Fed Should Hold Interest Rates Steady until after Presidential Primaries
Peter Morici
The Federal Reserve should delay further raising interest rates until after the major
party presidential nominees emerge this summer.
Americans opting out of full time employment and sinking pay hardly paints a
picture of economic health.
Whatever the shortcomings of President Obama's economic policies, businesses
have adjusted plans to his regime, but the populist revolt led by Donald Trump and
Bernie Sanders is making them skittish about more changes for the worse.
Obama has created a welfare dependency trap, and Clinton promises to make its
chains on the working poor even heavier.
It's no accident that in the wake of the financial crisis Republican leaning CEOs in
the failed auto sector were ousted when their firms took government aid while
Democratic leaning banking executives in New York kept their jobs.
An awful lot of what is new and innovative can't be blocked from leaving America
through any means, and look for the drug, technology and creative industries to
increasingly locate in Ireland, the UK and even Mexico.
Simply, making America more like France will give Americans French growth (not
much) and French unemployment (an awful lot).
Looking at it all, no wonder business investment fell the second half of 2015 and
shows no sign of significant recovery.
Whether Clinton or Cruz takes over in January 2017, both can be expected to climb
down from campaign promises and recognize any president gets more with sugar
than vinegar when dealing with business.
When the party nominees emerge this summer, a more realistic perspective on
what the winner is likely to actually do once in office will emerge.
For the Fed, it would just better to let presidential politics work out, at least until
summer, before hiking interest rates.
Peter Morici is an economist and business professor at the University of Maryland, and a
national columnist. He tweets @pmorici1
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2)
Marco Rubio Needs to Get Out
Now Because #NeverTrump is
Becoming #TrumpGuaranteed
Friday’s ago. That night it got over 60,000 hits and the #NeverTrump hashtag
became a worldwide trend. Credit for the hashtag goes to my friend Aaron Gardner. I’d used #AgainstTrump, the title of the National Reviewcover, but Aaron suggested I change it.
What I am seeing at this point, however, is that #NeverTrump is guaranteeing
Trump’s nomination because #NeverTrump is really #NeverTed. Many of the most vocal supporters of the #NeverTrump movement are Marco Rubio supporters and
they are handing the nomination to Trump because they cannot face the reality of
this election.
The reality is pretty simple. In 20 races, Rubio has won 2 and one of those, Puerto
Rico, gets no say in the electoral college. Trump has 384 delegates, Cruz has 300,
and Rubio has 151. Kasich, for what it is worth, only has 37.
In other words, Marco Rubio is 233 delegates behind Donald Trump, will perform terribly in Michigan tonight, and even if Rubio wins all 99 delegates in Florida, he will still be further
behind Donald Trump than Ted Cruz.
Marco Rubio is a great guy, I pray for him regularly and care for him sincerely,
almost all of my family and most of my friends have voted for him in the
primaries and caucuses held so far, and it is time for Marco Rubio to withdraw
from the race.
If Rubio wins in Florida, which is no guarantee, he will not stop Trump from winning the most delegates, but might stop Trump from getting to 1,237. That
would create a floor fight at the convention and, if Trump has the most delegates
and does not get the nomination, the Republican Party is f**ked for a generation at least. Heck, I’d help burn it down and I’m absolutely #NeverTrump. But the party would deserve annihilation if we got to that point.
Rubio, even if he wins Florida, would have to sweep virtually 70% of the rest of the contests. Given his performance so far, that will not be easy and is absolutely not guaranteed. The much touted poll showing Rubio winning early voting in Florida is pulled from a larger survey showing Trump ahead. In reality, that portion of the
survey shows Rubio winning a majority of just 72 people in a polling sample that is supposed to represent 571,000 people who have voted early — in other words, it is
an anecdote, not data. Again, it is no guarantee that he will win Florida and the
Cruz campaign has an absolutely legitimate reason to make sure Rubio loses
Florida. On top of that, the infrastructure of Rubio’s campaign is really not great.
The Cruz campaign understands that to beat Trump, Trump must be beaten in the primaries. Rubio’s defeat in Florida is the only way to force Marco Rubio out of the race for sure and secure donor support for Cruz. The conversations with donors are already happening.
The insistent that Rubio must stay in until Florida only keeps energy flowing to
Trump and does nothing to stop Trump from getting to Cleveland with the most delegates.
The only way to stop Trump is to fundamentally change the dynamic of the race.
That dynamic requires an outsider in the lead position because we have seen
repeatedly over this past year that the outsiders outnumber the insiders.
Again — if Trump leads delegates heading to Cleveland, despite not having 1,237,
the GOP will have hell to pay if it does not make him the nominee.
If Rubio loses Florida, which three other candidates have every incentive to ensure happens, Rubio’s political career is over completely and his chances of even being offered the Vice Presidential nomination go down dramatically.
If Marco stays in and wins Florida, the odds are still against him getting to
Cleveland with the most delegates.
Had Rubio gotten out before this past Saturday, Ted Cruz would have won every
single state at stake, which is actually not the case in the reverse had Cruz gotten
out and Rubio stayed in.
The only way to stop Trump now is to ally with Ted Cruz. But too many of the #NeverTrump brigade are really #NeverTed. They don’t want to look at the math,
they don’t want to look at the road ahead, they don’t want Ted Cruz. They’d rather
lose with Rubio and stay home in November than ally with Ted Cruz and even have a shot in November.
That is genuinely unfortunate and will either guarantee Trump is the nominee or guarantee the Republican Party is destroyed. Marco Rubio, a great man with a struggling campaign, has a cult of personality every bit as committed as Trump’s.
The difference is that Rubio’s cult will give us Trump where Trump’s cult alone
never could.
Marco Rubio needs to get out of the race now to stop Trump and save the party and nation. That’s just the cold, hard, unpleasant reality.
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Random thoughts on the passing scene:
The presidential election prospects for the Democrats are so bad this year that only
the Republicans can save them -- as Republicans have saved them before.
Will a Supreme Court without a single Protestant justice rule that an "under-representation" of any group is evidence of discrimination?
Here is a trick question: What percentage of American households have incomes in
the top 10 percent? Answer: 51 percent of American households are in the top 10
percent in income at some point in the course of a lifetime -- usually in their older
years. Those who want us to envy and resent the top 10 percent are urging half of us
to envy and resent ourselves.
His Super Bowl win gave retiring quarterback Peyton Manning his record 200th
victory. But it may also have benefitted losing young quarterback Cam Newton, by
giving him a very sobering experience after his exhilarating 17 and 1 season. Over the course of his career, Cam Newton may become an even greater quarterback than he would have been without this setback early in his career.
According to the Washington Post, record numbers of college students say that they
plan to engage in protests. Our educational system may not teach students much
math or science, but students learn from gutless academic administrators that mob
rule is the way to get what you want -- and to silence those who disagree with you.
Many Americans were not only saddened but angry that Iran publicized photographs of captured American sailors weeping. But do you think that Reverend Jeremiah
Wright was saddened and angry? What about his 20-year disciple in the White
House? Let us not forget that President Obama voluntarily humbled himself -- and America -- by bowing to foreign leaders.
People who are willing to consider virtually any conceivable excuse for criminals'
acts cut no slack at all for decisions that police have to make in a split second, at the
risk of their lives. For some people, it is not enough that cops put themselves at risk
to protect the rest of us. They want cops to risk their lives for the sake of handling criminals more gently.
What are the chances that the world's greatest violinist would make a good
quarterback? Or that the world's greatest quarterback would make a good violinist?
Why then would anyone think that a successful businessman would make a good president -- especially when he is demonstrating almost daily why he would not?
Many people, including Senator Bernie Sanders, repeat incessantly that the
economic system is "rigged" by the rich -- without providing either specifics or
evidence. The latest figures I have seen show that the 400 richest people in the
world have recently lost $19 billion on net balance. If they have rigged the system,
they have certainly done a very incompetent job of it.
If you listen carefully to what Senator Marco Rubio says, he is not for instant
amnesty. He is for amnesty on the installment plan, though of course he would not
call it that. Does anyone who knows anything about politics seriously believe that "legalization" of illegal immigrants will end that issue, without turning into
citizenship over time?
At last we have reached the point where we can say, "Next year this time, Obama will not be president." But the disasters he leaves behind will plague us for years to come.
And some of those disasters may strike even before he is gone.
Some countries in Europe have sealed their borders against refugees from the
Middle East, as the Soviet Union once sealed its borders against people getting in or getting out. But somehow it is said by some to be impossible to seal our border with Mexico.
When the Whigs could not get their act together on the crucial issue of their day -- slavery -- that led some Whigs to leave the party and form the Republican party,
with Lincoln as its candidate for president. Today's Republican party has repeatedly failed to get its act together on immigration. That has produced the current
divisiveness that may threaten them with the fate of the Whigs.
Historians of the future, when they look back on our times, may be completely
baffled when trying to understand how Western civilization welcomed vast numbers of people hostile to the fundamental values of Western civilization, people who had
been taught that they have a right to kill those who do not share their beliefs.
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4)New Hillary Clinton Emails Show
She Wanted Credit for Libya Intervention in 2011. Now She Doesn’t.
The latest tranche of Clinton emails recalls her pivotal role in the U.S. intervention.
The Clinton of 2012 saw herself as a principal agent in forging
the very resolution that the Clinton of 2015 cites as a turning
point in her thinking.
Now that Libya has descended into chaos, Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary
Clinton is at pains to dispel the notion that, as secretary of state, she led the U.S.
intervention that toppled dictator Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.
Yet the latest tranche of emails from Clinton’s private server, released by the State
Department on October 30, shows there’s one individual who would strongly object to
those efforts: the Hillary Clinton of 2011 and 2012.
A report in June by the New York Times revealed that in August 2011, Clinton’s advisors
had urged her to take credit for what was then seen as a military success in Libya. Now, the newly released emails show that the former secretary of state was herself intent on
emphasizing her key role in the affair—and that her team used cozy relationships with the media to help her do so.
In one exchange, on April 4, 2012, a frustrated Clinton complains to her staffers that they’d omitted a number of key details in a timeline titled “Secretary Clinton’s leadership on
Libya.” The timeline, which aims to show that Clinton “was instrumental in securing the authorization, building the coalition and tightening the noose around Qadhafi [sic] and his regime,” would later be provided to media.
“Did I meet in Paris w Jabril [sic] (brought to hotel by BHL) on 3/14? It's not on timeline,” she writes in the April 4 email, referring to Mahmoud Jibril, the prime minister for Libya’s
National Transitional Council during the country’s civil war, and Bernard-Henri Lévy
(BHL), the French philosopher who helped drive France’s own involvement in the conflict. In fact, Clinton’s meeting with Jibril was listed on the original timeline produced by advisor
Jacob Sullivan, suggesting Clinton was either referring to a different version of the
timeline or, more likely, failed to see it on the document.
“This timeline is totally inadequate (which bothers me about our record keeping),” Clinton writes three minutes later. “For example, I was in Paris on 3/19 when attack started. That's
not on timeline. What else is missing? Pls go over it asap.” Twenty-three minutes later, Sullivan sent Clinton an updated version of the timeline with the March 19 incident added
in.
Clinton emailed her advisors twice more within six minutes, saying, “What bothers me is
that S/P [the State Department’s Bureau of Policy Planning staff] prepared the timeline but it doesn't include much of what I did.” Among the items that were left out, she notes phone
calls and meetings with Arab officials, as well as her role in securing a March 12 Arab
League resolution, which called for a U.N.-imposed no-fly zone over Libya.
The emails also reveal that Clinton’s team was feeding information to the media to push
the narrative she is now contesting: that she was the chief force behind intervention in
Libya.
In the same email chain, Clinton complains, “The Joby Warrick piece from 10/30/11
includes more detail than our own timeline.” She is referring to a Washington Post article
that details Clinton’s “pivotal role” in forging and maintaining the alliance of intervening countries through “her mixture of political pragmatism and tenacity.”
However, Clinton’s team quickly assures her that Warrick’s piece was as thorough as it
was because the State Department had diligently furnished him with the necessary
information:
The comprehensive tick tock Jake put together … was done in large part for the Warrick piece. The great detail Joby had came entirely from Jake. Joby didn’t do any
independent research.
This suggests the timeline was provided to the Post to serve as the basis for the piece. Additionally, the fact that Clinton is rankled that the article’s extensive detail outdoes the timeline, and her staff’s subsequent assurance that Sullivan was the source of this behind-
the-scenes detail on Clinton’s leadership, implies that Sullivan—now one of Clinton’s top advisors for her presidential campaign—may have been one of the nameless State
Department officials cited by Warrick.
A comparison of the article and the timeline reveals their similarities. The Post piece
follows virtually the same progression as the timeline prepared for Clinton. Both cover her arrival in Paris on March 14 and her subsequent meetings with the G8 and Mahmoud
Jibril; her work to secure the March 17 United Nations Security Council resolution
authorizing a no-fly zone in Libya (as well as Russian abstention on that vote); her efforts
to convince Qatar, Jordan and the United Arab Emirates to provide their air power in the conflict; and her role in pressing more than 20 nations to recognize the Libyan National Transitional Council as the country’s legitimate government.
The piece also leans heavily on unidentified State Department officials and aides who “described the administration’s inner workings on the condition of anonymity.” One,
described as a “senior State Department official,” notes that, despite receiving no
instructions from the White House to support Libyan intervention upon arriving in Paris, Clinton “began to see a way forward” by her own initiative.
This is all a far cry from the Clinton of today, who tends to paint herself as just one of many pushing for an intervention—and stresses that President Obama made the final decision.
For instance, in her 2014 memoir, Hard Choices, published long after conditions in Libya
had deteriorated, Clinton portrays herself as reluctant to push for military action until the
March 12 Arab League resolution “changed the calculus.” Likewise, in both the
October 13 Democratic debate and her testimony to the House Committee on Benghazi in October 22, she pointed to the Arab League’s “unprecedented” resolution as a key reason
she supported intervention.
Yet Clinton’s emails suggest that she saw her own work on the resolution as a critical
element in “securing the authorization” for force on Libya. In other words, the Clinton of
2012 saw herself as a principal agent in forging the very resolution that the Clinton of
2015 cites as a turning point in her thinking.
Furthermore, over the last few years, Clinton has tended to lay the decision to go into
Libya squarely at Obama’s feet. Clinton says in her memoir that “the president decided to
move forward with drawing up military plans and securing a UN Security Council resolution,” rhetorically removing herself from the equation. Likewise, in response to a
question by Peter Roskam (R-IL) during the latest Benghazi hearing about whether she “persuaded President Obama to intervene militarily” in Libya, Clinton stressed that “there
were many in the State Department” in favor of intervention, and pointedly stated that, “at
the end of the day, this was the president’s decision.”
Yet the timeline produced by Clinton’s own team calls her “a leading voice for strong
UNSC action and a NATO civilian protection mission” and has her securing “Russian abstention and Portuguese and African support for UNSC 1973 [which authorized a no-fly zone over Libya], ensuring that it passes.” Moreover, the Postarticle that Clinton’s aides helped influence paints her as the deciding factor in Obama’s decision to intervene. “The president,” the article states, “who had been weighing arguments from a sharply divided Cabinet for
several days, sided with his secretary of state,” who had become a “strong advocate” for intervention by the time she spoke with Obama on March 15, according to an anonymous “administration official.”
These emails also raise questions about the relationship between administration officials
and the media. The establishment press has been criticized in the past for having cozy relationships with those in power, as well as an overreliance on anonymous administration sources, which allows officials to broadcast their preferred version of events without facing critique or questioning. The New York Times’ Public Editor Margaret
Sullivan has noted criticism of such reporting being little better than “stenography” that
“takes at face value what government officials say,” and that the Times’ own stylebook advises reporters to use anonymity as a “last resort.”
Michael Hammer celebrated a June 30, 2011, New York Times editorial urging NATO not
to give up in Libya and “stand firmly with the rebels.” Hammer told them that the State Department had arranged for then-Ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz to give NYT Foreign Affairs Editor Carol Giacomo “more ammo” for the op-ed. Tellingly, he added: “We're
doing more of this engagement with the editorial writers. Go team!” That piece made no mention of the conversation with Cretz. Other reports have also noted the Clinton team’s massaging of the media on other subjects.
As others have pointed out, despite Republicans’ attempts to use the Benghazi Committee
to eat into Clinton’s poll numbers, the real scandal involving Clinton and Libya is her
full-throated support for a war that has left the North African nation a chaotic breeding
ground for terrorism. Clinton may attempt to run away from her legacy in Libya, but she
can’t outrun her own words.
4a) Jews Overpaid Toe Hear Hillary (Jewish Charity Paid More Than Anyone Else.)
By Lori Marcus
The former Senator and Secretary of State, now presidential candidate, collected a total of over $21 million. The former President collected over $26 million during the same period.
The vast majority of the payments (the chart politely calls each payment an “honorarium”) were made by for-profit businesses or trade associations. For example, Morgan Stanley, the Global Business Travel Association,
Bank of America and General Electric all forked over $225,000 to hear Clinton speak between 2013 and 2014. By 2015, when it was assumed that the former Secretary of State was not only going to be running for
president, but might very well be the next president, her base fee began to inch upwards, with EBay
shelling out $315,00.
There are only a handful of actual charitable organizations on the list. And here’s the first piece of bad news for us: almost every single charity on the list – five in all for both Bill and Hillary – was a Jewish charity.
That means that money donated by people to promote a Jewish cause – Jewish education, religious
observance, or Holocaust education – was placed by the leaders of these charities directly into the pockets of the Clintons.
There are no churches on the list, and no mosques, and not even any identifiable Christian or Muslim
charities. The only religion whose officially identified religious institutions thought it was a good idea to pay hundreds of thousands of dollars for a single speech by a Clinton was Judaism.
The second sad piece of news is the amounts paid. Hillary was featured as a speaker by three Jewish organizations – a total of $850,000 for Hillary, scooped up from the Chicago Jewish Federation ($400,000); a shul in Minneapolis ($225,000); and the American Jewish University in LA ($225,000), which used to be the
University of Judaism and Brandeis-Bardin Institute. Bill spoke to the Tribe twice and was paid $400,000.
He was paid by the Friends of Simon Weisenthal Center for Holocaust Studies ($275,000) and Temple
Sinai of Roslyn ($125,000).
But here’s the most depressing thing of all: we overpaid. Hillary’s standard fee is an impressive $225,000.
That was the charge for the vast majority of her speeches. A few were more, some were less. But the
maximum charge, extracted from only one customer, was a whopping $400,000, taken from the Jewish Federation in Chicago. The next highest amount was $335,000, paid by a Biotech trade association and by Qualcomm.
The staggering amount paid to Clinton by the Chicago Federation was first discovered last summer, when
their tax returns were revealed. Just days later, the Federation explained that, essentially, "it takes money
to make money." It also made clear that the Federation had worked closely with, and hosted, many
prominent Republicans as well as Mrs. Clinton.
Of course it is essential that the Chicago Federation work with leaders from both political parties and
fundraising necessarily includes spending. But neither of those truths answer why a charity, any charity, but especially a Jewish charity, would pay more for Clinton for a single speech than corporate giants such as Deutsche Bank or Xerox or the National Association of Chain Drug Stores or the National Automobile
Dealers Association.
At least those people were making an investment, and they’re in the business of making money. The
charitable souls at the Chicago Federation ponied up $65,000 more than anyone else in the country.And
you thought Jews never paid retail.
About the Author: Lori Lowenthal Marcus is the U.S. correspondent for The Jewish Press. A graduate of Harvard Law School, she previously practiced First Amendment law and taught in Philadelphia-area
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