Obama Administration

Obamacare - There was a significant “drafting” mistake in the original legislation.

Tim Geithner's time is almost done, but the former NY Fed head is only one of very many whose position is expected to be replaced in Obama's second term (just so there is a non-continuous chain of command if and when the time comes for the people to demand an explanation for the state of the US economy from the talented Mr. Geithner). Who else is out and who is expected to be in? The following list attempts to cover all upcoming rotations at the top of the US cabinet. What is not attempted is a prediction of where in the private sector people such as Geithner will end up: that is considered largely self-explanatory.

Update: The devolution is complete as Egypt declares martial law.

It was only a matter of time before Egypt's US-endorsed temporary dictator resolved to what will be spun as temporary military intervention against what is increasingly looking like a permanent counterrevolution by deploying the army to crush local protesters who have besieged the Egyptian presidential palace for almost a week, and have put the country's new "democratic" regime increasingly under threat of collapse.  RT reports that "Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi will authorize the deployment of the country's armed forces to quash protests in Cairo, al-Ahram reported. The military said prolonging the crisis would be "disastrous,” and that they would not tolerate violence. At least six people died and hundreds were reported injured over the last few days in the unrest that has gripped the Egyptian capital since late November. Al-Ahram reported that the armed forces will be given powers of arrest, previously an exclusive right of the police."

What the granular data shows is that instead of a 146K gain in November, there was actually a drop of 114K jobs when broken down by worker "vintage." But where it gets simply stupid, is that of the 4 age group buckets (16-19, 20-24, 25-54, and 55-69), the biggest gainer continued to be America geriatric work force, which added 177 jobs. As for that key segment of the workforce, the 25-54? Jobs here declined by a whopping 359K in November. And this is good news?

• Bundesbank cuts growth outlook as crisis bites (Reuters)
• Strong quake hits off Japan near Fukushima disaster zone (Reuters)
• Greece to Buy Debt It Already Owns to Reach Target (BBG)
• Draghi’s Go-to ECB Seen Risking Credibility Through Overload (BBG)
• Judge urges Apple and Samsung ‘peace’  (FT) ... Alas only the US government has a Magic Money Tree; others need profit
• Fed Exit Plan May Be Redrawn as Assets Near $3 Trillion (BBG)... make that $5 trillion this time in 2014
• Level Global, SAC Fund Managers Ruled Co-Conspirators (BBG)
• Egypt demonstrators reject Mursi call for dialogue (Reuters)
• Japanese Dealerships in China Retrench in Wake of Dispute (BBG)
• Apparel factory fire reveals big brands' shadowy supply chainsa (Reuters)
• Republican Defectors Weigh Deal on Tax-Rate Increase (BBG)

The 8 day mini war between Israel and Gaza has come and gone and any attempts at provoking a wider regional conflict, one involving Iran (if indeed this was the intention), have failed. Which means the fallback plan - Syria - is back in play. And sure enough, as both the most recent naval map update, which shows a US aircraft carrier and a big deck amphibious warfare ship, both of which house thousands of troops and numerous offensive aircraft, and an RT news flash, indicating that thousands of troops have amassed near the Syrian shore confirm, the time for a US invasion may be near. The alibi? "Chemical weapons" of mass or non-mass destruction. In other words the Iraq playbook all over again.

As the Fiscal Cliff discussions get progressively more acrimonious, more people are being reminded that the new and improved $16.4 trillion debt ceiling, which the US will breach in a few days, is just as important, and just as much at an impasse. Which is why the Treasury just opined on the issue, by openly supporting the "McConnell Provision" and in doing so may have made any future Cliff/Ceiling discussions more difficult as the US has effectively invoked the nuclear option, aka a Presidential Veto to effectively elimiante the debt ceiling, something which will antagonize the GOP to such an extent any potential Fiscal Cliff deal may become unfeasible. The market is hardly happy that the already record polarity in Congress is about to get even worse as a result of this hardline stance, and just took another big leg lower.

During the its first term, the Obama Administration thus far has proven itself in favor of increased Government control and Central Planning. That is, the general trend throughout the last four years has been towards greater nationalization of industries (first finance, then automakers and now healthcare and insurance), as well as greater reliance on our Central Bank to maintain our finances.

We find ourselves more amazed than ever at the ability of those in power to lie, misinform and obfuscate the truth, while millions of Americans willfully choose to be ignorant of the truth and yearn to be misled. It’s a match made in heaven. Acknowledging the truth of our society’s descent from a country of hard working, self-reliant, charitable, civic minded citizens into the abyss of entitled, dependent, greedy, materialistic consumers is unacceptable to the slave owners and the slaves. We can’t handle the truth because that would require critical thought, hard choices, sacrifice, and dealing with the reality of an unsustainable economic and societal model. It’s much easier to believe the big lies that allow us to sleep at night. The concept of lying to the masses and using propaganda techniques to manipulate and form public opinion really took hold in the 1920s and have been perfected by the powerful ruling elite that control the reins of finance, government and mass media. How many Americans are awake enough to handle the truth? Abraham Lincoln once said that he believed in the people and that if you told them the truth and gave them the cold hard facts they would meet any crisis. That may have been true in 1860, but not today.

Doug Casey often gets letters from angry readers who accuse him of hating America, disloyalty, and perhaps even treason. The truth is that he loves the idea that was America. It's the United State it has become for which he has nothing but contempt. Where to begin? ...the US Constitution was essentially a coup; the delegates to what we now call the Constitutional Convention were not empowered to replace the existing government – only to improve upon the Articles of Confederation between the then-independent states. The framers of the Constitution drafted it with the notion of a national government already in place, but calmed fears of loss of state sovereignty by calling the new government the "United States of America" – a verbal sleight of hand that worked for over half a century. Then the southern states decided to exercise what these words imply, their right to leave the union... and as the government becomes more powerful, it's completely predictable that everything – including the justice system – will become ever more politicized... As great as a US citizen's risk is in the marketplace these days, the greatest single risk to their wealth and health is the government.

This memo on the official whitehouse.gov website was released the other day and as Mike Krieger notes, it deserves wider discussion. It implies that the Obama Administration may be very worried about the truth getting out about all of their crimes, potentially via leaks from high places.  Read it for yourself, but the language is pretty clear.

• As this has been priced in since September 13, it should come as no surprise to anyone: Fed Stimulus Likely in 2013 (Hilsenrath)
• Bowles Says Fiscal Cliff Deal Unlikely by End of Year (Bloomberg)
• Argentina debt repayment order frozen (FT)
• Obama Is Flexible on Highest Tax Rates (WSJ)... not really
• Geithner deployed for fiscal cliff talks (FT)
• Audit firms Deloitte and KPMG sued in HP's Autonomy acquisition (Reuters)
• Euro-Zone Budget Proposal Is Unveiled (WSJ)
• EU Nations Clash on Thresholds for Direct ECB Oversight (Bloomberg)
• LDP leader Abe: BOJ must ease until inflation hits 3 percent (Reuters)
• SNB’s Jordan Says High Swiss Franc Burdens Many Companies (Bloomberg)
• EU to launch free trade negotiations with Japan: EU officials (Reuters)

With hope high that TPTB will see fit not to plunge us over the cliff, we thought it useful to get some perspective on what the grand compromise might look like. Goldman's central assumption - albeit a close call - is that an agreement is found that includes a tax increase of a magnitude similar to the upper income tax cuts, though the composition might differ. Entitlement reforms also seem likely to be part of a package, particularly related to health programs. "Down-payments" in both areas seem likely, with additional deficit reduction to be enacted in 2013 as part of a two-stage process. The working deadline for an agreement appears to be December 21. While talks are ongoing, we, like Goldman, would not expect serious negotiations to begin for another couple of weeks. In the interim, headlines out of Washington are likely to be mixed, but we would expect more negative than positive news until at least mid-December.

Watching Barack Obama and Mitt Romney duel in the presidential campaign should have convinced the spectators that we live in an age of illusionists. Few of the assertions and conjectures thrown around have been subjected to what the political chattering classes deem to be the indignity of factual verification. This brings us to the sharp pencil people in the Obama administration, specifically the OMB. They claim to know what the relative size of the federal government will be in 2016, at the end of President Obama’s term. According to the OMB’s plans, the federal government, as a percent of GDP should be 22.5%. That’s a 1.8 percentage point drop from the current level. Given that President Obama’s first term recorded a record growth in the relative size of the federal government, and that the President campaigned on a platform of more big government, it is doubtful that he will come close to meeting his own OMB forecasts, in his second term. Yes, the illusionists, not the President’s sharp pencil people, will probably carry the day. What will make the President’s task even more onerous is money – as in the money supply. Thanks to Basel III, the U.S. money supply isn’t the only one creating growth headwinds. Europe faces significant money supply deficiencies. Will Asia continue to be the world’s locomotive? We will have to wait and see. At present, though, one thing is certain – an age of illusionists has arrived.

Not surprisingly, in the weeks since the historical hurricane made landfall, new attention is being paid to the mounting costs that coastal world megacities may face. Intriguingly, however, this new conversation about climate, energy policy, and America’s reliance on fossil fuels comes after a five-year period in which the U.S. has dramatically lowered its consumption of oil and seen an equally dramatic upturn in the growth of renewable energy. The combination of declining oil use and a greater reliance on the global powergrid is going to shape energy and climate policy. Especially at a time when the concerns of climate change – or, rather, rising seas and the greenhouse dangers of fossil fuel dependency – are being increasingly raised. This will make for a rather muddled and complex array of diverging policy initiatives. Moreover, as new oil supplies emerge from domestic American sources, the dream of resurrecting this cheap oil era will no doubt come back around several more times. But none of these new resource plays will change the trajectory of global oil supply much, nor will they lower the price of oil. So far, new oil supply mostly offsets declines elsewhere – but at substantially higher marginal cost. This should now be clear.