My How the Tables Have Turned

 

Richard Nixon was wrong, as wrong as wrong can be. He utilized the investigative powers of the Federal Government, the FBI, Justice Department, IRS and whatever might have aided his reelection, against his opponent, anything and anyone was a target, forging a theft which was his downfall. This was criminal in every way and President Nixon was fortunate to only have to resign and not spend many months or years in prison. His reputation was in tatters with everything positive he had accomplished now tarnished. His actions resulted in half a century of more and more liberal policies and culture taking over America. Now the tables have turned and the shoe is on the other foot and a million other trite sayings.

 

The questions now revolve around where will the investigation lead and who will be held culpable. Some of the names tossed about range from lesser known until the recent political free-for-all while others are household names. Who had heard of Mueller, Comey, Clapper, Steele, Brennan and other names which will become all too familiar in the near future, as everything plays out? Then there are the two names which we all are already very familiar with, former Secretary of State, Senator for New York and First Lady Hillary Clinton and former President Barack Obama. The same questions from the Nixon era will be heard all over again. Questions such as how high did it go, who knew and when did they know and a host of others will be thrown around and featured in article after article. Then there will be the big question, who, if anyone, will fall on their sword to save those above them who actually gave the orders. This was done and bartered into making himself into a folk hero of an odd sort when Lieutenant Colonel Oliver North in full uniform took total responsibility for the Iran-Contra Affair. His standing at attention while taking the oath and taking his valiant responsibility clearing President Reagan of any accountability.

 

Mueller, Comey, Clapper
Brennan, Steele

 

Now we have heard reports that former CIA Director John Brennan and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lied in their testimony given to Congress. This is a crime, obviously, defined by U.S. Code sections 1621 and 1001 of Title 18. These crimes could result in a maximum five-year prison sentence and potential fine. Both men are highly unlikely to actually face anything more than fines, especially if they are willing to give testimony leading to indictments of what are often called bigger fish. The truth should be sought over making the entire affair into some kind of vendetta. But there is a larger question involved this time around; is it worth the time, effort and attention for the Trump Administration to expend when the same efforts can be used to accomplish the Trump and the nation’s agendas.

 

This is what we will attempt to predict. President Trump is unlikely to seek convictions of his former opponent, Hillary Clinton, or of former President Barack Obama. What the FBI and other agencies desire may be something of a different matter. The FBI and CIA will likely desire to clear their agencies of any hints of corruption and could turn on their former heads which might not fare well for James Comey and John Brennan. These two disgraced their agencies and these are not agencies which can stand for politics entering into their lairs as these are investigatory agencies whose reputation is for providing administrations of both parties with equal diligence. But as far as Clinton and Obama, they will probably not face any serious difficulties, well; Obama will not likely be facing any charges. Hillary Clinton may face some charges for her handling of classified information while Secretary of State but will get a pass in sentencing if the charges are even pursued. The one thing is this might prove to be an interesting circus to watch while the antics are filling the three rings with the media doing its finest job at making molehills out of mountains. In the meantime, the media will be making mountains out of absolutely nothing over the presumed Trump-Russia collusion fantasy. The mainstream media has become so unfortunately predictable.

 

The main driving force in these investigations will probably be completely independent of President Trump and his closest team members. Coming from the business world, President Trump probably looks at the moves and machinations which were used to attempt to defeat his election as a done bad deal and in business; you move on from such difficulties and simply hope to never need to deal with such people again. President Trump is more forward looking and wants to get things accomplished, not dwell on things he would rather simply ignore and forget. President Trump has plans which he wants to get done and knows that looking back is counter-productive to getting everything accomplished as quickly as possible. President Trump probably has some long term plans which he realizes will take a second term, and he knows a second term is not a guarantee. This means he has a driving force to get as much accomplished as quickly as possible. This has been evident to anybody who has watched the blizzard of Executive Orders he issued almost as soon as he returned to the White House after the Inauguration. Things have slowed somewhat as much of what he desires to accomplish requires Congress, and Congress is a problem for Presidents, something Prime Ministers are unfamiliar with facing. A Prime Minister has the support of his coalition until he doesn’t, and then he has a problem which is called a new election. Presidents know when their next election is, they just are never quite sure if Congress will work with him, even if his party is in the majority. President Trump has realized that in spades.

 

That brings us to what President Trump is probably most concerned with over the coming six months, the mid-term elections. He is about to attempt what most Presidents have found very difficult, increasing his party’s numbers in both houses at their first mid-terms. Sitting a mere 9,387 kilometers, or 5,833 miles, from Washington D.C., we must rely on articles to get a feel for the electorate and information on the tricky Senate where only one-third of the Senators are up for re-election at any election cycle. From what we have read, the predictions are all over the place with some predicting the Republicans gaining three to five seats while others predict the Democrats taking control of the Senate gaining as many as seven or eight seats. We are glad we will not be in the business of predicting the outcome of the thirty-five seats up for election, apparently there are a couple of special elections making it more than the normal thirty-three seats. Perhaps when the coverage becomes somewhat more informative closer to the election and we will know who made the biggest gaff or posted a disturbing Tweet we will be bold enough to take a stab at a prediction. The only prediction we can make now is that President Trump will probably work hard to retain the House of Representatives and try very hard to increase his majority in the Senate by at least three seats giving him a better advantage at accomplishing his legislative agendas. This will mean much more to President Trump than wasting efforts on gaining conviction against people for past grievances. That he will leave up to the wheels of justice which move ever so slowly that we often forget what the crime was when politicians face prosecution for past misdeeds.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Will America Explode First?

 

There has been any number of editorials commenting about the presumed unrest in the United States. They all, more often than not, have referred to the extreme anger and protest existing on social media. They assume that as social media was largely quiet during the Presidency of Barack Obama and has been very noisy since the election of Donald Trump as President that the United States public was more unified during the former and very distressed now. There have been those who point out that there is this old expression of the “silent majority” which was described as what awoke to elect President Reagan. This was presumed to explain that the “silent majority” actually is silent. There is some support to this as these are presumed to be the older people plus ones who are not as computer active as the ones now protesting so vehemently. After all, they are presumably silent, right? Still, how completely upside down and fouled does the world, and the United States in particular, have to be for Donald Trump to be elected to the Presidency? That has been one of the overriding questions which are somewhat more difficult to answer. Had the election gone the other direction, there would be people asking how far things must have gone awry and has become to elect Hillary Clinton. The other question is how crazy have things become that an avowed socialist and former Communist to almost win the Democrat primary elections. Well, how far gone have things become in the United States?

 

The first point that we believe shows that the political class has completely lost all connection with reality has been the debt. Things were viewed as having reached the verge to going off the rails when George W. Bush was elected President and the debt stood near five-trillion dollars. Eight short years later the debt had all but doubled pushing towards ten-trillion dollars. Then enter President Barack Obama and another short eight years later and the debt had almost doubled again approaching twenty-trillion dollars. Things actually went off the rails far earlier when the politicians decided that they could only afford to pay the interest on the debt and never pay down the debt. When under President Willian Jefferson Clinton with a Republican Congress managed to make a budget that on paper did not add to the deficit, the nation celebrated as if President Andrew Jackson completely paid off the debt which was celebrated on January 8, 1835. By the end of 1935, the debt had returned to between thirty to thirty-five billion dollars. Apparently, the debt had been eradicated for just a few weeks and then Congress returned to business as usual. Debt appears to be the norm and not the exception. Eventually, one of two things are going to happen, either there will be a Constitutional Convention called by the States to amend the Constitution placing a balanced budget amendment onto the Constitution with a stipulation that some percentage, ten sounds like a good number, of each budget must be applied to the principle of any existing debt until all debt is vanquished and to be reapplied instantly should new debt accrue. Anything short will lead to the worst possible option, default.

 

Eventually the interest on the debt will exceed the ability to allow paying the full amount and still running the government and meeting promised payments and allotments. Now it is possible to continue to pay the interest and all government expenses as long as there is somewhere for the United States to borrow the necessary amounts of money. This became a problem when China closed its loan office to the United States. This led to some creative financing. The Federal Reserve sold the United States the needed moneys while creating this money through bonds which it gave to the main lending banks. This method works just fine providing that these funds remain dormant in the lending banks. The problem comes when the economy becomes more active and there comes a demand for more loans and these funds begin to be utilized by the loaning banks. This is called giving the money velocity in economics. This leads to inflation as the money supply begins to increase, and in this case possibly rapidly. With inflation comes the problem of removing this excess currency from the monetary supply. There are two means for completing this task, taxes and interest rates. There are, needless to point out, ramifications to each of these means. Increasing interest rates makes the interest on the debt, which is refreshed through short-term loans on the debt, rise and eventually this leads to default or spiraling inflation. So raising interest rates is out of the question and explains why interest rates have been artificially kept so low. The other means is taxes and increasing taxes ends the economic activity and leads to less tax moneys being collected. This would also eventually lead to default or spiraling inflation. Any means used will, eventually, lead to default on the debt which will cause a loss in faith of the dollar. What would that cause?

 

A crisis in the dollar would have any number of consequences. First, and likely the most devastating, the world would all but immediately demand that some different or group of different monetary notes be used as the new reserve currency. If a group of currencies were chosen, there would be some form of complicated and intricate formula to determine what the rest of the world’s currencies would be worth. The other choice would be some mythical means for establishing exchange rates and the various values of currencies. The reason for these confusions and problems is easy to explain, gold is no longer the basis of any currency. As the dollar was the reserve currency when President Nixon took the dollar off the gold standard, he took the world off the gold standard and now currencies floated against the arbitrary value of the dollar. This is also why gold prices fluctuate against the dollar, though they actually do not gain or lose value. If you were to figure what a Ferrari would have cost in gold in 1971 and then figured the price of a Ferrari cost in gold today, the difference would be relatively negligible. That is why these claims that investing in precious metals, especially gold, will make you more wealthy in the future. It will not, you may receive more dollars, Federal Reserve Notes, but they will have very much the same purchasing power as the money you utilized to purchase the gold in the first place.

 

Tulipmania

 

Would defaulting on the debt ruin the United States? Interestingly enough, such a default would allow the United States to get out of debt faster. The dollar would immediately lose much of its value and imported goods would become prohibitively more expensive. On the other hand, it would make American made goods extremely affordable to the rest of the world, except China who falsely set their currency tied to the dollar, so China would also become a pauper nation. This would allow the United States to become a prime location for manufacturing, as American labor prices would be lower than almost everywhere else where the ability of the work force is comparable. Made in America would become desirable once again not only for quality but also for affordability. Still, a default would be ruinous for American business initially and numerous companies, especially those manufacturing overseas, would find they were no longer able to be profitable and they would be replaced by new companies which would spring up almost overnight. The largest problem would be foreign corporations and billionaires could buy large shares of American companies which would provide the United States with the funding to climb out of the hole they would find themselves to have fallen. The real losers would be those people holding stocks and other investments which were in dollars as overnight they would become almost worthless compared to their value just a few days, possibly hours earlier. Such a default might lead to another stock market crash but the following dark days could be avoided providing that Congress was locked in political gridlock and unable to act. Financial bubbles burst and that makes room for new smaller bubbles to begin. That is the normal cycle for investing, especially if you are investing in tulips in the Netherlands from 1619 to 1622 when the bottom fell out when one person decided that tulips were not worth their price and everyone realized that mania had led them astray. Those left holding tulips had lousy investments but very pretty flowers to show for the insanity. On that flowery lesson, we will let the American mania continue and see when their crash comes or if they might be saved by some sagely leadership, whenever that is proven to be found. In the meantime, stay tuned for more fun and watch the crazed social media; it can be amusing as long as nobody gets hurt.

 

Beyond the Cusp

 

Radioactive Russia Scandal

 

What if a person with political power and connections arranged the sale of twenty percent of America’s uranium supply to a foreign interest? What if they did this for monetary remuneration of millions of dollars? Would this person and their accomplices be guilty of some criminal prosecution? What if this person committed and arranged this deal while serving in a position of the Cabinet of a President who approved of the deal as he preferred that the Russians have the nuclear fuel than the United States. What if this deal was payback for favors being delivered to the person and their interests in the United States? How far and deep does such a connection need to be before it becomes treasonous? And what if this person gained financially from these dealings and would be able to use these dealings to further their efforts to become President of the United States? Exactly how far does one’s ambition and greed need go before their perfidy becomes criminal? These are the real questions which need be asked about dealing with Russia and directly with Vladimir Putin. But fear not, the mainstream American media and European media will not dare touch these acts, which done by anyone else, would get them tried for treason and potentially have them facing twelve men with bolt action rifles and only two with real bullets and the remainder with blanks so that none would know which one fired the fatal shots. Every man in the firing squad could claim that they fired the blank as the report of the rifle was less than normal and that would be every man’s actual feelings as none desire being the executioner. But worry not as no firing squad will ever be called for, even for such blatantly criminal acts as these, as some people of power are above such laws as committing treason; they simply could murder somebody during a press conference covered live in the East Garden of the White House and they would never face any charges.

 

We decided to start by inundating our readers with articles covering the Russia Uranium transfer, supposed possibly criminal activity. We were nice and gracious and did the search for you and here is a sampling of what we found, not necessarily read, but found. There is The Hill, Washington Times, Investor’s Business Daily , New York Post, U.K. Daily Mail, National Review, Fox News, POLITICO, Newsweek, and lastly Boston Herald. If you read all or even most of these articles, then you probably know more than virtually every Television news personality and most others who are chiming in on this controversy.

 

Now, perhaps we can get to our commentary on the entire fiasco. Were Bill and Hillary complicit, probably, but who cares and what does it matter? Vladimir Putin used one Clinton Foundation bribe in order to get approval for the UraniumOne purchase of twenty percent of American mined uranium as well as having all involved with the kickbacks remaining silent, clearing the way for Congressional ratification of the New START Treaty. Oh, if they are guilty of illegal behavior then they should be prosecuted. Right. Really? Why would this time be any different than all the misdealing and illegal quid-pro-quo dealings of hundreds upon hundreds of previous political scams and insider trading which they made perfectly legal for them but not for the rest of us? By now we should all be aware that politicians rarely indict or otherwise prosecute one another which is why the swamp never gets cleared no matter who makes the promise. This will be great fun for the media with many enjoying making great noise and making claims that they have the morsel of incriminating evidence which will seal the deal. Others will go to any extreme to prove that nothing untoward has occurred and if it did, then how about President Trump and Putin, you have not forgotten the stealing the election scandal now, have you? Every news source will cover the Clintons and Obamas dealings with the Russians and the uranium deal as well as the Trump-Putin election stealing exactly as you would expect, with their own slant politically. Where can one turn for accurate and unbiased reporting on this? When you find out, please let us know as they might also give such coverage to things about which we actually care.

 

The Clintons, Bushes, Obamas and virtually every other political family are safely beyond reach of legal officials as long as their deals are made under clouded conditions with paybacks made through third parties and in untraceable routes. They will find cover with the other politicians including even those of the other party as their mutual protection is part and parcel of their comradery. Their motto could be “In Each Other We Trust.” The Congressional leadership has been as crooked as one can imagine. Has anyone ever wondered how members of Congress, and senior staff who are covered by similar rules and lack of restrictions, hold positions which have salaries starting at $174,000 and going as high as possibly $250,000 manage to leave Congress after ten to twelve years as multi-millionaires? They manage such things through currency manipulation such as putting thousands of dollars into the currency of some little known nation where they are about to build a new military base or send hundreds of millions in an aid package and then transferring the currency back to the United States after it has gained in health compared to the U.S. dollars.

 

They invest buying the stocks of companies they are about to give a huge contract thus benefitting from the investment made by themselves and the government in which they are employed. If we tried to do this, we would face charges of insider trading and face criminal behavior, but these people are completely immune to such charges thus are permitted to trade with such foreknowledge of where the government largess will be placed. Perhaps this is why so many college graduates are so interested in gaining a position in the staff of a member of Congress as though the initial payments in the form of salaries is poor, once they make it to a certain level, then they can also invest using their knowledge as their guiding tool knowing all the coming investments which Congress may be about to approve. Sure seems to be a quick and easy route to the millionaires club and even higher for those who can mange to make a career on Capital Hill. No financially rewarding deal will ever be a prosecutorial under the rules which the government higher employers play by though accusations will be thrown hither and nigh between the two major parties one at the other in the name of throwing dirt to see what might stick. By stick they mean what the media will blow all out of proportion making into one giant scandal of the moment before the news cycle moves on to the next disaster. That is the reality of life in the swamp and almost nobody ever spends even just a short five years there without becoming infected by the scandalous behavior of the government and all the money and sleaze that inundates the city.

 

The Clintons had the advantage of having committed acts for which a normal person would have faced long prison terms and walked away free as they were politicians who could get away with murder (not that we would claim they ever actually murdered anyone though others have). They had their fair share of scandalous behavior and concerns while in Arkansas and coming to Washington D.C. simply provided them with a far larger swimming pool from which to commit their pandering. Willian Jefferson Clinton chose women in which to invest his pandering and criminal escapades while for Hillary there were only two things which mattered, power and wealth. She married Bill for the knowledge that he would rise politically and was driven and she could tag along for the ride and possibly take off on her own at some point. That point came once Bill had served two terms with her covering for his escapades and running interference. She then expected that he would give her the support required for her to rise and be President, exactly as he had been, she desired to become. His assistance was rather tepid and her efforts have thusfar failed but she has reaped in the monetary half of her desires. The problem is that Senator from New York and even Secretary of State has not satisfied her lusts for the ultimate power, President of the United States. The Russia uranium deal was just another monetary arrangement, in which she gave Vladimir Putin and his power structure and financial friends what they desired, was repaid handsomely and likely promised that Putin will support her next bid for the White House just as he had presumably supported Donald Trump. President Obama desired this deal for the reason that it served his ideals of leveling the world and bringing the United States down from the position as the most powerful nation in the world and transferred some of that power to the Russians, and this served to weaken the United States and empower the Russians, what could have been better?

 

Clinton vs Trump

 

This was the big event which was never supposed to become an issue as Hillary was all but guaranteed to become the first woman President of the United States starting January 20, 2017, Inauguration Day. As something went wrong and now perhaps the Russian uranium deal would be exposed while still potentially relevant, there had to be some competing Russian scandal. Now enters that Russia and President Vladimir Putin stole the election through dirty tricks for Donald Trump as there can be no other explanation for why Hillary Clinton lost a sure fire election. The Russians were helping Republicans and were against Hillary, thus how could anybody expect us to believe that the Russians and Hillary Clinton had worked together in a cash for uranium deal if they worked to elect Trump. There you have the competing Russian evil manipulation of the United States elections and nothing, not even twenty percent of the mined uranium in America could compete with stealing the Presidency. And the media, in their collusion, ate it up and ran and are still running with it but some stories refuse to be outdone and just scream to be investigated. That is the problem Hillary Clinton and potentially others are facing as this was a deal beyond the pale if it proves true.

 

Beyond the Cusp