The Housing Bubble

Here is what I’ve noticed about human nature and wants vs. needs. A fair number of people whine endlessly about having to pay 1 thin dime for their needs. Gas, food, housing, health care - you never hear the end of it. Granted, prices are nuts, but then you never hear those same people complain about buying the wants - the fancy cars, the phones, the vacations. And it seems like paying through the nose for what they want is a badge of honor to them. To me, that is a childish attitude. Those same oversized children throw tantrums and want to turn their needs into “rights” and have them given to them gratis. Again, that makes sense if you’re a child. Time to grow the fk up!

Comment by Blue Skye
2014-04-12 20:50:15
Enjoying life and staying out of debt is good advice.

I am not in debt.

Comment by Whac-A-Bubble™
2014-04-12 22:23:30

Why would anyone with a decent credit record buy at a point when Subprime Sam is handing out mortgages in amounts north of $500K like candy to people with weak credit histories?

———–

Renter capitulation?

(Don’t worry, I’m not even close. In fact, I may skip the fixer-upper Victorian and go straight to the live aboard.)

Oxnard, CA Housing Demand Collapses 27% YoY; Falls To 10 Year Lows

http://www.zillow.com/local-info/CA-Oxnard-home-value/r_13150/#metric=mt%3D30%26dt%3D1%26tp%3D6%26rt%3D8%26r%3D13150%252C114909%252C114263%26el%3D0

Tampa, FL Housing Prices Plunge 7% As Inventory Skyrockets 53%

http://www.movoto.com/tampa-fl/market-trends/

Palm Beach, FL Housing Prices Crumble 11% YoY On Rising Housing Inventory

http://www.movoto.com/palm-beach-fl/market-trends/

Another Realtor Charged With Felonies

http://www.chestertontribune.com/Business/former_realtor_don_johnson_charg.htm

Realtor Targets Client Houses For Breaking And Entering

http://www.upnorthlive.com/news/story.aspx?id=1029902

http://wattsupwiththat.com/2014/04/10/the-great-credibility-gap-yawns-ever-wider/

Excerpt from a link which will soon post:

The 2013 Fifth Assessment Report backdated the IPCC’s predictions to January 2005. The interval of predictions, equivalent to 0.5[0.3, 0.7] Cº over 30 years or 1.67 [1.0, 2.33] Cº per century, is shown in orange.

By now, as a central estimate, there should have been 0.15 Cº global warming since January 2005, a rate equivalent to 0.5 Cº in 30 years, or 1.67 Cº per century, gathering pace rapidly after 2035 to reach 3.7 Cº over the full century.

However, the trend on the mean of the monthly RSS and UAH satellite lower-troposphere temperature anomalies is, if anything, falling, leading to an over-prediction by the IPCC of 0.17 Cº – a sixth of a Celsius degree – in the 111 months January 2005 to March 2014.

The models’ overshoot over 9 years 3 months is equivalent to more than 1.8 Cº per century.

Though the IPCC has finally realized that the models are unreliable as predictors of global temperature change, and has slashed its 30-year projection from 0.7 [ 0.4, 1.0] Cº in the pre-final draft of the Fifth Assessment Report to 0.5 [0.3, 0.7] Cº in the published final version, it has not cut its centennial-scale prediction, an implausibly hefty 3.7 Cº on business as usual (4.5 Cº if you are Sir David King, 11 Cº and a 10% probability of the Earth not surviving the 21st century if you are Lord Stern).

It is also interesting to compare the IPCC’s original global-warming predictions in the 1990 First Assessment Report with what has happened since. At that time, the IPCC said:

“Based on current model results, we predict [semantic bores, please note the IPCC uses the word “predict”, and, if you don’t like it, whine to ipcc.ch, not in comments here]:

Ø “under the IPCC Business-as-Usual (Scenario A) emissions of greenhouse gases, a rate of increase of global mean temperature during the next century of about 0.3°C per decade (with an uncertainty range of 0.2 C° to 0.5 C° per decade). This is greater than that seen over the past 10,000 years. This will result in a likely increase in global mean temperature of about 1 C° above the present value by 2025 and 3 Cº before the end of the next century. The rise will not be steady because of the influence of other factors.”

The IPCC’s best-guess near-term warming prediction in 1990 was equivalent to 2.78 Cº per century.

Real-world temperature change in the 291 months since January 1990 has been spectacularly below what was predicted. There has been just 0.34 Cº global warming, equivalent to a mere 1.39 Cº per century. The IPCC’s overshoot since 1990 amounts to another 0.34 Cº, or more than a third of a degree in 24 years 3 months, equivalent to 1.39 Cº per century. It predicted double the warming that has actually occurred.

Ski p0rn

From halfway up Lenawee Mountain looking west, top of Arapahoe Basin lifts at lower right, Keystone at center, Breckenridge at upper left

http://www.picpaste.com/IMG_20140412_111809_896-NVNwmzvr.jpg

Looking east to 14ers Torreys Peak and Grays Peak L-to-R

http://www.picpaste.com/IMG_20140412_111815_563-rXFwqMTk.jpg

Because warmists gonna warm

“The amount of global greenhouse gas emissions soared to “unprecedented levels” over the decade ending in 2010, the world’s top climate scientists said Sunday, and now governments must act aggressively to lower emissions or face the most dangerous consequences of global warming.

At a meeting in Berlin, the scientists released an authoritative report showing that emissions from human development increased more between 2000 and 2010 than in each of the previous three decades. It is a clear sign, they said, that government policies aimed at reducing carbons and staving off warming are failing.

To have any chance of limiting an increase in the mean global temperature to 3.6 degrees Fahrenheit by mid-century, a relatively low target negotiated by governments, world leaders must act aggressively to deploy clean-air technologies with the goal of lowering emissions “by 40 to 70 percent” of what they were in 2010.

Without strong action, nations will start to face the most debilitating effects of global warming — rapidly melting arctic ice, significant sea-level rise, flooding and storms — by the end of this century.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/national/health-science/world-must-turn-from-fossil-fuels-to-cleaner-energy-to-avoid-climate-disaster-panel-says/2014/04/13/21bd2144-c273-11e3-b574-f8748871856a_story.html

Only higher taxes and more regulations and bigger and bigger government can save us.

Australia’s Housing Bubble Will Pop
Robert Morley
April 11, 2014 • From theTrumpet.com
House prices and debt levels are hitting new records; be worried.

Australian household debt has reached a new record. Australians are living in the danger zone with debt at an astounding 177 percent of annual disposable income. Borrowing such massive amounts to spend on unproductive assets means economic disaster is virtually guaranteed.

What is this big unproductive asset that so many Australians are spending billions on?

Houses. Big ones, tall ones, even small ones. And they are all going up in price quicker than ever.

House prices rose at the fastest pace in 18 years in March, according to the Guardian. The average house in Australia’s major cities index went up by 2.3 percent in just the past 30 days. Over the past year, house prices across the country rose almost 11 percent. In Sydney they are up over 15 percent.

CommSec economist Savanth Sebastian called the rise in house prices “phenomenal.”

And the trend is showing no sign of slowing down, according to Commonwealth Bank economist Gareth Aird. “Strong population growth, record low interest rates and expectations of further house price appreciation are fueling demand,” he said.

Whoa. Did you catch that? Record low interest rates and buyers’ expectations that houses will keep going up are two of the three big factors pushing prices higher. If that is true, you could hardly ask for clearer signs that the housing market is a bubble. If ever there was a reason not to buy a house in Australia right now, those are two big ones.

Why are interest rates so low in Australia? Because the underlying economy is stuck in a funk and the Reserve Bank of Australia is using the only real tool it has to get the economy going—low interest rates—to encourage people to borrow and spend more money.

But increasing debt to stimulate growth is a short-term solution at best. It doesn’t solve the fundamental weakness in the economy. Australia’s manufacturing industry is collapsing. Soon Australia won’t even manufacture vehicles anymore. Ford, Holden and Toyota have all announced that they are shuttering their last plants.

Then there is the risk of a major economic slowdown in China. In March, for the first time ever, China let a corporation default on its debt. This is a sign that China’s highly leveraged corporations are struggling and may no longer be able to count on the government for a bailout. If China is maxed out on debt, who will buy Australia’s iron, coal and other raw commodities? Australia’s main revenue generation streams will get clogged. The Shanghai stock index certainly isn’t the picture of a healthy economy.

As economic analyst John Mauldin wrote on April 5, “The recent collapse in Australian new export orders and moderate contraction in Australian production could point toward a real man-eater lurking in the Chinese bamboo.” Analyst Harry Dent agrees. There is no doubt Australia has a housing bubble in which China plays a major role, as he says in the following video from March 7 (well worth the watch).
…

“Renewal of important expired federal tax benefits for homeowners took a major step forward last week, but the route to final congressional approval is beginning to look longer — and potentially bumpier — than previously expected.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/realestate/tax-benefits-for-homeowners-look-uncertain-as-senate-and-house-take-different-tacks/2014/04/10/b4664f00-be88-11e3-b195-dd0c1174052c_story.html?tid=hpModule_6032d2d6-919e-11e2-bdea-e32ad90da239

“Struggling homeowners across the country could face significant new tax bills if they receive mortgage relief from their banks, a prospect that threatens to slow the housing recovery and put further strain on distressed borrowers.”

http://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/distressed-homeowners-seeking-mortgage-relief-could-get-stuck-with-higher-taxes/2014/04/11/ba3d7498-be6b-11e3-b195-dd0c1174052c_story.html?tid=hpModule_79c38dfc-8691-11e2-9d71-f0feafdd1394

Note to “real journalists”, stop calling them homeowners

Is Putin fixin’ to ditch the dollar?

What was there, tens or hundreds of millions of dollars in debt forgiveness income taxes that they decided not to go after to save the deadbeats?

Meanwhile they are going after old relative’s tax debts?

Are you ready for stagflation?

Good luck to retirees trying to survive the next couple of decades on fixed-income pension payments.

Tensions over money flows bode poorly for global economy
Published: 2014-04-13 19:10:10.0 BdST Updated: 2014-04-13 19:10:10.0 BdST
A general view of the U.S. Federal Reserve building in Washington, July 31, 2013. Credit: REUTERS/Jonathan Ernst/Files

For poor nations, the easy monetary policies in advanced economies are leading to big swings in capital flows that could destabilise emerging markets. For rich countries, the hoarding of currency by developing nations is blocking progress toward a more stable global economy.

Those tensions, which have been brewing for years, seemed to be rising as finance ministers and central bank chiefs from the Group of 20 economies gathered last week in Washington, as evidenced by harsh words from Washington and Delhi.

Both rich and poor say they are acting in their own self interest, and what makes the conflict so intractable is that both have very rational arguments.

Even though the G20 agreed the global economy was on better footing, the tensions suggested little progress ahead in rebalancing the global economy away from a state where the rich world borrows massively to buy things from the poor world.

“This is not a healthy place,” Raghuram Rajan, governor of Reserve Bank of India, told a panel ahead of the G20 meeting.

Rajan has become a leading agitator for reforming the global monetary order, and he urged central bankers in advanced nations to avoid experimental monetary policies that might hurt the global economy.

He argued that years of easy money policies in the developed world had pushed emerging markets to hold bigger dollar reserves so they can intervene in currency markets to protect their economies from big swings in capital flows.

The need to hoard is only growing, as it now appears that the United States, Europe and Japan could keep easy money policies in place for several more years.

“You have to consider the feedback or spillover effects on other economies,” Brazilian central bank chief Alexandre Tombini said of rich nation policies, speaking alongside Rajan.

Developed countries, led by the United States, argue their stimulus efforts are in the best interest of emerging nations because they lift the global economy. They say the poors’ reliance on currency interventions is holding the world back.

Emerging markets often build dollar reserves by keeping their currencies weak to spur more exports, forcing developed economies to borrow to cover their import tab. Many economists feel heavy borrowing by the world’s biggest consumer, the United States, fuelled the asset bubble that sparked the 2007-09 financial crisis.

“Resistance in many emerging markets to moving more quickly to market-determined exchange rate regimes are hindering the rebalancing needed to ensure a lasting, strong global recovery,” a senior US Treasury official told reporters.
…

The future of finance
Leviathan of last resort
State subsidies and guarantees are once again corroding the financial sector and creating new dangers
Apr 12th 2014 | From the print edition

EVER since Lehman Brothers went bankrupt in 2008 a common assumption has been that the crisis happened because the state surrendered control of finance to the market. The answer, it follows, must be more rules. The latest target is American housing, the source of the dodgy loans that brought down Lehman. Plans are afoot to set up a permanent public backstop to mortgage markets (see article), with the government insuring 90% of losses in a crisis. Which might be comforting, except for two things. First, it is hard to see how entrenching state support will prevent excessive risk-taking. And, second, whatever was wrong with the American housing market, it was not lack of government: far from a free market, it was one of the most regulated industries in the world, funded by taxpayer subsidies and with lending decisions taken by the state.
…
In many cases the rationale for the rules and the rescues has been to protect ordinary investors from the evils of finance. Yet the overall effect is to add ever more layers of state padding and distort risk-taking.

This fits an historical pattern. As our essay this week shows, regulation has responded to each crisis by protecting ever more of finance. Five disasters, from 1792 to 1929, explain the origins of the modern financial system. This includes hugely successful innovations, from joint-stock banks to the Federal Reserve and the New York Stock Exchange. But it has also meant a corrosive trend: a gradual increase in state involvement. Deposit insurance is a good example. Introduced in America in 1934, it protected the first $2,500 of deposits, a small multiple of average earnings then, reducing the risk of bank runs. Today America is an extreme case, but insurance of over $100,000 is common in the West. This protects wealth, and income, and means investors ignore creditworthiness, worrying only about the interest-rate offer, sending deposits flocking to flimsy Icelandic banks and others with pitiful equity buffers.

The overall effect is not just to enrich one industry, but to mute the beneficial effects of finance. Healthy financial markets speed up an economy, channelling credit to firms that need it. They can also make an economy fairer and more competitive, providing the funds for those without them to challenge incumbents. Modern finance is a more slanted system in which savings are drawn towards subsidies and tax distortions. Debt-fuelled housing goes wild while investment in machines and patents runs dry. All this dulls growth.
…

Would Taxifornia work better as several smaller states? It might…

Our View: In a 6-way split, we’re the poorest California state
April 11, 2014

If California were to break into a half-dozen smaller states, a proposal that might actually make the November ballot, it would create the nation’s richest state and its poorest.

The state of Silicon Valley would bundle the vast wealth of its eponymous region with San Francisco’s riches. The per capita personal income of the folks in this new state would be $63,288, the highest in the United States. By contrast, the state of Central California – that’s where we live – would have the lowest in per capita income in the U.S., replacing current bottom placeholder Mississippi.

The new state order dreamed up by Silicon Valley venture capitalist Timothy C. Draper as part of his “Six Californias” fantasy creates an even greater economic disparity than the country now experiences. Lopping off the wealthy coasts from the working-class interior means concentrating wealth – and poverty – to unhealthy extremes.

The state of Central California gets the worst deal. An analysis by the nonpartisan Legislative Analyst’s Office points out that it would have the lowest property tax base and the second-lowest sales tax base. Those taxes are the main sources of funding for local and state governments. It would have fewer premium state universities – just one UC and no law or medical schools. But it would have the largest share of prisons. Central California also has a heavier reliance on state programs for the poor, which are in large part subsidized by the richer areas of the state.
…

What’s Behind America’s Soaring College Costs?
The cost of tuition has tripled over the last four decades.
Ronan Keenan Apr 10 2014, 10:20 AM ET

The growing $1.1 trillion student debt burden in the US has been well documented, yet concerns are subdued. That’s because the burden, unlike the housing crisis, won’t cause a sudden economic crash. Instead, it will prompt a slow strangulation of spending spread over many years. Congress has made some minor efforts to reduce interest rates on debt, but the necessity for such large loans must be scrutinized. And that means confronting the indulgences of colleges.

Tuition costs have soared in recent decades. In 1973, the average cost for tuition and fees at a private nonprofit college was $10,783, adjusted for 2013 dollars. Costs tripled over the ensuing 40 years, with the average jumping to $30,094 last year. Even in the last decade the increase was a staggering 25 percent.

The ability of colleges to raise costs has been facilitated by a sharp increase in federal student aid. Lenders freely dispense credit to students, safe in the knowledge that all loans are guaranteed by the government. Between 1973 and 2012, federal aid (inflation-adjusted) increased more than 500 percent. Looking at a shorter period, between 2002 and 2012, total federal aid to students ballooned an inflation-adjusted 106 percent to $170 billion.

Colleges have effectively been guaranteed an income stream and have used that certainty to partake in an arms race against each other by constructing lavish facilities and inflating administrative processes. The pursuit of education has turned into a vicious circle in which students need bigger loans to pay for higher costs, and colleges charge higher costs because students are getting bigger loans.
…

Advice for Debt Donkeys

Wall Street Journal - In Denial About Your Debts? The First Step Toward Solvency Is Facing Financial Reality

http://online.wsj.com/news/articles/SB10001424052702303603904579491943290225668?mod=WSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth&mg=reno64-wsj&url=http%3A%2F%2Fonline.wsj.com%2Farticle%2FSB10001424052702303603904579491943290225668.html%3Fmod%3DWSJ_hpp_MIDDLENexttoWhatsNewsForth

Because the future belongs to Lucky Ducky

“Take, for example, Americans age 25 to 34, the leading edge of the so-called millennials, the generation born in the 1980s and 1990s. They are worse off than Gen Xers (born from the mid-1960s to the late-1970s) were at that age and the baby boomers before them by nearly every economic measure — employment, income, student loan indebtedness, mobility, homeownership and other hallmarks of “household formation,” like moving out on their own, getting married and having children.

This group had the bad luck of entering the work force in the depressed and slow-growth years that started when the recession hit in 2007. Instead of spending the crucial early years of their work lives laying the groundwork for a solid economic future, many of them have struggled with unemployment and underemployment, and many have fallen so far behind where they would hope to be that recovering lost ground may well be impossible.

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/opinion/sunday/recovery-for-whom.html?hp&rref=opinion&_r=0

Prime rib for $5/lb. What’s the ManagedMedia telling you again?

http://picpaste.com/pics/f486614dbb5225d33857c0476b50d0ce.1397404945.jpg

Homeland Security app: ‘See something, send something’

Randy Ludlow
The Columbus Dispatch
April 13, 2014

Ohio Homeland Security officials are asking smartphone users to “see something, send something” with the release of an app to forward reports and photos of suspicious activity.

The “A Safer Ohio” app for both Apple and Android devices is being released shortly before the one-year anniversary of the Boston Marathon bombings on April 15.

The app now avaiable for free online allows Ohioans to relay both tips and photos of questionable activity to Homeland Security analysts for examination and potential investigation. Here’s a YouTube video on how the app works.

Officials hope Ohioans might use “Safer Ohio” to point out anything suspicious they spot at spring and summer events that attract large crowds.

Full article here

This article was posted: Sunday, April 13, 2014 at 5:44 am

Tags: police state, terrorism

Huge victory for property rights as establishment handed crushing defeat

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Infowars.com
April 12, 2014

UPDATE: Feds Back Down In New Bundy Standoff, Agree to Release Cattle

The federal government backed down and ended their siege against Nevada cattle rancher Cliven Bundy less than 24 hours after an Infowars exposé connecting the land grab to Harry Reid and a Chinese-backed solar farm went viral, becoming the biggest news story on the Internet.

http://www.infowars.com/feds-back-down-from-bundy-siege-after-infowars-expose-of-chinese-land-grab/

Some pretty interesting photos.

ven Bundy and cowboys celebrate victory over federal agents …
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2603026/Senator-speaks-favor-Nevada-rancher-militias-join-battle-federal-agents-accused-acting-like-theyre-Tienanmen-Square-fight-disputed-ranch-land.html - - Cached - Similar pages
1 day ago … Federal agents back down in stand-off

Going through her photo album, Mz. Craterton came across this picture that was snapped to memorialize her transformation into a home owner:

http://www.picpaste.com/Donkey_Crossing.jpg

The olds want to be hipsters now too:

http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/13/realestate/new-york-boomers-on-hipster-turf.html?hp

And the top rated comment on the article:

“Where, exactly, do “graphic artists” and full-time “classical pianists” get the funds to purchase condos ranging in price from $760,000 to $1.2 million? I think the New York Times does its readers a great disservice - repeatedly, over and over, in virtually every article about real estate - in not exploring the source of people’s money. Was the new place purchased from the proceeds of an old place that had risen in value? From family gifts or inheritance? From the vast and reliable annual income arising from employment as an artist? From careful saving and penny pinching over decades? Each story will be different, but I suspect that the ratio between the fruits of personal success and just being born into lucky circumstances will sadden and/or disgust the average New Yorker, a city where even in Manhattan the average family “only” makes $75,000 per year. Real estate writers should quit hawking the glamorous magical realism fantasies that the real estate gentrification industry apparently demands and start demystifying the truths of how people actually get there financially.”

Posted: 1:00 p.m. Saturday, April 12, 2014

Real Time: Wall Street landlords form lobbying arm

By Kimberly Miller

Palm Beach Post Staff Writer

Wall Street’s push into the single-family home rental market has spawned a new trade group, a sign the burgeoning billion-dollar industry is evolving as it continues to buy homes in Palm Beach County.

The launch of the Washington, D.C.-based National Rental Home Council was announced last month as a non-partisan advocacy group that will focus on educating the public and policymakers about the relatively new business model.

This story continues on our new premium website for subscribers, MyPalmBeachPost.com.
Continue reading/get access here »

I would believe this part of the paragraph below if you took out “climate-change” and replaced it with Obama Policy.

U.N. Climate Panel Issues Dire Warning of Threat to Global Food Supply, Calls for Action & Adaption

Wednesday, April 2, 2014

“climate-change impacts are projected to slow down economic growth, make poverty reduction more difficult, further erode food security, and prolong existing and create new poverty traps, the latter particularly in urban areas and emerging hot spots of hunger,”

http://www.democracynow.org/2014/4/2/un_climate_panel_issues_dire_warning - 77k -

Wow. If you have savings, you are now part of the 0.1% oligarchy, according to Krugman. Wow. I’m an oligarch now, as are many on this blog.

Paul Krugman: Blame American “oligarchs” for mass unemployment
The New York Times columnist says the 0.1 percent is thwarting policies to help everyone else
Salon.com
by Elias Isquith
Monday, Apr 7, 2014

Award-winning economist and best-selling author Paul Krugman says that despite new studies showing higher inflation would benefit the U.S. economy, American policymakers are unlikely to do anything for one chief reason: because the “oligarchs” who fund our elections don’t want to see their holdings decrease in value.

Doing what America did after World War II — using low interest rates and inflation to erode the debt burden — is often referred to as “financial repression,” which sounds bad. But who wouldn’t prefer modest inflation and a bit of asset erosion to mass unemployment? Well, you know who: the 0.1 percent, who receive “only” 4 percent of wages but account for more than 20 percent of total wealth. Modestly higher inflation, say 4 percent, would be good for the vast majority of people, but it would be bad for the superelite. And guess who gets to define conventional wisdom.

http://www.salon.com/2014/04/07/paul_krugman_blame_american_oligarchs_for_mass_unemployment/

Great argumentation:

The problem with breaking basic safety rules and getting away with it leads to a belief that the rules don’t really apply to the actor.

I pledge allegiance to the flag,
Of the winning party,
And to the recognized body for which it stands.

One nation,
Under something,
With liberty for some people,
And justice for others.

44% of listings in Phoenix have had a price cut. This is 13% more than the same time last year, and almost back up to the 2010 peak.

http://www.zillow.com/phoenix-metro-az_r394976/home-values/

Late night, all de trolls are out
They make little Igor want to shout
Hey trolls what do de oligarchs pay?
To make you say the crap dey pay you to say?

A false flag operation created by Obama to shelter Harry Reid from the fallout of the Bundy ranch fail.

Never underestimate what the statists will do to keep stating.

Reuters - Three people killed in shootings at Jewish centers in Kansas

http://www.reuters.com/article/2014/04/14/us-usa-kansas-shooting-idUSBREA3C0MX20140414

Got 7.62×39?

http://picpaste.com/pics/769b86de20bfabda5f5897afdacd1f82.1397439801.jpg

Make no mistake as to why Lola bashes Reagan. It isn’t because his mommy and daddy were air traffic controllers. It is a carefully crafted strategy that is being deployed to help HILLARY in 2016. How do you ignore that the economy is still in the crapper after 8 years of an incumbent leftist and 16 of the last 30 with Democrat presidents? You need to reach back even further and blame something else.

This has been focus grouped, polled and gamed out. They cannot just point to the economy under Bubba. It is too recent and Bubba’s economic policies were much too far right for the current Democratic Party and Hillary. None of this New Democrat fiscal conservative stuff that helped Bubba win. They need to be able to ignore all that. Hence blame Reagan. It is long enough ago that people don’t instantly scoff. They tie the left’s visceral hate of St. Ronnie with some sound bite blather about “trickle down” and viola, off the hook for the last 8 years. This is Lola’s game.

Ignore NAFTA, which is a big millstone for Hillary. Ignore the globalization.

April 13, 2014, 4:58 p.m. ET
U.S. Increases Pressure on Russia Over Ukraine as Europe Holds Back
By William Mauldin

WASHINGTON–The Obama administration is finding ways to unilaterally ratchet up pressure on Russia as it leans on global powers to back harsher sanctions should Moscow continue to stir trouble in Ukraine.

At the same time, a set of weekend meetings in Washington of the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank showcased the reluctance of European allies to impose stronger measures against Moscow. Concern runs high in Europe about the economic repercussions of penalizing a major trading partner and energy supplier.

The moves come amid signs of a major escalation by Russia, as pro-Russian forces apparently backed by Russian agents have taken over several cities and towns in the east.

European Union foreign ministers are expected to discuss new targeted sanctions on Russia in Luxembourg Monday. Diplomats said the EU isn’t ready to move to a new phase of broader economic measures against Moscow without fresh Russian incursions into Ukraine.

While pushing its allies to prepare for a heightened set of sanctions, Washington is quietly taking a series of smaller steps to target Russia’s government and businesses.

The U.S. late last week sanctioned a gas company, Chernomorneftegaz, and seven Ukrainian officials that it said were connected with the annexation of Crimea, bringing the total number of Russian and Ukrainian officials hit with U.S. sanctions to 38.

Meanwhile, the Export-Import Bank, a U.S. government agency, said it is no longer considering a request to help fund a liquefied-natural-gas project in the Russian Arctic that is part-owned by Gennady Timchenko, an energy tycoon on the official U.S. sanctions list.

And the State and Commerce departments have stopped granting new export licenses for shipments of military and “dual-use” goods to Russia. Dual-use products are those with civilian and military uses and include everything from horses to cryptography software and equipment used to detonate explosions in Russian mines.

David Lipton, the IMF’s No. 2 official, said in an interview Sunday that the combined set of international sanctions against Russia so far, and uncertainties that they have caused, “will certainly contribute to Russia’s economic difficulties.”

Were the international community to go further, Mr. Lipton predicted, “a future round of sanctions or counter-sanctions could be extremely consequential for Russia, Ukraine and Europe.”
…

Ron Paul group to defy IRS

By Joel Gehrke |
APRIL 15, 2014 AT 2:15 PM

Ron Paul’s nonprofit Campaign for Liberty will fight the Internal Revenue Service’s demand that it reveal its donor list to the agency, despite having already been fined for refusing to do so.

“There is no legitimate reason for the IRS to know who donates to Campaign for Liberty,” Megan Stiles, the communications director at Campaign for Liberty, told the Washington Examiner in an email on Tuesday. “We believe the First Amendment is on our side as evidenced by cases such as NAACP v. Alabama and International Union UAW v. National Right to Work. Many 501(c)(4) organizations protect the privacy of their donors in the very same way as Campaign for Liberty. For some reason the IRS has now chosen to single out Campaign for Liberty for special attention. We plan to fight this all the way.”

Ron Paul suggested that the group will refuse to pay the IRS fine in a fundraising email to supporters about the agency’s request for information.

“Paying this outrageous extortionist fine — just to exercise our rights as American citizens to petition our government — may even be cheaper in the short run,” he wrote. “But it’ll just embolden an alphabet soup of other federal agencies to come after us.” Paul’s email said that the rule requiring that 501(c)(4)s list their donors is “rarely enforced.”

Stiles accused the IRS of trying to silence her organization. “The IRS technically requires donor information from 501(c)(4) organizations and is forbidden by law from releasing it to the public, yet despite this they have ‘mistakenly’ released the information repeatedly over the years,” she wrote. “Often these leaks have been made to political opponents of the conservative groups whose information was leaked. Leaking the donor information is intended to harass and to intimidate those donors from donating to political causes. Campaign for Liberty has refused to provide donor information to the IRS to protect the privacy of our members. Now the IRS has demanded the information and fined Campaign for Liberty for protecting its members’ privacy.”

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