A humiliating day awaits the Federal Reserve

Friday’s the day that the Federal Reserve will be embarrassed — yet again.
The Commerce Department, at 8:30 a.m. on Jan. 29, will announce how healthy the US economy was in the fourth quarter — and the answer is expected to be “not so good.”
In fact, according to the Atlanta Federal Reserve Bank, the nation’s economy, or gross domestic product, grew at just a 0.7 percent annual rate in the final three months of 2015.
That’s not the official number — the official one will come on Friday from Commerce. The Atlanta Fed keeps running tabs of what the number should be, based on data already in circulation. They call it GDPNow and, so far, it has been pretty accurate.
Some Wall Street economists have GDP forecasts that are even lower, much lower — like negative numbers lower.
So why will the Fed be embarrassed?

http://nypost.com/2016/01/28/a-humiliating-day-awaits-the-federal-reserve/ 

Why oil glut not going away soon

U.S. oil production continues to defy forecasts that it is on the decline, and with refiners processing as much of the stuff as they can, the glut of oil, gasoline and diesel fuel keeps growing.

That should continue to pressure oil prices, which rallied Wednesday because the large weekly build in supply was not quite as gigantic as feared. The U.S. Energy Information Administration reported that crude oil supplies grew by 8.4 million barrels last week, well below the 11.4 million reported Tuesday by the American Petroleum Institute.

The government's lower figure helped trigger a relief rally in crude futures that erased steep losses and were trading more than 2 percent higher for the front month futures contract for West Texas Intermediate crude. Another factor was comments from Russia's energy ministry suggesting that possible coordination between Russia and OPEC was discussed Wednesday.

"It's a record amount of crude oil in storage. It's a huge build in gasoline, but there was a little strength in distillate demand, thanks to the weather. It's squarely bearish again," said John Kilduff, partner with Again Capital. 

http://finance.yahoo.com/news/why-oil-glut-not-going-183504936.html 

Another $58 Mil for Failed “Green” Car Program

A scandal-plagued “green” auto program that’s fleeced American taxpayers out of huge sums just got another $58 million from the Obama administration to support the development of advanced technology vehicles that meet higher efficiency standards.

The experimental program is known as Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing (ATVM) and it’s one of the president’s many disastrous green-energy investments. The public funds are funneled through the Department of Energy (DOE), which is handing out cash like candy on Halloween. In all, the administration has set aside an astounding $25 billion for the cause and a chunk of it has already been lost on initiatives that have failed miserably. Among them is fly-by-night electric car company called Fisker Automotive that shut down after getting an eye-popping $193 million from the government. The Obama DOE originally pledged $529 million for the California startup but the cash finally stopped flowing when Fisker laid off three quarters of its employees and announced it was on the verge of bankruptcy.

Judicial Watch has an ongoing investigation into the Fisker scandal and has sued the DOE for records detailing the government “loan” that will obviously never be repaid because the company went under. The Obama administration touted it as a great investment in a company that would create thousands of jobs in a region hit hard by unemployment. The administration also promised Fisker would develop two lines of plug-in hybrid electric vehicles that could run up to 300 miles on a rechargeable Lithium-ion battery. None of this ever came close to materializing and instead taxpayers got stuck with the huge loss of this failed experiment.

http://www.judicialwatch.org/blog/2016/01/another-58-mil-for-failed-green-car-program/

Asian Freeze Adds to Doubt on Reality of Global Warming

While many Americans are regarding the record-breaking East Coast blizzard as yet another reason to be skeptical of global-warming propaganda, we should not neglect events on the other side of the world. Most of eastern Asia is in the grip of a record-breaking cold snap of its own, a meteorological event that has claimed more than 80 lives in Taiwan alone — mostly from hypothermia — and seen snow fall for the first time in decades on tropical islands such as Okinawa.

The great Asian freeze is crippling Pacific Rim nations, many of them ill-equipped to deal with cold winter weather. Normally balmy Hong Kong, for example, is experiencing its coldest weather in nearly 60 years, and has had to close down its schools since few buildings in Hong Kong have central heating. Heavy snow and sleet have caused more than 100,000 flights to be cancelled or delayed in South Korea and China, while across Japan, cities are being blanketed with snow, including areas where snow seldom if ever falls. The southerly island of Amami Oshima (Japan’s seventh largest island and part of the Ryukyu chain), with a humid subtropical climate, has had snowfall for the first time in more than a century. In mainland China, the cold wave has coincided with the onset of Chinese New Year travels, but with road closures and flight, ferry, and train cancellations in the many thousands, holiday travel has been severely disrupted.

http://thenewamerican.com/tech/environment/item/22406-asian-freeze-adds-to-doubt-on-reality-of-global-warming

With Trump It All Depends on What the Meaning of “It” Is

Attempting to describe Donald Trump in conventional political terms is like trying to explain a smart phone app to a Neanderthal. Despite the candidate’s claim to be “conservative,” looking at Trump’s “political” past, one would find ample support for policies at the heart of an avowed leftist; including progressive taxation, gun control, and single-payer healthcare. Even if one were to afford Trump the benefit of the doubt that his views have genuinely “evolved” rightward since his days of palling-around with the likes of Al Sharpton and Hillary Clinton, the man remains more a chameleon than a conservative.

For example, where he would attempt to solve America’s immigration issues -- a key concern of conservatives -- Trump would vastly expand the size and power of the federal government. In combatting domestic terrorism threats, Trump would gut religious freedoms conservatives have fought hard to preserve, while further curbing civil liberties and privacy rights. Other “policy” statements Trump recently has espoused make even less sense; for example, championing ethanol regulations as a means of fostering “energy independence,” and eminent domain as a way to create jobs. Always a fast moving target, Trump often changes his positions from one ideological polarity, to the other in a matter of hours as he mentally works through how to “make America great again.”

On the surface, Trump’s kitschy campaign tagline might seem like just another hollow campaign ploy to take advantage of the growing political unrest on both sides of the ideological aisle.  However, when looking at Trump’s stances both in the past and in present day, a common theme emerges that sheds a light on what a Trump presidency would look like, and what it would mean for the future of conservatism. That theme? Trump’s fondness for authoritarianism.

http://townhall.com/columnists/bobbarr/2016/01/27/with-trump-it-all-depends-on-what-the-meaning-of-it-is-n2110360

The Flint Water Crisis Is the Result of a Stimulus Project Gone Wrong

Liberals are wrongly blaming Flint's lead poisoning crisis on austerity measures imposed on the city by a fiscallyconservative Republican Governor Rick Snyder, as I wrote last week. (Snyder had appointed an emergency manager in 2011 to help the city balance its books and avoid bankruptcy.) However, I didn't quite realize just how wrong they were. As it turns out, the debacle is the result of Snyder's efforts to stimulate the local economy—the exact opposite of the liberal line.

The whole mess occurred because Flint decided against renewing its 30-year contract with the Detroit Water and Sewage Department (DWSD) and switched instead to Karengondi Water Authority (KWA). KWA was planning to build its own hugely expensive pipeline, parallel to DWSD's, to harness water from Lake Huron and service the Genesee County area where Flint is located. This left the city in the lurch for a few years when its contract with DWSD ended but the new facility had not yet gone online, prompting it to reopen a local mothballed facility that relied on the toxic Flint River as its source (more on the rank stupidity of this decision later).

The rationale for the original decision to switch Flint's water providers was that, in the long run, KWA would generate substantial savings for the cash-strapped city. Not only was this false but Snyder had very good reasons at that time to believe that this was false.

http://reason.com/blog/2016/01/25/the-flint-water-crisis-is-the-result-of

BETTER TO BE GOVERNED BY AN HONEST SOCIALIST THAN A DISHONEST CONSERVATIVE?

It’s the season of the political pander. It seems worst on the right. Just vote for me for president, and I will make your dreams come true. Lots of benefits, low taxes, large military, many services, little government. It’s magic!

It probably comes as no surprise that a Democrat like Hillary Clinton doesn’t want to talk about how she’s going to pay for all the goodies she says she wants Americans to have. After all, she claims to be a friend of the middle class, and her Wall Street friends probably wouldn’t like new levies on their earnings.

Yet the Republicans are no more courageous. Donald Trump says he represents the disenfranchised masses. So he has defended programs like Social Security without explaining how he would sustain the underfunded system. His more mainstream opponents laud smaller government and criticize high taxes, while advocating ever higher military outlays without detailing what domestic spending programs they would cut. No wonder America faces some $200 trillion in unfunded liabilities.

But the bad news starts now. In January the Congressional Budget Office issued its latest report on the federal budget, warning that the deficit is set to grow from $439 billion last year to $544 billion in 2016. Future increases will be steady. By 2026 the deficit will be $1.37 trillion. The cumulative deficit over the next decade will be $9.4 trillion.

http://spectator.org/articles/65302/better-be-governed-honest-socialist-dishonest-conservative