America’s central-planning, big-government social welfare net is a cash-guzzling miserable failure in many ways.  Affordable housing for low income workers is one prime example.

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Affordability Crisis: Low-Income Workers Can’t Afford A 2-Bedroom Rental Anywhere In America

ZeroHedge, Jun 16, 2018 – Excerpts: 

The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s (NLIHC) annual report, Out of Reach, reveals the striking gap between wages and the price of housing across the United States. The report’s ‘Housing Wage’ is an estimate of what a full-time worker on a state by state basis must make to afford a one or two-bedroom rental home at the Housing and Urban Development’s (HUD) fair market rent without exceeding 30 percent of income on housing expenses.

With decades of declining wages and widening wealth inequality via the financialization of corporate America, and thanks to the Federal Reserve’s disastrous policies (whose direct outcome is the ascent of Trump), the recent insignificant countertrend in wage growth for low-income workers has not been enough to boost their standard of living.

The report finds that a full-time minimum wage worker, or the average American stuck in the gig economy, cannot afford to rent a two-bedroom apartment anywhere in the U.S.

According to the report, the 2018 national Housing Wage is $22.10 for a two-bedroom rental home and $17.90 for a one-bedroom rental. Across the country, the two-bedroom Housing Wage ranges from $13.84 in Arkansas to $36.13 in Hawaii.

The five cities with the highest two-bedroom Housing Wages are Stamford-Norwalk, CT ($38.19), Honolulu, HI ($39.06), Oakland-Fremont, CA ($44.79), San Jose-Sunnyvale-Santa Clara, CA ($48.50), and San Francisco, CA ($60.02).

For people earning minimum wage, which could be most millennials stuck in the gig economy, the situation is beyond dire. At $7.25 per hour, these hopeless souls would need to work 122 hours per week, or approximately three full-time jobs, to afford a two-bedroom rental at HUD’s fair market rent; for a one-bedroom, these individuals would need to work 99 hours per week, or hold at least two full-time jobs.

The disturbing reality is that many will work until they die to only rent a roof over their head.

The report warns: “in no state, metropolitan area, or county can a worker earning the federal minimum wage or prevailing state minimum wage afford a two-bedroom rental home at fair market rent by working a standard 40-hour week.”

The quest to afford rental homes is not limited to minimum-wage workers. NLIHC calculates that the average renter’s hourly wage is $16.88. The average renter in each county across the U.S. makes enough to afford a two-bedroom in only 11 percent of counties, and a one-bedroom, in just 43% .

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The Federal Reserve graciously provide hundreds of billions of dollars in direct emergency loans (“Fed’s Secret Liquidity Lifelines”)  to major banks and insurers during the Great Financial Crisis, 2007-2010, to include: Morgan Stanley, Citigroup, Bank of America, JP Morgan, Goldman Sachs, AIG, State Street, Merrill Lynch, Lehman, Wells Fargo, Barclays, UBS, Deutsche Bank, and many others.

The Fed bailed out the very institutions that precipitated the crisis with their leveraged speculation, derivative-fueled gambling binge…. some of the very institutions that took the money, and then went on to foreclose on home-owners who lost their jobs during the crisis and could not keep their morgtages current.

It is now time to grant U.S. citizens the same direct liquidity extensions that were provided to Wall Street’s financial sector – and provide citizens with the resources to regain control of their lives and livelihoods.

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The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

Leviticus 25 Plan 2018 (2810 downloads)

America needs an outside-the-box powerhouse economic acceleration plan,  one that will free up disposable income for Americans, generate massive new tax revenue flows, stimulate dynamic, free-market growth, and restore economic liberty.

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Where America’s Debt Slaves Are The Most Vulnerable

Authored by Wolf Richter via WolfStreet.com,

ZeroHedge, May 25, 2018 – Excerpts:

At year-end 2017, the ratio of non-housing debt – revolving credit such as credit card balances, plus auto loans and student loans – to disposable income reached a new record of 26.3%, up from 23% at the end of 2010, and up from 24% in 2007, the peak before it all came apart during the Great Recession:

So the ratio of non-housing consumer debt to disposable income – the burden these consumers carry on the backs in relationship to their incomes – is higher than ever, and only historically low interest rates have kept it manageable.

But interest rates are now rising, and many of these consumer debts have variable rates.

This explains a phenomenon that is already appearing: How this toxic mix – rising interest rates and record high consumer debt in relationship to disposable income – has now started to bite the most vulnerable consumers once again. And for them, debt service is getting very difficult.

In Q1, the delinquency rate on credit card debt at banks other than the largest 100 – so at the 4,788 smaller banks – spiked to 5.9%, higher than at the peak during the Financial Crisis, and the credit-card charge-off rate spiked to 8%. These smaller banks marketed to the most vulnerable consumers that had been rejected by the biggest banks. And now, once again, subprime is calling. Read…  Credit Card Delinquencies Spike Past Financial-Crisis Peak at the 4,788 Smaller US Banks 

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“He who will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.” – Sir Francis Bacon

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America

$75,000 per U.S. Citizen  –  Leviticus 25 Plan 2018 (2797 downloads)

Medicaid costs were projected to grow so fast, according to U.S. Secretary of Health and Human Services Michael Leavitt, that “within 10 years they would ‘crowd out virtually every other category of spending.’  State spending on higher education, infrastructure and safety, he predicted, would all get squeezed.” Source:  Wall Street Journal, March 29, 2018

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Why Are States So Strapped for Cash? There Are Two Big Reasons

WSJ, March 29, 2018 – Excerpts:

“As state and local officials prepare their next budgets, many are finding that spending decisions have already been made for them by two must-fund line items …. Medicaid, the state-federal health insurance program for the poor and disabled, and public-employee health and retirement costs.

These days, they consume about one out of every five tax dollars collected by state and local governments. That is the highest share since Medicaid was created in 1965. Postretirement health benefits, which are harder to quantify, add to that burden and have cumulatively cost states more than $100 billion since 2008, according to government financial disclosures compiled by Merritt Research Services.

Those costs are outpacing growth in tax revenue year after year. In 2016, state and local governments collected about $136 billion more in taxes than they did in 2008, adjusting for inflation. Two-thirds of those additional dollars went to fund pensions and Medicaid, according to a Wall Street Journal analysis of Commerce Department spending data.

“The more we stare at the data, the more we realize all roads lead back to Medicaid and pensions,” says Dan White, a director at Moody’s Analytics who has studied the issue.

The resulting revenue squeeze is making it harder for governments to pay for core services such as education, infrastructure, police and fire protection.

The cash crunch is likely to get worse. Federal actuaries predict that Medicaid’s annual cost, which was $595 billion in 2017, will exceed $1 trillion in 2026. States and many localities pay about 38% of that tab. The remainder is covered by the federal government.”

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The most powerful economic acceleration Plan the modern world has ever seen will restore free market, freedom principles in health care with direct allocation of resources by the citizenry.

More importantly this Plan will offer citizens powerful incentives that will eliminate debt and restore financial stability for millions of American families, while at the same time generating explosive tax revenue growth for state and local governments.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America  –  Leviticus 25 Plan 2018 (2727 downloads)

Friedrich A. von Hayek, 1974 Nobel Prize, Economic Sciences – The Road to Serfdom:

“It is true that the virtues which are less esteemed and practiced now–independence, self-reliance, and the willingness to bear risks, the readiness to back one’s own conviction against a majority, and the willingness to voluntary cooperation with one’s neighbors–are essentially those on which the of an individualist society rests. Collectivism has nothing to put in their place, and in so far as it already has destroyed then it has left a void filled by nothing but the demand for obedience and the compulsion of the individual to what is collectively decided to be good.”

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The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative granting, in form,  the same direct liquidity benefits to citizens that were provided to major banks and insurers during the great financial crisis.  This plan revitalizes the high ideals of independence, self-reliance and freedom from government control over the daily affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens, private enterprise, and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America  –  Leviticus 25 Plan 2018 (2725 downloads)

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Fed payouts: Big banks win, U.S citizens lose.

It is time for a new, citizen-centered economic plan…

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Today’s Biggest Winner: Banks To Get An Extra $5 Billion In Interest From The Fed

ZeroHedge, Mar 21, 2018 – Excerpts:

Today’s 25bps hike in rates to 1.75% will have little impact on how much interest is paid to the trillions of dollars held in checking and savings accounts across the US (simply because banks continue to drown in over $2 trillion in excess reserves and thus do not really need all those deposits). It will, however, have a notable impact on how much cash the Fed pays out to banks in the form of interest on excess reserves (just don’t call it a subsidy).

As the chart below shows, after today’s rate hike, the Fed will be paying $37 billion in annualized interest to banks, an increase of $5 billion from the last rate hike.

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And now on to the discomfiting part of this financial tale…

40% Of The Fed’s Interest On Excess Reserves Is Paid To Foreign Banks

ZeroHedge, Jul 13, 2017

Courtesy of the Fed’s H.8 statement, however, we can quickly figure out [the amount of interest paid out to foreign banks].

Recall that as we showed first all the way back in 2011, the total cash on the books of commercial banks with operations in the US tracks the Fed’s excess reserves almost dollar for dollar. More importantly, the number is broken down by small and large domestic banks, as well as international banks. It is the last number that is of biggest interest, because now that Congress is finally scrutinizing the $4.5 trillion elephant in the room, i.e., the Fed’s balance sheet, it may be interested to know that approximately 40%, or $838 billion as of the latest weekly data, in reserves parked at the Fed belongs to foreign banks.

This is a subsidy from the Fed, supposedly an institution that exists for the benefit of the US population, going directly and without any frictions to foreign banks….

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The Fed will now, following the rate hike this week, pay out $37 billion as interest on excess reserves to major bank.  Since, foreign banks account for approximately 40% of those excess reserves, the U.S Federal Reserve will be paying out $14.8 billion to foreign banks in the coming year..

Again: “This is a subsidy from the Fed, supposedly an institution that exists for the benefit of the US population, going directly and without any frictions to foreign banks….”

This is a Fed-fueled foreign bank funding fiasco – of the highest order.

It is time to grant U.S. citizens the same access to liquidity that the U.S. Federal Reserve is ‘flushing’ through their ‘policy pipes’ to major U.S. and foreign financial institutions.

It all starts here, with the most powerful economic acceleration plan in the world:

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America   Leviticus 25 Plan 2018 (2695 downloads)

America’s massive debt burdens are grinding steadily higher, and one of the primary drivers over the past two decades has been increasing growth curve of entitlement spending.

The U.S. Government Accountability Office (GAO) has been warning that the projected forward-looking, 75-year fiscal gap shows us to be on a dangerous, unsustainable fiscal path.

We must make a change…

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Smashing The Myth Of America’s “Stingy” Welfare State

ZeroHedge, Mar 2, 2018 – Excerpts:

According to the 2016 social expenditure database at the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development (OECD), public social spending as a percentage of GDP in the US was 19.4 percent:

One immediate solution is to decentralize the welfare state immediately, and take it out of the hands of the federal government.

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There is a right way to address America’s runaway entitlement spending, and there are wrong ways.

Here is the ONE right way:

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America – The Leviticus 25 Plan pdf (2677 downloads)

2014 – Money flows to … Russia.

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“Ukraine reached a preliminary deal with the International Monetary Fund to unlock $27 billion in international aid as U.S. lawmakers passed bills imposing more sanctions on Russians linked to Crimea’s annexation.”  Source:  Bloomberg, Mar 27, 2014

$18 billion of that aid package is being anted up by the International Monetary Fund (IMF).

Note 1: The U.S. finances 17.7% of the IMF budget, so U.S. taxpayers are kicking in a cool $3.2 billion in the deal – to ‘bail out’ Ukraine.

It was also announced (NY Times, March 27, 2014): Congress Approves $1 Billion of Aid for Ukraine

WASHINGTON — The House and the Senate voted overwhelmingly on Thursday to approve a $1 billion aid package for Ukraine….

Total from the U.S. – approximately $4.2 billion

Note 2:  A significant $2.2 billion from these bailout packages will actually go to pay off some Ukrainian debt to……. Russian natural gas giant, Gazprom.

Gazprom has been playing some ‘hard-ball’ lately when it nearly “doubled the gas price for Ukraine to $485 per 1,000 cubic metres, compared to the $370-$380 it charges Europe on average. Ukraine says the new price is unacceptable and is politically motivated.”  Source:  Ukraine fails to pay for gas on time, debt stands at $2.2-billion: Russia’s Gazprom

U.S. taxpayers to the rescue.  Money to Ukraine. Money to Russia.

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This raises an important question: How is it that our government could see fit in 2014 to authorize billions of dollars in bailouts to Ukraine… to help relieve their Russian debt, while at the same time our government would not consider granting equal access to credit extensions to our own U.S. citizens, to advance the cause of debt relief for American families?

It is time for some powerful new economics in America.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – the equal opportunity plan for American families.

The Leviticus 25 Plan pdf (2650 downloads)

The Social Security Old Age Survivors Insurance (OASI) and Disability Insurance (DI) funds are being ‘drawn down.’

The OASDI combined Trust Fund is sustained each year by contributions and interest income, which are currently in surplus versus the annual cost of the program.

The interest income represents an internal governmental entry, since the government has ‘borrowed’ the funds in their entirety, $2.6 trillion, and is ‘booking’ interest obligations at an effective rate of 3.156% in 2016, on those borrowed funds.

The annual ‘contributions’ no longer cover the ‘cost’ of the program, so the earned interest is needed to cover the deficit, and that deficit is growing.

In other words, the ‘interest coupons’ are being redeemed, currently at a $51 billion / year average (2017-2021), and that will rise “steeply” into 2034.

And then… trouble ahead.

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Status of The Social Security and Medicare Programs

A SUMMARY OF THE 2017 ANNUAL REPORTS

Excerpts:

Social Security

The Social Security program provides workers and their families with retirement, disability, and survivors insurance benefits. Workers earn these benefits by paying into the system during their working years. Over the program’s 82-year history, it has collected roughly $19.9 trillion and paid out $17.1 trillion, leaving asset reserves of more than $2.8 trillion at the end of 2016 in its two trust funds.

The Trustees project that the [OASDI] combined fund asset reserves at the beginning of each year will exceed that year’s projected cost through 2029. However, the funds fail the test of long-range close actuarial balance.

The Trustees project that the combined trust funds will be depleted in 2034, the same year projected in last year’s report.

Social Security’s total income is projected to exceed its total cost through 2021, as it has since 1982. The 2016 surplus of total income relative to cost was $35 billion. However, when interest income is excluded, Social Security’s cost is projected to exceed its non-interest income throughout the projection period, as it has since 2010.

The Trustees project that this annual non-interest deficit will average about $51 billion between 2017 and 2020. It will then rise steeply as income growth slows to its sustainable trend rate as the economic recovery is complete while the number of beneficiaries continues to grow at a substantially faster rate than the number of covered workers.

After 2021, interest income and redemption of trust fund asset reserves from the General Fund of the Treasury will provide the resources needed to offset Social Security’s annual deficits until 2034, when the OASDI reserves will be depleted.

Thereafter, scheduled tax income is projected to be sufficient to pay about three-quarters of scheduled benefits through the end of the projection period in 2091. The ratio of reserves to one year’s projected cost (the combined trust fund ratio) peaked in 2008, declined through 2016, and is expected to decline steadily until the trust funds are depleted in 2034.

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U.S. citizens need a powerful, proactive economic plan ‘in place’ to help insulate them from the effects of the longer-term financial inadequacies of our of our Social Security Trust Fund.

There is one Plan with the raw power to strengthen the future financial health of our citizenry.

The Leviticus 25 Plan – An Economic Acceleration Plan for America –  The Leviticus 25 Plan pdf (2643 downloads)

The banking crisis intensified in 2008 when the subprime default wave exploded across the financial landscape. Major U.S. and foreign financial institutions shifted into high gear with leveraged speculation and undercapitalized hedging strategies. They gambled and lost. And many of them ended up with gaping capital holes in their balance sheets.

The U.S. Treasury Department quickly activated its Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) to recapitalize the very institutions that had precipitated the crisis with their high-stakes subprime gambling binge.  Treasury bought equity stakes in those institutions and further helped them to erase billions of dollars worth of toxic debt from their balance sheets.

Federal Reserve also ran quickly to the rescue with its “secret liquidity lifelines” (Bloomberg 8-22-11).  The Fed substantially eased some important collateral rules for banks, “meaning that banks that could once borrow only against sound collateral, like Treasury bills or AAA-rated corporate bonds, could now borrow against pretty much anything – including some of the mortgage-backed sewage that got us into this mess in the first place….  ‘All of a sudden, banks were allowed to post absolute [expletive deleted] to the Fed’s balance sheet,’ [according to] the manager of the prominent hedge fund.” (Source: Bailout Hustle, Matt Taibbi).

The Federal Reserve created various funding “facilities” to fire-hose liquidity out to the big banks and big brokerage firms:

Primary Dealers’ Credit Facility                                            

Term Securities Lending Facility                                                          

Temporary Liquidity Guarantee Program                                      

Commercial Paper Funding Facility                                               

Term Auction Facility                                                              

Public Private Investment Program

As referenced previously, the top recipient: Morgan Stanley.   

“Morgan Stanley, facing a crisis of confidence after the fall of Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc., got a $9 billion injection from Japanese bank Mitsubishi UFJ Financial Group Inc. and agreed to take a $10 billion bailout from the U.S. Treasury to shore up capital. As hedge-fund customers pulled funds out of the New York-based firm, it plugged the hole with $107.3 billion of secret loans from the Federal Reserve’s Primary Dealer Credit Facility and Term Securities Lending Facility, set up earlier in the year to supply brokerage firms with emergency financing.”

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The Leviticus 25 Plan does not seek to ‘interrupt’ or reverse any of the special relationships that have developed in the Fed’s financial sphere.  It only seeks to level the playing field – by providing U.S. citizens the same access to direct liquidity flows that  the big banks enjoyed ‘in their time of need.’

The Leviticus 25 Plan proposes one additional upgrade to the Fed’s liquidity lines:  U.S. Citizens Credit Facility.

U.S. citizens should demand nothing less. The time is now.

The Leviticus 25 Plan 2018 –  $75,000 per U.S. citizen

The Leviticus 25 Plan 2018 (2613)

Some high-ranking economists, along with some elite-class political heavyweights, are carbon tax true believers (WSJ – Jenkins, 11-15-17).  The list includes the likes of Kevin Haslet, Greg Mankiw, James A Baker, Henry Paulson, George P. Shultz, Martin Feldstein, Mitt Romney.

The narrative goes like this: “The virtues of a carbon tax are not in dispute.  It’s a way to raise money that doesn’t weigh on incentives to work, save and invest.”

In truth, new carbon tax government revenues would simply supply fresh new resources to feed the insatiable appetite of a spend-happy U.S. government.

It would do little, if anything, to restore fiscal sanity within the walls of Congress.  It would do nothing to set America back on course for a sustainable, financially-sound, low-debt future.

America needs less government control, not more.  We need a citizen-driven economy and free markets, not a government-centric economy with shackled markets and central planning imperatives.

A new carbon tax would increase financial stress and further impair the monthly balance sheets of millions of American families.  It would do nothing to seriously strengthen growth in real disposable household income.

It would do nothing to cast off the shackles of government control and free the U.S. marketplace for vigorous, long term economic growth and brighten the future of American families with true economic liberty.

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Consider this critical point regarding America’s massive debt burden:  Every month hundreds of billions of dollars are obligated to servicing debt.  This massive, never-ending debt-service obligation, including household debt, credit card debt, corporate debt, and government debt, exerts a suffocating effect on economic growth.  It does nothing to enhance government tax revenue flows. In fact, various forms of debt are even tax deductible – thereby lowering potential tax revenue flows.

Household and Non-financial Corporate Debt has recently reached the $47 trillion mark.

Total Household and Non-financial Corporate Debt ($Trillions)

There is one economic acceleration plan in America with the power to get America back up on its feet again.

The Leviticus 25 Plan would eliminate massive amounts of debt across America and generate tremendous growth in government tax revenue flows (federal, state, local),  producing $1.02 trillion annual budget surpluses at the federal level for each of the next five years.

The Leviticus 25 Plan would provide massive debt elimination for millions of American families. It would relieve financial stress and restore financial health for families all across America.  The social benefits would be incalculable.

It would generate electrifying financial benefits to small businesses all across Main Street America.

The Leviticus 25 Plan would reduce the scope of government control over the daily affairs of U.S. citizens.  It would restore economic liberty for all America.

It is time to move.  There is no other plan in America. Period.

The Leviticus 25 Plan is a dynamic economic initiative providing direct liquidity benefits for American families, while at the same time scaling back the role of government in managing and controlling the affairs of citizens.  It is a comprehensive plan with long-term economic and social benefits for citizens and government.

The inspiration for this plan is based upon Biblical principles set forth in the Book of Leviticus, principles tendering direct economic liberties to the people.

The Leviticus 25 Plan 2018 –  $75,000 per U.S. citizen

The Leviticus 25 Plan 2018 (2576) 

“He who will not apply new remedies must expect new evils.” – Sir Francis Bacon