• Come Hillary or High Water, It’s Just About Hell Week for the Economy

  The following article by David Haggith was published first on The Great Recession Blog: 

  

  Election week is only about a week away. No matter who wins, rage will break out across the US landscape because, for the time being, the flames are kept minimally under a lid by hope on each side that their candidate will win. If Hellary Clinton loses, the establishment will come unhinged. If Trump loses, the Tumpettes are already sounding their war cry against the election results. Nothing is going to settle down no matter who wins; but to give Trump’s supporters some encouragement, should the worst befall them, I offer the following silver lining:

  As horrible as I believe a Hillary presidency would be — with its suffocating smog of endless scandals and swirl of smoke clouds from all the wars she would continue to instigate — as she so clearly did while senator and then secretary of state — a Hillary presidency would have one great benefit: it would in fairly short order bring clarity for the entire nation to the fact that the nation’s economic ruin is the fault of the establishment (something about which many are obviously in great denial or they wouldn’t vote for Hillary in the first place).

  Hillary is as establishment as you get; so is Obama; so was George Bush (both of them); so are most of the Republicans and Democrats in congress. While that is stating the obvious, the point I am working up to is that a Hillary victory is a chance for a total flush four years from now.

  The US economy is beyond saving at this point, anyway, regardless of who wins, and it will take a crash to push the reset button and wake America up. Having that crash hit while the establishment fully holds the reins should leave 100% of the blame at their feet, and it’s not the much longer to wait.

  I was thinking of writing about this hope when I read the following from David Stockman about what Hillary will face as president if she wins, with which I entirely agree, though I’d give a much shorter timeframe for the inevitable chain of events to come:

   

  …because things are going to blow up in the next four years, there will be a stock market crash, there will be a recession, the annual deficit will be back in the plus trillion dollar category very soon and it will all come down on her head and on the watch of the establishment….

   

  And maybe that will wake up the public, because it’s going to be bad. And what Trump proved in this campaign is that the establishment, you know, will do anything politically to stop a challenge. But if we have the crisis that I know is coming, then maybe this thing can be busted wide open and we have a chance to clear the decks and start again. (Newsmax)

   

  That, I think, is the best outcome from this election — national clarity when it all comes down as it most certainly is beyond saving at this point. For that reason only, I think a Hillary victory would actually be the best thing to happen to us (economically, but I am not sure it is worth the other non-financial costs we’d pay). The crash of the entire economy around Hillary’s feet would galvanize the resistance to the establishment and all but assure an anti-establishment victory across the entire political landscape in the next election.

   

  Signs of indifference that needs to break

   

  The flatlining stock market, which I wrote about in my last article, barely had enough energy to raise an eyebrow today at the ostensibly good news that GDP growth doubled since last quarter to almost 3% — a number associated with fairly normal US economic growth.

  It didn’t go up because, “Yay, the economy is finally running at normal speed” or down because “Yikes, that means the Fed will be more likely to raise interest rates.” Instead of either response, like a dying person, the market couldn’t have cared less what was happening economically in the world today. That says to me the crash is imminent.

  This same day, it registered the kind of upheaval that will come from the establishment if Trump wins. The market immediately plunged a hundred points when news broke of another FBI investigation that could cause trouble for Hillary. Not to worry, though, the Fed or government fix kicked in shortly thereafter and brought the market back up to its flatline status quo.

  My biggest concern if Hillary wins is that Trump (and with him all anti-establishment voters) will be made into the establishment’s scapegoat. They have already been preparing for this in consort with their media supporters, through whom they plan to say to American voters, “We told you the stock market would crash and take the economy down with it you elected Trump. See what happens when you don’t listen to us and support the superior establishment.”

  Of course, a world raging with wars, as I’ve shown Hellary has planned, is a steep price to pay for the opportunity to lay all blame for our economic doom at the establishment’s feet. That’s why it’s hard to say a Hillary victory, besides meaning I have to endure four years of nausea is worth the cost. I have no idea how bad the cost in wars might actually get if she wins.

   

  The US economy is sinking fast, regardless of today’s GDP number

   

  Consider the following recent headlines as a sign of the way the national and global economy continue to slide into the abyss of the Epocalypse — regardless of what the GDP data indicated today: (The headlines help explain the continual decent that is seen in the flatlining graph of the Dow I presented earlier this week even during a time when the government appears to have pulled out all stops to keep the economy afloat through the election year.)

   

  • “Caterpillar Posts Lower Earnings, Cuts 2016 Outlook” Cat has been in relentless decline for the last three years because heavy industry all over the world (including in the US) is in decline, so companies are not buying heavy equipment.
  • “Twitter Said to Plan Hundreds More Job Cuts as Soon as This Week” Twitter is symptomatic of a decline throughout high-tech. The euphoric ride up for unprofitable companies came to an end more than a year ago, just as happened when the euphoric dot-com boom went bust. Even Apple, which carried the Tech sector on its back for years, reported its first annual decline in sales since 2001 due to a 17% drop in China, and China was the market that was maintaining some demand for the rest of the world.
  • “Italian Bank to Cut 2,600 Jobs, Close Branches in Rescue Overhaul” Italy’s oldest bank and Germany’s oldest and largest bank continue to teeter on the edge of bankruptcy. These are some of the oldest banks in the world — banks that survived the Great Depression — but their days are clearly numbered. “The bank published the plan Tuesday as it posted a 1.15 billion-euro ($1.3 billion) loss for the three months through September.”
  • “Ford to Idle Four Factories as Slowing Sales Bloat Inventory” The press was crowing in their mind-numbing way about how well American auto manufacturers were doing all of last year and at the start of this year. I said it wasn’t so — that US automakers would find themselves in a bad situation this year because because they’re now counting leases as sales and would soon be getting back millions of used cars and because they repeated all their past financial gimmicks: absurdly slack credit terms on their internal auto loans looked just like what auto manufacturers were doing before the economic crisis of 2007-8 … when I also said automakers would be going down within a year. Those slack loan terms, coupled with an increase in defaulting loans, made me say last year, “What’s your end game for next year once you have pulled sales from that year into the present with these easy-to-walk-away-from terms?” Well, we’re there … again! Its even falling apart in the area of Ford’s greatest strength — its truck and SUV plants. Mustang sales, too, dropped 32% at the start of this auto year (September).
  • “Harley-Davidson Plans to Cut Jobs as US Sales Fall 7 Percent” Things are not looking any better for the nation’s oldest continuously operating motorcycle manufacturer either. “The motorcycle manufacturer cited continued slowed U.S. motorcycle industry growth as the main factor for weaker retail sales.”
  • “RED ALERT: Get ready for a ‘severe fall’ in the stock market, HSBC says” A technical analyst for one of the world’s largest banks now warns that the current stock market pattern looks eerily similar to the pattern that immediately preceded the crash in 1987.
  • “Bank of America has a recession warning that’s downright ‘scary’” BofA joins HSBC to say it sees a chilling trend: “We are seven years into a full-fledged, all out, central bankers doing everything they can to stimulate demand.” Yet demand is beyond evasive. “There are a lot of itchy trigger fingers. There’s lot of violent trades that can really roil a fairly complacent environment.”
  • “China facing full-blown banking crisis, world’s top financial watchdog warns” “The Bank for International Settlements warned in its quarterly report that China’s ‘credit to GDP gap’ has reached 30.1, the highest to date and in a different league altogether from any other major country tracked by the institution. It is also significantly higher than the … the US subprime bubble before the Lehman crisis. Studies of earlier banking crises around the world over the last sixty years suggest that any score above ten requires careful monitoring.”
  • “Biggest market crash in HISTORY is coming as HUGE debt bubble bursts, top investor warns” Michael Pento, a bond fund manager who has written for The Huffington Post, Bloomberg, Peak Prosperity, USA Watchdog, and who has often appeared on CNBC says we are now living in “the most dangerous [time] I have ever witnessed in my entire life – and I’ve been investing for over 25 years. The membrane has been stretched so wide and so tight that its about to burst.”
  • “Why the Stock Market Could Be Headed for a 1987-like Crash” Chris Matthews writes in Fortune that “we’re in the middle of the longest earnings recession since 2008…. What’s worse, estimates show that they will decline for a sixth straight quarter…. But Jim Bianco, president of Bianco Research argues that even this forecast might be overly optimistic…. Big picture, all the lines are headed down.”

   

  That is far from a list of all that is currently going wrong with the US economy. It’s simply the headlines that caught my eye in the last week or two. The economy is dying to where the establishment can barely even keep the stock market alive at a time when it would be devastating for them to have it crash. Nothing has the power to save us from this fate, not even the braggadocios Trump.

  If Hillary wins, all hell will break loose. It’s a rage that needs to happen, and it will be next to impossible to deny where the blame lies (I think, although the grip of economic denial has been indefatigable so far). Not saying I wish a Hillary victory on the nation or the world; just trying to be an optimist by pointing out the silver lining on the clouds.

  Clarity and breaking out of economic denial so that we get a real grasp of what we need to do are more important for the nation than anyone’s poorly conceived economic recovery plan at this point. Until the nation gets real about what its problems are, its not going to find any real answers to them. That has to start with the majority of people coming to grips with the fact that the establishment doesn’t have any answers at all. It’s not even looking for an answer.

  

• In Leaked Memo, James Comey Explains Why FBI Told Congress About Reopened Clinton Probe

  Having been the whipping boy of Republicans everywhere since July, following his announcement the FBI would not recommend charges against Hillary Clinton, then shockingly making the “most hated list” of every Democrat with the even more stunning news the FBI had reopened its probe of Hillary Clinton, bureau director James Comey just can’t seem to win.

  So in an attempt to justify his actions, a “leaked” memo emerged on Friday evening courtesy of Fox News, which explains why Comey took the unusual step of deciding to inform Congress that the FBI had reopened its investigation into Clinton’s private email server. The memo reveals two main arguments: a sense of obligation to lawmakers and a concern that word of the new email discovery would leak to the media and raise questions of a coverup.

  These two arguments prompted the FBI director to release his brief letter to Congress on Friday and has sent the presidential race into a tailspin less than two weeks before Election Day. It placed Comey again at the center of a highly partisan argument over whether the nation’s top law enforcement agency was unfairly influencing the campaign.

  In a memo explaining his decision to FBI employees soon after he sent his letter to Congress, Comey said he felt “an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed.” He admitted that he broke with custom in alerting lawmakers that the investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server was being reopened because of its political sensitivity.

  He further explained to FBI employees that “Of course we don’t ordinarily tell Congress about ongoing investigations, but here I feel an obligation to do so given that I testified repeatedly in recent months that our investigation was completed. I also think it would be misleading to the American people were we not to supplement the record.”

  What made this case special in Comey’s eyes is that Clinton is seeking the White House in an election on Nov. 8. In other words, both internal pressure to preempt leaks (from disgruntled employees?) and a sense of “obligations” is why Hillary’s campaign is in full damage control mode right now.

  “At the same time, however, given that we do not know the significance of this newly discovered collection of emails, I don’t want to create a misleading impression,” Comey’s letter continued. “In trying to strike that balance, in a brief letter, and in the middle of an election season, there is significant risk of being misunderstood, but I wanted you to hear directy from me about it.”

  As reported previously, the bombshell revelation that newly discovered emails had prompted a new look into whether Clinton or those around her had broken the law my mishandling sensitive information rocked the race for the White House Friday. Comey informed eight Republican lawmakers that new emails had surfaced that were relevant to the investigation, and warranted a new look.

  Comey announced in July that the FBI had wrapped up a year-long investigation into Clinton’s use of a private email server for official business and concluded that while she was “extremely careless,” he could not recommend that the Justice Department seek an indictment. The decision was blasted by Republicans, and FoxNews.com reported earlier this month that career DOJ and FBI workers were furious.

  Now, it is the democrats turn to rage at Comey and the FBI, although Comey likely did not have much choice: had he kept the information secret, it certainly would have leaked as we predicted; as such his best recourse was to come clean, although many have speculated about the cryptic nature of the disclosure.

  Needless to say, all Comey would need to do to regain the Demcorats’ trust and favor is to announce in just a few days that nothing material has been found and that the second probe is also over.

  Full memo below.

  

  

  

• New Clinton Emails Emerged As Part Of FBI Probe Into Anthony Weiner

  In the latest stunning revelation in today’s saga involving the FBI’s second probe, moments ago the NYT reported that the new emails uncovered in the closed investigation into Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server were discovered on a computer belonging to Anthony D. Weiner, the estranged husband of Huma Abedin, a top aide to Mrs. Clinton.

  In a stunning letter to Congress, the F.B.I. director, James B. Comey, said that emails had surfaced in an unrelated case, and that they “appear to be pertinent to the investigation.” It remained unclear, however, if the emails were sent from Mrs. Clinton’s private server, which has already been thoroughly examined by the F.B.I.
  

  The F.B.I. is investigating illicit text messages that Mr. Weiner sent to a 15-year-old girl in North Carolina. The bureau told Congress on Friday that it had uncovered new emails related to the Clinton case — one federal official said they numbered in the thousands — potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election.

  The NYT adds that Comey said the F.B.I. was taking steps to “determine whether they contain classified information, as well as to assess their importance to our investigation.” He said he did not know how long it would take to review the emails, or whether the new information was significant. A senior law enforcement official said that the emails belonged to Ms. Abedin and were backed up on Mr. Weiner’s computer. The officials said the F.B.I. has not looked at the emails to determine their significance.

  Meanwhile Hillary demanded that the FBI disclose all the information it has: “We are calling the F.B.I to release all the information that it has,” Mrs. Clinton said in an evening news conference that took issue with Mr. Comey for making the disclosure 11 days before the election. “Let’s get it out.”

  Until recently Anthony Weiner was married to Hillary Clinton’s closest aide, Huma Abedin, who separated from Weiner in August after it emerged that Weiner had engaged in an online affair with an underage girl. Such behavior had destroyed his congressional career and his 2013 mayoral campaign.

  

  The F.B.I. told Congress that it had uncovered new emails related to the closed investigation into whether Mrs. Clinton or her aides had mishandled classified information, potentially reigniting an issue that has weighed on the presidential campaign and offering a lifeline to Donald J. Trump less than two weeks before the election.

  As NBC’s Pete Williams adds, in looking at Weiner’s laptop, investigators discovered Huma also used the laptop—which contained some Huma/Hillary emails.

  .@PeteWilliamsNBC—In looking at Weiner’s laptop, investigators discovered Huma also used the laptop—which contained some Huma/Hillary emails pic.twitter.com/v1FKrYtrJD

  — Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) October 28, 2016

  Meanwhile, Trump was ebulient. After deriding the F.B.I. for weeks as inept and corrupt, Mr. Trump went on to praise the law enforcement agency. “I have great respect for the fact that the F.B.I. and the D.O.J. are now willing to have the courage to right the horrible mistake that they made,” Mr. Trump said, referring also to the Department of Justice. “This was a grave miscarriage of justice that the American people fully understand. It is everybody’s hope that it is about to be corrected.”

  “Perhaps, finally, justice will be done,” he declared at a campaign rally in New Hampshire.

  And then there was this: Rep. Tim Ryan, an Ohio Democrat, suggested to CNN’s Wolf Blitzer on Friday that the Russians may have played a role in the FBI reopening its investigation into Hillary’s email server after discovering new documents.

  It wasn’t just the Democrats. Rush Limbaugh said the FBI is starting a new review of Hillary Clinton’s emails to distract voters from WikiLeaks’s revelations about her. “[FBI Director James] Comey is just doing this to take everybody’s attention off of the WikiLeaks email dump,” Limbaugh said on his radio broadcast Friday.

  “The cynical view is that Comey is still carrying water for Clinton and is trying to get everybody to stop paying attention on the WikiLeaks dump because it’s starting to have an impact.”

  “So you announce you’re opening the inquiry, get everybody all hot and bothered and focused on it, and after three or four or five days, you announce it’s a false alarm, nothing to see her, investigation now officially over, and meanwhile, in that five day period, everybody’s forgotten about WikiLeaks.”

  Limbaugh said WikiLeaks emails are exposing the Democratic presidential nominee’s secrets and damaging her White House bid. “The WikiLeaks scandal right now is starting to hurt because it is exposing the fraud and the hustling and the collusion and the corruption that is going on at the Clinton Foundation,” he said. “You start messing around with things that are supposed to be charitable to serve humanity, you end up profiting personally from it. That’s easy to understand.

  “Everybody knows that’s not nice. Everybody understands that you’re not supposed to get rich off a charity. And the news here is that the Clintons have done that and are doing that,” he added.

  At this point in the must surreal campaign in history, he just may be right.

  * * *

  One clue as to what precisely the FBI may have uncovered comes courtesy of FOIAed Judicial Watch email disclosures, revealed one month ago, according to which Hillary Clinton’s chief of staff at the State Department, Cheryl Mills, had received classified national security information through one of two or three personal, unsecured email accounts she regularly used to communicate with Clinton aide Huma Abedin.

  Approximately 10 percent of Abedin’s emails released through Judicial Watch Freedom of Information Act requests were addressed to one of Mills’ various personal email addresses. As WND reported at the time, several were found to contain such highly sensitive material that the State Department redacted 100 percent of the content pages, marking many pages with a bold stamp reading “PAGE DENIED.”

  Of the more than 160 emails in the latest Judicial Watch release, some 110 emails – two-thirds of the total – were forwarded by Abedin to two personal addresses she controlled. The Washington Times reported in August 2015 that the State Department had admitted to a federal judge that Abedin and Mills used personal email accounts to conduct government business in addition to Clinton’s private clintonemail.com to transact State Department business.

  In a curious twist, one heavily redacted email, dated May 15, 2009, was sent by the infamous Doug Band (who until today was the primary source of headaches for Hillary Clinton due to his role as head of the Clinton Foundation-linked Teneo consulting firm whose recently leaked confidential memo exposed the fund flows involving Bill Clinton), to Mills at a personal address and to Huma Abedin at her State Department address.

  Band was forwarding to Mills and Abedin an email request from an associate who was seeking a State Department position in Charleston, South Carolina. Attached was a letter that the office-seeker had first sent to Bill Clinton containing the office-seeker’s resume . In the email Band was making a State Department job request on behalf of a Clinton Foundation and/or Teneo-related person.

  The email from Band was completely redacted, except for a salutation and first sentence. The letter the office-seeker had sent to President Clinton, as well as the office-seeker’s résumé, was redacted except for a phrase that reads, “Well organized, driven professional.”

  

  A second email dated May 15, 2009, was sent by Abedin from her State Department email to her personal email, presumably humamabedin@yahoo.com. Abedin apparently was archiving in her personal email account an email Hillary Clinton sent her from Clinton’s private email server at HDR22@clintonemail.com. Abedin was asked to print out attachments to an email Mills sent via a private address the previous day to Clinton involving “timetables and deliverables” for her review via Alec Ross, a technology policy expert who then held the title of senior adviser for innovation to Secretary Clinton.

  

  The two pages of timetables and deliverables attached to the email were 100 percent redacted, with “PAGE DENIED” stamped across the first redacted page.

  * * *

  Ironically, it appears that Donald Trump was spot on once again, first with a recent statement on the Huma-Abedin split:

  DONALD J. TRUMP STATEMENT ON HILLARY CLINTON’S BAD JUDGMENT

   

  “Huma is making a very wise decision. I know Anthony Weiner well, and she will be far better off without him. I only worry for the country in that Hillary Clinton was careless and negligent in allowing Weiner to have such close proximity to highly classified information. Who knows what he learned and who he told? It’s just another example of Hillary Clinton’s bad judgment. It is possible that our country and its security have been greatly compromised by this.” – Donald J. Trump

  and then, previously with this August 3, 2015 tweet:

  It came out that Huma Abedin knows all about Hillary’s private illegal emails. Huma’s PR husband, Anthony Weiner, will tell the world.

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) August 3, 2015

  Well, maybe not tell the world, but certainly drag Hillary into another scandal just as she appeared certain to win the election with less than 2 weeks until D-Day.

   

  

  

• Another Black Swan Hits The US Presidential Election

  Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

  By now, everyone on planet earth has heard about the bombshell news just announced by the FBI that it was re-opening its investigation into Hillary Clinton’s private email server. Here’s the text of FBI head James Comey’s letter to Congressional leaders.

  

  Obviously, lots of people are out there pontificating on what, if anything, this means. As such, I’m going to add my two cents to the conversation.

  I’ve prided myself on unemotionally calling this election how I see it the whole time, because I’m neither a Hillary Clinton nor Donald Trump supporter. Being free of the tremendous baggage that comes with cheerleading a particular candidate in this contentious election, I had consistently predicted a Trump victory until the Access Hollywood tape emerged. At that point I penned a thought-piece titled, Donald Trump is in Trouble – Part 2, in which I changed my forecast to a Hillary Clinton victory.

  Here’s some of what I wrote:

  After watching yesterday’s audio and reading through the Wikileaks revelations, my prediction has changed for the first time this election. All things equal from here on out (meaning no additional huge revelations against Hillary), I think Hillary Clinton will defeat Donald Trump. I don’t think it’s going to be a landslide, but I think she’s probably going to win. The audio was very harmful for Donald Trump, and now I’m going to explain why.

   

  First of all, if you want to accurately forecast the outcome of this election you need to get into the minds of the masses. Just like trading financial markets, what you think is right doesn’t matter. What matters is what everyone else collectively thinks, and whether or not they’re going to get off their asses and vote. A big part of why I thought Trump would win related to the fact that I believe many people were simply looking for an excuse to vote for him. Justified disgust with the status quo in general, and Hillary Clinton in particular, pushed millions of Americans into the camp of being willing to take a gamble on Trump despite disliking him personally and disagreeing with him on many issues. I felt strongly that there were millions upon millions of Americans you could place into this category — people who were “flirting with the idea of voting Trump.” I believe a significant amount of these people will not vote for him as a result of the audio. Will it be the majority of them? Probably not, but it will be a material number and arguably enough to swing the election. No, I don’t think these voters will shift to Hillary, and no, I don’t think committed Trump voters will change their minds. However, I do think enough of these willing to be convinced, leaning-Trump types will now stay home or vote third party. It’s these voters who I expected to swing the election in Trump’s favor, and they are now unreliable.

   

  Does Trump’s vulgarity excuse the incalculable crimes of Hillary Clinton and her husband, making them preferable in this election? No it doesn’t, but that’s not the point of this article. Most voters are too superficial, too busy trying to survive and too uninformed to weigh all the very important issues rationally. As an example, think about how most conversations are going to go down this weekend. Let’s say you’re out with a bunch of friends for drinks tonight. Someone says, “so have you seen the Trump audio?” If someone in the group hasn’t, someone will pull out their phone and it’ll be watched in 3 minutes. What if someone then says, “yeah, but have you seen the leaked Hillary emails?” What will your response be? You can’t adequately explain the importance of that to your friends in 3 minutes. Instead, you’ll have to send them a lengthy article that they’ll never read. So by the end of this weekend, pretty much everyone in America will have heard the Trump audio, while maybe 10% will take the time to analyze what came out of Wikileaks. There goes your election.

  Understanding the craziness of the election, I finished the piece with the following.

  Despite all of that, I still can’t say with certainty that Hillary will win. However, I do think the landscape has changed enough, that for the first time this entire election season, I am no longer confident of a Trump victory. Then again, I was absolutely convinced that Hillary was unelectable after she collapsed on 9/11 and mislead everyone about her health, and I was wrong about that. That’s how completely crazy this election is, and there’s still a month to go. Anything can happen, particularly with the debate coming up this Sunday. So while it’s certainly not out of the question, there will have to be some very material events over the next month to put Trump back in the driver’s seat.

  While the Wikileaks emails have been an important factor in keeping this race close, I didn’t think they were sufficient to alter my forecast of a Clinton victory. I think the reopening of the FBI investigation is enough of a black swan to materially change the course of this race.

  Clinton supporters will read this and think I’m insane. They will think this because they are anticipating a landslide victory for Hillary. I never expected a landslide, so I think this news tips the election into a total tossup situation. My reasoning for the change is the same that led me to switch my forecast to Hillary after the Access Hollywood video was released. The primary reason I initially thought Trump would win related to the fact I believed enough people would be willing to vote for a person they don’t really like in order to blow up the status quo. I felt that the video recording of Trump’s vulgar commentary was enough to put those people into the absentee or third party column, despite millions of Americans looking for an excuse to vote for Trump due to the well understood awfulness of Hillary. This has changed, and voters now have the excuse to vote Trump they needed.

  That reason is simple. The problems with Hilary Clinton will never go away. They will always resurface or new problems will emerge, and it has nothing to do with a “vast rightwing conspiracy.” It has to do with her. It has to do with the fact that her and her husband are career crooks, warmongers, and shameless looters of the American public. This re-opening of the FBI investigation just hammers all of that home for everyone. We know what 4 years of Hillary will look like. It’ll be Obama cronyism on steroids, plus endless investigations with a side of World War 3. I don’t think people want that, and so more Americans than the pundits realize will take a gamble on Trump.

  As a caveat, the above forecast assumes this new FBI investigation is not closed before November 8th. If it is, I think she’ll win. If not, I think Trump has even odds to win, if not better.

  Of course, with 11 days left in this crazy election, many more black swans could emerge. Stay tuned.

  Comey was a good FBI director until Putin got to him.

  — Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) October 28, 2016

  

  

• How To Make 2016 The Most Offensive Halloween Ever

  Social justice warriors have vowed to call the police on people wearing “offensive” Halloween costumes.

  

  So in an effort to ensure the special snowflakes aren’t triggered, Paul Joseph Watson explains how to keep Halloween ‘safe’… kinda.

  

  

• Dramatic 2006 Recording Captures Hillary Clinton Proposing To Rig The Palestine Election

  Hillary Clinton does not believe that US elections can be rigged, however it appears that when it comes to the rigging of foreign elections, she has a different opinion.

  This emerged today courtesy of a leaked September 2006 recording between Hillary, who was then running fore reelection as a US Senator and Eli Chomsky was an editor and staff writer for the Jewish Press. As the Observer, which released the recording writes, the tape is 45 minutes and contains much that is no longer relevant, such as analysis of the re-election battle that Sen. Joe Lieberman was then facing in Connecticut.

  But a seemingly throwaway remark about elections in areas controlled by the Palestinian Authority has taken on new relevance amid persistent accusations in the presidential campaign by Clinton’s Republican opponent Donald Trump that the current election is “rigged.”

  In the recording Clinton, who is speaking to the Jewish Press about the January 25, 2006, election for the second Palestinian Legislative Council (the legislature of the Palestinian National Authority), weighed in about the result, which was a resounding victory for Hamas (74 seats) over the U.S.-preferred Fatah (45 seats).

  “I do not think we should have pushed for an election in the Palestinian territories. I think that was a big mistake,” said Sen. Clinton. “And if we were going to push for an election, then we should have made sure that we did something to determine who was going to win.”

  The last statement is damning, and suggests that “making sure” that the desired party wins is something of a noram among top Washington circles, even if thrown around in jest.

  The Observer notes that Chomsky recalls being taken aback that “anyone could support the idea—offered by a national political leader, no less—that the U.S. should be in the business of fixing foreign elections.”

  A good follow up question would be if Clinton feels the same way about the US 2016 presidential election, in which it is clear who Hillary, and her campaign staff, would push for to win.

  In another tangential part of the recording, Chomsky is heard on the tape asking Clinton what now seems like a prescient question about Syria, given the disaster unfolding there and its looming threat to drag the U.S., Iran and Russia into confrontation.

  “Do you think it’s worth talking to Syria—both from the U.S. point [of view] and Israel’s point [of view]?”

  Clinton replied, “You know, I’m pretty much of the mind that I don’t see what it hurts to talk to people. As long as you’re not stupid and giving things away. I mean, we talked to the Soviet Union for 40 years. They invaded Hungary, they invaded Czechoslovakia, they persecuted the Jews, they invaded Afghanistan, they destabilized governments, they put missiles 90 miles from our shores, we never stopped talking to them,” an answer that reflects her mastery of the facts but also reflects a willingness to talk to Russia that sounds more like Trump 2016 than Clinton 2016.

  The conclusion comes a few moments later when Clinton said, “But if you say, ‘they’re evil, we’re good, [and] we’re never dealing with them,’ I think you give up a lot of the tools that you need to have in order to defeat them…So I would like to talk to you [the enemy] because I want to know more about you. Because if I want to defeat you, I’ve got to know something more about you. I need different tools to use in my campaign against you. That’s my take on it.”

  Ironically taking the “moral” ground and slamming Putin as evil is precisely what the Obama administration has done; we can only imagine what Hillary – and her Secretary of State – will do  in Syria and across the globe, if elected president through rigged elections or otherwise.

  Full recording below:

  

  

• New Research Finds Minimum Wage Ballot Initiatives Could Cost 300,000 Jobs In These 4 States

  Seemingly no amount of empirical evidence can convince progressives that raising minimum wages to artificially elevated levels is a bad idea.  Somehow the basic idea that raising the cost of a good ultimately results in lower consumption of that good just doesn’t compute.  Though it does seem odd that progressives in states like California lean heavily on higher taxes as a way to curb, for example, fuel consumption.  Could it be that the left actually does understand the basic economics of the minimum wage debate but don’t find the math behind it to be particularly “politically expedient” in certain instances?

  Be that as it may, in four states across the country this November voters will decide whether or not to hike minimum wage anywhere from 32% to 60% over the next three years.  And, according to research from the American Action Forum (AAF), those wage hikes could cost Arizona, Colorado, Maine and Washington a total of nearly 300,000 jobs.

  While proponents of these measures hope they will improve the welfare of low-wage workers, American Action Forum (AAF) research has consistently shown that proposals to raise the minimum wage often hurt those they intend to help by increasing joblessness among low-skilled workers and failing to deliver income gains to those who actually need assistance. So, what would happen in these states if each measure were approved? These minimum wage increases would come at a total cost of 290,000 jobs.

  

   

  Meanwhile, AAF points out that historical data indicates that every 10% increase in the real minimum wage equates to a roughly 0.3% – 0.5% decrease in future job growth.

  While proposals to raise the minimum wage are well intended, it is important to take into account the negative labor market consequences. Recently, Meer & West (2015) found that raising the minimum wage reduces job creation. Specifically, they found that a 10 percent increase in the real minimum wage is associated with a 0.3 to 0.5 percentage-point decrease in the net job growth rate. As a result, three years later employment becomes 0.7 percent lower than it would have been absent the minimum wage increase.

  

   

  Of course, despite how futile our efforts might be, we have frequently presented empirical evidence (see below) proving that minimum wage results in permanent jobs losses for the same low-skilled workers they’re intended to help.  Though despite the piling up mountain of evidence on the harmful “unintended consequences” of artificially high minimum wages, we suspect we already know how this story ends.  After all, it’s much easier to win elections by promising people more stuff rather than less.  And, as an added bonus, when it all goes horribly wrong it’s very easy to lay the blame at the feet of the wealthy 1%’ers who are behind all the layoffs.  Checkmate.

  

   

  * * *

  Excerpts from our previous post “Something “Unexpected” Happened When Seattle Raised The Minimum Wage“:
  

  The latest research comes from the University of Washington which researched the impact of Seattle’s recent minimum wage hike on employment in that city (as background, Seattle recently passed legislation that increased it’s minimum wage to $11 per hour on April 1, 2015, $13 on January 1, 2016 and $15 on January 1, 2017).  “Shockingly”, the University of Washington found that Seattle’s higher minimum wages “lowered employment rates of low-wage workers” (the report is attached in its entirety at the end of this post).  

  Yet, our best estimates find that the Seattle Minimum Wage Ordinance appears to have lowered employment rates of low-wage workers. This negative unintended consequence (which are predicted by some of the existing economic literature) is concerning and needs to be followed closely in future years, because the long-run effects are likely to be greater as businesses and workers have more time to adapt to the ordinance. Finally, we find only modest impacts on earnings. The effects of disemployment appear to be roughly offsetting the gain in hourly wage rates, leaving the earnings for the average low-wage worker unchanged. Of course, we are talking about the average result.

   

  More specifically, we find that median wages for low-wage workers (those earning less than $11 per hour during the 2nd quarter of 2014) rose by $1.18 per hour, and we estimate that the impact of the Ordinance was to increase these workers’ median wage by $0.73 per hour. Further, while these low-wage workers increased their likelihood of being employed relative to prior years, this increase was less than in comparison regions. We estimate that the impact of the Ordinance was a 1.1 percentage point decrease in likelihood of low-wage Seattle workers remaining employed.  While these low-wage workers increased their  quarterly earnings relative to prior years, the estimated impact of the Ordinance on earnings is small and sensitive to the choice of comparison region. Finally, for those who kept their job, the Ordinance appears to have improved wages and earnings, but decreased their likelihood of being employed in Seattle relative other parts of the state of Washington.

  Still not convinced?  How about a recent report from the Federal Reserve Bank of San Francisco that finds that “higher minimum wage results in some job loss for the least-skilled workers—with possibly larger adverse effects than earlier research suggested.”

  How do we summarize this evidence? Many studies over the years find that higher minimum wages reduce employment of teens and low-skilled workers more generally. Recent exceptions that find no employment effects typically use a particular version of estimation methods with close geographic controls that may obscure job losses. Recent research using a wider variety of methods to address the problem of comparison states tends to confirm earlier findings of job loss. Coupled with critiques of the methods that generate little evidence of job loss, the overall body of recent evidence suggests that the most credible conclusion is a higher minimum wage results in some job loss for the least-skilled workers—with possibly larger adverse effects than earlier research suggested.

  Don’t trust theoretical Federal Reserve Bank studies?  How about recent hard evidence from Starbucks (which we noted here)?  One year ago, we noted that Starbucks CEO, Howard Schultz, won over progressives when he said that minimum wage “should go up across the country” and that Starbucks would “pay above the minimum wage in every state we operate.”  Sounds fantastic, right?

  One year ago, when the political push to raise the minimum wage hit a crescendo, the CEO of Starbucks had some words of caution. Howard Schultz told CNN that minimum wage “should go up across the country”, however he warned that “it will be very difficult for small business in the country at a $15 level to pay those kinds of wages.” What about for his own company? “For Starbucks come January 1 we are taking wages up across the country and we will pay above the minimum wage in every state we operate. Starbucks is way above the minimum wage. I have always looked at total compensation.”

  Unfortunately, it turns out that Schultz isn’t one of those “practice what you preach” kind of guys.  Per our previous note:

  One year later, something “unexpected” has happened as a result of the Schultz’ all too eager push to “share” his company’s success by hiking minimum wages, namely the realization by the company’s employees (if not so much the CEO, management and certainly shareholders) that total compensation is a function of two things: hourly wages and number of hours worked.

   

  As Reuters reports, an online petition accusing Starbucks of “extreme” cutbacks in work hours at its U.S. cafes, hurting both employee morale and customer service, has been signed by more than 9,000 people. Suddenly Starbucks’ eagerness to raise its wages becomes all too clear: after all, it would merely have to reduce work hours, to keep profitability humming.

   

  The world’s biggest coffee chain, trying to address cooling growth at its U.S. shops, recently introduced technology that allows customers to order and pay from mobile devices. That service aims to boost sales and reduce bottlenecks in stores; it also aims to reduce work hours.

   

  In short: Starbucks is finding itself in a sales and profit squeeze (its shares have gone nowhere for the past year), and having been such a fervent supporter of minimum wage hikes, is now far less willing to “share” its success as a company, especially if it means a stagnant stock price for the foreseeable future.

  

  

• Watergate's Carl Bernstein: FBI Wouldn't Reopen A Probe Unless It Is "A Real Bombshell"

  In the aftermath of the so-called Cocktober surprise unveiled this afternoon by the FBI when the bureau announced it was reopening a probe into Hillary Clinton’s email server because “new evidence has come to light” after “materials” were found on equipment belonging to Anthony Weiner and Huma Abedin, the question on everyone’s lips – and certainly Hillary Clinton‘s and most democrats – is why did the FBI do this now, 11 days before the election, in a way that did not even coordinate with the White House?

  One opinion belongs to Watergate journalist Carl Bernstein, who just days after his infamous peer Bob Woodward said that the “Clinton foundation is corrupt, it’s a scandal” said that “her conduct in regard to the e-mails is really indefensible and if there was going to be more information that came out, it was the one thing, as I said on the air last night, actually that could really perhaps affect this election.  We don’t know what this means yet except that it’s a real bombshell. And it is unthinkable that the Director of the FBI would take this action lightly, that he would put this letter forth to the Congress of the United States saying there is more information out there about classified e-mails and call it to the attention of congress unless it was something requiring serious investigation. So that’s where we are…”

  Courtesy of Real Clear Politics is the full transcript:

  CARL BERNSTEIN: Well, there’s no question that the e-mails have always been the greatest threat to her candidacy for president, that her conduct in regard to the e-mails is really indefensible and if there was going to be more information that came out, it was the one thing, as I said on the air last night, actually that could really perhaps affect this election.

   

  We don’t know what this means yet except that it’s a real bombshell. And it is unthinkable that the Director of the FBI would take this action lightly, that he would put this letter forth to the Congress of the United States saying there is more information out there about classified e-mails and call it to the attention of congress unless it was something requiring serious investigation. So that’s where we are…

   

  Is it a certainty that we won’t learn before the election? I’m not sure it’s a certainty we won’t learn before the election. 

   

  One thing is, it’s possible that Hillary Clinton might want to on her own initiative talk to the FBI and find out what she can, and if she chooses to let the American people know what she thinks or knows is going on. People need to hear from her… 

   

  I think if she has information available to her from the FBI or any other source as to her knowledge of what these e-mails might be, hopefully she will let us know what they are and what is under discussion here. 

   

  Right now we’re all talking in a vacuum but I want to add here that in the last, oh, 36, 48 hours, there has been an undercurrent of kind of speculative discussion among some national security people that something might surface in the next few days about e-mails, and I think the expectation in this chatter — and I took it as just chatter but informed chatter, to some extent — was that it would relate to another round of WikiLeaks e-mails, which our Justice Department people seem to be saying is not the case, but there has been some noise in the national security community the last day or two of this kind of possibility of some kind of revelation. 

   

  But this is her achilles heel and we have to remember that it also comes on the — back to the word heel — of the revelations about the Clinton Foundation. So the confluence of all of this is bad for her as it stands now but with some knowledge she might be able to stop, turn things around, and give us some idea of what’s going on in a way we might not otherwise know, and also it’s very possible that some members of congress very quickly are going to get an idea of what these e-mails are, and what this is all about, and for whatever purpose put some information out there.

  Full video below:

  

  

• Hillary Holds 4 Minute Press Conference: Demands "Full And Complete Facts" From FBI

  Blink and you missed it: in a brief, 3 minute 47 second address to the press, a defiant Hillary slammed the FBI, said that she hopes that whatever information the Bureau has will be shared with the American people and added that she is confident that no charges will be brought against her by the FBI, while taking the opportunity to ask people to go out and vote for her.

  She took three questions which some have mockingly said were drafted and/or preapproved by Clinton campaign direction of communications Jennifer Palmier.

  “We are 11 days out from perhaps the most important national election of our lifetimes,” Clinton said during the brief press conference in Des Moines, Iowa. “Voting is already underway in our country, so the American people deserve to get the full and complete facts immediately.” 

  Hillary revealed that the FBI had not contacted her before or since Comey sent a letter to lawmakers Friday afternoon.

  “So we don’t know the facts, which is why we are calling on the FBI to release all the information that it has,” she said. “Even Director Comey noted that this new information may not be significant, so let’s get it out.”

  Comey’s letter said that the FBI was reviewing pertinent emails that it found in an unrelated investigation, but did not reveal much more than that. Republicans and the GOP presidential nominee Donald Trump quickly pounced on the news. 

  Clinton was asked about a New York Times report that said the FBI had found the new emails in its separate investigation into Anthony Weiner’s sexting scandal.

  “We’ve heard these rumors,” she said “We don’t know what to believe. And I’m sure there will be even more rumors. That’s why it’s incumbent on the FBI to tell us what they’re talking about, Jeff. Your guess is as good as mine and I don’t think that’s not good enough.”

  Watch the brief recording below:

  BREAKING: Hillary Clinton addresses FBI director’s revelation of new review related to private email server case. https://t.co/vSxftfXcIZ

  — NBC Nightly News (@NBCNightlyNews) October 28, 2016

   

  Hillary’s statement was similar to what Tim Kaine said earlier: it’s “very, very troubling” that the FBI is releasing information about a new probe into emails that may relate to Hillary Clinton just 11 days before the election. The Democratic vice presidential nominee is commenting on the development in an interview with Vice News.  Kaine says the FBI director needs to provide more details on the situation. He suggests it’s troubling that members of the press are finding out information before campaign officials. Kaine’s comments in turn echo the a statement made by Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta, and thus by Hillary.

  * * *

  Finally, President Obama is staying silent – for now – on the FBI director’s announcement of an investigation into new emails related to Hillary Clinton’s use of a private email server. Obama is in Orlando, Florida, where according to AP he is encouraging voters – young voters in particular – to take advantage of their opportunity to cast their ballots before Election Day on Nov. 8.

  

  

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