Wall Street…and BP
Before we get to BP, a look at the global markets. This coming week is going to be a critical one as the G-20 meets in Toronto for what could be a highly divisive gathering. It is going to take all of the diplomatic skill of President Obama, Angela Merkel, Nicolas Sarkozy and China’s leadership (I’m assuming President Hu Jintao, not Premier Wen Jiabao, will be the prime representative) for this not to devolve into a shouting match of sorts. After all, they have largely different agendas.
President Obama, for one, in a letter to economic leaders ahead of Toronto, warned that the G-20 must “reaffirm our unity of purpose” when “significant weaknesses” continue in several of the member countries’ economies. Obama said he was concerned about “continued heavy reliance on exports by some countries with already large external surpluses…I also want to underscore that market-oriented exchange rates are essential to global economic vitality,” talking about China in both instances without naming them.
Obama and the United States want the G-20 to encourage domestic consumption, but this is at a time when Europe in particular has deficit reduction fever, hardly conducive to encouraging the consumer to open the pocketbook. The U.S., on the other hand, seeks to continue to stimulate the economy through deficit spending, only now Congress is beginning to fight back. What was once a $200 billion package of increased jobless benefits, more state aid, and protection for doctors facing steep Medicare rate cuts, was whittled down to $120 billion and then voted down by the Senate this week, falling four votes short of the needed 60.
Former Federal Reserve Chairman Alan Greenspan, in an op-ed for the Wall Street Journal.
“An urgency to rein in budget deficits seems to be gaining some traction among American lawmakers. If so, it is none too soon. Perceptions of a large U.S. borrowing capacity are misleading.
“Despite the surge in federal debt to the public during the past 18 months – to $8.6 trillion from $5.5 trillion – inflation and long-term interest rates, the typical symptoms of fiscal excess, have remained remarkably subdued. This is regrettable, because it is fostering a sense of complacency that can have dire consequences.”
In Europe, the story hasn’t changed. France did hike the retirement age to 62 from 60, but by 2018. It was back in 1983 that Francois Mitterand lowered it to 60 and as a result, today only 13% of French aged 60-64 are in the workplace. The French are not taking even this minimal change to 62 well.
Greek public transit workers staged strikes this week, as did various unions in Spain. And if you travel a lot on business to Europe, I’m going to give you a valuable heads up. Mark the date, Sept. 29, on your calendar, as in do not travel to Europe around that time because various outfits are encouraging a general strike across the continent, a European “day of action.”
But one area where Europe is showing signs of getting the picture, aside from its ill-received deficit-cutting measures, is the issue of bank stress tests. Spain was the first to announce it would put its banks through the exercise in order to provide more transparency on sovereign debt exposures for each, and the EU has now promised that stress tests for all the major banks will be completed by end of July. The stress test mechanism in the U.S. last year proved to be highly critical in jumpstarting the recovery and improving confidence. The problem in Europe’s case is there seems to be no one set of rules and you’d expect each country to try to protect its main institutions at all costs.
Then there’s China. Premier Wen warned the G-20 not to come down hard on China and its currency policy. Nope, wouldn’t be prudent at this time, he said. China is going to pursue its own economic agenda and restructuring, and it’s unreasonable to expect Chinese workers to fill the void of the U.S. in being a consumer of last resort; Chinese workers just not earning that much to begin with.
Speaking of wages, as labor activism continues to spread, Wen said that as a new generation moves from the rural villages to the urban areas to work in factories and on building sites, they will not accept the harsh working conditions and low wages that their parents endured.
“Rural migrant workers are the main army of the contemporary Chinese industrial workforce,” said Wen. “Our wealth and our tall buildings are all distillations of your hard work and sweat. Your labor is a glorious thing, and it should be respected by society.” [Financial Times]
In a nutshell, they need to be paid more. China’s official and unofficial mouthpieces this week all said the same thing. Wages need to rise to protect stability and transform society. The All China Federation of Trade Unions, which is designed to represent workers rights, says employees have not had a pay rise in five years.
But as the BBC reports, “some of the workers who have gone on strike for higher wages in recent weeks have accused this organization of colluding with local officials and factory managers to try to force staff back to work before their demands have been met.” Chinese media has also been banned from reporting on some of the strikes.
As to China’s housing boom, economist Stephen Roach said there is no nationwide property bubble; that prices are supported by solid demand. But others, such as Nomura, say prices are slated to fall 20% over the next 12-18 months, to which I would say, that’s not a disaster. No doubt measures to rein in the housing market are seeing results. But I’ll concede that when it comes to the high-end market, there are legitimate concerns.
The World Bank weighed in this week on its growth forecast for China, now pegged at 9.5% for 2010 (after the sizzling 11.9% first quarter rate) and 8.5% in 2011.
Just one other note. Amidst Congress’ bitching about currency policy, which had zero to do with the financial crisis, U.S. exports to China were up 50% in the first quarter year-over-year.
As to the U.S. economy, there was a slew of data this week. Inflation, as measured by the producer and consumer price indexes, remains non-existent. The core PPI, ex-food and energy, is up 1.3% year-over-year through May, while the core CPI is up 0.9% the last 12 months, the lowest such rate since 1966. Of course this means it’s tough to raise prices, so profit margins will not be expanding anytime soon, in general, but I do not as yet fall into the outright deflation camp.
The news on the manufacturing end was solid, with May industrial production coming in better than expected, up 1.2%, and with the likes of Caterpillar touting the fact its worldwide sales of machinery were up 11% in May, while Federal Express said people are too pessimistic about the recovery in global trade. FedEx’s international shipments are up 23%, but the company nonetheless guided earnings lower. On the flip side, Best Buy, the largest consumer electronics retailer, issued a lousy report for its quarter with same-store sales up just 1.9%.
But when you’re looking at the U.S. economy, it’s still all about housing and jobs. On the latter, the jobless claims figure for the week was awful, 472,000, when many were figuring we’d be closer to 400,000 by now when looking ahead earlier in the year. The White House is destined to have to explain a 9%+ unemployment rate come November’s mid-term vote and it won’t be easy.
As for housing, the immediate future looks bleak here as well. May housing starts were far short of expectations as the first-time home buyer tax credit ran off. May building permits were also abysmal. Nationwide, the foreclosure picture is not getting any better and here in New Jersey, I see more and more homes going on the market (more than you’d expect for the spring/summer selling season). Long-time reader E.C. wrote last week to inform me that he is seeing the foreclosure issue in New Jersey up close and personal, E.C. having a mail route, and no one knows the local economic picture better than our nation’s mail carriers. The bottom line is whether or not you subscribe to a double-dip in housing, prices, with few exceptions, are not going up. At best they will continue to stagnate, and along the Gulf coast, they could outright crater anew depending on where the oil lands. Enough damage has already been done to set back recovery for a long spell. Much more and it could spell the deathknell for many a community.
[Just a note on commercial real estate. While I have read of some stability in the New York and Los Angeles markets, PIMCO doesn’t see any real pickup for 3-5 years in the sector with $500 billion in additional inventory hitting the markets as lenders dispose of the properties or restructure debt.]
As for the Deepwater Horizon disaster and the resulting spill, of all the topics I’ve raised in the 11+ years of writing this column, this might be the leader in my favored maxim, “wait 24 hours.” Just think how many of the facts have changed since the beginning of this debacle. For starters, we were initially told by BP the well was only releasing 1,000 barrels a day. Then for a long time the official figure was 5,000. Then 12,000-19,000. Then 12,000-25,000. Then we were told BP would soon be capturing 28,000, but we were still using a total of 12,000-25,000 and all of us could see a boatload of oil still coming out. So then our “incident commander,” Thad Allen, said it was 30,000 total. Then, just hours before President Obama’s Tuesday night address, it became 60,000.
One thing we do know for certain without having to wait 24 hours. You cannot believe one word coming out of the mouth of a BP official because even as they are ponying up an initial $20 billion after being strong-armed by Obama, it’s about survival and mitigating damages. You will never get the truth out of BP, just like you never got the truth out of the tobacco industry.
President Obama, for the first time, took to the Oval Office to address the issue as his poll #s for handling the spill and its aftermath plummet. [According to a USA TODAY/Gallup poll, 71% said Obama hasn’t been tough enough on BP; 53% rate Obama’s handling of the spill “poor” or “very poor.”]
“Make no mistake: We will fight this spill with everything we’ve got for as long as it takes. We will make BP pay for the damage their company has caused. And we will do whatever’s necessary to help the Gulf Coast and its people recover from this tragedy.
“Beyond compensating the people of the Gulf in the short term, it’s also clear we need a long-term plan to restore the unique beauty and bounty of this region.”
And then he hijacked the issue for his own political purposes.
“Now is the moment for this generation to embark on a national mission to unleash American innovation and seize control of our own destiny,” as he went on about our clean energy future when I thought what matters most is to stop the freakin’ flow of oil and clean the damn stuff up before we see bread lines down in the Gulf, and believe me, that day could be coming.
The Washington Post, in critiquing Obama’s speech, said “his remarks were largely an 18-minute compilation of what he has said about the spill over the past several weeks.”
But as each item comes up we need to wait 24 hours. The day after the speech, BP acquiesced and agreed to set aside $20 billion, suspending its dividend at the same time, and I suspect that if Americans were polled this weekend they would give the president better marks on his handling of the oil giant.
But then you’d need to wait another 24 hours, because many of the folks on the Gulf are not only out of cash, they are missing out on mortgage, car and boat payments.
It’s about reality. As in this passage from a report by Campbell Robertson of the New York Times on what is actually taking place in the communities being impacted.
“It was late May. Oil had been creeping into the passes around Grand Isle (La.). Two fleets of fishing boats were supposed to be laying out boom….
“But the boats were gathered on the inland side of the bay – wrong side – anchored idly as the oil oozed in from the Gulf of Mexico. BP officials said they had no way of contacting the workers on the boats….
“ ‘You’re watching the oil come in,’ (said the local emergency preparedness director for Jefferson Parish), ‘and they can’t even move.’
“For much of the last two months, the focus of the response to the Deepwater Horizon explosion has been a mile underwater, 50 miles from shore, where successive efforts involving containment domes, ‘top kills’ and ‘junk shots’ have failed, and a ‘spillcam’ shows tens of thousands of barrels of oil hemorrhaging into the gulf each day.
“Closer to shore, the efforts to keep the oil away from land have not fared much better, despite a response effort involving thousands of boats, tens of thousands of workers and millions of feet of containment boom.
“From the beginning, the effort has been bedeviled by a lack of preparation, organization, urgency and clear lines of authority among federal, state and local officials, as well as BP. As a result, officials and experts say, the damage to the coastline and wildlife has been worse than it might have been if the response had been faster and orchestrated more effectively….
“ ‘The information is not flowing,’ (Florida) Senator Bill Nelson said. ‘The decisions are not timely. The resources are not produced. And as a result, you have a big mess, with no command and control.’”
Again, wait 24 hours. The president may have a good news cycle or two but the reality of the situation will overwhelm the spin or BP’s $20 billion fund. This story has a long, long way to play out.
As to Texas Congressman Joe Barton’s statement during the House hearing in which BP CEO Tony Hayward was being grilled, “I think it is a tragedy of the first proportion that a private corporation can be subjected to what I would characterize as a shakedown, in this case, a $20 billion shakedown,” there is a kernel of truth to the use of the word that riled so many up, shakedown, but especially coming from a guy who is the king of oil money, Barton’s remark was ill-timed and careless. House Republicans scrambled to distance themselves from it. Rising star Adam Putnam of Florida said, “(Barton) owes the people of the Gulf Coast an apology, not the CEO of the company who may have cut corners to produce this horrific national tragedy.”
House Minority Leader John Boehner said, “BP agreed to fund the cost of this cleanup from the beginning, and I’m glad they are being held accountable.”
Barton was forced to issue not one, but two apologies during the remainder of the House hearing in an attempt to make it clear he wanted BP to pay for the mess it created.
“BP deserves to pay full restitution for the damage it has caused, but it ought to do so via legal means, not under what Texas Republican Joe Barton rightly called the pressure of ‘a shakedown’….
“The American people seem to have concluded that they dislike both BP for causing this disaster and the White House for appearing to exploit it without stopping the leak, and maybe that’s the right response. BP at first sounded arrogant and now is so obsequious it won’t even stand up for its legal rights. But it’s hard to know who is more unlovable, BP or its Washington expropriators.”
On Friday, Tony Hayward was told by BP chairman Carl-Henric Svanberg, to return to London. Bob Dudley, a U.S. citizen, will spearhead BP’s response from here on. Svanberg said:
“It is clear that Tony has made remarks that have upset people. But here is also a man that has programmed maybe 100 hours of TV time and 500 interviews….It’s been a difficult period, and as long as we don’t close the well and take care of this, there will be criticisms about many things.”
Street Bytes
–Stocks rose a second straight week with the Dow Jones adding 2.3% to 10450. The S&P 500 was up 2.4% and Nasdaq a solid 2.9% to 2309. Actually, stocks were flat except for a nice rally on Tuesday as investors took heart in the manufacturing data and a respite in the European debt crisis. Otherwise, I wouldn’t make too much of the past two weeks. As noted earlier, after all, housing and the jobs picture are still moribund.
–U.S. Treasury Yields
6-mo. 0.16% 2-yr. 0.71% 10-yr. 3.22% 30-yr. 4.15%
It was another week with zero movement. But we learned that China boosted its purchase of U.S. Treasuries by $5 billion to $900.2 billion in April, the highest level since November 2009. [Japan added $10.6 billion to $795.5 billion.]
–PIMCO raised its holdings of government-related debt to 51% in its flagship Total Return Fund from 36%. Manager Bill Gross said, “The U.S. is the least dirty shirt. The world is full of dirty shirts in terms of excessive debt, and the United States is one of those countries, but it still remains the reserve currency and still remains the flight-to-quality haven.”
–The Wall Street reform bill continues to be hammered out in the joint House and Senate conference with a goal of coming up with a final bill prior to the Group of 20 meeting in Toronto on June 26. For now the central element still concerns giving regulators the authority to seize unstable financial institutions before they threaten the entire system, though a remaining stumbling block is whether the banks pay for it before or after the firm runs into trouble. As to the issue of banks being able to keep lucrative swap-dealing desks, we’ll see. It’s still being negotiated.
–It’s a long-time before November, but the latest AP-GfK poll shows 45% of Americans in favor of the new health care law, its highest mark, vs. 42% opposed. Initially, opposition increased after Congress passed it in March. Of course this is the year of the goodies. The pain starts next year and beyond. And seniors remain opposed, with 56% of those 65 and older in opposition (and they’re the ones who vote).
You also have reality…as in according to a new PricewaterhouseCoopers report, deductibles for company plans will be going up again, with medical costs expected to rise 9% in 2011, though this doesn’t necessarily mean employees will see their monthly premiums go up a like amount. Costs are rising at a 9.5% clip this year, according to PC.
–As if BP didn’t already have enough problems, the Brazilian government is examining a $7 billion joint BP-Devon Energy deal to buy deepwater assets in Brazil.
–The median home price in Southern California jumped 22.5% in May from year-earlier levels. At $305,000, it’s above $300,000 for the first time since October 2008. But it is expected prices will slump anew as the effect of federal and state tax credits for buyers come off the table. California had a tax credit of as much as $10,000 for first-time purchasers, so with the $8,000 federal incentive, some were able to grab $18,000 in credits. No longer. Also, interest rates are as low as they’re going to get and any sizable increase will hit new sales hard.
Meanwhile, according to Fitch Ratings Ltd., 65% to 75% of those who modify their mortgages under a federal program will redefault within a year. Most have already defaulted once.
And in a piece for the Wall Street Journal, columnist David Wessel had some telling thoughts on the “American Dream,” homeownership.
“Beyond the complexities of securitization, the merits of home ownership tax breaks and the politics of Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac lurk two fundamental issues.
“One, the U.S. has for decades overemphasized the virtues of home ownership.
“Two, many Americans are addicted to a unique, and costly, strain of mortgage – a 30-year fixed-rate loan that can be paid off at any time without penalty.”
Homeownership rose from around 40% in the 1940s to a peak of 69.4% in mid-2004. At last count it’s 67.2% and falling. [Heck, I’m now a very happy renter after selling my 16-year-old home for a substantial profit.]
Of course today’s problem is that for all the positives of home ownership, that goes out the window if you’re in negative equity. As Wessel points out, “In San Diego, for instance, the home ownership rate had fallen to 55% last year from a peak of 63%. But by late last year, the fraction of households with equity in their homes was between 35% and 39%. In hard-hit Las Vegas, nearly 59% of households own their homes, but only 15% to 19% of households own a home in which they have any equity left.”
–On Friday, gold hit a new closing high, $1258, in a further sign of the ongoing shift away from stocks and currencies. Just make sure you have a good map of where you’re burying it, especially those of you subject to senior moments. [Make three copies of the map, placing one in the safety deposit box, one in the liquor cabinet, and the third….heck, forgot where I put the first one already…]
–Southern China is getting slammed by one wave of severe thunderstorms after another with many bridges, roads and rail lines washed out. The government estimates GDP will take a 3 percent hit as a result. [I’m concerned about my holding here in hard hit Fujian.]
On the positive side, China and Taiwan have agreed to a trade deal, the Economic Cooperation Framework Agreement, though no date for signing it has been set. As an analyst at JPMorgan in Taipei said, “We expect more deregulation in cross-strait investments and given the slowdown in Europe and the U.S., Taiwan will need to rely more on China.”
And an update on Hon Hai Precision Industry Co., the parent of Foxconn, the giant contract manufacturer in China for the likes of Apple and Hewlett-Packard. Last week I noted comments strongly hinting that due to labor issues in China, Foxconn was looking to move some production back to Taiwan. The company said this week it would instead expand “extensively” in China, both at existing locations and in new ones.
–Toyota fell to 21st place from 6th in the latest J.D. Power & Associates automobile-quality survey, its worst showing. Ford, on the other hand, came in 5th, the first time it’s been ranked in the top five and the best showing of any mass-market brand. The top four were luxury brands; Porsche AG, Honda’s Acura, Daimler’s Mercedes-Benz and Toyota’s Lexus.
–The airline industry continues to see positive trends in traffic with business travel picking up. Delta and American were the latest to boost second-quarter forecasts. American and Continental cited strong business travel in Asia in particular.
–New York City’s unemployment rate fell for a fifth straight month and now stands at 9.7%, the national average.
–According to PricewaterhouseCoopers, print ad spending in consumer magazines isn’t expected to rebound until 2013, even as television and radio advertising appears to be on the upswing.
Speaking of print spending, to my readers who first discovered me in the Wake Forest sports publication for donors to the Deacon Club…the ad group handling my account could not have screwed up more this spring. After ten years they stopped running the ad, even as I had paid for it. Suffice it to say, after pointing this out to them, the situation is now being rectified. Just had to pass this on for those of you wondering where the ad went and whether I’m down to eating gruel three times a day.
–Apple said it took advance orders for more than 600,000 of the new iPhone, the most ever by the company in a single day, a crush that resulted in “order and approval system malfunctions,” with AT&T halting orders as the demand ate up its initial projected inventory. To compound matters, AT&T’s site crashed and sent some customers into other people’s account pages.
–Swiss lawmakers approved a treaty with the United States that will hand 4,450 names and files on suspected tax cheats to U.S. authorities as UBS divulges the information, thus ending a three-year battle that resulted in revelations the bank helped American clients hide $millions in offshore accounts.
–BloombergBusinessweek had an interesting table on how household savings stacks up in various nations.
In the U.S., we’re up to 3.9%, which remains far below the postwar average of 7%, but in Germany the savings rate is 11.7%, India 34.7%, and China 38%.
Foreign Affairs
Afghanistan: Back during the American Civil War, President Lincoln addressed a letter to General George McClellan, whose lack of activity irritated the president.
“If you don’t want to use the army, I should like to borrow it for a while.”
Such, in my opinion, sums up the current situation in Afghanistan where General Stanley McChrystal announced this week that the much-discussed operation to win the hearts and minds in Kandahar, the spiritual center of the Taliban, won’t begin until September, months after it was supposed to. Early efforts on the fringes of the city have been ineffective, and violence is picking up as the Taliban seeks to secure it through intimidation and assassination, taking out those deemed to be cooperating with the U.S. and NATO, like on Tuesday, a critical NATO ally, a governor, Abdul Jabbar, who controlled a key district. Jabbar was being built up by the coalition as a figure of real authority and was given large-scale aid.
Our policy is a mess. Talk in Washington this week was how the July 2011 date was flexible and not necessarily a time to begin withdrawal as President Obama said when announcing the surge of an additional 30,000 troops, which are still being worked in.
During questioning before the Senate Armed Services Committee, Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. Central Command, reiterated July 2011 was not a pull-out date, after initially leaving it unclear just what American intentions were. “July 2011 is not a race to the exit and a switching off of the lights,” he said.
But 2011 is the departure date for our Canadian and Dutch allies, with Britain’s departure not all that clear at this point.
Asked what would happen in Afghanistan if there were no U.S. troops in the country, Petraeus replied: “The Taliban would take control in certain areas and other areas would evolve into war lordism and there could be a couple of civil wars between ethnic, even sectarian, groups.”
Senator John McCain, long a supporter of the effort, said there were multiple negative trends inside Afghanistan and that he was concerned there was a “mounting crisis” in the campaign.
“The larger trend that underlies all the others [is] the mounting loss of confidence in America’s commitment to succeed that seems to be shared by both our friends and enemies in Afghanistan, as well as its neighbors,” said McCain. McCain added the delay in the Kandahar operation is hardly projecting the air of confidence needed.
There have also been a series of fresh stories on the rampant corruption in Afghanistan, across all levels, and the pitiful state of the Afghan Army.
“Evidently Hamid Karzai did not get the memo on terminology. U.S. military commanders have stopped using the word ‘operation’ to describe the drive, now delayed, against the Taliban in Kandahar, Afghanistan’s second-largest city. This word connotes danger and stirs dread among the population, whose allegiance is the prize for which counterinsurgency is waged. But Afghanistan’s president, speaking there on Sunday, anticipated a ‘purification operation,’ saying ‘this operation requires sacrifice.’
“It has been four months since Gen. Stanley McChrystal said, in words that reflect the military’s embrace of nation building, ‘We’ve got a government in a box, ready to roll in’ to Marja. It took longer than expected to reach a more inconclusive outcome than expected in that town of about 80,000, which last month McChrystal called ‘a bleeding ulcer.’ Hence the delay from spring until autumn in tackling Kandahar, with its population of perhaps 800,000….
“The administration will review Afghanistan strategy in December, but last week Defense Secretary Robert Gates, defining success down, expressed the minimalist hope of ‘making some headway’ by then….
“Perhaps it was coincidental that after several weeks of bad news from Afghanistan [Ed. At least 34 NATO troops killed in the most recent week], on Monday there was good news, of sorts, about what Obama has previously called Afghanistan’s ‘vast potential.’ The New York Times reported that ‘senior American government officials’ say Afghanistan has ‘nearly $1 trillion in untapped mineral deposits,’ which might fundamentally alter the nation’s economy ‘and perhaps the Afghan war itself.’
“This could be true only on the fanciful supposition that this wealth can be tapped in 13 months or, even more fancifully, that the war will grind on for many years, until the infrastructure of extraction industries are built in a nation whose current gross domestic product is $12 billion. This ‘stunning potential,’ in Petraeus’ description of the minerals, will encourage the perception that the U.S. engagement there has something to do with economic aggrandizement, will aggravate Afghanistan’s pandemic corruption and will intensify the Taliban’s determination to prevail in a place where even good news has, like a scorpion, a sting in its tail.”
“Afghanistan’s one hope was that, eventually, outsiders would leave it alone. That hope’s gone now. Development of a full-blown mining industry will take decades, but that just means decades of violent competition.
“Back in the happy-face United States, optimists insist that these Afghan finds will fund good government, security and development. Ain’t gonna happen. A country living on aid and opium won’t go Harvard Business School when megawealth floods in (the opium trade won’t disappear, either). And the environmental damage will put BP to shame.
“Meanwhile, we can’t manage the war we’ve got. The CIA, at least, keeps killing al Qaeda terrorists across the border in Pakistan. But our troops, in the words of one fighter on the ground, just ‘patrol, patrol and patrol, making themselves IED magnets.’….
“It’s high time to ask ourselves the basic question about Afghanistan that we’ve avoided since we made the decision to stay: What do we get out of it?
Meanwhile, a report out of the London School of Economics (LSE) concludes that the ISI, Pakistani intelligence, is giving funding, training and sanctuary to the Taliban on a scale much larger than previously thought. The LSE authors suggest that support for the Taliban was “official ISI policy.”
A separate report, this one from the New York Times, talked of the increased presence of Pakistani terrorist group Lashkar-e-Taiba in Afghanistan.
Iran: This was a good week for the West. Both the United States and the European Union authorized new sanctions against Iran that were far harsher than the weak ones contained in the latest UN resolution. The new sanctions hit harder at the banking industry and Iran’s shell outfits that have been able to skirt the rules, but most importantly go after parts of the oil and natural gas industries. EU President Herman Van Rompuy said that European leaders “remain deeply concerned about Iran’s nuclear program, and new restrictive measures have become necessary.” Other sanctions are targeting Iran’s main shipping line. Even Germany, which has extensive commercial ties with Iran, appears to be ready to do the right thing.
And the London Times revealed that Saudi Arabia, despite its issues with Israel, “has conducted tests to stand down its air defenses to enable Israeli jets to make a bombing raid on Iran’s nuclear facilities….Riyadh has agreed to allow Israel to use a narrow corridor of its airspace in the north of the country to shorten the distance for a bombing run on Iran.”
Why would the Saudis do this? They fear Iran as much as Israel does. It’s also not as if the Saudis will be officially sanctioning any Israeli actions, it will just be ‘We know nothing.’
“A year ago on Saturday, a movement was born that offers the best chance of ending the threat posed by Iran’s support for terrorism and pursuit of nuclear weapons. Millions of Iranians turned out to vote against the extremist government of Mahmoud Ahmadinejad in a presidential election – and were outraged when the regime announced an improbable landslide victory for the incumbent. Since then, what is now known as the Green Movement has swelled into the most consequential challenge ever mounted to Iran’s Islamic theocracy. Through sheer brutality – shootings, mass arrests, tortures, rapes and executions – the regime has mostly driven it off the streets; leaders called off demonstrations that had been planned for Saturday. But the popular revulsion with Iran’s rulers that drives the opposition has not faded….
“(The Obama administration) has taken some small steps to help Iranians overcome the regime’s Internet censorship. Many of the new sanctions are focused on companies controlled by the Revolutionary Guard…But the policy could be much more aggressive: The State Department, for example, is still sitting on tens of millions of dollars appropriated by Congress for Internet firewall-busting.
“Mr. Obama’s strategy hasn’t slowed Iran’s nuclear program or its aggressions toward Iraq, Lebanon or Israel. The popular discontent reflected in the Green Movement offers another avenue for action, one that is more in keeping with America’s ideals. It’s time for the president to fully embrace it.”
Israel: The government is looking to ease the Gaza land blockade following the international outcry over the flotilla debacle, allowing previously banned building materials, for example. But the sea blockade will remain in force. Next week the story could be about the Iranian ships carrying supplies for Gaza and how Israel treats them.
As for Turkey and the deteriorating situation between Ankara and Jerusalem, the Turkish government said it is putting the relationship on hold, awaiting an investigation of the flotilla raid.
Meanwhile, remember all my talk of Hizbullah’s presence in Latin America? This week, Interpol arrested a Lebanese national suspected of being the money man for Hizbullah in Paraguay, more specifically in the tri-border area with Argentina and Brazil that is seen as a hotbed of activity for the group, as well as drug gangs. The United States has an arrest warrant for Moussa Hamdan and Paraguay will decide in the coming weeks whether to extradite him.
Iraq: There was a question in the grilling of BP CEO Tony Hayward that I found interesting. Amidst the cleanup, one congressman asked, where is the toxic waste being disposed? You see it. The cleanup crews are dealing in all manner of hazardous material. The congressman said he had heard it was just being dumped in local landfills, which carries all kinds of legal implications, let alone health ones. It should be carted out of the area.
Well the same could be said of the United States and its handling of an estimated 5,000 tons of toxic waste in Iraq. A study by the London Times points to a 2009 Pentagon document revealing the figure, yet the total is far higher. The locals then have to deal with it. In many cases blistering hands and feet, rashes, and coughing. “Rats near sites where waste was dumped have died and lie next to soiled containers.”
“The Times discovered a 2008 e-mail from Allied Chemical of Morristown, New Jersey, to Pentagon officials warning of hazardous effects.”
There are discarded canisters of sulfuric acid, with a label attached that reads: “Causes severe burns to skin and lungs…Get immediate medical attention…Use gas mask.”
“As the majority of U.S. troops depart from Iraq this year, hundreds of bases are being closed and all hazardous material is supposed to be either returned to the U.S. by ship via the Iraqi port of Umm Qasr or recycled in specially built facilities in northern and western Iraq.”
The military says it is aware of the problem and was to announce a plan to deal with it all.
But on the issue of forming a government, some members of parliament got together this week for the cameras but nothing will be done for another few months, if then. And a key Awakening Council member was killed, along with his wife and three children. Evidently the man gave security officials inside information on a planned car bomb attack.
Kyrgyzstan: What started out as a local dispute in this nation’s second-largest city, Osh, over an incident at a casino, spiraled way out of control last weekend and the result was a probable look into the future of not just this region, but possibly parts of Europe.
By week’s end up to 2,000 may have been killed in ethnic violence between Kyrgyz mobs and Uzbeks, in this land that borders China, Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, and Kazakhstan. Kyrgyzstan has become critical to both the United States and Russia over the years as both have air bases there; the U.S. using it to supply the effort in Afghanistan.
While Uzbek gangs initiated some of the violence, the clear preponderance of it was perpetrated by Kyrgyz in a full-blown attempt, a successful one, to ethnically cleanse Osh and another southern city, Jala-Abad.
Uzbeks make up 15% of Kyrgyzstan’s overall population, but about 50% of the southern region under fire and witnesses confirm that Kyrgyz police and military were involved. And there are an estimated 400,000 refugees attempting to flee to Uzbekistan, with the Uzbeks there taking in some 100,000 but shutting the door on the rest who are living in squalor as the UN attempts to rush in aid.
Women have been raped, victims burned alive. It’s as ugly as anything during the Balkan wars. One woman told a London Times reporter who discovered a man’s arm bone poking out of a pile of ashes, “They shot him and set fire to him right here in his bedroom. I don’t know how a human being could do that.”
It was in April that President Bakiyev was ousted in a bloody coup, replaced by an interim government. Bakiyev, after fleeing to his southern stronghold, was forced into exile in Belarus. But his son, 32-year-old Maksim, who essentially ran the economy, was said to be behind the efforts to stir up trouble in an attempt to get the people to demand the return of his father. Maksim is now in London, awaiting word on whether he will be granted political asylum.
What’s also disturbing is that the United States had extensive ties to both President Bakiyev and his son. We needed support for our air base, after all.
The Uzbeks, on the other hand, had welcomed Bakiyev’s ouster in April and this week’s carnage was payback.
In the meantime, the interim government failed to protect the people. Incredibly, there is supposed to be a referendum on June 27 on a new constitution with parliamentary elections in October. The United States is urging that the referendum still take place. For its part, Russia has been requested by the government to send troops to secure key facilities. The number is not known.
Germany: Calls are increasing for Chancellor Angela Merkel to resign and hold new elections, this after Merkel announced a $100 billion austerity plan for the coming four years. But members inside her own coalition criticize elements of it.
Belgium: Flemish separatists won a parliamentary election as the nation’s long-term future grows darker and darker with divisions between Dutch-speaking Flanders and the Francophone south. Any coalition talks that drag on (as is inevitable) will severely impact the country’s needed economic reforms.
Mexico: This is turning out to be the worst month yet for violence in the drug wars as President Felipe Calderon begs for support. Ten Mexican federal police were killed in an ambush, 15 gang members were killed by troops in a shootout, 30+ were killed at a drug rehab center (the cartels targeting anyone trying to kick the habit)….Since taking office in December 2006, more than 23,000 people have died.
Venezuela: The principal owner of Venezuela’s last large opposition television station has fled the country. Guillermo Zuloaga left the country after an arrest warrant was issued as President Hugo Chavez tries to snuff out the remaining few opponents ahead of September parliamentary elections.
Britain: Prime Minister David Cameron apologized on behalf of the nation for the “unjustifiable” deaths of 14 unarmed civilians in 1972’s Bloody Sunday massacre in Londonderry, Northern Ireland. Cameron labeled the conclusions of the Saville Inquiry “shocking.” Lord Saville’s report completely exonerated the 28 civilians who were killed or wounded by paratroopers, who claimed at the time they were the ones attacked. Following Bloody Sunday, an event commemorated in song by U2, the initial findings exonerated the soldiers, saying they acted in self-defense.
Japan: It has long been suspected that Japan bribed nations into voting for it to be allowed to continue its “experimental” whale hunt and now a Sunday Times (UK) investigation confirms this. In exchange for their votes on the International Whaling Commission, the countries received aid from Japan. Travel and hotel bills to the IWC meetings are also taken care of. One told the Times call girls were procured for him. It was smaller nations like St. Kitts and Nevis, the Marshall Islands, and Grenada that sold their votes.
But one nation will no longer participate in the disgraceful game, tiny Palau, which sits between my island of Yap and the Philippines. They are undoubtedly giving up substantial Japanese aid but representatives have said they will no longer support Japan’s “research.” The whaling votes are always very close and hopefully others like Palau will follow.
Random Musings
“The press traveling with Obama on the campaign never had a lovey-dovey relationship with him. He treated us with aloof correctness, and occasional spurts of irritation. Like many Democrats, he thinks the press is supposed to be on his side….
“The former constitutional lawyer now in the White House understands that the press has a role in the democracy. But he is an elitist, too, as well as thin-skinned and controlling. So he ends up regarding scribes as intrusive, conveying a distaste for what he sees as the fundamental unseriousness of a press driven by blog-around-the-clock deadlines….
“Sometimes on the campaign plane, I would watch Obama venture back to make small talk with the press, discussing food at an event or something light. Then I would see him literally back away a few moments later as a blast of questions and flipcams hit him.
“But that’s the world we live in. It hurts Obama to be a crybaby about it, and to blame the press and the ‘old Washington game’ for his own communication failures….
“Now that Obama has been hit with negative press, he’s even more contemptuous. ‘He’s never needed to woo the press,’ says the NBC White House reporter Chuck Todd. ‘He’s never really needed us.’”
“How can a man who was a dazzling enough politician to become the first black president at age 47 suddenly become so obdurately self-destructive about politics?
“President Obama’s bloodless quality about people and events, the emotional detachment that his aides said allowed him to see things more clearly, has instead obscured his vision. It has made him unable to understand things quickly on a visceral level and put him on the defensive in this spring of our discontent, failing to understand that Americans are upset that a series of greedy corporations have screwed over the little guy without enough fierce and immediate pushback from the president….
“You know the president is drowning – in oil this time – when he uses the Oval Office. And do words really matter when the picture of oil gushing out of the well continues to fill the screen?
“As Obama prepared to go on air, a government panel of scientists again boosted its estimate of how much oil is belching into the besmirched gulf, raising it from 2.1 million gallons a day to roughly 2.5 million.
“The president acknowledged that the problems at the Minerals Management Service were deeper than he had known and ‘the pace of reform was just too slow.’ He admitted that ‘there will be more oil and more damage before this siege is done.’….
“Robert Gibbs on Tuesday continued the White House effort to emote, saying on TV: ‘It makes your blood boil.’ But he misses the point. Nobody needs to see the president yelling or pounding the table. Ronald Reagan could convey command with a smile; Clint Eastwood, with a whisper. Americans need to know the president cares so they can be sure he’s taking fast, muscular and proficient action.
“W. and Dick Cheney were too headlong, jumping off crazy cliffs and dragging the country – and the world – with them. President Obama is the opposite, often too hesitant to take the obvious action. He seems unable to muster the adrenalin necessary to go full bore until the crowd has waited and wailed and almost given up on him, but it’s a nerve-racking way to campaign and govern.
“ ‘On the one hand, you have BP, which sees a risky hole in the ground a couple miles under the sea surface and thinks if we take more risk, and cut some corners, we make millions more. In taking on more risk, they’re gambling with more than money,’ said Richard Wolffe, and Obama biographer. ‘On the other hand, you have Obama, who is ambivalent about risk. What he does late is to embrace risk, like running for president, trebling troops in Afghanistan and health care. But in deferring the risk, he’s gambling with his authority and political capital.’
“By trying too hard to keep control, he ends up losing control.”
“Pedestrian is beneath Obama. Mr. Fix-It he is not. He is world-historical, the visionary, come to make the oceans recede and the planet heal.
“How? By creating a glorious, new, clean green economy. And how exactly to do that? From Washington, by presidential command and with tens of billions of dollars thrown around. With the liberal (and professorial) conceit that scientific breakthroughs can be legislated into existence, Obama proposes to give us a new industrial economy.
“But is this not what we’ve been trying to do for decades with ethanol, which remains a monumental boondoggle, economically unviable and environmentally damaging to boot? As with yesterday’s panacea, synfuels, into which Jimmy Carter poured billions.
“Notice that Obama no longer talks about Spain, which until recently he repeatedly cited for its visionary subsidies of a blossoming new clean energy industry. That’s because Spain, now on the verge of bankruptcy, is pledged to reverse its disastrously bloated public spending, including radical cuts in subsidies to its uneconomical photovoltaic industry.
“There’s a reason petroleum is such a durable fuel. It’s not, as Obama fatuously suggested, because of oil company lobbying but because it is very portable, energy-dense and easy to use….
“We haven’t run out of safer and more easily accessible sources of oil. We’ve been run off them by environmentalists. They prefer to dream green instead.
“Obama is dreamer in chief: He wants to take us to this green future ‘even if we’re unsure exactly what that looks like. Even if we don’t yet precisely know how we’re going to get there.’ Here’s the offer: Tax carbon, spend trillions and put government in control of the energy economy – and he will take you he knows not where, by way of a road he knows not which.
“That’s why Tuesday’s speech was received with such consternation. It was so untethered from reality. The Gulf is gushing, and the president is talking mystery roads to unknown destinations. That passes for vision, and vision is Obama’s thing. It sure beats cleaning up beaches.”
[Ed. While I agree with Krauthammer, my own portfolio is nonetheless loaded with clean energy stories in a number of different fields.]
–A new country study by the Pew Research Center offers some surprising results, at least to this scribe. In its annual Global Attitudes survey, positive attitudes toward President Obama remain overwhelmingly strong among America’s West European allies, with 90% of Germans, 87% of French and 84% of Britons expressing confidence in Mr. Obama to do the right thing in world affairs, compared with 65% of Americans surveyed. [The survey, however, was conducted in April and early May and I imagine with the trashing of BP, many in Britain today would feel differently.]
But in yet another surprise, 57% of Russians have a favorable attitude towards the U.S., though it needs to be pointed out the White House has been giving Russia the store in its negotiations so why wouldn’t they like us? And Chinese have a favorable view to the tune of 58%. [91% of Chinese also say they thought their national economy was in good shape, and 87% say they are satisfied with national conditions. Only 30% of Americans are satisfied.]
In our relations with the Muslim world, however, only 17% in Egypt have a favorable view of the U.S., this after Obama’s much-ballyhooed address in Cairo a year ago. At that time, 27% of Egyptians liked us. The 17% is the same as the viewpoint of Turks towards Americans.
“Contrary to what a lot of people say, voters are not stupid. They know that Barack Obama did not make the hole in the floor of the Gulf of Mexico. They know that not even a president can magic away a spill this size. That is why all the recent talk about Deepwater Horizon putting an indelible stain on Mr. Obama’s first term, perhaps even deciding the fate of his presidency, is overblown. He will decide the fate of his presidency. You could in fact argue that he has decided it already, by placing three huge and deliberate bets during his first year and a half in office. What he is mainly doing now is waiting to see whether they come good or not.
“Mr. Obama placed bet one as soon as he arrived in office, by staking what will add up to a cool $1 trillion on economic stimulus. Since the counter-factual – what would have happened to the swooning American economy without the cash injection – cannot be known, historians will squabble for decades about how good a bet it was. But by one critical measure, job creation, it has so far been a woeful disappointment….
“The president placed his second bet in the autumn of last year when he decided to recast America’s military strategy in Afghanistan and send more troops. Foreign wars have long been the bane of presidents who long to transform America at home….
“Alas, no number of hours devoted to dialogue, be they ever so Socratic, can guarantee hitting on a winning strategy in a war as messy as this….
“Mr. Obama’s third big bet was health reform. This has already been inscribed in White House lore as a magnificent victory, snatched in the spring of this year from the mouth of defeat by a combination of presidential fortitude and congressional ingenuity….Posterity may indeed one day thank the president for taking America a giant step closer to entrenching the principle of universal health coverage that other rich countries take for granted. But posterity has no vote. And as November’s mid-terms approach, polls suggest that most Americans will not be thanking the president for health reform when they go into the voting booth….
“Is it far-fetched to argue that having cast his main bets Mr. Obama can now do nothing except await their result? Of course. He can, for a start, work harder to explain them….
“Another thing Mr. Obama can do is double down: more stimulus, more troops, more controversial legislation in areas such as energy and immigration. But after the huge decisions he has already taken his stock of money, troops and political capital is severely depleted. For the first term at least, what you see now is probably the bulk of what you are going to get, and success remains uncertain. Much more gripping than an oil spill.”
–Goodness gracious…South Carolina’s political system is as dysfunctional as any on earth, save perhaps for Japan’s with its five prime ministers in less than four years. The latest example is some guy named Alvin Greene, as a Washington Post article put it, “an unknown, unpolished, unemployed Army veteran who is facing a felony sex charge.”
Greene didn’t spend a single dollar on his campaign, as can best be ascertained, yet he managed to win the Democratic Senate primary and will take on Republican Sen. Jim DeMint, who is known, somewhat polished, and doesn’t face a felony sex charge.
Greene’s opponent, Vic Rawl, a former judge and legislator, is claiming voting irregularities. State party officials have asked Greene to drop out. The idiot refuses to. As of the end of this week, the party has relented. Greene will be on the ballot.
As to his military service which ended nine months ago, Greene said, “Well, it was an honorable discharge. It was involuntary. But things just wasn’t working out.”
No one knows how this guy, who is just scraping by, managed the $10,400 candidate filing fee.
As to the sex charge, Greene allegedly made sexual advances to a Univ. of South Carolina student and showed her pornography.
Democratic Rep. Todd Rutherford went to Greene’s home town on Thursday (Greene lives with his father) to meet with him. “It was like talking to a child,” Mr. Rutherford said. “It became very clear to me that this guy is special. If there’s a joke, he’s not in on it.”
It’s felt that South Carolina’s blacks voted for him because they assumed that with the spelling of his name he was black, plus he was first on the ballot.
So now I’m thinking, hey, if I change my name to LeBron Johnson (James would be a bit presumptuous), I could run for president!!
–A Quinnipiac University poll of New Jersey voters found just 44% approving of Gov. Chris Christie thus far. 43% disapprove. 75% say they’re somewhat or very dissatisfied with life in the Garden State. Quinnipiac says this is the worst satisfaction rating ever. I don’t pay property taxes anymore, so I have a better attitude.
“Mr. Obama deserves to be pegged back. This newspaper supported him in 2008 and backed his disappointing-but-necessary health-care plan. But he has done little to fix the deficit, shown a zeal for big government and all too often given the impression that capitalism is something unpleasant he found on the sole of his sneaker. America desperately needs a strong opposition. So it is sad to report that the American right is in a mess: fratricidal, increasingly extreme on many issues and woefully short of ideas, let alone solutions.
“This matters far beyond America’s shores. For most of the past half-century, conservative America has been a wellspring of new ideas – especially about slimming government. At a time when redesigning the state is a priority around the world, the right’s dysfunctionality is especially unfortunate.”
–Army Times interviewed Army Chief of Staff Gen. George Casey. Among other things Gen. Casey said he wants to reduce combat zone deployments to 9 months from its current 12. [In 2007 it was extended to 15 months until Aug. 2008]
Casey says that the Army’s mental health assessment team studies show that “between nine and 12 is where a lot of the stress problems really manifest themselves, where the family problems really manifest themselves.” Casey is also looking to stretch dwell time between active duty deployments to 36 months. The same assessment studies have “shown us it takes 24 to 36 months to fully recover from a one-year combat deployment.”
Army Times: “There have been three Medals of Honor, all posthumous. Why, of all the actions that have gone on, are there only three Medals of Honor – all posthumous?”
Casey: “We’ve had over 13,000 soldiers decorated for valor since Sept. 11, 2001. That is not an insignificant number…By and large, what came up from the commanders was approved. I think in three years there might have been one, maybe two requests for Medals of Honor that the Awards Board has downgraded…The types of actions that we have in Iraq and Afghanistan, although they can be brutally violent for short periods of time, they are not the long duration, force-on-force type of battles we fought in the past. You’re going to continue to see awards for Medals of Honor and Distinguished Service Crosses, and I would expect that some of those, especially for living soldiers, would be approved.”
Not having served in the military, the last thing I should do is comment on the topic, but it is a fascinating subject given his parameters.
–A study conducted by economists at MIT, the University of Chicago and Harvard has concluded:
“Cities that experienced the Holocaust most intensely have grown less, and [regions] where the Holocaust had the largest impact have lower GDP per capita and lower average wages today. In addition, these same cities and oblasts exhibit a higher vote share for Communist candidates since the collapse of the Soviet Union.”
According to the study, the Jewish population in the 11 regions declined 39% between 1939 and 1959. Regions under Nazi occupation had an average 2002 GDP per capita of $4,554, compared with the average throughout the country of $5,854.
Before World War II, more than 67% of Russian Jews held jobs that could be considered white-collar, while only about 15% of non-Jews had such occupations. [Peter France and Maria Antonova / Moscow Times]
–Doctors and hearing experts are telling us what we already know. Those freakin vuvuzela horns at the World Cup are bad for our hearing…even when listening to the television from two rooms away, or so I surmise.
Plus, as reported by Robb Stewart of the Wall Street Journal, the blaring horns “possibly spread colds, the flu and other infectious diseases to spectators in stadiums,” though not through the television screen.
Anyone blowing a vuvuzela should be forced to pay a heavy fine…like $195,000; proceeds of which would go to the World Wildlife Fund.
“Southern Ocean sperm whales are an unexpected ally in the fight against global warming, removing the equivalent carbon emissions from 40,000 cars each year, thanks to their feces, a study has found.
“Previously, the cetaceans have been labeled as climate culprits because they breathe out carbon dioxide, the most abundant greenhouse gas. But this is only a part of the picture, according to the paper, published in the British journal Proceedings of the Royal Society.
“Australian biologists have estimated that the about 12,000 sperm whales in the Southern Ocean each deposit about 50 tons of iron a year from their diet of fish and squid.
“The iron is an excellent food for phytoplankton, the plants that live near the ocean surface and which suck up carbon dioxide from the atmosphere through photosynthesis.
“As a result of fecal fertilization, the whales remove 400,000 tons of carbon each year, twice as much as the 200,000 tons that they contribute through respiration.”
Kind of makes you want to treat sperm whales with more respect.
[Alas, a dead sperm whale was discovered near the oil spill in the Gulf, though it’s not known as yet if it was poisoned by the oil. And this is sad…up to one million turtle hatchlings could be moving towards the slick.]
–A taxi driver in Britain ferried Mary Watson to and fro for 20 years…shopping, the hairdresser. Mrs. Watson, a widow, said there would be something in her will for the driver, Don Pratt, and wouldn’t you know, when Mary died, she left him close to $400,000, her entire estate. What’s the lesson, boys and girls? Treat everyone you come across with respect because you never know. [Unless they work for Goldman Sachs.]
–Sign of the Apocalypse. New York State is attempting to ban teenage tanning, a good move. So I’m watching a local news piece on this and did you know there is actually an “Executive Director of the Indoor Tanning Association”?
Venice, Louisiana… “Crews cleaning up the oil in one Louisiana parish have trampled the nests and eggs of birds, including the brown pelican, which came off the endangered species list last year, the head of the parish said Wednesday….
“(Billy Nungesser) said officials recently found broken eggs and crushed chicks on Queen Bess Island, near Grand Isle….
“In one picture released by the parish, a plastic bag was on top of a nest containing broken speckled eggs….
“ ‘The people BP sent out to clean up oil trampled the nesting grounds of brown pelicans and other birds,’ said Nungesser. ‘Pelicans just came off the endangered species list in November of last year. They already have the oil affecting their population during their reproduction time, now we have the so-called clean-up crews stomping eggs.
“ ‘The lack of urgency and general disregard for Louisiana’s wetlands and wildlife is enough to make you sick,’ he said.”
–Thankfully, scientists have concluded the moon might be much wetter than previously thought. According to the BBC, scientists analyzing lunar rocks picked up by Apollo found that there was at least 100 times more water in the Moon’s minerals than they had previously believed.
So…at least some of us can get off this planet and go to the moon before Four Seasons puts a nice hotel/spa on Mars.
But wait…President Obama dismantled the rocket program designed to get us back to the moon! And without congressional approval! Sacre bleu!
–Lastly, New Jersey Gov. Christie was interviewed on the topic of local sports by the Star-Ledger’s Steve Politi and Politi asked the following.
“Does it worry you that, as a result of your budget cuts, some districts are cutting back on sports or having athletes pay to join high school teams?”
Gov. Christie: “It does. I don’t think it should have to. We’re looking at this all backwards. Teachers and administrators should be looking at what they’re paid and what their raises are, and if they’re really worried about the kids, sports are an integral part of a kid’s education. When I see some people being restricted in any way from participating in that, it does concern me, because I was very involved in it as a kid at public schools here. I also know it’s a false choice. They can make other choices and they refuse to.”
Damn right, Governor. Throw in music programs. Sports and music encompasses about 90% of the students, I imagine. The last thing we should be doing is cutting back on either. And it is beyond absurd that students are in some cases being forced to pay for these activities.
Pray for the men and women of our armed forces, and all the fallen.
Gold closed at $1258
Oil, $77.18
Returns for the week 6/14-6/18
Dow Jones +2.3% [10450]
S&P 500 +2.4% [1117]
S&P MidCap +2.1%
Russell 2000 +2.8%
Nasdaq +2.9% [2309]
Returns for the period 1/1/10-6/18/10
Dow Jones +0.2%
S&P 500 +0.2%
S&P MidCap +6.6%
Russell 2000 +6.6%
Nasdaq +1.8%
Bulls 37.0
Bears 32.6 [Source: Chartcraft / Investors Intelligence]
Have a great week. I appreciate your support.
Happy Father’s Day!
Brian Trumbore
