Austrian chancellor resigns amid tensions over migrant crackdowns

Austria’s chancellor resigned Monday, citing insufficient political support within his party to deal with challenges, including efforts to confront the ongoing migrant crisis. The surprise move by Werner Faymann followed a back-of-the-pack showing last month by his Social Democratic Party in the first round of the presidential election, which was led by the right-wing Freedom Party that favors a harder line against migrants and refugees streaming into Europe.
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Zimbabweans hunt for US cash as shortages bite

Severe shortages of U.S. dollars that are used as local currency in Zimbabwe have forced many residents into cash hunter-gatherers. This week, Zimbabwe’s central bank imposed measures in an attempt to ease the cash crunch, which reflects the country’s dire economic situation. The measures include reducing the amount of money that travelers can take outside the country and limiting daily cash withdrawals.
Read more at the Associated Press Read More......

Michael Burry, Real Market Genius From The Big Short, Thinks Another Financial Crisis Is Looming

If The Big Short, Adam McKay’s adaptation of Michael Lewis’s book about the 2008 financial crisis and the subject of last month’s Vulture cover story, got you all worked up over the holidays, you’re probably wondering what Michael Burry, the economic soothsayer portrayed by Christian Bale who’s always just a few steps ahead of everyone else, is up to these days.
Read more at New York Magazine Read More......

Military vows Maduro support in deepening Venezuela crisis

Venezuela's military pledged loyalty to President Nicolas Maduro on Thursday, ramping up a high-stakes standoff between his socialist government and a center-right opposition that has vowed to use its new legislative powers to oust him. The opposition laid claim to a big majority in the National Assembly, which could empower it to force out Maduro. He has rejected the assembly as illegal and formed a new hardline leftist cabinet to fight it, in a deepening political crisis.
Read more at Yahoo News Read More......

Saudi Arabia stews in policy hell: Spengler

Last week’s mass executions in Saudi Arabia suggest panic at the highest level of the monarchy. The action is without precedent, even by the grim standards of Saudi repression. In 1980 Riyadh killed 63 jihadists who had attacked the Grand Mosque of Mecca, but that was fresh after the event. Most of the 47 prisoners shot and beheaded on Jan. 2 had sat in Saudi jails for a decade. The decision to kill the prominent Shia cleric Nimr al-Nimr, the most prominent spokesman for restive Saudi Shia Muslims in Eastern Province, betrays fear of subversion with Iranian sponsorship.
Read more at the Asia Times Read More......

Worried About Refugee Crisis, Dutch Voters Flock to Geert Wilders' Anti-Immigration Party

According to a new report from the Dutch social policy institute, the SCP, almost one-third of Dutch voters now believes that immigration and integration are serious issues. Dutch News explains:    Almost 30% now consider immigration and integration to be the biggest problems facing the country, double the figure at the start of the year. In particular, people are afraid of increasing tensions in society and many think it unfair so much money is being diverted to refugees while Dutch people live in poverty, the SCP says
Read more at PJ Media Read More......

US interest rate rise could trigger global debt crisis

Debt ratios have reached extreme levels across all major regions of the global economy, leaving the financial system acutely vulnerable to monetary tightening by the US Federal Reserve, the world's top financial watchdog has warned.
The Bank for International Settlements said the wild market ructions of recent weeks and capital outflows from China are warning signs that the massive build-up in credit is coming back to haunt, compounded by worries that policymakers may be struggling to control events.


Read more at the UK Telegraph Read More......

Reinforcing Failure

Richard Fernandez - Pop quiz. Suppose a whole country decides to live off an imaginary inexhaustible stash promised by its president. One day it runs out of other people’s money and begins to starve. Hospitals start to close. Even the beer runs out. What do you do? What do you do? --According to the International Crisis Group that is the problem the world faces in Venezuela. “Some economists predict a sudden collapse in food consumption and widespread hunger, and public health specialists already say that some surveys are showing chronic malnutrition.” If the Colossus of the North doesn’t save it, then all hell with break loose. Can’t let that happen can you?

Read more at Belmont Club Read More......

Bad Math and a Coming Nationwide Public Pension Crisis

When Jim Palermo was serving as a trustee of the village of La Grange, Ill., he noticed something peculiar about the local police officers and firefighters. They were not going to live as long as might be expected, at least according to pension tables. After Mr. Palermo dug into the numbers, he found that the actuary — the person who advises pension plan trustees about how much money to set aside — was using a mortality table from 1971 that showed La Grange’s roughly 100 police officers and firefighters were expected to die, on average, before reaching 75, compared with 79 under a more recent table.
The four years are significant beyond any interest in macabre statistics.


Read more at the NY Times Read More......

Puerto Rico says it cannot pay its debt, setting off potential crisis in the U.S.

The governor of Puerto Rico has decided that the island cannot pay back more than $70 billion in debt, setting up an unprecedented financial crisis that could rock the municipal bond market and lead to higher borrowing costs for governments across the United States.


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Obama exploits immigrant child crisis that he created

The Obama administration’s arrogance and penchant for, charitably speaking, chafing the boundaries of legality, is almost boundless.  But dealing with illegal immigration turns the knob past 11.  Obama’s DHS has renewed DACA, the program that allows illegal immigrant children to stay in the US, sort-of-legally.  DACA created the current child-immigrant crisis, and Obama’s keen to exploit it.

I’ll give Obama credit for one thing:  he didn’t create the immigration problem.  He only made it exponentially worse.  Since passing the Immigration Reform and Control Act of 1986 our government has done little to control our southern border in the last 28 years, and the results are predictable—in fact were predicted by Theodore Hesburgh’s Commission on Immigration Reform.

Read more at Redstate.com Read More......

Steyn: Shutdown Simulacrum

By Mark Steyn - Just because it’s a phony crisis doesn’t mean it can’t be made even phonier.
Way back in January, when it emerged that Beyoncé had treated us to the first ever lip-synched national anthem at a presidential inauguration, I suggested in this space that this strange pseudo-performance embodied the decay of America’s political institutions from the real thing into mere simulacrum. But that applies to government “crises,” too — such as the Obamacare “rollout,” the debt “ceiling,” and the federal “shutdown,” to name only the three current railroad tracks to which the virtuous damsel of Big Government has been simultaneously tied by evil mustache-twirling Republicans. Read more at NRO... Read More......

The Healthcare bill would be Obama's "Enabling Act"

GRAND OLD PARTISAN BLOG, 12/17/2009 by Michael Zak - Why are Barack Obama and other Democrat leaders so intent on passing a government takeover of healthcare now Now NOW? Read Mr. Zak's historical account of the "Enabling Act"... Read More......

Health 'reform' that burdens our young

WASHINGTON POST, 11/23/2009 by Robert J. Samuelson - One of our long-running political stories is the economic assault on the young by the old. We have become a society that invests in its past and disfavors the future. This makes no sense for the nation, but as politics it makes complete sense. The elderly and near elderly are better organized, focus obsessively on their government benefits and seem deserving. Grandmas and Grandpas command sympathy. ∴ Everyone knows that the resulting "entitlements" dominate government spending and squeeze education, research, defense and almost everything else. In fiscal 2008 -- the last "normal" year before the economic crisis -- Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid (programs wholly or primarily dedicated to the elderly) totaled $1.3 trillion, 43 percent of federal spending and more than twice military spending. Because workers, not retirees, are the primary taxpayers, this spending involves huge transfers to the old. Read more at the Washington Post... Read More......

Green Shoots or Scorched Earth?

INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE, 8/14/2009, Bulletins From Clunkerville by Mike Whitney - Is the economy really recovering or is it all just hype? ∴ Here's what we know. The Fed doesn't drop rates to zero unless its facing a 5 alarm fire and needs to pull out all the stops. The idea is to flood the markets with liquidity in order to avoid a complete financial meltdown. It's a last-ditch maneuver and the Fed does not take it lightly. ∴ The Fed initiated its zero interest rate policy, ZIRP, eight months ago (December 16 2008) and hasn't raised rates since. In the meantime, Fed chair Ben Bernanke has pumped huge amounts of money into the financial system using thoroughly-untested and unconventional means. No one knows whether Bernanke can roll up his multi-trillion dollar lending facilities or not (and avoid Zimbabwe-like hyperinflation) because no one has ever created similar programs. It's all "make-it-up-as-you-go" policymaking. What we do know, however, is that the Fed intends to keep rates at rock-bottom for the foreseeable future, which means that the lights are all still blinking red. Read more at ICH... Read More......

Obama and his Media: The Real U.S. Terrorist (email)

From a Temple, TX CPA: ARE YOU PROPERLY TERRORIZED BY THE MEDIA AND WHITE HOUSE YET?

Now, let me get this straight. "Several hundred" people get the flu in Mexico and "150 Mexican nationals die," now lowered to seven.

A few Americans get the flu, 91 people at last count, but no one dies. A Mexican toddler did die in Houston, is referenced as an American, but had undisclosed "multiple underlying health issues."

Even before this number reportedly died, US Pravda, otherwise known as CNN, NBC, CBS, MSNBC, etc, hyped the "flu pandemic" story up to astronomical levels.

Here we go again!

The sky is falling, the sky is falling!

BE SCARED! TERROR, TERROR! CRISIS! BE AFRAID! ...

Does anyone buy this line, or these terrorize-the-public lines, anymore?

We have a pandemic alright, a leftist media and white house "fear pandemic."

Are you aware that tens of thousands of U.S. citizens die each year from plain old everyday influenza? 36,950 on average per year, every year!

Excuse me a minute while I change my surgical particle mask and guzzle some more Tamiflu.

What happened to the Hope and Change and "the end of the politics of fear?"

If we keep having nonstop crises, there's really no point in living. I feel like I'm cast in a never-ending white house and media directed soap opera, and I might as well end it all now.

But, there another motive behind all of this chicanery.

As a result of each "crisis" immediate action must be taken.

After 9-11 we received the Patriot Act that allows warrantless government surveillance of not only foreigners but American citizens as well. Who needs the 4th Amendment anyway? We also received the Department of Homeland Security, another federal police force. DHS ignores millions of illegals and terrorists openly operating in the U.S. while labeling veterans and conservatives as "terrorists" or "right wing extremists."

Exactly when did being a Republican become extreme anyway?

Later, we had the "credit crisis" and we got TARP, or is that TRAP, or CRAP?

As a result, the Federal Reserve, a private corporation which is as federal as Federal Express, leaves U.S. taxpayers on the hook for TRILLIONS of dollars without having to explain (video) where the money went.

That number is now over 12.8 TRILLION DOLLARS.

The Federal Reserve has great power over the value of our money and the direction of our economy and yet does not have to disclose its operations to the American people.

In fact, the Federal Reserve apparently doesn't have to answer (video) to Congress, the President or anyone.

There is currently pending in Congress H.B 1207 calling for an audit of the Federal Reserve, something that has never occurred since its inception in 1913.

The bill currently has 100 co-sponsors and may very well pass. I'm certain the foreign banker owners don't want this to happen. Cockroaches do tend to flee when the light switch is turned on!

Recently, the "stimulus" bill, another whopping $787 billion, passed because of the dire emergency.

One thousand pages of eye-popping pork that not one congressman even read.

The bill had to be passed right away or we would fall off the edge of the earth, even though "The One" didn't sign the legislation until 4 days after returning from his vacation.

Then, there was the uproar over the AIG bonuses.

The public was instructed to focus on $165 million in bonuses to camouflage the 10s of billions that were shipped to foreign banks.

Remember, they're the Fed, they transfer the money and you pay the amount back, the amount lent, with interest of course. Move along there's nothing to see here.

Does anyone else see a pattern here? Everytime there is another "crisis" more of our rights are confiscated and we get the short end of the stick.

Maybe it's time that "we the people" start issuing terrorist alerts, with a focus on the domestic variety.

Apparently, we're supposed to be frightened out of our minds because of the flu and the media is now preparing the public for the potential of mandatory flu innoculations.

TIME magazine is also soothing the public for this possibility. While discussing the mandatory flu vaccination debacle during President Ford's administration, the TIME article does have an interesting quote by Howard Markel, director of the Center for the History of Medicine at the University of Michigan.

Markel states, "the political climate in the U.S. is much less combustible today than in the post-Watergate era, when Ford faced a skeptical public. Even so," he says, "citizens still need to trust that the government is working for the greater good."

What planet is this guy from?

Now, the federal government has chosen Baxter International to develop a vaccine for the swine flu. Never heard of Baxter?

Why this is the same company that gave the world HIV infected treatments in the 1980s and more recently sent live avian flu in vaccinations to 18 European countries.

I feel safer already.

So what are we supposed to ignore while focusing on this latest "crisis?"

Does the government not want you to focus on the dismal quarterly economic data?

The continued rising unemployment?

This week's vote on the preposterous $3.5 trillion budget?

Forget about the concerns over the unbridled Federal Reserve?

Oh, I forgot. I'm not supposed to think. I'm supposed to be terrified.

Can I have another sip of that Kool-Aid?

Drew

(H/t: Stella Guenther/received via email) Read More......

Obama: Can't afford to wait on healthcare

(Brainchild just can't use this quote enough... "Every collectivist revolution rides in on a Trojan horse of EMERGENCY." --Herbert Hoover)

WASHINGTON (Reuters) by David Alexander - Saying Americans cannot afford to put off an overhaul of healthcare, President Barack Obama vowed on Thursday to break the political stalemate that has blocked past efforts and pass a comprehensive plan this year. --Obama formally launched a drive for healthcare reform at a White House forum, telling about 120 experts the costly and inefficient system was dragging down the ailing U.S. economy. --"Health care reform is no longer just a moral imperative, it is a fiscal imperative," Obama said. "If we want to create jobs and rebuild our economy, then we must address the crushing cost of healthcare this year, in this administration." Read more at Reuters... Read More......

Economy: Obama Policies Feed Market Panic

MONEYNEWS.com, 3/5/2009 by Greg Brown - Since Barack Obama was sworn in as president on Jan. 20, stocks have tumbled to record lows — with investors losing an estimated $2.5 trillion in market value. --The trend continued Thursday, with the Dow closing down 281 points, a 4.1 percent drop for the day. Since Inauguration Day, the Dow has fallen 20.4 percent. --All week, negative headlines have competed with the slumping market ticker, including early news Thursday that General Motors might well go bankrupt despite billions in taxpayer loans. Continued at moneynews.com...

(Newsmax graphic) Read More......

WND: Federal obligations exceed world GDP

Does $65.5 trillion terrify anyone yet?
WorldNetDaily, February 13, 2009 by Jerome R. Corsi (Hat tip: Patrick Wills) - As the Obama administration pushes through Congress its $800 billion deficit-spending economic stimulus plan, the American public is largely unaware that the true deficit of the federal government already is measured in trillions of dollars, and in fact its $65.5 trillion in total obligations exceeds the gross domestic product of the world. The total U.S. obligations, including Social Security and Medicare benefits to be paid in the future, effectively have placed the U.S. government in bankruptcy, even before new continuing social welfare obligation embedded in the massive spending plan are taken into account. The real 2008 federal budget deficit was $5.1 trillion, not the $455 billion previously reported by the Congressional Budget Office, according to the "2008 Financial Report of the United States Government" as released by the U.S. Department of Treasury. Read more at World Net Daily... Read More......

Biden: "Mark my words"

Joe Biden: The McCain Campaign's Best Friend
The Loft at GOPUSA.com October 21, 2008, by Bobby Eberle

Leave it to Joe Biden to say in one speech what John McCain has been unable to say for an entire campaign. Yes, there is the issue of the economy. (Obama's ties with Fannie and Freddie have barely been mentioned by McCain.) Yes, there is the issue of taxes. (McCain can't seem to explain how cutting taxes for all is better than class warfare and socialism). Yes, there are a host of issues where McCain has a better plan, but one of the most important, especially in a time of war, is that John McCain is ready to be commander-in-chief from Day 1.

Obama has no foreign policy experience and is not ready. Thankfully, Obama picked Sen. Joe Biden as his running mate. This gives Biden plenty of time at the podium and plenty of opportunities to open his mouth. At a speech on Monday, he reminded everyone what the consequences will be by putting a foreign policy novice in charge of the world's strongest military...

During a speech in Seattle, Biden said, "Mark my words. It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking." Biden added, "Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy. And he's gonna have to make some really tough -- I don't know what the decision's gonna be, but I promise you it will occur." [Emphasis added]

Thank you, Joe Biden! Thank you for saying what we all know to be true. When Ronald Reagan became president was the world lying in wait to test him right away? As I remember it, the day Reagan was sworn in as president was the day our American hostages were released from 444 days of captivity in Iran. America wasn't tested, it was respected.

Obama's socialist agenda puts him on the wrong side of many issues, and foreign policy stands out like a sore thumb. He would hold friendly chats with leaders such as Iran's Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Venezuela's Hugo Chavez. Doing so, of course, would lend validity to the rhetoric and actions of these people, but that doesn't seem to sink in to Obama.

Then, there is Iraq. Following the success of the major combat operations, the war was not going well at all. Terrorists were moving in, taking control of key locations, and they were winning in their mission to disrupt the transition. McCain not only supported the surge strategy, he was also one of the strategy's strongest supporters. The strategy worked, and now we hardly hear about Iraq in the news at all. I guess if there's nothing bad to report, the media will simply move on to something new like digging up dirt on Joe the Plumber.

Obama, as we all know, opposed the surge. He had no plan of his own other than to simply get out. But retreat is not a plan. Leaving Iraq unstable and in the hands of terrorists is not a plan.

McCain followed-up on Biden's comments by saying, "We don't want a president who invites testing from the world at a time when our economy is in crisis and Americans are already fighting in two wars."

"What is more troubling is that Sen. Biden told their campaign donors that when that crisis hits, they would have to stand with them, because it wouldn't be apparent Sen. Obama would have the right response," added the Republican nominee, who was spending Tuesday in Pennsylvania, another battleground. "Forget apparent. Sen. Obama won't have the right response, and we know that because we've seen the wrong response from him over and over during this campaign."

We can all thank Joe Biden for bringing this up. His affinity for gaffes is legendary, and he may just be the best thing to happen to the McCain campaign. As compiled by Fox News, Biden's gaffes just keep on coming, including saying that Obama should have picked Hillary Clinton instead of him: "She's easily qualified to be vice president of the United States of America and quite frankly it might have been a better pick than me."

Biden also tried to score points during the economic crisis by saying, "When the stock market crashed, Franklin D. Roosevelt got on the television and didn't just talk about the, you know, the princes of greed." However, as noted by Fox News, "Herbert Hoover was president in October 1929 when the stock market crashed. FDR wasn't elected until 1932, and television made its debut a decade later, in 1939."

Speaking about coal, Biden said told Virginia mine workers, "Hope you won't hold it against me, but I am a hard coal miner -- anthracite coal, Scranton, Pennsylvania, that's where I was born and raised." But, of course, he was never a coal miner. Fox News reports, "While his great-grandfather was a mining engineer, his father ran a Delaware car dealership and worked in the oil business. His campaign tried to spin the comments as a joke."

Biden's gaffes are great to listen to, but his latest one is also quite serious. America is at war, and we need a president who is ready to lead. McCain has to make that message clear. McCain has a better tax plan, will appoint better judges, will not engage in class warfare, and will bring his wealth of foreign policy experience to the White House. We can't afford a president whom terrorists will look to "test." Read More......