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Turning America Into Iran

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Another goofball televangelist just proved how he and his ilk would prefer America to be more like Iran.

Immediately after the Colorado movie theater shootings, I was ready to post my thoughts about the sleazy ways in which the mainstream news media exploit such events.  After considering the darkly sarcastic things I had to say, I decided that such a posting would be inappropriate – because it was too soon after the tragedy.  I chose to heed the advice from that old song by The English Beat:  Save It for Later.  Too many people were hurting from this incident.  A number of guys died because they threw themselves over their girlfriends in the ultimate act of love.

Nevertheless, those who would like to see the Iranization of America did not find it necessary to restrain themselves from expressing opinions which would inflame the open emotional wounds sustained by innocent people.  The Iranizationists saw fit to remind everyone that this happened because God concluded that some Americans deserved this.

Many followers of these deranged televangelists get irate when commentators point out how such religious zealots want to make America into another Iran.  The rebuff is always the same:  “Iranians are Muslim and we are Christian!”  Nevertheless, one need only look at what is being said to see that the Islamist message and the Wackovangelist messages are the same.

Immediately after the tragedy, televangelist Jerry Newcombe phoned into a program produced by the homo-hating, American Family Association.  You can watch this clip of that event.  Pay close attention to how the show’s host blinks incessantly throughout the call.  I would love to get a psychiatrist’s opinion as to what – if anything – that might indicate.  Anyway, Newcombe wanted to remind everyone that any individual killed in that theater who was not Christian would be going to hell.  In other words:  If your murdered friend or loved one was a Jew – that person would be going to hell.

Newcombe’s claim was the same spiteful remark we hear from Islamist terrorists after they kill Jews:  Not only did all those people get killed – but they are also going to hell!

How thoughtful of Newcombe to remind the infidels’ next of kin that their loved ones are headed toward eternal damnation!

In Newcombe’s America, Jews go to hell when they die.  How does that version of America differ from Iran?


 

Romney and the Rice Card

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With the Republican Convention set to begin on August 27, we are heading toward the final phase of the GOP Veepstakes.  Currently, the mainstream media mania is focused on the belief that Romney will play the Rice Card.  It won’t happen.  The excitement concerns the possibility that playing the Rice Card will enhance support from African-American and female voters.  Unfortunately, Condoleezza Rice lacks the degree of charisma one would expect in a Vice-Presidential candidate.  Worse yet, the baggage she brings from her testimony before the 9/11 Commission, particularly in response to the questions posed by Richard Ben-Veniste concerning the August 6, 2001 Presidential Daily Briefing is the most important reason she will not be picked.  Her failure to seriously heed the warning, “Bin Laden Determined to Attack Inside the United States” would become a big issue – once again.  Her response to Ben-Veniste’s interrogation was asinine:

Commissioner, this was not a warning.  This was a historic memo — historical memo prepared by the agency because the president was asking questions about what we knew about the inside.

We often hear pundits recite the Cardinal Rule for Presidential candidates, in selecting their Vice-Presidential nominee, as: “Do No Harm”.  In other words:  Don’t screw up your campaign by choosing a controversial running mate.  If Romney were to play the Rice card, he would append to his own campaign the Bush administration’s failure to heed the warnings about the September 11 attacks.  It won’t happen.

Wall Street Journal columnist Peggy Noonan – who considered the choice of Sarah Palin as “cynical” – recently endorsed Rice as the best candidate:

Consider:  A public figure of obvious and nameable accomplishment whose attainments can’t be taken away from her.  Washington experience – she wouldn’t be learning on the job.  Never ran for office but no political novice. An academic, but not ethereal or abstract.  A woman in a year when Republicans aren’t supposed to choose a woman because of what is now called the 2008 experience – so the choice would have a certain boldness.  A black woman in a campaign that always threatens to take on a painful racial overlay.  A foreign-policy professional acquainted with everyone who’s reigned or been rising the past 20 years.

What is really happening here is that potential candidates from minority groups are being paraded before the public, purely for optics.  Last month, it was Marco Rubio and now it’s Condoleezza Rice.  It has been important for the Romney camp to convince the voters that it seriously considered putting a minority group member on the ticket before finally deciding on a white man.

At this point, the smart money is on Ohio Senator Rob Portman.  Portman is from a battleground state and Romney can be confident that Portman won’t make any stupid moves or inappropriate remarks which could damage the campaign.  Romney needs to play it safe and Portman is a safe choice.

Actually, the Rice Card is being played right now.  You won’t see it again after August.


 

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EU-phoria Fades

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The most recent “light at the end of the tunnel” for the European sovereign debt crisis was seen on Friday June 29.  At a summit in Brussels, leaders of the European Union member nations agreed upon yet another “plan for a plan” to recapitalize failing banks – particularly in Spain.  The Summit Statement, which briefly summarized the terms of the plan, explained that an agreement was reached to establish a supervisory entity which would oversee the European banking system and to allow recapitalization of troubled banks without adding to sovereign debt.  By owning shares in the ailing banks, the European Stability Mechanism would no longer have a senior creditor status, in order to prevent investors from being scared away from buying sovereign bonds.

The bond markets were relieved to know that once again, taxpayers would be paying for the losses sustained by bondholders.  The reaction was immediate.  Spanish and Italian bond yields dropped faster than William Shatner’s pants when he passed through airport securitySpain’s ten-year bond yield dropped to 6.51 percent on June 29 from the previous day’s closing level of 6.87 percent.  Italy’s ten-year bond yield sank to 5.79 percent from the previous closing level of 6.24 percent.

Global stock indices went parabolic after the news from Brussels on June 29.  Nevertheless, many commentators expressed their skepticism about the latest plan.  Economist John Hussman of the Hussman Funds discussed the shortcomings of the proposal in his Weekly Market Comment:

The upshot here is that Spain’s banks are undercapitalized and insolvent, but rather than take them over and appropriately restructure them in a way that requires bondholders to take losses instead of the public, Spain hopes to tap European bailout funds so that it can provide capital directly to its banks through the European Stability Mechanism (ESM), and put all of Europe’s citizens on the hook for the losses.Spainhas been trying to get bailout funds without actually having the government borrow the money, because adding new debt to its books would drive the country further toward sovereign default.  Moreover, institutions like the ESM, the ECB, and the IMF generally enjoy senior status on their loans, so that citizens and taxpayers are protected.  Spain’s existing bondholders have objected to this, since a bailout for the banks would make their Spanish debt subordinate to the ESM.

As a side note, the statement suggests that Ireland, which already bailed its banks out the old-fashioned way, will demand whatever deal Spain gets.

So the hope is that Europe will agree to establish a single bank supervisor for all of Europe’s banks.  After that, the ESM – Europe’s bailout fund – would have the “possibility” to provide capital directly to banks.  Of course, since we’re talking about capital – the first buffer against losses – the bailout funds could not simply be lent to the banks, since debt is not capital.  Instead, it would have to be provided by directly purchasing stock (though one can imagine the Orwellian possibility of the ESM lending to bank A to buy shares of bank B, and lending to bank B to buy shares of bank A).  On the question of whether this is a good idea, as opposed to the alternative of properly restructuring banks, ask Spain how the purchase of Bankia stock has been working out for Spanish citizens (Bankia’s bondholders should at least send a thank-you note).  In any event, if this plan for a plan actually goes through, the bailout funds – provided largely by German citizens – would not only lose senior status to Spain’s government debt; the funds would be subordinate even to the unsecured debt held by the bondholders of Spanish banks, since equity is the first thing you wipe out when a bank is insolvent.

It will be interesting to see how long it takes for the German people to figure this out.

The criticism expressed by Charles Hugh Smith is particularly relevant because it addresses the latest move by the European Central Bank to lower its benchmark interest rate by 25 basis points (0.25%) to a record low of 0.75 percent.  Smith’s essay, entitled “Sorry Bucko Europe Is Still in a Death Spiral” consisted of sixteen phases of the death spiral dynamic.  Here are the final seven:

10. Transferring bad debt to central banks does not mean interest will not accrue: interest on the debt still must be paid out of future income, impairing that income.

11. Lowering interest rates does not create collateral where none exists.

12. Lowering interest rates only stretches out the death spiral, it does not halt or reverse it.

13. Centralizing banking and oversight does not create collateral where none exists.

14. Europe will remain in a financial death spiral until the bad debt is renounced/written off and assets are liquidated on the open market.

15. Anything other than this is theater.  Pushing the endgame out a few months is not a solution, nor will it magically create collateral or generate sustainable “growth.”

16. The Martian Central Bank could sell bonds to replace bad debt in Europe, but as long as the MCB collects interest on the debt, then nothing has changed.

The Martians would be extremely bent when they discovered there is no real collateral for their 10 trillion-quatloo loan portfolio in Europe.

Of course, Mr. Smith is forgetting that the Martians could call upon those generous taxpayers from planet Zobion for a bailout   .   .   .