Headlines

Dems agree to billions in humanitarian aid for southern border

China has plenty of ways to get back at US for treatment of Huawei

Texas serial killer suspect — in country illegally!

Comey vs. Brennan on pushing ‘pee’ dossier in intel assessment

Kasich aide backs out of contract to lobby against Russian sanctions

Michael Flynn told special counsel  about possible attempts to obstruct Russian probe

Judge orders parts of Mueller report unredacted, made public ...

Alabama Gov. Kay Ivey signs abortion ban into law

Senate confirms Jeffrey Rosen to replace Rod Rosenstein at DOJ

Architect I.M. Pei dies at age 102

Rasmussen: Trump 45% approval ...

Billionaire Koch’s rail against tariffs: Eliminate all tariffs

reddit Pic

Another moon grab ...

Burning Bridges

The growing revelations surrounding our intelligence agencies’ apparent conspiring with foreign spooks to spy on the Trump campaign and then trying to bring down his presidency ... very likely will cast a pall over future cooperation involving legitimate security threats. It looks like those agencies in Great Britain, Australia and Italy ... at least ... will end up with egg on their faces after this chicanery is fully revealed in AG Barr’s investigation of the investigation.

These governments seem to have been up to their eyeballs ... involved into US political intrigue ... and Italy is already cleaning house ... calling for resignations from the involved parties ... see: Citizens Free Press Story. These countries may now be reluctant to cooperate again under actual intrusion threats. Have Obama’s bumbling Keystone Kops, Brennan, Comey and Clapper, burned down our bridges with foreign intelligence agencies?

Quite likely ... at least for the nonce.

Powerline Pic

Quixotic ...

Headlines

De Blasio to kick off ‘presidential tour’ in Iowa after morning show appearance

China’s State mouthpieces are taking an aggressive tone on the trade war

Tehran vows to defeat ‘American-Zionist alliance’ ...

Alabama passes nation’s strictest s abortion ban by 25-6 vote

Trump pardons former business associate Conrad Black

Trump’s new immigration plan emphasizes skills and education over family connections

Econ warning: Atlanta Fed GDP forecast sliding ...

Poll: 2 in 15 Americans aware of huge scale of illegal immigration

Sanders backs call to break up Facebook

Federal judge orders FDA to begin review of e-cigarettes

China Social Credit System has restored morality ...

Bernie tells college student climate change will cause war

Income Disparity

Much of the impetus behind the blind drive to a socialist government in the United States derives from the disparity between the rich and the non-rich. This disparity has demonstratively grown in recent years to the point where the super rich and their lavish lifestyles are visible examples to the rest of us of a problem with capitalism. The simple solution to the simple-minded becomes socialism ... that economic policy that is inculcated into our children from kindergarten through graduate school by those pedagogues living in their left-canted ivory towers.

Yes, America now embraces snippets of socialism —  Medicaid, the Earned Income Tax Credit, food stamps, etc. But we don’t yet have the public ownership of the factors of production or services like in Venezuela or Cuba ... where the disparity of income shifts to that between the governors and the governed.

Can this disparity be fixed under capitalism. Yes, it has in the past through anti-trust legislation ... which should be resurrected to deal with the new technology trusts that have reared their ugly heads in the 21st century ... whereas fixing this disparity with a socialists regime can only be accomplished by bringing down our capitalist government ... the goose laying these golden income-disparity eggs.

The time is also ripe for another capitalistic solution to income disparity other than the Bernie Sanders lunacy. And, I can’t believe that ham-fisted laws that restrict corporate compensation ratios will fix things. But perhaps our tax code could be used ... maybe by making taxes on capital gains progressive like that on incomes ... since much of these stratospheric executive compensations come from stock options? And finally, eliminating the  “carried interest” tax loophole that the Republicans promised to deep-six three years ago. What’s the delay Donald?

Afterward: Restrict this progressive taxing proposal to only capital gains achieved though stock option grants.

Fractured Definition

Accident — a depression made in tree stump by a swing with a large hewer.

Precious Ratios

I recently posted a picture and discussion about how the United States used to back some paper currency with precious metals ... see: Real Money. The picture in this blog entry intrigued me to the point that I figured out what the value ratio between gold and silver was in the early 1930s. Roughly a  ten dollar Silver Certificate was equal to 10 one ounce silver dollars whereas a ten dollar Gold Certificate was backed by a half ounce gold coin. Therefore the value ratio of silver to gold then was 20 to 1.

And I also remember that, as a young man in the 1950s, this same government mandated ratio was 32 to 1 because gold was pegged at $32 per ounce when we still had real one ounce silver dollars. Today the spot price of an ounce of gold is $1,287 whereas silver goes for $14.54 an ounce. Therefore the current value ratio between these two precious metals now is roughly 88 to 1.

This suggests that either gold is too expensive ... or silver is too cheap. You decide.

Headlines

‘He’s white, male and gay’: Buttigieg’s obstacles with black voters

Trump’s threat of auto tariffs on Europe may really be a ‘Trojan horse’

[Mark] Cuban: None of the Dems can beat Trump!

Overcrowding forces Feds to fly migrants to other processing centers

Trump on Beto: ‘What the hell happened?’

China’s retail sales growth to 16-year low as trade war risks rise

US pulls govt employees from Iraq ...

Biden: ‘Not a single bit of evidence’ that son asked me to help him

Kamala Harris escalates gun control agenda

Iran officially ends some of its nuclear deal commitments, local media reports

Buchanan: Tariffs — the taxes that made America great ...

Schiff investigating if Trump lawyers helped to obstruct Russian probe

Between a Rock ...

... and a hard place.

It’s not there now, but the US Federal Reserve Bank might be in this predicimant in the not-to-distant future. Let me explain:

If Trump’s new-found infatuation with tariffs produces, as predicted by many “pundits,” higher inflation rates ... then the tool that the Fed uses to keep the lid on this ogre, higher interest rates, can’t be as effective in the sense that it strengthens the dollar which boosts imports ... working against Trump’s trade war ... and also makng the job of financing American deficits more difficult.

However, if the Fed night chose to let inflation rip, it would be effectively monetizing our national debt ... good for our country but bad for those elders on fixed incomes ... and China which would own a lot of this devalued debt.

At least two factors are working counter to inflation spikes — massive illegal immigration which holds down wages on the low end ... and huge increases in energy production which holds back gas price increases. And this is further complicated by the Fed’s desire to reduce its inflated balance sheet, a legacy of the Obama-era quantative easing.

So, in a way, the Fed is boxed in when it tries to set monetary policy ... not a happy place to be. I don’t envy Chairman Powell.

Spinoza Quote

From Mostly Cajun blog

Hear that “hate speech” haters ... like the Masters of the Universe?

Headlines

Republicans surrender to Trump’s China tariffs

Trump: We’ll know in three or four weeks if China trade talks are successful

Saudi: Oil pipeline attacked by drones ...

‘Empire’ canceled after season 6, ‘No plan’ for Smollett to return

Montana Gov. Bullock joins crowded Democratic crowded presidential race

China’s ‘self-destructive nuclear option’ in trade war: Selling US Treasury bonds

Bezos sees billion people living in space ...

Former president Jimmy Carter has surgery for broken hip

Barr appoints prosecutor to examine Russian probe origins

Fed’s Williams says policymakers need to better prepare for lower interest rate world

Supreme Court relies against Apple in App Store antitrust ...

Poll: Border wall, reducing all immigration top issues for GOP

reddit Pic

Royal blue male Grandalas (range is northeast India)

The Death of Humor

Comedian Tim Conway died recently ... and apparently so has much humor in American life. Some of Conway’s famous skits on the Carol Burnett show were side-splittingly funny ... the dentist’s erroneous Novocain shots (see above), his Swedish executive’s dealing with a clueless secretary (played by Burnett). He and Harvey Korman (passed in 2008) wee always tear-bringing hilarious together.

This kind of broad humor has pretty much disappeared from the American entertainment scene. If it is not dead, it is certainly on life support. What often passes for comedy in late night TV and variety shows is nothing but political applause lines bashing the Right. Kinda sad ...

And, ironically, this lack of laughs is occurring in a target-rich environment. Think of what could be panned —  “safe spaces,” “white privelege” (actually Dave Chappelle did a clever treatment of this subject ... but quite a while ago), Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez, un-free speech, the Green New Deal, the snowflake generation, the Mueller Russian hoax, diversity/inclusion hypocrisy, DNA testing, etc. I did offer a possible funny treatment of this last subject once on this blog ... see: DNA Test. No?

Sometimes it feels that even President Trump is more jocular than Saturday Night Live’s lame skits

Real Money

From reddit Pics

Once when money was backed by precious metals.

“Good money [supposedly] drives bad money out of circulation.” Gresham’s Law 

But all too often the opposite turns out to be the case.

My grandfather once collected Silver Certificates expecting to be able to turn them in for silver dollars ... until Lyndon B. Johnson  reneged on this federal government commitment in 1968. After that you could only exchange a (bad) Federal Reserve note for a (once good) Silver Certificate. Gold Certificates were previously eliminated when we went off the gold standard in 1933 under FDR.  Alas!

Fractured Definition

Hoarfrost — a rime that forms early in the morning on ladies of the evening.

Headlines

‘The epitome of privelege’: Booker supporters rail against Buttigieg mania

JP Morgan: The US-China tariff battle is just the start of a global trade reordering

Saudi tankers ‘sabataged’ ... Mideast tensions flare

Lutz: Bernie is ‘most likely’ Democratic nominee in 2020

Booker hits Warren over proposal to break up tech giants

Beijing defiant on trade war: ‘No one should expect China to swallow bitter fruit’

Iran orders men not to look at women during Ramadan as hardliners tighten control ...

Study: Google search results overwhelmingly favor mainstream

Kamala Harris: ‘I would not have voted for NAFTA’

Bitcoin is now over $7,000 and is now up over 90% year-to-date

Poll: Theresa May headed for historic defeat ...

Healthcare CEO: Medicare for All could ‘collapse’ the system

Turning Point?

The world may have reached a turning point in trading. For thirty years the United States allowed the world to treat us like a stepchild in international commerce. The US has ceded mercantilism to other countries ... mainly China. Now President Trump has said “enough” and is pushing back with increased tariffs and rhetoric ... which of course causes some trading “partners” to sit on their hands.

This conflict absolutely changes the previous “new world order” interactions. Tariff retaliations driven by saving face are popping up (China won’t eat America’s “bitter fruit”). So one has to worry how far these escalations will go? The United States clearly now has the strategic economic and innovative advantage. But is that enough ... or even too much? Can China’s retreat from its path to economic dominance be effected without its loss of face?

Before Japan attacked Pearl Harbor the United States had imposed an oil and gasoline embargo on Japan which caused them enough pain that they decided war was the only answer. See: Wikipedia Entry. So the United States needs some serious Asian mind reading so that it doesn’t drive China so far up the economic tree by our escalating tariffs that it feels it must resort to kinetic force ... maybe through its proxy North Korea?

Wouldn’t it be nice to have that gadfly Russia as an ally if this were to occur?

Oops!

From reddit Pic

Sorry Daddy ...

Headlines

Trump lashes out at former White House counsel Don McGahn

Trump tells China to ‘act now’ on trade or face a ‘far worse’ deal in his second term

Leaked letters reveal details of NRA’ chief’s alleged spending ...

North Carolina blowback intensifies on Richard Burr’s rogue subpoena

HUD immigrant plan could displace 55Kchildren

It’s ‘crazy talk’ to say that the US isn’t tough on Russia: Mike Pompeo

Amazon size becoming problem — for Amazon ...

Kirk: Trump’s greatest power is his reluctance to use power

Bernie Sanders: Biden’s reported climate plan ‘will doom future generations’

Drug makers allegedly inflated prices over1,000% and 44 states are now suing

India orders antitrust probe of Google ...

Farage’s Brexit party pulls ahead of Torres in general election poll