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A picture is worth a thousand words.
I was told by a memo reader that:Charles Rangel did attend. So the article I previously posted needed to be corrected.
55 Democrats failed to attend instead of 56.
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Stockman notes American corporations are buying up equity and substituting with cheap debt.
When earnings are basically stagnant, money is cheap and incentive to spend capital is squashed by uncertainty, increasing taxes and regulations it is logical for corporate managers to manipulate earnings.
The problem is, it can come back to haunt them. IBM, for all its former glory, is a prime example.(See 1 below.)
Roubini also comments (See 1a below.)
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It appears Obama is ignoring the Judge's stay regarding the implementation of immigrating illegals while that decision is being appealed and a court hearing to determine if that is so has been set for March 18.
I am never surprised when this president takes matters into his own hands.
Rest assured, Obama will ignore the precept that Congress has a say in treaty making after he negotiates a 'deal' with Iran. That is what he learned in Chicago and willingly employs in D.C. (See 2 below.)
The Clinton's operate in much the same manner because mob style governance is not exclusive to Illinois.
"IS, is is" if you remember so what difference does it make.
Hillary will meet her match in Rep. Gowdy, however, but time is always the ally of the Clinton's who are masters at stonewalling. Is the liberal press beginning to tire of Hillary? (See 2a and 2b below.)
Once again the courts will either save our Republic from those who refuse to co-operate with Congress' legitimate rights and demands or allow them to hide behind their alleged misdeeds while continuing to breed contempt and distrust for the political system. (See 2c below.)
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It was important for Holder to issue a swan song regarding Ferguson's police force because he had to assuage for his precipitous reaction. (See 3 below.)
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Life under the U.S umbrella. (See 4 below.)
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Who do you believe? From my limited view, I suspect Netanyahu is, at the very least, not a fan of Obama and sees him as I do, weak, inexperienced and therefore, incompetent. (See 5 below.)
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An e mail from a friend of long standing and fellow memo reader: "Dear Dick,
My compliments to you as always, and in this case I also wish that you will pass along my sincerest compliments to your friend who wrote the "Bibi destroys Obama and Iran with one speech" email. I was delighted to read his dead on review of Bibi's speech.
With all my best,
S------"
Has the truth regarding Obama's contempt for Israel finally come out in an op ed by Victor Hanson? (See 6 below.)
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Finally, I just listened to Hillary "whitewash' herself because it would be a burden to carry two phones.
I now believe she is totally qualified to be our first female president because she and her staff helped her dodge weak and repeated questioning and any president that can snow and 'serve' the American people in such a masterful way deserves to be elected.
The fact that Hillary alone decided to release what she did, will keep the server under the watchful eye of the Secret Service and rid herself of e mails she deemed were personal totally resolves the matter so once again 'what difference does it make' becomes the operative phrase. It all boils down to that nasty right wing conspiracy.
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Dick---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
1)
Stockman: Corporate America Is Cannibalizing Itself
American businesses are borrowing at historic high levels, but the only thing growing as a result is how fast their equity capital is vanishing, according to David Stockman, White House budget chief during the Reagan administration.
Stockman, a reliable critic of Federal Reserve policies, said much of the blame can be laid at the feet of the central bank and the bank's Wall Street cheerleaders.
He said the Fed's balance sheet has ballooned by 9 times since 2000, yet real net investment in the business sector has cratered by 33 percent during the same time period.
"Once upon a time businesses borrowed long term money — if they borrowed at all — in order to fund plant, equipment and other long-lived productive assets," Stockman wrote.
"Today American businesses are borrowing like never before — but the only thing being liquidated is their own equity capital. That's because trillions of debt is being issued to fund financial engineering maneuvers such as stock buybacks, M&A [mergers and acquisitions] and LBOs [leveraged buyouts], not the acquisition of productive assets that can actually fuel future output and productivity."
In Stockman's view, central bank "financial repression" — in the form of artificially low interest rates that have been orchestrated to provide a false prop to the economy — is responsible for fueling stock market bubbles that makes stock repurchases and other short-term financial engineering maneuvers profitable.
For 2015 to date, corporate bond issues total $241 billion — a giant $1.4 trillion annualized run rate, or nearly double the run rate prior to the 2008 financial meltdown, he noted. "Yet virtually all of this massive debt issuance has been cycled into after-burner fuel for the rocketing stock market. During the month of February alone, stock buybacks for the S&P 500 were a record $104 billion," he added.
"Is it any wonder that Wall Street threatens a hissy fit upon even a hint that the Fed's rotten regime of ZIRP [zero interest rate policy] might be ended after 80 months?"
Stockman explained that the titanic splurge in corporate debt issuance conceals the fact that real net investment in the U.S. business sector shrank sharply from $400 billion annualized in the fourth quarter of 2007 to only $300 billion annualized in the fourth quarter of 2014.
"This drastic shrinkage is something totally new under the sun, and not in a good way at all," he declared. "So thanks for the corporate bond bubble, Fed. It's just one more nail in the coffin of capitalist prosperity in America.
With the European Central Bank expected to start a $1 trillion quantitative easing (QE) program next week, an echo of the Fed's QE binge, European companies could follow America's corporate lead, Reuters reported.
"European companies are likely to join a boom in share buybacks as central bank cash floods the economy, risking criticism that they are recycling capital rather than investing to promote growth," Reuters said.
However, the news source predicted, "Political pressure will probably grow on companies to use ultra-cheap funding for creating jobs rather than simply buying back their own shares."
1a)
Roubini Sees Risk of Asset Bubbles
Ace economist Nouriel Roubini of New York University is concerned about the steep ascent of many financial markets.
The S&P 500 index, for example, has soared threefold in the last six years.
"Roubini believes asset reflation can lead to asset inflation, which in turn can lead to asset frothiness, eventually turning into asset and credit bubbles, and ending in a crash," Usman Hayat of the CFA Institute, wrote in a description of Roubini's speech at a CFA Institute conference in Kuwait City last week.
"The dilemma facing the Fed, Roubini contends, is that if it tightens monetary policy too late, it could lead to 'the mother of all bubbles' by 2017. And if the Fed tightens too soon, it could cause a hard landing of the real economy."
The central bank has kept its federal funds rate target at a record low of zero to 0.25 percent since December 2008. Analysts' consensus forecast is that the Fed will begin raising rates around mid-year.
Newsmax Finance insider Sean Hyman doesn't expect a move until September or October, he told Newsmax TV.
"I don't think that rate hikes are something to be feared at this point, because even if they start hiking, and even if they put in a couple of hikes this year, it'll probably be 25 basis points," the editor of Ultimate Wealth Report newsletter, told Newsmax TV's "Midpoint" show.
"So if you get 0.5 percent, is that going to kill companies in America? It's not. The earlier hikes never hurt companies. It's those later hikes, so I don't think we have anything to fear for quite some time on the rate front."
CNBC commentator Ron Insana sees it a bit differently. "The strong [February jobs] data suggests to the bond market that June is back on the table," he writes on CNBC.
"I have argued that the Fed will not, and should not, raise [interest] rates this year. . . . However, if the data remain this strong in the next two months, it will be increasingly difficult for the Fed to refrain from making its first move."
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2)
The impact of the letter on the Iranians is a matter of speculation. The Islamist regime needs no instructions from Republicans about how to protect their interests as they’ve been successfully stringing along Western governments for more than a decade in nuclear negotiations. In particular, they have scored a series of diplomatic triumphs at the expense of the United States as President Obama has abandoned his past insistence that Iran give up its nuclear program and instead offered concession after concession to the point where the deal that is being offered to the regime is one that will let them keep their infrastructure and will “sunset” restrictions on it. If they truly intend to take advantage of this craven retreat by the putative leader of the free world as opposed to more prevarication until the clock runs out on their march to a weapon, then nothing his Republican opponents say are likely to scare them out of it.
Moreover, the Iranians may believe that the same dynamic that has worked in their favor during the course of the negotiations may similarly ease their fears once such a bad deal is in place. Even a Republican president who has campaigned against appeasement of Iran and understands the dangers of an agreement that will make it possible for Iran to get a bomb either by cheating or, even worse, by abiding by its terms, will be hard-pressed to reverse it. America’s allies will fight tooth and nail against re-imposition of sanctions on an Iran that they want to do business with no matter what that terror-supporting regime is cooking up.
The campaign against reversal will also center on the straw-man arguments used by the president and his apologists to bolster their effort to appease Iran. We will be told that the only alternative to a deal that allows Iran to become a threshold nuclear power is war and not the return to tough sanctions and hard-headed diplomacy that President Obama jettisoned in his zeal for a deal.
But by planning to bypass Congress and treat his pact with Iran as merely an executive decision over which the legislative branch has no say, the president is steering into uncharted waters. Like his executive orders giving amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants that usurp the power of Congress to alter laws governing this issue, a nuclear deal that is not ratified by the Senate, as all treaties must be, can be treated as a presidential whim that is not binding on his successors. If it can be put into effect with only the stroke of a pen, it can just as easily be undone by a similar stroke from another president.
But Iran still had to be put on notice that a deal that is not approved by Congress can and should be reversed by the next president. One-man rule may make sense in Tehran, but not here. This is not a question of partisanship but a defense of both the Constitution and the security of the nation. The Iranians should know that this deal is unpopular and will have no legitimacy without congressional ratification. Rather than sabotaging diplomacy, the letter is necessary pressure on the president to remember his oath to preserve the Constitution rather than to recklessly risk the country’s safety on Iranian détente.
2a)Glaciers at the NYT: The Democrats’ War on Women and Blacks
The letter sent by 47 Republican senators to Iran’s leadership is provoking predictable cries of outrage from liberals and Democrats. Obama administration supporters are decrying the missive as a blatant attempt to sabotage U.S. diplomatic efforts to end the standoff over Iran’s nuclear-weapons program. By warning Tehran that any deal approved by President Obama may be revoked by his successor after January 2017, the GOP caucus is opening itself up to charges of extending partisan warfare to foreign policy. But the letter, intended as much as a shot fired over the bow of the president as it was a lesson in the U.S. Constitution for the ayatollahs, made an important point. No matter what you think about the administration’s blatant push for détente with the Islamist regime, the president’s plans to craft an agreement that will not be submitted to Congress for approval means the senators are correct about its status in law. More importantly, they are highlighting an issue that transcends the nuclear question, even though that is a matter of life and death. A president that seeks to ignore the constitutional separation of powers cannot complain when his critics point out that his fiats cannot be expected to stand the test of time.
The impact of the letter on the Iranians is a matter of speculation. The Islamist regime needs no instructions from Republicans about how to protect their interests as they’ve been successfully stringing along Western governments for more than a decade in nuclear negotiations. In particular, they have scored a series of diplomatic triumphs at the expense of the United States as President Obama has abandoned his past insistence that Iran give up its nuclear program and instead offered concession after concession to the point where the deal that is being offered to the regime is one that will let them keep their infrastructure and will “sunset” restrictions on it. If they truly intend to take advantage of this craven retreat by the putative leader of the free world as opposed to more prevarication until the clock runs out on their march to a weapon, then nothing his Republican opponents say are likely to scare them out of it.
Moreover, the Iranians may believe that the same dynamic that has worked in their favor during the course of the negotiations may similarly ease their fears once such a bad deal is in place. Even a Republican president who has campaigned against appeasement of Iran and understands the dangers of an agreement that will make it possible for Iran to get a bomb either by cheating or, even worse, by abiding by its terms, will be hard-pressed to reverse it. America’s allies will fight tooth and nail against re-imposition of sanctions on an Iran that they want to do business with no matter what that terror-supporting regime is cooking up.
The campaign against reversal will also center on the straw-man arguments used by the president and his apologists to bolster their effort to appease Iran. We will be told that the only alternative to a deal that allows Iran to become a threshold nuclear power is war and not the return to tough sanctions and hard-headed diplomacy that President Obama jettisoned in his zeal for a deal.
But by planning to bypass Congress and treat his pact with Iran as merely an executive decision over which the legislative branch has no say, the president is steering into uncharted waters. Like his executive orders giving amnesty to millions of illegal immigrants that usurp the power of Congress to alter laws governing this issue, a nuclear deal that is not ratified by the Senate, as all treaties must be, can be treated as a presidential whim that is not binding on his successors. If it can be put into effect with only the stroke of a pen, it can just as easily be undone by a similar stroke from another president.
The difficulty of undertaking such a revision should not be underestimated. No president will lightly reverse a foreign-policy decision with such serious implications lightly. That is why an agreement that grants Western approval to Iran’s nuclear ambitions is so dangerous. That it is part of a comprehensive approach to Iran that, despite last week’s disclaimers issued by Secretary of State John Kerry, indicates that the U.S. is prepared to accept the regime’s efforts to achieve regional hegemony makes it even more perilous. Congress needs to act soon to both impose tougher sanctions on Iran and to ensure that any deal must be submitted to it for approval.
But Iran still had to be put on notice that a deal that is not approved by Congress can and should be reversed by the next president. One-man rule may make sense in Tehran, but not here. This is not a question of partisanship but a defense of both the Constitution and the security of the nation. The Iranians should know that this deal is unpopular and will have no legitimacy without congressional ratification. Rather than sabotaging diplomacy, the letter is necessary pressure on the president to remember his oath to preserve the Constitution rather than to recklessly risk the country’s safety on Iranian détente.
2a)Glaciers at the NYT: The Democrats’ War on Women and Blacks
By Roger L. Simon
Did Americans suddenly become more racist and sexist after 2008 or could another factor be at play?
When I grew up, I thought the Democratic Party was the great friend of minorities and women. The party wanted a world of equality, I thought. Most people I knew believed that too.
Sorry, I was an idiot.
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It says in plain English what facts have been established by an autopsy on Michael Brown's body -- by three different pathologists, including one representing the family of Michael Brown -- by DNA examination of officer Darren Wilson's gun and police vehicle, by examination of the pattern of blood stains on the street where Brown died and by a medical report on officer Wilson, from the hospital where he went for treatment.
Here’s our contemporary world as it actually exists: Ayaan Hirsi Ali — a woman who has had a clitoridectomy and has had literally hundreds of death threats, maybe thousands, risking her life daily fighting the horrible mistreatment of her sex under Islamic Sharia — has her honorary degree withheld by Brandeis University while Hillary Clinton — the putative Democratic Party nominee (still, I guess) for president — takes multimillion dollar donations from Saudi Arabia, where women aren’t even allowed to drive.
Something is wrong with that picture. Now how about this?
Barack Obama, the first black president, comes into office and black unemployment actually increases while, for the first time in years, relations between the races in our country are reported in a recent poll to be worse by both blacks and whites.
Something’s wrong with that picture too. Did Americans suddenly become more racist or is it something else — that something being the policies of the Democratic Party, encouraging division and then living off those same divisions like a parasitic animal?
The Republican Party is unimpressive, to be sure, but the Democratic Party is indeed an animal feeding on our nation and making it weaker and weaker. The way that party approaches women and blacks is quite remarkably similar — treat them as a unified interest group and then exploit them. How insulting, how deeply reactionary. If I were a woman or a black I would be disgusted. Obviously, not enough are — yet.
So we live in what the French call la vie a l’envers — life upside down. Do we challenge the situation as it continues to grow worse or just disappear, go about our private lives (go John Galt, as they say)? People must decide for themselves, but I know I am emotionally unfit to go John Galt. I have to fight. As Lady Gaga would say, I am born that way. But the problem for those of us who feel we have to fight for whatever reason is that it is extremely difficult for us to get the other side to see the truth. They are so stuck in their 1968 vision of the world, and even more of themselves, that they resist movement and will be in denial until their dying day. So often we end up fighting with each other.
But this is an interesting moment. The publication of an article in the New York Times under the headline “Hillary Clinton Faces Test of Record as Women’s Advocate” could at least be seen as a sign of glaciers moving (barely). That Carly Fiorina was quoted positively in the same article is also notable:
Saudi Arabia has been a particularly generous benefactor to the Clinton Foundation, giving at least $10 million since 2001, according to foundation disclosures. At least $1 million more was donated by Friends of Saudi Arabia, co-founded by a Saudi prince.Republicans quickly zeroed in on the apparent contradiction. Carly Fiorina, the former Hewlett-Packard chief, told a crowd at the Conservative Political Action Conference last month that Mrs. Clinton “tweets about women’s rights in this country and takes money from governments that deny women the most basic human rights.”
Okay, the author, Amy Chozick, used the weasel word “apparent” to modify an obvious contradiction…. and, sure, she ends her article, in time-honored NYT fashion, with a quote (slightly) favoring Hillary from her book. (Did Chozick actually read it? Merit badge, please.) But still, we must be patient. As we know, glaciers move slowly…. unless you really, really, believe in climate change.
2b)
Is Hillary Toast? Sure Starting to Look That Way
If this scenario reminds you of the end of The Godfather, you may be a winner.
By Michael Walsh
Let’s see… the emails have been known for two years or so, but this story is just “breaking” now, at the same time Sen. Bob Menendez is being brought up on federal charges and David Petraeus cops a plea deal. Now the stenographers at the Washington Post are beginning to connect the dots between Hillary Clinton’s private emails and her disastrous tenure in Foggy Bottom — Benghazi! You remember Benghazi — nothing to see here Benghazi; who cares where Barry Hussein was the night of Benghazi. Yes, that Benghazi. If this scenario reminds you of the end of The Godfather, you may be a winner:
Clinton’s time at State Department, once an asset, now a liability.
Hillary Rodham Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state was supposed to be a central argument for her forthcoming run for president. Her globe-trotting record as the nation’s chief diplomat, her role championing women’s empowerment and gay rights, and her experience on tough national security issues were all supposed to confer credentials that none of her possible GOP opponents would possess.
But over the past two weeks, with back-to-back revelations that she was working with foreign countries that gave millions to her family’s charitable foundation and that she set up and exclusively used her own private e-mail system, that argument is in peril.
Mightly conveniently timed “revelations,” eh?
Instead of a fresh chapter in which she came into her own, Clinton’s time as the country’s top diplomat now threatens to remind voters of what some people dislike about her — a tendency toward secrecy and defensiveness, along with the whiff of scandal that blotted the record of her husband, former president Bill Clinton.That side of Hillary Clinton also plays directly into the main Republican argument against her, that she is a candidate of “yesterday” — as Sen. Marco Rubio of Florida recently put it — who comes with decades of baggage the country no longer need carry.“Part of the reason the story is gaining traction is that it reminds people of what the Clinton White House was like,” said American University political science professor Jennifer Lawless. “It reminds people of the scandals, the secrecy and the lack of transparency that were often associated with Bill Clinton’s eight years in Washington.”
As I’ve said before, these are not coincidences — they’re a message being sent to the Clintons that their time at the top is over. The only question is whether they’ll take the hint and retire to their money-collection business, aka, the Clinton Foundation, or whether she’ll go down hard. Already, the young Turks are getting restive:
And while Clinton remains the overwhelming favorite for her party’s nomination, some Democrats last week were more open about their misgivings about her candidacy. On Friday night in New Hampshire, former Maryland governor Martin O’Malley, who might run against Clinton, for the first time criticized her use of the private e-mail account, saying that “openness and transparency are required of governing in the modern age.”
If Hillary were smart, which she’s not, she’d take the hint. But her greed and arrogance will get the better of her, and she’ll never hear the sound of the accelerating bus until it’s too late.
UPDATE: The headline on the Post story has been changed. It now reads: Will Clinton’s experience be a liability? To which one might reply: what experience? Unless you count logging air miles and getting sozzled at public expense as “experience.”
2c)
After ignoring a Freedom of Information Act request submitted in August 2014, government watchdog Judicial Watch has issued a lawsuit against the State Department for all emails between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her top aide Huma Abedin and wife of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi, Nagla Mahmoud, from January 2009 to January 2013. It was discovered earlier this week that both Clinton and Abedine used personal email accounts to conduct government business, potentially violating federal records laws.
2c)
JUDICIAL WATCH SUES FOR CLINTON'S EMAILS WITH EGYPT'S MUSLIM BROTHERHOOD
By Katie Pavlich
After ignoring a Freedom of Information Act request submitted in August 2014, government watchdog Judicial Watch has issued a lawsuit against the State Department for all emails between former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, her top aide Huma Abedin and wife of Muslim Brotherhood leader Mohammed Morsi, Nagla Mahmoud, from January 2009 to January 2013. It was discovered earlier this week that both Clinton and Abedine used personal email accounts to conduct government business, potentially violating federal records laws.
The Judicial Watch lawsuit specifically seeks the following:
A. Any and all records of communication between Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and Nagla Mahmoud, wife of ousted Egyptian president Muhammad Morsi, from January 21, 2009 to January 31, 2013; and
B. Any and all records of communication between former State Department Deputy Chief of Staff Huma Abedin and Nagla Mahmoud from January 21, 2009 to January 31, 2013.
“Now we know why the State Department didn’t want to respond to our specific request for Hillary Clinton’s and Huma Abedin’s communications,” Judicial Watch President Tom Fitton said in a statement. “The State Department violated FOIA law rather than admit that it couldn’t and wouldn’t search the secret accounts that the agency has known about for years. This lawsuit shows how the latest Obama administration cover-up isn’t just about domestic politics but has significant foreign policy implications.”
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3) The 'Disparate Impact' Racket
By Thomas Sowell
The U.S. Department of Justice issued two reports last week, both growing out of the Ferguson, Missouri shooting of Michael Brown. The first report, about "the shooting death of Michael Brown by Ferguson, Missouri police officer Darren Wilson" ought to be read by every American.
It says in plain English what facts have been established by an autopsy on Michael Brown's body -- by three different pathologists, including one representing the family of Michael Brown -- by DNA examination of officer Darren Wilson's gun and police vehicle, by examination of the pattern of blood stains on the street where Brown died and by a medical report on officer Wilson, from the hospital where he went for treatment.
The bottom line is that all this hard evidence, and more, show what a complete lie was behind all the stories of Michael Brown being shot in the back or being shot while raising his hands in surrender. Yet that lie was repeated, and dramatized in demonstrations and riots from coast to coast, as well as in the media and even in the halls of Congress.
The other Justice Department report, issued the same day -- "Investigation of the Ferguson Police Department" -- was a complete contrast. Sweeping assumptions take the place of facts, and misleading statistics are thrown around recklessly. This second report is worth reading, just to get a sense of the contrast with the first.
According to the second report, law enforcement in Ferguson has a "disparate impact" on blacks and is "motivated" by "discriminatory intent."
"Disparate impact" statistics have for decades been used, in many different contexts, to claim that discrimination was the reason why different groups are not equally represented as employees or in desirable positions or -- as in this case -- in undesirable positions as people arrested or fined.
Like many other uses of "disparate impact" statistics, the Justice Department's evidence against the Ferguson police department consists of numbers showing that the percentage of people stopped by police or fined in court is larger than the percentage of blacks in the local population.
The implicit assumption is that such statistics about particular outcomes would normally reflect the percentage of people in the population. But, no matter how plausible this might seem on the surface, it is seldom found in real life, and those who use that standard are seldom, if ever, asked to produce hard evidence that it is factually correct, as distinct from politically correct.
Blacks are far more statistically "over-represented" among basketball stars in the NBA than among people stopped by police in Ferguson. Hispanics are similarly far more "over-represented" among baseball stars than in the general population. Asian Americans are likewise far more "over-represented" among students at leading engineering schools like M.I.T. and Cal Tech than in the population as a whole.
None of this is peculiar to the United States. You can find innumerable examples of such group disparities in countries around the world and throughout recorded history.
In 1802, for example, czarist Russia established a university in Estonia. For most of the 19th century, members of one ethnic group provided more of the students -- and a majority of the professors -- than any other. This was neither the local majority (Estonians) nor the national majority (Russians), but Germans.
An international study of the ethnic makeup of military forces around the world found that "militaries fall far short of mirroring, even roughly, the multi-ethnic societies" from which they come.
Even with things whose outcomes are not in human hands, "disparate impact" is common. Men are struck by lightning several times as often as women. Most of the tornadoes in the entire world occur in the middle of the United States.
Since the population of Ferguson is 67 percent black, the greatest possible "over-representation" of blacks among those stopped by police or fined by courts is 50 percent. That would not make the top 100 disparities in the United States or the top 1,000 in the world.
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4)
Life under the US umbrella
By Caroline Glick
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