For months now, the pundits have predicted doom and gloom for Barack Obama and the Democrats come November.
But we’re not totally convinced.
A very likely storyline goes something like this (as we’ve already written): Healthcare passes. On Friday, April 2 at 8:30 AM the March jobs numbers come in, and they show for the first time decisive job growth (very possible). Finally Case-Shiller shows the housing rebound that stalled out over the winter, and voila, the recovery looks credible. Obama then uses the next 8 months to keep juicing the economy, thus riding to a narrow, not-devastating loss in November.
It’s very possible.
But it’s also very easy to envision the nightmare.
Healthcare fails. The jobs numbers look ugly and suddenly there will only be one storyline: why on earth did the Democrats spend so much time pursuing a healthcare bill, when unemployment hovered around 10%, and there was no job growth to speak of?
What the hell were they thinking?
And it’s not just jobs. Calculated Risk lays out various downside risks to the economy: the savings rate begins to creep up rapidly again (something that should happen, though for the right-now that’s seen as a negative), wage deflation picks up again, while small businesses continue to suffocate without access to credit.
In just a few days, starting tomorrow, this could all be the storyline, and then that will go from here until November, at which point John Boehner & Co. will mop the floor with the Democrats, removing the gavel from Nancy Pelosi’s hands for good.
If Obama doesn’t get much sleep tonight, we won’t blame him.
Nowadays a newspaper cannot be opened — or a TV turned on — without one being subjected to anti-teacher misinformation. The anti-teacher hysteria looks diverse on the surface, but underneath, this public controversy seeks to dislodge teachers unions: the right-wing trashes teachers’ unions outright, while the “liberal” media takes a more subtle, sophisticated approach, blaming the state of public education on “bad teachers” who must be fired and replaced. Both styles are the same in essence.
The bi-partisan goal is to undermine and dismember public education, so that public funds may be instead channeled into paying debts racked up by multiple wars and corporate bailouts. Also, as public education is gutted, rich investors parasitically benefit from it by opening for-profit “charter schools,” curriculum corporations, or the bevy of new companies that "certify" teachers for a fraction of the cost or time of universities, ready to serve at the new corporate McEducation institutes.
Obama’s Race to the Top campaign enshrines these odious goals into governmental policy, picking up where Bush’s anti-teacher union policies left off, and racing frantically in the same direction, to the bottom.
The schools that Bush’s No Child Left Behind labeled as “failures” are to be shut down under Obama’s Race to the Top. These schools are almost entirely in poor neighborhoods, where the social disease of poverty is an easy predictor of a child’s poor test scores.
But Obama ignores this obvious fact and blames poor grades and test scores on the teachers, exclusively.
Thus, Obama cheered when every teacher at a Rhode Island “failing” high school was fired. He praised the past closures of dozens of public schools in both Chicago and New Orleans as examples for others to follow. Indeed, Detroit and Kansas City each have plans to close dozens of schools, while California is set to fire thousands of teachers. Under Obama’s plan, federal money is awarded to states that fire the most "bad" teachers and close the most “failing” public schools.
Charter schools are to fill the void, where the rich will have access to all the…
The amount saved from this freeze has been consistently reported as $15 billion in the first year and $250 billion over 10 years. I hate the “we’re saving $250 billion over 10 years” line. It is a piece of crass political rhetoric and I’m disappointed that the administration would use it. If they actually implement a three year freeze on the portion of the budget they’re talking about (which is a big if, but let’s assume the best), why measure the effects in the space of 10 years?
The answer is “To make the freeze look bigger”.
They might as well say that they’re saving a trillion dollars over the next 25 years or a hundred trillion over the next 300 years. It is a data statement designed to trick people.
Second, I hate the “We’re saving all this money by not spending it” line because it is similarly political. If a future politician wants to play this stupid numbers game, all they have to do is “project” that they will spend like a crazy person next year and when the next year comes, they decided to spend like a half crazy person. Then they can claim that they have “saved” all this money because they “reduced” their projected spending.
Keep in mind the hypocrisy on both sides of the aisle. Overall, it looks like both sides are more interested in political gain than in having a frank discussion about the numbers and what they mean. This should surprise no one, but I confess to finding myself somewhat dismayed that the Obama administration, for all their hype about being pro-science and pro-data, has no problem spinning the numbers in a way that decreases clear comprehension in order to increase message potency.
Where Are The Fiscal Conservatives?
When will conservatives in Congress be willing to do something other than play politics? That’s what I want to know. There was every opportunity under Bush to do something. Nothing happened.
Entitlements must be reined in, but so must military spending.…
1. Before Barrack Obama’s next televised speech, prepare your “Bullshit Bingo” card by drawing a square. I find that 5″ x 5″ is a good size — and dividing it into columns –five across and five down. That will give you 25 1-inch blocks.
2. Write one of the following words/phrases in each block:
Restored our reputation
Strategic fit
Let me be clear
Make no mistake
Back from the brink
Signs of recovery
Out of the loop
Benchmark
Job creation
Fiscal restraint
Win-win
Affordable health care
Previous Administration
At the end of the day
Empower (or empowerment)
Touch base
Mindset
Bipartisan
Trust
Inherited as in “I inherited this mess”
Relief for working families
Unprecedented
Accountable (or held to account)
Free market
Reform
Players can make substitutions to this list, but only one phrase can be used in any one block. Alternatives include:
Change (as in “change you can believe in)
Universal health care
Brought the economy back from the brink
3. Check off the appropriate block when you hear one of those words/phrases.
4. When you get five blocks horizontally, vertically, or diagonally, stand up and shout ”BULLSHIT!”
Testimonials from past satisfied “Bullshit Bingo” players:
”I had been listening to the speech for only five minutes when I won.” - Jack W., Boston
”My attention span during speeches has improved dramatically.” – David D., Florida
”What a gas! Speeches will never be the same for me after my first win.” - Bill R., New York City
“The atmosphere was tense in the last speech as 14 of us waited for the fifth box.” – Ben G., Denver
“The speaker was stunned as eight of us screamed “BULLSHIT!” for the third time in two hours.” – Harry A. Chantilly
We’ve now come full circle. Instead of trying to get people to stay in their homes, Obama is willing to pay them to leave. Please consider Program Will Pay Homeowners to Sell at a Loss.
In an effort to end the foreclosure crisis, the Obama administration has been trying to keep defaulting owners in their homes. Now it will take a new approach: paying some of them to leave.
This latest program, which will allow owners to sell for less than they owe and will give them a little cash to speed them on their way, is one of the administration’s most aggressive attempts to grapple with a problem that has defied solutions.
Under the new program, the servicing bank, as with all modifications, will get $1,000. Another $1,000 can go toward a second loan, if there is one. And for the first time the government would give money to the distressed homeowners themselves. They will get $1,500 in “relocation assistance.”
Short sales are “tailor-made for fraud,” said Mr. Lawler, a former executive at the mortgage finance company Fannie Mae.
Under the new federal program, a lender will use real estate agents to determine the value of a home and thus the minimum to accept. This figure will not be shared with the owner, but if an offer comes in that is equal to or higher than this amount, the lender must take it.
And so it begins. Big gun lawmakers are making the move toward principal writedowns as the last resort to save the housing market.
The problem is prices. Home prices have fallen so far in the hardest hit areas, the areas where the bulk of the troubled loans are, that banks would have to write down principal 30 to 50 percent to put borrowers back in the green. Accounting rules require that banks write down the value of those loans on their books, and experts tell me that if banks really accounted for all the losses in the home loan market, they’d all be insolvent.
That’s why the Obama Administration has created this kind of shell game in the first place.
I stole that shell game idea from housing consultant Howard Glaser: "We’re spending tens of billions of dollars on a tax credit to get people to purchase homes, we’re spending federal money to…
It’s difficult to understand a subject when those explaining it are motivated not by truth, but profit. In the case of health care, both Democrats and Republicans have huge financial incentives to obscure, mislead, or lie. Instead of common sense and honesty directing the debate, bags of money facilitate the conversation, funneled in from the health care industry via lobbyists into Congressmen’s pockets. This is the real reason that Obama’s “health care summit” was full of free-market jargon, staged debate and fake rage.
The majority of working people in this country are completely alienated from this nonsense, and are growing progressively hostile to the lies of both parties and their respective media mouthpieces. Polls continue to show rising opposition to the Democrats’ health care shenanigans, while showing no upgrade in status for the Republicans.
The ability for millions of people to see through the muddle in Washington points to a larger distrust of the two-party system. Even as “progressive Democrats” and other liberal pundits bow before the health care industry by urging passage of “an imperfect” health care bill, workers, the poor and the elderly aren’t taking the bait.
And why should they? The Democrats want millions of uninsured people to be mandated into buying crappy health insurance from the most hated companies in existence, where co-pays, premiums and other fees will prevent millions from benefiting from their new, shoddy health care. This individual mandate is reason enough to solidly reject Obama’s health care scheme, but it’s just the beginning.
The Democrats don’t like to talk about how their health care vision slashes Medicare. The New York Times explains in detail how Obama’s new plan attacks Medicare; here are some examples:
“President Obama’s budget would make a down payment toward his goal of covering the uninsured, and he would pay for it in part by cutting federal payments [Medicare] to hospitals, insurance companies and drug companies.”
Later, the article reads: “Mr. Obama said he would save $176 billion over 10 years by cutting Medicare payments to health insurance companies that provide comprehensive care to more than 10 million of the 44 million Medicare beneficiaries.”
And: “Mr. Obama also proposed squeezing $37 billion out of the [Medicare] payments to home health agencies over the next decade.” (February 26, 2010).
The article fails to connect these blandly stated numbers with the gigantic human suffering that will result. All that…
Look, I’m not a card carrying member of the Tea Party and I’m not an uber-conservative, but who the Hell does Obama think he is? When did we mutate from a country of laws to one driven by government fiat.
OK, I’[m overreacting to this story. It’s from Bloomberg and it goes like this:
The Obama administration may expand efforts to ease the housing crisis by banning all foreclosures on home loans unless they have been screened and rejected by the government’s Home Affordable Modification Program.
The proposal, reviewed by lenders last week on a White House conference call, “prohibits referral to foreclosure until borrower is evaluated and found ineligible for HAMP or reasonable contact efforts have failed,” according to a Treasury Department document outlining the plan.
“It is one of the many ideas under consideration in the administration’s ongoing housing stabilization efforts,” Treasury spokeswoman Meg Reilly said in an e-mail. “This proposal has not been approved and there are no immediate planned announcements on the issue.”
She confirmed the authenticity of the document, which hasn’t been made public.
Somewhere in the not to distant past, when someone defaulted on a loan extended from one private party to another, the holder of the security interest had the option of taking back the collateral in the event of default. Now, without benefit of any enabling legislation, let alone judicial review the current administration has evidently assumed that it has some regal right to dictate the terms under which those contracts can be enforced.
Yes, there is a housing crisis in this country and lots of people are going to lose their homes. And, yes, there is an appropriate role for the federal government acting in conjunction with the owners of those mortgages. An absolutely laissez-faire approach to the problem is most likely not the best approach. Nevertheless, any alteration in the manner in which security rights are exercised should be subject to negotiation and agreement among all of the parties. Dictats have never had a place in American society and it’s most untasteful to see them emanating from this administration.
Absent any credible solution to the housing crisis and suddenly politically vulnerable, the President and his staffs’ jerking knees are troubling.
Michael Pettis really gets at the heart of the fallacious argument that China is somehow bankrolling the United States government. The fact is the Chinese have fixed their currency at an exchange rate which induces a current account surplus with the U.S. and…
If China runs a current account surplus, it must accumulate net foreign claims by exactly that amount, and the entity against which it accumulates those claims (adjusting for actions by other players within the balance of payments) ultimately must run the corresponding current account deficit. And as long as China ran the largest current account surplus ever recorded as a share of global GDP, and the US the largest current account deficit ever recorded, and especially since China also ran an additional capital account surplus (i.e. other non-PBoC agents ran a net capital inflow), it was almost impossible for the PBoC to do anything but buy US dollar assets. Given the sheer amounts, a substantial portion of these assets had inevitably to be USG bonds.
This was not a discretionary lending decision. It is the automatic consequence of China’s currency regime, in which it pegs the RMB to a foreign currency, in this case the dollar. Why? Because when the PBoC decides on the level of the RMB against the dollar, it does not do so by passing a law, and making it a capital crime for anyone to trade at a different price. What it does is far simpler. It offers to buy or sell unlimited amounts of RMB against the dollar at the desired price.
No one will sell dollars for less than what they can get from the PBoC, nor will anyone buy dollars for more than what they can pay the PBoC, so all transactions get done at that price. That is how the PBoC (or any other central bank that intervenes in the currency market) sets the foreign exchange value of its own currency.
This means that as long as it wants to set the exchange rate, then, it must take the opposite position of the market. Since the rest of the market is a net seller of dollars (China runs a current and capital account surplus), the PBoC has no choice but to be a net buyer of dollars, which of…
Confidence among U.S. small businesses increased in January for the first time in three months as the outlook for sales improved, according to the National Federation of Independent Business optimism index.
The gauge climbed to 89.3, the highest level in 16 months, from 88 in December, the Washington-based organization said today. The advance left the measure close to the 2009 low of 81 reached in March, which was second only to a 1980 reading as the lowest on record.
Three of every 10 companies surveyed said a lack of sales remained their biggest concern even as the demand outlook turned positive for the first time since January 2008, the month after the recession began. A majority of small businesses expect profit and employment to decline, showing why the Obama administration has announced new plans aimed at providing credit and tax breaks to small firms.
“This is very disappointing for an indicator of the health of the most critical segment of the economy in terms of new job creation,” said Joshua Shapiro, chief U.S. economist at MFR Inc. in New York.
“The good news was less bad news,” William Dunkelberg, chief economist at the NFIB, said in a statement. “Optimism has clearly stalled in spite of the improvements in the economy in the second half of 2009.”
President Obama last week announced he will back a temporary increase in Small Business Administration loans to $1 million from $350,000 to encourage hiring. He has previously endorsed $33 billion in small business tax cuts and incentives for hiring as well as a plan to use $30 billion of bailout money paid back by Wall Street financial institutions to help community banks make loans to small businesses.
Such aid is “misdirected,” NFIB’s Dunkelberg said in the statement, because the top problem for small business leaders is weak demand rather than a lack of credit. Stimulus therefore should focus on reviving consumer spending, he said.
Keith Hennessey has a series of charts that put today’s budget announcements in perspective. If you have a moment I suggest you click over to review them. The one below is in my opinion the most important of the set that he produced.
A lot of the talk today has centered on the size of future deficits. It’s an important topic but not the most important. If you believe as Hennessey does and as I do that the size of the budget and its relationship to the size of the economy is what ultimately matters then this chart is what you need to focus upon. Ultimately, the real impact is the size of the bite that the government intends to put on the economy, not whether they raise the funds to do so via taxes or borrowing. Regardless of where the money comes from, it represents a diversion away from the productivity of the private sector and into the public coffers.
As you can see, the Obama budget is substantially above the budget he submitted in 2010 and represents what would appear to be a permanent increase in the percent of the pie that will be taken to fund future expenditures. Perhaps more to the point, it breaks away significantly from historical norms. The implications of such an expansion of federal spending at the expense of the private sector are largely unknown.
We know from experience that the budget proposal we have seen today is only a starting point. Congress will no doubt add substantially to the baseline and natural disasters, national defense, and all manner of other unforeseen events will drive the numbers higher.
I harbor little hope that either Republicans or Democrats have the will or for that matter the inclination to rein in this expansion of government. It’s pretty much a done deal and all of us will most likely be poorer for it.
A flurry of news reports abound as President Obama puts on a full court press to pass legislation no one really wants except the President and those who have been bribed. Let's take a look at a handful of articles.
Even as the Lehman scapegoating campaign is on in full force, there is little doubt that the man who somehow was in the middle of virtually everything, was not Dick Fuld, or any of the bevy of rotating Lehman CFOs, but Lehman's very much under the radar Global Product Controller, Gerard Reilly. Reilly was the point man on Repo 105, the point person for E&Y's "investigation" into the Matthew Lee whistleblower campaign, Lehman's Level 2 and Level 3 asset valuation, the brain behind the idea to spin off Lehman's commercial real estate business, Lehman's Archstone investment, and likely so much more. Reilly stayed on at Lehman, solid as a rock, even as the CFO's above him rotated one after another. Tragically, on December 29, 2008, a 44-year old Gerald [sic] Reilly died while skiing alone on New York's Whiteface mountain, while on a trip with his wife, 4 small chi...
Truthfully, I have not surveyed our ursine friends this morning, so I really have no idea if they are emboldened by the low CBOE equity put to call ratio (CPCE), but they should be.
My preferred way of looking at the equity put to call ratio involves using an exponential 10 day moving average (EMA) as a smoothing factor. The 10 day EMA generates the dotted blue li...
As I always do before options expiration I reviewed our Buy List, which, this quarter, is a list of 37 stocks we've been playing since late December and, sadly, after reviewing 37 of our favorite investments very carefully this week - I could only conclude that cashing them out was the only decision I could be comfortable with this week. Of 66 trades we had on our 37 stocks, 64 are winners with an average return since 2/8 of 28% - since most of the trades were designed to make 40% for the year - it just seems silly not to take the money and run now, on March 19th.
You are not supposed to have 64 out of 66 winners in 6 weeks, you are not supposed to make 3/4 of what you anticipate for the year in 6 weeks - that is NOT how the markets are supposed to work! When the ma...
Today’s tickers: BBY, DNDN, GLD, BAC, AET, BA & NBR
BBY - Best Buy Co., Inc. – Shares of the world’s largest electronics retailer rallied 2% to $41.25 during the trading session after receiving an upgrade to ‘buy’ from ‘neutral’ at Goldman Sachs Group where analysts increased BBY’s target share price to $47.00 from $44.00. Options traders employed a few different bullish tactics to position for continued upward movement in the price of the underlying stock through expiration in April. Plain-vanilla call buyers targeted the April $44 strike to purchase 5,100 calls for an average premium of $0.55 apiece. These investors stand ready to accrue profits if Best Buy’s share price increases 8% from the current value to exceed the effective breakeven point on the calls at $44.55 by expirati...
Let's take a look at Insider Buying and Selling over the last week or so. These are screen shots from Finviz - the significant buys against a green background first and significant sells against the pink background second. All the buys fit into my screen shot but the sells did not. Click here to see all the sells.
Note that the largest buy in the group, for KITD was at a price of 9.73 (KITD is currently at 11.54). The buy was part of an Equity Offering rather than an open market purchase. Tuzman Kaleil Isaza's (KITD's Chairman and Chief Exec. Officer) history of buys is http://www.insidercow.com/more from Insider
Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
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Philip R. Davis is a founder Phil's Stock World, a stock and options trading site that teaches the art of options trading to newcomers and devises advanced strategies for expert traders...
Ilene is editor and affiliate program
coordinator for PSW. She manages the Favorites backup site
(