another site
The
United States in August and September began considering in earnest
whether or not to become militarily involved in Syria. There are
many tough and contentious questions about that decision, but one
fact is undeniable: It would be expensive. Veronique de Rugy
analyzes some of the many costs of going to war with that
country.
from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/18/veronique-de-rugy-asks-how-much-would-wa
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Thanks to some overnght levitation (and in spite of major outflows from foreigner from the US as seen in the TIC data), US equities have opened this morning to new all-time highs. As “investors” watched in disappointment on Friday at the ‘miss’, the opening this morning – amid a double POMO day – has lifted the Dow above 16,000 and the S&P 500 above 1,800 for the first time ever (now up around 10% from the debt-ceiling lows in the last month). The S&P 500 has seen a 3x rise in the multiple this year… still chepa though, right? Caracas here we come…
S&P 500 1,800
Nearing The Fed’s year-end target…
Dow Jones Industrials 16,000
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/zKIyraYI998/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Thanks to some overnght levitation (and in spite of major outflows from foreigner from the US as seen in the TIC data), US equities have opened this morning to new all-time highs. As “investors” watched in disappointment on Friday at the ‘miss’, the opening this morning – amid a double POMO day – has lifted the Dow above 16,000 and the S&P 500 above 1,800 for the first time ever (now up around 10% from the debt-ceiling lows in the last month). The S&P 500 has seen a 3x rise in the multiple this year… still chepa though, right? Caracas here we come…
S&P 500 1,800
Nearing The Fed’s year-end target…
Dow Jones Industrials 16,000
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/zKIyraYI998/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Lately Bill Clinton has not been doing the president many favors. First, the “is” definition-challenged former president had some harsh words about Obamacare, and most recently in an overnight question-and-answer session before a standing-room-only crowd in a Beijing hotel ballroom, Clinton who was in Beijing for meetings with China’s President Xi Jinping as well as to promote the work of his New York-based philanthropic organisation, the Clinton Foundation, while withholding comments on Obama – whose approval rating has plunged to an all time low – refused to criticise Edward Snowden. Instead he said he believed it was “perfectly legitimate” for the US government to search “big data pools… to see if there are patterns of communication between certain numbers or sites and others known to be in the possession of terrorist groups”. But he went on, via AFP: “The question is when, if ever, is the government justified in going beyond the patterns to listen to telephone calls, read emails, read text messages, and who’s supposed to decide that? Mr Snowden obviously thought that it was excessive.”
He added:
The fact that Snowden was able to receive a top-secret security clearance despite having only been a contractor for several months “made me think that we are on the verge of having the worst of all worlds: We’ll have no security and no privacy”, Clinton added.
“I think the US and China and everybody else, we’re going to have to be more upfront with each other and probably with our own people about what it is we’re looking for and listening to,” he said.
Of course, it is unlikely that anything will change, much to the detriment of US companies with international operations such as Cisco, whose revenues are projected to tumble in big part due to the blowback resulting from the Snowden revelations. Whether this will be a limited, one-time event remains to be seen.
More amusingly, among Clinton’s other comments was his speculation on the gender of the next US president.
Former US president Bill Clinton hopes there will be a woman in the White House in his lifetime and will support his wife Hillary in whatever she decides to do, he told a Chinese audience on Monday.
Hillary, who earlier this year stepped down as US secretary of state, has not yet said whether she plans another presidential run after her failed 2008 bid for the Democratic nomination.
“I hope we have a woman president in my lifetime, and I think it would be a good thing for the world as well as for America,” Clinton said at a conference organised by the respected Chinese financial magazine Caijing.
“But I do not know if she’s going to run, and there is no such thing as a sure thing in politics,” he added.
In a question-and-answer session before a standing-room-only crowd in a Beijing hotel ballroom, Clinton, who was president from 1993 to 2001, was asked whether he envisages becoming a “first husband” in the future.
“You know, if I knew the answer to that, I couldn’t say,” he responded. “But I can give you an honest answer: I have no idea.”
He called his wife “the ablest public servant I have ever worked with” and said that he would support her whatever decision she makes on a White House run.
“If that’s what she wants to do, I will support her,” Clinton said. “But if she decides for whatever reason she doesn’t, I will support that.”
“It’s very interesting for us; we still feel young and we still feel healthy,” he added, noting that compared with several decades ago, he believes his wife now is “less motivated… by a fear of failure”.
Naturally, it would only be logical that the first female Fed chair be followed by the first female president. One can only hope, however, that in both cases it is not some gender quota driving the choice but the candidate with the best credentials. Then again, considering the current sorry state of the US economy, one wonders what difference does it make just who the next US president will be.
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/lgGYOnxEb6k/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Amid the Spanish FinMin’s “concerns about the pace of the increase” in government debt, and PM Rajoy’s confidence that the nation would exit the eurozone-fueled banking bailout by January, bad loans in the still disastrously-troubled nations have re-accelerated to an all-time record high of 12.68% of total loans. Mostly linked to the collapsed property sector, bad loans climbed by 6.9 billion euros from the previous month to an unprecedented 187.8 billion euros ($254 billion) in September. Having almost completed the drawdown of its 41 billion bailout – and with the situation fundamentally worse than ever (e.g. record high unemployment), Spanish bond spreads have collapsed to 250bps – their lowest in 29 months.
Chart: Bloomberg
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/Hd4CwY1LUsg/story01.htm Tyler Durden
The Fed is not taking any chances: on the day in which every index is broadly expected to slip into uncharted, even-number territory, Kevin Henry and the other NY Fed Inkjets are making sure to seal the deal not with one but two POMOs, the first one starting at its usual time of 10:15 am for about $1.5 billion, and the second at 1:15pm for a 2 pm closing amounting to roughly $3.5 billion. Since the total will likely be above the magical $5 billion threshold, the probability of a down day is virtually nil.
Why is $5 billion so critical? The TBAC explained it in August…
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/38Vwfso3-gI/story01.htm Tyler Durden
Via Benn Swann comes this
charming tale of SWAT team overkill. The Columbia, South Carolina
police department – along with 499 other municipalities across this
sweet land of liberty – received a “free” MRAP (Mine-Resistant
Ambush Protected) vehicle featuring bullet-proof skin and a rack
capable of holidng a 50 caliber machine gun. Such vehicles cost
about $658,000 but this one was gifted to the police by the
Department of Defense.
Swann notes:
Though the vehicle was “free” to the citizens of Columbia, they
were purchased by taxpayer money. 500 surplus military
vehicles costing $658,000 each adds up to $329 million dollars of
surplus DoD spending (and therefore taxing) on vehicles which are
so unnecessary to the military they are being given away to
American cities. Though this wouldn’t fix the debt, it is yet
another multi-million dollar piece of wasteful spending by the
American federal government.The most troubling aspect of the situation, though, is the
reason for obtaining such a vehicle. Another town which
recently obtained federal funding for a military armored vehicle –
though this one was through the Department of Homeland Security –
was Concord, New Hampshire. When the ACLU and New Hampshire
Civil Liberties Union submitted a public records request, they
discovered that groups like the Free State Project and Occupy New
Hampshire had been cited
as domestic terror threats, and their presence was listed as a
reason the police department needed an armored vehicle.
The vehicle came as part of the infamous “1033 program,” through
which Defense gets rid of excess stuff it didn’t need in the first
place by putting it into circulation via local police departments
(it’s like a gun giveaway in reverse and with tons more firepower).
Read Reason on that.
And read about that horrifying Free State Project – in which a
bunch of libertarians are moving to New Hampshire to influence
state and local government in a small-government direction –
here. Good luck finding any violent terrorists among the
participants.
No journalist has done more to highlight the militarization of
police than former Reason staffer Radley Balko (archive here),
now at the Huffington Post (archive here).
Watch this interview about his recent book
Rise of the Warrior Cop.
from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/18/police-in-columbia-south-carolina-and-49
via IFTTT
Via Benn Swann comes this
charming tale of SWAT team overkill. The Columbia, South Carolina
police department – along with 499 other municipalities across this
sweet land of liberty – received a “free” MRAP (Mine-Resistant
Ambush Protected) vehicle featuring bullet-proof skin and a rack
capable of holidng a 50 caliber machine gun. Such vehicles cost
about $658,000 but this one was gifted to the police by the
Department of Defense.
Swann notes:
Though the vehicle was “free” to the citizens of Columbia, they
were purchased by taxpayer money. 500 surplus military
vehicles costing $658,000 each adds up to $329 million dollars of
surplus DoD spending (and therefore taxing) on vehicles which are
so unnecessary to the military they are being given away to
American cities. Though this wouldn’t fix the debt, it is yet
another multi-million dollar piece of wasteful spending by the
American federal government.The most troubling aspect of the situation, though, is the
reason for obtaining such a vehicle. Another town which
recently obtained federal funding for a military armored vehicle –
though this one was through the Department of Homeland Security –
was Concord, New Hampshire. When the ACLU and New Hampshire
Civil Liberties Union submitted a public records request, they
discovered that groups like the Free State Project and Occupy New
Hampshire had been cited
as domestic terror threats, and their presence was listed as a
reason the police department needed an armored vehicle.
The vehicle came as part of the infamous “1033 program,” through
which Defense gets rid of excess stuff it didn’t need in the first
place by putting it into circulation via local police departments
(it’s like a gun giveaway in reverse and with tons more firepower).
Read Reason on that.
And read about that horrifying Free State Project – in which a
bunch of libertarians are moving to New Hampshire to influence
state and local government in a small-government direction –
here. Good luck finding any violent terrorists among the
participants.
No journalist has done more to highlight the militarization of
police than former Reason staffer Radley Balko (archive here),
now at the Huffington Post (archive here).
Watch this interview about his recent book
Rise of the Warrior Cop.
from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/18/police-in-columbia-south-carolina-and-49
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from Hit & Run http://reason.com/blog/2013/11/18/am-links-senate-to-hold-hearing-on-digit
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As Bitcoin soars over $600, another alternative to the fiat currency system is being monkey-hammered lower this morning as status quo support does everything it can to rotate stocks above the key levels we discussed earlier… because stocks rising on anything but fundamentals cannot be exposed for the liquidity-fueled excesses a rising precious metals price would unveil.
Gold is still holding above recent lows but Silver has broken to fresh 3-month lows…
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via Zero Hedge http://feedproxy.google.com/~r/zerohedge/feed/~3/WcSLuwDOf7Y/story01.htm Tyler Durden