Some excellent analysis by Bill McBride:

For fun on a Sunday: I’ve been asked frequently how investors will react to the election. First, every election is different. Sometimes it is obvious who is going to win, and the election results are completely expected (like Reagan in 2004 or Clinton in 1996). Other times the election is close (this election is close although I expect President Obama to be reelected).

Sometimes the economy is clearly headed into recession like in 2008. The 2000 election was during the ongoing decline following the stock bubble, and the election was especially unsettling because the Supreme Court made the final decision.

There are always some partisan analysts who predict doom if their candidate doesn’t win (see Bruce Bartlett’s Partisan Bias and Economic Forecasts). But any “doom” related to the election will be in the intermediate or long term, not in 2013.

The following graph shows the change in the S&P 500 from election day through the end of the year for all elections since 1952. Note: The number of trading days varied mostly because of the timing of the election.

Read the rest here.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h5fH3np1jsw

And you thought the “Have Your First Obamagasm” ad was bad…

Here are the lyrics:

Imagine an America
Where strip mines are fun and free
Where gays can be fixed
And sick people just die
And oil fills the sea

We don’t have to pay for freeways!
Our schools are good enough
Give us endless wars
On foreign shores
And lots of Chinese stuff

We’re the children of the future
American through and through
But something happened to our country
And we’re kinda blaming you

We haven’t killed all the polar bears
But it’s not for lack of trying
Big Bird is sacked
The Earth is cracked
And the atmosphere is frying

Congress went home early
They did their best we know
You can’t cut spending
With elections pending
Unless it’s welfare dough

We’re the children of the future
American through and through
But something happened to our country
And we’re kinda blaming you

Find a park that is still open
And take a breath of poison air
They foreclosed your place
To build a weapon in space
But you can write off your au pair

It’s a little awkward to tell you
But you left us holding the bag
When we look around
The place is all dumbed down
And the long term’s kind of a drag

We’re the children of the future
American through and through
But something happened to our country
And yeah, we’re blaming you

You did your best
You failed the test

Mom and Dad
We’re blaming you!

For all of the polls that are flying out almost hourly now, there are two common trends emerging: Mitt Romney is leading independents by healthy margins, and who holds the overall lead is entirely dependent on the party split within the sample. As of last night, Romney has a razor thin lead of eight tenths of a point nationally against an average Democratic partisan advantage of 4.4 points. In 2008, Barack Obama won the election by 7.2 points (52.9–45.7) and Democrats outnumbered Republicans by eight points. Compared to the average today, Obama has dropped eight points while only losing 2.6 points of the turnout advantage. That is due entirely to Romney’s strength with independent voters, and reason enough to sound the alarm in Chicago.

But of all the polls that have been released, there are two polls that will have Team Obama waking up in a cold sweat knowing that if these polls are even somewhat accurate they might be on the other end of a dramatic victory on Election Day: The party-affiliation polls from Gallup and Rasmussen.

Read the rest here.

Steyn: ‘We’re going to have that person arrested and prosecuted that did the video,” said Hillary Clinton. No, not the person who made the video saying that voting for Barack Obama is like losing your virginity to a really cool guy. I’ll get to that in a moment. But Secretary Clinton was talking about the fellow who made the supposedly Islamophobic video that supposedly set off the sacking of the Benghazi consulate. And, indeed, she did “have that person arrested.” By happy coincidence, his bail hearing has been set for three days after the election, by which time he will have served his purpose. These two videos — the Islamophobic one and the Obamosexual one — bookend the remarkable but wholly deserved collapse of the president’s reelection campaign.

Read the rest here.

Stay tuned as Draghi will ‘do what ever it takes.’

Full article

Perhaps you did….

Full article

Unbelievable. First the UN is coming over monitor US elections. Now they are telling us how to vote in them!

The United Nations Special Rapporteur on Counter-Terrorism and Human Rights has warned Americans not to elect Republican Mitt Romney in next month’s presidential election, saying that doing so would be “a democratic mandate for torture.”

The UN’s Ben Emmerson was referring to Romney’s refusal to rule out the use of waterboarding in interrogating terror detainees, a practice that President Barack Obama has ended.

Read the rest here.

An endorsement that could give Mitt Romney a boost in the Rust Belt: Former Chrysler and Ford executive Lee Iacocca is backing the Republican nominee, the Detroit Free Press reports.

In his endorsement message, Iacocca complained that “America is in deep trouble,” facing high debts and still suffering “anemic” economic growth. He said “hope and speeches won’t get our people back to work.”

Read the rest here.

When it comes to the presidential candidates’ pensions, size matters in more ways than one.

Read the rest here.

The numbers are in to determine further who was more accurate in Tuesday’s presidential debate….

Full article 

EU leaders gathered today in Brussels to make good on promises made this past June. As usual the 27 nations have a hard time agreeing upon a clear course of action.

Full article  

It’s a conspiracy theory, to be sure, but “Kozy” asserts the Benghazi attack was an “October Surprise” gone awry thanks to two SEALs who weren’t even supposed to be in Benghazi.

The scenario is both simple and plausible:

Read the rest here.

A Frank Luntz focus group made up mostly of former Obama voters say they now support Mitt Romney.

“Forceful, compassionate, presidential,” one participant said.
“Confident and realistic,” said another.
“Presidential,” another told Luntz.
“Enthusiastic,” another reacted.
“Our next president,” one man said.
“Dynamo, winner,” said one more.

Source

“Federal regulators have been accused of letting Bank of America (BofA) be heavily involved in a so-called independent review of foreclosure cases that’s supposed to correct the bank’s mistakes.

The Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC), which regulates financial institutions like BofA, began last year to evaluate millions of foreclosures by multiple banks from 2009 and 2010. The Independent Foreclosure Review was intended to keep the banks out of the decision-making process over whether homeowners should be compensated for institutional errors or illegal practices by only allowing them to provide information to an independent regulator. But the banks were allowed to choose their own regulator. Bank of America hired Promontory Financial Group, a company with which it had previously done business. No doubt Promontory would like to continue its business relationship with BofA…thus a potential conflict of interest.”

Full article

“Elderly people in Florida would have paid more than $200 extra for traditional Medicare if a system similar to Paul Ryan’s proposed overhaul of the program had been in place in 2010, according to researchers at the nonprofit Kaiser Family Foundation.

Ryan, the Republican vice presidential nominee, has proposed transforming Medicare into a “premium support” system in which beneficiaries get a fixed payment from the government for their health insurance, instead of guaranteed benefits. Such a plan would lead to wide variations in the cost of Medicare across the country, according to the Kaiser study reported today.”

Full article

See the charts here.

See the intrade results here.

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Cj5sRnk8QOc 450 300]

Biden (sic) the head off Ryan…

The clip that stole the show

[youtube://http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_WrMWK-FJzU 450 300]