Inequality! Obama Delays ObamaCare Penalties For Big Business, But Not For You.

Time reports here:

The delay deprives the federal government of a year of penalties that would have been paid by companies that do not meet the law’s requirements, with as yet unknown budgetary effects. Republicans had warned of a downturn in hiring as a result of the mandate.

The so-called individual mandate is unaffected by the rule change. That provision requires the vast majority of Americans to purchase insurance or pay a penalty, with tax credits provided to those who can’t afford coverage.

Obama Exercises Blatant Arbitrary Rule, Naked Lawlessness

So said we, and so says Jeffrey Anderson for The Weekly Standard, here:

In a blatant exercise of arbitrary rule, the Obama administration announced this evening that it has unilaterally decided not to implement a key provision of Obamacare on schedule.  By law, Obamacare’s employer mandate — its requirement that businesses with 50 or more workers provide federally sanctioned health insurance — should go into effect next year.  By executive fiat, it won’t go into effect until 2015.

In addition to being a naked display of lawlessness, this action is an embarrassing setback to the Obama administration and — more importantly — to President Obama’s centerpiece legislation.  More than three years after Obamacare’s passage — a passage marked by such shady backroom deals as the Cornhusker Kickback, the Louisiana Purchase, and Gator Aid — the administration is now admitting it has failed to get Obamacare up and running on time.

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Anderson wants the Congress to delay the entire law, which certainly is the constitutional way of going about it, but the fact of the matter is the president is acting unconstitutionally and should be impeached, tried, convicted and removed from office for the two-bit petty tyrant that he is.

That's what Independence Day is all about.

Obama Suspends Part Of ObamaCare: Equality Under The Law? Try Arbitrary Rule.

We call it tyranny, and the tyrant must be removed from office.

Story here.

Lying Weasel DNI Clapper "Apologizes", But Not Really

What a contemptible, lying weasel coward. He sends a letter on June 21, and claims he was confused.

We don't pay Directors of National Intelligence to be confused. We pay them to be intelligent.

Story here and here.

Record Bond Outflows In June Nearly Double Old Record

The old record was set in 2008 with $42 billion extracted from bond funds and bond ETFs during the panic of October. Outflows in June 2013 now clock in just shy of $80 billion.

Story here:

The rush out of bonds could be about to get even worse, according to the research firm, which says that more bond investors could take flight after receiving their quarterly statements in the coming weeks, noticing that their "safe" bond funds are delivering losses instead of gains. ... TrimTabs call the liquidation "unprecedented" after indicating last Monday that bond outflows had already reached records with a figure of $47.2 billion. In just one extra week that number has risen to $79.8 billion which it says is reversing 73 percent of the $109.6 billion inflows seen earlier this year.

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It was clear on June 8 here that many bond investors were already then a month too late getting out.

Where GDP Goes To Die

Edward Snowden Visited Here Yesterday

Yeah, we had Kentucky Fried Chicken and watermelon, but then he had to go.

States Still Owe US Treasury $30 Billion For Jobless Benefits Borrowing

The story was reported here in May:

"For decades, states have been offering benefit checks to the unemployed for 26 weeks. During recessions, Congress typically steps in and offers extended benefits for up to 99 weeks. States are supposed to build up their unemployment accounts during good times by taxing employers, based on wages. But their tax rates vary. Prior to the recession, most states lowered taxes on employers. Between 1995 and 2005, 31 states reduced unemployment insurance taxes by at least 20 percent, according to the Tax Foundation. That brought contributions down to 0.65 percent of total wages from 2000 to 2009 — a record low, according to NELP [National Employment Law Project]. ...

"Thanks to the 2009 federal stimulus law, states were able to borrow money interest-free to make up their gaps. But now Washington wants its money back. States now owe the Treasury $29.8 billion. That amount has actually dropped from $37.3 billion back in November 2011. ... 

"Employers pay unemployment insurance taxes based on wages — but not all wages. The federal government requires states to tax only the first $7,000 in wages, a standard that hasn't increased in 30 years. Some states, such as Oregon and New Jersey, impose taxes on more than $30,000 worth of wages. But the national average is about $13,000."

Banks Are Not Foreclosing On Hundreds Of Thousands Of Mortgages Nationwide?

That's still the suspicion of Keith Jurow, here, who maintains that the numbers on Long Island alone continue to put 35% there seriously delinquent, and in Chicago, and probably other major metros, a similar percentage:

"What this means is that the Greater Chicago metro looks rather similar to the shocking situation in NYC and Long Island. Here is my simple conclusion: When the banks finally begin to take action on these delinquent owners in the NYC and Chicago metro areas, home prices will start to collapse.

"Is this situation also prevalent in other major metros? I'm working on that. Stay tuned."

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This state of affairs would seem to be the best explanation for continued Federal Reserve policies of near zero interest rates and quantitative easing, long after the panic of 2008. The housing crisis remains a banking crisis requiring extraordinary leniency toward banks to give them time to repair their balance sheets. The dead weight of non-performing mortgage loans remains the elephant in the American living room.

Richest Will Benefit From Immigration Bill While Poorest Will Suffer

So says CNBC's John Carney, here:

What the CBO does get right is that return on invested capital is likely to increase under the bill. What this means is that the richest members of the economy will benefit from the bill even as the poorest members suffer. It will act as a sort of anti-Rawlsian law, delivering the greatest benefit to the best-off in society. Inequality will grow under this law, rather than shrink.

Rep. Amash Changed His Position On DOMA In 2010: Another Failure Of Libertarian "Consistency"

A former supporter of The Defense of Marriage Act just like former Pres. Bill Clinton who signed the law, Rep. Amash changed his position on it in 2010 saying government has no business defining marriage, changing his position just as Bill Clinton has now changed his, regretting his former support of the law, as reported here:

Early on in his career in federal politics, Amash was a self-described strong supporter of DOMA, which, until Wednesday, barred federal recognition of lawful same-sex marriages. Sometime in 2010, his campaign website was tweaked to replace that assertion with a more libertarian stance.

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Rep. Amash should switch to the Democrat Party, and take Sen. Marco Rubio with him.

Sleeper Story Of The Day: Q1 GDP Revised DOWN To 1.8% From 2.4%

While everyone was fixated on Supreme Court rulings involving homosexuality, the third and final report of GDP for Q1 2013 got buried in the avalanche. A good place for it, too, seeing how bad it was.

The BEA reported here:

Real gross domestic product -- the output of goods and services produced by labor and property located in the United States -- increased at an annual rate of 1.8 percent in the first quarter of 2013 (that is, from the fourth quarter to the first quarter), according to the "third" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis.  In the fourth quarter, real GDP increased 0.4 percent.

The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "second" estimate issued last month.  In the second estimate, real GDP increased 2.4 percent.  With the third estimate for the first quarter, the increase in personal consumption expenditures (PCE) was less than previously estimated, and exports and imports are now estimated to have declined (for more information, see "Revisions" on page 3).

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Poor growth is entirely apropos to the situation. Preoccupied by our own narcissism, we aren't PRODUCING.

Gold Miners Starting To Look Attractive As Gold Tanks To $1,230

A relatively diversified precious metals industry fund like VGPMX is starting to look like an attractive investment. The fund NAV has now fallen to within 4% of its March 2009 low of $10.04, trading at $10.47 last night. As a stock fund, however, I would expect this fund to take a further beating in a real stock market correction, which we have not experienced in quite a long time. Overall we are today only 5% off the current highs by broad market measures. One should keep in mind that this fund had once fallen to nearly $5 back in 1998 just before the long gold bull began. So you could get sliced and diced by the falling knives to the tune of 50% in a coming correction if you invest in this fund at current prices. That said, revisiting the March 2009 low certainly would make this fund very tempting from the long term perspective, seeing that between March 2009 and the highs in 2011 the NAV increased over 180%. The fund has the potential to make you a lot of money (NAV+685% 1998-2007), or hand you your hat when it's done with you (NAV-75% 2007-2009). The NAV is down 63% since April 2011.

Vanguard Total Bond Index NAV Down 5.77% In 11 Months

Vanguard shows one year performance, May on May, at 0.75%.

The Senate Immigration Bill Has One Basic Problem: It's Too Christian

The Senate immigration bill has one basic problem: Its desire to make illegal aliens legal with the sweep of a hand.

Forgiveness is fine in church, but America isn't a theocracy, and Jesus Christ isn't its Lord, unless you are willing to make thought-adultery and a host of other sins crimes, and turning the other cheek and loving your enemies civic duties. Hate crime legislation is already one sign we've gone over the deep end into this sort of thinking. We're the Christian antitype of Sufi Iran.

Amnesty makes a mockery of the rest of immigration law and a mockery of those who have obeyed it both in the past and now, just as it did in 1986. It is cheap grace personified, the epitome of Protestantism gone off the rails.

Unceremoniously Shown The Door, Maybe Bernanke Is Doing This On Purpose

The 10 Year Treasury falls off the cliff on Jun. 19

It is well known from almost every speech given by Ben Bernanke that he views Fed policy much more modestly than most of us do. A recent example was his address to the Economic Club of New York in November (pdf here) in which he said once again that Fed policy is only one part of what must be gotten right to ensure economic recovery. Both the Congress and the Executive must cooperate in his view to produce tax and spending policies which will not jeopardize the full faith and credit of the United States nor continue to grow the long term debt relative to GDP.

Having been unceremoniously shown the door by an ungrateful, ignorant and politically bellicose president on Monday, June 17th, it should come as no surprise that Bernanke reacted the way he did on Wednesday, June 19th, doubling down on the "taper talk" of May 22nd. No one in Congress nor The White House has taken Bernanke seriously about the urgency of the long term fiscal situation since the onset of the crisis, and if they are not going to take the bull by the horns despite his patience, Bernanke can well be understood to have given up, taken his accommodative ball and gone home.

I don't blame him one bit.

What's Worse? Frequent Financial Panics Over Quickly, Or A Long Great Depression?

Unfortunately, you won't read about the Federal Reserve's role in the run-up to the Great Depression from Roger Lowenstein's discussion of the creation of the Fed beginning on this date 100 years ago, here in The New York Times:

One of the plan’s most strident critics, Representative Charles A. Lindbergh Sr., the father of the aviator, predicted that the Federal Reserve Act would establish “the most gigantic trust on earth,” and that the Fed would become an economic dictator or, as he put it, an “invisible government by the money power.”

Savers know the dictator. Executive Order 6102 in April 1933 made them hand over their gold at $20.67 for an ounce only to learn in May the price per ounce was "raised" to $35. Savers now experience the same trick in a different form because they earn nothing for a lifetime of trouble due to ZIRP. It is not a coincidence that Lowenstein just leaves out the fact that one of the world's most gigantic busts occurred not 17 years after the creation of the Federal Reserve, just as it is not a coincidence that the current bust occurred not 10 years after Gramm-Leach-Bliley undid the banking reform of Glass-Steagall which had to be passed to fix what was wrong with Federal Reserve banking.

Particularly insidious is Lowenstein's use of the terms Fed "framers" and Fed "originalism" in discussing the Federal Reserve's origins, which had nothing to do with the framers of the constitution or the originalism which seeks to recover their lost ideas, ideas which were already long lost in 1913. Apparently those ideas still need to be killed.

Methinks the liberal doth protest too much of "ghosts".

David Gregory, NBC's Fascist Tool

During his interview with NBC's Gregory, Greenwald declined to discuss where Snowden was headed. That refusal seemed to prompt Gregory to ask: "To the extent that you have aided and abetted Snowden, even in his current movements, why shouldn't you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?"

Story here.

The World Champions Of Spying Accuse Snowden Of Espionage

Glenn Greenwald for the UK Guardian issues a blistering critique of the worst president in US history by almost every measure for his completely hypocritical violation of the 4th Amendment, here:

The irony is obvious: the same people who are building a ubiquitous surveillance system to spy on everyone in the world, including their own citizens, are now accusing the person who exposed it of "espionage". It seems clear that the people who are actually bringing "injury to the United States" are those who are waging war on basic tenets of transparency and secretly constructing a mass and often illegal and unconstitutional surveillance apparatus aimed at American citizens - and those who are lying to the American people and its Congress about what they're doing - rather than those who are devoted to informing the American people that this is being done.

When Republicans find themselves on the same side as former Speaker of the House Democrat Nancy Pelosi who says Edward Snowden is a criminal, it's a dark day for the republic indeed:

 "He did violate the law in terms of releasing those documents," Pelosi said, drawing a thunder of boos from the crowd at the progressive conference. "I understand, I understand, but he did violate the law."

Oh yeah, one more thing. Don't forget that the Italians LOVED Mussolini too, until they didn't.

Michael Hastings Needed More Than A Lawyer To Protect Him From FBI

The story and video are here.