Brent Nyitray
Fairlington Blade
Let the mutherfuker burn!
jnc4p
Kevin S. Willis
Michigoose
lmsinca
markinaustin
Arcanaut
novahockey
quarterback
ScottC
yellojktStocks are higher this mornings on no real news. Bonds and MBS are up.
Import prices fell .3% in March and are down 10.5% year over year. As we are seeing in the data elsewhere, the strong dollar is beginning to affect the economy. Q1 earnings will be interesting – how many multinationals will report weaker numbers due to weaker overseas demand.
GE is ending its decades-long dalliance into financial services, by selling its lending business and real estate assets. GEFS basically has been a Old timers will remember when GE owned an investment bank – Kidder Peabody – which blew up in the 90s. Investors like the news – GE is up about 7% pre-open.
Hillary Clinton announced she will announce her candidacy on Sunday, supposedly via Twitter. Are you ready?
Christine Lagarde of the IMF is warning that the financial markets could get bumpy when the Fed starts raising rates. Consider this: the Fed hiked rates in 94, 99, and 05. In the process, they blew up the MBS market (remember Orange County?), the stock market, and the real estate market. Asset prices are handicapping a 100% probability that the Fed can raise interest rates without any one blowing up. The Fed may in fact be able to stick the landing and exit ZIRP without a crisis, but that is not a foregone conclusion. The old market saw of “sell in May and go away” may turn out to be good advice this year.
Filed under: Morning Report |
All Things in Moderation 
Lurk, lurk, lurk, lurk, lurk. . . frist!
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Are you ready?
Sigh
via Twitter
Somehow that seems appropriate. I can’t put my finger on just why, but it does.
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Years (actually decades) ago my wife worked for a finance company which had been affiliated with GE. They financed mobile home purchases. Talk about a down market market segment.
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My dad worked for Kidder Nobody when Jett blew them up. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Joseph_Jett
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This is gonna sound harsh but fuck ‘me. Why should I suffer more through payroll taxes, income taxes and debt service so the current recipients can suffer less?
Edit: Forgot the link.
http://www.bloombergview.com/articles/2015-04-09/social-security-trust-funds-and-promises
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as long as Republicans hold the House there will be no tax hikes, period.
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This is actually a pretty entertaining Salon piece. I have a sneaking suspicion it may have been based on real life.
“Louie” and the walking uterus: When ugly liberal entitlement and surrogate pregnancy collide
A subplot featuring a lesbian couple and their surrogate turned dark at Louie’s school parent potluck
Sonia Saraiya
Friday, Apr 10, 2015 08:00 AM EST”
http://www.salon.com/2015/04/10/%E2%80%9Clouie%E2%80%9D_and_the_walking_uterus_when_ugly_liberal_entitlement_and_surrogate_pregnancy_collide/
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Kevin:
Recently had someone tell me all other nations healthcare is way cheaper than the US, with better results. I shrugged at that, as it seems credible:
Thought this was interesting:
An American woman’s chances of developing breast cancer are slightly higher than her British counterpart – but she is far more likely to survive.
One U.S. woman in eight can expect to have the disease at some point in her life, compared with one in nine in Britain. But five-year survival rates for all forms of the disease – including the most advanced – stand at 85 per cent in the U.S and just under 74 per cent in the UK. If the cancer is caught early – at what doctors call stage 1 – the differences in survival are even more shocking.
An American woman has a 97 per cent chance of being alive five years after diagnosis. In Britain, this figure is only 78 per cent.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-136377/US-v-UK-The-breast-cancer-survival-stakes.html
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This is great – eating brunch as an argument on privilege.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/wonkblog/wp/2015/04/10/how-brunch-became-the-most-delicious-and-divisive-meal-in-america/?hpid=z1
See also:
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You see this Scott?
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3031124/13million-NHS-bill-suncream-Millions-wasted-prescriptions-toothpaste-Yakult-Calpol.html
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jnc:
You see this Scott?
Yeah, that is what McWing linked to the other day that prompted my comment.
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Sigh:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/federal-eye/wp/2015/04/10/puerto-ricans-who-cant-speak-english-qualify-as-disabled-for-social-security/?tid=trending_strip_5
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jnc:
Sigh:
More lunacy from the unconstitutional regulatory state.
The fact that this is occurring at all is only slightly less outrageous than that it is occurring in Puerto Rico where Spanish is a primary language. I feel fairly confident in saying that there exists no law passed by congress and signed by the president that defines disability as a function of “age, education, and work experience”, much less does it go further and say that an inability to speak English should alter an evaluation of those factors.
I think taxpayers are clearly being deprived of due process when regulatory agencies just make shit up and start doling out our tax dollars to whoever they want.
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Brunch is my very most favorite meal. Sigh.
That NYT article reminded me that I haven’t had a mimosa in ages. I think I know what I’m doing tomorrow.
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Scott, thanks for that. I thought that was the case but didn’t know the numbers. However, since all healthcare isn’t government run things are still worse here, because capitalism.
Also, I don’t like to work and thus am unable to. So I can qualify for disability, right?
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Good David Brooks piece on the Iranian framework deal and the recent commentary from the Supreme Leader:
He references an Op-Ed from the WSJ. Anyone have a full copy?
http://www.wsj.com/articles/the-iran-deal-and-its-consequences-1428447582
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When can we start holding elections via Twitter.
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Rand is in full pander mode:
“Rand Paul wants to make college tuition tax-deductible
Updated by Libby Nelson on April 10, 2015, 3:30 p.m. ET”
http://www.vox.com/2015/4/10/8383425/rand-paul-tax-deductible-tuition
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jnc:
Rand is in full pander mode:
If we are going to have tax deductions for anything, this is one of the more defensible breaks.
College tuition inflation is largely due to the huge amount of money the government makes available to subsidize it, driving up demand. But most of those subsidies are provided on a “needs” basis established by tax returns. So those who pay the most taxes are least likely to get the subsidies, and therefore most likely to have to pay the inflated sticker price. So high income tax payers are getting fucked on both sides….they have to pay taxes which are then doled out to other people as subsidies, which in turn drives up tuition sticker prices which are then paid disproportionately by those same high income earners who are denied the subsidies precisely because they pay the most in taxes.
If anyone deserves a tax break it is those who are paying full tuition while at the same time being forced to subsidize thru taxes those who don’t have to.
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The announced framework for an agreement on Iran’s nuclear program has the potential to generate a seminal national debate. Advocates exult over the nuclear constraints it would impose on Iran. Critics question the verifiability of these constraints and their longer-term impact on regional and world stability. The historic significance of the agreement and indeed its sustainability depend on whether these emotions, valid by themselves, can be reconciled.
Debate regarding technical details of the deal has thus far inhibited the soul-searching necessary regarding its deeper implications. For 20 years, three presidents of both major parties proclaimed that an Iranian nuclear weapon was contrary to American and global interests—and that they were prepared to use force to prevent it. Yet negotiations that began 12 years ago as an international effort to prevent an Iranian capability to develop a nuclear arsenal are ending with an agreement that concedes this very capability, albeit short of its full capacity in the first 10 years.
Opinion Journal Video
Editorial Page Editor Paul Gigot on President Obama’s preference to cut Congress out of the Iran nuclear deal, and the implications for future Congresses. Photo credit: Getty Images.
Mixing shrewd diplomacy with open defiance of U.N. resolutions, Iran has gradually turned the negotiation on its head. Iran’s centrifuges have multiplied from about 100 at the beginning of the negotiation to almost 20,000 today. The threat of war now constrains the West more than Iran. While Iran treated the mere fact of its willingness to negotiate as a concession, the West has felt compelled to break every deadlock with a new proposal. In the process, the Iranian program has reached a point officially described as being within two to three months of building a nuclear weapon. Under the proposed agreement, for 10 years Iran will never be further than one year from a nuclear weapon and, after a decade, will be significantly closer.
Inspections and Enforcement
The president deserves respect for the commitment with which he has pursued the objective of reducing nuclear peril, as does Secretary of State John Kerry for the persistence, patience and ingenuity with which he has striven to impose significant constraints on Iran’s nuclear program.
Progress has been made on shrinking the size of Iran’s enriched stockpile, confining the enrichment of uranium to one facility, and limiting aspects of the enrichment process. Still, the ultimate significance of the framework will depend on its verifiability and enforceability.
Negotiating the final agreement will be extremely challenging. For one thing, no official text has yet been published. The so-called framework represents a unilateral American interpretation. Some of its clauses have been dismissed by the principal Iranian negotiator as “spin.” A joint EU-Iran statement differs in important respects, especially with regard to the lifting of sanctions and permitted research and development.
Comparable ambiguities apply to the one-year window for a presumed Iranian breakout. Emerging at a relatively late stage in the negotiation, this concept replaced the previous baseline—that Iran might be permitted a technical capacity compatible with a plausible civilian nuclear program. The new approach complicates verification and makes it more political because of the vagueness of the criteria.
Under the new approach, Iran permanently gives up none of its equipment, facilities or fissile product to achieve the proposed constraints. It only places them under temporary restriction and safeguard—amounting in many cases to a seal at the door of a depot or periodic visits by inspectors to declared sites. The physical magnitude of the effort is daunting. Is the International Atomic Energy Agency technically, and in terms of human resources, up to so complex and vast an assignment?
In a large country with multiple facilities and ample experience in nuclear concealment, violations will be inherently difficult to detect. Devising theoretical models of inspection is one thing. Enforcing compliance, week after week, despite competing international crises and domestic distractions, is another. Any report of a violation is likely to prompt debate over its significance—or even calls for new talks with Tehran to explore the issue. The experience of Iran’s work on a heavy-water reactor during the “interim agreement” period—when suspect activity was identified but played down in the interest of a positive negotiating atmosphere—is not encouraging.
Compounding the difficulty is the unlikelihood that breakout will be a clear-cut event. More likely it will occur, if it does, via the gradual accumulation of ambiguous evasions.
When inevitable disagreements arise over the scope and intrusiveness of inspections, on what criteria are we prepared to insist and up to what point? If evidence is imperfect, who bears the burden of proof? What process will be followed to resolve the matter swiftly?
The agreement’s primary enforcement mechanism, the threat of renewed sanctions, emphasizes a broad-based asymmetry, which provides Iran permanent relief from sanctions in exchange for temporary restraints on Iranian conduct. Undertaking the “snap-back” of sanctions is unlikely to be as clear or as automatic as the phrase implies. Iran is in a position to violate the agreement by executive decision. Restoring the most effective sanctions will require coordinated international action. In countries that had reluctantly joined in previous rounds, the demands of public and commercial opinion will militate against automatic or even prompt “snap-back.” If the follow-on process does not unambiguously define the term, an attempt to reimpose sanctions risks primarily isolating America, not Iran.
The gradual expiration of the framework agreement, beginning in a decade, will enable Iran to become a significant nuclear, industrial and military power after that time—in the scope and sophistication of its nuclear program and its latent capacity to weaponize at a time of its choosing. Limits on Iran’s research and development have not been publicly disclosed (or perhaps agreed). Therefore Iran will be in a position to bolster its advanced nuclear technology during the period of the agreement and rapidly deploy more advanced centrifuges—of at least five times the capacity of the current model—after the agreement expires or is broken.
The follow-on negotiations must carefully address a number of key issues, including the mechanism for reducing Iran’s stockpile of enriched uranium from 10,000 to 300 kilograms, the scale of uranium enrichment after 10 years, and the IAEA’s concerns regarding previous Iranian weapons efforts. The ability to resolve these and similar issues should determine the decision over whether or when the U.S. might still walk away from the negotiations.
The Framework Agreement and Long-Term Deterrence
Even when these issues are resolved, another set of problems emerges because the negotiating process has created its own realities. The interim agreement accepted Iranian enrichment; the new agreement makes it an integral part of the architecture. For the U.S., a decade-long restriction on Iran’s nuclear capacity is a possibly hopeful interlude. For Iran’s neighbors—who perceive their imperatives in terms of millennial rivalries—it is a dangerous prelude to an even more dangerous permanent fact of life. Some of the chief actors in the Middle East are likely to view the U.S. as willing to concede a nuclear military capability to the country they consider their principal threat. Several will insist on at least an equivalent capability. Saudi Arabia has signaled that it will enter the lists; others are likely to follow. In that sense, the implications of the negotiation are irreversible.
If the Middle East is “proliferated” and becomes host to a plethora of nuclear-threshold states, several in mortal rivalry with each other, on what concept of nuclear deterrence or strategic stability will international security be based? Traditional theories of deterrence assumed a series of bilateral equations. Do we now envision an interlocking series of rivalries, with each new nuclear program counterbalancing others in the region?
Previous thinking on nuclear strategy also assumed the existence of stable state actors. Among the original nuclear powers, geographic distances and the relatively large size of programs combined with moral revulsion to make surprise attack all but inconceivable. How will these doctrines translate into a region where sponsorship of nonstate proxies is common, the state structure is under assault, and death on behalf of jihad is a kind of fulfillment?
Some have suggested the U.S. can dissuade Iran’s neighbors from developing individual deterrent capacities by extending an American nuclear umbrella to them. But how will these guarantees be defined? What factors will govern their implementation? Are the guarantees extended against the use of nuclear weapons—or against any military attack, conventional or nuclear? Is it the domination by Iran that we oppose or the method for achieving it? What if nuclear weapons are employed as psychological blackmail? And how will such guarantees be expressed, or reconciled with public opinion and constitutional practices?
Regional Order
For some, the greatest value in an agreement lies in the prospect of an end, or at least a moderation, of Iran’s 3½ decades of militant hostility to the West and established international institutions, and an opportunity to draw Iran into an effort to stabilize the Middle East. Having both served in government during a period of American-Iranian strategic alignment and experienced its benefits for both countries as well as the Middle East, we would greatly welcome such an outcome. Iran is a significant national state with a historic culture, a fierce national identity, and a relatively youthful, educated population; its re-emergence as a partner would be a consequential event.
But partnership in what task? Cooperation is not an exercise in good feeling; it presupposes congruent definitions of stability. There exists no current evidence that Iran and the U.S. are remotely near such an understanding. Even while combating common enemies, such as ISIS, Iran has declined to embrace common objectives. Iran’s representatives (including its Supreme Leader) continue to profess a revolutionary anti-Western concept of international order; domestically, some senior Iranians describe nuclear negotiations as a form of jihad by other means.
The final stages of the nuclear talks have coincided with Iran’s intensified efforts to expand and entrench its power in neighboring states. Iranian or Iranian client forces are now the pre-eminent military or political element in multiple Arab countries, operating beyond the control of national authorities. With the recent addition of Yemen as a battlefield, Tehran occupies positions along all of the Middle East’s strategic waterways and encircles archrival Saudi Arabia, an American ally. Unless political restraint is linked to nuclear restraint, an agreement freeing Iran from sanctions risks empowering Iran’s hegemonic efforts.
Some have argued that these concerns are secondary, since the nuclear deal is a way station toward the eventual domestic transformation of Iran. But what gives us the confidence that we will prove more astute at predicting Iran’s domestic course than Vietnam’s, Afghanistan’s, Iraq’s, Syria’s, Egypt’s or Libya’s?
Absent the linkage between nuclear and political restraint, America’s traditional allies will conclude that the U.S. has traded temporary nuclear cooperation for acquiescence to Iranian hegemony. They will increasingly look to create their own nuclear balances and, if necessary, call in other powers to sustain their integrity. Does America still hope to arrest the region’s trends toward sectarian upheaval, state collapse and the disequilibrium of power tilting toward Tehran, or do we now accept this as an irremediable aspect of the regional balance?
Some advocates have suggested that the agreement can serve as a way to dissociate America from Middle East conflicts, culminating in the military retreat from the region initiated by the current administration. As Sunni states gear up to resist a new Shiite empire, the opposite is likely to be the case. The Middle East will not stabilize itself, nor will a balance of power naturally assert itself out of Iranian-Sunni competition. (Even if that were our aim, traditional balance of power theory suggests the need to bolster the weaker side, not the rising or expanding power.) Beyond stability, it is in America’s strategic interest to prevent the outbreak of nuclear war and its catastrophic consequences. Nuclear arms must not be permitted to turn into conventional weapons. The passions of the region allied with weapons of mass destruction may impel deepening American involvement.
If the world is to be spared even worse turmoil, the U.S. must develop a strategic doctrine for the region. Stability requires an active American role. For Iran to be a valuable member of the international community, the prerequisite is that it accepts restraint on its ability to destabilize the Middle East and challenge the broader international order.
Until clarity on an American strategic political concept is reached, the projected nuclear agreement will reinforce, not resolve, the world’s challenges in the region. Rather than enabling American disengagement from the Middle East, the nuclear framework is more likely to necessitate deepening involvement there—on complex new terms. History will not do our work for us; it helps only those who seek to help themselves.
Messrs. Kissinger and Shultz are former secretaries of state.
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Too funny! Have you seen this video jnc/NoVA?
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Inneresting piece on lie detectors.
http://takimag.com/article/insidious_orwellian_machines_gavin_mcinnes/print#axzz3Wy7RoRVv
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Thanks Brent.
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Interesting suggestion for the way a Christian baker can handle the “bake me a gay wedding cake you bible thumper or face a lawsuit” gay activist.
http://wdtprs.com/blog/2015/04/when-they-come-to-destroy-your-business-because-you-are-pro-traditional-family/
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Question:
If it is constitutional for the government to tell the owners of a bakery what cakes it must bake, why isn’t it also constitutional for the government to tell the owners of the NYT what articles it must print in their paper?
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The problem with this survey is that in most of these cases I don’t support the idea but support a states decision to legislate it.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/post-partisan/wp/2015/04/09/republican-nutcase-check-list/?wpisrc=nl_popns&wpmm=1
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Why can’t the govt force a bride and groom to use a gay baker?
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Hilarious, breathless description from The Gaurdian on how the world works.
http://www.theguardian.com/environment/2010/dec/03/wikileaks-us-manipulated-climate-accord
Stay tuned for their expose on water being wet.
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support a states decision to legislate it
You really support a state legislating doctors telling women that abortions can be reversed? Really???
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Mich:
You really support a state legislating doctors telling women that abortions can be reversed? Really???
You really believe a WaPo reporter has accurately characterized state law regading abortion? Really???
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I believe that states have the right to do it. I wouldn’t vote for it myself and it might make me rethink my vote on a legislator that supported it. But if a state’s citizens deem it worthy then so be it.
Welcome to Federalism.
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McWing:
Welcome to Federalism
Unfortunately a lot of people, particularly on the left, actually oppose federalism. They don’t want state’s to be able to make the “wrong” choices, just like they don’t want people to be able to make the “wrong” choices like deciding not to celebrate SSM.
Federalism is just an extension of the notion of individual freedom to states. There’s no reason to expect people who do not support individual freedom to support the idea of federalism.
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“Let the mutherfuker burn!, on April 11, 2015 at 6:17 pm said:
Why can’t the govt force a bride and groom to use a gay baker?”
The argument I would make is that if in fact catering or photographing a wedding is to be considered a public accommodation, then the wedding organizers themselves can’t close it off to the public as a private event.
I.e. Any and all wedding crashers should be welcome. To turn them away is to deprive them of their civil rights.
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jnc:
The argument I would make is that if in fact catering or photographing a wedding is to be considered a public accommodation, then the wedding organizers themselves can’t close it off to the public as a private event.
Any idea where the notion of a “public accomodation” even came from originally?
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The dis-ingeniousness of the NYT Editorial page goes to a new level:
“Perhaps the most outrageous example of the attack on the president’s legitimacy was a letter signed by 47 Republican senators to the leadership of Iran saying Mr. Obama had no authority to conclude negotiations over Iran’s nuclear weapons program. Try to imagine the outrage from Republicans if a similar group of Democrats had written to the Kremlin in 1986 telling Mikhail Gorbachev that President Ronald Reagan did not have the authority to negotiate a nuclear arms deal at the Reykjavik summit meeting that winter.
There is no functional difference between that example and the Iran talks, except that the congressional Republican caucus does not like Mr. Obama and wants to deny him any policy victory”
Well, they might have an argument had Reagan not submitted the agreement to the Senate for ratification as a treaty.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reykjav%C3%ADk_Summit
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Intermediate-Range_Nuclear_Forces_Treaty
Instead by citing Reagan’s nuclear arms deal they make the Republicans case.
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But these same people support, for example, Massachuset’s Romneycare or Vermonts (silly and doomed) attempt at single payer.
Go figure.
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McWing:
But these same people support, for example, Massachuset’s Romneycare or Vermonts (silly and doomed) attempt at single payer.
The support isn’t based on any underlying political principle. It is entirely preference oriented. “I like X, so the state has the power to make it so. I don’t like Y, so the state doesn’t have the power to make it so.” The fact that the power to do X necessarily implies the power to do Y is neither here nor there for them.
The idea of objective principles of governance that outline process regardless of outcome is, unfortunately, totally alien to far too many people in our society. Hence the spectacle of people, who would be appalled at government discrimination against one demographic, casually accepting, if not fully embracing, government discrimination against a different, less favored, demographic.
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Intramural fights on the left are always funny. Marxists vs the Check Your Privilege crowd.
https://www.jacobinmag.com/2015/04/1-99-percent-class-inequality/
http://www.vox.com/2015/4/8/8325613/privilege-anand-giridharadas-ted
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Here’s a good piece on it. Looks like it stems from the concept of a common carrier:
“Under English common law, it was the duty of-a common carrier to
serve all persons without imposing unreasonable conditions. The
English courts considered that “a person [who] holds himself out to
carry goods for everyone as a business . .. is a common carrier,”‘ and
that any member of the public may create a, contract with the carrier
by accepting its general offer.The rule remains the same today.”
http://scholarship.law.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=2418&context=mulr
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From J’s Jacobin link,
Like the journalist Robert Fitch once wrote, it is the aim of the Right “to restrict the scope of class conflict — to bring it down to as low a level as possible. The smaller and more local the political unit, the easier it is to run it oligarchically.”
Yes, when power is diffused down it’s much easier for the oligarchy to control!
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It is nice though that Jacobin is letting white Liberals let go of their collective guilt.
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