David Hines
High seize piracy
By David Hines
Some people think voters are bird-brains. I wish! No bird would be dumb enough to see a picture of food and mistake it for something edible. Even if a bird were fooled once, it wouldn't demand more copies from the photographer. Voters see Federal Reserve Notes being pushed around and mistake them for real assets. They want the government creating prosperity by printing more of them.
Not content to merely run a counterfeiting operation, Congress is hoisting the Jolly Roger above a new ship, commanded by Cap'n Trade.
Mortgage derivatives are no longer a money maker for politically connected speculators. The captain shall correct that little problem. Trading carbon credits shall be the new speculative venture. The usual Wall Street types will be joined by the likes of Al Gore, who is well-positioned to get in on the ground floor.
How soon before we see a Bernie Madoff aboard Cap'n Trade's vessel remains to be seen. It's virtually a foregone conclusion that there will be one, though Ponzi schemers try to remain unrecognized as such for as long as possible.
There's a lot of money to be made in trading carbon derivatives — as though the derivative were carbon pressed into the crystal structure of diamond. In a way it is: for inside traders, that carbon will fund their purchase of diamonds.
The convoluted market shall supposedly be regulated by temporary exiles from Goldman Sachs, whose friends and former associates will be trading carbon credits. Some insider will surely find a way to scam the system.
The Cap'n needs to shanghai a crew. There's a plan to make your health care more affordable by taxing your employer-provided health insurance. Well, not everyone will be taxed. If you're in a union, the plan is to exempt you. So when all employees are thereby induced to unionize in order to get untaxed insurance, what happens to that government-created affordability?
Another part of the plan is competition — government competing with private insurers. Government gets to set the rules for other insurers, and set different rules for itself. Government need not make a profit to stay in business; it merely takes more money from the insured, whether they are with the government plan or private plans.
The number of viable competitors is thus reduced to...one: the government.
The Cap'n's cat-o-nine-tails will cure what ails ye.
If you owed $12,000 on a credit card and promised to pay $17, would the debt collector on the other end of the phone be convinced that you are fiscally responsible? President Obama thinks so. Add nine zeroes to the right side of each of those numbers. You get the national debt, and the "fiscally responsible" cuts he has touted as proof of his sincerity. And this is before the charge card is run up a whole lot more.
Arrgh!! Cap'n Trade is a mighty smart pirate. He'll be sitting on piles of treasure, taken from honest seafarers. The parrot sitting on his shoulder is a damn sight smarter than those who buy into the goofy reasoning being spouted as selling points for these absurd proposals.
© David Hines
July 23, 2009
Some people think voters are bird-brains. I wish! No bird would be dumb enough to see a picture of food and mistake it for something edible. Even if a bird were fooled once, it wouldn't demand more copies from the photographer. Voters see Federal Reserve Notes being pushed around and mistake them for real assets. They want the government creating prosperity by printing more of them.
Not content to merely run a counterfeiting operation, Congress is hoisting the Jolly Roger above a new ship, commanded by Cap'n Trade.
Mortgage derivatives are no longer a money maker for politically connected speculators. The captain shall correct that little problem. Trading carbon credits shall be the new speculative venture. The usual Wall Street types will be joined by the likes of Al Gore, who is well-positioned to get in on the ground floor.
How soon before we see a Bernie Madoff aboard Cap'n Trade's vessel remains to be seen. It's virtually a foregone conclusion that there will be one, though Ponzi schemers try to remain unrecognized as such for as long as possible.
There's a lot of money to be made in trading carbon derivatives — as though the derivative were carbon pressed into the crystal structure of diamond. In a way it is: for inside traders, that carbon will fund their purchase of diamonds.
The convoluted market shall supposedly be regulated by temporary exiles from Goldman Sachs, whose friends and former associates will be trading carbon credits. Some insider will surely find a way to scam the system.
The Cap'n needs to shanghai a crew. There's a plan to make your health care more affordable by taxing your employer-provided health insurance. Well, not everyone will be taxed. If you're in a union, the plan is to exempt you. So when all employees are thereby induced to unionize in order to get untaxed insurance, what happens to that government-created affordability?
Another part of the plan is competition — government competing with private insurers. Government gets to set the rules for other insurers, and set different rules for itself. Government need not make a profit to stay in business; it merely takes more money from the insured, whether they are with the government plan or private plans.
The number of viable competitors is thus reduced to...one: the government.
The Cap'n's cat-o-nine-tails will cure what ails ye.
If you owed $12,000 on a credit card and promised to pay $17, would the debt collector on the other end of the phone be convinced that you are fiscally responsible? President Obama thinks so. Add nine zeroes to the right side of each of those numbers. You get the national debt, and the "fiscally responsible" cuts he has touted as proof of his sincerity. And this is before the charge card is run up a whole lot more.
Arrgh!! Cap'n Trade is a mighty smart pirate. He'll be sitting on piles of treasure, taken from honest seafarers. The parrot sitting on his shoulder is a damn sight smarter than those who buy into the goofy reasoning being spouted as selling points for these absurd proposals.
© David Hines
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