ObamaCare + Dodd-Frank = Double Dip

The financial reform bill has cleared a cloture vote and will now become the law of the land. Forget about the costs this will impose, just the uncertainty (one of big knocks on the bill from those who've analyzed it, it that it it so vague and wide open, much of it TBD by regulators) alone is enough to chill the financial sector in the near term. Combine this with ObamaCare and you have the federal take over of two huge sectors of the economy. Taken together the effect will be similar to FDR's National Recovery Act of 1933 - a massive micromanagement of the economy by bureaucrats. So herewith I am upping my probability of a double dip recession to 70%. It'll be a mild double dip, but clearly a noticeable one.


How Scott Brown and those ridiculous women from Maine could vote for this thing is beyond me. Are they really that clueless as to a) what this will actually do to the economy, and b) that this is a policy victory for the Democrats??

Double the Embarrassment!

The Lightworker's foreign policy gets double the embarrassment today as Iran boasts of running circles around the Obama administration on the nuclear deal, and Israeli Defense Minister lets the world know what an ass John Kerry is.

ObamaCare is Today's Smoot-Hawley

Actually, more like the National Recovery Act of 1933. This act probably did more to reverse a nascent recovery and deepen a routine recession into the Great Depression in the 1930s, but Smoot-Hawley has more brand recognition as a true policy disaster. Remember, our scorecard is currently 1 for 4. ObamaCare represents higher taxes and massive regulation of the economy, and I am afraid that our one success in avoiding the mistakes of the 1930s - monetary expansion - will be swamped by this failure to learn from the past. If ObamaCare passes, not only are we double-dipping, the Great Recession deepens, perhaps into Great Depression Dos.

A few more eerie parallels: 1) Roosevelt's cadre of academics went on a trip to Moscow and came back with a glowing admiration of Stalin's putatively efficient economic model. Today, our intelligentsia is again enamored with authoritarian models of efficiency (again, putative efficiency). 2) Given the dubious constitutionality of some major provisions in the emerging Obamacare bill, we may have to wait upon a defining Supreme Court case to set us free from the economic shackles that this legislation will put on us - just like Schechter Poultry v United States, aka the Kosher Chicken case. 3) In anticipation that many of his New Deal initiatives would run into judicial scrutiny, FDR aimed to pack the Supreme Court. On cue, similar calls can be heard today.

History never repeats? Horsepucky.

UPDATE: Jim "Mad Money" Cramer thinks we double dip too.

Why Would a Savvy CEO Tweak the Obama Admin Over O-Care?

AETNA CEO Mark Bertolini gives a not so glowing review of ObamaCare.  It's shifted people around rather than turn the uninsured into the insured, and adverse selection is going to be a big problem.

CEO Mark Bertolini told CNBC on Wednesday that Obamacare has failed to attract the uninsured, and he offered a scenario in which the insurance company could be forced to pull out of program.

"Are they going to be double-digit [increases] or are we going to get beat up because they're double-digit or are we just going to have to pull out of the program?" Bertolini asked in a "Squawk Box" interview from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland. "Those questions can't be answered until we see the population we have today. And we really don't have a good view on that."

He said that so far, Obamacare has just shifted people who were insured in the individual market to the public exchanges where they could get a better deal on a subsidy for coverage. "We see only 11 percent of the population is actually people that were firmly uninsured that are now insured. So [it] didn't really eat into the uninsured population."

I suspect that Kathleen Sebelius and/or some of her thuggish minions will be giving Mr. Bertolini a call, and might even get a nice personal tax audit from the IRS.  'Don't be so cynical, you say?'  The WSJ has a story today on the thuggishness of mild-mannered-looking Turbo Tax Timmy.

Of course, no savvy CEO would ever stick his neck out like this and tweak a sensitive, defensive administration that has been known to resort to thuggish tactics.  There must be something to this. Maybe Mr. Bertolini is looking to get out of ObamaCare or looking to bait the administration into something.

No Fooling...Economic Barbarity Is At the Gates

The Wall Street Journal's Op-Ed page today is chock-a-block with analysis of various government revenue grabs, many of which have been addressed before here at NBfPB. First the WSJ talks about the global bank tax money grab, and they rightly point out, as I did recently, that we just might be saved from this disaster by the Canadians, who didn't let their banking system become infected with crappy mortgages, didn't require national finances to bailout the system, and ought not to be punished for it. This is a very big deal, which is why I use the terms "saved" and "disaster". It does not matter by what means you do it or under what pretense you do it, removing capital from the banking system on a large scale results in economic activity grinding to a halt. We did this during the 1930s under multiple guises - the check tax comes to mind - and exacerbated what would become the Great Depression. This is no apocalyptic hooey, we are headed in that direction if we do things that give us the multiplier effect of the fractional reserve banking system in reverse. That is what sucking capital out of the banking system does, it gives us a reverse multiplier effect, for every dollar of capital that disappears, several dollars of loans supporting business activity has to disappear.

The next money grab on the horizon is the tax assault on dividends. This one is doubly dumb because, not only will it hurt the economy, but it won't achieve its revenue goals. Again the WSJ rightly points out that revenues from dividend tax increases almost always fall short of projections. Well short, and here is an example of why. Oh, and let's not forget what Nobelist Robert Mundell said about increased taxes on cap gains and dividends...nosedive city, baby. But you don't have to know your Great Depression economic history to know about the stupidity of this maneuver, we have ample lessons from recent history to guide us - lower divvy taxes and you get a flood, raise them and you get a drought. So in fact, this is a trifecta of stupidity.

I have warned that policy mistakes will send us double dipping. I think we are about an inch away from being there. We have a bottom of the ninth at bat to save us in the form of the November elections, but short of completely hamstringing this administration and this Congressional leadership, much greater economic pain is pretty much baked in the cake.

Obama's Double Diabolical Move: Appease the Mullahs, Demonize Israel

Check out Bret Stephens fundamental analysis of Obama's disastrous deal with Iran here, it's well worth your time for its spot-on historical and geo-political calculus.

But what caught my eye was a tidbit from Caroline Glick that had been worrying me, but that has not been getting much attention.

Clearly, Obama did not spend the last year trying to build domestic American support for a deal that enables the regime that calls daily for the annihilation of America to become a nuclear power. With Iran building military bases all over Central and South America, Obama never bothered trying to make the case to the American people that they would be more secure with this regime in possession of the capacity to kill millions of Americans with one bomb.

Obama never stood before the Congress to explain how a deal that gives America’s Good Housekeeping Seal of Approval to Iran’s illicit nuclear weapons program advances US national security. He never explained how allowing Iran to continue to enrich uranium decreases the likelihood of war.

Obama did this all on his own.  There is no fundamental demand for this deal emanating from the American people.  And he didn't even attempt to tell us what he was doing, not directly nor through our elected representatives.  Not wonder that there is bipartisan opposition building in Congress.  We have a foreign policy conducted within the mind of one man.

Of course, it wouldn't be Obama without casting those that disagree as demons, which Glick spells out.

So what did Obama need the last year for? If he wasn’t concerned with getting a less dangerous deal, and he didn’t care what the American people though about his facilitation of Iran’s nuclear weapons program, what prevented him from okaying the agreement last year? To ascertain the answer, it is worth considering Finance Minister Yair Lapid’s comments Sunday morning. Beyond noting the nuclear deal’s danger to Israel’s security, Lapid said, “I am worried not only over the deal but that we have lost the world’s attention.”

And indeed, Israel has lost the world’s attention. Its appropriately deep concerns over Iran’s nuclear behavior were belittled, ignored and derided, first and foremost by the Obama administration. Worse than belittling Israel’s concerns, which are completely shared by the Sunni Arab world, Obama and Kerry have castigated as warmongers those Americans who agree with Israel’s concerns and have attacked them as traitors who seek to push America into an unnecessary war.

This is an age-old leftist trope - if you are not satisfied with a phony peace, you are out for war.  They had to prepare the ground with this sort of rhetoric to be in a position to jam this agreement on the world, which doesn't appear to be swallowing it too well.

Canada: Double Our Previous Estimates About Our Shitload of Gas

Actually not Canada, but British Columbia. No matter, this is a shitload of clean burning, job-creating domestic energy. And those Canucks will frack away. Low corporate taxes, cheap/abundant energy, and stable money...Canada is poised to kick our economic tookus around for the next few years. Mark Perry highlights this interesting study...hell forget Mississippi and Alabama, try Mississagua and Medicine Hat!

Al Hunt & Co. Follow Their Marching Orders...and Look Foolish

While the NY Times is doing its duty with a partisan hatchet job of John Boehner, Al Hunt over at Bloomberg News has been given the tax cut issue and so tasks a minion with reporting a strange tidbit about how the rich would react to a tax cut. Basically, Hunt & Co. say, the miserly rich will sock the money away rather than buy stuff so that the rest of us can get a job. This is preposterous on its face, but let's wait on that for a second. What the article doesn't tell you is that the study is from the shop of Mark Zandi, Moody's Analytics, one of last few economists around who thinks the stimulus worked (because he helped design it). Zandi's name has become a bit of a red flag given his constant pimping of Obamanomics and resulting loss of credibility, so I guess Bloomberg just figures it shouldn't even mention anything that he has a hand in hoping that no one is paying attention.

Anywho...on to the substance. First, remember that saving used to be good. Remember when George W. Bush was in office, we didn't save enough and it was going to be our economic Achilles' heel? Well, they couldn't even get the numbers right, never mind interpret them properly. But now that the government needs your money to bail out its staggering profligacy, saving money is bad bad bad, so the government will deny you more of your own money lest you save it. Morever, as that penultimate link points out, the rich in America don't save, we invest. If allowed to keep more of our hard-earned money by the good grace of our betters in Congress, we don't stick it in the mattress, we invest in businesses whether it be through stocks and bonds or your smart, hard-working brother-in-law's great new business idea. Taxing that money away means taking away seed capital for small business as well as taking away public market capital that keeps our world-leading companies well-funded.

I understand Al Hunt has no choice but to print this drivel - orders are orders - but this one is a double flop.

Double Ouch

More embarrassing commentary on The Lightworker's foreign policy.  It is worth noting that these are not raw political enemies, these are people that expected to work with us.  I think this is correct but maybe these Brits don't understand the extent to which Obama loathes his own country and seeks to break it away from it past role in the world...

Also, I can't imagine the NYT means this in complimentary way...

Dumb Rubes Get What They Ask For, Then Totally Miss Point

Read this.  It's amazing.

San Francisco architect Lee Hammack says he and his wife, JoEllen Brothers, are “cradle Democrats.” They have donated to the liberal group Organizing for America and worked the phone banks a year ago for President Obama’s re-election.

The couple — Lee, 60, and JoEllen, 59 — have been paying $550 a month for their health coverage — a plan that offers solid coverage, not one of the skimpy plans Obama has criticized. But recently, Kaiser informed them the plan would be canceled at the end of the year because it did not meet the requirements of the Affordable Care Act. The couple would need to find another one. The cost would be around double what they pay now, but the benefits would be worse.

Dumb rubes.  No sympathy from me.  Collectivists like collectivism until they are collectivised.  The putatively compassionate want compassion until they are sent the bill.  Loss of freedom is no biggie until your freedom is taken away.  More government is great until dictates come in the mail and you are lost in the bureaucratic maze.

These people are getting exactly what they have believed in all their lives.  They are getting exactly what they voted for.  And sadly, they don't see it, their first reaction is to plead to the authorities for relief.  In other words, all they desire is to be on the inside, not to have freedom to choose, but to be a crony.

That’s little comfort to Hammack. He’s written to California’s senators and his representative, House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., asking for help.

To have sympathy for these people is a judgement call - they seem like nice, reasonably intelligent people, but the bottom line is that these people believe things that aren't so.  (Obligatory Reagan quote here.)

“We believe that the Act is good for health care, the economy, & the future of our nation. However, ACA options for middle income individuals ages 59 & 60 are unaffordable.

Just because they believed these things, doesn't make them so.  There are consequences to being wrong, to making a faulty analysis, and these people made a faulty analysis regarding the intersection of healthcare policy and progressive political goals.  They are not alone, many did.  And the consequences are here.  I have no problem with consequences, people make choices, thus I have little sympathy for people who lament the predictable consequences of their actions and beliefs.

ObamaCare was always and everywhere about wealth redistribution with a little coercion thrown in.  Nobody should be shocked when a little of their wealth gets redistributed, coercively.  And nobody should have thought they were immune because they were on the "good side" as no doubt these people feel about themselves.  Leftism eats its own.  So Hammack and Brothers were really wrong/naive on two counts.

Breaking: Congress Still Clueless

Wow. Let me repeat for the second time in a week: Oh. My. God.
The "Buy American" provisions of last January's non-stimulating stimulus bill were roundly criticized both at home and abroad as needlessly destructive and for it numerous specific distortionary effects and unintended consequences. Our two biggest trading partners, Canada and Mexico, have slapped back at us over these dumb provisions. China is now paying us back with new trade barriers after we didn't heed their warnnigs to ratchet back the protectionist urge. That protectionism is economically counter-productive is one of the most agreed-upon tenets of modern economics. It was part and parcel of the stimulus bill that is clearly a failure, and yet...and yet... it looks like the lower chamber of the Great Sausage Factory wants to double down on this idiocy.

Inflation: The Fed May Not See It, But the Folks Do

People have noticed both the stealth inflation that I warned about and, now, the unstealthy kind. As the lady said, "Double Whammy!"

BTW, that warning of mine came back in April. Pretty good, IMO.

DW-S Strikes Again, Republicans Hope for More

Debbie Wasserman-Schultz is an almost Biden-esque source of comedy/political gold. The Republicans must consider her a gift from on high.

Today she maintains that "anyone" can see that the economy is turning a corner

DNC Chair Debbie Wasserman Schultz insisted to CNSNews.com yesterday that “anyone’ can see that the economy is improving and sought to interpret what Pres. Obama really meant when he admitted Monday that Americans were not better off today than four years ago.

Anyone, perhaps, but the 152,881 people who were told they'd be laid off in the last two months.

UPDATE: This ought to be noted:

"It would be easy to look at the September job-cut figure alongside some of the other less-than-stellar economic news that has been reported lately and draw the conclusion that the economy is indeed headed for a double dip. However, it is important to keep in mind that 80,000 cuts, or nearly 70 percent of last month’s total, came from just two organizations: Bank of America and the United States Army ..."

A smaller Army and a shrinking Bank of America...for the left I'd say this is a feature not a bug.

Buy O'Donnell at InTrade

I am now convinced that O'Donnell cannot win. The reasoning? Scott Brown was a fluke. Clearly his win was attributable to his "erotic appeal to his state's famously nymphomaniacal womenfolk." Still, whether she wins or not - and the impending Van Voorhees-led counterrevolution is clearly an obstacle - the O'D Intrade contract at 25 is a screaming buy. She's got a million bucks and will have constant national media attention (and Coons looks like a doofus too). She could lose and you could still double your money.

You Heard It Here First: Menendez Is Horrid

As a life-long observer of the Garden State's political scene, I've known for years that Bob Menendez was not just a run-of-the-mill political hack, but a truly loathsome political whore.  (And speaking of whores, the noose is tightening around Menendez regarding his debaucherous escapades with underage hookers in the DR.)

But more interesting to me is not the run-of-the-millness of a sex scandal involving a well-known valueless and character-deficient man, but the phony edifice of nobility that is erected around these characters by the supporting cast institutions.  This kind of rhetoric is just so revolting to any one with a brain.

Bob Menendez is “committed to ensuring that every young person is able to reach their full potential,” read a 2012 fundraising solicitation for an October campaign event with the New Jersey Democratic senator, hosted by a political committee called “Women for Menendez.”

It is a double whammy of vomit-inducement.  First, it detracts from actual, real empowerment of women and second it seeks to paint over the horridness of Bob Menendez with a phony gloss of ennobling attributes.

Recipe for Disaster: We're Mixing the Ingredients in a Bowl

I have said that we are making all the same mistakes that Hoover and FDR made in the early 20th century that turned a routine recession into the Great Depression (all the mistakes save one, and we have Ben Bernanke, but not a single soul in elective office, to thank for that). Today, the top bank analyst on the street says that the SEC's bombing of Goldman Sachs could engender another financial crisis. Bove is merely saying what I've been saying, we are making the same mistakes again. Government can crater the system again through its vendetta of regulation. ObamaCare is today's NRA. We have small trade wars smoldering, threatening to burst wide open. Taxes are on their way up to highly distortive levels. And now we are on a campaign to destroy our best capital markets institutions. We are mixing the batter, but we have not yet baked the cake. If we avoid a double dip it'll be by a small miracle, a positive Black Swan, like when my three-year daughter decides to "help" and dumps a load of salt into the cake batter and we are forced to pitch it all and start over.

New Movie Celebrates Musical Icons of the Early 1990s

I just might have to see Friends With Benefits...no, not because of Mila Kunis...because of Chris Kelly and Chris Smith (weird, they sound like two Irish guys, but they ain't...).

I am the D-A-Double D-Y-M-A-C man! The Daddy makes you J-U-M-P!!!

How to Deal With Schmucks

The proper reaction to this is to double your contribution to whoever it is that you want to contribute to. Whenever I read of egregious Wal-Mart bashing, I hop in the car, head to WMT and buy shit. When the eco-tyrants' rants about SUVs get to be too much, I hop in my LR3 and go for a gratuitous drive. I have relatives that buy a gun when the gun-grabbers' get too uppity. People have proposed Israel fire back 5-10 Hellfires for every one Katyusha that gets lobbed in from Gaza.

That my friends is the way to deal with these people...INCREASE the behavior that has ignited their self-righteous authoritarian loins.

Journalism

Here is the title of an article found on CNBC.

The next Exxon Valdez? Remote Alaskan waters, experts fear

I read the article looking for some description of the risk.  It is nowhere to be found.  The premise of the article is simply this ridiculous, failing syllogism:

a) the Exxon Valdez disaster happened in Alaskan waters
b) there is still oil shipping going on in Alaskan waters, thus
c) another disaster is going to happen in Alaskan waters

As any student of logic will recognize, this is sheer, unadulterated poppyhorsecockshit.  The risk to Alaskan waters is no different than it is in any other navigable waterway on Earth today and it is in no way comparable to the risk of same in 1989.  (In response to the Valdez disaster, nearly 100% of the crude oil tanker fleet is now double-hulled, greatly reducing the risk of a full-scale leakage in the case of a hull breach.)

But hey, gotta fill the news pages and the 25th anniversary of the Exxon Valdez disaster is as good an excuse as any to strike fear in the hearts of the rubes, no?

Worse Than Trump's Comments? Lefties On Their High Horse

I'm no Trump fan, but all this bullshit over his comments is precisely that...bullshit.

1) It was the left who sexualized the culture and who pushes the envelope on the acceptability of sexual openness/luridness - except in those rare occasions where it suits their purposes to look prudish, like now.

2) Of course there is a double standard.  You can guarantee that Bill Clinton or the Kennedy boys or any number of Democrat heroes (not just politicians but heroes) have, said thought and did much worse in their conduct towards women.  But that is suppressed because, well, because it is.

I don't like his comments as much as your average decent person, what I can't stand more than anything is lefties up on their high horse.