When you lose your life
savings, your 401, IRA, or equity in your home it concentrates the mind.
We've been down this road before (at least our parents have) as the
Great Depression is being replayed before our very eyes. Déjà vu!
Reincarnation deniers
have been dealt a serious setback. First, Herbert Hoover came back as
George W. Bush and now Franklin D. Roosevelt as President Barack Obama.
The similarities are eerie. First there were the "Roaring '20s," 1921 to
1929 with a roaring stock market and roaring real estate market
stimulated by the Federal Reserve's 60 percent increase in loose and
easy money. This was the economic climate upon which Herbert Hoover rode
into office in 1928. After which real estate collapsed, then the stock
markets crashed in 1929, and by 1930 banks were failing at an alarming
rate. In 1932 unemployment skyrocketed to 24 percent and the manure
really hit the fan.
Roosevelt was
overwhelmingly elected in 1932 on a platform of restoring the dollar,
restoring private enterprise, balancing the budget and reducing
government spending by 25 percent. (SEE: Democratic Party Platform
1932.) He proceeded to spend more money than every president from
George Washington to Herbert Hoover combined. Roosevelt proposed a
marginal tax of 99.5 percent but couldn't get it accepted. He tried a
tax of 100 percent of incomes over $25,000 by Executive Order but
Congress rescinded it. Did he simply dislike rich, successful people
since they called him "a traitor to his class?" FDR spent eight
years experimenting with harebrained ideas turning a disaster into a
catastrophe until World War II overshadowed America's economic problems.
Roosevelt continuously
demonized businessmen, some of whom (like today) had provided him plenty
of ammunition. His justice department filed numerous federal lawsuits
threatening private property rights of businessmen across the country.
When a president taxes success and bails out failures -- why take risks?
Rather than being relentlessly attacked, many businessmen went on
strike, sort of like John Galt in "Atlas Shrugged," until Roosevelt died
in 1944.
Fast forward to 2000.
President George Bush reprised the role of Herbert Hoover as the Federal
Reserve adopted a "Roaring 20s" policy of loose and easy credit after
9/11. This stimulated booming real estate and stock markets. By 2006,
however, real estate was in a downdraft, and in October 2007 the stock
market began its long downward spiral, with big banks beginning to fail
in 2008.
Now it's President
Obama's turn, like Roosevelt following in Hoover's footsteps, trying to
adopt one harebrained idea after another, spending trillions of dollars,
and turning a disaster into a catastrophe. In fact, Obama is purportedly
spending more money than was spent by every president from George
Washington to George W. Bush collectively. His Whiz Kids in the White
House are replicating the same failed policies of the Roosevelt
administration with Congress lending a helping hand.
The
New York Times
reported that President Obama has "spent just $3 trillion of the total
$8.7 trillion authorized by government" (2/9/09). You watched 100
percent of Congressional House Republicans vote against the stimulus
act, then sell their souls to get 40 percent of the earmarks in the $410
billion Omnibus Spending Bill. How many friends and votes can be bought
by President Obama do you suppose with $8 trillion?
Members of Congress live
in a parallel universe. They're immune to the economic consequences of
their actions, the ups and downs, recessions and depressions that the
rest of us must cope with. They wallow in their sinecures regardless of
economic conditions as long as they remain in power and then receive
million dollar pensions. How many votes do you think Congress can buy
with $8 trillion?
Two things affect
virtually 100 percent of the population -- money and energy. President
Obama has promised 95 percent of the people a tax refund, including
those who don't even report income taxes -- to be paid by the richest 2
percent, he claims, half of whose wealth has already disappeared. But
here is where the sheer genius of the president blinds: dumping tons of
money into the economy acts as a "stealth tax." This inflation of the
money supply (a 32 percent increase in MZM this year) will sooner or
later erode purchasing power and reduce the value of ordinary people's
retirement savings. On top of this the CBO estimates the proposed carbon
footprint tax will cost every business that uses gas, electricity or
other forms of carbon energy (I think that's all of them) $300 billion a
year.
Two years from now, will
even one in 100,000 people connect the dots of skyrocketing prices to
today's government policies? More likely they’ll blame the oil companies
for higher gas prices, their landlords for increasing rents, banks for
charging higher interest rates and their grocers for increasing food
price rather than on the politicians who are laying the track for the
coming train wreck. Brilliant!
About making the rich pay
for everything: It's been calculated that taxing even 100 percent of the
incomes of America's richest won't generate $8.7 trillion, leaving "you
know who" to pay for the president's generosity. Once again, those who
do not learn from history are doomed to repeat it. We know what works.
There have been 22 recessions since 1900. Ronald Reagan cut taxes and
reduced counterproductive regulations and got us out of a far worse
pickle than the current one.
So why would Democrats
deliberately throw us into another Great Depression? They don't want to
let a "crisis go to waste" as White House Chief of Staff Rahm
Emanuel so inelegantly put it: the worse things get the more power the
Democrats get. Since the inception of the Democratic Party in 1792, when
did it gain the most economic clout, political power and prestige? The
Great Depression, that's when!
Fred Schnaubelt
Real
Estate Broker 39 years
$244 Million in Past Sales, Leases & Exchanges
Invited to Testify before the U.S. President's Commission on Housing
Invited to Testify before the U.S. House of Representatives Banking
Committee
Invited to the White House
Past Director -Apartment Association
Past Director -Board of Realtors
Past Director -First Centennial Title Insurance Company
Past Director -American Thrift & Loan Association
Real Estate Writer (over 100 articles published)
Talk Show Host "Politics" Weekends KOGO, KCBQ 1996-99
Former President Taxpayers Concerned
Former Chairman, County Board of Public Welfare
San Diego City Councilman 1977-81
2009
President, Citizens For Private Property Rights
