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Obama dithers and Russia deploys! Delays equal lost leverage and maybe even a base closing? (See 2 and 2a below.)
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Obama's shtick falling flat as well it should? (See 3 and 3a below.)
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Egypt's Arab Spring springs leaks? (See 4 below.)
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Hyping Hillary has begun early and managing it may prove a problem. (See 5 below.)
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Dick
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1) Author Todd Wood to Moneynews: Interest Rate 'Shock' Is Coming
The bond market is a bubble that's headed for a massive burst, says Todd Wood, who worked for more than 10 years as an emerging market debt trader.
"I see that we are paying basically nothing for the almost $20 trillion debt that we have now," Wood told Newsmax TV in an exclusive interview.
"The duration of our portfolio is around five to seven years, and it [the interest rate] is now slightly above 1 percent on that debt."
That's a recipe for disaster, says Wood, who also is author of the novel "Currency" and was a special operations pilot for the Air Force.
"At some point, the Fed can't keep growing its balance sheet and keep interest rates so low," he said. "So at some point we're going to have an interest rate shock."
It could be as much as a five-percentage-point move, Wood says. "That could wreak havoc on our economy."
Already, the 10-year Treasury yield hit a 14-month high of 2.29 percent last week. But Wood says the party is just starting.
"I laugh at the reaction of the market, because we're at such low rates," he said.
"People have seen nothing yet. There's a saying in Wall Street: interest rates are low until they're not. And we have no idea when that’s going to happen. So the move is the beginning of a longer term trend."
A bond blowout could have ramifications beyond the economy, Wood says. "Economic weakness leads to military weakness, and that is really what I want to make people aware of," he said.
"This has all happened before. Empires have crumbled over too much debt." The United States could lose its global clout, Wood says.
"As Machiavelli said, it's better to be feared than loved. And right now, my fear is that we're neither, because we're out of money, we're broke. People are not really worried about our reaction from a national security sense."
The dollar's status as a reserve currency is at risk too, he says. China and Russia are talking about eliminating the dollar from their trading relationship, as are Australia and China, Wood says.
"So this is already happening. The dollar is losing its status, and what the consequences of that are, I don’t think we fully know."
Meanwhile, Wood is bullish on gold, despite its recent drop. "I'm a firm believer that the currency should be backed by something that is real, whether it be gold, whether it be a basket of currencies," he said. "Gold is a heck of a buying opportunity right now."
And why is it so important to have gold or a currency basket behind the dollar? "We have to have something that backs our currency so that governments aren't incentivized to print money to stay in power," Wood said.
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2)
Russia deploys advanced intelligence vessel near Syria | ||
Russia has stationed one of its advanced intelligence vessels in the Middle East in order to follow Western readiness for a potential strike in Syria By Ronen Solomon Last week, Israel conducted an extensive military exercise that saw the participation of the IDF ground forces, the Israeli Navy and the IAF. The precise goals of the exercise were not made public and remained a secret. However, assessments are that it was aimed towards Israel's northern arena - towards the tension with Syria and Hezbollah. What was not known was that at the same time, the Russian Navy vessel CCB-201 - one of the Russian Navy's largest intelligence vessels - was present in the waters of the Mediterranean Sea. The CCB-201 is no ordinary intelligence vessel, but rather a naval intelligence gathering unit which is similar in its characteristics to Israel's Unit 8200 - a SIGINT collection and decryption unit capable of intercepting and listening to military transmissions between naval vessels and aircraft in the Mediterranean Sea. The vessel, which is also equipped with air defense systems, departed from one of the bases in the Black Sea and crossed the straits of Turkey on June 10 on its way to an area off the coasts of Syria and Cyprus. From past experience, it appears that the purpose of the visit to the area is for gathering intelligence on NATO and US force activities, as well as Israel's readiness with regards to the situation in Syria - where Russia has military interests and assets, and thus is concerned of military intervention. In 2000, Russia sent one of the same intelligence vessels to the Persian Gulf due to information received by Russian military intelligence, which indicated that NATO forces were planning to deal a blow to Iraq. At the time, the vessel's objective was to track NATO activities in the Persian Gulf and preserve Russia's interests there, especially those related to the fuel routes between Russia and Iran. A blow was dealt only in 2003 after an international coalition headed by the US and the UK dealt a blow that toppled Saddam Hussein's regime. Now that there are demands for US and NATO intervention in the Syrian crisis, Russia is responding in a similar manner. The CCB-201 was constructed in 1980 in the framework of what NATO refers to as the Russian Navy's "Project 864" in the Black Sea. The vessel is manned by 150 crew members, including dozens of operators of listening, tracking, radio transmission and electronic signal decryption systems, as well as electronic warfare systems. The gathered information is transmitted in real-time via the vessel's satellite antennas to the coastal headquarters of Russian Navy intelligence units, and perhaps to those found on Russian soil. 2a)
3)O’s rotten road trip Falling flat all over EuropeBy Michael A. Walsh
First he mistook Britain’s chancellor of the exchequer for a soul singer, calling him Jeffrey Osborne instead of George. Then he explained to an audience in sectarian Belfast that, in the interests of religious harmony, Catholics ought not to have their own schools. Finally, sweating in the hot sun and without his TelePrompTer, he stumbled through a nearly incoherent speech at the Brandenburg Gate that almost nobody attended.
Throw in the cold shoulders from German Chancellor Angela Merkel and Russia President Vladimir Putin, the ridicule of the British press (“just another lame duck”) and the disappointment of the German media, which had expected another walking-on-water moment like candidate Obama’s 2008 speech at the Victory Column, and it was not a successful foreign adventure for President Obama.
Too bad he needed one.
When the going gets tough, American presidents often get going — overseas, where they can bask in their role as commander-in-chief, strutting their stuff before foreign dignitaries and brass bands for the benefit of the folks back home.
Richard Nixon hit the road at the height of Watergate, traveling to the Middle East, Europe and the Soviet Union during the fateful summer of 1974. Embroiled in the Monica Lewinsky mess throughout 1998, Bill Clinton fled Washington for Africa, Europe, the UK, China, Russia, Ireland, Japan, Korea and Israel.
It didn’t do them much good: Nixon resigned in August 1974 and Clinton was impeached in December 1998, although he escaped conviction by the Senate two months later.
So it was no surprise to see Obama boarding Air Force One for an international jaunt of his own. Bombarded by scandals ranging from Benghazi to the IRS’s war on the Tea Party to the National Security Agency’s wholesale surveillance of the American public, the president scooted off to Northern Ireland and Germany in the hopes of recapturing some of his 2008 campaign magic.
The political strategy was transparent. Far more comfortable waving from Air Force One and giving canned speeches than wrangling with Congress, Obama has kept his campaign machine in full working order, aiming to hold the Senate and perhaps retake the House in next year’s elections.
But with GOP congressional investigators circling, Obama badly needed a win abroad to maintain his domestic popularity. Like Nixon and Clinton, he hoped to keep the wolves at bay by looking presidential.
This trip didn’t do it. With a malfunctioning TelePrompTer, he stumbled over the surname of Berlin mayor Klaus Wowereit (it’s Vo-ver-ite) and rambled on about nuclear disarmament, global warming, the rise of the oceans, “peace with justice” and 18th century Prussian philosopher Immanuel Kant before an invited audience of only about 4,500 — a far cry from the hundreds of thousands who turned out to see him in 2008.
At the G8 summit in Northern Ireland, Putin bluntly informed Obama that “of course our opinions do not coincide” on the crisis in Syria, while in Berlin Merkel criticized the NSA’s spying program, saying, “there has to be proportionality” between security and personal freedom.
And nobody thinks that Obama’s long-held fixation on reducing US and Russian missiles to about 1,000 apiece (roughly the same as in 1954) has the slightest chance of happening — Putin is happily upgrading his missile force under Obama’s last treaty with Russia. Plus, the crazy North Koreans already have nukes, and the Iranians will get them any day now.
In short, the president, his speechwriters and his advance team (which both let him down so badly in Berlin) are going to have to do better than warmed-over rhetoric and been-there, done-that photo ops in front of European monuments if they hope to turn around his sagging poll numbers.
Of course, better stagecraft might not do the job. It’s possible that folks have simply caught on to him, and the act is wearing is thin. The president himself said it best when he explained the absence of his wife and children from the Berlin dais by observing, “The last thing they want to do is to listen to another speech from me.”
Judging from the world’s reaction, they’re not alone.
Way down below, America loses and loses.
By Mark Steyn
Descending from the heavens for the G8 summit at beautiful Lough Erne this week, President Obama caused some amusement to his British hosts. The chancellor of the exchequer had been invited to give a presentation to the assembled heads of government on the matter of tax avoidance (one of the big items on the agenda, for those of you who think what the IRS could really use right now is even more enforcement powers). The president evidently enjoyed it. Thrice, he piped up to say how much he agreed with Jeffrey, eventually concluding the presentation with the words, “Thank you, Jeffrey.” Unfortunately, the chancellor of the exchequer is a bloke called George Osborne, not Jeffrey Osborne. President Obama subsequently apologized for confusing George with Jeffrey, who was a popular vocal artiste back in the Eighties when Obama was dating his composite girlfriend and making composite whoopee to the composite remix of Jeffrey Osborne’s 1982 smoocheroo, “On the Wings of Love.”
I suppose it might have been worse. When Angela Merkel proposed a toast to a strong West, he could have assumed that was the name of Kim and Kanye’s new baby. At any rate, President Obama’s mishap had faint echoes of a famous social faux pas during the Second World War. Irving Berlin, the celebrated composer of “White Christmas,” was invited to lunch at 10 Downing Street and was surprised to find that Churchill, instead of asking what’s that Bing Crosby really like, badgered him with complex moral and strategic questions and requests for estimates of U.S. war production. It turned out the prime minister had confused Irving Berlin with the philosopher Sir Isaiah Berlin , then under secondment to the British embassy in Washington , and thought it was the latter he’d invited to Number Ten. In the Obama era, any confusion is the other way around. It would be a terrible thing for the president to invite the eminent rapper Jay-Z to lunch only to find himself stuck next to the turgid British philosopher Professor Sir Jay Zed. Although Obama’s confusion went largely unreported in America, the BBC’s enterprising Eddie Mair got Jeffrey Osborne on the line and inveigled him into singing George Osborne’s best-known words — “Tax cuts should be for life, not just Christmastime” — to Jeffrey’s best-known tune.
The following day Mangue Obama — whoops, my mistake, Mangue Obama was the prime minister of Equatorial Guinea from 2006 to 2008, and has a way smaller and less incompetent entourage — Barack Obama departed for Berlin (the German city, not the American songwriter or British philosopher). Five years ago at the Brandenburg Gate, he thrilled a crowd of 200,000 with his stirring clarion call to himself, “Ich bin ein Baracker.” This time, he spoke to an audience barely a fiftieth of that size — 4,500, most of whom were bored out of their lederhosen. As I wrote of Obama’s Massachusetts yawnfest in 2010, he went to the trouble of flying in to phone it in. If the BBC’s mash-up of Jeffrey Osborne’s 1982 Billboard hit and Chancellor Osborne’s recent speech at the Mansion House in London was something of an awkward fit, you could slip large slabs of “On the Wings of Love” into Obama’s telepromptered pap and none of the 27 Germans still awake would have noticed the difference:
Peace with justice means extending a hand to those who reach for freedom, wherever they live. Come take my hand and together we will rise, on the wings of love, up and above the clouds, the only way to fly . . .
Peace with justice means pursuing the security of a world without nuclear weapons — no matter how distant that dream may be, just smile for me and let the day begin. You are the sunshine that lights my heat within, and we can reject the nuclear weaponization that North Korea and Iran may be seeking, because we are angels in disguise, we live and breathe each other, inseparable . . . The effort to slow climate change requires bold action. For the grim alternative affects all nations — more severe storms, more famine and floods . . . coastlines that vanish, oceans that rise, you look at me and I begin to melt, just like the snow when a ray of sun is felt. . . . This is the future we must avert. This is the global threat of our time. . . . That is our task. We have to get to work. We’re flowing like a stream, running free, flowing on the wings of love…
The wings of love don’t seem to carry Obama as far as they used to. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews blamed the lackluster performance on the sun’s glare affecting his ability to read the text. That’s how bad it is: Global warming melted his prompter. But the speech itself was barely distinguishable in its cobwebbed utopian pabulum from the video for a nuclear-free world just released by Michael Douglas and other celebrities. And Mr. Douglas, who recently gave a fascinating interview to the Guardian in which he blamed his cancerous walnut-sized tongue tumor upon his addiction to oral sex, at least has a better excuse as to why his silvery tongue doesn’t work its magic quite the way it used to. Der Spiegel, which is the very definition of mainstream media in Germany , described the president’s Berlin stop as a visit by “the head of the largest and most all-encompassing surveillance system ever invented” — and under the headline “Obama’s Soft Totalitarianism.”
Obama isn’t a “soft” totalitarian so much as a slapdash one. His apparatchiks monitor the e-mails of both Jeffrey and George Osborne, but he still can’t tell one from the other. Likewise, in Syria as in Libya , “the largest and most all-encompassing surveillance system ever invented” can’t tell a plucky freedom fighter itching to build Massachusetts in the sands of Araby from your neighborhood al-Qaeda subsidiary whose health-care plan only covers clitoridectomies.
His G8 colleagues have begun to figure out that America no longer matters. To be sure, the trappings of the presidency are a lagging indicator: He still flies in with more limos and Secret Service agents than everybody else, combined. Then again, the other American story to catch the fancy of the Fleet Street tabloids in recent days is that of the unfortunate Las Vegas man with the world’s biggest scrotum, weighing 140 pounds, yet unable to perform. Of his talks with Vladimir Putin, the president said, “With respect to Syria , we do have differing perspectives on the problem, but we share an interest in reducing the violence.” Putin aims to reduce the violence by getting his boy Assad to kill everyone he needs to. Obama aims to reduce the violence by giving a speech about the “intolerance that fuels extremism” — or is it the other way round? The world understands that Putin means it and Obama doesn’t — just as in Afghanistan everyone knows the Taliban means it and the fainthearted superpower doesn’t.
Thanks to the stork delivering his bundle to Miss Kardashian (see above), Americans seem not to have noticed that the U.S. has just lost yet another war. But in Moscow , Beijing , Tehran , they noticed, and they will act accordingly. On the wings of love, up and above the clouds, Obama wafts ever higher on his own gaseous uplift. Down on solid ground, the rest of the world must occasionally wonder if they haven’t confused the U.S. delegation with the world’s most empty-headed boy band
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4) As Egypt lurches into civil strife, local militias raise their heads. Obama keeps faith with Brotherhood
After weeks of mounting anti-government turmoil across Egypt, army chief Abdel-Fattah al-Sissi finally spoke up Sunday, June 23, to warn that the Egyptian army would “not watch the country descend into uncontrollable conflict” ahead of the planned June 30 mass opposition rallies” or allow “an attack on the will of the people.”
Meanwhile, Egypt lurches day by day closer to what US and Israeli intelligence diagnose as “low intensity civil war.” In outlying towns, law and order is breaking down as armed gangs attack governors and burn emblems of government, while the ruling Muslim Brotherhood deploys armed men strike back at government opponents. The police are not intervening in the disorder - any more than the army has to date.
Military sources note that Defense Minister al-Sissi avoided defining which side the generals regarded as representing the “will of the people” – President Mohamed Morsi who pushed them off the national stage, or the myriad opposition groups sworn to overthrow him on the first anniversary of his rise to power. They aim to replace him with a high presidential council headed by a Supreme Court judge. A number of opposition groups say they have collected 15 million signatures in support of their demand. If they succeed in their high-stake bid, Egypt would undergo its third revolution in three years. The first in 2011 ousted President Hosni Mubarak, whose successor, the Supreme Military Council, was itself unseated in 2012 by the Muslim Brotherhood.
The popular voice, heartened by the middle class clamor rising in Istanbul’s Taksim Square and Rio de Janeiro, speaks with greater confidence in its power to put Mohamed Morsi’s head on the block and get rid of Islamist rule - especially since he has also fallen out with his own Muslim Brotherhood.
For the Egyptian opposition, the 16 provincial governors the president approved this month were the last straw which shut the door to any possible conciliation and dialogue with the incumbent rulers. Morsi was considered as going too far by his appointment as governor of Luxor, Adel Khayat, a member of the extremist Al-Gamaa Al-Islamiyya, al Qaeda’s Egyptian branch.
The president has been wooing for the favor of extremist Salafist and pro-al Qaeda circles for help in standing up to Muslim Brotherhood leaders. Realizing he was the symbol of rising discord, Khayat stood down Sunday, June 23, “for the sake of Egypt.”
From the start of his presidency, Morsi’s Brotherhood masters expect Morsi to bow obediently to their authority and perform their will. His continuing independence has confronted him with his own Islamic camp as the fifth adversary bent on his ouster, in addition to –
1. The secular and liberal groups for whom Islamic rule is anathema:
2. Religious minorities, led by the largest, the indigenous Christian Copts;
3. Sections of the Egyptian army;
4. Despairing elements of the population, who see their country disintegrating into chaos and corruption, with no hope of personal security for Egypt’s masses and many of them facing starvation.
There is no reliable estimate of the size and strength of any of those five groups, excepting the Muslim Brotherhood, or their chances of coming together – either to overthrow the president, or to back him against fellow opponents.
These evaluations are further complicated by the wide reporting gap between the state of affairs in Egypt’s main cities and the bulk of the population in the rural areas. Most accounts focus on Cairo and Alexandria or, at most, the Canal towns of Suez and Ismailia, or the urban areas of the Delta, which have veered completed out of the central government’s security control. The rest of the country might as well be on the other side of the moon.
According to intelligence sources, local armed militias are springing up in the Suez and Delta cities and certain rural areas. Their political hues and plans of action are hard to pin down.
Two more imponderables further befog the direction in which Egypt may be headed: How the Obama administration views the mayhem touched off by the anti-Mubarak revolution it fostered, and the intentions of al-Qaeda’s Salafi allies in Sinai.
According to Washington sources, the US has pulled away from President Morsi in disapproval, while at the same time staying close to the Muslim Brotherhood. This orientation is manifested by the coming appointment of Anne Woods Patterson, former US ambassador to Cairo, as Under Secretary for the Near East. She has been Obama’s point person for cultivating good rapport with the Muslim Brotherhood, which he counts on as a reliable and steady hand at the helm of rule in Cairo.
Washington also maintains a good relationship with the Egyptian army, which is judged as the only organized power system in the country, as well as the steadfast guardian of the historic Egyptian-Israeli peace treaty.
Lawless Sinai falls through the cracks between the US, the Muslim Brothers and the military. Its destabilizing influence reaches into the Palestinian Gaza Strip and along the Egyptian-Israeli border running down eastern Sinai.
The army is willing to combat arms smuggling through Sinai to the Palestinian Hamas in the Gaza Strip, but refuses to take on the mutinous Bedouin of the al-Qaeda-linked Salafi cells who roam freely through the peninsula’s wastelands.
To step into the gap, the Obama administration last week decided to assign another 400 US soldiers to the 13-nation Multinational Observer peacekeeping force posted in Sinai to monitor the 1979 Egyptian-Israeli peace accord.
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5)Welcome to the Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential speculation sweepstakes
There’s a super PAC to support her and one that’s trying, at least in part, to stop her. Every word she utters is parsed by cable TV, blogs and anyone with a political pulse for indications of which way she is leaning. And, there are still 922 days between now and Jan. 1, 2016.
Welcome to the Hillary Rodham Clinton presidential speculation sweepstakes, a process that not only has begun earlier than it did before Clinton ran for president in 2008 but also is significantly more well developed — on both sides of the equation.
“It did start earlier this time around,” said Brian Wolff, a longtime senior aide to House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.). “You have the confluence of her being the anointed nominee [and] Obama supporters’ overwhelming support for her.”
Already there is Ready for Hillary, a super PAC designed to prime the pump for a Clinton presidential bid that has among its supporters longtime Clinton confidant Harold Ickes and even Sen. Claire McCaskill (D-Mo.), a strong backer of Sen. Barack Obama in the 2008 primary fight.
And just last week, America Rising, a conservative-aligned super PAC, launchedStop Hillary 2016, a Web site designed to raise money for its efforts to “prevent Americans from ever having to see another Clinton in the White House.”
At this point in the run-up to the 2008 election, Clinton was running for a second term in the Senate and deflecting all questions about her political future until that race concluded in late 2006. While Republicans attempted to recruit a serious contender against her in that 2006 race in hopes of forcing her to spend some time (and money) in the Empire State, they failed miserably. She eventually announced her presidential campaign on Jan. 20, 2007.
While there is broad agreement in the political world that the Clinton hype has started sooner than it did last time, there are differing opinions as to whether that is a good or a bad thing for her if she does decide to run.
“What worries me about the super PACs and groups starting so early is that it is hard to sustain a movement based on an idea — sooner or later, enthusiasm will stall and supporters will want a decision by the person,” said Penny Lee, a former executive director at the Democratic Governors Association and now a lobbyist. “You want to make sure that need for a decision coincides with Hillary’s own timing and doesn’t force her to make a decision before she is ready.”
There have already been some grumbles about Ready for Hillary and whether its stated goal of clearing a path for Clinton when she decides to run might have the opposite effect — by, as Lee suggests, forcing her hand before she is ready to decide or making her look political before she wants to appear that way.
Others argue, however, that all of the early jockeying and planning around the possibility of Clinton running again ultimately is a good thing for her if she wants to run.
“I’m one who believes the early hype is a good thing on both fronts if managed properly,” said GOP media consultant Fred Davis, who handled advertising for the presidential campaign of Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.). “She’s basically able to imply her opponents can huff and puff — but this time you’ll never blow this house down.”
Managing the attention that all of this early activity has created around Clinton is critical. On the one hand, she benefits from being seen as nonpolitical (or at least not a candidate) for as long as possible. On the other, if all of the buzz forces the media to litigate Clinton’s problems — or potential problems — now rather than in the heat of a 2016 presidential campaign, that’s a plus for her.
Also worth considering: Clinton, while one of the most famous people in the world, is out of office and, therefore, has no natural way of making news or driving an issue agenda. She clearly views her involvement in the Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton Foundation as that vehicle, although it remains to be seen just how effective she can drive a message from that perch.
Whether all of the attention is a good thing or bad thing in the long run then depends on what Clinton and her political team— who is in her inner circle remains unclear — can make of it.
“It’s a double-edged sword. Early hype can deter viable challenges, but it also invites the kind of scrutiny that can deflate a bubble very quickly,” said Phil Singer, a senior staffer in Clinton’s 2008 presidential campaign. “The team needs to manage the buzz carefully.”
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