Moochelle's 1985 Princeton Classmate An Executive At Firm Which Designed Failed Healthcare.gov

From the story here:

Toni Townes-Whitley, Princeton class of ’85, is senior vice president at CGI Federal, which earned the no-bid contract to build the $678 million Obamacare enrollment website at Healthcare.gov. CGI Federal is the U.S. arm of a Canadian company.

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Of four bids submitted, only the one from the firm of Moochelle's classmate was considered by the Obama regime.

Foreclosed New Jersey Homeowners Staying In Their Homes Rent-Free For YEARS!

From the story here:

"Its happening all over new jersey with Hudson & Cape May ranking the highest, 80% of people remaining in the home for years during foreclosure."

Kathleen Sebelius Should Forget About Resigning, She Should Be Fired: She Thinks She Doesn't Work For Us!

The arrogant bitch, quoted here:

“My goal is to actually get the website up and running,” she told reporters. “The majority of people calling for me to resign I would say are people who I don’t work for and who do not want this program to work in the first place. I have had frequent conversations with the president and I have committed to him that my role is to get the program up and running and we will do just that.”

Obama, healthcare Liar In Chief in 2009: “If you like your health care plan, you’ll be able to keep your health care plan, period. No one will take it away, no matter what.”

Hundreds of thousands of Americans are involuntarily losing their healthcare plans as we speak and being forced to sign up for ObamaCare on a website which doesn't work.

From the story here:

Hundreds of thousands of Americans who purchase their own health insurance have received cancellation notices since August because the plans do not meet Obamacare’s requirements.

The number of cancellation notices greatly exceed the number of Obamacare enrollees.

Insurance carrier Florida Blue sent out 300,000 cancellation notices, or 80 percent of the entire state’s individual coverage policies, Kaiser Health News reports. California’s Kaiser Permanente canceled 160,000 plans — half of its insurance plans in the state — while Blue Shield of California sent 119,000 notices in mid-September alone.

The Obama Regime Shut Out Private Online Healthcare Brokers For Over 3 Years

The Obama regime shut out help from private online health insurance brokerage firms for over three years, and it wasn't until July 31 that it finally relented and entered into partnerships with private online health insurance brokerages like ehealthinsurance.com, which routinely handles online traffic in a range up to 20 million, to facilitate ObamaCare's online presence.

CNBC reported the breakthrough here and the story was widely disseminated at the time.

But USA Today here featured a story earlier that month which highlighted the frustration of such brokerages over the way the regime had shut them out until the very last minute, when it was already way too late:

So far, none of the government exchanges being run by the federal government, individual states, or federal-state partnerships has given ehealthinsurance.com and other for-profit Web markets the green light to enroll uninsured individuals under the Affordable Care Act's subsidized coverage scheme.

"I'm just totally mystified, puzzled, flummoxed as to why the administration isn't using somebody like me to help," said eHealth CEO Gary Lauer, whose company is a leading industry player among a dozen or more Web-based markets that have sought to partner with various government exchanges.

Lauer noted that he had been an enthusiastic supporter of the new health law championed by President Barack Obama. But the stone-walling, foot-dragging and other inexplicable hurdles that he says his company has faced in offering subsidized insurance under that law has made him increasingly skeptical of the plan. ...

But Lauer and others think the delay on allowing participation by Web marketplaces may be a canary-in-the-coalmine indication of overall problems with the exchanges being ready for business by October.

-------------------------------------------

No one in America should have been surprised to see the rollout of Healthcare.gov fail spectacularly like it did when it made its appearance at the beginning of this month.

Hypocrite Hillary Tells Heckler The Future Doesn't Include Yelling

Here, even though her past sure did, and even her very recent past.

2013:

"We have to be willing to come together as citizens to focus on the kind of future we want, which doesn't include yelling. It includes sitting down and talking with one another," Clinton said in response to the heckler to huge applause from the audience.

2003: 

HILLARY 2003 (screeching): I am sick and tired of people who say that if you debate and you disagree with this administration, somehow you're not patriotic, and we should stand up and say, "WE ARE AMERICANS AND WE HAVE A RIGHT TO DEBATE AND DISAGREE WITH ANY ADMINISTRATION!"

Early 2013:

What difference does it make?!

Doyle McManus Discovers That The Middle Class Is Becoming The Underclass

Here in the Los Angeles Times article "Poof Goes The Middle Class", in which the liberal Doyle McManus relies on a libertarian prognosis for the future where efficiency and economy is all:

. . . middle-class American jobs being eliminated by automation and outsourcing, downward pressure on wages for all but the most skilled, growing inequality between the wealthy and everyone else, and elected officials who don't seem capable of slowing those trends, let alone stopping them. … If people have decent low-cost housing, food and healthcare, they might even be happier in a middle-classless future, [libertarian economist Tyler Cowen] speculates.

----------------------

In other words, an impoverished, stratified society based on free trade which Marx welcomed because it would finally lead to the social revolution of the many have-nots against the few haves after eliminating the rung on the ladder between them, the middle class:

"Generally speaking, the protectionist system today is conservative, whereas the Free Trade system has a destructive effect. It destroys the former nationalities and renders the contrast between proletariat and bourgeoisie more acute. In a word, the Free Trade system is precipitating the social revolution. And only in this revolutionary sense do I vote for Free Trade."

-- Karl Marx, 1847

Funny how contemporary libertarianism is completely oblivious to its role in this preparation for revolution and the impetus given to it under America's first Marxist president, while liberalism lies prostrate before it asking, New ideas, anyone?

Libertarians don't just spoil elections for Republicans in favor of Democrats, they ruin conservative republics on behalf of communism no less than liberals do.

Chinese Bad Bank Debt Write-Offs Explode 188% Year Over Year

From the story here:

China's five major banks have written off 22.1 billion yuan ($3.65 billion) of debt in the first six months of the year that couldn't be collected, compared to 7.65 billion yuan a year earlier, according to the news agency [Bloomberg]. The report added that the move is more than likely a cleaning-up process ahead of what may be a fresh wave of defaults in the world's second-largest economy.

Republican Gov. John Kasich Pulls An Obama, Suspends Ohio Medicaid Law That Displeases Him

No doubt that will please Ann Coulter, who loves it when governors act like dictators.

The Wall Street Journal reports, here:

Mr. Kasich simply decided to cut out Ohio's elected representatives and expand Medicaid by himself. This week he appealed to an obscure seven-member state panel called the Controlling Board, which oversees certain state capital expenditures and can receive or make grants. Because the feds are paying for 100% of new enrollees for the next three years, Mr. Kasich asked the panel to approve $2.56 billion in federal funding, and then he'll lift eligibility levels via executive fiat. It's a gambit worthy of President Obama, who also asserts unilateral powers to suspend laws that displease him and bypass Congress. The Controlling Board, which Mr. Kasich and his allies in the GOP leadership stacked with pro-expansion appointees, approved the request 5-2 on Monday. Mr. Kasich's action is all the more flagrant considering the state legislature did not merely refuse to appropriate or authorize spending the federal money. The GOP majority passed a budget with specific language prohibiting the Governor from expanding Medicaid without its consent. Mr. Kasich used a line-item veto to remove that provision, but he's still violating the spirit of the law.

Since ObamaCare Passed In 2010, Involuntary Part-Time Has Slowly Declined

Since ObamaCare passed in 2010, peak levels of involuntary part-time work have slowly but actually declined from in excess of 9.2 million in 2010 to 9.1 million in 2011, to 8.6 million in 2012, to 8.2 million in 2013.

These levels remain extraordinarily high, but are an after effect of the depression of 2008-2009 and cannot be blamed on ObamaCare. You can blame Obama for not doing anything about it, but you can't really point to ObamaCare as the cause of high levels of part-time employment because those levels have actually declined about 10% since the law was passed. Things might be different had Obama not unilaterally and unlawfully delayed the employer mandate in ObamaCare, but it is what it is, and until the law takes full effect it is not possible to say much more.

There appears to be a lower bound at 7.6 million below which involuntary part-time has so far been unable to fall. If the metric doesn't break that barrier this winter, all it will tell you is that the lingering after effects of the depression are still with us, not that ObamaCare is part-timing the work force.

A real recovery in jobs would put this measure back in the 4 million range where it was before the crisis of 2008 hit, on the assumption that the roughly 4 million extra people in this category who work part-time would be the first to be elevated to full-time when employment conditions improve.

Usually Full-Time Work Has Steadily Increased Despite The Passage Of ObamaCare In 2010

Usually full-time work has steadily increased despite the passage of ObamaCare in March 2010. Although full-time work has not completely recovered to its level reached when Obama was first elected in November 2008, which is a pathetic performance taken by itself for which Obama deserves all the criticism he gets (but not on television), full-time has nevertheless steadily recovered in a rising pattern which peaks in the summers and falls in the winters, which is just what was shown by the most recent data in the delayed release of the September employment situation report. Only a fall of full-time below the 114 million mark this winter would break the pattern and suggest ObamaCare might be at work destroying full time employment in this country.  

Usually Part-Time Workers No More Numerous Now Than Before ObamaCare Passed In 2010

Usually part-time ebbs in summers, flows in winters, but is not up abnormally due to ObamaCare.

Usually part-time workers are no more numerous now than before ObamaCare passed in March 2010. Claims that ObamaCare is part-timing the workforce are so far unsubstantiated for the workforce as a whole.

The US Dollar Currency Index Low Was 71.58, Reached In April 2008

71.58 on the US Dollar Currency Index in April 2008 represented a decline of the dollar in excess of 40% from the 120 level which prevailed before the closing of the gold window in 1971.

Since 1967 The US Dollar Currency Index Average Is 97.76, But 120 Remains The Gold Standard Benchmark

The US Dollar Currency Index benchmark is really 120 since that is the level which prevailed before the closing of the gold window in 1971, after which the index declined to average 97.76 to date.

September Unemployment Falls To 7.2%, The Broadest Measure To 13.6%

Obama: Making this time different than all the rest

The BLS employment situation report is late, here, due to the government shutdown.

The number of unemployed remains high at 11.3 million, accounted for in the headline rate of 7.2%. The U6 measure at 13.6% includes those, plus the part-time for economic reasons and the marginally attached workers, which all together still number 21.5 million, unchanged from August.

Just 148,000 jobs are said to have been added in September, but the average number of jobs added monthly over the last year now comes in at 185,000, or 2.22 million. In August the figure was 184,000 and two months prior to that 182,000, so there has been very minor progress in job growth.

Average hours worked remains unchanged at 34.5 hours for private non-farm employment, and average hourly earnings are up 2.1% in the last year, or 49 cents, to $24.09/hour.

Don't spend it all in one place.

Obama's employment recession, already easily the very worst and deepest in the post-war, is now 1.75 years longer than Bush's at 5.67 years and counting. And unless things improve dramatically on the jobs front, it looks to me like it's going to take almost another year for Obama's red line in the graph to get back to zero.

Vindictive CNSNews.com blames Speaker Boehner for $3 trillion jump in total public debt

Here:

Thus, all spending and borrowing by the federal government are the de facto and de jure—n.b. constitutional—responsibility of the House of Representatives that John Boehner leads.

Well, yeah, and the Bible says "Judas went and hanged himself" and "go and do thou likewise".

The author of the posting, Terence Jeffrey, never once places the spending and borrowing in their broader historical context of the economic depression which ensued in 2007, long before John Boehner took the reigns as Speaker of the House in 2011.

Never once does Mr. Jeffrey mention the revenue side, which dried up like an old prune in consequence of the panic which saw home prices crash and a record 29.5 million people file first time claims for unemployment in 2009. Nor does he bother to mention the deliberate, bi-partisan decision taken to reduce revenues to relieve the American people in this situation by temporarily cutting their Social Security taxes by 33% for back to back years in 2011 and 2012 when nothing else seemed to be working to revivify the economy. Revenues constrained by declining tax receipts due to depression-like conditions all over the economy coupled with these tax cuts, after peaking in fiscal 2007 at $2.568 trillion, for the next five fiscal years never once got above that level after reaching their low in 2009 at $2.105 trillion. What did Mr. Jeffrey expect to happen given that, the debt to decline?

One suspects Mr. Jeffrey isn't interested, however, in any of the facts and their context, only in slamming John Boehner. Otherwise he'd have mentioned them, and that Boehner's predecessor Democrat Nancy Pelosi increased the debt at a rate 63% faster in 2009 and 2010 than Boehner has in his nearly three years as Speaker.

Really bad form, old boy.

If profit margins were historically normal, the Shiller p/e would be about 29 here, not 24

So writes John Hussman, here, on Tuesday last:

Meanwhile, the current Shiller P/E (S&P 500 divided by the 10-year average of inflation-adjusted earnings) of 24.2 is closer to 65% above its pre-bubble median. Despite the 10-year averaging, Shiller earnings – the denominator of the Shiller P/E – are currently 6.4% of S&P 500 revenues, compared to a pre-bubble norm of only about 5.4%. So contrary to the assertion that Shiller earnings are somehow understated due to the brief plunge in earnings during the credit crisis, the opposite is actually true. If anything, Shiller earnings have benefited from recently elevated margins, and the Shiller P/E presently understates the extent of market overvaluation. On historically normal profit margins, the Shiller P/E would be about 29 here. In any event, on the basis of valuation measures that are actually well-correlated with subsequent market returns, current valuations are now at or beyond the most extreme points in a century of market history, save for the final approach to the 2000 peak.

-------------------------------------

You have been warned.

Hey Mark Levin! Who Got The Bush Tax Cuts Made Permanent Under A Democrat President?

John Boehner, you ingrate.

George Bush couldn't do that even with control of the House and Senate.

Total Public Debt Owed Jumps $328 Billion After Debt Ceiling Extended

click to enlarge

Rush Limbaugh Reaches Conclusion Reached Three Years Ago By Michael Savage: We've Been Taken Over

Here's Michael Savage back in April 2010:

"a takeover by the Red Diaper Doper Babies"

OBAMA DID SAY TODAY THAT THE SPREAD OF NUCLEAR WEAPONS TO MORE STATES IS AN UNACCEPTABLE RISK TO GLOBAL SECURITY. AND YET THIS INSANE TREATY INCREASES THAT RISK. OBAMA ALSO SAID TODAY THAT WHILE THE TREATY WAS A GOOD FIRST STEP FORWARD, IT’S THE FIRST IN A LONG WAY FORWARD. “IT WILL SET THE STAGE FOR FURTHER CUTS.” FURTHER CUTS. OBAMA DOESN’T JUST WANT TO REDUCE OUR ARSENAL. HE WANTS TO ELIMINATE IT COMPLETELY. HE IS OUR DESTROYER-IN-CHIEF. AND THE ONE REMAINING CHANCE TO END HIS AGENDA OF APPEASEMENT IS THE U.S. SENATE, WHICH MUST RATIFY THE TREATY BY A TWO-THIRDS MAJORITY. HE COULD BE STOPPED THERE, BUT WHERE IS THE REPUBLICAN OPPOSITION? EACH DAY, MORE AND MORE, IT’S AS IF A HOSTILE FOREIGN POWER HAS TAKEN OVER THE COUNTRY.

Here's Rush Limbaugh on October 15th:

You know what's happened here? You know what this feels like, folks? I'll tell you exactly what it feels like to me. You tell me if this isn't close. It feels like we've lost a war to a communist country. It's almost like there's been a coup. There's been a peaceful coup. The media has led this coup, and the Democrats have taken over with popular support. We're getting policies and implementations and things that were never, ever part of this country's design and founding. ... It feels like we've lost the country. In some estimations it's almost like we lost a battle for the country. Some outside force has actually come in and taken over, and they did it without firing a shot, 'cause there wasn't really a war going on that anybody saw. Sort of like a peaceful coup. It happens gradually and then all of a sudden everybody wakes up, "Gee, what in the name of Sam Hill's happened here?" I understand it.

Lefty Peter Beinart Calls Republican Surrender A Victory

Here:

If this is Republican surrender, I hope I never see Republican victory. ... Let’s pause for a moment to underscore the point. In early September, a “clean” CR—including sequester cuts—that funded the government into 2014 was considered a Republican victory by both the Republican House Majority Leader and Washington’s most prominent Democratic think tank. Now, just over a month later, the media is describing the exact same deal as Republican “surrender.”

Ted Cruz And Mike Lee Aren't Heroes. They Hung John Boehner Out To Dry.

During his non-filibuster filibuster, Sen. Ted Cruz had called defunding ObamaCare a matter of life and death: 

“In a football game we all cheer for our respective teams. I cheer for the Houston Texans. It’s a good thing to cheer for your team…This isn’t a team sport. This is life and death. There is a fundamental divide between the government and the people."

Presumably a matter of life and death means you'd do anything to stop ObamaCare, including block the raising of the debt ceiling to accomplish that.

That's what could have happened yesterday afternoon if Cruz, or Lee, or Rand Paul or Marco Rubio or any of the other senators opposed to ObamaCare in the Senate had moved to delay, which any of them easily could have. Then the deadline set by the US Treasury would have come and gone, and all hell would have broken loose.

Yes, within a day or two the bill in the Senate still would have been passed and sent to Speaker Boehner, who, being perhaps another man by that time, might have refused to bring the bill up for a vote in the US House, throwing down the gauntlet once and for all.

We'll never know, but no Republican in the Senate gave Mr. Boehner any political cover to take such a courageous stand and desperate action to stop the single biggest assault by government against free enterprise in this country in its history.

Speaker Boehner for his part received a standing ovation from the Republicans for his leadership in this affair because he went to the mat for members with whose views he personally disagreed, views they shared with Cruz and Lee. Too bad Ted Cruz and Mike Lee didn't go to the mat for him.

The Far Left Also Realizes Boehner Won. Too Bad Republicans Don't.

The Nation, here:

Because the deal only includes minor concessions, the Beltway consensus is that it represents a resounding defeat for Republicans, who “surrendered” their original demands to defund or delay Obamacare. In the skirmish of opinion polls, that may be true, for now. But in the war of ideas, the Senate deal is but a stalemate, one made almost entirely on conservative terms. The GOP now goes into budget talks with sequestration as the new baseline, primed to demand longer-term cuts in Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security. And they still hold the gun of a US default to the nation’s head in the next debt ceiling showdown.

---------------------------

Boehner, last August, who got exactly this, despite having to try the so-called Tea Party gambit of defunding ObamaCare, which failed because of all the RINOs in the Senate, and was destined to fail from the beginning for that very reason, if only people like Ted Cruz and Mike Lee had bothered to check their voting records:

“When we return, our intent is to move quickly on a short-term continuing resolution that keeps the government running and maintains current sequester spending levels,” Boehner (R-Ohio) said on a conference call with GOP lawmakers, according to a person on the call.

“Our message will remain clear,” Boehner said. “Until the president agrees to better cuts and reforms that help grow the economy and put us on path to a balanced budget, his sequester — the sequester he himself proposed, insisted on and signed into law — stays in place.”

Boehner Actually Wins Again Despite Himself: His Position From August 22nd Was A Clean CR Keeping The Sequester, And That's What The Senate Compromise Is Going To Provide

The Washington Post reported, here, at the time:

House Speaker John A. Boehner said Thursday that he plans to avert a government shutdown at the end of September by passing a “short-term” budget bill that maintains sharp automatic spending cuts, known as the sequester.

“When we return, our intent is to move quickly on a short-term continuing resolution that keeps the government running and maintains current sequester spending levels,” Boehner (R-Ohio) said on a conference call with GOP lawmakers, according to a person on the call.

“Our message will remain clear,” Boehner said. “Until the president agrees to better cuts and reforms that help grow the economy and put us on path to a balanced budget, his sequester — the sequester he himself proposed, insisted on and signed into law — stays in place.”

-------------------------------------------------------------

Well, that's what we're getting from the Senate at the very last minute after a two-week government shutdown: a short term continuing resolution which keeps the sequester cuts for that term.

It was libertarian Republicans who found this unacceptable and forced Boehner to try the shutdown gambit, which was incredibly stupid given the optics of the government running out of funding on September 30th and ObamaCare launching on October 1st. Clearly no one in Boehner's opposition was watching the news stories predicting problems with the internet exchanges, nor reflecting on what powerful weapons they were putting into Obama's hands when they've had five years' worth of examples of Obama usurping powers, acting unconstitutionally, and generally acting "out of character" for a president.

The president continues to go outside the experience of his enemy, but the enemy still hasn't figured that out. Now that they know how far Obama's willing to go, his enemies need to be more careful next time.

Boehner Knew The Political Danger Of A Shutdown. Republicans Should Have Listened To Him.

As always, Republican disunity becomes the Democrat opening, but Boehner deserves blame for not insisting on his preference and for letting someone else set the agenda, which unfortunately is his habit. The speaker of the House must assert the co-equality of it.

Politico, here:

Boehner allies strongly reject the idea that the speaker could be damaged by this latest debacle. After all, it was Sen. Ted Cruz (R-Texas) who was setting the terms of this debate, not Boehner. The Ohio Republican wanted to pass a clean government-funding bill more than a month ago, while organizing a tidy negotiating process around the debt ceiling. Instead, everything became one big mess, where House Republicans were unsure what they were asking for, what they should be seeking, and for what price.

Janet Yellen's Crystal Ball Utterly Failed Her In May 2007: She Never Saw The Crisis Coming

(as always, click on the image to enlarge)

“Taking a longer view, I anticipate real GDP growth over the next two and a half years [2008 & 2009] of about 2.6 percent, just a bit below my assessment of potential. My forecasts of both actual and potential growth are a tenth or two stronger than the Greenbook forecasts; but the basic story is very similar, and the underlying assumptions, including the path for the nominal funds rate, are essentially the same. I view the stance of monetary policy as remaining somewhat restrictive throughout the entire forecast period. The key factors shaping the longer-term outlook include continued fallout from the housing sector, with housing wealth projected to be roughly flat through 2008. Given the reduced impetus from housing wealth, household spending should advance at a more moderate pace going forward than over the past few years.” (Quoted here)

Obama Keeps Michelle's Website, letsmove.gov, Up During The Shutdown, But Not bea.gov

letsmove.gov is open for business during the shutdown

bea.gov is not

How Rep. Paul Ryan Is Just Like Sen. Ted Cruz

Here in The Wall Street Journal on October 8th, Rep. Paul Ryan says he is willing to swap sequester cuts for cuts to mandatory spending:

If Mr. Obama decides to talk, he'll find that we actually agree on some things. For example, most of us agree that gradual, structural reforms are better than sudden, arbitrary cuts. For my Democratic colleagues, the discretionary spending levels in the Budget Control Act are a major concern. And the truth is, there's a better way to cut spending. We could provide relief from the discretionary spending levels in the Budget Control Act in exchange for structural reforms to entitlement programs.

And the reason is there's more to be gained over the long haul from cuts to the mandatory side, which is 60% of annual outlays anyway:

These reforms are vital. Over the next 10 years, the Congressional Budget Office predicts discretionary spending—that is, everything except entitlement programs and debt payments—will grow by $202 billion, or roughly 17%. Meanwhile, mandatory spending—which mostly consists of funding for Medicare, Medicaid and Social Security—will grow by $1.6 trillion, or roughly 79%. The 2011 Budget Control Act largely ignored entitlement spending. But that is the nation's biggest challenge.

But just why Republicans like Paul Ryan expect us to believe they can negotiate cuts to mandatory programs from Democrats who have just rammed a new one called ObamaCare down our throats is quite beyond me. It's as unrealistic as Senator Ted Cruz thinking libertarian Republicans could get Obama to defund that program without unity in the party on the subject in the first place. Cynics quickly decided Cruz was just fundraising for 2016. And Rep. Ryan could just as plausibly be trying to re-establish some street cred with conservatives after his involvement with the Facebook-financed immigration amnesty debacle.

There's plenty of unrealism to go around in the Republican Party, which still hasn't figured out that Obama and the Democrats are the enemy, which is surprising since that's how he views them. But that seems to be a particularly libertarian penchant, expressed as it is in interminable losing electoral challenges throughout the country which do nothing but help elect Democrats. Maybe Paul Ryan and Ted Cruz are just libertarian spoilers on the national stage, for whom success is keeping Republicans from succeeding.

Figuring out how to proceed when your country has been taken over by a hostile foreign power without having fired a shot remains the central problem for an opposition which doesn't realize it is one, especially when your own ranks have been infiltrated by an enemy.

Where are the non-libertarian economic conservatives? 

Today's Average Price for Gas in GR is $3.35/gallon

The cheapest price for gas is at Sam's Club for $3.19/gallon at this hour.

The average inflation adjusted price for gasoline going back a hundred years is $2.60/gallon in June 2013 dollars, so gasoline remains about 29% too expensive by historical standards.

Without Issuing New Treasury Securities, Something Would Have To Give After Just 22 Days

How long can the government pay all its bills without selling any additional Treasury bills, notes or bonds? The answer is really about only 22 days.

The suggestion that the answer is indefinitely is completely wrong. The Sean Hannitys of the world who otherwise protest incessantly that we borrow 40 cents of every dollar that we spend are in denial about this.

Consider revenues in the last fiscal year: $2.712 trillion, or $226 billion per month.

Then consider outlays in the last fiscal year: $3.6849 trillion, or $307 billion per month, or $10.233 billion per day. So revenues will last about only 22 days, after which we'll need to find another $81 billion somewhere, or not pay some bills.

The monthly shortfall of $81 billion adds up to $972 billion over a year, or 26.4% of all outlays in the last fiscal year.

Discretionary spending in the Obama 2012 budget request was $1.510 trillion. Slashing that $972 billion across the board represents a 64.4% cut to discretionary spending.

By agency that means, for example, defense spending would have to be cut by $429 billion and Homeland Security by $35 billion, and the EPA by $5.9 billion and Agriculture by $17 billion.

That's why just about everyone in both parties wants to see the debt limit increased: no one can stand it that they'd have to take such a huge hit to live within our means. It's really all about that, not about "default" per se. Interest on the debt runs to only $34 billion to $35 billion per month. There's plenty of income to allocate to that. So we won't default, but spending cuts would of necessity be nothing short of draconian.

The squealing of the pigs continues.

CNBC Exaggerates That The Debt Party Is Back On

Debt is expanding year over year at a rate 33% faster than compared to the previous period, but even so, CNBC's Jeff Cox here is exaggerating the significance:

"Whether it's corporate loans, all quality levels of bonds or simple consumer credit, the debt party is back on in the U.S., whether it's in the boardroom or the living room."

Debt expansion between April 2012 and April 2013 is up at a rate of only 3.5% compared to the period a year earlier when total credit market debt outstanding (TCMDO) expanded at a 2.6% rate.

TCMDO increased from $55.592 trillion in April 2012 to $57.563 trillion in April 2013, the latest date for which figures are available. In April 2011, TCMDO stood at $54.150 trillion.

As welcome as the present higher rate of debt expansion might be from a monetarist perspective, it's still a far cry from the historic post-war pattern which has witnessed TCMDO double every 6-11 years, with an average doubling time of 8 years.

A doubling time of 11 years implies an annual rate of debt expansion of about 6.5%, not quite double the actual rate in the last year. At the present rate, it will take TCMDO 20 years to double, an unprecedented slowdown in the pattern since the end of World War II.

The United States remains severely hampered when it comes to its traditional post-war debt-based economy.

Larry Kudlow Says He Believes In Abraham Lincoln's Idea Of Political Persuasion

You mean like this, Larry?

Snowden Shmowden and Up Yours America: FISA Court Re-Authorizes NSA Collection Of All US Phone Calls

The announcement was unusual, but buried in the Friday night data dump, which is actually pretty thin because of the shutdown.

TheHill.com reports, here:

The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court has granted the National Security Agency (NSA) permission to continue its collection of records on all U.S. phone calls.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence announced the court's approval in a statement late Friday. The court authorizes the program for only limited time periods and requires that the government submit new requests every several months for re-authorization.

The existence of the bulk phone data collection was one of the most controversial revelations from the leaks by Edward Snowden. 

Obama Purges Nuke Commanders Back To Back: "To Preserve A Tyranny Take Off Those Who Will Not Submit"

As reported here yesterday:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The deputy commander of U.S. nuclear forces, Vice Adm. Tim Giardina, was notified Wednesday that he has been relieved of duty amid a military investigation of allegations that he used counterfeit chips at an Iowa casino, the Navy said.

The move is exceedingly rare and perhaps unprecedented in the history of U.S. Strategic Command, which is responsible for all American nuclear warfighting forces, including nuclear-armed submarines, bombers and land-based missiles.

And here today:

WASHINGTON (AP) -- The Air Force is firing the two-star general in charge of all of its nuclear missiles in response to an investigation into alleged personal misbehavior, officials told The Associated Press on Friday.

Maj. Gen. Michael Carey is being removed from command of the 20th Air Force, which is responsible for three wings of intercontinental ballistic missiles - a total of 450 missiles at three bases across the country, the officials said.

The officials disclosed the matter to the AP on condition of anonymity because it had not been publicly announced.

h/t Michael Savage

JFK, The So-Called Anti-Communist: "I'd Rather My Children Be Red Than Dead"

Quoted here:

At one point, after leaving the room to take another urgent phone call, he came back shaking his head and said to me, “I’d rather my children be red than dead.” It wasn’t a political statement or an attempt at levity. These were the words of a father who adored his children and couldn’t bear them being hurt.

Rush Says There's Nothing New, You Know, Like In The Book Of Genesis

"What has been is what will be, and what has been done is what will be done; and there is nothing new under the sun."

-- Ecclesiastes 1:9

Methodists these days.

Ann Coulter Should Just Shut Up And Stand There (and dance maybe)

John McCain Proves Yet Again Why We Who Supported Him In 2008 Were On A Fool's Errand

"It was pretty obvious that we were not going to defund ObamaCare."

Here.

Republicans' commitment to compromise means they are always defeated before they even begin.

ObamaCare Website Roll Out Fails Horribly, Despite Spending $500 Million

The conservative estimate of the cost of the website to date is $500 million, but in its first week just 51,000 nationwide are claimed to have completed applications successfully.

DigitalTrends.com:

[F]or the sake of putting the monstrous amount of money into perspective, here are a few figures to chew on: Facebook, which received its first investment in June 2004, operated for a full six years before surpassing the $500 million mark in June 2010. Twitter, created in 2006, managed to get by with only $360.17 million in total funding until a $400 million boost in 2011. Instagram ginned up just $57.5 million in funding before Facebook bought it for (a staggering) $1 billion last year. And LinkedIn and Spotify, meanwhile, have only raised, respectively, $200 million and $288 million.

The UK Daily Mail:

Just 51,000 people completed Obamacare applications during the first week the Healthcare.gov website was online, according to two sources inside the Department of Health and Human Services who gave MailOnline an exclusive look at the earliest enrollment numbers.

John Boehner Tries To Do The Mussolini . . .

. . . but not very convincingly.

First Time Claims For Unemployment Surge Above 300,000 Breaking Long Streak

Not-seasonally-adjusted first time claims for unemployment surged back above 300,000 for the first time in over two months in today's report, here, to nearly 337,000. First time claims in this category had been averaging 269,000 weekly for ten weeks.

Separate stories indicate computer problems still plague California reporting after all, and that figures today included some catching-up because of that, on top of furloughs of non-federal workers affected by the shutdown. Michigan also reported truncated data due to conversion to a new computer system there, so it may be some time before a more accurate picture emerges. 

The Department of Labor did not include the link to prior data in this week's report.

Self-Described Moderate Rep. Justin Amash To Receive Primary Challenge From Conservative

Grand Rapids businessman Brian Ellis is set to challenge Rep. Justin Amash in the Republican primary as a conservative because of Amash's idiosyncratically liberal voting record, as reported here:

Kevin Heine, chief strategist for iCaucus Michigan, said he's interested in hearing more of Ellis' platform. iCaucus is a Wyoming-based nonprofit that is "strategically allied" with the Tea Party, Heine said. "We saw this primary challenge coming because Congressman Amash's voting record is conspicuously sloppy on both military and veteran issues, as well as social issues," he said. "Neither of those play well in the 3rd District."

In April Rep. Amash famously described himself as a moderate in an interview with George Will when Amash was still flirting with the idea of running for Carl Levin's Senate seat:

He adds, “Because I do not fit neatly in the Republican box, some establishment Republicans and pundits think I am extreme,” but “I am a moderate” because “the point of the Constitution is to moderate the government.”

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This may well be a battle of the businessmen, DeVos and company vs. Chamber of Commerce types, not of conservatism vs. libertarianism per se. Both are what we used to call "shop and till" conservatives, hands familiar with the feel of coins but which fumble with the pages of Plato, the Bible and Shakespeare. Ellis is an accounting major and finance MBA who at least has a history in the real world of making a go of it and raising a family. Amash is an economics major and lawyer who went straight into politics and controversy, heir to a fortune made by his father, not by himself. As a representative he has taken as many courageous stands as he has controversial ones, but remains a mixed bag of predictable aloofness which is always at risk in elections where emotion, not reason, often carries the day. In a region where people think of old trees as members of their family, the advantage goes to the candidate who can tap into that sap. Ellis' entry from the right is a good opener.  

Why Money Market Funds Are Especially At Risk If The Government Defaults

the one-month T-bill settled at .27 after spiking to .32

Money market funds invest in ultra short term securities like T-bills with average maturities under 60 days. These came under pressure yesterday, as reported here:

The one-month U.S. Treasury bill yield spiked to a multiyear high on Tuesday amid mounting concerns that the U.S. may not fulfill its payment obligations to short-term bond holders. The yield on the one-month T-bill traded as high as 0.322 percent, levels not seen since the fourth quarter of 2008, before settling at 0.273 percent, according to data from Thomson Reuters. The yield stood at 0.083 at the start of the month. ... 

"If the U.S. was to default, T-bills are under real threat of not being paid... and the risk premium in the bond yields is reflective of that fear," said Evan Lucas, market strategist at IG. A large portion of demand for T-bills comes from institutional investors, such as money market funds. "Ten-year bonds [by comparison] are relatively unaffected by the shutdown and debt ceiling as coupon payments will flow over the life of the instrument and one or two missed coupons can be recuperated," he added.

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To put the fear in perspective, a 2-year Treasury yields only 0.373% this morning, so the spike in the one-month to 0.322% shows how seriously the bond market can react to the prospect of debt default.

Thank Former Reagan Bureaucrat David Stockman For Gestapo Tactics Of Today's Park Service

The Christian Science Monitor reports, here:

Under a 1981 memo by then-budget Director David Stockman, which is still in effect, the federal government in shutdown mode is allowed to keep policing and protecting “federal lands, buildings, waterways, equipment and other property owned by the United States.” Other essential services cannot be funded, however, including most of the primary mission of the Park Service: providing guidance and interpretation for visitors.

In that way, visitors coming into the parks could be seen as a distraction for rangers providing basic protection, land policy experts suggest.

Old Yellen To Continue To Save The Banking System, And Screw The Rest Of Us.

Here comes Yellen. Woof.

The AP announces tonight that The New Bernank is Janet Yellen:

Under Bernanke's leadership, the Fed created extraordinary programs after the financial crisis erupted in 2008. It lent money to banks after credit markets froze, cut its key short-term interest rate to near zero and bought trillions in bonds to lower long-term borrowing rates.

Those programs are credited with helping save the U.S. banking system.

Yellen emerged as the leading candidate after Lawrence Summers, a former Treasury secretary whom Obama was thought to favor, withdrew from consideration last month in the face of rising opposition.

Yellen, 67, would likely continue steering Fed policy in the same direction as Bernanke.

Housing Analyst Predicts 20% Decline In House Prices In The Next Year

As reported by Bloomberg:

Talk to Mark Hanson about the housing market for five minutes and you may find yourself wanting to sell your home and park the cash in a suitcase. 

The Menlo Park, California, real estate analyst, blogger and founder of consultancy Hanson Advisers predicts a decline of 20 percent in housing prices in the next 12 months. Half the gains since the latest housing bottom in 2011 could be erased in the hot areas -- Florida, California, Nevada, Arizona and Georgia -- by rising interest rates and a thinner herd of speculative private-equity buyers, he says.

Read the rest here.

The Stock Market Laugh Of The Day Comes From Josh Brown, The Reformed Broker

TARP wasn't even a speed bump as the market crashed past 1099

Here:

The House got another crack at the TARP vote on October 3rd and this time it passed 236-171. 63 Dems and 91 Republicans had still voted no, but common sense triumphed. Bush signed it a few hours later and the markets eventually stabilized (although the bear market was far from over.)

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Excuse me, but the market went from 1099 on October 3, 2008 to 899 on October 10th, an 18% decline AFTER TARP was signed.

Then it went to 800 by Thanksgiving, on its way to below 700 by March 2009.

TARP didn't do a damn thing to stabilize the market.

Bloomberg's Wrong. Gold Is Actually Fairly Priced Today By 1980 Standards.

Bloomberg says gold is worth half what it was in 1980, here:

After taking inflation into account, gold is worth almost half of what it was in 1980. It reached a then-record $850 that year after U.S. political and financial turmoil in the late 1970s caused a surge in consumer prices. The metal is valued at $464 in 1980 dollars, according to a calculator on the website of the Fed Bank of Minneapolis.

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Assuming that's true (which it isn't because $850 was a bubble price), theoretically gold has another 45% up to go from today's $1,311 before reaching parity with the 1980 record value of $850. As it happens, that level would be $1,900 an ounce, which we already reached in September 2011.

Since the 1980 high was clearly a bubble price, we may infer that we've already repeated that bubble high in inflation-adjusted terms.

The question is, what's the fair price. The average price in 1980 was about $613, but the low was about  $482. That low today adjusted for inflation is something between $1,140 and $1,340.

Today's last spot price is $1,322.

I'd say gold is about where it should be today, adjusted for inflation relative to 1980.

But 1980 was the blowoff top of a horribly inflationary decade, and gold prices would subsequently sink farther to $300 an ounce. In a fiat currency system dedicated to a strong dollar policy, that's about as low as it gets in the late 20th century floating currency regime. So $300 an ounce in 1985 gets you to only $640 an ounce in 2012 adjusted for inflation, meaning gold needs to fall about 50% from where it is today, if . . . IF! we go back to a strong dollar policy.

Don't hold your breath. They don't believe in it.

Best Summary Yet Explains Federal Reserve's Real Objective Behind ZIRP: To Fix The Banks (Not You)

0.25% is the upper limit of the Fed Funds Target Range

And there's still a LONG way to go.

From Warren Sulmasy of Trinus Investment Partners last March:

[E]veryone ... should ask why the Federal Reserve Bank has overnight rates at 0.25%.

The financial calamity of 2008 relieved the global banking system of around one trillion U.S. dollars. Therefore, in order to recapitalize itself, the global banking system needs to make around 1 trillion US dollars.

The Federal Reserve has made a dramatic, concerted effort to help the global banking system recapitalize itself principally by keeping rates at near zero. The current estimates place the recapitalization in the $300 to $400 billion range. While that is a wonderful gain by any measure, $300 to $400 billion is woefully short of the $1 trillion hole, over $500 billion short.

  

The next $500 billion will be much more difficult for the banks to recapitalize due to the new rules and regulations. While the Dodd/Frank and the Volker rule were created with very good intentions, as so many laws and rules and regulations are, the real impact of these new rules and regulations will be on the bank's bottom lines.

Both Dodd/Frank and the Volker Rule severely limit the businesses banks can pursue. This will create a difficult environment for banks to earn profits and thus, will only increase the time it will take for the global banking system to completely recapitalize itself. Therefore, the Federal Reserve will be obligated to continue the current near zero interest rate policy for a longer period of time than people have projected in order to continue assisting the global banking system to get closer to recapitalizing itself.

Read the rest, here.

Be Careful, Default Is A Venerable Old Liberal Democrat Specialty, Exponentially Imitated By Liberal Republicans

The Atlantic stumbles into the truth, here:

In 1933, President Roosevelt devalued the dollar against gold. That violated the so-called gold clause, which required that all public debts be paid in gold coin of a fixed weight. (America’s overwhelmingly pro-Roosevelt Congress simply declared all gold clauses null and void.) The 1933 devaluation effectively amounted to paying off debts with devalued currency, which is widely viewed as a default. In fact, in her exhaustive research on sovereign debt, economist Carmen Reinhart clearly classifies the 1933 devaluation as a domestic default.

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Imagine waking up on a Monday morning only to find out you now needed almost 15 more greenbacks to get back the same ounce of gold which on Friday the government basically confiscated from you for 20 of them, and they wouldn't let you. That's the legacy of the Roosevelt Democrats.

30 million ounces of gold were handed over to the government in exchange for $600 million, and then the price of that gold was effectively raised to $1.05 billion.

The price of gold was kept close to $35 an ounce for 31 of the next 38 years, when at length Nixon closed the gold window in 1971 when gold averaged about $45 an ounce.

Since then dollar devaluation to date has come to an additional almost 97%.

Total dollar devaluation since 1933 as of this very hour now comes to 98.43%.