And the Decline Clock Strikes Crying Time

We finally got some rain again thankfully. So far close to two inches showing in my gauge and the forecast says it ain't over yet, maybe. All and all it was a good day to veg inside and catch up with some after election news clips, comments and generally watching the local government organizations begin to sweat.

The crying has begun in earnest folks and not just around my neck of the woods according to some of the stuff I been reading.

Here in Missouri many governments attempted an end run around the heavy voting turnout that comes in November and hoped to sneak quite a few Hail Mary tax incentives onto the unsuspecting citizens. So far every last damned one of them was shot down in flames.

While I tend to agree with many of my more fed up blogger friends that voting means nothing as far as candidates go these days I still make it a point to show up and vote against every tax or money grab scheme they can come up with.

Local and State governments are broke people. No two ways about it. Most of it is directly because of Pensions but there's been an awful lot of over building and spending in other areas as well. They needed these tax schemes to pass so they could do the old politician shuffle with general funds and keep things going for a while.

One of the most repeated comments I saw on articles about tax proposals losing was "I don't trust em".

I think that says it all.

Some more interesting responses from those in power however all seemed to condense into one form. Cutting of services, even to the point of closing fire and police departments. My question is if that road is viable why did they have their own departments before?

I also came across this interesting little article today.

US Treasury to put Public Pensions under Scrutiny

 
State and Local Finance Office Director Kent Hiteshew told a meeting of the Council of State Governments that he had appointed the chief investment officer of Maryland's pension fund as a policy adviser who "will substantially strengthen our office's understanding of the critical challenges facing a system upon which approximately 23 million Americans depend ... for their retirement security."

What was that retirement scheme Obummer came up with a while back called again?

Oh and this little gem was embedded in the article as well.

 

Also on the office's agenda are President Barack Obama's push for more infrastructure financing, including creating a program akin to Build America Bonds, and continued monitoring of the financial situation in Detroit and Puerto Rico.
Build America Bonds were created by the 2009 economic stimulus plan, and the program expired in 2011.

My guess is we are going to see a Federal take over of all Public Retirement accounts and then heavily invest them into Build America Bonds while simultaneously managing to bail out the Pensions for Detroit and Puerto Rico.

Or we will if they can figure a way to do it anyway.

So now we are seeing Suburban emergency departments being folded into combined territories or outright eliminated and turned over to the county departments. Taxes from these entities which now offer no services can go to pay Pensions and Salaries while the citizens get zip and an emergency forming that will allow Federal take over of all that money.

What could go wrong?

As I have pointed out again and again the edges keep shrinking more and more. This is where you see the decline the most at the edges as the money pulls back into the center. What started off as a full stop of so called progress six years ago, turned into a set back, then into a waiting period and these days is beginning to look more and more like a general rout. Panic is building as the Fed and others realize their last bullet didn't have enough power to hit the target and all this pumping was for naught. Even with a severely bloated market they couldn't engineer enough gains to get the Pensions systems out of their mess and now their pumping is having the opposite effect many economist predicted some years ago.

What this means to us Sustainer and Prepper types is we are going to be even more on our own now.

Which is fine that's just the way we like it but we will also have to watch our wallets that much more closely.

Keep Prepping Everyone!!!