Russia to move S-300/400 missile system to Syria: deadly to F-16 iterations operated by Turkey

Reported here and here:

'One S-300 battery is a handful, but several such systems networked together into an integrated air defense system is a nearly insurmountable challenge for most fourth-generation fighters like the F-16 or F-15. As one senior U.S. Marine Corps aviator told me, the S-300 series is deadly. “A complete game changer for all fourth-gen aircraft [like the F-15, F-16 and F/A-18]. That thing is a beast and you don’t want to get near it,” he said.'

Obama Injustice Department closes IRS investigation without bringing charges against anyone

Reported here:

'"We found no evidence that any IRS official acted based on political, discriminatory, corrupt or other inappropriate motives that would support a criminal prosecution," the letter [to Congress] stated.'

Judge appointed by George W. Bush blocks Obama's deportation gambit

From the story here:

A federal judge in South Texas on Monday temporarily blocked President Barack Obama's executive action on immigration, giving a coalition of 26 states time to pursue a lawsuit that aims to permanently stop the orders.

U.S. District Judge Andrew Hanen's decision comes after a hearing in Brownsville in January and puts on hold Obama's orders that could spare as many as five million people who are in the U.S. illegally from deportation.

Hanen wrote in a memorandum accompanying his order that the lawsuit should go forward and that without a preliminary injunction the states will "suffer irreparable harm in this case."

"The genie would be impossible to put back into the bottle," he wrote, adding that he agreed with the plaintiffs' argument that legalizing the presence of millions of people is a "virtually irreversible" action. ...

Hanen, who's been on the federal court since 2002 after being nominated by President George W. Bush, regularly handles border cases but wasn't known for being outspoken on immigration until a 2013 case. In an order in that case, Hanen suggested the Homeland Security Department should be arresting parents living in the U.S. illegally who induce their children to cross the border illegally.

We Already Got The Change From Obama, And It Sucks

Obama can't run on change, or on economic achievements. So says a Vanderbilt political scientist in this report from The Associated Press:

"He can't run on change because he's the incumbent, and he can't paint too rosy a scenario because things aren't that rosy," said John Geer, professor of political science at Vanderbilt University. "He's got to come up with a theme that appeals to voters, especially middle-class voters, alleviates their fears and gives them reason to believe the future will be better."

In other words, we already got the change, and it sucks.

Perpetual Fascism: Government Still Owns 458 Companies, Is Owed $133 Billion Under TARP

Brought to you by the friendly folks at the two main political parties.

As reported by the AP this week:

A government watchdog says U.S. taxpayers are still owed $132.9 billion that companies haven't repaid from the financial bailout, and some of that will never be recovered.

The bailout launched at the height of the financial crisis in September 2008 will continue to exist for years, says a report issued Thursday by Christy Romero, the acting special inspector general for the $700 billion bailout. Some bailout programs, such as the effort to help homeowners avoid foreclosure by reducing mortgage payments, will last as late as 2017, costing the government an additional $51 billion or so.

Read it all here.

Aging US Nuke Plants: 48 of 65 Sites With Tritium Leaks, Rusting Underground Systems

The AP has a long and detailed accounting here of its investigation of radioactive contamination of groundwater from leaks at 75 percent of the US nuclear power sites where 104 aging reactors routinely get re-licensed by an industry-compliant US Nuclear Regulatory Commission, despite mounting evidence of problems associated with deteriorating underground infrastructure.

Perhaps most troubling is the fact that much of what is rusting underground would be depended upon to bring critical cooling water to the plants in an emergency, but they don't routinely test it or inspect it.

Meanwhile, 110,000 tons of cooling water contaminated with radioactivity has piled up at Fukushima in Japan and threatens to go to sea unless operators can get a de-contamination facility working properly.

Neither this nor our own problems with nuclear power have done much to move our feckless leaders in either party, while Barack Obama enjoys a very cozy relationship with GE head Jeff Immelt, whose company built many of the units in question, including the ones which have melted down in Japan. 

Too busy golfing.

Corporate Cash Reaches New Record Yet Corporate Borrowing is at Staggering Levels

Corporate cash reached a new record of $1.9 trillion in Q1 according to the Federal Reserve's Flow of Funds report. The figure is referenced in discussions here and here, among other places.

But what rarely seems to get mentioned in these sorts of discussions is the debt side of the equation involving all this corporate cash. To cite the growth in cash as evidence that corporations don't need a tax cut and aren't investing simply misses the larger reality which helps explain the phenomenon.

John Carney here points out among many other important considerations that corporations are behaving out of fear just like individuals had when they increased their savings in the wake of the recent financial crisis. Many businesses experienced first hand just how difficult times can be without sufficient liquidity in a situation where no one is lending. Increasing cash should be viewed in part as insuring against a repetition of a similar lending lock up in future. 

Other more extenuating circumstances should also be considered when evaluating the issue of corporate cash. One is Federal Reserve induced low interest rates.

David Zeiler calls attention here to the fact that the current low cost of borrowing is too attractive for corporations not to lock in before QEII ends and the cost of borrowing inevitably rises:

The amount of debt companies have issued this year is staggering. As of May 18, companies with investment-grade ratings had issued $392 billion of bonds, an increase of 30% over the same period last year.

Another consideration is related also to formal government policy, namely that much corporate cash may simply be too unattractive to use for tax reasons:

"Many tech companies have looked to raise capital in the [U.S. debt] market over the past year, for a multiple of reasons, including acquisitions, the maturing of businesses and the inability to tap offshore cash without tax consequences," Keith Harman, a managing director in debt capital markets at Bank of America Merrill Lynch told Reuters.

The issue of offshore cash is a significant one. For many companies, offshore money accounts for the bulk of their cash. About 46% of Google's cash is overseas; 90% of Cisco's and virtually all of Microsoft's.

Because of a reluctance to pay the 35% U.S. corporate tax on that money, that cash remains offshore and unavailable for many uses, such as stock buybacks and infrastructure investment. (Microsoft used some of its offshore cash to buy Luxembourg-based Skype earlier this month.)

This suggests that repatriating corporate cash should be a fundamental goal of tax reform in the US. That would mean making it more attractive to keep it here by reducing corporate tax rates.

Come to think of it, why stop there? Why not patriate everyone's cash in the world to America as a matter of formal government policy?

The more cash, the better.

AP News Frash: Rush Rimbaugh Must Aporogize, Right Now!

"Threats to minority lawmakers are not new," according to Judy Lin here.

Yeah, especially if you're a Republican lawmaker.


Is there a Caucasian American Journalists Association? 

Rush Imitates Hu Jintao

Ching Chong! Ching Chong Cha!

Stories here and here.

Massive Social Security Hearings Backlog: Millions Waiting, Many More Than Two Years

Sure that Obamacare thing will be different. You won't have to wait that long. Maybe only half as much! You can live with that hernia for a year, right?

As reported here:

A Senate subcommittee is expected to hear testimony on Monday at a field hearing in Akron, Ohio, about the rising number of threats, as well as the status of the massive backlog in applications for disability benefits, which are available to people who can't work because of medical problems.

Nearly 2 million people are waiting to find out if they qualify for benefits, with many having to wait more than two years to see their first payment.

OBAMA'S LAZY CLEAN AIR AND ENERGY POLICIES

The Associated Press is reporting today "President Barack Obama wants federal workers to cut down on business travel and commuting by car as he seeks to reduce heat-trapping emissions produced by the federal government." Remarkably, the report indicates "the federal government is the largest energy consumer in the US economy," which does make sense when you consider that with 2.7 million employees, it's also the biggest employer. By using mass transit, Obama thinks emissions like CO2 can be reduced by federal commuters by 13% in the next ten years, which doesn't make much sense. The federal vehicle fleet comes to about 600,000 vehicles, so that leaves a minimum of 2.1 million federal workers who aren't all going to be fitting on the Washington Metro, the expansion plans for which involve only a million daily riders by 2030. The rest will have to take . . . the bus?

More to the point about clean air, is Obama so uninformed that he doesn't know that CO2 emissions from CNG (compressed natural gas) vehicles are nearly 40% fewer than from  conventionally powered ones? Does he realize that barely 1% of the federal fleet uses CNG (just 6,472 vehicles)? Does he know that 8-11 million vehicles worldwide use CNG, but that in the US there are only 150,000 doing so, most of which are buses? Does he know that huge deposits of shale gas in this country have been discovered in just the last few years, giving us 45 years of energy independence, if we want it? Does he know that Honda Motor Company already has quite a long history of successful production of its CNG powered Civic, sold now in several states besides California?

Has he ever looked at this map of the existing infrastructure for the US natural gas pipeline network and pondered its potential?

Every passing day proves that Obama is a man without a grip on reality, and with very little imagination.

GDP FOR Q1 2010 REVISED DOWN TO 3.0% FROM 3.2%

For the story, go here. An additional and final revision is still forthcoming.

Growth of 2.5% is necessary, according to widely reported statements by the Federal Reserve chairman and others, to maintain the status quo in employment and absorb the new workers who are added to the population every year.

In other words, there is no growth engine presently at work effectively providing jobs for 8.5 million people sidelined by the recession, not to mention millions more involuntarily part-timed by the downturn. 

We Need More Ice At This Fiesta

In a story on yesterday's May Day immigration law protests, AP is very carefully reporting the totals from cities all across the country. Doing the math, I put the reported numbers for the whole country at at least 116,335.

In LA, protestors numbered 50,000, described by AP as "massive."

In NY, they managed only 6,500, where the organizer described the nationwide protests as the awakening of "a sleeping giant."

In Chicago, police estimated the crowds at 8,000.

At The White House, 35 cranks were arrested for civil disobedience.

In Dallas, 20,000 protested, a handful with signs saying Arizona's Governor is a Nazi and Sheriff Joe a Klansman.

In Denver there were 3,000, in Miami hundreds.

In Houston 7,000.

In Atlanta and Milwaukee each, 5,000, while 3,000 were counted in Boston.

Ann Arbor demonstrators numbered 500.

Tucson, AZ, had 5,000, and Phoenix had "several thousand," according to AP, which also said in San Francisco one counter-protestor had a sign saying "We Need More Ice At This Fiesta."

This is all in sharp contrast to the rallies of four years ago. In 2006 "more than 1 million people across the country" were counted, according to AP. In 2010 barely 10% of that.

Yep, that new Arizona law really galvanized dissent yesterday.

Read the story, here.

Federal Judge Asks Prosecutors Of Hutaree: Where's The Sedition?

The Associated Press has reported that after two days of hearings this week, a federal judge who must decide whether to keep the Hutaree militia locked up hasn't heard anything so far which indicated specific acts of violence were about to be unleashed by the group, nor anything qualifying as seditious conspiracy.

One prosecutor quoted the leader of the militia as saying, "It's now time to strike and take our nation back so that we may be free again from tyranny. Time is up," leading one defense attorney to retort that talk of that sort can routinely be heard on conservative talk radio and that millions of Americans are talking that way these days.

Read the full story here.

Foreclosure Tsunami Continues

As reported by the Associated Press today:

A record 2.8 million households were threatened with foreclosure last year, and that number is expected to rise this year as more unemployed and cash-strapped homeowners fall behind on their mortgages. . . .

The number of households that received a foreclosure-related notice rose 21 percent from 2008, RealtyTrac Inc. reported Thursday. . . .

Home prices have stabilized in some cities, but are still down 30 percent nationally from mid-2006. . . .

The foreclosure crisis isn't letting up. Between 3 and 3.5 million homes are expected to enter some phase of foreclosure this year, said Rick Sharga, senior vice president of Irvine, Calif.-based RealtyTrac, which began tracking the data five years ago.

To read the entire entry, go here.

Sham Economy, Part Three

In late October the government reported that third quarter GDP came in at 3.5%, about half of which was attributed widely to stimulus schemes like the first time home buyer credit and the cash for clunkers program.

Then the first revision brought the "growth" down to 2.8%. Today the Associated Press is reporting that the final revision brings third quarter growth down to 2.2%, which means that the economy, minus the hundreds of $billions in other stimulus spending, may actually have contracted in the third quarter, meaning "the recession" hadn't ended yet:

The economy grew at a 2.2 percent pace in the third quarter, as the recovery got off to a weaker start than previously thought. ...

The Commerce Department's new reading on gross domestic product for the July-to-September quarter was slower than the 2.8 percent growth rate estimated just a month ago. Economists were predicting that figure wouldn't be revised in the government's final estimate on third-quarter GDP.

You mean the same economists who warned us so long in advance of last year's financial tsunami?

The stuff they ladle out in this soup line we're standing in comes out of a crock of you know what.

FDIC In The Red . . . 140 Failed Banks Year to Date . . . $30 Billion Down, $100 Billion To Go

The Associated Press is reporting:

The 140 bank failures are the most in a year since 1992 at the height of the savings-and-loan crisis. They have cost the government-backed deposit insurance fund - which has fallen into the red - more than $30 billion so far this year. The failures compare with 25 last year and three in 2007.

The FDIC expects the cost of bank failures to grow to about $100 billion over the next four years. ...

If the economic recovery falters, defaults on the high-risk loans could spike. Nearly $500 billion in commercial real estate loans are expected to come due annually over the next few years.

Go here for the rest of the story.

"The Banks Must Be Restrained"

Total bank failures year to date reached 106 yesterday, bringing the total cost to the FDIC Deposit Insurance Fund this year to about $25 billion, with only about $100 billion to go, according to the FDIC's own projections.

The FDIC likes to take over banks on Friday afternoons, believing you won't notice it as readily with the weekend intervening before the next regular day of business. They wouldn't want you to panic, you know. So people who watch this stuff carefully like to call the last day of the work week "Bank Failure Friday." Yesterday, I noticed that the 106th bank to fail this year was in Itasca, Illinois, near where I used to live, and it reminded me of these words posted by Mish (who lives in Illinois) in July of 2008:

23. FDIC Chairman Sheila Bair said the FDIC is looking for ways to shore up its depleted deposit fund, including charging higher premiums on riskier brokered deposits.

24. There is roughly $6.84 Trillion in bank deposits. $2.60 Trillion of that is uninsured. There is only $53 billion in FDIC insurance to cover $6.84 Trillion in bank deposits. Indymac will eat up roughly $8 billion of that.

25. Of the $6.84 Trillion in bank deposits, the total cash on hand at banks is a mere $273.7 Billion. Where is the rest of the loot? The answer is in off balance sheet SIVs, imploding commercial real estate deals, Alt-A liar loans, Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac bonds, toggle bonds where debt is amazingly paid back with more debt, and all sorts of other silly (and arguably fraudulent) financial wizardry schemes that have bank and brokerage firms leveraged at 30-1 or more. Those loans cannot be paid back.

What cannot be paid back will be defaulted on. If you did not know it before, you do now. The entire US banking system is insolvent.

Since those words were penned, the FDIC is planning to charge premiums several years forward to banks to the tune of $45 billion, its deposit fund is down to about $10 billion, and its troubled bank list has ballooned to over 400 banks, with nearly 300 in serious trouble. The FDIC expects to need at least another $100 billion for bailouts through 2013. Let's see, $10 billion on hand plus $45 billion charged forward = $55 billion. Only $45 billion short! Hmm. And you think we can afford to federalize health care?!

When you go down to the bank to ask for a loan to buy a house, you typically get leverage of only 5 to 1 (20% down), because nobody's got your back but you. So why does the bank get leverage to the tune of 25 to 1 (4% down)? Because of the taxpayer guarantee, that's why. And "rules" which let them, written by politicians on the take. It's high time we ended all that or this country will surely go bankrupt. Consider Citigroup.

It alone has $800 billion in "assets" off the books, and looks to be in serious trouble: suddenly this week it ended its gasoline credit card program and dramatically hiked interest rates on its other cards. Forget about the FDIC covering Citigroup with forward charged premiums to its member banks if it goes under. There isn't enough money there. The taxpayer will be on the hook. Again. Are you mad as hell yet? Are you going to take it anymore? Vote the bums out.

No wonder Jesse keeps saying, "The banks must be restrained . . . before there can be any sustained recovery."