Archive - Jun 23, 2015

As the Confederate Flag hysteria escalates, CNN's Ashleigh Banfield asks fellow CNN mouthpiece Don Lemon if it’s now appropriate for lawmakers to start a future conversation about whether or not the monument of Thomas Jefferson should be removed from the U.S. Capitol. As DailySurge notes rather eloquently, Banfield is foolish to conflate the Confederate flag with a Thomas Jefferson memorial; but we fear the stupid won’t be receding anytime soon.

In one swoop, on June 22, 2015, a divided U.S. Supreme Court handed down three consecutive rulings affirming the right of raisin farmers, hotel owners and prison inmates. However, this push back against government abuse, government snooping and government theft only came about because some determined citizens stood up and took a stand against tyranny. Whether these three rulings will amount to much in the long run remains to be seen. That said, if “we the people” don’t keep pushing back, standing up, and holding government officials accountable to the rule of law, these victories will do little to keep government bureaucrats off the backs of the American citizenry.

The Abe Cabinet's approval rating plunged to 39%, matching a record low, as more than half of voters oppose the new US-sanctioned military/security legislation being debated in the Diet. The last time Shinzo Abe's approval ratings were this low, he called for a snap election and told Kuroda to unleash QQE2.0 which has only squeezed real wages to even record-er lows (24th month in a row of declines), destroyed-er elderly Japanese savings, and crushed-er the middle-class. As his popularity has waned, Abe has become more and more desperate to keep support and has, for the first time in 70- years, lower the minimum voting age from 21 to 18 (adding 2.4 million new voters who have not been demoralized yet by declining pension benefits and quality of life).

Why will the IMF throw up all over the latest Greek proposal in just two numbers? Here is the answer, courtesy of Kathimerini: The proposals contain 7.9 billion euros of measures, of which 7.3 are from increases to tax and social security contributions.

Thus far the Russian response has been incredibly restrained, but that may not last forever. Continued economic pressure from the West may very well necessitate a Sino-Russian monetary arrangement that will eventually dethrone the dollar. The end result of this needless bullying by the United States will hasten the one thing Washington fears the most: a world monetary system in which the US has no say and the dollar is relegated to playing second fiddle.

If you work for GE, take close note of the despicable behavior from your CEO. You, your livelihood and your family’s well being mean nothing to Jeff Immelt. In fact, you’re nothing more than an easily expendable cog in his corporate game to accumulate even more wealth and more power for himself. He talks about you like you are chips on a poker table. You have been warned.

"If they want to lecture us on democracy building, let them lecture students at some American university," Russia’s Commissioner for Human Rights, Democracy and the Rule of Law Konstantin Dolgov said Tuesday, regarding the collapse of a bilateral arrangement struck in 2009 between Moscow and Washington. Fortunately for Dolgov, it doesn't appear as though he, or any other Russian diplomats for that matter, will be forced to endure a "lecture" on democracy from the US anytime soon because as the positioning of 250 Bradleys and self-propelled howitzers, and associated armored brigade combat team equipment" in Eastern Europe makes clear, the time for dialogue of any kind has long since passed.

For all the drivelly, politically correct platitudes about how a great job is about emotional gratification, self-fulfillment and, of course, benefits such as a matching 401(k) and 2 weeks of paid vacation, the best job is the one where the least amount of effort generates the greatest compensation at the smallest amount of risk. In that case no job will ever match that of Coty CEO Elio Leoni Sceti, or rather non-CEO. Because whereas Sceti was scheduled to become Coty's CEO in about a week, decided not to take the job. The punchline, however, is that despite never actually having set foot in the company's Empire State Building headquarters, or even working one day for his new employer, Coty is contractually bound to pay Leoni Sceti a severance (or is that non-signing bonus) of $1.8 million... for quitting before he even started!

Of this touted €35 billion in bailout funding which Greece finally admitted it will cross "red lines" to obtain, the country will be lucky to pocket a little over €3 billion. However, considering that is how much the Greek government has already extracted out of various public pensions and municipalities as part of its quasi-capital controls unrolled previously to preserve the illusion of solvency, after the hard fought "deal" finally is inked, the Greek population will be left with... €0.

While China is rather proud of the fact that it hasn't yet implemented outright QE, Beijing has now put in place a bewildering hodge-podge of hastily construed easing measures that can't seem to get out of their own way.

Ten days ago it seemed as if America's corporatism would finally be slowed in its tracks after the House unexpectedly killed the fast-tracking of Obamatrade, aka the fast-tracking of the Trade Promotion Authority. Alas, it was not to last, and moments ago, in a "nailbiting" 60-37 vote, the Senate advanced Obama's fast-track tarde bill.

According to BofA's Jill Hall, "BofAML clients were big net sellers of US stocks in the amount of $4.1bn, following four weeks of net buying. Net sales were the largest since January 2008 and led by institutional clients—after three weeks of net buying, institutional clients’ net sales last week were the largest in our data history."

Many people see national finances as an impenetrable fog of numbers and acronyms, which they feel is best left up to financial specialists to interpret for them. But try to see national finances as a henhouse, yourself as a hen, and financial specialists as foxes. Perhaps you should pay a little bit of attention - perhaps a bit more than one would expect from a chicken?

President Barack Obama in 2014 said Mr. Gruber was “some adviser who never worked on our staff.” And then there's this:

“Thank you for being an integral part of getting us to this historic moment,” according to Sept. 9, 2009 email to Mr. Gruber from Jeanne Lambrew, a top Obama administration health adviser who worked at HHS and the White House. In a November 2009 email, she called Mr. Gruber “our hero.”