Month: November 2011

Thankful

by digby

As you sit down and give thanks today, just remember to be thankful that at least we aren’t putting up with this:

President Bush’s Baghdad turkey was for looking, not for eating.
In the most widely published image from his Thanksgiving Day trip to Baghdad, the beaming president is wearing an Army workout jacket and surrounded by soldiers as he cradles a platter with a golden-brown turkey.

The bird looks perfect, with bunches of grapes and other trimmings completing a Norman Rockwell image that evokes bounty and security in one of the most dangerous parts of the world.

But as a small sign of the many ways the White House maximized the impact of the 2½-hour stop at the Baghdad airport, administration officials said yesterday that Bush picked up a decoration, not a serving platter.

It’s not much, but it’s better than nothing.

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No Deal

by David Atkins

The death of the supercommittee has left Democrats in a great political position, if only they’re willing to seize the opportunity to simply do nothing. This is a point that a number of us having been making for some time now, including on this blog, but Ezra Klein summed it up succinctly yesterday:

Imagine if the Democrats offered Republicans a deficit deal that had more than $3 in tax increases for every $1 in spending cuts, assigned most of those spending cuts to the Pentagon, and didn’t take a dime from Social Security, Medicaid or Medicare beneficiaries. Republicans would laugh at them. But without quite realizing it, that’s the deal Republicans have now offered to the Democrats.

In August, Republicans scored what they thought was a big win by persuading Democrats to accept a trigger that consisted only of spending cuts. The price they paid was 1) concentrating the cuts on the Pentagon while exempting Social Security, Medicaid, Medicare beneficiaries, and 2) delaying the cuts until January 1, 2013. That was, they figured, a win, as it eschewed taxes. Grover Norquist’s pledge remained unbroken.

But 12 years earlier, George W. Bush had set a trigger of his own. In order to pass his tax cuts using the 51-vote budget reconciliation process, he had agreed to let them sunset in 2010. A last-minute deal extended them until the end of 2012.

So now there are two triggers. One is an extremely progressive spending trigger worth $1.2 trillion that goes off on January 1, 2013. The other is an extremely progressive tax trigger worth $3.8 trillion that goes off on…January 1, 2013. If you count reduced interest payments, the two policies alone would reduce future deficits by about $6 trillion. That’s far more than anything the supercommittee came close to discussing. It’s distributed far more progressively than anything the Democrats have even considered proposing. And all that needs to happen for it to pass is, well, nothing.

Republicans can’t stop these triggers on their own.

Klein points out that there are two main dangers for Democrats: first, that pulling back all the Bush tax cuts, including for the middle class, would be politically suicidal in an election year. Second, that the impact of all of these cuts and tax increases would be a very damaging shock to the economy.

But Klein is right: for once, the ratchet effect works in progressives’ favor here. The Democrats can offer the Republicans a deal: extending the Bush tax cuts only for the middle class, in exchange for cuts to various unpopular programs that only fall mostly in Republican areas of the country. Or the Republicans can offer a more unpopular package, which Democrats can rightly refuse, leading to all the tax cuts being rescinded. That would likely end the Obama presidency, which is one reason the President will strongly push for a deal. But it could also have the effect of galvanizing support for the President against the GOP House. I’m not sure the GOP would relish the prospect of sending Gingrich and Boehner to a Clinton-era-style duel to the death with Obama in an election year. They just might back down, if the President were to stand up and refuse to negotiate except on Democratic terms.

Of course, given this President’s history, that’s fantasy talk. But that doesn’t change the fact that the terrain is favorable to Democrats on this one. The ratchet is working to our advantage, and all Democrats need do is sit back, offer politically popular plans, and watch the GOP squirm and whine. The only things keeping this from being a slam dunk are the certainty that 1) the President will go into conflict avoidance mode and seek a politically damaging deal, and 2) the Villagers will lay blame on the Democrats for the conflict if they don’t give Republicans everything they want.

Still, it’s a risk worth taking. Time and popular opinion are on our side here.

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Who could have ever predicted?

by digby

From August 9th, 2011:

Also, too, this piece by Dana Milbank, which has provoked a John McCain into a mild case of twitoplexy:

Dem mouthpiece Dana Milbank sinks to disgraceful & false attack on @SenJonKyl – a decent man.

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She can see Manchuria from her house

by digby

How did I miss this? Pamela Gellar has called for a boycott of Butterball turkeys because they are certified halal, which means we are all going to become terrorists if we eat one. Or something.

I’ll let Tbogg take it from here:

[Butterball spokesperson]Wendy Howze is, like, the worst terrorist ever. Without even having Marc Theissen waterboard her, she is admitting that Butterball turkeys are tryptophan-laden IED’s that use Pop-Up Turkey Timers as fuses and then explode getting Islam all over the cranberries and stuffing and even the All-American Apple Pie (4th Thursday of November! Never forget!). But wait. What is a halal turkey? Does Butterball single out the turkeys that face Mecca several times a day? Ones that are dark meat only? No, it is much more complicated than that:

Halal slaughter involves cutting the trachea, the esophagus, and the jugular vein, and letting the blood drain out while saying “Bismillah allahu akbar” — in the name of Allah the greatest.

Tbogg had exactly the same thought I did when I read that:

So basically Muslim death turkeys are the end result of ritual turkey throat slitting that occurs while someone stands nearby spouting gibberish, which confirms what we have suspected for some time: Sarah Palin is a Muslim sleeper cell spy.

Top 1% tax cuts worth more than bottom 99% salaries

by David Atkins

Via Pat Garofalo at Think Progress, another depressing data point about income inequality in America:

As Occupy Wall Street protestors continue to demonstrate across the country, congress’ fiscal super committee failed to craft a deficit reduction package due to Republican refusal to consider tax increases on the super wealthy. In fact, the only package that the GOP officially submitted to the committee included lowering the top tax rate from 35 percent to 28 percent, even as new research shows that the optimal top tax rate is closer to 70 percent.

Sen. Patty Murray (D-WA), who co-chaired the super committee, explained that the major sticking point during negotiations with the GOP was what to do with the Bush tax cuts. With that in mind, the National Priorities Project points out that those tax cuts this year will give the richest 1 percent of Americans a bigger tax cut than the other 99 percent will receive in average income:

The average Bush tax cut in 2011 for a taxpayer in the richest one percent is greater than the average income of the other 99 percent ($66,384 compared to $58,506).

“The super committee failed to grapple with the extraordinarily costly Bush tax cuts for the richest—tax policies that, according to the Congressional Budget Office, cost more in added federal debt than they add in additional economic activity,” explained Jo Comerford, NPP’s Executive Director. Frank Knapp, vice chairman of the American Sustainable Business Council, added in a statement yesterday, “the high-end Bush tax cuts are a big part of the problem – not the solution…It’s obscene to keep slashing infrastructure and services for everybody on Main Street to keep up tax giveaways for millionaires and multinational corporations.”

As Digby and I have often said in the past, making significant cuts to Social Security and Medicare in exchange for tax increases is a bad deal regardless. On the other hand, our political system is built on compromise and sausage-making.

But any sort of compromise being remotely considered by Democrats must start with ending the Bush tax cuts for the wealthy. If Republicans won’t cooperate, there’s no sense even talking about a deal. Better to do nothing and simply let the triggers go off, and let the tax cuts expire through inaction.

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For cake

* (3/4 cup) softened unsalted butter.
* 2 1/4 cups all-purpose flour plus additional for dusting pan
* 2 teaspoons baking powder
* 1 teaspoon baking soda
* 1 teaspoon cinnamon
* 3/4 teaspoon ground allspice
* 2 tablespoons crystalized ginger, finely chopped
* 1/2 teaspoon salt
* 1 1/4 cups canned pumpkin
* 3/4 cup well-shaken buttermilk
* 1 teaspoon vanilla
* 1 1/4 cups granulated sugar
* 3 large eggs

Icing

* 2 tablespoons plus 2 teaspoons well-shaken buttermilk
* 1 1/2 cups confectioners sugar,
* 1/4 cup chopped walnuts
* a 10-inch nonstick bundt pan

Preheat oven to 350°F. Butter bundt pan generously.

Sift flour (2 1/4 cups), baking powder, baking soda, cinnamon, allspice, and salt in a bowl. Whisk together pumpkin, 3/4 cup buttermilk, ginger and vanilla in another bowl.

Beat butter and granulated sugar in a large bowl with an electric mixer at medium-high speed until pale and fluffy, add eggs and beat 1 minute. Reduce speed to low and add flour and pumpkin mixtures alternately in batches, beginning and ending with flour mixture, just until smooth.

Spoon batter into pan, then bake until a wooden pick inserted in center of cake comes out clean, 45 to 50 minutes. Cool cake in pan 15 minutes, then invert rack over cake and reinvert cake onto rack. Cool 10 minutes more.

Icing:

Whisk together buttermilk and confectioners sugar until smooth. Drizzle over warm cake, sprinkle with chopped walnuts (keep a little icing in reserve to drizzle lightly over walnuts) then cool cake completely. Icing will harden slightly.

Easy as pie (easier, actually.)

Happy T-Day everyone.

Knowing their marks

by digby

I’m not sure why we should be shocked by these Romney operatives taking credit for a dishonest campaign ad since operatives do it all the time, but I guess it’s just the arrogant openness about their rank dishonesty that makes it remarkable:

The offending moment comes when Obama says “if we keep talking about the economy, we’re going to lose.” That was a quote from a way-too-honest McCain adviser that Obama loved to repeat on the trail. By evening, the ad had been attacked, derided, parodied, and ruled “pants on fire” worthy by Politifact. The Romney campaign could have cared less.
[…]
Romney adviser Ron Kaufman, an RNC committee member and longtime operative, simply said that the ad “worked.”

“They always squeal the most when you hold a mirror up to them,” he said, “and they overreacted, clearly. All they did was make the ad more effective.”
[…]
What about the tough response from Politifact?

“Do you know how many times they did that to Barack Obama in 2008?” he said. “Quite a few. And that’s utterly absurd. Did he say this? Yes. Did we say he said it in a certain context? No.”

There you go. But why should they care? This exchange on the Washington Post chat on Monday with reporter Paul Kane explains perfectly why these political operatives have no worries about telling the truth:

Q. (IM)MORAL EQUIVALENCE

Paul, I’m guessing you won’t be sympathetic to the following point, but I’ll put it out there anyway. Most reporting on the supercommittee–like most reporting on the deficit–reflects an acceptance of a basic fallacy. Whenever there is an impasse, there seems to be a desire to blame both sides equally, on the theory that if only Democrats would concede more, Republicans would reciprocate (all evidence to the contrary notwithstanding). Yes, Democrats have drawn lines in the sand, but as Greg Sargent and other commentators have documented, when you compare the specifics, there is no factual basis for blaming both parties equally. So my question is, why does the Post’s coverage do so anyway, either explicitly or implicitly?
– November 21, 2011 11:48 AM

A. PAUL KANE:

Yeah, you’re right. I think this point is just absurd and ridiculous. This is a big thing among folks calling it “moral equivalence” (Fallows, Ornstein) and others calling it the “cult of balance” (Krugman).

It’s just stupid. If you want someone to tell you that Republicans stink, read opinion pages. Read blogs. Also, the underlying sentiment on the left is that this is the real reason why things went wrong in 2010: That the mainstream media is to blame. Sorry, I think that’s the sorta head-in-sand outlook that leads to longer term problems for a movement.

Greg is a fine writer. He’s an opinion writer, in the opinion section of the web site. I encourage you to keep reading him. And I encourage you to keep reading the news coverage, which should always strive to present both sides of the story. If you really don’t want to hear anything about the other side of the story, I really do encourage you to stop reading the news section.

– November 21, 2011 11:58 AM

He’s right about one thing. You should stop reading anything this reporter writes because clearly it is completely worthless. He is simply not interested in the truth and gets angry when anyone calls him on it — even to the point that he dispenses unwanted advice about “the movement” as if that has anything to do with it. Indeed, his defensiveness is most telling — clearly, he knows on some level that he’s bullshitting his readers.

Those Romney operatives aren’t fools and they know they can get away with lying as long as the press decides they can get away with it. Whether it’s because they want Romney to be the nominee or because it fits with their narrative about Obama or some combination of the two, they are very likely to let this pass or even allow it to become part of the CW, thus kicking in Cokie’s Law, which says “it doesn’t matter if it’s true or not, it’s out there.” Fact checking only matters if the press wants it to matter.

This lie may or may not become conventional wisdom, but whatever happens it won’t be a result of the news media doing its job and getting to the truth. It will be because it fits their story line.

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So it’s not about birth control, huh?

by digby

Yes, in fact, it is:

Women’s groups working to save coverage of women’s health care under health reform are concerned that President Obama will cave as early as this weekend to demands by the United States Conference of Catholic Bishops (all 271 men) to eliminate coverage of birth control without a co-pay.

The reason? The President thinks he “owes” the Bishops for help with passage of health reform.

I don’t know what the bishops did to “help” pass health care reform unless the president really wanted to ensure that women would have to swallow yet another unpalatable abrogation of their rights. (In fact, the bishops tried as hard as they could to tank the health care bill for purely political reasons — they support the Republican Party and wanted the president to fail.)But apparently we are supposed to believe he owes them something. I wonder what it is?

Sarah Posner has the full story on this at Religion Dispatches. Nothing surprising. Just another insult to the millions of liberal women who supported the president:

David Nolan, a spokesperson for Catholics for Choice, told me today, “Obama’s definitely listening to the bishops. The bishops seem to have significant sway over the administration, which can be seen by the fact Archbishop Dolan met with [Obama] last week and came out alleging that he felt much more at ease with what was going on after the meeting. Which seems to suggest that Obama made lots of conciliatory noises to the archbishop.” The archbishop, Nolan emphasized, does not represent American Catholics, but rather is “the leader of 271 active bishops, and that’s who he represents.”

Catholics for Choice has launched a campaign urging its supporters to call the White House and express that “Catholics overwhelmingly reject the bishops’ views on contraception” and that it “is discriminatory to deny these women and men access to this important provision simply because the institution where they work or the school they attend is religiously affiliated.” The ACLU has launched a similar campaign, arguing that religious freedom “does not mean that we get to impose those beliefs on others.”

“There is absolutely no reason to expand this exception,” said Sarah Lipton-Lubet, policy counsel for the ACLU. “There’s certainly no legal reason for it to be changed. The current rule doesn’t infringe on anyone’s religious liberty as a matter of law.”

Click through to the links above if you want to sign on of the petitions.

I have one question though. Posner says that Democrats for Life are out there touting this with everything they have:

The Administration has no intention of forcing Catholic institutions to provide insurance coverage for services that are directly in opposition to their moral beliefs. It does not make any sense from a public policy perspective and it certainly is not smart politically to alienate Catholic voters.

And here I’ve been told for years that Democrats for Life aren’t against birth control and that it’s purely about “life”. I don’t think anyone can say that’s true at this point.

Mr. Village

by David Atkins

The ways in which reading Thomas Friedman is infuriating are as deep as the ocean and endless as the horizon. Whether it’s resorting to anecdotes from taxi drivers to prove a point, or repeating disproven economic shibboleths, Friedman is exhibit A in imbuing the most trite conventional wisdom with false profundity.

All of this turf has been covered extensively by other critics. But what I find most frustrating about reading Friedman is that he does appear from time to time to have a somewhat clearer view of actual reality than most Village pundits. But no sooner does it appear that he has finally seen the light from the way he sets up an argument, than he turns round and reinforces conventional wisdom with a passion that defies logic and common sense.

Consider his latest opinion piece. He starts by declaring the necessity for President Obama to use the bully pulpit:

President Obama has a clear choice on how to approach the 2012 election: He can spend all his energy defining Mitt Romney, Newt Gingrich or whoever ends up as the Republican nominee in as ugly a way as possible, or he can spend all his energy defining the future in as credible a way as possible. If he spends his energy defining his Republican opponent, there is a chance the president will win with 50.00001 percent of the vote and no mandate to do what needs doing. If he spends his time defining the future in a credible way and offering a hard, tough, realistic pathway to get there, he will not only win, but he will have a mandate to take the country where we need to go.

OK, fine. The nation needs direction, and the President in is a position to provide it. And?

I voted for Barack Obama, and I don’t want my money back. He’s never gotten the credit he deserves for bringing the economy he inherited back from the brink of a depression. He’s fought the war on terrorism in a smart and effective way. He’s making health care possible for millions of Americans with pre-existing conditions, and he saved the auto industry. This is big stuff. But, as important as all of these achievements are, they pale in comparison to the defining challenge of Obama’s presidency: Can he put the country on a sustainable economic recovery path at a time when, if we fail, it could be the end of the American dream?

Fair enough. Obviously, progressive critics will take issue with this characterization of the Obama presidency, but there is a lot in this argument that resonates. So clearly, in order to boost economic recovery, the President will need a bold vision that stimulates demand and creates jobs. Right?

So far, this is a clearer encapsulation of the political moment than most Village pundits seem to have a handle on. But then comes the facepalm moment.

I believe the best way for Obama to do that is by declaring today that he made a mistake in spurning his own deficit reduction commission, chaired by Erskine Bowles and Alan Simpson, and is now adopting Simpson-Bowles — which already has Republican and Democratic support — as his long-term fiscal plan to be phased in after a near-term stimulus. If he did that, he would win politically and create a national consensus that would trump his opponents, right and left.

And with this, Friedman comes to the brink of reality, only to step back and make a full-fledged retreat into the comfortable land of the conventional.

There is nothing popular about any of the deficit commission plans on the table. Cutting Social Security and Medicare is wildly unpopular even among Republicans. Cutting defense polls poorly or with marginal approval even among Democrats, no matter how bloated its budget becomes. Simpson-Bowles is dead on arrival–as it should be–because most of what is in it is politically toxic on both sides of the aisle.

But that’s not all. Friedman sees the problem only to offer the wrong solution twice in the same op-ed:

Obama aides argue that so many G.O.P. lawmakers are committed to making his presidency fail, or have signed pledges to an antitax cult, that they would never buy into any grand bargain. I think that is true for a lot of Republicans in Congress. But I have some questions: Why are the Republicans getting away with this? Why are so many independents and even Democrats who voted for Obama sitting on their hands? Obama owns the bully pulpit of the presidency and he’s losing to Grover Norquist? Also, assuming it is all true about the G.O.P., how can Obama trump them? I think he can, if he leads in a new way.

So Friedman acknowledges that the Republicans are nuts, many of them in the grip of the Norquist cult, and that attempting to negotiate is useless. He also acknowledges that no matter how crazy the GOP becomes, they continue to get away with it.

But instead of taking the obvious conclusions from those facts–that the President should be unafraid to champion popular progressive policies, since the GOP will accept nothing less than total victory from any negotiation, and that a supine press will allow them to remain intransigent and careen ever rightward without calling them on their extremism–Friedman moves in precisely the opposite direction, with nonsensical results:

I think America’s broad center understands very clearly that the country is in trouble and that the Republican Party has gone nuts. But when they look at Obama on the deficit, they feel something is missing. People know leadership when they see it — when they see someone taking a political risk, not just talking about doing so, not just saying, “I’ll jump if the other guy jumps.” In times of crisis, leaders jump first, lay out what truly needs to be done to fix the problem, not just to win re-election, and by doing so earn the right to demand that others do the same.

What would it look like if the president was offering such leadership? First, he’d be proposing a deficit-cutting plan that matches the scale of our problem — one with substantial tax reform and revenue increases, a gasoline tax, deep defense cuts and cutbacks to both Social Security and Medicare. That is the Simpson-Bowles plan, and it should be Obama’s new starting point for negotiations. The deficit plan Obama put out last September is nowhere near as serious. “It is watered-down Simpson-Bowles,” said MacGuineas. “Most people don’t even know it exists.”

Second, he’d offer a plan in which the wealthy have to pay their fair share and more, because they’ve had a great two decades. But everyone, including the middle class, has to contribute something. This has to be a national effort. Third, he would offer a plan that is aspirational. It would not just be a roadmap to balancing the budget but to making America great again through reignited economic growth.

This is so stupid that it boggles the mind it even made it to print. The knock on President Obama since the beginning of his term has been that he is too keen to compromise, and that he begins negotiations by giving everything away in advance just to show goodwill. His negotiation tactics are so weak and so acquiescent to his opponents, that it has led many to fairly question whether it’s not a issue of poor negotiating skills so much as an active desire to champion conservative policies.

The American Public does understand that the President isn’t leading as strongly as he should. But the notion that he should be leading in the direction of more compromise and more unpopular cuts to popular programs is simply nuts. It’s not born out by any data, but rather by grandiose wishful thinking. And that doesn’t even touch Friedman’s request for higher taxes on the poor and middle class, which is not just bad policy but politically suicidal.

Finally, as Paul Krugman pointed out, there is nothing in the Bowles-Simpson plan that promises economic recovery. The economy is not petrified of debt. It’s petrified of lack of demand, which will only be hurt worse by cuts to the safety net and regressive tax increases.

But then there’s the kicker:

My gut says that if the president lays out such a plan — one that begins with him taking all the political risks on himself and then demanding the G.O.P. and his own party follow — he will be both defining himself and the future in a way that would earn him so much centrist support and respect that it would leave every possible Republican opponent in the dust, no matter how obstructionist they are or want to be.

That would be a halfway intelligent paragraph, except for the fact that every single statement in it is wrong. First, the progressive base would abandon him. Second, “centrists,” as defined as those with views in between the Democratic and Republican parties, don’t sway elections. There are actually precious few of them. “Moderates” and “independents” sometimes do–but so-called “moderates” and “independents” aren’t so much in the middle, as have views that lean GOP on some issues, and Dem on others. One thing moderates and independents do agree on is that cutting Social Security and Medicare is a bad thing, and so are tax increases on the middle class.

In fact, it was Obama’s embrace of the austerity train that made his poll numbers take a massive hit, and it was only when the President began to take a more aggressive stance promoting jobs and progressive rhetoric that his poll numbers began to rise again. President Obama, far from attracting moderates and independents by embracing austerity commissions, will in fact repel them. We don’t need to theorize about this; we only need look at recent history.

And third, Friedman only need look at his statement two paragraphs previous to see that no matter how far backward the President bent to enforce austerity on America, the GOP would move the goalposts ever rightward, and the media would again portray the situation as hyperpartisanship on both sides. Even if Friedman’s astoundingly wrong assumptions about economics and political bases had any merit, his misunderstanding of Republicans and the media alone makes a mockery of his thesis.

In the analogy of Plato’s cave, most Village pundits spend their entire careers pointing to and tracking the shadows they all create on the wall. But Friedman is all the more annoying because he occasionally steps forward into the light, only to run for cover back into the darkness, and insist that his visions of the sun only go to further prove the importance and relevance of the cavern shadows.

It’s a wonder that anyone with even a moderately advanced intelligence can read most of his columns and come away with anything but exasperation.

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You can believe me or you can believe your lyin’ eyes

by digby

Perhaps people don’t want to believe Paul Krugman because he’s just a liberal, elite commie propagandist. Fine. But reality is seeping into the mainstream nonetheless. This one’s suitable for sending around to your relatives:

I’ve been saying the following to friends and colleagues for months now: In all my many years as a business and economics reporter, I have never seen a greater cognitive dissonance than in the current coverage of the U.S. bond market. Even Chicken Little and the Boy Who Cried Wolf would have by now taken early retirement had their warnings proved as lame as those of the MSEM (mainstream economic media).

“S&P Downgrades!” “Bond Vigilantes Poised to Strike!” “America is Greece!” One-liners meant to catch the eye, freeze the heart. But flat-out irresponsible.

What, briefly, is the fear? Very simple. Investors in U.S. debt, aka U.S. bond holders, aka lenders to the U.S. government, are quaking at the prospect of U.S. debt default. The supposed reason: we can’t lower our annual deficit or cumulative debt. So the investors will become “vigilantes” and wreak frontier justice the only way they know how: charging us more in interest to continue lending us money by purchasing our bonds.

This is, infamously, what happened to Greece. When it joined the European Monetary Union a decade or so ago, it borrowed money for 10 years at around 3 percent. Today, as those loans come due, its credibility, and thus its credit, is shot. To borrow money for 10 years, the price for Greece is now above 25 percent. The panic of the moment concerns Italy and Spain, however, both of which are indeed experiencing the wrath of the bond vigilantes, their 10-year interest rates flirting with the 7 percent level, at which point the vicious circle is said to start spinning: higher interest rates feeding higher deficits feeding even higher interest rates feeding even higher deficits…

And so now, the simplest of answers to the simplest of questions: how much does the United States have to pay to borrow money for 10 years? On the day the supercommittee throws in the towel? The day the Fitch ratings agency (not the widely discredited S&P) is reported on the verge of a downgrade? The United States will have to pay a king’s ransom, right, as the bond vigilantes fasten the noose?

Let’s see. Going to bloomberg.com. Clicking on “Markets.” Clicking on “Bonds.” Clicking on “U.S. Government Bonds.” Scrolling down to “10-Year.” Here it is: 1.97 percent. Hmmm. The United States has to pay less than two percent to borrow money for 10 years? That’s anti-Chicken Little. Not the sky falling, but the interest rate plummeting. Exactly the opposite of all the dire warnings…

Investors also seem pretty sure that U.S. inflation is not going to be a problem anytime soon. If inflation scared them, they’d hardly let the United States lock in an interest rate of less than 2 percent for an entire decade.

So then why isn’t it plausible to draw the following conclusion: that U.S. interest rates have been going in the “wrong” direction because investors are scared that the U.S. is going to reduce its debt and deficits, and such a reduction might horse-collar the world economy?

Good question. You’d think more people would ask these market psychics why they have been so wrong for so long.

This ongoing Scary Greece scenario is one of those “you can believe me or you can believe your lying eyes” propositions, so beloved by our elite leadership.