Obama's All Wee-Wee'd Up Because Total Government Employment Is Down 1.03 Million

Government employment at all levels reached its zenith in 2010 at 22.997 million, spiking up dramatically very briefly under Census hiring between April and May 2010, after which it steadily declined. Today it stands at 21.969 million, a drop of 1.028 million from that one-off peak, or 4.5 percent.

More to the point, today's level of government employment was reached for the first time just a few years ago, in 2006, so what's happened is not much of a contraction compared to what happened in private employment, the recent nadir of which was 106.8 million at the end of January 2010.

That level of private employment last prevailed way back in 1998, and from peak to trough is a 7.6 percent decline, over 1.5 times worse than what happened in government jobs.

Private employment today stands at March 2005 levels, no thanks to Obama, but when it comes to shared sacrifice, government today could actually stand to give up some more jobs, say 229,000 more, all things being equal, to match where the private sector stands historically, which is still behind.

But you won't be hearing that from the Whiner In Chief About Fairness. 

Obama Lies About Private Sector: 4.6 Million Without Jobs Aren't Doing Fine

Private sector employment has plummeted from its peak in late 2007 by 4.6 million. Back then, 115,647,000 worked in the private sector. Today just 111,040,000 do.

Since the recent nadir of private employment in January 2010, 4.2 million have re-entered the work force.

Unfortunately since the beginning of 2008, part-time employment has skyrocketed from 4.9 million to 8.1 million today, calling into question how good are the jobs recovered over the entire period. As recently as September 2011, part-time employment was as high as 9.3 million.

In any event, private employment is back to 2005 levels, which for its time was no achievement. The growth trend in jobs first reached that level back in 2000 and 2001, only to suffer the slings and arrows of the dotcom bubble and 911.

America has not really recovered from that time, otherwise private employment would be far in excess of 120,000,000 today.

The current president has no imagination, despite not being named Bush.

Sean Hannity's Libertarianism Is Stupid

The radio ad for Sean Hannity's program runs incessantly, featuring him saying, "Society doesn't need to put its seal of approval on the choices people make."

This in reference to same sex marriage.

He obviously doesn't appreciate how the government already puts its seal of approval on people's choices, and has done so for a very long time.

The most obvious social example is marriage itself, which receives a healthy tax preference in the form of the tax code's filing status "married filing jointly" . . . since the end of the Second World War! This isn't just a seal of approval. It's actually a financial encouragement to marry.

Or consider the child tax credit, which you aren't going to get without having children. With it, the government encourages the having of children.

Or the earned income credit, which you don't get unless you have some earned income. It's government's way of encouraging people who don't work at all to get a job and get work experience, on the assumption that they will move up the ladder eventually to positions which pay too much to receive the credit.

All of these things the government encourages to promote social stability in the form of nuclear families, home ownership, work, and population growth, all of which are essential to . . . tax revenue.

Giving same sex partners the same rewards as heterosexual unions ignores the fact that the former are naturally incapable of growing the population. Government has no interest in promoting the ineffectual.

"Be it then, as Sir Robert says, that anciently it was usual for men to sell and castrate their children, Observations, 155. Let it be, that they exposed them; add to it, if you please, for this is still greater power, that they begat them for their tables, to fat and eat them: if this proves a right to do so, we may, by the same argument, justify adultery, incest and sodomy, for there are examples of these too, both ancient and modern; sins, which I suppose have their principal aggravation from this, that they cross the main intention of nature, which willeth the increase of mankind, and the continuation of the species in the highest perfection, and the distinction of families, with the security of the marriage bed, as necessary thereunto."

-- John Locke

New Evidence Proves Obama Was Member Of Socialist Third Party In 1996

And lied about it in 2008 to get elected president.

So claims Stanley Kurtz for National Review:

Recently obtained evidence from the updated records of Illinois ACORN at the Wisconsin Historical Society now definitively establishes that Obama was a member of the New Party. He also signed a “contract” promising to publicly support and associate himself with the New Party while in office.

Minutes of the meeting on January 11, 1996, of the New Party’s Chicago chapter read as follows:

Barack Obama, candidate for State Senate in the 13th Legislative District, gave a statement to the membership and answered questions. He signed the New Party “Candidate Contract” and requested an endorsement from the New Party. He also joined the New Party.

Consistent with this, a roster of the Chicago chapter of the New Party from early 1997 lists Obama as a member, with January 11, 1996, indicated as the date he joined.

Knowing that Obama disguised his New Party membership helps make sense of his questionable handling of the 2008 controversy over his ties to ACORN (Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now). During his third debate with John McCain, Obama said that the “only” involvement he’d had with ACORN was to represent the group in a lawsuit seeking to compel Illinois to implement the National Voter Registration Act, or motor-voter law. The records of Illinois ACORN and its associated union clearly contradict that assertion, as I show in my political biography of the president, Radical-in-Chief: Barack Obama and the Untold Story of American Socialism.

Why did Obama deny his ties to ACORN? The group was notorious in 2008 for thug tactics, fraudulent voter registrations, and its role in popularizing risky subprime lending. Admitting that he had helped to fund ACORN’s voter-registration efforts and train some of their organizers would doubtless have been an embarrassment but not likely a crippling blow to his campaign. So why not simply confess the tie and make light of it? The problem for Obama was ACORN’s political arm, the New Party.

The revelation in 2008 that Obama had joined an ACORN-controlled, leftist third party could have been damaging indeed, and coming clean about his broader work with ACORN might easily have exposed these New Party ties. Because the work of ACORN and the New Party often intersected with Obama’s other alliances, honesty about his ties to either could have laid bare the entire network of his leftist political partnerships.

Although Obama is ultimately responsible for deceiving the American people in 2008 about his political background, he got help from his old associates.

Read the whole story here.

Sweden's Economic Miracle Partly Due To Cutting Spending By 20 Percent Of GDP

So says Anders Aslund for Bloomberg.com:

Not so long ago, Sweden could claim world leadership in unmitigated Keynesian economics, with a 90 percent marginal tax rate and a welfare state second to none.

Now Swedes look at the conflict between the U.S. and German examples over whether more spending or more austerity is the key to financial salvation, and for them the choice is easy: Germany was right. Northern Europe harbors no sympathy for the spendthrifts of Southern Europe.

Americans still think of Sweden as a tightly regulated social-welfare state, but in the last two decades the country has been reformed. Public spending has fallen by no less than one-fifth of gross domestic product, taxes have dropped and markets have opened up.

The situation is similar in the other Scandinavian countries, the Baltic nations and Poland. But no turnabout has been as dramatic as Sweden’s.

Read the rest, here.

"The Banking System Is Incompatible With Public Safety And Prosperity"

So wrote Thomas Jefferson to Richard Rush, in 1819.

Read why here.

NAACP's Endorsement Of SS Marriage Causes Leader From Iowa To Resign

Yah man! Hallelujah!

Story here.

EU's Equivalents Of US FDIC Can't Cover Even 1 Percent Of Eligible Deposits In Bank Failure

According to a March 2011 policy brief from the European Credit Research Institute, here:

The [European] Commission’s Joint Research Centre (JRC) collected data from all DGS [Deposit Guarantee Schemes] in the EU to examine the ability to handle payouts (JRC, 2008). It revealed that the coverage ratio in most countries is not even sufficient to protect 1% of eligible deposits . . ..

. . . [T]he JRC carried out a ‘stress-testing’ exercise, which confirmed the weaknesses of EU DGS to handle payouts. Three different scenarios were tested, taking into account the availability of funding (ex ante, ex post and borrowing of funds):

•Small-impact scenario: €100 million average financial burden

•Medium-impact scenario: €2.18 billion average financial burden

•High-impact scenarios: €8.69 billion average financial burden

Results showed that all EU DGS could cover a small-impact bank failure. A medium-sized failure could be borne by seven EU countries with the highest coverage ratios using only ex ante funds. Six member states would not be able to reimburse depositor claims in the medium-impact case, even if they used all available funding, including ex post funds and additional borrowing. No member state was well-equipped to cope with a large failure using only ex ante funds.

To date in the current crisis, the US FDIC has paid out in excess of $88 billion. It appears the EU equivalents can't pay out even 10 billion euros. All guarantee schemes are individual member country responsibility.

The UK Guardian Savages Obama As An Authoritarian and Killer

Here:

[T]he three major policies of the Bush war on terror – rendition, military commissions and indefinite detention – continue to this day. But Mr Obama has also presided over a massive expansion of secret surveillance of American citizens by the National Security Agency. There is a ferocious crackdown on whistleblowers. He has made more government documents classified than any previous president. And he has become a true believer in drones. ...

[T]his administration is highlighting the fact that its president is a killer. In this new age of secrecy, three dozen current and former advisers are allowed to talk to the New York Times about the president's role of personally overseeing the shadow war with al-Qaida. Mr Obama has not been shy about the role he personally played in Osama bin Laden's death. His counter-terrorism adviser John Brennan makes speeches defending drone strikes as legal, ethical and wise. This administration is not on the defensive about its summary executions. It positively seeks to advertise them.

Wisconsin's Walker Ahead By 9 Points After 85 Percent Counted, CNBC Calls Victory Narrow

Maybe Sarah Jessica Parker Supports Marrying Anyone You Want For A Reason?

. . . here at SarahJessicaParkerLooksLikeAHorse.com.

Does she look more like her Mom, or her Dad?

Spikes In European Irrational Stock Market Exuberance Visualized From The Mid-1990s

Total Consumer Debt Has Barely Budged Since Late 2010

Americans continue deep in debt at $11.44 trillion in Q1 2012, which is $.04 trillion higher than in late 2010, according to this and the latest chart from the New York Federal Reserve:

As of December 31, 2010, total consumer indebtedness was $11.4 trillion, a reduction of $1.08 trillion (8.6%) from its peak level at the close of 2008Q3, and $155 billion (1.3%) below its September 30, 2010 level.

What's The Difference Between A Light Bulb And A Rear End?

You can unscrew a lightbulb.

The Queers Are Only 2 Percent Of The Population

Not 10 percent, and certainly not 25 percent of the population.

They just make up for their small numbers by being loud and by otherwise acting like pricks.

Story at The Atlantic, here.

AP Obama and CNBC.com Team Up To Poo-Poo All That "Obama Is A Socialist" Stuff

What else would you expect from the ideological nexus of media and academia?

Honesty?

These people can't even acknowledge we've experienced a minor economic depression let alone the utter failure of the predictions of their analysts and economists. Instead of failed 5 year plans as in the former Soviet Union we are treated to weekly, monthly and quarterly misses of an astounding variety so routine no one bothers to remark them any more except the gluttons for punishment in the blogosphere.

Remember the green shoots of recovery gibberish that went on and on for months after the so-called recession ended? Or the jobs created or saved nonsense? Or the bottom in housing? Before all that it was how bad was Bush's economy, an economy which Obama now only wishes he had so he could boast about it, which is why he must continue to denigrate it four years removed.

The regulation of American business by government is so massive it is a joke to call this a capitalist economy. Designed to pick the winners and the losers, the revolving door between the two carries a veritable freeway of crony traffic a 1930s fascist would envy.

It's almost pathetic the article spends most of its time quibbling about definitions from the left when Obama's is a socialism of the right.

The whole point is to obscure this fact.

Socialism is a wonderland, Alice, where words mean whatever they say they mean.     

Part Time For Economic Reasons Up Almost 400,000 During March and April

Data and graph here.

The all-time high in this metric was reached on 9-1-10 when 9.25 million were part-time for economic reasons.

The most current reading puts 7.98 million part-time.

It was in late 2008 when the measure reached above 7 million for the first time, and the lowest below 8 million we've fallen since 2009 was in March 2012 when 7.58 million were part-time.

Long Term Investors In Japan Down Over 15 Percent . . . Since 1984!

Housing Prices Need Not Increase, Just Remain Stable, For Economic Recovery

So says Harvard's Edward Glaeser for Bloomberg.com here:

The 1990s offer us one upbeat message. Housing prices stayed static for six long years after 1991, and in real terms, housing prices were no higher in 1998 than they were in 1991. Yet real GDP grew an impressive 28 percent between 1991 and 1998. It’s a myth that the housing market must recover before the larger economy can surge.

Not quite.

The average Case Shiller Home Price Index for 1991 was 125.55, and was 125.10 for 1998, but the chart for the period was flat to slightly declining, until the provisions of the Taxpayer Relief Act of 1997 helped begin the housing bubble. Prices reached a nadir for the period in 1996 at 117.64, a decline of over 5 percent from 1991.

Crude Is Down Nearly 25 Percent In 3 Months, Gasoline Is Falling

On February 25th I reported that gasoline prices had spiked in Grand Rapids, Michigan, from $3.13 to $3.48 in about one week's time, an 11 percent jump.

On June 1 I filled at $3.55 the gallon. Today the cheapest price is already $3.38 the gallon, a 5 percent fall.

The top price I paid this season was $3.89 the gallon, so we've fallen only 13 percent overall . . . so far.

Obama Blames High US Unemployment On . . . Europe!

Betcha thought he blamed Bush again, right?

The story is here:

Obama, speaking at a Chicago fundraiser on June 1 as he bids for re-election in November, said that a report showing the slowest month of U.S. employment growth in a year was in large part “attributable to Europe and the cloud that’s coming over from the Atlantic.” The “whole world economy has been weakened by it,” he said.

With this guy the buck always stops somewhere else.

Vehicles Sales At 14.4 Million Units Annualized Through March 2012

The chart is here and the data here.

Total auto loans outstanding in Q1 2012 came to approximately $686 billion, or 6 percent of the $11.44 trillion total household debt, according to the May 2012 report of The New York Federal Reserve.

The Shiller p/e Will Have To Get Much Lower Than This Before We Can Talk Of Capitulation

Capitulation means a multiple between 5 and 10, and assumes a complete lack of interest in stock investing. Tonight's multiple is still quite elevated above 20:

(This post replaces a previous one containing erroneous information about the Shiller p/e and has been deleted).

Misspelled Words Have Become Routinized At The Atlantic

As seen here, where the writer evidently thinks "routenized" is built off of "route", or something:

Gold To Oil Ratio Vaults To 19.5

Gold surged on US economic weakness and euro fears to $1,622 the ounce today, while oil has tumbled to $83 the barrel, elevating the gold to oil ratio 30 percent off the 15 level.

Average Unemployment: Pick A Year . . . Any Year

2001 4.7 percent

2002 5.8 percent

2003 6.0 percent

2004 5.5 percent

2005 5.1 percent

2006 4.6 percent

2007 4.6 percent

2008 5.8 percent

2009 9.3 percent

2010 9.6 percent

2011 9.0 percent

2012 8.2 percent (five months to date).

As soon as Obama takes credit for a year, you'll know it's no longer George Bush's fault.

Moral Hazard In Pictures

US Federal Reserve

European Central Bank

Bank of England

People's Bank of China

German Bundesbank

Bank of Japan

Banque de France

Swiss National Bank

The British Knee Is On The March!

“It’s quite impossible that the man who had invented Sir Roderick Spode in 1938 was prey to any covert sympathy for fascism.”

-- Christopher Hitchens on P.G. Wodehouse, quoted here

Deposit Insurance In Spain Is Meaningless

If you want to know why 100 billion euros have fled Spain in the first quarter of this year, here's why:

In Spain there are about 800 billion euros of insured deposits, but the deposit insurance fund has assets of just 7.9 billion euros, and 5.3 billion has already been committed to troubled savings bank Caja de Ahorros del Mediterraneo (CAM), Barclays analysts estimated.

Unemployment Rate Climbs To 8.2 Percent Despite Weasel Words From Bureau Of Lies And Statistics

Obama's Laser-Like Focus On Jobs

The report from the Bureau of Labor Statistics may be found here. PDF here.

Notice the attempt to weasel out of the fact that the rate actually increased 0.1 from last month by stating the rate was "essentially unchanged":

Nonfarm payroll employment changed little in May (+69,000), and the unemployment rate was essentially unchanged at 8.2 percent, the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics reported today. Employment increased in health care, transportation and warehousing, and wholesale trade but declined in construction. Employment was little changed in most other major industries.

The Obama regime is presiding over an employment catastrophe above 8 percent for his entire presidency: 3 years and 4 months.

GDP Revised Down For Q1 2012 From 2.2 Percent To 1.9 Percent

You talkin' to me?

Way to go, Brownie!

Here's the story from the horse's mouth:

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 1.9 percent in the first quarter of 2012 (that is, from the fourth quarter to the first quarter), according to the "second" estimate released by the Bureau of Economic Analysis. In the fourth quarter of 2011, real GDP increased 3.0 percent.

The GDP estimate released today is based on more complete source data than were available for the "advance" estimate issued last month. In the advance estimate, the increase in real GDP was 2.2 percent (see "Revisions" on page 3).

The increase in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected positive contributions from personal consumption expenditures (PCE), exports, residential fixed investment, private inventory investment, and nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by negative contributions from federal government spending and state and local government spending. Imports, which are a subtraction in the calculation of GDP, increased.

The deceleration in real GDP in the first quarter primarily reflected a deceleration in private inventory investment, an acceleration in imports, and a deceleration in nonresidential fixed investment that were partly offset by accelerations in exports and in PCE.

Michelle Obama Lies About When And Why Obama Gave Up Pot

Neither one can tell the truth

Here's what Michelle Obama has just claimed, as quoted here, in response to a question about her husband's prolific pot-smoking habits:

'When he lost his father, that was one of those click-in moments. And he really buckled down, he transferred schools, went to Columbia, and thought about how to use his life to the fullest.'

This is nothing but the same sort of fictionalization we've come to expect from Obama himself, say, about his girlfriends, experiences with whom are conflated in his book in composite characters, not real ones.

Michelle is lying about the chronology of events which supposedly led to Barack becoming a serious person, pinning it all of the death of Barack Obama Sr. But Obama's father died late in 1982 when Barack was already at Columbia for a year. Barack transferred to Columbia in the fall of 1981. See for example, here.

The death of Obama's father had nothing to do with transferring to Columbia. In fact, the death post dates the move from Occidental to Columbia by two years.

The truth is we don't know when Obama quit smoking weed. But we do know Michelle Obama isn't telling the truth about it.

President Pothead Strikes Again, Angering Poland

This time the president has referred to Nazi concentration camps in Poland as Polish concentration camps.

Just one more reason why the president's past (?) drug use makes him unfit for office in the present. Kind of like how Biden's 1988 brain aneurysms have something to do with his now very full repertoire of offensive gaffes which disqualify him.

The story is here.

But look on the bright side. At least Obama didn't call Jan Karski a corpseman.

Middle Class Implies Far More Than Being Able To Buy A House

Robert Weissberg details here the older definition of what it meant to be middle class, you know, the one which is now politically incorrect to talk about, let alone be:

The core of being middle class was a strong work ethic, self-discipline, a willingness to defer gratification, an aversion for flashy consumption,  and an embrace of what might be called “respectability,” (i.e., sobriety), a morality that stressed honesty, a solid family life, being law-abiding, and valuing education (though not necessarily being “intellectual”).

Inner dispositions were associated with speaking clear, grammatical English, exhibiting decent table manners, never using profanity in public (and almost none in private, too), being “clean cut”  in appearances and always acting politely. Middle class members also abhorred the thought of taking government handouts. ...

These “square” traits were associated with material well-being but were really a result of middle class values, not its defining elements. Nobody believed that the causal flow was reversible—home ownership could inculcate middle-class values. In principle, it was possible to be lower class despite owning middle-class doodads. A well-paid entertainer may live well but could still be considered white trash if he dressed in tattered clothing, beat his wife, openly philandered, cursed and spit in public and spent a dime for every nickel earned.

Case Shiller Home Price Index Falls To 128.13 Through 12/31/11

And everyone's happy for some reason.

When you consider that the mean for the whole history of the index is 123 and the median 120, which include the irrational exuberance of recent history, today's new low of 128 after this massive, outlier, bubble merely looks like more progress in the direction of regression toward the mean, not a "bottom" as many are saying. Indeed, the historical mean implies we have a fair way DOWN to go in price, to say nothing of the very real possibility of overshooting that to the downside.

The quarterly index, adjusted for inflation, has now hit today's level eight times in the post-war period:

Dec. 31, 2011 128.13

Mar. 31, 1999 128.40

Dec. 31, 1990 128.27

Dec. 31, 1979 128.78

Sep. 30, 1978 128.22

Dec. 31, 1955 128.21

Mar. 31, 1955 128.15

Dec. 31, 1954 128.30.

There's enough history between 110 and 130 to suggest that "normal" is still somewhere south of 128.

Take two aspirin every morning and call me in ten years.

Go here for the chart.

Banking Since 1913 In A Nutshell

From Daniel Oliver at Myrmikan Capital, here: 

Like any Ponzi scheme, the fractional reserve system must periodically collapse because wealth creation cannot stem from an eternal expansion of credit. Betrayed and confused, the little people march into the halls of power and hang the perpetrators from the nearest lamp posts. ...

When the next crisis comes, as it must, the central banks of the world will face the same choice as in 2008, only on a larger scale. They will have to decide whether to allow the major banks to fail, wiping out trillions of dollars of paper wealth and plunging the globe into a 1931-style bond market failure depression, or to print money on an even larger scale.

That crisis may be here now, which, perhaps, is what the gold markets have been telegraphing for months. ... 

In 1944, Christian Men Made The Best Soldiers

Dear Friend:

Pvt. V. L. Meyer was with us in our Field Service last Sunday afternoon. The men of his Battalion and attached units are on maneuvers in the Wichita Mountains near Fort Sill for two weeks. Since the men cannot come to the Chapel on Sunday, we take the service out to them.

We take our Field Organ and small books with familiar hymns in them. The men are usually brought by truck to a place set for the service. It is entirely up to the men whether they attend.

We meet them at the appointed place and have an informal outdoor service. The men choose the hymns and we have a short message, scripture readings and prayers.

The outstanding leaders of our armed forces are convinced that Christian men make the best soldiers, sailors and marines. With their fine cooperation, we do our best to help the men be real Christians.

Sincerely yours, 

Lawrence C. Upton

Chaplain (Capt.)


Jan. 3, 1944

They Didn't Die . . .

. . . for this

TSA VIPR Unit Patrolling Beneath Elevated Trains For Detroit Electronic Music Fest

As reported here by an attendee:

“[I]f you don’t like it,” the solution is clear: don’t leave your house. Or, you know, you could make your disapproval of TSA antics known now, before the TSA can expand in this absurd fashion and say, “Well you let us do it in the airports, so why can’t we do it in train stations?” “…at bus stops?” “…as you’re driving down the street?” “…whenever we want to.” If we don’t demand the Fourth Amendment in airports now, can you really, truly believe that I’m just talking hyperbole about what will happen next?

Waste Management Converting Over 18K Trucks To Natural Gas

Read all about it here in the Houston Chronicle.

Anti-Christian Army General Thomas Bostick Sued For Discriminating Against Women

Gen. Bostick and wife

The general who helped craft the Army's DADT policy and a five-year personnel reduction plan meant to weed-out members of the military who object to homosexuality on moral grounds has been sued by women in the military who want to fight in combat but are barred from doing so.

The general, Thomas Bostick, just assumed command of the US Army Corpse of Engineers on May 22 (a little Obama lingo there).

I'm guessing he's secretly happy he's named in the suit and that he hopes he'll lose so women, like homosexuals, can hit the front lines with the men.

In the job of transforming America, Obama's work is never done.  

The New York Times has the story here.

The UK Isn't Austere: Spending Has Increased To Record Levels

So reports the UK Telegraph here:

[T]he Office for National Statistics (ONS) revealed that the double-dip recession was even worse than feared. The economy shrank by 0.3pc in the first quarter of the year, the ONS said in its second estimates, rather than the 0.2pc initially thought. Government spending hit record levels in the three months to March in spite of the austerity drive, rising by 1.6pc to £81.5bn and delivering 0.4 percentage points of overall economic growth. However, the taxpayer-funded boost was not enough to offset weak activity in construction, trade and the financial sector.

Unfortunately for Great Britain, it has a leader who is more concerned with gay marriage, tax increases and diverting attention away from domestic failures.

Gee, kind of reminds one of none other than Barack Obama.

Hm.

The UK Lets Taxes Rise in 2010, Gets Ugly Recession in 2012

Louis Woodhill for Forbes details the history here, wondering why they call tax increases in the throes of an economic crisis Conservatism in the UK.

Maybe because Prime Minister Cameron isn't really a conservative, just like George Bush wasn't a conservative (junking free market principles to save the free market system). The top marginal tax rate went from 40 percent to 50 percent in 2010 in the UK.

Conservatism hasn't been practiced in either place in a very long time.

Radiation From Fukushima Accident Revised Up In New Report

CNN.com reports here:

Japan's largest utility said Thursday that more radiation than previously thought was released into the atmosphere in March 2011, in the days after the nuclear disaster that followed an earthquake and tsunami. TEPCO (Tokyo Electric Power Co.) estimates about 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive materials were released between March 12 and March 31, according to Japan's Kyodo news agency. ... In one town in the Fukushima area, the estimated thyroid doses to infants are within a dose band of 100 to 200 millisieverts (mSv), the preliminary report said. This level of radiation exposure could be associated with an increased likelihood of developing cancer. However, in the rest of Japan, the estimated thyroid doses are within a dose band of 1 to 10 mSv, the report said. Outside the country, the estimated thyroid doses are less than 0.01 mSv, and are usually far below this very low level, it said.

PBS.org had a fuller report here, comparing the accident's severity to Chernobyl and assessing the health consequences of the radiation releases:

Tokyo Electric, the plant’s operator, said on Thursday that reactor meltdowns at the Fukushima Daiichi plant released approximately 900,000 terabecquerels of radioactive substances into the air in the immediate aftermath of the March 2011 accident. By comparison, approximately 5.2 million terabecquerels of total radiation were emitted in the 1986 Chernobyl disaster. ... In terms of the accident’s health implications, the World Health Organization said on Wednesday that the amount of radiation released fell below cancer-causing levels in nearly all of Japan. Outside of “no-go zones” in Fukushima prefecture, residents were exposed to radiation levels between 1 millisievert and 10 millisieverts, the W.H.O. said. The annual average amount of exposure from naturally occurring background radiation is 2.4 mSv globally, according to the report ... . Cumulative exposure to 100 mSv is generally thought to raise a person’s risk of cancer death by 0.5 percent.

Reuters.com reports here that Namie and Iitate were the two towns hardest hit:

In a preliminary report, independent experts said that people in two locations in Fukushima prefecture may have received a radiation dose of 10-50 millisieverts (mSv) in the year after the accident at the power station operated by TEPCO. ... The areas estimated to have received the highest doses of radiation were Namie town in Futaba county and Iitate village in Soma county, northwest of the stricken plant, the report said. Infants in Namie were thought to have received thyroid radiation doses of 100-200 mSv, it added. The thyroid is the most exposed organ as radioactive iodine concentrates there and children are deemed especially vulnerable.

Follow the labels at the end of this post for this blog's reporting on the accident from the beginning.

President Pothead Has Been Saying, Repeatedly, He Has Sons

Maybe Joe Biden isn't the only one who needs his head examined.

The story is here.

Irrational Exuberance in Corporate Debt Reaches $7.8 Trillion v. $1.2 Trillion in Cash

"I would go a hundred percent equities if I thought that we had reached a point when equity values made sense."

"People always say stocks are cheap, stocks are cheap. They're trading 10 times forward PE, 12 times PE. The problem is, I don't know the E[arnings]."

"What if the U.S. had a balanced budget? What would GDP be? Then what would earnings be? The U.S. cannot in perpetuity run a $1.3 trillion annual deficit. I don't believe in any of the earnings numbers."

"You basically have 30 years of accumulated debt that funds consumption and that has to unwind. And as it unwinds, it's going to have implications on economic activity and it's impossible that it won't ultimately find its way back to U.S. companies."

--Andre Kovensky, Managing Director of bond and real estate investment firm, Octavia Investment, quoted here.

Stocks presently are relatively expensive when measured by the Shiller p/e, which this morning stands at 21.21, almost 34 percent elevated from the median level of 15.84 going back to 1881. Investors might want to consider that the Shiller median level itself incorporates earnings from past decades when increased borrowing by both business and government might make the metric somewhat artificially elevated anyway.

The assertion that debt "has to unwind", however, is evidenced in the post-war period by the corporate data set only in the early 1990s when aggregate quarterly debt dropped briefly by 2 percent, and in the decline just concluded when it dropped briefly by 3.5 percent or just $256 billion.

Total corporate assets, by way of contrast, have reached an all time high of nearly $30 trillion.

One wag notes that Kovensky is just talking his book.

Bonds remain at nose-bleed prices, as do all assets.   

Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick's Policy To Cleanse Army Of Christians

Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, recently promoted to head the Army Corps of Engineers and infamous for his equation of principled religious objections to gays in the military with racism and bigotry, is the person chiefly responsible for the Army's new force reduction program announced in the Army Times last September:

The Army is preparing to launch in March [2012] a five-year, nearly 50,000-soldier drawdown, using a combination of accession cuts and voluntary and involuntary separations, similar to the post-Cold War drawdown of the 1990s, according to Lt. Gen. Thomas P. Bostick, service personnel chief. ...

“We are currently reviewing the lessons drawn from the 1990s as captured in reports by the Army, Congressional Budget Office and the other services to ensure that we retain as much experience as possible from the ongoing conflicts (in Iraq and Afghanistan),” said a member of Bostick’s staff.

“As in the 1990s, the Army may need to conduct involuntary separations to meet mandated end-strength, but we will do everything we can to shape the force through competitive promotions, reclassifications and voluntary separations before we take harsher measures,” the official said.

Some force-shaping tools added to Army policy over the past two years include new, and stricter, retention control points for enlisted soldiers, a Qualitative Management Program to separate retirement-eligible senior noncommissioned officers who do not measure up to Army standards of behavior and performance, and the elimination of selective continuation for certain categories of officers who are twice passed over for promotion.

Gee, why have people who don't "measure up to Army standards of behavior" been allowed to remain in the ranks in the first place? Maybe because the standards being promulgated now are "new, and stricter", designed to weed-out undesirables like the Christians Bostick said had better comply or get out in these remarks in 2010:

“Unfortunately, we have a minority of service members who are still racists and bigoted and you will never be able to get rid of all of them,” Lt. Gen. Bostick said. “But these people opposing this new policy [homosexuals serving openly in the military] will need to get with the program, and if they can’t, they need to get out. No matter how much training and education of those in opposition, you’re always going to have those that oppose this on moral and religious grounds just like you still have racists today.”

NATO Is Listing Badly To Starboard

David Warren says as much for The Ottawa Citizen here:

What use is NATO? This was the unexamined background question in Chicago, where the 28 member states and a couple dozen with “observer” status gathered for the summit ritual . . . the grand question of what NATO has been doing as the institutional face of western intervention, both realpolitik and humanitarian, in trouble spots far away from the North Atlantic. The U.S. has needed NATO as diplomatic cover for what otherwise might look like “American imperialism.” They’d use the UN if it wasn’t so full of vetoes; and “coalitions of the willing” are passé.

By increments, NATO has been transformed from a hard and necessary Eurocentric alliance against a pointed Soviet threat into a prism for political and diplomatic “optics.” ...

I have argued before that if we must have summits — and I have yet to see why — they should be held on cruise ships. (And may I recommend Costa Cruises.) ... NATO does not know what it is for. Its member governments are unable to formulate a common purpose. Its use as a flag of convenience, for exotic foreign adventures that may be popular for a brief time, subverts its function as a military alliance. It has lost the luxury of a common, public enemy.

Thanks To Obama Your Electric Bill Will Skyrocket 8 To 22 Times What It Is Now

As reported here:

Last week PJM Interconnection, the company that operates the electric grid for 13 states (Delaware, Illinois, Indiana, Kentucky, Maryland, Michigan, New Jersey, North Carolina, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Tennessee, Virginia, West Virginia and the District of Columbia) held its 2015 capacity auction. These are the first real, market prices that take Obama’s most recent anti-coal regulations into account, and they prove that he is keeping his 2008 campaign promise to make electricity prices “necessarily skyrocket.”

The market-clearing price for new 2015 capacity – almost all natural gas – was $136 per megawatt. That’s eight times higher than the price for 2012, which was just $16 per megawatt. In the mid-Atlantic area covering New Jersey, Delaware, Pennsylvania, and DC the new price is $167 per megawatt. For the northern Ohio territory served by FirstEnergy, the price is a shocking $357 per megawatt.

In Passive v. Active Management, Vanguard Is The Winner And Still Champion

So says Robert P. Seawright, here:

[O]ne of every three dollars invested in mutual funds and exchange-traded funds through the first four months of ... 2012 has gone to Vanguard, according to Morningstar Inc. (and as reported by Investment News).  Investment in Vanguard so far this year is roughly $65 billion, nearly four times more than the next closest mutual fund company – PIMCO.  In ETFs, year-to-date through the end of April, Vanguard had gathered $21.6 billion, while BlackRock’s iShares collected $13.3 billion and State Street added $7.2 billion. As always, Vanguard focuses on passively managed index funds and ETFs. 

Europe Proves Nothing Except That Tax Increases Reduce Growth

So says Joseph Y. Calhoun here:

The G-8 met this weekend at Camp David to address the failure of austerity in promoting economic growth, specifically in Europe where it has allegedly been practiced. Of course, austerity, as modernly defined by a certain segment of the economics profession, has nothing at all to do with the definition from Merriam-Webster ... . Austerity is reckoned by those who oppose it to be an attempt to balance government budgets primarily through cruel spending cuts. Those who make this claim will find it hard to back up with facts in any European country outside Greece[,] which had little choice in the matter given that no one will lend them the Euros to keep up their previous pace of spending. The reality is that efforts to balance budgets in Europe have depended much more on tax increases than spending cuts. The European experience proves nothing except that tax increases reduce growth.

Returning To The Gold Standard, But At What Price?

John Tamny argues here for the ten year average price of about $800 the ounce, against Nathan Lewis who would prefer something closer to the current market price, $1,500 the ounce.

The 1933 US ten dollar gold coin pictured is worth about $300,000.00 in a recent valuation.

Sorry Krauthammer, A Drone's Already Been Shot Down

A cheap $300 drone anyone may purchase, but still a drone. It was shot down anonymously, by small arms fire, here in the USA.

For Krauthammer's remarks, see here. For the drone shoot-down, which was in February already, see here.

What Krauthammer doesn't realize is these things are going to get so small you'll never know one from the moth resting on the side of the house in a shady cool spot in the heat of the day.

Better shoot while the shootin's good, because pretty soon you're going to need a flyswatter instead of a shotgun.