Posts
“Going short against the box” is taking a leveraged financial position that ensures that a portfolio’s value is preserved, independent of market movement. It works like this. Suppose you own 100 shares of stock at $10 per share ($1,000) and believe it may either appreciate or depreciate 30% in value within the next month. To protect financial value, you borrow from your broker an additional 100 shares of your existing stock for a period of one-month and pay the broker 5% of the value ($50) for the right to hold the stock and exercise its rights. You then sell the borrowed shares in the market for their current value ($1,000). If you are correct, and the market falls 30% within one month, you simply buy back the 100 borrowed shares from the market at $700 and return them to the broker within one month. You net $250 on a $50 investment. If you are incorrect and the market goes up 30%, you can sell your portfolio shares at $1,300 less the $50 insurance, and return the shares to the broker. It’s a win-win: for $50, you protected your portfolio’s value.
So what has this to do with politics and President Obama’s strategy? Actually, it’s quite simple. While America is “betting” that our Country’s prospects are going to improve, the President is “betting” that they will not. To hedge his bet, he is putting in place a strategy that will “fundamentally transform” America’s form of government and economy while ensuring that it is constitutionally difficult for any future Congress to undo the damage that has been done. He is not motivated by his oath to uphold the Constitution, which he views as an antiquated document that places limits on what government can do instead of what it “should do” for its citizens, especially with respect to wealth redistribution. Instead, he is motivated by his progressive / socialist ideology that our constitutional republic and capitalist economy is a direct impediment to implementing global governance and social justice. I leave it to the reader to obtain and read Dinesh D’Souza’s book The Roots of Obama’s Rage, which is the best psychological / motivational study of the President that has been published to date.
What is the evidence that the President is “going short
against the ballot box?” There are three
key components to his strategy that must be completed before the end of
2012. If implemented, they will
effectively allow him to circumvent Congress and make it irrelevant as a
decision making body:
·
Marginalization of the Constitution through ratification
of five UN-sanctioned international treaties.
·
Centralizing government power in the executive
branch through implementation of selected executive orders and regulatory overreach.
·
Financial collapse of the economy through continued
deficit spending.
The remainder of this article presents evidence that this
strategy is in play.
UN Treaties. Currently, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton
is actively negotiating five United Nations treaties, which if ratified by the
Senate in a lame duck session of Congress and signed by the President prior to
his departure in January 2013, will bind the United States to international
laws that are antithetical to Constitutional principles. Further, if ratified
and signed, they may only be set aside by having the signatories to the Treaty release
us or by passing Constitutional amendments.
Their provisions will be legally enforceable in a United States Court of
Law. These treaties also have one other
thing in common: on the surface each addresses a moral concern for which people
have empathy. However, the price associated with adjudicating these concerns
through the UN is nothing short of tendering our personal liberties. These five treaties are briefly described
below.
Rights of The Child Treaty.
This treaty will create a legal requirement that the United States
contribute foreign aid to ensure that other less fortunate nations have enough
money to feed and clothe their children.
This Treaty was originally entertained by the G.H.W. Bush and W. Clinton
administrations because it addresses international child prostitution and human
trafficking – issues that are addressed in other places – but was rejected
because of its implications to United States sovereignty. It was signed by other nations, including
Great Britain. When Prime Minister
Cameron cut welfare benefits as part of his austerity program, he was sued by
the Child’s High Commissioner in Britain under the Treaty of the Child. Think President Obama will not sign it? Think again.
Senate Bill S. 2433, The Global Poverty Act, was introduced on the
Senate Floor by then-Senator Barack Obama on December 7, 2007. It ultimately failed, but would have required
the U.S. President to develop and implement a comprehensive strategy to further
the United States foreign policy objective of promoting the reduction of global
poverty, the elimination of extreme global poverty, and the achievement of the
United Nations Millennium Development Goal of reducing by one-half the
proportion of people worldwide, between 1990 and 2015, who live on less than $1
per day. This would have required the United States to add 0.7 percent of the
U.S. gross national product ($23 billion to $98 billion a year) to its overall
spending on Humanitarian Aid. The bill was endorsed by The Borgen Project,
Habitat for Humanity, Bread for the World, RESULTS, and CARE.
UN Small Arms Treaty.
This Treaty is intended to prevent private citizens from selling arms
overseas. The fact is that 90% of all
arms sold overseas are sold by governments.
The real intent is to require all signatories to institute a method for
registering and controlling arms within their borders and enforcing these laws
through the UN. United States citizens
would be denied their Second Amendment rights.
The Law of the Sea Treaty.
The Law of the Sea Treaty gives the UN veto power over the use of the
United States territorial waters and would require that the US cede half of its
offshore oil revenue to the UN. Like the
Kyoto Protocol, which pretended to be an effort to save the earth from the
effects of the industrial revolution, LOST pretends to be an effort to protect
the world's oceans from environmental damage and remove its natural resources as
a cause of potential conflicts between nations. Like the Kyoto Protocol, LOST
is an attempt at the global redistribution of power and wealth, by giving veto
over all of mankind's activities to a global body — in this case something
called the International Seabed Authority, located in Kingston, Jamaica. The
ISA will have the power to regulate 70% of the earth's surface, placing seabed
mining, fishing rights, deep-sea oil exploration, and the activities of the
U.S. Navy under control of a global bureaucracy. It provides for a global tax
that will be paid directly to the ISA by countries seeking to develop the
resources in and under the world's oceans.
International Criminal Court. In
1994, the UN’s International Law Commission presented its final draft statute
for an International Criminal Court to the UN General Assembly. In May 2002, before ratification by the
United States Senate, the Bush administration notified the UN that the
United States was withdrawing from the International Criminal Court Treaty. As
written, U.S. service members and officials would have been put at risk of
politicized prosecution and charged with war crimes as a political move by
other nations, especially in this age of terrorism. This in turn would have discouraged U.S.
military engagement in the world: a recipe for isolationism.
Code of Conduct in Outer Space. In a press statement on January 17, 2012,
Hillary Clinton expressed concern about space debris and declared the need to
join with the international community in addressing the “problem.” “A Code of
Conduct,” she stated, “will help maintain the long-term sustainability, safety,
stability, and security of space by establishing guidelines for the responsible
use of space.” Hiding behind this idea
of making outer space “green,” is the proposal of an “outer space military”
governed by a UN body, which will include many bad actors. This treaty, if
ratified, will make Congress irrelevant in matters of space, including
missiles, satellites, and any other object propelled into space. This is a very
dangerous treaty.
Implementation of
Executive Orders and Use of Regulatory Power. Beyond his pursuit of international treaties,
President Obama has signed 130 Executive Orders since entering office. Many of
these of these orders are routine; however, the scope and timing of a number of
these are circumspect. When combined
with his penchant to by-pass Congress through regulatory fiat, his motivations
become clear: his goal is to expand regulatory
power and centralize control in the executive branch, while marginalizing
Congressional authority. During his tenure, executive orders and regulatory
overreach provide him with the authority and power to “transform America.” Even if he is not re-elected, in the longer
term, it results in policies that achieve the Administrations overarching goal
of weakening individual rights, emphasizing collective rights, and
redistributing wealth in society. Once set in motion, it will take years if not
decades to reverse the damage inflicted on our Constitutional Republic, if it can
be reversed at all. Evidence that this strategy
is in play follows:
·
When Congress refused to pass the Dream Act,
which would provide a path to citizenship for illegal immigrants, Mr. Obama
issued an executive order that directed law enforcement officers to no longer
deport certain illegal immigrants.
·
When Congress refused to pass Cap-and-Trade
legislation, Mr. Obama directed his Environmental Protection Agency to
implement it via a broad reading of the Clean Air Act. As a result the cost of
energy will increase and up to eight percent of the country’s energy capacity
will no longer be economically viable.
·
When Congress did not pass the Net-Neutrality
Act, he directed his Federal Communications Commission to do it unilaterally. When SOPA and PIPA were rejected by the Congress,
he threatened to unilaterally take action – without Senate confirmation – to implement
through executive order the UN’s Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement
(ACTA). ACTA is nothing more than an
international version of SOPA and PIPA.
·
Mr. Obama instructed his justice department not
to prosecute persons using medical marijuana, even though Congress refused to
repeal the law that makes it a criminal act.
·
When Congress decided not to repeal the Defense
of Marriage Act, he directed his Attorney General to stop defending it in a
court.
·
Mr. Obama has demonstrated the same behavior with
the states. Attempts to address illegal
immigration at the state level have been blocked by law suits, all while the
Federal government refuses to address the border crisis even though they are required
to do so under the Constitution. Drilling on private land for oil and natural
gas have been blocked using imagined federal authority to regulate “fracking,” a
practice that has historically been the purview of the states.
This list is could be much longer, but it does illustrate
the point: the Obama Administration is circumventing Congress to ensure that
the command and control structure is in place that allows the President to act
with impunity.
The Economy. The last part of the President’s strategy is
to weaken America economically. One is
truly not a slave until he or she is destitute and owns no property or even
worse is in debt to his or her enemies.
In this regard, the Obama administration has single-handedly increased our
Country’s debt to $15.2-trillion dollars – a $5-trillion increase in less than four years. For
the first time in the history of our Country, our debt ($15.2T) is greater than
our gross domestic product ($14.95T), and our gross domestic product is
flattening out. In 2000, the United States’ GDP represented 22% of the World’s
GDP. In 2011 it was 19%, a decline of almost
14%.
To put our Country’s spending and debt into simple terms, one
only has to contrast 2011 tax receipts and expenditures to those in 2000:
·
In 2011, expenditures were $3.6T. In 2000, expenditures were $1.8T. This is a 100% increase.
·
In 2011, tax receipts were $2.3T. In 2011, tax receipts were $2.0T. This is 13% increase.
·
In 2011, tax receipts ($2.3T) were just sufficient
to cover government Entitlements (Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid and other
fixed obligations) AND interest on the debt.
Expenditures for Defense AND ALL OTHER FUNCTIONS OF GOVERNMENT ($1.3T) –
including your own personal favorite program, whatever that might be – were covered
by DEFICIT spending and had to be borrowed.
So what is the bottom line?
Our debt exceeds our GDP. The
interest rate on the debt (4.7% per year based on the 2000 to 2011 average)
exceeds our projected growth rate in GDP (4.1% per year according to the CBO).
Even if we were operate a balanced budget at the 2011 level of tax receipts
($2.3T) – which was only sufficient to cover entitlements and interest on the
debt – the projected GDP growth would be insufficient to cover the cost of
servicing the debt. Our deficits and
debt would continue to grow. At some point, these debts will have to be paid.
So what is the President’s plan? Do nothing. Continue to “invest” (viz.,
spend). His plan has been rejected in
the House by a vote of 414 to 0 and the Democrat controlled Senate refuses to
entertain the House’s budget or put forward one of their own.
Summary.
In summary, the President has decided to go “short against the box.” As he recently commented to outgoing Russian President
Medvedev, during a meeting on missile defense, "This is my last election
... After my election I have more flexibility," Obama said, expressing
confidence that he will win a second term. Medvedev’s response: "I will
transmit this information to Vladimir." But even if he does not win, he
has set up a framework – using treaties, executive orders, and regulations – to
effect an economic suicide pact that will force America toward take its “proper”
place in the global governance framework.
The last chapter in this story will be written by the
American people. My responsibility is to “transmit this information to the American people.” It is my prayer that they take the advice of
Benjamin Franklin who said:
“I agree to this Constitution with all its
faults, if they are such: because I think a General Government necessary for
us, and there is no Form of Government but what may be a Blessing to the
People if well-administered; and I believe further that this is likely to be
well administered for a Course of Years and can only end in Despotism as other
Forms have done before it, when the People shall become so corrupted as to need
Despotic Government, being incapable of any other.” – Benjamin Franklin
