Welcome to Monday! Ease back into your workweek with our slow smoked morning train reads:
• S&P 500 4,300 by 2025? Raymond James’ veteran chief investment strategist, Jeffrey Saut, expects a secular bull market (Barron’s)
• The Fed Whisperer, Misunderstood by Critics, Gains Sway on Board (Bloomberg)
• Elon Musk’s growing empire is fueled by $4.9 billion in government subsidies (LA Times)
• Saudi Arabia is no friend to the United States (Washington Post)
• Jerry Seinfeld, Online Force (NYT)
Saudi Arabia is to US in Iraq as Soviet Union was to US in South Vietnam.
“Playing” US for decades.
The past rhymes:
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176004/tomgram%3A_barbara_myers%2C_the_unknown_whistleblower/#more
Long but good read.
NSA surveillance program ends
http://www.latimes.com/nation/la-na-nsa-phones-20150529-story.html
Glad to see Rand Paul got lots of TV making stuff up.
Why doesn’t he ask the IRS to stop keeping records? What not ask the police department to stop keeping track of tickets? Phone company to stop keeping records? I think the banks should stop keeping records. I don’t want the credit card companies keeping records.
Rand Paul: Some critics ‘want there to be an attack on the US so they can blame it on me’
http://www.businessinsider.com/nsa-surveillance-law-expired-at-midnight-2015-6
Rand Paul: mind reader.
This doesn’t tell you anything about his opponents, but tells you a lot about Rand Paul’s mind
The ultimate Straw man argument, “I know what they think.”
Go visit Snowden in Russia and give him my “thanks.” I can’t wait until that crook is safely behind bars.
McConnell and Paul are the best TV time allocators in America.
That’s what the GOP is all about, “Shutting down government!” “Shutting down NSA!” “Shutting down Obama’s !” then once the cameras are gone, they pass the bill anyway.
You SUCKERS fall for the GOP nonsense and keep voting them in.
Let’s send them out to the wilderness for a while. Vote them out there.
Snowden is the modern Ellsberg. US is more ‘fraidy nation than in 1972.
Snowden will be seen as a hero by history, wait didn’t dubya say that too about himself. i think the snowden of yesteryear more so than dubya the painter
Texas Senate Clears Concealed Carry Of Guns On Campus
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2015/05/30/conceal-carry-gun-campus_n_7477274.html
Texans. ROFL.
Drunk college students with concealed and open carry handguns at football games. What could go wrong with that?
Ugh, I have a daughter and a niece who go to college in Texas….
probably should reconsider that. it wont safe for a decade or two. but dont expect the legislature to fix it either any time soon. look how long it took to address that explosion in West. oh wait they still havent
Rand Paul has forced three Patriot Act powers to expire. Here’s what that means. (Re/Code’s new home http://bit.ly/1QjSuHz)
Ex-FIFA Official Cites Article From The Onion in His Self-Defense http://nyti.ms/1QjSwPP Invictus! Warner got paid $10M from South African for 2010 cup. futbol you bet
The horrible reason one woman had to wait 77 years for her PhD http://wapo.st/1M3U7Zm she fled the Nazis, then the Birchers Kochers during the red scare // After gumbo and beer, customer leaves a $2,000 tip at a D.C. restaurant http://wapo.st/1M3UT8Q it’s gotta be the roux
I completely understand and forgive Mr. Warner for his error in citing The Onion. It is very hard to distinguish The Onion and Saturday Night Live these days from the main-stream print and TV news channels. I am sure that both The Onion and the Saturday Night Live editors and producers have been increasingly sweating over the steadily increasing competition in the nonsense news department. It will only get worse as we are moving into a new Presidential election when fiction actually becomes reality and reality becomes irrelevant. After all, Tina Fey broke new ground in political satire by simply reading Sarah Pailn’s debate transcripts which were freely available across the MSM..
its has become hard to tell the ‘news’ programs (usually a network we all know) from comedians and some times the comedians are better journalists
surely you jest. The Onion story was one long (or short) paragraph, ending with “At press time, the U.S. national team was leading defending champions Germany in the World Cup’s opening match after being awarded 12 penalties in the game’s first three minutes.” the 2015 world cup?
He’s at the top of the food chain at FIFA and he can’t read?
@hue
You are clearly not a believer in “everybody gets a trophy” and actually believe that leaders should be competent and accountable.
How quaint.
Jamie Dimon lashes out at ‘lazy’ shareholders who oppose his raise.
http://money.cnn.com/2015/05/28/news/jamie-dimon-shareholders-lazy/
JPMorgan Chase cuts 5000 jobs
http://www.bizjournals.com/columbus/news/2015/05/29/jpmorgan-chase-cutting-5-000-jobs.html
Outsourcing is great, but not if they say Jaime shouldn’t get a raise.
Free markets for you, but not for him.
Saudis Build Wahhabi Holiday spot
http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/06/01/world/middleeast/saudis-turn-birthplace-of-ideology-into-tourist-spot.html
When the comic steals the show they cut his hands off.
Ah, yes, what would a Monday morning be like without being subjected to a certain WaPo economic columnist’s confusion and ignorance WRT the economy.
Robert Samuelson Does Battle With the Bureau of Labor Statistics
Robert Samuelson used his Monday column to tell readers that the problem with the economy is that we are suffering the psychological fallout of the Great Recession: …
The problem is that the data refuses to agree with his psychoanalysis. As I pointed out yesterday, consumption is actually higher as a share of GDP than it was before the downturn, indicating that fear is not keeping households from consuming in any obvious way. ….
The most obvious explanation for the continuing weakness of the economy is that there is nothing to fill the gap in demand created by a $500 billion annual trade deficit (@ 3 percent of GDP). … Unfortunately this explanation is far too simple to be used by …those writing on economy.
or a housing bubble?
The housing bubble closed the gap in the previous decade but that was then.
This Day in History: June 1st- Sgt. Pepper
June 1, 2015
Sgt. Pepper is the one. It was a peak. Paul and I were definitely working together.” – John Lennon
After years of touring and relentless media attention, the Beatles felt frustrated creatively. They were tired of wearing matching suits in front of throngs of screaming girls. None of them came to hear the music. They could listen to their Beatles’ records at home. They went to a Beatles concert to worship their heroes and shriek at the highest decibel level possible, and sometimes throw Jelly Beans at them.
By the fall of 1966, the Beatles decided to focus their efforts on writing and recording. They entered Abbey Road studios with producer George Martin in November. Freed from the pressures of the road, the band’s creativity hit even loftier heights, and they urged George Martin to challenge the accepted limits along with them. What they managed to achieve using four-track equipment should shame the Pro-Tools generation of today.
…
http://www.todayifoundout.com/index.php/2015/06/day-history-june-1st-sgt-pepper/
I am surprised that the pool industry hasn’t trotted out how critical swimming pools can be for emergency water supplies in large earthquakes in California. An earthquake would likely damage much of the water distribution system and the big pools could temporarily fill that gap.
http://news.yahoo.com/look-competing-math-pools-versus-lawns-070733905.html
Assuming they dont crack and all the water leaks away . . .
Underground swimming pools are fairly resilient and don’t get the vibration amplification that above grade structures do. A bunch of the water will slosh out during the shaking and there may be some cracking in concrete pools, but most are fiberglass with decent tensile strength to resist the cracking.
The key period is the first 72 hrs before external relief efforts are fully mobilized. Pools can be valuable sources of water for fire-fighting, which is important because fires are one of the most destructive parts of the immediate aftermath of earthquakes. Broken water mains can make firefighters pretty ineffective.
is todays high debt levels the same problem that collapsed the economy in 2008? maybe, but its hard to tell, since we dont have the housing speculation and a huge mismatch between incomes and housing debt that we had then. and debt does grow as the economy does. so is the debt from an unproductive endeavors?
http://www.pragcap.com/how-scary-is-the-current-margin-debt-situation
I think debt now is more like having a stuck caliper on your disk brake where it is constantly applying friction and preventing the economy from operating as efficiently as it normally does.
The sound of this is very ZEN: http://www.core77.com/posts/37533/Worlds-Most-Epic-Marble-Machine