ObamaMan Spooks "Bill And Hillary Clinton" On SNL Halloween Party In 2007

Video here.

Only we can mock ourselves.

The Immorality Of Keynesianism Explained In A Thought Experiment

From the conclusion of Jeffrey Dorfman for Forbes, here:

"Actions by private individuals that are not beneficial to society do not suddenly become so when the government does them. Ask yourself if government policies [of printing money and income redistribution from the rich to the poor through the tax code] would be legal and have a positive effect if a private citizen did the same thing [by counterfeiting money and robbing banks]. If the answer is no, using government to accomplish the same aims will not change the policy into a good one."

Bernanke's Crime Against The Elderly: He's Cut Their Income 88%

From Kermit Zieg for The Washington Post, here:

The major architect of the recovery of the past five years has been the Federal Reserve System. ... Everyone seemed to win, but that’s not so. Retirees were badly hurt — devastated, in fact. They have not benefited from lower mortgage rates because their homes generally are paid off. They are not in the stock market because of the volatility. They primarily live on savings and the interest earned on these savings. Ten years ago, a retiree could have earned $40,000 annually on $1 million of savings in a bank. Today, that same $1 million would be lucky to earn $5,000 yearly. If a retirement lifestyle was built on expectations of $40,000 in annual interest income and the reality today is $5,000, the improving economy has no relevance. Economic survival in a low-interest-rate market is the focus for retirees.

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It is always the defenseless who are the first to go under the bus in this country: unborn children, the unemployed and the old.

Who's The Conservative? Rush Limbaugh Or The Prophet Jeremiah?

Now, Steve Jobs' version of what [Ashton] Kutcher said in the last sound bite was this: "Your time is limited, so don't waste it living someone else's life. Don't be trapped by dogma -- which is living with the results of other people's thinking. Don't let the noise of others' opinions drown out your own inner voice." Don't let other people talk you out of believing in yourself.  Don't let other people talk you out of believing that what you want to do is valid and good and worthwhile. Don't let other people's structure and formula make you feel second-rate or inconsequential. "And most important, have the courage to follow your heart and intuition. They somehow already know what you truly want to become. Everything else is secondary."

He said just have the courage, believe and think for yourself, live for yourself. And he's also saying something there that is really true. Your heart will never lie to you.  Your head will all day long, but your heart won't. Steve Jobs said that when you grow up, you tend to get told the world's the way it is and that your life has to be lived inside that world. Try not to get into too much trouble. Get an education, get a job, make some money, have a family, but don't make waves. And Jobs said, to hell with that. Make waves. Everybody else made waves. Change the world.

-- Rush Limbaugh, yesterday here

The heart is deceitful above all things, and desperately corrupt; who can understand it? "I the LORD search the mind and try the heart, to give to every man according to his ways, according to the fruit of his doings."

-- Jeremiah 17:9f.

Jobless Claims Average Plummets Below 300k For First Time Under Obama

First time claims for unemployment, not-seasonally-adjusted, have now averaged just under 298,000 per week in the last four weeks, the first time that's happened under Obama. Today's weekly report of 280,502 is the third in a row below 300,000 and only the fifth time in 4.5 years under Obama that weekly first time claims have been under that level.

The report is here.

The seasonally-adjusted figure at 332,000 doesn't quite capture the current facts on the ground and exaggerates what's going on by over 11% in the latest report. Even so, annualized we're looking at between 15.5 million claims per year to 17.2 million in the last month, conditions which should make it possible to make real improvements in hiring. Under George Bush claims never got below 16.2 million per year.

But there appears to be no driver for jobs anywhere in this depressed economy, just a driver for a golf ball in the hands of the president.

My Bazooms Are Bigger Than Hillary's

Sen. Amy Klobuchar (D-MN) is headed to Iowa

Ben Bernanke Is A World Class Thief And Should Be In Jail

The average annual return to cash for the three years since July 2010 has been 0.04%, for example in VMMXX, Vanguard's Prime Money Market Fund, but over that three year period inflation has absolutely raged at 7.18% overall, with the all items CPI soaring to 232.944 from 217.329. With about $10 trillion stuffed away in M2, returns to cash just keeping pace with inflation would have come to $718 billion to savers by now. Instead they've reaped just $4 billion (annually).

In a related note here, the contribution to GDP over the period from the Zero Interest Rate Policy and Quantitative Easing has mirrored the criminal returns to cash:

'But it turns out that the benefits of printing all that new money may have been negligible. According to a new study by two senior US economists, America's second programme of quantitative easing, nicknamed "QE2", boosted economic output by just 0.04pc.'

The rich have gotten richer the old fashioned way: they've stolen it.

Senator Rubio Fears Executive Orders Instead Of Fighting Them

He looks to his right, but to us it's left.

Sen. Rubio continues with his mission of disappointing the country and disappointing conservatives, here, expressly ceding his legislative authority to the executive:

“I have been saying now for over a year I believe that this president tempted, will be tempted, if nothing happens in Congress he will be tempted, to issue an executive order like he did for the DREAM Act kids a year ago, where he basically legalizes 11 million people by the sign of a pen,” Rubio said. ... “But we can’t leave it, in my mind, the way it is, because a year from now we could find ourselves with all 11 million people here legally through an executive order from the president, but no E-Verify, no border security, no more border agents — none of the other reforms that we desperately need.”

Bank Robberies: 2003-2011

We just had a bank robbery at a nearby bank this afternoon. The mope who did it is pictured at the left.

You would be wrong if you thought bank robberies are up because of the Obama depression. They are broadly down since 2003, almost 33%.

YEAR//BANK ROBBERIES

2003//7465

2004//7556

2005//6748

2006//6985

2007//5933

2008//6700

2009//5943

2010//5546

2011//5014

OK, there was a big spike up in 2008, but still nowhere near the 7556 in 2004.

It's kind of counter-intuitive. People rob banks 'cause that's where the money is. People had more money before the Obama depression. But after all the bank failures there were fewer banks and less money around, right? The FDIC had to come up with $88 billion to bail out all the failures. Anyway, it's still profitable to rob banks. Bank robbers get away with tens of millions every year, even now. That's why they do it.

(Data is from the FBI, here)

Present Savings To Business Of 5.5 Million Fewer Full Time Jobs

There are presently just under 118 million who work usually full time. In 2007 at the peak there were just over 123 million working full time. The difference is over 5.5 million.

Imagine all those workers not making the median salary from 2011, which was almost $27,000 per year. Or imagine all those workers not making the average salary from 2011, which was just over $41,000 per year.

The annual savings to business today in compensation alone because all those people are not working is somewhere between $149 billion and $228 billion. Add in the cost of benefits for each employee and then multiply by about six and you'll understand one of the reasons why stocks of businesses have done so well under Obama.

Flashback To January 2012: ObamaCare's "Not Worth Getting Angry About"

Santorum said, “Just so I understand this, in Massachusetts, everybody is mandated as a condition of breathing in Massachusetts, to buy health insurance, and if you don’t, and if you don’t, you have to pay a fine.”

Moments later, as the discussion over Romneycare and Obamacare continued, Romney rebuked Santorum, saying, “First of all, it's not worth getting angry about.”

4th Delay Of ObamaCare Provisions Revealed By The New York Times

The case builds for dropping insurance coverage altogether. Its basic cost only soars, and what it covers only plummets. That was the whole point behind ObamaCare, to completely wreck the free market in health insurance, and the entrepreneurs at the heart of it providing the healthcare, the doctors. 

Tip of the hat to Avik Roy of Forbes, here:

"According to the law, the limits on out-of-pocket costs for 2014 were $6,350 for individual policies and $12,700 for family ones. But in February, the Department of Labor published a little-noticed rule delaying the cap until 2015. The delay was described yesterday by Robert Pear in the New York Times."

Economic Stress: Top 10 Selling Cars In July All Get Combined 28-32 MPG

The top 10 selling cars in July 2013 all get a combined MPG between 28 and 32 in their four-cylinder offerings with automatic transmission. In June most consumer spending was on autos and gasoline, and when those were backed-out, remaining retail was actually down 0.1%, the first time in a year. Soaring gasoline prices have no doubt been at work in spending allocated to more fuel efficient vehicles. Gasoline has been averaging above $3.50/gallon nationally since the beginning of February. See Good Car Bad Car here for car sales data by month.

Toyota Camry 28 mpg

Honda Civic    32

Honda Accord 30

Nissan Altima  31

Chevy Cruze    30

Toyota Corolla 29

Hyundai Elantra 32

Ford Fusion (fwd) 28

Hyundai Sonata  28

Ford Focus          31

To Fix The Mortgage Market, Pay Wholesalers And Brokers Over Time, Not Up Front

So suggests Jeffrey Dorfman, here:

"If we want to avoid a repeat of the recent mortgage market meltdown, we would be wise to reform the incentive structure in the mortgage industry. No government regulation is needed to accomplish this. Wholesalers can change the way they pay brokers and investors can require wholesalers to keep some skin in the game by taking at least some of their profits over time along with the investors. Spreading payments over even as little as three to five years would significantly change the incentives.

"If wholesalers and brokers got paid only if the mortgage borrowers made their payments, I suspect that we would have fewer mortgages with repayment problems."

Real 10-Year Cost Of Being In Cash

With an average annual return of 1.77% in the last 10 years, July 2003 to July 2013, the cost of being in cash in VMMXX comes down to the inflation-adjusted return because inflation has averaged in excess of the nominal returns to cash: 2.43% annually over the period. That results in an average annual real return of -0.644% in cash. Ouch. By contrast, the real rate of return of the S&P500 has been +4.63% annually June 2003-June 2013, dividends fully reinvested. Going back 38 years to the inception date of VMMXX, 6-4-1975, the S&P500 has returned a real rate of 6.83% per annum. Cash has returned a nominal 5.58%, but with inflation averaging 3.95%, the real rate of return in cash has been just 1.568% per annum since 1975.

Your Real Return In Stocks Since 2000? Just 0.32% Per Year!

Sad, but true.

Check for yourself, here.

The Bernank Bombs The Buck

US Dollar Currency Index watchers have been reaching for the gin in recent weeks:

This was supposed to be a summer when the U.S. dollar would stand tall, pumped up by higher interest rates and the prospect of an improving economy.

But instead it's been sagging, with the dollar index losing 3.6 percent to 81.02 since July 10. On that day, Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke clarified the Fed's intentions about what it means to 'taper' its $85 billion a month in bond purchases. He emphasized that even with paring back of bond buying, the Fed would take its time pulling back from easing, and it has no plans to raise short term rates any time soon.

Read the rest from Patti Domm at CNBC here.

Obama Can See The Gulf Of Mexico From Three Atlantic Ocean Ports

The world's smartest president strikes again:

"If we don't deepen our ports all along the Gulf — places like Charleston, S.C., or Savannah, Ga., or Jacksonville, Fla. — if we don't do that, these ships are going to go someplace else and we'll lose jobs," Obama said.

Video and story here (AP dishonestly added the "(and in)" to the quotation above before the word "places").

Affirmative action in editing.

The link is now dead. Mediaite still has it all, here.

Mark Levin Only Just Discovers TSA VIPR Program Tonight

Mark Levin's recent discovery of TSA VIPR operations reinforces his interpretation of the developing police state, but it's just old news to us.

Welcome anyway, Mark.

40 Million In Individual And Small Group Health Plans Will Be Hit Hardest By ObamaCare

McClatchy reported here in June:

Those two coverage areas – the individual and small group markets – face the biggest rule and cost changes next year, when the main provisions of the Affordable Care Act finally kick in. ... About 24.5 million people have small-group coverage through companies with 50 or fewer employees, according to federal estimates. Just 15.4 million people purchase individual coverage, according to the nonpartisan Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonprofit health care research center.

Learn more at ObamaCareWatch.org.