News Useful for All of Us October 25, 2010

Tags: Break the Banks, Obama Tax Change, Health Advantage, Bonds, Last Minute Room, Pain, , Brain, Election Money, Food Inflation,

1. Consequence of Republicans Not Allowing Obama Fix to Bush Tax Law to keep tax cut for everyone up to $250,000 and start taxing those making over that amount. If all tax cuts expire this year, a family of four making $325,000 would pay $7,400 if Repubs prevail and if Obama prevails $5400.; Married 2 children making $325,000 would pay $7400 if Repubs prevail and $5400 if Obama prevails. Even at taxable income of $ one million for a family of 4, their taxes are lower by about $3,000 under if Repub prevail and $3,000 higher if Obama prevails.

For the same family, it starts to get significant at $5,000,000 income for a family of four, the tax would be $40,000 higher under Obama’s plan.

Stephen Ohlemacher AP, Sept 17, 2010 at the www.registerguard.com

1. If you have Health Advantage and Medicare, read the provisions carefully. If you move, you may not be able to get back into Health Advantage. Changing plans at the same address will have only a smaller window from Jan 1 to Feb 14. If you turn 65 and don’t enroll in Medicare, you will need to pay higher premiums to get in Medicare. WSJ Kelly Greene, Sept 18-19^th, 2010.

1. Investors Flee Stock Market and Go into Bonds NY Times Graham Bowley, Aug 22, 2010. First 7 months 2010, investors withdrew $33.12 billion from domestic stock market mutual and placing them into bonds. Investors pulled out $19.1 billion in May, the largest outflow since October 2008. Overall investors pulled out $151.4 billion out of stock market mutual funds in 2008. The surprise this time is that Americans are withdrawing money even when share prices are rallying. The market rose 7 percent in July. (And about 10 percent in September) They plowed $185.31 billion into bond mutual funds in the first seven months of this year and total bond fund investments for the year are on track to approach the record set in 2009.

With China diversifying out of the dollar and may even be selling our bonds, uncertainty in the Financial Sector, largest part of our GDP, due to what is happening to the housing mortgages where it is obvious that no one seems to know who owns these homes because the mortgages were broken into derivatives which were broken up into more derivatives without adequate records. The mentality was get the bucks before the whole system crashes. Yes, they knew what was happening as the Bush administration knew that Bin Laden planned to crash a plane into tall buildings.

My advisor had a hard time getting her clients to get out of some bonds so she persuaded them to go into short term bonds and high interest stable stocks. Remember that nothing is absolutely safe so diversifying might be safer, but not as safe as in the past where the markets seem to work together more often. Try to get out of ETFs that have a relatively low number of investors.

Remember that in the crash, index funds went down more sharply than mutual fund stocks. That is what happens in a financial crash. Let’s hope that we do not have another one soon. We should be good for another decade or so with the new Obama Regulations, weak as they may be.

1. New Websites Offer Deals on Last-Minute Accommodations, Ed Perkins Tribune Media Services www.registerguard.com August 22, 2010

Trust but Verify when you look at these “bargains.”

www.packlate.com

1. The Pain Chronicles by Melanie Thernstrom Worth reading for those in pain, but ignores the very useful Medical Marijuana which prevents the role of emotion in increasing beyond the irritation.
2. What Crisis? Why Vacancies on the Bench Matter by Dahlia Lithwick Newsweek, Sept 20, 2010 The Republican strategy pushed strongly by Bush was to put Conservative Supreme Court types on the Federal Bench so corporations can get away with breaking the law more easily. The other part of the strategy is prevent the Democrats from replacing empty federal judges when they in power because the Senate’s Anti-Democratic rules were put in place starting with the wealthy founders who wrote the Constitution.

1. Madison, Hamilton, and John Jay purposely put the wealthy and powerful in charge and made it almost impossible to change via an Amendment. It took Seventy Years of Constant campaigning to get the vote and being allowed to own property. The Oligarchy is very close to succeeding due to both the ignorance and money from corporations, the wealthy, and the Supreme Court allowing foreign corporations and country intruding on our election by donating money secretly.
2. www.doctoroz.com Our brain needs a rest. Take off your I-Pod when you want to rest your brain. I watch television so my brain sleeps according to a Wall Street Journal study.
3. NY Times has great article on the role of money in the Midterm Elections by Michael Luo, Friday, October 8, 2010. The secrecy of donations allowed corporations to donate much more money because they did not have to worry about boycotts of their products. Chamber of Commerce has taken many corporate and foreign donations which they have used to take down Democrats. Republicans have a Nine Fold advantage in money now compared to the Democrats. Today’s papers said the Democrats have dropped sharply in donations from the rich. They hate what Obama has done to reduce their money spun from the blood of Americans.
4. Expect much higher food prices. A combination of increasing population, droughts and floods throughout the world, especially in Russia, Asia, and even the good old USA will give us food inflation. Fast food stocks have jumped sharply! One piece of good news. Monsanto new Franken Soybeans and Corn has not succeeded in the market place. Their stock has gone down from $147 to about $45 in the last year or so. They had to get out of giving us milk with BST which has growth hormone in it. Good it feeds our cancers.
5. The Newsweek article on October 11, 2010 by Charles Ferguson “Break the Banks” explains that these crooks keep doing this because they never get thrown in jail. If they are prosecuted like they prosecute the Mafia and get the small guys to talk, we can start making Banks safe for democracy. Killing just one person by someone can result in a death sentence. How many Americans have the Banks killed. Its never reported that way, but the number may be enormous!