All Fools Day at the White House

Came early this year when the President declared April as National Financial Capability Month on March 29.

I call upon all Americans to observe this month with programs and activities to improve their understanding of financial principles and practices

Obama is lecturing me on financial responsibility?  Perhaps he'll teach me how to make and adhere to a budget?

So what's next?

Is John Boehner going to teach me how to use sun block?

Is Debbie Wasserman Schultz going to teach me how to comb my hair?

This is the second year of National Financial Capability Month.  We also had  National Financial Literacy Month in 2010 & 2011.

If you do not have a life, you can read all four:

April 2, 2010	-	2010 National Financial Literacy Month
March 31, 2011	-	2011 National Financial Literacy Month
April 2, 2012	-	2012 National Financial Capability Month
March 29, 2013	-	2013 National Financial Capability Month

So here is what I learned:

The debt at the end of March when each of these proclamations were made:

Year	Total Debt
2010	12,773,123,000,000
2011	14,270,115,000,000
2012	15,582,079,000,000
2013	16,687,289,000,000

So given we had a debt of 11,126,941 000,000 on  March 31 2009, the president called on us to become financially literate while the federal government was racking this sort of debt each year:

Year	Debt Increase	Debt Incr per Person *
2010	1,646,182,000,000	5487.27
2011	1,496,992,000,000	4989.97
2012	1,311,964,000,000	4373.21
2013	1,105,210,000,000	3684.03

* using a rough number of 300,000,000 people

So the federal government has increased the debt for each person in the U.S. by 18534.49.  Yep.  That's almost $20,000 even for your child sleeping in her cradle.

Here it is only 2-April.  I think my financial acumen has really grown.

Big Government Gone Wild

This one should make a libertarian out of everyone.

Florida has a law requiring vending machine owners to post a notice with no purpose other than to display the notice:

Operators must post the following statement on each machine:

NOTICE TO CUSTOMER: 

FLORIDA LAW REQUIRES THIS NOTICE TO BE POSTED ON ALL FOOD AND BEVERAGE VENDING MACHINES. Report any machine without a notice to 1-800-352-9273. You may be eligible for a cash reward. DO NOT USE THIS NUMBER TO REPORT PROBLEMS WITH THE VENDING MACHINE SUCH AS LOST MONEY OR OUT-OF-DATE PRODUCTS. 

http://dor.myflorida.com/dor/tips/tip10a01-05.html

Notice there is no real notice. No contact the police if you are being mugged.  Nor perhaps the health department if say mold is oozing from the machine or anything OTHER than if the notice is absent, then you might be eligible for a reward.

In case you missed it, the real humor comes if the notice is missing.  If the notice is missing, you are supposed to report the violation.  But of course if the notice is missing, you won't see the telephone number to use for reporting the violation.

I think Kurt Vonnegut wrote a story about this.

Fortunately churches, etc are exempt:

(5)?The provisions of this section do not apply to vending machines owned and operated by churches, synagogues, or nonprofit or charitable organizations exempt pursuant to s. 212.08(7)(z).

If you still think this is a prank, check the Florida legislative site:  Legislative Text

Take Tea at 3

I wanted to see what all this tea party stuff was about.

I was too lazy and too cheap to get up, buy a bus ticket, and get to the bus to go to DC.  So I went to Morristown to their rally (billed as for those who were to cheap or lazy couldn't go).

The rally was held on the Morristown square.  The Morristown square is in the middle of town, in the middle of the business district.  The square is much like the Boston Commons but smaller.  There are four intersecting streets that form a square block.  That square is a park with benches and the like.

The rally was scheduled to run from 11:00 AM until 2:00 PM.  I got to Morristown a little after 11 and had to spend a few minutes finding somewhere to park.  I found a new parking garage a few blocks from the square.

So I missed the beginning, but caught the first speaker part way through his spiel.  The speakers / speeches were pretty much what I had expected.  The speeches mostly railed against big government and government spending.  It was kind of having come out of Mr Peabody's WABAK machine.  If it was not for the topics being government spending rather than the war in Vietnam, I would have lit one of those Winstons I smoked back then.

I thought it was a decent crowd considering most people should be at work and if you had any ambition you'd be in DC.

I would say the majority of the attendees were older, but there were a fair number of 20's & 30's as well.  There were a few mothers with strollers as well as toddlers and preschoolers.   I didn't see any of the left-wing sabateurs like Crash the Tea Party types.

I did see a kind of counter protest by a small group in the very back. 

But I'm not sure what they were saying.  Can someone tell me what MORE BLOOD WON'T CLEANSE BAD BLOOD means?  Does this have anything to do with the Tea Party?  Are they saying drink blood, not tea?  I'm so confused.  One thing I did notice was an SDS sign.

 Gee, those guys are still around?  I mean I know that several of those original SDS ( and Weather Underground) founders / members are presidential advisers, but I didn't know they were still on college campuses (I assume the kids were from some local college).

The Tea Party people had their signs of course.  For the most part the signs were anti-taxes and government spending.  The sort of thing you would expect of the Tea Party people.  But I did see this one that I guess

seeks to explain the how and why of the Tea Party movement.  I was thinking it might be a little more complicated than that.

Unlike the news accounts you hear, I didn't see any wild terrorist wanna-bees.  No hitler signs.  I did see guns though.  Strapped to the several police who were there.  The hired security were armed to the teeth with a vest and walkie-talkie.

The only sign I saw which was a bit obnoxious was this one:

 

But I also thought it was kind of funny too.  If this is the worst the Tea Party has, I think Bill Clinton needs to look elsewhere for his terrorist concerns.

Guns for Lead Based Toys

"China's military stepped up pressure on the United States on Monday by calling for a government sell-off of U.S. debt securities in retaliation for recent arms sales to Taiwan."

 - Washington Times 2010-02-10

When will we wise up?  Will it take a real economic strike by China crippling our economy before we tighten our belts and stop the insane spending.  Federal, state, and our own consumer addictive self destructive behavior has to stop.

Sanctions

The news today reported that China is threatening sanctions against the US because of arms sales to Taiwan.

How could they?

As many have been predicting for some years now, our debt will come back to bite us in the butt.  China has been buying up our debt for years now.  And now like the poor broke neighborhood gambler up to his eyeballs in debt to the loan sharks, we could be truly screwed.

If we are to prevent our proverbial legs from being broken, we need to STOP THE SPENDING.  I never thought this was going to work.  But the feds took a shot.  It ain't working.  The projection is now that every penny of personal income tax will be needed to cover the interest on the debt. 

What's next?

Default?

Hyperinflation?  That worked out well in Germany now didn't it.

STOP THE INSANITY!