White House

A full Q&A on what just happened from the WSJ's Lousie Radofsky.

Let's give federal money to tax cheats!!

In about an hour, the US Supreme Court, three years after Chrysler, is about to have a profound impact on Wall Street one more time. As Goldman explains, the court is expected to release some of the final opinions of the current session, which ends this week. Rulings on the Affordable Care Act (ACA) as well as the Arizona immigration law are likely to capture the greatest amount of attention. With a number of opinions to get out, it is possible the court could wait until later this week (possibly Thursday, June 28) to release some of the remaining rulings for this term, though the court has not yet announced any additional dates for the release of opinions. Trading in the online prediction market intrade.com implies a 74% probability that the court will find the mandate unconstitutional; prior to the oral arguments in March, it implied only around a 35% probability the court would rule against the mandate. Goldman believes that the outcome is fairly unpredictable and that many market participants probably are relying too heavily on the oral arguments in trying to predict the outcome of the case.

There has been much talk today about Obama's use of the "executive privilege" yet few are familiar with the details of this relatively unknown presidential option. The AP sheds much needed light on this practice: perhaps the most fitting, to the constitutional expert president, is that the "privilege" isn't in the Constitution nor has been clearly defined by the courts. In other words - just the kind of loophole that one needs to mask the fact that the very person tasked with imposing justice is himself guilty of performing just the opposite. Yet Obama has only used it once (so far) during his tenure as president. Dubya used it six times, Bush Sr used it once also. Slick Willie however takes the cake with 14 cases of executive privilege during his 8 years on top.

After earlier none other than Obama stepped up and invoked an executive privilege, hoping the next step would be avoided, Darrell Issa just called the president and the AG's bluff:

HOUSE PANEL VOTES TO HOLD ERIC HOLDER IN CONTEMPT - BBG

But wait, there's more:

HOLDER CALLS CONTEMPT VOTE `EXTRAORDINARY' AND UNNECESSARY
HOLDER CALLS CONTEMPT VOTE `ELECTION-YEAR TACTIC'

... And now to give some illegal immigrant voters pseudo-amnesty. So aside from this soaring acrimony between Republicans and Democrats, the "Fiscal cliff" issue will be promptly resolved. Promise.

They're all Blowtards....

If there was any confusion whether Obama is in fact Bush, or maybe even Nixon, this has now been squashed. From Fox:

President Obama has granted an 11th-hour request by Attorney General Eric Holder to exert executive privilege over Fast and Furious documents, a last-minute maneuver that appears unlikely to head off a contempt vote against Holder by Republicans in the House. The House Oversight and Government Reform Committee is expected to forge ahead with its meeting on the contempt resolution anyway.

Holder, whose guilt is implicitly proven by this action, is now likely absolved of everything as the TOTUS has effectively onboarded all of his "balance sheet risk." And why not. The Fed does it for everyone else every day.

Four months before the election. And yet, a horrendous migration across the Pacific

Treaty Threatens Global Government … Run by Giant Corporations

All you can read.

With all the buzz about the 'Fiscal Cliff' – that toxic combination of tax increases and spending cuts due to take hold in a few months – the subject of ongoing Federal budget deficits has fallen by the wayside.  ConvergEx's Nic Colas believes that’s a temporary phenomenon, for Congress will have to hammer out agreements to raise the debt ceiling right alongside its negotiations over the 'Cliff' items.  His back-of-the-envelope attempt to quantify how much a multi-year debt limit increase would run to take this burdensome legislative issue off the Congressional docket for 5, 10 or even 20 years is worrisome at best with a $3.4 trillion for the 5-year runway, but this assumes a high level of incremental taxation. The number could be as high as $4.5 trillion.  As for the longer time horizon debt runways, think in terms of an incremental $6.5 -9.5 billion for a 10 and 20 year horizon. And without significant changes to taxes and/or spending, more.  Much more. We cannot help but think about Paul Krugman as we ponder these numbers.  His recent book, End this Depression Now, proposes that “A quick, strong recovery is just one step away, if our leaders can find the intellectual clarity and political will to end this depression now.”  This “One step” is deficit spending that is orders of magnitude greater than anything spent already.  We have no idea if he really believes any of this, since it is politically impossible, but he does have a Nobel (though so did the guys at LTCM).

All you need to know.

For years some of us have been preaching that the so-called American Dream, if it once existed, was then appearing as nothing more than a myth. Ronald Reagan, touted as the great communicator, articulated this myth quite well making most everyone feel hopeful and proud, while at the same time spreading the most perverse moral disease that can confront any modern day society: the cult of inequality – an inevitable result from the infamous trickle-down economics and the homage to greed. And, for three decades, that’s what we have been living in the United States: a morbid growth in inequality either sponsored or condoned by the leadership in the White House, all following in Reagan’s footsteps: the two Bushes, father and son; Bill Clinton; and now, our fizzle-savior, Barack Obama. The truth is that Americans have been fed by both parties the Great American Lie, while at the same time being humored with the placebo of the American Dream.

All Military-Age Men Are Labeled “Militants” In Areas of Conflict ... Including Inside the U.S.?

When Iran's nuclear facilities were publicly crippled in 2011 by what then was considered a revolutionary computer virus which destroys physical equipment, many immediately assumed the virus originated in Israel for obvious reasons. They were wrong. In what can be described as the first presidentially-mandated and condoned act of cyberwarfare, one circumventing the War Powers Act of course, the NYT informs us that the order to physically impair Iranian sovereignty came from none other than the Nobel Peace prize winning president: Barack Obama.