Is Perfect Financial Storm Brewing Overseas?

Investors went running for the exits on Tuesday with some analysts worried that we may be looking at the perfect financial storm.

Storm #1: Europe

As you may know, part of the bearish sentiment stemmed from a market rumor suggesting Spain might soon follow Greece and ask the EU for a massive bailout – to the tune of for 280 billion euros.

Euro / US Dollar FX... (EUR=X) 1.2876 -0.0091 (-0.7%%) Currency Exchange

Spanish Prime Minister Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero denied the claims calling the chatter "complete madness."

Nonetheless, investors dumped stocks worried that problems in Europe were far from solved; the euro tumbled to a one-year low against the dollar.

Storm #2: China

But, as you may not know, part of the bearish sentiment in the market also stemmed from Beijing’s decision to raise banks' reserve requirements to fend off inflation. It’s the third such increase in China this year.

ISHARES FTSE/XINHUA... (FXI) 39.56 -0.125 (-0.31%%) NASDAQ

“All sectors (in China) are under pressure," says Zheng Weigang, analyst at Shanghai Securities with bank and real estate stocks leading the plunge.

As a result the Shanghai Composite, China's key stock index, fell 1.2% on Tuesday to its lowest close in seven months.

What does it all mean?

If you watch Fast Money regularly, you may remember that Miller Tabak strategist Peter Bookvar has expressed concerns that investors can’t withstand a one, two punch from both China and Europe.

Investors didn’t want to buy umbrellas despite the gathering storm clouds, he says.

A lot of US investors think it’s all about the US and everything else can take care of itself but in a globalized world that’s not the case, Boockvar adds.

Europe is China’s biggest trading partner and internally China is trying to slow down. China’s slower growth impacts Taiwan, Singapore and South Korea. They export to China who then exports to Europe. We’re all in this together.

HATTIP: CNBC

I voted today!

It is voter day in Ohio (and Indiana) today! So make sure you go out and vote today! I even got a sticker!!!

As a side note, when I was voting, an elderly lady came in and was trying to vote. She stopped and asked the two or three people over seeing the election if they had any information on the people or issues that she was voting on. She admitted that she did not watch or listen to any local news and therefore did not know anything about the election, except that there was an election. The people overseeing the election said that the did not have any information and that if they did, they could not provide any because they did not want to be seen "pushing for one candidate or issue over another."

The lady walked out without voting.

I can see both sides of the coin on this issue, but what does it say for a citizens if they are not even engaged enough to know what they are voting about in a primary election. On my ballet there were 3 issues to vote for and only 3 different races that had multiple choices for candidates. Apparently she did not think her vote to count enough to even color in one box.

Sad.

GM Math

Hotshot sniper in one-and-a-half mile double kill!

A BRITISH Army sniper has set a new sharpshooting distance record by killing two Taliban machinegunners in Afghanistan from more than 1 miles away.

Craig Harrison, a member of the Household Cavalry, killed the insurgents with consecutive shots — even though they were 3,000ft beyond the most effective range of his rifle.

“The first round hit a machinegunner in the stomach and killed him outright,” said Harrison, a Corporal of Horse. “He went straight down and didn’t move.

“The second insurgent grabbed the weapon and turned as my second shot hit him in the side. He went down, too. They were both dead.”

The shooting — which took place while Harrison’s colleagues came under attack — was at such extreme range that the 8.59mm bullets took almost three seconds to reach their target after leaving the barrel of the rifle at almost three times the speed of sound.

The distance to Harrison’s two targets was measured by a GPS system at 8,120ft, or 1.54 miles. The previous record for a sniper kill is 7,972ft, set by a Canadian soldier who shot dead an Al-Qaeda gunman in March 2002.

In a remarkable tour of duty, Harrison cheated death a few weeks later when a Taliban bullet pierced his helmet but was deflected away from his skull. He later broke both arms when his army vehicle was hit by a roadside bomb.

Harrison was sent back to the UK for treatment, but insisted on returning to the front line after making a full recovery.

“I was lucky that my physical fitness levels were very high before my arms were fractured and after six weeks in plaster I was still in pretty good shape,” he said. “It hasn’t affected my ability as a sniper.”

Harrison, from Gloucestershire, was reunited in Britain with his wife Tanya and daughter Dani, 16, last month. Recalling his shooting prowess in Helmand province, he said: “It was just unlucky for the Taliban that conditions were so good and we could see them so clearly.”

Harrison and his colleagues were in open-topped Jackal 4x4 vehicles providing cover for an Afghan national army patrol south of Musa Qala in November last year. When the Afghan soldiers and Harrison’s troop commander came under enemy fire, the sniper, whose vehicle was further back on a ridge, trained his sights on a Taliban compound in the distance. His L115A3 long-range rifle, the army’s most powerful sniper weapon, is designed to be effective at up to 4,921ft and supposedly capable of only “harassing fire” beyond that range.

“We saw two insurgents running through its courtyard, one in a black dishdasha, one in green,” he said. “They came forward carrying a PKM machinegun, set it up and opened fire on the commander’s wagon.

“Conditions were perfect, no wind, mild weather, clear visibility. I rested the bipod of my weapon on a compound wall and aimed for the gunner firing the machinegun.

“The driver of my Jackal, Trooper Cliff O’Farrell, spotted for me, providing all the information needed for the shot, which was at the extreme range of the weapon.”

Harrison killed one machinegunner with his first attempt and felled the other with his next shot. He then let off a final round to knock the enemy weapon out of action.

Harrison discovered that he had set a new record only on his return to UK barracks nine days ago. The previous record was held by Corporal Rob Furlong, of Princess Patricia’s Canadian Light Infantry, who was using a 12.7mm McMillan TAC-50 rifle.

Tom Irwin, a director of Accuracy International, the British manufacturer of the L115A3 rifle, said: “It is still fairly accurate beyond 4,921ft, but at that distance luck plays as much of a part as anything.”

News of Harrison’s success comes amid concern over a rival insurgent sharpshooter who in a five-month spree has killed up to seven British soldiers, including a sniper, in and around the Taliban stronghold of Sangin.

In a later incident during the tour, Harrison’s patrol vehicle was hit 36 times during a Taliban ambush. “One round hit my helmet behind the right ear and came out of the top,” he said. “Two more rounds went through the strap across my chest. We were all very, very lucky not to get hurt.”

HatTip: TimesOnline

2010: Public Employee of the Year Awards

FIRE AT OUR APARTMENT COMPLEX!

This electrical fire started in the upper unit, shot down the electrical outlets and spread to the lower unit. A Lowe's delivery team was delivering a dryer to the lower unit when "the fire came pouring out all the outlets in the kitchen." One of them ran back to their truck, grabbed a fire extinguisher, and with one long spray put it out. He then ran to the upper unit but it was already filled with smoke and was not able to get in. The lady who lives in the upper unit with her family said that her fire extinguisher would not work. I over heard her say later that her fire alarm kept going off in the past and so she got rid of it. NOT A SMART THING!

Sorry about the quality of the video, we were trying to make sure that we were not going to lose our apartment too and were just trying to keep up with what was going on.

Here is some video:




Update:
The Red Cross is here and they are working to relocate two families and provide for them. The maintenance dept. is working on replacing all the doors that the fire men broken down as they cleared the adjoining apartments. And the fire men have all gone. In a sad development, the lady who bought the dryer and was having it delivered by Lowe's not only had her unit damaged by the fire, but according to the Lowe's driver, "the dry is a total lose, I saw it with my own eyes."

Here are some pictures I took near the end:To top it off, a local newspaper man showed up with his camera in what I think is a 2009 Lotus Elise! Poor BigMedia, have to drive around in their Lotus's being scooped by a local blogger!

Must See! Pictures of Iceland's Eyjafjallajokull volcano! Must See!

BOOK GATE - Coming soon

This is a must read. It sure has the tastes of BOOK GATE written all over it.

Barack Obama's Missing Girlfriends

The blogosphere abhors a vacuum. So when the mainstream media (MSM) leave holes in a given narrative -- in this case, the biography of the president -- bloggers individually, incrementally, and indefatigably strive to fill in the blanks -- sometimes successfully, sometimes less so....

As I have argued from textual analysis, and as Andersen has confirmed from his own reporting, Obama had help with the book. As Andersen tells it, after four futile years of trying to finish the contracted book, a "hopelessly blocked" Obama delivered his family's "oral histories, along with his partial manuscript and a trunkload of notes" to "friend and neighbor" Ayers for a major overhaul.

Ayers appears to have taken Obama's shapeless mass of a manuscript and fitted it into a Homeric framework....

If Obama's friend nicely fills the Circe role, then she is almost surely grounded in the real-life person of Diana Oughton, Ayers' lover who was killed in a 1970 Greenwich Village bomb factory blast...

Physically, the woman of Obama's memory, with her "dark hair, and specks of green in her eyes," evokes images of Oughton. As her FBI files attest, Oughton had brown hair and green eyes. The two women share similar family backgrounds as well. In fact, they seem to have grown up on the very same estate....

Hat Tip: American Thinker

Cincinnati TeaPart Signs

Below are the signs that we as a family took to the Cincinnati TeaParty on 4-15-10

Emma's Sign:

Dad's Sign:

Mom's Sign:

HooverInstitution — March 17, 2010 — Beginning with the assertion that war is inseparable from the human condition, Victor Hanson proceeds to explain the ways in which the American way of war is distinctive.

ABC: Key Iranian nuke scientist defected to U.S. in 2009

[Shahram] Amiri, a nuclear physicist in his early 30s, went missing last June three days after arriving in Saudi Arabia on a pilgrimage, according to the Iranian government. He worked at Tehran’s Malek Ashtar University, which is closely connected to Iran’s Revolutionary Guard, according to the Associated Press…

According to the people briefed on the intelligence operation, Amiri’s disappearance was part of a long-planned CIA operation to get him to defect.

HatTip: Hot Air

Enough Said

"Consensus is the absence of Leadership"

The above headline is a Margaret Thatcher quote. Below is more from her ladyship.

"Ah consensus … the process of abandoning all beliefs, principles, values and policies in search of something in which no one believes, but to which no one objects; the process of avoiding the very issues that have to be solved, merely because you cannot get agreement on the way ahead. What great cause would have been fought and won under the banner 'I stand for consensus'?"

"Consensus is the absence of Leadership"

HatTip: ExtremeWisdom

Good News For All You Men Out There:

Walnuts slow prostate cancer growth - A new study suggests that mice with prostate tumors should say “nuts to cancer.”

Thanks to Science News.

CNN Headline: “Hundreds of People, At Least Dozens” - at TeaParty Rally In Navada

Looks Like Dozens to me:


Update: The Daily Caller

Sarah Palin told thousands of tea party activists assembled in the dusty Nevada desert Saturday that Sen. Harry Reid will have to explain his votes when he comes back to his hometown to campaign.

The wind whipped U.S. flags behind the former Alaska governor as she stood on a makeshift stage, holding a microphone and her notes and speaking to a cheering crowd. She told them Reid, fighting for re-election, is “gambling away our future.”

“Someone needs to tell him, this is not a crapshoot,” Palin said.

At least 9,000 people streamed into tiny Searchlight, a former mining town 60 miles south of Las Vegas, bringing American flags, “Don’t Tread on Me” signs and outspoken anger toward Reid, President Barack Obama, the health care overhaul and other Democrats who supported it.

ATLANTIC OCEAN (Feb. 27, 2010) The aircraft carrier USS George H.W. Bush (CVN 77), the Navy's 10th and final Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, keels hard to starboard during high-speed turn drills. George H.W. Bush is underway in the Atlantic Ocean supporting fleet training operations. (U.S. Navy photo by Mass Communication Specialist 2nd Class Micah P. Blechner/Released)

Hat Tip: Unto The Breach

Supply fears start to hit Treasuries

The bond vigilantes are finally flexing their muscles. A long period of stability for the US government bond market showed signs of cracking this week as a lack of investor appetite for new debt sent the benchmark 10-year yield to its highest level since last June. For more than a year, analysts have been warning that record sized debt sales by the US Treasury were at odds with a 10-year yield sitting comfortably below 4 per cent. This week, the yield on 10-year notes jumped from 3.65 per cent to a peak of 3.92 per cent on Thursday. On Friday it was 3.87 per cent.

“The spotlight on Greece only helped to reveal that the US’s kitchen – with Federal and state budget balances – was itself full of cockroaches,” says William O’Donnell, strategist at RBS Securities.
It hasn’t helped that the US announced a big overhaul of its healthcare system this month, adding to worries about the scale of US spending."

Full Story Here.

Stop and Must Read

Today, we find this headline on MSNBC.com and the following article:

Health Care Overhaul Knocks Profits at Major US Firms

Several major U.S. companies said the health care overhaul will cost them millions of dollars this year, but the White House dismissed their complaints, saying it was simply closing a tax loophole. said Friday that it would record a $1 billion non-cash charge for the current quarter related to the bill. The operator, whose annual revenue is expected to be $124.1 billion this year, said the charge is the result of a provision in the law related to the tax treatment of Medicare subsidies.

AT&T also said it will be evaluating prospective changes to the health care benefits it offers.

Diversified manufacturer 3M said it will take a charge of $85 to $90 million in its first quarter as a result of health reform.

These announcements followed statements from manufacturers Deere and Caterpillar , which said on Thursday that they are expecting a combined $250 million in charges this year as a result of changes to the $2.5 trillion U.S. health care system.

They can no longer deduct from their taxes the subsidies paid by the federal government for retiree drug benefits.

We also find this story on MSNBC.com:

Jobless Rate Rose in 27 States in February; Four Hit Records

Unemployment continued to rise several states in February—even breaking records in some states, according to government data released Friday.

And then we read this story in the Boston Globe:

Social Security will pay more in benefits than it receives in payroll taxes in the current fiscal year, six years earlier than expected, the Congressional Budget Office reported yesterday.Last spring, Social Security trustees reported that expenses would exceed revenue beginning in 2016. Since then, applications for benefits have increased because people are retiring early due to the recession, and that, combined with high unemployment, means fewer workers paying taxes.

Add this story to the mix: CBO: Debt Will Rise to 90% of GDP
That is more than twice all the Presidents before him combined since George Washington!

President Obama's fiscal 2011 budget will generate nearly $10 trillion in cumulative budget deficits over the next 10 years, $1.2 trillion more than the administration projected, and raise the federal debt to 90 percent of the nation's economic output by 2020, the Congressional Budget Office reported Thursday.The federal public debt, which was $6.3 trillion ($56,000 per household) when Mr. Obama entered office amid an economic crisis, totals $8.2 trillion ($72,000 per household) today, and it's headed toward $20.3 trillion (more than $170,000 per household) in 2020, according to CBO's deficit estimates.

That figure would equal 90 percent of the estimated gross domestic product in 2020, up from 40 percent at the end of fiscal 2008. By comparison, America's debt-to-GDP ratio peaked at 109 percent at the end of World War II, while the ratio for economically troubled Greece hit 115 percent last year.

What do you get when you add all of these stories together?

Personal Income Drops Across the Country - WSJ

Interest rates rise after Treasury auction of seven-year notes draws less demand- Yahoo Finance

Half of U.S. Home Loan Modifications Default Again After Nine Months - Business Week

Fed's Warsh warns against inflation risk complacency - Reuters

A father's promise, a son's sacrifice for his country

The letter sat on the dresser for four years.

Robert Gilbert never opened it. He only touched the envelope when he needed to dust around it. He wanted to give it back to his son unopened.

Every time his Marine son was deployed, his son would ask, "You still got my letter?"

His dad never wanted to read what was inside an envelope marked: "Dad, open this if I am wounded. Love, Robert."

The call to open it came March 8.

Is Robert Gilbert there?" a voice from Marine headquarters in Quantico, Va., said.

"Junior or Senior?" Robert said.

"Senior."

The father felt his stomach drop even before he heard the words: "Your son has been injured in Afghanistan."

When he heard his son received "possibly a mortal wound," he sat on the bed, opened the yellow envelope and pulled out four handwritten pages of spiral notebook paper.

I'm sorry if you're reading this . . .

Robert Gilbert and his son Marine Gunnery Sgt. Robert L. Gilbert were more than dad and son. They were best friends. Robert, a police officer for Richfield, a village in Summit County, became a single dad the day his wife, Catherine, died of cancer in 1992. He stood at the cemetery with Robert, 9, and Ruth Ann, 11, wondering what to do next.

As soon as his son was old enough to drive, Robert Jr. headed to the Marine Corps recruiting office and came home with posters. Soon, he resembled that poster: 6-3, lean and powerful. He graduated from Revere High School, then from Parris Island. At 20, he became one of the youngest sergeants in the Marine Corps. He served five tours of duty: two in Iraq and three in Afghanistan.

I believe in sacrificing for freedom and I love America.

The last time Robert saw his son was in September. After a week together riding motorcycles around Richfield, his son grabbed a couple beers and said, "We gotta talk."

Instead of a father-to-son talk, this was a son-to-father talk. The 27-year-old Marine looked his 56-year-old dad in the eye and said, "If I'm incapacitated, don't keep me on life support. If we can't smoke cigars, drink a beer and ride motorcycles, let me go."

His dad resisted. "I really would like to keep you alive," he said.

The Marine insisted.

His dad made a promise he never imagined he'd have to keep.

View full sizeCourtesy of Gilbert familyMarine Gunnery Sgt. Robert Gilbert, Jr. with his dad, Robert Gilbert, Sr., who is a police officer in the Village of Richfield.

Dad, you gave me the desire and strength to do what I wanted to do . . .

The father couldn't be by his son's side to protect him from danger, but he sat by his side for the long journey home. The bullet from the rooftop sniper caught his son in the back of the head. Robert explained the damage to me this way: What allows you to breathe and your heart to beat is working, but what makes you Robert is not.

Before traveling to Germany to be with his wounded son, Robert began a journal on Facebook, to give friends news of his son: "Unless God grants me a miracle, I will find a badly broken child of mine that served America, his country that he loved, like none other."

When Robert arrived at Landstuhl Regional Medical Center in Germany, he found his son in the head trauma section. His eyes were black and blue. "But he was my Robert," he told me.

Seeing the strong'" Marine with a full beard and mustache unable to speak was heartbreaking.

Robert flew home to America with his son in a C-17. The cargo plane was big enough to hold two tanks. At the National Naval Medical Center in Bethesda, Md., Brigadier General David Berger gave his son the Purple Heart as the family looked on in yellow hospital gowns, gray gloves and blue face guards.

The next day, they signed the papers to donate his organs.

I believe I lived more life in 20 some years than most lived in a lifetime . . .

Sgt. Robert Gilbert's funeral

Calling hours are 2 p.m. to 8 p.m. March 27 at Catavolos Funeral Home, 3653 W. Market St., Fairlawn, Ohio.

The funeral is March 28. For information, call 330-666-3089. The time and place have not yet been determined.

Last Sunday, the father kept his promise. He held his son's head as doctors removed the ventilator. But his son's heart wouldn't give up. There was one last moment to share.

His birthday.

Marines filled pill container cups with Jack Daniels and sang Happy Birthday. Robert rubbed a drop of whiskey on his son's mouth, just like he had done 27 years ago when his boy was teething. Then each Marine kissed his son's forehead goodbye.

Robert told his son, "I love you. Thank you for being my son." He placed his right hand on his son's heart and felt the last beat March 16th, the day he first felt it beat.

His son got to turn 28.

"He passed from his father's hand to his Father's hand," Robert said. "I gave him back."

I pray for your health and happiness every night and I plan to continue. I love you. Your son, Robert.

After the funeral next Sunday, the father will put his son's letter back on the dresser. He plans to keep it there until the day he joins his son.

Story found here.

Key Dem. "We make up the rules as we go along"

Rep. Alcee Hastings was the sixth federal judge in American history to be impeached from office (bribery and perjury). The voters of FL-23 may have elected him afterward, but it was the Democratic party leadership that let him join the Rules Committee.

Anyone ready for change?