Monday, August 24, 2015

Re-posting Gramm. An Appeal From A Friend! Extended Market Thoughts!

I supported Phil Gramm's brief run for the presidency partly because he was a conservative economist, partly because he was a southerner and partly because he seemed better than those who had stated they were running at the time.  His campaign really never got off the ground .

I am re-posting his op ed because I believe it is a very worthwhile read and his comments are very plausible.

Obama is a radical who has always been more committed to operating in a radically philosophical manner.  He has never felt connected and has operated outside our nation's legal constraints. He has proven to be the most dangerous president we have ever elected.

It is as if he was hell bent to pay white America back for all its sins against his race.(See 1 below.)
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When I e mailed my memo this morning and commented about Al Erian's posting, I was not aware of the market's sharp opening decline.  I have been out most of the morning and now am aware of the carnage at the opening.  My view remains the same though this morning's drop could be a capitulation from a near term standpoint.

That said, the market will retest at some point, maybe from a higher bounce recovery level, but I still remain in an observation mode. and continue to be concerned about a deflationary spiral and coming Middle East confrontation.  (See 1a and 1b  below.)

Meanwhile, the extreme volatility we have experienced recently is probably being caused by hedge fund shorting and some individual panic liquidation.

The Fed reduced rates to drive money into the market and out of safe haven investments for the purpose of causing a wealth effect.  The current  decline in markets is erasing some of their success while interest rates remain at zero so The Fed has less leverage should our economy flatten. Furthermore, we are deep in debt and Obama has increased spending on entitlements to buy votes, and grow new constituencies for his Party so there is little left in the government's band aid cupboard.
Obama also drew many billions from Medicare to pay for Obama Care and then deferred the true cost of the latter until he is long gone from office. The sleight of hand action will not be reversed unless Republicans not only win the presidency but also have the good sense to replace it with a saner more rationale program.

Low demand, sinking commodity prices and high debt among nations are albatrosses that could come to haunt the world's economic order. I tend to be pessimistic but what I have pointed out is evident and real. What is uncertain are the consequences. (See 2 below.)
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This from a dear friend and fellow memo reader.  I  have not checked its authenticity though I am basically in general agreement with its thrust.

Intuitively, I confess,  it sounds like someone wanting to attribute thoughts to a credible source to elevate the message's acceptability as was done with my previous posting regarding attribution to The Baltimore Sun.  That said, I find it difficult to argue against the sentiments expressed. (See 3 below.)
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Meanwhile, Tommy Gustinella is a local criminal attorney.  I play tennis with him when he is able to and is not defending alleged criminals.

Tommy e mailed this to me as well as others and I told him if he wished I would post and send a modest check.

Please respond to Tommy if you are so inclined.  His e mail address is: tomgustinella@bellsouth.net 

His Landings home phone is:  598 7605

Thanks, Me


If you are receiving this e-mail, it is because you are known to me as a patriotic American. Granted, we certainly have had disagreements about how the country should be run but, nevertheless, a thread of commonality is a love of the United States.

Please then let me introduce you to Speengul Gharani and the abridged version of his recent history.   From 2004-2012, Speengul assisted the United States Army, in the volatile eastern Afghan provinces Nangarhar (Jalalabad), Kunar and Nuristan, as an linguist (interpreter and translator).  He has many testimonials about his efforts on our behalf. In 2011, the Taliban found out about his actions and threatened to kill both him and his family.  Speengul and his wife and children were  therefore granted an immediate Special Immigrant Visa (SIV) under section 602(b) of the Afghan Allies Protection Act of 2009.  Speengul and his family arrived in the United States shortly thereafter.  Unfortunately, Speengul has had to resort to public assistance in order to partially support his wife and six children.  This includes public housing.  Suffice to say he has not been greeted warmly.  He and his family have been labeled “terrorists” by their neighbors and have otherwise been harassed and ridiculed.  This sorry state of affairs culminated in his wife, Nek Bebe, being charged (baselessly) with simple battery against a neighborhood child that she essentially prevented from assaulting one of her own young children.  I am her counsel and am optimistic that she will prevail.  In the interim, she is basically confined to their small apartment.  This out of fear of more baseless accusations and a possible revocation of her bond.

I am thus writing to all of you to solicit thoughts about how Speengul and his family can be helped.  His school age children attend (second language) school in Port Wentworth.  He lives in public housing in Savannah.  He would like to move to Pooler. He was formerly employed by Krogers but had to take a leave of absence to help his wife deal with the ramifications of her quasi-imprisonment.

Any ideas are welcome.

Sincerely,  Tom Gustinella
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A friend who is also a fellow memo reader was responding to an earlier e mail of mine sent this:

For a random thought in this perpetual political season, I loved the Jim Boren campaign slogan, "I got what it takes to take what you got." As  a spoof, Boren was running for President in 1984. He had formed "The National Association of Bureaucrats." Great humor."
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Dick
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1) How Obama Transformed America

His progressive legacy won’t last because he passed vague laws and abused his executive power to impose policies that are unpopular.


By Phil Gramm

How did Barack Obama join Franklin Roosevelt and Ronald Reagan to become one of the three most transformative presidents in the past century? He was greatly aided by the financial crisis that erupted during the 2008 campaign. This gave the new president a mandate and a large Democratic congressional majority that fully embraced his progressive agenda.

Having learned from previous progressive failures, President Obama embarked on a strategy of minimizing controversial details that could doom his legislative efforts. But no factor was more decisive than his unshakable determination not to let Congress, the courts, the Constitution or a failed presidency—as America has traditionally defined it—stand in his way.

Americans have always found progressivism appealing in the abstract, but they have revolted when they saw the details. President Clinton’s very progressive agenda—to nationalize health care and use private pensions to promote social goals—was hardly controversial during the 1992 election. But once the debate turned to the details, Americans quickly understood that his health-care plan would take away their freedom. Even Mr. Clinton’s most reliable allies, the labor unions, rebelled when they understood that under his pension plan their pensions would serve “social goals” instead of maximizing their retirement benefits.

In its major legislative successes, the Obama administration routinely proposed not program details but simply the structure that would be used to determine program details in the future. Unlike the Clinton administration’s ill-fated HillaryCare, which contained a detailed plan to control costs through Regional Healthcare Purchasing Cooperatives and strictly enforced penalties, ObamaCare established an independent payment advisory board to deal with rising costs. The 2009 stimulus package was unencumbered by a projects list like the one provided by the Clinton administration, which doomed the 1993 Clinton stimulus with ice-skating warming huts in Connecticut and alpine slides in Puerto Rico.

The Obama stimulus offered “transparency” in reporting on the projects funded but only after the money had been spent. Similarly the 2010 Dodd-Frank financial law defined almost nothing, including the basis for designating “systemically important financial institutions” that would be subject to onerous regulation, what bank “stress tests” tested, what an acceptable “living will” for a financial institution looked like or what the “Volcker rule” required.

In addition to a filibuster-proof majority in the Senate, Mr. Obama benefited from unprecedented Democratic support in Congress. Congressional Quarterly reported that “Obama’s 98.7% Senate success score in 2009 was the highest ever,” surpassing LBJ’s 93%, Clinton’s 85% and Reagan’s 88%. Reagan’s budget, tax cuts, Social Security reform and tax reform programs all had significant bipartisan input and garnered the strong Democratic support they needed to become law. But ObamaCare had no bipartisan input and did not receive a single Republican vote in Congress. The Obama stimulus package received no Republican votes in the House and only three Republican votes in the Senate. Dodd-Frank received three Republican votes in the House and three in the Senate.

Voters used the first off-year election of the Obama presidency to express the same disapproval that they had expressed in the Clinton presidency. Democrats lost 54 House and eight Senate seats in 1994, and 63 House and six Senate seats in 2010.

Mr. Clinton reacted to the congressional defeat by “triangulating” to ultimately support a bipartisan budget and tax compromise that fostered broad-based prosperity and earned for him the distinction of being one of the most successful modern presidents. Mr. Obama never wavered. When the recovery continued to disappoint for six long years he never changed course. Mr. Clinton sacrificed his political agenda for the good of the country. Mr. Obama sacrificed the good of the country for his political agenda.

The Obama transformation was achieved by laws granting unparalleled discretionary power to the executive branch—but where the law gave no discretion Mr. Obama refused to abide by the law. Whether the law mandated action, such as income verification for ObamaCare, or inaction, such as immigration reform without congressional support, Mr. Obama willfully overrode the law. Stretching executive powers beyond their historic limits, he claimed the Federal Communications Commission had authority over the Internet and exerted Environmental Protection Agency control over power plants to reduce carbon emissions.

When Obama empowered himself to declare Congress in “recess” to make illegal appointments that the courts later ruled unconstitutional, he was undeterred. In an action that Lyndon Johnson or Richard Nixon would have never undertaken, Mr. Obama pushed Senate Democratic Leader Harry Reid to “nuke” the rights of minority Senators to filibuster judicial nominees and executive appointments by changing the long-standing 60-vote super majority needed for cloture to a simple majority.

American democracy has historically relied on three basic constraints: a shared commitment to the primacy of the constitutional process over any political agenda, the general necessity to achieve bipartisan support to make significant policy changes, and the natural desire of leaders to be popular by delivering peace and prosperity. Mr. Obama has transformed America by refusing to accept these constraints. The lock-step support of the Democrats’ super majority in the 111th Congress freed him from having to compromise as other presidents, including Reagan and Mr. Clinton, have had to do.

While the Obama program has transformed America, no one is singing “Happy Days Are Here Again” or claiming it’s “morning in America.” Despite a doubling of the national debt and the most massive monetary expansion since the Civil War, America’s powerhouse economy has withered along with the rule of law.

The means by which Mr. Obama wrought his transformation imperil its ability to stand the test of time. All of his executive orders can be overturned by a new president. Obama Care and Dodd-Frank can be largely circumvented using exactly the same discretionary powers Mr. Obama used to implement them in the first place. Republicans, who never supported his program, are now united in their commitment to repeal it.

Most important, the American people, who came to embrace the Roosevelt and Reagan transformations, have yet to buy into the Obama transformation. For all of these reasons it appears that the Obama legacy rests on a foundation of sand.

Mr. Gramm, a former Republican senator from Texas and chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, is a visiting scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.


1a)

Iran Deal Will Trigger Major War in Middle East

By Nima Gholam 

If someone had asked you a year ago what would be the most efficient way to cause a major war in the Middle East, you might well have said: Giving the mullahs in Iran the opportunity to get advanced conventional weapons, ICBMs, nuclear weapons and tens of billion of dollars to fund terrorist organizations and destabilize other countries in the region.

You might have argued that a regime that does not hesitate to attack targets in Washington or Berlin might not be the most prudent one to shower with gigantic quantities of money and the deadliest weapons.
If one knows anything about the regime in Iran, it is difficult to understand how U.S. President Barack Obama's agreement with Iran could create anything other than chaos and war in the Middle East.The content of the Iran nuclear agreement creates the perfect conditions for a major war in the Middle East — one that could spread and start a major regional conflict.
Despite what President Obama likes to say, it is not true that the agreement “permanently prohibits Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon” or “cuts off all of Iran's pathways to a bomb”. The agreement means that the U.S. has accepted that after 15 years, or sooner, Iran may build as many bombs as it likes.
The Islamic Republic of Iran, since its founding in 1979, has had an ideology that seeks to “export the Islamic revolution.” The phrase is not just a catchword for the mullahs. They have done it in practice, if necessary by force. After coming to power in 1979, the leader of the revolution, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini, called on the Shi'ite Muslims in Iraq to revolt and establish an Islamic republic. The mullahs' effort to export the Islamic revolution to Iraq was one of the causes of the Iran-Iraq War, which lasted eight years and resulted in possibly a million deaths. Despite intense resistance from Arab countries, Khomeini's Islamic revolution has been successfully exported to Lebanon, Gaza, Yemen, Syria and Iraq.
Iran is not a country busy trying to preserve its own sovereignty. Iran, instead, undermines other countries' sovereignty. In the case of Israel's, the regime in Iran is threatening the nation's entire existence. Even more astonishing is that the president of the United States gets peevish — and threatens American Jews — when Israel's prime minister reminds the public of that.
The regime in Iran has carried out terror attacks against Americans in Lebanon[1] and in European cities. A German court has stated that Iran's supreme leader, Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, organized terrorist attacks in Germany. Several times, Iranian agents have been arrested in Europe when they were attempting to organize terror attacks.
Iran was behind the World Trade center attacks.
As late as 2011, Iran planned to assassinate the Saudi ambassador and attack the Israeli and Saudi embassies in Washington.
Iranian forces, both directly and through Hezbollah proxies, have been responsible for over 1,000 American military fatalities over the last decade and a half. Iran has continuously backed the Lebanese terror group Hezbollah, providing it with money, training, and weapons.
Iran's regime is, contrary to rumors, extremely pragmatic: it sees that no matter what it does, its survival is not threatened even slightly. Iran's regime sees — as does everyone else – that even the worst transgressions are, on the contrary, rewarded.
The regime is simply following Khomeini's original ideology to “export the revolution” and to fight against Western influence, which he called “Westoxification.”
Iran's regime has always done what it says it will do. Experience shows that when the mullahs in Iran say “Death to America,” they mean it with actual and real consequences. When the mullahs first shouted “Death to America,” a slogan that started in 1978-1979 in response to American support for the Shah, they followed that up by having the Iranian-backed Hezbollah kill 241 American soldiers in Beirut on October 23, 1983. Iran then continued to ensure that Americans died in Iraq and Afghanistan during the Iraq- and Afghanistan wars.
In the same vein, when the Iranian regime shouts “Death to Israel,” it sends weapons and resources to Hamas and Hezbollah, while organizing a conference for the world's anti-Semites who deny that the Holocaust happened.
This is the Iranian regime with which the current U.S. administration would like seal a deal, under which Iran will, after 10-15 years — or sooner — be legitimately able to enrich sufficient quantities of uranium to produce many nuclear weapons.
For each of the 36 years the Iranian regime has been in power, despite strong resistance from Arab countries, Turkey, Israel and the United States, its influence and ambitions have increased. There is no reason to think that with an infusion of $150 billion, the regime in Tehran will not be even more aggressive and proceed to build its nuclear bomb.
The regime in Iran has demonstrated no plans to become less militant, create a democracy, or even to release the American hostages it continues to hold on trumped-up charges in unspeakable Iranian prisons.
Part of the regime's triumph even seems to consist in humiliating the United States as exhaustively as it can.
The P5+1 (China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US; plus Germany) have agreed that Iran can buy conventional weapons after five years, and ICBMs after eight years. But why would any civilized nation allow a country that arms terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Hamas to buy advanced conventional weapons? They will simply be passed on to Hamas and Hezbollah. Iran does not even deny that it supports Hamas and Hezbollah.
Iran already has missiles that can reach Israel and parts of Europe. Iran already has supplied missiles, such as the Fajr 5, to Hezbollah. Why would anyone allow a country that gives missiles to terrorists to get hold of ICBMs that can be fired from one continent to another?
It is also Iran's official government policy that Israel should be destroyed. Why does the U.S. wish to allow a regime that wants to destroy America's closest ally in the Middle East to get more advanced conventional — and later, nuclear — weapons?
If you listen to the mullahs in Tehran, Americans and Israelis are the targets. Therefore, these conventional weapons will be directed against the Americans and Israelis, wherever they are.
That the mullahs, thanks to this deal, will get $150 billion is not rational. When a country or organization supports terrorism, you freeze its assets. Iran continues openly to support terrorism; this deal gives Iran access to $150 billion dollars to support more terrorism.
Under the agreement, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) can inspect only Iran's declared nuclear facilities — and that only with a 24-day delay, in addition to having to disclose to the Iranians what evidence has caused the site to be inspected.
The IAEA, however, even at its best, has never found anything. Iran's secret nuclear program was discovered by an Iranian opposition group, the National Council of Resistance of Iran (NCRI), in 2002. There is nothing that says Iran will not have more secret nuclear programs unavailable to the IAEA.
The entire agreement is based on these mullahs showing goodwill towards the West, which they no doubt see as a threat that could lure their people away from the righteous course of Islamism. President Obama's approach seems to be based on the hope that one of the most fanatical regimes in the world will suddenly become honest and peaceful — that the same regime that shouts “Death to America” will actually present all its military installations and secrets to its archenemy, the United States, through the good offices of the IAEA.
Let us not ask President Obama to care about all those wrongly imprisoned, tortured and hanged in Iran every year. Let us not ask President Obama to care about Iranians who would like the same democracy and the freedom they begged him for in 2009. President Obama needs only to maintain peace and stability in the Middle East. But allowing these mullahs to get advanced conventional weapons in five years, ICBMs in eight years, and nuclear weapons in 15 years — or sooner — is to create the conditions for a larger regional conflict that, in this era of globalization, will surely spread to the West.
If this agreement were about peace, why do the Iranians need more weapons? If Iran wants peace, why don't they scrap their missile program and stop supporting terrorist organizations that want to destroy Israel? If Iran wants peace, why does it want weapons that can reach other continents? Which country is threatening Iran's sovereignty today that makes Iran want more advanced weapons?
If anyone has ICBMs and says “Death to America”, what do you think he will do with those ICBMs?
There are those who compare the Iran deal to the Munich Agreement of 1938. The Iran deal is much worse. Hitler duped Chamberlain and presented himself as a man of peace. No one has duped President Obama. The mullahs openly say “Death to America” and “Death to Israel,” and have backed up their words with actions.
It was the Iranians who helpfully exposed inconsistencies in the nuclear deal, which the U.S. government had presumably hoped to hide from Americans, such as two side-deals Iran has with the IAEA.[2]
Why would an American president do this? Does he not know at whom the Iranians will point their ICBMs?
This deal, combined with the expansionist policies of the Islamic Republic of Iran, can only lead directly to the biggest war of the 21st-century — Obama's War, even if he is not in office any more. The mullahs will not start loving Israel. The Saudis, Turks, Egyptians and Emiratis are not just going to sit and watch Iran get nuclear weapons. No Arab country wants to be the next Syria, Lebanon, Yemen or Iraq, and Israelis have no desire to be, as threatened, wiped off the map.
The alternative is to walk away from the deal. Instead of a major war becoming the only scenario, the worst-case scenario would become a limited bombing campaign now to prevent the Iranian regime from obtaining nuclear weapons.
Even if the results lasted, as critics charge, “only” two or three years, at least Iran — and global onlookers — would understand that there are real consequences for rogue behavior; and that there could always be further rounds later, if needed.
At the very least, massive damage to select nuclear facilities would not be seen as a reward. In the worst-case scenario, walking away from the deal still leaves the world in a position of deterrence that offers it better choices before Iran becomes nuclear, not after.
Even no deal with Iran leads to a more peaceful and stable Middle East than President Obama's bad deal.


1b) Analysis: A warning to Tehran
By Yossi Melman

The swift Israeli reaction to the launching of four rockets from Syria at the Galilee and Golan shows how deep is the Israeli intelligence penetration of Iran’s military.
It was not the first time that precise and updated intelligence data enabled Israel to prevent terrorist attacks from Syria sponsored by Iran, or to execute attacks against Bashar Assad’s regime, or whatever is left of it.
The rocket launchings – which caused no casualties or damage to property, except sparking fires in open fields – didn’t surprise IDF Intelligence. They were expecting some sort of an attack against Israel from the Syrian Golan and prepared themselves for the eventuality.
Israel’s response was gradual but fierce. First, Syrian Army positions were attacked with artillery and missiles. Later, a senior Israeli officer revealed sensitive intelligence information by naming a senior Iranian officer and holding him responsible for ordering the rocket attacks. He is Saad Ezadi, in charge of the Israeli desk in the Quds Force of Iran’s Revolutionary Guard Corps.
The military source also said that, although the rockets were fired by members of the pro-Iranian Palestinian Islamic Jihad group, those who ordered it were the commanders of the Quds Force.
Revealing the name of such an important operative is unusual and is aimed at signaling to the Iranians that we know a great deal about them, so they had better watch out.
It was also good intelligence work that enabled the Israel Air Force on Friday to strike the car carrying four or five Islamic Jihad operatives who took part in firing the rockets the night before, hitting them some 15 kilometers inside Syria.
The Quds Force, led by the charismatic Maj.-Gen. Qassen Sulimanie, one of the most influential officials in Iran, already has a forward command post on the Syria side of the Golan. Its goal is to recruit local agents and terrorists who in return for cash would be ready to carry out terrorist attacks against Israel.
They include local Druse loyal to Syrian President Bashar Assad, Palestinians, Syrians and infiltrators sent by Hezbollah from Lebanon.
The Iranian decision of when and how to operate is motivated mainly by the availability and accessibility of terrorists. However, the most important consideration for the Iranians is not to leave their fingerprints behind.
It is not clear what motivates the Iranians to use their proxies to create tension along the already fragile and tense Israeli-Syrian border.
This question is crucial at this most sensitive time when Tehran waits for the US Congress to approve the nuclear deal and pave the way for lifting the sanctions, which is clearly Iran’s ultimate goal.
Tehran is also well aware of the arguments used by Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu in opposing to the deal.
Netanyahu claims that the flood of money from ending the sanction regime will be funneled to further finance terrorist groups such as Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad.
So why does Iran appear to be playing at this sensitive time into the hands of its arch enemy, Netanyahu? Senior Israeli military and security officials have no convincing answer. Some argue that Iran is using its proxies to avenge the killing of an Iranian general a few months ago by an alleged Israeli air strike on the Syrian side of the Golan border.
Others say Iran will never miss an opportunity to shed Israeli blood, as long as it doesn’t leave a trace behind.
In this cold but heated war, Israel’s latest response was aimed at warning Iran: You have enough troubles defending your crippled client in Damascus, so don’t mess with us.
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2 ) Dow Falls More Than 1,000 Points Before Bouncing


U.S. investors woke up to a serious jolt Monday when the Dow Jones industrial average tumbled 1,000 points minutes after the market opened in a wave of selling that circled the globe after a historic plunge in Chinese stocks.

Though the declines eased significantly as the morning went on, it sent a shiver of fear through Americans with retirement accounts or saving to buy a home that the bull market is over.

The Standard & Poor's 500 index slid into correction territory after the opening — Wall Street jargon for a drop of 10 percent or more from a recent peak. The last market correction was four years ago. Treasurys surged as investors bought less risky assets.
The Dow was down 336 points, or 2 percent, to 16,124 points as of 11:49 a.m. Eastern time. The Dow pulled back from its 1,000-point drop within the first half-hour of trading. The S&P 500 dropped 43 points, or 2.2 percent, to 1,927. The Nasdaq composite fell 91 points, or 1.9 percent, to 4,614 points. The three indexes are down for the year.

Heightened concern about a slowdown in China had already shaken markets around the world on Friday, driving the U.S. stock market sharply lower. A big sell-off in Chinese stocks on Monday caused the rout to continue.

That's left investors unsure of how to gauge which companies might be a good bet to weather a slowdown in China.

"What's a company that's doing business with China actually worth right now? When you're not sure, you tend to sell," said JJ Kinahan, TD Ameritrade's chief strategist.


China's main index sank 8.5 percent amid fears over the health of the world's second-largest economy.

Oil prices, commodities and the currencies of many developing countries also tumbled on concerns that a sharp slowdown in China might hurt economic growth around the globe.

The market slide was broad. All the sectors in the S&P 500 headed lower, with energy stocks notching the biggest decline, 3.1 percent.

In Europe, Germany's DAX fell 5 percent, while the CAC-40 in France slid 5.6 percent. The FTSE 100 index of leading British shares dropped 4.5 percent.

The Shanghai index suffered its biggest percentage decline since February 2007, with many China-listed companies hitting their 10 percent downside limits. The benchmark has lost all of its gains for 2015, though it is still more than 40 percent above its level a year ago.

Underlying the gloom in China is the growing conviction that policymakers and regulators may lack the means to stem the losses in that nation. The country is facing a slowdown in economic growth, the banking system is short of cash and investors are pulling money out of the country, experts note.

"There is a lot of fear in the markets," said Bernard Aw, market strategist at IG.

China's dimming outlook is drawing calls for more economic stimulus from Beijing, though earlier government efforts to stop the sell-off in stocks appear to have done little to stabilize markets.

The bloodletting spread across Asia earlier, where Japan's Nikkei fell 4.6 percent, its worst one-day drop since in over two and a half years. Hong Kong's Hang Seng index fell 5.2 percent, Australia's S&P ASX/200 slid 4.1 percent and South Korea's Kospi lost 2.5 percent.

Those declines followed tumbles over the weekend in emerging markets such as Egypt, Dubai and Saudi Arabia.

The panic has underscored the scale of the challenge for Chinese leaders in seeking to curb excess investment and guide the economy toward a more sustainable pace of growth.

"My biggest concern is that global growth momentum is very fragile. The most important step is to see China take further action to try to bring their economy to a 7 percent growth path," said Rajiv Biswas, Asia-Pacific chief economist for IHS.
In currency trading, the dollar was at 118.55 yen on Monday, down from 122.05 yen on Friday. The euro rose to $1.1579 from $1.1138. Currencies fell hard in developing economies — particularly those that rely heavily on the export of commodities and oil, both of which China is a big consumer.

In commodity markets, benchmark U.S. crude dropped $1.99 to $38.46 a barrel in New York. It fell 87 cents a barrel on Friday. Brent crude, a benchmark for international oils used by many U.S. refineries, fell $2.50 to $42.96 a barrel.

U.S. government bond prices rose. The yield on the 10-year Treasury note fell to 2.03 percent.

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3) 
>Franklin Graham was speaking at the First Baptist Church in 
> Jacksonville, Florida in January, 2015 when he said America will not 
> come back. He wrote:
  
>The American Dream ended (on November 6th, 2012 ) in Ohio .The 
> second term of Barack Obama will be the final nail in the coffin for 
the legacy of the white Christian males who discovered, explored, 
> pioneered, settled and developed the greatest Republic in the history 
> of mankind. A coalition of Blacks, Latinos, Feminists, Gays, Government 
> Workers, Union Members, Environmental Extremists, The Media, Hollywood, 
> uninformed young people, the "forever needy," the  chronically 
> unemployed, illegal aliens and other "fellow  travelers" have ended 
> Norman Rockwell 's America .The Cocker Spaniel is off the front 
> porch... The Pit Bull is in the back  yard. The American Constitution 
> has been replaced with Saul Alinsky's "Rules for Radicals" and Chicago 
> shyster, David Axelrod , along with international Socialist George 
> Soros will be pulling the strings on their beige puppet to bring us Act 
> 2 of the New World Order.
      
Our side ran two candidates who couldn't even win their own home 
> states, and Chris Christie helped Obama over the top with a glowing 
> "post Sandy " tribute that elevated the  "Commander-in-Chief" to Mother 
> Teresa status. (Aside: with the way the polls were run, he didn't need 
> any help!) People like me are completely politically irrelevant, and I 
> will never again comment on or concern myself with the aforementioned 
> coalition which has surrendered our culture, our heritage and our 
> traditions without a shot being fired.
      
You will never again out-vote these people. It will take 
> individual acts of defiance and massive displays of civil  disobedience 
> to get back the rights we have allowed them to take away. It will take 
> Zealots, not moderates & shy not reach-across-the-aisle RINOs to right 
> this ship and restore our beloved country to its former status.
   

Those who come after us will have to risk their lives, their 
> fortunes and their sacred honor to bring back the Republic that this 
> generation has timidly frittered away due to "white guilt" and 
> political correctness...
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