Government stupidity at work here.....

The CASH for CLUNKERS program, giveaway of taxpayer funds) is ready to roll!!

The government makes an electronic transfer of $3,500 or $4,500 to the dealer for each qualifying sale. The dealer has to ruin the engine of the trade-in so it never can be reused, then send the vehicle to a scrap yard.

CARS runs until Nov. 1, or until its $1 billion budget is gone. The government website www.cars.gov has full details.

Generally speaking, the new car has to be rated 22 miles per gallon or more by the government in combined city-highway driving. The trade-in can't be older than 1984 and has to be rated 18 mpg or less. Ratings are at www.fueleconomy.gov.

Hey, a billion here a billion there adds up.........pure and simple, it's waste.

The Haircut...........

One day a florist went to a barber for a haircut.

After the cut, he asked about his bill, and the barber replied, 'I cannot accept money from you , I'm doing community service this week.' The florist was pleased and left the shop.

When the barber went to open his shop the next morning, there was a 'thank you' card and a dozen roses waiting for him at his door.

Later, a cop comes in for a haircut, and when he tries to pay his bill, the barber again replied, 'I cannot accept money from you , I'm doing community service this week.' The cop was happy and left the shop.


The next morning when the barber went to open up, there was a 'thank you' card and a dozen donuts waiting for him at his door.

Then a Congressman came in for a haircut, and when he went to pay his bill, the barber again replied, 'I can not accept money from you. I'm doing community service this week.' The Congressman was very happy and left the shop.

The next morning, when the barber went to open up, there were a dozen Congressmen lined up waiting for a free haircut.

And that, my friends, illustrates the fundamental difference between the citizens of our great country and the politicians who run it.

Market integrity???? sure, yea, right.........

July 25 (Bloomberg) -- Charles Schumer, the third-ranking Democrat in the U.S. Senate, asked the Securities and Exchange Commission to ban so-called flash orders for stocks, saying they give high-speed traders an unfair advantage.

Schumer’s letter to SEC Chairman Mary Schapiro yesterday raised the stakes in a debate over the practice offered by Nasdaq OMX Group Inc., Bats Global Markets and Direct Edge Holdings LLC, which handle more than two-thirds of the shares traded in the U.S. With flash orders, exchanges wait up to half a second before they publish bids and offers on competing platforms, giving their own customers an opportunity to gauge demand before other traders.

“This kind of unfair access seriously compromises the integrity of our markets and creates a two-tiered system, where a privileged group of insiders receives preferential treatment,” Schumer wrote in the letter.

Flash orders make up less than 4 percent of U.S. stock trading, according to Direct Edge and Bats. They have drawn criticism from the Securities Industry and Financial Markets Association, which is Wall Street’s main lobbying group, and Getco LLC, one of the biggest firms that uses high-frequency trading strategies to make markets in stocks and options. NYSE Euronext, owner of the world’s largest exchange by the value of companies it lists, told the SEC in May that the technique results in investors getting worse prices.

Schumer, a member of the Senate Banking Committee, said he will introduce legislation to ban flash orders if the SEC doesn’t act on his request.

‘Deeper Conversation’

“This practice has been going on for three years and didn’t get much attention until the New York Stock Exchange” started complaining, said Sang Lee, managing partner at financial- services consultant Aite Group LLC in Boston. “Someone like Chuck Schumer getting involved in the process will create a deeper conversation about where the whole market is headed.”

Brian Fallon, a spokesman at Schumer’s office in Washington, confirmed Schumer sent the letter. Erik Hotmire, an SEC spokesman, declined to comment. Nasdaq’s Robert Madden, Randy Williams of Bats and Ray Pellecchia of NYSE Euronext also didn’t respond. Nasdaq and NYSE are based in New York. Bats has its headquarters in Kansas City, Missouri.

Direct Edge, based in Jersey City, New Jersey, handles the most flash trades through its three-year-old Enhanced Liquidity Provider program. Chief Executive Officer William O’Brien said in an interview yesterday that it’s available to any brokerage and that investors choose to have their orders held to make it more likely they will be executed.

‘Better Position’

“Anybody can be part of it,” he said. “This is something that warrants a debate, and when you have so many competing interests, we think the SEC is in a better position to fulfill that.”

The Schumer letter follows concerns expressed by investors and traders that computer-driven strategies executing hundreds of trades a minute make stock prices more volatile and boost costs. NYSE Euronext, operator of the New York Stock Exchange, estimates that about 46 percent of daily volume is executed through high-frequency strategies.

For the past decade, U.S. equity markets have sought to draw more business from high-frequency traders by offering rebates on transaction fees. Exchanges rent space in their data centers to brokerages so they can cut the distance information must travel and reduce transaction times to eke out an edge over the competition.

‘Not Good’

“You have all this activity going on that in one way or another is preferencing one part of the investing group over another,” said Michael Panzner, author of “The New Laws of the Stock Market Jungle” and a Wall Street trader for a quarter century. “That’s not good.”

More than 75 percent of money managers use computer-driven strategies because they reduce costs, according to a survey this month conducted by Greenwich Associates, a consulting firm in Stamford, Connecticut. For those transactions, they rely on some of Wall Street’s largest brokerages, which account for two- fifths of high-frequency trading, NYSE estimates.

Traders including David Lutz say automated brokerages are helpful because they boost liquidity, increasing the likelihood that buyers and sellers will agree on a price. Competition has driven bids and offers for stocks including Microsoft Corp., Citigroup Inc. and General Electric Co. to 1 cent in the U.S., according to data compiled by Bloomberg.

“When high-frequency traders are in the stocks I’m trying to execute, it helps me find the best execution,” said Lutz, a managing director of equity trading at Stifel Nicolaus & Co. in Baltimore. “It’s completely benign to me.”

Hank Paulson

The book he is supposedly working on should be a real winner.

The differences in his writing and what he has testified too will be interesting.

One will probably have to be wearing very high boots to read it.

The bullshit inside ought to be deep.

Why I get pissed at the grocery, don't you too?

I don't mind standing in line at the grocery store watching (invariably) a women in front of me buying alot of food. And paying for that nutritious food with food stamps.

What irks me to no end is her lover/boyfriend/father of her children stepping in behind and buying all the beer, wine and cigarettes with cash.

Fair? Equitable? Honest? Right?

Not a chance.

Boortz says it best......read his words here

Americans think they want freedom. What a crock. Americans will whine about their freedom to choose which sports team to root for or which Hollywood gossip magazine to buy. But when freedom requires any ounce of personal responsibility, people immediately wipe their hands clean and want someone else to do it for them. This is where the Democrats come in .. the Democrats will make sure that the government is there to do the things the people of this country no longer feel is their personal responsibility. The reason why the Democrats are willing to do this is also simple: power. Ensuring votes. Not hard to figure out, is it?

Second, who is going to pay for this? That's also easy to answer. The achievers. The filthy, disgusting rich. The small business owners. If you are an individual making over $280,000 you will be shouldering even more of the tax burden in order to pay for this government healthcare/redistribution scheme. Don't worry, that's just a starting point. That number will slowly shift downward as Democrats realize they don't have the enough money to fund their dreams and schemes. But guess what? That includes more than 1 million small businesses in America. Those small businesses that provide jobs and write paychecks .. yep, those are the evil rich people the Democrats want to hit with tax increases. And to really play on the wealth envy of Americans, the Democrats want to increase taxes even more .. 5.4% tax increase .. on people earning more than $1 million a year. I'm sure most Americans are okay with that one. Those people are millionaires because they were lucky! Right?

By the way, the Democrats also want to ram this thing through the Congress as fast as possible. We are talking within weeks. That move is also not hard to understand .. the longer Americans have to really look into the details of this bill and begin to understand the consequences of this bill, the harder it will be to support it. Then again, that assumes that Americans give a flying Krispy Kreme about the future of this country.

CNBC Today........

Listening to the grilling of Hank Paulson today is what is wrong with this country.

Cutting through the bullshit to get to the truth is so very diffucult with all of the distortion by the former chief of the white shoe firm.

The pattern of deception by those at the top must be stopped.

Yes............

“If you can walk, You can dance. If you can talk, You can sing”.

--Zimbabwean proverb