The term anchor baby has been tossed around by GOP candidates lately.  As usual, it started by Trump.  As usual, that helped Trump in the standings among GOP voters.  But when Jeb Bush used the term, it backfired on him.  His retraction to say the term applied to Asians only made things worse for him.  I am sure there are Asian groups who are offended by the term.  I don't look at it as an offensive term.  After all, anchor on a relay team is the best runner usually.  The anchor on a newscast is the highest paid.  So the anchor by itself is not bad.  The implication of term is, however, inaccurate.  It implies that the baby being born in the U.S. is an U.S. citizen and thus can protect the parents from deportation.  That, of course, is not true.  In case of Asians, the parents are not trying to avoid deportation.  They are usually wealthy Chinese who just want an outlet for their kids in case the communist country reverse its economic course.  It would also give the kid a better chance of obtaining an education in the U.S. if so desired in the future.

Chinese women giving tourism birth in the U.S.is nothing new.  It maybe illegal only in the sense that it circumvent tourist visa laws.  It has been overlooked in the past, particularly in California.  It is not an economic drain for the U.S. in that these women are paying Americans to house and feed them.  They spend money while in the U.S.  They and the baby then leave the country.  They are not picking up welfare checks.  Eventually the kid may come back for high school and college.  They may cost the education system money at that point but I am sure they would be paying to live here and the parents may even buy houses here.  So it hard to know what the full economic impact would be.  If the U.S. wants to stop this, it can do so by shutting down the so called birth hotels in California and other places popular to Chinese visitors.  No need to change the constitution regarding birth citizenship.  It is also not a problem worthy of a presidential debate!

We have a lot of problems in this country but pointing the finger at immigrants is unfair.  There are studies that say illegal immigrants are a drain to the economy and there are studies that say they are positive.  But as I always say, where there is a demand, there is a supply.  To clear up the question, just arrest the people who hire illegals.  There are only two reasons why a business must hire illegals:  they can't make a profit with American workers or there are not enough Americans willing to do the job.  If legal pressure cause the owners to change the practice then we will find out if either of these things are true.  If neither are true then businesses will thrive.  If either is true, then the businesses will fail without illegal immigrants.  In either case, illegal immigration will come to a halt and we will find out what the true economic impact of illegal immigrants are.

A few weeks ago I wrote about the Greek bailout and the Chinese financial market's big decline.  Now the Greeks have kowtow to their European debt masters and accepted the bailout.  They have agreed to worse measures than if they didn't revolt in the first place.  I hope the best for the Greeks  but I don't see how these measures are going to get them out of trouble in the near future.

The Chinese market was stabilized for a short time but it is declining again.  This has spooked the rest of the world, including the U.S. stock market.  China has gotten so big now that when it sneezes, the world catches a cold.  But while this may linger for a while, China does have the largest foreign reserves in the world and should be able to withstand this down turn.  It just make market reform that much more difficult.  As far as the U.S.'s concern, our indicators show that we are due for a correction in the market anyway.  But the price to earnings ratio are not very high and unemployment is down.  So I think the market will recover in the near future.  I may be wrong and we head for a recession and that will hand over the election to the GOP nominee.  But I am going out on a limb and say this won't happen and I have backed that up by investing $5000 tomorrow in the market because I think it is a reasonable time to buy.

Joe Biden is being pushed by some of his supporters to run.  They set the deadline of Oct. 1st  because the first Democratic debate is Oct. 13.  It would be difficult to get all ready for a debate in less than two weeks if you have not decided by then.  My feeling is that if he does not decide by Labor Day, I don't think he will run.  With two passed failed attempts, the unpopularity of Obama generally, and the recent loss of his son, I don't think he has the stomach to do it.

If Hillary fails, how about Al Gore?  I do think that is a good possibility if the Democrats are desperate.  I think a lot of people think he got robbed the last time and wished that he would have become president instead of Bush.  So they may vote for him as a compensation.  He can also point out that he was an integral part of the Clinton administration that had a budget surplus.  In other words he can claim he is Bill second without the scandal!  I don't think he wants to run but he would be a good plan B for the Democrats.

The  first Christian. I mean Republican party, debates are over.  I did  not see much of the JV game but I understand Carly Fiorina came out best.  That is bad news for veteran politicians like Perry and Graham who should have been able do better than the inexperienced.  Fiorina is not a viable candidate since she couldn't even do the job at Hewlett Packard.  So I don't see anyone from the JV moving up to the varsity.

The varsity game started out with a bang.   Trump was the only one who raised his hand to not pledge that he would support the eventual nominee and not run as a third party candidate.  This seems to give credence to the idea that he is really a secret democrat embedded to mess up the Republicans.  Asked why he donated to Democrats like Clinton, he said basically that he used the system to get favors later on although he did not specify which favors he got with his money.  The question is:  if he games the system as a private person, wouldn't he also game the system even more as president?

I think overall John Kasich did the best followed by Marco Rubio.  Neither is likely to win.  Kasich is too well unknown and too moderate.  Rubio is too young and Hispanic.  Jeb Bush was mediocre, again not giving a concise answer (to an expected question) to the Bush war.  Bush, Christie, Walker, Cruz and Huckabee were in the middle pack.  Paul and Carson were at the end.  Trump maybe just ahead of those two but clearly did worse than the other 7 in my opinion.