Maybe Obama Learned Refusal To Negotiate From Lincoln At Ft. Sumter

The South sent delegations to Washington, D.C., and offered to pay for the Federal properties and enter into a peace treaty with the United States. Lincoln rejected any negotiations with the Confederate agents because he did not consider the Confederacy a legitimate nation and making any treaty with it would be tantamount to recognition of it as a sovereign government. However, Secretary of State William H. Seward, who wished to give up Sumter for political reasons—as a gesture of good will—engaged in unauthorized and indirect negotiations that failed.

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In which case, not a good thing, not a good thing at all.

Wait Times At Healthcare.gov In Michigan Are Running About 5 Minutes

IBD Poll Puts Unemployment At 31%: 47.9 Million Looking For Work, 2 Times Higher Than BLS U6 Level

Here:

Investor's Business Daily has been polling Americans each month on the job market for well over a decade. Unlike the numbers released each month by the Labor Department, ours haven't been crunched, tweaked, twisted, seasonally adjusted or otherwise tortured to tell a comforting story. ... In our IBD/TIPP Poll, we ask a different question: "How many members of your household are currently unemployed and are looking for employment?" Not surprisingly, the answer we get differs greatly from the government's data. This month's survey, completed Thursday night, indicated that 47.9 million Americans are looking for work. No, that's not a misprint: 47.9 million. Out of a workforce of 154 million, that yields a gross unemployment rate of 31%. Among all households, 26% have at least one member looking for work.

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The U6 unemployment rate of 13.7% in August is the combination of the officially unemployed, 11.3 million, the marginally attached to the labor force, 2.3 million, and the part-time for economic reasons, 7.9 million. That comes to 21.5 million unemployed in August by the broadest official government measure. The IBD poll puts the level 2.23 times higher than that at 47.9 million.

The 5-year Anniversary of Jim Cramer's Worst Advice Ever

When TARP was signed by George Bush on Friday, October 3, 2008, the S&P500 closed at 1099 after falling dramatically in September during the events of the banking panic.

Jim Cramer came on television the next Monday morning and advised a national audience that if they needed their money in stocks in the next five years, they'd better sell.

They did sell, and the market continued to plunge . . . all the way into 2009 to the March lows. You might even say a lot of people panicked because of Jim Cramer.

But 5 years later, the S&P500 market index alone is up 54%, not counting dividends. And if you had stayed in the market from August 2008 to August 2013 and fully re-invested your returns, you'd be UP 6.4% per year in inflation-adjusted terms, and 7.8% per year nominal.

Thanks for nothing, Jim!

Obama Wants A Debt Default To Discredit His Opposition?

So suggests JT Young, who makes a plausible, although strictly political argument, here, for why Obama might want a debt default:

[T]he last time Obama faced Congressional Republicans in a debt limit fight, he lost enormously. ... However the roots of the administration's non-negotiating stance may run deeper than just that last defeat. It is not just a repeat of the past it must avoid, but a continuation of the present. ... Obamacare is hardly the worst of the administration's PR problems. According to a Bloomberg News national poll released 9/25, Obama's approval rating on the economy is negative, with 38% approving to 56% disapproving. On the federal deficit, it is -32% (29% to 61%). On the recent Syria sidetrack, his rating is 31% - 53%. ... It is clear that nothing the administration wants is likely to move over the next three years. Historically, the president's party generally loses seats in midterm elections - particularly second midterms - so the president's legislative situation is only likely to worsen. Should it do so, the president's political fortunes and popularity are sure to follow. In sum, there appears to be no variable that will change the chessboard. ... [T]he president's only hope appears to stake everything on a single move. In this case, it appears the move is to goad Congressional Republicans into a dramatic loss in a high-profile - and ideally prolonged - budget battle. That means a shutdown or worse, default, to discredit his opposition - in his best case scenario, to such an extent that he reverses the trend of normal midterm losses and the rapid decline of second term presidents' political relevancy. With his second term initiatives dead early, fighting a continuous rearguard action on his signature achievement, anticipating the loss of additional Congressional seats, and with lame duck status just over a year away, the White House may see little to lose by betting large. If so, America could find itself with quite a lot to lose, as this budget fight gets nastier, longer, and more dangerous than anyone anticipated.

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But what if the non-negotiating stance is more than just political in the conventional sense? What if it's ideological in a more sinister way? What if Obama really means to transform the country not just by eliminating Republicans, who are the political representatives of the middle class, but by eliminating the middle class itself? And capitalism in the process? And using the crisis of a default to install himself permanently at the head of the government? Using the impressive means now at his disposal with surveillance capabilities, militarized police who care nothing for the Fourth Amendment as we saw in the Tsarnaev affair, drones, the Department of Homeland Security generally, and the TSA in particular to control travel? And a de-Christianized, paganized military loyal to the commander in chief?

As all students of communist revolution know, it is the middle class which is the greatest enemy of the communists because being more numerous than the upper class the middle class stands in the way of the revolutionaries' attacks on the rich and on private property as a concept. "Their special interests are absolutely incompatible with the economic disturbances which are the inevitable accompaniment of transitional periods. The disturbance of credit cuts the ground from under their feet. They begin shouting for order, for the strengthening of credit, in such a way that every concession to them leads in effect to a complete restoration of the old order", wrote Bela Kun in 1918.

Make no mistake. This has been a transitional period in the mind of Obama, who is trying to transform the country in a number of ways which are not in keeping with America's past. For example, despite growing public opposition since March 2010, Obama continues to insist that ObamaCare must be implemented even though he himself has underscored its unpopularity by unilaterally and unlawfully altering and delaying key features of it. The Supreme Court itself has validated its compulsory basis, which the regime constantly trots out as authoritative as any teaching bearing Pontifical imprimatur. But at what cost to the middle class whose numbers continue to shrink? The best estimates show that ObamaCare will force 16 million heretofore middle class Americans into Medicaid, the healthcare system for the country's poor which already has 70 million participants, dramatically reducing their numbers by transforming their condition to dependency on the government. Fully 93% of American wage earners already make less than $100,000 a year, and 75% bring home less than $50,000 annually. Between the two extremes lie barely 30 million people. This week's posterchild for ObamaCare, for example, was a law student who got cheaper healthcare through Healthcare.gov, ObamaCare's new web portal which just opened, because it shunted him into Medicaid because his income is too low to qualify for a subsidized ObamaCare compliant health insurance plan. This was widely viewed as a positive!

The truth is Obama has done nothing to help the middle class even though he claims to be their champion, just as the Affordable Care Act will neither provide care nor be affordable. In fact, one might say Obama has been exacting revenge on the middle class. Even though he's been in charge of the government going on five years, Obama has done nothing to improve middle class incomes, which have instead headed in the other direction under his watch. Annual household income has been reduced by over 5% since June 2009 alone.

Similarly the hallmark of middle class membership, the home ownership rate has been reversed to the 1996 level after 5 million homes have been repossessed by the banks. During Obama's tenure in office the ranks of those not in the labor force have soared above the 90 million mark as the longest unemployment recession in the post-war period appears to have no end in sight nearly 6 years since it began, driving college graduates back home with their parents and dramatically reducing family formation. The credit expansion of the post-war economy upon which home ownership was based has hit a brick wall since 2007 while the powers that be have claimed to fix it while enriching only the bankers and the richest investors. Total credit market debt outstanding is up less than $8 trillion in the interim when by all rights it should be up $25 trillion. We even have so-called right wingers who both applaud this decline of home ownership and enthusiastically agitate for the elimination of the home mortgage interest deduction. They are as much useful idiots to Obama's pinched leftist vision as have been Republican free-traders who helped the investor class get rich by shipping American jobs to cheaper labor markets abroad, gutting American exceptionalism long before Obama came along.

As if all that isn't bad enough, unprecedented financial repression of the savings of the middle class is the official policy of Obama's Federal Reserve through Zero Interest Rate Policy and Quantitative Easing, arresting the basis of the gains which customarily accrue over time from compounding and destroying the incomes of the already retired.

Its main sources of wealth in employment and earning power, housing and savings already severely punished under Obama, the middle class is just an inch away from losing it all in a debt default. And once they are out of the way, there will be nothing standing between Obama and finally spreading the wealth around of the 2-3 million at the top who hold it.

September Unemployment?

The BLS is not issuing reports during the shutdown.

OK then, if you're off to work, you're employed, if not, you're not.

Majority of Whites, Plurality of Minorities Don't Support the ObamaCare Individual Mandate

In this age of "choice", not having one is what upsets people, except Obama and his supporters.

John Harwood, here, in Wednesday's "Obama To Wall Street: This Time Be Worried", indicates the president is aware of the polling data but doesn't really care that we don't like his law, which he doesn't seem to like much either because he's unilaterally and unlawfully delayed many parts of it:

On Obamacare, the president's most significant legislative accomplishment, Obama said that despite certain polls showing it was unpopular with specific segments of the population--namely white people--the law would ultimately be accepted by the population at large. Tenets of the bill are popular among "all races" the president said. "The majority of the people who will be helped by the ACA will be white," he said.

Rasmussen reports 55% of whites and 46% of minorities don't support the individual mandate:

Fifty-two percent (52%) of black voters agree that the government should require every American to buy or obtain health insurance. Fifty-five percent (55%) of whites and a plurality (46%) of other minority voters oppose that mandate.

Unprecedented Jobless Claims Under Obama: 10 Weeks Straight Below 300,000

Not-seasonally-adjusted first time claims for unemployment have come in below 300,000 for ten straight weeks from July 27th, averaging just 269,000 first time claims per week. Annualized that's just under 14 million. The lowest level actually achieved annually under Bush was 16.2 million.

For the first 29 weeks of 2013 the average weekly report was 354,000 first time claims, an annualized rate of 18.4 million.

Considering that this has been the longest, deepest unemployment recession in the post-war period, it is not surprising that such low levels should occur eventually. If it's really a fact that we've bottomed out, the numbers will have to hew close to 310,000 for a full year to come in at 16.1 million.

The report is here.

The Government is shut down. Healthcare.gov doesn't work, and neither does America. Please check back in January 2017.

Non-Essential Employee Of The Month

Obama Shuts Down Government, Wins Non-Essential Employee Of The Month Award

Andrew Malcolm for Investors.com, here:

What if an intransigent Obama forced a partial government shutdown, the 18th in recent decades? And what people noticed was that things actually seemed to run pretty well with nearly 900,000 "non-essential" federal workers furloughed from Obama's bloated workforce of 2.2 million? Why should American taxpayers pay for any non-essential workers? If we can do without nearly 900,000 "non-essential" personnel today with all their costly benefits and accruing pensions, why not tomorrow? And next week? And next year? Which is the smaller government argument that so many conservatives will make in advance of Nov. 4, 2014. Now just 399 days away.

Don't Ask, Don't Tell Used To Be "The Law Of The Land" Too, But That Didn't Stop Democrats From Trying To Repeal It

Rich Lowry in The New York Post, here:

Having done the deed, Democrats now expect Republicans to salute smartly, accept “the law of the land” and suggest minor improvements that Democrats will, in their wisdom, decide whether or not to adopt. In other words, they recommend the acquiescence of surrender. If this were a consistent principle rather than opportunistic advice, Democrats would have been content to leave “don’t ask, don’t tell” in place and never would have agitated to repeal the Bush tax cuts, out of deference to duly constituted policy and law. ...

[T]he law suffers from basic design flaws beyond the question of whether the Obama administration can get its software to work. It depends on young, healthy people buying insurance even as it reduces their incentive to do so; it encourages employers to dump workers off their current insurance; it suppresses full-time work, through the employer mandate; in 10 years, the law still leaves 30 million people uninsured.

The government shut down because it's a PC, not a Mac

5 Years After Saying "Sell" Jim Cramer Says "Sell"!

Almost 5 years to the day after going on national television the Monday after TARP was signed and recommending that people sell their stocks if they needed the money in five years, Jim Cramer again tells people to sell.

Hm. Must mean there's more upside.

Here. 

ObamaCare Will Force Millions More Into Medicaid, And DENY Them The Right To Buy Private Insurance

It will deny them because ObamaCare-compliant plans will simply be too expensive for them to afford, and those will be the only ones available. 

John Goodman tried to warn us over two years ago, here:

"While defenders of the new law have chattered endlessly about people who are uninsured because of pre-existing conditions (turns out there are only 12,500 of them) almost no one seems to have noticed that 16 million people are not only going to be forced into Medicaid, they are effectively going to be denied the right to buy any private insurance — whether or not they have a pre-existing condition."

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But today it is coming true.

For example, in one county in Michigan an older, married, full-time worker with one child still in the home must make at least $19,530/year to get a tax credit to make the bargain basement Bronze plan monthly health insurance "affordable" for his family, but go below that threshold and he loses the subsidy entirely and ends up in Medicaid whether he likes it or not. That means he must make almost $9.39/hour, almost $2/hour above the Michigan minimum wage of $7.40/hour, or he's out of luck.

A single parent in the same situation must make no less than $15,510 to stay out of Medicaid and get the subsidy.

There were almost 61 million Americans making less than $20,000/year in 2011, and nearly 50 million making less than $15,000, meaning many of them will be forced into Medicaid under ObamaCare if they are not among the 70.4 million already in Medicaid in 2011, already 46.5% of all wage earners in the country that year.

Two kinds of insurance, ObamaCare and its crappier forerunner Medicaid, and one unhappy nation.

Michigan Healthcare Marketplace Opens, Tells Me To Wait, Then Tells Me It's Down

Good enough for government work.

Hey, I've got appendicitis here!

Total Public Debt Outstanding Kept At $16.738 Trillion By Treasury Dept. For Four Months!

I can't show you all of the data because the format is too long for me to capture it all in a single screen shot.

All of June, all of July, all of August, and now all of September at $16.738 trillion, despite the fact that federal revenues are estimated to be running at $226 billion per month in fiscal 2013.

See for yourself here.

Angela Merkel Is More Attractive Than You Think

Maybe A Guy Who Can't Count Shouldn't Be Messing With Your Health Insurance

You're once, twice, three times a . . . red diaper doper baby.

Most Of The Free-Rider Problem Is An EMTALA Problem, Not A General Healthcare Problem

Maybe a guy who can't count shouldn't mess with your health insurance.

One good estimate of the cost of uncompensated hospital and doctor care in 2008 was just $43 billion, or 5.7% of a hospital care economy of $750 billion that year. But total spending on health care is much higher than that. For example, for 2011 the total size of the healthcare economy has been estimated at $2.7 trillion.

Consistent with that, Megan McArdle recently cites an Urban Institute estimate here for the following year, 2009, showing costs of all uncompensated care, not just for hospitals and doctors, at $62 billion, saying "this is a relatively small amount of overall health spending ... in the trillions."

She's right. $62 billion is just 2.3% of a $2.7 trillion healthcare economy.

The spread between those two numbers for 2008 and 2009 is $19 billion. Assuming a 4% increase in the costs of the hospital/doctor portion only from 2008 to 2009, the spread declines to $17 billion. That's the non-hospital side of the free-rider problem in 2009, less than 1% of all healthcare spending in 2011. Passing ObamaCare to fix that is like firing a bazooka to kill a gnat.

Clearly the bulk of the free-rider problem has been in the hospitals, which will continue to experience problems with uncompensated care despite Obama's Affordable Care Act.

That problem exists because of Ronald Reagan's 1986 signature on EMTALA, requiring hospitals to provide care regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. It drove up visits to emergency rooms over 26% in the first 15 years, and uncompensated cost totals over 600% since 1983, when they were just $6 billion compared with over $45 billion today. Those costs have been paid by all of us over time in a variety of ways, not the least of which have been increased healthcare insurance premiums, higher taxes, and longer waits in fewer available ERs.

While we're at it trying to overturn ObamaCare, EMTALA should be scrapped with it.

Tapering Delay Makes People Think It's Safe To Go Back In The Bond Water

Just because someone got killed at the beach last week by a great white shark is no reason not to go swimming here, right?

Bond mutual funds are witnessing net asset value increases in the wake of the Fed's decision announced on Wednesday, September 18th to delay tapering.

For example, VBISX a week ago closed at 10.51. Yesterday it closed at 10.53. VBIIX a week ago was 11.24. Yesterday it closed at 11.31. VBLTX a week ago closed at 12.51. Yesterday it closed at 12.64.

In other words, every part of the bond spectrum is up from 0.2% to 1.0% in just one week, even though none of the net asset value prices had yet fallen below their respective high end of normal prices.

Fools dare where angels fear to tread.

10-Year Treasury Rate Ends The Week At 2.64%

The 10-year US Treasury Rate ended the week at 2.64%, 43% below the mean level going back to 1871.

Despite the best efforts of the US Federal Reserve to suppress interest rates on behalf of other "investments" like housing and stocks, the current rate of the 10-year Treasury still bests the dividend yield of the S&P500 by 34%, which ended the week at 1.97%. From another perspective, it's even worse than that.

John Hussman noted this week here that based on the ratio of equity market value to national output, you might expect less than zero from the S&P500 going ten years out: 

Likewise, Buffett observed in 2001 that the ratio of equity market value to national output is “probably the best single measure of where valuations stand at any given moment.” On that front, the chart below [follow the link above] shows the value of nonfinancial corporate equities to GDP (imputed from March to the present based on changes in the S&P 500). On this measure, the likely prospective 10-year nominal total return of the S&P 500 lines up at somewhere less than zero. Suffice it to say that our estimates using both earnings and non-earnings based measures suggest a likely total return for the S&P 500 over the coming decade of less than 2.9% annually, essentially driven by dividend income, and implying an S&P 500 that is roughly unchanged a decade from now – though undoubtedly comprising a volatile set of market cycles on that course to nowhere.

In other words, it's possible stocks could return absolutely nothing over the next decade, or just barely beat bonds by less than 10% based on the current 10-year Treasury rate. For sleeping soundly at night, the choice is easy.

The 10-year Treasury rate has backed off about 10% since Ben Bernanke reversed himself on tapering bond purchases this month, seeing how it was knocking on the door of three.

Normalization of the 10-year yield would cost the US government dearly, jacking up interest expense costs over time which are paid from current tax revenues, by nearly double. In the last four years under Obama, interest payments on the debt have averaged $403 billion annually. Increasing those payments 43% would add another $173 billion to budgetary requirements, again, not all at once but over time.

Seymour Hersh, For The Ages: "Our Job Is To Find Out Ourselves"

Here, in the UK Guardian:

"Our job is to find out ourselves, our job is not just to say – here's a debate' our job is to go beyond the debate and find out who's right and who's wrong about issues. That doesn't happen enough. It costs money, it costs time, it jeopardises, it raises risks. There are some people – the New York Times still has investigative journalists but they do much more of carrying water for the president than I ever thought they would … it's like you don't dare be an outsider any more."

Talmudic Asset Allocation Strategy

A third in land, a third in business, a third in reserve. (h/t Mebane Faber)

"And Rebbe Yitzchak said, A person should always divide his money into three: one third in land, one third in commerce, and one third at hand."

-- Babylonian Talmud, Bava Metzia 42a (quoted here)

Defeated Bush 41, Still Compromising With The Victors: Signs As Witness To Lesbian Marriage

Seen here.

The guy's never had a conservative bone in his body.

The Face The Dog Makes When Caught In A Sex Scandal . . .

and the face the cat makes:

h/t Chris

Total Credit Market Debt Has Grown Less Than 9% In The Last Three Years

The debt deflationary depression continues.

Total credit market debt owed (TCMDO), now unhelpfully renamed by the Federal Reserve "All Sectors; Credit Market Instruments; Liability" and perfectly Orwellian in doing away with both information-rich terms "debt" and "owed", has grown 8.76% from the recent April 2010 low to April 2013, about $4.64 trillion.

To put that in context, there have been episodes going back to 1949 when this measure has exploded 50% in three years' time so that doubling times for TCMDO have been as short as 6 years. The longest periods between doubling have been around 11 years long, and since 1949 have averaged about 8 years. The last time the metric doubled was in July 2007, at just under $50 trillion. At almost six years out from that date, we could well have been close to witnessing the number double again to $100 trillion by now based on past experience, or certainly something like half the way there, say to $70-$75 trillion. But here we are instead, at less than $57.6 trillion. It's like we hit a brick wall, the brick wall of a repossessed house most likely.

Say what you will against such a debt-based economy, its fundamental immorality, unsustainability and limits, but that's the economy we have, where the real money in the post-war has been in growth in borrowing, not in the money supply. From this perspective we have entered a long debt-deflationary depression, to get out of which borrowing will have to pick up to at least the point where TCMDO doubles at the extreme of the post-war experience, say by 2018, 11 years on from 2007.

Unfortunately for us, if the last three years are indicative of the new normal pattern of very slow debt expansion, it will take until about the year 2042 for TCMDO to double again to $100 trillion, another 29 years, an unprecedented slowdown in the American way of life.

This is what Chris Whalen meant when he warned in 2010 of decades of economic shrinkage ahead.

Q2 2013 GDP 2.5% Annualized In 3rd Estimate, Nearly 11% Lower Than In 2012

The full GDP report from the BEA is here.

Subdued growth in the last three quarterly reports, 0.1% for the last quarter of 2012, 1.1% in Q1 and now 2.5%, in part reflects on-going effects from Hurricane Sandy last November, little remarked in the press since then probably because of all the heat Obama got in 2011 for blaming exogenous events for poor GDP performance, but correctly forecast by Rosie in the instance.

Since about 25% of GDP is government spending at any given time, the real economy is piddling along at about 1.88%.

Face It, The Heritage Foundation Has Been And Remains Confused (By Liberalism)

As the photo at left demonstrates but conservatives want to ignore, including Erick Erickson here at Red State, a Heritage Foundation representative was present for the signing of RomneyCare in 2006 because Heritage invented the damn idea way back before HillaryCare raised its ugly head and Heritage was happy to see it made into law (so was Senator Ted Kennedy). That was just seven years ago, but now Heritage would just rather have you ignore all that.

Forcing people to sign up for health insurance at the point of a gun has its analog, of course, in forcing people in distant lands to adopt Western-style democracy, something we heard the heir of Republican conservatism, George Bush, incessantly preach: "The long-term solution is to promote a better ideology, which is freedom. Freedom is universal." (Whether they want it or not). To this day, as Molly Ball's article in The Atlantic points out here, "universal coverage" is still Heritage's position:

In my interviews with them, Heritage officials could recite chapter and verse on why Heritage turned against the individual mandate -- a turn, they claim, that occurred before Romney or Obama adopted the idea. “We still believe universal coverage is a good idea,” [Phillip] Truluck [VP and COO] said. But none of the four Heritage officials I interviewed could tell me offhand how the foundation proposes to reform health care and cover the uninsured if Obamacare is scrapped. (Later, an assistant followed up by emailing me links to Heritage papers on “putting patients first,” regulating the health-insurance market, and Medicare reform.)

The place is universally incoherent, and always has been. It has been against Drugs for Seniors as an expansion of big government, but supported the line-item veto, thus expanding the authority of the executive part of government, even as it once used to warn about the imperial presidency. Today it is famously against the current immigration amnesty plan but was pro-immigration for the longest time. It had a founder who has moved notably left liberal, but now it has a libertarian-friendly leader in Jim DeMint. It was for ObamaCare before it was against it. Something about the Heritage Foundation is really off for it to be the home of so many contradictory currents. If conservatism is the negation of ideology, as Russell Kirk taught us, Heritage knows nothing about it.

Maybe they should just rename the place The John F. Kerry Foundation and be done with it.

Time To Ram ObamaCare Up The Donkey's Ass . . . Again

Real Clear Markets Has JP Morgan Predicting Either 4% Up Or 31% Down By Year's End

So, it's either going to be a modest 4% rise in the S&P500 by the end of the year to 1775, or a 31% collapse to 1175. My dartboard could predict as much. If I were JP Morgan, I wouldn't be too happy.

Attention to detail . . . what separates the wheat from the chaff.

Healthcare Groundhog Day: Can You Say HMO-bamacare?

So says Scott Gottlieb, MD, for Real Clear Markets, here:

The new health plans offered in the Obamacare exchanges are going to be narrow network, no frills affairs. Obamacare's exchange based plans will be a throwback to the 1990s style of restrictive HMOs. They will give you fewer choices of doctors and hospitals than the kinds of health plans currently sold in the private, commercial marketplace. The doctor networks that Obamacare plans use will resemble Medicaid plans. But it doesn't end there. Pretty soon, these same bare bones health plans will also become standard fare in the commercial marketplace. You'll get them at work.

Sole Proprietorships 2009-2011

2009 22.7 million

2010 23.0 million

2011 23.4 million

The number of sole proprietorships is up 3.1% over the period. Total revenues have gone from $1.2 trillion to $1.3 trillion over the period, an increase of 8.3%. That's about $55k per sole proprietor in 2011.

If Only It Were So . . .

33% Increase In Dutch Euthanasia Misreported As 13%

The figure for 2011 was 3,136, meaning the 2012 increase to 4,188 is 33%, not 13% as reported here by The UK Telegraph.

Fire The Druncken Interns At Real Clear Markets!

Oops! JP Morgan Chief Strategist Predicts S&P500 To 1775, Real Clear Markets Says 1175!

Video here.

And you have to listen incredulously to nearly the whole thing with all its happy talk to confirm the headline's typo.

Update: Added the headline from the front page just so you understand my surprise.

Should Chief Justice John Roberts Have Recused Himself On ACA Because Of Epilepsy?

Should Chief Justice of the Supreme Court John Roberts have recused himself from the ObamaCare case because he has epilepsy? He had a seizure as early as 1993, and another in 2007.

You know, a guy with a pre-existing condition like that may have felt compelled to help other people with pre-existing conditions by upholding ObamaCare. His own condition may have interfered with his judgment on the merits of the Affordable Care Act.

Striking it down would have meant that that provision of the Act guaranteeing coverage to people with pre-existing conditions such as his would have gone down with it.

The Rise Of Patents From The 1980s Is Basically A New Protectionism, Reducing Innovation

So says Jeffrey Snider, here:

Contrary to popular belief, again assuming I am correct in interpreting it, patents are not about innovation at all. The rise in patent applications was not a proxy for a new wave of innovation, but an era of protectionism. A patent is a legal form of destroying competition. Ostensibly, that is assumed to be a cost to the system worth bearing because we largely believe that patents encourage innovation by giving the innovator some protection to reap the benefits of trying to innovate. But is that really the case? Would innovation suffer from competition at the earliest stages?

Markets develop because market demand exists, and I happen to believe that innovation would be better served with competition right from the start. But to the question at hand, the sharp rise in patent applications starting in the 1980's was likely far more related to reducing competition than signaling the continued advancement of technology revolution.

"In blow to immigration reform, House ‘gang of seven’ bill looks dead"

Story here.

Bond Mutual Fund Prices Remain Expensive, Returns Negative: Cash Has Been King

Bond mutual fund prices remain expensive by historical standards despite the recent carnage, while returns have been negative. For a safe haven, cash has been the place to be over the last year, such as it is.

For example, the short duration bond index fund from Vanguard, VBISX, finished the week at 10.51, 1.05% above the high end of normal (10.40). Vanguard reports returns down -0.27% for this fund in the last year.

The intermediate duration total bond index fund from Vanguard, VBMFX, a mixture of short, intermediate and long bonds, finished the week at 10.61, 1.04% above the high end of normal (10.50). Vanguard reports returns down -2.77% for this fund in the last year.

The pure intermediate duration bond index fund from Vanguard, VBIIX, finished the week at 11.24, 2.18% above the high end of normal (11.00). Vanguard reports returns down -3.66% for this fund in the last year.

Meanwhile the long duration bond index fund from Vanguard, VBLTX, finished the week at 12.51, 4.25% above the high end of normal (12.00). Vanguard reports returns down -10.01% for this fund in the last year.

Add in the insult of all items inflation of 1.5% to these miserable returns over the last year and cash was the place to be for safety even though it is also down because of inflation (gold, by the way, has fallen, per the London Fix, from 1758.50 on September 20th, 2012 to 1349.25 on September 20th, 2013, a decline of 23.3%).

Clearly such bond funds have farther to fall before they become attractive safe havens once again.

WaPo Finally Demotes The Leader Of The Banana Republic To Lecturer

When you lose The Washington Post, you've really lost it.

The comment at the left was seen here in the comments section to an article in The Washington Post which, among other things, omits Obama's use of the term "Banana Republic" in his address in Kansas today, but does finally demote him to the mere lecturer that he was at the University of Chicago:

Obama at times sought to belittle GOP lawmakers. “The most basic constitutional duty Congress has is to pass a budget,” said the president, a former constitutional law lecturer. “That’s Congress 101.”

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The demotion from "professor" is interesting in the light of the omission of "Banana Republic" since America pretty much qualifies as one by the definition in Wikipedia if you remember that the bank and automobile maker bailouts enriched private enterprise by socializing the losses on the backs of the taxpayers:

In economics, a banana republic is a country operated as a commercial enterprise for private profit, effected by a collusion between the State and favoured monopolies, in which the profit derived from the private exploitation of public lands is private property, while the debts incurred thereby are a public responsibility. Such an imbalanced economy remains limited by the uneven economic development of town and country, and tends to cause the national currency to become devalued paper-money, rendering the country ineligible for international development-credit. Such government by thieves is a kleptocracy; such a kleptocratic government is manipulated by foreign (corporate) interests, and functions mostly as ceremonial government that is unaccountable to its nation. The national legislature is, in effect, for sale, influential government employees illegitimately exploit their posts for personal gain (by embezzlement, fraud, bribery, etc.), and the resulting government budget deficit is repaid by the country's working people who earn wages rather than making profits.

Better, apparently, to deflate his credentials than face his fascism.

Economic Stress: Middle Class Can't Eat Out On Friday Night . . .

. . . neither at Red Lobster nor at Olive Garden:

"Outside Darden's niche in casual dining, limited-service eateries that don't require tipping are gaining ground."

Read more, here.

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Tonight's menu at your blogger's home? Baked Steelhead lemon pepper trout filet, Jasmine rice, and steamed broccoli with butter. Serves three tonight for $10.

Nancy Pelosi Doin' The Mussolini

The World Has Learned Nothing Since The Crisis: Global Public Debt Is Up 63% 2008-2013

2008 global public debt $32 trillion

Global public debt, the amount owed by the world's governments, has risen by almost $20 trillion in the five years since the panic of 2008, an increase of nearly 63%.

Note the main offenders, none of whom has been practicing austerity in any sense of the term: America, Canada, Mexico, Brazil, The UK, Europe, India, China, Japan and Australia. Spendthrifts all.

See the data and charts, here.

2013 global public debt $52 trillion

None of this is ever going to be paid back. Chaos awaits.

Jobless Claims Plunge Again To A New Record Low Under Obama: 8 Weeks Under 300,000

Not-seasonally-adjusted first time claims for unemployment now average another new all-time low in the last four weeks under Obama, also marking the eighth week in a row below 300,000.

Over the last four weeks, jobless claims have averaged just 262,000 weekly, handily beating last week's old record 4-week average low of 273,000.

Over the last eight weeks, jobless claims have now averaged an astonishing 273,000 weekly.

Annualized these average levels would fall into the range of 13.6 million to 14.2 million per year. The best actual performance under Bush was 16.2 million per year, also not-seasonally-adjusted. So these are excellent numbers indeed, if they can keep them up. The difference, however, is that under Bush the low levels of claims occurred simultaneously with high levels of employment.

By the way, the advance estimate of 228,399 in last week's report for September 7th merely bumps up this week to a revised 229,485. Supposedly reporting problems were blamed for the low level. It appears any missing numbers from last week appear in this week's advance estimate, which is up +42,262 week over week, which means this week's advance estimate is significantly higher than it really is.

Read this week's report here.

If It's A Number And It's On Rush Limbaugh, You Can't Trust It

Here is today's Rush Limbaugh basic K-8 math error, which keeps him and his audience from appreciating the fact that high gasoline prices have been pummeling the American people for one year longer than he says they have:

"The number of people losing their jobs is up. The number of jobs lost, all of this, is up. The one thing that none of these stories cover is another thing that's going on, and that is the price of gasoline has been over $3 a gallon for 20 months now.  Now, Obamacare is gonna raise everybody's health care costs.  Premiums are gonna skyrocket. The cost of food is way up.  Gasoline is over $3."

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Actually the number of people losing their jobs is DOWN and down big in the last 2 months to a rate low enough to compete with George W. Bush, if it can be sustained. Usually part-time is not up significantly, and usually full-time is almost back to where it was on Election Day 2008. The real story there is the failure of full-time to recover to the 2006-2007 level.

But gas has been above $3 for 1000 consecutive days, according to The Wall Street Journal, not 600 days:

1000

------  = 33 months (not 20).

30

He read it, he flubbed it, boo hoo. And you people pay for that?

New Stock Market High Based On Nothing But ZI(R)P

The total stock market makes another new high today on mere words from the Federal Reserve.

So what does that have to do with fundamental analysis?

ZI(R)P.

By Not Tapering, Fed Devalues Your $ In One Day By Almost What It Takes A Year To Do

The dollar fell 1.2% today because the Fed decided not to taper bond purchases, while year over year the dollar is down 1.5% to 1.8% because of inflation, as reported yesterday by the Bureau of Lies and Statistics, here:

The all items [Consumer Price] index increased 1.5 percent over the last 12 months. The [core] index [Personal Consumption Expenditures] for all items less food and energy has risen 1.8 percent over the last year; the 12-month change has remained in the range of 1.6 percent to 2.3 percent since June of 2011.

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By all means the Fed should have tapered, and increased interest rates to boot.

The war on the citizenry continues.

End the Fed.

(As far as broken clocks go, Ron Paul is correct twice every 24 hours).

Best American Rifleman Cover Ever