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Ever been there? I permanently reside there!
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The blow back threat by Caroline Glick. (See 1 below.)
And yes, Obama, the tragic effect of terrorism can spread beyond borders! (See 1a and 1b below.)
And yes, Obama, terrorism and terrorists are stronger today than ever.
And yes, you lied, once again, when you knowingly told the American people otherwise for political gain.
And yes, GW continues to be hated among Liberals, who blame him for getting us into a war under false pretenses. Yet, we know Sadaam was engaged in the development of WMD, and it was Israel who was also attacked for destroying his nuclear facilities in an earlier bombing raid.
And yes, we also know, Liberal politicians, who relied upon the same intelligence Bush received, also concluded Sadaam was developing WMD, but now want to squirm away from their vote - Hillary being among them.
After 9/11, and I daresay, even had Obama been president, the nation would have demanded a response.
GW made some huge mistakes in Iraq. I believe his appointment of Adm. Brimmer, was a disaster but when it came to following the advice of Gen. Petraeus, GW took it and 'the surge' produced the effect intended.
Whatever calm and tranquility, even if only beneath the surface, was accomplished, Obama undid it all when he pulled out of Iraq. That is why we are where we are today.
Yes, Obama eventually responds to the demands he do something but he does so either too late, leads from the rear and/or never goes in all the way.
GW had guts,Obama lacks balls!
But this is fighting the last war and Liberals will not change their minds because it provides comfort and shelter for the fact that Obama, who said Afghanistan was the real war, has been a total failure in everything he has undertaken - domestic and foreign.
So here we are today fighting over allegations of presidential corruption, social divide and downright abuse of laws and contempt , not only for Congress and the American people, but also our treasured Constitution. Yet, those who vilified GW, for far less, remain willing to continue their callous support of Obama.
I find this intellectually dishonest, I find this hypocritical and totally disingenuous but, again, I know their views will not change because to admit the truth and to allow fresh air to penetrate their concrete minds is beyond their self-imposed bias.
As for myself, I take some comfort in being willing to call a spade a spade and don't take that as a racial slur.
George Will may write but do Americans have' the will' to stop a lawless president? I doubt they do!
Once again, the courts remain our last bastion of hope if our Republic is to be saved from Obama.(See 1c below.)
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Turning the Euro zone into the erogenous zone.
Now that the states of Colorado, and I believe Washington, have legalized marijuana for personal use and its use is spreading beyond the intent of the law, I assume it will only be a matter of time before "Social Conscious" liberals will find a way to capture this potential revenue source. Colorado claims big tax revenues already.
Funny, if it produces revenue, Liberals can find behaviour, of any sort, socially acceptable and thus, are capable of finessing their embrace of politically correct matters - except when it comes to global warming and reliance upon specious research claims.
After all, liberals must retain one fallback issue beyond their hatred of GW, so as not to appear narrow minded. (See 2 below.)
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What states will determine control of the Senate? (See 3 below.)
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Dick
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| Column one: The threat is blowback | ||
| ||
Watching the undoing, in a week, of victories that US forces won in Iraq at great cost over many years, Americans are asking themselves what, if anything, should be done.
What can prevent the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) – the al-Qaida offshoot that President Barack Obama derided just months ago as a bunch of amateurs – from taking over Iraq? And what is at stake for America – other than national pride – if it does? Muddying the waters is the fact that the main actor that seems interested in fighting ISIS on the ground in Iraq is Iran. Following ISIS’s takeover of Mosul and Tikrit last week, the Iranian regime deployed elite troops in Iraq from the Quds Force, its foreign operations division.
The Obama administration, along with Republican Sen. Lindsay Graham, views Iran’s deployment of forces in Iraq as an opportunity for the US. The US, they argue should work with Iran to defeat ISIS.
The idea is that since the US and Iran both oppose al-Qaida, Iranian gains against it will redound to the US’s benefit.
There are two basic, fundamental problems with this idea.
First, there is a mountain of evidence that Iran has no beef with al-Qaida and is happy to work with it.
According to the 9/11 Commission’s report, between eight and 10 of the September 11 hijackers traveled through Iran before going to the US. And this was apparently no coincidence. (Zarqaw was allowed to remain even i Iraq for a while, I blieve.)
According to the report, Iran had been providing military training and logistical support for al-Qaida since at least the early 1990s.
After the battle of Tora Bora in December 2001, al-Qaida’s leadership scattered. Many senior commanders – including bin Laden’s son Said, al-Qaida’s chief strategist Saif al-Adel and Suleiman Abu Ghaith – decamped to Iran, where they set up a command center.
From Iran, these men directed the operations of al-Qaida forces in Iraq led by Abu Musab Zarqawi. Zarqawi entered Iraq from Iran and returned to Iran several times during the years he led al-Qaida operations in Iraq.
Iran’s cooperation with al-Qaida continues today in Syria.
According to The Wall Street Journal, in directing the defense of Bashar Assad’s regime in Syria, Iran has opted to leave ISIS and its al-Qaida brethren in the Nusra Front alone. That is why they have been able to expand their power in northern Syria.
Iran and its allies have concentrated their attacks against the more moderate Free Syrian Army, which they view as a threat.
Given Iran’s 20-year record of cooperation with al-Qaida, it is reasonable to assume that it is deploying forces into Iraq to tighten its control over Shi’ite areas, not to fight al-Qaida. The record shows that Iran doesn’t believe that its victories and al-Qaida’s victories are mutually exclusive.
The second problem with the idea of subcontracting America’s fight against al-Qaida to Iran is that it assumes that Iranian success in such a war would benefit America. But again, experience tells a different tale.
The US killed Zarqawi in an air strike in 2006.
Reports in the Arab media at the time alleged that Iran had disclosed Zarqawi’s location to the US. While the reports were speculative, shortly after Zarqawi was killed, then-secretary of state Condoleezza Rice floated the idea of opening nuclear talks with Iran for the first time.
The Iranians contemptuously rejected her offer. But Rice’s willingness to discuss Iran’s nuclear weapons program with the regime, even as it was actively engaged in killing US forces in Iraq, ended any serious prospect that the Bush administration would develop a coherent plan for dealing with Iran in a strategic and comprehensive way.
Moreover, Zarqawi was immediately replaced by one of his deputies. And the fight went on.
So if Iran did help the US find Zarqawi, the price the US paid for Iran’s assistance was far higher than the benefit it derived from killing Zarqawi.
This brings us to the real threat that the rise of ISIS – and Iran – in Iraq poses to the US. That threat is blowback.
Both Iran and al-Qaida are sworn enemies of the United States, and both have been empowered by events of the past week.
Because they view the US as their mortal foe, their empowerment poses a danger to the US.
But it is hard for people to recognize how events in distant lands can directly impact their lives.
In March 2001, when the Taliban blew up the Bamiyan Buddhas statues in Afghanistan, the world condemned the act. But no one realized that the same destruction would be brought to the US six months later when al-Qaida destroyed the World Trade Center and attacked the Pentagon.
The September 11 attacks were the blow back from the US doing nothing to contain the Taliban and al-Qaida.
North Korea’s nuclear and ballistic-missile tests, as well as North Korean proliferation of both nuclear weapons and ballistic missiles to rogue regimes, like Iran, that threaten the US, are the beginnings of the blow back from the US decision to reach a nuclear deal with Pyongyang in the 1990s that allowed the regime to keep its nuclear installations.
The blow back from Iran’s emergence as a nuclear power is certain to dwarf what the world has seen from North Korea so far.
Yet rather than act in a manner that would reduce the threat of blow back from Iraq’s disintegration and takeover by America’s worst enemies, the Obama administration gives every indication that it is doubling down on the disastrous policies that led the US to this precarious juncture.
The only strategy that the US can safely adopt today is one of double containment. The aim of double containment is to minimize the capacity of Iran and al-Qaida to harm the US and its interests.
But to contain your enemies, you need to understand them. You need to understand their nature, their aims, their support networks and their capabilities.
Unfortunately, in keeping with what has been the general practice of the US government since the September 11 attacks, the US today continues to ignore or misunderstand all of these critical considerations.
Regarding al-Qaida specifically, the US has failed to understand that al-Qaida is a natural progression from the political/religious milieu of Salafist/Wahabist or Islamist Islam, from whence it sprang. As a consequence, anyone who identifies with Islamist religious and political organizations is a potential supporter and recruit for al-Qaida and its sister organizations.
There were two reasons that George W. Bush refused to base US strategy for combating al-Qaida on any cultural context broader than the Taliban.
Bush didn’t want to sacrifice the US’s close ties with Saudi Arabia, which finances the propagation and spread of Islamism. And he feared being attacked as a bigot by Islamist organizations in the US like the Council on American Islamic Relations and its supporters on the Left.
As for Obama, his speech in Cairo to the Muslim world in June 2009 and his subsequent apology tour through Islamic capitals indicated that, unlike Bush, Obama understands that al-Qaida is not a deviation from otherwise peaceful Islamist culture.
But unlike Bush, Obama blames America for its hostility. Obama’s radical sensibilities tell him that America pushed the Islamists to oppose it. As he sees it, he can appease the Islamists into ending their war against America.
To this end, Obama has prohibited federal employees from conducting any discussion or investigation of Islamist doctrine, terrorism, strategy and methods and the threat all pose to the US.
These prohibitions were directly responsible for the FBI’s failure to question or arrest the Tsarnaev brothers in 2012 despite the fact that Russian intelligence tipped it off to the fact that the 2013 Boston Marathon bombers were jihadists.
They were also responsible for the army’s refusal to notice any of the black flags that Maj. Nidal Hassan raised in the months before his massacre of his fellow soldiers at Fort Hood, or to take any remedial action after the massacre to prevent such atrocities from recurring.
The Muslim Brotherhood is the progenitor of Islamism. It is the organizational, social, political and religious swamp from whence the likes of al-Qaida, Hamas and other terror groups emerged. Whereas Bush pretended the Brotherhood away, Obama embraced it as a strategic partner.
Then there is Iran.
Bush opted to ignore the 9/11 Commission’s revelations regarding Iranian collaboration with al-Qaida. Instead, particularly in the later years of his administration, Bush sought to appease Iran both in Iraq and in relation to its illicit nuclear weapons program.
In large part, Bush did not acknowledge, or act on the sure knowledge, that Iran was the man behind the curtain in Iraq, because he believed that the American people would oppose the expansion of the US operations in the war against terror.
Obama’s actions toward Iran indicate that he knows that Iran stands behind al-Qaida and that the greatest threat the US faces is Iran’s nuclear weapons program. But here as well, Obama opted to follow a policy of appeasement. Rather than prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, or stem its advance in Syria and Iraq, Obama treats Iran as though it poses no threat and is indeed a natural ally. He blames Iran’s belligerence on the supposedly unjust policies of his predecessors and the US’s regional allies.
For a dual-containment strategy to have any chance of working, the US needs to reverse course. No, it needn’t deploy troops to Iraq. But it does need to seal its border to minimize the chance that jihadists will cross over from Mexico.
It doesn’t need to clamp down on Muslims in America. But it needs to investigate and take action where necessary against al-Qaida’s ideological fellow travelers in Islamist mosques, organizations and the US government. To this end, it needs to end the prohibition on discussion of the Islamist threat by federal government employees.
As for Iran, according to The New York Times, Iran is signaling that the price of cooperation with the Americans in Iraq is American acquiescence to Iran’s conditions for signing a nuclear deal. In other words, the Iranians will fight al-Qaida in Iraq in exchange for American facilitation of its nuclear weapons program.
The first step the US must take to minimize the Iranian threat is to walk away from the table and renounce the talks. The next step is to take active measures to prevent Iran from becoming a nuclear power.
Unfortunately, the Obama administration appears prepared to do none of these things. To the contrary, its pursuit of an alliance with Iran in Iraq indicates that it is doubling down on the most dangerous aspects of its policy of empowering America’s worst enemies.
It only took the Taliban six months to move from the Bamiyan Buddhas to the World Trade Center. Al-Qaida is stronger now than ever before. And Iran is on the threshold of a nuclear arsenal.
1a)
13-year-old killed in Golan Heights
in cross-border fire from Syria
IDF tanks immediately returned fire at Syrian army positions in response to what an IDF source said appeared to be a deliberate attack on the truck.
Courtesy
Syrian border explosion victim in hospital.
One of those injured in the attack was in serious condition, while the other suffered light injuries. The teenage boy killed in the attack, Muhammad Karaka from Arraba in the lower Galilee, had been accompanying his father, a contract worker who was carrying out work at the border for the Defense Ministry.
Following the attack, an army source said it found what appeared to be a hole in the frontier fence. Army sources said they did not yet know whether the attack took the form of a shell, or another type of weapon.
The latest evaluation was that the truck was hit by an anti-tank missile.
"We know that the attack was carried out from an area under the control of Syrian rebels, but we're not at all sure that this was a Syrian rebel attack," said a source.
"It seems this attack was the result of direct fire [on the truck]," the source said.
Shelling from the Syrian civil war has occasionally spilled over onto the Golan, including what Israel has said were deliberate attacks on its troops.
While the Syrian army has a presence in the Golan, some areas are controlled by rebels fighting to topple President Bashar Assad, including al-Qaida-inspired militants hostile to the Jewish state.
Israel says Hezbollah guerrillas from Lebanon are also operating, on Assad's behalf, on the Golan. Israeli officials have voiced concern that Israel will increasingly become a target during and after the Syrian conflict.
Last March, four Israeli soldiers were wounded in a roadside bombing along the Golan frontier. Israel responded to that incident by launching air strikes against Syrian military sites.
1b) Oil Topping $116 Seen Possible as Iraq Conflict Widens!!
Brent crude was projected by Wall Street analysts to average as much as $116 a barrel by the end of the year. Now, with violence escalating in Iraq, how far the price will rise has become anyone’s guess.
The international benchmark surged above $114 on June 13 for the first time in nine months as militants routed the Iraqi army in the north and advanced toward Baghdad, threatening to ignite a civil war. The Islamic State in Iraq and the Levant, known as ISIL, has halted repairs to the pipeline from the Kirkuk oil field to the Mediterranean port of Ceyhan in Turkey.
The conflict threatens output in OPEC’s second-biggest crude producer. The Persian Gulf country is forecast to provide 60 percent of the group’s growth for the rest of this decade, the International Energy Agency said June 13. Global consumption will “increase sharply” in the last quarter of this year and OPEC will need to pump more oil to help meet the demand, according to forecasts from the Paris-based IEA.
“We’ve been waiting for the other shoe to drop in this tightly balanced market and now it’s happened,” Katherine Spector, a commodities strategist at CIBC World Markets Inc. in New York, said June 13 by phone. “There have been lurking risks but nobody was projecting how quickly things would turn worse.”
Rising Prices
Brent for August settlement rose as much as 82 cents, or 0.7 percent, to $113.28 a barrel on the London-based ICE Futures Europe exchange Monday. The July contract expired June 13 after climbing 0.4 percent to $113.41, the highest close for a front-month future since Sept. 9. Vikas Dwivedi of Macquarie Group Ltd. predicts Brent will average $116 in the fourth quarter. He was the best forecaster of Brent prices in the first quarter, according to Bloomberg Rankings.
West Texas Intermediate crude, the U.S. benchmark, rose as much as 63 cents, or 0.6 percent, to $107.54 a barrel on the New York Mercantile Exchange. U.S. regular gasoline at the pump rose 0.8 cent to an average of $3.657 a gallon on June 13, the third consecutive daily gain, according to AAA in Heathrow, Florida, the largest American motoring group.
Oil-price volatility rebounded from the lowest on record as the violence escalated in Iraq. The 20-day historical volatility of Brent futures rose as high as 13 percent on June 12, according to exchange data compiled by Bloomberg. It was at 7.2 percent on June 3, the least since the contract began trading in 1988. The volatility is a reflection of market uncertainty, according to Olivier Jakob, managing director of Switzerland-based researcher Petromatrix GmbH.
Market Movements
“The market is going to be whipsawed by headlines from Iraq,” Michael Lynch, president of Strategic Energy & Economic Research in Winchester, Massachusetts, said June 13 by phone. “If there’s shooting on the streets of Baghdad, we’ll get a spike in prices, but I don’t see WTI passing $120.”
ISIL has control of the pipeline to the 310,000 barrel-a-day Baiji refinery, the country’s biggest. The insurgents also took Mosul, the country’s second-largest city. Kurdish forces moved into Kirkuk to protect the northern oil fields from the militants. The main pipeline from that field to Turkey hasn’t operated since early March because of attacks.
The fighting hasn’t spread to the south, which the U.S. Energy Information Administration says is home to three-quarters of Iraq’s crude output. The country’s three biggest oilfields — Rumaila, West Qurna-2 and Majnoon — lie in the south, and crude production there has been increasing. The region has a Shiite majority opposed to ISIL’s Sunni militants.
Export Impact
“The immediate impact on Iraq’s crude oil exports is limited for now as the conflict in northern and western Iraq is far from the southern — and Shiite-controlled — oilfields and export terminals from where all current oil exports originate,” Goldman Sachs Group Inc. analysts Damien Courvalin, Anamaria Pieschacon and Jeffrey Currie said in a report received by e-mail Sunday and dated June 13.
If the conflict reached the southern oil fields and the port of Basra, it would “likely have a significant impact on crude prices given current supply disruption in other OPEC members, in particular Libya,” the Goldman analysts said.
Iraq’s armed forces have attacked positions held by Sunni Muslim militants to try to halt their advance, while Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki deployed the air force to defend his Shiite-led government.
U.S. Carrier
The U.S. has dispatched an aircraft carrier to the Persian Gulf as President Barack Obama weighs options to help Maliki repel ISIL attacks. The U.S. withdrew its forces from Iraq in 2011. Obama said on June 13 that the conflict can’t be resolved unless
Iraq’s leaders bridge political differences.
Iraqi crude output capacity will increase by more than 1.2 million barrels a day in the six years through 2019, the IEA estimated. Production rose to 3.3 million barrels a day last month, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Output surged to 3.4 million in February, the highest level since 2000. Neighboring Saudi Arabia had 2.83 million barrels of spare production capacity in May.
“A disruption of Iraqi supply would represent a global energy crisis,” John Kilduff, a partner at Again Capital LLC, a New York-based hedge fund that focuses on energy, said by phone on June 13. “This isn’t hyperbole.”
The increase in concern about Iraqi supply comes as fighting in Libya has curbed production in the North African country, international sanctions against Iran for its nuclear program have cut its exports and sabotage reduced the flow of Nigerian barrels.
Libyan Output
Libyan output fell by 35,000 barrels a day to 180,000 in May, the lowest level since September 2011. Production was down 87 percent from a year earlier.
“The roughly 3 million barrels a day that Iraq is producing accounts for about 10 percent of OPEC’s overall production,” Kilduff said. “The Libyan outage and the up and down in Nigerian output leave OPEC with limited spare capacity. Saudi Arabia can’t make up for a loss of Iraq.”
The 12-member Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries, which supplies about 40 percent of the world’s oil, kept its production target unchanged at 30 million barrels a day when ministers gathered in Vienna last week.
The conflict has the potential to push U.S. crude and gasoline prices higher, Andy Lipow, president of Lipow Oil Associates LLC in Houston, said by phone.
Retail Prices
“Given the current unrest in Iraq, I expect oil prices to reach $110 here for WTI, which would mean that the national average would go towards $3.80 for gasoline,” he said. “Should we see a significant supply disruption in exports, then I expect oil prices to go to $125 and the national retail average to exceed $4 a gallon.”
It’s been almost six years since U.S. retail gasoline averaged more than $4 per gallon, in the week of July 21, 2008, according to data from the EIA.
1c) Stopping a lawless president
By George Will
George F. Will writes a twice-weekly column on politics and domestic and foreign affairs. He began his column with The Post in 1974, and he received the Pulitzer Prize for Commentary in 1977. He is also a contributor to FOX News’ daytime and primetime programming.
What philosopher Harvey Mansfield calls “taming the prince” — making executive power compatible with democracy’s abhorrence of arbitrary power — has been a perennial problem of modern politics. It is now more urgent in the United States than at any time since the Founders, having rebelled against George III’s unfettered exercise of “royal prerogative,” stipulated that presidents “shall take care that the laws be faithfully executed.”
Serious as are the policy disagreements roiling Washington, none is as important as the structural distortion threatening constitutional equilibrium. Institutional derangement driven by unchecked presidential aggrandizement did not begin with Barack Obama, but his offenses against the separation of powers have been egregious in quantity and qualitatively different.
Regarding immigration, health care, welfare, education, drug policy and more, Obama has suspended, waived and rewritten laws, including theAffordable Care Act. It required the employer mandate to begin this year. But Obama wrote a new law, giving to companies of a certain size a delay until 2016 and stipulating that other employers must certify they will not drop employees to avoid the mandate. Doing so would trigger criminal perjury charges; so he created a new crime, that of adopting a business practice he opposes.
Presidents must exercise some discretion in interpreting laws, must havesome latitude in allocating finite resources to the enforcement of laws and must have some freedom to act in the absence of law. Obama, however, has perpetrated more than 40 suspensions of laws. Were presidents the sole judges of the limits of their latitude, they would effectively have plenary power to vitiate the separation of powers, the Founders’ bulwark against despotism.
Congress cannot reverse egregious executive aggressions such as Obama’s without robust judicial assistance. It is, however, difficult to satisfy the criteria that the Constitution and case law require for Congress to establish “standing” to seek judicial redress for executive usurpations injurious to the legislative institution .
President Barack Obama. (Dennis Brack / Pool/EPA)
Courts, understandably fearful of being inundated by lawsuits from small factions of disgruntled legislators, have been wary of granting legislative standing. However, David Rivkin, a Washington lawyer, and Elizabeth Price Foley of Florida International University have studied the case law and believe that standing can be obtained conditional on four things:
That a majority of one congressional chamber explicitly authorizes a lawsuit. That the lawsuit concern the president’s “benevolent” suspension of an unambiguous provision of law that, by pleasing a private faction, precludes the appearance of a private plaintiff. That Congress cannot administer political self-help by remedying the presidential action by simply repealing the law. And that the injury amounts to nullification of Congress’s power.
Hence the significance of a House lawsuit, advocated by Rivkin and Foley, that would unify fractious Republicans while dramatizing Obama’s lawlessness. The House would bring a civil suit seeking a judicial declaration that Obama has violated the separation of powers by effectively nullifying a specific provision of a law, thereby diminishing Congress’s power. Authorization of this lawsuit by the House would give Congress “standing” to sue.
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2) Why I'm Bullish on Hookers and Heroin
by Alexander Green, Chief Investment Strategist
Recently I've turned more bullish on prostitutes and illegal drug sales.
This is not some new found libertarian streak. I'm really just thinking about what's best for the eurozone.
This takes a bit of explaining...
Last week, Italy announced that beginning next year it will include revenues from drug trafficking and the sex trade, in addition to contraband tobacco and alcohol, in calculating GDP.
You're probably hoping that someone will pinch you, but the Maastricht Treaty, which established the euro in 1992, member states were asked to meet strict criteria, including a budget deficit of less than 3% of GDP.
Unfortunately, Italy - whose economy is contracting rather than expanding - cannot meet that criterion, unless it includes black market activities. Will that really be enough to make a difference?
Surprisingly, the answer is maybe. Last month Britain said including revenue from drugs and prostitution into European Union accounts would total $16.8 billion a year, equivalent to 1% of output.
In Italy, it seems, gross criminal conduct may become an essential part of gross national product. (I can just see a few economists from the Chicago school shouting "at last!")
This Isn't Working
The real eye-opener here is just how far the European Union and its central bank are willing to go to try to patch up an inherently unworkable currency.
Bear in mind, the euro is still very much an experiment. That surprises some investors since the euro is the world's second-largest reserve currency and the second-most traded currency after the U.S. dollar. With approximately $1 trillion worth in circulation, the euro also has the highest combined value of banknotes and coins in circulation. And, considered as a whole, the eurozone is the world's second-largest economy.
But the problem is that the currency must serve different countries with different governments, different political and economic needs, and different strengths and weaknesses.
At Cross Purposes
In Germany and the Netherlands right now, for instance, economic growth is increasing. (Not enough but at least the figure is a positive one.) However, Greece and Spain have seen their economies contract for six years now. Unemployment in both countries is at 25%.
The Greeks and Spaniards would love to see a weaker currency to boost exports and attract international tourists to their seaside resorts. But that can't happen because they have outsourced their monetary policy to Frankfurt.
And much of their fiscal policy, too. Another plank of the Maastricht Treaty is that fiscal deficits must be less than 60% of GDP. This was widely flouted after the euro's introduction but stronger European nations still pay lip service to the idea and encourage "austerity" for profligate member states Portugal, Italy, Ireland, Greece and Spain (the PIIGS).
Unclear Path Forward
How will all this play out? Your guess is as good as mine. After all, the geniuses that dreamed up this common currency didn't even create an exit. There is no pathway or precedent for dropping out. And it would be a nightmare for any countries that did - since their new currencies would plunge and their borrowing costs would soar - as well as those of the countries holding their sovereign debt.
And so I suppose we will see the Italians keeping closer tabs on their streetwalkers and meth dealers. (You really couldn't make this stuff up.)
In addition, eurozone depositors will start receiving negative interest on their bank balances. That's right. They're going to have to pay to keep their money in cash.
You might ask why the European Central Bank doesn't take a page from the Federal Reserve's book and stimulate the euro economies by buying up euro-denominated government debt to lower longer-term rates.
But the yield on the 10-year Spanish Treasury is already lower than the yield on 10-year U.S. Treasury bonds.
That looks like a bad bet. So it's hookers and heroin for now.
Good investing,
Alex
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3) 12 Races That Will Determine The Senate Majority
Primaries have, largely, sorted themselves out in the most competitive Senate races in the country with Republicans -- so far -- avoiding the perils of 2010 and 2012 in which the party nominated a number of candidates who had major electability problems in the general election. The recently concluded Iowa primary gave Republicans their strongest nominee and the Georgia primary produced two runoff participants without the general election baggage of some of the GOP candidates in the running.
What we are left with is 12 races that can be considered truly competitive -- meaning that either one (or both) of the national parties and/or the various outside groups have or will spend money in them. The races are tipped heavily toward Democratic-held seats; 10 of the 12 contests -- including the six most vulnerable -- are currently in Democratic hands. Of the 12 states, Mitt Romney carried nine of them in 2012 -- with Michigan, Iowa and Colorado the trio that went for President Obama.
Republicans insist the playing field is actually 14 not 12 -- adding Minnesota and Oregon to the list. We remain unconvinced that Republican challengers in either of those Democratic-leaning seats have shown the ability to make the races genuinely competitive just yet. Similarly, Democratic optimism in Mississippi seem overly optimistic to us -- even if state Sen. Chris McDaniel ousts Sen. Thad Cochran in the GOP runoff next Tuesday.
Below we've ranked the 12 most competitive Senate races in the country. The number one ranked race is the most likely to switch party control.
12. Michigan (Democratic-controlled): Republican Terri Lynn Land was not the first -- or even second -- choice of many Republican strategists. But she has raised money at an impressive pace and kept this race close against Rep. Gary Peters. The question for Land is whether she can sustain it when media and voter attention ramps up in the fall. Land's campaign has protected her very carefully so far; it will be harder to do that in the stretch run with multiple daily campaign events and periodic debates. (Previous ranking: 9)
11. Georgia (Republican-controlled): We’re still awaiting the results of the Republican primary runoff on July 22 (longest runoff ever). Businessman David Perdue beat Rep. Jack Kingston 31 percent to 26 percent on primary day, but there are lots of voters up for grabs, and third-place finisher Karen Handel is backing Kingston -- thanks in no small part to Perdue’s careless decision to insult her level of schooling. We’re not sure which man gives the GOP a better shot against Democrat Michelle Nunn -- we'd lean toward Perdue -- but the Democrat is still polling well and raising big money. This remains, surprisingly, a legitimate Democratic target. (Previous ranking: 10)
10. Iowa (D): Republicans got a big break when state Sen. Joni Ernst routed the competition in the GOP Senate primary, and since then several polls have shown the race with Rep. Bruce Braley (D) to be something close to a toss-up. We still think Ernst probably got a bounce from the big primary win, but this is a swing state, and as long as she runs a credible campaign, the GOP should have a good chance in an open-seat race. (Previous ranking: N/A)
9. Colorado (D): While most people look at the North Carolina race as the one on which Senate control might swing, this race between Sen. Mark Udall (D) and Rep. Cory Gardner (R) could easily fit that bill too. Polling done by Quinnipiac in late April showed the race a dead heat and both sides acknowledge the race is and will stay close. Udall is on TV now bashing Gardner as too conservative -- particularly on abortion -- and Democrats think Gardner's record is full of bad votes. (Previous ranking: 10)
8. Alaska (D): Conservative blogger Erick Erickson this week endorsed Lt. Gov. Mead Treadwell (R), giving the long-struggling candidate a much-needed boost. But it's not going to change the fact that former attorney general Dan Sullivan is the clear frontrunner for the Republican nomination. Sullivan has both establishment (American Crossroads) and tea party (Club for Growth) money in his corner and is well on his way to a fall showdown against Sen. Mark Begich (D). (Previous ranking: 7)
7. Kentucky (R): Republicans are feeling more confident about McConnell's chances following the Republican leader's convincing primary victory last month and their sense that the GOP is quickly uniting behind him. And, President Obama didn't do Democrat Alison Lundergan Grimes any favors with his announcement on power plants earlier this month. But, as we have written in this space, McConnell's numbers suggest his vote ceiling is very low. And, in a cycle where they have very few opportunities, Democrats will pour everything they have into this one. (Previous ranking: 8)
6. Arkansas (D): Republican Rep. Tom Cotton's campaign released an internal poll claiming a lead over Sen. Mark Pryor (D). The release was meant to counteract a growing narrative that Pryor is not nearly as vulnerable as he once seemed. But the most notable part of the survey was in the trend line: Cotton was polling the race in February in 2013, when he was s till a brand new member of the House. The revelation probably won't help Cotton in his chief task right now: Humanizing himself and showing voters that he's not just a super-ambitious pol championed by national conservative groups. (Previous ranking: 5 )
5. North Carolina (D): Democrats tried to make an issue of state House Speaker Thom Tillis (R) referring to white people as the “traditional population” of North Carolina. We wouldn’t call that a campaign-stopping gaffe, but given Democrats would love to motivate minority voters in a midterm election, Tillis should probably choose his words a little more carefully. The race between Tillis and Sen. Kay Hagan (D) remains very close. (Previous ranking: 5)
4. Louisiana (D): Expect Sen. Mary Landrieu (D) to emphasize (and reemphasize) her role as head of the Senate Energy Committee for the rest of the campaign. She passed a bill out of her committee this week that would bypass President Obama and approve the Keystone XL pipeline. The question is whether the emphasis on energy will be enough to overcome a capable Republican opponent in Rep. Bill Cassidy in a state where the president is deeply unpopular. Those are big obstacles to overcome. (Previous ranking: 4)
3. Montana (D): Both appointed Sen. John Walsh (D) and Rep. Steve Daines (R) easily dispatched nominal primary challenges on June 3 and formally began a race that both campaigns had already been waging for months. There's very little public polling in the race but the general consensus is that Daines starts the general election with an edge -- and is likely to benefit from a national political environment benefitting Republicans. (Previous ranking: 3)
2. West Virginia (D): Rep. Shelley Moore Capito (R) likely wrapped up this Senate seat in November 2012 when she abruptly announced for the seat even though Sen. Jay Rockefeller (D) had yet to announce his retirement. Democrats eventually convinced Secretary of State Natalie Tennant to run but she started the race at a distinct disadvantage because of Capito's early start and the dislike toward the national Democratic party in the state. A recent non-partisan poll put Capito up 49 percent to 38 percent. That seems about right. (Previous ranking: 2)
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