Author's Comments - Victory in Iraq Celebration (Final Req for Support)
 

Author's Author's Comments - Victory in Iraq Celebration(Update8/19/2010)
On Aug 31, 2010, the end of this month, our remaining troops in Iraqwill be down to 50,000. We are on schedule according to our withdrawal agreement with the Iraqi government. Majority of my earlier tweets about Victory in Iraq Celebration, about 200 now, were suggestions to have celebration/parade about Jul 4^th. 2010. I did not get support from other twitters or from the government. My initial suggestion for the celebration was Aug 31, 2010, when ourtroops in Iraq is down to 50,000. There were earlier bloggers who posted that Victory in Iraq Celebration had a $20 million budgetedamount for victory celebration in Washington DC. I was a little discouraged that I did not have the needed support about celebration on or about Independence Day. I have not given up. I thinkit is necessary morale booster for our troops, for their families, and for our country, more so now that we are having economic hardships. Let us not make the decision to have celebration political posturingas to whether Democrats or Republicans will get credit for the victoryand for the withdrawal.  Let’s just do it for our troops and our country. It does not have to be August 31, 2010. It can be day certain in the near future, preferablywhen we still have minor presence in the area.  We celebrate Superbowl winners, Baseball Champions, Olympic Gold medal winners etc. It is definitely worth celebrating the success of what our country fought for and our troops died for. Under the united world government, regional conflict like the Iraq Warwill not start and will not go on that long. The peacekeeping force maintainsthe peace in such area

Author's Comments - Beneficial Unintended Consequence, Gulf Oil Spill

In rare instance such as accident, beneficial unintended consequence happened. Such is the case of the BP Gulf

of Mexico oil spill.

 

The beneficial unintended consequence is that now that it

appears that the leak is successfully capped, BP will spend

several trillions of dollars to pay for damages to the fishing

industry, businesses, cleaning and other losses to the individuals

and businesses in the affected area.

 

Below is a brief observations and suggestions of the author:

 

EU

BP will spend est $5 trillions

for compensations  to businesses

and other losses in the US

 

US                                             

Individuals and businesses          

receive  from BP as                   

compensations for businesses    

and other losses est $5 trillions

(plus for US Gulf States)

 

EU

EU manufactures and

builds equipments and perform

contracts worth est. $5 trillions

(plus for EU)

  

US

US has West Coast and East       

Coast project bullet train system        

US awards to EU the project    .

for  est $5 trillions                               

           

  

The trades should not be limited to bullet trains. It could

be US buying airbus planes etc, commercial and military

from EU.  This suggestion if adopted will help the

economies of both the US and EU to get out of recession.

 

Under the united world government, this will be the

cooperative relations between members to help each

other.

Author's Republished Post - Financial Bailout Alternative

I was disappointed that the U.S.A. bill did not survive the House of Representatives the first time. However, it passed the Senate and the House, with minor changes, the second time. President Bush signed it and it is now a law.
Personally, I wish our government success on the $700 billion market intervention package to buy toxic assets from troubled companies. I will be one of the millions of taxpayers who will be thankful. I felt the amount will not be enough. I felt the planned course of action is too risky for the government and the taxpayers. It was never done is such a large scale in the past. It is just like somebody tells you, trust me it will work.

The risk of buying worthless assets is unreasonable. The assets at present are most likely worthless and are only good for write offs as bad debts. It is too big a gamble to the detriment of the government and the taxpayers.

Since our government will not use any part of my suggestions, I am republishing it, per chance EUROPE and other countries might use it. I submitted this suggestion to our government before it’s package became law.
The following is my own idea as an alternative to the market intervention law in effect. I hope EUROPE and other countries which have similar problems maybe able to use part or the whole suggestion to help them.I will use the same amount of $700 Billion bailout in my alternative solution. I believe we can even exceed this amount without any danger to our economy or our country.Simply, our government should grant interest free loans to our troubled companies. This would be regardless of what type of business. Our target is the financial sector but it could be manufacturing, real estate, airline, etc.Simple calculations:The following are the savings in interests for eligible borrowers:If we planned to loan $700 Billion at a low 3%, the borrowers would not have topay $21 Billion in yearly interest. They can use the principal plus the interest ifthey deposit the loan to a bank as they use it, to take care of their toxic assets.To make calculation simple, the government can loan the $700B to 70 companiesat $10 Billion each to fairly large companies and these companies do not have toworry about interest and they only have to pay the principal after the number ofyears set by the government. The year required by the government to pay theprincipal, might be the time these companies need to recover.If the government wants a larger program, it is willing to forego $700B in interesta year, it can loan up to $2.33 Trillion dollars for one year or longer. Simple requirements to qualify for the interest free loan:The company has to have positive net assets (assets minus liabilities, provisionsalready set aside for toxic asseets). If the company has negative asset balance, itcan easily be acquired or merged with larger company with positive asset balance.Protection for the taxpayers and government interest:If the borrower company is unable to pay the principal when due, as set by the government, it will be liquidated or taken over by the government to recover the loan amount.What do I want out of this suggestion? I will be happy to know that my country's economy and the world’s economy will be doing good again. I will appreciate it if my name Jess Galang is mentioned as the originator of this suggestion.

This is an update since this comment which was posted about two years already. Former Pres Bush used about half of his bailout package and President Obama used what remained of Pres Bush plus he obtaiend about  $700 + and he used all of this amount. The target of both bailouts was financial, the Wall Street giants. What was and is the effect of the bailout? I am not impressed. There is a very like chance that we will not recover a lot of our  money in particular from AIG insurance. Unemployment remains high, Housing Industry has not shown significant improvement, very small amount is being spent for infrastructure, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac losses were estimated to be over Trillion dollars.

Since the the financial bailout alternative I suggested was not adopted, in all fairness, I should  not criticize what was and being implemented  at present. I am not, I just write what I observed.

Happy Independence Day to ALL.

Author's Republished Post - Fannie Mae & Freddie Mac

Fannie Mae also known as Federal National Mortgage Association (FNMA) and Freddie Mac also known as Federal Home Loan Mortgage Corporation (FHLMC) are two government sponsored enterprises (U.S. Government). They are like any commercial corporation with stocks owned by stockholders. Their stocks are traded in the stock exchanges. They make loans and they guarantee loans. They are major lenders in the secondary market, this is in addition to the money loan by banks and other finance companies to purchase houses. In other words, when banks are low on funds for house purchases and they need more funds, the two corporations above loan more funds to the banks.

The U.S. Government is very much interested in the good financial condition of these two corporations because together they own or guarantee about half our country’s $12 trillion mortgages. To their credit, it is undeniable that they contributed immensely to the millions and millions or Americans to own high quality houses, if not luxurious, if compared to other countries in the world. But, it is very likely that if these two corporations are in deep trouble, they might cause the country to go to recession or even depression.

We have many big problems already like the Iraq war, the real estate market downturn and foreclosures, the high gasoline price,
the airline industry, the automobile manufacturing, weak dollar, to name a few.

We do not need to be surprised by big losses that are impossible to calculate, to bail out sponsored corporations. The President just signed into law help to our countrymen whose houses are in foreclosures. This is good. With this is a standby amount of $800 billion increase in national debt to help these two corporations if they are really in big trouble.

The following were great nations that fell in the past, Egypt, Rome, Portugal, Spain, France, Italy, Holland, Germany, Japan, England, to name a few. Let us talk about this possible enormous risk in the open. Maybe we can save ourselves from being the next country to fall.

I am not a pessimist and I am writing this not to criticize any particular entity or individual. I am concerned about the future. We have lots of great minds when we talk about problems and possible solutions. I hope we will do this.

Under the united world government, there will be concerted discussions and finding solutions to enormous problem like this one. This task might be given to a group of national leaders with one of them in charge.


This is a republished posting. The following are brief additions. Since the bailout of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac, more huge problems already surfaced. The taxpayers’ exposure to losses of the two entities was estimated to be $800 billion but may be more because these two enterprises’ combined ownerships and guarantees is about $5.4 trillion. Our exposure at Bear Stearns is $29 billion in loan and at American International Group (AIG) is $85 billion in loan. The following large businesses are having problems. Lehman Brothers filed for bankruptcy, Merrill Lynch sold itself to Bank of America, the largest thrift Washington Mutual is looking for buyer, investment bankers Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley seem to be in trouble as well.

Caution Mr. President. Let us slow down or stop the bailout. This might be the biggest trouble in your presidency. It could be bigger than Iraq. The Japanese tackled their recession and real estate over-building problem by not interfering with their market. You are trying to control the aberrations in the market.
Instead the problems seem to be mushrooming. I would suggest you work these problems with Congress. It appears that you are depending on a very limited number of advisers and they might have narrow focus. We realize it is difficult to have anything done during presidential election year but we can try. You do not have to solve all the problems alone.

We will all hope for the best.

This is very limited update according to my readings in the newspapers. Our government are now playing major role, if not completely taken over  the problems of the two quasi entities. This means the taxpayers, you and I and everybody will be responsible for any losses the two entities suffered. Early May 2010, Freddie Mac reported Quarter 1 loss of over $6 billion and asked for over $10 billion help.

We need transparencies in all these entities both government and commercial entities that require  taxpayers  help. In addition and very important, the Congress and the taxpayers need to know our total exposures to losses so we can address them and have better chance of successes in our decisions. We also want to be sure our money is accounted for and nobody misappropriated it for his own benefit.

We are behind in infrastructure projects to get out of recessions.

Happy Memorial Day Holiday to All.

Author's Republished Post - Housing Problem in USA

 

Most people would think that the United States of America, the richest, the most powerful, with the high standard of living, the highly educated, the best fed people, the best entertained, etc, etc, will not have housing problem. Surprisingly, Americans have housing problems. At present, with the crash of the real estate industry, Americans cannot afford to buy houses they need. The price of the houses is not affordable to the regular wage and salary earners. It is very difficult to apply for a house loan and have it approved. The mortgage lending on houses practically stopped because of large finance companies and large banks millions and billions of dollar losses badly invested in houses whose owners are not able to continue the monthly payments. Majority of the loans are adjustable and as the lenders increased their percentage of interest, the payments of the owners increased
and with several increases are not now able to afford the monthly payments. The houses are now on foreclosures and many had been taken over by the banks or other lenders.

Hundreds of thousands maybe millions of houses throughout the country are on foreclosures. The adjustable rates of mortgages of homeowners, kept on increasing until homeowners cannot afford to make their monthly payments. Many homeowners just walk away from their properties. The government is planning to take steps to help the homeowners keep their properties but legislation to do this takes a long time. For many, help maybe too late, the banks had taken over their properties. The lenders are not eager to help because they themselves need help for their blunders in making the loans. The lenders expect help from the government also. And so the falling prices of the properties in the entire country continue to fall. The housing crash continues.

There are many smaller problems which contributed to the housing problem. American families like the single family residences usually outside the cities and towns. This means bigger lots, larger houses, extra rooms, beautiful green grass in the lawns, two car garage, two or more bathrooms, etc. All these nice things add to the high cost of the houses.

The average American family lives in a house for about 5-7 years. Then they sell their house and move to another city.

When the government, through the Federal Reserve Bank, believes the economy is experiencing inflation, it increases the interest rate the commercial banks can borrow from the government. Less money becomes available for commercial and real estate loans. For several years and many quarters, the trend had been cutting the interest rates to make more money available. There had been many adverse effects. One, the dollar had been losing value compared to other currencies, like the European money. The economy is on a downturn. The unrealistic prices of real estate finally stopped. In other words the bubble burst. Nobody wants to buy or can not afford to buy real estate. The sub-prime mortgage, borrowers not really qualified for the loan they obtained to buy their overpriced homes, surfaced and large finance companies and banks failed.

Even with government intervention, it will take several years to have the housing industry recover its losses and have the confidence of the lenders, the buyers and the sellers to be functioning properly again.

Under the united world government, immediate massive constructions of inexpensive standardized housing will be undertaken by each by each national government when funds are available. The purpose of the project is to upgrade the standard of living of the people living in slums, ghettos, decaying neighborhoods, and the homeless. These massive constructions will stop diseases, poverty, crimes, and lawless neighborhood. It will provide opportunities to the poor and desperate people will be proud of the communities they live in. There will be less of the extravagant and wasteful housing that the Americans prefer which got them in housing trouble at present.

Update April 28, 2010: Millions of houses had been foreclosed and millions more are in foreclosure. Hundreds of banks failed. The government bailed out the biggest banks, finance and insurance conpanies to avert nationwide economic collapse. This helped a little but the unemployment is still very high
I hope I am wrong but my estimate for the recovery is much longer than the goverment experts, maybe as long as 5-10 years.

Happy Mother's Day and Memorial Day

  

Author's Republished Post - Cartel and Monopoly

 

As the inhabitants of our planet Earth, we have done many accomplishments to preserve ourselves, to make our lives comfortable, to educate, take care of our health, to feed our people fairly well and to house ourselves from bare minimum to the to the palaces of kings and queens. We had electricity, telephone, radio and television, air travel, nuclear power, movies, refrigerator. freezer, air conditioner, efficient food production, ocean fishing, space exploration, superhighways, bullet trains, the internet and I am sure hundreds more I do not list here. All good for all of us if we could just learn to peacefully share it’s other.

What we have not learned good is to take care and look after our fellow humans. We have gone to many wars with each people and with each country. We have destroyed other countries to take their resources. We have withheld our own resources supposedly for our own nationals. We have formed Cartels and Monopolies.

At present, today, we have fuel crises. Are the cartels and monopolies good for their countries? Sure they are. The dozen of members of the oil cartels and dozen of oil monopolist companies are financially doing great. They show shameful revenues and profits. They show unbelievable progress in their cities for the cartels and embarrassingly huge quarterly profits for the oil monopoly companies.

Are the cartels and monoplies good for the all the countries of our planet? Definitely not. Not in any kind of order, the following are the adverse effects observed by the author. Airline companies are grounding a lot of their planes. Trucking industry cannot make money with the rise in fuel prices. The farm production and dairy
have increased their prices to recoup fuel cost. Vacation, travel and hotel industry are showing slowdown. The real estate industry and mortgage lending firms are on meltdown. The retail merchandise business is down in U.S. and the stimulus package started by the government to help people spending hopefully will work There are countless other problems caused by fuel shortages. What happened with the World Trade Organization agreements?
Let me ask questions to the members of the cartels and monopoly oil companies. What will happen, if countries good in food production joined together and form a food cartel? What will happen if countries good in ocean fishing form fishing cartel? If you can control the fuel supplies of the world, so with other cartels and monopolies that may be formed in the future. Then we will really have economic chaos.

Under the United World Government, cartels and monopoly manipulations, will not be tolerated.

Happy Easter to all who observe it.

 

Author's Republished Post - Economic Downturn in US
The following are indicationsof economic downturn: Collapse of housing market; Mortgage meltdown in housing; Falling interest rate; Sub-prime mortgage crises; Turmoil in world financial market; Plunging stock prices; Unemployment on the rise; Busineses closing their doors; Number of uninsured Americans in the rise; Sharp increase in health cost; High prices in crude and gasoline; Cost of war in Iraq and terrorists continue; Car manufacturers are selling less cars than past years; The economy as a whole is in decline; Weak dollar against other currencies; The author believes that we are close to a recesion. What should we do?

Under the united world government, domestic commerce maybe regulated by national laws. The recently passed law to give rebates of $600 to $1200 to taxpayer to encourage consumer spending is a wise move. Worldwide investments will be unrestricted and encouraged. Investments in poor and underdeveloped areas will be given incentives. It will be a good idea to have our American companies to invest in other countries where they can be succesful because of less competition. Oil and other fuel cartels will not be tolerated. It will be disastrous if countries very efficient in food production suddenly form a food cartel. A lot more people in the world will be hungry. Domestic oil and other fuel producers will be allowed fair returns on their investments. Our large oil companies are acting like monopoly. They are all showing unreasonably large profits at the expense of consumers. Our government should pass a law again to levy heavy taxes and fines on unreasonably high profits. Require the big oil companies to pump crude oil instead of buying from oil cartels. We should negotiate bilateral agreements with large countries we have large trade deficits every year like China. We should be buying from them about the same amount as they buy from us with reasonable imbalance.

Majority of the indications above really contributed to our present bad recession. The two serious problems we are experiencing now are: the unemployment of millions of our workers and millions of housing foreclosures.

The lenders and holders of the loans who foreclosed these properties must somehow liquidate the properties even with big losses. They are waiting to sell these worthless loans to our government. Earlier, I our government may have already done this dangerous decision. Our quasi government entities we already took over are already in trouble for holding billions in both foreign and domestic bad loan guarantees. Let us not buy anymore worthless loans from our banks and financial companies. We must reduce our huge money in circulation quickly. I am concerned that our recession might last much longer...Thanks, Jess

Author's Republished Post - World Economic Forum Adds

Author's Republished Posts - World Economic Forum

 

 

My three earlier republished posts were relevant to our Iraq initiative. The following eleven (11) republished posts might help my readers to determine if some of them were relevant to our economic problems.

 

Several senior leaders in the administration are mentioning several positive comments of the improvements of several of our economic problems.  Let us read them as open minded as possible

but be cautious that such opinions may not necessarily be true.

Most of them will be like coming from the cheering squads of athletic teams.

 

We have several large problems that came up almost the same time. They require large efforts to remedy them. I will name a few and I am sure a lot of you can come up with much more.  The financial problem in Wall Street; the insurance problem; the banks problem; the real estate and real estate loan problems; The Federal Reserve, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and FDIC problem; The unemployment problem; the auto and airline industry problem; the large deficit and low dollar value; the deficits in state and city budgets;

 

I am not a pessimist but I caution our senior officials not to be overly optimistic and offer misleading assessments.  I believe our recession will last five to ten years. I want to be cautious to say that we might be in much deeper trouble than we realize. We have too much money in circulation, we printed too much for bailout money, too much money to save Wall Street, Finance and insurance companies, Banks in trouble, too much for real estate and auto industry, had to spend too much for the two wars, we forced the interest rate to almost zero..

 

We can retrench and reduce the money in circulation and hopefully make more impact in many of the problems instead of piecemeal solution.

 

I plan to republish in the same sequence as they were posted before. Readers will be alerted if additional comments were added. The first in this series will be:

World Economic Forum

 

Under former President Bush:  

Earlier post dates:                     Title:

Feb 8, 2008                             World EconomicForum

Mar 17, 2008                           Economic Downturn in US

Jun 24, 2008                            Cartel and Monopoly

Jul 5, 2008                               Housing Problem in USA

Sep 19, 2008                           Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac

Oct 10, 2008                           Financial Bailout Alternative

 

Under President Obama:

Feb 14, 2009                           Economic Rescue

Mar 20, 2009                           U.S. Housing Crash

Mar 23, 2009                           Acquisition of Toxic…

Jun 23, 2009                            U.S. Health Reform                 

Aug 22, 2009                           Economic Recession

 Merry Christmas and Happy New Year……Jess