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Mirror, 6 May 2013 – Iranian forces are flooding in to war-ravaged Syria to back up President Assad’s ailing forces. Crack troops including Revolutionary Guards have flown in and a Western intelligence source said Iran now has more than 1,500 military personnel in Syria. The move comes as Israeli steps up its own involvement in the bloody civil war. Yesterday its warplanes attacked the Syrian capital of Damascus, triggering three huge [...] Sen. Marco Rubio acknowledged Tuesday on a conservative radio talk show that the Gang of Eight’s comprehensive immigration reform bill won’t likely pass the Republican-led House. The comments from Rubio, perhaps the most influential congressional Republican on immigration, illustrate the challenges facing the prospects for reform after months of private negotiations by a bipartisan coalition of senators produced a wide-ranging, 844-page bill. “The bill that’s in place right now probably can’t pass [...] from Zero Hedge: Back in 2012, amid “intense pressure from Obama” including an appeal for its passage in his 2012 State of the Union address, Congress passed theStop Trading on Congressional Knowledge (STOCK) Act (with 96-3 theatrical votes in the Senate, and 417-2 even more theatrical votes in the House) – a bill prohibiting the use of non-public information for private profit, including insider trading by members of Congress and other government employees. [...] by Dr. Ron Paul, The Daily Bell: President Obama announced his choices for key national security posts this past week, and there has been both celebration and gnashing of teeth in Washington and around the country. There is widespread belief that either or both of these nominees will have an immediate and profound effect on US policy. However, this belief is really just a mistaken over-emphasis on personnel over policy. We should not [...] SEN. MITCH MCCONNELL (R-KENTUCKY): My office submitted our latest offer to the Majority Leader last night at 7:10 p.m. and offered to work through the night to find common ground. The Majority Leader’s staff informed us they would be getting back to us this morning at 10:00 a.m., despite the obvious time crunch we all have. It’s now 2:00 p.m., and we have yet to receive a response to our [...] Despite Americans’ willingness to strengthen gun laws in the wake of Sandy Hook and other deadly mass shootings, Gallup finds public opposition to a broad ban on the possession of handguns at a record-high 74%. Conversely, the 24% in favor is the lowest recorded since Gallup first asked the question in 1959. http://times247.com/articles/gallup-record-74-oppose-handgun-ban.mobile from CNBC: This could be the week when markets lose patience with politicians and the “fiscal cliff.” Despite lots of comments about willingness to compromise, the markets will look for hard proof from Congress and the White House that some progress is being made as the year-end deadline on the fiscal cliff approaches. There have been talks between the White House and Republicans, but there were no visible signs by Friday of [...] Under Fed Chairman Ben Bernanke, the Fed has been the great enabler of Washington’s fiscal excesses of the past few years. The Fed’s quantitative easing blurs the line between fiscal and monetary policies. The Fed may still be politically independent, but fiscal policy has become very dependent on the willingness of the Fed to purchase lots of government securities. A consolidated statement of the US Treasury and the Fed would show [...] Perhaps the most interesting part is where he talks about specifics that are holding the economy back still. “Recently, the housing market has shown some clear signs of improvement, as home sales, prices, and construction have all moved up since early this year. These developments are encouraging, and it seems likely that, on net, residential investment will be a source of economic growth and new jobs over the next couple of years. However, [...] President Obama and House Speaker John Boehner have each made cursory appeals to cooperation in the wake of Tuesday’s election. But they’re still making incompatible demands about the tax code. And on Friday, President Obama made clear that if Republicans reject the policy goal he campaigned on, all of the Bush tax cuts will expire. “If we’re serious about reducing the deficit we have to combine spending cuts with revenue, and [...] By Ron Hera
Hera Research is pleased to present a sobering interview with Neil Barofsky, Senior Research Scholar, Senior Fellow and Adjunct Professor of Law at the New York University School of Law. From December 2008 until March 2011 Mr. Barofsky served as the Special Inspector General for the $700 billion U.S. Troubled Asset Relief Program (TARP) that bailed out the U.S. banking system in 2008.
In his role as Inspector General, [...] CITI: The ECB’s New Plan Could Be As Worthless As The ECB’s Old Plan
Citi is out with its reaction to the bond-buying plan ECB President Mario Draghi revealed at the central bank’s big meeting earlier today. Rates strategist Jamie Searle asks some pointed questions about the new program (aka the OMT) – namely, whether it’s robust enough to avoid the same fate that the ECB’s previous attempts at bond buying (via the SMP) did, where [...] Citi is out with its reaction to the bond-buying plan ECB President Mario Draghi revealed at the central bank’s big meeting earlier today.
Rates strategist Jamie Searle asks some pointed questions about the new program (aka the OMT) – namely, whether it’s robust enough to avoid the same fate that the ECB’s previous attempts at bond buying (via the SMP) did, where sovereign bond yields in Italy and Spain ended up moving higher after implementation. Searle [...] TUNIS, Tunisia (AP) – U.S. Defense Secretary Leon Panetta acknowledged Monday that increasingly stiff international sanctions have yet to compel Iran to give up its nuclear ambitions. But he argued that more pressure eventually would lead Iran to “do what’s right.” Iran’s disputed nuclear program, which Tehran contends is only for peaceful purposes, is a prominent backdrop to Panetta’s five-day tour of the Middle East and North Africa. On Wednesday he’ll [...] President Obama has accused Mitt Romney of raking in profits from investing in companies that ship American jobs overseas, but according to his most recent financial disclosure, he and First Lady Michelle Obama have hundreds of thousands of dollars in a mutual fund that has large holdings in corporations that outsource jobs. “(Romney) invested in companies that have been called ‘pioneers’ of outsourcing,” Obama said at a Saturday campaign event in [...] Although the GDP figures from China were not yet disastrous, given the very little faith the market has on the accuracy of Chinese data, quite a few people including ourselves suspect growth was actually lower. That suspicion was raised especially when electricity output growth has slowed to zero, which implies much lower growth.
Sell-side consensus, however, believes that growth will recover in the second half of the year. The reason for such recovery [...] Democrats are making increasingly explicit threats about their willingness to let nearly $600 billion worth of tax hikes and spending cuts take effect in January unless Republicans drop their opposition to higher taxes for the nation’s wealthiest households. Emboldened by signs that GOP resistance to new taxes may be weakening, senior Democrats say they are prepared to weather a fiscal event that could plunge the nation back into recession if the new year arrives without an [...] Attorney General Eric Holder agreed to meet with Rep. Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) on Tuesday as part of his attempt to stave off a vote to hold him in contempt of Congress. In a letter to the chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee sent on Monday, Holder proposed the meeting in order to discuss the role of the Justice Department in the botched gun-tracking operation, Fast and Furious. He also [...] UPDATE 4:30 PM ET/11:30 ATHENS
If you thought for a moment that the Greek election would end in a clean outcome tonight, the joke was on you. In the first wave of exit polls that came out at 12:00 PM ET, the pro-bailout, conservative New Democracy party held a razor thin 0.5% lead over the leftist SYRIZA party. Then an hour and a half later, it became clear that New Democracy would come in [...] The United States held onto its AA+ rating from Standard & Poor’s Friday but the agency said it also kept a negative outlook on the country, citing the political deadlock over fixing the fiscal deficit. Ten months after delivering a historic rate cut to Washington, removing its top-level AAA rating, S&P warned that the reasons for the downgrade remained in place and that if anything they were deteriorating. The ideological deadlock between Republicans and Democrats continued to [...] From FT: The EU official line – no renegotiation of the programme, no exit at any price – is however not credible either. For if the price it puts on exit is infinite, the EU cannot deter Greece from making use of its leverage. To strengthen its hand, it has to be ready to contemplate a forced exit. But it can only do that if equipping itself to limit potential damages. [...] The experts miss the point of the free market. If Greece goes then they will have inflation the likes that Europe hasn’t seen in decades. Too bad for the Greeks. What the experts don’t see, will be the positive effects that Spain, Italy and Portugal will have on their populations willingness to cut their deficits. The problem at this time is that no one wants to take the hard step and cut [...] by Charles Hugh Smith from Of Two Minds A Crazy Idea That Might Just Work: Greece’s New Currency, The U.S. Dollar There is an undeniable internal logic to the crazy idea that Greece should jettison the euro and accept the U.S. dollar as its national currency. Before you dismiss my crazy idea out of hand, hear me out. It might not be as crazy as it seems on first blush. I have a straightforward three-point [...] One Million Moms had attempted to tarnish JCPenney’s reputation by condemning the use of a lesbian couple in the retailer’s Mother’s Day catalogue. But in doing so, the conservative U.S. activist group has in fact brought more positive attention to the brand than usual. According to YouGov BrandIndex, a UK-based research group that measures public perceptions of brands, JCPenney’s brand health ‘rose’ after One Million Moms released a complaint against the retailer earlier [...] by ZH
In his usual quiet manner, TrimTabs CEO Charles Biderman unloads his emotional baggage along withUSAWatchdog’s Greg Hunter in this 15-minute interview. The sad truth is that, just like his alter-ego Lewis Black, Biderman is right – again and again. Whether it is reflecting on the kick-the-can mentality of polticians or US investor’s apparent willingness to accept the pulling-the-printing-press-over-our-eyes-behavior, or the fact that Europe can only get worse and how that [...] (Reuters) – America’s swelling ranks of fallen municipal borrowers have been blamed in the past year on ‘what-were-they-thinking’ causes, be it a Taj Mahal sewer system in Alabama or an overpriced trash incinerator in Pennsylvania’s capital city of Harrisburg. But the next series of major cities and counties in danger of defaulting on their debt can hardly point to one single decision for their malaise. Whether it be Detroit, Miami or [...] |
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Moody’s: “The ECB Can Do No More Than Buy Time”
It would be odd to suggest that one of the most scathing critiques of the ECB’s attempts to talk up the market on nothing but hope, promises and expectations would come from rating agency Moody’s, yet that is precisely what has happened. With Swiss, Dutch, Finnish, and German short-dated bonds once again hitting new record low (negative) rates (and Italian 10Y is weakening), it would appear that at least some of [...]