The Housing Bubble

Signing that mortgage is a one way ticket to hell. Don’t do it!

Was yesterday’s relief rally on Wall Street echoed overnight in China?

Has oil finally reached a firm bottom?

Has the Baltic Dry Index finally alighted on terra firma?

First of all, congrats to the Don for sticking his thumb in the eye of Faux News. Magnificent! (and cue the lefty whiners wringing their hands about the b*tch slap to Fox, now THERE will be a moment)

And secondly, congrats to Justin Raimondo who has destroyed the navel gazers with their ruminations about the meaning of Trump. A superb piece of journalism (gotta love the Chris Matthews clip where he destroys the National Review and the Kristolnacht)

http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2016/01/24/nationalism-and-its-discontents-the-meaning-of-trump/

“The meaning of Trumpism is that Americans want to rid themselves of the burden of empire: Wright is right about that. Trump’s rise augurs a seismic shift in the foreign policy debate in this country, marking the end of the interventionist consensus that dominates both parties. And it certainly means the final defeat and humiliation of the neoconservatives, who are busy spewing vitriol at him and his “plebeian” supporters. And that alone is worth whatever price we have to pay for the triumph of Trump. For the neocons are the very core of the War Party: their demise as a politically effective force inside the GOP is an event that every person who wants a more peaceful world has been longing for and should celebrate.”

It’s a long piece, but well worth reading.

Marketwatch dot com
Opinion: Here’s one top investor’s odds of a market meltdown
By John Coumarianos
Published: Jan 27, 2016 5:18 a.m. ET
Howard Marks expects no 2008-like downturn, but has plenty to worry about
Everett Collection

Investors often are psychologically scarred by the financial traumas they’ve lived through. So it’s not without reason that the global markets’ gyrations of the past few weeks should trigger a fear of another 2008-like financial crisis.

In response, Howard Marks, the respected co-chairman of Oaktree Capital Management, offers an excellent view of behavioral finance in a recent memo, entitled “On the Couch.”.

To the question of whether the markets’ current volatility is setting up another deep plunge like investors suffered in 2008, Marks says no, but not without trepidation, and his reasoning is worth a closer look.

For starters, Marks discounts the likelihood of a bust because, he writes, “we haven’t had a boom (either in the economy or in the stock market).”

That’s true about the U.S. economy, but more difficult to believe about the U.S. stock market. The S&P 500 gained 162%, including dividends, from 2009 through 2015. Such a gain, which equals a 15% annualized return over a seven-year stretch, seems like it should be called a boom.
…

Hands up, don’t shoot!

#rancherlivesmatter

Oregon stand-off militiaman killed in shootout with the FBI

Oregon militia spokesman LaVoy Finicum has been shot dead after a traffic stop escalated into a shoot-out that saw Ryan Bundy wounded and eight leaders of the occupation movement arrested.

The group’s leader Ammon Bundy was among the militiamen arrested during the encounter on Tuesday afternoon as they drove to attend a community meeting in the neighboring town.

It is the climax of a tense stand-off between federal agents and the activists more than three weeks after they took over a government building in Burns, Oregon, to protest two ranchers being jailed.

According to local media, shots were fired within minutes of the traffic stop, killing Finicum and wounding Ryan Bundy.

It is not clear who opened fire first.

Canada
January 25, 2016 11:15 am
Canada’s housing correction is ‘already happening’ say experts
By Jamie Sturgeon
Consumer Affairs Reporter Global News

Newly constructed homes are coming up for sale in already softening housing markets, experts say.

Builders have been busy constructing new houses over the past year or so in places like Calgary and Regina thanks to plans put in motion when oil prices were sharply higher.

Unfortunately for them, those new homes are being finished just as work is drying up and job seekers are moving away from Alberta and Saskatchewan, a trend that is already denting real estate values in both provinces.
…

Money
Does the Fed Have the Guts to Raise Interest Rates?
6:59 AM ET
A pedestrian walks past the Marriner S. Eccles Federal Reserve building in Washington, D.C., on December 15, 2015.
Andrew Harrer—Bloomberg via Getty Images

While conventional wisdom says the Fed will wimp out and leave interest rates alone, it’s a bit more complicated.

In December, when the Federal Reserve was on the verge of raising interest rates for the first time in nearly a decade, several prominent economists including Nouriel Roubini warned that such a move was premature. The Fed lifted rates anyway.

Despite fears over the global economy, Fed chair Janet Yellen said she was “confident about the fundamentals driving the U.S. economy.” A few weeks later, vice chairman Stanley Fischer added that he could see the Fed raising rates four times this year. “We make our own analysis and our analysis says that the market is under-estimating where we’re going to be,” he told CNBC.

Later today, investors will see whether the Fed is finally willing to listen to others.

Since the Fed lifted rates in mid December, the S&P 500 index has lost 8% of its value, the Nasdaq composite index has tumbled 9%, and the Dow Jones industrial average is down 10%. Investors are sending a clear signal that the economy isn’t nearly as strong as policymakers think.

So how will central bankers respond?
…

The head of China’s statistics bureau is being investigated for corruption, the country’s watchdog said on Tuesday.

“Wang Baoan is suspected of severe disciplinary violations, he is currently under investigation,” the Central Commission for Discipline Inspection said in a one-line statement on its website, using a phrase that is usually used to refer to corruption.

The announcement came just hours after Wang appeared at a media briefing in Beijing on China’s economy in 2015.

Last week the National Bureau of Statistics released data that showed China’s economy grew at the slowest pace in 25 years.

Wang reiterated on Tuesday that the country’s gross domestic product calculations were reliable, Chinese media reported, despite widespread criticism of the data.

Questions have repeatedly been raised about the accuracy of official Chinese economic statistics, which critics say can be subject to political manipulation.

Wang was appointed head of the National Bureau of Statistics in April 2015. He previously spent about 17 years in various positions in the finance ministry.

http://www.theguardian.com/world/2016/jan/27/china-statistics-bureau-chief-investigated-corruption

Apple began to see “some signs of economic softness” in its Greater China region earlier this month, according to CEO Tim Cook.

Despite boasting the company’s “best results ever” in the region (which also includes Taiwan and Hong Kong), Cook acknowledged “the turbulent environment.” The signs of softness, he said, have most notably been seen in the Hong Kong area.

“Beyond the short-term volatility, we remain very confident about the long-term potential about the China market and the large opportunities ahead of us, and we are maintaining our investment plans,” Cook said.

Revenue in the region grew 14 percent over the prior year, 47 percent sequentially, and 17 percent year-over-year in constant currency, Cook said, adding that those results “were fueled by our highest ever quarterly iPhone sales and record App Store performance.”

In fact, later in the company’s earnings call, Cook said Apple remains “very bullish on China” and does not “subscribe to the doom and gloom kind of predictions.”

http://www.cnbc.com/2016/01/26/apple-begins-to-see-signs-of-softness-in-china.html

Trail balloon?

——————-

Obama on Supreme Court? ‘A great idea,’ Clinton says
CNN | 6:49 PM ET, Tue January 26, 2016 | Dam Merica

Barack Obama will be out of a job next year. And one voter in Iowa had a suggestion for Hillary Clinton, should she become president: Nominate him to the Supreme Court.

“Wow. What a great idea. Nobody has ever suggested that to me. Wow,” Clinton said to laughter and applause from the audience.

“He may have a few other things to do,” Clinton added.

After noting how the next president will nominate “at least three” Supreme Court justices and that she isn’t happy with the current Supreme Court, Clinton went back to the voter’s question.

If you like your re-education camps, you can keep your re-education camps.

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NY Court: Farmers to Be Re-Educated, Pay Fines for Not Hosting Homosexual Wedding
cns news | 1/26/16 | Penny Starr

A couple who hosts occasional wedding ceremonies on their New York farm have lost an appeal to overturn the $13,000 in fines levied against them by the state’s human rights agency, which ruled that their refusal to host a wedding for two women was discriminatory.

On Jan. 14, the New York Supreme Court, Appellate Division, Third Department, upheld the agency’s order and the fines, a decision the Alliance Defending Freedom - which represented Robert and Cynthia Gifford - said amounted to confirming, “that the government can punish the Giffords for declining to coordinate a ceremony that conflicts with their conscience.”

The couple lives in a barn they built on their farm and have occasionally hosted weddings on the first floor and the surrounding backyard area, according to ADF.

“After the agency ruled that the Giffords were guilty of ‘sexual orientation discrimination,’ it fined them $10,000, plus $3,000 in damages and ordered them to implement re-education training classes designed to contradict the couple’s religious beliefs about marriage,” a press release issued following the court decision stated.

FWIW: Go here to see what the Vegas odds are regarding various end-of-year oil price ranges …

http://www.sportsbet.com.au/betting/financial/commodity-prices?LeftNav

Office market in Houston melting down.

http://wolfstreet.com/2016/01/26/office-market-in-houston-croaks/

Face.The.Triumph.Of.Trump.

When are the sheeple going to stop voting for corrupt, crony-capitalist dynasties?

http://www.nydailynews.com/entertainment/gossip/confidential/chelsea-clinton-gearing-white-house-bid-article-1.2510390

When we have our permanent Democrat supermajarity, public sector corruption will shift into high gear with impunity from the captured judiciary and enforcers. And we will be even more of a banana republic.

http://www.theguardian.com/global-development/2016/jan/27/index-perceived-corruption-billions-locked-in-poverty-by-public-sector

Pure Propaganda.

We have a government that is now guaranteeing sub-prime mortgages again.

No jobs.

Higher and higher taxes.

———————————————-

It’s a seller’s market but are homes still affordable?
Yahoo Finance - Melody Hahm - 1/27/2016

U.S. home prices saw a 5.8% year-over-year increase in November, according to Tuesday’s S&P/Case-Shiller 20-city composite.

“The housing market continues to see a strong recovery. Recovery is stronger than the historical trend, and a lot of that is driven by strong job growth numbers.” says Stan Humphries, chief economist and head of analytics at Zillow Group. In August 2013 the same 20-city composite posted a 12.1% increase year-over-year. Despite this report’s robust numbers, current figures are a far from those highs.

“Home prices were really appreciating too quickly back then and that’s bad for the housing market because it risks reinflating another housing bubble. So we’re happy to see lower gains, but they’re still very robust — you have to compare that to the historical average where home prices rise about 2% to 4% a year,” says Humphries.

Additionally, renters are reluctant to make the commitment to buy. Only 32% of all purchasers in 2015 were first-time homebuyers, which marks the third straight yearly decline and the lowest percentage since 1987.

As millennials put off marriage and having kids, they have less need to buy a home. They’re now starting to “move into home buying in earnest, but a lot of them are still renting,” says Humphries.

The democrats “Sophie’s Choice”

Vote for a thoroughly corrupted liar with a like factor of -3

Or a massive tax increasing socialist…

Where did you gone JFK, A nation turns its lonely eyes to you…

————

Democrats would be insane to nominate Bernie Sanders
Dana Milbank Opinion - January 26,2016 - Washington Post

I adore Bernie Sanders.

And I am convinced Democrats would be insane to nominate him.

Sanders and his supporters boast of polls showing him, on average, matching up slightly better against Trump than Clinton does. But those matchups are misleading: Opponents have been attacking and defining Clinton for a quarter- century, but nobody has really gone to work yet on demonizing Sanders.

The first questioner from the audience asked Sanders to explain why he embraces the “socialist” label and requested that Sanders define it “so that it doesn’t concern the rest of us citizens.”

Sanders, explaining that much of what he proposes is happening in Scandinavia and Germany (a concept that itself alarms Americans who don’t want to be like socialized Europe), answered vaguely: “Creating a government that works for all of us, not just a handful of people on the top — that’s my definition of democratic socialism.”

But that’s not how Republicans will define socialism — and they’ll have the dictionary on their side. They’ll portray Sanders as one who wants the government to own and control major industries and the means of production and distribution of goods. They’ll say he wants to take away private property. That wouldn’t be fair, but it would be easy. Socialists don’t win national elections in the United States .

Sanders on Monday night also admitted he would seek massive tax increases — “one of the biggest tax hikes in history,” as moderator Chris Cuomo put it — to expand Medicare to all. Sanders, this time making a comparison with Britain and France, allowed that “hypothetically, you’re going to pay $5,000 more in taxes,” and declared, “We will raise taxes, yes we will.” He said this would be offset by lower health-insurance premiums and protested that “it’s demagogic to say, oh, you’re paying more in taxes.”

Sanders also made clear he would be happy to identify Democrats as the party of big government and of wealth redistribution. When Cuomo said Sanders seemed to be saying he would grow government “bigger than ever,” Sanders didn’t quarrel, saying, “People want to criticize me, okay,” and “Fine, if that’s the criticism, I accept it.”

Sanders accepts it, but are Democrats ready to accept ownership of socialism, massive tax increases and a dramatic expansion of government? If so, they will lose.

Ted Cruz Trumpets Endorsement From a Man Who Thinks God Sent Hitler to Hunt the Jews

Last week, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas proudly announced the latest endorsement of his presidential bid. It came from Mike Bickle, the founder and director of the International House of Prayer of Kansas City. Bickle is a controversial pastor who has attacked same-sex marriage as a sign of the End Times and seemingly blamed the Jews for the Holocaust.

http://www.motherjones.com/mojo/2016/01/ted-cruz-welcomes-endorsement-guy-who-thinks-god-sent-hitler-hunt-jews?platform=hootsuite

I luv it when liberals who vote for liberals get smacked in the face with liberalism.

New York Values in action.

Go google NYC in the 1970s. What a toilet.

——————–

New York City To Allow Public Urination, So Minorities Can…
The Political Insider | 1/25/2016 |

The left-wingers who run New York City are about to make it 100% legal to urinate in public.

Why? Because many blacks and minorities have been fined or arrested for it. They would rather legalize this disgusting behavior than enforce basic rules of public sanitation.

From Craine’s New York:

Urinating and drinking in public would no longer be treated as crimes under a package of bills New York’s City Council will consider to ease enforcement of quality-of-life offenses that lawmakers say clog the courts and have been disproportionately enforced against minorities.

According to the New York Times, one liberal official who sponsored this change noted it was designed to help minorities “reach their full potential.”

This also comes as the city is relaxing rules on public drug use, open alcohol container rules, public masturbation, and excessive noise in this sweeping “Criminal Justice Reform Act.”

“Anyone claiming that America’s economy is in decline is peddling fiction.”

– President Obama, 2016 SOTU.

DEFLATION = DEBT DESTRUCTION

Bernie Heard the Criticism. His New Ad Is Optimistic, Inspiring - and Very Diverse.

The Bernie Sanders campaign is out with Part 2 of its closing statement in Iowa, a television commercial that picks up where last week’s much-discussed Simon and Garfunkel–scored “America” spot left off. The new 60-second ad stands out for two chief reasons: its unbridled optimism and its diversity.

“There are those who say we cannot defeat a corrupt political system and fix a rigged economy, but I believe we need to lift our vision above the obstacles in place and look to the American horizon,” Sanders says, before ticking off his wish list that includes universal health care and higher education, equal pay for women, a living wage for all, and “an America where after a lifetime of labor, there is time for rest and grandchildren.”

http://www.slate.com/blogs/the_slatest/2016/01/26/bernie_sanders_new_ad_is_optimistic_and_diverse.html

“Yes, We’re Corrupt”: A List of Politicians Admitting That Money Controls Politics

One of the most embarrassing aspects of U.S. politics is politicians who deny that money has any impact on what they do. For instance, Tom Corbett, Pennsylvania’s notoriously fracking-friendly former governor, got $1.7 million from oil and gas companies but assured voters that “The contributions don’t affect my decisions.” If you’re trying to get people to vote for you, you can’t tell them that what they want doesn’t matter.

This pose is also popular with a certain prominent breed of pundits, who love to tell us “Don’t Follow the Money” (New York Times columnist David Brooks), or “Money does not buy elections” (Freakonomics co-author Stephen Dubner on public radio’s Marketplace), or “Money won’t buy you votes” (Yale Law School professor Peter H. Schuck in the Los Angeles Times).

Meanwhile, 85 percent of Americans say we need to either “completely rebuild” or make “fundamental changes” to the campaign finance system. Just 13 percent think “only minor changes are necessary,” less than the 18 percent of Americans who believe they’ve been in the presence of a ghost.

So we’ve decided that it would be useful to collect examples of actual politicians acknowledging the glaringly obvious reality. Here’s a start; I’m sure there must be many others, so if you have suggestions, please leave them in the comments or email me. I’d also love to speak directly to current or former politicians who have an opinion about it.

• “I gave to many people, before this, before two months ago, I was a businessman. I give to everybody. When they call, I give. And do you know what? When I need something from them two years later, three years later, I call them, they are there for me. And that’s a broken system.” — Donald Trump in 2015.

• “[T]his is what’s wrong. [Donald Trump] buys and sells politicians of all stripes … he’s used to buying politicians.” — Sen. Rand Paul, R-Ky., in 2015.

“Now [the United States is] just an oligarchy, with unlimited political bribery being the essence of getting the nominations for president or to elect the president. And the same thing applies to governors and U.S. senators and congressmembers. … So now we’ve just seen a complete subversion of our political system as a payoff to major contributors …” — Jimmy Carter, former president, in 2015. (Thanks to Sam Sacks.)

• “[T]he millionaire class and the billionaire class increasingly own the political process, and they own the politicians that go to them for money. … we are moving very, very quickly from a democratic society, one person, one vote, to an oligarchic form of society, where billionaires would be determining who the elected officials of this country are.” — Sen. Bernie Sanders, I-Vt., in 2015.

https://theintercept.com/2015/07/30/politicians-admitting-obvious-fact-money-affects-vote/

Have Da Boyz already exited the Fed-Wall Street pump & dump, leaving retail investors, yet again, holding the bag?

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/feldstein-says-fed-should-let-the-market-fall-and-keep-hiking-rates-2016-01-27

FB Nation will have heart-rending tales of victimhood a year from now.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/new-home-sales-soar-to-annual-rate-of-544000-2016-01-27?link=MW_home_latest_news

We need to import millions more…

They will vote as a block for the democrats so all is good.

————————–

“Try to Relax Here for a While Because They’re Going to Kill You Anyway”
FrontPage Mag | January 25, 2016 | Daniel Greenfield

In one particularly poignant chapter, Ms. Zoepf steps through the doors of a girls’ prison in Syria, where 16-year-old Zahra al-Azzo was jailed for being raped. (That’s right, they jailed her.)

The prison is a sort of holding facility for girls like Zahra who are at risk of being murdered by their families in a so-called honor killing. Yet there is little to protect the young women once they leave.

“One of the girls came to me, crying, the other day,” the head social worker tells Ms. Zoepf. “She wanted to go home and it’s an honor crime situation. I told her, ‘Try to relax here for a while because they’re going to kill you anyway when you’re released.’ It sounds cruel, but I needed to calm her down, to get her to behave sensibly.’”

Zahra was eventually freed from the prison in order to marry a cousin. Shortly thereafter, she was hacked to death in her apartment by her own brother-with the blessing of their parents. Zahra’s crime: “losing her virginity out of wedlock.” Her brother believed he was “washing away the shame” to the family.

The day of her murder, Ms. Zoepf chronicles, the girl’s family threw a party.

When you consider the problem of terrorism, it’s important to remember that we are dealing with societies where dehumanization and murder of even one’s own closest relatives is not an aberration.

Anyone paying attention to the Muslim problems in England?

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fA6XcyXsxXU

iF your think the DOW IS headed to 10k, you know you can short it and profit from your vision.

dont just site on the sidelines, get in the game.

Update: Dow Craters; Blows Hole Through 16,000 Support Level

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/index/DJIA

A FSA ALERT:

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Federal Report: 40 Percent Qualify for Need-Tested Benefits
Townhall.com | January 27, 2016 | Terry Jeffrey

As of December 2012, the total population of the United States — including members of the Armed Forces stationed overseas — equaled 315,255,012, according to the Census Bureau’s estimate.

At some time during 2012, according to a study the Congressional Research Service published last month, approximately 134,800,000 people qualified for one or more of “nine major need-tested benefit programs” and approximately 106,000,000 actually received benefits from at least one of them.

That means about 42.7 percent of the U.S population was eligible for one or more of these government benefit programs at some time during 2012 and about 33.6 percent actually received a benefit.

The CRS Report — “Need-Tested Benefits: Estimated Eligibility and Benefit Receipt by Families and Individuals” — looked at eligibility and receipt of benefits from: the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (commonly known as food stamps), the refundable Earned Income Tax Credit, the refundable Additional Child Tax Credit, Supplemental Security Income, housing assistance, WIC (Women, Infants and Children), Temporary Assistance for Needy Families, the Child Care and Development Fund and the Low-Income Home Energy Assistance Program.

“Medicaid is not included in the central analysis of this report. Rather, it is discussed separately (in Appendix B) for several reasons,” said the report. “TRIM3 did not include estimates of Medicaid enrollment and the value of benefits for 2012. This report focuses on receipt of need-tested benefits in 2012. However, the Affordable Care Act (ACA) made substantial changes to Medicaid eligibility, which became effective in 2014. Thus, the picture of Medicaid today and in future years might be significantly different from that of 2012.”

Obamacare, in fact, increased eligibility for Medicaid. Thus, it is reasonable to conclude, it is a force that will tend to drive up the number of people eligible for and receiving “need-tested” government benefits.

Lately I’ve been regretting not buying my last rental. (LL had wanted $150K in January 2012, $40K over most estimates at the time. It sold last fall for $200K.) Then I remember the new neighbors who moved in just before we left. They shrieked at each other in a foreign language and the requisite junk car (no hood, half hanging off cover) outside the garage appeared. We were lucky because we could leave.

Been in this rental since July. It’s a very nice area, despite the east Las Vegas location. Neighbors are now in an uproar because a drug rehab (for 14 individuals) has been quietly established in a house right in the middle of the development. Again, we’re lucky. If things get worse, we can leave.

“1.2-million sq. ft. solar panel ‘Gigafactory’ in Buffalo almost ready, will make 1 GW/year”

http://www.treehugger.com/solar-technology/12-million-sq-ft-solar-gigafactory-buffalo-ny-looks-almost-ready-1-gw-year.html

“Buffalo is attempting an economic comeback fueled by the state’s Buffalo Billion initiative, a multi-year redevelopment plan spearheaded by Governor Andrew Cuomo. Included in the funding is support for a new genomic research center and an information technology center, but at the heart of the city’s ambitions is the solar factory, which New York is spending $750 million to build and equip. SolarCity, based in Silicon Valley, will lease it, essentially for free…”

” homeowners participating in one of SolarCity’s offerings can lease the system for 20 years, paying a monthly fee. Because it owns the panels, SolarCity benefits from the generous 30 percent federal investment tax credit for solar power; the homeowner is credited at retail electricity rates for any surplus power fed back to the grid. SolarCity is still unprofitable, but its revenue doubled from 2012 to 2014 as its leasing program proved attractive for homeowners…”

“Our aspiration is to build many more of these factories over time,” says Peter Rive, the chief technology officer, who founded SolarCity with his brother nine years ago (their cousin Elon Musk is the company’s chairman).”

“At the end of 2016, the federal tax credit for solar power is due to drop from 30 percent to 10 percent for businesses and to disappear altogether for consumers who buy their own solar panels…”

“If technologies were chosen purely on the basis of what it costs to produce power, “there isn’t a market for residential solar,” says Severin Borenstein, a professor at the Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, and an expert on electricity economics. Without government incentives for clean energy like solar, he says, “natural gas wipes everything else away.”

http://www.technologyreview.com/review/540226/paying-for-solar-power/

Losing that subsidy at the end of the year is going to leave a mark. Note that the factory will not even use its own solar cells on the roof to manufacture solar cells. Perhaps they know something.

If there is money to be made off taxpayers, we can do it better right here in NY! Sorry China.

The Bethlehem Lackawanna Mill to the Southwest raised a generation of the Skye clan.

Montecito Bank & Trust profits up 21 percent in 2015

Santa Barbara-based Montecito Bank & Trust reported net income of $15.9 million for 2015, up from $13.1 million in 2014. (21%) Looks like some winners out there.

They’re millionaires, and they get Obamacare subsidies

Dan Mangan
4 Hours Ago

This one weird trick can help even rich people buy Obamacare at sharply reduced prices. Really.

A number of wealthy individuals, some of whom were “disgusted” with Obamacare when it first went into effect, nonetheless are now taking advantage of federal financial aid available under that health-care law to help significantly reduce their monthly insurance premiums.

Carolyn McClanahan, a Jacksonville, Florida-based financial advisor and medical doctor, told CNBC that she’s steered at least five such clients, whose individual net worths range between $1 million and $3 million, toward buying Obamacare health plans because of the federal subsidies available due to their taxable income levels.

Those clients are saving between $4,600 and $8,800 in annual premium payments as a result of subsidies. On top of that, McClanahan said, those customers are getting extra financial help to pay their out-of-pocket health expenses — the copayments, coinsurance and deductibles that aren’t covered by their insurance plan.

The idea of giving rich people discounted Obamacare plans raises the eyebrows of even McClanahan’s clients, who were initially skeptical when she described the option.

“Everybody was like, ‘Are you sure this is going to work?’” McClanahan said of her clients’ reaction.

“And I’m like, ‘Yes, I’m sure it’s going to work.’”

And it’s legal as well, because of the way the Affordable Care Act focuses on income rather than net worth to establish eligibility for Obamacare aid.

“The law was set up that way, so I’m going to help them take advantage of it.”

The ACA was enacted primarily to help uninsured people get health coverage at a price they could afford. To help do that, the ACA authorized the federal government to issue tax credits, or subsidies, to people with low or moderate incomes who buy health plans sold on government-run Obamacare exchanges.

For 2016, individuals with annual taxable income between $11,770 and $47,070 qualify for such aid.

McClanahan’s Obamacare customer clients were all retirees who stopped working before they were 65 years old. They no longer had the option of getting health insurance through their jobs, and were too young to qualify for Medicare, the federal health insurance program for senior citizens.

Those people, while having relatively high net worths due to investments and real estate, also were in a position to have taxable income that was low enough to qualify for Obamacare subsidies.

But that income could still be high enough to keep them above 100 percent of the poverty level. If their incomes fell below that, they would not qualify for the subsidies to help buy private plans, and also would not qualify for government-run Medicaid because Florida rejected expanding that program to cover more low-income people.

McClanahan said she helped the clients structure their income stream — and the taxable component of it — “just right.”

“The first thing you’ve got to figure out is how much money do they need to live on,” she said.

The clients, all of whom had paid off their homes, needed “anywhere between $5,000 and $7,000 a month” to live on, she said.

Helping that strategy was the clients’ use of bond ladders, which gave them steady income as the bonds matured over time, and also spun off interest payments from the bonds’ coupons. While the interest payment is taxable, the initial investment in the bonds is not, McClanahan noted.

“For most people, we’re aiming for like $18,000, $19,000 in income” that is taxable, she said.

That level of income also was low enough that all of the clients qualified for the added Obamacare aid of “cost-sharing reductions,” which are available to people with taxable incomes below about $29,000 who enroll in so-called silver plans. Without cost-sharing reductions, silver plans cover about 70 percent of customers’ medical expenses, with the balance owed out-of-pocket by the customer.

Angie Koury Lieb, a Jacksonville insurance broker, helped McClanahan’s clients get into those plans, which in Florida are sold on the federally run Obamacare exchange HealthCare.gov.

Lieb said that some clients initially “were pretty disgusted about the subsidies and how it all works” when Obamacare first began taking effect.

“I think a lot of it was very politically motivated, that they didn’t necessarily agree with the Affordable Care Act itself,” she said.

“Then they said, ‘Well, shoot, I’m going to try to qualify myself,’” Lieb said. “I think they were more, ‘If I can’t beat them, join them.’”

Lieb said that when she helped McClanahan’s clients sign up on HealthCare.gov and pick their plans, “they were usually pretty pleased and excited” when they saw how much subsidies they would be getting to lower their premiums.

And “with the cost-sharing reduction, I think people were extremely happy,” Lieb said. “It reminds people of what health insurance looked like 25 years ago, when they had a $10 copay and no deductible.”

Lieb and McClanahan both noted the fact that their clients, due to their financial position, came under scrutiny from the government when they applied for their subsidies. To obtain those subsidies, customers have to indicate how much income they expect to earn in the coming year.

Every client, McClanahan said, was flagged for review of their subsidy eligibility when they applied because tax forms revealed they previously had high incomes.

“We had to provide a lot of supporting documentation,” McClanahan said.

Clients also must be conscientious about reporting income changes during the course of the year. If people end up earning more than they had estimated when they applied for their subsidies, they could end up owing some or all of the subsidy back when they file their tax returns the following year.

The firm dollar will remain a restraining force on economic activity and should cause the year-over-year increase in the CPI to reverse later in the year. Under such circumstances, lower, rather than higher, inflation remains the greater risk. Such conditions are ultimately consistent with an environment conducive to declining long-term U.S. Treasury bond yields. In short, we believe that the long awaited secular low in long-term Treasury bond yields remains ahead.

Van R. Hoisington
Lacy H. Hunt, Ph.D.

Latin American countries are telling women of child-bearing years to hold off getting pregnant for the next couple of years due to the risk of birth defects (babies born with abnormally small heads and malformed brains). Our own Pineapples have left HBB readers sadly familiar with the tragedy of small-brained pinheads and mental defectives living stunted existences. Are we now going to see a wave of Central American women headed for the relative safety of North America to get pregnant and have their babies?

http://news.yahoo.com/zika-pregnancy-panic-loaded-issue-latin-america-023536335.html;_ylt=AwrC2Q7nZqlWEGwAfzzQtDMD;_ylu=X3oDMTByNXM5bzY5BGNvbG8DYmYxBHBvcwMzBHZ0aWQDBHNlYwNzcg–

If the fed leaves the market on life support and doesn’t save it where will it end up?

We all know this was a fed driven rally. Can they let it go or do they have to prop it up at any cost?

Is there a law of diminishing terms coming into factor?

How can you can make investment decisions in this environment?

Hillary Clinton: I’d Appoint Obama to the Supreme Court

Kurt Nimmo | Infowars.com - January 27, 2016 356 Comments

During a campaign stop in Deocorah, Iowa on Tuesday, Hillary Clinton said she likes the idea of Barack Obama sitting on the Supreme Court.

“I would certainly take that under advisement,” she said. “I mean he’s brilliant, and he can set forth an argument, and he was a law professor, so he’s got all the credentials.”

She added “we do have to get a Democratic Senate to get him confirmed so you’re going to have to help me on that, OK?”

This is nothing new. In 2015, before she announced her run, Clinton floated the idea of appointing Obama to the Supreme Court. She also mentioned possibly appointing him to her cabinet.

“I would of course consider him for the Supreme Court,” Clinton said. “I believe he would make a great justice, and he’s certainly qualified for the role. No US President has ever gone to the Supreme Court, nor has any individual ever served in all three branches of our government, so it would be unprecedented. But I agree; he’d definitely make for a great Supreme Court Justice, at a time when we need those seats filled with strong independent minds.”

Clinton’s claim regarding Obama’s professorship is as phony as everything else about her campaign. Obama was never a professor. He wasn’t even an adjunct.

According to Doug Ross, who spent some time with the facility members who worked with Barack Obama in Chicago, the University of Chicago “law school got a phone call from the Board of Trustees telling them to find him an office, put him on the payroll, and give him a class to teach. The Board told him he didn’t have to be a member of the faculty, but they needed to give him a temporary position. He was never a professor and was hardly an adjunct.”

Obama, according to Ross, was “lazy, unqualified, never attended any of the faculty meetings” and “it was clear that the position was nothing more than a political stepping stool.”

Furthermore, Ross doubts Obama edited the Harvard Law Review “because if he was, he would be the first and only editor of an Ivy League law review to never be published while in school (publication is or was a requirement).”

Obama taught two courses at the University of Chicago, “Racism and the Law” and “Constitutional Law III.” Both concentrated on race and other trendy social issues such as “gay rights” and in vitro fertilization.

“Obama appears to have never taught the structure of the Constitution nor the history behind it, nor any of the other areas of doctrine that constitutional scholars must master—standing, justiciability, Commerce Clause, Tax-and-Spending Clause, Contracts Clause, separation of powers, international relations, First Amendment (a huge area by itself), the rest of the Bill of Rights, etc. etc.,” writes Rob Natelson, the Independence Institute’s Senior Fellow in Constitutional Jurisprudence.

Obama would make a great Supreme Court appointee for the progressives. He is not only an avowed enemy of the Constitution. Radical progressives hate the Constitution and are eager to undermine it.

In 2012 Louis Michael Seidman, remarkably a professor of constitutional law at Georgetown University, wrote a scathing piece for that great liberal bastion, The New York Times.

“As the nation teeters at the edge of fiscal chaos, observers are reaching the conclusion that the American system of government is broken,” Seidman writes. “But almost no one blames the culprit: our insistence on obedience to the Constitution, with all its archaic, idiosyncratic and downright evil provisions.”

Obama touched on these “evil provisions” during an interview with NPR in 2012. He said the Constitution places “essential constraints” on the government’s ability to provide positive economic rights.

Of course the Constitution says nothing specific about a governmental role ensuring “positive economic rights” and this has bothered liberals since FDR tried to pawn off his “Second Bill of Rights” in 1944. FDR’s “economic truths” included the right to a useful and remunerative job, a home, medical care, an education and more.

As a Court justice Obama will undoubtedly work to remove the “essential constraints” underlined in the Tenth Amendment and institute the Marxist maxim: From each according to his ability, to each according to his needs, a concept at odds with the laws of nature that has never worked and was used as an excuse to murder tens of millions of people in the 20th century.

the Kinks - The Village Green Preservation Society (entire LP):

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=NYMA-qlReg0

Welcome to the reservation, sheeple.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-LA-S64QY3o&feature=youtu.be&t=4m18s

Bernie is going to tax the 1% to pay for it!