Monday, April 26, 2010

Barker's Newsbites: Monday, April 26, 2010


Something cheerful for a rainy day!

(*WINK*)

Profit by the newsbites...
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7 comments:

William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703441404575206252252365076.html?mod=WSJ_hpp_LEFTTopStories

A key Senate committee had changed its proposed overhaul of derivatives regulation after lobbying by Mr. Buffett's Berkshire Hathaway Inc., potentially helping the famed investor avoid a financial hit, congressional aides say.

Sunday night's deal, hammered out by Senate Banking Chairman Chris Dodd (D-CT) and Senate Agriculture Chairwoman Blanche Lincoln (D-AR) reflects the populist, anti-bank sentiments simmering on Capitol Hill.

The provision, sought by Berkshire and pushed by Nebraska Sen. Ben Nelson in the Senate Agriculture Committee, would largely exempt existing derivatives contracts from the proposed rules.

* SOUNDS LIKE THE START TO ONE OF THOSE OLD JOKES: "CHRIS DODD, BLANCHE LINCOLN, BEN NELSON AND WARREN BUFFETT WALKED INTO A BAR..." (*SMIRK*)

The fate of Berkshire's effort to influence the legislation remains uncertain.

* HMM... BUFFETT'S INTERESTS VS. THE PUBLIC INTEREST... (*CHUCKLE*) STAYED TUNED, FOLKS!

Mr. Buffett's push is especially notable because he has warned of the potential dangers of derivatives, famously branding them "financial weapons of mass destruction."

* MY GOD - GAMBLING GOING ON IN RICK'S CAFÉ - I'M SHOCKED... SHOCKED!

The White House has been trying to kill the Berkshire provision on the grounds that it would weaken the government's ability to regulate the enormous market for derivatives.

* FUNNY HOW THAT WORKS, HUH? "GOOD COP/BAD COP." HEADS THE DEMS WIN, TAILS THE DEMS WIN. JEEZUS, PEOPLE... OPEN YOUR EYES! SEEMS LIKE THE CLINTONS AREN'T THE ONLY EXPERTS ON TRIANGULATION... (*SIGH*)

Mr. Buffett has been a vocal critic of how some in the financial markets use derivatives. In making his case for regulation, Mr. Obama in a New York speech last week quoted Mr. Buffett's "financial weapons of mass destruction" remark, which was made in Berkshire's 2002 annual report. In his letter to investors this year, Mr. Buffett, an Obama supporter, wrote that while Berkshire has "long invested in derivatives," the contracts "can be dynamite."

* FUNNY HOW BUFFETT IS NOW... er... RETHINKING HIS POSITION. (*SMIRK*)

* HEY... THIS IS COMPLICATED STUFF. I URGE THOSE INTERESTED TO UTILIZE THE LINK (PROVIDED ABOVE) AND READ THE FULL ARTICLE FOR THEMSELVES.

April 26, 2010 at 12:42 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748704627704575204182680774338.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_LEFTTopOpinion

The rampage at Fort Hood, Texas, on Nov. 5, 2009 - after which U.S. Army Major Nidal Hasan was charged with 13 counts of murder and 32 counts of attempted murder - has been reviewed by the administration and its group of handpicked outsiders, who were all formerly with either the Department of Defense or the Department of Justice.

But the administration continues to withhold much of the crucial information from the Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs Committee, of which we are chairman and ranking member.

* THIS OP-ED IS AUTHORED BY SENATORS LIEBERMAN AND COLLINS - INDEPENDENT DEMOCRAT AND RINO RESPECTIVELY.

There are too many questions that still demand answers. Whatever mistakes were made in the run-up to the Fort Hood shootings need to be uncovered, and an independent, bipartisan congressional investigation is the best way to do it.

* AS WE KNOW, PRESIDENT OBAMA ISN'T MUCH INTERESTED IN BIPARTISANISM - NOR APPARENTLY UNCOVERING MISTAKES.

We know through press reports, for example, that Hasan's associates and superiors in the Army had for years noticed signs of his growing Islamist radicalization. We also know through press reports that the FBI and Defense Department were aware of emails he exchanged with radical Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki.

* HELL... THINK ABOUT IT... THIS GOES BACK TO WHEN BUSH WAS COMMANDER-IN-CHIEF; BUSH'S REPUTATION IS AS MUCH AT RISK AS OBAMA'S! GETTING TO THE TRUTH HERE SHOULD BE A BIPARTISAN CONCERN!

We first requested information on the incident in writing on Nov. 13. We followed that with three other written requests plus numerous follow-up conversations. The administration has refused to provide the key information we need to establish the facts of what happened and carry out our constitutional responsibility of oversight, and so on April 19 we subpoenaed it.

The administration has denied our request to interview the FBI and Defense Department agents who investigated Hasan's email exchange with Awlaki. It claims some of the agents will likely be witnesses at trial and that congressional interviews could compromise their independent recollections. But we are not investigating the shooting and have no intention of jeopardizing the prosecution's case. There is recent precedent for Congress to interview agents who may be prosecution witnesses. The Congressional Joint Inquiry into 9/11 interviewed FBI agents who were involved in arresting the so-called 20th hijacker, Zacarias Moussaoui, even though they were potential witnesses in that case.

The administration has also denied our request to receive transcripts of the prosecution's interviews with Maj. Hasan's associates and superiors that were given to the Defense Department's internal review of the incident. There is no reason why the Defense Department should be able to provide those documents to its internal review - which is separate from the prosecution - and not share them with Congress.

* FOLKS... (*SIGH*)... THIS STINKS TO HIGH HEAVEN.

April 26, 2010 at 2:20 PM
William R. Barker said...

* TWO-PARTER... (Part 1 of 2)

http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703709804575202943330131072.html?mod=WSJ_Opinion_BelowLEFTSecond

Supporters of Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega were in the streets of Managua last week firing on a hotel, burning cars, and otherwise trying to intimidate opposition members of Congress. The mob was mobilized because the legislature is standing in the way of a Hugo Chávez-style power grab by Mr. Ortega.

Last year Honduran President Manuel Zelaya had similar aspirations, ran into the same problem, and tried the same solution - violence.

Fortunately the Honduran military stepped in to stanch the flow of blood by deporting him.

[President Obama's] U.S. Ambassador [to Honduras] Hugo Llorens was disappointed, but the Honduran democracy was saved. Nicaraguans may not be so lucky.

* AS KNOWLEDGEABLE READERS WILL RECALL, PRESIDENT OBAMA AND SECRETARY OF STATE HILLARY CLINTON DID EVERYTHING WITHIN THEIR POWER AND INFLUENCE TO SUPPORT THE LEFTIST CRIMINAL ZELAYA.

* I KNOW... I KNOW... LATELY IT SEEMS AS IF WE'RE ALL CAUGHT LIVING WITHIN THE PAGES OF A BADLY WRITTEN POLITICAL THRILLER... (*SIGH*)

[P]opulist demagogues channeling Mussolini see respect for the rule of law as the stuff of quitters. The elected despot can do what he wants. Institutions that push back get visits from thugs. That's what has happened in Venezuela, Ecuador and Bolivia, and why those countries can no longer be considered democracies.

Nicaragua now hangs in the balance - and there is a lot at stake. Mr. Chávez wants a permanent, reliable ally in Central America. He hoped that would be Honduras. Now his chips are on Nicaragua, with the goal of making the Sandinista paradise part of the 21st-century Bolivarian utopia. Cuba, with its long history of repression, is a valuable partner in this effort. Its armed forces and elite guards are already working with the Chávez government as noted in a press conference last week by retired Venezuelan Gen. Antonio Rivero. Specifically he complained of "courses in sniper training in which Cuban professionals participate."

An unclassified report from the Pentagon released this month says that Iran's Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps-Qods Force "maintains operational capabilities around the world" and "recent years have witnessed an increased presence in Latin America, particularly Venezuela." Mr. Ortega re-established diplomatic relations with Iran after his election in 2006.

* FOLKS... AGAIN... JUST TO REMIND YOU: NO, THIS ISN'T PART OF THE PLOT OF A NEW SPIKE TV SERIES; THIS IS THE STATE OF THE WORLD IN THE AGE OF OBAMA.

* To be continued...

April 26, 2010 at 2:39 PM
William R. Barker said...

* CONTINUING... (Part 2 of 2)

Mr. Ortega's term is up in January 2012, and according to Article 147 of the constitution he is barred from running for president again.

For three years he tried to get Congress to change that. He failed.

[I]n October he went to Nicaragua's Supreme Court alleging that since congressmen can be re-elected, he's the victim of discrimination. The Sandinista judges on the court's constitutional panel waited until the opposition judges had gone home for the day, called in three Sandinista judges from other court panels as alternates and held a vote. The court ruled the prohibition on re-election "inapplicable." Mr. Ortega promptly declared himself a candidate for 2011.

* FOLKS... YOU CAN'T MAKE THIS SHIT UP! (BTW... HAVE YOU HEARD OF OBAMA RAILING AGAINST THIS...??? HAVE YOU HEARD OF SECRETARY OF STATE CLINTON REVOKING DIPLOMATIC RECOGNITION FROM SANDINISTA COMMISSARS...???)

Even so, the wannabe dictator still has a problem: He is unlikely to win a fair election. That's why he wants to hand-pick the electoral council, which is charged with ensuring a level playing field and is up for renewal in June. And that's why he is locked in mortal combat with Congress. Normally the president sends his nominees for the Supreme Court and the electoral council to Congress for a vote. But after the "inapplicable" trick, Congress refused to proceed. So in January Mr. Ortega issued a decree that he was extending the terms of two Supreme Court judges and the electoral council. The president has no such power, and earlier this month the two judges should have withdrawn from the court because their terms expired. They refused to do so. Last week one of them was leading the mob violence in the street.

April 26, 2010 at 2:39 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/23/AR2010042302222.html

Bill Gross is used to buying bonds in multibillion-dollar batches. But when it comes to U.S. Treasury bills, he's getting nervous.

Gross, a founder of the investment giant Pimco, is so concerned about America's national debt that he has started unloading some of his holdings of U.S. government bonds in favor of bonds from such countries as Germany, Canada and France. Gross is a bottom-line kind of guy; he doesn't seem to care if the debt is the fault of Republicans or Democrats, the Bush tax cuts or the Obama stimulus. He's simply worried that Washington's habit of spending today the money it hopes to collect tomorrow is getting worse and worse.

It even has elements of a Ponzi scheme, Gross told me.

"In order to pay the interest and the bill when it comes due, we'll simply have to issue more IOUs. That, to me, is Ponzi-like," Gross said. "It's a game that can never be finished."

The national debt...totaled $8,370,635,856,604.98 as of a few days ago [- and this doesn't even count -] the trillions owed by the government to Social Security and other pilfered trust funds...

* THE "POLITE" TERM IS UNFUNDED LIABILITIES... (*SMIRK*)

The short term looks awful, and the long term looks hideous. Under any likely scenario, the federal debt will continue to balloon in the years to come. The CBO Expects it to reach $20 trillion over the next decade - and that assumes no new recessions, no new wars and no new financial crises.

In the doomsday scenario, foreign investors get spooked and demand higher interest rates to continue bankrolling American profligacy. As rates shoot up, the United States has to borrow more and more simply to pay the interest on its debt, and soon the economy is in a downward spiral.

April 26, 2010 at 3:20 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://article.nationalreview.com/432504/the-case-against-the-dodd-bill/the-editors

The dirty little secret about the Obama administration’s “Wall Street reform” bill is that it’s full of favors for Wall Street.

Case in point: [T]he new $50 billion fund that would be used to wind down large financial firms that became insolvent.

The fund would come from assessments on Wall Street banks, based on the principle that these “too big to fail” institutions should pre-fund their own bailouts.

(*SNICKER BASED UPON WHAT'S COMING UP*)

But you probably didn’t know that these assessments would count as tax-deductible business expenses, meaning that for every dollar the banks would pay into the fund, 35 cents would come out of the Treasury.

* PLUS OF COURSE THE REMAINING 65 CENTS OUT OF EACH DOLLAR... THAT COST WILL NO DOUBT BE PASSED ON TO CUSTOMERS IN THE FORM OF HIGHER INTEREST SPREADS (IN THE BANK'S FAVOR), HIGHER FEES, OR MOST LIKELY... BOTH.

For every measure that would cut into Wall Street’s profits, another would subsidize its operations.

New regulations governing derivatives would cut into the fees investment banks could charge for structuring these customized products. But the bailout authority awarded to the FDIC and the Federal Reserve would allow the banks to borrow at reduced rates, with their creditors secure in the knowledge that the government would step in if the market tanked.

* MORE BAILOUTS... (*SMIRK*)... BAILOUTS FINANCED BY THE TAXPAYER OF COURSE.

[L]ast week the Obama administration called the GOP’s bluff and offered to drop the fund. But as we editorialized at the time, removing the liquidation fund would not address the GOP’s concerns.

Under the administration’s proposal, the government would retain the power to seize and liquidate insolvent financial firms; instead of raising the necessary money beforehand, it would raise it after the fact.

[T]he bailout fund would remain in place, except it would materialize only after a crisis - if policymakers retained the stomach to impose assessments on what would be, at that point, a very shaky financial industry.

Senate Republicans have pledged to block the bill as it currently stands.

* AND THEY'D BETTER STAND BY THEIR GUNS...!!! (OH... DAMN... THINK I'LL BE GETTING A VISIT FROM HOMELAND SECURITY BY SAYING "GUNS...?") (*NERVOUS LAUGHTER*)

Under the Dodd bill, the Fed would retain the power to make loans accepting the shadiest of assets (such as subprime-mortgage-backed securities) as collateral. The Fed has used this authority over the past year to inject more than $1 trillion in new money into the economy, much of it routed through banks that stretched the definition of solvency.

The point of providing this money, then and in the future, is to prevent firms from going into resolution. It is the architecture of a permanent bailout authority, and it needs to be dismantled.

April 26, 2010 at 5:35 PM
William R. Barker said...

http://www.usatoday.com/news/topstories/2010-04-25-2380358148_x.htm

[Raul Grijalva, a Democrat] Arizona congressman urged the Obama administration not to cooperate when illegal immigrants are picked up by local police if a tough new state immigration law survives legal challenges.

* TELLS YOU ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT GRIJALVA, HUH?

Obama has called the new law "misguided"...

* WHICH TELLS YOU ALL YOU NEED TO KNOW ABOUT OBAMA, TOO! (*CHUCKLE*)

Opponents say it would lead to racial profiling... Supporters have dismissed concerns about profiling, saying the law prohibits the use of race or nationality as the sole basis for an immigration check.

* SUPPORTERS ARE RIGHT; I READ THE BILL!

Gov. Jan Brewer, who signed the measure Friday, has ordered state officials to develop a training course for officers to learn what constitutes reasonable suspicion someone is in the U.S. illegally.

State Sen. Russell Pearce, the Mesa Republican who sponsored the legislation, said it's "pretty disappointing" that opponents would call on the federal government to refuse to cooperate with Arizona authorities.

"It's outrageous that these people continue to support law breakers over law keepers," Pearce said Sunday.

The new law makes it a crime under state law to be in the country illegally. Immigrants unable to produce documents showing they are allowed to be in the U.S. could be arrested, jailed for up to six months and fined $2,500. Other provisions allow lawsuits against government agencies that hinder enforcement of immigration laws, and the law makes it illegal to hire illegal immigrants for day labor or knowingly transport them. Arizona officers would arrest people found to be undocumented and turn them over to federal immigration officers.

* THIS ALL SOUNDS REASONABLE...

Opponents said the federal government can block the law by refusing to accept them.

* AND THIS NOT ONLY "SOUNDS" BUT IS ON ITS FACE UNREASONABLE! HMM... ONE MIGHT EVEN SAY... er... SEDITIOUS! (*SMIRK*)

April 26, 2010 at 7:45 PM

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