Tag Archives: Stimulus Bill

185 Pensions Got Their $86 Billion Piece of the COVID-19 Rescue “Pie”, from Birch Gold

Posted on March 15, 2021 | Leave a comment

Incompetence is the sure ticket for getting money from the Biden government. From birchgold.com:

185 Pensions Got Their $86 Billion Piece of the COVID-19 Rescue Pie

Where pension debt is a looming danger to taxpayers, via Texas Public Policy Foundation

Both private and public pensions have been having major funding issues and struggling to get a good ROI for a number of years.

So it’s no surprise that any sort of economic relief package presented to Congress would include funds for pensions. Especially since a “bailout” culture seems to have taken root in America.

The recent $1.9 trillion COVID-19 stimulus bill approved by the House is no exception to this “bailout culture.”

The New York Times reported that it contains $86 billion for struggling pensions:

The $86 billion is a taxpayer bailout for about 185 union pension plans that are so close to collapse that without the rescue, more than a million retired truck drivers, retail clerks, builders and others could be forced to forgo retirement income.

The article continued: “The trend predated the pandemic and is a result of fading unions, serial bankruptcies and the misplaced hope that investment income would foot most of the bill so that employers and workers wouldn’t have to.”

Leaving aside the fact that “hope” is shaky ground to base any economic decision on, this appears as another signal that pensions are going the way of the dodo bird.

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Tomorrow and Tomorrow and Kaboom, by James Howard Kunstler

Posted on March 9, 2021 | Leave a comment

If it’s not the ultimate Inversion it’s pretty darn close: wealth without work. From James Howard Kunstler at kunstler.com:

The Senate bill also includes a provision intended to avert surprise tax bills for people who lost jobs, waiving federal income taxes for the first $10,200 of unemployment benefits received in 2020 for households earning under $150,000.”
—The New York Times

Isn’t that a curious concept from the front page of Re-set Central? How does a couple with no jobs and no income earn $150,000 in a year that they were not working? And if they somehow brought in $150,000 anyway, why do they need the support of the US government? Such are the many mysteries of the Coronavirus 2021 stimulus bill.

What’s actually going on with this monster of legislation? Kind of looks like an attempt to replace what used to be a national economy with something that pretends to be money conjured from a system pretending to tax itself on wealth that was never generated in the first place. In other words: politicians have achieved the final divorce of wealth from production, and thus economy from reality. The USA has become the Big Rock Candy Mountain.

Whatever else the Soviet experiment was, it was at least predicated on producing stuff, however defective the incentives turned out to be, or how shoddy the stuff was that got produced — and the system finally crashed anyway, because it was based on fantasies of human social behavior that just didn’t comport with reality. Now, the USA, in its own existential climax phase, seeks to re-do the Soviet experiment, only minus that feature of industrial production. Instead, our “wealth” gets generated from the banking system alone, and its subsidiary activities, such as hedge funds, arbitrages, dividends from companies with no earnings, and the fees for swapping digitized bundles of this-and-that. You understand that it’s all an illusion, right?

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Posted in Banking, Business, Currencies, Debt, Economics, Economy, Financial markets, Governments, Law, Media, Morality, Politics, Propaganda

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Federal workers scoring massive perks in COVID relief bill, by Jazz Shaw

Posted on March 8, 2021 | Leave a comment

There are sweetheart deals for federal government workers tucked in the bowels of the recently passed stimulus bill. From Jazz Shaw at hotair.com:

Last month, union boss Everett Kelley, the president of the American Federation of Government Employees, sent out a self-congratulatory memo to all of his members celebrating the election of Joe Biden and the return of Democratic majorities in both the House and Senate. But rather than just taking a victory lap, he cautioned union members to not “pat ourselves on the back” because “windows of opportunity rarely stay open for long.” He warned them that there may be only two years to undo the “damage” (translation: ‘progress’) that Donald Trump made in curbing abusive union practices in the federal government.

See Also: A state-mandated lockdown of high schools and sports had a tragic impact on one student

It looks like the AFGE has gotten their message through to the White House and Democrats in Congress. Tucked into the COVID relief bill currently being jammed through the legislative process are some huge perks for federal workers. One of the more eye-popping ones is a provision mandating fifteen weeks (!) of automatic paid leave above and beyond the normal, generous amounts of paid time off workers receive, for anyone “affected” by the pandemic. For those without a napkin and a pencil handy to do the math, that works out to nearly a third of the entire working year. (Government Executive)

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Pelosi, Barrett and the False Face of Strength, by Tom Luongo

Posted on October 16, 2020 | Leave a comment

There are strong women (Amy Coney Barrett) and there are women who can only pretend (Nancy Pelosi). From Tom Lungo at Tom Luongo.me:

Something truly amazing happened this week in American politics. The false narratives of modern feminism collapsed completely as Judge Amy Coney Barrett waltzed through her confirmation hearing.

But to make my point I first have to deal with Speaker of the House Nasty Nancy Pelosi’s appearance on CNN.

While Barrett was dealing with the dementia of the Senate Judiciary Committee, Pelosi finally came face to face with strength in the unlikely form of Wolf Blitzer and lost complete control of his Situation Room.

If you watch this entire sequence carefully you’ll note that Blitzer simply held to his point that she wouldn’t answer, why not pass some stimulus bill now and get something done, even if it’s perfect?

Madame Speaker, you have a chance to alleviate suffering and you’re playing politics.

We know what the answer is, because it would allow President Trump a victory on the eve of an election. We know Pelosi is a pure political animal (and her behavior here truly sinks to that level).

But, that’s not what’s interesting, here.

It is how transparent she is about not automatically being allowed to control the conversation to recite her talking points. She obviously feels entitled to the power of Wolf’s platform.

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Day of Shame: US House Approves $2 Trillion Everything Bailout on a Voice Vote, by David Stockman

Posted on April 1, 2020 | 1 comment

When historians look back, they may well pinpoint the $2 trillion bill and the Federal Reserve actions in response to the coronavirus outbreak as the inflection point when the US’s slide into bankruptcy accelerated. From David Stockman at davidstockmanscontracorner.com, via lewrockwell.com:

Did we say it’s getting stupid crazy down there in the Imperial City?

Well, we probably have….ad infinitum. And we are doing so again but not merely owing to today’s abomination in the once and former Peoples’ House, which thinks so little of its oath to defend the constitution and the rights of current and future taxpayers that it approved the $2 trillion Everything Bailout without even a roll call vote.

Then again, like the late night TV pitchman says – wait, there’s more!

Consider the chart below, which surely the Fed heads have not. To wit, it took the Fed 85 years after its doors opened in 1914 to print enough money to fund a $600 billion balance sheet.

It wasn’t exactly the Ohio State offense – three yards and a cloud of dust – which accomplished this. But it was pretty close – even including Greenspan’s first years at the helm. Between the famous Treasury Accord in 1951, under which the Fed was liberated from Treasury-ordered yield pegging, and 1999, its balance sheet grew at a modest 5.2% per annum.

And, by your way, the Fed’s relative stinginess with the printing press was a great big no nevermind. Real GDP grew at 3.4% per annum over that near half-century period, and real median family income more than doubled from $35,000 to $74,000.

We are pondering the number “$600 billion” today because its capsulizes the insanity loose in the Imperial City. What took 95 years to accomplish in the purportedly benighted 20th century, has now taken just five days!

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Posted in Banking, Business, Cronyism, Debt, Economics, Financial markets, Governments, Politics

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