Pork Laced Traitors.
October 6, 2008
So, how are you feeling this bright Monday morning? Feeling all ready for work with that chipper “Can Do” attitude? Have you forgotten all about Friday? You know, the sellout of the American people by our elected leaders? I am still fuming mad—have been for days. The blatant disregard for me and my vote makes me want to find some tea, and a harbor and a bunch of politicians only to see what comes of it! For these people to spend two weeks telling me that without $700 billion we would be facing an “Armageddon” and the equivalent of a “911 attack on our economy” only to follow it up with bribery to get the deed done is unacceptable. Un-accept-able!!
Sure, I know that because Congress screwed things up to begin with we have major hurdles in our world of finance but how dare they? How dare they add a couple hundred billion dollars in pork—plus a new government instrument on page 180 of the 451 page document—an instrument that could control my every move? Every single one of them who resorted to this bribery tactic is nothing less than a traitor to America. Let’s not just vote every single one of these incompetent “leaders” and I say that almost as a curse word, out of office. Let’s come up with their replacements first. Let’s exchange ideas on how to do it later this morning.
October 3, 2008
October 3, 2008
Today on Ankarlo Mornings: Ankarlo thinks Gov. Palin did a great job in last night’s Vice Presidential debate. He also commends Sen. Biden, but thinks Palin has the advantage. Ankarlo takes your calls and gets Diane’s thoughts.
Also, the House passes the amended Senate version of the $700 billion bailout bill. Ankarlo says we have been sold out. There is so much pork loaded up into this bill it’s sad that anyone in Congress would even vote for it. He wonders if this is just part of the eroding of our rights.
October 2, 2008
October 2, 2008
Today on Ankarlo Mornings: Ankarlo says the new Anti-Dan Saban ad is a low blow. Saban makes his first appearance on the show to explain the allegations. Also, Senator Jon Kyl joins Ankarlo to talk about the Senate bailout package that passed last night. Kyl explains where the money is going to come from to fund the bailout and says this wasn’t the best bill, but it is necessary in order to help the economy. The Chairman of the Arizona Republican Party, Randy Pullen joins Ankarlo to explain the anti-Saban ad.
The Center for Equal Opportunity released a new study saying ASU and UA are racially discriminating against white students. The President and General Council of the organization Roger Clegg answers your questions about the study.
Tonight is the Vice Presidential debate. Will Palin exceed our expectations or will Biden expose her inexperience? Fritz Wenzel from Zogby gives us the latest polling data. They have it as a tight race giving Obama a 2 point edge.
In the final hour, the seven deadly sins are at play in America as we speak. This is the root of the problem on Wall Street too. Look to greed. It’s so much so that the London Telegraph says, “Why propping up banks will not rescue a debauched financial system.”
Congress wears me out.
October 1, 2008
I don’t know about you but I am drained. Wasted. I feel like a yo-yo with dueling politicians yanking and pulling the string. Not to mention the hourly doomsday updates. But here is what I know: just as the sun came up today it will set tonight and re-emerge tomorrow. Ocean tides will flow in and out like clockwork. Life will go on. For some it will be painful and hopefully to all, we will have learned a lesson in this matter about greed, gluttony and corruption.
October 1, 2008
October 1, 2008
After the KTAR economic summit, Ankarlo expresses his outrage at Congress when it comes to this bailout. It’s no wonder why the American people don’t trust them. The time to act it now and stop adding junk to the bailout bill. We all admit something has to be done, but it must be enacted quickly.
Also, Ankarlo talks the vote. CBS’ Evening News Anchor Katie Couric asks Gov. Sarah Palin what magazines she reads. Is that the best question she can come up with?
KTAR Economic Summit w. Ankarlo
October 1, 2008
KTAR and Ankarlo present The KTAR Economic Summit. The goal is to answer your economy related questions. Our experts include Economist Elliot Pollack of Elliot Pollack and Company, President and CEO of the Arizona Bankers Association Tanya Wheeless, Mortgage and Debt consultant Dean Wegner and Investment Guru Wayne Stutzer of RBC Wealth Management.
A ton of questions come in related to mortgages, banking, investments, retirement, home prices, the national and Arizona economy. Hear all the expert answer here.
It’s All About the Dollar…
April 24, 2008
Like you, I have been bombarded with headlines and stories about rising gas and food prices. On the way to work this morning I saw gas priced over $3.35 a gallon. Wheat prices are up. The price of rice has caused riots in parts of the world. I have been wondering how something so drastic can happen so quickly. Several signs point to the falling value of the dollar.
John Tamny writes on RealClearMarkets:
No doubt the dollar price of wheat, corn and soybeans has increased respectively 136, 203 and 205 percent since 2001. It seems like a lot, and in isolation would make their worries…understandable.
But what all three left out of their analysis is the dollar’s near singular role in the above. Indeed, over the same timeframe the objective benchmark that is gold is up 244 percent in dollar terms. Rather than expensive, food in real terms hasn’t kept pace with a severe dollar devaluation that has spread to currencies around the world.
When inflation outside the U.S. is considered, it’s seemingly hidden owing to the desire of currency experts to compare the interplay of paper currencies lacking any market definition. But in truth, dollar devaluations going back to 1971 have historically occurred in concert with inflationary outbreaks worldwide. And that’s what’s happened over the last several years.
Maybe we should be paying more close attention to the dollar.
Bill Steigerwald of Townhall.com recently interviewed Steve Forbes about the falling dollar.
Q: The stock market seems to fall a percent and half a day. Oil prices just set a new record. The dollar is falling. Inflation is going up. The subprime troubles don’t seem to end. What has suddenly happened to our economy?
A: What’s happened is twofold. One is the weak dollar policy of the Federal Reserve and particularly the Bush administration. I’m a Republican, but I think they have made a grievous mistake here. When you debase your currency — you print too many dollars — strange and unpleasant things happen, such as soaring commodity prices. Since 2004 oil, copper, lumber, steel — they’ve all gone up. The housing market, which was booming, went on steroids. The same thing with a lot of the hedge and equity funds. We’re paying the price for that today.
Then with the credit crisis last summer, what has made that protracted is, first of all, the people don’t know where the bad stuff is. It’s similar to getting a health warning that bags of lettuce are tainted. It may be only a small number, but nobody buys lettuce until they know where the bad stuff is. That’s what’s happening with the subprimes.
But we also have a modern version of a bank panic. Lenders are reluctant to lend, even to solvent customers. The system is frozen up. That’s why even solvent companies in the mortgage business are having a very, very tough time these days. So we have a panic and we have the unknown.
Q: In layman’s terms, why is the fall of the dollar so important?
A: Why it’s important? Every time you go to the gas pump, you’ll see why. Every time you go to the grocery store — why are those prices rising like that? You see it in the impact on the housing market. Why did lenders behave so bizarrely? Well, one of the reasons is that a lot of new players came in with the easy money and lending standards went out the window. When you have that situation with excess money — it’s the equivalent to flooding the engine of a car with too much fuel — what you also have is that businesses are investing more outside the U.S. than inside the U.S.
Q: Is it simple enough to say that the dollar is falling in value because too many have been printed up and are in circulation?
A: Too many dollars out there. Especially when the Fed prints a dollar bill these days, with all the borrowing and exotic instruments, it can multiply pretty quickly — just like rabbits. So you stop breeding the rabbits.
Makes you wonder why this is all happening, doesn’t it?
Fewer Border Crossings Show Troubled Economy
March 25, 2008
An Arizona State University research economist says she could see rocky times ahead for Arizona’s economy a year before the real problems emerged.Dawn McLaren with the W.P. Carey School of Business said a slowdown in border apprehensions of illegal immigrants tipped her off.“When the work starts to dry up, then they don’t come,” McLaren said. “And this happened long before our slowdown. It gives us about a year’s heads-up on the turnaround.”
McLaren said illegal immigrants are highly networked.
“The one who has a job here will call home to his hometown and say, `Hey, we need more people on our construction crew, we need more people doing this type of work or that type of work.”
McLaren said as soon as more illegal immigrants start trying to cross the border, “I’ll feel better. I’ll say, `Well, here comes the upturn in the economy.’”
Authorities credit the drop in illegal border crossings to stepped up enforcement and tough employer sanctions against hiring illegal immigrants.
McLaren said Arizona may have a tougher time digging its way out of the current economic slup than it did in the 1980s.
“We had Motorola and we had Intel, we had the semi-conductor industry then that we could say, `This will pull us out of it,’” she said. “We also had affordable housing, we were really an affordable place to live.”
America really is a giving country
March 11, 2008
From Arthur Brook’s piece on the American:
Americans are remarkably charitable. But what sorts of people give the most? And how do we compare with the Europeans?
Q. How much do Americans give? Is the amount we give going up?
A. In 2006, Americans gave about $295 billion to charity. This was up 4.2 percent over 2005 levels, and charitable giving has generally risen faster than the growth of the American economy for more than half a century. Correcting for inflation and population changes, GDP per person in America has risen over the past 50 years by about 150 percent, while charitable giving per person has risen by about 190 percent. That is, the average American family has gotten much richer in real terms over the past half century, and charitable giving has more than kept pace with this trend.
I noticed this personally after Hurricane Katrina. I lived in New Orleans during that time and after broadcasting live during the storm. I lost my job. But, a couple of my friends reached deep into their own pockets to help me out. I’m sure this happened to thousands of others as well. This won’t even be reported in Brook’s article because that form of giving doesn’t show up in any statistic.
Another great example is the money raised for Dave last week on Ankarlo Mornings. Dave called into the show to say it was the little things in life that made him happy despite falling behind on his truck payments. Ankarlo made the call out to you. And you not only helped Dave catch up with his truck payment, you raised enough money for Dave to pay off his truck so the creditors can never take it from him. Dave, an old Marine, got emotional when he was told the news. America is a great and generous nation and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.
More from Brooks:
Q. Are Americans more or less charitable than citizens of other countries?
A. No developed country approaches American giving. For example, in 1995 (the most recent year for which data are available), Americans gave, per capita, three and a half times as much to causes and charities as the French, seven times as much as the Germans, and 14 times as much as the Italians. Similarly, in 1998, Americans were 15 percent more likely to volunteer their time than the Dutch, 21 percent more likely than the Swiss, and 32 percent more likely than the Germans. These differences are not attributable to demographic characteristics such as education, income, age, sex, or marital status. On the contrary, if we look at two people who are identical in all these ways except that one is European and the other American, the probability is still far lower that the European will volunteer than the American.
Head to the fallout shelter:
March 7, 2008
Every time you turn on the television and watch the news, you are told to the economic world is going to end. We hear headlines like this: The dollar is at an all time low, oil prices are setting records, the world’s richest man, Warren Buffett, says we are in a recession, CEO’s of major companies say we are in the worst housing crisis since the Great Depression, unemployment and inflation are going up.
Just read some of the language and you will know what I mean. From an Associated Press story a headlines reads, “Employers Slash Jobs by Most in 5 Years.” Why put the word slash in there other than to conjure up fear? The media thrives on fear. Personal finance expert, Suzie Ormon, was on the Today’s Show yesterday explaining how scared she of the current economy because of the dollar’s fall and oil prices. Here is another headline from the New York Sun in November of last year, “Talk of Worst Recession Since the 1930’s” The media is brow beating us into submission. A google news search of the word “recession” turns out over 10-thousand hits in the past month alone.
What happened to the American spirit? The American Spirit that could overcome anything. The American Spirit that has the most productive workers in the world. The America that most other countries want to be like. The America where our standard of living is above all else. The America where poor people own homes, cars, televisions, cell phones and have cable.
One other footnote. The man who know says America is in a recession, Warren Buffett made $10 billion dollars alone in 2007. He is now the world’s richest man with a total value of $62 billion. That’s not a bad year at all.
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