House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has an impressive record with passing big votes, but according to this article on The Hill a robust public option may be too much for the Congress to handle. Pelosi is relying on a complex series of whips to keep the factional Democratic party in line. There are two votes that will be particularly hard for her to get: Rep. Frank Kratovil (Md.): Kratovil is considered one of the most endangered Democrats in this year’s freshman class. He became the poster child for incivility when protesters hanged him in effigy. So it was a surprise when Pelosi snagged his vote on climate change by making Maryland farmers eligible for as much as $1 billion in incentives for reducing emissions. But she might not get him this time; Kratovil has said he’s a no on the healthcare ...

James Dale Davidson’s latest special report, “The Plague of the Black Debt,” went live to Notes readers yesterday. For those of you who missed it, you can access it here.  James’s message is simple: the $110.7 trillion in outstanding US debt is about to bury the US economy.

Unfortunately, it’s too late to reverse course for America. President Obama’s spending program is speeding up the collapse, not slowing it down. Right now, 21 cents out of every $1 paid over to the feds in income tax goes to paying off the interest on the national debt. Soon, it will be almost double that amount. It doesn’t take a genius to work out that this is unsustainable.

It doesn’t take a genius, either, to figure out that higher spending and higher debt mean higher taxes and a weaker dollar. Here are just some of the shocking forecasts James makes in this explosive

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House Speaker Nancy Pelosi has set a target of month's end to enact health care legislation, while in the Senate, Majority Leader Harry Reid hopes to complete legislation by the end of the first week in August. However, progress towards clarifying the way forward remains cloudy with yet another setback in Congress on Thursday, when a key group of House Democrats demanded changes in legislation, claiming the emerging bill "lacks a number of elements essential to preserving what works and fixing what is broken." This followed concerns about a proposed new tax on generous health insurance benefits provided by some employers raised earlier in the week. On a positive note for the government, leaders from hospital industry trade groups were expected to appear with Vice President Joe Biden to announce that hospitals are ready to give up about $155 billion over 10 years in government payments, with ...

Idiocracy in action: Congress blocks bill to audit the Fed… No surprise: American loan defaults hit record… Surprise: Could Canadians be next? China takes another “World’s No. 1” from U.S. … Dan Denning, Byron King on recent triumph and tragedy in the oil patch…

Great news: The Federal Reserve will retain its right to operate in secrecy.

“Thank God for Rule 16!”

Late yesterday, the Senate majority put the kibosh on a last-hour provision in the 2010 spending bill that would audit the Fed. Not because it’s a bad idea… but because of the arcane Rule 16, which prohibits policy legislation from being added to spending bills. (The kind of “rule” that’s only evoked when the majority gets uncomfortable.)

“The Federal Reserve will create and disburse trillions of dollars in response to our current financial crisis,” said Sen. Jim DeMint, who spearheaded

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Capitol Hill is moving faster than ever. We will get a Cap-and-Trade vote on Friday. The market has already cast its vote, making now a great time to make some smart investments. The Obama administration must be getting some schooling from Dealin’ Dave’s Used Car Sales.

Can’t you hear Nancy Pelosi saying to some farm-belt democrat, “What’s it going to take to get you into this climate bill tonight?”

One of the easiest “outs” for a potential car buyer is to say, “I like it, but let me go home and talk to my wife.”

It is no different with shoddy legislation. “I like it,” say our fence-sitting lawmakers, “but let me go home and talk to my constituents.”

Knowing if a customer leaves the lot, he may never come back, House leaders are working overtime to ensure the latest nefarious piece of legislation to come off of Capitol Hill gets a vote before

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About 130 Congress members, independent experts, and advocacy group members will converge on the White House today to address the fiscal health of the United States. The summit is the first step in President Obama’s administration to prioritize plans on how to cut the deficit in half to $533 billion by the end of his first term.

Senator Judd Gregg said, “It can either be a nice press event. Or it can be a substantive event.” Gregg indicated that in past meetings participants have focused on rehashing problems rather than staying focused on how to solve the problems.

One solution that may be discussed is a piece of legislation written by Senator Kent Conrad of North Dakota and Senator Mitch McConnell of Kentucky. Their legislation would be to create a bipartisan commission that would deal with Social Security, Medicare and Medicaid. Speaker Nancy Pelosi and many House Democrats appear to

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Ghost of stimulus past warns… government spending “does not work”…Obama champions bill, nevertheless… Lew Rockwell provides voice of opposition…Geithner unveils TALF, TARP 2.0, whatever you want to call it… another $1 trillion-plus on the line…Time to go back to school, right? Maybe not…. MBA recruiting at record low….Not all market sectors in the drink, one high-end market still showing signs of life…

“We have tried spending money,” begins our mystery politician today. “We are spending more than we have ever spent before and it does not work. I say after eight years of this administration, we have just as much unemployment as when we started…

“And an enormous debt to boot!”

The mystery man? Henry Morgenthau Jr., Treasury secretary to then-President Franklin Delano Roosevelt.

Morgenthau uttered these words in May 1939 before the House Ways and

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As the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression continues to worsen, decades of deregulation and the growing independence at the state level are being reversed as a deteriorating national economy forces the federal government to increasingly take on responsibilities that no other institution has the power or resources to handle.

This dismantling of the so-called “New Federalism” will be readily apparent again this week as the federal government is once again at the forefront of the most-closely watched  crisis-fighting initiatives at hand: With Congress pushing forward on an $827 billion stimulus plan and the Treasury Department planning to unveil its new banking bailout blueprint on Tuesday, economists and other experts say the federal government is taking its biggest role in the economy in a generation.

States that once pushed away from the federal government as part of the New Federalism are now essentially begging

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Today it was announced that House Democrats, working closely with President-elect Barack Obama, have proposed an $825 billion stimulus bill to revive the waning economy. The legislation calls for tax cuts of $275 billion over the next two years and federal spending of approximately $550 billion with strong emphasis on energy, education, health care and highway construction.

“Immediate job creation and continuing job creation” are the two main goals, Speaker Nancy Pelosi, D-Calif., said at a news conference. The number of those jobless has risen sharply in recent months, and Obama has warned the jobless rate could reach double digits unless aggressive action is taken to re-energize the economy.

The $825 billion stimulus bill is one of two key elements in Obama’s plan to revive the economy. The President-elect has also asked lawmakers not to stand in the way of the use of another $350 billion in financial bailout money.

Let us hear

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The base metals were all strongly positive on Tuesday. Copper rose from the pre-dawn hours straight through the New York day, just edging below its intraday highs to finish at $1.5308/lb., up more than 10½ cents. Nickel peaked as New York opened, but only slipped a little during the day, closing at $5.8665/lb., up more than 23¾ cents.

Zinc had a decent day, ending at its intraday high of $0.581/lb., up better than a penny and a half. Aluminum pushed higher all day, ultimately adding 3¼ cents, to $0.719/lb., while lead shot straight up to its intraday high of $0.5398/lb., up 4 cents.

Copper led the industrial metals higher, soaring to a one-month high past the $1.50 mark as the new year buying momentum gathered some steam as economic stimulus optimism prevailed alongside the annual portfolio rebalancing by index funds.

“Metals could do somewhat better over the course of the week,” wrote Edward

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