President Obama

Here are Deutsche Bank's 10 themes and "summer issues" to keep an eye on as we leave May behind and enter June...

"While advising Mrs. Clinton on Libya, Mr. Blumenthal, who had been barred from a State Department job by aides to President Obama, was also employed by her family’s philanthropy, the Clinton Foundation, to help with research, “message guidance” and the planning of commemorative events, according to foundation officials... Much of the Libya intelligence that Mr. Blumenthal passed on to Mrs. Clinton appears to have come from a group of business associates he was advising as they sought to win contracts from the Libyan transitional government."

Obama-style immigration reform could be dead in the water as the DoJ's decision not to seek a Supreme Court end-around on the President's stalled executive order presents a number of possibly insurmountable problems.

• No change in Greek debt talks after another day of spin (Reuters)
• G-7 Weighs In on Greece as Government Told to Be Serious (BBG)
• FIFA Faces Mounting Pressure From Sponsors as Visa Threatens to End Deal (WSJ)
• U.S. hopes Chinese island-building will spur Asian response (Reuters)
• Japan Inc.’s $104 Billion Investor Payout Set to Surge (BBG)
• Russia masses heavy firepower on border with Ukraine (Reuters)
• China Says Its Most-Wanted Fugitive Is in U.S. Custody (BBG)

On the heels of a tough Senate fight that initially saw Democrats oppose granting fast-track authority on trade deals, President Obama was just dealt a fresh blow related to what some say is another example of Presidential overreach after the 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in New Orleans ruled that an executive order on immigration designed to prevent the deportation of undocumented immigrants will remain on hold.

"The top 25 hedge fund managers made more than all the kindergarten teachers in the country," declared President Obama. One side supports him, and the other defends hedgies. Both get it partially right.

While some have argued that President Obama and his folly-prone foreign policy debacle is the laughing stock of the world, it seems, as DefenseNews reports, that the Iraqi military is directly mocking America. Just a day after defense secretary Ash Carter accused them of cowardice, an umbrella group for mostly Shiite militia and volunteer fighters, Hashed al-Shaabi, said it had dubbed a military campaign to cut off the Islamic State group in Anbar province as "Operation Labaik ya Hussein," which roughly translates as "We are at your service, Hussein."

"I got interested in her in 2008," Kenyan Felix Kiprono tells The Nairobian newspaper, and now, in an official marriage request, the lawyer has offered US president Barack Obama 50 cows, 70 sheep, and 30 goats in exchange for his 16-year old daughter Malia's hand in marriage. As AFP reports, Kiprono dismissed the notion he might be a gold-digger, adding that he and the young Obama would lead "a simple life," and he will teach Malia how to milk a cow. This is not the first time a Kenyan has offered livestock in exchange for a President's daughter...

“The Iraqi forces just showed no will to fight. They were not outnumbered. In fact they vastly outnumbered the opposing force and yet they failed to fight and withdrew from the site...We can give them training, we can give them equipment. We obviously can’t give them the will to fight.”

It seems comical, yet ill-omened, how Barack Obama is herding the already decimated middle class along a path sure to reach economic oblivion, while maintaining support from much of the old guard of school-government-trade unionists which has kept the Democratic Party afloat during the last five decades in a conservative sea dominated by currents of old-time religion and misguided patriotism. ISIS’ literal style of decapitation is repugnant and shocking. US’ self-imposed economic decapitation may not appear at first as shocking, but the end result will be as gruesome to America’s working class: not the proletariat of old, but most everyone holding both blue and white collar jobs.

"China said on Friday it was 'strongly dissatisfied' after a U.S. military plane flew over part of the South China Sea near where China is building artificial islands, and called on the United States to stop such action or risk causing an accident."

The State Department has released 850 pages of e-mails from Hillary Clinton’s private e-mail address. Clinton has been under fire for using a private e-mail server (as opposed to an official government account) to discuss potentially sensitive matters of national security and foreign policy during her tenure as the nation’s top diplomat. Specifically, there are big questions about who knew what and when about an attack on US outposts in Benghazi that killed US ambassador J. Christopher Stevens.

When in doubt how to boost GDP, always revert to that old Keynesian favorite. War.

“Fast Track Trade Promotion Authority” (which was invented by the imperial President Richard Nixon in 1974, in order to advance his goal of a dictatorial Executive, that the Presidency would become a dictatorship) lowers the Constitutionally required approval from 67 Senators down to only 50 Senators. The difference between 50 Senators versus 67 Senators is, essentially, the difference between a treaty that is publicly discussed and widely acceptable to the American public (the people, after all, who voted for those members of Congress); versus a secret treaty that will be widely unacceptable to the American public when the America public will become informed of its contents, which won’t be until years after the treaty has already gone into effect.