Why pay money to have your family tree traced; go into politics and your opponents will do it for you.
This from a dear friend, memo reader and retired criminal trial lawyer:~Author unknown~++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
The Indictment is now in the Congressional Record and this Georgia night school lawyer believes the Senate can start it's trial without Nancy "delivering" it.
AS AN ASIDE: In Georgia a criminal defendant can demand immediate trial and must be tried within the next term of court or not tried at all. G-----"
My response: "Pious, Petty Pelosi wants Senate Republicans to beef up her pitiful case. McConnell not likely to throw her a life line. She will have to swim or drown in the swamp unless Schiff and Nadler are lifeguards.
The Democrats are giddy over their vote to impeach and this simply re-affirms my view they and their media friends remain totally out of touch. Most American deplorables are not stupid, still know when a fellow American, in this case their duly elected president, is being railroaded and resent being taken for granted.
Justice delayed is justice denied . Pelosi, obviously, does not know about a defendant's rights and due process. She just knows about political strategies. She has outsmarted herself, allowed the zanies to control her party and now will pay the price for her hypocrisy.
Justice delayed is justice denied . Pelosi, obviously, does not know about a defendant's rights and due process. She just knows about political strategies. She has outsmarted herself, allowed the zanies to control her party and now will pay the price for her hypocrisy.
I believe the 2020 election is Trump's to lose." (See 1 below.)
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Ranting from Florida. (See 2 below.)
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Merkel is a lame duck. (See 3 below.)
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As I suspected The FISA Courts, led by Judge Collyer, were not diligent. If anything, she was dismissive of Rep. Nunes' efforts to warn them.
If There ever was a Pulitzer Prize for Politicians, Rep Nunes should be the first recipient. (See 4 below.)
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DORIS
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Merkel is a lame duck. (See 3 below.)
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As I suspected The FISA Courts, led by Judge Collyer, were not diligent. If anything, she was dismissive of Rep. Nunes' efforts to warn them.
If There ever was a Pulitzer Prize for Politicians, Rep Nunes should be the first recipient. (See 4 below.)
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DORIS
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1) Pelosi Has Second Thoughts
2) I am now happily in my Florida home for the winter. Sunny and in the seventies every day. Lots of good warm days for tennis and fishing.
McConnell should hold a trial with or without House managers.
After the Majority Leader Mitch McConnell suggested Democrats were getting “cold feet” over sending articles of impeachment to the Senate, Nancy Pelosi again twisted the Founder’s meaning of the constitution.
The House impeachment of President Trump is only a day old and it has already moved from folly to farce. Speaker Nancy Pelosi is now threatening to withhold the articles of impeachment that Democrats just passed until the Senate sets trial terms that she and her left-wing faction deem adequate.
“We cannot name managers until we see what the process is on the Senate side,” Mrs. Pelosi said Wednesday night after the impeachment vote, referring to the House Members who would present the case for removal to the Senate. “So far we haven’t seen anything that looks fair to us.”
The Constitution gives the House “the sole power of impeachment.” It also gives the Senate “the sole power to try all impeachments.” Mrs. Pelosi nonetheless wants to use the articles the House has passed as leverage to force the Senate to do what she wants. The idea was floated this week by Harvard Professor Laurence Tribe and has been picked up on the left, apparently as a way to discomfit Senate Republicans.
This further trivializes the impeachment power that the Pelosi Democrats have already done so much to diminish. The House raced to an impeachment vote to please swing-district Members who wanted it over before Christmas. Democrats barred GOP witnesses and truncated questioning. Rep. Adam Schiff even said speed was essential and the House couldn’t wait for court rulings on witnesses, lest Mr. Trump steal the 2020 election.
But now Mrs. Pelosi says speed isn’t essential because Senate Republicans might not hold the kind of trial she wants. She is running interference for Chuck Schumer, the Senate Democratic leader, who is demanding that the Senate call witnesses the House refused to call. The goal seems to be to turn the Senate trial into a second impeachment investigation ad infinitum. Keep the machinery running, and who knows what else might turn up that pressures Republicans to convict.
This isn’t what the Founders intended for the Senate trial, which is supposed to judge the President based on the charges in the House articles. The Senate can call any witnesses it thinks will shed light on House claims, incriminating or exculpatory, but Mrs. Pelosi can’t dictate which witnesses the Senate calls or anything else about the trial.
Mitch McConnell, the Senate Majority Leader, ridiculed all of this in remarks on Thursday. “Speaker Pelosi suggested that House Democrats may be too afraid to even transmit their shoddy work product to the Senate. The prosecutors are getting cold feet in front of the entire country and second-guessing whether they even want to go to trial,” he said. “They said impeachment was so urgent that it could not even wait for due process but now they’re content to sit on their hands. It is comical.”
He’s right, but the harm from Mrs. Pelosi’s impeachment shenanigans is too serious to dismiss as comic relief. The Senate needs to quarantine the damage by taking the trial more seriously than the House took impeachment.
Mr. McConnell may be tempted to let Mrs. Pelosi delay naming managers for as long as she wants, figuring that she’ll look increasingly cynical to the public. But now that the House has voted to impeach, Republicans should honor the Constitution by holding a trial. It needn’t be long, but the President deserves the chance to marshal a defense that he didn’t get in the House, and to get a Senate verdict.
Mr. McConnell should put Mrs. Pelosi on public notice that she has a certain period of time, perhaps until the end of the year, to name House managers. If she still refuses, he should declare that the Senate will appoint managers to make the House impeachment case for the Democrats.
The House will howl, but there are plenty of lawyers who could make a better argument for removing Mr. Trump from office than Mr. Schiff or Rep. Jerrold Nadler would. If Mrs. Pelosi wants her Members to make the case, stop the unconstitutional meddling with the Senate’s prerogatives and appoint them.
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So now we have impeached Trump. What a truly sad day for democracy. This action by the Dems is exactly what the founders warned against and tried to prevent by defining what conditions must prevail to use impeachment. The Dems have set a horrible precedent we hope will end with this fiasco. If it happens again we have no democracy. We have partisan anarchy where the popular vote is meaningless. What is occurring today is a real threat to the cohesion of the country and irresponsible to the ultimate. The behavior of the press through all of this over three years is equally dangerous as a free, and nominally objective press, is critical. The mainstream media have abandoned all pretense of professional journalism, and have become a megaphone for the Dems. We are in a very bad and dangerous place.
As the year comes to a close, it has been a great one for the economy and especially for the stock market. I have stated for a long time, the place to be is in equities, especially in US stocks, and that being in fixed income or worst of all, annuities, was a huge lost opportunity cost. My portfolio is up over 32% on the year, and if you did nothing other than buy the S&P index you would be up 27% without having to do anything. Bonds had a good year due to the Fed dropping rates, but nowhere near as good as equities. And from here on it is likely that bonds will be losers as the economy continues to remain good and rates slowly rise. An average long term bond fund returned 19.25% and a government bond fund 17.25% YTD. Corporates returned 12.77% and the highest risk, high yield bonds returned only 11.05%. Target dated bonds returned only 8.17% making the whole target dated strategy really dumb. The only thing worse is probably annuities. Munis returned around 8.2%. This is Morningstar data. With all of this data, they are averages, and specific funds had different performances. As I have said several times, I rarely trade. I just own very good US companies, and only trade out when I think the stock is in for a long term decline. Otherwise, I go play tennis, and let my money do its job. Bottom line is as always, a portfolio of great US corporations is a long term winner, and while that may suffer ups and downs, over time it wins by a good margin. The average returns over the past 6-7 years for the stock indexes has been around 13%. Historically, whenever there has been a severe decline in stocks, there has been a strong bull market to follow, even in the thirties. The S&P at the start of 2009 was 865. It is now around 3200. That is a 268% increase in 10 years. It is up around 41%, and the Dow up 43%, 10,000 points, since Trump was elected. So long as rates remain low, the stock market will remain strong. 2020 should see good, but much lower returns than 2019. Equities are still where I plan to be.
There was a recent article stating almost nobody saw the upturn in the stock market in 2009. That is like Greenspan saying only 5 people saw the crash coming. Both are ridiculous. How you could not see the upturn coming in 2009, is beyond me. Once we had TARP, TALF, and other Treasury support for the banks and AIG, plus QE, it was clear the upturn was starting and would be strong. While I admit I had some basic inside information on what Treasury was doing, that input was not needed to see the turn coming. Every time there is a major downturn in the S&P, there is a strong recovery in stock prices. If you look at the thirties and every other deep dive in stocks, you see the pattern. Once Trump was elected with his plan to materially reduce taxes and cut regulations, and implement a pro-business policy agenda, there was no question what was coming. To me, 2020 should be good, but not as good as 2019 simply because 2019 was so great, a repeat is too much to expect. However, I do not rule it out if China abides by Phase 1, Brexit happens as Johnson has planned within one year, there is a new deal with the EU, and factory production picks up as appears starting to happen, not just in the US, but also in China and the EU.
The world economy seems to be bottoming according to PMI data. Johnson will now cut a strong deal with the EU, and he will make a good deal with the US. The whole world trade system is dramatically changed permanently. The China deal and USMCA have left the US in the best trade position ever. We now have deals with Japan and S Korea, and next year we will force the EU into a new deal that will benefit the US. Without the UK, the EU is in a very weak situation. Trump will jam them once Johnson gets done doing the same. 2020 should be a very good year for the US regarding world trade. Trump and Johnson working together will dominate.
China is now in a much weakened position. China is the real risk the world faces now. The whole country, but especially the private companies, are grossly over levered. The trade war has caused a substantial rise in defaults, and many more are in poor shape regarding debt service. This is not going to change with the trade deal. Business will never be the same for China as many companies are continuing to move out, and supply chains are shifting as fast as new ones are established. Watch the Chinese debt situation. It is the next world financial crisis. We just do not know when. Chinese agriculture is in bad shape, especially pigs. That alone on top of Hong Kong and over-leverage, have put them into a situation where they had to give important concessions. Combined with the financial problems, China is in for some tough years even with a Trump deal.
In the same vein, the US has a similar, but nowhere as serious debt problem. Continuing massive government deficits are a huge issue for the Fed to manage. We saw a brief example when the repo market, a $2.2 trillion market, went off the tracks in September. Repo's are essential to the smooth functioning of the financial markets. It is how banks, brokerages and traders fund very short term cash needs with very low cost loans using Treasuries as collateral. The Fed has taken steps to fix this problem, but it is a canary in the coal mine. Treasury has to issue hundreds of billions of new bonds to meet the deficit. There is a group of primary dealers who have to buy these bonds. As the government floods the market with more bonds to fund the deficit, there is reduced cash available. Nobody is clear where the cash has gone around the world, but it is being hoarded or just socked away. When there is a shortage of cash, repo rates rise, and that screws up the whole financial market. That is a huge problem for the Fed trying to manage the financial markets and interest rates. The Fed is now probably locked into holding $4 trillion of bonds on its balance sheet since liquidating a small part of that helped create the September problem. As federal deficits grow, the pressure on the Fed increases. This is a fundamental problem that is not going to get better. One day deficits will be totally out of control. In the meantime this fiscal stimulus will prime the economic pump along with ultra-low interest rates, and a liquidity push by the Fed with its mini-QE that is now underway. It is hard to see a recession in 2020 with all of this occurring in conjunction with the trade deals. GDP could grow at 2.5% or better with all this stimulus. That is why I am staying in equities, and why Trump will win.
Last Saturday, the WSJ had an extraordinary 2 page detailed article describing how We Work got started, and how it crashed. It was a perfect story of how the geniuses of Silicon Valley and Wall St banks may be smart at finance, but they know little/nothing about how to assess a business, its founder, nor what makes a business successful-cash flow-wise. They made all the rookie mistakes. I have been involved in either listening to pitches for start-ups, and being part of several, for many years. I learned a lot of lessons from being part of the operating side. It is very different than the finance side in which I am also deeply experienced. The first clue should have been the crazy personality of Neuman. He was the ultimate snake oil salesman with no experience running a real business. Second, the whole business strategy made no sense to anyone who understands real estate and office leasing. Third, you never give a guy like this voting control of the company unless it is already very successful, which We Works was not. How they let that happen is inexcusable. However, after Facebook and Google, the trend was to let that happen. They bought into the BS that this was like Amazon, and growth at any price was what the strategy needed to be. Office leasing is not selling retail goods, nor digital messaging, and Neumann is no Bezos. Nobody was controlling the clash outflow, which is critical in a startup. Mr. Son, the largest investor, even encouraged more growth. Neumann had the most expensive private jet when the company was hemorrhaging cash. Expenses were out of control, but the board went along. The board of investors became enamored with Neumann and his BS, and what they believed was the huge payoff in an IPO. This is pretty typical. Financial executives focus on the future payday more than how to get there in one piece. This was Dotcom II to the ultimate. What made it even worse, was the CEO of Softbank, Mr. Son, the $100 billion venture fund, seemed to make some lucky decisions early on in its fund life, mainly Alibaba, and so he made a decision to invest billions into We Works in literally twenty minutes. The company was leasing space for its offices around the world at a pace that was impossible to control. Then they spent enormous sums to finish the spaces in high style. They would change out furniture at a whim, and throw away whole floors of almost new furniture so they could replace it with what was suddenly deemed more cool. Neumann was smoking pot in the office, and taking time off to go surfing. The company was losing more than its revenue. Yet the geniuses kept investing more billions. I saw this sort of insanity in the late eighties, and at other times in my career, and it is the same every time. You have a group of fund managers and bankers who get bamboozled by some fast talking guy who has some business idea bankers do not understand, but sounds like a great way to make a big hit when they can do the IPO-millions in fees and cap gains. Business schools should make this their prime case study and drill it into their students as lessons of everything to avoid doing. If you can get a copy of the Dec 14 WSJ, it is in the first section and well worth reading.
Florida is about to pass a bill that requires all high school students to pass a civics course to graduate. A big step in the right direction. Now if we could get all high schools and freshman college kids to be required to do the same, plus a real objective history class, not a left wing version of what they view as white male oppression, we would really start a return to some level of education and reality.
In my view, the divide today being heavily pushed on college campuses by left wing professors, is the ideology that merit and self-reliance, combined with hard work, no longer matters, and anyone who does not have what successful people have, is entitled to a share of that successful person's accumulated money or wealth. To each according to his needs, and you don't need all that money you earned. That is why Bernie is so popular with under 25 kiddies. I think Lenin would feel comfortable. In short, it is a rationale that says, I did not work as hard, I am not goal driven, I was born to a difficult home life, so I am therefore, entitled to have the government take a lot of what you have and give it to me for free, to make up for my lack of brains, talent and effort. I am a victim and you owe me, as opposed to, I will fight harder to achieve success because it is solely up to me to make it or not. That entitlement mantra is what they teach in school. " Gross inequality" attitudes must be eliminated. The real single word is envy. Most of my friends had little to nothing at the start, and became rich or wealthy through hard work and sacrifice. Kids on campus are being taught they are entitled to have all the same, and more, just because they are not oppressive white males who illegally took all of the money and goodies for themselves. It is combined with the whole reparations mantra. Someone should ask how Oprah did it, or the former black CEO of Merrill Lynch. They both were black in the south in the fifties and sixties, and grew up in homes lacking indoor plumbing.
31% of people polled think socialism is good. All one can say is, that demonstrates how uneducated kids are coming out of college. They obviously learned nothing about economic systems, nor the history of socialism in countries that tried it. It is fed by Pocahontas and Bernie, and the far left Dems promising government controls and free everything for the "victims". They are really victims of a prosperity never seen before. Of inclusivity never experienced before anywhere in the world. That anyone would even promote socialism today, given its history of failure, is a real condemnation of theU.S education system. It continues to astonish me that less than a huge majority think Trump is doing a great job with the economy. I blame the mainstream media for pressing recession scenarios, and not giving Trump credit for the best economy and stock market we have had in over 50 years. You can hate Trump, but you cannot refute the data.
A team of scientists at Google reported they had achieved quantum supremacy. A term of art in science. Sure enough, soon came the attack from 13 academics claiming the word supremacy is racist, violence prone and neo-colonial, and other things these nincompoops rage about these days. What any of that has to do with quantum mechanics is a real mystery. As the WSJ pointed out, Diana Ross needs to rename the Supremes now, and I guess we need to rename the Supreme Court, Then there is always the Supremacy clause in the constitution. Do these so called academics realize what idiots they are uttering this nonsense. This is another example of what is happening on campuses across America today. And your kids and grand kids are being indoctrinated with this crap instead of being educated. This is why I keep asking you to stop donating and demand an end to this left wing nonsense
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3)
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The Lamest of Ducks
German Chancellor Angela Merkel is the most powerful woman in the world, according to Forbes.
From there, the only way is down.
Once firmly in control of the economic powerhouse of Europe, Merkel is facing tough times lately. Following a series of electoral setbacks, she announced last year that she would step down as chancellor in 2021 when her term ends. She quit the helm of her party, the conservative Christian Democratic Union, a year ago.
Now she’s discovering that being a lame duck leader isn’t easy.
First, the new even more leftist leaders of the Social Democratic Party are big trouble for Merkel, says Euractiv: They are considering pulling out of their current coalition with Merkel’s party, a move that would potentially bring down her government.
The Social Democrats are particularly sick and tired of Merkel’s austere fiscal policies. They want to boost spending to head off a recession. Even Merkel’s most important supporters in the business lobby are siding with the Social Democrats.
Restraining borrowing and spending was wise after the 2008 financial crisis when budgetary discipline was necessary, Federation of German Industries head Dieter Kempf said in Fortune magazine. But today the economy is slowing, private investment is falling and the government can borrow at negative interest rates to make up for the gap.
Bloomberg editorial board member Andreas Kluth agreed. “The current government of the European Union’s largest economy has been inexcusably mediocre, and is badly in need of change,” Kluth wrote in an opinion piece. “Name almost any major challenge facing Europe today, and German flexibility and leadership is as needed as it is absent.”
The new leader of the Christian Democrats, Annegret Kramp-Karrenbauer, also sometimes called “Mini-Merkel,” appears to be standing by the chancellor and resisting calls for new spending. But Kramp-Karrenbauer also recently told a German newspaper that she didn’t see any “red lines” in talks with the Social Democrats, or policies that she would never consider in order to keep the coalition together.
Other challenges are emerging, too.
Social Democrats and Christian Democrats in parliament want to stop Chinese telecommunications company Huawei from building a 5G mobile network in Germany (where even 4G lags behind). They fear the company might help China with espionage. But, as the Financial Times reported, Merkel fears such efforts could backfire if Beijing imposes similar restrictions on German companies that depend on exports to the world’s biggest market.
British voters also thumbed their noses at Merkel and other European leaders who hoped Brexit critics would win, not lose, in recent elections in the United Kingdom, Reuters reported.
Politics is not kind to those whose time has passed
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4)
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court this week blasted the Federal Bureau of Investigation for “misconduct” in the Carter Page surveillance warrant. Some would call this accountability. Others will more rightly call it the FISC’s “shocked to find gambling” moment.
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FISA Court Owes Some Answers
Why did the presiding judge stonewall Rep. Devin Nunes when he reported FBI abuses?
By Kimberley A. Strassel.
The Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court this week blasted the Federal Bureau of Investigation for “misconduct” in the Carter Page surveillance warrant. Some would call this accountability. Others will more rightly call it the FISC’s “shocked to find gambling” moment.
Presiding Judge Rosemary Collyer issued her four-page rebuke of the FBI Tuesday, after a Justice Department inspector general report publicly exposing the FBI’s abuses. The judge blasted the FBI for misleading the court by providing “unsupported or contradicted” information and by withholding exculpatory details about Mr. Page. The FISC noted the seriousness of the conduct and gave the FBI until Jan. 10 to explain how it will do better.
The order depicts a court stunned to discover that the FBI failed in its “duty of candor,” and angry it was duped. That’s disingenuous. To buy it, you’d have to believe that not one of the court’s 11 members—all federal judges—caught a whiff of this controversy until now. More importantly, you’d have to ignore that the court was directly informed of the FBI’s abuses nearly two years ago.
On Feb. 7, 2018, Devin Nunes, then chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, sent a letter to Judge Collyer informing her of its findings in his probe of the FBI’s Page application. He wrote that “the Committee found that the FBI and DOJ failed to disclose the specific political actors paying for uncorroborated information” that went to the court, “misled the FISC regarding dissemination of this information,” and “failed to correct these errors in the subsequent renewals.” Mr. Nunes asked the court whether any transcripts of FISC hearings about this application existed, and if so, to provide them to the committee
Judge Collyer responded a week later, with a dismissive letter that addressed only the last request. The judge observed that any such transcripts would be classified, that the court doesn’t maintain a “systematic record” of proceedings and that, given “separation of power considerations,” Mr. Nunes would be better off asking the Justice Department. The letter makes no reference to the Intelligence Committee findings.
Mr. Nunes tried again in a June 13, 2018, follow-up letter, which I have obtained. He told the court that Congress “uncovered evidence that DOJ and FBI provided incomplete and potentially incorrect information to the Court,” and that “significant relevant information was not disclosed to the Court.” This was Mr. Nunes telling FISC exactly what Inspector General Michael Horowitz told the world—18 months sooner. Mr. Nunes asked Judge Collyer to “initiate a thorough investigation.” To assist her, the same month he separately sent FISC “a classified summary of Congress’s findings and facts” to that point. The letter was signed by all 13 Republican members of the Intelligence Committee.
Judge Collyer blew him off. Her letter on June 15, 2018, is four lines long. She informs Mr. Nunes she’s received his letter. She says she’s also received his classified information. She says she’s instructing staff to provide his info to “the judges who ruled on the referenced matters.” She thanks him for his “interest” in the court.
This is stunning, given the House Intelligence Committee has oversight jurisdiction of FISA. And Mr. Nunes didn’t come to the court with mere suspicions; he provided facts, following a thorough investigation. The court at the very least had an obligation to demand answers from the FBI and the Justice Department.
It didn’t—because it didn’t want to know. One of the biggest criticisms of the FISA court since its inception is that it is a rubber stamp for law enforcement. The FISA process is one in which government lawyers secretly and unilaterally present their case for surveillance to judges, with no defense attorney to argue in opposition. The system relies on judges to push back, but they don’t. Until recently, the FISA court routinely approved 100% of the applications before it.
Just as it rubber stamped the Page warrant. That application made clear the FBI was asking to spy on a U.S. citizen associated with a presidential candidate. And the court was provided a footnote indicating political operators were involved in producing the allegations. If ever there was time to grill a few government lawyers, this was it. Yet from the inspector general’s evidence, the court whipped through the warrant with barely a blink.
The secrecy of FISA had always shielded the players from scrutiny. But Mr. Nunes’s inspection of the Page applications threatened to highlight this rot in the system. Judge Collyer’s dismissive letters made clear just what the court thought of Congress poking its nose into the secret club.
After the Horowitz report, the court had no choice but to respond. It’s predictably pointing fingers at the FBI, but the court should itself account for its failure to provide more scrutiny, and its refusal to act when Mr. Nunes first exposed the problem. The FBI is far from alone in this disgrace.
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