It Takes An Irritable Mental Gesture To Know One

Occupy Wall Street Doesn't Know How Good They've Got It

Occupy Wall Street doesn't know how good they've got it.

A new study using data up through 2005 puts the world's top 1 percent of earners starting at $34,000 of after tax income per person per year.

The world's median income is just $1,225 per person per year.

Half of the world's one percenters live in the USA, and "even the poorest 5 percent of Americans are better off financially than two thirds of the entire world."

Story here.

Does This Parachute Make My Butt Look Big?

In NDAA America Embraced Authoritarianism With Little More Than A Pause Between Drinks

So says liberal Jonathan Turley.

Read the whole stinging rebuke of Obama and both political parties, and of the American people, here.

You have the evil government you deserve.

"Your Excellency"? "Your Immensity" maybe, but not "Your Excellency".

Story and video here.

Thank Republican Justin Amash for Giving Planned Parenthood $487 Million to Abort 329K

The latest Planned Parenthood annual report is the subject of a news story here:

According to its latest annual report, the Planned Parenthood Federation of America (PPFA) received $487.4 million in tax dollars over a twelve-month period and performed 329,455 abortions.

Of course, these figures are for the fiscal year ended in 2010, but since funding and abortions continue to increase every year Amash's vote to continue funding of Planned Parenthood makes him a conservative only in the sense that he's maintained continuity with the past.

Consistent, unprincipled Libertarianism.

Sarah Palin's Republican Hotel Reserves a Room For Insane Libertarians

Yeah, and it's right across the hall from one marked "GOProud" and another marked "Log Cabin Republicans."

The Libertarians' room is easy to spot. Its sign says "Insane Asylum."

Video here:

"the GOP had better not marginalize Ron Paul and his supporters after tonight"

The Pig and The Communist

Story here and here.

"You are a pig" . . . "And you are a communist"

"Vote For Me and I'll Set You Free" Went The Song on Don and Roma This Morning

On wlsam.com.

Nothing epitomizes better what's wrong with America than that: "Vote for me and I'll set you free!"

People want a savior it seems, especially of the presidential sort. If Christianity has had just one baneful influence on the American psyche, this obsession with presidential politics is it. No wonder the executive is imperial. That's just the way the slaves of God want it.

A more original, more free and noble America would save itself. It would demand broader, deeper and better representation, and would not wring its hands over our corrupt plutocracy.

Instead it would wring their necks.

The truth dies another death as the mobs cry "Give us Barrabbas!" 

'Judicial Supremacy is Eroding America's Democratic Values'

So says Jeff Jacoby for Boston.com, quite correctly even if he does agree with Newt Gingrich in saying so, here: "Judicial supremacy is eroding America’s democratic values. The balance of federal power needs to be restored." In noting that both the executive and legislative branches are servile to the court, however, the question is, Which branch needs to restore the balance? Well, surely not the executive. The branch which needs to re-assert itself is the legislative, and I can think of no better way, than for Americans to have the number of representatives intended by the constitution. Not 435, but 10,267 as of the last census.

Total Public Debt as of 12/29/11 is $15.1 trillion

(source)

Quality Collateral is King

From another in a series of incisive meditations upon the continuing global banking crisis from Jeffrey Snider, here:

The collateral problem is not going away no matter how authorities on either side of the Atlantic try to dress up fake guarantees. The system of wholesale lending through repo is terminally broken, since both quality reputations as well as quality collateral are in short supply. In other words, the inside participants of the global banking scheme know all too well that the system pyramided far too much paper on top of far too little actual cash flow. Liquidity is not the real problem since all the worthless collateral still stuck inside the system is likely worthless because the mathematical predictions of 2005 and 2009 proved utterly inept. Those accounting notions of equity during the credit bubbles were just as phantom as the valuations of the assets that were created from it. This coming year will be just a dance or game of musical chairs to determine who gets stuck with the bill. ...

As the progression of crisis has moved from paper asset to paper asset, from banks to countries and back to banks again, the trajectory is entirely clear. Some form of actual, exogenous restraint on credit creation will be imposed, either by someone currently in power that finally "gets it", or by a free market shaking free from the shackles of the over-enlarged financial economy and its hell-bent attempts toward unlimited money. Collateral is king in this banking world, and the rapid decay of "quality" is a testament to the intentional imbalance of finance over economy, to the hubris of modern economics and monetary "science". Unfortunately for the dreamers of true money elasticity, and too late for the rest of us, this was never supposed to happen.

Radiation 3km WSW From Fukushima the Day After Christmas 65.10 Microsieverts Per Hour

That's still over 90 times what an American can expect on average from all sources, including natural environmental, medical and transportation-related exposures. Just from normal environmental conditions the level is nearly 600 times normal for Japan at the location measured.

(source)

Standard and Poor's 500 Index Treads Water For The Last Year

So all gains were dividend related, which ended the year at 2 percent, a hell of a lot better than cash.

Real House Prices Are Back To Q1 1999 Levels

So calculatedriskblog here: "In real terms, all appreciation in the '00s is gone." 

Obama is the King of Unemployment

Initial claims for unemployment have been at or above 400,000 for 90 percent of Obama's presidency. By contrast, George W. Bush spent 25 percent of his time in office with unemployment that bad. Change . . . you asked for it.

Ronald Reagan Was No Conservative: He's Responsible For The Healthcare Mess

Treatment regardless of ability to pay is all his fault, along with a number of other things:

The Emergency Medical Treatment and Active Labor Act (EMTALA) is a U.S. Act of Congress passed in 1986 as part of the Consolidated Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act (COBRA). It requires hospitals to provide care to anyone needing emergency healthcare treatment regardless of citizenship, legal status or ability to pay. There are no reimbursement provisions. Participating hospitals may only transfer or discharge patients needing emergency treatment under their own informed consent, after stabilization, or when their condition requires transfer to a hospital better equipped to administer the treatment.

EMTALA applies to "participating hospitals." The statute defines "participating hospitals" as those that accept payment from the Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) under the Medicare program. However, in practical terms, EMTALA applies to virtually all hospitals in the U.S., with the exception of the Shriners Hospitals for Children, Indian Health Service hospitals, and Veterans Affairs hospitals. The combined payments of Medicare and Medicaid, $602 billion in 2004, or roughly 44% of all medical expenditures in the U.S., make not participating in EMTALA impractical for nearly all hospitals. EMTALA's provisions apply to all patients, and not just to Medicare patients.

Romney, Gingrich and Obama: Three Do-Gooders Shoving "Morality" Down Your Throat

Here's Romney recently: "[I]t is fundamentally a conservative principle to insist that people take personal responsibility as opposed to turning to government for giving out free care.”

Here's Gingrich in 2006: The Romney plan attempts to bring everyone into the system. The individual mandate requires those who earn enough to afford insurance to purchase coverage . . .. We agree strongly with this principle . . ..

Yankees everywhere agree: "Doin' right ain't got no end."

Big Brother Bait

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Pablo Triana Says "Value at Risk" Model Permitted Leverage Up to 1000 to 1

Pablo Triana dates the adoption of the Value at Risk model, internationally, right at the onset of American irrational exuberance after 1994:

Before VaR, which was enshrined into law by international banking regulators around 1996 and finally adopted by the SEC in 2004, the capital charges on toxic trading stuff would have been way less economical for traders, effectively making it unaffordable for banks to bet the entire farm on such dangerous punts. Without VaR, monstrous leverage on balance sheets inundated with high-stakes punts would not have been possible. Many job losses would have been avoided.

Actual capital ratios were so infinitesimal because the model allows debt to take the place of equity.

More here.