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Barb’s Blog » Entries tagged with "debt"

Learn From Greece

May 13th, 2010 | Add a Comment

At the rate we are going, I doubt we can learn from Greece. My feeling is debt is rarely addressed anymore, in any way that is serious. Perhaps the following article helps your understanding of debt in the United States today. Too weak to fail By George Will To understand the pertinence to America of events in Greece, notice General Motors’ most recent misbehavior. A television commercial featuring CEO Ed Whitacre demonstrates the institutional murkiness and intellectual dishonesty that result when the line between public and private sectors disappears. In the commercial, Whitacre says GM has “repaid our government loan in full.” Rep. Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) noted that GM used government funds to pay back the … Read entire article »

Filed under: News Items

Common Sense Money

April 5th, 2010 | Add a Comment

Common Sense Money

“The principle of spending money to be paid by posterity, under the name of funding, is but swindling futurity on a large scale.” ~Thomas Jefferson From Glenn Beck’s Common Sense : There was a time when our political leaders cited their leadership, temperament, experience, judgment, character, and merit in order to gain the trust and support of a skeptical electorate. Today they purchase votes and campaign cash by boasting about the pork they’ve secured for their pet projects … Read entire article »

Filed under: General

Bailout Greece?

February 12th, 2010 | Add a Comment

Greece in is financial trouble and The German chancellor, Angela Merkel, dashed hopes of a swift bailout of debt-laden Greece yesterday. The euro continued to fall today amid disappointment that the European Union has not come up with a solid rescue plan for Greece. Figures showing that Germany’s economic recovery unexpectedly stalled in the final quarter of last year added to the euro’s woes. A small headline barely a notice for most Americans maybe, but perhaps we should be closer attention. Pat Buchanan has a very interesting take on the subject, I think we should pay close attention: They are called the PIGS — Portugal, Ireland, Greece, Spain. What they have in common is that all are facing deficits and debts that could bring on national defaults and break up the European Union. What … Read entire article »

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Treaty of Copenhagen

November 4th, 2009 | Add a Comment

The draft Treaty of Copenhagen, to be signed in mid-December 2009, would create an unelected world government with direct power over all financial and trading markets, and direct power to intervene over the heads of elected governments in the economic and environmental affairs of all nations that sign the Treaty. The word “government” actually appears in the Treaty as the first of three purposes of a huge, new, supranational bureaucratic entity that will have the power to require wealthier nations to redistribute up to 2% of their annual gross domestic product to third-world countries in imagined reparation for imaginary “climate debt”. Watch the video. On October 14th 2009, Lord Christopher Monckton, a noted climate change expert, gave a presentation at Bethel College in St. Paul, MN. He has a strong warning … Read entire article »

Filed under: General

Smokescreens

April 5th, 2009 | 1 Comment

According to Chuck Norris, the outcry regarding AIG is a newstory that is keeping us from the REAL story, a smokescreen if you will. First, while people blow a cork over AIG corruptions, far larger amounts of money are being funneled to European financial groups without a peep of protest. AIG employee bonuses are chump change in comparison.   Where is the roughly $170 billion AIG received from taxpayers going? Some of the biggest beneficiaries of the bailouts are European financial affiliates of AIG.   While AIG’s bailout money was distributed to American companies Goldman Sachs ($13 billion), Merrill Lynch ($7 billion) and Bank of America ($5 billion), European partners were making out like bandits, too. The banks include Societe Generale of France ($12 billion), the Deutsche Bank of Germany ($12 billion), Barclays of Britain … Read entire article »

Filed under: News Items

Savior Based Economy

February 9th, 2009 | Add a Comment

Recently comments by the South Carolina governor, to me, shows a total awareness of what is going on with this country of late: The South Carolina Republican said such an economy is “what you see in Russia or Venezuela or Zimbabwe or places like that where it matters not how good your product is to the consumer but what your political connection is to those in power.” “A problem that was created by building up of too much debt will not be solved with yet more debt,”  ’We’re moving close to ‘a savior-based economy’ After all, why should we bail out companies that have made bad desicions? And how wise will the next set of decisions be with the next set of billions? General Motors plans to invest $1 billion in Brazil to avoid the kind … Read entire article »

Filed under: News Items

Much Spending, Little Stimulus

February 7th, 2009 | 4 Comments

I am not surprised to read the Senator from Oklahoma’s remarks regarding the “Stimulus” Package that will likely pass: “While I appreciate the efforts of my colleagues to bring down the price tag of this bill, the fact is we still face a trillion dollar spending bill. Making it worse, the bill is 93% spending and only 7% stimulation. Over the past few days I have fought to include more in the way of real stimulus through higher percentage of infrastructure and defense spending, while working to cut much of the typical government waste often found in a bill of this size. Yet Democrats have blocked these efforts.”   Is this what you want America? A near trillion dollars debt to hand to your children and grandchildren so Democrat elites can payback people … Read entire article »

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The Inconvenient Debt

February 1st, 2009 | Add a Comment

… Read entire article »

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Debt Collectors Harrassment

January 11th, 2009 | 1 Comment

I should preface this entry: I probably owe someone a favor, I might even owe a few a debt of gratitude, but I DO NOT, nor have I ever owed someone MONEY. I personally didn’t borrow money and not pay the credit card company back. However, someone I know did, and the phone number connected to that person was also mine. Needless to say, since May, I have received at least a few thousand phone calls, all hours of the day and night, holidays and weekends, bugging me – as if I could help them. I learned rather late, that this kind of harrassment is against the law. The following defines Abusive Debt Collectors Calls after 9:00 p.m. or before 8:00 a.m., without your consent; use of foul or obsence language Misleading or exaggerated collection letters; continued collection … Read entire article »

Filed under: Personal

Mortgage Crisis in a Nutshell

October 7th, 2008 | Add a Comment

How did it happen? …a banker would draw a red line around certain neighborhoods that were off limits for the bank’s loan underwriters. No one in the government or the media cared that the people living in these neighborhoods were known for having bad credit. No one in the government or the media really cared anything about the borrower’s credit history in general, or debt-to-income ratios, whether the borrower even had a job, or loan-to-value ratios, or a borrower’s personal net worth and they certainly didn’t think these factors should be considered in the mortgage process. That just wouldn’t be “fair.” Owning a home in America is a right, by God! They even coined a term for it–NINJA loans–no job, no income, no assets. But these were voters, constituents, and they … Read entire article »

Filed under: General

Debt and Covetousness

June 19th, 2008 | 1 Comment

Money is a terrible master, but it’s a good servant. I don’t think that I am a materialistic person, however we learned in a sermon by Dr. Michael Duffy in church a few Sundays ago, that ‘wanting stuff’ is basically in our fallen nature. He went on to say, “You don’t really have to teach a child how to want stuff, you do have to teach them to SHARE.” He defined covetousness as “valuing stuff over relationships.” It’s a destructive sin. It’s a trap and a lie we believe (hence the commerical ads on television making us believe we need the latest and greatest). It never bring satisfaction, in fact, intensifies the lust. Enough is never enough. Mike Duffy went on to share that if you didn’t believe that we don’t have enough stuff, take a look … Read entire article »

Filed under: General