Tea Party Tax Protest

I was all set to write about the Tea Party Tax Protest that will be occurring today, and after a while, I thought, "Will it really matter?"

Right now, we are spending future generations into the poorhouse, and we really don't care as long as we have the cash to keep the cable on, pay for text messages, or purchase $600 shower curtains.

President Obama said something yesterday about us no longer being able to spend, spend, spend in government, but I guess that does not include the healthcare reform Obama wants, the stimulus package we "need" or else the Earth will start hurling into the sun, or for the US to either bail out or purchase the US automakers.

I look at things in simple terms, and here is how I see things:

Some people made some really foolish moves when purchasing homes – people who could not really afford homes purchased them on really shaky grounds because they figured that the housing market would go up 10% per year. Then when it looked like this was not going to happen, people started defaulting on loans, banks foreclosed on houses they did not really want to own, and property values fell in many areas of the country.

The government got involved because elected officials need to appear to be helpful. What I never understood was that some Federal oversight failed, regulators were sleeping at the wheel, so as rational beings we wanted the same people who made the mistakes to fix the problem. We did that because they have the expertise. I am still scratching my head on this one.

We passed a bunch of spending bills, and some of them did very little to help the economy. So our legislators decided to spend money in other ways. It reminds me of seeing someone on the side of the road, head bend, hood popped open, wondering why the car has stalled. He (face it, it would be a "he"; a "she" would call AAA) takes a monkey wrench (or other item in the toolbox) and whacks part of the car. If it doesn't fix the problem, he whacks another part of the engine. We are kinda doing the same thing right now, but our monkey wrench is 1 Trillion Dollar spending bills.

Here is what people are not talking about: (1) Unemployment is on the rise, but people are still making mortgage payments. What happens in several months when people start blowing through their emergency funds. (2) Most ARMs (adjustable rate mortgages) have not ratcheted up, yet. The first wave will hit in a year or so. What happens when this occurs.

Both of these events are what I like to call "Holy Cow" events. They are big, may affect housing prices and the economy, and will probably need our legislative bodies writing hundreds of billions of dollars in spending (because that's what legislatures do).

Part of me wants to dress like a native American and attend one of these tea party events – though I think dressing like Pocahontas is not really PC unless you are on a Disney property.

Me, I am looking at the stock market gain more than 1,000 points over the last month or two, and I still think about the bad news on the horizon. But stock brokers are smart, right? I mean, they are a bit smarter than mortgage brokers and bank regulators, right?

I have started thinking about this tea party tax protest some more. Why could it not have been some wine tasting tax protest instead? I mean, that would have more appeal to me, and after thinking about this, I could use a drink.