- The deeper story on those undemocratic superdelegates supporting Hillary. And the background on how superdelegates came to be.
- Electorally, the big question is will the dogs eat it? (Given that dogs will eat both vomit and sh*t, maybe they will.)
- OTOH, the backlash has begun. Michelle Alexander writes in The Nation that Clinton doesn’t deserve the black vote that the media considers so inevitable for her.
- The new frontier of negative interest rates. You know, if I didn’t realize this stuff is for real, I’d think articles like this one were parodies. Or bizarre fantasies. Oh, the weird world of economics!
- LOL, and here you thought the media just fawned on HRC because they choose to. Sometimes, though, they’re simply following orders.
- Another flash story via MJR: “Walkers: Akira and Brenna.”
That piece on Mann is two years old. Steyn did file suit, but the last I heard it was stalled in the DC Court of Appeals while they decide if the SLAPP rules apply.
Oh damn. I always try to remember to check dates on articles. Sometimes I slip. I’ll de-link that one. Thanks for pointing it out, Bear.
AAAAAGH!!! When will the Clinton’s and Bush’s just go away? Just take all the money and go torture small animals in Bermuda or somewhere! Get off us.
With the passing of Antonin Scalia, my concerns about who would be appointing justices has come into sharper focus. Really, I figured Ginsberg would the one to go, whether by retirement or otherwise. And already the screeching voices are going off.
http://www.nytimes.com/2016/02/14/us/antonin-scalia-death.html
Oh, sh*t, jed. I hadn’t heard until you posted. Gods forbid that Obama gets to appoint another justice, and to replace Scalia, yet.
The most compelling aspect of the current election show has always been the makeup of the Court, IMO.
Well, the D’s are all WE HAVE TO MOVE FORWARD TO FILL THIS VACANCY and the R’s are all we should wait until the next President is in office.
In 1968, the R’s fillibustered the elevation of Fortas to Chief Justice. Do they have the backbone for that now? Lots of commentary already that they don’t.
In my fever dreams, the spot goes to Alex Kozinski.
Or Eugene Volokh.
I agree with Bob. Most people don’t really think about the Supreme Court (or federal courts in general) when deciding on a president. In some respects it’s the most important aspect of the presidency, but it’s usually ignored. The death of Scalia should force that issue into sharper focus.
Kozinski would be good (I’d prefer Randy Barnett!), but my fear is that Obama will nominate Eric Holder. Holder has all the proper credentials (former federal judge, former US Attorney and Attorney General, now a partner in a prestigious Washington law firm). He would be a disaster, of course, and that little matter of his contempt of Congress citation should destroy any chance of confirmation. But how about a (I>recess appointment? It’s been done before, and would put him on the Court until the end of the next term of Congress (January 2018), long enough to do serious harm.
How’s that for a nightmare scenario?
As to negative interest rates, that’s a very complicated subject and not appropriate for a brief thread comment. But I will make two observations about it:
(1) Before the Fed even considers going down that road, it should first eliminate its idiotic policy of paying interest on excess reserves. Those are reserves which banks are not required to hold on deposit with the Fed (“required” reserves are a cushion against bank runs). Payment of interest on excess reserves was illegal before 2008, but since that law was changed the Fed has consistently paid more interest on them than the banks could get putting the money into short-term Treasury securities (the alternative place to hold short-term cash). For 6 years the Fed has been effectively subsidizing banks not to lend. It was an idiotic policy from the start, and should have been abandoned long ago.
(2) Negative interest rates are a pre-cursor to currency and capital controls. Once they begin that policy, the next step will be to eliminate cash entirely (which means that all of your money will have to be in electronic form, so the government always knows where it is and could conceivably simply wipe it out if it considers you an enemy), followed by severe limits on the ability to expatriate it, so you won’t even be able to get it out of their clutches. It would be a horrible policy, equivalent to (or even worse than) the abolition of gold convertibility. They’ll make it sound benign: that it’s only a charge to banks, not consumers, designed to encourage lending and thus stimulate the economy. But it will fail at that, and the end game is clear. If this happens we’re all in serious trouble.
A short follow-up to my last post (about negative interest rates0, in case anyone is still following this thread:
Trial balloons are already being floated: This week the President of the European Central Bank disclosed that it is strongly considering eliminating the 500 Euro note, and former US Treasury Secretary Larry Summers published an op-ed in the Washington Post advocating the elimination of the $100 bill. This is ostensibly to help combat crime (after all, who but criminals uses cash?), but it is a significant first step toward moving to a true cashless society. That would be an utter disaster for anyone who values personal freedom.
The wheels are turning.