Believe me, while I have rested my keyboard-weary fingers for a few months, my mind has been going full-speed-ahead.  I have watched my stock portfolio take a hit that is reminiscent of 2008 (I cringed when I got my statement today), Congress has proven yet again their unworthiness to govern and President Obama  has demonstrated to all sensible  Americans that he is  as American born and Christian as the next   (only attends church on Easter and for funerals).  The economy is souring with unemployment still (20 months into this recession) the #1 problem.

But wait, there is more.  Iraq is no longer a combat zone for Americans (pity the poor Iraqii’s though), Afghanistan is ballooning into a Vietnam and a Korea all balled up into one awful nightmare, and the Mid-East situation is no better at all (despite the opening of Obama’s direct talks with Palestinians and Israelis) as the threat of Iranian nukes hovers ominously.

Hold on!  If you keep on reading you will get even more from CapitalistMarks in the coming days.  Health care reform is proving to be the opposite of the wonderful promises made  (Regence Blue Cross/Blue Shield of Utah has cancelled my policy and forced me to take another with significantly less coverage/benefits coupled with added costs that could easily be in the tens of thousands of $$ each year).  I am told there are a bunch more like me out there that won’t be helped at all until at least 2014 when the new Obamacare/Democratcare plan kicks in.  Health care costs will continue soaring, and health insurance companies profits will bollow in lockstep.  But will I (others) live until 2014 with reduced coverage and costs that exceed average American family incomes?

Bailout spending?  Sure a few big banks have survived and some large Corporations  too . . . but only to the benefit of the CEOs and a few of their croonies . . . surely not you and I . . . the employees,  ‘head-shaking’ shareholders or the stunned taxpayers.

Stimulus?  Cost billions more than we were told originally and now Obama and his minions are talking about adding a few dozen more billions.  And, the Federal Reserve is out of arrows with interest rates at zero (of course they have quantitative easing left . . . but the Fed buying up government notes will add to the already enormous deficit).

Fiscal Policy?  Don’t look for any help in an election year.  Everyone in the country knows that the tax system needs to be reinvented.  But, don’t expect any politicians to offer  any credible solutions that would cost any votes.

Remember the old sage who said (roughly) ‘when 51% of the poor decide they want to live off the honest earnings of the other 49% then democracy will fail.’   Well, Obama’s democratic solutions of socialism at it’s worst are beginning to make that a possibility.  Wouldn’t it be something if he really is a Muslim or Communist ’sleeper’ who ends America’s greatness by destroying our economic/political system with old fashioned Marxist policies?  NOTE:  I do not believe this . . . but I can see why some bloggers are going conspiracy theory on us.

China?  Passed Germany as the #2 economy in the world and is only 30 or so more years of double digit GDP growth from passing the U.S.  Oh, yeah, don’t forget their military is growing faster and more aggressively than any other in the world, nor their efforts to grab natural resources from the rest of the world for their own good (sounds pretty capitalist to me).  Note that the ‘rare earth’ minerals used in so many high-tech products are produced primarily in China’s two mining/mineral centers, and that the costs of these crucial minerals have gone up over 1000% (yep, one thousand) in the last 10 years or so.

Iran?  I can’t even bear to talk about it.  Ahmadinejad is nuts!

Venezuela?  Run by a lunatic dictator who makes Castro (in his old days) seem like a kindergarten recess monitor.

Housing?  Millions of homes in foreclosure and the banks still won’t bend over to help anyone despite federal laws requiring them to do so  (wait until those very real writeoffs hit the books!).

Unemployment?  Some estimates put actual #’s as high as 20+% when underemployed and work-force abandoners are included but regardless there are at least 25 million Americans who want good full-time jobs and don’t have them.

Global warming?  Only the HOTTEST summer in history for our northern hemisphere.

I could go on but my moist, fearfuk and warm tears are clouding my eyes too much.

All I can say is it behooves you to stay tuned to this channel.

I will tell it like it is–give my answers to tough questions–offer solutions where needed.  I will be right-on most of the time and never wavering in pursuit of truth and justice.

But,remember this always:  the single biggest problem America has today is professional politicians.  They call D.C. home and they love living there and partaking of their un-American perks and benefits.  The new byword is ‘if you don’t like their perks, get rid of the jerks.’

Do NOT vote for incumbents . . . we need citizen leaders who leave their real lives to serve for 4-8 years and then go back to those same lives.  Guys like you and I who can listen to both sides consider the alternatives and decide what is really best for our country.   Our founding fathers intended it.  We really have to now.  Oh, and eliminate the guaranteed jobs, golden retirements and benefits for congress and government employees.  Make them live like the rest of us . . . they won’t want to stick around more than they are welcome if we can push that through.

I hope you will join me at the polls in November to oust the greedy, self-serving ‘pros’ and vote in our neighbors and friends who will do an honest job (particularly those who promise to go home after one or two terms).

I will post when impressed to do so and not just in order to get another word in.  You can count on that.  Also, due to some continuing health issues, I may not post as regularly as I would like.  I promise though, every post will be important, current, relevant and helpful.

Read this with the clear knowledge that President Obama has proven he is NOT a free market capitalist in the Adam Smith mold.  He claims to be, but the last 16 months have given sufficient proof that he is a genuine dyed-in-the-wool left-wing democrat socialist (not that this ideology is bad since it works in China . . . just that it is generally bad for the world’s greatest and most powerful economy).

I am going to give each of the points he enumerated in his recent speech a letter grade.  Just like school.  An ‘A’ is really good, a ‘B’ is pretty good, a ‘C’ is  politically and economically tiresome with no new news, a ‘D’ is bad stuff for you and I as individual investors, and an ‘F’ is bad news for everybody but the big-wigs on Wall Street (already the highest paid–read overpaid–executives on the Planet Earth).

First:  Obama is going to ‘make certain taxpayers never again are on the hook to bailout Wall Street Firms that are Too Big To Fail.’ To do this he is going to put a limit on the size of risks that financial firms can take.

Grade– ‘C’  maybe ‘C-’.  How does he intend to accomplish this task?  An army of accountants in the hundreds of thousands to monitor every transaction above a certain limit?  Impossible.   New rules that simply say what he said?  Impossible.  Wall Street is overloaded with entrepreneurial and greedy financial wizards right out of Business Schools that give prestigious MBAs.  They can, and will, find a way around any new rules including breaking up trades so that the risk appears limited but really isn’t.  Bottom line:  fancy talk that makes points with taxpayers (the 50% of the population that do pay taxes and do invest) but  Obama will NOT be able to deliver.

Second: New transparency that will take derivatives out of the ‘filthy cellar’ of Wall Street’s underground and make them legitimate financial instruments that are well-defined and traded on an exchange so that everyone can see and understand what the risks and benefits are.  Whew, that sentence took some effort!

Grade: ‘B.’  It makes sense to get all derivatives out in the open and trade them on an exchange.  Doing this will require that those who create and sell such ’stuff’ will have to meet SEC disclosure regulations ( improved for this purpose).   Then, if you are so inclined, as an investor, you will be able to look up the ugly (or pretty) details of all  derivatives and judge for yourself, though I caution you these could run into the hundreds of pages.  There will also be a market for derivatives and you had better believe they will trade a lot.  This means that skilled and savvy financial wizards will study them carefully before they commit their own, or their client’s, money — because if they don’t they could be liable for losses.  I don’t know how this will work but the infrastructure to do so is in place and won’t require a lot of time and money.  Good for you President Obama, but, isn’t this one kind of obvious given the current recession?  And does he really think individual investors will read all that crap?

Third:  Create ‘The strongest consumer protection ever.’  This is really nothing more than a political ploy to appeal to voters.  It doesn’t do anything more than #2 above does.  But, it does give the President a talking point to prove he is an efficient and versed user of the ‘Telepromter.’

Grade: ‘D’.  There isn’t anything here that will offer new meat to investors.  Better product?  Better disclosure?  Better Choices?  All encompassed in #2.  Make your talks short and to the point Mr. President.  Stop gloating at your command of financialese.

Fourth:  Give shareholders more power.  ’Say on Pay and  more say on the election of Directors.’  Attaboy.  This was always intended in public corporations but has been dreadfully abused and destroyed by modern management.  Shareholders provided the capital and they should have a determinative say on compensation at the highest levels.  Directors should also be elected by the shareholders and not as a result of ‘friendly’ votes by Mutual Funds or Retirement Funds with majority control and ‘interlocking directorships’ (where directors serve . . . with handsome compensation . . .  on boards of mutual funds and also on the board of corporations that the mutual fund invests in — just one of many ways that directors and CEO’s pad there own pockets.  This is a move that could really level the field for what Obama calls ‘consumers’ or individual investors like you and me.  It means those proxy statements that come in the mail once a year will be meaningful and give each of us a say.

Grade: ‘A’ – if the president can pull it off.  Remember that these same mutual funds and corporate boards are the ones who contribute huge amounts to election campaigns (another area for major reform) and won’t want to kill the golden goose.  I am a long time investor and I ‘KNOW’ that certain CEO’s and many Directors are paid far too much.  There is nothing really magic about running a huge public company (I have consulted to a few in my days).  Good leadership is not as rare as many people believe and decision making is not as difficult as many others tell shareholders.  There has to be a limit and Boards have to represent the shareholders rather than the CEO’s and themselves.  This can be done but it is going to take some real ‘cajones’ to push through politically.  Does the President have what it takes?  The health care reform bill makes me think he might.   We can only hope.

Overall, reform of Wall Street is needed.  No doubt.  I just hope lobbyists and ‘endentured servant’ politicians can pull it off.

I liked what he had to say and heard a few Wall Street regulars on the preceding talk shows also agree.  But is that enough?

Bottom line?

We can’t trust the folks on Wall Street (the investment capital of Earth) any more than we can throw them . . .  and some of those dudes are very rich and very heavy types.  Why should we expect?  Wall Street is the most sublime exhibit for Capitalism at work.

If there are no rules to follow you can (and they do) just about   anything to make money.

The key problem has been the use of scary, misunderstood, largely unregulated derivatives.

No one, including the salesmen who pumped them, understood entirely what derivatives were all about, except that they were a grand scheme to make a lot of money at the expense of naive investors.

These things (derivatives) are fancifully names financial instruments like CDS’s (credit default swaps) which are kinda like insurance for debt (you pay a fee or premium to a big financial institution to guarantee you will get paid the debt you owe and if there is a default the company — like AIG — will pay the debt).  This can also include sovereign debt (countries debt).

Then there are CDO’s or consolidated debt obligations.  These are a bit simpler but just as deadly.  A bunch (in the hundreds of millions of $$ and more) of mortgages are bundled together and sold.  And the seller does the bundling. Since there are hundreds or thousands of mortgages the seller sort of takes the ‘bundled’ debt on a leap of faith.  This is what Goldman Sucks Sachs is being sued by the SEC for and that has been in the news all week.

Problem is CDS’s and CDO and the like  are no small financial ‘instruments’, they can represent hundreds of billions of $$ and if there are a bunch of defaults all at once then there isn’t enought money to pay the debt.  Then  companies — Like AIG — reneg on the debt.  Whabang!  All of a sudden (like in 2008) companies fail (unless they are ‘too big to fail’ and the government steps in and guarantees them with taxpayer $$) and there is a terrible financial crises followed by a recession.

All of this fancy financial dealing is further endangered (to you and I particularly) because there is no regulation, no markets to trade them in so that they are monitored, and no rules to manage them.

This is a very bad place to be . . . one that in fact exacerbated an already scary recession.  And, it can’t be allowed to happen again.

What to do?

Write some regulations that will manage this threat and stop the secrecy perpetrated by large financial institutions, like JPMORGAN, MORGAN STANLEY, AIG, CITI BANK, BANK OF AMERICA and others.

I hope this brief lesson clarified the problem.

It was, and continues to be a big one.

Since I endeavor to make these posts short and to the point, and have failed miserably at this in the past, I am going to stop now and let you mull this over.

Ohh, the suspense!

Remember, as it stands now, we CAN”T trust Wall Street.  Investors lack confidence and with good reason.

Our definitively leftward-leaning President proposed today what he wants to do.

My next post will consider his proposal, and evaluate my estimate of its effective handling of such problems in the future.

I hope you are on the edge of your seats by now.

Tune in Tomorrow, or soon, for the conclusion:  Obama Takes on Wall Street.

thanks to flickr’s rosino for the photo

We can’t believe them though.

Taxes are everywhere at all times.

Buy a car?  Check the sales form for everything from sales tax to tire taxes.

Buying a house?  Check the closing statement for everything from property tax to energy taxes.

Shopping for groceries or clothes?  Sales tax.

Buying gas for the weekend drive into the mountains?  Well, there is the $0.75 federal tax and sundry state and local taxes — all per gallon.

Wanna tan before the spring break beach party?  Uhhuh, thanks to the dems (remember not a single Repub voted for the health care bill) you now pay a tax on your quick-tan.  I could go on but I am too dang depressed because taxes will keep haunting me right through the end of next tax season — when nearly all our taxes will have to go up due to the huge city, county, state and federal deficits.

I guess I wouldn’t mind, since this really is a great country and we should all pay our part, but I read an article recently that confirmed what most of us income-tax paying types have believed for a long while.  About half of our entire tax-age population paid no taxes at all this year.  Shoot, what is fair or right about that?

And there are so many taxes that are hidden and add to costs of just about everything.  Take sugar.  We could get imported sugar a lot cheaper than the domestic stuff (and this isn’t like wine– it all tastes the same) and the reason is that our government puts tariffs (import taxes) on the dang stuff.  So, now my Dr. Pepper (I would like to start a Dr. Pepper party instead of a tea party) costs a whole lot more.  About 30% according to my reckoning.  Now, a nice big bottle of the Dr. costs about the same as a bottle of domestic wine did just  a few years ago.  (note:  few may be an exaggeration and I don’t drink wine so what do I know?)

The whole tax thing gets worse though.

Most Americans (the 50% of us that pay income taxes to support the others, anyway) can’t do our own taxes.   Too complicated.  We pay out of the ying-yang to get it done for us.  The tax code was 400 pages long in 1913 and is 70,000 pages today, or about 35 times as long as the new health care reform bill.  Who can read 70,000 pages let alone understand it when it is written not in English but in Governmentish (more complicated than Hieroglyphics.

Entire industries are built around the fact that the tax code is incomprehensible to the average American.  It takes the equivalent of about 4 million skilled professionals working full time to handle the paper work (thanks to The Economist for the arcane facts).

Does it make you wonder how all this got screwed up so much?  Just think of Congressmen (hundreds of them for over a hundred years) adding bits and pieces of tax code just to protect their own little constituency —  think of the credits you get for ‘bee-keeping’ or ‘hand-stitching’ footballs, or ‘bridges to nowhere’ and you will quickly get the answer.

I have said this before in this very forum and quite a few others.  Our tax system sucks!

Half the people supporting the other half?  Boy would Karl Marx ever smile at this system and we can’t let that dude win.

We need a national sales tax system (or Value Added Tax –VAT) to simplify and speed up the federal part of it all.  And contrary to what many complain, it can be done fairly and with a great more equity than the present system.  It won’t take an Army of congressmen to do it either.  Start with no taxes on any food or medical items to protect the poor, and then tax everything else at increasing rates based on basic utility.  In other words average priced cars (everyone needs them) are taxed low–say 10% and fancy-shmantzy cars (no one needs them) are taxed at 20%.  Funeral costs: 10%.  Wedding costs: 40%.  Golf: 10%.  Soccer: 70%.

You get the idea.

Put me in a room with 9 other average type Americans (tax payers) and give us a month — we will come up with a tax system and tax code that makes sense, works, is easy and fair in less than one month!

As for now, well I guess I won’t have to write about this particular travesty until next April 15 or so.

thanks to flickr’s josh thompson for the photo

With patience and hope, I have watched his ‘rookie’ mistakes:  wavering and waiting on Afghanistan as more Americans perished at the hands of the ‘talibummers’, ignoring our dependence on foreign oil (what about natural gas dude?), passively accepting the ‘gotchas’ by the Chinese, Russian and even Brazilian leaders, staying in the background as congress pussy-footed around until health care reform became a 2,000 page mess, waiting (still) as unemployment soared to completely unmanageable highs (can’t wait for the #’s that come out tomorrow — I look for a gain of 100,000 or so but don’t give much credit to Obama), and . . . well you get the idea.

But sadly I now come down hard on the side of those who believe that obama is the ‘anti-capitalist’, the American Socialist of the 21st century, one mighty big government, income transferring danger to everyone who believe in free markets and freedom of choice.

President Obama right now is a socialist, tried, true and red as can be.

Here is what pushed me over the precipice:  the health care bill . .  and the ’stealth’ student loan provisions that were hidden inside that 2,000 page horror and passed without a whisper from the right.

I am far from alone.  Steve Forbes (April 12 issue of FORBES), “Health insurers will eventually be private in name only, as the details of their policies will be dictated by governmental decrees.  About the only thing companies will have any autonomy over–perhaps–will be their corporate logo.”  And, “President Obama wants higher education in this country to be free of charge, which is why his admin is pushing for a government takeover of student lending.”

This absolutely could lead to complete government control of higher education (think of North Korea here to get the full impact of such an awful thought).

Others are even more condemnatory and I will not repeat the rantings of such as O’Rielly or Beck.  Those guys make Obama seem like a total Boy Scout (with all the merit badges of course).

Oh, how I fear for our country when the left manages (and micro-manages) with no debate with the right.  But, the right is motionless as republicans cower behind an agenda-less fury.  Oh, the dread of democrats in control as President Obama ignores the right.

At his peril, we can only hope.

This is what is happening.  Obama pushed health care reform through with NO republican support.  The victory seems to have made him into the ‘Teflon’ President.  Forget that he has opened more areas to off-shore drilling — with the same sweep of his left-wing pen he also denied drilling in other areas with great potential.

Consider that No, None, Nada, Zip, Zero, government programs have ever come in at or below the original estimates.  Name me one!  You can’t.  Oh, dread the thought.

If Obama gets his way now, those who have worked hard, paid their debts and mortgages, saved, invested and benefited from American opportunities are now going to have to finance the mistakes of the lazy, the indolent, the illegals, and the entitled.  Those who pay are most of you reading this because the others never have to worry about the facts–they get everything they need from the government or MTV!

Have a huge mortgage on you McMansion?  Don’t worry Obama will pay off enough of it to make you whole–with our money.

Got no health insurance?  No problemo Obama will take our money and pay your premiums or your health care costs.

Can’t afford a car or a toaster?  Heck, Obama has a few hundred to $8,000 just to get you in the driver’s seat.  With our money.

Own a big bank that is busted?  Shoot, Obama has $trillions to back your risky bets right or wrong.  Again our money.

Crap — I can’t stand to go on.

Bottom line today?

Obama is a socialist, through and through.

Doesn’t look like he is going to live up to the hype (unless you are a rich hollywood star or a tort lawyer).

There are some of us out there ready to do something about it.  Not those you might think.

Conservative values are not those of the whacky right that think Obama is the ‘Anti-Christ’ or not even born in America.  Conservative values are the exact same values that directed President Lincoln to same the Nation, that made Apple a house-hold name, that developed amazing drugs to help the sick, that put a man on the MOON for crying out loud.  Real people, real work, real hope, real patriotism, real values.

Obama is a good man, I am convinced of that (would love to take him on one-on-one for a few of my political and economic agendas), but he really does have this whole government and economics/social  thing wrong.

We (the good guys above — you know who pay taxes and stuff) have got to start a real movement to get our country back.  No silly ‘tea-party’  or ‘coffee-party’ , we need a genuine ‘Founders Party’ to get us back to where the Constitution, common sense, and a high school education take us.

DO NOT VOTE FOR ANY INCUMBENT!  NEVER!  EVER!  NOT OF ANY STRIPE!

America by and for Americans.  Sounds good (maybe that should be the name of our new party)

‘America for Americans’ — and God Bless Our Great Nation!

thanks to flickr’s doratagold for the photo

“I’m 63 and I’m Tired” 

The Repubs are guaranteeing to make this the #1 issue in this year’s midterm elections.  Some are even proposing to repeal the bill.  Of course, Obama, has struck back with ‘bring it on’ which is scary since weren’t those the exact (or very close) words Bush used when referring to Osama Bin Laden and his rag-tag crew a few years ago?

But at least we, the people, are now getting a chance to look at the bill (several web sites including  Whitehouse.g0v link to copies).

Politics aside this bill is clearly better (at least for 30 million Americans) than nothing . . . and there are some real advantages to what has been passed: no lifetime limits for coverage of serious illness (like the cancer that has struck both the mother and father of a great family we know), and no arbitrary exclusion of coverage for pre-existing conditions.

Great.  And of course as the only developed nation in the world that doesn’t offer health care as a ‘right’ we have just added those 30 million mentioned above to the system so we are a bit closer to the health equity of all other rich nations.

And this is probably a good thing.

Yesterday I was driving home from a doctor’s appointment with my wife when we heard a discussion about that very point on the radio.  She turned to me and said something I had never heard from her before–and believe you me it pressed home the point.

“I remember my Dad telling my Mom with real astonishment a few months after we had emigrated here from Germany, ‘I had no idea that you get no health care in America — you have to pay for it all yourself, either with insurance or out of your own pocket.  The government does nothing.’  They were both worried and the result was that while I grew up my brothers and I  hardly ever saw dentists or doctors because we couldn’t afford to.”

Boy that struck home.  If my 4 kids had not had good insurance while growing up then none of them (nor I) would be around today.

Of course from a social justice point (and to heck with that airhead Glen Beck for ridiculing that term) America should provide health care to those who need it.  How can we have ‘life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness’ without good health?

BUT . . . on the other hand.  How do we (and believe me it is you and I that will) pay for it??

Big issue and one that the Obama plan practically ignores.

I took a survey and extended it from the one person I polled to the entire nation.  Here is what I found out.

Most Americans would like to see the government provide health care to all . . . they just don’t want to pay for it with more taxes.  What they DO want is to lower the out-of-control inflation of health care costs and the crazy increases in insurance premiums.  Did you know that if health insurance premiums continue at the rate of the last decade then in another decade or two all of our paychecks will go to health insurance?  True.  And that is a scary thought.

Government always over-extends social benefits–and not just the democrats.

Social Security?  The standard employee withholding in 1950 was 0.2% (the amount the government takes out of your wages for you to contribute to S.S.) and today it is 6.2% or a 3100% increase!  Further S.S. is the most expensive government program in the world and America’s biggest federal budget expenditure all while being essentially bankrupt.

Medicare?  Medicaid?  Same kind of thing with even worse funding and cost problems down the raod.  Do your own search but I assure you that what you read will be scary.  And now we add another program that is almost just as bad and will certainly bet worse?

What is going to happen with this new reform?  We know that, at least, in the next ten years it is going to cost about $1 trillion and as our government gets into it and as entitlements increase the costs are going to soar just like other entitlement programs in the past.  That seems to be inevitable human and political nature.

This reform does very little to deal with the most critical issue on the health care horizon:  costs.

America has to find a way to lower cost inflation in health care.  Actual costs have to be lowered while still providing reasonable service.  The bill is silent on the issue.  No interstate competition for insurers (Adam Smith assured us that competition would always drive prices lower), no effort to deal with Tort Reform and limit frivolous law suits (that enrich greedy lawyers who then run for Congress, yech), no legislation that deals with incredible RX costs (ours are much higher than most nations even though a majority of new drugs are developed by U.S. companies), and there are other ways to cut costs too — but Obama failed to address them.

Seems like tax and spend, or spend and tax, all over again.

How the heck are we going to pay for this thing 10 years down the road.  Will the 4% surtax on the wealthy be increased by 3100% and extended to everyone like Social Security funding?  My math shows that is not even possible but the thought is scary enough.

We can’t afford  to have another Social Security system or another Medicare/Medicaid system.  Not without giving up defense programs, the war on terror, and many other federal programs.

Maybe, and it pains me to admit this, the repubs have it right and they should try to repeal this bill and start over by taking health care issues one at a time and do each of them methodically and  right.  I do know that as it stands we surely have moved one step to the left and are closer to European socialism than we have ever been before.

For a free market, true democracy, freedom of choice guy like me this bill smells bad.  Something is rotten in Denmark Washington D.C. and in a few years our Treasury is going to need open heart surgery and a full financial-resucitation all at once!!

Sorry folks, but the truth hurts.

We’ve always had it but it hasn’t always been available or retrievable.  Now it is.  Thanks to American ingenuity and entrepreneurial spirit natural gas is about as abundant as political blowhards on TV.

Natural gas.  If you believe Boone Pickens it is the answer to all our problems.  I wouldn’t go quite that far but I would love to convert both my cars to run on it.

But — consider.  We can  heat our homes with natural gas, natural gas can power our huge electrical power plants, natural gas can power cars, trucks, vans and even hybrid cars.  And for you ‘rednecks’ out there consider that you can cook your hot dogs and ribs on grills using natural gas (propane in this instance).

I’m not going to go into the specifics of how it is sold (BCF’s — billion cubic feet), obtained (new fracturing in shale sites and horizontal drilling for example), or distributed and sold (through gas lines or in heavy duty metal containers) but this much is important . . . for the last three years or so the price has been dropping simply because there is so dang much of it out there waiting for us to take advantage.

What is really cool?  Well, the fact that natural gas now sells for about 1/3 of what it was selling for a couple of years ago.

Cheap, abundant, available and flexible — natural gas absolutely can provide this great country with decades (at least) of energy independence while we are developing and economizing more difficult energy solutions like wind, solar, nuclear and who knows what once American minds start really focusing on the problem.

So, why (you ask incredulously) aren’t we converting all of our cars and powering all of our dirty coal-fired generating plants with natural gas?  The only answer I can come up with is health care.

Huh?  You ask with further consternation.

Yeah, health care.

Obama and the dems are so focused on health care that they are neglecting important things like jobs (well they did just pass  a relatively poor jobs bill) and of course energy independence.  Maybe they will start to think about it next week after they ‘force’ their patchwork, poor excuse of  health care reform down our throats along strictly partisan lines.

But they might now.  Unless we, the people let them know we really, really, really want them to give us genuine energy independence.  By the way,  the repubs aren’t doing anything to push this either — so both sides need to get wired on to this critical subject.

Man would I love to tell Saudi Arabia, Iran, Russia and Venezuela that we don’t need their oil anymore.  What would they do without our billions and billions (thanks Carl Sagan) of dollars to finance terror and hatred.  Think what that would do to the so called ‘balance of power’ and the OPEC cartel!

You can Google (interesting verb isn’t it?) the facts and find out for yourself.

When you finish you can also Google (sounds like something a baby does) the email addresses for the White House and your Senators and Representatives and tell them you want them to take action now!  Not tomorrow but now.

Use our natural gas to do what Americans have dreamed of since the oil embargoes and hostage holding of the 1970’s (and ’80’s and 90’s and ’00s).  Freedom!  Oh, thank heavens we can be free at last!

I’m betting on natural gas.

I hope Obama, Reid, and Pelosi would too!

thanks to flickr’s roy.luck for the photo

The reasons for his approach are clear.  The imbalance in our trade with China is huge ($266 billion deficit in 2008) and the total trade with China has grown from $5 billion in 1980 to about $410 billion in 2008 — that’s 8000% growth.

President Obama recognizes that this kind of trade imbalance and expansion can’t continue.  Every year China gets the gift of a few hundred billion $$ to do with as they please . . . and they please to put more and more into their military budget and expansion of influence around the world.

China holds about $700 billion of U.S. debt and Obama made it clear that he doesn’t like owing China that kind of money–especially when the markets that create the debt are so lop-sided.  Still, China insists on keeping the value of their currency unrealistically low, which distorts (to their advantage) their real capacity to manufacture and export.

It is so easy a cave man could do it, because the Chinese leaders have a ‘command economy’ (they control everything about their economy) and we have a ‘market economy’ (the will of the masses directs economic results).  It comes down to the fact that  the Chinese have about a fifty point lead at the beginning of each year’s game (forgive the basketball analogy but it works).  America has no chance to make up the difference.

Obama started his first year in a conciliatory mode . . . expecting countries like Brazil, Russia, India and China (the so-called BRIC’s) to change from a tight-fisted acceptance of American leadership to an arms wide open welcome.  To give him credit it has worked a bit–but not with China.  They have taken this as a sign of weakness and followed-on with strident, aggressive and bitter language and actions.

Obama should have known better, his advisors didn’t do their jobs.  Heck I grew up in the orient and I could have told him that orientals have a vastly different view of the world.  To them respect is earned with strength, earnestness and real credibility.  Obama failed in all three cases.

China saw this as an opportunity to act.  They are planning to send a man to the moon (with US $$) and build aircraft carriers to extend the range of their military influence (with US $$).    But more importantly they are  ’purchasing’  loyalty from leaders in Africa and South America where the abundant natural resources will, in the future,  fill the voracious demand of Chinese manufacturing and the energy/fuel needs of a huge and rapidly growing middle-class.  Again with the American $$ they earn from the unlevel field of our mutual trade.  (note: to be fair the Eruo-zone nations are suffering the same ignominious treatment)

Back to the Obama speech on Thursday.  He spoke of a need for China to improve their human rights dealings.  He spoke of a need for them to let their currency float on international markets so that trade will be more balanced.  He spoke of leveling the playing field.  And his words were not very conciliatory, for the first time that I know of.

So, perhaps this marks the end of his effort to win friendship with hugs and kisses.  Perhaps now the Obama administration will put realistic diplomacy at the forefront of our international relations.  Perhaps this new effort will particularly include China–our 2nd largest trading partner, our 3rd largest export market (after Canada and Mexico) and our largest importing market.

I hope so because I am sick and tired of China running rough shod over America.  I am tired of their political and diplomatic hypocrisy.

They willingly broadcast their friendship with those who hate America such as the leaders of Venezuela, Cuba, and Iran–its like kicking sand in our faces.  But, shoot, when Obama meets with a revered international religious leader like the Dalai Lama, the Chinese leaders have an ickky fit.  They gripe and moan at our selling or sending defensive weapons to tiny little Taiwan whose entire population is not even equal to that of Shanghai.  Heck let tham ‘claim’ that Taiwan is a part of China but don’t ever let them pretend to be afraid of that miniscule little nation of free and entrepreneurial people.  More people are born in China every year than live in Taiwan.  Get real.

I don’t want our relationship with China to be adversarial but it sure as heck can’t be apathetic.

We have to recognize that they are a potential foe and recognize that today they are at best a faux friend.

President Obama and Secretary Clinton need to deal with the Chinese leaders as equals and do so without giving anything away.  The 1.3 billion people in China love western (read American) things but they also revere their own history and culture.    Wow, and 300 million American’s love Chinese things (almost everything we buy at Walmart or Best Buy) but we also revere our history and culture.

We can get along.  We have far too much mutual benefit at stake to do otherwise.  And besides I don’t think the people on the streets of either country want enmity . . . they want to be tourists of each country.  Every time I visited China the Chinese people I met wanted to be friends, to sit and talk, to spend a few hours doing Kareoke . . . and I have to tell you that they must have been sincere since listening to my rendition of anything is a chore.

We need to become real friends with China and use the relationship to benefit both nations people.  But we have to do it in a way that is fair to everyone.

Keep the pressure on Mr. President.  Until our relationship with China is fair and balanced.

thanks to flickr’s exfordy for the photo

When I was a junior in high-school my dad moved us to a country that was still recovering from war.  Poverty was something I saw everyday for two years.  I had heard rumors of people throwing themselves in front of diplomatic trains and cars — so they (or their families if they were killed) could collect compensation for the ‘accident.’  It wasn’t more than a few months before I saw it myself.  I won’t go into the details but let me tell you I was shook up.

I took marshal arts classes ‘off base’ from a local.  He lived better than most but it sure wasn’t good.  Then in my business travels years later I saw poverty in a number of other countries.  Kids starving and begging, adults so skinny their clothes wouldn’t hang on them.  Lots of stuff you just can’t describe adequately — something you have to see to believe.

More importantly I traveled back to that country I grew up in (if you count the last two years of high-school as growing up–and I do).  Thanks to huge infusions of capital from America that country had changed.  Now it is one of the most developed and ‘wired’ nations in the world.  The people there are proud, educated and well-off.  It is a beautiful country with wonderful people.

But, there are far too many more countries that need the same kind of help (Africa, Mid-east, Asia mostly).

The lesson;.

Ever since those experiences I have felt like we Americans have a lot more than we think, a lot of ‘things’ that make our lives more enjoyable, more food than we can eat . . . I always get frustrated at the food restaurants throw out.  We take it all for granted– but the food a singe family leaves on their plates after dinner one night could feed a family in some countries for a months.  Believe it.

We have a responsibility to help others.  And we do–it is in our blood so to speak.  Americans give more individually than any other nation on earth.  But I think if we all knew how bad it is ‘out there’ that we would give even more.

So I was glad to read about a local  program to help us understand . . . and maybe change the way we think about the third world.

Though it was the first I had ever heard about it, apparently Brigham Young University (50 miles south) held their 20th Annual Hunger Banquet last week.  It was hosted by the David M. Kennedy Center for International Studies and Students for International Development — whew, that’s some long names.

I didn’t get all the details but the banquet apparently works like this:  a bunch of folks (hundreds) pay some money and go to the banquet.  When they get there they are sent (randomly) to different areas representing the main classes of development and wealth in the world.

Seventy percent have to sit on the floor on cardboard.  They are fed small servings of rice, beans and tortillas.  All they get to drink is a small plastic bag of water.  Twenty percent get to sit on chairs around the walls of the room and get to eat a hot dog and chips with soft drinks.  The other 10 percent sit at decked out tables and eat off of nice plates with fancy glasses and silverware.  They are served a wonderful dinner with delicious dessert.  Way more than they can eat and far too much was prepared for them (just in case?).

That’s not all.  While the meal is going on ’scuzzy’ people are wandering the room trying to sell the leftovers from the rich’s banquet for a whole lot more than the scraps are worth.  There are also ‘tourists’ wandering around the ‘poor’ sections taking pictures and mumbling about how bad the poor folk have it.

I will leave it up to you to figure out the consequences . . . it shouldn’t take too long.  I think this program should be held once a year at every University in the country.  Maybe high-schools too.

I hope this description strikes home.

Just remember that every time you throw anything out, at home or at a restaurant, the 70% of the world that go hungry would shout for joy if you gave them those scraps.

We sit at home watching TV and ‘notchin’ chips and Dr. Pepper and never give a second thought to those 70%.

Health care reform?

Jeez Louise, that seems pretty inconsequential when enough kids to fill California have one set of dirty clothes and ribs that show through their stretched skin.

Can we do more?

You bet.

Will we?

Well that is up to you and me . . . and 306 million just like us.

Thank God we live in this great country.

Count your blessings and then share a few.

thanks to flickr’s ralphrepo for the photo