Eat The Rich, Only If You're Certain It's Your Last Meal

Europe has decided to ban short-selling.  This might help for a few days but it hasn't proven to work, ever.  The SEC banned short-selling in Sept 2008-March 2009.  During that time, the financials fell 70% anyway.  However, there was an 11% up day on the initial announcement.  I'm thinking about short European banks on the up move from the announcement.  This brings me to today's title...

Eat The Rich, Only If You're Certain It's Your Last Meal!

Blaming short-sellers for the mess that has been created is ridiculous.  However, that seems to be the world we live in these days.  No one takes responsibility for their actions.  They want to blame everyone, but themselves.  Our politicians and the TBTF bank CEOs are perfect examples.

In London, the rioters are blaming the rich for all the vandalism and violence.  They say the rich forced them into it.

Comrade Obama isn't much better.  He recently has blamed jet owners and other luxury good buyers on our troubles.  He wants to tax all of them.  This is another tactic that has proven not to work.  In 1990, we imposed a 10% tax on yachts, jets, jewelry, furs, etc.  It was supposed to be a fair and easy way to soak the rich.  Within eight months, the largest U.S. yacht company, Viking Yachts, closed one of its two plants and laid off more than 1,100 of its 1,400-member workforce. Within 12 months, one-third of all yacht builders in the U.S. ceased production. The industry lost 7,600 jobs in the first year. Before the tax was finally repealed, 25,000 workers lost their jobs. The U.S. went from exporting yachts to importing them. Viking Yachts shrank to just 68 employees. Congress estimated the tax would generate $5 million in revenue the first year. Reality didn't read the estimate… The Treasury lost $24 million in tax revenue because all the yacht makers either closed up or left the U.S. Congress repealed the tax in 1993.

If you think that was an isolated example, you'll learn otherwise when our glorious Komrade Obama starts raising taxes. When FDR raised taxes in the Great Depression, the Depression deepened, and more people found themselves out of work.

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I really dislike Michael Moore.  His movie "Roger and Me" was a fantastic movie.  I think he needs to stick to Hollywood productions.  I got this from the S&A Digest:

On the subject of casting blame… Left-wing filmmaker Michael Moore called for Obama to arrest the head of credit ratings agency Standard and Poor's for downgrading the U.S. On his Twitter page today, Moore wrote, "Pres Obama, show some guts & arrest the CEO of Standard & Poor's. These criminals brought down the economy in 2008 & now they will do it again."

Yes… Michael Moore blamed the ratings agencies for the subprime crisis because they didn't downgrade mortgage debt soon enough. Now, he is calling for those same companies to be punished for downgrading the U.S. – a much larger problem than the mortgage crisis.

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Postal Service proposes cutting 120,000 jobs, pulling out of health-care plan

By Joe Davidson, Published: August 11

SEATTLE — The financially strapped U.S. Postal Service is proposing to cut its workforce by 20 percent and to withdraw from the federal health and retirement plans because it believes it could provide benefits at a lower cost.
The layoffs would be achieved in part by breaking labor agreements, a proposal that drew swift fire from postal unions. The plan would require congressional approval but, if successful, could be precedent-setting, with possible ripple effects throughout government. It would also deliver a major blow to the nation’s labor movement.
In a notice informing employees of its proposals — with the headline “Financial crisis calls for significant actions” — the Postal Service said, “We will be insolvent next month due to significant declines in mail volume and retiree health benefit pre-funding costs imposed by Congress.”
During the past four years, the service lost $20 billion, including $8.5 billion in fiscal 2010. Over that period, mail volume dropped by 20 percent.
The USPS plan is described in two draft documents obtained by The Washington Post. A “Workforce Optimization” paper acknowledges its “extraordinary request” to break its labor contracts.
“However, exceptional circumstances require exceptional remedies,” the document says.
“The Postal Service is facing dire economic challenges that threaten its very existence. . . . If the Postal Service was a private sector business, it would have filed for bankruptcy and utilized the reorganization process to restructure its labor agreements to reflect the new financial reality,” the document continues.
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