Rush Limbaugh's Junk Math Unnecessarily Discourages Republicans

Rush Limbaugh keeps repeating that 4 million Republicans stayed home and didn't vote for Romney, for example, here, on March 12:

"[H]ad four million Republicans shown up to vote, who did vote in '08 but didn't vote in 2012, we wouldn't be talking about an Obama victory."

This just isn't so. I understand Rush wants to blame the base and not the candidate, but this '4 million' assertion simply has no basis in fact.

McCain received 59.95 million votes in 2008, of 131.5 million cast: 45.6%.

Romney received 60.93 million votes in 2012, of 129.2 million cast: 47.2%.

That's almost a million more votes for Romney than for McCain, and as I've said before, in the swing states Romney lost the entire election by just 770,000 votes. McCain lost to Obama in roughly those same states by 1.4 million votes.

You can argue that lower turnout overall by 2.3 million was all Republican lower turnout, but I don't know how you'd know that. Besides, it's a fact Obama received 3.59 million fewer votes in 2012 than he did in 2008. A good share of them must be represented in that 2.3 million total. Splitting the difference, which is probably more unfair to Romney than to Obama, you are left with 1.15 million Republicans staying home minus the 980,000 by which Romney bested McCain.

The bottom line is you're left with 170,000 Republicans who may have stayed home. Peanuts compared to what was needed to prevail in the swing states.

If Rush wants to argue those 4 million he thinks stayed home were somehow replaced by some new Republican voters no one's ever heard of, he's welcome to do so, but as far as I can make out Republican registrations have remained constant longer than just the last two cycles, while Democrat registrations have declined as a percentage of the eligible voter base as more and more people, according to the Bipartisan Policy Center (BPPC), here, bail out of partisan affiliation altogether:

These revised figures further support the trend in the states which have partisan registration toward increased registration for neither party, rising for the 13th consecutive presidential election year. Based on raw and unadjusted registration figures, Democratic registration is 36 percent of eligible voters, down by 2.2 percentage points from 2008; Republican registration is 27.2, unchanged from 2008 and on the same level as it has been for several election cycles. Republican registration has remained steady due to an increase in Southern and Mountain states registration that have compensated for losses in the West and New England. Registration for neither major party is at 23.8 percent of eligible voters, up from 22.0 in 2008 and now nipping at the heels of the two major parties.

In 2012 BPPC estimated eligible voters at roughly 219 million, meaning Republican registrations were nearly 60 million, Democrat nearly 79 million. But as a share of the eligible voters, Democrats continue to lose affiliation while Republicans tread water, which is why Democrats have to work like dogs, lie, slander and spend gobs of cash to win in still pretty conservative places like Ohio, where the margin was 167,000 votes out of 5.6 million cast.

Rush Limbaugh should stop dumping on his peeps. They haven't let anybody down, but their leaders sure have.

Uninsured Deposits Make America A Much Bigger Casino Than Cyprus

According to the FDIC, here, at the end of 2012 there were $7.406 trillion in insured deposits, but that report covers commercial banks only.

According to the FDIC, here, at the end of 2012 there were $9.447 trillion in domestic deposits in the entire system of 7,083 institutions.

Does that mean there are $2.041 trillion in uninsured deposits? It's not that simple, and the number is actually much bigger than that.

Separately in its statistics on depository institutions the FDIC states that at the end of 2012 there were $8.6 trillion held in "domestic offices" of 6,096 commercial banks, of which 62.6% were insured, and $.8 trillion held in "domestic offices" of 987 savings institutions, of which 86.3% were insured. That's a total of 7,083 institutions with $6.1 trillion insured, and $3.3 trillion uninsured. Just over a year ago Felix Salmon put the figure then at about $3.1 trillion, properly not counting those deposits held outside of domestic offices in running the numbers, so the current $3.3 trillion today looks about right for one year later.

With $10.8 trillion in total deposits, however, both inside and outside of "domestic offices", does it not shock you that just $6.1 trillion is insured? That's insurance for just 56% of total deposits, and no insurance for 44%. It's a little misleading of the FDIC to say 64.27 is the percentage insured. Yeah, the percentage of "deposits held in domestic offices", not the percentage of "total deposits". The relevant line is indented in the illustration attached for a reason. It's a subset of what immediately comes before, not of "total deposits".

(Incidentally, at the end of 2003 there were 9,181 total institutions in the FDIC system. Today there are just 7,083, a decline of 23% in almost 10 years, most of it due to consolidation and just 22% due to bank failures since 2003.)

We're told that in the EMU bank heist in Cyprus, 38 billion euros of 68 billion euros in total deposits is held in accounts over 100,000 euros. But that's not saying 38 billion euros is uninsured. Anything over 100,000 euros is not insured, and that's what's getting plundered. But how much is that?

We're told the idea is to raise about 5 billion euros by expropriating depositors' funds, and that now all of it is going to come from the big depositors, not from the people with up to 100,000 euros. Reports say that the hit to these high rollers is going to be in the neighborhood of 30%. Simple math tells you therefore that 5 billion euros raised at a 30% rate must mean uninsured deposits in Cyprus run in the neighborhood of 17 billion euros, or just 25% of total deposits.

In the US it's 44% of total deposits, so whose banking system is the bigger casino, huh Mr. Moscovici?

With banks closed for the last week, the Central Bank of Cyprus imposed a 100-euro daily limit on withdrawals from cash machines at the two biggest banks to avert a run.

French Finance Minister Pierre Moscovici rejected charges that the EU had brought Cypriots to their knees, saying it was the island's offshore business model that had failed.

"To all those who say that we are strangling an entire people ... Cyprus is a casino economy that was on the brink of bankruptcy," he said.

EMU Sees Something Big On Cyprus And Decides To Tax It

Reuters, here:

Cyprus clinched a last-ditch deal with international lenders to shut down its second-largest bank and inflict heavy losses on uninsured depositors, including wealthy Russians, in return for a 10 billion euro ($13 billion) bailout. ...

Deposits above 100,000 euros in both banks, which are not guaranteed under EU law, will be frozen and used to resolve Laiki's debts and recapitalize Bank of Cyprus through a deposit/equity conversion. ...

The tottering banks held 68 billion euros in deposits, including 38 billion in accounts of more than 100,000 euros - enormous sums for an island of 1.1 million people that could never sustain such a big financial system on its own.

Velocity of Money Soared Over 35% During the Housing Bubble

Velocity of M1 money soared to unprecedented heights during the housing bubble, dating from the housing provisions in the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997. Money changed hands at a rate over 35% faster at the peak reached in October 2007 at 10.367 than at the previous high levels around 7.4.

The burst bubble has seen velocity of M1 plunge to 6.5 today after all those years of new highs from 7.5. Velocity in the 6s was common for twenty years between the 1970s and 1990s, and looks to be again.

This is what happens when you convince Americans to unleash all the stored up capital in their homes, and squander it. Thanks Bill Clinton. Thanks Newt Gingrich.

Your Real 5-yr. Rate Of Return In Stocks Has Been Poor, Actually

The real rate of return in the S&P500 for the five years from February 2008 to February 2013 hasn't been all that good, actually. Just 2.61% per year. And long term investors have had to stomach all the volatility just to get that measly return. Meanwhile investors in the Vanguard Total Bond Market Index Fund have received returns in excess of 5%, while being able to sleep at night.

Has it all been worth it, Ben?

Calculator available here.

Case Shiller Home Price Index In February 2013 Dollars Flirts With Historic Highs

The Case Shiller Home Price Index re-calculated for inflation in February 2013 dollars at 136.11 is today 11.6% elevated from the historic mean of 121.96 going back to . . . the 19th Century.

The 122 level on the index is a veritable polestar of housing prices for forty years from the 1950s until the recent housing bubble, with 140 representing the rare high water mark of prices in the 1980s . . . and the 1890s.

From a long term perspective prices today are elevated and represent a good time to sell. Prices are only low if you think the housing bubble is repeatable.

And it must not be forgotten that the data from the housing bubble itself contributes to elevated mean and median prices on the index, biasing them upward.

First Time Claims For Unemployment NSA Below 300K For Only 2nd Time For Obama

The report is here. The report is good news.

Libertarian Sen. Rand Paul Embraces Form Of Amnesty For Illegal Aliens

Hardly anything good ever comes from libertarianism, including this "not-amnesty-amnesty" from so-called conservative Republican Sen. Rand Paul:

In year two of [Sen. Paul's] plan, illegal immigrants would begin to be issued temporary work visas, and would have to wait in line behind those already in the system before moving forward toward citizenship. A bipartisan panel would determine the number of visas per year. High-tech visas would be expanded and a special visa for entrepreneurs would be issued.

Different from other approaches, Paul would not attempt to crack down on employers by expanding working verification systems, something he says is tantamount to "forcing businesses to become policemen."

"My plan will not grant amnesty or move anyone to the front of the line," Paul says. "But what we have now is de facto amnesty."

All this will do is encourage a flood of more illegals looking for temporary work visas. And if it were really true that we have de facto amnesty now, one wonders then what is the urgency of the issue. Issuing a temporary work permit is the real de facto amnesty.

Sen. Paul must think that telling bald-faced lies works for Obama, so he might as well try it.

Chinese Abortion Ratio To US Perfectly Mirrors Exchange Rate

336 million dead from abortion in China v. 55 million in US over 40 years. That's a ratio of 6.11:1.

The yuan currently trades at 6.22:$1.

Rush Limbaugh Rightly Attacks Libertarian Idea Of Freedom

Today, here:

"[F]reedom" is taking on a whole new meaning, incorrectly and dangerously so. I might say -- and I know I'm gonna make some people mad by saying this. But this very broad definition of freedom that is used to, for example, justify gay marriage, is being advanced not just by radical leftists but by libertarians as well, and even some conservatives. ...

Freedom without virtue isn't freedom.  It will eventually destroy a society.  Freedom without morality. Freedom without proper constraints and restraints. Freedom without an accompanying sense of responsibility. Freedom without a spine or a spinal cord of morality.  We're not talking freedom.  But in today's modern vernacular, we are.  To young people today, that's exactly what freedom is. 

Freedom is hedonism.  Freedom is your sybaritic pursuits.  You do whatever you want, and as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else, there's nothing wrong with it.  And it's the "as long as it doesn't hurt anybody else," that's where the trouble begins.  Because is there great harm to a society when an age-old, I mean, as old as humanity itself custom is corrupted?  Any custom, any tradition that has demonstrated its usefulness, its primacy over hundreds of thousands of years, is a freedom that would corrupt that, actually good?  Is it virtuous?  It isn't. 

Libertarian Sen. Rand Paul Would Throw Everyone "Married Filing Jointly" Under The Bus

Pro-family forces fought long and hard to secure tax preferences for couples trying to raise children for the future in the aftermath of World War II, and libertarian Sen. Rand Paul would give it all away to appease the gay mafia. This is what passes for conservative Republicanism these days.

If you don't know by now that libertarianism is a threat to traditional Americans, you haven't been paying attention.

Story here.

Libertarian Charles Murray Comes Out For Same Sex Marriage

At CPAC, where else?

Story here.

Liberty, Illustrated

This is liberty.

This is not.

Diabolus Duplicetur

Europe: Where Your Money Has Nothing To Fear But The Bank Itself

US Stock Futures Are Down Sharply On Euro Confiscation Gambit

Haven't seen numbers like this in a while.

The market is like the devil: one little word can fell him.

US Banks Still Keep Literally Trillion$ In Liabilities Hidden Off Balance Sheet

So said Floyd Norris just last week, for The New York Times, here.

And you thought they laundered money only in Cyprus.

The New Motto Of The European Central Bank

"The European Central Bank, where your money has nothing to fear but the bank itself."

Cyprus Bailout Deal Amounts To Robbery Of Ordinary Citizens' Accounts

The Chair of the European Parliament's Economic and Monetary Affairs Committee, Britain's Liberal Democrat Member of the European Parliament, Sharon Bowles, comments here on today's news that Cyprus residents, regardless of nationality, must agree to confiscation of personal savings (at either 9.9% or 6.75% of the total) in exchange for an EU bailout, or face a messy national bankruptcy:

"This grabbing of ordinary depositors' money is billed as a tax, so as to try and circumvent the EU's deposit guarantee laws. It robs smaller investors of the protection they were promised. If this were a bank, they would be in court for mis-selling.

"The lesson here is that the EU's Single Market rules will be flouted when the Eurozone, ECB and IMF says so. At a time when many are greatly concerned that the creation of the 'Banking Union', giving the ECB unprecedented power, will demote the priorities of the Single Market, we see it here in action.

"Deposit guarantees were brought in at a maximum harmonising level so that citizens across the EU would not have incentive to move funds from country to country. That has been blown apart.

"What else will be blown apart when convenient? All the capital requirements we have slaved over, what about the new recovery and resolution rules? What does this mean for confidence in cross-border banking and resolution and preventing the fragmentation of the banking sector?

"When the dust has settled on this deal, which I hope it never does, we will see that the Single Market has been sold down the river for a shoddy price. All the worse as the consequences for Cyprus of the Greek bond haircuts were obvious."

The UK Guardian has a full report here, Reuters here. The cost of the 10 billion Euro bailout is to be offset by the confiscations, totaling as much as 6 billion Euros, perhaps half of which will come from rich Russians living on Cyprus. ATMs on the Mediterranean island nation ran dry before noon yesterday.

Of such small sparks are conflagrations made.

TNR Blames And Credits JK Galbraith For Contemporary Financier Fascism

It would be nice if liberals could make up their mind.

The New Republic's Tim Noah here traces TARP, Dodd-Frank and ultimately the general state of regulatory capture (Stigler) of the government by the banks to John Kenneth Galbraith's vision in his 1967 The New Industrial State:

Galbraith (who died in 2006) argued that big U.S. corporations had become immune to competition. Any effort to break them up into smaller companies would neither succeed nor—given the complex challenges of a modern economy—be especially desirable. Better to keep them in harness through a partnership with government. “Planning,” Galbraith wrote (in a sentence you could probably get arrested for writing today), “must replace the market.”

Galbraith was writing about manufacturing giants like General Motors and U.S. Steel. These seemed indestructible at the time, but of course they would soon prove all too susceptible to competition from abroad. Still, Galbraith’s vision of the regulatory state comes pretty close to describing today’s relationship between the federal government and a different oligopoly: the Big Six megabanks. ...

When the 2008 financial crisis hit, the feds went into Galbraithian planning mode. They bailed out the banks through the Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP), arranged mergers, and, through the Dodd-Frank bill, required big banks to prepare “living wills” showing how they would dismantle themselves in orderly fashion should the need arise. ...

Conservatives were wrong to oppose the government’s bank rescue . . ..

For conservatives who feel queasy advocating the breakup of private enterprises, MIT’s Johnson offers this consolation: Remember George Stigler. Stigler, a conservative economist who died in 1991, won the Nobel for a theory that basically said Galbraith’s partnership approach didn’t work because of “regulatory capture,” i.e., the various ways corporations tame their minders—for example, by maintaining a revolving door between industry and government. Rather than try to control powerful corporations, Stigler thought government should use antitrust law to break them up and let competition rein them in.

What's wrong with this analysis is that banking is not a private enterprise and hasn't been since 1913. The then new partnership of banking with government in 1913 failed in less than 20 years, requiring Glass-Steagall in 1933, which was reactionary liberalism at work. And what we have just witnessed is an instant replay of that debacle, only in faster motion. The Gramm-Leach-Bliley Act of 1999 overturning Glass-Steagall took only 9 years to blow up. But unlike Glass-Steagall, the grotesque of interventions in the wake of this latest panic has done nothing to demarcate clearly the public vs. the private in banking, and consequently keeps the public, and the country, at risk while insuring advantage to those closest to the printing presses at the Treasury. Money goes to money, as they say out in the sticks.

It's not much solace that liberalism's fingerprints have been and continue to be all over the inception and development of financier fascism in the United States. There don't seem to be any conservatives smart enough to understand the advantage it presents to them, and to the country. Or maybe it's just that they've been captured, too.