Obama and GOP Make A Deal For the Great American Giveaway

If you want it, here it is, come and get it...

 

Washington Post
Obama, Republicans reach deal to extend tax cuts, unemployment benefits
By Shailagh Murray
December 6, 2010; 6:40 PM

President Obama and congressional Republicans have agreed to a tentative deal that would extend for two years all the tax breaks set to expire on Dec. 31, continue unemployment benefits for an additional 13 months and cut payroll taxes for workers to encourage employers to start hiring.

The deal has been in the works for more than a week and represents a concession by Obama to political reality: Democrats don't have the votes in Congress to extend only the expiring tax breaks that benefit the middle class. The White House estimates that the proposed agreement would prevent typical families from facing annual tax increases of about $3,000, starting Jan. 1.

Obama was able to extract an agreement from GOP leaders to support an additional 13 months of jobless benefits, a 2 percent employee payroll tax cut and extensions of several tax credits aimed at working families that were included in the stimulus bill.

The deal also would revive the estate tax, but it would exempt inheritances of up to $5 million for individuals and $10 million for couples. Democrats on Capitol Hill are strongly opposed to setting the cap at that high a level and to the 35 percent rate discussed by Obama and Republicans that would apply to the taxable portion of estates.

The White House is preparing for significant opposition from Democrats and will send Vice President Biden to meet with Senate Democrats on Tuesday. Later on Tuesday, House Democrats are schedule to discuss the proposed deal.

SP 500 and NDX December Futures Daily Charts

The Street is pricing three big Chinese IPO's this week, and the US Treasury has just announced its intentional to try and unload the rest of its position in Citigroup. So we might see equities hold together a little longer at what appears to me at least to be a lofty level.

I was taking some of my short term gold and silver trading positions off the table today, but added a few equity shorts so net-net came into the close weighted to a light expectation of a trend change in the next five days, in the form of at least a pause or a correction.

My overall portfolio weighting remains heavily invested in bullion as it has been since 2001, with a hedged position now long the US dollar. I do not like US equities here at all, but am trying to keep an open mind since we are so close to all our targets in equities and bullion.

Gold Daily and Silver Weekly Charts

Gold and Silver virtually hit our intermediate targets today. With gold at 1425 it is close enough to the forecast of 1455 we made at around 1150 to take some profits.

Therefore we took some of the short term positions off into the close and adjusted the hedges accordingly, leaving us slightly net short equities.

We do not touch our long term positions here as we are still far from the long term targets. We will hold bullion until the currency war is abating. To put this in perspective, that puts us in about round three of a fight that could easily go the twelve round distance.