The Treasury bond market is in cardiac arrest today over the May employment report: Yields are soaring, dealing another blow to investors who’ve been hiding out in government bonds — and threatening another big jump in mortgage rates.
If rising home loan rates price more buyers out of the market, sellers will have to respond by cutting asking prices. Anyone have a better idea?
I know, we need another stimulus package and more government spending. What’s the old saying, “Spend till you drop?”
[blockquote] Anyone have a better idea?[/blockquote]
[url=http://www.123jump.com/fundpdf/501.pdf]The Permanent Portfolio Fund[/url]
Anyone have a better idea? Sure, slash and burn the federal budget, drop tax rates, cut payroll deductions for two years, impeech Obama, and then stand back and watch the economy rock.
I am no fan of zero. But after the eight years of G. W. Bush feeding the constitution into a shredder I am resigned that we will never see a president actually removed from office by impeachment.
Had the government (either the one we have now or its predecessor) chosen to enact a tax holiday of significant duration and scope (FICA for a year or FIT for six months) would have turned the economy around nearly instantly. Of course, such a route would have allowed individuals to seek their own courses to financial empowerment which is entirely antithetical to Obama’s plan for us all.
[blockquote]I am no fan of zero. But after the eight years of G. W. Bush feeding the constitution into a shredder I am resigned that we will never see a president actually removed from office by impeachment. [/blockquote]
I’m no fan of Dubya, but I really don’t understand how he was any worse in trampling the Constitution than any other Prez we’ve had in the past 20 years.
I think we would have to go back a ways to find a president who very openly arrested American citizens on American soil and locked them up in a military prison for years without benefit of legal council and incommunicado for much of that time, who spied at will on Americans without warrants, and who invaded a foreign country under false pretenses. I know these things have happened before. But not usually all from the same administration. Even Nixon didn’t claim authority to trample habeus corpus (though I think he would have liked to).
Bush came uncomfortably close to the kinds of things I expect to see in police states. If zero is doing these things I am not aware of it. He has a lot of issues. But I don’t think he has taken any big steps towards overt disregard for the rule of law (both domestic and international). Bush did. For his treatment of José Padilla alone he should have been thrown in prison with John Ashcroft as his cellmate.
[blockquote]I think we would have to go back a ways to find a president who very openly arrested American citizens on American soil and locked them up in a military prison for years without benefit of legal council and incommunicado for much of that time, who spied at will on Americans without warrants, and who invaded a foreign country under false pretenses. I know these things have happened before. But not usually all from the same administration.[/blockquote]
Well, to be fair, Padilla’s case was not a cut-and-dried circumstance. If an American has allied himself with a group, even a non-state group, that has declared war on the United States and killed 3,000 of its citizens, is the status of that person determined by citizenship only or is it by his allegiance with a military aggressor? We have guidance from the USSC now, but prior to that decision we did not.
The interception of international calls to domestic destinations was and is perfectly legal, the same thing as US Customs looking through your luggage at the airport. Even the FISA court agrees. It was not a matter of “domestic spying.”
Perhaps you are unaware of the Senate Select Intel Committee’s report about the lead-up to the war. It said the Administration didn’t fudge the intel, which almost uniformly said Saddam had WMD, a datum confirmed by every nation that has an intel service worthy of the name. I’m sorry, but this is a red herring.
#7, “But I don’t think he has taken any big steps towards overt disregard for the rule of law (both domestic and international).”
The questions about the government takeover of auto companies is in court. Rights of creditors have been trampled. And how about the withdrawal of a slam-dunk prosecution for voter intimidation in Philadelphia, and the refusal to allow Georgia to verify its voter registration rolls? Reliable contract law, the punishment of criminal violations, and the fairness of the election process sound fundamental to me. If this trend continues with more examples, we will have a lot to worry about.
I am afraid I must respectfully disagree with you especially on the Padilla case. It is about as cut and dry as any case i can remember. I am a strict constructionist. Where exactly does the constitution confer on the President the power to arbitrarily arrest American citizens on our soil and lock them up without trial or access to a lawyer? No where does the constitution give presidents the power that Bush was claiming (we could add so called signing statements to that list as well).
And we did in fact have guidance from the Supreme Court going back quite a ways on this. In Ex Parte Merriman the court ruled that President Lincoln could not do exactly what Bush just did. The power to suspend the writ of habeus corpus resides with Congress alone. Padilla was basically kidnapped by the government.
Now if he had been captured in a foreign country while under arms that might be a different story. But he was a citizen of the US, unarmed and on American soil when arrested by civilian law enforcement. And then they locked him up for years in a military prison incommunicado until a Federal court finally ordered them to let him see a lawyer. This is not even a close call. Bush belongs in jail not Padilla.
As for the wire taps I am not referring to the international ones, I am referring to the purely domestic ones and the coercion of companies to hand over private phone and financial records without warrants. This could really go on and on. The lawlessness of the Bush administration still chills my blood when I think about the things they did and felt they could do without answering to anybody.
Then we could discuss the USA Patriot act which is anything but patriotic…
And of course all of these powers Bush claimed now rest in the hands of zero. I can only conclude you are far more trusting of our government than I am.
But its getting late.
And on the interest rate question, the obvious corollary is that the Obama budget projections, already more optimistic than the CBO’s, are now wildly unrealistic. It’s going to cost huge sums more than they predicted to pay off this staggering debt we’re running up.
Re #9
Katherine,
Every point you made is a fair one. Some I have made myself. But I don’t think that they rise to the level of abuse of power we saw under the Bush Administration. That said it’s early days yet and I think zero may be just warming up. I read not too long ago he said he will use Bush’s claimed power to issue signing statements as a way to avoid vetoing a law and still be able to ignore it.
I suppose the correct treatment of Padilla would have been to charge him with treason.
So far as I know the wiretaps were international on one end. If a suspected international terrorist wasn’t calling you, the USA wasn’t listening, and there was legal supervision. When I’m home and my husband is overseas, I get calls. I doubt very much we have been listened to. In the same way, I am certain we have been checked out because of funds transfers from foreign banks (sending earnings home). They look at it, look at the Treasury forms we file every year identifying foreign accounts, and conclude (rightly) that we’re not a problem. I don’t object to this, just as I don’t object to security searches at airports.
12, Bush didn’t start “signing statements”. The simple fact is the entire govenment is operating outside the Constitution and there is no way to rein it in. And both parties are to blame. Agruing which is worse gets us no where.
#12, you have it right. Our current philosophy of ‘government’ is a pitiful one, when compared with what the Founders clearly called for, and set up. Benjamin Franklin, when asked outside the Continental Congress as they deliberated on the Constitution, responded to the question: “What kind of government did you give us?” with “A Republic, sir, if you can keep it.” it now appears that perhaps we will not keep it for much longer. But all political “parties” are at fault, because political parties are made up of people, and people are corruptible. If one looks back at the Presidents within the last 50 or so years, one sees: (1) Kennedy, and his intense womanizing, and the Bay of Pigs / Missile Crisis (2) Johnson, and the moves of several big defense companies’ headquarters to Texas during the Vietnam war, and other items, (3) Nixon – – need I say more? (4) Ford, and his ridiculous pardon of Nixon, (5) Carter, the debacle in the desert of Iran, (6) Reagan, Grenada, Panama, the mainstreaming of mentally ill veterans and patients to the streets of our cities, where many of them still “live” (7) Bush I and the “war” that ended with the liberation of Kuwait while Hussein remained in power, (8) Clinton – – the blue dress, oral sex in the Oval Office, etc., (9) Bush II and the questionable ‘extra=constitutional’ acts, and now (1) Obama and the trillion-dollar “we will spend our way out of this” total nonsense. Have I left anyone out? We could add to the list for any of these presidents. They are people, power corrupts, and the power of the presidency is a viciously corrupting thing.
May God have mercy on the United States of America.
And, when I said #12 – – above – – I meant #14. (No offense to #12)
Br. Michael reports that arguing which pres was worse gets us nowhere. Good point. In his book “Liberty & Tyranny”, Mark Levin points out that it was the Supremes mistreatment of the interstate commerce clause (in the 30’s?) which opened the door to expansive Federal Govt at the expense of States Rights. Once Pandora’s box was opened, Washington has been on a power grab since.
17, amen to that. That one decision undermined the intent that the federal government be limited to enumerated powers. That decision was , in effect, a grant of general police powers to the federal government.
The finger points at all THREE branches of the Federal Government. The President has seized more and more power for himself, the SC has consistently since John Jay delegated for itself legislative powers instead of merely interpretive powers, and the Congress has run rampant with pork, deficit spending, intrusive policies, and special interest bills every year. Sure one party has always called the other party worse, but the last administration tore THAT wall down. Now we see the erosion of our privacy and state rights (States cannot refuse stimulus money; banks cannot REPAY stimulus money; rewording of the ‘fairness bill’ so that it does the same thing, but isn’t CALLED that, to silence dissenting voices; etc.) unprecedented at any time previously.
And it should also be pointed out the Obama Administration has continued many of Bush’s ‘questionable’ practices granted by the Patriot Act (including listening in on phone conversations). About the only thing he has tried to distance himself from was Gitmo, and look at how that is turning out!
Check out the chart here – http://michaelscomments.wordpress.com/2009/06/05/the-may-unemployment-numbers-are-here-and-worse-than-predicted/
All that money for nothin’
And. . . . real unemployment is actually much higher than shown by the government figures. “Part-timers” are apparently counted as employed. I have seen “real numbers” as high as 17%.
this should have been an economic thread. Although the trend may end up in a very bad place. Nobody should fear mortage rates at 5.29%. shorting treasuries in Jan would have been a great move.
[blockquote]And we did in fact have guidance from the Supreme Court going back quite a ways on this. In Ex Parte Merriman the court ruled that President Lincoln could not do exactly what Bush just did. The power to suspend the writ of habeus corpus resides with Congress alone. Padilla was basically kidnapped by the government.
Now if he had been captured in a foreign country while under arms that might be a different story. But he was a citizen of the US, unarmed and on American soil when arrested by civilian law enforcement. And then they locked him up for years in a military prison incommunicado until a Federal court finally ordered them to let him see a lawyer. This is not even a close call. Bush belongs in jail not Padilla. [/blockquote]
Merryman is a possible precendent, but so is Quirin, and Quirin does not distinguish between domestic and foreign unlawful combatants. It’s not as clear-cut as you posit. And, unlike the Merryman case, Bush didn’t disregard the USSC decision.
[blockquote]As for the wire taps I am not referring to the international ones, I am referring to the purely domestic ones and the coercion of companies to hand over private phone and financial records without warrants. This could really go on and on. The lawlessness of the Bush administration still chills my blood when I think about the things they did and felt they could do without answering to anybody. [/blockquote]
I have to confess, I not aware of the purely domestic ones. Are you certain of this?