After The Gold Rush II – Kentucky Coal and Japanese Stocks

By: Repair_Man_Jack (Diary)  |  May 23rd at 12:30 PM  | 

If you have based your hope for prosperity on what Globalization Guru Thomas Friedman referred to as The Electronic Herd, this morning you probably feel like one of the pigs that Christ sent over the cliff when he exorcised “Legion.” For today, at least, there is no hiding from the stupid. The Nikkei 225 crashed and burned yesterday and Business Insider describesjust what traders in American Equities markets woke up to this morning.

Markets around the world are deep in the red. England’s FTSE is down. 1.7%. France’s CAC 40 is down 2.3%. Germany’s DAX is down 2.4%. Spain’s IBEX is down 1.4%. Italy’s FTSE MIB is down 2.5%. In the U.S., the S&P 500 is down 0.8%. This follows sell-offs across Asia. Japan’s Nikkei fell by a stunning 7.3%.

I’m sure the parrots at CNBC Squawk Box are remarkably charming this fine and wonderful morning. And Jim Cramer has probably exploded and totally made a mess all over the set at “Mad Money.” However, you can get the same level of news content and far more entertainment by watching this Alien’s clip linked here. What staggers the mind is that all of this is caused by US Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke dropping hints that he might choose to reduce the rate at which he hands out free money to banking institutions via QE.

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State Department: sorry, Mr. President. The Keystone Pipeline can go ahead.

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  March 2nd at 09:00 AM  | 

The Obama administration is rapidly running out of wiggle room on the Keystone pipeline: The State Department’s long-awaited environmental report on the Keystone XL pipeline leaves President Barack Obama with no real scientific reason to reject the nation’s most fiercely debated energy project. The sprawling 2,000-page report, released late Friday afternoon, doesn’t issue a clear yea or nay on a sprawling section of pipeline that | Read More »

10 Reasons to Oppose Highway/Student Loan/Flood Insurance Omnibus Bill

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  June 28th at 07:40 PM  | 

While everyone is focused on how to deal with the impending government takeover of healthcare, we must continue to battle the forces of big-government in Congress.  Yesterday, in another display of venerable bipartisanship, leaders from both parties agreed to roll the $120 billion Democrat highway bill, subsidies to fuel the Big Education bubble, and a 5-year extension of government-run flood insurance into one omnibus bill, | Read More »

Double Capitulation Alert: Say No to Highway and Student Loan Bills

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  June 27th at 07:00 PM  | 

While everyone is waiting breathlessly to see whether the Supreme Court will strike down Obama’s egregious power grab in the healthcare sector, a bipartisan group of congressmen and senators are working to grow government in several other sectors of the economy.  We must not be complacent. In our battle to shrink the size of the federal government, there have been a number of issues on | Read More »

Republicans Already Showing Weakness on Keystone Pipeline

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  May 16th at 04:00 PM  | 

Well, that didn’t take long.  Just one week into the conference committee on the highway bill, Republicans are showing signs of caving on their insistence that the Keystone pipeline be approved as part of the deal. Throughout the past few months, we have been chronicling how Republicans have been apathetic to the underlying vices of the highway bill (S. 1813).  They basically told the Democrats | Read More »

$2.50 per Gallon Gasoline, Energy Independence and Jobs

By: Newt Gingrich (Diary)  |  February 23rd at 07:48 AM  | 

To hear the White House and President Obama tell it, high gasoline prices are here to stay and we better get used to them. If Americans would quiet down and accept $4.00 a gallon gas, it would certainly make the President and his environmentalist allies happy—but it would also require us to forget everything we know about American energy. During the years I was speaker | Read More »

Congressional Republicans Can and Must Force Obama’s Hand on Keystone Pipeline

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  January 23rd at 04:00 PM  | 

Immediately prior to the congressional recess in December, Congress passed an inefficacious two-month extension of the Social Security tax cut.  Additionally, they reauthorized another two months of unprecedented long-term unemployment benefits, along with more spending for Medicare ‘doc fix.’  None of it, including the entitlement spending, was paid for in any meaningful way. Nevertheless, you might ask, didn’t we get the Keystone pipeline as part | Read More »

House Must Decouple Payroll Tax Cut From Broader ‘Extenders’ Package

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  December 18th at 12:05 PM  | 

“The Senate action was akin to grounding into a triple play for Team GOP, yet the underlying bill passed with unanimous consent.” Over the weekend, Mitch McConnell and Senate Republicans obviated the superior leverage of House Republicans by passing a two-month extension of the payroll tax cut, along with a clean extension (no reforms and offsets) of doc fix and unemployment benefits. In a premature | Read More »

Democrats throw Obama under the bus over payroll taxcut

By: Dan Spencer (Diary)  |  December 17th at 12:30 PM  | 

The Democrat-controlled Senate voted 89-10 to pass an extension of the payroll tax cut. According to theAssociated Press, the two-month extension requires President Obama to grant a permit for the Canada-to-Texas Keystone pipeline within 60 days unless he determines that the pipeline is “not in the national interest.” Obama had implied that he would veto any bill that required that he make a decision before it was politically | Read More »

Keystone showdown looms: is Harry Reid a Senator, or Barack Obama’s Lap Dog?

By: Moe Lane (Diary)  |  December 13th at 04:30 PM  | 

Here’s the background: the current hot topic of conversation in domestic politics right now is whether or not to extend a temporary payroll tax cut. It’s currently an object of some controversy on the GOP side, largely because it would involve effectively another 180 billion in spending; Democrats were in fact kind of gleeful about that, given that it promised to give Republicans a bit | Read More »

The GOP Payroll Tax Cut/UI Extension Proposal

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  December 9th at 12:04 PM  | 

“will they finally hold the line on their own promises this time, or will they pass all the extensions without the reforms, riders, and spending offsets? This package must be the final offer.” Earlier today, House Republican leaders unveiled their package deal to extend the payroll tax and unemployment benefits for another year and to continue Medicare ‘doc fix’ for another two years. While bipartisan | Read More »

Anti-Pipeline Dave Heineman Should Not Run for Senate in Nebraska

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  December 5th at 07:01 PM  | 

One of the biggest political and policy winners for Republicans is their strong support for expeditious approval of the Keystone Pipeline.  Their unified support for this propitious project has provided voters with a sharp contrast to Obama’s casual disregard for private-sector job creation and cheap energy for consumers.  Hence, it is a no-brainer that the pipeline issue should be used as a rallying cry for | Read More »

Nebraska Gov. Heineman to the Left of Obama Administration on Keystone Pipeline

By: Daniel Horowitz (Diary)  |  September 1st at 04:21 PM  | 

After three years of cumbersome red tape, environmental impact studies, and endless litigation, the Canadian Keystone KL Pipeline extension project is close to obtaining final approval from the State Department.  This $7 billion pipeline project, when completed, would transport over 700,000 barrels of oil per day from the Canadian tar sands in northeast Alberta to the hungry oil refineries on the Texas Gulf coast.  This | Read More »