Feed Aggregator Page 599

Rendered on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 22:30:08 GMT  newer latest older 

Weekend Reading: Anticipation

via by Tyler Durden on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 21:50:00 GMT

Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Over the past couple of weeks, the market has continued to remain overbought, extended and exuberant on “hopes” that Trump’s policies will be the ointment to cure the economy’s ills. As noted yesterday, exuberance has exploded in everything from consumer to investor to business optimism.

The explosion of optimism is interesting given the consistent diatribe over the last few years about how well the economy was performing under the previous administration. This is the equivalent of a company’s stock price surging when the previous CEO is replaced which doesn’t speak well of his “legacy of performance.” 

The question now is whether or not “hopes” will translate into “reality.”

Interestingly, since the beginning of the year, the rush to pile into “Trump Trades” has quickly evaporated as transaction volumes have plunged as “anticipation” has turned into “wait and see.” 

It is worth noting that previous, when transaction volumes have plunged to such low levels, the markets were generally at an inflection point of a correctionary process. With the markets currently extremely overbought and extended, the reality of a “sell the inauguration” trade is possible.

In the end, “anticipation” of better outcomes is one thing when it comes to the financial markets and your money, however, “reality” is quite another.

Here is what I am reading this weekend.

Fed, Economy & Trump

Markets

Interesting Reads

“Stock market bubbles don’t appear out of thin air. They have a basis in reality. But that reality is distorted by misconception” ? George Soros

What can we learn by looking at a carnival, a casino, and the stock market as simple-closed systems?

via by hedgeless_horseman on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 21:44:24 GMT

Gambling with cards or dice or stock is all one thing.
It’s getting money without giving an equivalent for it.

-Henry Ward Beecher

 

What can we learn by looking at a carnival, a casino, and the stock market as simple-closed systems?

For our purposes, at its most basic economic level, a carnival has as its economic input the sum total of money that we marks spend on buying tickets.  We will call this amount, "SALES."  

We will call the sum of money spent by the carnys on the giant stuffed animals and glow-in-the-dark necklaces that we marks win and get to take home from the carnival, "WINNINGS."


We will refer to as, "OVERHEAD," the total amount of money the carnival pays for all other expenses, such as roller-coaster loan payments, payroll for the carnys, clowns, and sideshow acts, electricity, gasoline, reptile feed, bribes to government officials, and snowcone syrup.

SALES - (WINNINGS+OVERHEAD) = PROFIT (or LOSS)

Nothing odd about that.  We go to the carnival to have fun.  It is entertainment, not an investment.  We don't expect a return on our money.

What is the con?  The con is that the milk bottles are made of lead and much harder to knock over than you imagine, and the carny's basketball hoop is half size.

Is it any different for a casino, if we leave out the hospitality aspects of the business for simplicity's sake?

SALES is the total sum of money which we marks spend on buying chips.  WINNINGS is the sum of money that we marks get to take home from the casino when we cash in our chips.


We will refer to as, "OVERHEAD," the total amount of money the casino pays for all other expenses, such as construction loan payments, payroll for the dealers, electricity,  white tiger feed, bribes to government officials, and slot machine repairs.

SALES - (WINNINGS+OVERHEAD) = PROFIT (or LOSS)

Nothing odd about that.  We go to the casino to have fun.  It is entertainment, not an investment.  We don't expect a return on our gambling, except maybe if you are a gambling addict.  We understand that the house always wins in the long run.  We understand that someone is paying for those giant water fountains in the desert, and Steve Wynn's art collection.  We understand that the someone is us, because the odds are always against us.

What is the con?  The con is hope.  

Is it any different for the stock market?

SALES is the total sum of money which we marks spend on buying stocks from the broker/dealers.  WINNINGS is the sum of money that we marks get to keep when we sell our stocks to the broker/dealers.

We will refer to as, "OVERHEAD," The total amount of money the broker/dealers pay for all other expenses, such as interest payments on debt, payroll for the licensed broker/dealers, traders, analysts, and software developers, electricity, coffee, campaign contributions to government officials, CNBC advertising, and exchange fees.

SALES - (WINNINGS+OVERHEAD) = PROFIT (or LOSS)


There is something odd about that.  We don't invest in the stock market to have fun.  Or do we?  It is an investment, not entertainment.  Or is it?  We expect a return on our investing.  We fail to understand that the house always wins in the long run.  We fail to understand that someone is paying for those golden toilets on Wall Street, and Steven Cohen's art collection.  We fail to understand that the someone is us, because the odds are always against us as individual investors.  

What is the con?  The con is that economic growth is both good and real.  It is most often neither  The con is nominal returns versus real returns. 

What keeps the con going?  Apart from our greed?  Money printing.  

Please, understand that if the amount of money in a closed system doubles, the value of each monetary unit halves, and the price of everything, including stocks, increases 100%.


I realize this is all an over simplification.  That doesn't mean it isn't true, it is, and that we cannot learn something from it.  

We can.

TANSTAAFL!

h_h

Will 2017 Be Illumina's Best Year Yet?

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 21:44:00 GMT

Here are three reasons to believe that the genomic-sequencing giant is poised to have a prosperous 2017.

Growing Pains: The Biggest Risk I See at Veeva Systems Inc.

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 21:36:00 GMT

Some might scoff, but this is worth keeping an eye on.

Where Is the Best Place to Stash Seed Money for a Future Small Business?

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 21:32:00 GMT

Listener Peter expects that 20 or so years from now, he will be going into business for himself.

Looking to Buy Stocks? Here Are 3 to Start With

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 21:31:00 GMT

Here's what you need to know about buying stocks and why these three stocks are great buys to start with.

Confirmed: "Unknown" Republican, Democrat Paid For Anti-Trump Report

via by Tyler Durden on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 21:23:10 GMT

Having learned previously both the identity of the former British intelligence officer who compiled the "Trump dossier", revealed by the WSJ earlier this week as former MI-6 staffer Christopher Steele, currently director of London-based Orbis Business Intelligence, and that John McCain was the person who delivered the report to the FBI, one question remained: who commissioned the original report meant to uncover a material,i.e., campaign-ending, weakness in Donald Trump's past.

We now have an answer, or least a partial one. But first, a brief detour into just how Steele allegedly went about compiling his data.

In a report in Mother Jones, David Corn, who first broke the story that a former Western counterintelligence official had sent memos to the FBI with troubling allegations related to Donald Trump, writes about Steele's experience shortly after being retained in June by a "private research firm" to look into Trump's activity in Europe and Russia.  Steele recalls that "It started off as a fairly general inquiry." One question for him, he said, was, "Are there business ties in Russia?"

Corn then writes that the former intelligence official went to work and contacted his network of sources in Russia and elsewhere.

He soon received what he called "hair-raising" information. His sources told him, he said, that Trump had been "sexually compromised" by Russian intelligence in 2013 (when Trump was in Moscow for the Miss Universe contest) or earlier and that there was an "established exchange of information between the Trump campaign and the Kremlin of mutual benefit." He noted he was "shocked" by these allegations. By the end of June, he was sending reports of what he was finding to the American firm.

 

The former spy said he soon decided the information he was receiving was "sufficiently serious" for him to forward it to contacts he had at the FBI. He did this, he said, without permission from the American firm that had hired him. "This was an extraordinary situation," he remarked.

Corn writes that the FBI's response to Steele's information, was "shock and horror."

After a few weeks, the bureau asked him for information on his sources and their reliability and on how he had obtained his reports. He was also asked to continue to send copies of his subsequent reports to the bureau. These reports were not written, he noted, as finished work products; they were updates on what he was learning from his various sources. But he said, "My track record as a professional is second to no one."

Perhaps, although it does not explain either why the FBI took no action when presented with this "hair-raising", "shocking" information, despite his "track record as second to none", nor why McCain had possession of the document, and then also supposedly handed it off to the FBI. Steele told Corn that  he "believed this material was important, and he was unsure how the FBI was handling it. Certainly, there had been no public signs that the FBI was investigating these allegations. (The FBI at the time refused to tell me if it had received the memos or if it was examining the allegations.)"

Maybe the reason why the FBI had taken no action is because they knew data was fake, and that Steele himself was the subject of a hoax, one either perpetrated by 4Chan as the message board has claimed, or he was the victim of a counter-disinformation campaign by Russian "sources" (yes, Russian spies don't always tell the truth to UK spies) who meant to discredit Steele by providing him with purposefully wrong material.

Corn then tries to further validate the credibility of his source: "A senior US administration official told me that he had worked with the onetime spook and that the former spy had an established and respected track record of providing US government agencies with accurate and valuable information about sensitive national security matters. "He is a credible source who has provided information to the US government for a long time, which senior officials have found to be highly credible," this US official said." Yet he himself also admits that "I also was able to review the memos the former spy had written, and I quoted a few key portions in my article. I did not report the specific allegations—especially the lurid allegations about Trump's personal behavior—because they could not be confirmed."

So if the actual underlying allegations - the very basis of the report - could not be confirmed, what if any was the story? This is how Corn spins it:

The newsworthy story at this point was that a credible intelligence official had provided information to the FBI alleging Moscow had tried to cultivate and compromise a presidential candidate. And the issue at hand—at a time when the FBI was publicly disclosing information about its investigation of Hillary Clinton's handling of her email at the State Department—was whether the FBI had thoroughly investigated these allegations related to Russia and Trump. I also didn't post the memos, as BuzzFeed did this week, because the documents contained information about the former spy's sources that could place these people at risk.

That's not the end of it: now that his identity has been revealed, there is little downside to pushing forward, and Steele now says that "these allegations deserved a "substantial inquiry" within the FBI. Yet so far, the FBI has not yet said whether such an investigation has been conducted. As the former spy said to me, "The story has to come out."

Of course, the implied allegation is that Trump, was not only controlled by Putin due to the "kompromat" the Russian secret services had on him, but was also being protected by the FBI, which withheld this "shocking" report from the public.

There is just one problem. Others had it too... and here we go back to the original question: who commissioned the anti-Trump report in the first place?

Curiously, according to Steele, this spy whose "track record is second to none", has no idea. Says Corn, "the former spy said he was never told the identity of the client."

Well, that's not exactly true. He does know that the private research firm from the US "was conducting a Trump opposition research project that was first financed by a Republican source until the funding switched to a Democratic one."

In other words, while Steele didn't know the identity of the actual source of funds, he did know their ideological leanings.

However, someone who did seem to know the identity emerged on Wednesday, when BBC News' Paul Wood reported that "the opposition research firm that commissioned the report had worked first for a superpac - political action committee - supporting Jeb Bush during the Republican primaries."

The interview in which the Jed Bush connection emerged, was the following, in which Ted Malloch, a Trump insider, said the following:

Let me tell you what the British intelligence told me this morning. [Christopher Steele] was also an FBI asset at one point in time so he has an intelligence background, but he was paid for people that were working for Jeb Bush in order to discredit him. The democrats took over the contract. He kept adding to the dossier and using information given to him by the FSB in Russia, most of it fabricated, the more he put into the dossier, the more he got paid. So e made a sensationalist dossier, as fat as possible just like your lawyer charges you more billable hours in order to get paid more.

Almost as soon as the BBC report and interview hit, Charlie Spies, an attorney for Right to Rise USA, which had supported Bush's presidential candidacy, disputed it. "Right to Rise categorically denies the BBC reporter's made up report and will be demanding that he retract the made up allegation," Spies told TPM. "Other than enjoying James Bond movies, the PAC had nothing to do with British Intelligence officers." He also proceeded with a rejection on Twitter.

The head of the PAC, Mike Murphy, also tweeted a denial:

Naturally, good luck proving either side of the allegations.

As the WSJ explained in its initial report, "no presidential campaigns or super PACs reported payments to Orbis in their required Federal Election Commission filings. But several super PACs over the course of the campaign reported that they paid limited liability companies, whose ultimate owners may be difficult or impossible to discern."

Just as was intended, and surely no self-respecting spy would allow a SuperPac to pay him directly... or for that matter publicly.

So where do we stand now?

After a series of back and forths, Jeb Bush has been accused of funding the report, with his own SuperPAC immediately denying it, as it would of course, since there is no definitive evidence (yet?) of Bush's involvement.

However, courtesy of Corn's report, who is writing on behalf of Steele, we do know without dispute, that "the American firm was conducting a Trump opposition research project that was first financed by a Republican source until the funding switched to a Democratic one."

And all this happened after a British spy was being worked by the FSB, who provided him with fake intel, including the glorious Golden Shower scene (hopefully the impact of 4Chan will eventually emerge somewhere here) to stuff the report, and ask for even more cash from his client; a report which was so incredibly not even the FBI could do anything with it.

Could the Republican source have been Jeb Bush? Certainly: after all, the Republican funding stopped at one point - perhaps when Jeb dropped out of the primary - only to be replaced with a Democrat source. Incidentally, we also have very good sense of who the "Democratic source" funding Steele's research may have been.

We are confident we will know more soon. After all, none other than Trump earlier today promised his own Russia hacking report in 90 days when he lashed out at "sleazebag" Democrats and Republicans.

But the real point here is not who is behind it, but who had this report before it was finally released by Buzzfeed on Monday. And according to the latest information, not only the FBI, but also at least one Republican and one Democrat source had it. And yet nobody went public with it to "crush" the Trump campaign; instead the best "compromising" thing that could be dug up was the tape of Trump "grabbing women by the pussy."

It goes without saying that if there was indeed some Trump-crushing fact in the report, it would have emerged long ago, and if not by the FBI, then certainly by Trump's immediate competitors, both Republican and Democrat... unless they too were "compromised" by Russia.

Which is why, no matter how this story ends, it should be clear by now that nothing contained in the "Trump report" was in any way actionable, or else it would have seen the light of day long ago.

Here's Why Insulet Corporation Rose by Double-Digits Today

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 21:22:00 GMT

Shares jumped after one of the company's partners reported good news.

Better Buy: Bank of America Corporation vs. Wells Fargo

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 21:11:00 GMT

Which of these two banking giants makes more sense as we head into 2017?

3 Reasons Square, Inc. Stock Could Fall

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 21:09:00 GMT

The payments processor seems to be on a roll lately, but there are plenty of risks ahead.

Dow 20k Disappoints For Fourth Straight Week As Banks Pump'n'Dump

via by Tyler Durden on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 21:03:28 GMT

"I was promised Dow 20k, where's my Dow 20k?!!"

 

It's been a month since Bob Pisani said that Dow 20k was "inevitable"...

 

Gold leads in 2017 and bonds are beating stocks as crude lags...

 

Stocks were desperately pushed higher into the close today to ensure the S&P closed green on the week.. but failed...

 

Energy stocks (black) were the worst on the week, Tech (blue) best, and Financials (red) unch...

 

VIX flash-crashed to a 10-handle early on this morning as stocks ramped at the open...

 

Banks pumped-and-dumped after earnings...

 

And no - NIM didn't explode - this is why!! The Yield curve has NOT steepened!!! No matter how many times the media claims it has...

 

"Most Shorted" stocks ended the week unchanged after a yuuge squeeze on Thursday...

 

Apparel stocks plunged to its lowest since Nov 2012...

 

Breadth remains anything but supportive...

 

And SVXY Puts exploded to record highs relative to calls (SVXY is the inverse VIX ETF, thus SVXY Puts ~ VIX Calls ~ Bearish stocks)

 

A lot of vol in bond markets the last two days (echoing the dollar and yuan) but bonds ended the week higher in price, lower in yield with little curve effect...

 

The USD Index tumbled by the most since the week before the election, erasing the post-Fed-rate-hike gains...NOTE - The Dollar Index has fallen back to unchanged year-over-year

 

It's deja vu all over again in The Dollar Index... (one year lagged)

 

With AUD and JPY the strongest on the week (and Cable weakest)...

 

Copper was the week's biggest gainer in commodity-land (best week since Thanksgiving) but gold is now up 3 weeks in a row (the best run since June)... Crude ended the week down almost 3% - the worst week since before the election...

 

Gold back at $1200...

 

Finally, a silver lining... Global economic surprise indices are at their highest since 2010 - having risen in the last 3 months - post-Trump - by the most since the bounce off 2009's lows... Only trouble is - this series is majorly mean-reverting as expectations follow trend...

Friday Humor? Man Pays DMV Tax Bill With 300,000 Pennies

via by Tyler Durden on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 20:50:00 GMT

Submitted by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,

As Americans weather unprecedented division and vitriol amid the impending presidency of Donald Trump, there’s one thing many can still agree on: the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) is a deplorable place that yields unending frustration, wasted time, and excessive fines.

In this spirit, after dealing with bureaucracy and headaches from the DMV, Virginian Nick Stafford decided to inconvenience the agency, as well. According to his version of events, after attempting to contact the Lebanon, Virginia, DMV to determine which of his four addresses he should register his son’s new car under, he was met with a road block. Rather than being connected to Lebanon, he was redirected to a call center in Richmond.

Stafford made use of the Freedom of Information Act, which is often used to obtain documents government agencies withhold. He used it to obtain the Lebanon phone number, which he received.

But as the Bristol Herald Courier, a local paper, explained:

“When Stafford called the number he was given, he said the employees at the DMV told him the phone line wasn’t meant for public use. However, Stafford said after repeated phone calls, the DMV eventually answered his licensing question.”

Apparently frustrated with the difficulty of obtaining basic information required to pay the agency in question, Stafford decided to take it several steps further:

“Stafford then decided he wanted the direct phone lines to nine other local DMVs: Abingdon, Clintwood, Gate City, Jonesville, Marion, Norton, Tazewell, Vansant and Wytheville. He said the Lebanon DMV employees wouldn’t provide those numbers.

 

“So, Stafford went to court to get them.”

 

“If they were going to inconvenience me then I was going to inconvenience them,” he told the Courier.

 

He eventually filed “three lawsuits in Russell County General District Court: two against specific employees at the Lebanon DMV and one against the DMV itself.”

Unsurprisingly, the court sided with the DMV in a court ruling on Tuesday after a representative for the state’s attorney general’s office presented Stafford with the requested phone numbers. The judge also declined to issue any fines or penalties to the DMV employees who failed to provide the phone numbers. These fines “could have been between $500 and $2,000 per lawsuit if the employees had ‘willfully and knowingly’ violated public records law.”

Stafford expressed the importance of making use of laws like FOIA:

“I think the backbone to our republic and our democracy is open government and transparency in government and it shocks me that a lot of people don’t know the power of FOIA.”

 

“The phone numbers are irrelevant to me,” he also said. “I don’t need them. I told the judge ‘I think I proved my point here.’”

But he had one more point to prove. Stafford still had to pay $3,000 in sales tax to the DMV for his purchases of two cars — his son’s and one other. He hired 11 people to break up rolls of pennies and place them in wheelbarrows, which he proudly presented to the DMV.

The employees had to count the 300,000 pennies — weighing 1,600 pounds — by hand. As the Courier notes:

“One might feel bad for the Lebanon DMV employees, who chose to count the coins by hand. But Stafford is within his legal right. According to the U.S. Department of the Treasury, ‘United States coins and currency are legal tender for all debts, public charges, taxes and dues” under the Coinage Act of 1965.’”

Stafford is not the only person to troll government agencies’ fines and fees with piles of low-value coins. In 2009, John Almany paid his $350 Virginia utilities electric bill in pennies. Last year, Frisco, Texas, resident Brett Sanders paid a $250 traffic ticket with pennies loaded into buckets.

As local, state and federal government agencies continue to impose steep fines — whether for traffic tickets, simply purchasing a vehicle, or even one’s renouncing U.S. citizenship — some Americans are apparently eager to make their indignancy known.

This is especially true in Stafford’s case, where he was inundated with bureaucracy and a lack of accountability for simply attempting to pay the State what it demanded under penalty of further fines.

These payments are undoubtedly involuntary, as they are demanded — not requested — by the State. If any of these individuals had simply refused to pay what their government agency required of them, they would have faced not only further fines but also likely would have had their property confiscated. If they still resisted, they would ultimately be met with police action to resolve the situation. For this reason, as well-known anarchist activist and philosopher Larken Rose explains in his book, The Most Dangerous Superstition:

“What might be called ‘extortion’ if done by the average citizen is called ‘taxation’ when done by people who are imagined to have the right to rule. What would normally be seen as harassment, assault, kidnapping, and other offenses are seen as ‘regulation’ and ‘law enforcement’ when carried out by those claiming to represent ‘authority.’”

Considering the ever-expanding power of government institutions that threaten citizens with potentially violent punishment for refusing to fund them, delivering hundreds of thousands of pennies may currently be the most effective way to draw attention to this top-down paradigm — outside of outright tax protests.

Is GlaxoSmithKline's Stock a Bargain After Dropping 4.8% in 2016?

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 20:42:00 GMT

Glaxo's product churn negatively impacted its valuation in 2016 -- but better days appear to be close at hand.

Expect Test of 2200 over Next Two Weeks (Video)

via by EconMatters on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 20:39:45 GMT

By EconMatters


We discuss the two obvious markets bubbles in the FTSE and Nasdaq, and do some general market commentary in this video. Amazon and Facebook are going to get slaughtered from these levels on earning`s reports.

© EconMatters All Rights Reserved | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Email Digest | Kindle   

Mainstream Media Meltdown: 'Journalists' Seek 'Safe Space' To Discuss "How To Cover Trump"

via by Tyler Durden on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 20:35:00 GMT

After the president-elect's first press conference since the election this week, it appears the mainstream media is in need of a 'safe space'. As The Hill reports, so-called journalists from the Huffington Post, Slate, CNN, and Univision will gather days before Donald Trump’s inauguration to publicly discuss "how the news media can and should proceed to cover" the president-elect.

After this happened...

Source: Branco

Slate will host the event next Wednesday, called “Not the New Normal.” CNN’s Brian Stelter will moderate the panel at New York University. As The Hill details,

The focus of the discussion will include "how journalists and media companies at large can play a bigger role in making sure that fact prevails over fiction in the coming months and years," according to Slate. 

 

Slate’s editor in chief Julia Turner and Slate Group chairman Jacob Weisberg — who hosts “Trumpcast,” a podcast dedicated to covering the president-elect — will participate in the panel.

 

Joining them will be Borja Echevarría, Univision Digital’s vice president and editor in chief; Huffington Post editor in chief Lydia Polgreen and New Yorker editor David Remnick.

 

Most of the panelists were staunchly critical of Trump during the campaign and since Election Day.

Tickets will cost $30, with proceeds benefiting the Committee to Protect Journalists.

This is the first time Slate has hosted a panel to discuss how to cover an incoming president.

House Passes Budget Resolution Clearing Path For Obamacare Repeal

via by Tyler Durden on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 20:34:09 GMT

After a tweet from the President-elect this morning promising that "The "Unaffordable" Care Act will soon be history!", the House of Representatives has just approved a budget resolution that brings that promise one step closer to its fruition.  Although many speculated that House Republicans would splinter after weeks of bickering on the merits of a simultaneous repeal and replace versus repeal now and replace later strategy, the final vote came in at 227-198 with only 9 Republicans dissenting.

 

And here is the full official vote tally courtesy of CSPAN:

Obamacare

 

Of course, the House vote comes just one day after the Senate voted 51-48 to approve the budget resolution with Rand Paul being the only dissenting Republican vote.  Here's our summary from yesterday:

Early on Thursday morning, in a 51-48 vote, the Senate took the first concrete step toward dismantling Obamacare, when it voted to instruct key committees to draft legislation repealing Barack Obama's signature health insurance program. Republicans needed a simple majority to clear the repeal rules, instructing committees to begin drafting repeal legislation, through the upper chamber, with the vote falling largely along party lines.

 

Rand Paul was the lone Republican to vote against the budget resolution because it didn’t balance. Paul said in a statement after the vote that while he supports nixing ObamaCare "putting nearly $10 trillion more in debt on the American people’s backs through a budget that never balances is not the way to get there."

The resolution passed by the Senate on Thursday instructs committees of the House and Senate to draft repeal legislation by Jan. 27. Both chambers will then need to approve the resulting legislation before any repeal goes into effect.

With conflicting messages flooding the mainstream media about the timing of the Obamacare repeal versus the introduction of a plan for its replacement, House Speaker Paul Ryan again noted that Congress is "in complete sync" with the Trump administration that the failed law should be repealed and replaced "concurrently."  Per The Hill:

Speaker Paul Ryan (R-Wis.) insisted on Thursday that the House GOP and Trump are on the same page. The president-elect this week urged Congress to follow a repeal vote with a replacement as soon as possible.

 

“We are in complete sync. We agree we want to make sure we move these things concurrently, at the same time repeal and replace,” Ryan said at a Capitol news conference.

 

Ryan said that Republicans will outline their strategy for replacing the law at the joint House-Senate GOP retreat in Philadelphia a week after the inauguration.

 

“Some of these steps will be taken by Congress; some of these steps will be taken by the incoming Trump administration” after Rep. Tom Price (R-Ga.) is confirmed as Health and Human Services secretary, Ryan said. “So this will be a thoughtful, step-by-step process. We’re not going to swap one 2,700-page monstrosity for another.”

Of course not all Republicans were supportive of the budget resolution with a handful vowing to oppose the Obamacare repeal effort without first crafting a clear vision of a replacement plan. 

A handful of conservative lawmakers are already on record saying they will vote no on the GOP budget, griping that it doesn't do enough to tackle federal spending and debt or that leadership has not laid out enough details of how it will go about replacing ObamaCare. They include Freedom Caucus members like Rep. Raul Labrador (R-Idaho) and Ken Buck (R-Colo.), as well as another conservative, Rep. Thomas Massie (R-Ky.).

 

“More people are reluctant to support it because they’re taking the first step on a journey and leadership won’t tell them where it’s going to end,” Massie told The Hill on Thursday. “But for me, it’s the numbers.”

 

“The numbers are too high,” added Buck. “They say to me, ‘The number's not the important part; it's the repeal, the reconciliation.’ But if the number's not the important part, then make it lower.”

 

Centrist Rep. Charlie Dent (R-Pa.) said Thursday that he still had “serious reservations” about voting for the budget resolution without any concrete plans of how to replace ObamaCare.

 

“Before we take this plane in the air, we better have a damn good idea where we’re gonna land it. Because right now, we’re not sure how we’re gonna land,” Dent told reporters in the Capitol.

And while we're a big fan of metaphors, we would suggest to Mr. Dent that his particular example ignores the point that the Obamacare plane is already in-flight, both engines have failed and the plane is spiraling toward the ground.  So while we understand the desire to move forward thoughtfully, we would also suggest that almost anything would be better than the current healthcare calamity that is Obamacare.

Why DexCom, Inc. Stock Surged Higher Today

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 20:27:23 GMT

The Centers for Medicare and Medicaid handed DexCom a major regulatory victory today.

Sanctions, What Sanctions? Russia Bond Yields Plunge To 3 Year Lows

via by Tyler Durden on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 20:20:00 GMT

After three years of US sanctions on Russia, Putin's cost of funding his nation's economy has tumbled as Russian government five-year ruble notes climbed further this week, pushing the yield to the lowest on a closing basis since February 2014.

As Bloomberg reports, the securities are gaining as a strengthening ruble and lower-than-expected inflation prompt economists to project that the Bank of Russia will resume interest-rate cuts as soon as March, and not in the second quarter as Governor Elvira Nabiullina had previously signaled.

Along with being the best performing stock market in the world since Trump's election, Russia's bond market has soared (while China's has tumbled).

 

Perhaps Rex Tillerson was right after all - despite the liberal media's desperation to paint him as yet another 'friend of Putin' - when he questioned the efficacy of US sanctions on Russia this week during his confirmation hearings...

The long-serving executive said the Trump administration needs to review the efficacy of the sanctions and judge whether there might be better ways to try to constrain, or potentially woo, the Kremlin.

 

"Sanctions, in order to be implemented, do impact American business interests,” Mr. Tillerson said in response to questioning. "When sanctions are imposed, they are, by design, going to harm American business."

 

"In protecting American interests.…sanctions are a powerful tool. Let’s design them well... Let’s ensure those sanctions are applied equally.”

 

The Pros and Cons of Using a Self-Directed IRA

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 20:19:00 GMT

Listener Dan has his sights set on a commercial real estate investment but is looking for the best way to build up capital to make it happen.

Pandora Pops On Good News and Bad News

via Motley Fool Headlines by on Fri, 13 Jan 2017 20:08:00 GMT

The ad business is improving, and layoffs are coming.

 newer latest older