Friday, July 20, 2012

Posted by James Altucher

My dad hit me when I got bad grades. Particularly when I was young and got a bad grade in “Conduct”. Happiness was an “A”. Even better: an “A+”. Sadness was an “F”. It was almost like a joke. Like the only way to get an “F” is if you tried to screw up almost as much as you tried to get an “A”.
But in twelve years of basic schooling I can’t’ remember anyone asking where the “E” was. It goes A, B, C, D (which was really horrible to get a D. It means you were trying somewhat (so as to avoid the “F”) but you were just plain stupid and got a D. Not even a C.) and then, the magic “F”. Which was more than just a letter but a one-letter acronym. None of the other letters stood for anything. They were just letters. They could’ve been replaced by numbers (Claudia tells me in Argentina they were graded by numbers from one to ten. No letters). It’s not like “A” stood for Amazing. Or “B” Boring. “C” Crazy. “D” Dumb. You could’ve just replaced them by 1, 2, 3, 4. Or a “1+”. But F was irreplaceable.

(the mirror image of the tattoo says “Never a Failure, Always a Lesson”)

“F” stood for “Failure”. [Note: except when I was really little. There was "O" for outstanding. "S" for Satisfactory. And "N" for needs improvement. I got an N for conduct and it's the first time I remember my dad hitting me after the teacher told him I was always calling her old, which she was and there is no shame of that but I only realize that now that I am as old as she was.]

The Untouchables by Gary North

The word "untouchable" means something different in India than it does in the West. In India, no one wants to be an untouchable. In the West, achieving the status of untouchable is the supreme organizational goal.

In India, untouchable status means that you cannot move up. In the West, it means that you can't be pulled down.

In every Western nation, certain institutions are untouchable. Anyone challenging them is regarded as a revolutionary, a kook, or a self-promoter looking for publicity.

Untouchable status means that the organization gets a free ride in society. Its mistakes are overlooked. Its deviations from established standards are overlooked. It is immune from the usual criticisms that all other institutions are subjected to.

The Communist Party in the Soviet Union had this status. So did the Politburo.

Obama Believes Success Is a Gift From Government

By Michael Barone -

Perhaps the rain made the teleprompter unreadable. That's one thought I had on pondering Barack Obama's comments to a rain-soaked rally in Roanoke, Va., last Friday.
Perhaps he didn't really mean what he said. Or perhaps -- as is often the case with people -- when unanchored from a prepared text he revealed what he really thinks.

By Thomas Sowell -

There was a time, within living memory, when the achievements of others were not only admired but were often taken as an inspiration for imitation of the same qualities that had served these achievers well, even if we were not in the same field of endeavor and were not expecting to achieve on the same scale.
The perseverance of Thomas Edison, as he tried scores of materials for the filament of the light bulb he was inventing; the dedication of Abraham Lincoln as he studied law on his own while struggling to make a living -- these were things young people were taught to admire, even if they had no intention of becoming inventors or lawyers, much less President of the United States.

Michelle Jenneke Dancing Sexy as Hell at Junior World Championships in B...

The Price Of Corn Hits A Record High As A Global Food Crisis Looms

Are you ready for the next major global food crisis? The price of corn hit an all-time record high on Thursday. So did the price of soybeans. The price of corn is up about 50 percent since the middle of last month, and the price of wheat has risen by about 50 percent over the past five weeks. On Thursday, corn for September delivery reached $8.166 per bushel, and many analysts believe that it could hit $10 a bushel before this crisis is over. The worst drought in the United States in more than 50 years is projected to continue well into August, and more than 1,300 counties in the United States have been declared to be official natural disaster areas. So how is this crisis going to affect the average person on the street? Well, most Americans and most Europeans are going to notice their grocery bills go up significantly over the coming months. That will not be pleasant. But in other areas of the world this crisis could mean the difference between life and death for some people. You see, half of all global corn exports come from the United States. So what happens if the U.S. does not have any corn to export? About a billion people around the world live on the edge of starvation, and today the Financial Times ran a front page story with the following headline: "World braced for new food crisis". Millions upon millions of families in poor countries are barely able to feed themselves right now. So what happens if the price of the food that they buy goes up dramatically?

The U.S. economy is in a massive amount of trouble. There aren't enough jobs. There isn't enough money to go around. Business activity is slowing down again. Household wealth has been falling. Food prices have been rising. Many state and local governments all over the country are flat broke and are drowning in debt. The federal government has been rolling up unprecedented amounts of debt in an attempt to keep things going, but everyone knows that kind of borrowing is simply unsustainable. So where do we go from here? We consume far more than we produce and we use debt to make up the difference. 40 years ago the total amount of debt in America (government, business and consumer) was less than 2 trillion dollars. Today it is nearly 55 trillion dollars. How in the world did we let the total amount of debt in the United States grow more than 27 times larger over the past 40 years? Our economic system is fundamentally broken, but most Americans don't realize it yet because times are still relatively good.

Is the petrodollar dead? Well, not yet, but the nails are being hammered into the coffin even as you read this. For decades, most of the nations of the world have used the U.S. dollar to buy oil and to trade with each other. In essence, the U.S. dollar has been acting as a true global currency. Virtually every country on the face of the earth has needed big piles of U.S. dollars for international trade. This has ensured a huge demand for U.S. dollars and U.S. government debt. This demand for dollars has kept prices and interest rates low, and it has given the U.S. government an incredible amount of power and leverage around the globe. Right now, U.S. dollars make up more than 60 percent of all foreign currency reserves in the world. But times are changing. Over the past couple of years there has been a whole bunch of international agreements that have made the U.S. dollar less important in international trade. The mainstream media in the United States has been strangely quiet about all of these agreements, but the truth is that they are setting the stage for a fundamental shift in the way that trade is conducted around the globe. When the petrodollar dies, it is going to have an absolutely devastating impact on the U.S. economy. Sadly, most Americans are totally clueless regarding what is about to happen to the dollar.

Do you want to see where this country is headed? If so, don't focus on the few areas that are still very prosperous. New York City has Wall Street, Washington D.C. has the federal government and Silicon Valley has Google and Facebook. Those are the exceptions. The reality is that most of the country has been experiencing a slow decline for a very long time and once thriving cities such as Gary, Indiana and Flint, Michigan have become absolute hellholes. They are examples of what the rest of America will look like soon. 60 years ago, most Americans were decent, hard working people and there were always good jobs available for anyone that was willing to roll up his or her sleeves and put in an honest day of work. But now all of that has changed. Over the past decade, tens of thousands of manufacturing facilities have shut down and millions of jobs have left the country. Cities such as Cleveland, Baltimore and Detroit were once shining examples of everything that was right about America, but now they stand out like festering sores. The "blue collar cities" have been hit the hardest by the gutting of our economic infrastructure. There are many communities in America today where it seems like all of the hope and all of the life have been sucked right out of them. You can see it in the eyes of the people. The good times are gone permanently and they know it. Unfortunately, the remainder of the country will soon be experiencing the despair that those communities are feeling.

The U.S. government has stolen $15,876,457,645,132.66 from future generations of Americans, and we continue to add well over a hundred million dollars to that total every single day day. The 15 trillion dollar binge that we have been on over the past 30 years has fueled the greatest standard of living the world has ever seen, but this wonderful prosperity that we have been enjoying has been a lie. It isn't real. We have been living way above our means for so long that we do not have any idea of what "normal" actually is anymore. But every debt addict hits "the wall" eventually, and the same thing is going to happen to us as a nation. At some point the weight of our national debt is going to cause our financial system to implode, and every American will feel the pain of that collapse. Under our current system, there is no mathematical way that this debt can ever be paid back. The road that we are on will either lead to default or to hyperinflation. We have piled up the biggest debt in the history of the world, and if there are future generations of Americans they will look back and curse us for what we did to them. We like to think of ourselves as much wiser than previous generations of Americans, but the truth is that we have been so foolish that it is hard to put it into words.

The cracks in the ice are getting bigger. At this point it is really hard to have much confidence in the global financial system at all. They told us that MF Global was an isolated incident. Well, the horrific financial scandal over at PFGBest is essentially MF Global all over again. They told us that we would not see a huge wave of municipal bankruptcies in the United States. Well, three California cities have declared bankruptcy in less than a month. They told us that we could have faith in the integrity of the global financial system. Well, now we are finding out that global interest rates have been fixed by insiders for years. They told us that Greece was an isolated problem and that none of the larger European nations would experience anything remotely similar. Well, what is happening in Spain right now looks like an instant replay of exactly what happened in Greece. So who are we supposed to believe? Why does it seem like nearly everything that "the authorities" tell us turns out to be a lie? What else haven't they been telling us?
The following are four reasons to be even less optimistic about the global financial system than you were last month....

BBC Gives Jerusalem to the Arabs

by William Bigelow

The BBC, ever mindful of British obligations to their swelling Muslim population, decided on its BBC Sport website to name the capital of every country participating in the London Olympic games except one: Israel. Even more incredibly, the site listed Palestine as a country and named its capital as East Jerusalem. But for Israel, a capital wasn’t even listed.

Israel’s government, angered by the omission, responded with a letter by Mark Regev, the Prime Minister’s Spokesman, to Paul Danahar, the Middle East bureau chief of the BBC:

by John Nolte

Within hours of these awful murders, narcissist Roger Ebert decided to preen around and push his left-wing politics on gun control and, through some brilliant insight few mortals enjoy, read the alleged killer's mind...

Lowlights:

JAMES HOLMES, who opened fire before the midnight premiere of “The Dark Knight Rises,” could not have seen the movie. Like many whose misery is reflected in violence, he may simply have been drawn to a highly publicized event with a big crowd. In cynical terms, he was seeking a publicity tie-in. He was like one of those goofballs waving in the background when a TV reporter does a stand-up at a big story.

by Breitbart News

"The Dark Knight Rises" was expected to threaten "The Avengers" for box office supremacy this weekend.

Then, earlier this morning, a gunman dressed as the Joker, opened fire on a "Dark Knight" screening in Colorado, and killed 12 movie goers before police took him into custody.
The film's commercial chances suddenly were up in the air, but Deadline.com reports the early indicators show the massacre hasn't adversely affected ticket sales - yet.

“What happened in Colorado is a tragedy, make no mistake about it. But East Coast numbers are coming in like nothing ever happened. We grossed half a million dollars by 10 AM just in Manhattan.” One reason for that is because most of today’s grosses, and a good portion of this weekend’s, consisted of $30M in pre-sales. So whether moviegoers show up or not to the theaters doesn’t matter: they still paid for their tickets. The real-time effect of the Aurora movie theater shooting likely won’t be felt at the box office until Saturday at the earliest and more likely Sunday and next week and next weekend as pre-release sales decrease.

Police: 71 People Shot, 12 Deceased

Money, Where's the Money?. by Steve H. Hanke

Since September 2007, when the British Government and the Bank of England bungled the Northern Rock affair, one government after another has sent in the boy scouts in an attempt to douse what has become an international economic wildfire. Their efforts haven't worked. Indeed, they have often made matters worse — much worse — and the fire remains uncontained.

Heads of state continue to rush from one meeting to the next. Worryingly, they (and the army of pundits that follow them) continue to focus most of their rhetoric on whether fiscal austerity or more fiscal stimulus is the right strategy to contain the crisis and turn things around. Instead, they should be focusing on the money supply. As history shows us, money and monetary policy trumps fiscal policy.

Steve H. Hanke is a Professor of Applied Economics at The Johns Hopkins University in Baltimore and a Senior Fellow at the Cato Institute in Washington, D.C.

More by Steve H. Hanke

When the monetary and fiscal policies move in opposite directions, the economy will follow the direction taken by monetary (not fiscal) policy. For doubters, just consider Japan and the United States in the 1990s. The Japanese government engaged in a massive fiscal stimulus program, while the Bank of Japan embraced a super-tight monetary policy. In consequence, Japan suffered under deflationary pressures and experienced a lost decade of economic growth.

In New Zealand, Farmers Don't Want Subsidies. by Mark Ross and Chris Edwards

Every five years or so, members of Congress from rural areas team up to push through a costly extension of farm programs. They are at it again this year. The Senate recently passed legislation to keep billions of dollars in subsidies flowing to farm businesses, and the House just passed a similarly bloated bill out of committee.

Farm bills are an inside game. Politicians never give the public a good reason why U.S. agriculture needs to be coddled by the government. Members of Congress focus on grabbing more subsidies for home-state farmers, and they rarely discuss or debate whether all this federal aid is really needed.
It isn't needed. New Zealand's farm reforms of the 1980s dramatically illustrate the point. Faced with a budget crisis, New Zealand's government decided to eliminate nearly all farm subsidies. That was a dramatic reform because New Zealand farmers had enjoyed high levels of aid and the country's economy is more dependent on agriculture than is the U.S. economy.

Let Them Eat Hope. by Gene Healy

After much soul searching, Barack Obama has figured out where his presidency has gone wrong — and he shared it with CBS's Charlie Rose and viewers across the fruited plain Sunday morning.

"The mistake of my first term — couple of years," the president allowed, "was thinking that this job was just about getting the policy right." At times, Obama confessed, he'd forgotten that "the nature of this office is also to tell a story to the American people that gives them a sense of unity and purpose and optimism, especially during tough times." He needed to do "more explaining, but also inspiring."
"Because hope is still there," the first lady added.

by Michael D. Tanner

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The Obama administration clearly doesn't believe that enough Americans are receiving welfare.

Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius last week issued an order giving the Obama administration greater authority to waive work requirements included in the 1998 welfare reform law. This comes on top of a new ad campaign, using Spanish-language soap operas, to encourage more Latinos to sign up for food stamps.
The administration even gave a special award to an Agriculture Department worker who found ways to combat the "mountain pride" discouraging Appalachian residents from taking full advantage of food stamps and other welfare programs.

by Mark A. Calabria

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Continued weakness in the labor market has renewed calls for an additional round of quantitative easing by the Federal Reserve; that is the large scale purchase of assets, mostly treasuries or agency (Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac) securities, with long maturities. Such additional purchases would be a mistake as the impact on the labor market would be minimal, potentially negative, and the long-run risks to the Fed and the economy would be substantial.

By Alex J. Pollock

The director of the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation responds to an article on American.com.

Late last month I published a piece on the serious financial problems at the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation (PBGC), the government corporation that guarantees private pension plans (see “The Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation: Who Will Guarantee This Guarantor?”).
The article prompted a thoughtful response from Josh Gotbaum, the director of the PBGC. His response follows, along with my additional comments:

How Over-Regulation Fuels Economic Segregation

Illustration by Andrew Neyer

By Virginia Postrel

For a century, incomes became increasingly equal across the U.S., as poor states such as Alabama caught up to rich places like California.
Economists have long taught this history to their undergraduates as an illustration of the growth theory for which Robert Solow won his Nobel Prize in economics: Poor places are short on the capital that would make local labor more productive. Investors move capital to those poor places, hoping to capture some of the increased productivity as higher returns. Productivity gradually equalizes across the country, and wages follow. When capital can move freely, the poorer a place is to start with, the faster it grows.

By Amity Shlaes

“But the best ideas don’t spread spontaneously.”
That line from the New York Times columnist Bill Keller about state experiments involving President Barack Obama’s Affordable Care Act reflects a prevalent attitude: States that break away with original fiscal plans come up with subpar results that waste everyone’s time.

About Amity Shlaes

Amity Shlaes is a senior fellow in economic history at the Council on Foreign Relations and the author of the best-sellers "The Forgotten Man: A New History of the Great Depression" and "The Greedy Hand: Why Taxes Drive Americans Crazy."
More about Amity Shlaes

Photographer: Ben Baker/Redux

This summer, the focus of such criticism is Florida Governor Rick Scott’s announcement that his state won’t participate in the expansion of Medicaid under Obama’s health- care reform. Scott is pulling away from a federal plan, a move Obama will doubtless raise when he tours Florida this weekend. Yet long before this administration came along, states began running off from their own pack of fellow states, experimenting with their own tax base. And these experiments, too, have often been condemned for squandering time and money.

By Vincent Del Giudice, Jennifer Oldham and Mark Niquette -

PHotographer: Ed Andrieski/AP Photo

Police use a video camera to look inside an apartment where the suspect in a shooting at a movie theatre lived in Aurora, Colo., on July 20, 2012. PHotographer: Ed Andrieski/AP Photo

At least 12 people were killed and as many as 59 injured when a gunman in a gas mask opened fire about 12:30 a.m. in a theater showing the new Batman movie in Aurora, Colorado, near Denver.

Opinion: Who's Not on the Shortlist

Strassel: Obama's Enemies List—Part II

First an Obama campaign website called out Romney donor Frank Vandersloot. Next the IRS moved to audit him—and so did the Labor Department.

By KIMBERLEY A. STRASSEL

This column has already told the story of Frank VanderSloot, an Idaho businessman who last year contributed to a group supporting Mitt Romney. An Obama campaign website in April sent a message to those who'd donate to the president's opponent. It called out Mr. VanderSloot and seven other private donors by name and occupation and slurred them as having "less-than-reputable" records.
Mr. VanderSloot has since been learning what it means to be on a presidential enemies list. Just 12 days after the attack, the Idahoan found an investigator digging to unearth his divorce records. This bloodhound—a recent employee of Senate Democrats—worked for a for-hire opposition research firm.
Now Mr. VanderSloot has been targeted by the federal government. In a letter dated June 21, he was informed that his tax records had been "selected for examination" by the Internal Revenue Service. The audit also encompasses Mr. VanderSloot's wife, and not one, but two years of past filings (2008 and 2009).
Mr. VanderSloot, who is 63 and has been working since his teens, says neither he nor his accountants recall his being subject to a federal tax audit before. He was once required to send documents on a line item inquiry into his charitable donations, which resulted in no changes to his taxes. But nothing more—that is until now, shortly after he wrote a big check to a Romney-supporting Super PAC.

Enlarge Image

Zhang Jun/Xinhua/ZUMAPRESS.com Two weeks after receiving the IRS letter, Mr. VanderSloot received another—this one from the Department of Labor. He was informed it would be doing an audit of workers he employs on his Idaho-based cattle ranch under the federal visa program for temporary agriculture workers.
The H-2A program allows tens of thousands of temporary workers in the U.S.; Mr. VanderSloot employs precisely three. All are from Mexico and have worked on the VanderSloot ranch—which employs about 20 people—for five years. Two are brothers. Mr. VanderSloot has never been audited for this, though two years ago his workers' ranch homes were inspected. (The ranch was fined $8,400, mainly for too many "flies" and for "grease build-up" on the stove. God forbid a cattle ranch home has flies.)

Spaniards Protest Austerity Measures

Police Name Denver Suspect, Raid Apartment

Colorado Batman Movie Shooting Suspect Was PhD Student

By CLAYTON SANDELL, KEVIN DOLAK, and COLLEEN CURRY |

http://news.yahoo.com/video#video=30044080

The suspected "lone-wolf" shooter of the Batman movie theater massacre in Aurora, Colo. earlier today has been identified as PhD student James Holmes, who recently withdrew from his neuroscience studies at the University of Colorado before shooting up "The Dark Knight Rises" screening.

Holmes, 24, moved to Aurora to pursue his PhD at the University of Colorado medical center, living just blocks from the hospital in an apartment that is now laced with explosives and being searched by Haz-Mat teams.

Holmes killed at least 12 people and injured as many as 50, including U.S. military members, during the midnight premiere of the movie at the Century 16 Movie Theaters in Aurora early this morning. He barged into the theater mid-show, setting off smoke bombs and stalking up and down the aisles firing as many as four weapons at viewers.

US: Romneyconomics: Good but incomplete – by Lewis E. Lehrman

Mitt Romney has articulated the choice we will make in November. We can choose President Obama and a European future—i.e., high unemployment, demographic winter, big government commanding over 50 percent of future output, a welfare state engineered and manipulated by the Washington bureaucracy, the end of American leadership, and, ultimately, national insolvency. Or we can embark once again on the road to rapid economic expansion, through pro-growth tax reform, smaller government, a balanced budget, and sound money. What we need, Romney argues, is an entrepreneurial economy based on the free price mechanism, free markets, free and fair international trade. For Romney the goal of rapid economic growth is full employment, a strong national defense, and a rising American standard of living. These policies are necessary. But are they sufficient?
Romney’s analysis emphasizes the character of presidential leadership, the need for hands-on White House direction of national economic policy. Workable economic policies require not only the right goals but also a strong president capable of leading Congress and the nation in a new direction—away from Obama’s backward-looking statism, and forward to pro-growth tax policies, budgetary equilibrium, and sound monetary policies. Regulations must be radically simplified. The tax code must be comprehensively reformed—with a larger base, fewer loopholes, and lower rates.

US: Caught in a green crossfire – by Paul Driessen

President Obama’s war on fossil fuels is hurting American workers, families, hopes and dreams.
President Obama has waged war on fossil fuels for three and a half years – and American consumers and families are caught in the green energy crossfire.
They are getting hit with higher energy prices, dismal employment prospects and a floundering economy, as billions go to unfriendly overseas countries for oil we could produce in the USA, and billions of tax dollars are wasted on subsidy schemes designed to make “green” energy more competitive – by raising the cost of electricity and fossil fuels that really power our economy.

US: The War Against Men – Make it Stop! – by Carli Eli

What do the shows Different Strokes, The Cosby Show, Family Ties, Full House, Step by Step and Family Matters have in common?
Categorized as America’s favorite TV shows at one point, one thing they share is that the fathers played in each show represented authority, respect, power, love and stability in their households. We fast forward to today and unfortunately the “feel-good,” family friendly shows are rarely shown on TV, which explains why I find myself watching old re-runs on Netflix.

US: First Amendment & Federal Elections – by Derwood S. Chase, Jr.

Dear Editor,
I write in regard to your June 4^th story “Council OKs Resolution Against Citizens United Ruling” in which the U.S. Supreme Court found that the First Amendment prohibits the federal government from restricting independent political advertising paid for by corporations or labor unions.
Right now the United States Congress is considering 16 amendments to overturn Citizens United. Most of them give Congress unlimited power to control spending by anyone – individuals, businesses, unions or groups – on federal elections. Two of the amendments even propose prohibiting private spending on elections.

US: Barack is no Batman – by Jeffrey T. Kuhner

President Obama is being compared to Batman. That’s right. The Obama campaign believes the new blockbuster movie, “The Dark Knight Rises,” set to be released this weekend, is an artistic reflection of political reality. According to many liberals, Mr. Obama is more than a leader. He is a real-life superhero, endowed with fantastical, almost superhuman powers. The Obama cult of personality has now reached absurd levels. Even Josef Stalin or Mao Zedong never said he was Superman.
Democratic surrogates are arguing that Mr. Obama is like the caped crusader, who defends ordinary citizens — the 99 percent — from rapacious, greedy villains — the 1 percent — bent on plundering American society. In the much-anticipated Hollywood film, Batman’s arch-nemesis is “Bane,” a gas-breathing bad guy who breaks the hero’s back. The Obama camp alleges that Bane stands for “Bain,” Mitt Romney’s investment firm that they say is responsible for foreign outsourcing and destroying jobs. According to the analogy, Mr. Romney’s supposed vulture capitalism will do to America what Bane does to Gotham city in the movie: destroy it. As the superhero analogy goes, only the Dark Knight (Mr. Obama) stands in the way.