Class Today (and Monday) at No Bull U on WEBY

Listen to the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- No political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- Just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

NoBullU will be on air today, Friday, and Monday from 4:05 to 6 p.m. at 1330 AM WEBY and on line, courtesy of Cyber Smart Computers.

Topics: Local, state, national and international events.

Tune in, call in, but only if you can handle the truth!

How Old is Your Brain?

The test program is written in Japanese so review these instruction first:

1. Touch 'start'
2. Wait for 3, 2, 1.
3. Memorize the number's position on the screen, and then click the circle from the smallest number to the biggest number.
4. At the end of the game, the computer will tell you the age of your brain.

Good luck! Take the test.

Tell us, how old is your brain?

Mine was 33. I'm not sure if that is good or bad since I am not 33 years old.

Tell your friends to take the test.

UWF Football

For years there has been talk of starting a football program at the University of West Florida. Someone should just start a club football team like a student did at the University of Vermont. See The New York Times, A Year of Toil and Sweat, Then They Played a Game.

It would be relatively easy, quick, and cheap. And if it proves popular, it would justify a varsity program.

Go Argonauts!

Civics Quiz

Here is the civics quiz that Renee and Mike discussed on Monday's show.

(NBB editorial comment - a few of the questions seem unrelated to civics and/or ask for an answer closer to opinion than fact.)

Mike got 33 of 33 correct, I got only 32 of 33 correct.

What was your score?

UPDATE: Read this editorial about the quiz by Walter Williams, TownHall.com, Ignorance Reigns Supreme.

Do You Like Jokes?

A friend sends me jokes all the time and sent me this:

A store that sells new husbands has opened in New York City , where a woman may go to choose a husband. Among the instructions at the entrance is a description of how the store operates:

You may visit this store ONLY ONCE! There are six floors and the value of the products increase as the shopper ascends the flights. The shopper may choose any item from a particular floor, or may choose to go up to the next floor, but cannot go back down except to exit the building!

So, a woman goes to the Husband Store to find a husband. On the first floor the sign on the door reads: Floor 1 - These men Have Jobs.

She is intrigued, but continues to the second floor, where the sign reads: Floor 2 - These men Have Jobs and Love Kids.

'That's nice,' she thinks, 'but I want more.' So she continues upward. The third floor sign reads: Floor 3 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, and are Extremely Good Looking. 'Wow,' she thinks, but feels compelled to keep going.

She goes to the fourth floor and the sign reads: Floor 4 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Good Looking and Help With Housework. 'Oh, mercy me!' she exclaims, 'I can hardly stand it!'

Still, she goes to the fifth floor and the sign reads: Floor 5 - These men Have Jobs, Love Kids, are Drop-dead Gorgeous, Help with Housework, and Have a Strong Romantic Streak.

She is so tempted to stay, but she goes to the sixth floor, where the sign reads: Floor 6 - You are visitor 31,456,012 to this floor. There are no men on this floor. This floor exists solely as proof that women are impossible to please. Thank you for shopping at the Husband Store.

WHAT FLOOR DID YOU STOP ON?


PLEASE NOTE: To avoid gender bias charges, the store's owner opened a New Wives store just across the street.

The First Floor has wives that Love Sex.

The Second Floor has wives that Love Sex and Have Money and Like to Drink.

The Third, Fourth, Fifth and Sixth floors have never been visited.

Should I post things like this?

PR Strategy or Just Clueless

Just read the article and watch the video, New York Magazine, Sarah Palin’s PR Strategy Gets Weirder.

Is Palin a PR genius, or just clueless?

If Palin keeps this up, as the article said it should be an entertaining few years.

The Bailout Bull, Cont.

Why all the effort to prop up failed financial institutions? The whole sector might have been an elaborate Ponzi scheme. There seems to be a lively debate about letting the auto industry work its problems out in bankruptcy. Why not the same for the financial sector?

Will Wilkinson, a research fellow at the Cato Institute, thinks that the government should stop "trying to prop up already failed financial giants. We'll best ensure continued investment in our still-vital economy if we let new financial players rise from Wall Street's ruins." Read or listen to his opinion.

Should He Change His Name to George Herbert Hoover Bush

First there was George Herbert Walker Bush, and he beget George Walker Bush. But given the son's response to the economic mess, should he now change his name? Read Washington Post, Bush's Final Fiasco.

And tell me, should the 43rd President of the United States change his name from George W. (The Worst) Bush to George Herbert Hoover Bush?

Harry Reid Should Resign

Behind schedule and hundreds of millions of dollars over budget, the new Capitol Visitor's Center in Washington, D.C. opened just in time. Thanks goodness it was before another summer. Senate majority leader Harry Reid was tired of smelling the tourist. No kidding, he said:

"In the summertime, because the high humidity and how hot it gets here, you could literally smell the tourists coming into the Capitol."

Someone should tell Reid that most of those smelly tourists are U.S. citizens, the people that he works FOR. This is just one example of the contempt that politicians have for the people they represent.

I'm sure his opponents are preparing the 2010 campaign ads already.

Reid should do us all a favor and resign now.

Did You Hear About the White House Christmas Tree Ornament

If not you might want to read Washington Post, Christmas Colors for the White House: Red, White and Impeach.

An appropriate farewell to George W. (The Worst) Bush, don't you think.

UPDATE: After asking members of Congress to pick artists from their districts to decorate ornaments, Laura Bush has decided that the ornament made by Deborah Lawrence, who created a red and white ornament that salutes Rep. Jim McDermott (D-Wash.) and his support for a resolution to impeach the president, was “inappropriate and it's not being hung.”

The ornament embedded a "subversive" message, the text from a resolution to impeach Bush.

No word on whether copies of the ornament will be offered for sale to the public at the White House Gift Shop.

Our New Pompous-Elect

Is it just me, or is he overdoing it, with the faux office, staged announcements nearly everyday, too many press conferences and interviews, simulated blue-collar connectedness (thinking the comment about the hypoallergenic mutt here).

I don't know if I can take 4 (or even 8) years of this.

What do you think?

The Bailout Bull

First AIG, now Citigroup. The common thread, both companies had close ties with a current or former Treasury Secretary. It is all about who you know, but is that capitalism or communism? Read:

• The New York Times, The Reckoning, Citigroup Saw No Red Flags Even as It Made Bolder Bets
• The New York Times, All Fall Down
• Washington Post, From Market Economy to Political Economy

And why is the government trying to save the financial sector when much of it might be a fraud. Michael Lewis sounded the warning nearly 20 years ago when he wrote the book, Liar's Poker, in which he portrayed "the 1980s as an era where government deregulation allowed less-than-scrupulous people on Wall Street to take advantage of others' ignorance, and thus grow extremely wealthy." Now read his latest article at Portfolio.com, The End, in which he writes:

In the two decades since then, I had been waiting for the end of Wall Street. The outrageous bonuses, the slender returns to shareholders, the never-ending scandals, the bursting of the internet bubble, the crisis following the collapse of Long-Term Capital Management: Over and over again, the big Wall Street investment banks would be, in some narrow way, discredited. Yet they just kept on growing, along with the sums of money that they doled out to 26-year-olds to perform tasks of no obvious social utility.

No Class at NoBullU on WEBY Until December

Usually on Fridays you can listen to me, the voice of wisdom and reason in a wilderness of partisan rhetoric -- no political insanity, no conservative hypocrisy, no liberal foolishness -- just straight talk, straight at you, and that’s no bull!!

But the next show will not be until Friday, December 5, 2008. Until then, read my wit and wisdom here, and continue the discussion and debate by posting a comment or two.

Republi-cons Lose Hope of Comeback in 2012

Are you a Republi-cons that had hoped Obama would turn out to be some radical leftist, terrorist loving, Muslim secret agent. If so, bad news, Obama is surrounding himself with people that are open-minded individuals who are persuadable by evidence, admired professionals, not excessively partisan, not ideological, with practical creativity. Read The New York Times, The Insider’s Crusade.

He'll need them to clean up the mess the Republi-cons have created.

Leveraged Beyond Imagination

What's going on in the economy? It is deleveraging. We were living in a house made of credit cards and it was not very structurally sound.

Here is a fuller explanation. I am not sure of the original source, but you might find it informative.

"Former FED chief Paul Volcker hits the nail on the head when he says “There has been leveraging in the economy beyond imagination, and nobody was saying we need to do something.”

When he says “leveraging beyond imagination” he means it. In fact, there is really no way to adequately describe it, since the investment vehicles designed to conceal the extent of the leveraging are so complex. Even trying to describe it simplistically can be a chore, but I’ll try:

The bankers, who make loans to people by issuing them “credit” are allowed to count the debt they hold as assets on their balance sheets. Then they are allowed to use those “assets” (i.e., the money owed to them) to make even more loans.

This would be the equivalent of you lending someone $1,000. So you put that thousand dollars on your balance sheets as an asset, and you give someone else a loan of $800 from the $1,000 you are owed, by issuing them a spendable credit.

Then you put that $800 on your balance sheets as an asset, since it is owed to you, and lend someone else $600 on the $800 you are owned, by issuing them a spendable credit.

Then you put that $600 on your balance sheets as an asset, since it is owed to you, and lend someone else $400 on the $600 you are owed, by issuing them a spendable credit.

Then you put that $400 on your balance sheets as an asset, since it is owed to you, and lend someone $300 on the $400 you are owned, by issuing them a spendable credit.

That’s called leveraging debt. (I know that’s a simplistic example, but it will do for the sake of this commentary.)

Now, you only started out with a single $1,000 loan. That’s all of the money you had. But suddenly you have $3,100 in “assets” on your balance sheets even though in reality there is only the original $1,000 you lent out. The rest is simply credits you’ve issued to others, that are “owed” to you.

That’s what former FED chairman Paul Volcker refers to in the below article as “credit alchemy” – the art of making money out of thin air by granting loans based on previous loans, based on previous loans, based on previous loans, ad infinitum.

In reality there is nothing backing up those loans but the “promises to pay” of each of the previous debtors. Of course, to keep the debt pyramid going, you have to make more and more loans, which by definition means you have to make riskier and riskier loans.

But wait. There’s more. If you were a bank, people probably invested in your stock. After all, you were a genius. You were able to turn $1,000 into $3,100 – at least on your balance sheet. And as investors saw what a great businessman you were and how you were able to operate so “profitably,” they invested more and more money in your bank by purchasing its stock. This gave you even more money to loan out, on the same leveraged basis you used in the first place. So your balance sheet continued to swell. Now, instead of $3,000 it’s $30,000. Or $300,000. Or $300 million. Or $300 billion. You get the idea. It continues to grow as you continue to use the money coming in from the purchase of your stock to make even more new loans and then to leverage that debt by using it to make even more new loans. Thus, the “assets” on your balance sheet continue to grow. Everyone begins to believe it can never end. You have figured out the key to infinite wealth. But those assets are not real. They are bloated figures based upon the fact that you have leveraged $1,000 into tens of thousands of dollars, then hundreds of thousands of dollars, then millions of dollars, then tens of millions of dollars and finally billions of dollars. Every cent on your now bloated balance sheet was predicated upon your amazing ability to leverage that original debt into more and more debt, then convince investors to throw more money at you, all of which you are able to leverage and then show on your balance sheet as “assets.”

Then you come up with a great idea: You’ll take advantage of some new laws that have been passed, and begin packaging up all of those loans you’ve issued into “securities” (now there’s an oxymoron for you) and sell them to investors around the world, promising “safe” returns on their investments. After all, if you’re making 6% on the loans you made, you can now promise investors a nice safe” 3% or even 4% on their investment and still rake in 2% or 3% at no risk to yourself. In short, you’ve sold your risk off to others. And as the schmucks (er…ah…I mean investors) buy more and more of your packaged “securities,” believing them to be a safe, easy way to make 3% or 4% on their money, you rake in even moremoney with which to leverage even more loans, with each leveraged loan adding even more phantom “value” to your balance sheet.

But as you make loan upon loan upon loan, you have to reach further into the bottom of the barrel for people to lend to. In other words, you have to relax your lending standards in order to bring in new herds of people wanting to borrow money from you. Then you repeat the process: You package those loans up as “securities” and sell them off to investors through the large investment funds that average people like you and me buy into with our 401k and IRA monies.

This is what essentially happened. The money-changers said packaging and selling the highly leveraged loans – now numbering in the trillions of dollars -- as “securities” would further “spread the risk” and make the investments even safer. Large mutual funds and other types of investment funds began purchasing these “securities” on behalf of investors, as average men and women poured money into these funds through their 401ks and IRAs. But in reality it merely concealed the risk, skillfully transferring it from the Wall Street bankers to the average “Joe” investor. Most investors never realized the “securities” they had invested in through their 401ks, IRAs, or in their mutual fund investment programs, were in reality a pyramid of largely unrepayable debt.

But then a curious thing happened: Some of the riskier debtors began defaulting on their loans. And when the risky debtors started defaulting on their loans, a series of ominous events began to transpire:

- As the defaults began to grow, investors got nervous and gradually stopped investing in the bank’s stock, as the true value of bank’s balance sheet slowly began to drop with each new defaulted loan. This gradually began to dry up the new supply of money needed by the banks to continue making loans and leveraging them.

- The large funds and their investors stopped purchasing the packaged debt-based “securities” being offered by the banks. After all, as more people defaulted on their loans, the value of these “securities” began to drop. Th e large Wall Street funds that had purchased these “securities” began to lose money for their investors. And as their investors reacted by beginning to pull out of the funds, the funds simply stopped buying up the bad debt disguised as “securities.” This further dried up the new supply of money needed by the banks to continue making loans.

- Even relatively good debtors, now unable to extend or refinance their loans because the banks no longer had such huge pools of money to lend, began defaulting on their loans. So good loans as well as risky loans began to go bad. And since these loans were interconnected to all of the other loans through the process of leverage, the whole system began to “unwind” or “deleverage.”

- The bank’s bloated balance sheet suddenly began to deflate like an Aero Bed with a bad leak. Seemingly overnight, our hypothetical bank loses two-thirds of its supposed “value.” In reality, what happened is that the true value of the bank is suddenly exposed. People begin to see that the “emperor has no clothes.” Everything that had appeared to be “assets” on the bank’s balance sheet was in reality unrepayable debt.

- The average “Joe” begins to see the value of his 401k or IRA plunge, losing as much as half, or two-thirds, or even three-fourths of its value, depending largely upon the extent of its involvement in the debt-based “securities” packaged by the banks and sold to the bi g funds on Wall Street, or in investments leveraged off of those debt-based securities by the funds themselves.

Hence, we have witnessed not only banks going under as their bloated balance sheets crashed back to earth due to the loan defaults, but also the stock market plummeting and taking everyone’s 401ks and IRAs and mutual fund investments down with it.

The problem is this: Once this process starts it is hard to stop. After all, at this point literally trillions of dollars are involved in this unwinding debt pyramid. And because investors from around the world purchased those debt-based “securities” (chiefly the large investment funds that average workers invest their retirement funds through), the entire global financial system is being affected.

And the untold story is that many of these large global investment funds used their investments in those debt-based securities as “assets” with which to leverage even more investments. So you have highly leveraged investments that were based upon other investments made up of highly leveraged debt. Oy, vey!

Finally, you can top off this unholy witches brew of leverage with the use of the futures markets which allowed banks and investment funds to leverage their “assets” even further by betting on the future value of investments. With all of that, and more, you have “leverage beyond imagination” as former Fed chairman Volcker puts it.

That’s why many analysts now say the “unwinding” of these investments is unstoppable, no matter how much money the governments of the world throw at the problem. After all, they are simply adding to the problem by using brand new debt-based “promises to pay” (ultimately backed by the already beleaguered taxpayer) to stop the unwinding of older debt-based “promises to pay.” It’s kind of like throwing buckets of water on a drowning man, hoping it will somehow help keep him afloat.

How will it all end? Badly I’m afraid. While everything is de-leveraging now, causing a deflation in the prices of oil, stocks, commodities, real estate, and the value of what were once trillions of dollars worth of assets, we know from Amos chapter 8 that it is all going to end in inflation. In other words, higher and higher prices for smaller and smaller portions, with the poor going into economic bondage to the system. But out of it all, we will most certainly see a new global economic system emerge. And Biblically, that means we are now very close to the events that kick off the end of this old flesh earth age."

Kinda scary isn't it.

Taxpayers are Chumps Cont.

Told ya so, in October, I said taxpayers were chumps for bailing out corporate America, especially AIG. Rep. Elijah Cummings, D-Maryland agrees, watch him on YouTube question Neel Kashkari, the interim assistant Treasury secretary for financial stability and read Washington Post, Treasury's Bailouts Are Getting Us Chumped.

We bailout corporate America and they use the money to pay for private jets, swanky retreats, dividends, and bonuses. The latest, AIG will pay employees $503 million in deferred compensation. We are a nation of chumps thanks to the Republi-cons.

If you ask me, it is just icing on the cake of the Republi-con legacy as another chapter of the unholy alliance ends.

Should the Republi-cons Give Up on God?

Remember Kathleen Parker, the heretic who wrote the article in the National Review asking The Great Palin to bow out of the election. Now she suggests that the Republi-cons give up on God! Read Washington Post, Giving Up on God.

But she does not understand that without God there would be no unholy alliance.

Pardon the Mess

I discussed the pardon issue recently. Now there is speculation that Bush could issue preemptive pardons in the final days of his administration. Read Daily Telegraph, George W Bush could pardon spies involved in torture, ABCNews, Record Numbers Seeking Bush Pardons, and Newsweek, Pardon Me? Don’t Bet On It.

Would blanket amnesty for those who carried out Bush's policy of torture be seen as a tacit admission of guilt?

Let Them Go Bankrupt, Cont.

Should the the future of the American economy depend on politically powerful capitalists who use their influence to create a stagnant corporate welfare state or a process of creative destruction with safety nets so workers can survive the dynamic changes? Read The New York Times, Bailout to Nowhere.

Economics Professor at Harvard University Endorses My Idea of Preemptive Reorganization

An economics professor at Harvard University endorses my idea of preemptive reorganization. Read Washington Post, A Chapter For Detroit To Open.

I should get paid for this, gold preferred until further notice.