The Market’s Upward Bias

Slap the 55-day timer again.  New highs yesterday (again) and our Trading Model over on the Peoplenomics side of the house is proving far smarter than the guy who designed it.

Makes the earliest likely crash window open April 26th which gets to the “sell in May and go away” window.  Which is slightly less pessimistic than my “when in port, be short” adage from years back…

Baltic Dry Index is back to 553 this morning, right around 2009 lows.

Bibi’s Guns

The talk of the town this morning is what Benjamin Netanyahu will say.  If anything is going to move the markets, since not much else is going on in the US financial scene until jobs data later in the week, this may move markets.

Our military affairs contributor, warhammer, looks at things this way:

George, 

Tuesday, March 3rd 2015, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin ‘Bibi’ Netanyahu, will deliver a speech to the U.S. Congress in direct and blatant opposition to the U.S. President, Barack Hussein Obama.

If reports are to be believed, Netanyahu’s oratory will be a seminal event.  Miriam-Webster defines ‘seminal’ as follows:  “having a strong influence on ideas, works, events, etc., that come later : very important and influential”

See:  http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/seminal

Netanyahu becomes the first foreign leader since British Prime Minister Winston Churchill to address Congress for the 3rd time.  By all measures, this speech is trending as historic.  Not only U.S. President Obama’s Middle Eastern Foreign Policy legacy be at stake, but so too will be Netanyahu’s, not to mention the future of Iranian/U.S. Relations and perhaps peace in the Middle East.

Israel, the only true democracy in the Middle East, is facing the reality of an authoritarian, theocratic nation vowing the annihilation of the democratic Jewish state.  Iran is reportedly only one to two months away from producing enough fissionable weapons grade Plutonium to produce a nuclear warhead and wipe Jerusalem off the map.

Throughout history, Jews endured crushing defeats by Persia, Babylon and Rome, the two millennia long diaspora, the Roman Catholic directed Inquisition and the unfathomable, horrific Nazi led holocaust.   Netanyahu has stated time and again that the direct and public threats made against Israel by recent Iranian religious and political  leaders highlights precisely why they cannot produce nuclear weapons.  Iran has not hidden its intent to destroy Israel.  Why make the job that much easier and allow them to retain the technology necessary to produce a nuke?

Tangentially, if Shiite Iran somehow gains nukes, Sunni Saudis will surely not stand idly by.  They will either build or, more likely, buy their own nukes in order to strategically deter Iran.  The entire Middle East would eventually be at risk of slipping into a 21st Century Cold War, a war powered by religious and racial animosity.

Netanyahu is making his plea to Americans – ‘stand with us in an unbreakable alliance, or we will act alone as we must to guarantee the safety and solidarity of a free Israel.’  Israelis’ will be watching from their homes.  Netanyahu may not openly, overtly threaten military interdiction against Iran’s nuke program in front of Congress, but he will most certainly leave little doubt that, if pressed into a strategic corner that would undermine Israeli national security, Israel will do what she must to neutralize any and all perceived threats.

Netanyahu is in the driver’s seat.  The U.S. President may not like it, but one of the other two tri-cameral bodies of power invited Netanyahu to speak, as was that body’s Constitutional right.  

The real danger to the U.S. administration is the Israeli PM may look more in charge and leader-like than President Obama.  Here lies the unsavory reality for Netanyahu.  The narcissistic Obama does not well tolerate standing in another man’s shadow.  Flatly stated, Obama hails from Chicago.  He has ways to deal with such things.

With the stakes so high, this situation bears very close watching through the 2016 election cycle, assuming we aren’t all living in caves and underground shelters by then.

The Obama administration reportedly has proposed a 10-year freeze on Iranian nuclear development.  But, on this morning, Iran is flatly rejecting such a proposal as unacceptable.

CNN is reporting that the Obama posse has warned Bibi not to spill the beans on Iran secrets, but just guessing here, I don’t think Netanyahu will cower to White House.  An  odd world where a foreign leader may tell Americans more about what’s going on than our own leadership, is it not?

The “New & Improved” Cold War

The sleepy-headed US LameStream Media has not yet figured out that the world has been slipping back into a new and improved Cold War for over a year.

Not surprisingly, the US attempts at appeasement of Iran have not born fruit, any more than  ISIS – busy building the Global Caliphate, will be appeased, either.

Off in the background pay close attention to the Russian support of Iran.  Recall that Russia has funded the Bushir reactor complex.

And, and Iranian state-run media points out today, their buddies – the Russians – are planning to build 50 new naval craft this year.

The way I’ve got it handicapped, it will be a dead heat between the new Russian Borei and Yasen-class submarines seeing actual war-time use, or simply making a cameo appearance in one of Clive Cussler’s Dirk Pitt  adventure novels.

Could be a flash finish…

Executive Action Tax Hikes

The Commissar in Chief is warming up for another round of Royal Decrees  Executive Actions.  These will be aimed at increasing taxes, according to this report.

So, on top of handing out Social Security cards, drivers licenses and such to illegals, the attack on the middle class is about to be ramped up even further.

While the story this morning is about “corporate tax loopholes”  (and many of them are bad) there’s the other side of the coin;  namely that corporations don’t pay taxes, people do

All corporations do is pass through expenses…and if taxes do go up…it doesn’t take a rocket surgeon to figure out who pays in the end.

Unless your main job was being a neighborhood organizer, of course.

Another Reason:  No Hillary

The report that the democraps leading put-up for the White House next time around used a personal email account instead of a government email account counts in my book as yet another reason not to vote for her. mm

True, keeping emails on private servers may technically preserve them, but access to historians and researchers is key.  Federal servers and FOI requests are a believable combination.  Yet another law-twister in the wings is what it feels like to me.

Oh, wait…federal regulations…they’re for everyone else, except the aristocracy, right?

National Pancake Day

Check out IHOP’s deal.