Libertarian Leanings

Is Anybody Else Wondering...

...how a total disaster like Joe Biden ever got to be the top of the Democrat 2020 presidential ticket? Here's my theory.

I don't think he really wanted to run for president but events forced him into it. Had Hillary won in 2016 Joe would have quietly retired. No scandals, no controversies, just a celebration of his long and brilliant career in public service. Tongue firmly in cheek there. But Trump won.

Back during the Obama administration Democrats had been deeply involved in Ukraine politics. Audio of a phone call purported to be between Assistant Secretary of State Victoria Nuland and the US Ambassador to Ukraine, Geoffrey Pyatt was leaked in 2014. In it the two discussed who should become president of Ukraine. Turned out their guy didn't win, but the call implied serious election meddling on the part of the U.S.

The winner of the Ukraine presidential election in 2014 was businessman and oligarch Petro Poroshenko.  2014, coincidentally, was the same year that Hunter Biden joined the board of Burisma, which paid him at least $50,000 per month for his services.  In early 2015 State Department officials expressed their concerns over Hunter Biden and the potential conflicts of interest he created with his high priced Burisma board seat.  Contrary to what Joe Biden said about not knowing Hunter's business, documents show he was briefed on it in 2015.  Moving forward to 2018 we have a video of Joe Biden bragging to the Council on Foreign Relations how he got a “corrupt” Ukrainian prosecutor fired. It just so happened that it was a prosecutor who at that  moment was investigating Burisma, the company on whose board sat Hunter Biden.

In April 2019 there was a landslide in the Ukraine presidential elections. Comedian Volodymyr Zelensky defeated the incumbent Poroshenko getting 73% of the vote. Seems Ukrainians were fed up with corruption. Zelensky's victory was announced April 21^st. On April 23^rd Joe Biden Biden announced he was running for President of the United States. Two days after the wrong guy won the Ukraine presidential election?  Zelensky's win was potential trouble for Biden.  Joe's deal with the prior Ukraine administration, ending the criminal investigation into Burisma in return for a billion in loan guarantees, was endangered if not dead.  Hunter Biden resigned from the board of Burisma in October of 2019

Joe Biden had family interests to protect by running, but Democrats saw opportunity in it as well.  Obama holdovers in the State Department's Ukraine mission with their ears to the ground might easily have foreseen that the Trump administration would look into the conflicts of interest that they, themselves, had already found troubling.  Sure enough, Trump asked the new president about the Burisma investigation and Hunter Biden's role. Without Joe running for president, Trump's conversation with Zelensky would have no connection to foreign meddling in a U.S. election, and therefore would offer no grounds for impeachment. Whether he was pressured by Democrats or not, Joe ran and the Dems got their shot.

But damn the luck, double damn!  Not only did impeachment come up empty, Joe Biden won the nomination.  Except for Bernie Sanders, the entire slate of candidates was too pathetic to beat a 77 year old political hack who never accomplished a thing in government except lining his and his family's pockets. Bernie Sanders quickly became the front runner. Had anybody but Bernie taken a lead in delegates ahead of the South Carolina primary, the Dems might have let Joe off the hook. But a socialist at the top to the ticket would have been suicidal for the party, so James Clyburn threw his support behind Biden delivering the African American primary votes and saving the Biden campaign.  Joe took the lead after for good after Super Tuesday.  He was officially stuck.

I thought he would make an early pick of Hillary for running mate, the deal being that Hillary would almost immediately take over as president and Biden would get to retire, which he now probably wishes he had done. I think Democrats had the same idea, except that the leadership wants a new face, so we have a Harris/Biden ticket instead of a Clinton/Biden ticket.  I don't for a second think that Biden is making the decisions in his campaign, which leads me to think he doesn't really want to be there.

ACB

As of this writing Amy Coney Barrett is at the top of Trump's list to replace Ruth Bader Ginsburg on the Supreme Court.  Barrett is reliably conservative and a Catholic.  That latter fact assures us of a supremely contentious confirmation, since the Catholic position on abortion puts her squarely in the crosshairs of the now insanely leftist Democrat party.  It promises to be an ugly fight, but my gut says Trump wants to have that fight, and have it right now.

It would give President Trump and his Senate Majority Leader McConnell a campaign promise fulfilled — another conservative on the high court.  Moving to confirm Judge Barrett now seems like great election strategy to me.  The Democrat faithful are already promising more riots and looting (which they and their media allies refer to as "peaceful protests") if the nomination of RBG's replacement goes forward.  This comes at bad time for Democrat leaders who've recently noticed in the opinion polls that the "summer of love" was not a huge hit with voters.  So they've turned around to say rioting and looting are not very good and might even be bad, right when the rioting and looting is about to start up again and go right up to election day.  And when it's all over, there won't be a Supreme Court seat hanging in the balance to motivate the leftist voters.  This isn't likely to lead to a Biden victory.

Though this endless battle royal is waged the name of abortion rights, but I've recently come around to the idea that Roe v. Wade fight is not about abortion as much as it is about filling the court with justices who will deliver the outcomes that progressives in congress are unable to deliver legislatively.  The reality is that America is largely conservative, and Americans are divided on the issue of abortion, even Democrats.

The poll had surveyed more than 4,000 people between late July and early August 2019, asking them not only about their attitudes toward abortion but also about whether they agreed with their party’s stance on the issue.

The survey found that 59 percent of self-identified Democrats support some limits on abortion; only 40 percent said abortion should be “legal in all cases.” It also found that 29 percent of Democrats said they either agreed with Republicans on abortion policy or did not agree with either party’s position.

Years ago when I was stationed at St. Albans Air Force Station in Vermont, my girlfriend at the time and I discussed what we might do if precautions failed.  This was before Roe v. Wade.  We decided that one of our options was to drive over through Rouses Point and into New York state where abortion had recently been legalized.  It never came to that.  The point is, states were already moving to legalize abortion when Roe v. Wade was decided, and that's where we are headed again if it's ever overturned.  If that happens abortion will be legal in some states and not in others.  There will be varying levels of restrictions that will be decided upon by legislators and governors in the various states.  In other words, the people will decide through their elected officials what to do about abortion.

Exactly what the left doesn't want.  They've never been able to sell America on the idea that this country should become a socialist Utopia, and for that reason Roe v. Wade means more to progressives than just abortion.  By creating a previously unknown "constitutional right" Roe v. Wade put the issue of abortion beyond the reach of the voters and their elected representatives.  Abortion being such an emotional issue, the left is able to mobilize millions to protest, riot and demand justices that are inclined to dis-empower voters, themselves.  By filling the court with defenders of Roe v. Wade, progressives will create a court, unaccountable to the voters, that decides cases based, not on what the U.S. laws or the constitution say, but on the political winds of the day, or international law, or the influence of liberal billionaires. 

So get ready to hear once again how Republicans are the party of misogyny and the enslavement of women.  Expect more riots and looting.  Democrat leaders have already talked about impeaching Trump and Barr.  Nothing is off the table.  They say they'll add more seats to the Supreme Court and fill them with liberals.  What Democrats really want is to be beyond the reach of the voters, in power permanently.

Pension Funds Start Looking to Gold to Avert Disaster

The following article was provided by Stefan Gleason, President of Money Metals Exchange.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

Public and private pension plans face a dual crisis.

The first and most obvious threat to pensioners is that defined-benefit vehicles are severely underfunded. By one estimate, pension systems taken as a whole are $638 billion in the red.

Some are in better shape financially than others. But all pension plans will have to reckon with a second huge challenge going forward.

Namely, they are already entirely unable to meet their stated return objectives by owning conventional “safe” interest-bearing instruments such as Treasury bonds.

Fed Declares War on Savers

The Federal Reserve has effectively declared war on savers by vowing to hold short-term interest rates near zero, likely for years to come. Longer-term bond yields also plummeted to record lows (below 1% for most maturities) this year.

An ultra-low interest rate environment is survivable for investors only so long as rates keep falling, thereby generating capital gains on bond holdings that supplement their diminutive coupon payments.

But what happens when the great bond bull market, which has been intact for nearly four decades, reverses? It will be a disaster for the assets of pension funds.

They could reach for yield elsewhere by owning dividend-paying stocks. But an all-equity portfolio would be too volatile for their conservative investing mandate. Even the highest quality stocks got hammered during the virus-induced economic lockdown hysteria this spring.

Market volatility combined with rising liabilities has driven a 6% increase in total adjusted pension debt this year, according to Moody’s Investor Services.

Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve recently announced that it would be changing its 2% inflation “target” to an “average.” That gives central bankers the policy leeway to begin pushing inflation well above 2% for an extended period. (And let’s not forget the Fed also uses the U.S. Government’s grossly understated inflation statistics.)

Pension Plans CAN Hold Gold – But Only These Two Do

How can pension funds obtain protection from this threat? They can own gold.

Last week, Ohio's $16 billion Police & Fire Pension Fund approved a 5% allocation to the monetary metal. This relatively small gold allocation provides at least some measure of portfolio diversification and could pay off in an outsized way if the gold market enters into a price-compounding mania phase.

Ohio will join Texas, through its Texas Teacher Retirement System, in having the only known public pension programs that hold precious metals.

Each fund appears to be targeting about $1 billion in gold holdings.

Others have been urged to do so, including by the Sound Money Defense League and Money Metals Exchange, whose Sound Money Index ranks all 50 states on whether they hold gold in their pension or reserve funds.

Wyoming, for example, considered and rejected the idea early last year when gold was trading at just $1,300/oz.

In a contentious Wyoming senate hearing in February 2019, the career deputy to the newly elected State Treasurer – having just turned in a staggering $300+ million loss on the state’s controversial investment in Third World debt – scoffed at gold while openly opposing his own boss who had just testified in favor of holding the monetary metal to protect the state.

Unfortunately, precious metals assets represent only about 0.5% of all savings and investments in the United States. The vast majority of pensioners and workers are thus vulnerable, like sitting ducks, to the threat of an inflation outbreak or a meltdown in the financial system.

Studies show investment portfolios that include a 5% to 10% allocation to physical gold over time enjoy higher returns, and, at the same time, less volatility.  So why do so few investment managers hold even an ounce of gold?

The bias against gold runs deep, according to Larry Parks, Executive Director of the Foundation for the Advancement of Monetary Education (FAME): “Money managers, lawyers, actuaries, accountants, and other ‘fiduciaries’ recommend pension plans to not have gold in their portfolios. They say that gold is too risky and too volatile.”

But Parks says the opposite is true: “The real reason they try to discredit gold is that gold pays no fees, which is their principal concern. Thus, they have an inherent conflict of interest with pensioners, who are by law the sole plan beneficiaries. It is a scandal how pension trustees have been misled.”

A Secure Retirement Requires Physical Backup

Those who are now, or later will be, relying on a pension as their primary source of retirement income should develop a fail-safe backup plan.

The agency tasked with backing up pension programs, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation, is itself underfunded and could quickly become insolvent in the event of a rise in pension failures.

Of course, the risk of a pension program failing to keep pensioners ahead of inflation is closer to a certainty.

Conventional institutional asset allocation models will be exposed as deficient and even dangerous when their stock and bond portfolios wilt under a period of possible stagflation – an economic trend that investors haven’t had to navigate since the late 1970s.

The ultimate hedge against a regime of currency depreciation and an environment of negative real returns on interest-bearing paper is physical precious metals.

As FAME’s Larry Parks advises, “If you want a secure retirement, you better own some physical gold.”

We would add that if you want the potential for some spectacular real gains in retirement above and beyond what gold delivers, you better own some physical silver as well.

 

Stefan Gleason is President of the Sound Money Defense League, a national grassroots lobbying organization working to restore gold & silver to their historical role as America's constitutional money. He also leads Money Metals Exchange, a national precious metals dealer with over 75,000 customers. Gleason has frequently appeared on national television networks such as CNN, FoxNews, & CNBC, & his writings have appeared in hundreds of publications such as the Wall Street Journal, TheStreet.com, Seeking Alpha, Detroit News, Washington Times, & National Review.