Tag: news

Friday’s testimony before the House coronavirus subcommittee on Friday was supposed to be just another snoozefest with Dr. Fauci fielding the same questions from obsequious Democrats and hostile Republicans.

But viewers perked up roughly 2 hours into the hearing on Friday when Ohio Congressman Jim Jordan, one of the good doctor’s most vocal critics, was called on to ask a question.

His initial question was simple enough: “Dr. Fauci,” Jordan asked. “Can protests spread the virus?”

Considering the straightforwardness of the question, Dr. Fauci seemed surprisingly startled. He took a few moments to gather his thoughts, then responded that all large gatherings where people aren’t complying with all social distancing recommendations are ill-advised – though, the good doctor insisted, he didn’t want to make a specific judgment about what types of activities are permissible, and which aren’t.

But Jordan soon pointed out that the good doctor has made a lot of “judgment calls” – including opposing in-person worship and other practices seemingly protected by the first amendment.

Aside from the high probability that speaking out against the protests would instantly transform him into a target of deranged leftists, why does the good doctor feel justified to couch all criticisms of the protests in such mealymouthed language, while treating work, worship and other “rights” with much less respect?

He couldn’t answer. Instead, he reiterated that it wasn’t for him to say.

As far as Friday entertainment goes, Jordan’s grilling is one to remember.

Wow

Rep. @Jim_Jordan GRILLS Dr. Fauci on whether protests are increasing the spread of the virus.

Watch This 🔥 pic.twitter.com/DHxSs7lDUH

— Benny (@bennyjohnson) July 31, 2020

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

There is a real possibility that, this coming week, Joe Biden will be selecting the 47th president of the United States.

For the woman Biden picks – he has promised to exclude from consideration all men, black, brown, white or Asian – has a better chance of succeeding to the presidency than any vice presidential nominee in U.S. history, other than perhaps Harry Truman.

In 1944, the Democratic establishment engineered the dumping of radical Henry Wallace from Roosevelt’s ticket. They could see from FDR’s physical deterioration that he would not last through a full fourth term.

There are other reasons the woman Biden chooses in August may become our 47th president.

If Biden wins, he will be 78 when he takes the oath, older than our eldest president, Ronald Reagan, was when he left office after two terms. Biden would turn 80 even before he reached the midpoint of his first term.

Moreover, Biden has suffered a transparent deterioration of his mental capacities that was nowhere evident when he debated Mitt Romney’s running mate Paul Ryan in 2012.

What are the odds that Biden would serve a full term?

Of our 45 presidents, nine failed to complete the term to which they had been elected. One resigned; four died in office; and four were assassinated. All nine were succeeded by their vice president.

John Tyler became president in 1841 when William Henry Harrison died a month into office of pneumonia, following an inaugural address of nearly two hours in the cold without an overcoat.

Tyler would effect the annexation of the Republic of Texas in his final days in 1845, fail to win his party’s nomination to a full term, back the secession of Virginia in 1861, and end his days as a member of the Confederate Congress sitting in Richmond in 1862.

Mexican War hero and President Zachary Taylor died in his second year in 1850, to be succeeded by Millard Fillmore, who would go on to become the 1856 nominee of the anti-Catholic, anti-immigrant American Party known to history as the “Know Nothings.”

Andrew Johnson became president after the assassination of Lincoln at Ford’s Theater a month after Lincoln’s second inaugural.

Johnson would be impeached in 1868 by radical Republicans who wanted a more severe Reconstruction of a defeated and occupied South.

Chester Arthur succeeded James Garfield in 1881 after President Garfield suffered a mortal wound from an assassin’s bullet at a D.C. train station, only months into his first year in office.

Teddy Roosevelt became our youngest president in 1901 when he succeeded the assassinated William McKinley. In our own time, Lyndon Johnson succeeded John F. Kennedy after Dallas in November 1963.

In addition to Tyler, Fillmore, Andrew Johnson, Arthur, TR and LBJ, three vice presidents succeeded to the presidency in the 20th century on the death or departure of the men who selected them: Calvin Coolidge on the death of Warren Harding in 1923, Harry Truman on the death of FDR in April 1945, and Gerald Ford on the resignation of Richard Nixon.

Thus, of our four dozen vice presidents, all of whom have been white men, nine have risen to the nation’s highest office to fill out a term of the president who selected him.

Yet, with the pandemic crisis, the economic crisis and the racial crisis gripping the nation, what are the unique conditions Biden has set down for the person he would put a heartbeat away from the presidency?

Biden began his selection process by eliminating and discriminating against whole categories of people.

First, no white men need apply. Second, no man of any race, color or creed will be considered. Gender rules them out, though every vice president for 230 years has been a man.

Nevertheless, says Biden, this one has to be a woman.

“No men need apply!” automatically eliminated 17 of the 24 Democratic governors who are men, including Andrew Cuomo of New York and Gavin Newsom of California, and it eliminated 30 of the 47 Democratic members of the Senate who are men.

In the aftermath of the George Floyd killing and protests, pressure has grown on Biden not only to choose a woman but a woman of color, and preferably a Black woman. If that were a criterion, it would eliminate all but a tiny few of the party’s senators and governors.

What national interest impelled Biden to so restrict the pool of talent from which a possible presidential successor would be chosen?

Joe Biden would be the oldest man ever to serve as president. He would enter office with visibly diminished mental capacities. And he has decided to restrict his choice as to who should inherit our highest office by ruling out the vast majority of the most able and experienced leaders of his own Democratic Party.

Is this any way to select someone who could, in a heartbeat, take control of the destiny of the world’s most powerful nation?

Whatever happened to Jimmy Carter’s “Why Not the Best?”

Following today’s release of the latest Personal Income and Spending data, Wall Street was predictably focused on the changes in these two key series, which showed a modest slowdown in personal spending (to be expected one month after the savings rate in the US hit a record), coupled with a modest decline in personal income (as government benefits and stimulus checks slowed substantially).

But while the change in the headline data was indeed notable, what was far more remarkable was less followed data showing just how reliant on the US government the population has become.

We are referring, of course, to Personal Current Transfer payments which are essentially government sourced income such as unemployment benefits, welfare checks, and so on. In May, this number was $4.9 trillion annualized, and while it is down from the record $6.6 trillion hit in April when the US government activated the money helicopters to avoid a total collapse of the US economy, it was nearly $2 trillion above the pre-Covid trend where transfer receipts were approximately $3.2 trillion.

Even more striking, is that as of June when total Personal Income was just below $20 trillion annualized, the government remains responsible for over a quarter of all income.

Putting that number in perspective, in the 1950s and 1960s, transfer payment were around 7%. This number rose in the low teens starting in the mid-1970s (right after the Nixon Shock ended Bretton-Woods and closed the gold window). The number then jumped again after the financial crisis, spiking to the high teens.

And now, the coronavirus has officially sent this number into the mid-20% range, after hitting a record high 31% in April.

And that’s how creeping banana republic socialism comes at you: first slowly, then fast.

So for all those who claim that the Fed is now (and has been for the past decade) subsidizing the 1%, that’s true, but with every passing month, the government is also funding the daily life of an ever greater portion of America’s poorest social segments.

Who ends up paying for both?

Why the middle class of course, where the dollar debasement on one side, and the insane debt accumulation on the other, mean that millions of Americans content to work 9-5, pay their taxes, and generally keep their mouth shut as others are burning everything down and tearing down statues, are now doomed.

The “good” news? As we reported last November, the US middle class won’t have to suffer this pain for much longer, because while the US has one one of the highest median incomes in the entire world, with only three countries boasting a higher income, it is who gets to collect this money that is the major problem, because as the chart also shows, with just a 50% share of the population in middle-income households, the US is now in the same category as such “banana republics” as Turkey, China and, drumroll, Russia.

What is just as stunning: according to the OECD, more than half of the countries in question have a more vibrant middle class than the US.

So the next time someone abuses the popular phrase  “they hate us for our [fill in the blank]”, perhaps it’s time to counter that “they” may not “hate” us at all, but rather are making fun of what has slowly but surely become the world’s biggest banana republic?

And as we concluded last year, “it has not Russia, nor China, nor any other enemy, foreign or domestic, to blame… except for one: the Federal Reserve Bank of the United States.”

By Megan Brenan of Gallup

After hitting 20-year highs in April and May, Americans’ approval of Congress continues its downward slide to 18%. The last time congressional approval was below 20% was in September 2019.

The latest reading is from a Gallup poll conducted July 1-23 as coronavirus cases in the U.S. continued to spike, and Congress worked to negotiate another economic relief package. Congress’ heightened approval ratings in the spring came on the heels of the first relief package, which was well-received by majorities of Americans across party lines.

While partisans’ approval ratings of the legislative branch have declined by double digits since May, Democrats’ approval has fallen the most — from 39% to 20%. At the same time, Republicans’ approval has dropped from 24% to 14% and independents’ from 32% to 21%.

Presidential Approval Rating Stable

As Americans’ approval of Congress drops, President Donald Trump’s approval rating has been steady near 40% in June and July. Still, the current 41% remains well below the 49% earlier this year when the economy was in good shape, and Trump was enjoying a post-impeachment bounce.

The 87-percentage-point gap in Trump’s approval rating between Republicans (91%) and Democrats (4%) remains among the highest measured by Gallup, exceeded only by the 89-point gap in June.

Implications

As the nation continues to simultaneously battle the coronavirus pandemic and the poor economic conditions that resulted from it, Americans appear to be of the “what have you done for me lately?” mindset in assessing Congress.

With the general election just over three months away, the president’s approval rating is in dangerous territory from a historical perspective, and he is running out of time to bounce back to his pre-pandemic highs.

Update (1020ET): Wow! From gains of over 2% overnight, Nasdaq is now almost red along with the rest of the US major equity indices…

Small Caps are crashing hard and The Dow has broken back below its 200DMA…

GOOGL is down significantly along with MSFT as AMZN, AAPL, and FB all remain up large but losing gains quickly…

*  *  *

The overnight explosion higher in Nasdaq – on the heels of blockbuster earnings from the tech giants – is fading extremely fast as the US cash markets opened…

More than half of the Nasdaq’s gains are gone and Small Caps are ugly…

“…sell the news?”

Gold is also sliding at the same time after Futures topped $2000 this morning…

Is this month-end flows?

Via SchiffGold.com,

As gold was closing in on its all-time record price last week, Peter Schiff appeared on the Claman Countdown and warned about the looming dollar crisis.

Claman set up the interview pointing out that Peter predicted this big move up in gold months ago and asked, “What’s your new prediction about the dollar?”

Peter said it’s not really a new prediction, but perhaps it’s more timely.

The dollar’s not just going down. It is going to crash.”

Prior to the interview, Claman mentioned that the Dow was up, but Peter said there is another way to look at it.

Priced in real money, gold and silver, the Dow is actually down. And what gold is telling you, and silver, is that the dollar is losing value. It’s losing purchasing power.”

The dollar had been drifting lower against other fiat currencies over the past several weeks. At the time of the interview, the dollar index was just a few ticks off its March low.

But I think the dollar is going to keep drifting down until it collapses,” Peter said.  “And this is going to usher in a real economic crisis in America, unlike something we’ve ever seen. Because it’s going to force the Fed to choose between saving the dollar, and dumping all the bonds its been buying, letting interest rates rise sharply, forcing the US government to slash spending right now and abandon all these stimulus plans, or just let inflation ravage the entire economy and wipe out a generation of Americans.”

Claman asked Peter what is the trade given what’s coming down the pike. Peter said his advice is “to get out of Dodge.”

Get out of dollars. Number one, yeah, own gold and silver. The gold and silver mining stocks are killing it, but they’re just getting started. I mean, these stocks, I think, can go up 10, 20 times in dollar terms.”

Peter also recommended foreign stocks that derive their revenues outside the US and earn them in foreign currencies, not US dollars. They can return those appreciated foreign currencies to you in dividends that avoid the inflation tax.

Forget about the payroll tax. The real tax that’s going to clobber every American is inflation because that’s how the government is now funding its spending is through inflation. And inflation is a tax on anybody who owns US dollars.”

While ‘hard’ data continues to disappoint, ‘soft’ survey data is still chock full of hope as MNI’s Chicago Business Barometer surged to 51.9 from 36.6, smashing expectations of 44.0.

Source: Bloomberg

Under the hood, everything is awesome with 6 subcomponents rising:

• Prices paid rose at a faster pace; signaling expansion

• New orders rose and the direction reversed; signaling expansion

• Employment fell at a slower pace; signaling contraction

• Inventories fell at a slower pace; signaling contraction

• Supplier deliveries rose at a slower pace; signaling expansion

• Production rose and the direction reversed; signaling expansion

• Order backlogs fell at a slower pace; signaling contraction

This is the highest reading for Chicago PMI since May… what lockdown?