Yes we can -- draft your ass
JD Tuccille
Nov 06, 2008
http://www.tuccille.com/blog/2008/11/
yes-we-can-draft-your-ass.html
You know, I warn, and I warn, and I warn, and I warn, but nobody listens. Don't know what I'm talking about? Read on ...
Rep. Rahm Emanuel of Illinois, President-Elect Obama's choice for chief of staff in his incoming administration, is co-author of a book, The Plan, that calls for, among other things, compulsory service for all Americans ages 18 to 25. The following excerpt is from pages 61-62 of the 2006 book:
It's time for a real Patriot Act that brings out the patriot in all of us. We propose universal civilian service for every young American. Under this plan, All Americans between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five will be asked to serve their country by going through three months of basic training, civil defense preparation and community service. ...
Here's how it would work. Young people will know that between the ages of eighteen and twenty-five, the nation will enlist them for three months of civilian service. They'll be asked to report for three months of basic civil defense training in their state or community, where they will learn what to do in the event of biochemical, nuclear or conventional attack; how to assist others in an evacuation; how to respond when a levee breaks or we're hit by a natural disaster. These young people will be available to address their communities' most pressing needs.
Emanuel and co-author Bruce Reed insist "this is not a draft," but go on to write of young men and women, "the nation will enlist them for three months of civilian service." They also warn, "[s]ome Republicans will squeal about individual freedom," ruling out any likelihood that they would let people opt out of universal citizen service.
As chief of staff, Emanuel will not be in a position to directly introduce public policy, but his enthusiasm for compulsory service, combined with Barack Obama's own plan to require high school students to perform 50 hours of government-approved service, suggest an unfortunate direction for the new administration.
Saturday, November 8, 2008
Friday, November 7, 2008
We Will Watch Obama Like A Hawk
We Will Watch Obama Like A Hawk
Bob Chapman
Nov 05, 2008
http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/
International_Forecaster_Weekly/
We_Will_Watch_Obama_Like_A_Hawk
Congratulations, America. You are now officially the Obamanation. Not that you had any other realistic choices. And the only other viable alternative, McCain, was no better than Obama. He will now be forced to do as he is told under threat of exposure, and will have no independent latitude to make decisions concerning anything which the Illuminati care about. Biden will be his handler just as Cheney was, and continues to be, Caligula's handler. In fact, that's why Biden, a fervent and hardened Illuminist, was chosen as VP.
The October Surprise also explains why Palin was chosen as VP for McCain. McCain and Palin were never seriously in contention due to the coming October Surprise, so this gave the Illuminists a chance to cater to the Christian Right without any worries about Palin ever becoming President in the event that McCain could no longer serve in that capacity. Once again, the naive and fawning Christian Right got all excited over being patronized in yet another false-flag overture to Christians. The Palin nomination was intended as a plug for incumbent traitors in Congress who had electorates filled with Christian voters. The idea was to energize these Christian voters so as to help these incumbents get reelected. In this manner, the evil Illuminists attempted to keep the best government officials that money could buy in office, while the government officials who were up for reelection attempted to keep their established system of embedded graft and corruption going. Apparently, despite all that has happened, the Christian Right still can't recognize a wolf in sheep's clothing, nor are they able to perceive when they are being led down a garden path. With that kind of gullible leadership, Christianity is doomed in the US. In time, we will become just like Europe, unless God intervenes with an Exodus-like series of miracles to spark a Christian revival, because that is what it will probably take to wake up our sleeping Christian leaders.
Dr Martin Luther King, whose thoughts and philosophy were the antithesis of those held by the Illuminati, ended up being assassinated by them, while by contrast, Mr. Obama, an elitist bootlicker who surrounds himself with upper tier Illuminist advisors like Brzezinski, Buffett, Volcker, Rubin and Anderson, and who kow-tows to the same evil Illuminist scum who are financing his Jimmy-Carter-like campaign out of obscurity, ended up being elected President of the United States. This shows you, in no uncertain terms, how corrupt the system really is.
We judge people by the content of their character as Dr. King suggested, and based on Mr. Obama's campaign associations alone, we would have to conclude that his character is not a good one. His support of Fannie and Freddie in the face of their obvious bankruptcy, and his number one spot as the target of Fannie and Freddie campaign contribution largesse, puts the icing on the cake, as does his support of Mr. Odinga, whose attempted coup in Kenya has resulted in the destruction of 800 Christian churches and the murders of hundreds of Christian Kenyans, events which were totally suppressed by the fane-stream media. He is not Dr. King. In fact, he is the precise opposite of Dr. King, who preferred peace over militancy.
Worse yet, we note that the current group of Illuminati are the most virulent racists of all time. They make Hitler look like a civil rights leader. What may be happening here is that these fiends are trying to associate what will be the worst economic, social and political times ever suffered by Americans, which these elitists have malevolently and intentionally orchestrated to bring America to its knees and to pave the way for world government, with a black Presidency. In one brilliant master stroke, they will take all the misery they have created to push us into a corporatist, fascist police state, and place it on the head of a black President. In addition, they will make sure that his Presidency is a disaster and that it does not succeed. Obama will be in over his head, and due to his compromised position regarding his citizenship, he will do whatever they tell him to do, and none of it will work. That is because it is not supposed to work. They want to bring you to your knees so you will bow down to the new self-proclaimed masters of the universe as the old Goldilocks Matrix is discarded and the new corporatist, fascist police state is substituted in its place. Note how well this association of national disaster with a black Presidency will play into the rhetoric of white supremacists.
Like Pavlov's dogs, the sheople are conditioned to come bleating to the voting polls on Election Day to cast their vote for reprobate A, or for reprobate B. They think they are making a choice, but for most part, in the important campaigns like President of the US and many other major state and federal elective positions, the choice has already been made for them. Pick Illuminist Skull and Bones candidate A, or pick Illuminist Skull and Bones candidate B, ala Bush against Kerry. Either way, we win. Candidate A will promote items "a" through "m" of our agenda, and candidate B will promote items "n" through "z" of our agenda.
Politicians blab away, talking about what is on their party's agenda, and then they are told what to do by those in our shadow government who run the whole agenda, which is of course divided between the two parties. We promise Mr. Obama that we will never listen to what he says, but will we watch what he does like a hawk. We will burn away all the Illuminist lies and webs of deceit which are woven around his actions to obscure and to obfuscate their true nature and purpose. We will give him a chance like anyone else and we will be his supporter if he is honest and forthright. But we will be his worst nightmare if he tries to get "cute" with the American people. We will expose what he is doing and lay it bare to the American public. If he is not being honest we will see right through it, and then tell you, our subscribers, how things really are. This is what we have done over the course of the past ten Presidential Administrations preceding Obama's coming Administration, and is what we will continue to do. Remember, Mr. Obama, we have been doing this for over 50 years and we know their agenda and how they operate far better than you do. We can also assure you that they are not telling you everything they plan to do. You could not take the shock. You might even be enraged. They will tell you what is coming on an as-needed basis.
Obama will now put the finishing touches on the destruction of America which was started in earnest under the previous trilogy of traitors, or triad of trouble, which commenced with the Administration of Bohemian Bush, Sr., continued with vigor under Slick Willie Clinton, and then was nearly completed during the epically catastrophic Caligula administration, which we note is still not finished with its skullduggery, and won't be until Caligula leaves office, if ever.
The above are just a few of the possible scenarios, which the Illuminists could force on us in order to implement martial law and a feudal, Orwellian police state. Who knows what could happen as long as these Illuminist sociopaths are running our shadow government? Never underestimate the cleverness of these megalomaniacal, satanic trillionaires, whose intelligence is powered by supernatural forces of evil and darkness. Next comes another major war to distract us from the destruction of our economy, and to destroy our military so we have no defense against foreign troops or against both foreign and domestic mercenaries. We also note that Obama has promised a new national draft so that your children get to be cannon fodder for the fun and profit of the US military-industrial complex and so they also get to become the objects of persecution and terrorist retribution overseas as they are forced to stick their noses into everyone else's business where they do not belong.
Even if they end the war in Iraq and divvy it up with big oil while retaining a mercenary force, rest assured that they will move on to the next war or escalation in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, in the Balkans, or on the Russian border. Who knows with these maniacs? This is the end of our society as we know it. This is the Fall of the House of Usher.
The prices of gold and silver futures have been suppressed to such an extent by the Illuminists within the Treasury Department that there is a stampede out of gold and silver futures, an event that could lead to default. As you all know physical gold and silver are in short supply and we are seeing higher premiums. At the same time the rigged futures market is just the opposite. All throughout history good money, gold, has driven out bad, fiat, and that is why the gold and silver futures market will either collapse because no one will play anymore, or they will default as a result of inability to deliver.
Gold is a 2-edged sword. Gold and silver go up with inflation and hyperinflation and gold also goes up or holds its own in deflation in a flight to quality.
We have been in the credit crisis for 15 months and the US and world economies are headed at breakneck speed into deep recession. We have stagflation, inflation and stagnation and it is going to get considerably worse as we head toward eventual deflation. Personal consumption expenditures are falling, as is GDP, which in the third quarter finally entered the minus column. We have a rigged rally in the dollar as consumption falls and government expenditures climb. Long before this is over the part of GDP consisting of personal consumption will fall from 70% to 72% to the long-term mean of 64.5% and that alone will cripple the economy. Although we see it going into the 50s as depression takes hold a few years from now. Our government and Wall Street are orchestrating a less severe recession to keep you spending and to keep you in the rigged stock market. As a result you are talked into a bailout package for banks and Wall Street. It doesn’t work and over 80% of Americans are against the package because they know what is going on. They are listening to alternative radio and reading what is on the Internet. In spite of that a purchased or compromised Congress give the corrupt Illuminists what they wanted. It must also be remembered the administration told congressmen that if we didn’t have such legislation that they’d impose Martial law. That is what corporate fascist government is all about.
We are already in a severe recession. All of our government’s statistics are bogus. The bailout was for the most part for money center banks, the big financial conglomerates and transnational corporations. Those funds went to the insiders, not to smaller institutions. They were for the crime syndicate, the corrupt Illuminist mafia. The next step after the election is the monetization of money and credit and horrible hyperinflation. Soon the dollar short covering will be history. Libor has already fallen and is back in its normal place. Credit derivatives and credit default swaps has produced a demand for dollars for settlement payouts. That will soon end as well. Fifteen months ago these derivatives began to fail and that systemic failure is ongoing. It will end in the complete collapse of the dollar.
This is the same barbaric horde that just sent the commodity market down almost 60%. They are now waiting to take it back up again to plunder the public once more. They bashed commodities and gold and silver because the rush for real assets had to be destroyed even though it was temporary. As a result there was a rush into physical gold and silver products, a resultant shortage developed. The elitists saw that and not wanting more physical gold in the publics’ hands the mints in Johannesburg, Canada, the US and Mexico shut down. Do you really think that was coincidence? They do not want gold and silver attractive because they are going to hyper inflate. At least for the next two to three years inflation is going to rage. Money and credit are still expanding at 12-1/2% and inflation is 12-1/2%. What deflationists do not seem to grasp is that the elitists will keep the system running because they do not want a crash until they can get a major war underway, as a distraction; another way of adding wealth, and for getting a tighter grasp on power and to further exercise population control. The question is when will the viability of America debt be questioned? Will the failure to deliver US treasuries break the market and not nonparticipation? We do not know but it is surely possible. This is why we have not for some time recommended US Treasuries, but instead Swiss franc Treasuries for those who prefer a partial cash position. It is very simple. The more debt the US government creates and the more money and credit the Fed creates the more the value of the dollar depreciates. Worse yet, the collateral being presented for the exchange of Treasuries is essentially worthless. We also believe Treasuries are being created and not being reported in order to satisfy the perceived flight to quality. Remember, these people do not tell the truth about anything and they believe as the Illuminated ones that they can do anything they please. That is why we continue to tell you to be out of US government and debt paper as well as the stock market. The only exceptions are gold, silver and oil and gas stocks. Cash out your retirement plans if you can and move them into gold and silver related assets. We can promise you two things, hyperinflation and eventual Treasury default. Why do you think on 11/15 major nations are meeting to form a new monetary unit? It will take several months. But it is about to happen. The dollar as a reserve currency and as a store of value is finished and many other currencies will follow. Remember 64.5% of world central bank reserves are in US dollars. No country is going to survive this unscathed. There will be a trigger as there always is. It probably will be an economic event or a string of events that begins the dollar collapse. There are things going on we know nothing about, but which we will soon find out about.
We have another couple of bubbles coming. There is a pension bomb that is in process and the credit card bubble-bomb. Lenders wrote off about $21 billion in bad credit card loans in the first half of 2008, and they haven’t even scratched the surface yet. Companies are laying off millions of workers and it is currently conservatively estimated that by the end of 2009 they’ll lose another $55 billion. Currently losses are 5.5% of debt outstanding and probably will easily exceed 8%.
As lenders rethink their lending rules our credit-hooked nation is rethinking their credit habits. It is about time lenders smartened up and stopped being greedy and it is about time Americans started paying for gas, food and other items with cash. You should only be using credit cards for emergencies and you should pay off your debit every month.
In 2005 mortgage extractions were $595 billion, in 2007 they fell to $470 billion and the second quarter of 2008 saw $9.5 billion. At that rate we’ll see a 90% drop from 2005.
Total loans from commercial banks grew by $89 billion yoy to December. Of that $61 billion was credit card debt. That means banks only lent $28 billion to business or to individuals. These numbers show you how stressed consumers are, amid accelerating job loss, low wages and high inflation, home price deflation, the effects of illegal immigration and the losses in equity in stocks, never mind having their retirement accounts clobbered. Credit card debt is up – it has risen more in the recent 10 weeks than it has in the previous 10 months. The increase is annualized at 48.3%. American Express delinquencies on credit payments rose to 4.1% in the third quarter, up from 2.5% yoy, their pool of uncollectible loans to a high of 6.7%. If it weren’t so sad the following would be laughable. The second largest credit card merchant vendor is McDonalds. This is a sign of very serious distress. This level of credit card usage is unsustainable.
All this comes as stock market losses worldwide reduced global wealth by $16 trillion. A good part of which was in retirement accounts. This coming year government will admit to unemployment of more than 9%. That puts U6 at 14% and long-term at 17% using government figures. The duration of current unemployment is nine months or 38 weeks. That will be at least 14 months at the end of 2009. Unless unemployment benefits are expended an additional six months they’ll be lots of people in serious financial trouble. That means less consumption, which will feed recession. Incidentally, that will widen the budget deficit. Unemployed don’t pay taxes and that means less revenue.
We see a 2009 budget deficit of $1.2 trillion plus, as the recession deepens. The only thing keeping the end of 2009 out of depression will be massive injections of money and credit and that will cause the dollar to fall and inflation, gold and silver to rise. With all this in the mix we see would-be newsletter writers, economists and analysts predicting already slow recovery by the end of 2009. In order to be politically acceptable they didn’t recognize recession until a few months ago, a year and one-half behind the curve. This in spite of massive welfare during the year.
Bob Chapman
Nov 05, 2008
http://www.theinternationalforecaster.com/
International_Forecaster_Weekly/
We_Will_Watch_Obama_Like_A_Hawk
Congratulations, America. You are now officially the Obamanation. Not that you had any other realistic choices. And the only other viable alternative, McCain, was no better than Obama. He will now be forced to do as he is told under threat of exposure, and will have no independent latitude to make decisions concerning anything which the Illuminati care about. Biden will be his handler just as Cheney was, and continues to be, Caligula's handler. In fact, that's why Biden, a fervent and hardened Illuminist, was chosen as VP.
The October Surprise also explains why Palin was chosen as VP for McCain. McCain and Palin were never seriously in contention due to the coming October Surprise, so this gave the Illuminists a chance to cater to the Christian Right without any worries about Palin ever becoming President in the event that McCain could no longer serve in that capacity. Once again, the naive and fawning Christian Right got all excited over being patronized in yet another false-flag overture to Christians. The Palin nomination was intended as a plug for incumbent traitors in Congress who had electorates filled with Christian voters. The idea was to energize these Christian voters so as to help these incumbents get reelected. In this manner, the evil Illuminists attempted to keep the best government officials that money could buy in office, while the government officials who were up for reelection attempted to keep their established system of embedded graft and corruption going. Apparently, despite all that has happened, the Christian Right still can't recognize a wolf in sheep's clothing, nor are they able to perceive when they are being led down a garden path. With that kind of gullible leadership, Christianity is doomed in the US. In time, we will become just like Europe, unless God intervenes with an Exodus-like series of miracles to spark a Christian revival, because that is what it will probably take to wake up our sleeping Christian leaders.
Dr Martin Luther King, whose thoughts and philosophy were the antithesis of those held by the Illuminati, ended up being assassinated by them, while by contrast, Mr. Obama, an elitist bootlicker who surrounds himself with upper tier Illuminist advisors like Brzezinski, Buffett, Volcker, Rubin and Anderson, and who kow-tows to the same evil Illuminist scum who are financing his Jimmy-Carter-like campaign out of obscurity, ended up being elected President of the United States. This shows you, in no uncertain terms, how corrupt the system really is.
We judge people by the content of their character as Dr. King suggested, and based on Mr. Obama's campaign associations alone, we would have to conclude that his character is not a good one. His support of Fannie and Freddie in the face of their obvious bankruptcy, and his number one spot as the target of Fannie and Freddie campaign contribution largesse, puts the icing on the cake, as does his support of Mr. Odinga, whose attempted coup in Kenya has resulted in the destruction of 800 Christian churches and the murders of hundreds of Christian Kenyans, events which were totally suppressed by the fane-stream media. He is not Dr. King. In fact, he is the precise opposite of Dr. King, who preferred peace over militancy.
Worse yet, we note that the current group of Illuminati are the most virulent racists of all time. They make Hitler look like a civil rights leader. What may be happening here is that these fiends are trying to associate what will be the worst economic, social and political times ever suffered by Americans, which these elitists have malevolently and intentionally orchestrated to bring America to its knees and to pave the way for world government, with a black Presidency. In one brilliant master stroke, they will take all the misery they have created to push us into a corporatist, fascist police state, and place it on the head of a black President. In addition, they will make sure that his Presidency is a disaster and that it does not succeed. Obama will be in over his head, and due to his compromised position regarding his citizenship, he will do whatever they tell him to do, and none of it will work. That is because it is not supposed to work. They want to bring you to your knees so you will bow down to the new self-proclaimed masters of the universe as the old Goldilocks Matrix is discarded and the new corporatist, fascist police state is substituted in its place. Note how well this association of national disaster with a black Presidency will play into the rhetoric of white supremacists.
Like Pavlov's dogs, the sheople are conditioned to come bleating to the voting polls on Election Day to cast their vote for reprobate A, or for reprobate B. They think they are making a choice, but for most part, in the important campaigns like President of the US and many other major state and federal elective positions, the choice has already been made for them. Pick Illuminist Skull and Bones candidate A, or pick Illuminist Skull and Bones candidate B, ala Bush against Kerry. Either way, we win. Candidate A will promote items "a" through "m" of our agenda, and candidate B will promote items "n" through "z" of our agenda.
Politicians blab away, talking about what is on their party's agenda, and then they are told what to do by those in our shadow government who run the whole agenda, which is of course divided between the two parties. We promise Mr. Obama that we will never listen to what he says, but will we watch what he does like a hawk. We will burn away all the Illuminist lies and webs of deceit which are woven around his actions to obscure and to obfuscate their true nature and purpose. We will give him a chance like anyone else and we will be his supporter if he is honest and forthright. But we will be his worst nightmare if he tries to get "cute" with the American people. We will expose what he is doing and lay it bare to the American public. If he is not being honest we will see right through it, and then tell you, our subscribers, how things really are. This is what we have done over the course of the past ten Presidential Administrations preceding Obama's coming Administration, and is what we will continue to do. Remember, Mr. Obama, we have been doing this for over 50 years and we know their agenda and how they operate far better than you do. We can also assure you that they are not telling you everything they plan to do. You could not take the shock. You might even be enraged. They will tell you what is coming on an as-needed basis.
Obama will now put the finishing touches on the destruction of America which was started in earnest under the previous trilogy of traitors, or triad of trouble, which commenced with the Administration of Bohemian Bush, Sr., continued with vigor under Slick Willie Clinton, and then was nearly completed during the epically catastrophic Caligula administration, which we note is still not finished with its skullduggery, and won't be until Caligula leaves office, if ever.
The above are just a few of the possible scenarios, which the Illuminists could force on us in order to implement martial law and a feudal, Orwellian police state. Who knows what could happen as long as these Illuminist sociopaths are running our shadow government? Never underestimate the cleverness of these megalomaniacal, satanic trillionaires, whose intelligence is powered by supernatural forces of evil and darkness. Next comes another major war to distract us from the destruction of our economy, and to destroy our military so we have no defense against foreign troops or against both foreign and domestic mercenaries. We also note that Obama has promised a new national draft so that your children get to be cannon fodder for the fun and profit of the US military-industrial complex and so they also get to become the objects of persecution and terrorist retribution overseas as they are forced to stick their noses into everyone else's business where they do not belong.
Even if they end the war in Iraq and divvy it up with big oil while retaining a mercenary force, rest assured that they will move on to the next war or escalation in Afghanistan, Iran, Syria, Lebanon, in the Balkans, or on the Russian border. Who knows with these maniacs? This is the end of our society as we know it. This is the Fall of the House of Usher.
The prices of gold and silver futures have been suppressed to such an extent by the Illuminists within the Treasury Department that there is a stampede out of gold and silver futures, an event that could lead to default. As you all know physical gold and silver are in short supply and we are seeing higher premiums. At the same time the rigged futures market is just the opposite. All throughout history good money, gold, has driven out bad, fiat, and that is why the gold and silver futures market will either collapse because no one will play anymore, or they will default as a result of inability to deliver.
Gold is a 2-edged sword. Gold and silver go up with inflation and hyperinflation and gold also goes up or holds its own in deflation in a flight to quality.
We have been in the credit crisis for 15 months and the US and world economies are headed at breakneck speed into deep recession. We have stagflation, inflation and stagnation and it is going to get considerably worse as we head toward eventual deflation. Personal consumption expenditures are falling, as is GDP, which in the third quarter finally entered the minus column. We have a rigged rally in the dollar as consumption falls and government expenditures climb. Long before this is over the part of GDP consisting of personal consumption will fall from 70% to 72% to the long-term mean of 64.5% and that alone will cripple the economy. Although we see it going into the 50s as depression takes hold a few years from now. Our government and Wall Street are orchestrating a less severe recession to keep you spending and to keep you in the rigged stock market. As a result you are talked into a bailout package for banks and Wall Street. It doesn’t work and over 80% of Americans are against the package because they know what is going on. They are listening to alternative radio and reading what is on the Internet. In spite of that a purchased or compromised Congress give the corrupt Illuminists what they wanted. It must also be remembered the administration told congressmen that if we didn’t have such legislation that they’d impose Martial law. That is what corporate fascist government is all about.
We are already in a severe recession. All of our government’s statistics are bogus. The bailout was for the most part for money center banks, the big financial conglomerates and transnational corporations. Those funds went to the insiders, not to smaller institutions. They were for the crime syndicate, the corrupt Illuminist mafia. The next step after the election is the monetization of money and credit and horrible hyperinflation. Soon the dollar short covering will be history. Libor has already fallen and is back in its normal place. Credit derivatives and credit default swaps has produced a demand for dollars for settlement payouts. That will soon end as well. Fifteen months ago these derivatives began to fail and that systemic failure is ongoing. It will end in the complete collapse of the dollar.
This is the same barbaric horde that just sent the commodity market down almost 60%. They are now waiting to take it back up again to plunder the public once more. They bashed commodities and gold and silver because the rush for real assets had to be destroyed even though it was temporary. As a result there was a rush into physical gold and silver products, a resultant shortage developed. The elitists saw that and not wanting more physical gold in the publics’ hands the mints in Johannesburg, Canada, the US and Mexico shut down. Do you really think that was coincidence? They do not want gold and silver attractive because they are going to hyper inflate. At least for the next two to three years inflation is going to rage. Money and credit are still expanding at 12-1/2% and inflation is 12-1/2%. What deflationists do not seem to grasp is that the elitists will keep the system running because they do not want a crash until they can get a major war underway, as a distraction; another way of adding wealth, and for getting a tighter grasp on power and to further exercise population control. The question is when will the viability of America debt be questioned? Will the failure to deliver US treasuries break the market and not nonparticipation? We do not know but it is surely possible. This is why we have not for some time recommended US Treasuries, but instead Swiss franc Treasuries for those who prefer a partial cash position. It is very simple. The more debt the US government creates and the more money and credit the Fed creates the more the value of the dollar depreciates. Worse yet, the collateral being presented for the exchange of Treasuries is essentially worthless. We also believe Treasuries are being created and not being reported in order to satisfy the perceived flight to quality. Remember, these people do not tell the truth about anything and they believe as the Illuminated ones that they can do anything they please. That is why we continue to tell you to be out of US government and debt paper as well as the stock market. The only exceptions are gold, silver and oil and gas stocks. Cash out your retirement plans if you can and move them into gold and silver related assets. We can promise you two things, hyperinflation and eventual Treasury default. Why do you think on 11/15 major nations are meeting to form a new monetary unit? It will take several months. But it is about to happen. The dollar as a reserve currency and as a store of value is finished and many other currencies will follow. Remember 64.5% of world central bank reserves are in US dollars. No country is going to survive this unscathed. There will be a trigger as there always is. It probably will be an economic event or a string of events that begins the dollar collapse. There are things going on we know nothing about, but which we will soon find out about.
We have another couple of bubbles coming. There is a pension bomb that is in process and the credit card bubble-bomb. Lenders wrote off about $21 billion in bad credit card loans in the first half of 2008, and they haven’t even scratched the surface yet. Companies are laying off millions of workers and it is currently conservatively estimated that by the end of 2009 they’ll lose another $55 billion. Currently losses are 5.5% of debt outstanding and probably will easily exceed 8%.
As lenders rethink their lending rules our credit-hooked nation is rethinking their credit habits. It is about time lenders smartened up and stopped being greedy and it is about time Americans started paying for gas, food and other items with cash. You should only be using credit cards for emergencies and you should pay off your debit every month.
In 2005 mortgage extractions were $595 billion, in 2007 they fell to $470 billion and the second quarter of 2008 saw $9.5 billion. At that rate we’ll see a 90% drop from 2005.
Total loans from commercial banks grew by $89 billion yoy to December. Of that $61 billion was credit card debt. That means banks only lent $28 billion to business or to individuals. These numbers show you how stressed consumers are, amid accelerating job loss, low wages and high inflation, home price deflation, the effects of illegal immigration and the losses in equity in stocks, never mind having their retirement accounts clobbered. Credit card debt is up – it has risen more in the recent 10 weeks than it has in the previous 10 months. The increase is annualized at 48.3%. American Express delinquencies on credit payments rose to 4.1% in the third quarter, up from 2.5% yoy, their pool of uncollectible loans to a high of 6.7%. If it weren’t so sad the following would be laughable. The second largest credit card merchant vendor is McDonalds. This is a sign of very serious distress. This level of credit card usage is unsustainable.
All this comes as stock market losses worldwide reduced global wealth by $16 trillion. A good part of which was in retirement accounts. This coming year government will admit to unemployment of more than 9%. That puts U6 at 14% and long-term at 17% using government figures. The duration of current unemployment is nine months or 38 weeks. That will be at least 14 months at the end of 2009. Unless unemployment benefits are expended an additional six months they’ll be lots of people in serious financial trouble. That means less consumption, which will feed recession. Incidentally, that will widen the budget deficit. Unemployed don’t pay taxes and that means less revenue.
We see a 2009 budget deficit of $1.2 trillion plus, as the recession deepens. The only thing keeping the end of 2009 out of depression will be massive injections of money and credit and that will cause the dollar to fall and inflation, gold and silver to rise. With all this in the mix we see would-be newsletter writers, economists and analysts predicting already slow recovery by the end of 2009. In order to be politically acceptable they didn’t recognize recession until a few months ago, a year and one-half behind the curve. This in spite of massive welfare during the year.
Thursday, November 6, 2008
The Obama Campaign’s Credit-Card Crack-up
The Obama Campaign’s Credit-Card Crack-up
Tom Blumer
Nov 02, 2008
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/
the-obama-campaigns-credit-card-crack-up/
A breakdown of controls has enabled foreign and other unaccountable funds to pour into the Obama campaign — and it's not an accident.
The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has been and may still be accepting credit-card and prepaid-card contributions from overseas. It has done so in a way that may very likely prevent it from refunding the contributions to “donors,” many of whom may have had their credit cards used without their consent. It’s virtually impossible that the system for accepting card contributions was inadvertently set up without adequate controls, and almost certain that existing controls were instead deliberately disabled to create untraceability. Finally, it is likely that the total dollar amounts involved run in millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars.
In mid-August, Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, writing at American Thinker, summarized a pattern of irregularities she had found. Geller, and readers who assisted her, discovered that:
* “Obama’s overseas (foreign) contributors are making multiple small donations, ostensibly in their own names, over a period of a few days, some under maximum donation allowances, but others are aggregating in excess of the maximums when all added up.”
* The contributions had come from over 50 specifically named countries and major cities.
* Obviously bogus contributor names that a 7 year-old would have known to be fictitious, including “Hbkjb, jkbkj,” “Doodad Pro,” and “Good Will,” were frequent.
* “Thousands of Obama’s foreign donations ended in cents.” U.S. contributors very rarely contribute in anything other than whole dollar amounts, so the reason why contributions would end with anything other than “.00? would almost always involve foreign currency translation.
In a later post, Geller listed 18 donors who had contributed more than the legal $2,300 limit. “Good Will” and “Doodad Pro” were among them, to the tune of over ten grand each.
You might think “Well that’s pretty bad, but really no big deal, because at some point, Obama will just refund the money.”
In many cases, that does not appear likely.
On October 22, Geller’s “Who Is John Galt?” post revealed information that should have set off alarms in newsrooms across America — namely, that anyone could pretend to be someone else, with someone else’s address, and successfully process a credit-card donation to Obama. Reader Craig reported the following (bold is mine):
I’ve read recent reports of the Obama campaign receiving donations from dubious names and foreign locales and it got me wondering; how is this possible?
I run a small internet business and when I process credit cards I’m required to make sure the name on the card exactly matches the name of the customer making the purchase. Also, the purchasers address must match that of the cardholders. If these don’t match, then the payment isn’t approved. Period. So how is it possible that the Obama campaign could receive donations from fictional people and places? Well, I decided to do a little experiment. I went to the Obama campaign website and entered the following:
Name: John Galt; Address: 1957 Ayn Rand Lane; City: Galts Gulch; State: CO; Zip: 99999
Then I checked the box next to $15 and entered my actual credit card number and expiration date (it didn’t ask for the 3-digit code on the back of the card) and it took me to the next page and “Your donation has been processed. Thank you for your generous gift.”
This simply should not, and could not, happen in any business or any campaign that is honestly trying to vet it’s (sic) donors.
How can this happen? Here’s how (found at the same Atlas post; bolds are mine):
Having worked for companies that process credit cards online, it is necessary to go through and manually disable the safeguards that they put in place to verify a person’s address and zip code with the cardholder’s bank. But international banks don’t currently have the same safeguards that banks in the U.S. have, which also works in the One’s favor.So most likely they’ve disabled the necessary safeguards for U.S. cards …
The disabled components involved are part of what is known as the “AVS” (Automated Verification System). Many bloggers and blog commenters have confirmed the accuracy of the just-excerpted claims, including the fact that the merchant has to take proactive steps to rewrite or disable existing programming and controls to make AVS not work.
This information would indicate that Team Obama does not know (or pretends not to know; that would be for investigators to determine) who specifically has donated much of its campaign money — and the fact that they don’t know is deliberate.
Further, the lack of controls in Obama’s campaign-contribution system enables the use of prepaid cards, which if paid for in cash, are more than likely completely untraceable without going back to store video recordings, most of which are discarded or overwritten after a short time.
From all appearances, in both cases — unverified credit-card and prepaid-card contributions — it is very likely that the Obama campaign couldn’t refund monies received even if it wanted to. Donations to Obama are making it to statements of cardholders who never authorized them. The only people who might get their money back are the ones who catch the charges. And what about charges to stolen or forged cards?
Despite many tests, no one has been able to show that these material control weaknesses exist in the McCain-Palin contributions system.
Meanwhile, though space doesn’t permit fully chronicling the specifics, America’s mainstream Obama-mad media has been negligent in covering this astonishing story, either failing to report it at all (which Clay Waters of NewsBusters has noted is the case at the New York Times), or blandly understating the severity and, if you will, audacity of the enterprise (Washington Post, October 25 and October 28; National Journal).
If this were John McCain’s campaign, a deafening “what did he know and when did he know it?” chorus would have begun well over a week ago.
As it is, most voters have cast or will cast their presidential ballots totally unaware of what may very well be the largest and most highly-organized campaign-finance fraud in U.S. elections history.
As they do, they should be asking, “What did Obama know and when did he know it?”
Tom Blumer
Nov 02, 2008
http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/
the-obama-campaigns-credit-card-crack-up/
A breakdown of controls has enabled foreign and other unaccountable funds to pour into the Obama campaign — and it's not an accident.
The campaign of Democratic presidential candidate Barack Obama has been and may still be accepting credit-card and prepaid-card contributions from overseas. It has done so in a way that may very likely prevent it from refunding the contributions to “donors,” many of whom may have had their credit cards used without their consent. It’s virtually impossible that the system for accepting card contributions was inadvertently set up without adequate controls, and almost certain that existing controls were instead deliberately disabled to create untraceability. Finally, it is likely that the total dollar amounts involved run in millions, if not tens of millions, of dollars.
In mid-August, Pamela Geller of Atlas Shrugs, writing at American Thinker, summarized a pattern of irregularities she had found. Geller, and readers who assisted her, discovered that:
* “Obama’s overseas (foreign) contributors are making multiple small donations, ostensibly in their own names, over a period of a few days, some under maximum donation allowances, but others are aggregating in excess of the maximums when all added up.”
* The contributions had come from over 50 specifically named countries and major cities.
* Obviously bogus contributor names that a 7 year-old would have known to be fictitious, including “Hbkjb, jkbkj,” “Doodad Pro,” and “Good Will,” were frequent.
* “Thousands of Obama’s foreign donations ended in cents.” U.S. contributors very rarely contribute in anything other than whole dollar amounts, so the reason why contributions would end with anything other than “.00? would almost always involve foreign currency translation.
In a later post, Geller listed 18 donors who had contributed more than the legal $2,300 limit. “Good Will” and “Doodad Pro” were among them, to the tune of over ten grand each.
You might think “Well that’s pretty bad, but really no big deal, because at some point, Obama will just refund the money.”
In many cases, that does not appear likely.
On October 22, Geller’s “Who Is John Galt?” post revealed information that should have set off alarms in newsrooms across America — namely, that anyone could pretend to be someone else, with someone else’s address, and successfully process a credit-card donation to Obama. Reader Craig reported the following (bold is mine):
I’ve read recent reports of the Obama campaign receiving donations from dubious names and foreign locales and it got me wondering; how is this possible?
I run a small internet business and when I process credit cards I’m required to make sure the name on the card exactly matches the name of the customer making the purchase. Also, the purchasers address must match that of the cardholders. If these don’t match, then the payment isn’t approved. Period. So how is it possible that the Obama campaign could receive donations from fictional people and places? Well, I decided to do a little experiment. I went to the Obama campaign website and entered the following:
Name: John Galt; Address: 1957 Ayn Rand Lane; City: Galts Gulch; State: CO; Zip: 99999
Then I checked the box next to $15 and entered my actual credit card number and expiration date (it didn’t ask for the 3-digit code on the back of the card) and it took me to the next page and “Your donation has been processed. Thank you for your generous gift.”
This simply should not, and could not, happen in any business or any campaign that is honestly trying to vet it’s (sic) donors.
How can this happen? Here’s how (found at the same Atlas post; bolds are mine):
Having worked for companies that process credit cards online, it is necessary to go through and manually disable the safeguards that they put in place to verify a person’s address and zip code with the cardholder’s bank. But international banks don’t currently have the same safeguards that banks in the U.S. have, which also works in the One’s favor.So most likely they’ve disabled the necessary safeguards for U.S. cards …
The disabled components involved are part of what is known as the “AVS” (Automated Verification System). Many bloggers and blog commenters have confirmed the accuracy of the just-excerpted claims, including the fact that the merchant has to take proactive steps to rewrite or disable existing programming and controls to make AVS not work.
This information would indicate that Team Obama does not know (or pretends not to know; that would be for investigators to determine) who specifically has donated much of its campaign money — and the fact that they don’t know is deliberate.
Further, the lack of controls in Obama’s campaign-contribution system enables the use of prepaid cards, which if paid for in cash, are more than likely completely untraceable without going back to store video recordings, most of which are discarded or overwritten after a short time.
From all appearances, in both cases — unverified credit-card and prepaid-card contributions — it is very likely that the Obama campaign couldn’t refund monies received even if it wanted to. Donations to Obama are making it to statements of cardholders who never authorized them. The only people who might get their money back are the ones who catch the charges. And what about charges to stolen or forged cards?
Despite many tests, no one has been able to show that these material control weaknesses exist in the McCain-Palin contributions system.
Meanwhile, though space doesn’t permit fully chronicling the specifics, America’s mainstream Obama-mad media has been negligent in covering this astonishing story, either failing to report it at all (which Clay Waters of NewsBusters has noted is the case at the New York Times), or blandly understating the severity and, if you will, audacity of the enterprise (Washington Post, October 25 and October 28; National Journal).
If this were John McCain’s campaign, a deafening “what did he know and when did he know it?” chorus would have begun well over a week ago.
As it is, most voters have cast or will cast their presidential ballots totally unaware of what may very well be the largest and most highly-organized campaign-finance fraud in U.S. elections history.
As they do, they should be asking, “What did Obama know and when did he know it?”
Wednesday, November 5, 2008
How large is the Bradley effect and does it matter for Obama?
How large is the Bradley effect and does it matter for Obama?
David Strömberg
Nov 03, 2008
http://voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2514
Will tomorrow’s US presidential election be closer than expected because Barack Obama is African-American? This column looks at the last decade of US electoral contests with black candidates and says that there is a Bradley effect, in which African-American candidates garner lower vote shares than predicted by opinion polls. If that holds true, it will be close tomorrow.
Should Barack Obama worry about the Bradley effect? The much-discussed effect refers to observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes, in which African-American candidates receive a smaller vote share than would be predicted using opinion polls. In this column, I study US congressional and gubernatorial contests from 1998 to 2006 – black candidates on average receive a 2-3% lower share of the two-party vote than non-black candidates with similar numbers in the polls. If an effect of a similar size would appear in the current presidential race, then it would lower Obama’s probability of winning from 85% to 53%. However, black Republican candidates drive the result, so it may not apply to Obama’s campaign.
Data
My sample includes 431 elections for the offices of House, Senate and Governor 1998-2006 for which I have election and opinion poll data and information on whether the candidate was black. The data on elections was provided by Jim Snyder at MIT, the data on candidate race is from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and the polling data was gathered from various sources. This data is similar to that of Daniel Hopkins (2008), who uses data from 133 gubernatorial and Senate elections from 1989-2006.
There are 26 black candidates in the sample, 17 Democrats and 9 Republicans (4 in gubernatorial races, and 11 each for the offices of House and Senate). I will only analyse races where a black candidate ran against a candidate who was not black. This eliminates two races, one of which is Barack Obama’s race for Senator of Illinois against Alan Keyes in 2004. I am left with 22 races. The relevant sample of 22 elections is quite small, so all results should be taken with a grain of salt (still, the sample is larger than existing studies).
The 2-3% Bradley effect
Figure 1 shows the relationship between polling and vote outcomes for races for House, Senate and Governor 1998-2006. I only include polls performed from August to the date of the election. Each dot shows the poll and vote average within each two-percent opinion poll interval, 0-2, 2-4, etc. The grey dots are non-black candidates, the blue dots are black Democratic candidates, and the red dots are black Republican candidates. The grey line shows the fitted values of a regression of Democratic vote share on Democratic poll share, for non-black candidates. As you can see, black candidates on average do worse than other candidates polling at the similar numbers in the polls: Democratic black candidates more often lie below the regression line (expected vote, conditional on poll) and Republican black candidates more often lie above.
[contd.]
David Strömberg
Nov 03, 2008
http://voxeu.org/index.php?q=node/2514
Will tomorrow’s US presidential election be closer than expected because Barack Obama is African-American? This column looks at the last decade of US electoral contests with black candidates and says that there is a Bradley effect, in which African-American candidates garner lower vote shares than predicted by opinion polls. If that holds true, it will be close tomorrow.
Should Barack Obama worry about the Bradley effect? The much-discussed effect refers to observed discrepancies between voter opinion polls and election outcomes, in which African-American candidates receive a smaller vote share than would be predicted using opinion polls. In this column, I study US congressional and gubernatorial contests from 1998 to 2006 – black candidates on average receive a 2-3% lower share of the two-party vote than non-black candidates with similar numbers in the polls. If an effect of a similar size would appear in the current presidential race, then it would lower Obama’s probability of winning from 85% to 53%. However, black Republican candidates drive the result, so it may not apply to Obama’s campaign.
Data
My sample includes 431 elections for the offices of House, Senate and Governor 1998-2006 for which I have election and opinion poll data and information on whether the candidate was black. The data on elections was provided by Jim Snyder at MIT, the data on candidate race is from the Joint Center for Political and Economic Studies, and the polling data was gathered from various sources. This data is similar to that of Daniel Hopkins (2008), who uses data from 133 gubernatorial and Senate elections from 1989-2006.
There are 26 black candidates in the sample, 17 Democrats and 9 Republicans (4 in gubernatorial races, and 11 each for the offices of House and Senate). I will only analyse races where a black candidate ran against a candidate who was not black. This eliminates two races, one of which is Barack Obama’s race for Senator of Illinois against Alan Keyes in 2004. I am left with 22 races. The relevant sample of 22 elections is quite small, so all results should be taken with a grain of salt (still, the sample is larger than existing studies).
The 2-3% Bradley effect
Figure 1 shows the relationship between polling and vote outcomes for races for House, Senate and Governor 1998-2006. I only include polls performed from August to the date of the election. Each dot shows the poll and vote average within each two-percent opinion poll interval, 0-2, 2-4, etc. The grey dots are non-black candidates, the blue dots are black Democratic candidates, and the red dots are black Republican candidates. The grey line shows the fitted values of a regression of Democratic vote share on Democratic poll share, for non-black candidates. As you can see, black candidates on average do worse than other candidates polling at the similar numbers in the polls: Democratic black candidates more often lie below the regression line (expected vote, conditional on poll) and Republican black candidates more often lie above.
[contd.]
Tuesday, November 4, 2008
Can Obama win popular vote but lose election?
Can Obama win popular vote but lose election?
Liz Sidoti, AP Writer
Nov 03, 2008
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081103/
ap_on_el_pr/split_decision
It's a nightmare scenario for Democrats — their nominee Barack Obama winning the popular vote while Republican John McCain ekes out an Electoral College victory. Sure, McCain trails in every recent national poll. Sure, surveys show that Obama leads in the race to reach the requisite 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
Sure, chances of Republicans retaining the White House are remote.
But some last-minute state polls show the GOP nominee closing the gap in key states — Republican turf of Virginia, Florida and Ohio among them, and Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania, too.
If the tightening polls are correct and undecided voters in those states break McCain's way — both big ifs — that could make for a repeat of the 2000 heartbreaker for Democrats that gave Republicans the White House.
In 2000, Democrat Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote by 537,179 votes. But George W. Bush won the state-by-state electoral balloting that determines the presidency, 271 to 266. The outcome wasn't clear until a 36-day recount awarded Florida, then worth 25 electoral votes, to Bush by just a 537-vote margin.
Before the 2000 election, political insiders had speculated just the opposite, that perhaps Bush would win the popular vote but lose the presidency to Gore.
One day before the 2008 election, Obama sat atop every national poll.
Enthusiastic by all measures, the Illinois senator's Democratic base was expected to run up the score in liberal bastions of party strongholds such as New York and California.
But the race appeared to be naturally tightening in top battlegrounds that each candidate likely will need to help them reach the magic number in the Electoral College, electoral-rich Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia among them.
To win, McCain must hold on to most states that went to Bush in 2004, or pick up one or more that went to Democrat John Kerry four years ago to make up for any losses. McCain's biggest target for a pickup is Pennsylvania, which offers 21 votes and where several public polls show Obama's lead shrinking from double digits to single digits.
McCain faces a steep hurdle. Obama leads or is tied in a dozen or so Bush-won states, and has the advantage in most Kerry-won states.
The Republican's campaign argues that as national surveys tighten, McCain's standing in key states also rises and that, combined with get-out-the-vote efforts, will lift McCain to victory in Bush states and, perhaps, others.
There's still another possibility, perhaps more improbable than the first — that McCain wins the popular vote while Obama clinches the White House.
True, Democrats have been fired up all year.
True, Republicans haven't been.
True, Obama and McCain have been faring about even among independent voters.
But there are signs that the GOP's conservative base has rallied in the final stretch and these voters usually turn out in droves, even if lukewarm on the candidate.
Then there's the question of a tie in the Electoral College. In that case, members of the next House would select the winner.
If Obama carries every state that Democrat John Kerry won in 2004, plus Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada, then he and McCain each would have 269 electoral votes. A tie also would result if McCain takes New Hampshire from the Democrats' column but loses Iowa, New Mexico and another state that Bush won, Colorado.
In an election year that's defied conventional wisdom time and again, anything can happen.
Liz Sidoti, AP Writer
Nov 03, 2008
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081103/
ap_on_el_pr/split_decision
It's a nightmare scenario for Democrats — their nominee Barack Obama winning the popular vote while Republican John McCain ekes out an Electoral College victory. Sure, McCain trails in every recent national poll. Sure, surveys show that Obama leads in the race to reach the requisite 270 electoral votes to win the presidency.
Sure, chances of Republicans retaining the White House are remote.
But some last-minute state polls show the GOP nominee closing the gap in key states — Republican turf of Virginia, Florida and Ohio among them, and Democratic-leaning Pennsylvania, too.
If the tightening polls are correct and undecided voters in those states break McCain's way — both big ifs — that could make for a repeat of the 2000 heartbreaker for Democrats that gave Republicans the White House.
In 2000, Democrat Al Gore narrowly won the popular vote by 537,179 votes. But George W. Bush won the state-by-state electoral balloting that determines the presidency, 271 to 266. The outcome wasn't clear until a 36-day recount awarded Florida, then worth 25 electoral votes, to Bush by just a 537-vote margin.
Before the 2000 election, political insiders had speculated just the opposite, that perhaps Bush would win the popular vote but lose the presidency to Gore.
One day before the 2008 election, Obama sat atop every national poll.
Enthusiastic by all measures, the Illinois senator's Democratic base was expected to run up the score in liberal bastions of party strongholds such as New York and California.
But the race appeared to be naturally tightening in top battlegrounds that each candidate likely will need to help them reach the magic number in the Electoral College, electoral-rich Florida, Ohio, Pennsylvania and Virginia among them.
To win, McCain must hold on to most states that went to Bush in 2004, or pick up one or more that went to Democrat John Kerry four years ago to make up for any losses. McCain's biggest target for a pickup is Pennsylvania, which offers 21 votes and where several public polls show Obama's lead shrinking from double digits to single digits.
McCain faces a steep hurdle. Obama leads or is tied in a dozen or so Bush-won states, and has the advantage in most Kerry-won states.
The Republican's campaign argues that as national surveys tighten, McCain's standing in key states also rises and that, combined with get-out-the-vote efforts, will lift McCain to victory in Bush states and, perhaps, others.
There's still another possibility, perhaps more improbable than the first — that McCain wins the popular vote while Obama clinches the White House.
True, Democrats have been fired up all year.
True, Republicans haven't been.
True, Obama and McCain have been faring about even among independent voters.
But there are signs that the GOP's conservative base has rallied in the final stretch and these voters usually turn out in droves, even if lukewarm on the candidate.
Then there's the question of a tie in the Electoral College. In that case, members of the next House would select the winner.
If Obama carries every state that Democrat John Kerry won in 2004, plus Iowa, New Mexico and Nevada, then he and McCain each would have 269 electoral votes. A tie also would result if McCain takes New Hampshire from the Democrats' column but loses Iowa, New Mexico and another state that Bush won, Colorado.
In an election year that's defied conventional wisdom time and again, anything can happen.
Monday, November 3, 2008
Stocks likely to recover no matter who's president
Stocks likely to recover no matter who's president
Madlen Read, AP Business Writer
Nov 02, 2008
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081102/
ap_on_bi_ge/election_stock_market
Wall Street prefers Republicans, McCain supporters argue. But stocks have done better under Democratic presidents, Obama supporters fire back.
When it comes to the stock market — especially this turbulent market — does it really matter who is elected president?
Yes and no. Politicians do influence the economy — and they'll play a big role in how the country emerges from this current crisis. But analysts say neither presidential candidate can be a cure for what's ailing Wall Street.
Moreover, most analysts believe the battered stock market has nowhere to go but up next year, no matter who ends up in the White House — and history will probably give the victor credit even if he actually had little to do with the rally.
Still, the stock market is just one part of the economy, and under either Barack Obama or John McCain, the United States needs to recover from a downturn whose severity has not yet been determined. And either candidate will face a budget deficit of around $500 billion when he's sworn into office — a shortfall expected to climb to $1 trillion next year.
Because of the deficit, the financial climate might end up affecting the new president's policies more than his policies will affect the financial climate.
That's not to say, of course, there aren't differences in the impact McCain or Obama would have on U.S. businesses, and in turn, their stocks. Robert Froehlich, an investment strategist at Deutsche Bank, said it's likely that under Obama, the alternative energy sector would do well, and possibly the paper and steel industries if he enforces trade treaties. And under McCain, Froehlich said, it's likely that big energy companies would do better because he does not support a windfall profits tax, and that financial companies could benefit because of his stance on dividend taxes, long-term capital gains taxes, and estate taxes.
"Don't expect the next president to say, 'I'm strapped with this economic crisis, I'm going to throw all my plans away,'" Froehlich said.
There are historical trends one can draw between presidents and how the stock market performs. The question is how seriously to take them.
The Dow Jones industrial average and the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index have posted larger returns during the terms of Democratic presidents. But this statistic doesn't prove that Democratic policies boost the stock market — the major indexes have also done better under a Republican Congress than a Democratic Congress.
Another pattern to take note of is the stock market's apparent four-year cycle, described by market historian Yale Hirsch in his Presidential Election Cycle Theory. The theory says the stock market does well in a presidential election year, badly in the year after the election and then improves until the next presidential election. This pattern has held up for most of the century, although it's being tested by the two terms of President George W. Bush.
However, the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, rather than the influence of the president, can explain this pattern better, according to a 2007 study by CFA Institute Education managing director Robert Johnson, University of Wisconsin professor Scott Beyer and Northern Illinois University professor Gerald Jensen. Their study found that the Fed has tended to lower interest rates during the latter half of presidential terms — and lower interest rates encourage borrowing and spending.
And investors shouldn't get too caught up in the market's short-term reaction after the election results. The Dow surged, for example, after President Hoover was elected in 1928 — and the next year the it crashed, ushering in the Great Depression.
Madlen Read, AP Business Writer
Nov 02, 2008
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081102/
ap_on_bi_ge/election_stock_market
Wall Street prefers Republicans, McCain supporters argue. But stocks have done better under Democratic presidents, Obama supporters fire back.
When it comes to the stock market — especially this turbulent market — does it really matter who is elected president?
Yes and no. Politicians do influence the economy — and they'll play a big role in how the country emerges from this current crisis. But analysts say neither presidential candidate can be a cure for what's ailing Wall Street.
Moreover, most analysts believe the battered stock market has nowhere to go but up next year, no matter who ends up in the White House — and history will probably give the victor credit even if he actually had little to do with the rally.
Still, the stock market is just one part of the economy, and under either Barack Obama or John McCain, the United States needs to recover from a downturn whose severity has not yet been determined. And either candidate will face a budget deficit of around $500 billion when he's sworn into office — a shortfall expected to climb to $1 trillion next year.
Because of the deficit, the financial climate might end up affecting the new president's policies more than his policies will affect the financial climate.
That's not to say, of course, there aren't differences in the impact McCain or Obama would have on U.S. businesses, and in turn, their stocks. Robert Froehlich, an investment strategist at Deutsche Bank, said it's likely that under Obama, the alternative energy sector would do well, and possibly the paper and steel industries if he enforces trade treaties. And under McCain, Froehlich said, it's likely that big energy companies would do better because he does not support a windfall profits tax, and that financial companies could benefit because of his stance on dividend taxes, long-term capital gains taxes, and estate taxes.
"Don't expect the next president to say, 'I'm strapped with this economic crisis, I'm going to throw all my plans away,'" Froehlich said.
There are historical trends one can draw between presidents and how the stock market performs. The question is how seriously to take them.
The Dow Jones industrial average and the broader Standard & Poor's 500 index have posted larger returns during the terms of Democratic presidents. But this statistic doesn't prove that Democratic policies boost the stock market — the major indexes have also done better under a Republican Congress than a Democratic Congress.
Another pattern to take note of is the stock market's apparent four-year cycle, described by market historian Yale Hirsch in his Presidential Election Cycle Theory. The theory says the stock market does well in a presidential election year, badly in the year after the election and then improves until the next presidential election. This pattern has held up for most of the century, although it's being tested by the two terms of President George W. Bush.
However, the monetary policy of the Federal Reserve, rather than the influence of the president, can explain this pattern better, according to a 2007 study by CFA Institute Education managing director Robert Johnson, University of Wisconsin professor Scott Beyer and Northern Illinois University professor Gerald Jensen. Their study found that the Fed has tended to lower interest rates during the latter half of presidential terms — and lower interest rates encourage borrowing and spending.
And investors shouldn't get too caught up in the market's short-term reaction after the election results. The Dow surged, for example, after President Hoover was elected in 1928 — and the next year the it crashed, ushering in the Great Depression.
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