Saturday, March 17, 2018
60 years ago today,
Billboard's #1 Song - "Tequila" by The Champs
One of the greatest "B-side" hits of all time
Dick Clark presents a gold record to The Champs before they perform "Tequila" live on the Saturday Night Beech-Nut Show
Friday, March 16, 2018
National Review:
The Best Immigration Is Voluntary Immigration
"The only lasting and just resolution is to help create a world where people of all nations can stay in the land of their heritage if they choose, where immigration is by choice, rather than by necessity. The goal is not to eliminate immigration altogether but to create a more just world for all peoples. A by-product of such a world might be reduced immigration, but it need not be the goal."
I thought the Dems were interested in obstruction of justice:
Oakland Mayor Emailed Businesses with Illegal Alien Employees Before Announcing ICE Raid
Thursday, March 15, 2018
On this day in 1833,
The Nullification Crisis
Andrew Jackson Avoids Civil War After Southern States Resist Tariffs Imposed By Northern Manufacturers
Four minute video with charts explaining the "Nullification Crisis"
28 years before the start of the Civil War, South Carolina almost triggered a military conflict with Union when it claimed the right to nullify federal tariffs, including the Tariff of Abomination.
Led by former Jackson Vice President, John Calhoun, the Nullifiers argued the compact theory of government (i.e. the states had created the federal government) allowed the states to secede from the Union and/or refuse to comply with offensive federal laws. The South had long complained about tariffs backed mostly by northeastern merchants. Although Congress lowered the tariffs as part of the Tariff Bill of 1832, South Carolinians remained outraged, said they would not pay the reduced tariffs, and threatened to leave the Union - by force if necessary. Virginia and influential southerners suggested they would support South Carolina in a military conflict.
Jackson countered that the compact theory of government was wrong, that the states had not created the federal government, and that the people themselves had created the federal government through state conventions. (Jackson’s theory was later echoed by Abraham Lincoln years during his first inaugural address.) Jackson countered South Carolina’s tariff nullification with a carrot and a stick: by further reducing the tariffs as part of the Compromise Tariff of 1833, and by threatening the use of federal military force to subdue the “traitors.”
The congressional debate was led by such luminaries as Daniel Webster, who strongly supported the Union, Henry Clay, who supported the tariffs, and Calhoun.
South Carolina ultimately relented and accepted the additional tariff reductions, but saved face by continuing to maintain it had the right to nullify federal laws.
On this day in 1767,
In 1828 Jackson became the only prisoner of war to have been elected president, having been captured by the British during the Revolutionary War when he was a 13 year old soldier. As a result of his capture, Jackson held a lifelong dislike for the British.
John McCain would have been the second P.O.W. to be elected president. McCain was released from the Hanoi Hilton 45 years ago yesterday.
Andrew Jackson Born
In 1828 Jackson became the only prisoner of war to have been elected president, having been captured by the British during the Revolutionary War when he was a 13 year old soldier. As a result of his capture, Jackson held a lifelong dislike for the British.
John McCain would have been the second P.O.W. to be elected president. McCain was released from the Hanoi Hilton 45 years ago yesterday.
Wednesday, March 14, 2018
Imagine if the roles were reversed and a guy had kissed a girl who had not been kissed before:
Man Katy Perry Kissed On 'American Idol' Says He Didn't Like It
Man Katy Perry Kissed On 'American Idol' Says He Didn't Like It
Grant's Almost Daily Interest Rate Observer
Is the Japanese Yen looking at a sharp decline?
If a bond yields nothing and no one trades it, does it even exist? That existential question is put into relief by a dispatch from Bloomberg this morning: Not one solitary lot of the Japanese 10-year note changed hands during Tuesday’s trading session (the market was open – we checked). Bloomberg notes that “Barclays Securities Japan rates strategist Naoya Oshikubo, summed it up, with perhaps an understatement: ‘the JGB [Japanese Government Bond] market was generally thin.’” Indeed. For context, the active (June) contract of 10-year U.S. Treasury futures saw trading volume of just under 1.7 million contracts yesterday, equating to a dollar value of $202 billion.
Of course, one needn’t look too far to the explanation for a dormant debt market in the world’s third largest economy. The Bank of Japan (BoJ) has been hard at work at its “Quantitative and Qualitative Monetary Easing” strategy since April 2013, while “Yield Curve Control” has been monetary dogma since September 2016. A zero-percent 10-year yield is part and parcel with that policy, and the BoJ is taking every measure to ensure that no pesky investors get in the way of its objectives. Bloomberg writes in the same story that “Governor Haruhiko Kuroda noted to lawmakers Wednesday that the central bank has bought 75 percent of the government bonds issued in the fiscal year ending this March.”
The JGB market’s long road to zero yields has been colored by more than BoJ monetary policy or even the worldwide bond bull market. Following the bursting of a spectacular stocks and real estate bubble of the 1980’s, the Japanese economy has been marked by stagnation: Since 1998, Japanese year-on-year CPI growth has averaged 0.1%. In that same 20-year period, Japanese year-over-year real chained GDP growth has averaged just 0.8%.
In an effort to reach the consensus monetary Valhalla of 2% inflation, the BoJ has undertaken policy that leaves its peers in Europe and the United States in the dust: In the five years ended Feb. 28, Japan’s monetary base (comprised of money in circulation as well as bank reserves) has increased by 281% to ¥475 trillion ($4.4 trillion), or just under 31% annualized growth. By comparison, the European Central Bank has increased its monetary base by 63% over the past five years (10% annualized growth), while the Federal Reserve has overseen a 34% uptick in the U.S. monetary base, or 6% annualized. On the consumer inflation count, the BoJ has been somewhat successful. Over the past five years, average CPI growth has risen to 0.9%.
While the BoJ prints yen, the Fed is nearly six months in to its (very gradual, to be sure) balance sheet reduction while the 10-year Treasury yield has more than doubled from its July 2016 lows of 1.37%. The Wall Street Journal noted on Feb. 28 that foreign investor demand for Treasurys has been crimped by rising hedging costs as the Fed continues to raise overnight interest rates (Almost Daily Grant’s, Feb. 28). Nevertheless, Russell Napier, independent strategist and co-founder of the Electronic Research Interchange, speculates in to day’s “The Solid Ground” commentary on potential consequences if Mr. and Mrs. Watanabe come to find U.S. Treasurys and their positive real yields too tempting to resist:
Might this additional relative yield tempt Japanese investors? If it does, who buys the JGBs they most likely liquidate to fund their Treasury purchases? If such a liquidation is triggered, the BOJ balance sheet expansion, given their yield target for JGBs, would accelerate just as the Fed’s balance sheet contracts.
So, the more the Fed acts to contract its balance sheet, the more it could, through enticing Japanese savers to the Treasury market, force an accelerated balance sheet expansion on the BoJ. This [effort], aimed at driving up all asset prices, while maintaining relative interest rate stability, will very clearly be over. The impacts from a decline of the yen on the international exchanges will be profound.
The yen currently trades at 106.8 per dollar, almost exactly at its 20-year average.
For its part, the central bank has evinced no lack of conviction in its goal or its methods. The BoJ website explains that “When prices fluctuate, individuals and firms find it hard to make appropriate consumption and investment decisions, and this can hinder the efficient allocation of resources in the economy.” Potential consequences of unrivaled financial repression were left unmentioned.
My favorite living economist,
Larry Kudlow Named Trump’s White House Economic Adviser Replacing Gary Cohn
Tuesday, March 13, 2018
The man who presaged Trumpism,
Pat Buchanan: Washington & Hamilton's "America First" Will Prevail Over WSJ's Goal of "Open Borders"
On this day in 1954,
Viet Minh Rout French At Dien Bien Phu - Eisenhower Rejects French Plea For Help
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| Viet Minh Plant Their Flag At French Headquarters |
On this day in 1954, the Viet Minh surrounded 15,000 French troops at Dien Bien Phu in Vietnam. The French asked Republican President Dwight Eisenhower for military help. Eisenhower, who knew a thing or two about when and how to fight a war, declined. All but 73 of the French troops were killed or captured by the Viet Minh. The massacre at Dien Bien Phu effectively marked the end of French involvement in Vietnam.
10 years later, Democrat President Lyndon Johnson would ignore the advice of his generals and mislead the American people during the presidential campaign regarding the scope of American involvement in Vietnam and what lay ahead. By the time the Vietnam War was over, 58,000 American boys, most of whom had been drafted and forced to go to Vietnam to fight, had been killed.
[Partial source: Lt. General H.R. McMaster (President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor), Dereliction of Duty (1997).]
[Partial source: Lt. General H.R. McMaster (President Donald Trump’s National Security Advisor), Dereliction of Duty (1997).]
Time to do something radical.
The War on Opioids Has Become a War on Patients
"As prescriptions continue to decrease, overdose deaths continue to increase."Monday, March 12, 2018
Sunday, March 11, 2018
On this day in 1862,
Lincoln Fires McClellan
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| Lincoln and McClellan at Antietam in 1862 |
On this day in 1862, President Lincoln removed George McClellan as general-in-chief of the Union Army.
McClellan and Lincoln did not get along. One time Lincoln walked from The White House to McClellan’s home to talk to him about war strategy. When Lincoln arrived, he was told the general was out a social event. Lincoln waited in McClellan’s parlor. And waited. When McClellan arrived home, he walked past Lincoln and went straight to bed.
Lincoln was critical of McClellan’s unwillingness to fight. McClellan thought Lincoln was a bit of a know-nothing meddler. McClellan claimed in part he did not have enough men to win a decisive victory without unreasonable casualties. The two bickered back and forth, with McClellan generally refusing to engage the Confederate Army.
Lincoln went through six generals-in-chief, hoping each time for a more aggressive fighter. He finally got what he wanted in Ulysses S. Grant.
In 1864 McClellan ran for president against Lincoln as a Democrat opposed to the abolition of slavery. The Democrat Party platform called for an immediate end to the war.
By the end of the war, both sides had lost about 620,000 soldiers (even more wounded) – the equivalent of about 6,000,000 people today.
On this day in 1942,
MacArthur Flees Philippines - Leaves 19,000 American Soldiers Behind – Pledges “I Shall Return”
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| Fled in a PT Boat |
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