Winning elections, especially in an environment where the people hate politicians that have allowed Wall Street to asset-strip them for more than two decades, is easy.

All you have to do is point to the guy who offered "change"  as his campaign slogan and then failed to deliver on that promise.

Who, instead of fixing the banking system and prosecuting the myriad frauds, protected the thieves.

Who, instead of dealing with the long-term deficit problems in Medicare and Medicaid, made them worse, and worse, watched insurance companies jack everyone's health rates by 20, 30, even 40% - and did nothing about it.

This election wasn't about "we love the Republican ideals."  The nation doesn't, to be frank.  "Guns, Gays and God" sells for a while, but when you're hungry both gays and straights can be driven to reach for their guns, swearing to God that those rats aren't going to get away with this!

I'm quite sure that wasn't the "Guns, Gays and God" viewpoint that either side was thinking of when they were running their campaign.

We're still hearing about how we have to "reach across the aisle" and deal with "the budget."

The first step to resolving a problem is admitting what it is.  In the case of Washington we have a government that is borrowing 43 cents of every dollar it spends.  That has to stop right now.

Further, we have a Federal Reserve that, in the last two years, has printed and debased the currency of this nation by more than 100%, taking their balance sheet from $800 billion to more than $2 trillion.  They now threaten, today, to do even more of that.  This has resulted in insane price ramps in soft commodities, and that will result in insane margin compression.  Did you watch 60 Minutes? 

Don't tell me the people don't get it.  They sure do.  And they delivered the message yesterday.

Now it's up to Washington to listen and act, or the people will deliver the message again.

Government cannot both protect the scammers on Wall Street from well-deserved bankruptcy and personal liability in the form of judgment and prosecution and fix the economy.  It can't happen - the losses have to be eaten by someone.

Sweeping them under the carpet simply hides the rot while it continues to do damage to the economy.  This destroys competitiveness and jobs.

At the same time we cannot both have a strong national economy and unbridled offshoring of production to places where there are no labor or environmental laws.

If The Republicans are going to govern they need to address these issues:

1. The Budget.  We cannot tax our way out of this.  Therefore, we must fix the entitlement spending, since that's where the problem is.  We must also fix - 100% fix - our energy dependence whether the greenies like it or not.  In coming weeks I will put forward an actual and actionable set of budget discussion points.  They'll work.  They will take big brass balls to put on the table and get through Congress.  Obama can either deal with this or not - if not, in two more years he'll be gone too.
   
   
2. The Economy.  We cannot continue to protect the banks.  There are ridiculous losses - well over a trillion dollars in aggregate - that are being hidden.  The banks lied about what went into these complex MBS securities.  That is now established beyond any doubt through sworn testimony.  Resolving the economy means resolving Fannie and Freddie along with the private issue MBS that contain these bogus loans.  Someone has to eat these losses and the reason we are now more than two years post-Lehman and have not seen a normalization in the interest rate and market environment is because these losses have been hidden instead of realized.  The reality of this situation is that until the BS games stop in the interest-rate markets capital formation cannot return nor can reasonable interest income on saved income.  Retirees simply cannot be forced out into "risky assets" to earn a reasonable income on their savings as a means of financing the bailout of big banks who did evil - and even criminal - things.  Destroying Senior Citizens and Pension Funds to cover up these losses is an intentional policy decision being taken by The Fed and it must stop.
   
   
3. Monetary policy.  Tied in with #2, The Fed has to stop monetizing deficits and hiding bad bank debt.  The fact of the matter is that it is effectively trying to fill in the hole in these balance sheets through its back-door debasement of the currency.  All this does is shift the cost of the evil acts of these banks to Main Street by driving the price of everything you buy higher. Since we live in an economy where we have offshored nearly all of our production and factory jobs to China, India and Mexico, this results in ridiculous increases in the cost of living for the middle class and below.  In addition, as noted above, Seniors and other Retirees are having their retirement security intentionally and wantonly destroyed - both in their private accounts and in Pension funds.  Forcing retirees to risk a market crash in order to avoid literal exhaustion of their savings and starvation ought to be a criminal act.  Yet that is exactly what Bernanke's monetary policy is doing.  Further, this policy has shut down the engine of job creation - small business - by trashing capital formation - and it is destroying bank interest income as well.  We were told this was an emergency measure in 2007 and 2008.  We now know that was a lie, as the so-called "emergency" has been declared over, but the policies remain.   The truth is that these policies are intended to, and always were intended to, shift the cost of these outrageous acts to Main Street from Wall Street.
   
   We need a banking system.  We do not need the specific banks that intentionally and willfully caused the economic malaise.
   
   
4. China. Love 'em or hate 'em we can't continue to have them run their economy with a peg to the dollar and non-existent labor and environmental laws.  Wage and environmental parity must be enforced one way or another.  The best way, in my opinion, is via tariffs on a broad basis.  Either the Chinese drop the peg and fix the problems on their side, or we will recover the trade imbalance that results from their policies via import duties until they do.  Those must be the only two choices offered, and the idea that we can allow this to take place over ten years or some other such nonsense must go out the window.  China lied when they promised to address these issues when they got most-favored-nation trading status.  That's a fact and we now need to hold them to account - here, now, today - for that lie.

Time to step up folks.