An adviser to two presidents warns that if the United States gives free health care to illegal aliens, as some Democratic candidates advocate, it would be “the end of the country as it now exists.”
Doug Wead is a New York Times bestselling author and is credited for coining the term “compassionate conservative.”
“If the United States becomes the first nation on Earth to offer free healthcare to anyone who enters its borders, even illegally, it would result in massive immigration and the end of the country as it now exists,” said Wead.
Despite nearly 60 per cent of Americans opposing free healthcare for illegal aliens, presidential candidate Bernie Sanders once again advocated the policy during last night’s debate in Detroit.
“I happen to believe that when I talk about health care as a human right, that applies to all people in this country,” said Sanders.
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If one had to summarize Powell’s press conference, in which he was so dazed and confused after facing a barrage of questions forcing him to explain just why he is cutting rates now when in the Fed’s own words the US economy is doing great and “confidence is rebounding”, and just what a mere 25bps “insurance” cut will achieve that it was painfully uncomfortable to watch, it was with the following two quotes:
POWELL: THIS ISN’T THE START OF A LONG SERIES OF RATE CUTS
… but
POWELL: I DIDN’T SAY IT’S JUST ONE RATE CUT
And as markets shook, stunned by Powell’s revelation that today’s rate cut was just a “mid-cycle adjustment”, with the Dow Jones plunging briefly by over 400 points as hopes for an easing cycle were promptly dashed, Wall Street analysts sent out their hot takes of what Powell just did and said. Courtesy of Bloomberg here are some of the most notable responses, besides today’s winner from Chris Rupkey of course:
Delores Rubin, a senior equity trader at Deutsche Bank Wealth Management
“The market was fine with the statement, but as seems to be the case, the press conference reveals details that do not sit well with the market. The response that this is a mid-cycle adjustment and not part of a longer term accommodative stance has raised concerns. The market has really talked itself into a need for lower rates. Obviously the FOMC still feels strongly the economy is resilient.”
Zhiwei Ren, Penn Mutual Asset Management portfolio manager.
“The market pricing is for 3 more cuts for the next one year. He is pushing back that market pricing. He says this is a mid-cycle rate cut, which means it is 1-2 cuts and done…he is not giving the market what it wants — three cuts for next year. He basically said ‘At the beginning of the year, we were pricing a few hikes and turned patient — no rate hike, no cut — and now we’re cutting 25 bps. We think that’s accommodative enough.’ he didn’t say they need to cut more. That’s a big surprise to me and the market.”
Max Gokhman, the head of asset allocation for Pacific Life Fund Advisors.
“Two possible reasons. One is that the market thinks an ‘adjustment’ is a one-and-done thing. I doubt that’s the case, especially because there was also language in the statement about the ‘future path’ of rates being a subject of future data. To be clear, I’m not saying the market isn’t worried that it’s one-and-done — that’s just not how I’m seeing it. The second reason is perhaps the market thinks that when Powell says “mid-cycle” he is giving credence to the (ahem) fact that business cycles have a beginning, middle and… END. Most likely the first reason is what moved prices though.”
Charlie Smith, founding partner and chief investment officer at Fort Pitt Capital Group in Pittsburgh.
“The catalyst for sell-on-the-news was that phrase. He made it explicit — basically, that’s what that phrase means. An insurance cut implied ‘Hey, it’s just an insurance policy. It’s a one-time premium and we’re done.’ And then he made it explicit with that sentence and the market figured it out.”
Matt Maley, equity strategist at Miller Tabak + Co.
“His comment about an ‘adjustment’ probably means that those looking for an aggressive easing cycle over the next six to nine months are not going to see it. What it means is that there was a divergence between what investors were saying and what they were pricing in. Investors wanted Powell to say that he’s cutting, but they really wanted to see the Fed embarking on a rate-cutting cycle. The consensus belief on what the Fed would do was correct. It’s just that the markets pricing in an aggressive cycle of rate cuts were way off.”
And now, we wait for Trump to tweet his reaction to his demands for a rate cut… when what he got was a stock plunge and a dollar surge.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LPKZkV Tyler Durden
Hours after Reuters reported that the Saudi Binladin Group is looking to restructure between $20 and $30 billion in debt, the infamous construction family was hit with the news that son and potential successor of al Qaeda leader Osama Bin Laden is dead, according to NBC News, citing three US officials regarding intelligence obtained by the United States.
It is unclear whether the US played a role in the death of Hamza bin Laden, who was approximately 30-years-old.
Hamza bin Laden is believed to have been born around 1989. His father moved to Afghanistan in 1996 and declared war against the U.S. Hamza went with him and appeared in al Qaeda propaganda videos. As leader of al Qaeda, Osama bin Laden oversaw operations against Western targets that culminated in the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York’s World Trade Center and on the Pentagon. –NBC News
In February, the State Department announced a reward of up to $1 million for information on Hamza’s whereabouts – describing the younger bin Laden on Twitter as “an emerging al Qaeda leader” who “has threatened attacks against the United States and allies.”
Meanwhile, the Binladin Group is reportedly seeking a financial adviser to restructure their debt – after the Saudi government took a roughly 1/3 stake in the conglomerate after family members were swept up in an anti-graft campaign launched by Saudi Crown Prince Mohammad Bin Salman.
The company, which has dominated the construction sector for years, is crucial to the kingdom’s plans for tourism and infrastructure projects aimed at diversifying the economy away from oil revenues by 2030.
The Binladin Group has sent a request for proposals to a select group of international advisers over the past few weeks to reorganize the debt of the whole group, said the five sources, speaking anonymously because the matter is private. –Reuters
The debt restructuring is likely to concern Saudi banks and other creditors, who had been expecting the Saudi finance ministry to provide the group with government loans.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2K5Sdz1 Tyler Durden
Given the market’s expectations for 4 rate cuts and more if it really wants, Fed Chair Powell just stole the jam out of the market’s donut by saying this was a “mid-cycle adjustment” confirming that this is “not the start of an easing cycle.”
Stocks tumbled….
This presser marks the 10th time out of 12 that S&P has dropped during Powell presser. Not a great record.
And the yield curve crashed…
And the dollar surged to its highest since My 2017…
Stocks down and dollar up – Trump won’t be happy!!
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Never before have presidential candidates offered voters so much “free” stuff.
Kamala Harris wants you to “collect up to $500 a month.”
Elizabeth Warren says, “We need to go tenfold in our research and development in green energy.”
No one has tracked the cost of all of the promises. So my video team did!
Who will spend the most?
Here are the new spending proposals from the five most popular (according to ElectionBettingOdds.com) candidates.
In my latest video, we break it down by category, education spending first:
Joe Biden wants to “triple the amount of money we spend for Title I schools” ($32 billion) create “universal pre-K” ($26 billion), provide “free community college” ($6 billion per year) and double the number of psychologists and social workers in schools ($14 billion) — $78 billion total.
That’s a lot, but much less than what Kamala Harris would spend.
She too wants to “make community college free” ($6 billion), but she’d add debt-free “four-year public college” ($80.1 billion), “increase government’s investment in childcare” dramatically ($60 billion) and “give the average public school teacher a $13,000 raise” ($31.5 billion) for a total of $177 billion.
Pete Buttigieg rarely says what his proposals would cost, but he at least seems to want to spend less than Harris.
He touts “free college for low- and middle-income students” and would give teachers more money. Assuming his plan is like Harris’, that brings his education total to $87 billion.
Elizabeth Warren would spend much more.
“You’ll be debt-free!” she tells students. Taxpayers, unfortunately, will be deeper in debt, since she would “forgive” most existing student debt and make public college tuition-free ($125 billion).
She also wants a “Universal Child Care and Early Learning Act” ($70 billion).
These big-ticket items put her in the first place so far.
But wait! Bernie Sanders would spend even more.
He’d completely “eliminate student debt,” “make public colleges and universities tuition-free” and provide universal daycare and pre-K. That totals $280 billion, so Sanders “wins” in education spending.
I assumed the self-described socialist would be the biggest spender, but he’s got lots of competition!
Let’s look at health care spending.
Harris, Sanders and Warren all propose “Medicare for All,” including for people here illegally.
Sanders goes further, saying, “Under our plan, people go to any doctor they want.” He admits it will cost between $3 trillion and $4 trillion per year, about what the government now spends on everything. How will he pay for that? Well, somehow the rich will pay. Or Martians. Somebody.
Sanders, Harris, and Warren all said they’d ban private health insurance — although Harris now says she’d let private companies sell “Medicare plans” that “adhere to strict Medicare requirements on costs and benefits.” She also claims her “Medicare for All” will be cheaper than Sanders’ version, but as of now, there is no independently calculated cost.
When it comes to the environment, all Democratic candidates but Biden say they support the Green New Deal, which Republicans say would cost $93 trillion. For our ranking, I went with the lowest estimate we could find: An economist who likes the idea says it will cost around $500 billion a year.
Welfare? Harris would increase benefits and have the government pay your rent if it’s over 30% of your income ($94 billion), and Friday she offered $75 billion to black colleges and minority entrepreneurs.
Warren wants to spend more ($50 billion) on housing.
Sanders would increase food stamps for kids ($10.8 billion), boost Social Security benefits ($19 billion) and guarantee everyone a government job ($158 billion), for a total of $187.8 billion.
President Donald Trump, who says America will never be a socialist country, hasn’t been a responsible spender either.
Since he took office, spending increased about $500 billion per year. Trump did propose some cuts, but when Congress ignored his cuts and increased spending, he signed the bills anyway.
Now he says he’d spend even more: $200 billion a year for infrastructure, $8.6 billion for the border wall construction, $1.6 billion for more NASA funding and on and on, for a total of $267 billion.
We can’t afford it! The federal government is already $22 trillion in debt — $150,000 per taxpayer.
While Trump’s $267 billion is bad, the Democrats’ plans are worse. We counted $297 billion proposed by Biden, $690 billion from Buttigieg, $3.8 trillion from Warren, $4 trillion from Sanders and $4.3 trillion from Harris. That would double what the entire federal government spends now.
Senator Harris “wins” the free stuff contest.
Taxpayers lose.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2GECB3d Tyler Durden
The discussion of gun violence during last night’s Democratic presidential debate started with a misleading question, which prompted answers that were both misleading and irrelevant. “There were three large-scale shootings this past week in America, at a park in Brooklyn, on the streets in Philadelphia, and one that left three dead and 12 injured at a food festival in Gilroy, California,” said one of the moderators, CNN’s Don Lemon. “Mayor Buttigieg, other than offering words of comfort, what’re you specially going to do to stop this epidemic of gun violence?”
Since Lemon referred to an “epidemic of gun violence,” you could be forgiven for inferring that homicides committed with firearms are on the rise. In fact, the number of such crimes fell in 2017 and 2018 after rising in 2015 and 2016. And even at the recent peak of 11,138 in 2016, the number was nearly two-fifths lower than in 1993, just before violent crime began to fall, a trend that continued for two decades. Since the population grew during that period, the gun homicide rate fell even more sharply, from 7 per 100,000 in 1993 to 4.5 per 100,000 in 2017, which is higher than the rate in 2014 but still 36 percent lower than the 1993 peak.
Responding to Lemon’s question, South Bend, Indiana, Mayor Pete Buttigieg compounded the confusion. “This epidemic of gun violence has hit my community too, far too many times,” he said. Later he added: “I was a junior when the Columbine shooting happened. I was part of the first generation that saw routine school shootings.”
Mass shootings like the one at Columbine High School in 1999, or like the ones Lemon mentioned in his question, account for a tiny share of gun homicides: 1 percent in 2017, which had an unusually high death toll because of the Las Vegas massacre, which killed 58 people. But is Buttigieg right that school shootings, which account for an even tinier share of gun homicides, became noticeably more common after Columbine?
According to research by Northeastern University criminologist James Alan Fox, fatal school shootings peaked in the early 1990s, when they were far more common than in 1999 or the following decade. “There is not an epidemic of school shootings,” he said last year, noting that deaths caused by firearms at schools remain very rare. During a 25-year period, he found, an average of about 10 students died that way each year. Seven times as many children die from drowning each year, and 10 times as many are killed in bicycle accidents.
Nor do Buttigieg’s solutions—”universal background checks,” “red flag laws,” and “an end to assault weapons”—make much sense as a response to mass shootings or gun violence generally. Mass shooters typically do not have disqualifying criminal or psychiatric records, and common criminals easily avoid background checks by buying guns on the black market or through proxies. The effectiveness of so-called red flag laws hinges not only on the ability to identify would-be murderers ahead of time but on their compliance with court orders. All rifles combined, a subset of which politicians would describe as “assault weapons,” accounted for less than 4 percent of gun homicides in 2017.
Handguns accounted for 64 percent of murders with firearms that year, and they are also the kind of weapon used in most mass shootings, including two out of the three incidents mentioned by Don Lemon. The perpetrator of the Gilroy shooting used a rifle he legally bought in Nevada that is banned as an “assault weapon” in California, which The New York Times seems to think is a big deal.
“In Nevada, the purchase by the 19-year-old was legal,” the Timessays. “But just across the line in California, where the minimum age for purchasing a rifle is now 21, the weapon is banned and should never have been brought into the state, according to the state’s attorney general, Xavier Becerra.” Yet a graphic explainer accompanying that article notes that bans like California’s have no significant impact on the lethal capacity of legally available firearms, which are “nearly indistinguishable from illegal assault weapons.”
Why is that? Possibly because the “military-style” features that legislators dislike, which in California include pistol grips, folding stocks, and flash suppressors, have little or nothing to do with a gun’s functionality in the hands of a mass murderer. “Gun owners say those features are largely cosmetic and don’t necessarily make the weapon more dangerous,” the Times notes. “The proof, they say, is that the same features remain legal for rifles with a fixed, or attached, magazine.”
But as far as Buttigieg is concerned, the burden is not on him to show that his policy prescriptions would actually have a measurable impact on gun violence. “Something is broken if it is even possible for the same debate around the same solutions that we all know are the right thing to do,” he said. “They won’t prevent every incident. They won’t save every life. But we know what to do, and it has not happened.” In place of an argument, Buttigieg offers poll numbers. How do “we all know” the policies that Buttigieg favors are “the right thing to do”? We just do.
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At last night’s Democratic presidential primary debate in Detroit, the contenders repeatedly excoriated each other for regurgitating Republican talking points on health care, environment, student debt forgiveness, and government spending. But the one issue on which they all seemed content to play on President Donald Trump’s turf was immigration.
For all their lip service to implementing humane border policies that don’t involve ripping suckling infants from the breasts of migrant moms, not a single candidate thought to systematically stick up for immigrants because they are good for America. Senator Amy Klobuchar (D–Minn.) came the closest when she noted, “Immigrants don’t diminish America; they are America.” But that was a single throwaway line in a 150-minute gabfest that none of her rivals picked up. They all talked about immigrants as if they were supplicants—debating whether handing them this or that benefit would draw too many of them—rather than producers and contributors who are the source of America’s dynamism and strength.
Bernie Sanders insisted that his universal health care designs wouldn’t become a magnet for illegal immigration because of “strong border protections.” How precisely his border strongness would avoid Trump-style border inhumanity, he didn’t explain (unless you count his suggestion of a hemispheric conclave to chatter about the problem of fleeing asylum seekers). Ditto for Colorado Governor John Hickenlooper. Meanwhile, Beto O’Rourke, the alleged BFF of immigrants who has long sung paeans to the safety of El Paso, the Texas border town where he lives, despite its huge presence of undocumented immigrants, refused to hop on board with plans to decriminalize illegal border crossings. Senator Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) did enthusiastically favor decriminalization but beyond that muttered vaguely about “living our values” instead of actually saying something positive about immigrants and what they’ve done for America.
In other words, Democrats allowed President Trump to control the immigration conversation without him having to get anywhere near the stage.
But if Democrats really want to move the needle on this issue, they will have to change the narrative and talk about immigrants as the assets that they are—rather than the liability that they are not. Democratic candidates ought to be reminding Americans day and night that immigrants don’t threaten their jobs and wages. To the contrary, they boost productivity and innovation.
This shouldn’t be that hard given that even foes of immigration such as Harvard University’s George Borjas (whom I debated here) concede that after accounting for the schooling, health care, and other fiscal costs, immigration still produces a $50 billion annual GDP surplus for the country. One recent study even found that without migration, U.S. economic growth from 1990 to 2014 would have been roughly 15 percentage points lower; and 1.5 percent lower every year from 2011 to 2016, the years after the Great Recession. “This is enough to cancel out the majority of post [financial] crisis gains,” the study concluded. In other words, without immigration America would have been in for an even longer recession, which would have hurt native wages.
More immigration boosts productivity by removing crucial labor bottlenecks in the low-skilled and high-skilled industries where there aren’t enough Americans able or willing to do the jobs. But it also boosts innovation because new people bring new ideas.
Everyone accepts that an increase in skilled migration directly increases the aggregate level of mental capital, the lifeblood of a knowledge economy. But even more low-skilled immigration ultimately boosts the availability of this capital. How? Low-skilled workers relive high-skilled workers (especially women) from menial chores, allowing them to devote themselves to other pursuits.
It is hardly an exaggeration to suggest that if America’s economy has become the innovative hub of the world, dominating virtually every industry in the 21st Century from IT to Media/Entertainment, it is because of immigration.
Indeed, immigrants and their children were responsible for founding 46 percent of all the Fortune 500 companies in America in 2017, including, of course, Apple, which was started by the son of Syrian refugees. Immigrants have started more than half (44 of 87) of America’s startup companies valued at $1 billion dollars.
Between 2000 to 2017, immigrants won nearly 40 percent of the Nobel Prizes for America —and we aren’t talking about the fake Nobel Peace Prize that President Obama won before he started drone-bombing foreign lands into the stone ages, but those in chemistry, medicine, and physics. About 83 percent (33 of 40) of the finalists of the 2016 Intel Science Talent Search, the leading science competition for U.S. high school students, were the children of immigrants. In fact, 75 percent—30 out of 40—of the finalists had parents who worked in America on H-1B visas. That compares to seven children who had both parents born in the United States. Heck, a 2006 study by the National Foundation for American Policy even found that the great American sport of baseball would be far less great without immigration:
In the American League in 2006, 7 of the top 9 batting averages belonged to foreign-born players, while the leading home run hitter (David Ortiz) and the two leaders in runs batted in (Ortiz and Justin Morneau) were foreign-born.
In the National League, two of the top three hitters for average (Albert Pujols and Miguel Cabrera) and home runs (Pujols andAlfonso Soriano) were foreign-born. Dominican-born pitcher Johan Santana led the major leagues in strikeouts, earned run average and wins (tied at 19 with Chien-Ming Wang).
And even as folks like Rep. Steve King (R–Iowa) yammer about saving Western civilization from foreign hordes, said hordes are saving the English language. Indeed, even as natives are forgetting how to spell, foreigners have been dominating the National Spelling Bee competition, including this year, when 7 of the 8 finalists were Indian Americans.
Despite these massive contributions from immigrants, Democrats are allowing President Trump to depict them as moochers and criminals who threaten American culture. Until they wrest the conversation back from him and set the record straight on just how vital immigration is to this country’s success, even if one of them wins the White House, he or she won’t be able to accomplish zilch on this issue, presuming that they want to.
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The following epic rant from MUFG chief economist Chris Rupkey hardly needs any commentary, as it is about as close to a perfect reaction to the idiocy unleashed by the Poiwell Fed as can get.
Congratulations to all of you down in Washington who have lowered the boom on interest rates today. We guess you must be feeling pretty proud of yourselves. US central bank policymakers have learned nothing from the experience of low interest rates in Japan or Europe. The economies of Japan and Europe aren’t going up like a rocket ship and it is doubtful economic growth will see any greater liftoff here in the good old USA.
Go ahead and eliminate interest rates. Wall Street is already eliminating thousands of jobs in sales and trading and more rate cuts mean reduced margins and less volatility and thousands more will be told to go. Hedge interest rate risk. What interest rates?
Countries with low rates have economies with low growth. The Fed’s decision today is like in the days when doctors bled their patients to heal them. Fed officials made a very unwise decision today and buckled to the president’s demands by manufacturing reasons to cut interest rates despite a strong economy with no recession signs apparent anywhere out on the horizon.
The stock market may be partying today, but it will wake up with a huge hangover tomorrow as the Fed alters the way the country saves and spends and borrows and invests forever. I think they are probably proud of themselves, but they should really be more ashamed.
The Federal Reserve threw away their independence today and with each future rate cut they will gradually eliminate their relevance to the economy forever.
What can one possibly add to this: he is 100% correct.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/315ghYr Tyler Durden
