Saturday, March 24, 2018
Friday, March 23, 2018
The man who presaged Trumpism
Pat Buchanan: The Deep State Is Trying To Overthrow Trump With A Coup D'Etat
Thursday, March 22, 2018
Mollie Hemingway lets it rip
The Federalist: McCabe’s Bogus Witch Hunt Of Jeff Sessions Confirms Worst Fears About FBI/DOJ Politicization
On this day in 1947,
More here via the Truman Presidential Library
TRUMAN ORDERS LOYALTY TESTS FOR ALL FEDERAL EMPLOYEES
On this day 61 years ago, Democrat President Harry Truman ordered loyalty tests for all federal employees to flush out all those who were communist sympathizers or aligned with “totalitarian, fascist or subversive” organizations. Truman’s order demanded “complete and unswerving loyalty” to the United States, with anything less being deemed “a threat to our democratic process.” Each federal department and agency set up Loyalty Boards to enforce the order.More here via the Truman Presidential Library
Wednesday, March 21, 2018
Tuesday, March 20, 2018
Unlike the coward Broward County school deputy
Two people shot at Maryland high school before school resource officer stopped the suspect
On this day in 1852,
Uncle Tom's Cabin,
the best-selling novel of the 19th century, is published
 |
| Simon Legree Beats Uncle Tom |
On this day in 1965,
On this day in 1965, President Lyndon Johnson federalized the Alabama National Guard to protect a 54 mile civil rights march from Selma to Montgomery led by Rev. Martin Luther King. The purpose of the march was to protest the intimidation of black voters which had resulted in almost all of the black voters of Selma not being able to register to vote. Two other marches had started but ended in violence when police attacked the peaceful marchers with dogs, billy clubs and tear gas, all caught by TV cameras and broadcast on the national news shows. Five months later Congress passed the Voting Rights Act which guaranteed the right of all citizens to vote.
LBJ Federalizes Alabama National Guard to Protect Selma Voting Rights Marchers
Monday, March 19, 2018
Grant's Almost Daily
History Rhymes
Trouble Ahead for Real Estate?
An excerpt from a Bloomberg dispatch this morning, headed: “HNA’s $2.2 Billion NYC Tower a Hard Sell Less Than a Year Later.”Last year, the Chinese conglomerate bought 245 Park Ave., a late-1960s-era building that’s home to JPMorgan Chase & Co., paying one of the highest prices ever for a New York office property. Values have since dropped and HNA faces the challenge of selling a building that’s starting to lose some of its gold-plated tenants and in need of improvements that could cost its new owner more than $1 billion, said Gregory Kraut, managing partner of K Property Group, which considered buying the building and examined it closely.
HNA, among the most prolific dealmakers in recent years, is pulling back after its gorge on trophy properties helped push up New York real estate prices. Now HNA, which used borrowed money to expand and accumulated one of the biggest debt loads in China, is under pressure from the government to liquidate assets. The company has already put about $4 billion of U.S. commercial real estate on the block.
HNA’s Manhattan misadventures recall the experience of another overseas asset-gatherer in a prior heyday: specifically Japan’s Mitsubishi Estate Company, which purchased an 80% stake in Rockefeller Center for $1.4 billion on Oct. 31, 1989. Upon the consummation of that deal, Jotaro Takagi, president of Mitsubishi Estate, was quoted in the New York Times: “There is no business address in the world that has the same cachet as Rockefeller Center. It is synonymous with excellence. We are making this investment with the objective of continuing this tradition into the 21st century.” Grant’s duly chimed in, quipping at the conclusion of a Nov. 24, 1989 analysis of the then-slowing real estate market that: “Perhaps Mitsubishi Estate Co. . . . would like to buy the rest of the United States.”
The rest, as they say, is history. Japan’s Nikkei index made its blow-off highs on New Year’s Eve 1989, the real estate boom ended, as booms do, and the high-priced Rockefeller Center deal floundered. From The New York Times’ 1995 follow-up:
Mitsubishi proposed yesterday afternoon that it plans to pass ownership of the Manhattan property to Rockefeller Center Properties, Inc., the publicly traded real estate investment trust that holds the $1.3 billion mortgage on the center, according to advisers involved in negotiations to bring Rockefeller Center out of bankruptcy protection.
REBUTTAL REBUTTAL
On Mar. 11, the Bank for International Settlements sounded the alarm on the Canadian housing market, warning that America’s northerly neighbor features credit-to-GDP and total debt-service ratios that place the country at elevated risk for a banking crisis. Avery Shenfeld, chief economist at Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce (a.k.a CIBC, CM on the Toronto Stock Exchange and the NYSE) took exception to the findings of the central bankers’ own Swiss bank, writing that:
The [BIS] report itself has multiple warnings to treat its results with ‘considerable caution.’ That seems prudent, based on the BIS’s own track record. Two of the current warning signals look particularly likely to mislead.
The first is a measure tracking the degree to which a country’s ratio of non-financial credit to GDP is above its longer term trend. That is certainly true for Canada, but interest rates are also miles below their longer term levels . . . Moreover, as we always caution, it’s not just how much credit has been issued, but to whom. The U.S. financial crisis was triggered by large debts owed to individual households that didn’t have matching incomes. Mortgage arrears rates in Canada continue to dive.
Interest rates, while up from their summer-2016 nadir, are still low by historical standards, and Canadian mortgages in arrears footed to just 0.24% of the total as of the third quarter of 2017 (the most recently available data), according to the Canada Mortgage and Housing Corporation. That’s down from 0.28% year-over-year. However, Canada’s elevated debt levels (household debt topped 170% of disposable income in the fourth quarter, well above the 133% peak seen in the U.S. in 2007) and a pronounced reversal in the formerly red-hot housing market (February prices in Toronto dropped 12.4% year-over-year with active listings nearly tripling) will put to the test Canadian mortgage-holders ability to pay.
Relatively small changes in rates can have a big impact: Recall that most Canadian mortgages are structured as five-year bullets with re-setting maturities, as opposed to the conventional 30-year fixed rate mortgage in the U.S. In addition, the Office for the Superintendent of Financial Institution’s B-20 regulations, enacted on Jan. 1, require all mortgagors to pass a stress test using the “greater of the five-year benchmark rate published by the Bank of Canada or the contractual mortgage rate +2%.” According to the Bank of Canada, 47% of all mortgages are scheduled to reset in the year ending July 2018.
Meanwhile, the interest rate tailwind cited appears to be abating. The benchmark Canadian five-year mortgage rate has jumped more than 10% from its April lows, and has ticked back above its eight-year average (covering the period in which the Canadian housing boom accelerated).
Liz Shield: Rally 'round the corrupt McCabe
But Rand Paul nails it
Democrats, never-Trumpers, and Republicans quickly mobilized to defend the fired McCabe because lying to the FBI is only an issue if you are Mike Flynn, not if you are "Andy's office" McCabe or Hillary Clinton.
Senator Lindsey Graham, always a reliable turncoat, wants to have hearings on the McCabe firing. Rubio questions the timing of the McCabe firing. Democrats offer to hire McCabe so he can get his pension.
But Rand nails it, saying, “I really think General Flynn was treated unfairly. I think Andrew McCabe did worse than General Flynn, frankly. Andrew McCabe lied about doing something illegal. He leaked classified documents."
Another reason to spend time down south
Study: Wisconsin has highest rate of fatal crashes involving elderly in nation
On this day 15 years ago in 2003,
Summary Casualties Iraq War
U.S. Invades Iraq - Fails To Find WMDs- 1,000's Killed
Summary Casualties Iraq War
Sunday, March 18, 2018
Law Prof. Jonathan Turley:
Did McCabe Just Implicate Comey And Give Trump A Reason To Pardon Gen. Flynn
Time to do something radical.
Hospitals are confronting a new opioid crisis: an alarming shortage of pain meds
On this day in 1942,
War Relocation Authority Created
To Imprison Japanese Citizens
On this day, the War Relocation Authority was created per the direction of Democrat President Franklin Roosevelt to imprison over 120,000 Japanese citizens residing in the states of California, Oregon, Washington and Arizona solely because of their national origin.
There were three categories of Japanese citizens covered by the order: Nisei (native U.S. citizens of Japanese immigrant parents), Issei (Japanese immigrants), and Kibei (native U.S. citizens educated largely in Japan). The internees were transported to relocation centers in California, Utah, Arkansas, Arizona, Idaho, Colorado, and Wyoming.
Milton Eisenhower, the younger brother of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, was the first administrator of the WRA. He was opposed to imprisonment of Japanese citizens and resigned after 90 days.
Milton Eisenhower, the younger brother of Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, was the first administrator of the WRA. He was opposed to imprisonment of Japanese citizens and resigned after 90 days.
The Democrat-appointed majority of the Supreme Court, in an opinion authored by former KKK member Hugo Black, upheld this imprisonment of Japanese citizens per the president’s war powers. The only Republican-appointed member of the Supreme Court dissented.
In 1976 Republican President Gerald Ford signed an executive order prohibiting the executive branch from ever taking such action again.
In 1988 Republican President Ronald Reagan formally apologized on behalf of the American people and authorized reparations for all those detained or their descendants.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)