Saturday, January 23, 2010

The Idiots in the Senate

The United States Senate is full of complete idiots. With hooker-loving David Vitter(R-LA), primary-scared John McCain(R-AZ), and two sure losers this November on the Democratic side,
Barbara Boxer(D-CA) and Russell Feingold(D-WI) all coming out against the renomination of Fed Chairman Bernanke, something is really wrong. To be sure Chairman Bernanke is not without sin, too much monetary ease in 2003-4 and regulatory failures with respect to sub-prime mortgages, but he and a few others really did save our country from The Great Depression 2.0.

What are these Senators thinking? Voting against Bernanke won't save their hides, but should the nomination go down, watch out below for stocks, bonds and the U.S. Dollar. Even if these idiots don't care about the markets, at the end of the day, they are voting against job creation and for higher unemployment rates.

Friday, January 22, 2010

In the Dow Jones Newswire, "Ex-Tarp Chief: Proposals Should Consider Broad Risk

JANUARY 22, 2010, 4:35 P.M. ET
UPDATE: Ex-TARP Chief: Proposals Should Consider Broad Risk

(Adds post-speech comments from Lambright in fourth paragraph.)
By Marshall Eckblad
Of DOW JONES NEWSWIRES

NEW YORK (Dow Jones)--The former chief investment officer of the U.S. government's Troubled Asset Relief Program said Friday proposals for overhauling the U.S. financial system should focus on limiting broad risks at institutions large and small.
Risk "could arise from lots of small institutions," said Jim Lambright, who left the TARP program last summer, at a financial services conference hosted by the Australian Consulate in New York.
President Barack Obama said in a speech Thursday he is committed to limiting the investment activities and risk levels of the nation's banks, and he also signaled the biggest banks could be forced to shrink.
Lambright didn't address any specific proposals in his speech. He said after the speech that he was challenging the audience to ask "where risks might migrate to other parts of the system."
Lambright was an appointee in the Bush administration under then-Treasury Secretary Henry Paulson, but stayed on to work for the Obama administration.
David Shulman, a former executive at Lehman Brothers and now an economist at the UCLA Anderson Forecast, told Dow Jones Newswires on Thursday that any regulatory overhaul should include capital requirements for bigger hedge funds to prevent banks from being exposed to risk at less regulated firms.
-By Marshall Eckblad, Dow Jones Newswires; 212-416-2156; marshall.eckblad@dowjones.com

Source:http://online.wsj.com/article/BT-CO-20100122-712290.html?mod=WSJ_latestheadlines

Sunday, January 17, 2010

An Upset in Massachusetts?

I now think that GOP insurgent Scott Brown will upset Democrat Martha Coakley in this Tuesday's primary. What was unthinkable a month ago, a Republican winning the late Senator Kennedy's seat, has now become a real posibility. Why? Aside from Coakley running a very poor campaign as evidenced by her calling Red Sox pitching star Curt Schilling a Yankee fan, it has become apparent that President Obama's health-care plan has lost its popularity in bluest Massachusetts. After all Massachusetts voters have been living with an earlier version of Obamacare for the past few years and are not all that happy with it. Further exacerbating the situation was the backroom deal with organized labor exempting labor union members and government employees ( a redundancy) from the tax on Cadillac health plans through 2018. For all of the talk of CSPAN visibility during the 2008 campaign, Obama has lost his good government gloss by getting to caught up in the dealmaking ways of the Capitol.

However there is a more subtle reason why Scott Brown will likely win. Just as in New York City, where the electorate showed their resentment to Mayor Bloomberg changing the rules to allow him to run for a third term by reelecting him by the slimmest majority, Massachusetts voters will rebel against the party sachems for changing the rules to allow Paul Kirk to temporarily take Senator Kennedy's seat by appointment rather than election. The Senate Democrats needed a 60th vote quickly. They got it, but they will now pay for it by losing it in an election.

To be sure Brown is running in the bluest of blue states, but I remind you that in another blue state, goodie two-shoes Minnesota, wrestler Jesse Ventura surprised all of the pundits and was elected governor. That's why it is not a stretch to visualize the former Cosmo nude model to be sitting in the U.S. Senate.

On the talk shows today all of the pundits were focusing on the implication for Obamacare in the Senate should Brown win. They are all myopic as usual. Should Brown win, Obamacare will lose its majority in the House! A Senate loss in Massachussetts means that House Democrats have very few safe seats in 2010.