Thursday, June 9, 2016

Obama's Accomplishments. Murray Greenfield's Story. Bernie Needs To Go To Venezuela.Soros.


Socialism! Why isn't Bernie in Venezuela? (See 1 below.)
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When one stops and considers the consequences of 7 plus years of Obama it is hard to ignore the devastating impact . He told us he was going to bring about change but even I , who never trusted him, could not have predicted the damage he has done to our nation.

Domestically:

a) He allowed the corruption and or decline in the services of virtually every government agency from the IRS, to the EPA to the V.A, to the Justice Department etc..

b) He has added untold trillions of debt.

c) His wedge issue style of governing has divided the races and seeded discord in every facet of American life even to the point that bathrooms are no longer a personal and private sanctuary.  He has demonized those who have achieved wealth and encouraged the increase in entitled demands and like former Gov. Wallace, he has stood in the school door in order to protect unions and deprive his own race of better educational opportunities.

d) He has lied to us regarding our health care.

e) He has imposed untold billions of dollars of added cost to business making us less competitive.
This has resulted in a less than typical economic recovery and dispirited corporate managers from expanding.

e) He has totally abandoned the protection of our borders and handcuffed the agency whose job it is to secure them.

f) He has increased tensions among citizens and their police forces by insinuating the latter are all racially biased/motivated and he has looked the other way when riots occurred and/or characterized what happened in a purposefully distorted manner with the intent of perpetuating increased hostility.


Foreign:

a) He has disarmed our nation and run off top military leadership.

b) He has withdrawn forces creating vacuums which have been filled by new radical Islamist thugs bent on building a Caliphate.  His feckless style of disengagement has led to untold tragedy and created swarms of fleeing refugees who have destabilized most of Europe. He has drawn lines in the sand and disbanded them when challenged.

c) He has engaged in secret diplomacy and then lied about having done so. He has presided over a State Department that has doctored tape recordings.  He has deserted former allies and made them wary of our word and commitments.

d) He has emboldened our adversaries and lost whatever influence we had in The Middle East.



General:

a) The world is less secure, the spread of Islamist terrorism is growing and China is expanding  its military and becoming more menacing.

b) Americans in general, have a more subdued view of their prospects and the middle class has been decimated.

c) He has acted unilaterally and arrogantly and outside the legal borders of his office.

d) He has proven he can lead the Republican Party and its leadership around by their noses.
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Soros reportedly liquidated a big portion of his portfolio and went bearish buying gold and employing other bearish strategies.  Why?  Because he is concerned about bad news impacting the market and the potential collapse in Europe and China.  Meanwhile he is funding many of the professional goons who disrupt Trump political meetings in his desire to bring more chaos to America. This is the same dude who enriched himself by shorting the British Pound.

The most encouraging thing I can say about Soros is he is 85. (See 2 below.)

As for myself, I too remain suspect.  The recent employment data was a warning that something is rotten about our recovery.  I believe the fact that wages are going up, the consumer remains cautious and corporate managers are unwilling to spend on expansion suggests corporate earnings in the second quarter are not going to be encouraging and that stocks are relatively high priced in the face of this disquieting news.  Furthermore The Fed now seems less prone to raise rates even in July as I previously thought  they might.

Rallies brought about by low and negative interest rates are not something I find encouraging.
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This was sent to me by a new friend and now fellow memo reader. It pertains to our discussion of "In The Arena."Dick,

I, too, enjoyed our visit. You, like me, must be a collector of small speeches, odd quotes from anywhere, minutia from the scrap heaps of history, etc. I have two full folders full of them collected over thirty years but which, most of them anyway, are ageless. In one of the folders I found the quote from Teddy Roosevelt’s Paris speech “Citizenship in a Republic” given in 1910 that we both recalled yesterday. It read;

“It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly, so that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat. It is not the critic who counts; not the man who points out how the strong man stumbles, or where the doer of deeds could have done them better.

The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena, whose face is marred by dust and sweat and blood; who strives valiantly; who errs, who comes short again and again, because there is no effort without error and shortcoming; but who does actually strive to do the deeds; who knows great enthusiasms, the great devotions; who spends himself in a worthy cause; who at the best knows in the end the triumph of high achievement, and who at the worst, if he fails, at least fails while daring greatly. So that his place shall never be with those cold and timid souls who neither know victory nor defeat.”

As I read some of these now, I’m reminded of how fitting most are still today. If you please, I may send some along every now and then for your thoughts. OOPS, just ran across another.

     “On the sands of hesitation bleach the bones of countless millions who, at the dawn of victory, sat down to rest.
     And resting, died.”
                            
     Old Persian proverb

Republicans sat down to rest in 2012. And died. Will they choose to rest again simply because Donald Trump is not the perfect candidate? Probably so, be my guess. My religion teaches that there has been only one Perfect Man in all of history. And looked what happened to Him.

Kindest Regards, E----"
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I attended a lecture tonight by Murray Greenfield who told his story of how he came to be a crew member on a boat that helped to rescue Holocaust refugees fleeing to what was then called Palestine and is now Israel.

In telling the story he touched upon the activities my own father was involved with and which has been recorded in various books, the most noted written  by Leonard Slater  and called "The Pledge."  It is the story of The Sonneborn Institute which was a cover for 18 men who helped supply the fledgling state of Israel. Murray actually sailed aboard one of the boats purchased through money raised by The Sonneborn Institute and arranged by The Chairman of The Board of  The United Fruit Company.  Shep Broad was the go between, lived in Miami, subsequently developed Bar Harbour. The Broad Causeway is named after Shep.  I am in touch with his son and daughter to this day.

Murray is now approaching 90 and is a delightful story teller and I cannot retell it and at the same time capture the essence of his mannerisms etc.  He told the story of how Jewish members of the British Army assisted the rescuers and reminded the audience the Grand Mufti assembled 100,000 Arabs who assisted Germany in World War 2, and never considered or named themselves Palestinians until 1948.

Murray was one of 1500 former American servicemen who participated in various rescue missions and not all were Jewish.  In fact one of Murray's shipmates was an Irishman named McDonald.  My own father told me how he arranged for a former World War 2 pilot from Alabama to go to Israel, joined what later became the IAF and flew a Piper Cub dropping grenades by hand on the Arab Armies. He too was Christian.
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Dick
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1) As hunger mounts, Venezuelans turn to trash for food
By FABIOLA SANCHEZ, 

Venezuelans Sort Through Trash as Hunger Mounts
Venezuelans Sort Through Trash as Hunger Mounts
Associated Press Videos
https://s.yimg.com/uu/api/res/1.2/4YJ63jMRNguNJeMV3PczMA--/Zmk9ZmlsbDtweW9mZj0wO3c9NjQwO2g9MzYwO3NtPTE7YXBwaWQ9eXRhY2h5b24-/http:/media.zenfs.com/en-US/video/video.associatedpressfree.com/e360831894c64d5113943b70def66f2b

CARACAS, Venezuela (AP) — Until recently, Julio Noguera worked at a bakery. Now he spends his evenings searching through the garbage for food.
"I come here looking for food because if I didn't, I'd starve to death," Noguera said as he sorted through a pile of moldy potatoes. "With things like they are, no one helps anyone and no one gives away meals."
Across town, unemployed people converge every dusk at a trash heap on a downtown Caracas sidewalk to pick through rotten fruit and vegetables tossed out by nearby shops. They are frequently joined by small business owners, college students and pensioners — people who consider themselves middle class even though their living standards have long ago been pulverized by triple-digit inflation, food shortages and a collapsing currency.
Venezuela's poverty had eased during the administration of the late President Hugo Chavez. But a study by three leading Caracas universities found that 76 percent of Venezuelans are now under the poverty line, compared with 52 percent in 2014.
Staples such as corn flour and cooking oil are subsidized, costing pennies at the strongest of two official exchange rates. But fruit and vegetables have become an unaffordable luxury for many Venezuelan families.
"We're seeing terrible sacrifices across many sections of society," said Carlos Aponte, a sociology professor at the Central University of Venezuela. "A few years ago, Venezuela didn't have the kind of extreme poverty that would drive people to eat garbage."
While some hunt through the garbage piles for food they can eat, many more are drawn by the opportunity to fetch a few bolivar bills by rescuing and reselling bruised produce.
On a recent evening, Noguera managed to retrieve a dozen potatoes.
"I'm a trained baker, but right now there's no work anywhere here. So I make do with this," he said.
The trash pickers aren't just people who've lost their jobs.
Jhosriana Capote, a vocational student, comes to the trash heap to supplement her pantry. She recently completed an internship with a Coca-Cola subsidiary.
"I used to be able to find food, but not anymore. Everything is lines," she said after an evening picking through the refuse.
Dumpster diving isn't a new phenomenon in Venezuela, but it is a growing one. Venezuela was once South America's richest nation, but a fall in oil prices combined with other economic problems has sparked desperation.
Nearly half of Venezuelans say they can no longer afford to eat three meals a day, according to a recent poll by the local firm Venebarometro. The poll surveyed 1,200 adults at their homes the first week in April and had a margin of error of plus or minus of about 2 percentage points.
The government blames the political opposition, accusing it of waging an "economic war" to stir unrest and oust President Nicolas Maduro from power. The administration has launched an aggressive program to build urban farms in an effort to address food shortages.
One recent night, two young girls found some cilantro, lemons and remains of a cabbage in the garbage. Their mother, Monica Espinosa, said the scavenging helps them get by since her husband walked out on the family. Espinosa said she still owns two apartments, but makes ends meet by cooking sauces from the vegetables she finds and selling them to stores, earning about $6 a week.
"I'm a single mother with two children, and this is helping me get by," she said.
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2)WSJ: Soros Makes Big 'Bearish' Trades on Fears of China, EU Collapse

Image: WSJ: Soros Makes Big 'Bearish' Trades on Fears of China, EU Collapse
By Frank McQuire
The octogenarian and philanthropist, who built a $24 billion fortune through savvy wagers on markets, has taken a dim view of the world economy and particularly of China.
In April, Soros said China’s debt-fueled economy resembles the U.S. in 2007-08, before credit markets seized up and spurred a global recession. Most of the money that banks in China are supplying is needed to keep bad debts and loss-making enterprises alive, Soros said at the time.
In January, the former hedge-fund manager said a hard landing in the Asian nation was “practically unavoidable,” adding that such a slump would worsen global deflationary pressures, drag down stocks and boost U.S. government bonds.

“China continues to suffer from capital flight and has been depleting its foreign currency reserves while other Asian countries have been accumulating foreign currency,” Soros said in an email to the Journal. “China is facing internal conflict within its political leadership, and over the coming year this will complicate its ability to deal with financial issues.”

Soros also argues that there remains a good chance the European Union will collapse under the weight of the migration crisis, continuing challenges in Greece and a potential exit by the United Kingdom from the EU.

“If Britain leaves, it could unleash a general exodus, and the disintegration of the European Union will become practically unavoidable,” he said. “I’m confident that as we get closer to the Brexit vote, the ‘remain’ camp is getting stronger,” Soros said. “Markets are not always right, but in this case I agree with them.”

His bearish view prompted him to pare back his U.S. stock investments by more than a third last quarter, betting against the equities while banking on gold. The value of Soros Fund Management’s publicly disclosed holdings dropped by 37 percent to $3.5 billion at the end of March, according to a government filing in May.

Soros’ former chief strategist, billionaire investor Stan Druckenmiller, echoed Soros’ view on gold, saying last month that the yellow metal is his largest currency allocation as central bankers experiment with the “absurd notion of negative interest rates.”
The last time Soros became closely involved in his firm’s trading: 2007, when he became worried about housing and placed bearish wagers over two years that netted more than $1 billion of gains, WSJ.com reported.
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