Month: March 2013

The Fed Building a Collapse ~ Stock Market Illusions

Published by Papa Giorgio

Question or Statement Often Made by Democrats

“The stock market relies on confidence, and the stock market has done incredibly well since Obama took over. How do you explain that?”

Click to Enlarge

(This is with thanks to Gay Patriot and the graph from Zero Hedge) Here is Gay Patriots summary: Fed pumping gobs of money into Wall Street? Market drifts upward. Fed stops pumping? Market doesn’t. The so-called “confidence” is drug-induced.

Credit Writedowns touches on this a bit:

…As for Bill Gross, he also said that the Federal Reserve knows that its easy money policies have a negative impact: “There are ultimately and presently negatives to these policies. The chairman recognizes that.”

[….]

On how to get out of the quantitative easing scenario that we’ve been in for so long:

“That’s very difficult, not just for the Fed, but other for other central banks. at the moment, the bank of japan is about to enter the pool, so to speak, the deep end. The Bank of England as well, perhaps, with carney indicating as much. Is it easy to get out of the deep end once you get into it? It gets difficult, because the market begins expects a constant infusion of liquidity–$85 billion a month into the bond market, which extends out into high-yield and equity credit as we move forward. Once you cut off the check writing and the purse strings, it becomes a problematic question in terms of valuation and the ability of markets, stocks, and bonds to continue on.”

On his tweet on 2/20 saying that bond vigilantes are no more and central bankers are the masters of the universe:

“They are trying to let us know that they are vigilant. We saw the minutes yesterday and they were extensive and they meet every other month or more frequently. Are they vigilant? They are in terms of their objectives. what the fed is trying to do is reflate the economy, that means not only produce 2 to 3 to 4% real growth, but a modicum of inflation in combination such so we have a nominal 5% of GDP environment. Are they vigilant in terms of moving towards that goal? Yes. Will they be vigilant in terms of having reached it then pulling back and not disrupting markets? Perhaps not. We’ll have to see going forward.”

To Wound, or Kill ~ Special Air Service (SAS) Debate

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Via Firearm Blog) According to the Daily Mail the SAS are looking at switching from the 5.56x45mm NATO round to a 7.62mm round. They seem unimpressed that their US counterparts have access to 7.62mm FN SCAR-H rifles [pictured above] and they are stuck with the M4-like 5.56mm Colt Canada/Diemaco C8 Carbine. From the Daily Mail:

The SAS are being issued with new ammunition designed to kill the enemy outright after they condemned a ‘shoot-to-wound’ policy that put their lives at risk.

SAS Insider

Last night, a regiment insider said: ‘The shoot-to-wound policy was based on the assumption that once he was wounded an enemy combatant would stop fighting, and so would his comrades to give him first aid. ‘But this backfired against the Taliban. The 5.56 mm rounds did not take a big enough chunk out of them, allowing fanatical insurgents to keep on fighting despite their wounds. As a result, more SAS soldiers were shot and badly wounded

The elite troops will now use bigger, heavier rounds to overcome Islamic insurgents who are determined to fight to the death.

The bullets upgrade – and a new range of rifles designed to fire them – were recommended in a top-secret report on SAS operations in Afghanistan. It called for a return to a ‘shoot-to-kill’ policy and for heavier rounds to be issued to troops. The report’s authors described bloody clashes with Taliban jihadists who managed to ignore their bullet wounds and carry on shooting.

[….]

The problem of 5.56 mm rounds lacking killing power in firefights is worse because the Taliban use 7.62 mm rounds in their AK-47 Kalashnikovs and Russian sniper rifles. The SAS’s report said the 7.62 mm rounds flew farther and with greater accuracy – giving the enemy a distinct advantage, especially in long-range engagements.

…read more…

MSNBC vs. Chuck Todd (Via Red Eye)

Published by Papa Giorgio

(Forbes) If you’re like most cable news viewers, you probably think the channel you favor has a monopoly on the facts and the other ones are nothing more than a bunch of ranting. In fact, which cable network is the most opinionated is not a matter of opinion. It’s MSNBC.

A full 85% of the Comcast-owned network’s coverage can be classified as opinion or commentary rather than straight news, according to the authors of the Pew Research Center’s annual State of the News Media report.

CNN and Fox News Channel, meanwhile, fall much closer to a 50/50 distribution, with Fox News skewing somewhat more heavily toward opinion. Here are the breakdowns:

(Breitbart) Pew Research has a new State of the Media 2013 report which finds that MSNBC’s output contains far more opinion than news. This chart shows the balance at all three cable networks…

…Last November Pew reported that MSNBC’s coverage of Gov. Romney was 71 percent negative and just 3 percent positive, by far the least balanced ratio of all three cable news networks….

Maddow Admits Radical Politics

The above video keeps disappearing from YouTube, and when it can be found there the quality is bad. So it will be here at my MRCTV account for all to marvel at.

(NewsBusters) For the past few years, MSNBC has produced ‘Lean Forward’ ads featuring a network hosts push his or her liberal agenda on the  audience.  Past ‘Lean Forward’ ads have included a push for action on global warming, promoting gay rights, and viciously attacking the Republican Party.

MSNBC’s newest ad features weekend host Melissa Harris-Perry unwittingly — or at least one hopes– referencing the Communist Chinese economic program known as the “Great Leap Forward” which left an estimated 18-45 million Chinese dead. The 30-second ad featuring Ms. Perry is narrated as follows:

No fight began just in the years preceding victory.  The struggle for civil rights didn’t begin in the 1950s.  African-Americans had been demanding representation since the 1880s.  Women didn’t just start fighting for the vote in the 1920s.  That began at the founding of this country.  Immigrants to this country have been since its founding fighting for safe and legal status. It’s a change in the political climate that creates the moment for that great leap forward.  The time has come….