Lawmaker is worried about future funds
Tuesday, February 17, 2009 10:57 AM PST
BAKER CITY (AP) — Senate Minority Leader Ted Ferrioli warned his constituents to expect the worst when state economist Tom Potiowsky releases his revenue forecast Friday.
From his Salem office, Ferrioli told a breakfast gathering in Baker City on Monday that there’s ‘‘wild speculation’’ in the Capitol that reductions in the state budget for 2009-11 must be between $3 billion and $4 billion, at least 20 percent below current spending levels, the Baker City Herald reported.
‘‘That’s not a recession,’’ Ferrioli said. ‘‘It’s a full-blown depression.’’
Ferrioli added: ‘‘The crash and depression of 1929 are looking more and more relevant. For us, it’s unprecedented, but we’ll have to deal with it.’’ Ferrioli, a Republican from John Day who represents Baker County, predicted that Democrats, who control both the House and Senate, will try to tax Oregon out of its budget problems. He said a better response would be to remove obstacles to economic development, including reducing or eliminating ‘‘unnecessary regulatory interference.’’
Ferrioli said Republicans, and a few Democrats, are working to reduce or rescind the raises Gov. Ted Kulongoski awarded last year to Oregon’s 55,000 state employees. Ferrioli said such a step could save the state $300 million by June 30 and $600 million in the next biennium. Last week, Local 503 of the Service Employees International Union, the labor union representing thousands of state workers, agreed to forgo cost-of-living raises for two years. Ferrioli praised the union leadership for taking that step.
‘‘They decided it was better to absorb less salary than to absorb layoffs,’’ Ferrioli said.
Ferrioli called the union’s offer ‘‘the kind of shared responsibility model we need to work with’’ in the weeks ahead, as legislators attempt to balance the current and future budget.
FDRAllOverAgain wrote on Feb 21, 2009 10:08 AM:
The easiest way to mentally model this massive super-cycle depression, from it's beginning in late-2006, to its end (I'm not ruling out another Dark Age), is as if a high-tech counterfeiter had successfully printed, then spent into circulation, almost all of the currency in existence.
After decades of asset accumulation, the counterfeiter is smart enough to continually lend his phony paper out, at interest. He is sooo greedy, that he lends/prints/counterfeits 40 times as much as he owns (in reality, roughly $500T) at peak insanity. This pumps all prices to the Moon, because he has introduced sooo much artificial, bogus, concocted, counterfeit, fabricated, fake, fictitious, forged, fraudulent, invented, make-believe, mock, phony, pretend, pseudo, reproduced, sham, simulated, spurious, un-backed, funny-money.
Now that the world is indebted to him, at 2006 mega-prices, it's time to cash in.
Turning on a phony dime, he cleverly admits to his crime. Repenting, he agrees to pull back all of the phony cash he introduced. He starts burning every paper dollar he can acquire. His partners in crime do the same. They burn and burn and burn cash. Poof! The entire paper mountain goes up in a blaze.
Prices plunge as his funny-money is destroyed. In the end, all that is left is an Earth brimming with ludicrous, inflation pumped debt (30 year mortgages sporting 2006 price tags at ultra-high interest rates, etc.) payable to the counterfeiter, because he lent and lent and lent before "coming to Jesus." Now there is no cash left in circulation to pay him back.
A world enslaved.
That is EXACTLY what is happening, right now. Our counterfeiter is a private banking cartel with an iron fist monopoly on all U.S. paper currency issue: the Federal Reserve banks. "