Sean Hannity, Brent Bozell Flunk Chris Matthews for Failing to Ask the President Tough Obamacare Questions

On Thursday night’s Media Mash on Fox News Channel, Sean Hannity and MRC president Brent Bozell were quick off the mark, denouncing Chris Matthews for failing to press Barack Obama about the broken promises and lies of Obamacare.

Both men lined up questions they would have asked. “Let’s say little old Sean Hannity gets to interview the president. What, at this moment, you have an audience of kids, what are the main questions that you think, that you would ask the president?” (Video, transcript below)

HANNITY:  I’ll give you my list off the top. What do you say to those people you promised if they liked their plan, they keep their plan, but lost their plan? What do you say to those people who liked their doctor, lost their doctor, when you said they can keep their doctor? What do you say to those people, those families that you promised would save on average $ 2500 per family per year? What do you say to the country about you said it would be $ 900 billion and now it’s $ 2.7-or-8 trillion. Did you know that people wouldn’t be able to keep their plan, but say it anyway? Were those questions asked, Brent Bozell? No. What other questions?

BOZELL: No, no, another one. How about just asking the question, Mr. President, just yesterday you spoke to a national audience and you lied. You said the republicans have no [health] plans. The Republicans have been putting out one plan after another since 2009. It was just sheerly dishonest. No, Chris Matthews is not going to ask him any serious questions. What is going on here is the president is now in full community organizer mode. You are seeing it with the chest thumping rhetoric, you’re seeing it with the ugly accusations, you’re seeing it with the lying. And he’s looking for the most comfortable venue that will be most sympathetic to him, and that’s why he’s on MSNBC with Chris Matthews.

HANNITY: Frankly, Noah Rothman over at Mediaite had a good line. I think it’s a desperate move by the president to do this, and frankly, fairly pathetic, because I don’t think he can answer [tough Obamacare] questions in a way that would be credible to the American people.

Scott Whitlock reported that on a show still mysteriously called “Hardball,” sympathetic Matthews could only ask Obama about how he would like to encourage the twentysomethings to sign up:

MATTHEWS: You have a great audience here of– college age– people and some graduate students and faculty. There’s some resistance out there among young people– We’ve seen it in the polls– to, to enrolling in the– in the exchanges and to get involved in taking responsibility for their health care. What’s your argument why they should do that?

After listing their questions, Hannity turned to a funny clip of Matthews trying to say Obamacare is a great theme, but the president had bad spelling and handwriting on it:

MATTHEWS: I think I would compare it [the ObamaCare fiasco], Andrea, to a brilliant writer, perhaps, with a great theme who turns in a paper with a lot of misspellings, or bad handwriting. It’s a bad way to roll out something. With all the great strengths, potentially, of a national health care system along these lines, the way it was rolled out has hurt it. It hurt its reputation. It’s given the other side a lot of talking points to use against the President generally in terms of his competence.

Hannity called that “hero worship.” Bozell just tried to keep from laughing through an answer:

BOZELL: When they’re down to this, it’s time to punt the ball and go to something else! When you’re going to [laughs] — when you’re going to say the reason Obamacare isn’t working, bad handwriting! [Laughs] . I mean, you’ve to say, you’ve run out of excuses here! It’s time to move on to another subject. This isn’t selling, but again, in community organizer mode, you go to your  base and try to mobilize your base. The minority base. That’s what he’s down to. It is panic mode for this administration.

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Sean Hannity, Brent Bozell Flunk Chris Matthews for Failing to Ask the President Tough Obamacare Questions

GLOBAL MARKETS-Bonds and stocks drift ahead of Fed, Brent jumps

GLOBAL MARKETS-Bonds and stocks drift ahead of Fed, Brent jumps
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Mon Oct 28, 2013 11:17am EDT





* U.S. pending home sales slump in September




* Fed meeting could fuel more dollar selling




* Brent climbs as Libya output drops




By Rodrigo Campos




NEW YORK, Oct 28 (Reuters) – An index of world shares ticked up and neared a six-year high while the U.S. dollar edged higher on Monday but stayed close to a nine-month low as expectations lingered that the Federal Reserve will keep its loose monetary policy in place this week.




The Federal Open Market Committee, the Fed’s policy-making arm, is unlikely to make any shift to policy at its meeting on Tuesday and Wednesday as the Fed awaits more evidence of how badly Washington’s recent budget battle hurt the U.S. economy.




Most riskier assets rose sharply last week as the uncertainty caused by the U.S. government shutdown and a mixed batch of economic data convinced many the Fed would delay any move to begin trimming its stimulus into next year.




With the dollar trading near its lowest levels of the year against most major currencies, however, and the euro near a two-year high and many major global share indexes near record highs, investors were wary of pushing prices higher.




“It may turn out that a neutral FOMC is a green light to keep selling the dollar until November headline data begin appearing in early December, but there is already a lot of dovishness priced in,” said Steven Englander, global head of foreign exchange strategy at CitiFX, a division of Citigroup in New York.




The dollar index was up 0.2 percent at 79.35, not far from a near nine-month low of 78.998 touched on Friday. The euro dipped to $ 1.3782, having touched a high of $ 1.3833 late last week.




The longer the Fed keeps its policy loose, the longer U.S. yields will stay low, making the dollar less attractive.




U.S. stocks were little changed with the S&P 500 near the record set on Friday as traders awaited earnings from Apple due after the closing bell.




“In order for the ball to keep rolling on Wall Street, we’ll need to know that the Fed’s stimulus will stay in place, giving us abundant liquidity,” said Jack Ablin, chief investment officer at BMO Private Bank in Chicago.




“In the meantime, we’ve gone something like 500 days without a 10 percent correction, and at some point earnings will have to catch up with current valuations.”




The Dow Jones industrial average fell 22.61 points or 0.15 percent, to 15,547.67, the S&P 500 lost 1.06 points or 0.06 percent, to 1,758.71 and the Nasdaq Composite dropped 13.722 points or 0.35 percent, to 3,929.639.




MSCI’s world equity index, which tracks share moves in 45 countries, was up 0.2 percent marking a fourth day of gains as it climbed back towards last week’s peak, last seen in January 2008.




After opening in line with Asian markets’ gains, Europe’s main indexes had turned lower by midday, reflecting a more mixed set of corporate earnings announcements and the caution over the recent run up.




The broad FTSEurofirst 300 index was down 0.2 percent as it shed some of last week’s 0.6 percent gain which had taken the index to a five-year high.




MOST MARKETS ON FED WATCH




The likelihood that Fed cash will keep flowing into the financial system for longer than many had anticipated supported gold and other metal markets, but after strong gains last week these markets were also wary of pushing much higher.




Spot gold was up 0.2 percent at $ 1,354.2 an ounce, after hitting a five-week high of $ 1,356.5. Copper was also up 0.2 percent at $ 7,199 a ton.




In the oil market, Brent crude rose above $ 108 a barrel after a new drop in Libya’s oil exports revived supply concerns, while strong gains in U.S. industrial output boosted demand hopes.




Brent rose 1.8 percent to $ 108.90 a barrel and U.S. crude added 0.2 percent to $ 98.08 a barrel.




U.S. Treasuries prices were little changed as investors prepared to make room for this week’s $ 96 billion in longer-dated government debt supply but a weak reading in U.S. pending home sales data gave prices support.




Benchmark 10-year Treasury notes traded down 1/32 in price with a yield of 2.507 percent. The 10-year yield touched a three-month low of 2.471 percent last week in the wake of disappointing September jobs figures.





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Reuters: Bonds News

Read more about GLOBAL MARKETS-Bonds and stocks drift ahead of Fed, Brent jumps and other interesting subjects concerning Bonds at TheDailyNewsReport.com

As Brent and WTI Converge, Keep an Eye on These ETFs

Last Friday, Brent oil futures, the global benchmark contract, fell below NYMEX-traded West Texas Intermediate for the first time since August 17, 2010.

That was on an intraday basis and Brent ultimately closed at a slight premium to WTI, one that grew Monday as WTI fell more than one percent.

WTI is in the midst of a four-week winning streak, buoyed by last week’s favorable inventories data and a string of encouraging U.S. economic data points. That could be a sign oil is due for a near-term pullback, possibly making the PowerShares DB Crude Oil Double Short ETN (DTO), an alluring play.

However, history shows that the last time Brent and WTI were nestled this close together, owning oil equities and the ETFs that house them over the next 90 days was an excellent trade. Soaring U.S. oil output at the Bakken, Eagle Ford and Permian Basin shale plays, among others, has helped unlock the supply glut and that is proving to be a boon for refiners, whose shares have recently been under siege after surging earlier this year.

Refiners, enjoying bumper profit margins on export sales, are running their hardest since 2005, drawing down U.S. crude inventories at the fastest rate on record, Reuters reported.

Increased activity and attractive margins for ETFs such as the iShares U.S. Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF (IEO) and the PowerShares Energy Exploration & Production Portfolio (PXE). While there is refiner-specific ETF on the market today, IEO and PXE are credible options due to their larger-than-average weights to refining names.

IEO has four refiners among its top-10 holdings while three refiners are found among PXE’s top-eight holdings. When Brent and WTI met back on August 17, 2010, IEO and PXE proceeded to gain 14 percent and 17.3 percent, respectively, over the next 90 days. The two ETFs have gained an average of 1.75 percent over the past five trading days.

More traditional equity-based energy ETFs also performed well during the aforementioned 2010 time frame. The Energy Select SPDR (XLE) gained almost 14 percent while the rival Vanguard Energy ETF (VDE) gained nearly 15 percent. Those performances make sense because XLE and VDE are heavily allocated to Exxon Mobil (XOM), Chevron (CVX) and Occidental Petroleum (COP).

Those companies have not followed the lead of Marathon Oil (MRO) and ConocoPhillips (COP) in spinning off their refining operations. Since the refining business is still a revenue driver for Exxon, Chevron and Occidental, those stocks stand to benefit from favorable margins. That trio represents 40.6 percent of VDE’s weight and about 36 percent of XLE’s weight.

The Guggenheim Equal-Weight S&P 500 Energy ETF (RYE) was another solid August-November 2010 play. In fact, RYE slightly outperformed VDE and XLE over that time. No stock receives an allocation north of 2.7 percent in RYE, but the ETF is home to four pure-play refiners along with Exxon, Chevron and Occidental. With just 43 stocks, at least one of every six RYE holdings has some refining exposure.

For more on ETFs, click here.

(c) 2013 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

FOXBusiness.com

As Brent and WTI Converge, Keep an Eye on These ETFs

As Brent and WTI Converge, Keep an Eye on These ETFs

Last Friday, Brent oil futures, the global benchmark contract, fell below NYMEX-traded West Texas Intermediate for the first time since August 17, 2010.

That was on an intraday basis and Brent ultimately closed at a slight premium to WTI, one that grew Monday as WTI fell more than one percent.

WTI is in the midst of a four-week winning streak, buoyed by last week’s favorable inventories data and a string of encouraging U.S. economic data points. That could be a sign oil is due for a near-term pullback, possibly making the PowerShares DB Crude Oil Double Short ETN (DTO), an alluring play.

However, history shows that the last time Brent and WTI were nestled this close together, owning oil equities and the ETFs that house them over the next 90 days was an excellent trade. Soaring U.S. oil output at the Bakken, Eagle Ford and Permian Basin shale plays, among others, has helped unlock the supply glut and that is proving to be a boon for refiners, whose shares have recently been under siege after surging earlier this year.

Refiners, enjoying bumper profit margins on export sales, are running their hardest since 2005, drawing down U.S. crude inventories at the fastest rate on record, Reuters reported.

Increased activity and attractive margins for ETFs such as the iShares U.S. Oil & Gas Exploration & Production ETF (IEO) and the PowerShares Energy Exploration & Production Portfolio (PXE). While there is refiner-specific ETF on the market today, IEO and PXE are credible options due to their larger-than-average weights to refining names.

IEO has four refiners among its top-10 holdings while three refiners are found among PXE’s top-eight holdings. When Brent and WTI met back on August 17, 2010, IEO and PXE proceeded to gain 14 percent and 17.3 percent, respectively, over the next 90 days. The two ETFs have gained an average of 1.75 percent over the past five trading days.

More traditional equity-based energy ETFs also performed well during the aforementioned 2010 time frame. The Energy Select SPDR (XLE) gained almost 14 percent while the rival Vanguard Energy ETF (VDE) gained nearly 15 percent. Those performances make sense because XLE and VDE are heavily allocated to Exxon Mobil (XOM), Chevron (CVX) and Occidental Petroleum (COP).

Those companies have not followed the lead of Marathon Oil (MRO) and ConocoPhillips (COP) in spinning off their refining operations. Since the refining business is still a revenue driver for Exxon, Chevron and Occidental, those stocks stand to benefit from favorable margins. That trio represents 40.6 percent of VDE’s weight and about 36 percent of XLE’s weight.

The Guggenheim Equal-Weight S&P 500 Energy ETF (RYE) was another solid August-November 2010 play. In fact, RYE slightly outperformed VDE and XLE over that time. No stock receives an allocation north of 2.7 percent in RYE, but the ETF is home to four pure-play refiners along with Exxon, Chevron and Occidental. With just 43 stocks, at least one of every six RYE holdings has some refining exposure.

For more on ETFs, click here.

(c) 2013 Benzinga.com. Benzinga does not provide investment advice. All rights reserved.

FOXBusiness.com

As Brent and WTI Converge, Keep an Eye on These ETFs