President Obama

Despite the barrage of geopolitical headlines involving Iran, and as of today, the US and Israel, especially as pertains to wargame exercises in the Straits of Hormuz, a different, and potentially much more important story is to be found in the country's capital markets, and specifically its currency, which has continued to tumble ever since Obama signed the Iran financial boycott on New Year's Day as reported here. And, as we predicted, it is the aftershocks of the boycott which may have the most adverse impact on geopolitics. Because if the Iran regime finds itself in a lose-lose situation with its economy imploding and its currency crashing, the opportunity cost of doing something very irrational, from a military standpoint or otherwise, gets lower and lower. Then again, something tells us the US administration has been well aware of this sequence of events all along. Here is Art Cashing explaining it all.

America may be $25 million away from breaching the interim debt ceiling, it may have well over 40 million people subsisting on food stamps, and we may be reading all about this "austerity" thing gripping the country, but it sure won't be impacting Federal workers, all millions and millions of them, if Obama has his way. According to Washington Post, the White House will propose a 0.5 percent pay increase for civilian federal employees as part of its 2013 budget proposal, according to two senior administration officials familiar with the plans." Well as long as the president is adamant about increasing taxes on what is left of America's upper middle class (and let's not forget that half of America pays no taxes at all) to pay for this, we see no way that this proposal will irritate the class-war divided United States even further. And yet we can't help but wonder: why a pay increased? Haven't we been brainwashed day after day how the only threat is deflation, that prices are not going up, that nobody actually needs food or gas, and that people should in fact be grateful for a pay cut?

Looking for a reason why the surge of BAC has been abruptly halted after hours? Look no further - as predicted earlier, when we commented on the periodic reincarnation of the always false global refi rumor which served among other things to push BAC higher by almost 10%, the rumor was found to be false... all over again. In other words no refi, no benefit to TBTF, and all of today's gains are based on what Bloomberg noted was a report issued yesterday by a Jaret Seiberg, who until recently was an employee of MF Global, and has since been acquired with his entire Washington Research Group by none other than Guggenheim partners, which just happens to be run by former Bear Stearns exec Alan Scwhartz. From Bloomberg, here is the official denial (which came literally seconds after market close):

• White House Has No Plan for Mass Home Refinancing, Person Says

Incidentally, even if the rumor was true, here is JMP explaining why it would have no real impact on Bank of America

There is literally no difference between Obama and a moderate Republican when it comes to the truly important policies governing the nation's insolvent finances, its predatory financial sector, its corrupt and fraudulent sickcare system or its sprawling Empire. Obama's policies have all aided and abetted existing Status Quo cartels and fiefdoms. He has changed absolutely nothing of import except further eroding civil liberties. President Obama can be charitably characterized as an ineffectual Demopublican. From those demanding more, then he can be accurately described as a well-meaning puppet of Wall Street and the rest of the Status Quo cartels and fiefdoms.

There are dim lights at the end of the seemingly darker and darker tunnel. The proposed sanctions legislation allows Obama to waive sanctions if they cause the price of oil to rise or threaten national security. Furthermore, there is the wild card of Iran’s oil customers, the most prominent of which is China, which would hardly be inclined to go along with increased sanctions. But one thing should be clear in Washington – however odious the U.S. government might find Iran’s mullahcracy, it is most unlikely to cave in to either economic or military intimidation that would threaten the nation’s existence, and if backed up against the wall with no way out, would just as likely go for broke and use every weapon at its disposal to defend itself. Given their evident cyber abilities in hacking the RQ-170 Sentinel drone and their announcement of an indigenous naval doctrine, a “cakewalk” victory with “mission accomplished” declared within a few short weeks seems anything but assured, particularly as it would extend the military arc of crisis from Iraq through Iran to Afghanistan, a potential shambolic military quagmire beyond Washington’s, NATO’s and Tel Aviv’s resources to quell. It is worth remembering that chess was played in Sassanid Iran 1,400 years ago, where it was known as “chatrang.” What is occurring now off the Persian Gulf is a diplomatic and military game of chess, with global implications.

The Status Quo's Ministry of Propaganda has a single political task for 2012: eliminate the sole threat to the Status Quo (Ron Paul) from the running, leaving voters with a "choice" of clueless stooges for the Power Elite. That roster includes President Obama and the daytime-TV/soap-opera field of Republicrat contenders. The Ministry of Propaganda has settled on a ludicrous strategy to eliminate Ron Paul: declare Paul "unelectable." As with all propaganda, the basic idea is that if it is repeated often enough on officially sanctioned stages, it will eventually be accepted as "true." Our Christmas-New Year's week of family visits took us to homes where the television is on all the time, and as a result I was exposed to the Ministry of Propaganda's preferred media, TV "news." Regardless of the channel or program, the message was the same: "The presidential race will between Obama and either Romney or Gingrich." Despite the polls that find Paul and Romney with equal levels of support in Iowa, Romney has been declared the front-runner and Paul written off as "unelectable." In other words, the voters don't even need to check in; the Ministry of Propaganda's army of toadies, lackeys and media apparatchiks have their marching orders: repeat that Ron Paul is unelectable at every opportunity, either explicitly or implicitly via leaving him off the list of "frontrunners."

When it comes to corruption, cronyism and general muppetry in Washington D.C., the only real question is 'where does one start?' Yet one has to start somewhere to conclude with a list of the ten most corrupt and despicable marionettes in D.C. Which is precisely what JudicialWatch has done in its annual compilation of the "Top 10 Most Corrupt Politicians in Washington D.C." for 2011. And confirming what everyone knows, that both the left and right are merely irrelevant names for the same general social affliction, or should we call it by its true name - wealth pillage - the split is even between democrats and republicans. In no particular order, the winners of 2011 are...

"They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety."

Do we want a real debate?

In the latest note from the masters of the arcane at ConvergEx, Nick Colas' team looks at the historically very strong correlation between home prices (which recently hit an 8 year low: here and here) and unemployment, a foundation stone in every single QE episode as to the Chairman the only controlled variable to set the unemployment rate are average home prices, and flips it. In other words, in their Friday analysis ConvergEx try to extrapolate just by how much home prices need to rise to hit the Fed's projected unemployment rates of 8.7% in 2012 (absent the now generic labor participation rate fudge of course), 8.2% in 2013 and 7.7% in 2014. The answer is disturbing: "In order for unemployment to reach 8.7% in the Composite-10 next year (2012), home prices will have to rise by an average of 3.5%. To reach 8.2% in 2013, they will have to climb 9.4% from their current prices. For a 7.7% unemployment rate in 2014, the necessary rate of increase is 15.4%." It is disturbing because while Case Shiller predicts a 2.7% rise in 2012, we have now seen the 5th consecutive drop in home prices, and the largest sequential decline since March 2011. In other words, not only are home prices not rising, or even stabilizing, they are suddenly deteriorating at an alarming pace yet again. ConvergEx continues: "we have no doubt that the Fed knows these numbers... If it costs a QE III to get the 3.5% bump in real estate prices, or even a QE IV, then markets should not doubt that the current Federal Reserve will seriously consider it." At the end of the day, the only thing the Fed thinks it can control are asset prices for that most critical of assets: housing. And if rising home prices means diluting a few hundred billion more dollars, so be it. After all, we are now less than 12 months from the presidential election, and all bets are off. As SocGen predicted, expect to see massive monetary easing resume as soon as January when Obama realizes he needs something to go right or else he can kiss that second term good bye. Ironically, the lower the president's interim rating, the higher the price of gold will ultimately rise when all is said and done. Who would have thought that the worst president since Carter would be a gold bug's biggest friend.

Since President Obama missed the best opportunity three years ago, it is too late for a do-over now.

While there are some undertones of caution in the latest letter from the head of Goldman's worst performing group ("I suspect the reason why the bond market has rallied and the Dollar and equities have fallen, is because there is going to be a budget deal, which the markets worry will weaken the cyclical GDP growth outlook further"), his bottom line (literally) is precisely what everyone on Wall Street, and everyone else who writes rants against responsible fiscal management (wait, wasn't Congress responsible 1 year ago? or two years ago? No of course not. It became an emergency a week ago) thinks. And it is as follows: "Go on President Obama and Congress; give us a nice pleasant Summer surprise!" Indeed, when you cut out all the hollow rhetoric of all those whose livelihood depends on the status quo^TM and on "borrowing" from the future (cold fusion will certainly help with our energy problems one day... so will the tooth fairy), this is what it is all about.

Prior to the reception, Thigpen will be attending a special policy briefing with senior White House and Administration officials on topics including housing, immigration reform, innovation, energy, and job creation.

Presented without comment

We have heard much from the propaganda machine just how much better the jobs situation has gotten under president Obama three years into his term. We would like to interject with two very simple charts...