Saturday, November 4, 2017
Friday, November 3, 2017
Thursday, November 2, 2017
Shelby Foote’s Civil War History Defends America Against Insatiable Haters Like Ta-Nehisi Coates
For Coates and his ilk, the entire idea of America is indefensible. Our original sin of slavery can never be extirpated—not by the Civil War, not by the civil rights movement, not even by the remarkable fact that a black man became president of the United States, even as he has become one of the most celebrated and influential writers in America. Coates’ entire project is fundamentally anti-American. To speak of compromises that could have prevented or delayed the war is to speak of a great crime—slavery—for which there is no suitable punishment, except maybe extinction.
SCOTUS Justice Clarence Thomas: "What's our Unum now?"
I mean, what binds us? What do we all have in common anymore? I think we have to think about that. I think this is — when I was a kid, even as we had laws that held us apart, there were things that we held dear and that we all had in common. And I think we have to — we always talk about E pluribus unum. What’s our unum now? We have the pluribus. What’s the unum? And I think it’s a great country. I think we, for whatever reasons, have made it our — some people have decided that the Constitution isn’t worth defending, that history isn’t worth defending, that the culture and principles aren’t worth defending. And, certainly, if you are in my position, they have to be worth defending. That’s what keeps you going. That’s what energizes you. … I don’t know what it is that we have, we can say instinctively, we have as a country in common.”
Wednesday, November 1, 2017
On this day in 1950,
Puerto Rican Activist Gunmen Attempt To Enter Blair House And Kill President Truman
Secret Service Agent Killed In Gunfight
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| Secret Service Agent Leslie Coffelt |
From This Day In History
On this day, Griselio Torresola and Oscar Collazo attempt to assassinate President Harry S. Truman at the Blair House in Washington, D.C. Truman escaped unscathed.
In the autumn of 1950, the White House was being renovated and President Truman and his family were living in the nearby Blair House on Pennsylvania Avenue. On the afternoon of November 1, Truman and his wife were upstairs when they heard a commotion—and gunshots—coming fromthe front steps of the house. Indeed, the pair of would-be assassins had strolled up to the front door of Blair House and opened fire. They never made it past the entry steps, however, due to the quick reaction of police officers and guards. Secret Service Agent Leslie Coffelt was mortally wounded in the ensuing melee, but not before he managed to kill Torresola. Collazo later revealed to police just how poorly planned the assassination attempt was: the assailants were unsure if Truman would even be in the house when they launched their attack at 2 o’clock in the afternoon.Torresola and Collazo were political activists and members of the extremist Puerto Rican Nationalist Party, a group fighting for full independence from the United States. The “Independistas,” as they were commonly called, targeted Truman despite his support of greater Puerto Rican autonomy.
Apparently unfazed by the attempt on his life, Truman kept his scheduled appointments for the day. “A President has to expect these things,” he remarked dryly. Oscar Collazo was sentenced to death, but in an admirable act of forgiveness on July 24, 1952, Truman commuted the sentence to life imprisonment.
Tuesday, October 31, 2017
Grant's Interest Rate Observer
INFLATION?
Keep on growing
An upbeat turn in the fortunes of U.S. employees, from deep in the heart of Texas: Fast casual dining chain Texas Roadhouse, Inc., which employs about 52,500 people according to its most recent form 10-K, provided investors with an eye-catching data point in yesterday evening’s third quarter earnings release. In its full-year outlook, management raised its forecast for labor inflation to a range of 7% to 8%, up from previous guidance of mid-single digit growth. A decline in third quarter restaurant margins was likewise attributed to the higher costs associated with compensation increases.
Chief financial officer Scott Matthew Colosi noted the broad-based advance in wages on the earnings call: “All over the country, you hear how challenging it is with unemployment being so low to – you’re competing for talent. And so you’re having to pay almost in every position more than you did even a couple of years ago.” Tonya Robinson, vice president finance and investor relations, added: “And actually, you hear more and more people talking about that even outside the restaurant industry.” Chris Kempczinski, president of McDonalds USA, LLC proffered a similar observation on Oct. 24: “There is some commodity inflation, but the biggest drag that we’re facing right now is related to the labor investments that are being made.”
Labor staffing companies have also remarked on an apparent strengthening in overall conditions this quarter. On Oct. 24, Robert Half International, Inc. chairman and CEO Harold Messmer noted a catch-up dynamic: “Clearly we’re seeing clients starting more projects. They’re spending more money. They have more sense of urgency. Their existing staff [has been] lean because they’ve held a line so far during this recovery. So, there’s some pent up demand that results from that.” Manpower Group, Inc. CEO Jonas Prising laid it out even more plainly on the company’s Oct. 20 call: “The labor market in the U.S. is extremely tight, [it is] hard to find people.”
One potential reflection of the improved outlook in wages is the market’s assessment of Manpower itself. Shares in the staffing company have gone on a rampage of late, shooting higher by 120% since July of last year, compared to a 23% gain in the S&P 500 in that period.
Anecdotal but broad inflationary sightings are popping up beyond the realms of labor and wages. Darius Adamzyck, president and CEO of diversified manufacturer Honeywell, Inc. commented on the company’s Oct. 20 call: “Overall we’ve probably been more challenged on the cost side this year than we’ve seen in a while.” Thomas J. Falk, CEO of consumer packaging giant Kimberly-Clark Corp. on Oct. 23: “Our commodity inflation estimate has increased somewhat from three months ago.” His colleague, CFO Maria Henry, chimed in: “It is a stronger inflation than we were expecting.” Jon Moeller, CFO of Procter & Gamble Co., identified an unexpected rise in chemicals prices on Oct. 20: “We knew we’d see higher pulp price cost going into [the] year, these costs have continued to increase beyond initial forecast ranges. Ethylene, propylene, kerosene, and the polyethylene and polypropylene resins have increased recently.”
There are some limits to this evidently broad-based inflationary uptick. Bloomberg reported this morning that Best Buy Co. halted its sales of “un-activated” Apple smartphones (meaning not set up on a specific carrier network) amidst customer backlash, after the electronics retailer priced its iPhone X and iPhone 8 inventory at $1,099 and $1,249 respectively, each a $100 premium over the quotes supplied by Apple.
Mueller is running amok
The real lesson of the Russia non-story is that globalization, the great theme of the 2016 election, is more pervasive than any of us wants to acknowledge. No one who works in consulting or lobbying or finance is lacking in ties with Russia. Our press corps is largely made up of enthusiastic children. These 20- and 30-somethings who have never read a book were raised to excel in "critical thinking," but they are amusingly bad at it. Anyone can write a decontextualized story about a person or a group having "ties" to any malicious foreign power because having "ties" is what it means to exist somewhere in the sinuous continuum of depersonalized financial accretion that is late capitalism.
In 2017, everybody is working for somebody, somewhere.
Pope Francis: Martin Luther Was Right, the Catholic Church Wrong
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| Pope Francis speaking in front of statue of Martin Luther |
Five hundred years ago today, the Augustinian monk Martin Luther famously nailed his 95 Theses to the chapel door of Germany’s University of Wittenberg. And for much of the ensuing half-millennium, the man who begat the Protestant Reformation has been reviled by the Catholic Church.
Indeed, the view of Luther among many if not most of today’s Catholics is informed by a polemic written by the not entirely objective Catholic clergyman Henry George Ganss. It was published in the Catholic Encyclopedia all the way back in 1910 and republished on the Internet in 1995.
Ganss suggested that Luther was given to “uncontrolled rage.” That he exhibited “psychopathic” tendencies. That he suffered “satanic delusion.” That his observations were “highly exaggerated, frequently contradictory, and commonly misleading.” That he “hated God.” And that he “blasphemed God.”
But that was just so much defamation. Luther’s real offense, in the eyes of those who though him a heretic, who believed him justifiably excommunicated by Pope Leo X, is that he had the temerity to accuse the Holy Roman Catholic Church of slouching towards corruption.
Five centuries and 50 pontiffs later, Pope Francis declared last year that Luther was done a historic injustice. “I think the intentions of Martin Luther were not mistaken,” the Holy Father said. “He was a reformer.”
Moreover, Pope Francis continued, there was during the time of Luther “corruption in the Church. There was worldliness, attachment to money, to power… and this he protested.”
Luther’s 95 Theses concentrated primarily on the Church’s profane practice of selling so-called “indulgences,” which was the currency of the economy of salvation. While penitent sinners were forgiven and would no go to hell after they died, without indulgences, certificates bearing the pope’s imprimatur, they would still face punishment both on this side of the grave and in purgatory.
So it was that Pope Leo ramped up the selling of indulgences to finance construction of St. Peter’s Basilica, sending indulgence preachers to shakedown the Catholic laity. And so it was that Luther decried the Church’s money-changers, who misled the laity into believing that God’s grace could be purchased.
Clearly, the 16th century Church had strayed far from the teachings of the Church that traces its origins to the Apostle Peter, who condemned those who thought the gifts of God could be purchased. Indeed, in Acts 8 Peter tells a sorcerer who offers money to receive the Holy Spirit, “Your money perish with you because you thought the gifts of God could be purchased with money.”
The Protestant Reformation Martin Luther begat saved Christianity be eschewing the corrupt practices of the mid-century Roman Catholic Church in favor of a doctrine based on the Five Solas: Sola Scriptura, which declares the Bible alone is our highest authority; Sola Fide, we have been saved through faith alone in Jesus Christ; Sola Gratia, we are saved by the grace of God alone; Sola Christus, Jesus Christ alone is our Lord and Savior; and Sola Deo Gloria; we live for the glory of God alone.
Because of Martin Luther, Pope Francis said, “Today Lutherans and Catholics, and Protestants, all of us agree on the doctrine of justification. On this point, which is very important, he did not err.”
Tucker Carlson Identifies The Real Swamp Creatures
“In the meantime, if you’re looking for a summary of all of this — here’s the one-sentence Cliff note to the whole affair: The chairman of one major presidential campaign colluded with the chairman of the other major presidential campaign to enrich themselves by secretly advancing the interests of a foreign adversary. That happened. That’s the swamp they told you that needed to be drained.”
Grant's Interest Rate Observer: A Dollar Rally Imminent?
Uncle Sam is feeling his oats. Friday morning brought a brisk reading of third quarter advance GDP growth, with annualized sequential gains of 3.0%, well above the economist consensus of 2.6%. In tandem with the 3.1% pace of output growth in the second quarter, last week’s reading marked just the third instance of consecutive three-handle GDP prints since the end of 2004. Taking in the news, interest rate futures markets rendered their verdict: A rate hike is probably imminent. Futures currently price 84% likelihood of policy tightening at the Fed’s Dec. 13 meeting, little changed from last week.
The solid output and upward trajectory in U.S. short term interest rates (recent charts of three-month Libor or two-year Treasury note yields resemble that of a FAANG stock) is increasingly diverging from that of the eurozone, where growth is slower and rates lower. Euro area GDP growth has also managed some modest acceleration, printing 2.3% year-on-year in the second quarter (its best showing since 2011), but has yet to reach 3% in any single quarter since the financial crisis. Third quarter statistics are set to be released tomorrow.
The interest rate differential is even starker. While the 10-year Treasury note currently fetches lenders a modest 2.37% per annum, 10-year German bunds yield a paltry 0.38%, which Bloomberg notes is the largest interest rate spread between the two countries since the Berlin Wall came down. Spain, which is facing an existential crisis featuring the potential secession of its most prosperous region (Catalonia), borrows for 10 years at a rate of 1.51%.
Better growth and higher interest rates in the U.S. than Europe have not been reflected in the currency markets. The euro, which traded at $1.04 into year-end, has rallied against the greenback for the bulk of 2017 and currently fetches $1.16 after a recent pullback. More broadly, the U.S. Dollar Index (DXY), which was the recipient of a friendly word in the Aug. 8 edition of Almost Daily Grant’s (“The buck stops here”), is still down by more than 8% this year even after a 3.5% bounce since the beginning of September.
Current positioning could prove a tailwind for dollar bulls if the rebound persists. According to the Oct. 17 Commitment of Traders Report from the Commodity Futures Trading Commission, noncommercial (i.e., speculative) short contracts outstanding in the DXY easily exceeded noncommercial longs. The last time that happened was May 2014, after which the Dollar Index enjoyed a 25% rally through the spring of 2015.
There are of course risks to the dollar appreciation case. Carl Weinberg, chief economist and managing director at High Frequency Economics, articulated a perhaps-unlikely but certainly unpleasant hypothetical for dollar bulls in a recent appearance on CNBC: “I believe that yuan pricing of oil is coming and as soon as the Saudis move to accept it – as the Chinese will compel them to do – then the rest of the oil market will move along with them. . . Moving oil trade out of dollars into yuan will take right now between $600 billion and $800 billion worth of transactions out of the dollar.”
The man who presaged Trumpism
Pat Buchanan: The Other Plot To Bring Down Trump
Here one is tempted to cite Bismarck that, if you wish to enjoy politics or sausages, you should not inquire too closely how they are made.
Thus we have Free Beacon neocons, never-Trump Republicans, the Hillary Clinton campaign, the DNC, a British spy and comrades in Russian intelligence, and perhaps the FBI, all working with secret money and seedy individuals to destroy a candidate they could not defeat in a free election.
If future revelations demonstrate that this is what went down, it is not only the White House that has major problems.
If you wish to know why Americans detest politics and hate the “swamp” that has been made of their capital city, follow this story all the way to its inevitable end. It will be months of unfolding.
The real indictment here is of the American political system, and the true tragedy is the decline of the Old Republic.
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