Why are Interest Rates so Low?

from the National Center for Policy Analsysis:

“Despite frequent, dire warnings about the unsustainability of government budget deficits in the United States, Europe and Japan, investors are lining up to lend to some governments at very low interest rates, says John Makin, a resident scholar at the American Enterprise Institute.

• Ten-year U.S. treasury notes are trading at approximately 2 percent and three-month notes have at times actually promised negative returns.
• Germany, the bull of the European Union’s economy, has its trading at approximately the same level.
• Japan has even seen its 10-year bonds dip below 1 percent.

Behind these incredibly low interest rates, which in the United States are almost record lows, are three persistent factors that have kept rates low and will likely continue to do so into the near future.  First, fears of inflation are minimal internationally.  U.S. inflation has been falling for the past four months and is expected to continue.  Inflation in Germany is following a similar behavior, and Japan’s currency is actually experiencing deflation.

The second reason for the low rates is that there is little growth in the world’s most stable economies.  As the United States, Germany and Japan stagnate and the Chinese economy begins to slow down, investors have few safe options in the private sector in which to participate.

• Europe on the whole, plagued by debt crises and fears of bank insolvency, is expected to experience a recession in 2012.
• Japan will also likely experience negative growth.
• The United States, though briefly optimistic about the 3 percent growth posted in the final quarter of 2011, is still expected to maintain 2 percent growth for 2012.

The third and final reason has been the gradual erosion of investor confidence in a largely uncertain international market.  When individual investors are bombarded with stories of political upheaval like the Arab Spring and natural disasters like the Japanese-tsunami-turned-nuclear-accident, they tend to distrust risky assets in security markets and flock instead to sovereign debt.  This ample supply of investors clamoring to buy government bonds and notes drives down interest rates.”

Source: John Makin, “Why Are Interest Rates Presently So Low?” Real Clear Markets, January 25, 2012.

For text:

http://www.realclearmarkets.com/articles/2012/01/25/why_are_interest_rates_presently_so_low__99481.html

For more on Economic Issues:

http://www.ncpa.org/sub/dpd/index.php?Article_Category=17

Charles Krauthammer Goofs on Attacking Romney “Caring about the Poor” Statement

which prooves a major Christian thesis that no one is perfect…..even ones HEROES>

COME ON, CHARLIE……NOT EVERY BREATH MITT TAKES HAS TO BE ABOUT CONSERVATIVE POLICIES!!!

FOR SHAME!     Mitt said nothing….ABSOLUTELY NOTHING WRONG in his statement about the ‘poor’. 

Here is the Krauthammer claim as printed in the realclearpolitics video cut:  This is bad,” syndicated columnist Charles Krauthammer said about Romney’s remark that he is not concerned about the poor .   

The statement “ he is not concerned about the poor ”  is a LIE twisting the meaning of the real Romney statement!!

THERE IS NOTHING BAD ABOUT THE ROMNEY  STATEMENT!

   Here Mitt’s  conservative public is demanding to know who the real Mitt Romney is, despite his twenty years of exemplary life on the American stage in both business and government.   I, like other conservatives, want to know a bit about the  sensitive, personal thoughts about his concerns for the Republic.   I want to hear his words, not Charles Krauthammer’s moment’s burpings about a general staement, a sincere statement, a statement which apparently  didn’t sufficiently  pander to the plight real or imagined among America’s poor.

Stop this Letwing Mass Media game of GOTCHA smearing!!!    

I knew Charles Krauthammer wasn’t perfect.   Glitches have appeared in the past.   He must have eaten an Obama snack just before his Fox tv performance the other night.    He is still the greatest!

http://www.realclearpolitics.com/video/2012/02/02/krauthammer_on_poor_comment_romney_cant_explain_conservative_ideas.html

How about a few laughs from yesteryear………Before the Marxist Era in America

 

The greatest attack upon traditional America and its core beliefs  was launched during  the late 1960s.   It was often violent and everywhere intimidating attacking both the American body and mind.    The noisemakers  in  society were young, spoiled, and profoundly uneducated.    They were looking for a ‘freer’ more ‘open’ life.

They didn’t find Marxism.    Marxism found them and has grown in power and persuasion in America ever since.  

Marxism is based on the ugly belief that there is no God.    Since there is no God,  “good”  is to be determine by  mankind  of any sex, by one person, committee, or by ‘all’.    It’s primary ‘democratic’ goal is to force  people into  equality.

Only one ‘kind’ of government  is allowed….Marxism, the dictatorship of and by ‘the people’.    Its leaders or leader will determine policy and police to punish all  who become  more equal than others according to the tenets of those in power.    

The rule above all other Marxist rules, is ‘Thou shalt have no other gods before Marxism”.

The following vignettes of expressions for  humor and pleasantries were recorded before America’s introduction to government Marxism protections:     

Warning:   Not all humans are equal yet in their receptors to humor.   Some might laugh less than others.    Such responses have not yet been polititcally evaluated.

 

Learning about Zombies:      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkzV5AIK8iM

 

At the Obama National Dental Clinic:              http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=PCcdI5T4Z5Q

 

Life is just a dance or two:        http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JOoNOs8Ql28   

 

 

The Female Mind Working Overtime at the Globe…. “Catholic Church Unfair to Obama?”

Catholic Church’s unfair attack against Obama

by Joan Vennochi     at  the Boston Globe

Sunday, the Catholic Church declared war on President Obama. Republican Senator Marco Rubio of Florida quickly took up the cause, signaling the outlines of a serious religious rumble to come in 2012.

The president should be ready for the fight, knowing that on this one he is right.

At Sunday Mass, Catholic parishioners across the country were read letters denouncing the Obama administration’s recent decision to require religiously affiliated hospitals, colleges, and charities to offer health insurance coverage to employees for contraception and the “morning-after pill.’’ On Monday, Rubio, a Republican star who is often mentioned as a VP candidate, introduced a bill that would override the Obama policy by allowing religious institutions that morally oppose contraception to refuse to cover it.

“But not all employees of Catholic institutions are Catholics. Why should their employers impose their religious beliefs on them and deny coverage for birth control and other medical care? As long as those Catholic institutions are getting taxpayer money, they should follow secular rules. That’s the Obama administration’s argument, and it makes sense.

But if truth is a casualty of war, reason is an even more specific casualty of culture war. Obama can’t let the other side frame the argument, which it is already doing in typically ferocious fashion.

Obama isn’t trying to undermine Catholicism. He’s telling Catholic leaders they can’t regulate the beliefs of those of other faiths.

I happened to be attending Mass on Long Island, N.Y., when the priest took to the pulpit to read from an address Pope Benedict XVI gave last month to US bishops, in which the pope decried “radical secularism.’’ Benedict did not specifically mention Obama’s name, but the priest informed parishioners the pope was referring to the president. He also said Obama’s policy represented “totalitarianism’’ and an attack on religious freedom and the Catholic Church. The priest went on to quote from a recent opinion piece written by Bishop David A. Zubik of Philadelphia, who argued that the Obama administration “has just told the Catholics of the United States, ‘to hell with you!’ ’’

Now the bishops are basically saying to hell with Obama, and the GOP is seizing the opportunity to join forces with a constituency that can play an important role in presidential politics. Recent history shows that when the Catholic Church goes after Catholic politicians, it can be a real problem for them.

In 2004, many bishops made an issue out of John Kerry’s abortion rights support by threatening to deny communion to the Catholic Democratic presidential nominee. On election day, George W. Bush, a Republican who opposed abortion rights, won the Catholic vote. Kerry was unprepared for the attacks and remained silent about his faith, a stance he now regrets. In a speech he gave at Pepperdine University in 2006, he said, “Despite this New Englander’s past reticence of talking publicly about my faith, I learned that if I didn’t fill in the picture myself, others would draw the caricature for me.’’

After Obama picked Joe Biden, a Catholic, as his running mate in 2008, the US Conference of Catholic Bishops criticized Biden for pro-abortion comments. But their targeting of Biden was not enough to derail the Democratic ticket. Obama ultimately won the Catholic vote over John McCain by a 54 to 45 percent margin, in large measure because voters were more focused on the country’s post-Labor Day economic meltdown. Recent polls, however, show Obama’s support from Catholics is slipping. If the issue of health insurance coverage for contraception becomes a major rallying cry, it could evolve into a real problem for Obama. Republican Mitt Romney, the front-runner who is now running as an anti-abortion candidate after previously expressing support for Roe v. Wade, is already showing signs of strength with Catholic voters.

On the larger health care reform issue, this president has the moral high ground, if only he would take it. A church that is supposedly dedicated to feeding the hungry and clothing the naked wouldn’t want to leave it to insurance companies and free markets to decide who gets to see a doctor and who gets care – would it?

Obama isn’t trying to regulate religion or undermine Catholicism. He’s telling Catholic leaders they can’t regulate the beliefs of those of other faiths. That’s fitting in a country that treasures religious freedom, but also values separation of church and state.”

Comment:   Let us struggle to work ourselves out of the webs cluttering the human female mind……and let us all never forget  that not all female minds are ‘possessed’ by women.

A fundamental purpose of Catholic existence for centuries, is a belief  that certain human actions are Godly, that is classically righteous, in a battle with certain human actions that are classically unGodly, that is, evil.   

Murdering is a sin, says this ‘existence’.      Murdering an infant before it is extracted from the womb  to begin its fight for life, is a classic sin violating a Law of Catholic existence.    Human life is sacred.  

I am not Roman Catholic and might have some nuances wrong, here or there,  or missing, but I have lived in this community all of my life.  

Ms. Vennochi, I suspect from name, of Catholic blood somewhere along her line……only a suspicion, dear reader…….insists that workers at a Roman Catholic institution, have a right to dictate the rules, laws, behavior, morality, philosophy, teachings, whatever, because of their employment.     The female human mind is in full gear.    Its carrier, ‘Joan’, seems likely to be a woman.    Many Obama Democrats of all sexes appear to agree with her, hence the crisis.

I am only guessing……and while in this state, I am sweating a bit, because I realize I am entering the cathedral of  learning at  Marxist university, president Obama’s alma mater where  such thinking and language is not allowed.

I have already committed a number of  its ‘Newspeak’ rules.   You can figure out which ones, for the number of them is not my point of this essay.  

To solve this particular problem of its message on murder and abortion in order to adjust to Obamathink, the Church could direct  that all of its insitutions be manned only  by Roman Catholics and others who believe infanticide is a sin,  perhaps a DNA or litmus sample…for that kind of employment.    This is unlikely to happen.

 Obamarule would not permit such a sin.

It is about time the Church realizes its main social, religious and battle of our America today, is  its  war against Marxism for the human soul.   

Sooner or later the human female mind of all sexes  might catch on to this reality, as well.

Christianity banned from West Point? Making more room for Marxist Atheism?

Gen. Boykin Blocked At West Point

by Ken Blackwell                                            (Sent by Mark Waldeland)

“A three-star Army general and war hero cannot speak at West Point because he’s an outspoken Christian. So the Obama administration’s hostility toward religion—and especially Christians—continues even to the detriment of our men and women in uniform.

Lieutenant General William G. (“Jerry”) Boykin is like an action-movie hero. When the super-elite Delta Force was formed in late 1970s—our top counter-insurgent military unit that the Pentagon still does not officially discuss—this ranger in the 101^st Airborne unit was tapped to be part of it.

In 1983 he was in Grenada, where Boykin survived being hit by a round from a .50-caliber gun. (Many anti-aircraft guns are “.50-cal,” and a single round can split a human body in two.) In 1992 and 93, he was part of the Delta Force team hunting (and unofficially killing) drug lord Pablo Escobar. Then in 1993, Boykin was the commanding officer of the mission in the Battle of Mogadishu in Somalia forever memorialized in the movie “Black Hawk Down.”

After these heroics, General Boykin served as the commanding general of U.S. Army Special Forces Command, then commanding general of U.S. Army Special Warfare Center. He also served at the CIA and as Deputy Undersecretary of Intelligence at the Department of Defense.

Jerry Boykin has done it all. He’s been in battle as part of America’s most elite fighting force; then he rose to command those troops as a general, and also served in the CIA and Pentagon on the strategic planning and management side of this equation.

He is also a Christian evangelist who speaks at churches nationwide. As a private citizen retired from the Army, General Boykin was invited to speak at a prayer breakfast at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point. He seems like an ideal choice, as someone who has served as the tip of the spear at the highest ranks, who is also a man of profoundly deep faith.

But the Far Left exploded.

Boykin has cast America’s war against radical Islamic terrorists as fighting Satan. So his religious language has made strange bedfellows of various Islamic groups joining with atheists to call on West Point to disinvite this American hero who risked and achieved so much for this country.

Evidently, it’s not politically correct to suggest that blowing up children is the devil’s work.

After heavy pressure, General Boykin chose to withdraw. This soldier fears no foe, but the situation evolved in a direction where his message of faith and courage would be overshadowed by controversy to the possible detriment of the West Point cadets.

This sad episode is yet another example of the Obama administration’s ongoing hostility to people of faith, especially Christians. President Obama’s pick to the Equal Employment Opportunity Commission (EEOC) is a lesbian activist who says that homosexual rights should always trump religious liberty.

This is the same EEOC that argued it had the power to order a church to reinstate as a minister a person the church had fired for violating church teaching, a position the Supreme Court unanimously rejected. And the administration has enacted regulations under Obamacare forcing Evangelical and Catholic universities and hospitals to provide contraceptives against the religious beliefs of those church-affiliated institutions.

Now this hostility is doing a disservice to our military. People of deep faith are opposed and marginalized by the Obama administration’s civilian political appointees. Weeks ago, they were caught banning Bible reading at Walter Reed hospital, a policy they immediately reversed when the media picked it up and House Republicans demanded answers.

All this paints a picture of radical secularism. Many of the greatest heroes our military has ever seen were people of fervent prayer and deep faith. Many find their battlefield courage in their unshakeable belief that their sins are forgiven, their lives are in God’s hands, and that when they die they would go to an eternal reward.

Sounds like the kind of people you want at a prayer breakfast for those who may soon land on one of those battlefields”.

http://cnsnews.com/blog/ken-blackwell/gen-boykin-blocked-west-point

 

 

Paulsen Report: Battling Obamacare, but Silent on its American Disease, Marxism

Erik Paulsen is  the Representative in Washington from my suburban Minneapolis district.   He is the map of reponsible Scandinavia, the immigrant kind of years ago, not the Socialist cripples of modern Norse or Swede  life,  which prompts him to retain a host of  classical adult human responsibilities in our 21st century America led by Barack Hussein.

A quiet and rather shy man, true to post Viking genetic travels, he reports regularly to his followers with notices of Congressional activity such as the note below.    I cherish them and enjoy passing them off ot you, dear reader.

He writes:

“Obamacare continues to be a financial nightmare driving our country deeper into debt and killing jobs.  After trying to repeal the new law in its entirety we are now trying to dismantle it piece by piece.
 
Last night the House voted to repeal the CLASS Act to save Americans from another unwanted underfunded program that expands the federal government.
 
The CLASS Act is a new federal long term care insurance entitlement that was included in the Democrat’s healthcare law.  It was used as smoke and mirrors to “pay for” Obamacare and a new government entitlement.
 
Despite being told time and time again by the President and HHS Secretary Sebelius that this program would help Americans and save us money, the true experts knew that the CLASS Act was nothing more than a budget gimmick that could have a catastrophic impact if it were actually implemented.  In other words, it’s a government Ponzi scheme.
 
Even as the Administration has gone on to waste time and millions of dollars to try and make the legislation sustainable, it finally came to the same conclusion we knew all along: that the program will not work and needs to be scrapped.
 
You can be sure of my continued fight to rollback and repeal Obamacare.”

I am good to know  that.

A problem we have here among concerned Minnesotans  is the silence that seems to be reigning  in Congress, including from  the Republican sectors, suggesting  government is paralyzed because of our aloof Emperor, Hussein the first.     I agree that the human animal is a herd creature awaiting for a leading bull to make his noise before the masses are awakened, but the nation  has  become diseased.

Is it  that Republicans are so passive and wimpy, so  programmed from years of  the bullying Marxist bellowings from professors in college and law schools, that they are playing “Captain, May I?” in the House of Representatives and Senate?    Has seeking truth rather than soothing feelings become the new American dogma?

Who is exposing the corruption of education at the American university and in its Marxist Law schools?    Where are the reports of the idiocies that are accepted as cemented   truths at these religious pig sties of leftwing  preachings and learnings  at Yale, Harvard, and the rest of the nation’s Law Schools including the ones in your neighborhood?

Who is producing these Marxist  zombies, Obama, Schumer, Sotomayor, Kagan, the 9th District Federal Court judges, and my neighborhood attorneys et alia,  embalmed   of  all juices  other than  those  bleating their college  Marxist verses?

Obama’s Man, Warren Buffett Escapes Obamamedia Scrutiny

Saint Warren’s dark side

Ugliness the media overlook

by Charles Gasparino     at   the New York Post:

“Imagine a Republican president regularly invoking the wisdom of a multibillionaire businessman who had profited off companies with questionable business practices, and who law-enforcement officials had recently asked to provide information about his own company’s questionable practices. No question about it: Democrats and the media would be having a field day.

So why do we hear so little about the dark side of Warren Buffett?

True, the double standard involving Buffett’s business record is longstanding. But now President Obama is using him as a central prop in his class-warfare strategy for winning a second term.

Yes, Buffett is a great investor; his Berkshire Hathaway company has made him a multibillionaire and earned shareholders lots of money over the years. But in all my years in journalism, I’ve never seen a business figure get such a free pass from the media even when his public pronouncements are oozing with hypocrisy, let alone when he steps over the line into sleaze — as Buffett has done on more than one occasion.

But then “St. Warren” wears his liberal politics on his sleeve: He wholeheartedly backed Obama back in 2008, and now is lending his name (and his secretary’s) to Obama’s cockamamie tax scheme, a k a the Buffett Rule — which would barely make a dent in the federal deficit, but would certainly squeeze small-business owners and other job-creators.

Now, Buffett’s hypocrisy on taxes is well known to readers of these pages: He decries the fact that rich investors like him get taxed mainly at the lower capital-gains rate of 15 percent. Yet he made his vast fortune enjoying that favorable treatment, and largely kept his mouth shut until now, as he nears the end of his long career. Plus, he plans to use a charitable trust to further shield much of his income from taxes.

Much less has been said about Buffett’s unsaintly investment record. I won’t bore you with every gory detail of his questionable associations, which include no-lose investments in Goldman Sachs and General Electric just before the companies received massive federal aid during the financial crisis.

But other items really take the shine off St. Warren’s halo — like his insistence that the ratings agencies didn’t play a key role in setting up the 2008 financial meltdown.

In fact, the ratings biz was rife with conflicts of interest, since the agencies were paid by the same entities they were rating. Most people figure that’s why these “watchdogs” ignored major signs of trouble in the housing markets as they slapped all those Triple-A ratings on the toxic housing-related debt that was at the heart of the financial crisis.

But Buffett has publicly defended the rating agencies as bit players in the debacle, caught up in the mania much like nearly everyone else. His obvious motive: He held a major stake in rating agency Moody’s Investors Service, so Berkshire got a nice cut out of all those fees that Moody’s “earned” as it fueled the crisis.

It’s hard to believe a conservative businessman would be able to get away with that hypocrisy — not to mention the association with a business that helped do so much damage to the US economy.

It’s also hard to believe that any conservative businessman who was just interviewed by the Securities and Exchange Commission over some corporate sleaze would be getting invitations to the White House, much less be touted at the State of the Union Address.

The SEC interviewed Buffett last year over one of the most sordid corporate affairs I’ve seen in a long time: His longtime aide and one-time heir-apparent bought shares in a company called Lubrizol just before Buffett purchased the outfit.

The executive, David Sokol, made a hefty profit from the purchase, and even advised Buffett to buy the company in the first place.

Insider trading? I can’t say if it was outside the law. But the SEC is looking into the matter. (SEC and Sokol spokesmen declined to comment on the probe’s status; Buffett didn’t return repeated calls seeking comment.)

Yet I don’t recall any major media outfit bringing up the sordid affair while Buffett was lecturing the nation on tax fairness. Nor did any jump on Buffett’s bizarre initial reaction as Sokol was resigning from Berkshire last year: He defended Sokol’s actions — which, even if they weren’t illegal, still smack of the kind of corporate favoritism that Obama and the rest of the left continually denounce.

Buffett later issued a statement that, after reviewing the facts, he’d changed his mind: What Sokol did was bad, after all. But why did it take Buffett so long to realize that corporate cronyism reeks?

You’ve also got to ask why the president has embraced a businessman with this type of record — and why the media are letting him get away with it.”

Charles Gasparino is a Fox Business Network senior correspondent.

Read more: http://www.nypost.com/p/news/opinion/opedcolumnists/saint_warren_dark_side_mhMyAHUqp3nn0jR0xdtGmI#ixzz1lAuYioRg