Reuters: Dozens of former Republican officials in talks to form anti-Trump third party

(Reuters) - Dozens of former Republican officials, who view the party as unwilling to stand up to former President Donald Trump and his attempts to undermine U.S. democracy, are in talks to form a center-right breakaway party, four people involved in the discussions told Reuters.

The early stage discussions include former elected Republicans, former officials in the Republican administrations of Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, George W. Bush and Trump, ex-Republican ambassadors and Republican strategists, the people involved say.

More than 120 of them held a Zoom call last Friday to discuss the breakaway group, which would run on a platform of “principled conservatism,” including adherence to the Constitution and the rule of law - ideas those involved say have been trashed by Trump.

The plan would be to run candidates in some races but also to endorse center-right candidates in others, be they Republicans, independents or Democrats, the people say.

Evan McMullin, who was chief policy director for the House Republican Conference and ran as an independent in the 2016 presidential election, told Reuters that he co-hosted the Zoom call with former officials concerned about Trump’s grip on Republicans and the nativist turn the party has taken.

Three other people confirmed to Reuters the call and the discussions for a potential splinter party, but asked not to be identified.

Read the rest here.

Romanian Orthodox Church faces criticism after tragic baptism

In Romania a six week old infant boy recently died shortly after being baptized. Authorities believe the death was directly related to his being baptized by full immersion according to the immemorial rite of the Orthodox Church. The tragedy, not surprisingly, has caused a firestorm of commentary including criticism of the Church's baptismal rite. 

Romania is generally regarded as one of Europe's most religiously observant countries with a little over 80% identifying as members of the Orthodox Church, around 7% as Catholics (mostly Latin Rite but a small number of Eastern Rite), and approximately 5% self identify as some form of Protestant. Somewhere around 2-3% are Muslims or Jews with the rest being either non-believers or having no formally expressed religious beliefs in the latest census. 

And now for something different

I know next to nothing of pre-modern Japanese history but found this fascinating.

Virginia is close to abolishing capital punishment

Since taking control of the state Legislature in 2019, Virginia Democrats have enacted a run of progressive laws — on gun control, abortion access and the removal of Confederate monuments. Now Virginia is poised to become the first state in the South to abolish the death penalty, a sign of ascendant liberal political power in a state that has executed more people since the 1970s than any other except Texas.

Read the rest here.

With the exception of intentional murder committed by already life sentenced inmates and a handful of very rare crimes like treason and wartime spying, I am an opponent of capital punishment. So this doesn't particularly bother me. But I must note the hypocrisy of Gov. Northam who bemoans the machinery of death while doing everything in his power to facilitate the legal killing of children by their mothers purely on the basis of their not yet having been born. 

A Papal Jubilee

Some interesting details from the jubilee honoring the 50th anniversary of Leo XIII's episcopal consecration. (page 17 right column)

Against (re)Baptizing Converts

A cogent argument against the practice of receiving Roman Catholic and Trinitarian Protestant converts by baptism. I have been and remain ambivalent on this subject and am happy to defer to whatever my bishop says. 

P.S. See also this. 

Lunatic Conspiracy Theories

Are not just a problem on the right. That said, arresting kooks is not the answer. 

How to Win at the Stock Market by Being Lazy

Read it here.

Executive Summary: Low cost broad based index funds or near equivalent ETFs are very hard to beat. Even the so called professional money managers, who often charge scandalous fees, rarely beat the dirt cheap fund that just tracks the S&P 500. 

Pope Francis: Vatican II must be taught as part of church teaching, or ‘you are not with the church’

 VATICAN CITY (CNS) -- Religious education must focus on leading people to a personal relationship with Christ and building a community of believers where the talents of each person are valued and where all go out to share the Gospel and serve the poor, Pope Francis said.

"The first protagonists of catechesis are those messengers of the Gospel, often laypeople, who generously get involved to share the beauty of having encountered Jesus," the pope said Jan. 30 to participants in a meeting organized by the Italian bishops' National Catechetical Office.

Catechesis must "express God's saving love, which precedes any moral and religious obligation on our part," he said. "'You are loved, you are loved' -- this comes first; this is the gateway."

Catechesis does "not impose the truth but appeals to freedom, like Jesus did," he said, and "it should be marked by joy, encouragement, liveliness and a harmonious balance which will not reduce preaching to a few doctrines which are at times more philosophical than evangelical."

However, he said, a catechist always must teach what the church teaches and that includes the vision and teachings of the Second Vatican Council.

"This is magisterium: the council is the magisterium of the church," he said. "Either you are with the church and therefore you follow the council, or if you do not follow the council or you interpret it in your own way, as you wish, you are not with the church."

Read the rest here.

HT: Blog reader John L.

Beware of Amazon Product Reviews

A huge percentage of reviews are fake. That applies to both the positive and negative reviews.

Wall Street: Silver jumps as retail investors pile in (Updated)

The same crowd that drove up GameStop stock by 1600% while inflicting huge losses on several hedge funds in a coordinated short squeeze have turned their attention to the silver market. Silver has long been the subject of conspiracy theories about mysterious but powerful entities short selling it. The metal was up more than 10% in overnight trading.

Silver is both an industrial and precious metal and its movements can be hard to predict. But unlike GME it is not a stock and the market for silver is huge with multiple avenues for investors to gain exposure. These include stock in silver miners, the bullion backed ETF SLV, physical bullion that can be purchased in bulk on the COMEX or in smaller quantities from local coin shops and online bullion dealers. Also unlike GME, most Wall Street analysts have been bullish on silver (and gold) for a while and silver was already at multi-year highs before the arrival of the #silversqueeze crowd. 

It will be interesting to see where this goes. But one indicator is that I checked my two favorite online bullion dealers this morning to see what they had in stock and what they were charging in premiums (the mark up above spot price for retail oriented bullion). Both of them look like the toilet paper aisle at Walmart did last March. They have been almost completely wiped out of their silver inventory and the little that's left is being sold at extortionist premiums. I would be careful about reading too much into that though. Only a small percentage of silver is refined/minted with ordinary investors in mind so whenever precious metals spike there is often a near term shortage in the small bars and rounds popular with retail investors or collectors. 

Disclosure: I have had a smallish position in silver for several years and do not have any plans to add to or sell any of it in the immediate future. But if the price goes nuts... 

Update: No surprise. The rally fizzled as silver has given up almost all of its gains. And in related news GameStop is also falling like a rock as the short squeeze ends and people realize they were paying hundreds of dollars for a company whose stock is probably worth no more than $25 a share in fair market valuation. A few people made a ton of money. but a lot of the folks late to that trade and those who didn't realize that it was already over, are getting hosed. They can join the hedge fund guys in licking their wounds. 

Wall Street is a rough neighborhood. 

Reuters: Some Prominent Republicans Are Leaving the GOP

(Reuters) - Dozens of Republicans in former President George W. Bush’s administration are leaving the party, dismayed by a failure of many elected Republicans to disown Donald Trump after his false claims of election fraud sparked a deadly storming of the U.S. Capitol last month.

These officials, some who served in the highest echelons of the Bush administration, said they had hoped that a Trump defeat would lead party leaders to move on from the former president and denounce his baseless claims that the November presidential election was stolen.

But with most Republican lawmakers sticking to Trump, these officials say they no longer recognize the party they served. Some have ended their membership, others are letting it lapse while a few are newly registered as independents, according to a dozen former Bush officials who spoke with Reuters.

“The Republican Party as I knew it no longer exists. I’d call it the cult of Trump,” said Jimmy Gurulé, who was Undersecretary of the Treasury for Terrorism and Financial Intelligence in the Bush administration.

Read the rest here.

Dear Comrades!

This film has been getting rave reviews. I'm going to have to get a copy or rent it online.

India mulling ban on Bitcoin and other cryptocurrencies

India’s government plans to introduce a bill in the country’s lower house that would ban private cryptocurrencies such as bitcoin and create a national cryptocurrency. 

The so-called “Cryptocurrency and Regulation of Official Digital Currency Bill” moves “to create a facilitative framework for creation of the official digital currency to be issued by the Reserve Bank of India.” 

Additionally, “the bill also seeks to prohibit all private cryptocurrencies in India, however, it allows for certain exceptions to promote the underlying technology of cryptocurrency and its uses.”

Fronted by Prime Minister Narendra Modi, the right-wing Bhartiya Janata Party currently have control of India’s two houses of Parliament (the Lok Sabha and the Rajya Sabha), giving the legislation a strong possibility of passing.

Bitcoin’s value jumped more than 20% to $38,566 on Friday after Elon Musk changed his personal Twitter bio to #bitcoin.

Read the rest here.

This is one of the main reasons cryptos will never replace gold as the ultimate currency hedge. Governments can effectively regulate or throw the off switch on any or all crypto-currencies at will and there is basically nothing that anyone can do about it. 

Robinhood attempts to explain trading limits

Online broker Robinhood said that it put temporary buying restrictions on a small number of securities because central Wall Street clearinghouse-mandated deposit requirements for equities increased tenfold.

The decision by Robinhood, a free-trading pioneer and app that’s popular among small investors, drew scrutiny from its customers over the past week.

“It was not because we wanted to stop people from buying these stocks,” Robinhood said in a blog post published late Friday.

“We did this because the required amount we had to deposit with the clearinghouse was so large — with individual volatile securities accounting for hundreds of millions of dollars in deposit requirements — that we had to take steps to limit buying in those volatile securities to ensure we could comfortably meet our requirements,” it continued.

Amateur investors using Robinhood and other apps bid up heavily shorted stocks and caused GameStop shares to skyrocket 400% in the past week, resulting in major losses for hedge funds who shorted the shares.

Robinhood initially told investors they could only sell and not buy new shares in certain companies that were attracting attention from retail traders on Reddit. The brokerage is now allowing clients to buy only a single share of GameStop. A total of 50 securities are now restricted on the stock trading app.

Source

Quote of the day...

Me: GM says they are only going to make electric cars by 2035. When do you think you will consider buying an EV?

My friend Ben: Can you get one with a clutch and stick shift?

GameStop: Wall Street's bloody battle of the shorts

Something is happening on Wall Street that is almost unheard of. A war has broken out between large institutional investors (banks, hedge funds etc.) and small investors. And as of this post, the small investors are crushing the big boys of the financial world. 

Read the story here.

If you don't understand how short selling works, you can read a plain English explanation here. 

Disclaimer: I do not own or speculatively trade any individual stocks or other financial securities which is very risky. Nor do I encourage speculative investing unless you fully understand what you are doing, the risks involved, and are prepared to lose some or all of the money you are playing with. 

Bond yields have risen sharply, despite aggressive Fed intervention

Since August 6 of last year, the Fed has purchased $400 billion of U.S. Treasury notes and bonds. Despite that massive amount of propping up the market, the yield on the 10-year Treasury has more than doubled, from half of one percent to a yield of 1.05 percent at 7:30 a.m. this morning. That means that all of those billions of dollars in Treasuries that the Fed bought at lower yields are now trading at losses.

Read the rest here.

Orthodox Priest Suspended for Attending Jan 6 Trump Rally

Details.

For the record, I haven't seen any suggestion he was part of the violent attack on Congress that followed. 

Update: The diocese is now claiming that the suspension is for other, undisclosed, reasons. 

Details.

Population decline and its consequences

For many years it seemed that overpopulation was the looming crisis of our age. Back in 1968, the Stanford biologists Paul and Anne Ehrlich infamously predicted that millions would soon starve to death in their bestselling, doom-saying book The Population Bomb; since then, neo-Malthusian rumblings of imminent disaster have been a continual refrain in certain sections of the environmental movement – fears that were recently given voice on David Attenborough’s documentary Life on our Planet.

At the time the Ehrlichs were publishing their dark prophecies, the world was at its peak of population growth, which at that point was increasing at a rate of 2.1% a year. Since then, the global population has ballooned from 3.5 billion to 7.67 billion.

But growth has slowed – and considerably. As women’s empowerment advances, and access to contraception improves, birthrates around the world are stuttering and stalling, and in many countries now there are fewer than 2.1 children per woman – the minimum level required to maintain a stable population.

Falling fertility rates have been a problem in the world’s wealthiest nations – notably in Japan and Germany – for some time. In South Korea last year, birthrates fell to 0.84 per woman, a record low despite extensive government efforts to promote childbearing. From next year, cash bonuses of 2m won (£1,320) will be paid to every couple expecting a child, on top of existing child benefit payments.

The fertility rate is also falling dramatically in England and Wales – from 1.9 children per woman in 2012 to just 1.65 in 2019. Provisional figures from the Office for National Statistics for 2020 suggest it could now be 1.6, which would be the lowest rate since before the second world war. The problem is even more severe in Scotland, where the rate has fallen from 1.67 in 2012 to 1.37 in 2019.

Read the rest here.