WHERE'S THE LOVE?

Man, I got nothin.'  The Leader got up and babbled about nothing for an hour last night giving me no material whatsoever.  Poor Marco Rubio looked like a deer caught in headlights, setup in that awful setting and being forced to demonstrate his agility to remain in the "spot" whilst bending 45 degrees to the side to pick up a bottle of water which does nothing for us old timers who resent agility of any sort.  Where do the Repubs find these idiots who plan these events?

Anyway, I was looking for some really hot stuff from somebody last night to help out and got zip.  The Leader tried to get us to believe that fiscally, all is fine; that the economy is in it's fifth year of turning around; the world is a safer place and God's in his Heaven.  Somehow, I didn't feel much better after he was done.  There was one line in the speech that was important; the United States would begin a dialog with the EU on a trade agreement.  Now if Joe Biden could figure it out he would probably say something like, "This is a big, *&^)^%$ thing!"  but he can't and will not.  It is exactly that, however, as trade between the two continents totalled $800 billion dollars last year.  A big *&^)^%$ thing indeed.  Of course, we should not expect anything to occur in the breath of this administration: too many special interest at work (to be fair, Republicans have their share) and there are real divisions relating to the citizenry of both continents, for example as to genetically altered food that must be overcome in an area vitally important to the U.S.  But the journey begins and it is one that could lead to truly remarkable and beneficial future.  Strike me for saying it but this is far more important than the implementation of Basel III.

But as for financial and banking stuff, the next great hope is the G-20 meeting in Russia this weekend.  Russia in February:  now there's a really good idea.  Of course it will not be too crowded as every Russian with two Rubles to rub together will be somewhere else and because of that, something might get accomplished but probably not.  Currencies will be high on the agenda as they were at the G-7 pre-meeting yesterday where it was unanimously agreed that the manipulation of one's currency to gain advantage was simply not on and the G-7 would demand that the full G-20 agree to that principal...Come to think of it, maybe Russia IS the perfect venue for nonsense like that.  Nothing real has come out of there in 100 years.

And so we labor on in search of material.  Oh, the Bank of England announced today that the inflation target of 2% will continue to be exceeded until at least 2016.  As to what this meant in the great scheme of things remained undiscussed.  I'm beginning to think that even the reported 2 million+ nicker that they are going to pay Mark Carney may not be enough, then again he doesn't get there until July so things may have sorted themselves out by then.  We seem to be sinking deeper into the "phony war" syndrome.  I wonder when the shooting is going to start.