I have always thought April Fools jokes were somewhat cruel. When austerity hits it will snowball like the inflation times during Carter’s admin. Keep most of your money (if you have any) in cash cuz the market will dive as GS and Morgan get their 4,465 clients to bail.

Thanks, Jon.

After all is said and done, they want chained CPI for OASDI and cuts to Medicare and Medicaid, but no cuts to the defense budget.

You are so right. Obama is way too eager to offer up these cuts.

FYI, JW and friends, I repeat the following comment I left this morning on my own post on the sequester from yesterday.

As to the sequester, WaPo (news, not editorials) is reporting this morning that it will likely stay in place through the end of the fiscal year (Sept. 30, I think) in connection with a deal between Obama and the Orangeman to avoid a shutdown at the end of this month and fund the government, according to the latter O and Gene Sperling on Meet the Press, although Sperling qualified this by saying that his O would still work to undo the sequester “as part of a broader discussion” (read, I suppose: chained-CPI etc.) The House is to vote Thursday on averting the shutdown. There is more in the article, including what some Senators — the two “amigos” and the amiga that took the place of the 3rd, plus Mitch (“attacks on my wife are racist”) McConnell — think about it all, so it’s worth reading.

Also, since a lot of my professional work is carried out at the Library of Congress, I keep in touch with its issues. Thus to give you an example of the nitty-gritty of the sequester, last Friday LC’s “Gazette” Newsletter reported that, according to Librarian James Billington, its effect will be to furlough all employees for four days between April 1 and September 30; to close the library to the public for three days during that period when it would normally be open; and to substantially reduce various services from preservation of decaying booka to cleaning the buildings.

Multiply how many employees by how many days lost pay and that will be a big number multiplied across the Country and adding the ripple effect to other employees in private industry will make the number even bigger. Taking billions of working dollars out of our economy will send it into a tailspin.

We’re no better than the ass clowns that run this country. The only difference is we enable them by our silence.

We might be ignored but we are not silent.

I live in a county on the West Coast which is a majority of civil service employees (almost all Navy). I was talking to friend last Friday night about the furlough days they will be taking – it will be about 20% of his income.

I’m curious for those of you that live in or near DC. Is the furloughs the talk of the DC civil servants? Or is the government using sequestration to just inflict pain on somebody else?

Civil service jobs have always been and remain underpaid compared to the private jobs (I know DC is the exception where it seems everybody is a GS-12 or higher), but people took them because of the benefits and the stability. Seems like now we target them to take away the unions, stability, and benefits. Then watching everybody else climb on board because they have to be screwed “just like me” is getting to be a bit much. It’s just more good middle class jobs being sacrificed for the ultra rich on Wall St that caused this mess.

I think the shutdown is a given and Obama will use it as a lever to get the Grand Betrayal that he so desires.

You got to hand it to Obama, he knows who he represents and it isn’t the 99%.

I think you are right. They learned from last time when they had Paulson, Dodd, and Frank running around screaming “DIRE” when no one really felt dire and it became a “Bank Bailout” rather than a rescue of joe the plumber so this time sequester will make everyone “feel” the pain.

They learned from last time when they had Paulson, Dodd, and Frank running around screaming “DIRE” when no one really felt dire.

You know the TARP bailout still bugs me because it could have been carried out by executive order* but the Fed wanted Congress to hold hands with it when it jumped off a bridge (Paulson’s team, frankly, was too weak to realize they were being played).

*Bernanke could have told Bush the Fed needed to do XYZ, after which Bush would a National Emergency and signed an executive order under the authority granted him by the International Economic Emergency Powers Act and Gold Exchange Act and ORDERED the Fed to do XYZ. Bush was retiring back to Texas in a few months anyway, so it was no shirt off his back. That way Bernanke and the Fed governors would be covered from any legal or political liability for exceeding the Federal Reserve charter and a slew of congressmen and senators wouldn’t be forced to vote themselves out of office w/ the TARP bill.

Sorry for the digression, that still tees me off. :o)

I live in Virginia. We’re going to be the second hardest hit state, right after California. About 10% of our population is civil service.

*shrugs*

I prefer sequester to cuts to Social Security or raising Medicare age. I guess Virginia is going to get to experience what the rest of the country already has and find out that the government is responsible for a whole lotta jobs after all.

It all ticks me off because both beo and I know very well that none of this is necessary. I’ve developed the reasons why and what can be done immediately in my new Kindle e-book.

Don’t worry if you don’t own a Kindle. You can download the Kindle software application to your PC, or IPad, and then when you get the book it’s a convenient read. There’s a free promotion on the book today.