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The Big Short A Review by Peter Wallison –

Posted By on January 7th, 2016

The arrival of The Big Short in theaters a few weeks ago has reignited interest in the causes of the 2008 financial crisis. If you believe that the crisis was caused by greed and recklessness on Wall Street then you’ll like this film. Paul Krugman, writing on the op-ed page of the New York Times, liked it immensely, apparently thinking a Hollywood version of reality was fact.

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Twenty20 License

We can all agree that the financial crisis was caused by a “mortgage meltdown” mostly among subprime and other risky mortgages. What neither this film nor the greed narrative tells us, is why there were so many of these mortgages in the financial system to begin with. The answer: Sorry Dr. Krugman, it was not Wall Street.

In June 2008, just before the crisis, more than half of all US mortgages—31 million loans—were subprime or otherwise risky. Of these, 76 percent were on the books of government agencies, primarily the government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. This shows, without question, that the government—a sophisticated buyer—created the demand for these deficient loans.

The remaining 24 percent of these loans were on the books of private sector entities, such as banks, investment banks, insurers, and investment funds of all kinds.

Because of their government backing, Fannie and Freddie were the dominant players in the US mortgage market, and had been for more than a quarter century. They did not make loans themselves, but acquired mortgages from banks and other lenders. These were held in their portfolios or sold off to investors with a GSE guarantee.

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Former Navy SEAL to Hillary Clinton: ‘You Are An Ignorant Liar’

Posted By on January 7th, 2016

Former U.S. Navy Seal officer Dom Raso this week slammed Hillary Clinton and commenced his campaign to educate Americans that she really is a dishonest and fraudulent politician. During his career as a special forces hero, Raso faced some of the world’s worst bad guys in his 12-year career as a Navy SEAL and he’s killed more than his share of enemies.
Several law enforcement counterterrorism operatives have told the Conservative Base’s Jim Kouri that Raso knows what he’s talking about when it comes to protecting lives and property from terrorists, rogue military forces, drug cartel members and other dangerous human beings.
Raso has begun his”truth campaign” by boldly doing what the nation’s journalists have refused to do: Calling Clinton out for her lies, such as when she told an audience how she bravely dodged enemy fire in Bosnia. “in order to make herself appear as courageous as American soldiers.”
Even when it was revealed by dozens of witnesses that Hillary once again uttered yet another one of her whopping lies, the news media treated it as his she simply forgot someone’s name. “I remember landing under sniper fire,” Clinton said. “There was supposed to be some kind of a greeting ceremony at the airport but instead we just ran with our heads down to get into the vehicle to get to our base. It was a moment of great pride for me.”
Dom Raso points out that a videotape proves Mrs. Clinton was greeted warmly with handshakes that day. She tried to blame her lie on a mistake, calling it a “misstatement.” “In my 12-year military career, I never heard an excuse like that from my leadership,” Raso told reporters. “It’s impossible to even imagine that happening.Only someone completely arrogant, ignorant and disrespectful of what happens in war could say something like that,” he concluded.

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The New Nuclear Proliferation Age North Korea’s test shows the continuing failure of arms control.

Posted By on January 7th, 2016

The temptation in most world capitals will be to denounce North Korea’s Wednesday nuclear test but do little beyond attempting to bribe dictator Kim Jong Un with more cash in return for more disarmament promises. The more realistic view is to see this as another giant step toward a dangerous new era of nuclear proliferation that the world ignores at its peril.

Pyongyang says the explosion, its fourth so far and first since 2013, was a “completely successful” test of a miniaturized hydrogen bomb. That would represent a technological leap, as H-bombs can be thousands of times stronger than the atomic weapons that North Korea tested previously. Pyongyang often lies, and the White House said Wednesday the initial U.S. analysis suggests it wasn’t an H-bomb.

But even an upgraded atomic bomb using boosted fission would give Kim a more powerful weapon than the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Kim is estimated to have enough uranium and plutonium production for 50 to 100 bombs by 2020.

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S.O.S. for a Declining American Navy Today’s 272-ship fleet isn’t nearly enough. The U.S. needs 350 ships to meet the rising global dangers. By Seth Cropsey

Posted By on January 7th, 2016

Late last week China confirmed that it is building its first aircraft carrier from scratch, adding to a fleet that includes a Russian-made carrier. The news cast U.S. military policy in a particularly unsettling light: While China’s naval power expands, America has deliberately reduced its presence on the seas. The Navy—after nearly $1 trillion of Defense Department cuts, in part mandated by the 2011 budget-sequestration deal between Congress and the Obama administration—is already down to 272 ships. That means the U.S. fleet is less than half its size at the close of the Reagan administration nearly 30 years ago (and down by 13 ships since 2009).

The Navy had intended to increase the fleet to 308 ships, including 12 that will replace the nation’s aging ballistic-missile submarine deterrent. But in a mid-December memo, Defense Secretary Ash Carter told the Navy to cut the number of ships it plans to build in favor of placing more-advanced technology aboard the existing fleet.

Secretary Carter’s plan implies that the deterrent effect of a constant U.S. presence in the world is less important than the Navy’s ability to fight and win wars with the advanced weapons he favors. That assumption is mistaken. We need both the ability to be present, which demands more ships than we have, and the related power to win a war if deterrence doesn’t work. Even the Navy’s now-endangered plan for 308 new ships was far below the approximately 350 combat ships needed to achieve this aim.

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Nasdaq Dives Into Israel Tech Boom With TASE Pact Deal with Tel Aviv exchange could answer critics of Israel’s shallow financial system By Orr Hirschauge

Posted By on January 7th, 2016

TEL AVIV— Nasdaq Inc. is jumping into Israel’s tech boom.

The stock-market operator said Wednesday it is joining forces with the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange in a venture to nurture startups, including offering advice and mentoring for private, growth-geared companies and creating an exchange here to help them raise capital.

The move comes amid long-standing complaints among Israeli startup founders and investors that the country lacks the infrastructure to foster stock-market listings for its exploding technology sector. Instead, critics say companies have been forced to seek listings overseas, particularly in the U.S., or sell themselves to foreign firms to raise capital and keep growing.

The two exchange operators described the new Tel Aviv exchange as a private, “secondary market for liquidity events and debt financing services.” Nasdaq said more details about the new market will be disclosed early this year.

Gal Landau-Yaari, chief risk officer at the Tel Aviv Stock Exchange, or TASE, said the new exchange will help connect foreign investors and Israeli companies, offering investors access to private shares, debt and secondary offerings. The exchange announcement coincided with a separate agreement by TASE to use Nasdaq technology for stock, derivative, bond, fixed-income and commodities trading, as part of an overhaul to attract more Israeli and foreign listings.

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Framing Israel: The Distortions of the New Boycott-Driven School Curriculum Max Samarov & Amanda Botfeld

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

The next phase in anti-Israel academic indoctrination is already here – at Hebrew schools across the country.

Eucation is important. What shapes our youth shapes the future, and so we need to craft our school curricula carefully. So it is worth carefully deconstructing the troubling new K-12 curriculum, Reframing Israel, produced by Rabbi Laurie Zimmerman. The curriculum was introduced at the beginning of the school year, and Zimmerman claims that more than 10 Hebrew schools have already adopted it. The stated goal of Reframing Israel is “teaching Jewish kids to think critically about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.” But is this the actual impact of the curriculum?
The answer is no.
First, it is crucial to note that the main author and the majority of contributors to Reframing Israel are part of the Boycott, Divestment, and Sanctions (BDS) movement against Israel. This includes the writer of the curriculum’s “historical overview of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.”
This is deeply problematic, because while BDS sells itself as a movement for justice and human rights, its ultimate goal is the elimination of Israel and the violation of Jewish rights to self-determination. According to recent polls, only four percent of American Jews strongly support BDS, and the overwhelming majority see the denial of Israel’s right to exist as racism. Members of the Jewish community are of course free to support anything they choose, but responsible parents and educators should take BDS’s agenda into account when thinking about the goals and biases of Reframing Israel.
At first glance the curriculum appears well-balanced, filled with pride-building activities like learning Hebrew songs and creative exercises aimed at building understanding of both Israeli and Palestinian narratives. The educational method is also well thought out, encouraging students to actively engage with diverse points of view instead of expecting them to “passively accept the information.” These aspects of Reframing Israel could indeed help Jewish kids think critically about the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.
It is therefore disturbing that when digging a little deeper into the material, the message becomes overwhelmingly anti-Israel and pro-BDS. This is particularly apparent in the “Historical Overview” and “Key Terms” sections, which guide the majority of the curriculum.

NATIONAL NEWS & OPINION Comments turned off

Obama’s Immigration Policies: Instrumentalities of Change Displacement of American workers, suppression of wages and importation of new voters. Michael Cutler

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

Prior to World War II the U.S. Department of Labor was charged with enforcing and administering our immigration laws. It was understood that flooding the U.S. labor pool with foreign workers would force American workers to compete with those foreign workers who would be willing to work for much lower wages. This would depress wages and cost many Americans their jobs.

The enforcement of our immigration laws played an important role in creating America’s unusually large and upwardly mobile middle class, which in turn, gave rise to “The American Dream.”

The authority for the enforcement and administration of our immigration laws was shifted to the Department of Justice during the Second World War when concerns shifted to enemy spies and saboteurs entering the United States.

For our enemies, going behind the “enemy lines” meant the borders of the United States whether they existed along our northern or southern borders, along our tens of thousands of miles of meandering coastline or even by entering the United States through international airports.

In the wake of the terror attacks of September 11, 2001 the responsibility for the enforcement of our immigration laws was shifted from the Department of Justice to the newly created Department of Homeland Security- once again reaffirming the nexus between immigration and national security. However, under DHS the enforcement of our immigration laws was hobbled by splitting the former INS (Immigration and Naturalization Service) into several unwieldy components and blending those components with other agencies.

POLITICS Comments turned off

2016: Year of Decisions Freedom does not mean America writes you a blank check. Bruce Thornton

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

Next November’s election will decide more than who becomes president. It will establish whether the United States has shifted from its foundational ideals of limited government, personal freedom, citizen autonomy, and a robust foreign policy that serves America’s interests and security, to the European model of quasi-pacifist internationalism abroad, and a centralized, collectivist technocratic rule at home –– exactly what 2400 years of political philosophy has feared is the infrastructure of tyranny.

Barack Obama vowed to “fundamentally transform the United States,” but for all his malign changes and erosion of the Constitutional order, “fundamentally” remains a question-begging adverb. The unique circumstances of his election and re-election ––especially the desperate and misguided yearning for racial reconciliation to be achieved merely by voting –– question whether a critical mass of Americans agrees with that goal. High disapproval numbers in polls of Obamacare, the president’s foreign policy, and the man himself suggest not. But the election of Hillary Clinton would show that despite those opinions, a majority of Americans endorse the progressive Democrats’ agenda.

That agenda has been obvious for at least a century. It is predicated on political scientism, the false idea that human nature, motivation, and behavior, along with social and political order, can be understood “scientifically,” and thus manipulated and guided toward a more egalitarian world –– the “social justice” of so much progressive rhetoric. But such a program requires a technocratic, administrative elite housed in powerful government bureaucracies and agencies, walled off from direct accountability to and scrutiny by the people. The ensuing reduction of political freedom and autonomy necessary for top-down rule is compensated for by redefining political freedom as private hedonism –– the freedom to indulge the appetites, consume products and services, abort unwanted pregnancies, and choose whatever sexual identity one fancies.

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Obama Goes it Alone on Gun Control The Radical-in-Chief ignores the Constitution and the Jihadist threat. Joseph Klein

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

Wiping away tears that eluded him when he spoke about the jihadist massacres in Paris and San Bernardino, President Obama condemned congressional inaction in the face of gun violence during remarks he delivered from the East Room of the White House on Tuesday morning. The president vowed to fill in the void through executive action. The most egregious of these measures is a wholesale re-writing of the definition of what constitutes a “seller” in order to extend the reach of federal government control over all gun owners. Obama listed this as his top priority action, ahead of what he described as “smart and effective enforcement of gun safety laws that are already on the books.”

Enforcing the laws already on the books is the responsibility of the executive branch. Making new laws or changing existing laws is the responsibility of the legislative branch.

Apparently, President Obama has learned nothing from the Supreme Court’s reversal of his unconstitutional recess appointments and the judicial stay issued against his unconstitutional immigration amnesty executive orders. Obama gave little comfort to skeptics when he claimed in his White House remarks that “I believe in the Second Amendment. It’s there written on the paper.”

The proble

BOOKS Comments turned off

University Policy: ‘Slight’ Neck-Touching Can Be ‘Sexual Battery’ By Katherine Timpf

Posted By on January 6th, 2016

East Carolina University’s new sexual harassment policy declares that even “slight” neck-touching can be considered a form of “sexual battery” and deserving of punishment.

According to the school’s new “Regulation on Sexual and Gender-Based Harassment and Other Forms of Interpersonal Violence” rules, which went into effect on Jan. 1, “sexual battery includes the intentional or attempted sexual touching of another person’s clothed or unclothed body, including but not limited to the mouth, neck, buttocks, anus, genitalia, or breast, by another with any part of the body or any object in a sexual manner without their consent,” “however slight” that touching may be.

Of course, no one wants to deal with some creep coming up to her and rubbing on her neck and making grunting sounds and smacking his lips or something. But where is the line drawn? What if someone picks a piece of fuzz off of my turtleneck and I decide that they seemed sexually aroused by it? Does how I say I felt about it determine whether or not it was sexual battery?

Or is it about whether or not the person with the neck looked uncomfortable with it being touched? If so, would what Joe Biden did to Ash Carter’s wife be considered sexual battery? What about when George W. Bush touched Angela Merkel at that G8 summit? Was that really just a funny little awkward moment, or was it in fact a violent, disturbing incident of battery that was caught on tape and should have led to him being punished if not impeached?