Social unrest has swept the globe and the only surprise to this fact is that it has taken some 3 years for it to happen. In foreign lands which many have never even heard of the name of the countries the people want change, real change. Some are fighting because of political repression and others because of higher food prices, thanks Ben, and they are politically oppressed. Regardless of the reasons people are on the move and America is not immune from this change.

In Madison Wisconsin we are witnessing the first of what I predict will be many protests over public union contracts. It is simply amazing that the unions are so upset over modest changes to healthcare and pension premiums, 12% is the magic number there. However, it seems the real sticking point is that Wisconsin wants to reform the collective bargaining arrangement which has consistently favored labor for the last 50 years and, in my opinion, has allowed for unions to make demands that have led to higher taxation of the people because the pension funds were so underfunded, as participants did not have to add any money to it, and healthcare costs rocketed to the moon, again, participants had to add little to no money to their health insurance plan. On top of these fantastic benefits they have job security meaning they literally cannot be fired.

In a nutshell, states are going bankrupt in order to pay a few peoples pensions, often 70-80% of the last 3 years of the employee’s highest earning pay. Oh, did I mention that they also got mandatory 4-5% cost of living adjustments during their working years and during their retirement? It is a good deal and getting these public sector jobs are difficult and you typically have to know someone to get one. You also get nice vacation time as well, often starting off with up to 3 or 4 weeks and earning more as time goes on. When things do not go well you strike to get your way.

Unions are what drove GM and Chrysler out of business and their bankruptcies allowed them to start over with their contracts. Since those contracts were redone both firms are doing much better, go figure. Ford forced unions to the table threatening bankruptcy and got their contracts redone and look what is happening there. In all 3 cases the union employees are happy. Sure, they are not as happy as they were when the Job Bank was there, they got paid for months at normal rates if they were laid off, but they have hobs, goof benefits and in GM’s case they got the biggest bonus ever, I believe, last year. This is evidence that when you take the power away from unions it actually benefits the employees, but only time will tell if this continues but so far it looks pretty good.

The public sector though, well, should they be unionized at all? I personally do not believe so, but at the same time when dealing with the government some protection is warranted so I would say a nontraditional union is needed not the super strong unions we currently see that curry state and the federal government into bankruptcy. If you are paying attention to the Madison situation it is very interesting especially from the media’s perspective.

I have been watching a lot of MSNBC lately who was classic for smashing and ridiculing the Tea Party last year. I have to say that their coverage of Madison is much, much different than their coverage of the Tea Party events. For starters the Tea Party events were all nonviolent, completely peaceful open gatherings where kooks were chased away. Contrary to all reports no racists were there and I saw plenty of nonwhite people attend and, in short, they were people who cared about the country and wanted to restore some sanity in the government which is a noble cause in my mind. They were described by MSNBC as America hating racists who want to destroy this country, all we stand for and are violent, not one report of violence was ever reported to my knowledge.

Compare that to Madison which is all white, ironic in my opinion, they spat upon state senators, pushed them around, shouted them down, shouted for an Egyptian style revolution and held signs of the usual Hitler pictures. MSNBC said these people were being stripped of their civil rights and are fighting for democracy even though their elected officials fled the state so a vote could not take place. The protesters were teachers who walked out of their jobs, that they love, supposedly, to protest for a week straight so kids are now without school which means parents are paying for daycare or babysitting. These people are not fighting for work, they are not fighting against a massive pay cut or furloughs what they are fighting about is paying an extra 12% for their benefits that are outstanding and still way underpriced.

Keep in mind that if this bill does not go through some 6,000 people will lose their jobs, think about that for a minute. Instead of giving up 12% and the right to strong arm the state later on they instead decided to walk off their jobs, spit and shove people, and cost 6,000 people their jobs. Oh, the 12% benefit hike was on the table last fall and the union rejected it and they are trying to get it back now because of the removal of the collective bargaining language in this bill, keep in mind that the senate only got rid of the collective bargaining language because they rejected the 12% then, but decided to take it when the state decided to play hardball. What the new language does is gives the state more equal say in negotiations with unions instead of the unions having 90% of the power like they have now. It is time to reduce their power especially in the public sector where we all pay for these people through our tax dollars.

As far as who are the patriots I would have to say the Tea Party wins hands down. You may not agree with their politics, but I can guarantee you they will always be polite to you, respect your views, not spit on you, shove you and they will defend your right to say whatever and gather wherever you want just as the Constitution allows. I am not so sure about the Madison people I have a feeling if you agree with them they will like you, but if you disagree with them get out of their way and that is not patriotic, American or the sign of a healthy Democracy. I had to say m peace. Thank you.

All the talk about the double dip recession is being blamed on not enough stimulus, but that is not true since there is a lot of money being spent right now because of the stimulus. The final spending of the stimulus funds will end this year, right near the elections ironically enough, but it is clear it did not work. We now have Paul Krugman out railing about a deflationary depression because governments are cutting back stimulus efforts. My question to him is, if stimulus is the answer and we are spending it now why are we seeing disinflationary forces? His excuse does not hold water. It is the massive government intervention that is causing the problems, not a lack of stimulus, but too much stimulus.

I am in disbelief how anyone could not have seen these problems coming, the signs were everywhere. Employment was the best indicator, but look at money velocity, what you can piece together at least, and declining credit combined with higher foreclosures, bankruptcies and weak retail sales it is clear as day that at best we stabilized at less bad and at worst we are heading for really tough times. This is not something I wanted to happen I think you would be hard pressed to find anyone wishing pain and suffering on anyone, but the signs were all there. Not to mention the implications of Europe tightening its belt and trying to force China to revalue its currency, talk about insanity, we took it to the next level.

So, Krugman may be right and we may have a deflationary depression, but I am sure it will last for only a little while. Because Bernanke will not stand for a deflationary depression, which is ironic considering Ben is the Great Depression expert and he is creating another one, and he will print our way out settling for an inflationary depression. The unfortunate part is Mr. Krugman has the reasons wrong for the depression we are in and he doesn’t seem to understand that you cannot cure debt problems with more debt, it just doesn’t work. Our debt is so large that is will now be a complete drag on GDP which means lower growth, the new normal anyone? Again, his reasoning is flawed because we just spent $1T, give or take between all the programs, on stimulus and we are not even done spending and he is calling this a deflationary depression because there is no stimulus? Maybe he likes to confuse the less informed or something, but talk about being wrong, wow.

My point is that you need to remember today, what is going on, the money that is being spent, what politicians are saying and blaming because they will, whichever party, will point to right now saying we should have done more or we should have done less. The fact of the matter is we are doing both, stimulus is declining and we are not adding more to it, and keep in mind that the data we are all looking at is still coming from April or May when much more money was being spent. All that data, even further back then April, is also showing significant decline in economic activity when the stimulus was running full speed ahead. To clarify, just because the spending is slowing now don’t blame the negative data on that since the data was generated prior to the slowdown in stimulus spending. Furthermore, employment never recovered or even showed significant improvement given the price tag.

Will the decline of stimulus spending hurt? Yes, a lot, but it needs to stop somewhere. The problem with the stimulus is that it is cruel because it extends the bad periods much longer than they should have lasted by blocking the markets from finding a true bottom. The more you spend, the more it distorts reality and lures people into a false sense of security, but when it stops the real pain begins because those fooled may have to lay more people off and readjust for a post stimulus world. So not only do the long-term unemployed receive the proverbial shaft, but newly hired employees may also receive the same treatment after they thought they caught a break.

Right now you can see what worked and what did not, but in a few months many might not remember. They may point to the 5.6% GDP print and say remember how good things were then? Well, they weren’t that good to the unemployed or those in bankruptcy or losing their homes, but that is how it will e framed and there will be cries for more stimulus. Those cries must be rejected and the only government stimulus that must continue is unemployment insurance. You cannot dump millions of Americans who are not unwilling to find a job it is that no jobs exist for them.

We tend to have very short memories and forget things quickly because of who knows what, I blame TV. You cannot forget what is happening right now because if you do they might talk you into another round of stimulus or God knows what else. We are in trouble, I know this, but we tried Krugman’s way and it failed, let’s give it the “let’s not give it the college try” and see what happens. Besides all of that, we simply cannot afford more spending especially for mediocre results, I am being generous here. While Krugman is grabbing the headlines for using the “D” word, let’s not forget I started using the term depression months ago based on the employment figures, food stamp numbers and the way foreclosures and bankruptcies were growing because I was paying attention and not traveling to my vacation house in the tropics unlike some BY Times economist.

Thanks to Bloomberg and Fox we might now find out who borrowed what and what was provided as collateral to the Fed during the crisis we may finally know thanks to a lengthy legal battle. The Fed might continue to fight, but it may not go much further, just show us already as this data is almost 2 years old, I am sure we can handle the truth.

However, you will see that the Fed took some very questionable items as collateral or so we think. Some bankruptcy documents do show that the Fed did take some stocks and other, well, crap for collateral during the height of the financial crisis. What many people do not know is that it is against the rules for the Fed to take credit risk since it is the U.S. governments bank. These documents will either confirm or deny those rumors, but I am betting on the former, if we ever really get to see them.

Could this be the end of the Fed as we know it? I hope so because since the Fed was enacted, in secret in 1913, we have witnessed the dollar lose 97% of its value, a depression in 1920-21, the crash of 1929 leading to the Great Depression (now known to be the Fed’s fault for tightening credit), more boom-bust cycles than any other time in history, the 1970’s (really, need I say more about the 70’s? I think they introduced bell bottoms too, but I cannot prove it), the 1980 near collapse of the U.S. treasury market, the first banking crisis, Long-Term Capital, the dotcom bubble, loose monetary policy for the last 30 years, the housing bubble, the complete meltdown of the financial system, and, for its final act, complicity to destroy the dollar’s value with its current balance sheet.

Really, I cannot think of any reason why we need to reform the Federal Reserve system.

I just read a story where Larry Summers, White house economic advisor, is blaming the weather for a potentially ‘distorted’ jobs report this Friday. Seriously, we are still going with the bad weather? It must be snowing everywhere, the UK, Greece, China, the Ukraine, Dubai, etc. The data all over the world, including today’s ISM number, is rolling over and in some areas it is just plain scary. I got news for you, it has nothing to do with the weather, at all.

Over the past few weeks more and more companies announced layoffs, not a good sign, and the initial claims data went way up over the past 4 weeks. The data started to roll over before the snow hit the ground. Not to mention, but the last time I checked it usually snowed in the winter time anyhow. I realize we had a few days of snow, but nothing major and it is beyond me how snow would be firing people. I will say that the weather impacted retail sales, but not all this other data.

Let’s not forget that the vast majority of the bad weather was also in the Northeast so I am very excited how the bad weather in NY caused California to have increased unemployment figures. Never in my life have I seen such a snow job being perpetrated by the talking heads and now Washington blaming bad weather for horrible economic data. What will happen next month when we have even more layoffs and there is no weather to blame? Maybe we will blame the sunshine because people are so broke they cannot afford sunglasses… wait that kind of admits the economy stinks, never mind.

My point is that the data, well before the snow, rolled over viciously and it is the economy that is the problem. We are over 2 years into this thing, recession/depression, whatever, and we are still losing jobs, that is not good. The unfortunate part is we spend trillions only to be in a position where employment is continuing to contract. It is fair to say that the stimulus probably helped a little, but clearly it was not as big of a help as the administration claims. As an aside, it will be interesting to see if some municipalities file for bankruptcy in the next couple of weeks, maybe that is because of the bad weather as well.

It was funny to see many of the pundits spin bad data on the weather. This equates to my daughter saying the dog ate her homework. It is hard to believe the snow is to blame for higher initial jobless claims when we are in the middle of winter. However, I will concede that retail sales will be pretty horrible because of the weather, but other pieces of data, well, not so much of that weak data can be blamed on some snow.

Housing starts stink because the housing market is in trouble and even massive government stimulus is not helping. My guess is this data will probably improve in March to April because of the last minute rush to buy homes, but I would not count on that being much of a bump. What is worse is that the President wants a permanent moratorium on foreclosures which is doing no one any good and, in fact, will hurt banks that would not be able to collect or sell an asset that is earning them anything. I am referring to Obama’s demand that before a foreclosure can happen it has to pass through the re-modification process. Capitalism is officially being suspended until further notice.

As far as jobless claims are concerned, they are going to get worse as far as I can see. I am basing this on antidotal evidence of firms continuing to announce layoffs and a jump in the mass layoff indicator a few days ago. It is crazy to think employment will improve when you have blue chip companies announcing layoffs and claims are heading back above 500K a week. This is not because of the weather it is because the economy stinks. David Rosenberg calls this a Houdini recovery and he is correct. Besides a statistical recovery and a rally in equities, which is odd considering the dismal news over the past 2 weeks, the average person is worse off than they were last year. Again, unless it has been snowing for 8 months it cannot be blamed on the weather.

Perhaps it is snowing in Greece as well, that will explain their financial problems. It is true that the weather hurts certain things, but it has a rather limited impact on employment. After all, snow removal companies would probably be hiring. The weather might hurt retail sales, but with more people using the internet, me included, to shop I would not buy the soon to be claim that the weather killed retail sales. This is all about uncertainty in the world and to deny that there is uncertainty is simply crazy.

We have problems all over the place from domestic issues to possible sovereign defaults. Let us not forget we will witness municipal bankruptcies in the near future as well, chapter 9 is the more likely bankruptcy procedure. Health care reform is back and will be passed, whether you like it or not, and believe me you should be careful what you wish for because this means higher premiums for everyone. Do you really think Anthem raised prices 39% because they wanted to? Nope, it is because, I as speculated months ago, they know they are out of business in 4 years. All of these things mixed with tight credit conditions means tons of uncertainty.

Why the markets are not down 200 points, I do not know. However, it appears that Goldman Sachs was a huge buyer or S&P 500 futures yesterday, according to Zero Hedge reports, which made this a futures driven rally, check out the trading between 3 and 6AM for more weird futures action. I do not want to spread conspiracy theories, but all I am saying is the markets are trading very odd right now. I am still very bearish, how could anyone be bullish with the horrible data we have seen as of late? This is not 1 week of bad data, but 2 months worth of bad data and the market ignores it, weird.

Bad things often happen to good people, but why would anyone take advice from a guy who is bankrupt? Lenny Dykstra famously lost his house and fortune last year in a very public bankruptcy and at one point the judge ordered a trustee to take control of Dykstra’s assets because Lenny seemed a bit, um, well, aloof. Lenny claimed that he got bad advice from a mortgage broker and was a victim of fraud. I do not know if the allegations are true or not, but one thing I do know is that you do not buy a house you cannot afford, he clearly could not afford it, and then claim fraud.

Lenny famously wrote for the TheStreet.com under the watchful (?) eye of Jim Cramer who had nothing but praise for Lenny. That is, of course, right up until his bankruptcy hearing when he was quickly and quietly let go from Cramer’s outfit. You would think after such a public display of horrors Lenny would simply just go away to rebuild his life somewhere, but that is not to be. Apparently Dykstra decided that he needs to get back up on that horse and has started a website to sell his top picks.

The service for Lenny’s top picks range from $899 to $1548 a year, depending if you pay monthly or all upfront. For this service you get access to Lenny and a signed baseball as a value add proposition, ever hear of Ebay? Regardless, his website mainly brags about his baseball achievements and his prowess as a deep in the money option player, but you have to pay to find out how good he is. What his site leave out is the facts regarding his own personal financial problems.

While I could never hold a personal financial issue over someone’s head or a string of bad luck, maybe he was a victim of fraud, but to omit such information is sketchy to me. If he was so good at picking winners, he boasts a track record of 140-0, how could you lose your home? I honestly wish Lenny the best, but why anyone would trust his picks or why he would omit his public financial problems is just dirty pool, in my opinion. Everyone is entitled to make a living doing what they do best and, in this case, perhaps Lenny should go back to something baseball related instead.

Everyone remembers the aftermath of 9/11/01 and how horrible those days were, but what sticks out in my mind, after the obvious, was what happened after words. The President said to get out and shop, and boy did we, but the thing most do not recall is what the auto industry did to boost sales, 0% financing. This was the beginning of the end for the auto industry simply because how can you ever raise financing costs after you go to 0%. The demand that 0% financing created meant that the automakers would have a heck of a time raising those rates and they needed the sales. It essentially created a major problem for the industry which help speed its way into bankruptcy.

We are seeing the same thing happen in housing with all the government help being injected into the market. We have tax credits to encourage buying, but we also see what the market looks like without those credits, see recent home sales data, and we have the Fed lowering mortgage rates like mad with QE. What happens when/if these programs stop? It will get ugly, just like when the automakers tried to stop 0% financing. If you do not let the markets work their magic, i.e. stop malinvestments, the pain is just prolonged. GM and Chrysler should have gone out of business a few years ago but that 0% financing helped keep them around, however it could not stop the inevitable.

The mistakes made by the automakers are being made by the government with the housing market. Homeowners already enjoy a ton of tax breaks, mortgage interest deductions, property tax deductions, etc. and the last thing they really needed was a tax credit to buy a home. It has helped, the data shows that, but the problem is these programs have to end and then what happens? As we have seen already, with limited data of course, is that housing does not move without that tax credit. Sure we can blame the weather or whatever external force we want, but that is ignoring the obvious, housing wants to go lower. That leads me to believe that more tax credits are on the way and QE is a permanent fixture at the Fed, see Japan.

When you incentivize buying to such a degree you create a major problem for yourself, or the country in this case, as you boost expectations on false hope. Once you remove those incentives and reality sets in you are stuck with doing nothing, clearly something government does not want to do now, or let the market sort things out, what should happen. Because the government has created false hope for a housing recovery they have created more problems than they solved. The sales we do see now are false demand, meaning it is only there because of the rich incentives, which means that many economists and market participants are creating strategies or projections around numbers that are not real. The fact is that without a natural housing recovery the economy cannot recover.

While the insane 0% financing hastened the decline of the automakers into bankruptcy, in my opinion, the government is simply slowing the fall of housing or kicking the can down the road a bit. The good news is that at least the incentives will not cause the government to go into bankruptcy, well on their own at least, but it is an enormous waste of money. The government should step back and stop what they are doing and the Fed needs to stop its QE program. If neither stop and they continue doing this the next leg down will be ugly and, the reality is, we do not need more incentives to buy houses, look at the tax breaks you get now. False demand creates false hope which lures investors into investments they ordinarily would not buy. When that false demand and hope disappear those investments decline in value, investors are being suckered.

I guess a few firms had to be to Scrooge given the 452K initial claims we saw this morning. Anyone expecting a larger number than we got is crazy because companies just do not or try not to fire people around the holidays. In fact, I am shocked that we saw claims as high as we saw today which reinforces my thought that the employment picture is not getting any better, I know I wouldn’t know a V shaped recovery if it hit me in the head because employment is a lagging indicator. That would be true for an inventory recession, but not for a credit collapse or do I have my type of recessions mixed up?

These initial claims and the ISM data is still not consistent with the magical -11K employment report we got in November, sorry for being a doubter. I simply do not trust government data and neither should you because the BLS along with this administration, any administration for that matter, will do anything to make themselves look better. For example, even though banks are not lending the BLS insists that 30K people started their own businesses in November, really, that is what the birth/death model says. Go back a year ago when things were really bad and the numbers are even higher, 100K+ people were starting their own businesses when the credit markets were frozen solid, so trust those BLS numbers all you want, I don’t.

To further illustrate this point, last month the BLS reduced the number of people in the work force by some 130K, they just took them out of the work force, why? Because they gave up looking for a job, or could not find one, and that is how you get a -11K employment report and massively revised prior reports. I wish we could all doctor our books like the government as we would all be rich. However, did you hear Steve Liesman tell you about how the BLS removed people from the workforce? Nope, you did not. Santelli told you about it and Santelli told you about how retail sales were doctored, but none of the other talking heads, why? I don’t have an answer, I really want to know why. I get that no one wants all bad news all the time, even I don’t want that, but I do want the truth.

My point is that last week and this week we will see soft initial claims numbers and December’s employment report will probably be OK, unless they doctor it up again. If they doctor the report, which will be unnecessary, it will be spectacular and completely unbelievable which will be the problem. Moving forward credibility will be an issue for the government, kind of like the USSR in the 1980’s when they said everything was fine and we knew it wasn’t, we are trying to do the same freaking thing. The thing is when 20% of the population is unemployed/underemployed, 1 out of 5 people, you cannot lie your way out of that and you will pay through the elections. This AM on Squawk even Liesman finally admitted that the Bush “economic recovery” was very poor and we are right where we were at the beginning of the decade. We need massive job growth, 300K+ a month now to turn this around and that is not going to happen.

The economy is bad and without government intervention there is no green shoots, period. The housing data yesterday proves that because that was the first look at housing starts without the tax credit, starts were down 11% when expectations were for +6%, ouch. That is quantifiable proof that the private sector is doing nothing right now and it is 110% government intervention growing the economy which has zero multiplier effect, it actually destroys wealth especially when your country has to borrow 100% of the money. That one data point on its own destroys the V shapers story, but if you combine it with any other data point it completely buries it. Let us not forget that if this was a V shape the Fed would have at least changed its language during the last meeting, but nope they did not even do that. Keep in mind I want out of this to, but I am just not delusional. Sure stocks are higher, but that doesn’t mean the economy is OK and in fact it means there is pain coming hard and fast somewhere along the way. Oh, where’s the volume?

Just how bad are things? Well, banks aren’t lending to the wealthy either. I spoke to a very wealthy friend of mine yesterday in Florida which is telling of what is really going on in the mortgage market right now. Now, I know how lending works, but there is simply no excuse for what he is going through right now in trying to refinance his condo in Florida, I know it is a hard hit area, but hear out the story before passing judgment. His condo was worth 7 figures before, but now in the high 6 figures and he has zero debt, $2M in cash, 790 FICO score and he is self employed. Now his self employed status is an issue because he has inconsistent income, $40K a year to $400K a year which is wild swings, but not bad considering he only wants to refinance $200K.

Here is the thing, he cannot get any financing from any bank anywhere. He wants to refi a portion of his condo, so it is totally secured, he has cash, credit, no debt and income with no bank wanting the business. Keep in mind I am not talking about a second lien where if he filed for bankruptcy the bank gets nothing, we are talking first lien here. So, how can this be if banks are ‘eager’ to lend, the credit markets are fully functional or the economy is just fine? It is not possible as this guy is prime to lend to. Now, if a bank is not going to lend to him, which is a collateralized loan I might add, then they are not going to lend to a small business or consumers in general.

All of this points to much tighter credit and much higher unemployment coming soon. Especially since banks are dumping TARP as fast as they can because they do not want to be told to lend by the administration or they want that one last big payday before the whole thing comes down. Actually, my belief is that why wouldn’t banks not want to repay TARP since they know they could get it back anytime they want. Either way, banks do not want to lend and they are not going. No lending, no growth.

There is good news and bad news to this mess. The good news is it is almost over and the bad news is that is it is almost over. No matter what side of the fence you are on the one thing I can assure you of is that it is going to pass tomorrow morning. Even though I can also assure you that it is a budget buster, see the Republican CBO inquiry today for proof, and you should all know by now that the CBO is garbage in, garbage out group. What I mean is that if you feed it the sequence of data you want results for you are certain to get the desired results you want.

The real unbiased results were from the actuary that submitted his results a couple weeks ago, sorry, but actuaries know insurance and are key to determining costs, risks and results. His report shows that the costs for premiums will go sky high, I guarantee that to be the case as well, I know a thing or two about insurance as well. Basically, we have lawyers writing a bill that is math intensive and that is a major mistake, for proof look at Medicare deficits, Social Security, National Flood Insurance or any other government run program. For those who think this bill will reduce health insurance premiums ask yourself this one question, how can it is they did not take out the federal anti-trust exemption for insurance companies?

Seriously, without taking out that one exemption it is next to impossible to lower insurance premiums because it restricts citizens from buying policies across state lines. That means that insurers who have a lock on some states will still have a lock on those states, give me a break. Not only that, but now these same insurers must add millions of sick people to the roles and cannot charge them higher premiums, specifically, so that means all of our premiums will go up. This bill is the greatest gift to the insurance industry ever created. The only government gift to the private industry that was better, and it was not even close, was the no bid contracts to Halliburton under Bush. If this thing passes, buy insurance companies because for the first time in history the Federal government will mandate that citizens will be forced to buy a product from private companies to the tune of a trillion dollars over the next 10 years, give or take a few billion.

Because premiums will go sky high and our brilliant elected officials are incapable of doing simple math the subsidized premiums we will have to pay will blow those sweet deficit reducing estimates right out of the water within 3 to 4 years. If the administration and Congress decided to work with the industry, people like me who are truly impartial, they could have built a real reform bill, but since they think they know everything they have just put the final nail in the coffin of the US, from a fiscal point of view. Medicare will be insolvent or eliminated much faster than currently projected and the budget deficits will be through the roof by 2016 as the new taxes make people rethink how much money they want to earn. Oh, I am also assuming that we are actually in a recovery I might add, but if we are not in a real recovery, which the housing numbers today shows that without government help we are still in trouble, then the trouble comes much earlier.

What is that you say, AARP and the AMA support this bill so it must be OK? Let me tell you something about those organizations, in my opinion, they would sell their grand kids for an extra dollar and I am not kidding. AARP had a Medicare Advantage plan that they endorsed pulled from the market because it was so bad. They endorsed the product, it got pulled from the market and I can assure you that Medicare Advantage contract was a lot shorter than 2,100 pages long so it is highly unlikely they even know what is in the health care reform bill, but they know they can profit from it somehow. They hate variable annuity contracts, but love immediate annuity contracts because they have a GA contract with NY Life. Basically, if they can profit from it they will endorse it, period.

The AMA, who knows what they see in it except that they probably think they will get a permanent Doc Fix Bill passed or they like the idea of mandatory private insurance much better than a public option. Let’s face it, $26 per office visit from Medicare must stink versus the $50 or $90 per visit from private insurance. If you combine that an additional 30M new patients, or 40M depending who you listen to or where you get your uninsured number from, that equals some major money for the AMA and its members.

Clearly, this whole bill revolves around money for everyone. Everyone who loves it is getting paid big time to endorse it or vote for it. However, you, the person who pays for everything, is not in favor of this bill according to every poll conducted. I wonder why you are not in favor of it? Maybe because you know your Congress person is receiving tons of money from special interest groups to push things through, check opensecrets.org to see, or that Bernie Sanders, a socialist, sold out for $10B, way to be a socialist, Ben Nelson sold out for less, and of course we have the Louisiana Purchase take II. However, you have to pay your taxes plus the health insurance premiums and Congress wonders why you don’t want this thing, incredible.

What I find interesting is that New York, who is on the verge of bankruptcy, should have held out against this thing. Where was Schumer and Gillibrand on this? Why didn’t they say no way on this bill and get out Medicaid paid for? It work for Ben Nelson and Bernie I am sure it would have worked for NY. Oh yeah, Chuck was busy making the media rounds and calling flight attendants “bitch” instead of doing is fiduciary responsibility to his home state. I dislike the Republicans, I mean abortion that is the best defense against this thing you can come up with, however I agree with them that this bill is the train wreck of the century. Why is China moving towards capitalism, but the US appears to be moving towards socialism?

Clearly socialism did not and does not work, but here we are. For those who want the socialist lifestyle I urge you to seek out the countries that live under those types of regimes. I admit the US has problems, nothing is perfect, but here is the thing most countries want what we have, not the other way around. We could fix health care the right way if we took our time and did things in the open, as Obama promised he would do, but that never happened. Instead we decided to use a sledge hammer to itch our nose and it is not going to end well. Unfortunately it will take 4 years for me to be proven correct.

I am on a quest for yield, nothing major, but anything better than treasuries without risking everything. Guess what, it does not exist without taking on monster risk. I know, this is not new news, but still it is a sign of what the Fed has resorted to in order to “get the credit markets working” again. Money markets are paying .1% and short-term treasuries are yielding 0% so what is a person seeking income supposed to do?

There is nothing one can do other than go seeking high risk yield, exactly what the Fed wants. All this has done is helped the credit markets function again, but it has also gotten individuals to do what they do not want to do again, take excessive risk. Now, I own PCY, sovereign emerging market debt, which is “risky” as owning any other foreign government debt, but not too risky and it pays a nice 6.24%. However, Dubai, Spain, Greece and some Eastern European governments have me really thinking that perhaps PCY should be paired back some, but where do I go?

You may also know that I am very short the market, surprising flat in those positions which may be shocking to most of you (I know that may also disappoint many of you as well), but I do know what I am doing. I know my shorts will pay off as short-term treasuries and the currency markets are telling everyone something is coming, it’s kind of like a freight train barreling down on all of us blowing its horn but you all look the other way, but I digress. In other words, I am extremely confident in my shorts right now and considering my relative flatness in my positions, it doesn’t really matter. So with my remaining money I would really like some high yield, lower risk holdings since I believe we have hit a multiyear high in the markets.

I also believe that the likelihood of a meaningful rate hike is not in the cards ever again and deflation is here for the foreseeable future. This was illustrated by Kroger’s earnings and, locally in my area, Penn Traffic’s, a grocer, bankruptcy (for like the third time), which shows the deflationary death spiral we are currently in. Long-term, inflation will come like we have never seen it and, ironically, we do see inflation in actual food prices, but grocers simply do not have pricing power, which is what deflation is. Therefore, fixed income in the near future is incredibly attractive, but where is the yield?

Sure, I can get into treasuries, but I think the supply we will see next year will trigger the beginning of a bear market for treasuries, which is why I want to sell my existing holdings at a profit. I could buy high yield, I like the HYG ETF for this option, but look at the holdings, Tenet, Ford, Calpine, Delta and a bunch of other questionable issues. The yield is attractive at 9.5%, but the risk? The other option would be investment grade corporate ETF’s, I really like LQD, but the yield is not that attractive at 4.68% 30 day SEC.  I also am very bearish on financials which make up some  24% of the portfolio which scares me to death, considering we all really know financials are in much worse shape than we would like to admit publically.

This is not only an issue for me, but for millions of Americans seeking income from their investments. As illustrated by several stories, recently on CNBC.com as well “Tired of Money Markets? Investors Explore Debt Funds,” investors are plowing money into income funds and shunning equity funds, so much for a retail support bull market, because they are seeking yield. In the CNBC story it is trying to convince investors to put money into short-term bond funds for higher yields instead of money market accounts. Now, I cannot argue against that since I have done the same exact thing, but is that the right thing to do? You have to remember that if one takes the dividends from a bond fund in cash chances are that you will lose money, it is almost a 100% certainty that will be the case. People who buy money markets want stability with, really, no risk and that is not what you get with short-term bond funds. Sure, you get a higher yield, but with a higher yield you get more risk.

Even these higher yields the article brags about is pitiful, 1.5-2%, and I do not believe that is responsible reporting or advice to give to risk adverse investors. Take more risk for a paltry yield even though you really do not want to risk your principal, which is what you are doing with this fund. The irony is that the more people who do this strategy those funds will grow enormous, there are trillions in money market accounts, and then you are simply blowing a bubble in short-term bonds which will burst eventually. In other words, this will not end well for the risk adverse investor.

What I have decided to do, which is pure insanity and because I have no choice, thanks Ben, is to build my own strategic income fund. I am going to hold my PCY, add HYG and LQD as far as percentages are concerned I believe I will lean more towards the PCY and HYG right now. I decided to do that because of the massive liquidity in the market and decided that the default risk right now, keep in mind this might change next week, month or year, is pretty low and this will boost my yield significantly right now. I will only buy ETF’s and will not buy mutual funds because of the intraday liquidity that ETF’s offer and, in this case, you can see all of the holdings. Mutual funds are rather archaic relics from decades past that served their purpose and ETF’s, with all their flaws, are much better even though there are, gasp, transaction costs associated with them.

Whether or not this is the best portfolio that could be designed is questionable, but there is very little in the way of choice out there right now. I really like bonds at the moment as their real rate of return will more than likely be better than stocks in the near-term. Bonds did not price in a 5% GDP growth rate like stocks did which means there is much less downside risk at the moment. Deflation appears to be our problem which is favorable to fixed income at this stage of the game. Bonds and preferred stocks put you first and second in line if the firm goes bankrupt, common share are worthless 99% of the time and, frankly, as an investor you need to start thinking about issues like that in the future because corporate bankruptcies will increase in the near future.

Of course, even if you’re a bond holder if the government steps in you could be wiped out still, but the odds are still in your favor. Regardless, I need an income portfolio and this design gives me high income, with some upside potential, I know what I own, and I have intraday liquidity that is tough to beat. The best part is anyone could own this because they are ETF’s with no minimums to get in. Of course, always do your own due diligence and what is right for me probably is not right for you.