Corporate Cash Really Isn't

Mish has an interesting post which contrasts "corporate cash" with corporate debt. The upshot is the cash is concentrated in just four big financials (Goldman Sachs, JP Morgan Chase, Citigroup and Bank of America), and overall in about 50 companies. But corporates with cash are also in debt up to their eyeballs, so much so that the debt outweighs the cash by a TARP-size bailout amount:

As you can see, the total cash (in green) for the top 50 companies is $3.71 trillion, which sure sounds like a hell of a lot of cash, and it would be were it not for the debt (in red) totaling $4.45 trillion.

Read it all and see the graphic here.

Promises! Promises!: Hurt US Congress

Story here.

Hurt is running against Tom “If you don't tie our hands, we will keep stealing” Perriello in VA-5. 

Los Angeles Times Says 2010 Obama Message is "Darker" Than 2008's

Seriously. Here.

Obama Doesn't Know His (Foreclosure) Constituency

John Judis for The New Republic almost says he knew FDR and that FDR was a friend of his, but he does say that Obama is no FDR:

The left will support Obama and Democrats. It’s the working-class voters who reluctantly backed Obama in 2008, but have been turned off by the impression that the administration cares more about the banks than about them. ... [FDR] knew who his constituency was: His was the party of the common man. The Obama administration, meanwhile, worries about the people who listen to "Charlie Rose." And they and the Democrats are going to pay a steep price for their inattention to common concerns this November.


Read the full commentary here.

Some Banksters May Yet Go To Jail for Fraud

According to a story today from CNBC.com:

In a number of cases in the past year — sources put it between five and ten — auditors have found enough evidence of fraud by bankers that they referred the cases to criminal investigators within the Treasury Inspector General’s office for a more detailed analysis.

The rest is here.

On the Lesson of the Log Cabin Republicans

"If you let in a bunch of pricks, eventually you'll get screwed."

-- Imam John

14 More Reasons Not To Be a Republican

One More Reason I'll Never Be a Republican Again

Obama Increases National Debt 29% in 22 Months

Eyeball news has the story here.

National debt on Obama Immaculation Day: $10.626 trillion.

National debt yesterday: $13.665 trillion.

That's about $138 billion of new debt every month Obama's been in office.

GDP in 2009 was about $14.26 trillion.

A Voice Crying in the Wilderness Against Chinese Protectionism

James Kostohryz here doesn't say so explicitly, but he's just a little embarrassed by the fact that Americans are so stupid that he needs to write an article explaining how "China's [currency] policies are blatantly and massively protectionist," because it hoards US dollars to prevent equilibration just like 19th century powers hoarded gold against the rules.

Praying for Clean Spirits: That's Not Weird?

Easily as weird as another First Lady who believed in astrology.

"It means all the world to us to know that there are prayer circles out there and people who are keeping the spirits clean around us," First Lady Michelle Obama said on the "Tom Joyner Morning Show" today.

See that here.

Didn't anyone tell her there's an election coming up shortly and to put a sock in it, or at least some more shrimp, crab and lobster to keep that yap occupied until the danger passes? If she keeps this up that Marian Robinson voodoo stuff is going to start sounding plausible!

Serbians Try to Beat Up Marching Poofters in Belgrade

Thomson Reuters has the story here:

"This government [of President Boris Tadic of the Serbian Democratic Party in coalition with the Socialist Party] wants to protect a deviant, wicked and non-Christian minority against the good, law-abiding majority," said Milija, 28, a construction engineer who described himself as a religious nationalist.

Selling Gold? You'll Pay the IRS at 28%, not 15%

Paul Sullivan reminds us here of a little appreciated drawback to investing in gold:

And even if you invest in gold through an E.T.F. — as opposed to buying bullion — it has two significant costs. The first is that it does not pay a dividend, so there will not be a stream of income from it.

Selling it is easy, particularly with an E.T.F., but this leads to the second problem: gold is taxed at a much higher capital-gains rate. The Internal Revenue Service considers it a collectible and taxes gains at a rate of 28 percent, as opposed to the 15 percent capital gains tax for other securities. This means gold has to appreciate more than other securities to make up for a tax rate on gains that is almost double.

Natural Gas Reserves in US Increase 35%, The Most in Forty Years

And supplies in other countries, also from shale fields, are on the increase and are making energy, economic and political independence more certain for many more nations than ever before:

Last year, the “Potential Gas Committee,” a group of specialists linked to the Colorado School of Mines, reported the biggest increase in US natural-gas reserves in its 44-year history, from 1,532 trillion cubic feet (TCF) in 2006 to 2,074 TCF in 2008.

Since the US used approximately 23 TCF in 2008 at a unit cost in excess of $9.00, the vast new reserves point to prices closer to $6.00 going forward and decades of supply. Americans should get serious about committing to compressed natural gas powered automobiles instead of gimmicks like electric and hybrid electric cars in order to bridge the gap to a cleaner energy future.

Read the fascinating details from Peter Foster for The Financial Post here.

Obama: The God That Failed

The Associated Press is reporting today here that unemployment holds high and steady at 9.6%:

Unemployment has now topped 9.5 percent for 14 months in a row, the longest stretch since the Great Depression of the 1930s.

Flash back to the beginning of the year when we were in month six of the fourteen:

"And the notion that I would somehow resist doing something that cost half as much but would produce twice as many jobs -- why would I resist that? I wouldn't. I mean, that's my point, is that -- I am not an ideologue. I'm not."

-- BHO, Baltimore Q and A, January 29, 2010

What else but devotion to a failed ideology would work like such a charm and keep unemployment so high for so long?

Obama: 22 Months of Making This Time Different Than All the Rest

"We are the ones we've been waiting for. We are the change that we seek. We are the hope of those boys ... We are the hope of the father ... We are the hope of the woman ... We are the hope of the future; the answer to the cynics who tell us ... we cannot remake this world as it should be.

[W]hat began as a whisper has now swelled to a chorus ... that will heal this nation, repair this world, and make this time different than all the rest."

-- BHO, speech in Chicago, February 5, 2008

Obama The Utopian

"Our union can be perfected."

-- BHO, speech in Chicago, IL, November 4, 2008

Remember This Health Insurance Premiums Whopper?

"If you already have health insurance, the only thing that will change under my plan is that we will lower premiums."

-- Barack Hussein Obama, speech in Canton, Ohio, Monday October 27, 2008

A new survey of companies by Hewitt Associates here projects an 8.8% overall increase in premiums for 2011, 11% to 22% of which is directly caused by ObamaCare.

Obama: "We Are Going To Have Hand-to-Hand Combat"

The Los Angeles Times has the story here:

"They are fired up. They are mobilized. They see an opportunity to take back the House, maybe take back the Senate," he said. "If they're successful in doing that, they've already said they're going to go back to the same policies that were in place during the Bush administration. That means that we are going to have just hand-to-hand combat up here on Capitol Hill."

Suddenly it's OK to use this kind of speech.

Just seven months ago Democrats were accusing Republicans of trying to foment physical violence over the passage of Obamacare because they used this kind of vivid language of "fighting." Within a week the FBI had raided the Hutaree militia in southeast Michigan and other states, accusing them of planning an armed revolt against the government. Google "Republicans threaten violence over healthcare" and see how many million  results you get. It was an hysterical reaction designed to incite hysteria, and perhaps goad someone into making a mistake which would be very politically valuable to the Democrats.

This is the m/o of leftist extremism.

Nat Hentoff Worries We Are Ignoring Obama's Gutting of the Fourth Amendment

Nat Hentoff is justifiably worried that Tea Partiers have ignored the threat posed by Obama to the Fourth Amendment:

Insofar as the tea partiers will continue to be an influence on the Republicans – having already been instrumental this year in re-electing some – I have not, as I've reported, seen much concern among them about our vanishing privacy (though I admire the tea partiers declared devotion to the Constitution).

Perhaps when the drones start scanning you in your own home you'll wake up, but by then it may be too late.

Read Nat Hentoff at The Village Voice here, or The Richmond-Times Dispatch here, or at World Net Daily. His latest on the Fourth Amendment for the latter appeared here.