SENATE DEMOCRATS SCRAMBLE TO SLAM THROUGH LEW NOMINATION

Lew, the guy who lied about the sequester being Obama’s idea.

You know our Republic cannot operate when your government lies to you, repeatedly. What’s at stake is the truth, and the lamestream media covering up the Obama administration lies …

Senate Democrats are scrambling to ram through Obama Treasury Secretary nominee Jack Lew in a Tuesday Senate Finance Committee vote followed by a rushed floor vote on Wednesday.

“Obama has spent two campaigns railing against everything that Treasury Secretary nominee Jack Lew represents,” said a Republican National Committee press release issued today.

Sen. Charles Grassley (R-IA) previously asked Committee Chairman Sen. Max Baucus to delay the Lew vote until the nominee provided adequate answers to questions involving Lew’s involvement in a kickback scheme put in place between New York University (NYU) and Citigroup during Lew’s tenure as NYU vice president of operations. Baucus’s press person denied Grassley’s request and said “the confirmation process continues to move forward.”

No Republican senators have threatened to filibuster Lew’s confirmation.

If confirmed as the next Treasury Secretary, Jack Lew will play a pivotal role in reshaping the U.S. tax code and determining the fate of federal mortgage powerhouses Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac.

CITI’S MATT KING PRESENTS: ‘The Most Depressing Slide I’ve Ever Created’

Citi’s Global Head of Credit Strategy, Matt King, has a knack for putting together useful illustrations.

Here, he examines one of the implications of one of the most powerful forces in all of economics: demographics.

King explained his charts to us like this:

It’s what I like to call “the most depressing slide I’ve ever created.” In almost every country you look at, the peak in real estate prices has coincided – give or take literally a couple of years – with the peak in the inverse dependency ratio (the proportion of population of working age relative to old and young).

In the past, we all levered up, bought a big house, enjoyed capital gains tax-free, lived in the thing, and then, when the kids grew up and left home, we sold it to someone in our children’s generation. Unfortunately, that doesn’t work so well when there start to be more pensioners than workers.

The slide:

Read more:

Thank Obama For Bank Downgrades

IBD reports:

The Obama Record: Moody’s didn’t quite say it, but its move to slash the credit rating of America’s No. 1 and No. 3 banks to near junk is based in part on the banks’ exposure to bad government risk.

Officially, Moody’s said its downgrading of Bank of America, Citigroup and three other major U.S. banks was due to their “significant exposure to the volatility and risk of outsized losses inherent” in a difficult global market environment. It also cited increased pressures from government regulations.

Indeed, the Dodd-Frank Act, federal lawsuits and other anti-bank pressures generated by this administration have made that environment all the more difficult.

Consider that three of the downgraded banks — BofA, Citi and JPMorgan Chase — are defendants in a $25 billion mortgage settlement led by Attorney General Eric Holder. He calls the record sum a “small measure of relief” for alleged “victims” of “unfair” mortgages.

Holder insists he’s not done shaking down banks. Pressure groups working with him say they won’t be happy until banks cough up at least $350 billion.

Separately, BofA must pay $335 million to minority borrowers in an unprecedented race-bias suit.

Truth is, this administration has put banks at risk. It’s a key reason they’re still under stress.

President Obama declared war on bankers from the moment he took office. He demonized them as “predatory lenders” and “greedy fat cats,” who allegedly exploited the poor and middle class and caused the Great Recession. And even as they’ve struggled to repair tattered balance sheets, he has assaulted them on multiple fronts, including:

• Suing the nation’s largest banks to recover as much as $30 billion in losses from subprime mortgages.

• Forcing banks to tear up mortgage contracts and even write down principal amounts.

• Dumping millions of pages of sensitive bank examination records on the Web, so trial lawyers can pore over them to find something to sue banks on.

• Prosecuting more than 60 banks for discriminatory lending.

• Ordering bank defendants to open new branches in unprofitable urban areas.

• Ordering defendants to give away loans at cut rates to low-income minority customers with bad credit, repeating the cycle of risky political lending that caused the crisis.

• Helping dozens of major cities across the country pass “responsible banking” ordinances to pressure banks into making irresponsible loans to people who can’t repay them.

The US Energy Industry Is Going To Grow So Fast, It Will Spark A New ‘Industrial Revolution’

CITI: The US Energy Industry Is Going To Grow So Fast, It Will Spark A New ‘Industrial Revolution’

Oil and gas production in the United States and North America is going to skyrocket in the next 8 years due to strides in natural resource extraction, write Citi analysts in a report published yesterday. In fact, they went so far as to call North America “the new Middle East,” at least in terms of oil production.

This—as well as a trend towards declining U.S. energy consumption — will completely transform both the domestic economy and the threats the U.S. will face in the future,

Indeed, Citi economists expect total liquids production to as much as double for the continent in the next decade, and predict that the U.S. could overtake both Russia and Saudi Arabia in oil production by 2020.

And what he based it on:

Based on an 2011 EIA report….

This energy boom would have a transformative effect on the domestic economy. Here are just a few of the most astonishing consequences in a “good-case” scenario:

Citi analysts expect real GDP to increase by 2.0 to 3.3 percent—$370 to $624 billion—as a consequence of new production, a decline in energy consumption, and the economic activity generated along with this.

3.6 million new jobs could be created by 2020 as a consequence of increased energy production. Of those new jobs, some 600,000 would probably be devoted to oil and gas extraction while 1.1 million would be generated to meet demand in related industrial and manufacturing sectors. National unemployment could subsequently decline by up to 1.1 percent.

The current account deficit could shrink by 80 to 90 percent due to energy exports at an already low level of production. Citi analysts predict that the current account balance could move from -3.0 percent of GDP to -0.6 percent of GDP by 2020.

The value of the dollar could jump by 1.6 to 5.4 percent, primarily based on changes in the current account balance.

What’s more, risks to the U.S.—in particular, geopolitical risks—would dramatically decrease. A domestic or continental energy boom would diminish the importance of conflict within and tensions involving the Middle East, as the U.S. would become significantly more energy independent.

Finally, Citi analysts note that this could lead to a considerable decline in oil prices.

Watson Goes To Work

IBM’s Jeopardy! playing computer Watson is getting plenty of job offers following its smack-down of two grand champions on national TV a year ago.

Citigroup threw its support behind the question-answering software on Monday, when the bank announced that it was exploring possible uses for Watson. It didn’t go into specifics, but Citi said Watson could “help advance customer interactions, and improve and simplify the banking experience” for a “first-of-a-kind customer interaction solution.”

“We are working to rethink and redesign the various ways in which our customers and clients interact with money,” said Don Callahan, Citi’s chief technology officer, in a statement. “We will collaborate with IBM to explore how we can use the Watson technology to provide our customers with new, secure services designed around their increasingly digital and mobile lives.”

The news follows health insurer Wellpoint’s September 2011 announcement that it would incorporate Watson to help medical professionals diagnose and sort out treatment options for complicated health issues.

IBM had said early on in the Watson project that the research wouldn’t just be used for playing games. The tech giant said it would focus on partnering with companies in the health and finance industries, which IBM believes are best-suited to integrate a natural human language analytic technology.

“IBM continues to advance Watson in information intensive industries, enabling organizations to quickly gain valuable insights from vast amounts of data that can speed decision making and improve how companies serve their customers,” said Mike Rhodin, head of IBM’s software solutions division