Wednesday, December 17, 2014
Rep. Tim Walberg (MI-7) admits everyone in the US House read the Cromnibus bill in July and knew what was in it
In a recent interview, here (Capital City Recap with Michael Cohen for Monday, December 15th), Republican Rep. Tim Walberg (MI-7) said one of the reasons he ended up voting for Cromnibus was that it overturned some parts of Dodd-Frank, a law which in his view is responsible for the middle class being "destroyed".
How putting the FDIC on the hook for derivatives is good for the public in a crisis like we just had is beyond me. The FDIC went severely into the red, had to be backstopped by the very public it serves, and then was replenished by raising rates on member banks which have crushed the small and regional banks who behaved honorably, and raised costs for everyone who uses a bank. The whole process has accelerated bank sales and consolidations, reducing competition in the industry.
Well, at least Walberg acknowledges the middle class is in big trouble, unlike some people. But becoming "unbanked" is hardly at the top of the list of their troubles like being unemployed is.
Walberg also stated that voting against Cromnibus and shutting down the government as a possible consequence was not an option because that would have punished members of the American military who wouldn't get their paychecks, presumably at this the happiest time of the year. No, you wouldn't want to shut down the government and anger a government employee, no sir.
Maybe the most interesting thing Walberg said, however, and doubled-down on in the interview is that everyone in the House knew what was in the massive spending bill because they had all read the individual components of the bill in the form of individual legislation which they had passed in July and sent to the Senate piecemeal . . . all to die under the withering glare of Dirty Harry Reid.
So all the crap that's funded in the bill Rep. Tim Walberg is admitting to knowing about ahead of time, and voting for.
Read like what, here, but not after meals.
Yield on the US 10-year has fallen 29% since last December but the S&P500 is up 11% year over year
It's a little odd.
Falling yields have been associated with big stock market pull backs in the recent past, but not this year . . . so far.
Between December 2007 and December 2008, the 10-year Treasury yield fell over 40% while the S&P500 tanked 37% in calendar 2008. Similarly in calendar 2011 the S&P500 barely eeked out a total return of 2% as the 10-year yield also fell 40%.
Conversely, rising yields have been associated with healthy stock market gains. In 2013 yield on the 10-year rose almost 69% as the S&P500 posted a phenomenal total return in excess of 32%, the fourth best return since 1970. Similarly yield rose 50% between late 2008 and late 2009 as the S&P500 recovered 26% in 2009.
Steady yields in 2006, 2007, 2010 and 2012 relative to the prior year are associated with S&P500 gains of between 5.5% and 16%. That 5.5% year in 2007 is associated with a yield drop of 10%.
The current yield of 2.07% would need to fall another .33 to represent a 40% drop in yield year over year associated with the big stock market pull backs of the recent past which everyone seems to have been waiting for but not getting.
Obama was mistaken for a valet?
He's also been mistaken for a president, an American and a golfer, but who's counting?
The story in People here is making a lot of people pretty angry.
Gone are the days back in 2011 when Obama claimed to miss being so anonymous.
Liar then. Liar now.
Queen Moochelle STILL has a huge chip on her shoulder
Seen here:
"I tell this story – I mean, even as the first lady – during that wonderfully publicized trip I took to Target, not highly disguised, the only person who came up to me in the store was a woman who asked me to help her take something off a shelf. Because she didn't see me as the first lady, she saw me as someone who could help her. Those kinds of things happen in life. So it isn't anything new."
WHAT A BUNCH OF CRAP.
I WAS IN THE STORE RECENTLY AND AN OLD LADY COULDN'T REACH SOMETHING AND ASKED ME TO FETCH IT FOR HER, NOT BECAUSE SHE MISTOOK ME FOR AN EMPLOYEE BUT BECAUSE PEOPLE DO THINGS FOR EACH OTHER . . .
. . . UNLESS YOU ARE THE QUEEN OF THE USA. DON'T ASK HER FOR A SIMPLE ACT OF HUMAN KINDNESS, NO SIR.
THAT'S RACIST!
Tuesday, December 16, 2014
Did Steve of the Steve Gruber Show ever pay attention to the guy he just helped reelect?
You know the guy: Rep. Tim Walberg, who said the middle class in this country was getting crushed?
You know Tim Walberg, the same guy Gruber had on his show like clockwork during election season, campaigning for free, who just got reelected and promptly voted for Cromnibus?
And you know the Gruber, the one who recently agreed with his buddy Liberal Lee that the middle class in this country was quite intact, and spoke out against Cromnibus?
They must be smokin' the really special ganja on the set of the Steve Gruber Show, you know what I mean man?
True Born Sons of Liberty 2, Gruber 0
Gasoline nationally just now averages $2.50/gallon without Newt Gingrich's help, or Obama's
The Gingrich campaign responded to [White House spokesman Jay] Carney Tuesday with a statement that read in part, "$2.50 gasoline is achievable and drilling here, drilling now so we can pay less and be independent of Middle East oil is just common sense."
Jeb Bush meets with John McCain for advice on how to win without conservatives
You know, without those 2012 fear-mongering types.
From the New York Times, here:
When former Gov. Jeb Bush of Florida quietly visited Senator John McCain in his Capitol Hill office this fall, discussion turned to a subject of increasing interest to Mr. Bush: how to run for president without pandering to the party’s conservative base.
“I just said to him, ‘I think if you look back, despite the far right’s complaints, it is the centrist that wins the nomination,’ ” Mr. McCain, an Arizona Republican, said he told Mr. Bush. ...
Mr. Bush would benefit most if those Republicans who do run vie for the support of the party’s hard-liners. That would fracture the conservative base, leaving an opening for him among more moderate-leaning Republicans.
“Lock up the center and let them fight it out on the right,” Mr. McCain said.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Yeah, and lose the election.
Who wants another president who thinks it's perfectly alright to divide instead of unite in order to win?
In 2012 Jeb Bush sought to distance himself from conservatism, but in 2014 he wears it like a badge
Judge for yourself from the video and full transcript here a couple of days ago when Jeb insisted he isn't going to change what he believes if he decides to run for president, but it's plain as day to me that he has already flip-flopped and wants this conservative thing both ways, just like his brother did and just like his father did, because he's basically an open borders libertarian who doesn't want to go to the trouble of lifting up existing Americans to fill the "skills gap" and instead wants to bring in the best and the brightest from abroad to take those jobs:
"WE HAVE A LOT OF PROBLEMS THAT COULD BE SOLVED IF WE FIX A FEW BIG THINGS AND IMMIGRATION IS ONE OF THEM. SO LONG STORY SHORT, IF I WAS TO RUN, I WOULD TRY TO PERSUADE PEOPLE. I'M NOT GOING TO CHANGE WHAT I BELIEVE. AND MY BELIE[F]S, [I] THINK, ARE GOOD SOLID, MAINSTREAM CONSERVATIVE THOUGHTS."
Flashback to February 2012 here when Jeb Bush sought to distance himself from conservatism, his own and its then-current expression in the Republican presidential debates:
"I used to be a conservative and I watch these debates and I'm wondering, I don't think I've changed, but it's a little troubling sometimes when people are appealing to people's fears and emotion rather than trying to get them to look over the horizon for a broader perspective and that's kind of where we are," said the former Florida Governor. "I think it changes when we get to the general election. I hope."
---------------------------------------------------------------
So in 2012 we have this incoherent jibber jabber that it was totally acceptable to "change for the general election" but he hasn't changed a lick even though he used to be a conservative but in 2014 it's not acceptable to change and Jeb Bush is all transparency and light and hasn't changed a wit don't you know (except he used to be a conservative), and if anyone's changed it's them, those fake conservative demagogues, and vote for me because I'm what I've always been, blah blah blah.
For Jeb Bush conservatism is exhausted by three things in the interview: reforming what's broken, limited government and liberty. Nothing there about preserving anything valuable which exists or what those things might be or how they got that way, or how people in this country who have perverted liberty into license are supposed to be capable of limiting the government when they can't, and won't, control themselves.
And evidently it also just comes down to consistency, which is the hobgoblin of libertarian minds.
It haunts him still.
Average hourly earnings are up 2.69% year over year, inflation 1.66% suggesting Fed tightening may be coming
Earnings are actually getting ahead of the curve in the latest data, suggesting the Fed may move to raise interest rates as "planned".
Not-seasonally-adjusted, average hourly earnings are up $0.65 from $24.11 to $24.76 for all private employees in November. For October the all items consumer price index is up only 1.66% year over year.
In July the picture wasn't as clear, before the dollar took off and gasoline prices began to fall off the cliff. Average hourly earnings at the time were up just 2.01% year over year while CPI (again with a one month lag) was up a nearly identical 2.07%.
I'll go out on a limb and say the Fed continues with "the plan" in order to cool the heat evident in rising earnings.
Not that they should.
I think everyone is forgetting that the employment numbers have recently surged as they always do at the end of the year because part-timers have swelled the ranks at the end of the year. Full-time surges to its cyclical peaks in the summers and early autumn. This is always made more clear by the not-seasonally-adjusted data, which is why it is often missed.
Remember, full-time failed to rise above the 2007 peak again this summer, the seventh year in a row and another dubious post-war distinction for the Obama regime, and part-time just made an all-time high.
An accommodative Fed is still probably necessary, unfortunately, at least the way they think.
Monday, December 15, 2014
Terrorist heads! Terrorist heads! Terrorist heads on pikes!
A venerable old practice, described here.
Pacifist Rama is the first caller to Steyn on Limbaugh today, and now to Savage!
Just now.
How did he do that? People claim they've been trying sometimes for decades to get through to these radio talkers, and Rama punks two of them in one day?
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says Britain's George Osborne is full of fiscal baloney
George Osborne is in today's Wall Street Journal here, bragging about Britain's fiscal discipline, among other things:
"In the U.K., faced four years ago with a record budget deficit of over 10%, we set out a clear deficit-reduction plan and steadily implemented it. The challenging spending totals I set out for the British government have been consistently achieved year after year."
Ambrose Evans-Pritchard has heard it all before, and says baloney, here:
On the fiscal front, Britain has a deficit of 5pc of GDP a full five years into the economic recovery, when growth is running at 3pc and should be generating a windfall of tax revenue. This is prima facie evidence of a chronic reliance on state borrowing to perpetuate a consumption model.
The deficit is 4.4pc in France, 1.5pc in Italy and 0.2pc in Germany. The US deficit - once similar to ours - has dropped to 2.8pc of GDP on a quarterly basis. Britain sticks out like a sore thumb. ...
For all the superficial likeness, the Anglo-Saxon growth stories in Britain and America have nothing in common. The US has cut its current account deficit from 6pc to 1.9pc of GDP. It is on track to achieve energy independence by 2018, igniting a revival of its chemical, plastics, glass and steel industries along the way. Luck has played its part but one recovery is durable, the other is literally on borrowed time.
---------------------------------------------------
Methinks Ambrose overestimates US GDP in his analysis to arrive at his rosy 2.8% deficit, and is too sanguine about the future of Republican spending restraint now that Cromnibus has passed, but you get the idea . . . Politicians spinning tales.
Federal Reserve and FDIC lose power
Electrical, but hey! we can dream can't we?
From the story here:
"Most power at the State Department was lost and employees were told to work as best they could. Other buildings affected included the Federal Reserve, the General Services Administration, Metro’s Smithsonian subway station, the Labor Department, the U.S. Park Police and the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp."
Maybe Ted Cruz & Company have been trying to shut down the government the wrong way!
Steve Gruber Show grudgingly admits middle class needs rescuing
Hm, imagine that.
Here, in "Fracking Rescuing Middle Class", concluding:
"Hats off to fracking and the American energy revolution that is riding in to save the economy and the American middle class!"
True Born Sons of Liberty 1, Gruber 0.
At $2.53/gallon, the national average price of gasoline now officially represents a "sale"
The very long-term average price of a gallon of gasoline in June 2013 dollars going back to 1918, as reported here, is $2.60.
Using all items CPI since then to date, up 1.682%, $2.60 a gallon would come to about $2.64 today.
So this morning's national average of $2.532/gallon, if not officially CHEAP, is at least ON SALE at a discount of about 4%.
Sustained for a year, and hopefully longer, that would definitely mean something helpful to the American consumer's bottom line. Republican control of both chambers of Congress means it is more likely to continue than not, but you never know about these things. After all, both Newt Gingrich and Mitt Romney were for the ridiculously expensive ethanol fuel program and subsidizing it with your tax dollars, which has only driven up the price of animal feed, fuel itself, and food.
Stay tuned.
Libertarian free-trade presidents named BUSH get the most blame for lost manufacturing jobs
Since Jimmy Carter took office in January 1977, during whose term manufacturing jobs reached their zenith of 19.5 million, 5.6 million net manufacturing jobs have disappeared, and with them the middle class lives to which they gave birth and from which other good-paying, middle class service jobs had been spawned.
Manufacturing jobs had risen steadily from their post-war low in February 1946 at 11.9 million to their 1979 height, just before Ronald Reagan brought us the Libertarian Revolution in the guise of conservative Republicanism. He gave us both Alan Greenspan in 1987, Fed Chairman and disciple of Ayn Rand, who steered the country right up to the rocks before jumping ship in 2006, and a quixotic message of freedom and free-trade which has made the investor class rich while middle class families have seen their lives wrecked under Reagan's libertarian successors who presided over the export of their good jobs to foreign countries.
The two Bush presidents in particular, George Herbert Walker and his son George W., get the blame for most manufacturing jobs lost since the 1970s peaks. And George W. far and away gets more blame than anyone else, exporting fully 80% of the net jobs lost:
Carter +0.8 million
Reagan -0.6 million
Bush I -1.3 million
Clinton +0.3 million
Bush II -4.5 million
Obama -0.3 million.
The last thing this country needs in 2016 is a BUSH named Jeb, or a PAUL named Rand.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)