So we are down to Romney and Gingrich.  Great.  Yawn.  Can anyone really see Newt Gingrich as President?  God help us.  Just the name alone should give us pause.  Is Bill Clinton a presidential name?  Yes.  George Bush?  Yep.  Barack Obama?  Not so much.  Newt Gingrich?  I don’t think so.  One might object that one [...]

The saga of MF Global has faded from the headlines a bit, what with the end of the world approaching in 13 months or so, and societal and economic collapse prior to that.  But one big question I have is why have I not heard any talk about either the US DOJ or some States [...]

The common wisdom one hears these days is that we are in a hard spot because economic growth is stalling, but government debt is so high that resort to additional “stimulus” via government expenditure is unpalatable.   This is of course only wisdom to the extent that you believe that government expenditure is inn fact [...]

Today there are multiple articles out about tax policy and the “President” is out talking about millionaires and billionaires again. This must be part of a coordinated effort to change public opinion in the wake of the Debt Ceiling battle and S&P downgrade. So lets tackle the biggest issue head-on. Maobama insisted [...]

Today the Department of Energy (DOE) in conjunction with the International Energy Agency decided it was going to release 30 Million barrels of oil from the Strategic Petroleum Reserve (SPR) – 1 million Barrels a day for 30 days.  According to the Energy Information Administration (a sub body of the DOE), we use about 18.77 [...]

If it were not so sad it would be funny.  This is one of Dennis Gartman’s favorite sayings.  The reaction to the May Employment Report by those in Washington would be hilarious if it weren’t so serious.  The reaction of those brain-dead in Washington is “We have to craft better policies to get jobs going”.  [...]

It is passing strange that a week or so after the Obama administration declared it would be taking a tough line on speculation and shortly after the Fed was roundly abused for a lackluster performance in its 1st press conference and for not taking any responsibility for the run-up in commodities due to its outrageously [...]

Today I paid $4.15 to put some gas in the tank of my car. Ben Bernanke refuses to accept that the Fed has anything to do with commodity inflation and refuses to view it as anything other than “transitory” according to remarks on April 5th.  Before putting the lie to such nonsense, it will [...]

I love Wisconsin.  My favorite area is what is known as the Driftless Area, a strip about 30-50 miles wide running from Eau Claire down into Illinois that is free of the drumlins and moraines and erratic detritus of the glaciers that covered the northern states in the last glacial period which ended some 20,000 [...]

With China’s Premier in town, it seems a good time to review where the United States stands vis-a-vis China in the realm of trade.  China is still nominally a Communist state.  It is an authoritarian state.  It imprisons its citizens on the basis of their thoughts without affording them due process of law or access [...]

I just watched Maria Bartiromo interview Jennifer Granholm, the Governor of Michigan. The topic of the interview was the great job Granholm was doing revitalizing the Michigan economy by partnering with automotive green energy companies, specifically those producing the batteries to be used in electric vehicles. After much blabber about access to capital, [...]

I am in the habit of rolling through most stop signs at 4 way stops. I used to come to pretty much a full stop. But then I thought about the following.   The U.S. imported 1.2 Million barrels of oil per day from Saudi Arabia in 2009. At $70 per barrel (that [...]

I always sort of a grimly chuckle when I hear a politician on the tube say something like “Our focus is now entirely on creating jobs.” Politicians may be just about the stupidest creatures on our shared Earth, but they do know one thing. When people feel economically insecure, they tend to [...]

Antichrist’s Adjutant: Henry Waxman
Dumb as a Rock, but just as dangerous when thrown at your head – 3rd in line for the Presidency, House Speaker Nancy Pelosi

These are two of the most powerful Demunists and Commocrats in Washington, Waxman, Chair of the House Energy Committe, and Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the House of Representatives.  Waxman [...]

In December the Fed announced that it would target Fed Funds at 0 to 1/4% and it also announced that it would be in the market for agency debt and treasuries, effectively monetizing the debt of the United States.  The dollar, which had been strengthening in the flight to quality as risk positions were eliminated [...]

UPDATE 05 March 2009: I would add that in light of what seems an unbelievable overextension of their balance sheet by writing hundreds of billions of dollars or more in Credit Default Swap (CDS) contracts they could not even remotely begin to conceive of being able to honor in the event, it would [...]

President Obama has been using the phrase “the tired policies of the past” quite a bit to refer to supply-side conservative economic ideas.  He should be careful.  These words sound like words that could have been uttered by Reagan in 1980 or by Newt Gingrich in 1994.
The tired policies of the past are precisely the [...]

UPDATE:  4 June 2009 – Freedom House and some other organizations have released a report, Undermining Democracy: 21st Century Authoritarians (pdf) that captures the ideas expressed here so I guess it is now official.
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I have been meaning to write about this for about 5 years, but the installment of the Obama administration with what should [...]

In listening to some congressional idiot talk about aid to the auto makers, I was struck by their determination in insisting that this is not a bailout but a bridge loan.  There is a grain of truth in this I suppose.  When the commercial paper markets seized up, financing oprerations would have become very difficult [...]

People have to make judgments and they also have limited time to do so.  This probably explains why so many Americans are content and even eager to see the same rubes return to positions of authority, or their children or siblings or spouses.  The latest example is of course Vladimir – er – Michael Bloomberg.  [...]