65% Now Hold Populist, or Mainstream, Views

55% Favor Repeal of Health Care Bill

I find his polls as good as any. He shows 54% favor repeal of the new health care law, with 70% of seniors against the Medicare cuts.

The lack of understanding of the monetary system is taking an increasing both economically, politically and socially.

With almost 20% of the workforce unable to find full time work, and near record low capacity utilization in general, our leaders saw fit to raise taxes and cut spending which will lower demand and undermine their political careers to ‘pay for’ a very modest spending increase of about $100 billion a year, and with delays, of the perhaps additional $1 trillion of fiscal adjustment needed to get us back to full employment in a reasonable time frame.

Also, part of the rise in costs goes to insurance reserves which are a demand leakage.

The politics get uglier by the day, and from watching the news over the weekend the loudest health care protest seems to be over the expense and how it will add to the size of the deficit. Seems this means more ‘fiscal responsibility’ is on the way, including letting the tax cuts expire next year and maybe even a VAT which is an absurdity under any circumstances, apart from a desire to cut consumption.

Add to that the reality of the eurozone actually offering Greece nothing of value, opening the way for wider credit spreads spreading to the entire eurozone.
It also looks like their combined deficits are now large enough for the added non govt financial assets to now be driving down the euro independent of the credit issues. This continues until exports increase sufficiently for the automatic stabilizers to tighten fiscal balances. They aren’t anywhere near there yet.
Additionally, the dollar index chart is beginning to pick up a bid from commodities traders as well.