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And then a little humor about 'Sutheren' Women and where they are coming from:
http://www.youtube.com/embed/euzjO51pQvU?feature=player
---
The question of what we should do about Syria is not easily answered. When it comes to Russian intransigence, no doubt Putin has no desire to help America where our interests diverge but Russia also has some strategic geographic concerns should Syria fall. Their attitude is not totally illogical, combative or without a modicum of justified self-interest.
Should America stand aside and watch a blood bath simply because it may not be in our strategic interest to get involved would we be effective if we did get involved and finally, do we have the stomach for one more attempt at problem solving in The Middle East?
All legitimate questions and any answer is complicated.
That said, not to make a decision early on and to stick to is has brought us to where we are and this is where Obama fails hands down. Dithering is not acceptable an acceptable foreign policy, leads to creating a vacuum and making a tough problem even more intractable.
Liberals rained down on Bush for Iraq and assuredly mistakes were made but Bush not only made decisions, he stayed the course and even raised the stakes when he sent in extra troops and the world said it was another mistake. Did Iraq work out as he wanted? No, but then Obama pulled out prematurely stating Afghan was where the real fight should be and we will never know what might have been had we continued to stay the course in a smaller and less visible roll.
Time and again Obama has either failed to act, acted too late and/or acted in a way that could be likened to a half loaf.
Confused incompetence is the chink in his armor. This is where his lack of qualification to be president becomes most glaring.
This is why after 8 years of Obama, America is and will pay a very heavy price which will have implications beyond his two terms. They will be both of a financial as well as a foreign policy nature.
When it comes to Hillary running in 2016, no doubt Bill is laying the keel . Can she distance herself from her ineffectual involvement as a senior member of Obama's Administration and will Obama and his inner confidants circle the wagon in his defense and start smearing her? They proved effective before. Do they still have the clout?
Republicans may have their own Hatfield and McCoy fight to nominate their own candidate but I believe the Democrats could wind up shredding each other as well. Obama's Chicago thugs sank Hillary once and may just decide to do so again. If so, that leaves Biden and where does that leave America? Biding our time, which we can ill afford after 8 years of Obama.
Stay tuned!
---
As reported in a recent memo, Iran stopped refining uranium above 20% and now Russia and Iran seem to be laying a trap which Obama may well fall for because it could get him off the hook. (See 1 below.)
---
American military aid to Israel is likely to be upped thanks to Jack Kingston and other like minded legislators! (See 2 below.)
---
Will the young recoil at 'Obamascare?' (See 3 below.)
---
Paying political obeisance to Greens, regarding the Keystone Pipeline, now comes at a potentially elevated price. (See 4 below.)
---
State Sen. Elbert Guillory follows David Mamet, David Horowitz et. al and becomes a Republican. Then, Guillory proceeds to explain why and what do you know? Seems he stole a page from Sowell and other like minded black Americans who have the guts to tell their brethren why Democrats are bad medicine. (See 5 below.)
---
Yesterday, Obama gave Bernanke a back handed thank you when in fact Bernanke should be lauded for saving Obama's behind. Whether Bernanke's various Q's will pan out, as The Fed begins withdrawal, is another matter but Bernanke's flooding of the economy with printed money saved the day for the moment.
In order to save the patient from going back into depression, Bernanke took draconian measures which may prove very costly down the road. Time will tell but by printing money, Bernanke accomplished his announced goal, ie. get the stock market higher, save the housing market and make people feel wealthier so they would spend. (See 6 below.)
I have not been in favor of printing money to buy our way out of a deeper recession but, at least. Bernanke acted according to his convictions and accomplished his objective.
---
As reported in a recent memo, Iran stopped refining uranium above 20% and now Russia and Iran seem to be laying a trap which Obama may well fall for because it could get him off the hook. (See 1 below.)
---
American military aid to Israel is likely to be upped thanks to Jack Kingston and other like minded legislators! (See 2 below.)
---
Will the young recoil at 'Obamascare?' (See 3 below.)
---
Paying political obeisance to Greens, regarding the Keystone Pipeline, now comes at a potentially elevated price. (See 4 below.)
---
State Sen. Elbert Guillory follows David Mamet, David Horowitz et. al and becomes a Republican. Then, Guillory proceeds to explain why and what do you know? Seems he stole a page from Sowell and other like minded black Americans who have the guts to tell their brethren why Democrats are bad medicine. (See 5 below.)
---
Yesterday, Obama gave Bernanke a back handed thank you when in fact Bernanke should be lauded for saving Obama's behind. Whether Bernanke's various Q's will pan out, as The Fed begins withdrawal, is another matter but Bernanke's flooding of the economy with printed money saved the day for the moment.
In order to save the patient from going back into depression, Bernanke took draconian measures which may prove very costly down the road. Time will tell but by printing money, Bernanke accomplished his announced goal, ie. get the stock market higher, save the housing market and make people feel wealthier so they would spend. (See 6 below.)
I have not been in favor of printing money to buy our way out of a deeper recession but, at least. Bernanke acted according to his convictions and accomplished his objective.
---
Dick
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)Lavrov: Iran agrees to halt 20-percent uranium enrichment. West must lift sanctions
Iran has confirmed it is prepared to halt its enrichment of 20-percent uranium, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reported on the ministry website Tuesday, June 18. He urged Western nations to reciprocate by lifting sanctions. It was not clear whether this was a temporary suspension, an absolute halt – or a dodge for getting sanctions eased to enable the incoming Iranian president Hassan Rouhaini come to grips with his country’s dire economic straits. - his top priority.
of security assistance once its current $30 billion, 10-year military aid
package expires in 2018, former US officials here said.
Recently launched negotiations to extend aid through 2027 should yield an
agreement that exceeds the $3.1 billion Israel now receives in annual
Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grant aid, said Stuart Eizenstat, a former
official who negotiated an earlier aid package on behalf of the
Administration of then-President Bill Clinton.
“Support for Israel in the United States is astonishing. There’s no other
foreign country favored in terms of assistance; and this support is
bipartisan, bicameral and largely protected by sequestration,” said
Eizenstat, whose last in a series of high-level government posts was deputy
Treasury secretary under Clinton.
When asked at a June 17 talk with Israeli business leaders if Washington
would be willing or even able to sustain current FMF levels to Israel,
Eizenstat replied, “I have no concerns that aid to Israel will be
diminished. The question is rather by how much will it increase.”
According to the former US official, now a partner in the Washington-based
Covington & Burling law firm, “It is in the interest of Congress and future
administrations to sustain or even enhance aid to Israel, particularly given
the turmoil in this region and all the threats and pressures on Israel.”
Howard Berman, a former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
also said Washington can be expected to sustain and probably increase annual
military aid to Israel. The former democratic congressman from California
noted, however, that the resumption of long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian
peace negotiations would “improve the climate” for securing domestic support
for a new 10-year aid deal.
“From the inside of the [appropriations] process, I can tell you the special
and strong relationship with Israel is enduring ... It is not linked to any
particular issue,” Berman said.
Nevertheless, the 28-year congressional veteran of US-Israel strategic
cooperation said “forward movement” toward a two-state, Israel-Palestine
peace deal “would be very appreciated” in key constituencies.
In a visit here in March, President Barack Obama announced his support for a
new agreement to extend annual military aid through 2027.
“Our current agreement lasts through 2017, and we’ve directed our teams to
start working on extending it for the years beyond,” Obama told reporters at
a joint press conference in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu.
The current agreement, signed in 2007, elevated Israel’s annual grant aid
from $2.4 billion to $3.1 billion, and Israeli officials here expect the
follow-on package to provide incremental boosts to nearly $4 billion per
year.
In parallel, the two countries are discussing prospects for financing
billions of dollars in Pentagon-proposed weapons through US
government-backed bridge loans that would be repaid with FMF to come from
the future 10-year military aid package.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)
Media outlets lately have emphasized the challenge of enticing healthy young adults to sign up for ObamaCare, "exactly the type of person insurance plans, states and the federal government are counting on to make health reform work," as the L.A. Times put it. These pieces are useful as far as they go, but miss a key point that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito managed to convey in many fewer words during last year's Supreme Court argument on ObamaCare.
You see, in recent history the Democrat Party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what’s best for black people. Somehow it’s been forgotten that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement with one simple creed: that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.
Frederick Douglass called Republicans the ‘Party of freedom and progress,’ and the first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, the author of the Emancipation Proclamation. It was the Republicans in Congress who authored the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments giving former slaves citizenship, voting rights, and due process of law.
The Democrats on the other hand were the Party of Jim Crow. It was Democrats who defended the rights of slave owners. It was the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who championed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, but it was Democrats in the Senate who filibustered the bill.
You see, at the heart of liberalism is the idea that only a great and powerful big government can be the benefactor of social justice for all Americans. But the left is only concerned with one thing — control. And they disguise this control as charity. Programs such as welfare, food stamps, these programs aren’t designed to lift black Americans out of poverty, they were always intended as a mechanism for politicians to control black the black community.
The idea that blacks, or anyone for that matter, need the the government to get ahead in life is despicable. And even more important, this idea is a failure. Our communities are just as poor as they’ve always been. Our schools continue to fail children. Our prisons are filled with young black men who should be at home being fathers. Our self-initiative and our self-reliance have been sacrificed in exchange for allegiance to our overseers who control us by making us dependent on them.
Sometimes I wonder if the word freedom is tossed around so frequently in our society that it has become a cliché.
The idea of freedom is complex and it is all-encompassing. It’s the idea that the economy must remain free of government persuasion. It’s the idea that the press must operate without government intrusion. And it’s the idea that the emails and phone records of Americans should remain free from government search and seizure. It’s the idea that parents must be the decision makers in regards to their children's education — not some government bureaucrat.
But most importantly, it is the idea that the individual must be free to pursue his or her own happiness free from government dependence and free from government control. Because to be truly free is to be reliant on no one other than the author of our destiny. These are the ideas at the core of the Republican Party, and it is why I am a Republican.
So my brothers and sisters of the American community, please join with me today in abandoning the government plantation and the Party of disappointment. So that we may all echo the words of one Republican leader who famously said, ‘free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.’
1)Lavrov: Iran agrees to halt 20-percent uranium enrichment. West must lift sanctions
Iran has confirmed it is prepared to halt its enrichment of 20-percent uranium, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov reported on the ministry website Tuesday, June 18. He urged Western nations to reciprocate by lifting sanctions. It was not clear whether this was a temporary suspension, an absolute halt – or a dodge for getting sanctions eased to enable the incoming Iranian president Hassan Rouhaini come to grips with his country’s dire economic straits. - his top priority.
Lavrov explained persuasively in his message: “For the first time in many years, there are encouraging signs in the process of settlement of the situation with the Iranian nuclear program. It would be a shame not to take advantage of this opportunity.”
He called Tehran’s concession “a breakthrough agreement, significantly alleviating existing problems, including concerns about the possibility of advanced uranium enrichment to a weapons-grade level.”
Lavrov urged the international community “to adequately respond to the constructive progress made by Iran, including gradual suspension and lifting of sanctions, both unilateral and those introduced by the UN Security Council.”
The Russian foreign minister’s move ties in with two other developments – one at the two-day G8 summit ending Tuesday in Northern Ireland and the other in Tehran:
1. The Group of Eight was about to wind up its summit Tuesday evening by issuing a joint communiqué – over President Vladimir Putin’s objections – calling for a transition government in Damascus and Bashar Assad’s removal from power. Lavrov’s message from Tehran sought to persuade the Western powers, chiefly President Barack Obama, that they would be missing the chance of a nuclear settlement with Iran, because Tehran would never countenance Assad’s ouster.
The Syrian conflict and the nuclear controversy with Iran have long been closely intertwined.
2. Moscow tried to put a positive slant on President-Elect Rouhani’s negative statement at his first news conference Monday, when he said Tehran “would not consider halting the country’s uranium enrichment activities entirely.”
What he meant, Lavrov hinted, was that Iran would not abandon low-level 5.3 percent enrichment - only the 20 percent grade which brought its nuclear program close to a weapons-grade capacity.
The Russian minister’s comment about it being “a shame not to take advantage of this opportunity” was addressed to Jerusalem.
The Russian minister’s comment about it being “a shame not to take advantage of this opportunity” was addressed to Jerusalem.
Military sources report that, two years ago, Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu and defense minister at the time, Ehud Barak, came to a secret agreement with the Obama administration that if Tehran stopped the 20-percent enrichment of uranium and shut down its underground enrichment plant at Fordo, Israel would have no objections to Iran carrying on producing uranium refined to the 5.3 percent level.
Israel revoked this deal at the end of 2012 when Iran began massively accelerating its enrichment activities and accumulated enough 5.3 percent material for a rapid switch to 20-percent enriched uranium.
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
2)US Experts Forecast Military Aid Hikes for Israel
Despite sequestration and protracted fiscal constraints, Israel
can expect an additional decade of sustained and possibly increased levelsof security assistance once its current $30 billion, 10-year military aid
package expires in 2018, former US officials here said.
Recently launched negotiations to extend aid through 2027 should yield an
agreement that exceeds the $3.1 billion Israel now receives in annual
Foreign Military Financing (FMF) grant aid, said Stuart Eizenstat, a former
official who negotiated an earlier aid package on behalf of the
Administration of then-President Bill Clinton.
“Support for Israel in the United States is astonishing. There’s no other
foreign country favored in terms of assistance; and this support is
bipartisan, bicameral and largely protected by sequestration,” said
Eizenstat, whose last in a series of high-level government posts was deputy
Treasury secretary under Clinton.
When asked at a June 17 talk with Israeli business leaders if Washington
would be willing or even able to sustain current FMF levels to Israel,
Eizenstat replied, “I have no concerns that aid to Israel will be
diminished. The question is rather by how much will it increase.”
According to the former US official, now a partner in the Washington-based
Covington & Burling law firm, “It is in the interest of Congress and future
administrations to sustain or even enhance aid to Israel, particularly given
the turmoil in this region and all the threats and pressures on Israel.”
Howard Berman, a former chairman of the House Foreign Affairs Committee,
also said Washington can be expected to sustain and probably increase annual
military aid to Israel. The former democratic congressman from California
noted, however, that the resumption of long-stalled Israeli-Palestinian
peace negotiations would “improve the climate” for securing domestic support
for a new 10-year aid deal.
“From the inside of the [appropriations] process, I can tell you the special
and strong relationship with Israel is enduring ... It is not linked to any
particular issue,” Berman said.
Nevertheless, the 28-year congressional veteran of US-Israel strategic
cooperation said “forward movement” toward a two-state, Israel-Palestine
peace deal “would be very appreciated” in key constituencies.
In a visit here in March, President Barack Obama announced his support for a
new agreement to extend annual military aid through 2027.
“Our current agreement lasts through 2017, and we’ve directed our teams to
start working on extending it for the years beyond,” Obama told reporters at
a joint press conference in Jerusalem with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin
Netanyahu.
The current agreement, signed in 2007, elevated Israel’s annual grant aid
from $2.4 billion to $3.1 billion, and Israeli officials here expect the
follow-on package to provide incremental boosts to nearly $4 billion per
year.
In parallel, the two countries are discussing prospects for financing
billions of dollars in Pentagon-proposed weapons through US
government-backed bridge loans that would be repaid with FMF to come from
the future 10-year military aid package.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
3)
The Young Won't Buy ObamaCare
It makes scant financial sense for them to subsidize others' care.
By Holman W. Jenkins Jr.
Media outlets lately have emphasized the challenge of enticing healthy young adults to sign up for ObamaCare, "exactly the type of person insurance plans, states and the federal government are counting on to make health reform work," as the L.A. Times put it. These pieces are useful as far as they go, but miss a key point that Supreme Court Justice Samuel Alito managed to convey in many fewer words during last year's Supreme Court argument on ObamaCare.
Mr. Alito pointed out that young, healthy adults today spend an average of $854 a year on health care. ObamaCare would require them to buy insurance policies expected to cost roughly $5,800. The law, then, isn't just asking them to pay for "the services that they are going to consume," he added. "The mandate is forcing these people to provide a huge subsidy to the insurance companies . . . to subsidize services that will be received by somebody else."
Since he puts it that way, why would they sign up for ObamaCare, especially since the alleged penalties will be negligible and likely unenforced?
Journalism celebrates the "five Ws" but a secret of our profession is that many of us disdain the fifth W—"why"—as if accurate analysis is somehow woolly and inferior to accurate transcription of simple facts like "who," "what," "when" and "where."
Here's another example. For 30 years, journalists have been "investigating" hospital pricing, which is neither competitive nor closely related to cost, invariably throwing up their hands and saying government must fix matters. Yet any reasoned analysis shows that government policy is why we have such a byzantine payment system in the first place, in which an ever-inflating health-care bill is allocated among "payer" groups via opaque political bargaining.
Why isn't the same mess seen in other realms of the economy? In the automobile market, dealers publish prices on their websites and in ads that are always lower than the sticker prices. Why?
Independent websites like Edmunds.com, AutoTrader.com and Kelley Blue Book publish detailed pricing information for consumers and do so for free. Why?
The answer is obvious. Consumers want such information and businesses see opportunity in providing it, even for free, in order to attract eyeballs for advertising.
Such information doesn't exist in health care because consumers don't demand it, because somebody else is almost always paying for our health care. Those of us who aren't subsidized directly by Medicaid, Medicare and the Veterans Administration are subsidized through the tax code to channel all our aches and pains through a third-party payment mill, disguised as employer-provided "insurance."
Not being able to analyze "why" also leads to all kinds of anomalous conclusions.
The uninsured are painted as the payer group getting the worst deal from the health-care system since they don't enjoy insurer discounts. But judging by the 6% of hospital costs written off as uncollectable, the uninsured are actually getting the best deal (in a sense). A 2011 government study found that even relatively affluent families pay just 37% of their hospital bills in full.
Medicare is portrayed as getting the best deal from the system because Medicare pays less per service. But remember how the system works. Who's to say Medicare doesn't pay less per procedure because it's being billed for many more procedures, because that's how providers are allowed to maximize their revenues from the payer known as Medicare?
In fact, plenty of evidence suggests this is exactly how Medicare operates. And Congress understands as much, hence the 25% cut in physician reimbursements it keeps threatening to impose is informed partly by expectations that physicians could maintain their incomes by charging for more services.
The media's refusal to accumulate any wisdom on the "whys" of our health-care system is also behind the willingness of so many to credit a recent moderation in health-care spending to ObamaCare, though that moderation began before ObamaCare was enacted.
The spending moderation is actually not dissimilar to that seen during the heyday of managed care in the 1990s and again during the 2000s as employers rolled out sharply higher deductibles, co-pays and health savings accounts. The moderation is not dissimilar to that seen in every economic downturn when companies chuck insured workers off their payrolls and fellow workers curb their health spending out of fear of losing their jobs.
Employers are stuck constantly trying to combat the inflationary forces that government policy fosters. That's our best explanation of why health-care inflation waxes and wanes, though never to the point of falling in real terms. And it's probably true now too.
If this big picture is news to you, blame the disrespect in which the fifth W is held by the media profession.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
4)Obama's Keystone Regrets
By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL
If President Obama once thought it politically savvy to kick the Keystone XL pipeline decision down the road, he's surely ruing that strategy today. The delay has allowed the environmental community to elevate the project into a litmus test of his environmental fealty—so much so that some of Mr. Obama's biggest supporters are now vowing to turn his base against him if he moves ahead with a win-win project that will boost the economy.
The ultimatum was expressed clearly in an open letter to Mr. Obama on June 3 from Thomas Steyer, the billionaire climate activist. Mr. Steyer has been a loyal Obama ally, speaking at the Democratic National Convention in 2012 and donating generously to the president and his party
In his letter, Mr. Steyer nonetheless made clear that he and his NextGen political action committee will turn their force on the president if he approves Keystone. "NextGen Action is going to be working with friends and allies who are opposed to the development of Keystone XL to intensify our efforts in communicating what is the right policy choice for your Administration," the letter reads. "On June 20, in Washington, D.C. we will announce a campaign that will specifically focus on communicating to those Americans across the country that supported your re-election in 2012."
That vow comes alongside the green community's plans to launch a new phase of rowdy summer activism against the project. The group 350.org is planning "mass action," including a demonstration at the White House on July 27 to pressure the president to keep climate "promises" that have "fallen by the wayside." Groups like CREDO Action and the Rainforest Action Network are pushing a "Keystone XL Pledge of Resistance," asking Americans to "engage in serious, dignified, peaceful civil disobedience that could get you arrested." More than 20 activists were arrested on Monday in Chicago, where the Rainforest Action Network deliberately organized a protest in Mr. Obama's hometown. Environmentalists have also—amusingly—been blasting Mr. Obama's Organizing for America group, furious that it hasn't jumped into the pipeline fight.
One clear message to the president is that the environmental community won't be placated by the administration's expected July announcement of a climate policy. Quite the opposite, many green groups are now claiming the only measure of Mr. Obama' climate devotion is his willingness to kill the pipeline.
This puts Mr. Obama in a tough position. The vast majority of Americans are supportive of Keystone, seeing it as a sensible and obvious job-creation project. Yet the Obama strategy for success in next year's midterms—in which he hopes to reclaim the House—is to use his special-interest supporters (including environmentalists) to get his base out to vote. Maybe if he'd green-lighted Keystone back before it become a household term, he could have avoided all this.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
5)Elbert Guillory: Why I Chose To Become A Republican
Hello, my name is Elbert Lee Guillory, and I’m the senator for the twenty-fourth district right here in beautiful Louisiana. Recently I made what many are referring to as a ‘bold decision’ to switch my party affiliation to the Republican Party. I wanted to take a moment to explain why I became a Republican, and also to explain why I don’t think it was a bold decision at all. It is the right decision — not only for me — but for all my brothers and sisters in the black community.
You see, in recent history the Democrat Party has created the illusion that their agenda and their policies are what’s best for black people. Somehow it’s been forgotten that the Republican Party was founded in 1854 as an abolitionist movement with one simple creed: that slavery is a violation of the rights of man.
Frederick Douglass called Republicans the ‘Party of freedom and progress,’ and the first Republican president was Abraham Lincoln, the author of the Emancipation Proclamation. It was the Republicans in Congress who authored the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth amendments giving former slaves citizenship, voting rights, and due process of law.
The Democrats on the other hand were the Party of Jim Crow. It was Democrats who defended the rights of slave owners. It was the Republican President Dwight Eisenhower who championed the Civil Rights Act of 1957, but it was Democrats in the Senate who filibustered the bill.
You see, at the heart of liberalism is the idea that only a great and powerful big government can be the benefactor of social justice for all Americans. But the left is only concerned with one thing — control. And they disguise this control as charity. Programs such as welfare, food stamps, these programs aren’t designed to lift black Americans out of poverty, they were always intended as a mechanism for politicians to control black the black community.
The idea that blacks, or anyone for that matter, need the the government to get ahead in life is despicable. And even more important, this idea is a failure. Our communities are just as poor as they’ve always been. Our schools continue to fail children. Our prisons are filled with young black men who should be at home being fathers. Our self-initiative and our self-reliance have been sacrificed in exchange for allegiance to our overseers who control us by making us dependent on them.
Sometimes I wonder if the word freedom is tossed around so frequently in our society that it has become a cliché.
The idea of freedom is complex and it is all-encompassing. It’s the idea that the economy must remain free of government persuasion. It’s the idea that the press must operate without government intrusion. And it’s the idea that the emails and phone records of Americans should remain free from government search and seizure. It’s the idea that parents must be the decision makers in regards to their children's education — not some government bureaucrat.
But most importantly, it is the idea that the individual must be free to pursue his or her own happiness free from government dependence and free from government control. Because to be truly free is to be reliant on no one other than the author of our destiny. These are the ideas at the core of the Republican Party, and it is why I am a Republican.
So my brothers and sisters of the American community, please join with me today in abandoning the government plantation and the Party of disappointment. So that we may all echo the words of one Republican leader who famously said, ‘free at last, free at last, thank God Almighty, we are free at last.’
-------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
6)Obama suggests Bernanke on way out as Fed Reserve head
-
President Obama strongly suggested Monday that Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke will not be extending his stay as head of the U.S. central bank.
The president said in an interview with PBS's Charlie Rose that Bernanke has done an "outstanding job," but has "already stayed a lot longer than he wanted or he was supposed to."
The president's comments should fuel the widely held expectation that Bernanke will not be seeking a third term as Fed chairman when his term expires at the beginning of 2014.
Rose asked Obama if he would reappoint Bernanke if the economist wanted it, and the president largely avoided the question, referring instead to what Bernanke has already accomplished.
"He has been an outstanding partner along with the White House, in helping us recover — much stronger than, for example, our European partners — from what could have been an economic crisis of epic proportions," he said, according to an interview transcript.
Bernanke himself has been mostly mum on the topic when asked, but has done little to dissuade the notion that he has had his fill of steering the nation's monetary policy.
First nominated by President George W. Bush and then a second time by Obama, Bernanke's time included navigating the Fed — and the nation's economy — through the financial crisis and resulting recession.
Along the way, the Fed has embarked on unprecedented policy maneuvers, including three rounds of massive bond purchases known as "quantitative easing" and novel new communications strategies, such as regular press conferences and setting specific economic targets that will lead to policy changes.
Those efforts have subjected the Fed to criticism, particularly from the right, as Republicans argue the Fed is departing from its traditional mission and potentially encouraging damaging inflation down the line.
Bernanke will likely have to field questions himself about his future at the Fed on Wednesday, when he holds one of those press conferences after the Fed updates its policy at a regular meeting.
Financial markets are watching the Fed even more closely than usual now, wondering when the central bank might indicate it will ease off the stimulus it has pumped into the economy for years.
Obama also indicated in his interview that with the crisis faded and the economy now on a seemingly stable recovery, he would like to focus on economic matters that originally drove his run for the White House, such as income inequality and other "structural problems" in the economy.
"The economy is not working for everybody," he said. "We have recovered from the worst of the crisis, but the underlying problem, which is growing inequality, wages and income stagnant or even going down in some cases for middle class families, that trend line has continued.
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