The Producer Price Index (PPI) reported by the Labor Department Bureau of Labor Statistics.
The Labor Department said on Wednesday its producer price index (PPI) for final demand increased 0.4% last month after rising 0.2% in April. In the 12 months through May, the PPI fell 0.1% after being unchanged in April.
The median economists forecast outlined in a poll by Reuters expected the PPI to increase 0.3% last month and falling 0.1% from a year ago.
While the report marks the second straight month of gains, underlaying inflation remains weak. A relatively strong U.S. dollar (USDUSD) and weak oil prices between June 2014 and December 2015 weighed down and kept inflation below the Federal Reserve’s 2% target for hiking interest rates. However, the dollar has fallen 1.5% against the currencies of the United States’ main trading partners this year and oil prices have increased to nearly $50 per barrel.
Yet, underlying inflation remains benign.
Last month, energy prices jumped 2.8% after increasing 0.2% in April. Energy prices accounted for two-thirds of the 0.7% rise in the PPI.
Surveys gauging manufacturing growth or contraction in Empire State. (REUTERS)
The New York Federal Reserve said Wednesday the Empire State Manufacturing Survey, a gauge of manufacturing activity in the Northeast, expanded slightly in June. The headline general business conditions index increased by 15 points to 6.0, climbing out of contraction territory (-9.02).
The new orders index and the shipments index rose from negative values to 10.9 and 9.3, respectively—a sign that orders and shipments were increasing after last month’s decline. The inventories index fell to -15.3, indicating that inventories were lower, and the employment index was zero, signaling that employment counts were unchanged.
The prices paid index held steady at 18.4, suggesting that moderate input price increases were continuing, and the prices received index was near zero, indicating that selling prices were stable. Firms were more optimistic about the six-month outlook this month, and capital spending plans picked up.
The employment index was largely unchanged, but tilted negative. It came in at a reading of zero, suggesting that employment levels remained flat, which we’ve seen now as a pattern since February. At -5.1, the average workweek index showed that hours worked declined this month.
John Stossel, right, eats lunch with Hillary Clinton, right. (Photo: AP)
I had lunch with Hillary Clinton.
Really.
I was on vacation on the Caribbean island of Anguilla, at a hotel that’s a mixture of villas-for-rent that stand right next to big houses owned by rich Americans.
One day, several black SUVs arrived — men in suits wearing earpieces got out. I asked another tourist, “What’s that about?”
“Bill and Hillary Clinton may stay here,” he said.
Another tourist said, “That’s just a rumor.” But a few days later, Secret Service men surrounded a big house owned by Black Entertainment Television billionaire Bob Johnson. He’s a big Clinton supporter. It was clear that the former president had arrived.
We then wondered, “Are both Bill and Hillary here?”
This was 2006, five years after Bill left office, 10 years after his affairs with Monica Lewinsky and others had been revealed. Pundits said the Clintons had a “political marriage” — that they didn’t actually live together.
So we tourists asked, “Is it Bill with someone else?”
We got our answer quickly. There were the former president and first lady, strolling down our beach. “Holding hands!” gasped a tourist. “Is it just for show?” Who knows? But they certainly acted as if they liked each other.
So my brother-in-law invited them to lunch.
Why did he think they might accept? Because he’s a successful investor who, years before, squandered money on a group called the Democratic Leadership Council. Its goal was to bring Democrats back to centrist economics.
The Clintons had convinced him that they were “responsible” Democrats (sometimes Bill was). So, by donating money, my brother-in-law helped Bill Clinton become president.
Donating money: That gets the Clintons’ attention. Our lunch invitation was quickly accepted. Of course, they didn’t know that I would be there.
I sat next to Hillary Clinton. She was very friendly — for a while.
Being a provocateur, I brought up a local controversy: Some Chinese workers were sleeping in old shipping containers, four to a container. They had moved to Anguilla to help build hotels.
“This is why we need regulation!” she told me.
I pointed out that the workers weren’t slaves. They’d come to Anguilla only because their alternatives in China must have been significantly worse.
Of course, the housing the Chinese workers inhabited wasn’t up to American standards, but the standards Clinton wants would raise costs. That would eliminate opportunities. Some of those workers might never have gotten the chance to leave China and better their lives. Our well-intended rules often create nasty, unintended consequences.
For example, after Western media complained that Bangladeshi workers were abused in “sweatshops,” many of those businesses closed. “Good!” said the media. “We stopped the abuse!” But then Oxfam researchers discovered that many of those now unemployed workers were begging for food on the streets. Some became prostitutes.
Clinton replied, “I heard about that study, but most regulation improves living conditions: zoning rules, affirmative action, licensing, minimum wage … ”
I responded, “Well, I’m a libertarian and … ”
“I know who you are!” she interrupted. We were off. I give her credit: She argued with me for half an hour. Finally, she’d had enough. She just ignored me for the rest of the meal.
Clinton’s wish to regulate workers’ sleeping arrangements is a symptom of “lawyers’ disease.” Like most politicians, she assumes problems are best solved with new rules. She doesn’t notice that most new rules create new problems. Worse problems. Problems that often take away opportunity altogether.
I don’t want to live in a shipping container. But when politicians say “no one” may, they prevent desperate people from improving their lives.
America’s settlers lived in one-room homes made of sticks and mud. Should that have been banned?
In China, millions try to live on a buck or two a day. Because Anguilla did not have Clinton-level housing regulation, some moved to Anguilla, where they can live cheaply and start businesses. Many now run grocery stores. Their lives are immeasurably better.
This is how life progresses, if politicians don’t constantly interfere.
Unfortunately, Hillary Clinton is eager to interfere.
Omar Mateen, right, with his wife Noor Salman, left. Mateen, 29, a radical Muslim born to Afghan parents, opened fire in a gay nightclub in Orlando, killing at least 50 people.
Federal law enforcement officials convened a grand jury to investigate the wife of the Orlando nightclub shooter, seeking to charge her as an accessory to 49 counts of murder and 53 counts of attempted murder. In addition, they will also seek to charge Noor Salman with failure to notify law enforcement about the pending terrorist attack and lying to federal agents, a federal law enforcement source confirmed Tuesday.
FBI agents have interviewed Salman, wife of Omar Mateen, 29, the Orlando terrorist who opened fire and killed at least 49 and injured at least 53 more (updated numbers). A federal law enforcement source told People’s Pundit Daily that the FBI determined from interviews in the days following Sunday’s massacre that Salman knew of her husband’s terrorist plans and did not alert authorities.
While Salman has been widely referred to as Mateen’s wife, it is true that the only proof of their marriage is from a 2013 mortgage document that listed her as his wife. Family members, including his pro-Taliban father, also said the two were married and had a 3-year-old son.
Separate law enforcement sources said Salman told federal investigators that Mateen, who died during a shootout with law enforcement officials, told her of his plans to carry out the terrorist attack and Mateen may likely called her from the gay club Pulse during the slaughter.
While PPD has not independently confirmed the report, CBS cited a source claiming she had taken a polygraph. PPD can confirm that Salman is likely to be arrested shortly. She told law enforcement that Mateen scoped out an alternate location for the shooting–Downtown Disney–in April and again in early June.
Fox News also reported on Tuesday that investigators seized two phones that belonged to Mateen, one of which was a Samsung mobile device. A law enforcement source told Fox News the FBI was able to access both devices, and that investigators are currently going through the data on the phones. The second device was described to Fox News as an older model, although the exact make could not be specified.
While PPD could not independently confirm those reports, investigators had been scrubbing computers in Mateen’s possession for evidence of any communications with individuals known to FBI, photos and video of areas he may have been scouting for attack, as well as traces of terrorist propaganda.
Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton gives an address on national security, Thursday, June 2, 2016, in San Diego, Calif. (Photo: AP/John Locher)
Presumptive Democratic nominee Hillary R. Clinton has won the District of Columbia Democratic primary, defeating Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders in the final contest.
Britain’s Prime Minister David Cameron delivers a speech on EU reform, at Chatham House in London, Britain November 10, 2015. Cameron said he hoped to make good progress with reforms of the European Union when leaders from the bloc meet next month, but he gave no fresh sign of when he plans to hold Britain’s EU membership referendum. (Photo: Reuters/Kirsty Wigglesworth)
On June 23, the people of the United Kingdom will have the opportunity to restore sovereignty and protect democracy by voting in a national referendum to leave the European Union.
They should choose “leave” over “remain.”
The European Union’s governmental manifestations (most notably, an über-powerful bureaucracy called the European Commission, a largely powerless but nonetheless expensive European Parliament, and a sovereignty-eroding European Court of Justice) are – on net – a force for statism rather than liberalization.
A vote to leave, by contrast, would create uncertainty and anxiety in some quarters, but the United Kingdom would then have the ability to make decisions that will produce a more prosperous future.
Leaving the EU would be like refinancing a mortgage when interest rates decline. In the first year or two, it might be more expensive because of one-time expenses. In the long run, though, it’s a wise decision.
From an American perspective, George Will has been especially insightful and eloquent. Here are some excerpts from a recent column in the Washington Post.
Lord Nigel Lawson… is impatient with the proposition that it is progress to transfer to supra-national institutions decisionmaking that belongs in Britain’s Parliament. …The Remain camp correctly says that Britain is richer and more rationally governed than when European unification began. The Leave camp, however, correctly responds that this is largely in spite of the E.U. — it is because of decisions made by British governments, particularly Margaret Thatcher’s, in what is becoming a shrinking sphere of national autonomy. In 1988, Thatcher said: “We have not successfully rolled back the frontiers of the state in Britain, only to see them reimposed at a European level with a European super-state exercising a new dominance from Brussels.”
Here’s a good visual of what’s happening. What began as a good idea (free trade) has become a bad idea (economic union) and may become an even worse idea (common government).
Here’s what Dan Hannan, a British Member of the European Parliament, wrote on the issue. He’s very pro-Europe, but understands that does not mean European-wide governance is a good idea.
I’m emotionally drawn to Europe. I speak French and Spanish and have lived and worked all over the Continent. I’ve made many friends among…committed Euro-federalists. …they are also decent neighbours, loyal companions and generous hosts. I feel twinges of unease about disappointing them, especially the anglophiles. But, in the end, the head must rule the heart.
Dan identifies six reasons why it is sensible to leave.
Here are relevant portions of his arguments, starting with the fact that the EU is becoming a super-state..
The EU has acquired, one by one, the attributes and trappings of nationhood: a president and a foreign minister, citizenship and a passport, treaty-making powers, a criminal justice system, a written constitution, a flag and a national anthem. It is these things that Leavers object to, not the commerce and co-operation that we would continue to enjoy, as every neighbouring country does.
Second, it is only pro-trade for members, not the wider world.
The EU is not a free-trade area; it is a customs union. The difference may seem technical, but it goes to the heart of the decision we face. Free-trade areas remove barriers between members and, economists agree, tend to make participants wealthier. Customs unions, by contrast, erect a common tariff wall around their members, who surrender the right to strike individual trade deals. …Britain is one of only two of 28 member states that sell more to the rest of the world than to the EU. We have always been especially badly penalised by the EU’s Common External Tariff. Unlike Switzerland, which enjoys free trade with the EU at the same time as striking agreements with China and other growing economies… It’s a costly failure. In 2006, the EU was taking 55 per cent of our exports; last year, it was down to 45 per cent. What will it be in 2030 — or 2050?
Third, the advocates of common government are candid about their ultimate goals.
The Five Presidents’ Report sets out a plan for the amalgamation of fiscal and economic policies… The Belgian commissioner Marianne Thyssen has a plan for what she calls ‘social union’ — i.e. harmonisation of welfare systems. …These are not the musings of outlandish federalist think tanks: they are formal policy statements by the people who run Brussels.
Fourth, Europe is stagnant.
…in 1973, the states that now make up the EU accounted for 36 per cent of the world economy. Last year, it was 17 per cent. Obviously, developing economies grow faster than advanced ones, but the EU has also been comprehensively outperformed by the United States, Canada, Australia and New Zealand. …Why tie ourselves to the world’s slowest-growing continent?
Fifth, there are examples of very successful non-EU nations in Europe.
…we can get a better deal than…Switzerland…and Norway…; on the day we left, we’d become the EU’s single biggest export market. …They trade freely with the EU…they are self-governing democracies.
And last but not least, a decision to remain will be interpreted as a green light for more centralization, bureaucratization, and harmonization.
A Remain vote will be…capitulation. Look at it from the point of view of a Euro-federalist. Britain would have demanded trivial reforms, failed to secure even those, and then voted to stay in on unchanged terms. After decades of growling and snarling, the bulldog would have rolled over and whimpered. …With the possibility of Brexit off the table, there will be a renewed push to integration, on everything from migrant quotas to a higher EU budget.
Dan’s bottom line is very simple.
We have created more jobs in the past five years than the other 27 states put together. How much bigger do we have to be, for heaven’s sake, before we can prosper under our own laws?
…the 1970s turned out to be an odd period where many things that seemed like good ideas at the time turned out not to be. …While there may have been an element of truth about EEC membership in the 1970s that seduced many subsequent sceptics…our timing for joining “the club” could not have been worse. …globalisation was beginning to eat into the logic of a political European Union at the very point it was striding towards statehood with a single euro currency. …the European single market is being rapidly eclipsed. …The EU is therefore increasingly becoming a pointless middleman as a vast new global single market takes over.
Here’s a chart from the article showing the European Union’s rapidly falling share of global economic output.
Mr. Smith does not think it’s smart to link his country’s future to a declining bloc of nations.
We are now less dependent than ever on our closest trading partners in Europe and this trend is marching relentlessly onward. For the first 40 years of our membership, the majority — over 60% — of UK exports went to the EU. But in 2012, for the first time, that figure dropped below 50%. It is now at 45% and continues to sink. …The demographics of the European continent, alongside the dysfunctional euro and its insidious effects across Europe have also played a large part in this change… This situation and these trends are not going to change.
Here’s his conclusion.
This Brexit vision is therefore a global, outward-looking and ambitiously positive one. It eschews the inward-looking outlook of…the Remain lobby… So a parochial inward-looking “little Europe” and a demographically declining one, ranged against an expansive, liberal and global outlook. …The crux of the matter is that we in Britain want trade and cooperation; our EU partners want merger and a leashed hinterland.
These are strong arguments, so why does Prime Minister David Cameron want to remain?
And why is he joined by the hard-left leader of the Labour Party (actually, that’s easy to answer given the shared leftist orientation of both Jeremy Corbyn and EU officials), along with most big companies and major unions?
Most of them, if asked, will argue that a vote to leave the EU will undermine the economy. They’ll cite estimates of lower economic output from the International Monetary Fund, the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development, the British Treasury, and other sources.
To be blunt, these numbers lack credibility. A pro-centralization, pro-EU Prime Minister asked for numbers from a bureaucracy he controls. As critics havepointed out, the goal was to produce scary numbers rather than to produce real analysis.
Indeed, the palpable mendacity of these numbers has probably boomeranged on supporters of the EU. Polls show that voters don’t believe these hysterical and overwrought numbers.
Instead, they laugh about “Project Fear.”
Yet, as reported by John Fund of National Review, the EU crowd is doubling down in their panic to frighten people.
…the organizers of Project Fear have gone into overdrive. European Council President Donald Tusk said in an interview with the German newspaper Bild that radical anti-European forces will be “drinking champagne” if Brexit passes. …Tusk said. “As a historian I fear that Brexit could be the beginning of the destruction of not only the EU but also of western political civilization in its entirety.”
End of western civilization? Seriously?
Gee, why not also predict a zombie apocalypse?
These chicken little predictions are hard to take seriously when Britons can look at other nations in Europe that are prospering outside the European Union.
Consider Norway. Advocates of the EU claimed horrible results if the country didn’t join. Needless to say, those horrible results never materialized.
This doesn’t mean there aren’t honest people who sincerely think it would be a mistake to leave the European Union.
Indeed, a survey by the Centre for Macroeconomics found very negative views.
Almost all panel members thought that a vote for Brexit would lead to a significant disruption to financial markets and asset prices for several months, which would put the Bank of England on high alert. On top of the risk of a financial crisis in the near future, an unusually strong majority agree that there would be substantial negative long-term consequences.
Other economists seem to agree.
Four of them produced an article for VoxEU, and here’s some of what they wrote.
The possibility of the UK leaving the EU has generated an unusual degree of consensus among economists. …analysis from the Bank of England, to the OECD, to academia has all shown that Brexit would make us economically worse off. The disagreement is mainly over the degree of impoverishment… The one exception is…Professor Patrick Minford of Cardiff University, who argues that Brexit will raise the UK’s welfare by 4% as a result of increased trade… Minford’s policy recommendation is that following a vote for Brexit, the UK should not bother striking new trade deals but instead unilaterally abolish all its import tariffs… we know of no cases where an industrialised country has ever implemented full unilateral liberalisation – and for good reason. Persuading other countries to reduce their trade barriers is easier if you can also say you’re going to reduce your own as part of the deal. If we’re committed to going naked into the world economy, other countries are unlikely to follow suit voluntarily. …In reality, the UK will still continue to trade extensively with our closest geographical neighbours, it’s just that the higher trade barriers mean that we will do less of it.
Other establishment voices are convinced that the United Kingdom would be crazy to leave the EU.
Robert Samuelson, in his Washington Postcolumn, views it as a form of national suicide because of existing economic ties to continental Europe.
Countries usually don’t knowingly commit economic suicide, but in Britain, millions seem ready to give it a try. …Leaving the E.U. would be an act of national insanity. It would weaken the U.K. economy, one of Europe’s strongest. The E.U. absorbs 44 percent of Britain’s exports; these might suffer because trade barriers, now virtually nonexistent between the U.K. and other E.U. members, would probably rise. Meanwhile, Britain would become less attractive as a production platform for the rest of Europe, so that new foreign direct investment in the U.K. — now $1.5 trillion — would fall. Also threatened would be London’s status as Europe’s major financial center, home (for example) to 78 percent of E.U. foreign exchange trading. With the U.K. out of the E.U., some banking activities might move to Frankfurt or other cities. …Brexit is an absurdity. But it is a potentially destructive absurdity. It creates more uncertainty in a world awash in uncertainty.
Allister Heath of the Daily Telegraphdisagrees with these proponents of the status quo.
David Cameron and George Osborne have been claiming, over and again, that those of us who support Brexit have lost the economic argument. …utter nonsense. …The free-market, cosmopolitan, pro-globalisation economic case for leaving is stronger than ever… The hysterical studies claiming that Brexit would ruin us are grotesque caricatures, attempts at portraying a post-Brexit Britain as a nation that suddenly decided to turn its back on free trade and foreigners. …a Brexit would almost certainly mean the UK remaining in the European Economic Area (EEA), like Norway: we would be liberated from much political interference, be allowed to forge our own free-trade deals while retaining the single market’s Four Freedoms. Europe’s shell-shocked corporate interests would demand economic and trade stability of its equally traumatised political classes, and they would get it. …with supply-side reforms at home, the UK would become more, rather than less, attractive to global capital. The Treasury, OECD and IMF’s concocted Armageddon scenarios wouldn’t materialise. Remain has only won the economic argument in the sense that most economists and the large institutions that employ them support their side.
And Allister points out that the supposed consensus view of economists has been wildly wrong in the past.
Time and time again, the majority of economists make spectacularly wrong calls, and it is a small, despised minority that gets it right. In 1999, The Economist wrote to the UK’s leading academic practitioners of the dismal science to find out whether it would be in our national economic interest to join the euro by 2004. Of the 165 who replied, 65 per cent said that it would. Even more depressingly, 73 per cent of those who actually specialised in the economics of the EU and of monetary union thought we should join – the experts among the experts were the most wrong. Britain would have gone bust had we listened… The vast majority of economists did not foresee or predict the financial crisis or the Great Recession or the eurozone crisis. Yet they now have the chutzpah to behave as if they should be treated like philosopher kings… Remember the Twenties? The economics profession overwhelmingly failed to see the great bubble and subsequent crash and depression. The Thirties? It messed up on just about everything. …In the Sixties and subsequently, Paul Samuelson’s best-selling, dominant economics textbook was predicting that the Soviet Union’s GDP per capita would soon catch up with America’s. The Seventies? Most economists didn’t know how stagflation could even be possible. The Eighties? The profession opposed Thatcherism and the policies that saved the UK; infamously, 364 economists attacked Thatcher’s macroeconomic policies in the 1981 Budget and then kept getting it wrong. …The problem this time around is that Remain economists assume that leaving the EU would mean reducing globalisation and halting most immigration. They assume that there are only costs and no benefits from leaving the EU…the EU’s anti-democratic institutions are unsustainable and thus pose a great threat to the liberal international economic order its UK supporters claim to be defending.
The debate among economists is mostly focused on trade.
With that in mind, this television exchange is very enlightening.
[brid video=”41658″ player=”2077″ title=”The Alternative to Being in the EU”]
In other words, nations all over the world trade very successfully without being in the European Union, so this view that somehow the United Kingdom can’t do likewise is a triumph of theory over reality.
It’s way past time to wrap this up, but there are a few additional items I can’t resist sharing.
A British parliamentarian (akin to a member of Congress in the U.S.) is understandably unhappy that some Americans, most notably President Obama, are interfering in the Brexit election.
Here are parts of Chris Grayling’s column in the Washington Post.
Imagine if you were told that the United States should join an American Union bringing together all the nations of North and South America. It would have its own parliament — maybe in Panama City, a place on the cusp of the two halves of the Americas. That American Parliament would have the power to make the majority of your laws. A Supreme Court of the Americas in Panama would outrank the U.S. Supreme Court and take decisions that would be mandatory in the United States. …That is, more or less, where Britain finds itself today.
Sensible Americans obviously wouldn’t like that state of affairs.
And we would be even more unhappy if that Superstate of the Americas kept grabbing more power, which is exactly what’s happening across the Atlantic.
It decrees that any citizen of any European country can come and live and work in Britain — and that if they do, we must give them free health care and welfare support if they need it. Millions have done so. …it is moving closer and closer to becoming a single government for Europe, and indeed many of its key players — leaders such as Germany’s Angela Merkel and France’s François Hollande — have that as a clear goal. Britain has a small minority of the voting rights, and loses out almost every time.
He’s especially mystified by those who think the EU is a force for liberalization.
Bizarrely, given the EU’s appalling record, these folk see Brussels as the last guardian of enlightenment values; the only way to save the project, they believe, is rule by a transnational nomenklatura. …Remainians are petrified that the British public would…vote the wrong way: for protectionism, nationalisation, xenophobia and stupidity. We would…support idiotic, growth-destroying and socially unacceptable policies. Astonishingly, given the Continent’s collectivist history, such folk equate membership of the EU with free trade and Britain’s Leave camp with protectionism. It’s a breathtaking error of judgement… They cannot grasp that there are other, better ways of opening markets than from within the EU, and that in any case it is just about as far from a libertarian project as it is possible to imagine. …pro-EU Left and Right agree that the people are dangerous, that they must be contained and that, slowly but surely, entire areas of public policy should be hived off beyond the reach of the British electorate. The strategy is to impose top-down restraints and to subcontract decision-making to external bodies… European institutions are actually the antithesis of true liberalism.
Let’s end with some passages from another George Will column.
Michael Gove, secretary of justice and leader of the campaign for Brexit — Britain’s withdrawal from the E.U. — anticipates a “galvanizing, liberating, empowering moment of patriotic renewal.” …American conservatives would regard Britain’s withdrawal from the E.U. as the healthy rejection of political grandiosity. …If Britons vote to remain in the E.U., this might be the last important decision made at British ballot boxes because important decisions will increasingly be made in Brussels. The E.U.’s “democracy deficit” is…the point of such a state. …Under Europe’s administrative state, Gove says “interest groups are stronger than ever” and they prefer social stasis to the uncertainties of societies that welcome the creative destruction of those interests that thrive by rent-seeking. …most of binding law in Britain — estimates vary from 55 percent to 65 percent — arises not from the Parliament in Westminster but from the European Commission in Brussels. The E.U. has a flag no one salutes, an anthem no one sings, a president no one can name, a parliament that no one other than its members wants to have more power (which must be subtracted from national legislatures), a capital of coagulated bureaucracies that no one admires or controls, a currency that presupposes what neither does nor should exist (a European central government administering fiscal policy), and rules of fiscal behavior (limits on debt-to-gross domestic product ratios) that few if any members obey and none have been penalized for ignoring. …the 23rd of June can become Britain’s Fourth of July — a Declaration of Independence. If Britain rejects continuing complicity in the E.U. project — constructing a bland leviathan from surrendered national sovereignties — it will have…taken an off-ramp from the road to serfdom.
Well said.
If I lived in the United Kingdom, I would vote to leave the European Union.
Simply stated, the European project is controlled by statists and the one good thing it provides (free trade between members) is easily overwhelmed by the negative things it imposes (protectionism against outsiders, tax harmonization, horrible agriculture subsidies, bad fisheries policy, etc).
Moreover, the continent is demographically dying.
The bottom line is that the European Union is a sinking ship. This cartoon is a bit flamboyant, but it captures my overall sentiments.
If I had lots of money and was confident of the outcome, I would learn the words to this song and fly to London so I could sing in celebration on June 23rd.
Larossi Abballa, 25, the radical Muslim terrorist killed a French police officer and then tortured the officer’s wife in front of their toddler son.
Larossi Abballa, 25, a radical Muslim under investigation for terror ties stabbed and killed a French police chief outside his home, then tortured the man’s wife in front of their toddler son. He live-streaming the horrific attack on Facebook.
Jean-Baptiste Salvaing, 42, was not in uniform when he was ambushed and stabbed repeatedly in the stomach outside of his home shortly before 8.30 p.m. on Monday. His wife, a 36-year-old secretary at a local police station, was killed with a knife inside the residence while the couple’s 3-year-old son hid behind a couch.
On Abbala’s Facebook page, which has been taken down, the Muslim terrorist wrote that “the Euros will be a graveyard.” Neighbors also reported that the attacker was shouting “Allahu Akbar” — Arabic for “God is Great” — during the attack that took place in Magnanville, a suburb located just 35 miles north of Paris.
French President François Hollande described as an “incontestably terrorist act” and warned France was facing a terror threat “of a very large scale.” The French interior minister called the slaughter “an abject terrorist act.”
“The toll is a heavy one,” a visibly emotional Interior Ministry spokesman Pierre-Henry Brandet told reporters at the scene.
The attack became a three-hour standoff ending after French commandoes stormed the chief’s home, rescuing the boy and killing Abballa.
“I just killed a police officer and his wife.” Abballa said in a video released by Islamic State’s Amaq news agency. The video appears to have been recorded inside the home of the couple as security forces stormed the scene.
Abballa, a French national with a prior terrorism conviction and ties to jihadists based in Pakistan, wrote a disturbing message to his Facebook followers before the commandos entered the home.
“I don’t know what I’m going to do with the boy.”
Prior to the attack, Abballa stayed at his neighborhood mosqueat prayer until employees made him leave without questioning his state of mind. The rector of the small mosque said Abballa attended services rarely in recent months, but showed up to pray before the killings. Rector Mohamed Droussi said Abballa was reading the Koran for a long time, and was the last one to leave.
“I took the key and I said, ‘we are closing,'” Droussi said.
Law enforcement officials have confirmed that three men believed to have close ties to Abbala were brought in for questioning by French police shortly after the attack. Paris prosecutor François Molins said authorities found a Koran, headscarf and two other books in a vehicle used by Abbala. A list of other targets that includes several police officers and journalists was found at Abbala’s home.
“Today every police officer is a target,” Yves Lefebvre of police union Unite SGP Police-FO told The Associated Press, adding that attackers are “professionalizing” and can now find police in their homes.
Abbala, who lived in the western Paris suburb of Mantes-la-Jolie, was sentenced in 2013 to just three years in prison, including six months suspended, for trying to recruit jihadists to fight in Pakistan. However, Abbala had also been the subject of a more recent terror investigation and was allegedly on a government terror watch list.
French officials confirmed police had recently wiretapped Abbala, but had not found anything incriminating by the time of the attack. He did pledge allegiance to ISIS three weeks ago and reportedly echoed that pledge during the video of the attack.
The Islamic State, as was the case in the Orlando terror attack on Sunday, quickly claimed responsibility. Islamic State’s Amaq news agency cited an unnamed “source” as saying an ISIS fighter carried out the attack and the jihadist group claimed responsibility for the assault on its Albayan Radio.
Molins said Abballa’s attack was a response to ISIS calls to “kill non-believers where they live” during Ramadan.
The latest import prices and export prices, including data and reports. (Photo: REUTERS)
The Labor Department said on Tuesday U.S. import prices recorded their biggest increase in more than four years in May, fueled by higher costs for petroleum and other products. The report indicates potential firming of inflation, which could lead to the Federal Reserve hiking interest rates later this year.
U.S. import prices rose by 1.4% last month after an upwardly revised 0.7% gain in April. It was the largest rise since March 2012.
Economists polled by Reuters had forecast import prices rising 0.7% in May after April’s previously reported 0.3% gain. In the 12 months through May, import prices fell 5.0%, the smallest decline since November 2014.
The relative strength of the U.S. dollar (USDUSD) and cheap oil prices between June 2014 and December 2015 weighed down inflation. Since then, the U.S. dollar lost 1.5% against the currencies of the United States’ main trading partners this year and oil prices near $50 per barrel.
Last month, imported petroleum prices skyrocketed by 17.4% after rising 11% in April, the largest increase since 1999. Excluding petroleum, import prices rose 0.4%, the first monthly increase since March 2014, after being unchanged in April.
Imported food prices edged up 0.3% last month, while prices for imported industrial supplies and materials excluding petroleum increased 1.6%. That’s the latter’s biggest rise since February 2014.
Imported capital goods prices were flat, but the cost of imported automobiles gained 0.2%, which was the biggest gain since April 2014. Prices for imported consumer goods excluding autos edged up slightly by 0.1%.
The Labor Department report also found export prices increase 1.1% in May after rising 0.5% in April, which is the biggest gain since March 2011. However, export prices have fallen 4.5% from a year ago, the smallest drop since December 2014.
Shopper at a mall impacting consumer data and retail sales reporting. (Photo: Reuters)
The Commerce Department said on Tuesday U.S. retail sales rose more than expected (o.5%) in May an unrevised 1.3% gain in the month of April, topping views. The second straight month of gains brought retail sales up 2.5% from a year ago.
The report finds Americans are purchasing automobiles and a range of other goods, despite economic growth losing steam and a sharp slowdown in job creation. Excluding automobiles, gasoline, building materials and food services, retail sales rose by 0.4% last month after an upwardly revised 1.0% increase in April.
These so-called core retail sales most closely correspond with the consumer spending component of gross domestic product, which other surveys found to be weak. They were previously reported to have risen 0.9% in April, but economists polled by Reuters had forecast both overall retail and core sales gaining 0.3% last month.
Now, the stronger-than-expected May U.S. retail sales report could prompt economists to raise their second-quarter GDP growth estimates, which is currently around a 2.5% annualized rate. The economy grew at an abysmal 0.8% rate in the first quarter.
In May, auto sales rose 0.5% after gaining 3.1% in April. Receipts at service stations jumped 2.1%, a result of recent increases in gasoline prices.
Sales at clothing stores ticked up 0.8%, but it was the largest gain since November. Online retail sales increased by 1.3%, while receipts at sporting goods and hobby stores increased 1.3%. Restaurants and bars sales inched up 0.8%.
Sales at electronics and appliance outlets tacked up 0.3%, but sales at building materials and garden equipment stores fell 1.8% after declining 2.0% in April. Furniture store sales fell slightly by 0.1%.
President Barack Obama delivers a statement on the mass shooting at a nightclub in Orlando, Florida, at the White House in Washington, DC, USA, 12 June 2016. (Photo: EPA)
President Obama’s predictable reaction to the latest heinous, unprovoked terrorist massacre of innocent citizens on American soil would be embarrassing if it weren’t so disgraceful. This man’s term can’t end quickly enough.
There is just no excuse for Obama’s warped moral compass — the way he excuses the culpable. And his judgments are not happening in a vacuum; they are guiding his policies, which are leading to more, not fewer, attacks against us.
After the deadliest mass shooting in the history of the United States — at the hands of an Islamic terrorist at an Orlando, Florida, nightclub — Obama couldn’t sprint to the lectern fast enough to tell Americans not to believe our lying eyes, saying we should view this slaughter through his perverse prism.
Obama has a selfish interest in denying that this was an act of Islamic terrorism by an Islamic terrorist, which would be an admission of the failure of his policies. He has virtually withdrawn the United States from the war on terror unilaterally, operating on the grossly reckless assumption that Islamic terrorism springs from economic motivations, our recent military actions in the Middle East or some other such nonsense.
Obama simply will not identify this (or similar outrageous attacks) as an act of Islamic jihad. He will only say the FBI is investigating it as a generic “act of terrorism.” He said: “We’ve reached no definitive judgment on the precise motivations of the killer. … And I’ve directed that we must spare no effort to determine what — if any — inspiration or association this killer may have had with terrorist groups.”
What inspiration? What association? Insistence on tying homegrown terrorists to formal terror groups when they are not distorts the reality that we’re dealing with an ideological epidemic, with some terrorists connected to terrorist organizations and others not. Efforts to deny that other terrorists are connected with such groups when they actually are, particularly the Islamic State and al-Qaida, serves Obama’s purpose of pretending that he’s got such groups under control.
Anyone with average intelligence and observation skills knows that Islamists are at war with “infidels,” and the United States, being the “Great Satan,” is at the very top of that list. It doesn’t matter what our policies are, and it doesn’t matter how rich or poor these religious ideologues are; they aim to kill those who won’t submit or convert. And this isn’t rank speculation. They tell us this every time they open their mouths.
Obama has this bizarre notion that if we would just be nicer to the terrorists — if we’d release the detainees from Guantanamo Bay, if we’d quit intervening in other nations’ internal affairs (oops, scratch that one, because Obama gets to violate this at will) and if we’d renounce the use of enhanced interrogation techniques — the terrorists would come around, or at least their ability to recruit would be diminished. I’m sorry, but I didn’t realize the United States has been inciting Islamic terrorists since the seventh century.
As with almost every other tragic event, Obama is exploiting this as a platform to preach on gun control. He said: “This massacre is … a further reminder of how easy it is for someone to get their hands on a weapon that lets them shoot people in a school or in a house of worship or a movie theater or in a nightclub. And we have to decide if that’s the kind of country we want to be. And to actively do nothing is a decision, as well.”
This is unspeakably grotesque. Why must Obama and the left always go here? Why must they always blame the hardware — the inanimate objects — rather than the people pulling the triggers? And for the information of this self-styled constitutional law professor, we decided at our founding that we were going to be the kind of country that has a robust right to bear arms.
Just as objectionably, Obama said, “We need to demonstrate that we are defined more — as a country — by the way they lived their lives than by the hate of the man who took them from us.”
So Americans who had nothing to do with this mass killing have the burden of proving we are not defined by the hate of the terrorist? This really takes the cake. There are no words to sufficiently describe this insanity. Americans in general have nothing to prove here. It is leftist officeholders and their enablers who must explain why they won’t take the handcuffs off our military, law enforcement and intelligence services and have the government do its job of protecting and defending the United States and its citizens.
More than access to guns, Obama’s insistence on keeping our heads in the sand and tying our hands behind our backs is imperiling all of us. Inviting the invasion of our borders without regard for who represents a danger to Americans, refusing to identify our enemy and playing footsie with the Islamic State group overseas are imperiling Americans. If anyone needs a lecture, it’s not ordinary Americans; it’s Obama and his fellow finger-wagging leftists, who keep mouthing their mantra that we need to examine ourselves to see what we are doing to cause these acts.
No, they need to examine themselves, apologize to the rest of us and get out of the way so that the adults in this nation can take the imperative steps to identify the enemy, fight the war and defend America and Americans.
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