Flat Line

The United States reported yesterday its first quarter GDP growth at 0.1% … see: My Way News Story. Wow ... a measly 0.1%! This is clearly flat-line economic growth after 4.5 years of mucho-trillions of dollars of fiscal pump-priming by this administration and the unprecedented monetary expansion by our Federal Reserve Bank. This anemic financial news, instead of being reported by banner front-page headlines in the New York Times was relegated to the “Business Day” sub-section of this Obama public relations rag.

Can the media suppress this bad news until after this fall’s elections? Sure … it has a quiver full of Obama’s distracting phony stories to mitigate such voter downsides … the war on women, increasing the minimum wage, rampant racism, the Koch brothers, immigration reform, etc. Yes, the stock market is up substantially since 2009 … primarily due to the Federal Reserve Bank’s easy-money policies. Yes, “reported” unemployment is down to 6.7% … mainly because over three million otherwise-employable adults have dropped out of the work force … see: Christian Science Monitor Story.

It is clear as glass that this administration cares not a twit about economic growth or reducing real unemployment. There are a plethora of levers that they could pull to improve things … meaningful tax reform, oking the Keystone pipeline, more international trade reforms … particularly in the Far East and in Latin America, reducing bureaucratic regulations, reforming entitlements, streamlining government, etc.... none of which seem to be being grabbed.

Actually when one ponders this anemic economic growth, one could easily justify this 0.1% number just with the extravagant spending that taxpayers are footing to keep the Obama clan living in the luxurious style to which they have become accustomed … see: WND Story.

The Warm Fuzzies

Somehow when this country seems to be doing the right thing, I get the warm fuzzies.  That is, I sense that this or that move is going to make things better … be it domestically or internationally. For some reason, the actions of the Obama administration seldom reward me with this cozy feeling. It is more often a forehead-slapping, “Oh no!” … such as with its recent Keystone Pipeline can-kicking. Or, giving up control of the Internet … ouch! Or, deploying snipers in Nevada … cringe! Or, allowing Iran six more months of plutonium production … groan!

Actually our recent moving of U.S. troops into Poland came close to producing some comfort for me … until I heard the number … 150! I sincerely doubt that this small of a military contingent will keep Russia’s Putin up at night … nor stop any designs he might have on Eastern Europe. In fact, this namby-pamby number may well tell him more about Obama’s intentions … or lack thereof … than the act itself.

And I would love to understand what this administration hopes to get out of its current far-east excursion … other than dining on the best sushi in the world. Yes, I hear the words “better trade” and “reassure allies,” but I don’t really feel that this trip can have any consequences other than the “Hillary effect” …  getting on and off an airplane as a pretend pretext to “doing something.” The mere fact that there are virtually no headlines coming out of this trip tells me how vacuous it really is.

And so, dear reader, this country is sleep-walking through one crisis after another without, it seems, any overarching strategy or design. Fuzzy thinking doesn’t tend to give me the warm fuzzies.

Top 10 List

When Mitt Romney is inaugurated next January, these are the top 10 things that I would like to see him do in his first hours as President:

1) Kill or disable, in whatever ways possible, Obamacare.
2) Make all Obama's czars account for what they did during their tenures ... then fire them and their staffs.
3) OK the Keystone pipeline and restart all offshore drilling.
4) Fire all the political appointees in the Justice Dept. and insure that all Fast & Furious documents are not destroyed.
5) Stop all pending Energy Dept. loans and start an audit on all outstanding ones.
6) Restart the the missile defense shields in Poland and the Czech Republic.
7) Halt all foreign aid to Egypt, the Palestinian Authority, and Pakistan until and unless they accede to our demands.
8) Restore the bust of Winston Churchill to its place of honor in the White House.
9) Cut all Cabinet Dept. budgets to 2008 levels + 10%.
10) Count the White House silverware.

Oil of Oy Vey

Gasoline prices are high today and may keep escalating over the summer driving season.  This cannot be good for The Barry's reelection chances.  So, he has tried to deflect this political negative by blaming speculators and greedy oil companies.  These rationales may be partially true, but, I believe, the real reasons for high oil and gasoline prices are due to a much greater multiplicity of forces:

- Barack Obama  has indicated recently that he wants to eliminate "tax subsidies" for oil companies (see: Business Week Article).  These subsidies are nothing more than the equivalent of depreciation ... a time honored accounting practice on which I have commented before on this blog (see: Oily Proposal).  All hell would break loose if Obama were to suggest the elimination of depreciation expenses for any other U.S. industry.  This threat surely may cause oil companies to anticipate lower margins and may have them beginning to take counter measures.

- The Federal Reserve Bank has been maintaining a weak dollar policy to the point were it costs about $1.30 to buy a Euro when this exchange rate should be closer to parity.  Since oil around the world is traded in dollars, this, by itself, has caused oil prices to be inflated by as much as 30%.

- Clearly all the unrest in the Mideast has caused a risk premium to be added to the price of oil.  Two major producers, Libya and Iran, in particular, are in the limelight.  Libya is in political chaos after its successful revolution and Iran lives under the daily threat of an Israel attack to stop its development of atomic weapons. Thus, most countries are balancing these threats with the hoarding of oil.  So, even though there is a glut of oil worldwide, prices will still likely stay high.

- Obama's energy policy is blatantly anti-U.S.  He has essentially stopped offshore oil discovery in the Gulf of Mexico and elsewhere off the U.S. coast, put the kibosh of the the Keystone pipeline, and is actively trying to kill the U.S. coal industry (see: Our Once King Coal).

- Investor speculation on higher oil prices is made a lot easier by extremely low interest rates.  The Federal Reserve has kept interest rates for banks at below 1% for over three years and has continually indicated that they would stay low into the foreseeable future.  Thus the carrying-cost penalty for speculation is quite low and will likely stay low.  I'm sure that the Fed could squeeze much of the speculation on higher prices out of the oil futures market by letting interest rates rise to their natural level ... rather than Obama's today-proposed punitive measures (see: Voice of America).

Thus, the next time you spend your retirement funds to fill up your gas tank, blame the real culprits, world Islamic extremist unrest, the Obama administration, and the Federal Reserve Bank ... not greedy capitalism and out-of-control speculation.  Most of these things could be corrected overnight ... and may well be, sometime right before November's elections.

Our Once King Coal

According to authorities, the United States is the Saudi Arabia of coal resources.  Over one half of all U.S. electricity is produced by coal-fired power plants.  Yet, President Obama has been diligently working to keep his campaign promise to kill the coal industry (see: Washington Times Article) just as he is apparently trying to kill oil production on government-owned lands and off shore (and stop cheap oil from reaching our refineries via the Keystone pipeline.)  So there is at least one campaign promise that our imperial President is keeping.  He says that he is working overtime to create jobs yet is pulling out all stops to kill them. 

Surely all those green-energy companies that The Barry has so richly subsidized (and have gone belly-up) are not going to supply the jobs that his Pollyanna-ish Energy Department has claimed.  Nor are they going to fill the electricity gap that the closing of existing coal-powered plants and the moratorium on building new ones would produce.  The Chinese are building one (dirty) new coal-powered plant a week and, as a result have become by far the largest producer of CO2 emissions in the world (not that there is anything wrong with that.)  See the below 2009 chart to understand the dramatic dynamics of world CO2 production (click on the chart to make it bigger):

Our President is perfectly happy with our exporting coal to China (see: AP Story) so that they can produce more electricity and loaning money to Brazil so that they can off-shore drill for more oil, yet not allow his own country to do the same.  He can cripple us with a debt burden that even our great-grandchildren will be paying back.  He can try to nationalize 1/6 of our economy.  He can take over the student loan industry and more than half our car industry.  He can sub-rosa try to kill our missile-defense system.  He can cozy up to the Islamic radicals of the world (when he isn't killing them) while abandoning our allies (such as Israel).  And he can attack the Supreme Court with bombastic rhetoric.  Is Obama really so anti-us that he would purposely make such bone-headed moves?  The sad conclusion is unfortunately, yes, and four more years of his smiling chicanery will certainly leave us in a hole from which we likely cannot extract ourselves.

Hill and Dale

Let's look beyond this far-eastern fire drill of the Republican primary ... to this fall when the election is in full swing.  Many believe that, if the GOP has gotten its act together by then, The Barry might well have to switch horses and put Hillary Clinton on his ticket as his Veep ... retiring Biden to that stud farm called the State Department.  This move would be to bolster his re-election chances with "the devil you know" popularity of Hillary ... attracting those voters who believe she was denied her crown last time around.

Now, apart from the fact that she has bluntly stated multiple times that she is done with politics, Hillary might well be tempted with such an offer ... as it could present a greased slide into the White House in 2016.  And, besides, to my continued amazement, most media pundits believe that she has done a bang-up job at Foggy Bottom.  So, I think a quick review of her record there is now in order:

- The State Department recently put the kibosh on the Keystone pipeline from Canada (see: Falling Keystone)
- We reopened our embassy in Syria last spring just in time to watch Assad slaughter his people.  We may now be embarrassed into reclosing it (see: The Cable Story)
- We totally botched the Egyptian uprisings last spring (see: The Gong Show)
- We sat on our hands when the Iranian street rose up against their oppressive regime in 2009
- Our troop pullout from Iraq has been a clumsy mess, leaving this country to slip back into secular warfare
- Our relations with Pakistan are at the breaking point
- Iran is about ready to produce its first atomic weapon and the United States has stated no coherent strategy to deal with this contingency
- In general, we appeared to be bystanders in the Arab spring
- We seem to be quite timid when dealing with China and its many military and economic threats
- The Euro-zone bogey man is afoot and the United States is hiding under the covers

Need I go on any further?  (There's lots more.)  Yes, one could say that most of these failings are Obama-inspired, but where was Hillary when these decisions were made?  Yes, she has been good at the optics ... willing to travel to these hot spots, pose for pictures, and utter some platitudes, but she has not put forward any overarching policies of her own to deal with the world's turmoil.  ("Reset" is hardly an overarching strategy ... I don't even know what it means.) To me, she appears to shrink from these challenges.  And, God forbid, Biden tries to fill her shoes.  He clearly would screw things up even more ... even if the "San Francisco Giants" win the Super Bowl.