Obama Administration

The NDAA lawsuit is one of the key topics we have written about over the past year or so.  For those of you that aren’t up to speed, one of the most popular posts we ever wrote was NDAA: The Most Important Lawsuit in American History that No One is Talking About.  Basically, Section 1021 of the NDAA allows for the indefinite detention of American citizens without charges or a trial.  Journalist Chris Hedges and several others sued Obama on the grounds of it being unconstitutional.  Judge Katherine Forrest agreed and issued an injunction on it.  This was immediately appealed by the Obama Administration to a higher court, which promptly issued a temporary stay on the injunction. Yesterday, oral arguments began in front of this aforementioned higher court; the 2nd Circuit.  As Chris Hedges states in the interview below, if they win the case then it will likely be brought in front of the Supreme Court within weeks.  On the other hand, if the Obama Administration wins and the Supreme Court refuses to hear the appeal, Hedges states: “at that point we’ve just become a military dictatorship.”

• Bersani's lead over Berlusconi continues to erode, now just 3.6 Pts, or inside error margin, in Tecne Poll
• Spain gears up for U.S. debt investor meetings (Reuters)
• PBOC Set for Record Weekly Liquidity Injection (WSJ)
• RBS Trader Helped UBS’s Hayes With Libor Bribes, Regulators Say (BBG)
• ECB, Ireland reach bank debt deal (Reuters)
• AMR-US Airways Near Merger Agreement (WSJ)
• Monte Paschi says no more derivatives losses (Reuters) ... remember this
• Harvard’s Gopinath Helps France Beat Euro Straitjacket (BBG) - by sliding into recession?
• Obama Relents on Secret Drone Memo (WSJ)
• Brennan to face questions on interrogations, drones and leaks (Reuters)
• Wall Street Success With Germans Boomerangs (BBG)
• Khamenei rebuffs U.S. offer of direct talks (Reuters)
• Boeing Preps Redesign to Get 787 Flying  (WSJ)

“Facts do not cease to exist because they are ignored.” – Aldous Huxley

The entire system is corrupt to its core. Both political parties, regulatory agencies, Wall Street, the Federal Reserve, and mainstream media are participants in this enormous fraud. They grow more desperate and bold by the day. The lies, misinformation and propaganda being spewed on a daily basis become more outrageous and audacious. They are using the Big Lie method on a grand scale. They frantically need to lure the muppets into the stock market and the housing market to keep the game going a little longer. You can sense we are reaching a tipping point. The system they have created is mathematically unsustainable. Therefore, it will not be sustained.

Bush and Obama Have Set Us Back 800 Years

As the world's economic powers squabble over the intricacies of cause and effect in a vicious cycle of currency devaluation and domestic economic defense; it appears, NYTimes reports, that the US is leading the way in another direction. A secret legal review on the use of America’s growing arsenal of cyberweapons has concluded that President Obama has the broad power to order a pre-emptive strike if the United States detects credible evidence of a major digital attack looming from abroad - i.e. if we 'suspect' someone is going to hack us, we can hack them. In what appears to be Stuxnet's bigger (and scarier) brother,one official noted, "there are levels of cyberwarfare that are far more aggressive than anything that has been used or recommended to be done." New policies will also govern how the intelligence agencies can carry out searches of faraway computer networks for signs of potential attacks on the United States and, if the president approves, attack adversaries by injecting them with destructive code - even if there is no declared war. Cyberweaponry is the newest and perhaps most complex arms race under way, based in Cyber Command at The Pentagon, with the unspoken question being, ‘What are we going to do about China?’

Government Prosecutes and Harasses those Who Expose Criminal Wrongdoing

It is a well-known fact that nobody in Congress ever reads, or even skims, any law, and especially not the fine print, it passes until long after it has been enacted into law. It appears the same is just as true for the biggest pillar of support for the Obama administration: America's labor unions, whose liberal vote every election is instrumental to preserving the outflow side of America's welfare state. As it turns out, it was the same labor unions who enthusiastically supported the primary accomplishment of the Obama administration in the past 4 years, Obamacare, only to realize, long after it has become reality that, surprise, their healthcare plan costs are about to go up. And, as the WSJ colorfully summarizes, they are now "turning sour."

The hypocrisy of the government knows no bounds. The writing on the wall couldn’t be clearer.

When the Republican party agreed last week to a push back on the debt ceiling discussion by three months to May 19, virtually without a fight in a move that may presage what is set to become a quarterly can kicking exercise on the US credit card max, some were curious what the quo to this particular quid may be. Earlier today on Meet the press Paul Ryan explained: the pound of spending flesh demanded by the GOP in exchange for caving on yet another key GOP hurdle is, as our readers have known for over two weeks, the Sequester, which is set to hit on March 1 and possibly the stop-gap government funding on March 27, after which various government agencies will start shutting down. Both programs are set to kick in automatically as incremental spending cuts, chopping away even more basis points from the 2013 US GDP, unless the GOP votes affirmatively to extend them in what would then be seen as a move that destroys any last trace of leverage and credibility that GOP may have had.

With eight months left until million of Americans are supposed to begin shopping at online markets created by the Obamacare 'tax' law, the insurance industry is concerned at the government's lack of readiness. Bloomberg reports that Jim Donelon, the head of the National Association of Insurance Commissioners, suggested that President Obama may need to delay the implementation of the health-care overhaul or "risk chaos" when the subsidized plans go on sale later this year. While it is clear that the administration has shown no sign of seeking a delay, Donelon notes that "...to rush into implementation before it's ready would not be in the President's best interest."

The ex-back of the envelope TARP calculation "chump" become wood-chopper, turned equity portfolio manager has gone full circle and decided his time is better spent serving the public good once again. As the WSJ reports, Neel Kashkari is considering running for office in California. The napkin-laden chrome-dome has seen his funds suffer from spotty performance since their launch - all underperforming the benchmarks. We can't help but think the timing of his announcement odd given his love affair with Apple and tonight's collapse but that would be harsh judgment on the always self-denigrating 39 year-old. Of course, we will hear the impressive nature of him leaving a well-paid job to run for office as his patriotism runs wild; we are less 'believer'. Still, managing to have your name turned into a noun and a verb is no easy task...

On occasion, truth is stranger than fiction; and in the somewhat surreal world in which we now inhabit, The Onion's perfect parody of where we are headed could have been lifted from any mainstream media front-page with little questioning from the majority of Americans. For your reading pleasure, the 62-year-old with a gun that is the last man standing between the American people and full-scale totalitarian government takeover.

If governments or central banks really can create wealth simply by creating money, why does poverty exist anywhere on earth?  Why haven’t successive rounds of quantitative easing by the US Fed solved our economic recession?  And if Fed money creation really works, and doesn’t create inflation, why haven’t Americans gotten richer as the money supply has grown? The truth is obvious to everyone.  Fiat currency is not wealth, and the creation of more fiat dollars does not mean that more rice, steel, soybeans, Ipads, or Honda Accords suddenly come into existence. The creation of new fiat currency simply strengthens a fantasy balance sheet, either by adding to cash reserves or servicing debt.  But this balance sheet wealth is an illusion, just as the notion we can continue to raise the debt limit and borrow money forever is an illusion. 

Last week we reported that in the aftermath of the so far disastrous French campaign to eradicate "rebels" in the north of Mali, because of their implied threat fo Europe, that "US Drones, Boots Arrive In Mali." Turns out we were wrong, and as the case virtually always is, for some reason there was already a US presence of at least three US commandos in Mali in the summer of 2012. What they were doing there remains a mystery, as it is a mystery if the ever co-present flip flops on the ground were there inciting the perpetual scapegoat Al Qaeda to do this, or that. Or maybe it was not the CIA. Maybe it was the Army's "little-known and secretive" branch known as the Intelligence and Security Command. Regardless, what becomes obvious is that while the US was on the ground and engaged in secret missions, it needed an alibi to avoid "destabilizing" the local situation once its presence became conventional wisdom. It got just that, thank to one Francois Hollande just over a week ago.

“Here we go again”