Rich Businessmen Pulling out of France as Tax-hit Looms

AFP – A flood of top-end properties are hitting the market as businessmen seek to leave France before stiff tax hikes hit, real estate agents and financial advisors say.

“It’s nearly a general panic. Some 400 to 500 residences worth more than one million euros ($1.3 million) have come onto the Paris market,” said managers at Daniel Feau, a real-estate broker that specialises in high-end property.

While it is not yet on the scale of the Exodus of rich French after the election of Socialist president Francois Mitterrand in 1981, real estate agents said, the tax plans of France’s new Socialist President Francois Hollande are having a noticeable effect.

Read the rest here.

Scary.

Via Instapundit, this is the chart to keep in mind when it comes to deficits and campaign promises.  It’s pretty self-explanatory, but pay close attention to the huge jump in deficit spending between FY2008 and FY2009 — and the very large gap between White House and even CBO estimates and reality (in gray) in FY2010-12:

Read the rest here.

Fascinating (and perhaps too clever) note from Citi’s FXguru Steven Englander commenting on tomorrow’s big Non-Farm Payrolls report. He has a very surprising argument for what would be the best outcome for markets

President Obama reelection campaign, rattled by his Wednesday night debate performance, could be in for even worse news. According to knowlegable sources, a national magazine and a national web site are preparing a blockbuster donor scandal story.

Sources told Secrets that the Obama campaign has been trying to block the story. But a key source said it plans to publish the story Friday or, more likely, Monday.

Read the rest here.

Not convinced that Mitt Romney’s victory has something to do with today’s rally?

Here’s a fun chart.

Total N. American rail traffic came in at 717k card last week. The adjusted total of ~735k cars sets a new 4 year record for a single week in the series handily beating the 721k set during the same week last year.

Read the rest of the analysis and see the chart, here.

EVERY four years, we poll the top American economists to get their views on the presidential election. This week’s print edition explains many of the results from our 2012 survey, which was conducted between September 18 and September 28. One particularly interesting set of results was generated when we asked economists why they thought the recovery had been so slow. This chart shows how various subpopulations rated the importance of six factors we chose:

Read the rest here.

Two generations spar over the wreckage the baby boomers leave behind.

Link to the data here.

Party like it’s 1980!

Bewildered and lost without his teleprompter, President Obama flailed all around the debate stage last night. He was stuttering, nervous and petulant. It was like he had been called in front of the principal after goofing around for four years and blowing off all his homework.

Not since Jimmy Carter faced Ronald Reagan has the U.S. presidency been so embarrassingly represented in public. Actually, that’s an insult to Jimmy Carter.

10.31 pm. Look: you know how much I love the guy, and you know how much of a high information viewer I am, and I can see the logic of some of Obama’s meandering, weak, professorial arguments. But this was a disaster for the president for the key people he needs to reach, and his effete, wonkish lectures may have jolted a lot of independents into giving Romney a second look.

Obama looked tired, even bored; he kept looking down; he had no crisp statements of passion or argument; he wasn’t there. He was entirely defensive, which may have been the strategy. But it was the wrong strategy. At the wrong moment.

The person with authority on that stage was Romney – offered it by one of the lamest moderators ever, and seized with relish. This was Romney the salesman. And my gut tells me he sold a few voters on a change tonight. It’s beyond depressing. But it’s true.

There are two more debates left. I have experienced many times the feeling that Obama just isn’t in it, that he’s on the ropes and not fighting back, and then he pulls it out. He got a little better over time tonight. But he pulled every punch. Maybe the next two will undo some of the damage. But I have to say I think it was extensive.

Read the rest here.

“Tonight wasn’t an MSNBC debate tonight, was it?” Chris Matthews said after the first Obama-Romney presidential debate concluded on Wednesday night.

“I don’t know what he was doing out there. He had his head down, he was enduring the debate rather than fighting it. Romney, on the other hand, came in with a campaign. He had a plan, he was going to dominate the time, he was going to be aggressive, he was going to push the moderator around, which he did effectively, he was going to relish the evening, enjoying it,” Matthews said.

“Here’s my question for Obama: I know he likes saying he doesn’t watch cable television but maybe he should start. Maybe he should start. I don’t know how he let Romney get away with the crap he throughout tonight about Social Security,” Matthews complained.

Matthews then demanded that President Obama start watching cable news, specifically his program.

Read the rest here.

Mitt Romney controlled the flow of the debate during its first segment. He framed the discussion of the economy and taxes by laying out what he called a five-point plan to fix the economy. He same up with a clever line by accusing Obama of favoring “trickle-down government.” He also took the offensive by claiming that Obama and other critics are wrong when they accuse him of proposing tax cuts for the rich.

“Virtually everything he said about my tax plan is inaccurate,” Romney said.

Obama found himself on the defensive. He also found himself noting areas where he agrees with Romney, such as small business tax cuts and increased domestic energy production.

Read the rest of Rick Dunham’s debate commentary as recorded in real time, here.

Republican presidential contender Mitt Romney took the offensive in the first presidential debate Wednesday night, forcing President Obama to defend his record in a series of sharp exchanges in which Romney charged that the President’s economic policies have “crushed” the middle class.

Appearing more vigorous than he often is on the campaign trail, Romney painted Obama’s first term as a time of rising poverty, slowing economic growth and struggle for millions of Americans. He pushed his own plans to lower taxes and bring down the federal deficit, saying his approach would revive the sputtering economy.

“Gasoline prices have doubled under the president. Electric rates are up. Food prices are up,’’ Rommey said. “Health-care costs have gone up by $2,500 a family. Middle-income families are being crushed.’’

“Look at the evidence of the last four years. It’s absolutely extraordinary,’’ he said. “We’ve got 23 million people out of work or stopped looking for work in this country … economic growth this year slower than last year, and last year slower than the year before.’’

“Going forward with the status quo is not going to cut it for the American people who are struggling today,’’ the former Massachusetts governor said, prompting a frown from Obama.

Read the rest here.

(Reuters) – An aggressive Mitt Romney took the fight to President Barack Obama on Wednesday and the Republican candidate appeared to breathe new life into his struggling campaign with a solid performance at their first debate.

As polls showed Obama with a slight edge among voters, Romney was on the offensive throughout the 90-minute encounter between the two rivals at the University of Denver.

The two men, standing side-by-side for the first time after months of brutal campaign attacks hurled at each other, clashed over taxes, healthcare and the role of government, reflecting the deep ideological divide in Washington.

Appearing poised and well-prepared, Romney zeroed in on weak economic growth and 8.1 percent unemployment that has left Obama vulnerable in his effort to win a second four-year term.

Read the rest here.

A very interesting article, based on some new research. Read it here.

NEW YORK (CNNMoney) — Economists think Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney would be better for the economy than President Obama. But they’re not very enthusiastic about either of them.

Nine of 17 top economists surveyed by CNNMoney picked Romney when asked who’s election would help the economy grow more. Only three picked Obama.

Read the rest here.

In the context of historical evidence and outcomes, present market conditions give us no choice but to remain highly defensive. Valuations remain rich on the basis of normalized earnings (which are better correlated with subsequent returns than numerous popular alternatives based on forward operating earnings, the Fed Model and the like). Investor sentiment is overcrowded on the bullish side even as corporate insiders are liquidating at a rate of eight shares sold for every share purchased – a surge that Investors Intelligence describes as a “panic.” Market conditions remain steeply overbought on an intermediate and long-term basis, with the S&P 500 still near its upper Bollinger bands (two standard deviations above the 20-period moving average) on weekly and monthly resolutions. We continue to observe wide divergences in market action, from century-old criteria such as the weakness in transports versus industrials (which suggests an unwanted buildup of inventories) to more subtle divergences and signs of exhaustion in market internals.

Overall, we continue to estimate a steeply negative return/risk for stocks on horizons from 2-weeks to 18 months….

Read the rest here.

H/T @MOOBER

Surveyed, as in, if it wasn’t shut off, the NYPD skimmed or “surveyed” most of your information, really your identity and all that goes along with it, straight off your phone.

A leading privacy blogger and working member of the American Civil Liberties Union, Kade Ellis, recently took note of an obscure lecture posted to YouTube more than a month ago. At less than 900 hits (at the time this was written), this video passed well beneath the public radar.

The lecture was titled “Privacy is dead,” and private investigative expert Steven Rambam had this to say:

“I can tell you that everybody that attended an Occupy Wall Street protest, and didn’t turn their cell phone off, or put it — and sometimes even if they did — the identity of that cell phone has been logged, and everybody who was at that demonstration, whether they were arrested, not arrested, whether their photos were ID’d, whether an informant pointed them out, it’s known they were there anyway. This is routine.”