A Respectable Note of Optimism in the Budget Numbers

I've spouted alot of budget doom and gloom here for a while now, justifiably I think.  I thought to be fair, I'd give some space to a much more optimistic take from a highly respected source.  You can read the full analysis here, but here is a taste:

The budget deficit is still very high from an historical perspective, but it is also well within the range of what is manageable and sustainable. If current trends were to continue, the budget would be balanced within the next 3 years! (Interesting note: in a January 2011 post, I suggested that the improvement already evident in the budget outlook at that time could result in a balanced budget by 2016. Things have evolved accordingly.)

There's lots of good news to be found here. On the one hand, Congress has managed, for whatever reason, to rein in the growth of federal spending. Four years ago it was out of control, but now spending is back within historical ranges relative to GDP. On the other hand, we've seen a significant amount of fiscal retrenchment in the past four years, yet the economy has managed to grow. Keynesians four years ago would have been apoplectic at the thought of reducing the deficit from 10% of GDP to 4% of GDP in four short years, but it turns out the sky has not fallen. Looking ahead, Congress now has more freedom of action because the budget is in much better shape. If done right, fiscal policy could become genuinely stimulative (e.g., simplifying the tax code and reducing marginal rates) in coming years.

This is sound analysis.  Where I part ways with Grannis, is that these past few years' deficits haven't merely faded from the scene, they now reside, rather perilously, on our balance sheet.  We can't simply wave goodbye to deficits in the rear view mirror, we have to live with their progeny, which is the debt.  And it is the debt that can bring on a crisis.  Unless we make a commitment to undo the debt accumulation and/or keep deficits de minimus for a long time to come while we grow out of the debt, the deficit reduction is not cause for much celebration.  It is merely unfinished business.  Looking at the political landscape, I don't see the commitment nor the discipline to compete the task.

A Harvard Education Is Expensive, Most Especially To All of Us That Didn't Go There

As I contemplate, yet again, the sheer idiocy on display from our foreign policy to our domestic travails, (i.e. the deceitful and purposeful destruction of our individual health insurance market) that were thoroughly predictable and predicted, all brought to us by the credentialed ivy league eilte, I am put in mind of a classic NBfPB post.

Tell Me Again, What's Expensive Exactly?

Funny the cosmic forces at work in the world. I was just reading something (this I think) that put me in mind of a quip used ad nauseum by former Harvard President Derek Bok. Bok is fond of saying, in reply to the criticism that Harvard's tuition is too high, "if you think education is expensive, try ignorance." I've always liked this quip, it's clever and captures the important concept that not all costs are monetary. That said, I think, as applied, the quip is false. Education is not necessarily expensive, but a Harvard degree certainly is, and the two are not the same. To wit, it is the credential that is expensive - the education need not be expensive, nor even need it be present (come to think of it, wasn't this the stance of the left vis-a-vis the Yale and Harvard Business School "educated" George W. Bush??). Nevertheless, the deeper falsehood lies in the fact that for society the cost of ignorance, as defined by a lack of a Harvard or similar education, looks downright manageable (tantalizing even) versus the ever mounting costs of a world run by our credentialled elites. Sure enough, Victor Davis Hanson supplies the timely and erudite exposition of this irony in "The New Sophists".

In light of the embarrassing spectacle emanating out of Brown University this past week, the wisdom of this is more apparent than ever (if I do say so myself).

Goldman Places Its Bets

Well, she IS a legendary cattle futures trader...

CULTURE OF CORRUPTION: Hillary Clinton’s Lucrative Goldman Sachs Speaking Gigs. I think, at some point, you’ve made enough money. For the Clintons that point came a long time ago.

No Sympathy for the Rubes

Rubes All.

No sympathy from these quarters.  Conservatives saw this coming a mile away, and we told you so.  But you all were off in Unicorn Fart Land, batting your eyelashes at the Lightworker. 

Choke on you cancellation notices.

Hope and Change...and Bankruptcy

Fiscal 2013 is in the books and it's official, the Lightworker has racked up 5 of the 6 largest budget deficits in the history of the USA.  Obama's got three more fiscal years to put his stamp on.  By the time it is all said and done, he'll have title to 7 of 8 of the largest deficits in history and he'll have racked up more debt than all of his predecessors combined.  Hope and Change, Baby!

This might be a good time to read or reread why Obama and his enablers are doing this, why they are spending like crazy and resist any and every plan to gets things in order.  Hint:  they are teeing up an Argentina-style theft of personal wealth.

The Plan Behind Why the Obamacrats Have No Plan

Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner said it, the Obamacrats don't have a plan for our impending fiscal meltdown.  The actual quote was this:

"We're not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem. What we do know is we don't like yours."

Not having a plan is the plan.  Spending with abandon and hurtling us ever faster toward a fiscal crack-up IS the plan.  No administration would rack up $7 trillion in additional national debt on top of $10 trillion in five years and then fight tooth and nail to assure we add an additional $2-3 trillion by the time a two-term presidency is over, just for the hell of it.

Ultimately, there is a plan.

Look at the debt clock.  What is the only number in green on that page that even comes close to signifying that we aren't dead flat broke?   Hint: Look towards the bottom.

It's Total National Assets.  Specifically, Household Assets and Corporate Assets.  There's $96 trillion there.

And they're going to steal it.

Not today.  Not Barack Obama.  But someday.  The next Barack Obama will do it.  This Barack Obama is just preparing for the heist to go down.  The next radical sheep in moderate clothing that the media fawns over, covers for, and aids and abets all the way to the White House will steal from this honey pot.

It is a core part of their ideology.  Read The Communist Manifesto and/or any other of the hundreds of left wing treatises or manifestos written since.  They want to confiscate private wealth.  Always have, always will.  And they do it all the time.  Poland just did it.  Cyprus did it.  Argentina is famous for doing it.  They want to rule and take all your money to do with it what they will.  And they will.

Look what they're doing.  Listen to their rhetoric.

What are they doing with food stamps?  They've blown the doors off and gotten 15% of the population hooked on food stamps, buying 11% of all the food bought in America.  This time they closed parks and monuments.  Someday they're going to shut off food stamps to create riots.  They're going to say that other people are keeping you from eating.  Those awful racists in the other party are out to starve you.  And they're going to say that the country can't pay its bills - not $20 trillion of debt, but bills.  Like food bills, the lights, the heat etc.  American life just can't go on unless those selfish, unpatriotic, hostage-taking racists "share".

And then they'll steal your money.  Not from your wallet, but from your pension fund, your stock portfolio, your bank account, your business.  They'll even take it out of your home.  Anywhere you have a store of wealth that you (or your ancestors) have worked hard for.  They'll get it.  It's you or the country and millions upon millions of dependent wards of the state from food stamp recipients to unionized government workers to ObamaCare dependents will take to the streets to make sure they get it.

It's an old playbook.  America has been a tough nut to crack using this well-worn playbook.  But it's coming.

That is the plan behind having no plan.

Enjoy Your Thug Government America

Government by fear.

Enjoy it America.  You voted for it.  You deserve it.

Checking In

Hey, did I say that California's fiscal and economic outlook would look so desperate that they would resort to the unthinkable?  Why yes, yes I did.

Voila...

 Did I say that the government would begin to default on its obligations, starting with Social Security and initially by draining benefits of their purchasing power?  Yup.

The easiest obligations to weasel out of are non-bonded promises.  Pensions, Medicaid, Medicare, and Social Security will, at best, be purposefully drained of purchasing power as governments stealthily reduce benefits, and, at worst be cut outright.

 Voila...

Did I say that Dems are driving us to the fiscal abyss and when they want to steal what bit of our money they can't tax, their message will be 'these racists are keeping food off your tables'?  Yup.

This time they closed parks and monuments.  Someday they're going to shut off food stamps to create riots.  They're going to say that other people are keeping you from eating.  Those awful racists in the other party are out to starve you.  And they're going to say that the country can't pay its bills - not $20 trillion of debt, but bills.  Like food bills, the lights, the heat etc.  American life just can't go on unless those selfish, unpatriotic, hostage-taking racists "share". 

Here is a precursor to what you'll hear.

The superintendent of the Tucson Unified School District, H. T. Sanchez, has called local taxpayers with “disposable wealth” a bunch of bigots who must be convinced “to educate kids who don’t look like their kids.”

Yup.  Think your taxes are already pretty high and think that the public school system might be too inefficient??  Racist!  Fork it over!
 
It's all coming.

UPDATE:  And did I say that even if the fiscal situation went really well, we are still structurally in for @$600 billion deficits?  Yup, I did.  Well, we collected a record amount of taxes in fiscal 2013 and still racked up a $680 billion deficit. 

Blood & Gore Try to Scare You Out of Your Energy Investments

Ha!  Al Gore has come out in the WSJ and directly contradicted one of my 5 realities for investors going forward.  I said:

3) Global Warming Is Dead - From a policy perspective that is.  The climate will do what it does but there ain't gonna be a re-ordering of the global economy cooked up by the warmists.  If you've been scared out of energy investments by the incessant bleating of global warmists, you've got to get back in.  The world needs energy and it can't afford phony energy, so get invested in energy that works.  So don't invest in solar or wind or any of that garbage (if any of it does turn out to actually work, the Exxons of the world will wind up owning it ultimately anyway).  Furthermore, those in thrall to the religion of climate change will wake up; expect Europe to drastically improve its competitiveness by jettisoning decades of wrong-headed warmist policy.

Al "Release my Chakra" Gore and co-author David Blood tell carbon source investors that their assets are worth alot less because much of the value will be stranded. (Blood & Gore, could be the title of a horror flick, and what they have to say, on the surface, is scary!)

Here is the relevance of carbon to investing: There is consensus within the scientific community that increasing the global temperature by more than 2°C will likely cause devastating and irreversible damage to the planet. Reliable measurements make it clear that we will easily cross this threshold in the near term at our current rate of CO2 emissions. So in an effort to avoid it, the International Energy Agency has calculated a global "Carbon Budget" that accommodates the burning of merely one-third of existing fossil fuel reserves by 2050. Put differently, at least two-thirds of fossil fuel reserves will not be monetized if we are to stay below 2°C of warming—creating "stranded carbon assets."

Oddly, Gore and Blood don't have the conviction that these assets are going to get marked down via normal processes, so they go on to urge investors to a) pressure Boards, 2) divest carbon and 3) invest in renewables.  They're scaremongering and urging people to action.  They might as well have commercials running on late night cable along with all the "BUY GOLD" hokum.

The truth is that investors, companies and Board of Directors have been assiduously evaluating just this question for many years now and their informed decisions are contrary to ole' Chakra Al's view.  Certainly developing countries like China and Brazil have been plowing tens of billions into hydrocarbon assets.  Capital is flowing into - and being rewarded handsomely - "tight" hydrocarbon extraction, both oil and gas.  Previously skeptical and environmentally rigid nations are warming to fracking and more exploration.  Even voters are realizing the value of hydrocarbons to their economies and are voting out environmental zealots (i.e. Australia).

Al Gore seems to think he's educating people and doing them a favor.  Trust me, people with alot more money and alot more brains have been on the case for a long time, and they think Al is simply wrong - they are plowing time, energy and money into hydrocarbon energy at an accelerated pace.

Gore and Blood's piece amounts to a rearguard salvo after the battle has been lost.  Nice try at a scare on Halloween fellas, but the world has moved on.

Tell Me Again About the Wisdom of Crowds???

I thought for sure that it was patently obvious what a disaster an Obama presidency would be - mostly because he was a sketchy individual with silly ideas and no experience doing anything.  But we elected and re-elected him. 

After five years, and in the midst of the ObamaCare explosion (never mind the long list of incompetencies, scandals and embarrassments), New York City is poised to elect a sketchy individual with silly ideas and no experience doing much of anything as its mayor.  And Virginians appear poised to elect an extremely sketchy individual (also with batty notions, but I am certain that McAuliffe has no fixed notions about anything) as their governor. 

It's one thing to have different views and political philosophies, it is another thing entirely to let these scumbags float into office, where they have undue influence over our lives.  It's a depressing spectacle of (lack of) electoral judgement on the part of citizens.

Just Because We're Paranoid Doesn't Mean We're Wrong

Within a few screen inches of each other on Instapundit are these two items:

“Increasingly, the US government’s many police forces (often state and local ones as well) operate militarily and are trained to treat ordinary citizens as enemies. At the same time, the people from whom the government personnel take their cues routinely describe those who differ from them socially and politically as illegitimate, criminal, even terrorists. Though these developments have separate roots, the post-9/11 state of no-win war against anonymous enemies has given them momentum. The longer it goes on, the more they converge and set in motion a spiral of civil strife all too well known in history, a spiral ever more difficult to stop short of civil war. Even now ordinary Americans are liable to being disadvantaged, hurt or even killed by their government as never before. Government’s violent treatment of citizens has become generalized and unremarkable.”

and

21ST CENTURY LAW ENFORCEMENT: Police smell meth, raid home, kill 80-year-old man, find no meth.

Yup.

Now It All Makes Sense

No wonder the economy sucks, Obama's favorite columnist is the atrocious Josh Barro.

Breaking News: Unrelentingly Dishonest Politician Has Been Dishonest With Us

I have said repeatedly - and over and over as well - that we elected (and then re-elected) an incompetent boob at best or a sinister serial liar at worst.  I have long believed the former, but am now firmly in the latter camp.  It has been frustrating but the best I can do is allow the results to hit the ground running.  An electorate deserves the bad government they vote for (unfortunately, those who don't vote for bad government are along for the ride).

Today from NBC News (NBC News!) we learn that the Obama administration knew that ObamaCare would cause millions of people to lose their health insurance.

Obama Admin Knew Millions Could Not Keep Their Health Insurance
By Lisa Myers and Hannah Rappleye
NBC News

President Obama repeatedly assured Americans that after the Affordable Care Act became law, people who liked their health insurance would be able to keep it. But millions of Americans are getting or are about to get cancellation letters for their health insurance under Obamacare, say experts, and the Obama administration has known that for at least three years.

Four sources deeply involved in the Affordable Care Act tell NBC NEWS that 50 to 75 percent of the 14 million consumers who buy their insurance individually can expect to receive a “cancellation” letter or the equivalent over the next year because their existing policies don’t meet the standards mandated by the new health care law. One expert predicts that number could reach as high as 80 percent. And all say that many of those forced to buy pricier new policies will experience “sticker shock.”

Of course, they knew, because ObamaCare was designed to destroy the individual market.  Just a few million broken eggs on the way to a social justice omelette...

Lefties: "Yes We Lied, But Eat This Sh*t Sandwich Anyway."

Jonah Goldberg goes full guns, as we ALL should, on the new lefty argument that conservatives and Republicans ought to just accept the giant shit sandwich that is ObamaCare.

The president and the Democrats lied us into a bad law. The right opposed the law on principle. A single party — the Democrats — own this law in a way that no party has had complete ownership of any major social legislation in a century. They bought this legislation with deceit and the GOP said so.   Now that it is going into effect, the facts on the ground are confirming that deceit. Moreover,  the same haughty condescending bureaucrats and politicians who told us they were smart enough and tech-savvy enough to do just about anything are being exposed as incompetent political hacks. And this is the moment when Sargent thinks the GOP should simply throw in the towel and work with the Democrats to make Obamacare bipartisan?

I find that puzzling.

ObamaCare sucks.  They knew it would suck (they designed it to suck).  That is why they had to lie about it.

UPDATE:  Here is Krauthammer explaining the "fatal conceit" of ObamaCare, and Ed M. notes below the clip how this couldn't be more of a classic example of why Hayek was right.  But liberals don't read Hayek and, as Yoda would say, "that is why you fail."

Andy Cuomo's Economic Agenda (Still) Sucks

Inexplicably popular Governor Andy Cuomo has about the lamest economic policy agenda of any big state governor in the nation.  First it was a badly-located convention center to serve the dying convention business, then it was green buildings. 

Now it's CASINOS! 

Woo Hoo!  Finally, a bright idea to take this state into the globally-connected, innovation-driven economy of the 21st century.  Casinos!  Brilliant!

Hey, I've got another idea.  This idea allows for cutting edge technology to be deployed in our state, offering high-paying jobs.  It meets demand for a product that is growing here at home and around the world.  It has been proven successful all over the country, resulting in booming state economies.  It has been the one bright spot in Barack Obama's dismal economic record.  Oh wait, we can't do that...

Yeah, But Was It "Rape-Rape"??

This story is just awful.

As a kid who loved music in the age of radio, I grew up listening to this guy, but what a sick f**k.

Maybe ole' Dave will get the Roman Polanski Memorial Lefty Child Rape Pass.  

Oh, and I love the Obama hat...

Hey 99%, Thanks for Helping Me Buy a Bigger House

I've been able to skirt the ire of the 99% by being one of you up until now.  I don't want to jinx it, but, on current course, I could wind up this year in the 1%. 

Yikes.  I don't really know what that means.  I hope it doesn't mean I have some dirty OWSer crap on my car or an Episcopal bishop scaling a fence to get at me.

However, what I do know is that you 99%ers are going to help me buy a house.  Your tax dollars are going to subsidize a big ole' jumbo mortgage that I am going to take out.  Frankly, I don't want the help, find the whole thought repulsive actually, and would reject the help if I could, but I can't.  The government is going to pump that subsidy into the system no matter what.

I wish it were otherwise.  Sorry. 

But thanks anyway.

Harvard Gets The Rich To Tell The Poor to Go To Harvard

Harvard to use really rich people to convince poor people to go to Harvard.

Harvard University is enlisting actor Matt Damon and basketball player Jeremy Lin as part of an initiative to encourage low-income students to apply to the college and other selective universities. 

I can just see the spit-ballin' that went on in the hallowed, Ivy-covered halls...'Hey, those poor people seem to listen to whatever celebrities have to say...'

Still...Obama Down, Stocks Up

There's been alot of angst in market commentary lately about the tenuousness or inexplicable nature of recent stock market gains.  Tenuous maybe, but inexplicable?  Now, let me throw in the caveat that the stock market is a mighty complex organism that factors in myriad information.  Having said that, I've put forth the theory before that policy and politics has had an outsized influence on the market in recent times.  I've also advanced the theory that, in general, what is bad for Barack Obama is good for the stock market and vice versa many many times.  I backed this up with data here.


That data set was through June 4, 2012.  I thought I'd go back and update the data set to see where we stand on this notion.  Here is the chart from 6/5/12 through recently.

Aside from the fancy new formatting that comes with a newer version of Excel, we can see that correlation has mostly held.  As Obama's popularity stagnated the market rose.  It then had a selloff as the media fomented a faux Obama revival in the runup to the election (the election corresponds to roughly 110 on the horizontal axis).  Of course, Obama 2.0 stumbled right out of the gate with myriad scandals (remember all those?  NSA Spying, IRS targeting the Tea Party, Benghazi) and has persisted with its garden variety ineptitude from Syria to healthcare.gov.  This stretch after the glow of his re-election wore off has resulted in a steady loss of popularity accompanied by a steady rise in the S&P 500 index.

So that's two graphs.  Let's combine the two into one for the entire Obama experience to date...
Dunno, still looks like a pretty solid relationship to me.  So with the likely continued troubles of Obamacare looming, I'm not ready to get all panicky about the stock market...

Mitt Romney Was Right...Again

So, I guess Mitt Romney low-balled the number of takers with his 47%...

In the fourth quarter of 2011, 49.2 percent of Americans received benefits from one or more government programs, according to data released Tuesday by the Census Bureau.

In total, the Census Bureau estimated, 151,014,000 Americans out of a population then estimated to be 306,804,000 received benefits from one or more government programs during the last three months of 2011. Those 151,014,000 beneficiaries equaled 49.2 percent of the population.

Lefty Hatred: No Math Required

I draw your attention to this post over at Powerline which deconstructs an attack on the left's ultimate hobgoblin, the Koch brothers, using math an common sense.  It's pretty funny.  When I saw the punch line, that the Koch would only need to process 8 billion barrels of oil, I knew at a glance how laughable this was.  You mean, if Koch Industries was somehow 10 times bigger than Exxon...? 

It's too funny, and PL captures it all nicely...

From here on, it is just arithmetic: 830,000 barrels per day equals 303,000,000 barrels per year. If Koch gets 1/18 of that capacity, it is 16.8 million barrels per year. IFG says Koch *only* needs to sell eight billion barrels to break even on the $120 billion it will lose (over 50 years) because of the pipeline. So how long will it take Koch to break even? Eight billion divided by 16.8 million = 476 years. Yup! In a mere 476 years, Koch will break even on the Keystone pipeline!

And that assumes IFG’s facts are correct. In fact, to the best of my knowledge Koch produces no, or virtually no, oil in Alberta.

So what is going on here? Rich liberals hire kids–recent college graduates, or maybe college or high school students–to produce idiotic “research reports” that can be dismantled by anyone familiar with arithmetic, let alone the oil and gas industry, of which these kids obviously know nothing at all. The claims these reports make are completely divorced from reality, but liberals don’t seem to care. The Huffington Post headlines: “Keystone XL Pipeline Could Yield $100 Billion For Koch Brothers.” PolicyMic: “Actually, You Probably WILL Guess Who Stands to Make $100 Billion Off the Keystone XL Pipeline.” TruthDig: “Koch Brothers Stand to Make $100 Billion From Keystone Pipeline.” And, of course, the Kos Kidz are all over it.

Update from the Oil Patch

Major trends/events in our hydrocarbon-driven world:

The Chinese and the Indians are competing for foreign hydrocarbons to fuel their future.

The land grab is over and now there is a $2-5 trillion opportunity for investors to invest and economies to benefit from US shale deposits.

Brazil is auctioning off rights to drill yet another HUGE oil discovery, bigger than the last HUGE oil find, which they named after leftist former President Lula da Silva.

SWPL: Diversity Up to a Point

Gosh, if I had a dime for every one of my liberal friends who said, 'we like where we live, the school the kids go to is so diverse...but we're moving.'

Left unsaid...we're moving to less diverse environs.

Raw translation - we want them to be friends with the local black kids when they're playing tag and kickball and reenacting Star Wars, but when they get old enough to be interested in more mature pursuits, not so much.

NY ObamaCare Exchange Has Glitches

Glitches that keep enrollments, um, er, low...

My experience, it seems, was indicative...

In New York, one of only 16 states that has its own exchange, not one person had succeeded in using the site to enroll in a plan as of Friday.

Vindication!

Aha!  I have been vindicated.  Two themes I've been writing about here at NBfPB are 1) there is no such thing as "austerity" going on in Europe, and 2) even so, what little fiscal retrenching European nations are doing will be good for their economies but yet be skewered in the press as disastrous, driven by all manner of delusion and/or fealty to nutty Keynesian notions of the economy.

Well, the WSJ carries an analysis piece today highlighting the confounding reality that the UK economy is doing well despite all manner of predictions to the contrary, all based on "theory." 

Here is the headline:

For five years, the British economy has persistently failed to behave as predicted by theory—and continues to do so with increasing evidence it is growing faster than almost any other major Western economy.

Some choices tidbits:

Yet this growth spurt has taken economists almost entirely by surprise. It is hard to identify a single leading forecaster predicting such a strong recovery at the start of the year, or even at the end of the first quarter.

As recently as July, the International Monetary Fund was so gloomy about the U.K. that it was advising the government to loosen its deficit-reduction strategy. This month, it raised its 2013 growth forecast by half, to 1.4%.

Gee, globalist government econo-bureaucrats were advocating more unaffordable government spending?  No kidding.

The answer to the first question is becoming clear: More policy makers and economists now accept that the most plausible explanation for the U.K.'s postcrisis underperformance and its recent outperformance lies in the workings of the financial system—something that barely features in standard macroeconomic models.

 Gee, f**k with the banking system and things go awry.  Where have I heard that before?

Previous attempts to blame the U.K.'s weak performance on the government's fiscal policies have been undermined by the recovery and by the fact that U.K. austerity hasn't actually been very austere.

 +1 for DB.

While economists argued over Keynesian demand-side remedies, the main problem was one of supply—specifically the supply of finance.

Stuck on demand-side thinking.  I think that was even the title of one of my posts!

If you want more background as to how supply-side economic analysis has been pasting demand-side (Keynesian) analysis these last few years, check out here and here.

Bloomberg News Is the New JournoList, Part IXX

I have long chronicled the raging left-wing bias that pervades everything emanating from Bloomberg News, which is an outcome foreordained by the hiring of Al Hunt many moons ago.

I have since welcomed other bloggers to the party, and I am happy to report that they seem to be taking up the cudgel with alacrity.  I like this tidbit particularly:

Hunt is of course a raving liberal and friend of the Obama administration.

Exactly.

The Plan Behind Why the Obamacrats Have No Plan

Turbo Tax Timmy Geithner said it, the Obamacrats don't have a plan for our impending fiscal meltdown.  The actual quote was this:

"We're not coming before you to say we have a definitive solution to our long-term problem. What we do know is we don't like yours."

Not having a plan is the plan.  Spending with abandon and hurtling us ever faster toward a fiscal crack-up IS the plan.  No administration would rack up $7 trillion in additional national debt on top of $10 trillion in five years and then fight tooth and nail to assure we add an additional $2-3 trillion by the time a two-term presidency is over, just for the hell of it. 

Ultimately, there is a plan.

Look at the debt clock.  What is the only number in green on that page that even comes close to signifying that we aren't dead flat broke?   Hint: Look towards the bottom.

It's Total National Assets.  Specifically, Household Assets and Corporate Assets.  There's $96 trillion there.

And they're going to steal it.

Not today.  Not Barack Obama.  But someday.  The next Barack Obama will do it.  This Barack Obama is just preparing for the heist to go down.  The next radical sheep in moderate clothing that the media fawns over, covers for, and aids and abets all the way to the White House will steal from this honey pot.

It is a core part of their ideology.  Read The Communist Manifesto and/or any other of the hundreds of left wing treatises or manifestos written since.  They want to confiscate private wealth.  Always have, always will.  And they do it all the time.  Poland just did it.  Cyprus did it.  Argentina is famous for doing it.  They want to rule and take all your money to do with it what they will.  And they will.

Look what they're doing.  Listen to their rhetoric.

What are they doing with food stamps?  They've blown the doors off and gotten 15% of the population hooked on food stamps, buying 11% of all the food bought in America.  This time they closed parks and monuments.  Someday they're going to shut off food stamps to create riots.  They're going to say that other people are keeping you from eating.  Those awful racists in the other party are out to starve you.  And they're going to say that the country can't pay its bills - not $20 trillion of debt, but bills.  Like food bills, the lights, the heat etc.  American life just can't go on unless those selfish, unpatriotic, hostage-taking racists "share".

And then they'll steal your money.  Not from your wallet, but from your pension fund, your stock portfolio, your bank account, your business.  They'll even take it out of your home.  Anywhere you have a store of wealth that you (or your ancestors) have worked hard for.  They'll get it.  It's you or the country and millions upon millions of dependent wards of the state from food stamp recipients to unionized government workers to ObamaCare dependents will take to the streets to make sure they get it.

It's an old playbook.  America has been a tough nut to crack using this well-worn playbook.  But it's coming. 

That is the plan behind having no plan.

Hedge Funders Make Easiest Trade Ever in Booker

Here is an absolutely atrocious example of a classic of the MSM genre: the phony baloney Dem puff piece masquerading as journalism.

A new senator is coming to Washington, and hedge fund managers couldn't be more excited.

Democrat Cory Booker beat Republican challenger Steve Lonegan in a special election this week to represent New Jersey in the U.S. Senate. 

To begin with, alot of these guys are simply garden variety NYC limousine liberals and their donations to Booker signal nothing out of the ordinary.  Rich Dems giving to Dem candidates - ho-hum, no story there.

Secondly, and most importantly (and I know this), hedge fund managers want one thing above all else - the continuation of the current tax policy whereby "carried interest" is taxed at rates for investment gains and not as income.  (I'm not making a hypocritical accusation here, because I want this same thing!)  And they are willing to give to any up and coming politician, especially Senate candidates, and doubly especially shoe-in candidates, who will protect this tax arrangement.  Full stop.  (Conversely, this is how DC politicians shake the money tree.)

Check out this drivel:

"What attracted a lot of investors to Cory is that he thinks about problem-solving the way we think about returns—it's more practical than ideological," said Boykin Curry, managing director of $20 billion long-only investment firm Eagle Capital Management. 

This is complete horseshit.  No hedgie gave money to Booker because of Booker's wondrous characteristics, notions or anything of the sort.  Booker was a shoe-in, an easy bet on owning a Senator who will protect the carried interest tax treatment.

Two Fine Letters Against Alan Blinder's Pro-Leviathan Drivel

I have taken Alan Blinder's special brand of intellectual idiocy and big government shilling to task on this blog many times.  I've ceased to do so for health reasons, it hurts my brain to read Blinder and life is too short.  But two of our fellow citizens have taken up the charge in the form of Letters to the Editor in the WSJ.  They touch upon themes you've read here before at NBfPB, a) we're going to be Greece on current course, and b) the Obamacrats do not have a plan to stave off bankruptcy, because bankruptcy IS the plan.  Reproduced here in full.

Oct. 17, 2013 1:31 p.m. ET

Alan S. Blinder's "The GOP's Flirtation With Disaster" (op-ed, Oct. 11) states: "If the Treasury loses the ability to borrow more, the budget must be balanced immediately, meaning that federal spending must fall." He believes this will lead to a disaster, but seems to be oblivious to or unwilling to offer solutions to the worse disaster that continued deficit spend will bring to America. Government spending is at a rate of $3.5 trillion annually while revenue is at an all-time high of $2.7 trillion. President Obama's Simpson-Bowles commission laid out a plan three years ago to head off the debt disaster we still face. Having ignored his own commission, Mr. Obama still has no plan to balance revenue and spending. Mr. Blinder seems not to realize that the current administration just keeps extending the debt and tries to keep the public in the dark on how near to disaster we really are. The Republican brinkmanship is simply a means to finally get the media to write about our runaway debt and focus the public on the fact that Washington has no credible plan to avoid the disaster. Increasing the debt limit doesn't solve the problem and the global financial system already knows that.

Ron Dudley

Sanibel, Fla.
 

Mr. Blinder fears that Republicans playing with default do long-term economic damage as a result of the "cost of making the United States of America look clownish in the eyes of the world." Before we lose too much sleep over our global image of political dysfunction, one question for Mr. Blinder: Would Europe in general, and Greece in particular, be in better or worse shape today if fiscal conservatives there had acted like clowns and confronted welfare-state spenders a decade ago? One could reasonably argue that a flirtation with disaster before Greece's economic meltdown might have headed off the fiscal wreck that it is today.

With regard to the lasting effects of Washington looking "like a bunch of knaves and fools," it is worth noting that President Obama refused to accept any GOP initiatives to keep funding various federal programs. Mr. Blinder will argue that Republicans poisoned the well with political acrimony, so our post-partisan president had no choice but to refuse to negotiate budget or debt-ceiling deals. Actually, in an Oct. 8 news conference, President Obama candidly admitted that his cold-shoulder to Republicans is all about partisan political pressure: "And if there's no political heat, if there's no television story on it, then nothing happens." That is why national monuments were closed.

Republicans attempting to slow federal spending may or may not be clowns. But Washington clearly has been transformed into a circus when the economic future of the country hinges on how loud we all clap or boo.

Richard Perkins

Ocala, Fla.

Great Minds Think Alike: Instapundit Version

Professor Reynolds says take seriously the authoritarian ravings of the left, and, um, plan accordingly.  That's in a blog post that is barely three lines long.

Victor Davis Hanson and I have touched on the subject before (although not in collaboration) with bonus material from Yale Law School professor Stephen Carter.  My admonition was "these are not idle musings."  Great minds think alike, and obviously many many Americans are.

You Heard It Hear First

I've been saying that "austerity" in Europe, and particularly in Britain, is non-existent.  Now, Forbes is backing me up.

I also noted a while back that no commercial ship with armed guards has been hijacked by pirates even while sailing through the pirate infested waters off Somalia, Nigeria or Indonesia, the world's piracy hotspots.  Today on the WSJ Op-Ed pages we learn that very same tidbit again.

Establishment Republicans, Nation Loses

This morning at the open when the cloud of doom and gloom was blackening out the sky, the 10 year Treasury was trading up.  Now that we have a deal that increases the debt ceiling, the 10 year is trading down.  Why?

Because we are broke and the pols just struck a deal to continue getting broker.  Default is not an issue.  A political system that can't reign in spending to save its life, a party in charge of two of three branches of government that wants absolutely unrestrained spending, and a media complex that propagandizes for bigger government to a low information voting public that can't do math and tell its fiscal ass from its budget elbow spells...

It spells "Holy Shit, we really are going broke unless the bond vigilantes save us."  The Bond Market Vigilantes, however, are scared of fighting Janet Bernanke's $85 billion per month money pumping Fed.  We are so f**ked.

Inflation is coming.  Higher interest rates are coming.  Brace.

Politics can't solve our fiscal woes, only going belly up can.  I've said it before and if this past few weeks' evidence isn't enough to convince you, well...

UPDATE:  $17 trillion.  Next stop $20 trillion and then let's elect Hillary, because we all know she's a real problem solver.  Enjoy it America.

Armagedd.....Oh, Wait

Yep folks.  Brink of disaster.  Going over the falls...

Wait.  Up?
How about bonds?

Flat to up.  What's going on?

This is fitting.  Government is so predisposed to cock things up, they can't even do Armageddon right.  That or maybe the media is blowing smoke to help the Obamacrats...nah, couldn't be, that's crazy talk.

Sebelius's March on Moscow

I said this would happen.

The number of visitors to the federal government’s HealthCare.gov Web site plummeted 88 percent between Oct. 1 and Oct. 13, according to a new analysis of America’s online use, while less than half of 1 percent of the site’s visitors successfully enrolled for health insurance the first week. …

Based on a sample of two million users — or 1 percent of all online users in the U.S. — which Millward Brown Digital has permission to track, it suggests that the rush of traffic administration officials cited as the cause of the site’s problems trailed off within a matter of days.

Captain Ed understands exactly what I said in my prediction.

 Every private-sector firm operating in the on-line market discovered that in 1995 or so, but the Obama administration only just started to learn it after spending hundreds of millions of dollars on the world’s worst web portal.  And now consumers are staying away in droves

A bad website is like Napoleon's march on Moscow.  Ed's post even has a graphic (a funnel) that is eerily reminiscent of the famous Moscow March graphic.  Ouch.

This is a bloody disaster and yet Obama seems not too concerned.  Why?  Because in 21st century America government failure is rewarded with more power.  ObamaCare's faceplant is already stirring progressive minds to how to up the ante and take that step toward single payer.  Our only hope is that we will go broke before then.  Scratch that, we are broke...our only hope is that idiots will stop lending us money before then.

This has me wondering if certain propaganda arms are going to be pimping for ObamaCare as intended.  They may not want to be seen endorsing this shit show. 

Obama Running Hamilton's Six Point Plan????

Uh oh.

This is how Obama rolls.  Crisis helps him.

Fresh reminder. Alexander Hamilton, who was accused of wanting to bring back tyranny, knew the actual recipe for bringing tyranny...

For Hamilton, who knew the real path to tyranny, this was almost funny. Had he wanted to impose monarchy upon America he said he "...would mount the hobbyhorse of popularity, I would cry out usurpation, danger to liberty etc. etc. I would endeavor to prostrate the national government, raise a ferment, and then ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm."

1) mount the hobbyhorse of popularity = "taking on the big banks", "healthcare for all", etc.

2) cry out usurpation = Republicans are hostage-takers, holding us up for ransom

3) danger to liberty = NSA spying is essential

4) prostrate the national government = 57% increase in debt in just five years

5) raise a ferment = Obama warns of default

6) ride in the whirlwind and direct the storm = ...???