Wall Street Change offers simple, logical solutions to tough economic problems
that appear to have been caused by Wall Street Investment Fraud.

Thursday, August 16, 2012

Forum Post: Five Reasons Why Crisis Persists by richard wolff | OccupyWallSt.org

This is an excellent article by Richard Wolfe. Points one and two completely justify why the Debt Neutrality Petition exists and needs to be signed.

Forum Post: Five Reasons Why Crisis Persists by richard wolff | OccupyWallSt.org

Friday, May 25, 2012

California Budget Death Spiral can be fixed before it is too late.

I was listening to KFI-AM talk show hosts John and Ken yesterday and they were discussing Detroit's budget deficit and how it appeared as if their budget was in an economic "death spiral".  

The concept behind a city or state's budget death spiral is interesting. As one cuts certain areas of the city or state budget, less critical services are provided resulting in more blight and less economic interaction.  

As the city or state budget is further cut, pension fund payments become a greater and greater percentage of the remaining budget. The result is a budget "death spiral" in which sacred cow portions of city or state budgets become all that the city can afford to support. The resulting loss in quality of life for all citizens causes personal safety and actual home equity values to keep dropping.

The loss in home equity values further reduces city and state income levels as property tax revenue drops, causing the sacred cow portions of the budget (including pensions) to become a bigger and bigger portion of the overall budget, thus accelerating the budget death spiral cycle.

The city and state budget death spiral is further exacerbated as the loss of home equity values also INCREASES consumer debt to personal collateral ratios. It's one thing to owe 10,000 dollars if one has 20,000  dollars in wealth, it's quite another to have that 20,000 dollars in home equity suddenly nosedive to 7,500 dollars yet still have that same 10,000 dollars of debt. 

Less overall wealth drives down wages while the ongoing interest rate charges on existing consumer debt reduces the opportunity to spend money locally. Hence, the 2008 stock market crash that then caused home values to plummet almost overnight dramatically increased the ratio of overall consumer debt to home equity values.


All of these economic conditions have led to the beginning of a state budget death spiral funneled from several different but intersecting sources, the key now is to find a force that can offset the budget death spiral.

The solutions to stopping a budget death spiral are amazingly simple. 


The first step is to Incentivize consumer debt with a consumer debt paydown program that slashes interest rate charges on existing debt to virtually zero percent, AS LONG AS THE CONSUMER IS ACTUALLY REDUCING THEIR OVERALL DEBT EVERY MONTH.

The benefits of consumer debt reduction through interest free pay down incentives is far superior to either debt forgiveness or telling people to either get a job or get a second job. 


Consumer debt reduction should occur in as efficient manner as possible otherwise it can create additional economic stress on  resources raging from petroleum, electricity, to water, because working additional hours simply to service an interest rate charge on a debt requires the use of valuable resources.  Valuable resources should only be used to PAY DOWN an existing debt, NOT to simply tread water.

The second step involves linking pension fund guarantees to a specific percentage of the overall state budget. I don't know what that pension percentage cap should be, but I would assume more than 10% to 15% of the city or state budget going towards pension plans or pension payrolls would help initiate a city or state's budget death spiral.
So here are the two solutions,
One, incentivize consumer debt paydown with zero percent interest rate charges for those who pay down their overall debt every month (because this means in short time they actually have more liquid income to spend locally, which is good for city and state tax revenue). 


Two, limit pension fund obligations to a specific percentage of overall city and state total tax income. 
If this reduces pension payouts to those already promised pensions, offer perks to make up the difference such as severely reduced pricing for special events, reduce property tax payments to the level they were when the original pension promise was made, offer low interest rate incentives for car purchases. 
Give perks to those with state pensions as a way to offset pension payment reductions if the present pension payout is suffocating the overall ability of the state and city to offer basic, fundamental services that are valued and relied upon.
Do these two things and the state and city budget death spirals can be fixed before they spiral out of control.



Sunday, March 18, 2012

How to Safely Increase Organ Donations for all Countries.

Organ donation has always had an unintended sinister aspect to it. How long does the hospital wait before harvesting the organs of an organ donor who may be on life support? Hospitals from all over the country anxiously watch for organ availability and viability, and the pressure to save multiple lives today could over ride the desire to give  an organ donor on life support extra time before harvesting their organs.

Responsible people who agree to be organ donors could find themselves the victim of a numbers game. Perhaps their chance of recovery is less than 1%, but at that same moment in time there could be 5 different people waiting for organs that that donor may be able to supply.

What are the doctors to do?  Save the lives of five people in desperate need of an organ, or keep someone on life support even if their chance of recovery is less than 1%?  

If you were an organ donor, and you had a .5% chance of recovery, would you want the organ donor system to give up on you and end your life after a few days to a couple of weeks so that others could be saved?
There probably is a solution to the organ donor dilemma that could increase the overall supply of organ donors. 
What if an organ donation protocol were established in which ALL ORGAN DONORS were entitled to 30 days of life support treatment, plus an additional evaluation and another 10 days before their organs were harvested?

The initial reaction of, "What good is it going to do if every donor gets up to a 40 day extension?" is a knee jerk response that misses the  actual benefits of such a program. I think it is possible that if a 40 day organ donation waiting period were established, the number of organ donors could go up significantly once organ donors knew they would not be cast aside because of a numbers game before it was truly known if they may or may not make a recovery.

Harry's Law had an episode on organ donation and organ trafficking and I don't believe the scenario I am proposing was explored. More and more I am troubled by the lack of a "float" being used to solve societal problems.

The refusal to pass on any significant reparations to the middle class for the loss of several trillion dollars in home equity due to home securitization fraud is a typical example of refusing to let the "float" solve an issue.

Helping homeowners now would have eventually created a financial windfall that could have replaced investment funds that would have had to accept part of their losses now, but possibly get reimbursed later on.

Instead everyone keeps passing the buck and kicking the problem down the road while demanding they get all of theirs, NOW! Organ donation is in the same predicament.  

A study needs to be done to see if the amount of total organ donors would go up if the donor was guaranteed 30 plus 10 days of life support and that there would be significant attempts made to bring them out of a coma for up to forty days.

If there was an overall increase in organ donation, then nobody would feel pressured to "pull the plug" on somebody who had recently become comatose because there would already someone else on life support about to come off after 40 days, and there in lies the "float".

A perfect example of this process would be Sarah Burke.  I disagree with the medical conclusion that was reached about her having irreversible brain damage.

The reason I disagree is that Ms. Burke was injured in very cold weather. I'm not a medical expert but I have read that the cold can slow down damage to organs and the brain.

Burke was in the prime of her life and in great cardiovascular shape. Why the rush to take her off of life support after only 20 days? If she wasn't an organ donor, they should have given her more time. If she was an organ donor, then she should have gotten her 40 days on life support and then a final evaluation would have been done.

The 40 days rule takes away the possibility of a desperate doctor or ultra efficient hospital administrator possibly manipulating a family into agreeing to a premature organ donation. 
If an honest and reasonably lengthy attempt is made at reviving a person, would that not INCREASE the amount of people who would agree to be organ donors?
Do the organs atrophy during the 40 days of life support? I don't know, but assuming that the life support is working properly, and the person is being nourished, would that not mean the organs remain viable?


Thursday, February 9, 2012

Why Millions won't get help from Home Foreclosure Settlement.

Propublica is reporting that millions won't get help from the just signed Home Foreclosure Agreement. Should I be surprised? Should you be surprised? It's typical rope a dope from Barack Obama. 

Yet republican politicians are too dense to actually be kinder and gentler towards the american people when it means going against their banker and wall street buddies, even though bankers and wall street actually give more money to Obama than the Republican politicians.

Stupid Stupid Republican politicians.

Thursday, January 26, 2012

Beware Awesome Penny Stocks, (as seen on Yahoo front page).

(Edit update - March 12, 2012, 5:40pm)  After rising from 14 cents all the way to $1.72, NSRS has settled nicely at....13 cents! Yet some of the pennystock newsletters claim that NSRS is one of their biggest success stories ever, gasp).


As Reported here on WallStreetChange in our previous story, Yahoo appears to be embracing inaccurate stories and is now allowing companies to advertise on their main page that may be violating investment laws. 

I saw an ad for Awesome Penny Stocks on Yahoo's front page in early  January and figured that Yahoo would not allow companies of questionable business practices to advertise on their front page.

Was presuming that Yahoo at the very least would make sure they are not validating companies that may be manipulating penny stocks above and beyond the area of plausibility, an outrageous presumption to make?

I don't know if it was a joke, but Awesome Penny Stocks actually sent out an email with pictures of what appear to be bags of gold in the foreground just below a hillside that has a gold coloring to it, a shot of a pic axe by a possible mining site, and a guy standing where I don't know, but, "working diligently" presumably to help O.J. Simpson find the killer of Nicole Brown Simpson, er, gold. 

I practically fell out of my chair laughing when I saw the pictures and accompanying captions. While one of the captions claims to be patient, the daily email message headlines would have made the trashiest newspaper rag proud.

CLICK ON IMAGE TO ENLARGE.

I decided to email awesome penny stocks and alert them that their tireless attempt to pump NSRS (23 emails between Jan. 04 and Jan. 25th) is probably illegal simply because this blatant pumping is being done without any proof that income is rising or will rise in the foreseeable future.

Buying a mining site does not guarantee income. Otherwise, two failed mining sites could simply swap their properties and then PR that they have acquired a new mining location.

After emailing awesome penny stocks with the following message...
You do realize that a stock won't reach full market value until it starts producing real revenue. I think eventually you could end up being charged with some type of stock trading crime. I'm not trying to be mean, but it's ridiculous to try and get this stock to four or five dollars without it producing any tangible results.
I hope you have some consultants to confer with.
-Alessandro Machi, 
I received the following message from the email server stating the email address that I replied to for awesome penny stocks, is non-existent.
picks@awesomepennystocks.com (after RCPT TO): 550-The mail server could not deliver mail to 550-awesome@hostname.awesomepennystocks.com. The account or domain may not 550 exist, they may be blacklisted, or missing the proper dns entries.
What is kind of amazing to me is the stocks that Awesome penny stocks refers to that have risen by dramatic amounts, took 60 MONTHS to achieve their success.

It sure looks like Awesome Penny Stocks is trying to do in a few weeks or a month or two, what the very examples they themselves cite took 5 years to achieve.

How much would it have cost Yahoo to actually get on awesome penny stocks email list and monitor this company? I'm offended that yahoo let this company advertise on their main page, aren't you?

Thursday, January 5, 2012

Yahoo headlines are getting out of control, Elin Nordegren and bulky high school basketball player are the victims of poor investigating by Yahoo.

(Edit update: Monday, Jan 09, 2012, 7:22 PM, Yahoo reveals the reasons why Elin Nordegren had the house razed, sure seems like my article was pretty much spot on.)


Yahoo seems to be sensationalizing their headlines to such an extent they are able to create both rich monsters, and high school monsters within their stories that are universally hated by anyone who reads the articles.

The two examples below were on their front page Jan 5, 2012, and in both instances the yahoo comments section yielded tens of thousands of responses that were universally hating on the people profiled in the yahoo stories. It seemed to me that I was the only one  who disagreed with the "angle" that the stories took.

The first Yahoo headline condemns "Tiger Wood's ex" for "bulldozing a mansion". This is patently ridiculous. The tens of thousands of yahoo comments are universally "trashing" Elin Nordegren even though what she is doing may actually be the right thing to do.


Yahoo has simply taken a helicopter photo of the home, and then proceeded to assassinate the reputation of Elin Nordegren without any further investigation. 

The ocean front "home" looks like it was copied from the local condo association's design. The home had way too many windows and way too many doors. The home also seems dangerously low in elevation for being so close to the ocean. (I'm assuming the home is near the ocean because of the second picture that shows a beachline at the bottom of the photo).


First, if the new home is going to invoke the latest in heating and air conditioning efficiency, and improved water reclamation, lets not be so quick to judge whether the previous home was worth living in, as is.

Secondly, I would raise the actual foundation about 15 - 25 feet with breakers in front of the home.

Thirdly, the reconstructed home will probably pay for itself when it is completed in increased overall property value versus the prior home that was demolished. Based on the location, the property appears to be worth much more than the home being constructed on it, therefore constructing a superior home to what was there may actually create an instant profit for Elin Nordegren while also getting the home she wants to live in.

Thirdly, A heck of lot of people are going to be employed constructing a superior home to what already existed. I am not usually in favor of destroying a home just to rebuild it, but in this instance, it seems like the logical thing to do.

The Yahoo "article" is really nothing more than a way to fuel class anger and resentment against Elin Nordegren, and Yahoo should offer a full apology for such an irresponsible manipulation of this story without even knowing what Nordegren's intent is, and how her rebuild may actually help the local economy and community by creating jobs.


If her money just sits in a bank, that money is then used to unfairly repossess the homes of the 99%. If the money is spent, that money ends up in wages of several dozen people, maybe more.

Then there is the high school basketball player who looks more like a wrestler that took a wrong turn and ended up on a basketball court. Yahoo shows a video clip that portends to show flagrant fouls against this "wrestler" turned basketball player. 


But closer analysis reveals two things, the wrestler turned basketball player is A, just to darned slow,and B, seems incapable of leaving his feet when he attempts to defend.

So what looks like flagrant fouls are actually a basketball player whose aim is too slow, and because he never leaves his feet, his arms and hands end up missing the ball and instead making contact with the opposing players face, neck, chin, shoulder, etc.

These are not flagrant fouls, this is what happens when a basketball player is not athletic enough to properly defend the lane. I am appalled at the lack of intelligence Yahoo is incorporating into their shameless attempts to rile up tens of thousands of people against  individuals with incomplete information and incorrectly interpreted actions.


I'm a bit freaked out at how easily the masses can be manipulated in this day and age of alleged increased media awareness we are all supposed to have.




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