Double Trouble

Let us say your house is worth $x in your opinion (based on square footage muliplied by the going rate in your area)

Now you get a property tax statement from the county that says your house is worth x+300k !!! and you now owe the county a bigger tax amount.

You figure that if your house is worth that much, then you should be able to get a really nice interest rate on a loan.. afterall your risk is low considering how much your house is worth and how much money you have put in the house already!

So you start the process and to your surprise and anger, the guy who came to appraise your house values the house at x-200k. You are now scratching your head...

The banks want to keep your mortgage high by lowering house value
The county wants to keep your tax high by raising house value

This whole country is run by crooks at every level!

Maybe we should sell our house to the state of California and repay the bank loan and start renting?

If the above mentioned weren't true, I would be laughing.

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Rewards

The radio did the usual spewing of Obamisms along with the standard string of words that is a must for any news item today

1. economy
2. deep recession
3. jobs
4. congress
5. bill
6. law
7. bailout
8. green
9. reward

every day you hear about one more bad decision that gets a pat on the back.

The reward of the day news was

People who got gas guzzlers are to be offered a check for 3500 bucks to give up their guzzlers. funny thing is that this is going to be based on the age of the car.

that is soooo ridiculous. people who bought gas guzzlers did so out of their own choice. the people who decided to market that product knowing that those vehicles are a blatant assault on the environment, did so knowingly. the people who sold that product to the people who sought that product did that knowingly.

now a string of bad decisions gets rewarded.

this is like offering heroin growers cash to grow something else. okay, that was not a perfect example as heroin is a lot more expensive than corn or wheat.

why?

Why should I work so hard and be responsible? why is the system tempting me to make irresponsible decisions so I can be rewarded?

why not levy a tax on the next round of DMV registrations on any vehicle that doesn't meet 20 mpg?

why not say "you pay 20 bucks extra for every mpg drop below 20mpg as part of a clean air tax" . Chances are if you got that hummer or Jeep or sports car that has ridiculous gas mileage you will pay an extra 200-250 bucks a year back. That can at least go towards subsidizing the bailouts of companies that make these vehicles.

It appears as though there is no sense in being sensible anymore!

You borrow way beyond your means knowing you might never repay a loan.. no problem. You are a voting consumer. You will be taken care of.

You lend money without any scruples to people knowing you will make a commission for giving away literally free money.. no problem. You will get bailed out with taxpayer dollars.

You keep making vehicles that are not competitive in an open market and sell your vehicles by linking it to car loans which you control and sell to people who buy the vehicles for all the wrong reasons.. no problem.. we will give you more money to keep making more of the same.

you buy vehicles that blatantly violate effective cost of ownership, environmental impact, no problem.. we will give you some cash so you can go buy a relatively more fuel efficient car made by the same dudes who made your current car.. and when that car becomes a gas guzzler in 10 years, we will give you more money to get rid of that car.

aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaarrrrrrrrrrghhhhhhhhhhhhh!

Time to go buy that third hand hummer for 2000 bucks so we can get 3500 bucks to get rid of it!

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Senthilian economics

You have all heard of terms like Keynesian economics and the likes, but what in Goundamani's name is Senthilian economics?

Well, it is a sign of the times!
This video (with subtitles!), explains how the United States got the world in this mess!

Senthil shows one banana and accounts for two. The people who "created" wealth in the United States (the same ones who are getting the millions in bonuses for creating said wealth) used one dollar and accounted for it 30 times!

Chances are they learnt the trick from watching this video..

Some smoke, lot of mirrors, one buck reflected thirty times across multiple mirrors..

The bonuses for the guys who sell one dollar with all those mirrors is the real dollar!

We live in funny times.

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Somebody stop this.. please!

Read this..
If this goes on, I would seriously ask why I should pay any taxes at all?!

Enough is enough!!

Somebody, stop this!

This government better not let this one fly. Time to put some people behind bars and stop this bleeding!

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We are like that only !

This phrase is more popular in India.

Do not know if some famous Indian head honcho said this and it became some kind of classic quote, so readers please provide a link to the origin of "We are like that only!", if you have it.

Now, this is used usually in a defensive state, as in "dont tell us how we are doing, dont complain about how we run things, etc. etc." and it ends with "we are like that only!".

It is high time Americans adopted the phrase.

Why?

The US economy is going through its worst time
Taxpayers are going to be taxed more with all bailouts
Money is literally being pumped in to the same channels which got the US in this mess and

While all this goes on two news items today catch my ears:

1. Citibank gives bonuses to employees in the form of cards with $1,000 to $3,000 loaded in them!

2. American express decides to offer 300 bucks to a bunch of American express card holders, if they would close their credit card account and pay their bills.

Here is the funny part according to what I heard on the radio.

Let us say, you have $ 500 left in your amex Card. Now you transfer the balance to another credit card, thereby essentially paying off the Amex card, you get $ 300 from Amex!

You just made 300 bucks courtesy of some bailout money for which guys like me are busting everything they got working 18 hours a day, 6 days a week! It is however sad that you are still in debt by 200 bucks.

If you happened to transfer your balance to Citibank, the guy who gave you that credit card offer will get another bonus for his brilliant ability to get "more business" and they will give him another $3,000 gift card, courtesy of more of taxpayer money. I will probably have to work 18 hours a day all seven days a week!

If the person whose account Amex is trying to close is as fiscally responsible like I expect him to be (I am literally rolling on the floor laughing at my own sarcasm with happy and sad tears), he/she will figure out a way to transfer the balance do some juggling and get a perpetual payout machinery.

Before you know it, a couple of more billion dollars will be syphoned out of the system.

At that point I will be working 27 hours a day nine days a week!

Hi, if you think that cannot happen, think again. There is no bottoming out of this crisis. The next bailout to bailout the previous bailout will be approximately 10 Trillion dollars and it will involve bailing out rotten banks, loan brokers, real estate agents, mortgage lenders, wall street firms, insurance agents, credit card companies, etc. etc.

What to do?

We are like that only!

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