Joe the plumber is now Joe the blogger. He has founded a web site called Secure our Dream. Best of luck to Joe in his new endeavor.
Archive for category Current events
secure our dream
Nov 9
Reuters reports OPEC may cut oil supplies in 2 rounds: Khelil. With the price of oil falling from $147.27 to under $70 per barrel, OPEC is now trying to stop the decline. The November sweet crude contract rose from $69.85 to $71.85 even in anticipation of OPEC meeting to cut production.
Updated Monday morning (10/20/2008): crude rose more than $2 to over $74 a barrel.
Updated Tuesday afternoon (10/21/2008): U.S. oil for November delivery tumbled $3.98 a barrel to $70.27 by 12:33 p.m. (1633 GMT) on weak demand, despite the OPEC supply cut.
Updated Friday morning (10/24/2008): U.S. light crude for December delivery traded down $4.80 at $63.04 a barrel. Earlier it touched $62.85, its lowest since May 2007.
Updated Monday morning (10/27/2008): Crude for December delivery dropped $1.99, or 3.1%, to $62.16 a barrel.
Updated Tuesday morning (10/28/2008): OPEC officials say ready to act again to boost oil. Prices recovered to $64 a barrel.
Bailout pork enumerated
Oct 4
Taxpayers for Common Sense has posted a detailed analysis of the pork attached to the bailout bill. A value is estimated for each item.
Ron Paul has nothing good to say about the Wall Street bailout plan.
Ron Paul’s speech to congress in 2002 was prescient.
However, despite the long-term damage to the economy inflicted by the government’s interference in the housing market, the government’s policies of diverting capital to other uses creates a short-term boom in housing. Like all artificially-created bubbles, the boom in housing prices cannot last forever. When housing prices fall, homeowners will experience difficulty as their equity is wiped out. Furthermore, the holders of the mortgage debt will also have a loss. These losses will be greater than they would have otherwise been had government policy not actively encouraged over-investment in housing.
Perhaps the Federal Reserve can stave off the day of reckoning by purchasing GSE debt and pumping liquidity into the housing market, but this cannot hold off the inevitable drop in the housing market forever. In fact, postponing the necessary but painful market corrections will only deepen the inevitable fall. The more people invested in the market, the greater the effects across the economy when the bubble bursts.
His statement in 2002 was foreseeing the current bailout action.
Updated: separately, on The O’Reilly Factor, Bill interviewed Barney Frank, and confronted him about his role in bringing about the financial crisis and making comments that caused investors to lose millions of dollars. The confrontation escalated, of course. Bill ended up calling Barney Frank a coward for not accepting responsibility for his actions, as others like Chris Dodd have conceded.
