poop on Fox.

[rockandrollsouls]

it's interesting. In all fairness, i think it's safe to say FOX business may actually like the doctor...or they at least respect him. The other wing of FOX is the polar opposite

[Chibioz]

I hope Elizabeth MacDonald makes more blogs like this.

[Joseph Hart]

"The Reality Check That Bounced" Great Title!

[angelatc]

it's interesting. In all fairness, i think it's safe to say FOX business may actually like the doctor...or they at least respect him. The other wing of FOX is the polar opposite

Nonsense. They'll divide us eventually.

[Highland]

bump

[tajitj]

I notice they put her picture with blog title on the front page. Still on front page and its Sunday morning. Maybe we have caught their interest. I did hear her reference yesterdays blog and all the support it got on air.

I am getting way ahead of myself here but maybe the very young foxbusiness can grow into a channel that champions Pauls economic views. I mean what he talks about is the TRUTH. So lets keep on them. Read the blogs and watch the maybe we can influence them in a positive way.

[angelatc]

I notice they put her picture with blog title on the front page . Maybe we have caught there interest. I did hear her reference yesterdays blog and all the support it got on air.

I am getting way ahead of myself here but maybe the very young foxbusiness can grow into a channel that champions Pauls economic views. I mean what he talks about is the TRUTH. So lets keep on them. Read the blogs and watch the maybe we can influence them in a positive way.

I am cynical and bitter. I remember when Fox News really was pretty fair and balanced. They took a lot of good people with them when they went over to the dark side.

[Bradley in DC]

most viewed and most commented...

[Geronimo]

I'm too devoted to my fox boycott to open the link.

Can someone cut and paste the text to this thread, please?

[eleganz]

If you want Elizabeth to continue her support for Ron Paul, let her know she is doing a good job by contacting her and telling her. Knowing Fox, her supervisors/directors are probably giving her heat for not following the "fox way" so she probably needs some support.

[Chibioz]

The Reality Check That Bounced (http://emac.blogs.foxbusiness.com/2008/03/28/the-reality-check-that-bounced/)

By Elizabeth MacDonald
Oliver Stone is doing a movie about George W. Bush.
That bit of news was a fitting end to a kaleidescopic week straight off the fiction shelves.

Before I get to the week that was, I want to thank all of you who weighed in about my blog about listening to presidential candidate and Congressman Ron Paul. I am so deeply appreciative and grateful for all of your comments, I read them all and I am impressed with your knowledge and passion. I came here to Fox Business, the sister network to Fox News, just last October, and Fox Business gave me the honor of starting this blog this year. One thing rings through all of your responses–you deeply love this country and you are deeply worried. I hear you. Again, I thank you.

Please be aware that I am a flawed individual who is aware of my many limitations (on an hourly basis), please tell me when I am off the rails. I will do my level best. Know that I listen to everybody. I try to think things through, as I get an allergic skin reaction to knee-jerk, autopilot thinking.

I would like to see Dr. Paul debate all of the presidential candidates, not just John McCain (should Dr. Paul run as a third party candidate?). Though I may not agree with everything he says, the same goes true for all the candidates. Dr. Paul deserves a fair hearing, this country ought to hear what he has to say, especially about monetary and fiscal policy.

Here’s a recap of the week’s headspinning highlights: the Federal Reserve’s historic rescue of Bear Stearns and its handouts to investment banks, which it doesn’t regulate; regulators for the overleveraged, underwater Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac now saying the two need to raise a total of $20b more via dilutive stock offerings, a whopping two-thirds of their market caps; more scary talk about bank write-downs; the dollar plunging toward the Zimbabwe currency; oil veering toward $120; Congress now doing its neat after-the-fact refereeing with planned hearings on fixing Wall Street’s very expensive, very messy freelance experiment at satisfying the government’s 100% homeownership dream for this country.

But just as thinking that Oliver Stone’s movies are historically accurate is like thinking that the movies “Gone With the Wind” or “The Titanic” are documentaries, the real problem rocking the market is its bafflement over what exactly will be the truth about the size of the writedowns at places like Citigroup (C (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:stockSearch%28%27C%27%29;): 20.83, -0.96, -4.40%), Merrill Lynch (MER (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:stockSearch%28%27MER%27%29;): 39.93, -1.97, -4.70%), Lehman Bros (LEH (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:stockSearch%28%27LEH%27%29;): 37.87, -0.84, -2.16%), Goldman Sachs (GS (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:stockSearch%28%27GS%27%29;): 164.45, -3.69, -2.19%), JP Morgan Chase (JPM (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:stockSearch%28%27JPM%27%29;): 42.71, -0.15, -0.34%) and UBS (UBS (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:stockSearch%28%27UBS%27%29;): 27.77, -1.36, -4.66%) (to get a handle on it, see my prior blog, “The Answer to Who’s Next on Wall Street”).

Before I get to the writedowns, this must be said:
*THE DEMOCRATS AND TAX CUTS: In his speech on the economy this week, to punish what he thinks is “the investor class” on Wall Street, Democratic presidential hopeful and Senator Barack Obama says he wants to raise taxes on dividends and capital gains; so does Democratic presidential hopeful Senator Hillary Clinton. The presumptive Republican nominee, John McCain, still backs the Bush tax cuts.

Set aside for now the fact that the Bush tax cuts on capital gains and the death tax alone raised more revenue than President Bill Clinton’s tax hike on the upper bracket, analysts note.

For some time now, the Democrats have had no more sense than a flock of geese. That’s because hiking these taxes hurts Main Street, the most important investor class of all. Many senior citizens live entirely on dividend income alone; the middle class desperately needs its 401K and IRA money like never before because Social Security is in a ditch (thanks to the Democrats changing the law in the ‘60s so it could, for the first time, get its mitts on Social Security funds to spend on pork and to buy votes).

The Democratic candidates, in their blinkered concretism, stubbornly refuse to acknowledge human behavior. Investors sit on assets, including stocks, rather than sell and pay the capital gains tax, because capital gains taxes are voluntary. You don’t have to pay until you sell. Higher capital gains taxes keep frozen all sorts of economic activity. Hike taxes, you also get tax avoidance schemes going viral too–and massive loopholes written into the colossally inefficient tax code, a big tangled pile of barbed wire as it is. But we’d rather be a nation of tax lawyers and accountants. Both Obama and Clinton want to make it even more confusing with gimmicky credits that won’t buy you a bag of groceries for a month.

Obama and Clinton want to hurt Main Street with more taxes. “Why is Barack Obama so hell-bent on pursuing policies that would wreck America’s retirement savings?” asks Ryan Ellis, tax policy director at Americans for Tax Reform. ”Because, by and large, he doesn’t have any skin in the game.”
How so? Obama is not part of the investor class because he’s reported no dividend income on his tax returns from 2001 to 2004, and just $2,754 in dividend income on his 2005 tax return and $1,188 on his 2006 return (Clinton has yet to release her returns).

Where are the John F. Kennedy tax-cutting Democrats? Lower taxes help the economy. Even the former Soviet satellite states like Estonia and Lithuania have enacted flat taxes. Lowering rates in our anti-growth, anti-entrepreneur tax code is the best non-inflationary liquidity in the galaxy. But as the Heritage Foundation notes, though we won the Cold war, Russia has a flat tax while we’re still stuck with America’s museum of mass confusion, the IRS.

*BEHIND THE BANK WRITE-DOWNS: The market is volatile because the accounting rules the financials use to book these write-downs for their securities backed by mortgages and other credit act more like a weathervane, auditors and accounting pros say (for the heated debate about what’s driving the record write-downs, see my prior blogs on the controversial accounting rules to book them, the fair market rules, “The Answer to Who’s Next on Wall Street,” “What’s Really Rocking the Stock Market,” and “In the Weeds”).
You’d have to have the training of a tornado forecaster at the National Weather Center to say with any certainty what the write-downs are going to look like, and some of these estimates already have been dreadfully wrong.
That was certainly true for the recent, way off-the-mark write-downs expected at Goldman Sachs and Lehman Bros., which came in lower than estimated. There will be losses, we just don’t know the size. No one does–hence the record volatility.

Fights are breaking out between the companies and auditors, because the accounting rules say the companies have to get a price-tag for these securities that are backed by loans based on what the market says they are worth. That’s called ‘marking to market.’

Sounding like an Abbott and Costello routine, you can’t mark something to market when there is no market to market these securities in. “Everyone seems to be clueless when it comes to projecting how much still needs to be written off and how much longer this [market distress] will continue,” says economist Ed Yardeni. One thing you can bet on: More shotgun weddings between damaged financials.

*THE REGULATORY FREIGHT TRAIN: Congress is hopping on it now, with hearings planned on Capitol Hill that will take a closer look at the Federal Reserve’s actions on Wall Street, including the forced nuptials between Bear Stearns (BSC (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:stockSearch%28%27BSC%27%29;): 10.78, -0.45, -4.00%) and JP Morgan Chase (JPM (http://javascript%3Cb%3E%3C/b%3E:stockSearch%28%27JPM%27%29;): 42.71, -0.15, -0.34%). New York Sen. Charles Schumer says he may call for a single regulator for commercial and investment banks, following the collapse of Bear Stearns. The hearings may result in tighter capital requirements for investment banks.

That will likely happen–the capital levels from the Securities & Exchange Commission are roughly a third of what the Fed requires of the investment banks it regulates. Banks in Japan dropped into a black hole in the ’90s because they didn’t have to set aside a sufficient amount in capital reserves to back their lending. The collapse of the banking sector in Japan led to that country’s lost decade of the ’90s, which it only surfaced from several years ago.

Congress will also want to take a look at the Fed’s backstop of a $29bn non-recourse line to finance toxic parts of the balance sheet of Bear Stearns, which is now only protected by a $1bn cushion of first loss collateral from JPMorgan. Non-recourse, meaning, the Fed can’t hit up JP Morgan for this money, it has to auction those securities off and take a gain or a loss on them, not JP Morgan.

Despite what you hear that the Fed is only charged with printing money and that this backstop doesn’t hurt taxpayers, it does. The Fed turns over to government coffers what it earns on the investments it holds in its portfolio. Taking a hit from Frankenstein securities means less money coming in those coffers from the Fed. And more printing of money to make up the difference–which taxpayers pay for in the form of inflation. Watch this quote: In 2002, then Fed board member Ben Bernanke, now the Fed chairman, said in a speech, “the U.S. government has a technology called a printing press…that allows it to produce as many U.S. dollars as it wishes at essentially no cost.”

*INFLATION: New numbers purport to show that inflation is not a problem. Not. Talk to any middle class family struggling with health care costs and tuition expenses, and they’ll tell you it is. Why is inflation a problem? Too many dollars, rising demand for commodities, plus, again, zero oversight, no where, none, for things like health care and tuition costs.

*GDP: GDP growth came in at a low six-tenths of a percent. Don’t know if that’ll get revised downward–if it does it’ll mean the tip of a recession. I saw a great study that says GDP should be considered on a per capita basis, to show how truly productive a country’s workers really are and to get a better window on how much an economy is growing.

In Japan, GDP per head increased at annual rate of 2.1% in the past five years to ‘07, a bit better than the US’s 1.9% and a lot better than Germany’s 1.4%, the study says. And despite all the talk about Brazil and Russia being on fire, check this out. On this basis, Brazil increased 2.3% per capita per year since ‘03, a touch faster than Japan. Russia comes in at 7.4% per capita, but that’s because its petrodollars are pouring in while its population has been on the decline.

*SILVER LINING: Weekly initial unemployment claims. In previous deep recessions, they tended to rise rapidly, over 400,000 toward 500,000, notes Yardeni. In the 1990-1991 recession, jobless claims hit 496,000 on a four-week moving average basis; in 2001-2001, it hit 489,000. The latest four-week average was only 358,000. Sigh of relief. For now.

[Geronimo]

Thanks!!

[Rhys]

She's real smart actualy. Usualy I read these financial blogs, and think "all wrong" but she's actualy right!

[tajitj]

Get her to have paul on Foxbusiness. He needs to tell the people about the new fed regulations.

[nc4rp]

4 months left fro this grassroots fire to blaze up in all its intended glory!

We may be heading to a "flashpoint"

keep it up the positivity!!

[liberteebell]

Before I get to the week that was, I want to thank all of you who weighed in about my blog about listening to presidential candidate and Congressman Ron Paul. I am so deeply appreciative and grateful for all of your comments, I read them all and I am impressed with your knowledge and passion. I came here to Fox Business, the sister network to Fox News, just last October, and Fox Business gave me the honor of starting this blog this year. One thing rings through all of your responses–you deeply love this country and you are deeply worried. I hear you. Again, I thank you.

Please be aware that I am a flawed individual who is aware of my many limitations (on an hourly basis), please tell me when I am off the rails. I will do my level best. Know that I listen to everybody. I try to think things through, as I get an allergic skin reaction to knee-jerk, autopilot thinking.

I don't recall reading a more fine compliment than she's paid us here. For that alone, I will support her. Other people besides us Ron Paul Peeps are reading her blog so we can change minds through this venue. We are, on the whole, impressively knowledgable on the economy (among other things). :D:D