I haven't had much of a muse as of late, but feel the need to get back into blog mode.
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The big political fight is over the debt ceiling, but the rhetoric is that of mining, as conservatives are guarding against cave-ins. Wouldn't that be a cave-out if we were increasing the ceiling rather that having it collapse on us?
One thing is for sure, the senior senator from the Bluegrass will have a primary in 2014 and a nasty one at that. However, the son of a Mitch might be closer to the truth that we'd like, since the conservative dream of having Obama be forced to balance the budget next month in order to not bust the debt ceiling ain't likely to happen.
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One thing that the Obama team might try is to sell bonds at a premium. 30-year T-bonds are yielding 4.18% at present. If they offered them at 5%, they'd sell for 114% of par, or $1139 per $1000 of face value. Thus, they could bring in an extra $139 for every 1000 they refinanced; that could be a sneaky but legal trick to add to the cash flow without adding to the face value of the debt.
Would that be legal? It might pass muster with Anthony Kennedy.
Would Geitner stoop that low? He might need a good chiropractor afterwards, but I wouldn't put it pass him.
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When will we stop the all-Casey-all-the-time? Life goes on even when you can't get the "right" result. The irony to me is that the person who was leading the hang-her-high chorus is named Grace and was very lacking in grace.
Why did you turn on Grace when that came in? The case was weak and trying weak cases hurts other strong cases in the same vein.
Remember the quote (ish) 'I would rather free 100 (?) guilty people than convict one innocent one.'
Posted by: alan | July 13, 2011 at 02:04 PM