When Putin announced that Russia would no longer sell its oil and natural gas in dollars, there were the normal — its OK type statements from the financial world, and it was viewed by the Western financial cognoscenti as an anomaly.

However, since the Federal Reserve is printing an estimated $600 billion a year to give to bankers and brokers, who then buy U.S. Treasury bills to finance for our over-spending Federal Government with printed dollars — the value of the dollar drops due to the massive over supply.

Then, those countries holding the U.S. dollar as reserve currency start to speak up. They plead with the President and Congress to start balancing the budget and lowering the deficit.

Instead, President Obama and Congress has not decreased the deficit, it has grown four times it was under Bush, to record numbers — $9 Trillion — under President Obama and the Democratic Congress.

And President Obama, by pushing his trillion dollar health care plan is rubbing the world’s face in their concerns about U.S. spending. He simply does not care that the dollar is dropping and that the value of these country’s dollar holdings is also dropping.

Read More →

Maybe some societies should take their own national anthems to heart.

E.g., excerpt:

Aux armes, citoyens!
Formez vos battalions!

(Citizens, to arms!
Form your battalions!)

Happy Bastille Day from…. Bucharest.

Bastille Day open thread….

One at a time, President Barack Obama is alienating America’s European allies. First there was the embarrassingly crude snub of Prime Minister Gordon Brown of Great Britain, who was denied the courtesy of a joint press conference with the president on his recent Washington trip and was sent packing with a disastrously cheap official gift: a DVD collection that Brown cannot even view in London. By comparison, Obama was treated like royalty in Britain at the G-20. However, the gift he presented Queen Elizabeth, an iPod loaded with Broadway show tunes, left some scratching their heads.

But if the president’s behavior toward America’s best friend is a scandal, then his treatment of the president of America’s oldest ally is an international incident. Obama has publicly snubbed French President Nicholas Sarkozy three times since being elected, and now it is coming back to bite him.

Read More →

As Obama bows in supplication before a Saudi King then tries to spin his way out of his own actions, America is being humiliated by whelps at sea. He was just leaning, we’re told, not bowing. It was because the Saudi King is short or so goes the White House spin. But the Queen of England is even shorter than the Saudi King and there was no royal navel gazing from Obama in England! Obama failed that test, indeed.

To be sure, Barack Obama is being tested just like Joe Biden said he would. But those testing him are not the sort of big state actors that Biden imagined would task the new president. They are low-tech, low-rent, unorganized pirates, not heads of state of great and dangerous nations. And this fact, that it is mere pirates testing him, is an even bigger slap in the face than it would be if it were a powerful nation or two testing President Obama.

And worse, these skinny, underfed, unorganized and ill-equipped pirates are making a fool of what is ostensibly the most powerful man in the world. And it is about to get worse if Obama allows the U.S. Navy to stand idly by as more pirates come to the scene of the standoff to float in solidarity with the four fellows holding captain Philips in that disabled power boat.

Read More →

During his incredibly successful [/snark] trip to Europe last week, President Obama rejected an invitation from French president Nicolas Sarkozy to visit Normandy, France — the site of the 1944 D-Day beach landing. The reason given by the Obama administration? They didn’t want to offend the Germans by having the U.S. president visit the site where over 4,400 allied soldiers died in the operation that made victory in Europe against the evil, inhuman Nazi German regime and its allies possible.

They didn’t want to offend the Germans. Amazing. Perhaps we should next cancel all July 4 celebrations out of fear of offending the British? Or perhaps we should cancel Easter out of fear of “offending” the Romans, or cancel all 9/11 remembrances out of fear of “offending” al Qaeda terrorists, or cancel Memorial and Veterans’ days out of fear of “offending” all and sundry who have had the misfortune of throwing themselves on American bayonets over the course of our nearly-223-year history.

Sounds absurd, doesn’t it?  Absolutely — until you push a little further, and learn anew just what absurdity really is, courtesy — again — of the Obama administration:

Mr Sarkozy’s most senior aide said Mr Obama had agreed to come back in June for the 65th anniversary of the June 6th 1944, D-Day landings. A White House spokesman declined to comment on whether Mr Obama would travel to France in June.

So far, innumerable media outlets have reported that Obama will, in fact, be joining Sarkozy in Normandy on the June 6 anniversary of D-Day — but every one is citing Sarkozy and other European sources, because the Obama administration, for whatever reason, is refusing to confirm or deny whether Obama intends to honor those fallen — and those saved — by the historic D-Day operation.

It’s a simple question; the answer should be a no-brainer, and this topic should be a nonissue. Unfortunately, the indecisive and tin-eared Obama White House is, with its usual confusion, discombobulation, and ineptitude, quickly turning what should have been far less than a molehill into one heck of a forbidding mountain.

Read More →

We would like to think that this is a joke. Sadly, the French media is reporting as true that Barack Obama sent a letter to the President of France pledging support and friendship. His actual words were

“I am certain that we will be able to work together, in the coming four years, in a spirit of peace and friendship to build a safer world.”

There’s just one problem: he sent it to the wrong guy. That’s right. Barack Obama sent the letter to the former President of France, not the present President.

And Nicholas Sarkozy is not amused.*

As my wife said, we no longer have to worry that Obama is the anti-Christ — he’s too incompetent. But let’s still withhold judgment on the teleprompter.

*Let’s say that Barack Obama knew he was communicating with the former President of France. He still hacked off the present President who has a lot of bad blood with the old guy. Burning bridges with an ally? I thought that’s what he accused Bush of doing.

Both the House and Senate stimulus bills contain some pleasant-sounding ‘Buy America’ provisions, which require that all the steel used for construction funded in the bill be American-made. Rules like ‘Buy American’ may sound nice, but they are inherently unhelpful. In a global economy, what does ‘American-made’ mean? And how much of a premium should taxpayers cover to purchase ‘American-made’ products instead of others? Why does American-made steel get a preference, but not cars, or food, or health care, or any other commodity? And why should taxpayers pay extra to support less-efficient firms in the first place? Rules like this amount to an attempt to protect an inefficient economy hamstrung by big government, and they’re no substitute for cutting taxes, reducing regulation, and getting government out of the way.

And apart from ineffective, it also has the potential to spark a very costly trade war:

“There is no company that is going to benefit more from the stimulus package than Caterpillar, but I am telling you that by embracing Buy American you are undermining our ability to export U.S. produced products overseas,” said Bill Lane, government affairs director for Caterpillar in Washington. More than half of Caterpillar’s sales — including big-ticket items like construction cranes and land movers — are sold overseas.

Read More →