Ellen DeGeneres - "I Am Not A Second Class Citizen"

BRAVO ELLEN

Home Prices Continue To Fall

It is even worse than expected.

The decline in residential real estate accelerated though the end of 2007, and home prices in 20 key markets plunged 9.1% for the year, according to a survey released Tuesday.

The S&P Case/Shiller Home Price index showed its largest annual drop in its 20-year history. By comparison, during the 1990-91 recession, home prices fell 2.8%.

Prices dropped faster throughout 2007 with the index recording a 9.1% year-over-year drop in December.

"We reached a somber year-end for the housing market in 2007," said Robert Shiller, Chief Economist at MacroMarkets LLC and co-founder of the index, in a statement. "Home prices across the nation and in most metro areas are significantly lower than where they were a year ago."

All metro areas are now reporting at least four consecutive monthly declines.

So lets examine our current economy. We have rising inflation, a dollar with the lowest value ever against the Euro, rising unemployment and we are tipping into a recession. How can things get worse? The problem is that I think we are just beginning to feel the pain.

How did we get here? This is what happens when we allow corporations to write public policy. Unless and until we overhaul our campaign finance system this type of economic upheaval will become constant. In a global economy where these companies can still generate huge profits, the future of the American people is meaningless. Until we all accept that as fact and act to change this corrupt system our economic future will be in jeopardy.

Nader To Enter Presidential Race

The fool who saw no difference between Al Gore and George W. Bush is at it again..

Can someone give this guy some sort of special prize so he can feel he is worth something and get out of Presidential politics? The ego on this fool is amazing.

Understanding The Subprime Debacle

This explains the subprime mortgage mess for those who simply don't understand it. Thanks to Americablog for posting this.

Here Comes Inflation

Like we needed this report to tell us what we already know.

Consumer prices rose in January, fanning concerns that high inflation may keep the Federal Reserve from maintaining its aggressive interest rate-cutting campaign.

The Consumer Price Index, a key inflation reading, rose 0.4% last month, according to the Labor Department. That matched the 0.4% jump recorded in December and exceeded the 0.3% rise economists surveyed by Briefing.com had forecast.

The more closely watched core CPI, which strips out volatile food and energy prices, rose 0.3%, representing the biggest jump in 19 months. Economists had expected a 0.2% rise after a 0.2% jump in December.

The rise in January left overall prices 4.3% above where they were 12 months earlier, up from the 4.1% rise on that basis in December.

Food prices were much higher in January. A recent driver of inflation, food prices jumped 0.7% from a 0.1% rise in December, the largest monthly increase since last February.

THis report was complied before oil hit $100.00 per barrel. Things just continue to decline economically but I feel the worst is yet to come.

How Secure Is Our Banking System?

US banks borrow $50bn via new Fed facility.

US banks have been quietly borrowing massive amounts of money from the Federal Reserve in recent weeks by using a new measure the Fed introduced two months ago to help ease the credit crunch.

The use of the Fed's Term Auction Facility, which allows banks to borrow at relatively attractive rates against a wider range of their assets than previously permitted, saw borrowing of nearly $50bn of one-month funds from the Fed by mid-February.

Why do they need to borrow these funds? The answer is that they have lost so much money during the credit crisis that they do not have the capitalization necessary to insure deposits. If these were small regional banks they would be in receivership. Who exactly is paying for this bailout? It is you and me, the American taxpayer. So we are asked to bail out these institutions due to their lack of regulation and the greed associated with the subprime crisis. What choice do we have? Doing nothing could mean the collapse of the banking system and the onset of yet another worldwide DEEP recession or even worse another great depression.

It is for exactly this reason that banking regulations need to be more rigid. We can no longer allow the industry to police itself. It is this lack of regulation that has led us here.

"The TAF ... allows the banks to borrow money against all sort of dodgy collateral," says Christopher Wood, analyst at CLSA. "The banks are increasingly giving the Fed the garbage collateral nobody else wants to take ... [this] suggests a perilous condition for America's banking system."

The Fed announced the TAF tool on December 12 as part of a co-ordinated package of measures unveiled by leading western central banks to calm money markets.

The measure marks a distinct break from past US policy. Before its introduction, banks either had to raise money in the open market or use the so-called "discount window" for emergencies. However, last year many banks refused to use the discount window, even though they found it hard to raise funds in the market, because it was associated with the stigma of bank failure.

What else do you need to see to understand how dire this situation is? The new age of the Robber Barons is here and the same devastating effects that occured in the 1920's are here again. Will we never learn?

Is The Middle Class Already Gone?

I started this website to highlight the plight of the American middle class. It was obvious to me that the average family now needed two workers just to afford the same lifestyle that had been common just a generation before. Why is this happening and how can this alarming trend be reversed? Now there are statistics to show this very dangerous slide.

Except for the late 1990s, pay has been stagnant for more than a generation, barely keeping pace with inflation. In 1973, the median male worker earned $16.88 an hour, adjusted for inflation. In 2007, he earned $16.85.

For many families, the stagnation has been moderated by the addition of a second paycheck as more women went to work, and their pay rose over the same period.

But the largest gains went to workers at the top of the pay scale. Now, economic worries are rising fastest in households with smaller paychecks, and that chasm is widening.

"Over the past decades, whether inflation was much higher or lower, or incomes grew faster or more slowly, there has never been such a wide divergence in the experiences" separating richer households from poorer ones, Richard Curtin, the director of the University of Michigan's consumer survey said in summing up the most recent figures.

How can any Democracy flourish when the middle class is being eliminated? The answer is that it can not. The biggest problem is educating the population on political matters. This didn't happen by accident. It happened as a result of middle class Americans voting against their own best interests. Just the other day I was driving about 90 miles north of NYC and spotted an older car with wheel wells that had been rusted through. On the back of the car was a bumper sticker "Vote Republican" and I thought this dumb ass can't even afford a semi decent car and yet he is voting Republican. It is the economic policies of the Republicans since Ronald Reagan that have caused the greatest redistribution of wealth in our history and his inability to afford a safe car.

The Republicans count on people like this fool being too politically stupid to make a reasoned choice and unfortunately many in the middle class fall into this trap.

Home Prices In Steepest Quarterly Drop

The largest investment for most Americans has taken a really nasty fall.

Home prices continued their plunge during the last three months of 2007, setting a real estate trade group's record for the biggest-ever quarterly drop.

The national median price drop of 5.8%, to $206,200 from $219,300, was the steepest ever recorded by the National Association of Realtors (NAR), which has been compiling the report since 1979.

NAR officials blamed the liquidity squeeze that began last summer for much of the drop. Home buyers had trouble obtaining mortgage financing, especially for more expensive properties.

"The continuing crunch in the jumbo loan market that began in August has disproportionately reduced the number of transactions in higher price ranges," said Lawrence Yun, NAR's chief economist, in a statement.

Fewer expensive homes were sold, bringing down median prices.

"California, south Florida, D.C., many of the high-cost markets are reflecting that," said Walter Molony, a spokesman for NAR.

Each of the four U.S. regions recorded losses compared with the fourth quarter of 2006. The West took the worst hit, at 8.7%. Prices dropped 4.8% in the Northeast, 5.4% in the South and 3.2% in the Midwest.

Prices would not be dropping so quickly if it wasn't for the fact they were artificially high as a result of the subprime mortgage debacle and other mortgage products that allowed people to bite off more than they could chew.

It was a catch-22. You really couldn't afford the house but you also could not afford not to buy the house because next year it would be even less affordable. Like any giant ponzi scheme the market eventually collapsed and took a whole lot of people with it. Our economy is a mess as a result of bad decisions on Wall St. and the endless desire for ever larger profits. The Federal Government will bail the companies out at taxpayer expense and leave the citizens twisting in the wind.

It has once again been proven that we must regulate the financial industry with strict standards. This idea that industry will police itself is utter bullshit and the proof is in the economic state we find ourselves in.

Budget Deficit Nearly Doubles

Who would want to be the next President after this administration has run us into a whole so big we may never get out?

The federal budget deficit is running at a pace that is more than double last year's imbalance through the first four months of the budget year.

In its monthly review of the government's finances, the Treasury Department said Tuesday that the budget was in surplus in January, but totals $87.7 billion so far this budget year, double the $42.2 billion imbalance recorded during the same period in 2007. The new budget year started last Oct. 1.

The Bush administration sent its final budget request to Congress last week, projecting that the deficit for all of 2008 will total $410 billion, very close to the all-time high in dollar terms of $413 billion in 2004.

The amount owed by every American just continues to grow. They talk so much about the death tax but what about the birth tax? That is the amount of debt each citizen is saddled with as a share of the national debt. Oh and always remember that these figures do not include the war costs which are considered "supplemental". Do you still think the tax cuts are generating this supposed extra revenue? The proof is in the numbers and they are getting down right ugly.

G7: No Quick Fix

The world's leading economies pledged on Saturday to work together to secure stability in volatile markets but brushed off the idea of a single uniform remedy for the Group of Seven industrialized nations.

A joint statement, issued at the end of an afternoon meeting in Tokyo of the G-7 finance chiefs and central bank governors, acknowledged that "downside risks" remain for the global economy. It also warned of the dangers of the U.S. housing crisis, while assuring that U.S. growth was expected to continue in 2008.

The officials from the United States, Japan, Germany, France, Canada, Britain and Italy also urged oil-producing nations to boost output and encouraged China to accelerate the appreciation of its currency.

"Going forward, we will continue to watch developments closely and will continue to take appropriate actions, individually and collectively, in order to secure stability and growth in our economies," the statement said.

The G-7 had faced calls for increased coordinated action to deal with the U.S. housing problems in subprime mortgage loans, financial market turmoil, high oil and commodity prices, and heightened inflation expectations.

The various countries, however, have differed on what measures were appropriate. The U.S. has urged other countries to pursue policies to boost domestic demand, while the Europeans said their economies were resilient and focused more on regulatory coordination.

Japanese Finance Minister Fukushiro Nukaga, who hosted the gathering at a Tokyo hall, said the economic conditions in each nation were so different that a single remedy was not feasible.

The pain will continue for some time with the world's poor being disproportionately affected. It never ceases to amaze me that those that cause economic distress are usually those least effected. The subprime crisis which has sent world markets into a tailspin, has made millionaires of many who helped create the crisis. It seems crime really does pay, at least here in the good old USA.

Home Prices Set To Slide In '08

National Association of Realtors pulls back on outlook and forecasts second consecutive annual decline in prices and sales .

In a fresh sign that the nation's housing crisis will worsen, home prices are likely to decline in 2008 for the second straight year, the National Association of Realtors said Thursday.

The Realtors, in its monthly economic and sales outlook, is forecasting a 1.2% drop in prices of existing homes sold this year.

Only a month ago, the association was forecasting that prices would be flat in 2008 and that the home market would rebound in the last half of the year.

The group was forecasting that the first quarter would see a record 5.3% drop from year ago levels. Now it's expecting the current quarter to see even a larger decline in prices of 6.1%.

Last year, when the median price slipped 1.4 from 2006 levels, was the first on record that the Realtors recorded full-year decline in existing home prices.

The average American family is seeing steep declines in both their 401(k) balances and their home values. For most families these are their greatest assets.

Our economy has been left in a shambles by an administration that doesn't understand the plight of the middle and lower classes. When will Americans finally realize that Republican economic policies are destroying our country and have taken us from the largest creditor nation on earth to the largest debtor nation on earth. Who has benefitted from these awful policies? Those at the upper echelons of society. Is this really what we want for our nation?

January Job Cuts Up 69%

Nearly 75,000 layoffs were the highest total since August, according to a consulting firm, but the cuts are still not at 2001's recession pace.

Job cuts increased 69% in January from the previous month, as the U.S. economy continues to struggle amid a housing and credit slump, according to a survey released Monday by a consulting firm.

Global outplacement consultancy Challenger, Gray & Christmas Inc. said planned layoffs swelled to 74,986 from 44,416 in December.

The year-over-year increase was 19% from January 2007's 62,975.

The January 2008 total represents the highest monthly job cut figure since August, when there were 79,459 layoffs.

The housing and financial sectors were hit the hardest, according to Challenger, while the retail, leisure and hospitality, and professional and technical services sectors actually saw employment gains last month.

But despite the large increase in layoffs month to month, job cuts remain well below the 2001 recession levels, which averaged 140,000 per month from March to September.

"The fact that job cuts have not reached pre-September 11 levels could be an indication that the impact of the economic slowdown on the job market may be muted," said John A. Challenger, chief executive officer of Challenger, Gray & Christmas, in a statement.

Challenger believes that if the government's proposed economic stimulus package works, the United States will avoid reaching the 2001 levels.

I believe that the worst is yet to come. The financial industry has just started to lay off and the housing market has yet to bottom. People are hurting financially and with easy credit a thing of the past how will families that have mortgaged their futures be able to keep pace?

The American consumer has seen their debt load go from 7 trillion to 12 trillion under the failed economic policies of this administration. Until that debt is paid down I think a slowdown in spending isn't just certain its necessary. Without real pain now we risk even worse finances down the road. So much for wanting a better economic future for your children. That is now just a pipe dream.

The Job Market Is Worse Than You Think

An unemployment rate of 5% is low by historic standards. But the number of people out of work for long stretches is rising dramatically.

Ahead of Friday's January employment report, there is a lot of concern about the weakening job market, even as the unemployment rate stands at a relatively modest 5%.

The Federal Reserve cited evidence of a "softening in labor markets" when it announced both of its rate cuts this month. Congress is rushing to pass a $150 billion stimulus package that the Bush administration said should add 500,000 jobs to the economy.

The worries about the job market are widely shared on Main Street, Wall Street and inside the beltway.

The Conference Board's latest consumer confidence survey found that twice as many people believed there would be fewer jobs available six months from now than those who expected more jobs.

And a survey conducted for Fortune magazine from earlier this month found that just over one in four Americans are somewhat worried or very worried about losing their job in the next 12 months.

Economists surveyed by Briefing.com are forecasting that the unemployment rate will remain at 5% in Friday's report. However, it's worth a reminder that this is up from just 4.7% in November. And economists expect an addition of 70,000 jobs in the month, only a modest increase.

But the jobs numbers may be even worse than they first appear. That's because the number of Americans who have been out of work for six months or longer is on the rise.

Harder to find a new job The number of long-term unemployed stood at a seasonally-adjusted 1.3 million in December, up about 22 percent from year-earlier levels. The full-year average for 2007 was 1.2 million long-term unemployed, nearly double the reading for 2000 -- just before the last recession.

What happens to the long term unemployed? Are they still counted when the rate is calculated? The answer is no. Once you are off the unemployment rolls you are no longer considered when doing the statistics. What about those who are underemployed? How many of us have seen middle aged men now working as cashiers in the local grocery store? I know I have seen it often here in NY. Whether it is a second job to meet the bills or a stop gap measure to keep food on the table, it is not a good sign for the middle class who are being decimated.

New Home Sales: Biggest Drop Ever

Weak December sales caps 2007's record slide, with prices for the month off sharply from a year earlier.

New home sales posted the biggest drop on record in 2007, according to the government's latest look at the battered housing market, as a year that saw a meltdown in the mortgage market and a drop in home values ended with yet more signs of weakness.

December sales came in at an annual rate of 604,000, the Census Bureau report showed, down from 634,000 in November, which was also revised lower.

The reading was well below the consensus forecast of 645,000, according to economists surveyed by Briefing.com.

The weak December sales left full-year new home sales at 774,000, down 26 percent from the 1.05 million sales in 2006. That was the biggest drop since the government started tracking new home sales in 1963, surpassing the 23 percent decline posted in 1980.

No bottom yet Adam York, an economist with Wachovia, said the report confirms fears that the housing market won't bounce back anytime soon.

"We're expecting sales to decline into at least mid-2008," he said. "We think housing still has a long way to go."

Its really amazing how much damage has been done to the housing market as a result of the subprime mortgage crisis. By giving loans to those that could least afford it, the price of homes remained artificially high and the resulting bubble has burst causing financially pain not only in the United States but around the world.

Will we learn anything from this situation and enact meaningful reforms to stop the next crisis from happening? History says no so let the buyer beware.

Home Sales Record First Drop On Record

The median price for a homes dropped 1.3 percent to $219,000 in 2007, while total home sales plunged by 13 percent for the year.

Prices of homes sold in December registered the biggest year-over-year decline on record, according to a report from an industry trade group, and 2007 is the first year on record that has seen a drop.

The National Association of Realtors (NAR) said on Thursday that the median price of homes sold in December fell nearly 6 percent from a year earlier to $208,400. The three biggest declines in prices ever recorded have now come in the last four months.

In addition to the December price decline, NAR reported the median price for all homes sold in 2007 fell 1.3 percent to $218,900, the first time that the annual price reading has shown a decline since the group started tracking that measure in 1968.

Now that we have definitive proof that the housing market has collapsed, what next for beleaguered homeowners? The problem is that this will effect all aspects of the economy. Do you think they will be building homes in Florida with foreclosures on every block? Do you think homeowners will be remodeling when their homes are declining in value?

What about those that lose their jobs as a result of this mess? How many of them will wind up in foreclosure? Do you understand now why this is bringing down the economy?

Will The Cure Be Worse Than The Disease?

Is the cure just for Wall St. with the little guy left holding the bag down the road?

The wobbly economy is overtaking Iraq as the issue weighing most heavily on the minds of America's voters. And Washington has noticed. The White House and Congress are almost certain to enact some kind of stimulus package. But like all such temporary, feel-good measures, it will generate a quick blip in growth that will quickly evaporate. In reality only one player has the power to do anything swift and decisive: the Federal Reserve. And its chairman, Ben Bernanke, has already made his intentions abundantly clear. Unfortunately, the cure he's prescribing may be worse than the disease.

When I read this I was not surprised. How can we regain fiscal health with an employment market that has basically stopped creating high paying jobs. The Bush Administration touts their record of steady job growth but what is the quality of the jobs they have created? The service sector is growing but we all know that those jobs pay much less than the manufacturing jobs that they are replacing.

Wall St. artificially pushed up the price of homes with the subprime mortgage mess and that helped boost profits on Wall St. Those disastrous unregulated decisions have left us with an economy in peril and a Federal Reserve with few options.

Bernanke is setting the stage for an even bigger recession down the road. Just as the ultra-low rates of the early 2000s created many of the problems we're experiencing today, pumping money into the system would probably stoke inflation, forcing the Fed to hike rates sharply in the near future. "It's better to take a small recession and kill inflation immediately instead of facing high inflation and a really big recession later," says Carnegie Mellon economist Allan Meltzer.

So will the cure kill the economy down the road? Only time will tell but anything touched by the Bush administration turns to shit and the economy has little chance of escaping this reverse midas touch. The next President will be left with a colossal mess on more fronts than can be printed in one short blog. Will the American people be smart enough to understand that this was done by the Bush administration and not lay blame on our next President? Since they elected this intellectual midget twice that seems unlikely and because of that the next President will be forced to choose between popularity and very hard decisions. There are no good options left in the United States after Bush.

World Markets Tank

The chickens have come home to roost. Unfortunately those that created the mess are laughing all the way to the bank.

Stocks fell sharply worldwide Monday following declines on Wall Street last week amid investor pessimism over the U.S. government's stimulus plan to prevent a recession.

U.S. markets were closed for Martin Luther King Jr. Day, but were primed to open Tuesday's session with steep declines, according to futures trading.

Futures don't correlate exactly to the underlying indexes, but are nonetheless a good indicator of stock index direction. As of 11:30 a.m. ET, March contracts on the Dow Jones industrial average, the S&P 500 and the Nasdaq composite all pointed to declines of over 4 percent at Tuesday's open.

The downbeat mood from last week's U.S. market declines isn't limited to the United States, with markets in Europe, Asia and the Americas tumbling Monday.

Britain's benchmark FTSE-100 slumped 5.5 percent to 5,578.20, France's CAC-40 Index tumbled 6.8 percent to 4,744.15, and Germany's blue-chip DAX 30 plunged 7.2 percent to 6,790.19.

In Asia, India's benchmark stock index tumbled 7.4 percent, while Hong Kong's blue-chip Hang Seng index plummeted 5.5 percent to 23,818.86, its biggest percentage drop since the Sept. 11, 2001, terror attacks.

Canadian stocks fell as well, with the S&P/TSX composite index on the Toronto Stock Exchange down 4 percent in early afternoon trading. In Brazil, stocks plunged 6.9 percent on the main index of Sao Paulo's Bovespa exchange.

Investors dumped shares because they were skeptical that an economic stimulus plan President Bush announced Friday would shore up the economy that has been battered by problems in its housing and credit markets. The plan, which requires approval by Congress, calls for about $145 billion worth of tax relief to encourage consumer spending.

Why would the world be skeptical about the ideas put forth by President Bush? Could it be that they realize that he is an intellectual midget that has destroyed our country and that due to the lack of oversight by a Republican Congress, our economic problems threaten to hurt millions around the world. This is the legacy of the trickle down theory. The rich have gathered an even greater share of the worlds wealth while those in the middle have struggled to keep their heads above water. Those at the bottom are drowning.

How can anyone look at what has happened in the financial markets and not demand more regulation? This idea that industry will police itself has lead to our current mess. Citibank, Merrill Lynch and Countrywide Mortgage have all paid executives that created this mess millions while their employees have lost their jobs.
Is this what we want for our country?

Most middle class Americans are seeing drastic reductions in their 401(k) accounts while also seeing the value of their homes plummet. In almost all cases these are the two largest assets for most families. How could we possibly avoid a recession with statistics like that? If we elect another Republican who believes in these types of economic principles we may very well wake up one day and be bankrupt. If you think that can never happen here then you are sadly mistaken.

Food Costs Jump 4.9% in 2007; Biggest Gain Since 1990

What is the similarity? Both times a Bush was President.

Inflation truly hit home in 2007 with food prices rising 4.9 percent, the most since 1990, as energy costs for farmers surged and the production of crops, livestock and dairy products failed to keep pace with increased global demand.

Dairy prices gained the most of all foods last year, with milk surging 19.3 percent, the Labor Department said Wednesday. Fruits and vegetables increased 5.9 percent and cereal and baked-goods prices rose 5.4 percent. Bread prices jumped 10.5 percent, according to the report.

Companies including Kellogg Co. and General Mills Inc., the largest U.S. cereal-producers, boosted prices as the cost of commodities such as wheat reached record highs.

"If they're going to pay more for food, people offset that by being more frugal users of food and looking at other parts of their spending where they feel they can cut back," said Michael Walden, an economics professor at North Carolina State University in Raleigh. "Likely that would be entertainment, electronics, higher-end clothing, vacations."

and why are food costs rising so quickly?

One of the driving forces for higher food prices was the rising cost of fuel. Farmers and ranchers, along with transport companies, felt the same pinch that many consumers did in 2007 as energy prices, which include gasoline and diesel fuel, rose 17.4 percent.

We attacked an oil rich nation for what most beleive was the oil, yet the vast majority of American people have reaped no gain from this endless and destructive war.

The American people have been screwed and not even kissed while the Bush cronies have laughed all the way to the bank over the bodies of the dead soldiers and Iraqi civilians. Are you finally fed up enough? You elected this murderous moron, not once but twice and this is the result. His father was a poor President, this one is the worst in American history.

Republicans to Hold Economic Stimulus Package Hostage

They want even more tax cuts for their already wealthy friends. Do these people know anything but tax cuts?

Speaker Nancy Pelosi met on Monday with the Federal Reserve chairman, Ben S. Bernanke, to discuss potential action by Congress, the White House and the central bank to jump-start the economy and try to shorten the slowdown that many economists say has already begun to take hold.

But even as Ms. Pelosi renewed a call by Democratic leaders for cooperation with President Bush and Republicans in Congress, lawmakers in both parties said that efforts to develop a short-term stimulus plan could easily fall prey to partisan disputes like whether to extend Mr. Bush’s tax cuts of 2001 and 2003, which expire after 2010.

The Democrats are insisting that Republicans not inject their desire to extend the tax cuts into negotiations of a short-term rescue package intended to dampen the impact of a recession. But in interviews, several Republican lawmakers said they could not imagine a debate not involving long-term tax policy.

"The planning for 2010 in a business sense is happening now," said Representative Dave Camp, Republican of Michigan. "So it isn’t too soon to talk about making permanent the Bush tax cuts."

The Bush tax cuts have led to the spiraling national debt and have done nothing to help the American Middle Class. Job creation has been awful during this President's administration and real wages have been down for seven years. The only people getting rich on this economy are those at the top who now earn 400 times the yearly income of their lowest wage earners and these fools want to mke that permanent.

Why don't we just stop taxing the rich altogether? The middle class will pay it all because we all know how much that extra money at the top will trickle down to us at the bottom. Shit also rolls downhill but I can't see any benefits to being shit on, but its what the Bush administration has done to the middle class for the past seven years.

Mitt Romney Wins Michigan But Why?

I am becoming increasingly concerned that a large percentage of Americans are really too stupid to be voting. Michigan, which has the highest rate of unemployment in the United States, decided that Mitt Romney was the best Republican candidate to handle the economic crisis.

Are these people aware that Mitt Romney made his fortune by buying up companies, selling the assets and laying off the employees? I understand the clown car that is the Republican candidates leaves much to be desired but to pick the one person whose history is so blatantly anti labor makes you wonder if these people even understand the political process.

Our economy was destroyed by greed and stupidity and the people of Michigan decided to award the greediest and stupidest candidate in the woeful bunch. Way to go Michigan.