Conservatism Has Always Been Counter-Revolutionary

A frequent MO of the left is to substitute its own definition of something for the real thing, and then argue against it. Otherwise called setting up a straw man. Words mean whatever they say they mean.

That's what Michael Lind has done to Russell Kirk over at Salon.com.

A commenter on his "The three fundamentalisms of the American right: How conservatism went from orthodox and traditional to radical and counter-revolutionary" here gets it exactly right:

The stupidity is also amusing for the way Lind telegraphs his punch in the title, since Russell Kirk, channeler of Burke, consistently advocated for the counter-revolutionary interpretation of the American Revolution throughout his career. More than that, he thought that his own interpretation of the American Revolution as a revolution not made but prevented was entirely consistent with E.J. Payne's interpretation of the Burke who famously loathed what became of France's revolution. Kirk lays out his interpretation in this famous essay, stating from the start his indebtedness to Payne for the idea:

The most learned editor of Burke’s works, E. J. Payne, summarizes Burke’s account of the events of 1688-89 as “a revolution not made but prevented.” Let us see how that theory may be applicable to North American events nine decades later.

On this interpretation, the King of England was the revolutionary, against whose red-coated infringers on the chartered rights of Englishmen the American colonists reluctantly and at length opened fire with more than just words.

Lind would like things to be as they once were, when conservatism was still inchoate, unsure of itself, and above all, politically ineffectual:

Back when conservatism was orthodox and traditional, rather than fundamentalist and counter-revolutionary, conservatives could engage in friendly debates with liberals, and minds on both sides could now and then be changed.

But now that conservatism is a genuine threat to the revolutionary left which has taken control of America, it's time to sound the alarms:

Sooner or later, dogmatism and reality will collide, and it is not reality that will crumple like tinfoil. The only question is how much damage will be done to the American polity before the revolution of the saints fizzles out.

"Collide." "Crumple." "Damage." Sounds more like an invitation to a train wreck than to a battle, but I could be wrong.

Round one to the right last November. More skirmishes to follow. 

The Liberal Attack on Bill Clinton Continues, This Time From Joe Stiglitz

As picked up by Slate, here, which especially savors a straw man when mixed with a delusion:

[A] powerful ideology—the belief in free and unfettered markets—brought the world to the brink of ruin. Even in its heyday, from the early 1980s until 2007, American-style deregulated capitalism brought greater material well-being only to the very richest of the richest country of the world. ...

A decade ago, in the midst of an economic boom, the United States faced a surplus so large that it threatened to eliminate the national debt. 

Here Come The Mexican Trucks

Unless Congress stops them by not ratifying the agreement.

Story here.

Defining a Depression

"Some point to the success of Latvia in managing its so-called internal devaluation. But its GDP is 23 percent below its pre-crisis peak. That is a depression."

-- Martin Wolf, here

Rare Earth Mineral Finds on Pacific Floor Dwarf Known Land Reserves

The new discoveries near Hawaii and Tahiti in international waters by the Japanese are said to be on the order of perhaps 100 billion tons, while known land reserves are in the vicinity of 100 million tons.

Looks like the Chinese may soon discover they've been paying way too much in their attempt to corner this market.

The article, here, makes no mention of the implications of the Law of the Sea for the discovery.

 

Updated link here.

Everything You Need To Know About TX Gov. Rick Perry, George W., and Karl Rove In One Sentence

"In 1989, Mr. Rove, already a powerful Texas political consultant, helped persuade Mr. Perry to join the Republican Party and run as agriculture commissioner."

The New York Times, here.

Walter Williams Skewers Democracy, and Time Magazine's Richard Stengel

Just one of the bons mots:

Stengel says, "If the Constitution was intended to limit the federal government, it sure doesn't say so." That statement is beyond ignorance. The 10th Amendment reads:

"The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people."

Stengel apparently has not read The Federalist No. 45, in which James Madison, the acknowledged father of the Constitution, said:

"The powers delegated by the proposed Constitution to the federal government, are few and defined. Those which are to remain in the State governments are numerous and indefinite."

Stengel's article is five pages online, and I've only commented on the first.

Read the whole thing here.

Fight The Will-Try-ANYTHING Fed

From Bill Julian, making the contrarian case here that it's already winter:

M3, the broadest definition of money that includes credit creation, is still well off its peak of 2008 and is no higher than it was when QE2 was instituted. ... This is unprecedented and is consistent with the current flurry of poor economic data. It is almost certainly a huge disappointment to the FED.

The meaning of this is that the asset prices which have been inflated by Federal Reserve policies look less and less sustainable. 

'Money is the Lifeblood of the Nation'

"Money, the lifeblood of the nation,
Corrupts and stagnates in the veins,
Unless a proper circulation
Its motion and its heat maintains."

-- Jonathan Swift

End Obama's Big Fat 'Tax Break' For Air Force One: $35 Million a Year

From Rich Karlgaard, here:

[T]he annual carrying costs and fuel costs of Obama’s big fat jet comes to $100 million, give or take. My round number is supported by the National Taxpayer’s Union finding that Air Force One costs $181,000 an hour to operate, all in.  Obama would have to fly 552 hours to hit $100 million-a-year by this calculation. However you analyze it, the cost of Air Force One comes in at around $100 million.

Gee, wouldn’t you call that a form of compensation? The president of the U.S. makes $400,000 in salary but he gets a perk that is worth $100 million a year. Cool! I’m not even counting the annual costs of his other perks — ground transportation in limos, free digs at the White House, the parties, the First Lady’s trips, and so on.

Just one perk, Air Force One, is worth $100 million a year.

You are right, Mr. President. Let’s end this tax break for corporate jets. Which means, you pay up, Big Guy! You owe the IRS roughly $35 million a year for your personal jet.

Rethinking 2008: Panic Number Fifteen

From The Chicago Tribune:

There are remarkable similarities in the events that trigger panics. A century-old economic text, "A Brief History of Panics and their Periodical Occurrence" noted, "The symptoms of an approaching panic… are wonderful prosperity… a rise in the price of all commodities, of land, of houses, etc, etc…, by the gullibility of the public, by a general taste for speculating in order to grow rich at once, by a growing luxury leading to excessive expenditures…." The book further cited excessive leverage in the financial system, a point taken up by [Roger] Babson, who likened the creation of new financial institutions to "putting out a flame by pouring oil over it." How easily all this could have described the years preceding the Panic of 2008!

Read more from Jeff Korzenik's fascinating op-ed, here.

Risk-Taking Capital is Fleeing the US

From The Wall Street Journal here:

Americans are taking their investment dollars abroad at a faster pace than foreigners are bringing capital to these shores. In 2010, for example, U.S. investment abroad was $351 billion—$115 billion higher than foreign investment here. Economic recoveries are periods when investment capital usually surges into a country, but since this weakling rebound began in the middle of 2009 the U.S. has lost more than $200 billion in investment capital. That is the equivalent of about two million jobs that don't exist on these shores and are now located in places like China, Germany and India.

This is a recent and dramatic reversal of fortune. Huge net inflows of productive capital into the U.S. in the 1980s and '90s helped finance the 25-year boom in jobs and broad-based prosperity from 1982-2007. Over that period, foreigners invested just over $6 trillion more in the U.S. (in total capital) than Americans invested abroad, according to the Bureau of Economic Analysis, with most of it going into businesses.

Minnesota Governor Flip Flops on Government Shutdown

Seen here:

[D]uring the 2010 gube[r]natorial election ... governor Dayton said he would not shut down state government in order to get his way on a tax increase.

Anonymous Eyewitness Fukushima Workers Allege Quake Caused Meltdowns, Not Tsunami

The Atlanticwire.com has the long story here, including testimony from three different workers:

 “I personally saw pipes that came apart and I assume that there were many more that had been broken throughout the plant. There’s no doubt that the earthquake did a lot of damage inside the plant. There were definitely leaking pipes, but we don’t know which pipes – that has to be investigated. I also saw that part of the wall of the turbine building for Unit 1 had come away. That crack might have affected the reactor.”

“If the walls are too rigid, they can crack under the slightest pressure from inside so they have to be breakable because if the pressure is kept inside and there is a buildup of pressure, it can damage the equipment inside the walls so it needs to be allowed to escape. It’s designed to give during a crisis, if not it could be worse – that might be shocking to others, but to us it’s common sense.” (first worker)

“It felt like the earthquake hit in two waves, the first impact was so intense you could see the building shaking, the pipes buckling, and within minutes, I saw pipes bursting. Some fell off the wall. Others snapped. I was pretty sure that some of the oxygen tanks stored on site had exploded but I didn’t see for myself. Someone yelled that we all needed to evacuate and I was good with that. But I was severely alarmed because as I was leaving I was told and I could see that several pipes had cracked open, including what I believe were cold water supply pipes. That would mean that coolant couldn’t get to the reactor core. If you can’t sufficiently get the coolant to the core, it melts down. You don’t have to have to be a nuclear scientist to figure that out.”

“There were holes in them [the walls of Unit 1]. In the first few minutes, no one was thinking about a tsunami. We were thinking about survival.” (worker two)

“I was in a building nearby when the earthquake shook. After the second shockwave hit, I heard a loud explosion that was almost deafening. I looked out the window and I could see white smoke coming from reactor one. I thought to myself, ‘this is the end.’” (worker three)

Worker three, quoting a supervisor: “there’s been an explosion of some gas tanks in reactor one, probably the oxygen tanks. In addition to this there has been some structural damage, pipes have burst, meltdown is possible. Please take shelter immediately.”

It's a little odd that the story concludes with this statement:

[S]haking experienced at the plant during the quake was within it’s [sic] approved design specifications.

Three readings from TEPCO's own report of the seismic data, updated June 16, 2011, contradict this statement for Units 2, 3, and 5, and Unit 1 got very close to not just its E-W limit, but also its N-S, which would cohere with its geographic position at the plant, bearing the brunt of the forces from the north, and sharing in the record-setting forces from the east:

Workers fleeing west before the tsunami hit were reported here to have heard a radiation alarm sounding at a point 1.5 km distant from reactor Unit 1.

White House Staff: 454 People. Total Compensation? $37.1 Million.

As reported here:

141 White House staffers make six figures. ...

In total, the 454 White House staffers earn a payroll of $37,121,463.

Poverty Lines 2010 US Census

(source)

Poverty Guidelines for 2011 from HHS

(source)

The Current Tax Code is Already Unseemly and Socialist

Because of the way it massively extracts taxes from the top 50 percent of earners and redistributes the benefits to every class of people, to be sure, but disproportionately to the poorest who pay nothing in federal taxes. They number in excess of 63 million tax filers.

So why can't Bruce Bartlett, here, just say that?

"Perhaps the right and left can at least agree that it is unseemly for those in the top 1 percent of income distribution, with incomes at least 10 times the median income, to pay no federal income taxes. It’s not socialism to ask them to pay something."


"Unseemly"? We're talking 24,000 filers in the top 1 percent. Why isn't it unseemly, and in fact a scandal, that over 5 times as many people in the lowest two quintiles pay no federal income taxes than in the highest three quintiles?

Bartlett well knows that the rich who pay no federal taxes may in fact pay capital gains taxes, and may also be massively financing America's municipalities in the bond market to escape federal taxes, just as he knows the poor who work pay Social Security taxes just like everyone else who works.

That's the problem with the tax code. It's balkanized and hyphenated, just like America, and when only looking at one part of it and from that perspective, it only provokes judgments as distorted as the code itself.

A tax code which taxed all income in all forms and at all levels without exception and at one low rate would go a long way to repairing the divisions in this country.

Unfortunately we don't have very many people in leadership advocating for this.

From the article:

Tim Pawlenty Wasn't Much of Spending Cutter in Minnesota From 2003

Captain Capitalism has the story here:

More Than Half of Real GDP Through 2010 Came from Government Spending

From deficit spending, that is, measured in the hundreds of billions per year under George Bush, and now in the trillions in just two and a half years under Barack Obama.

It ain't worth it! And the country needs a growth strategy.

Seen here at The Department of Numbers:

The Great Stagnation

"[M]ore than half of our economic growth in the past ten years has come from government spending."

Minnesota Government Employee Fears Two Month Government Shutdown

Big whoop:

State worker Lori Sobczak tried to remain optimistic.

"There's frustration," said Sobczak, a two-year Minnesota Department of Transportation employee.

The fear is "the unknown, you know," she said. "Rumors are flying around; [a shutdown] could be, you know, 45-60 days. ... That's scary."

Scary? You don't know scary. Try going two and a half years without a regular paycheck, sister, like seven million other unemployed Americans. That's why your government is shutting down, because we used to pay the taxes that made your job possible in the first place.

If I were you I'd tell my union to cut a deal.

Read all about the Minnesota government shutdown here.

Only Dreamers Think Corporate Cash Will Be Used To 'Create Jobs'

Robert Lenzner opines on the naive hopes for repatriating about $1 trillion in corporate cash, noting how corporations are already sitting on a similar sum here and could just as easily use it to create jobs if they needed to:

[Companies] aren’t in business to serve the public patriotic interest by using that money to create jobs unless there is demand over and above what is being filled today.

Which would mean that a tax break for repatriating the cash would just be a "sweetheart deal," the favor   of which would no doubt redound to the politicians granting it, in the time-honored form of campaign contributions, or revolving door jobs in industry.

It's the same story with using taxpayer funds to "create jobs." There's no economic demand for the jobs created, otherwise they'd exist already. They're a sweetheart deal, usually for the affected government and/or union workers whose jobs, and (Democrat) votes, they're designed to preserve.

Whatayah Mean 'Yesterday'?

“I thought he was a dick yesterday,” [Mark] Halperin, who also is a senior political analyst for MSNBC, said on Morning Joe, referring to the President’s conduct during his press conference.

Story here.

$280 Billion

The minimum cost to the economy when 7 million people lose the average $40,000/year job.

Inflation Analyst Says TIPS Are Overpriced

Seen here:

In terms of owning inflation protected securities (TIPS), we find that at current price levels they offer absolutely NO protection against further increases in the US inflation rate. Rather, we believe that you should (at this point) own real assets such as commodities for protection or small cap stocks, which have proven to be a decent hedge against inflation historically.

Even after yesterday's pullback to $13.44, VIPSX is trading near ten year highs.

Q1 Non-Bank Corporate Debt Surged to a Record $7.3 Trillion

And Brett Arends, same article, thinks corporations used the borrowing to finance the stock buy-backs, which kind of puts the taint on both their stocks and their bonds:

The total [borrowing] at the end of 2007, at the peak of the so-called “credit bubble,” was just $6.7 trillion.

This borrowing spree has pushed overall gearing for nonfarm, nonfinancial corporates to hefty levels. The Fed says that U.S. nonfinancial corporates now have debt equal to 50% of their net worth. It’s near record levels for modern times. As recently as 2006, it was just 40%.

When a company borrows money to bolster its own stock price, it makes me wary of the bonds. When the executives aren’t even willing to invest their own money, it doesn’t exactly make me enthusiastic about the stock either. 

Q1 SPX Rise of 5 Percent: Companies Painted The Tape

Just like they're doing in the last three days, along with everyone else, to make Q2 look better after a tough couple of months.

Brett Arends has the story here:

So who was driving up the market? What was creating this boom?

Turns out it was the companies themselves. TrimTabs says companies spent a thumping $124 billion in the first three months of the year trying to boost their share prices by buying up stock.

That works out at about $2 billion for every day the market opened.

Meanwhile, according to Trim Tabs, guess who avoided buying stock during the first quarter? Company executives. The “insiders.”

Phony as a $3 bill.

The Democrat Idea of a 50 Percent Tax Cut

Buy one, get one half off!

If Anyone's Hung Up on Taxes, It's the Democrats: It's Their Price for Spending Cuts

So says the much trumpeted Reuters story today:

Democrats say the $1.5 trillion to $2 trillion in spending cuts that the two sides have tentatively identified must be augmented by $400 billion in new tax revenue over the coming 10 years. That money would come by closing a range of tax breaks for hedge-fund managers, private jets and specific business sectors.

The Most Dangerous Combination of Four Words in the English Language

"Debt draws forward prosperity."

-- Ambrose Evans-Pritchard, here

"I Redefined the Republican Party"

"Let me tell you something. I whupped Gary Bauer's ass in 2000. So take out all this [conservative] movement stuff. There is no movement.

"Look, I know this probably sounds arrogant to say, but I redefined the Republican Party."    (source: Matt Latimer)

"And I redefined my foot in your ass"

Barack the Magic Cadger, on Vacation Every 6 Weeks, Complains Congress Takes Off

The whole debt ceiling thing is really getting under his skin. Republicans should keep it up.

Lengthy, ornery, news conference quotations here.

Bush Appointee to 6th US Circuit Court of Appeals Tilts Ruling in Favor of ObamaCare

Thanks George you mushy headed liberal.

The ruling was by a three judge panel. The Reagan appointee voted against the healthcare mandate, while a Bush appointee and a Carter appointee voted for it, proving once again that W, who aimed to redefine conservatism in his own image, was no friend of the right.

Plaintiffs can appeal to the full, currently 15 member, 6th circuit court, or to the Supreme Court.

The story is here.

ClimateGate's Michael Mann Isn't Off the Hook Yet

Larry Bell explains why here.

Rolling Irrational Exuberance . . . in Pictures

in housing from 1997

in the fed funds rate from 1990

in stocks from 1994

in oil from 2003

in gold from 2005

Liberals Blame Bill Clinton for Housing Bubble

The Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission, under Phil Angelides who had a testy, partisan, op-ed in The Washington Post yesterday, in its report sought to blame Wall Street for leading the way to the housing bubble, not government policy as mediated through the likes of Fannie Mae.

Gretchen Morgenson of The New York Times has begged to differ, and Steven Malanga provides a timely and sympathetic review of a new book she co-authored which uncovers a major impetus to the housing bubble in the administration of none other than Bill Clinton, who took a weaker form of liberalism under George Herbert Walker Bush and ran with it:

Reckless Endangerment locates the origins of the crisis in the ironically named Federal Housing Enterprises Financial Safety and Soundness Act of 1992, which was supposed to protect taxpayers from big losses by Fannie and Freddie. That law pushed the institutions into affordable housing lending and prompted Fannie in particular to adopt a strategy to disarm critics by continually arguing that efforts to rein in the company's operations, such as requiring it to back its mortgage purchases with more capital, would only hurt the goal of expanding home ownership. "You should rejoice in Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac rather than fight them," Fannie's chief executive, James Johnson, told the New York Times.

In the wake of the 1992 legislation, Fannie Mae created the Housing Impact Advisory Council, an assembly consisting of low-income housing advocacy groups and mortgage lenders. Fannie Mae also began supplying grants to the housing groups, like ACORN, which a few years earlier had criticized the GSEs in the press as "strictly by-the-book" interpreters of underwriting standards whose young underwriters, "are not sensitized to the existence of redlining, be it racial or geographic." Now Fannie was singing a different, more cooperative tune, and its new council, Morgenson and Rosner write, evolved into "the centerpiece" of President Clinton's 1994 National Partners in Homeownership program, a "disastrous homeownership policy" that played a crucial role in inflating the housing bubble.

With The Nation pinning financial deregulation on Bill Clinton in recent days, liberalism's not having a good start to the summer.

If Bill Clinton were smart, he'd respond to all this by blaming Bush, or hope people still have enough money left to go to the beach and read trashy novels instead.

Corporate Cash Earned Overseas, Presently About $1 Trillion, Cost the US Treasury About $90 Billion in 2008

So says a detailed and insightful story at Bloomberg here by Jesse Drucker, showing how companies book earnings abroad through the Netherlands, Switzerland and Bermuda, lawfully, to minimize taxation both in the US and in high tax European countries.

The next time some pinhead US politician says he wants to take away your $88 billion mortgage interest deduction, tell him this corporate tax loss expenditure is just as big, and getting bigger. 

When you consider that corporate taxes represent less than a third of the tax revenues which individual payers contribute to the federal government under current arrangements, there's plenty of room to rebalance that income portfolio more fairly.

Maybe we could start by rewarding companies for earning their money here instead of over there. If the Netherlands, Switzerland and Bermuda can do it, why can't we?

Well? 

Flaky, as in 'Obama' (not as in 'Bachmann')

Michele Bachmann may be many things, but flaky is not one of them.

For flaky, we must throw out the much too tame traditional dictionary, and go to the Urban Dictionary, which nails it many times over:

An unreliable person. [See 'Obama' who hasn't improved one economic measure for black people, let alone anyone else, except for their government dependency]

A procrastinator. [See 'Obama' who dithered and dithered for three days after the Fruit of Kaboom bomber incident in route to Detroit because he and his administration were all on vacation, again. And how many months did it take him to decide to surge in Afghanistan?]

A careless or lazy person. [See 'Obama' who was content to let the House and the Senate duke it out over their versions of healthcare reform and provided no legislation of his own, or who let BP clean up the spill in the Gulf despite a long-standing contingency plan put in place by the government in the wake of the Exxon Valdez spill in Alaska]

Dishonest and doesn't keep to their word. [As in 'Obama' who didn't close Gitmo and didn't try the terrorists in civil court]

They'll tell you they're going to do one thing, and never do it. [See 'Obama' who promised to end the war in Iraq but our soldiers continue to die there]

They'll tell you that they'll meet you somewhere, and show up an hour late or don't show up at all. [As in 'Obama' who, the president of all the people, deliberately misses church, and patriotic or Christian holidays but never seems to miss a Muslim one]

Also spelled "flakey", or "flake" in the noun form. [Also spelled 'baked' in the adjectival form, as in the noun 'head']

She told me she would send me her pictures, but it's been 3 months and she hasn't sent me shit. She's flaky as hell.

I think Sean Hannity is still waiting for an RSVP for that beer.

Plane for Moochelle's Africa Trip Alone Cost Us Over $400,000

Another timely expenditure by the queen of shtrong.

White House Dossier has the shtory here.

The Federal Reserve's ZIRP is Another Form of Age Discrimination

Baby boomers, like Ben Shalom Bernanke, are such a self-loathing brood. First they put us all out of work, and then they pay us nothing on our savings:

[I]t is reasonable to call Bernanke the enemy of savers, because he is the enemy of savers. When one can’t earn anything over one year without risk, something is wrong. ...

Saving deserves a return. Let the Fed raise the Fed funds rate by 1%, and they will see that there is no harm to the banks, and little harm to the economy. Once you have 1% slope between twos and tens you have more than enough oomph to make the economy move. What, does the AARP have to bring a age discrimination lawsuit against the Federal Reserve to make this happen? The Fed is discriminating against the elderly.

David Merkel has more to say here.

James Altucher Refuses to Recognize the (Education) Gods of the State

But they didn't serve him hemlock at the dinner party, just hatred. (Hey, isn't that a crime?)

Here:

The main thing is, these people didn’t like me very much. I felt like I had upset the religion of America so I was an apostate. I left at the end and very few said goodbye to me.

My new hero.

One Voice Suggesting Money Market Mutual Fund Risk is Not Worth It

Bill Fleckenstein, here, who advocates government guaranteed debt instruments maturing in a year or less, or FDIC insured cash accounts:

For the risks associated with [big money market funds], investors are getting paid a whopping one basis point (0.01%, or one one-hundredth of 1%). ...

The point in all of this is that because no one is being compensated no matter where they put their savings, there is really no point in taking any risk at all. Thus, it probably makes sense for those who can to shift their holdings to Treasury bills.

Another Enemy of the Mortgage Interest Deduction

Bloomberg.

Editorial here.

The hard fought war to subsidize the nuclear family has been lost from within. Dissolve the nuclear family through cultural decadence, and suddenly its members no longer value its advantages because they do not experience them. By choice.

The fool and his money soon are parted, one from the other.

Too stupid now to know how good they could have had it.

The loudest voices against the deduction stand to gain the most.

Asset Allocation: The Big American Picture, Built on Debt

Cash:   14 percent ($8.3 trillion)

Stocks: 27 percent ($16 trillion)

Bonds: 59 percent ($35 trillion)

Size of US Bond Market in 2009 was $35 Trillion

As per FINRA here:

All Sums Held in Cash, $8.3 Trillion, Equivalent to 52 Percent of Wilshire 5000

An astonishing number, as Tom Petruno points out here, because most of that cash is making next to nothing, and everyone who holds it is losing money because of inflation:

[I]nvestors who want absolute safety for their money are sticking with cash. Lots of cash.

Since 2008, millions of individuals and corporate investors have sharply boosted what they hold in cash accounts at banks. The total in basic savings and money market deposit accounts has reached a record $5.58 trillion, up from $5.09 trillion a year ago and $4.03 trillion three years ago, according to Federal Reserve data.

There's an additional $2.7 trillion sitting in money market mutual funds.

Most of the combined $8.3 trillion in those cash accounts is earning close to zero interest. That's a massive chunk of capital producing almost no return for its owners. To put it in perspective, the sum in cash accounts is 52% of the value of the entire U.S. stock market as measured by the Wilshire 5,000 index.

Fukushima Prefecture Residents Have Absorbed 3.2 MilliSieverts Between March and May

According to this story.

The total is over 3 times the annual limit, in just 2 months, while Americans typically get 6.2 millisieverts per year from natural background radiation, air travel, and medical diagnostic scans.

Levels of radiation in the air in Fukushima have declined steadily, but concentrations of radiation in soil and water have contaminated food which residents are urged to avoid.

Residents of Iitate and Kawamata had their food and urine tested in the study.

Fukushima City Checks Radiation at Over 1000 Sites, 6 Are Above 3.4 MicroSv/Hr

The city itself is 60 km inland from the nuclear power plant on the coast.

Reported here.

The levels are over 30 times normal, three months and counting since the accident.

Federal Reserve Balance Sheet Ammo: About $1 Trillion in MBS Garbage

(source)

Q1 2011 GDP Final Revision: 1.9 Percent

Discussed here.

August 5, 1997: A Date That Will Live in Housing Infamy

When President Bill Clinton signed into law The Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997, and liberalism turned your home into just another commodity:

The act exempted from taxation the profits on the sale of a personal residence of up to $500,000 for married couples filing jointly and $250,000 for singles. This is for residences that were lived in for at least 2 years over the last 5 ... .

Real estate churning was off to the races, in concert with a deregulated financial industry, almost as if someone had flipped on a switch:

(source: Ritholtz/Steve Barry, The Big Picture, here)

Top Ten Countries with Direct Banking Exposure to PIIGS

Since May 2010, banks of eight countries with assets directly exposed to the PIIGS group of countries have made considerable progress in reducing that exposure, based on the figures reported here, now and previously:

IRELAND ........ down 65 percent to $  31.7 billion

Netherlands ........ down 38 percent to $150.5 billion

Belgium ............... down 34 percent to $  78.2 billion

PORTUGAL ........ down 30 percent to $  45.2 billion

France ....... down 29 percent to $646.5 billion

Germany ..... down 24 percent to $532.7 billion

U.K. ............. down 17 percent to $347.2 billion

SPAIN............ down 15 percent to $126.8 billion.

Two additional countries, Austria ($36.8 billion exposed) and Switzerland ($56.4 billion exposed), join these eight in the top ten ranked by seriousness of exposure to PIIGS as a percentage of their bank assets. These are, in descending order:

UK, France, Portugal, Belgium, Germany, Netherlands, Austria, Spain, Switzerland and Ireland.

PIIGS ranked by the most owed to the banks of these ten countries are as follows:

Italy       $780.3 billion

Spain     $594.5 billion

Ireland   $357.4 billion

Portugal $189.5 billion

Greece   $130.0 billion.

Total owed by PIIGS to the banks of just these 10 countries:  $2.052 trillion.

Oh, Obama's Ignorant Dutch Sabotoogee, Eh?

"When it comes to genuine, pro-capitalist job-creation, Obama is a saboteur, in the original meaning of the word. Its root is sabot, which is French for “wooden shoe,” and it was such shoes (clogs) that insecure, ignorant Dutch workers threw into the gears of new machines centuries ago, hoping to impede output gains and prevent job losses among colleagues. To sabotage something means to purposely weaken or destroy it through subversion, obstruction and disruption. That’s what public policy does today to those who might hire labor." -- Richard M. Salsman, here

(video here, 1944)

Secretary of State Hillary Mussolini

Money Funds Inundated by Inquiries About Exposure to Euro Banks

Reported here:

"We've been inundated by inquiries on (our) exposure to French banks, to German banks, our direct exposure to Greece," said Peter Li, director in money markets at Northern Trust. "The profile of our portfolios has gotten very, very conservative."

America's Top Half of Income Earners Paid 36 Times More in Taxes in 2008

Individual income tax revenues in 2008 were $1.03 trillion on AGI of $8.43 trillion, for an effective overall tax rate on the individual American taxpayer of . . . 12.25 percent, to which add social insurance taxes and excise taxes.

The bottom 50 percent of Americans enjoyed a much lower rate, however, than the top 50 percent: 2.59 percent vs. 13.65 percent.

The top 50 percent in 2008 made 7X as much as the bottom 50 percent, and paid 36X as much in taxes.

And liberals say the rich don't pay their fair share.

(source)

Whose Side Are You On?

So asks Secretary of State Hillary Clinton of the US House.

Glenn Greenwald notices that in saying so, the Obama regime sounds just like the Bush regime.

Here.

None dare call it liberalism.

Liberals Deliberately Conflate Extension of Bush Tax Rates With New Cuts

As here. It's their, well, job to lie like this.

Steve Benen still expects us to believe that a reduction in the top rate from 39 percent to 35 percent, ten years ago, was a massive cut?

It would be nice if we could have some Republicans today actually proposing reducing top marginal tax rates to say, 28 percent. Now that would be a cut. But massive? From 70 percent, and 50 percent, yes (for a brief, shining moment under G.H.W. Bush, when 'Read My Lips. No New Taxes.' meant raising them anywhere north from 28 percent). But cutting taxes now anywhere south from 35 percent would be a massive cut? Puh-leeze.

Of course things haven't improved since the Bush tax rates were extended, temporarily. Nothing has changed.

Unless of course the Republicans want to argue that the extension averted another Great Depression.

But only Democrats could say such things with a straight face.

The Nation Rips Bill Clinton a New One for Enabling Financial De-Regulation Under Gingrich

An argument, here, with which we happily agree, except there's no discussion of the de-regulation of the homeowner, who, since 1997, has been able to forego taxes on up to $500,000 of gains on the sale of a principal residence every two years.

Smart couples plausibly have been able to milk this provision very profitably by flipping homes up to five times since then, until everything fell apart in 2008.

And don't forgot all those HELOCs whose capital was misallocated to financing automobile purchases, vacations, and other consumption not even remotely having to do with "home improvement."

The current housing debacle shows among other things, as Chris Whalen has suggested, how the entire post-war commitment to housing was a giant, civilizational misallocation of capital. More than anything, it was a failure of a sentimentality which developed in the wake of the de-moralization which forever destroyed the naivete of a nation. The de-regulation of the financial industry at the end of that road was only the logical conclusion of this process, its final outworking, not its cause.

Obama Regime Tries to Mollify Restless Natives, Releases Oil From Strategic Reserve

The bread and circuses continue.

Story here.

Combined with announcing an end to the surge in Afghanistan last night, the man who would be king is trying to remedy political and economic disasters of his own making.

The surge has been ineffective, and the drilling moratorium a disaster. So like FDR he'll just keep trying things in the hope that they will work.

Good thing we decided to limit presidents to two terms.   

S and P 500 Companies Sit on $800 Billion in Cash, A New Record

This sum, however, is still less than half the total of all corporate cash.

The story from John Melloy is here:

“This is a systemic problem post-Lehman,” said Larry McDonald, author of ‘A Colossal Failure of Common Sense, the Lehman Brothers Inside Story.’ “After a near death experience with the capital markets closed for a record 18 months, they've raised cash now and are cautious. Imagine if you're a CFO and you went through this near death experience.”

Do You Save $1,400 Each Year For Retirement?

I didn't think so.

Half of the country can't scrape together $2,000 for an emergency let alone for retirement. Meanwhile, $2,000 represents the median amount  individuals have saved for retirement, meaning half of you have set aside less than that.

Well, $1,400 is how much state and local governments want to raise your taxes every year for 30 years to pay for government (usually union) employee pension promises.

That sounds fair. You have very little saved for retirement, but you should pay huge sums in taxes every year so some paper pusher can look forward to a life of ease and entertainment at your expense.

The story is reported here.

Jon Huntsman and His Family are Thick as Thieves with Dem. Sen. Harry Reid

Gee, what a shock.

Story here.

Talk about over before he begins.

Republican Gov. Rick Perry of Texas: Democrat, Al Gore Operative and Opportunist

What?! Did I say "Democrat?"

Yes, I did.

Did I say, "Al Gore?"

Yes, I did.

As reported here:

Perry ... entered the Texas House in 1984 as a Democrat. He won reelection as a Democrat in 1986 and 1988, the same year he served as state chairman of Al Gore’s presidential campaign.

Whether Perry left the Democratic Party or the Democratic Party left him, to borrow a phrase from Ronald Reagan, is immaterial. He perceived the long term trend of rising GOP political power in Texas. He also spotted an opportunity to capitalize on that trend by running in 1990 as a Republican against a nationally recognized figure of liberal Democratic politics — Agriculture Commissioner Jim Hightower.

It Ain't Free Trade:Peter Navarro Rips China's Infractions of WTO Rules

Here:

The most potent of China's "weapons of job destruction" are an elaborate web of export subsidies; the blatant piracy of America's technologies and trade secrets; the counterfeiting of valuable brand names like Nike and Chevy; a cleverly manipulated and grossly undervalued currency; and the forced transfer of the technology of any American company wishing to operate on Chinese soil or sell into the Chinese market.

Each of these unfair trade practices is expressly prohibited both by World Trade Organization rules as well as rules established by the U.S. government, e.g., the Treasury Department has sanctions against currency manipulation (which, alas, the Obama administration refuses to use against China despite campaign promises to do so).

The only "candidate" who understood this was Trump. Navarro doesn't point to a replacement, but knows we need one.

The Fed Must Tighten, and Marginal Tax Rates Must Be Cut at the Same Time

So says Brian Domitrovic, here, but only if we want to stop stagflation.

Otherwise, just keep doing what we're doing, like we did in the 1970s.

TSA Operation VIPR Searches Cars and Trucks at Random at Port of Brownsville, TX

Obama's fascist police state flexes its muscles, and tightens its grip on your constitutional liberties.

The story is here.

Mother Jones is warning here of expanded Operation VIPR searches to come at train and subway stations, and ferry and bus terminals as TSA seeks expanded funding to add 12 VIPR teams to 25 existing units which already conduct 8,000 checks a year.

If they're doing that many already and we have to rely on stupid stories like this to learn about it, you know that the sheeple of the United States are just mutely complying, as they do at airports.

You know who you are, and you disgust me. Slaves all.

Huntsman is Pro-Gay, Tied to Log Cabin Republicans

The story is in Politico, here.

Like Romney, Huntsman Won't Sign Anti-Abortion Pledge

As reported on Rush's show today.

Zuckerman is Mortified: It May Be A Depression

He takes a long look at the depth of the unemployment problem, here, and concludes with this:

Gluskin Sheff's Rosenberg captured it perfectly: We may well be in the midst of a "modern depression."

Liberal Bizarro World Bait and Switch Tax Math

Just when I thought the headline "Payroll tax cuts rob the poor to feed the rich" meant that I was going to read a fine story by a liberal lamenting how the richest Americans, everyone making about $106,800 a year and "to infinity and beyond," don't pay Social Security taxes on all their income, I was met with this instead, that the present and proposed cuts in the payroll tax do nothing but finance the extension of the Bush tax cuts which, evidently, benefit only the rich:

Specifically, I'm talking about a new proposal to rob from Social Security to fund a continuing tax break for people who don't need Social Security — the wealthy. ...

It started back in December, when President Obama capitulated to the GOP on a budget deal by cutting the payroll tax, which funds Social Security. Advocates for the program pointed out then the shortcomings of this approach: It was targeted inefficiently and unfairly, skewing to the upper middle class and hurting lower-income families in comparison with the Making Work Pay tax credit it replaced.

Nevermind that the ten year Bush tax cut regime is responsible for the sorry state of affairs in which we presently find ourselves, with over 45 percent of the population paying nothing in federal income taxes, and a sizeable minority actually enjoying a negative tax rate whereby they receive government welfare through the tax code.

Nevermind that the latter is specifically designed as a subsidy to offset the regressivity of Social Security taxes on the poorest wage earners.

And nevermind that the future solvency of Social Security isn't really front and center in the author's mind, either.

What is Michael Hiltzik's greatest fear?

[O]nce you've cut a tax, it's ever harder to restore it.

You mean like abolishing the Bush tax cuts and thereby raising taxes on the poor by 50 percent?

I'll say.

Or how about this one?

In 2008, the top 14 million tax returns had AGIs totaling $3.8 trillion. If a liberal were really serious, he'd be advocating taxing all this income to make not just Social Security solvent, but Medicare, too. At 6.2 percent, we're talking an extra $236 billion of foregone tax revenue annually.

As tax loss expenditures go, it's the largest one I know of, by a long shot. But try getting people to focus on that one instead of my measly mortgage interest deduction, a tax loss expenditure of $88 billion.

Liberals are so caring.

Nike Drug Messages Upset Boston Mayor, Vulgarities . . . Not So Much

The story is here:

". . . an accepted expression for performance at the highest level . . ."

-- Nike

Yeah, if you're an elephant maybe.

Obama is Vulnerable: McCain Lost Because of Nine States, 1.38 Million Votes

Yahoo News repeats the myth here:

McCain lost to Barack Obama in 2008 in a race that was not close.

McCain's loss was actually very narrow, and attributable to two interrelated factors, as here:

1) he lost nine formerly Red states which went to Bush by just 1.38 million votes; that's 1.04 percent of 131.5 million votes cast; had these gone his way, he'd be president today, not Obama;

2) in those same states, Obama outperformed Kerry and McCain underperformed Bush by a margin of over 3.2 million votes; Obama turned out his vote in those states, McCain turned his away.

Republicans and independents won't vote like that again . . . unless of course Republicans buy up all the stupid pills at Walgreens and make McCain their candidate again.

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.

Government Interest Payments as a Percentage of GDP

As reported here:

Greece            6.7 percent

Italy                4.8 percent

Portugal          4.2 percent

United States  2.9 percent.

The Left in Wisconsin is Falling Back, and Calling in the Lawyers for Cover Fire

So says the Milwaukee Journal-Sentinel's Pat McIlheran, here, who moves on to a new assignment.

We wish him well.

Here Come The Bird and Insect Drones: They'll Be Hiding in Plain Sight, Watching You

The New York Times has the story, here:

In February, researchers unveiled a hummingbird drone, built by the firm AeroVironment for the secretive Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency, which can fly at 11 miles per hour and perch on a windowsill. But it is still a prototype. One of the smallest drones in use on the battlefield is the three-foot-long Raven, which troops in Afghanistan toss by hand like a model airplane to peer over the next hill.

Fukushima Cooling Water Requirements Total 500 Tons Per Day

The water gets contaminated with radioactivity and must be stored on site. A new system to decontaminate this water was unsuccessfully tested on Friday.

NHK World reports here:

Contaminated water is increasing by 500 tons a day as fresh water is continuously being injected into the reactors to cool them down.

The storage facilities for the contaminated water are filling up and a delay in restarting the system could cause the water to overflow [into the sea] in about a week.

A story via Reuters here says 110,000 tons of the stuff has already accumulated since 3/11 and that space is running out.

The Indignants of Spain: 'We are not property in the hands of politicians and bankers'

Their story, here, is also our story.

Our politicians and bankers also view us as their property, indeed their slaves. It doesn't make much difference if it's your job that's theirs, or your mortgage, when the politicians are owned by the bankers.

We view them both as our tyrants, slaves also like us, but turned inside out.

Our answer?

NO, to either condition!

RINO Romney Won't Affirm Pro-life Position

Bachmann pins him to the wall. Story here.

Christopher Hitchens: You Can Take the Liberalism out of the Brain Dead Liberal . . .

. . . but he'll still be brain dead.

"From a playwright, however, one might also have expected some discussion of what the Attic tragedians thought: namely, that tragedy arises from the fatal flaw in some noble person or enterprise."

In the New York Times, here.

And for someone who has concluded that the founders were playing swine off against each other in writing the constitution in the way that they did, the absence of the discussion of Attic tragedy is doubly disappointing.

A hole in his education, and that of his Republican rabbi, perhaps. No one knows everything, not even Hitch. Tragedy at 11.

After QE2 Ends It Continues, But on a Far Less Grand Scale

At least for the time being.

Tom Petruno for the LA Times notes:

The Fed may be slow to consider more stimulus for another reason: It still will be reinvesting the proceeds from its total $2.6-trillion securities portfolio in more Treasuries. And the central bank seems certain to keep short-term interest rates near zero for the time being. So in Fed parlance, policymakers remain very "accommodative" for growth.

Readers are left to wonder just how much money is involved when the Fed reinvests "the proceeds from its total $2.6-trillion securities portfolio."

According to the Federal Reserve, here, the earnings of the Fed in 2010 break down as follows:

The Reserve Banks reported comprehensive income of $81.7 billion in the year ended December 31, 2010, up from the year prior.

Total comprehensive income included interest earnings of $44.8 billion on the federal agency and government-sponsored enterprise (GSE) mortgage-backed securities (MBS) holdings,

$26.4 billion on holdings of U.S. Treasury securities,

and $3.5 billion on holdings of government-sponsored enterprise debt securities.

In addition, total comprehensive income included interest income of $3.5 billion on loans to depository institutions and others.

The consolidated LLCs contributed to the Reserve Banks’ comprehensive income, with net earnings of $7.6 billion for the year ended December 31, 2010. ...

Net earnings from the [System Open Market Account] portfolio were approximately $76.2 billion; most of the earnings were attributable to interest income on Treasury securities and federal agency and GSE MBS.

So compared to the QE2 program of $600 billion in purchases, the Fed's intention to reinvest the proceeds of about $75 billion annually in like instruments represents a continuation of the program, but scaled back by roughly 85 percent.

Various scenarios for the unwinding of the Fed's massive balance sheet are discussed here.

The Problem with the Public Schools is that the Teachers are Illiterate

From The Wall Street Journal:

"People who come out of college with a degree in education and not a degree in a subject are severely handicapped in their capacity to teach effectively," Mr. McCullough argues. "Because they're often assigned to teach subjects about which they know little or nothing." The great teachers love what they're teaching, he says, and "you can't love something you don't know anymore than you can love someone you don't know."

Much more here.