5-4-16 Great Guests for Your Show

1. Michelle Seiler-Tucker: Halliburton to Pay Baker Hughes $3.5 Billion After Failed Merger

2. Daniel Greenfield: Trump Won Because He Was the Safe Choice

3. Michael Stumo: TPP Unlikely to Empower U.S. to Write Global Trade Rules 
4. Jeff Cox: Apple has been 'The Biggest Wealth Destroyer' for Investors

Halliburton to Pay Baker Hughes $3.5 Billion After Failed Merger

By Michelle Seiler-Tucker

Halliburton, the oil services provider few look at fondly, paid rival firm Baker Hughes $3.5 billion in terminations fees after an attempted merger was shot down from every direction. Halliburton is the second largest such company, with Baker Hughes in third (first goes to industry giant Schlumberger). Once valued at $34.6 billion in 2014, this merger would now have only been worth $28 billion given the precipitous fall of oil over the last two years. The oil industry’s near collapse was a major factor leading to the scuttled deal. Halliburton and Baker Hughes both rely on oil company contracts; and, given that oil was, until recently, too expensive to pull out of the ground for many producers, their services saw little request. But the oil industry is slowly recovering. So what else killed this deal? Hint: the government. [more...]

Trump Won Because He Was the Safe Choice

By Daniel Greenfield

Could it be that the same primary process that gave us McCain and Romney also gave us Trump? Yes. And for the same reasons. This campaign has been full of tilting at establishment windmills. The establishment makes for a convenient strawman, but the Republican Party of today, much like that of 1860, is neither an establishment nor a big tent. Instead, it's a bunch of opposing factions held together by a professional corps. Being strongly identified with one or more of those factions gets you a base of support, but also eventual defeat. That's why Seward never became the Republican nominee, instead a guy named Lincoln did. [more...]

TPP Unlikely to Empower U.S. to Write Global Trade Rules 
By Michael Stumo, CEO of Coalition for a Prosperous America

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) free trade agreement is unlikely to put the United States in a better position than countries like China to write and enforce the rules of the global economy. On Monday, President Barack Obama said in an op-ed piece published in the Washington Post that the TPP agreement would allow the United States - and not China - to write the trade rules for the world economy. The U.S. failed miserably to enforce WTO regulations and there is little reason to believe Washington will be able to write enforceable trade rules through TPP. [more...]

Apple has been 'The Biggest Wealth Destroyer' for Investors

By Jeff Cox - Finance Editor for CNBC.com

Investors managed to make it through a volatile April modestly ahead of the game, though individual returns were held back by one principal culprit: Apple. The tech giant was "the biggest wealth destroyer" for market participants during the month, according to Openfolio, a social networking platform that compares more than 65,000 shared portfolios within its community.  [more...]