Gold highest in a year

Posted on October 1, 2012 by John Bullar

Gold continues to perform better than stocks post-QE3.

The precious metal hit $1791.45 today, beating the former 2012 high set back in February and it’s the highest gold has been since November 2011.

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QE3 and what it means for the US economy

Posted on September 19, 2012 by John Bullar

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…and it’s finally here

Posted on September 13, 2012 by John Bullar

Ladies and Gentleman, I give to you…QE3!

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Why Congress has no budget

Posted on September 13, 2012 by John Bullar

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The absolute joke politics has become

Posted on September 6, 2012 by John Bullar

Delegates and members of the Democratic party booed after former Democratic Ohio Governor Ted Strickland discussed God and moved to recognize Jerusalem as the capital of Israel.

Convention chairman Antonio Villaraigosa, mayor of Los Angeles, had to ask for the ‘Yea’ and ‘Nay’ vote multiple times before declaring the motion passed.

This is what politics has become – an utter embarrassment to say the least.

I am certain, regardless of party, that all find this offensive to the spirit of how the process was designed to function. I’m a little concerned for our country when something like this can happen on TV, well-documented and well-recorded, with no consequence. More importantly it demonstrates the extreme apathy, and acceptance of, that defines America today.

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Top cities for a salary increase

Posted on September 4, 2012 by John Bullar

The University of Toronto’s Martin Prosperity Institute (MPI) that analyzed wage data from the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the most lucrative salary gains for workers from 2010 to 2011 were in the remote Alaskan city, home to Fort Wainwright military base and the University of Alaska Fairbanks.

Good news if you’re from Alaska. But what about the rest of the country? MPI released its numbers recently and the following charts give plenty of options, if you’re looking for a raise.

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US National Debt

Posted on September 4, 2012 by John Bullar

national debt

The Treasury Department announced today that the national debt has topped $16 trillion.

I don’t think much more needs said.

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BOHICA!

Posted on August 31, 2012 by John Bullar

My blood started to boil after seeing this article today.

Congress is so frightened of the upcoming fiscal cliff that it will consider raising the guarantee fees Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac charge to lenders in order to pay for tax cuts and avoid toppling over the ledge.

Last year, lawmakers raised g-fees in order to pay for a previous round of tax cuts. The Congressional Budget Office estimated at the time the increases would bring in $3.3 billion and $4.6 billion in revenue lost from the tax cuts per year.

That’s great and all. Except

Lenders pass these costs to the homebuyer, meaning taxpayers are essentially paying for their own tax cuts.

I’ll say it again in case you missed it: TAXPAYERS ARE PAYING FOR THEIR OWN TAX CUTS.

Ridiculous.

I’m not surprised. But that doesn’t make it any less ridiculous. There’s an old military word that comes to mind when crap like this occurs. It’s BOHICA and it stands for “Bend over. Here it comes again.”

Posted in Government, Housing, Pay Attention| Comments Off

QE3 weeks away

Posted on August 29, 2012 by John Bullar
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Wells Fargo fires employee

Posted on August 28, 2012 by John Bullar

Trust me, it's not a good one.

Saw this article today because its headline caught my eye:

Wells Fargo Fires Iowa Worker for Minor 1963 Crime

It struck me as funny because clowns like Jon Corzine can commit several felonies and only lose their jobs when they resign yet here someone else loses their job for something “minor” that happened almost 50 years ago. But I didn’t want to get ahead of myself, so I continued.

Richard Eggers, 68, was fired in July from his job as a customer service representative for putting a cardboard cutout of a dime in a washing machine nearly 50 years ago in Carlisle, the Des Moines Register reported Monday.

Seriously? What the hell?

Big banks have been firing low-level employees like Eggers since new federal banking employment guidelines were enacted in May 2011 and new mortgage employment guidelines took hold in February, the newspaper said. The tougher standards are meant to clear out executives and mid-level bank employees guilty of transactional crimes — such as identity theft and money laundering — but are being applied across the board because of possible fines for noncompliance.

The regulatory rules forbid the employment of anyone convicted of a crime involving dishonesty, breach of trust or money laundering. Before the guidelines were changed, banks widely interpreted the rules to exclude minor traffic offenses and misdemeanors.

WHAT?! You have got to be kidding me. You can’t tell me the FDIC is cracking down hard enough that a senior citizen working as a customer service representative who got a free load of laundry in the 60s has to fall under the umbrella of corporate crook.

The Federal Deposit Insurance Corp. provides a waiver process employees can follow to show they’re still fit to work at a bank despite a past criminal conviction, but it usually takes six months to a year to be approved. There is also a process for automatic waiver that works more quickly but is limited to people who were sentenced to less than year of jail time and never spent a day locked up.

Eggers, who was jailed two days, doesn’t qualify.

Golden parachutes for CEOs and a pink slip for the little guy. It’s a damn shame.

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