Conservative Rumblings

When it comes to foreign policy, I don’t think I agree with a dang thing this crazy old man says. Fiscally, however, he makes a lot of sense, especially with his long-term mission to audit the crooked Federal Reserve.

Now, it seems that other congressmen are listening.

The feisty congressman from Texas, whose insurgent “Ron Paul Revolution” presidential campaign rankled Republican leaders last year, now has the GOP House leadership on his side — backing a measure that generated paltry support when he first introduced it 26 years ago.

Paul, as of Tuesday, has won 245 co-sponsors to a bill that would require a full-fledged audit of the Federal Reserve by the end of 2010.

Paul attracted just 18 co-sponsors when he authored a similar bill, which died, in 1983. While the impact Fed policies have on inflation is once again a concern, fears about loose monetary policy and excessive federal spending appear even more widespread in 2009.

“In the past, I never got much support, but I think it’s the financial crisis obviously that’s drawing so much attention to it, and people want to know more about the Federal Reserve,” Paul told FOXNews.com.

With the Federal Reserve holding interest rates at rock-bottom levels, pumping trillions into the economy and now poised to have new powers to oversee the financial system under President Obama’s proposed regulatory overhaul, Paul said lawmakers want transparency.

“If they give them a lot more power and there’s no more transparency, that’ll be a disaster,” he said.

The bill would call for the comptroller general in the Government Accountability Office to audit the Fed and report those findings to Congress. The GAO’s ability to conduct such audits now is severely restricted.

This makes perfect sense, of course. The Fed’s “IOU” system of monetary policy, combined with them marching in lockstep formation with the Obama administration has given them far too much power in our society. Obama is a huge fan of not being accountable; his “czars” were created as a way to run the government with a bunch of socialists that answer to no one. His insistence of expanding the powers of the Fed Reserve is exactly the same thing.

If Paul’s bill can move, however, it could put a serious damper on the corrupt little schemes Obama and his ilk have planned for the Fed.

WASHINGTON — [Barack] Obama is offering a broad-scale overhaul of the financial system, saying hard times struck largely because a post-Depression era business regulatory scheme couldn’t keep up with an increasingly global economy.

In remarks readied for the unveiling of new rules to govern business, Obama attributed much of the country’s current problem to “a cascade of mistakes and missed opportunities” which happened over several decades.

His plan would bestow vast new powers on the Federal Reserve, authorizing it to oversee the entire financial system. It also would create a new consumer protection agency to guard against the types of abuses that played a big role in the current crisis.

(emphasis added)

“Never waste a good crisis” is the motto of this administration. They are taking a financial “crisis” that was caused by Democrats forcing banks to give out loans to unqualified individuals (Community Reinvestment Act of 1977, reaffirmed in the 90s) and turning it into an assault on capitalism.

Anytime BHO gets up to the teleprompter and reads the line “vast new powers” for a federal agency, we should all be cringing. He’s using the finance issues as a battering ram to implement communism and destroy the free market.

And what greets this harbinger of the death of freedom? Cheers from the media, who hail Obama as “sort of God” who is going to “save us all.”

Joy.

Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is urging Congress and the Obama administration to start plotting a strategy to curb record-high U.S. budget deficits. Failing to do so could eventually erode investor confidence and endanger the economy’s prospects for long-term health, he said.

Bernanke’s comments, in prepared testimony Wednesday before the House Budget Committee, come as concerns grow at home and overseas about the United States’ mounting red ink.

“Even as we take steps to address the recession and threats to financial stability, maintaining the confidence of the financial markets requires that we, as a nation, begin planning now for the restoration of fiscal balance,” Bernanke said.

The White House estimates that the government will rack up an unprecedented $1.8 trillion budget deficit this year. That would be more than four times last year’s all-time high.

He just figured this out NOW? It’s not going to matter at this point what he says to BHO and his gang of Chicago thugs; they are committed to running our economy into the ground.

The amount of debt we have piled up is not sustainable and will bring our economy to its knees. Hopefully, this happens before 2012, because this is all a stunt meant to keep Obama in office. If the economy survives that long, he can claim it was due to his socialist intervention, get elected again and continue to ram through communist economic policies, social engineering bills and various other disgusting pieces of legislation that spit on the Constitution.

Obama and his advisers have to know that what they’ve done will destroy our country economically. There are only three choices: they know and don’t care, they know and did it intentionally, or they don’t know and easily qualify as the most incompetent executive branch in the history of the country.

None of the options make it easier to sleep at night as China buys up our debt and the government continues to push its way into private enterprise.

Hypocrites. So, when it’s necessary to get elected, you mock someone saying the economy is strong. Now, you turn around and say it is good to drum up support for your multi-trillion dollar socialism packages? Ridiculous.

The economy is fundamentally sound despite the temporary “mess” it’s in, the White House said Sunday in the kind of upbeat assessment that Barack Obama had mocked as a presidential candidate.

Obama’s Democratic allies pleaded for patience with an administration hitting the two-month mark this week, while Republicans said the White House’s plans ignore small business and the immediate need to fix what ails the economy. After weeks projecting a dismal outlook on the economy, administration officials — led by the president himself in recent days — swung their rhetoric toward optimism in what became Wall Street’s best stretch since November.

During the fall campaign, Obama relentlessly criticized his Republican opponent, Sen. John McCain, for declaring, “The fundamentals of our economy are strong.” Obama’s team painted the veteran senator as out of touch and failing to grasp the challenges facing the country.

But on Sunday, that optimistic message came from economic adviser Christina Romer. When asked during an appearance on NBC’s “Meet the Press” if the fundamentals of the economy were sound, she replied: “Of course they are sound.”

“The fundamentals are sound in the sense that the American workers are sound, we have a good capital stock, we have good technology,” she said. “We know that — that temporarily we’re in a mess, right? We’ve seen huge job loss, we’ve seen very large falls in GDP. So certainly in the short run we’re in a — in a bad situation.”

The economy is good. No, it’s bad. No, it’s good again. Wait…nope, still good. Ok, now it’s bad. Yep, still bad. Ok, now it’s good again.

The only constant coming out the White House is pure incompetence.

The bailout is bad enough, ladies and gentlemen. The government getting involved in private enterprise is communism, but the idiots in Washington went through with it anyway.

Now, despite receiving hundreds of billions in taxpayer money (which they should never have gotten in the first place), banks are refusing to explain how they are using the money.

WASHINGTON — It’s something any bank would demand to know before handing out a loan: Where’s the money going?

But after receiving billions in aid from U.S. taxpayers, the nation’s largest banks say they either can’t track exactly how they’re spending the money or they simply refuse to discuss it.

“We’ve lent some of it. We’ve not lent some of it. We’ve not given any accounting of, ‘Here’s how we’re doing it,”‘ said Thomas Kelly, a spokesman for JPMorgan Chase, which received $25 billion in emergency bailout money. “We have not disclosed that to the public. We’re declining to.”

The Associated Press contacted 21 banks that received at least $1 billion in government money and asked four questions: How much has been spent? What was it spent on? How much is being held in savings, and what’s the plan for the rest?

None of the banks provided specific answers.

“We’re not providing dollar-in, dollar-out tracking,” said Barry Koling, a spokesman for Atlanta, Georgia-based SunTrust Banks Inc., which got $3.5 billion in taxpayer dollars.

Some banks said they simply didn’t know where the money was going.

“We manage our capital in its aggregate,” said Regions Financial Corp. spokesman Tim Deighton, who said the Birmingham, Alabama-based company is not tracking how it is spending the $3.5 billion it received as part of the financial bailout.

The answers highlight the secrecy surrounding the Troubled Assets Relief Program, which earmarked $700 billion — about the size of the Netherlands’ economy — to help rescue the financial industry. The Treasury Department has been using the money to buy stock in U.S. banks, hoping that the sudden inflow of cash will get banks to start lending money.

Good call, Washington. Let’s fork over $700 billion and then not demand any sort of accounting as to what it was used on. I’m sure the taxpayers are very grateful to you for throwing more good money after bad and not even keeping so much as an IOU slip to figure out where it is going.

Barney Frank, one of the most pathetic congressmen in the absolutely hated Pelosi/Reid Do Nothing Congress, is also the chairman of the House Financial Services Committee and one of the architects of the financial market fiasco (thanks in large part to his receiving campaign contributions from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac and looking the other way when they did bad things while he was on the House Banking Committee).

Now, he is calling for cuts to the military and increased taxes.

Why? Another stimulus-palooza!!!

After the November election, Democrats will push for a second economic stimulus package that includes money for the states’ stalled infrastructure projects, along with help paying for healthcare expenses, food stamps and extended unemployment benefits, U.S. Rep. Barney Frank said Thursday.

There are so many things wrong with that paragraph. Let’s start:

1. Let the states fund their own infrastructure. If they can’t, they don’t need it.
2. Healthcare is not a charity nor is it a right. It’s a business. Doctors are not state employees; that is their livelihood. Not the government’s place to be paying for it.
3. Food stamps = welfare. Welfare = bad. Nuff said.
4. Unemployment benefits only encourage the bums to sit on their, well, bums, and not get jobs. Slash ‘em! As the great Ronald Reagan once said, the best social program is a JOB!

In a meeting with the editorial board of The Standard-Times, Rep. Frank, D-Mass., also called for a 25 percent cut in military spending, saying the Pentagon has to start choosing from its many weapons programs, and that upper-income taxpayers are going to see an increase in what they are asked to pay.

So the barbarians are at the gate, we are fighting two wars plus an overarching ‘war on terror’ and Iran and North Korea are threatening to start WWIII. And you want to CUT THE MILITARY SPENDING? How about instead we remove you from office and use your salary to buy another tank?

Unfortunately for the Dems, the 80/20 rule that works in business does not work for taxes. You can’t just sit on the “upper-income” taxpayers and expect that to fix the economy. The “upper-income” business taxpayers (who already pay one of the highest corporate tax rates in the world) are the backbone of our economy.

You tax the big guys too hard, they stop expanding their businesses and stop hiring, which HURTS the economy. Spending goes down and unemployment goes up. Frank already knows this, of course; that’s why he’s pushing for more unemployment benefits.

WASHINGTON — Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama said Sunday his Republican rival deserves no credit for helping to forge a tentative agreement on the $700 billion bailout of Wall Street.

Instead, Obama said he deserves credit for making sure the proposal includes safeguards for taxpayers. Obama said he is inclined to support the bailout because it includes increased oversight, relief for homeowners facing foreclosure and limits on executive compensation for chief executives of firms that receive government help.

The Chosen One is acting like people would WANT credit for this ridiculous piece of socialistic garbage.