• What The Hell Is Going On?

  Via Jim Quinn of The Burning Platform blog,

  “The older I grow, the more I distrust the familiar doctrine that age brings wisdom.” –  H.L. Mencken

   

  “The older I get the less I listen to what people say and the more I look at what they do.”– Andrew Carnegie

  I’m 53 years old. The older I get the less sure I am about things I was sure about when I was 25 years old. I believed stocks for the long run was an unquestioned truth. I believed our economy was based on free market capitalism. I believed stock prices were based upon profits and cash flows. I believed a home was a place to live – not an investment. I believed the Catholic Church was run by good men doing good things. I believed journalists and the media were watchdogs working on behalf of the public. I believed our military was protecting our interests. I believed politicians legislated on behalf of the people. I believed the main purpose of bankers was to loan money to businesses and consumers in order to support economic growth. Boy, was I dumbass.

  My skeptical nature, reliance on data I’ve personally vetted, and judging our leaders based on what they have done versus what they say, has allowed me to escape the Matrix. I wasn’t truly awakened until I watched Bush, Cheney, Powell, the rest of the neo-con prevaricators and fake news mainstream media utilize propaganda to railroad Americans into a $6 trillion unnecessary war, resulting in 36,000 American casualties, the destruction of a country and the creation of thousands of new Muslim terrorists.

  I’ve spent the last fourteen years pushing back against the establishment narrative, documenting the fake data published by government apparatchiks, and trying to open the eyes of as many people as possible to the propaganda utilized by the Deep State to keep the ignorant masses dazed, confused and distracted. The country is in deep trouble because what the majority believe regarding the economy, politics, religion, and culture just ain’t so.

  “What gets us into trouble is not what we don’t know. It’s what we know for sure that just ain’t so.” – Mark Twain

  Since the start of this year I’ve found myself in a mental funk. I’m tired of the lies. I’m tired of incessant media propaganda. I’m tired of politicians. I’m tired of economic experts. I’m tired of hucksters touting their “the end is near” tale to sell me something. I’m tired of faux mainstream media journalists and their whining about Trump being mean and threatening the First Amendment.

  They don’t know jack about the First Amendment, as they work for one of the six media conglomerates whose job it is to produce fake news supporting whatever narrative keeps their Deep State benefactors in power. Regurgitating lines written for them by corporate propagandists is not journalism and has absolutely no relationship to the First Amendment. Over the last decade the only place to find some truth has been the alternative media thriving on the uncensored internet. That’s why the establishment wants to regulate the internet.

  The fake news blitz by a Deep State, flailing about trying to retain their power and wealth, has reached frantic proportions. The left wingers, egged on by Obama and funded by Soros, hold increasingly inane protests with themes like: wear a vagina hat to support feminazis; hug an illegal immigrant; everyone I hate is a Nazi; and women take another day off and no one notices. The traitorous neo-con warmongers like McCain, Graham, and Kristol see their enormously profitable never ending global conflict agenda at risk. The military industrial complex needs enemies. The left wingers and neo-cons have joined forces to utilize the fake Russian election intervention propaganda in a last ditch desperate attempt to derail the Trump presidency before it starts.

  The relentlessness, bitterness, and blatant disregard for the truth exhibited by Trump’s vast array of opponents have made TV virtually unwatchable. I’ve found myself mentally checking out. Why waste mental energy debating hacks, mental midgets and paid trolls for the establishment? After spending years obliterating fake government statistics on a daily basis, I find continuing to do so is just mental masturbation with no ultimate satisfaction. Confronting left wingers and neo-cons is like wresting with a pig, you both get dirty and the pig likes it.

  I’ve always been an observer. I’ve been observing how certain both sides are regarding their positions on illegal immigration, Muslims, Russia, Obamacare, Supreme Court nominees, executive orders, jobs, taxes, climate change, school choice, oil pipelines the First Amendment, Second Amendment, the rule of law, and the Bill of Rights. I find it exhausting. We’re lost in a blizzard of lies. I’m not certain about anything. I will remain skeptical of everything uttered by all politicians, all government bureaucrats, all corporate executives, all central bankers, all media pundits, all religious leaders, all corporate paid journalists and especially Wall Street shysters.

  “Moral certainty is always a sign of cultural inferiority. The more uncivilized the man, the surer he is that he knows precisely what is right and what is wrong. All human progress, even in morals, has been the work of men who have doubted the current moral values, not of men who have whooped them up and tried to enforce them. The truly civilized man is always skeptical and tolerant, in this field as in all others. His culture is based on “I am not too sure.” – H.L. Mencken

  The dissonance between what I have been observing and what is being flogged by the establishment mouthpieces in the corporate mainstream media has never been greater. Some of my observations are anecdotal, others are based on real unadulterated truthful data, a few are based on simple common sense and the rest are based on my understanding of what happens during Fourth Turnings.

  When you understand the cyclical nature of history you are not surprised when events lead to reactions among the masses which take the linear thinking status quo by complete surprise. The 2008 global financial implosion and the subsequent election of Donald J. Trump by the deplorable white silent majority completely blindsided the oblivious establishment, but were entirely predictable if you had studied previous Fourth Turnings throughout history.

  I’ve been making a horrific sixty mile round trip commute into Philly for the last ten years. The average daily commute has been about two hours, as the entire route has been under some sort of construction for the entire decade. A fantastic one way commute is forty five minutes. I regularly have ninety minute commutes, and I’ve experienced a few which breached the two hour mark. It became immediately evident to me something changed as this new year got under way. My morning and evening commute has been consistently in the forty-five minute range for the last two months. There are less cars and trucks on the road. The question is why?

  This only happened once before over the last decade – during the 2008/2009 recession. In a shocking correlation (especially for brain dead tax and spend liberals), when there are less jobs, there are less drivers on the roads going to work. I tried to think of other reasonable explanations for why traffic appeared to be contracting so dramatically. But lo and behold, certain data can’t be easily manipulated by the government. Gasoline demand is plunging, with the year over year trend crashing to levels last experienced during the 2001 recession. Gasoline demand was higher during the 2008/2009 crisis. Demand was higher when oil was over $100 per barrel. Based on this crash in gasoline demand, Goldman Sachs issued a report saying we should be in a recession.

  

  Total miles driven are dramatically slowing down. It’s not because of electric cars or fuel efficiency, as the vast majority of the 17.5 million vehicles being hawked to the math challenged driving public (using low payment leases and six year 0% loans) are pickups, SUVs, or luxury sedans. The Fed induced and subprime debt fueled frenzy of vehicle sales (aka long – term rentals) has seen vehicle sales skyrocket from 10 million in 2010 to an all-time high above 17.5 million in 2016, while auto loan debt has soared from $700 billion to over $1.1 trillion during this same time frame. The truthfulness of the 17.5 million sales number may be in question, as dealer lots are stuffed with record levels of inventory. With a record number of cars in the hands of consumers, how could gasoline usage and miles driven crash?

  

  More questions emerge to those with critical thinking skills. If the unemployment rate is really 4.8%, how could 40% of the employable population (102 million) not be working? This explains the lack of cars on the road during my commute. Obama and his minions jabber about the tremendous jobs recovery during his reign of error. In 2007 there were 122 million full-time workers among a working age population of 233 million, or 52.3%. After Obama’s eight year economic “recovery”, there are 125 million full-time workers among a working age population of 254 million, or 49.2%.

  We’ve added 3 million full-time jobs in the last 9 years, and the captured mainstream media touts this as a success story. The deceitfulness – it burns. When 125 million full-time workers, of which 22 million are non-producing government drones, have to support 102 million non-working Americans, most living on the dole, you have a financially unsustainable paradigm. Trump’s slogan should be Make Americans Get Off Their Fat Asses and Work Again.

  The explanation for the plunge in gasoline demand and miles driven is quite simple if you haven’t drunk the mainstream media kool-aid about the fantastic economy, low unemployment, and soaring consumer confidence. Americans drive their vehicles to work, to shop, and to eat out. Truckers are the backbone of our just in time big box retail society. If Americans are driving less, there are less people with jobs, less spending at bricks and mortar retailers, and fewer people eating out.

  If truckers are logging less miles, retailers are ordering less inventory, manufacturers are selling less widgets, and the economy is contracting. The entire economic improvement narrative is based on soft data about feelings from consumer confidence surveys and dozens of other easily manipulated surveys. Propagandists are experts at convincing clueless dolts it’s raining when their government is actually pissing down their backs.

  Despite government reports about expanding retail sales and strong holiday sales, real info from real retailers tells the true story. Major retailers have announced 1,500 store closings in the first two months of 2017, including:

  • JC Penney – 140 stores
  • Sears – 150 stores
  • Macy’s – 68 stores
  • HHGregg – 88 stores
  • The Limited – 250 stores
  • Abercrombie & Fitch – 60 stores
  • Wet Seal – 171 stores
  • CVS – 70 stores

  Kohl’s, Target, Macy’s, Sears, and dozens of other retailers reported awful holiday sales. Wal-Mart was lauded for generating a 1% comparable store sales increase. There is virtually no store expansion by large retail chains. During the 2000 to 2007 period these chains were each opening hundreds of new stores per year. We are in the midst of a long term retail contraction which is just picking up steam.

  The closure of these stores combined with rising interest rates are a toxic concoction for real estate mall developers. The Fed allowed them to extend and pretend for the last eight years. The jig is up. A wave of retail and mall bankruptcies is baked in the cake. The government reported retail sales growth is driven by Fed induced auto sales (leases and loans), home furnishing sales financed at 0% over five years, building materials stores offering 0% financing, Amazon and until recently restaurant and bar sales.

  Since I don’t go into malls or many retail establishments, and rarely eat at chain restaurants, my observations of retail and restaurant traffic are based on how full their parking lots are at peak hours. When the economy was in bubble mode prior to 2008, mall parking lots were jammed and you had a ninety minute  wait to get a seat at Outback or Olive Garden. Today, you can get a parking spot at a big box retailer near the front door on a Saturday afternoon.

  Malls are ghost towns, with Space Available as the hot new location. Except for peak dinner time on a Friday or Saturday (if then) there are no longer long waits to get a table at one of the struggling chain restaurants. We reached peak retail and peak overpriced restaurants a few years ago. The downward spiral, due to demographics, declining real income, and over-saturation, is irreversible.

  

  As usual, with propaganda distributed by the government or industry organizations, they present a positive restaurant performance index based on false hope and delusional expectations. Restaurant chains like Applebees, Outback, Ruby Tuesday, Chilis, Buffalo Wild Wings and many other major chains have been reporting declining same restaurant sales. Industry comparable restaurant sales are lower than two years ago.

  Outback’s parent company announced it will close more than four dozen locations of Outback Steakhouse, Bonefish Grill, Carrabba’s Italian Grill and Fleming’s Prime Steakhouse. Ruby Tuesday is closing 100 locations. Despite government reports showing strong restaurant sales over the last eight years, annual traffic to U.S. restaurants has been flat or up just 1% since 2009, when there was a 2% drop in the wake of the Fed created financial crisis.

  The “increase” in sales was generated by price increases of 2% to 3% per year. Now these chains are paying the price for high prices, shitty food, and poor service from their college graduate millennial staff. With higher taxes, soaring Obamacare costs, student loan and auto loan debt up to their eyeballs, and low paying service jobs as their career, even clueless millennials have gotten a clue – they don’t have the money to eat out four times per week.

  Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows the majority of Americans have fallen further behind since 2009, with only the establishment and those leaching off the establishment profiting from the suffering of senior citizens and the former middle class. When real personal spending plummets at the highest rate since 2009, you just might be in the midst of a recession.

  

  As consumer confidence surveys, ISM surveys and Fed surveys provide fake news about consumer and corporate feelings about a glorious future, the hard data tells the truth. How could households feel confident when real median household income fell by $558 in December and is down by $529 year over year? How could Obama and his lapdogs in the mainstream media pontificate about the record economic recovery when real median income is 2% lower than it was nine years ago?

  How can anyone deny the average American household has been experiencing a depression since 2000, when real median household income is lower today than it was at the turn of the century? Do you think the lack of income growth over the last 17 years may have played a part in the deplorables electing Trump in November?

  

  The corporate fake news media will continue to produce the false narrative as directed by their Deep State employers. The credibility of journalists can be summed up in two pithy sentences by Hunter S. Thompson.

  “The press is a gang of cruel faggots. Journalism is not a profession or a trade. It is a cheap catch-all for fuckoffs and misfits—a false doorway to the backside of life, a filthy piss-ridden little hole nailed off by the building inspector, but just deep enough for a wino to curl up from the sidewalk and masturbate like a chimp in a zoo-cage.” – Hunter S. Thompson – Fear and Loathing in Las Vegas

  In Part Two of this article I’ll show how the Deep State/establishment/ruling class/status quo have utilized their mastery of propaganda techniques to convince the masses inflation and debt are beneficial to their interests and why Trump’s election is the pushback by a citizenry who are beginning to awake and are mad as hell.

  

  

• 5 Dystopic Movies That Are Coming True Right Now

  From ‘border walls’ to ‘biometrics’ and from ‘economic collapse’ to the ‘surveillance state’, is life imitating art… or was it all a guidebook?

  

  As The Daily Sheeple’s Melissa Dykes notes, it’s actually kind of hard to watch some of these… things are hitting way too close to home these days.

  

  

• Q&A: How Can I Stop My TV Spying On Me?

  Following today's publication, by WikiLeaks, of documents exposing the CIA's secret hacking program – describing tools that can turn a world of increasingly networked, camera- and microphone-equipped devices into eavesdroppers, AP's Frank Bajak answers the public's biggest questions. Bajak warns consumers, there's "not much you can do if you don't want to sacrifice the benefits of the device," but offers a silver-lining of sorts for the average joe, the "tools that appear to be targeted at specific people's (devices).. and many intrusion tools are for delivery via 'removable device'."

  

  Smart televisions and automobiles now have on-board computers and microphones, joining the ubiquitous smartphones, laptops and tablets that have had microphones and cameras as standard equipment for a decade. That the CIA has created tools to turn them into listening posts surprises no one in the security community.

  Q: HOW WORRIED SHOULD CONSUMERS BE?

  A: The intrusion tools highlighted by the leak do not appear to be instruments of mass surveillance. So, it's not as if everyone's TV or high-tech vehicle is at risk.

   

  "It's unsurprising, and also somewhat reassuring, that these are tools that appear to be targeted at specific people's (devices) by compromising the software on them — as opposed to tools that decrypt the encrypted traffic over the internet," said Matt Blaze, a University of Pennsylvania computer scientist.

   

  The exploits appear to emphasize targeted attacks, such as collecting keystrokes or silently activating a Samsung TV's microphone while the set is turned off. In fact, many of the intrusion tools described in the documents are for delivery via "removable device."

  Q: WHAT CAN BE DONE TO PREVENT A COMPROMISED INTERNET-CONNECTED DEVICE FROM COMMUNICATING WITH SPIES?

  A: Not much if you don't want to sacrifice the benefits of the device.

   

  "Anything that is voice-activated or that has voice- and internet-connected functionality is susceptible to these types of attacks," said Robert M. Lee, a former U.S. cyberwar operations officer and CEO of the cybersecurity company Dragos.

   

  That includes smart TVs and voice-controlled information devices like the Amazon Echo, which can read news, play music, close the garage door and turn up the thermostat. An Amazon Echo was enlisted as a potential witness in an Arkansas murder case.

   

  To ensure a connected device can't spy on you, unplug it from the grid and the internet and remove the batteries, if that's possible. Or perhaps don't buy it, especially if you don't especially require the networked features and the manufacturer hasn't proven careful on security.

   

  Security experts have found flaws in devices — like WiFi-enabled dolls — with embedded microphones and cameras.

  Q: I USE WHATSAPP AND SIGNAL FOR VOICE AND TEXT COMMUNICATION BECAUSE OF THEIR STRONG ENCRYPTION. CAN THE EXPLOITS DESCRIBED IN THE WIKILEAKS DOCUMENTS BREAK THEM?

  A: No. But exploits designed to infiltrate the operating system on your Android smartphone, iPhone, iPad or Windows-based computer can read your messages or listen in on conversations on the compromised device itself, though communications are encrypted in transit.

   

  "The bad news is that platform exploits are very powerful," Blaze tweeted. "The good news is that they have to target you in order to read your messages."

   

  He and other experts say reliably defending against a state-level adversary is all but impossible. And the CIA was planting microphones long before we became networked.

  Q: I'M NOT A HIGH-VALUE TARGET. BUT I STILL WANT TO PROTECT MYSELF. HOW?

  A: It may sound boring, but it's vital: Keep all your operating systems patched and up-to-date, and don't click links or open email attachments unless you are sure they are safe.

   

  There will always be exploits of which antivirus companies are not aware until it's too late. These are known as zero-day exploits because no patches are available and victims have zero time to prepare. The CIA, National Security Agency and plenty of other intelligence agencies purchase and develop them.

   

  But they don't come cheap. And most of us are hardly worth it.

  Source: AP

  

  

• China Imports Spike As Lunar New Year Skew Creates Biggest Trade Deficit In 3 Years

  When the headline prints hit tonight on China's trade data, offshore Yuan dipped and ripped…

  

   

  As China faced its first trade deficit in 3 years (-$60bn vs +172.5bn exp)…

  

  Obviously there is some major seaonality…

  

  With imports exploding 44.7% YoY (and exports missing expectations dramatically +4.2% vs +14.6% exp). But it appears the economists forgot about this year's lunar new year holiday falling in January (vs Feb last year).

  

   

  As Bloomberg points out, the results were skewed because the week-long Lunar New Year holidays that shutter factories and ports across the nation occurred in February 2016 versus late January in 2017, distorting base year comparisons.

  Even though the specific data point is entirely worthless, we note that Imports from U.S. rose 41% to 163.5b yuan in Jan.-Feb., General Administration of Customs says in statement.

  For now it appears Bitcoin is suffering the most post-data (but this could be renewed selling pressure from this morning ahead of this weekend's ETF decision)

  

  

  

• Hawaii To File Lawsuit Over Trump's New Travel Ban

  If Trump was harboring any hopes that his “new and revised” travel ban would sneak through unopposed, they were just dashed by the state in which Trump’s ex-presidential nemesis was born. 

  Just as the federal government said Washington state and Minnesota had consented to dismiss their cases before the U.S. Court of Appeals in San Francisco, Hawaii announced it plans to challenge Trump’s new travel ban, according to legal documents as well as tweets from one of the lawyers involved.

  “Here we go,” tweeted Hogan Lovells partner Neal Katyal Tuesday night, and one of Hawaii’s lead attorney. “Proud to stand w/State of Hawaii challenging Pres. Trump’s ‘new’ Executive Order issued yesterday.”

  Here we go. Proud to stand w/State of Hawaii challenging Pres.Trump’s “new” Executive Order issued yesterday. 1/2 https://t.co/GrPvlPGshL

  — Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) March 8, 2017

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  “To be sure, the new executive order covers fewer people than the old one,” Katyal said in an interview with CNN. However, he added that the new order though still “suffers from the same constitutional and statutory defects.”

  The state will file its complaint and temporary restraining order in federal court by Wednesday, according to a document published on the website of the Hogan Lovells law firm, based in Washington.

  After Trump’s initial immigration order faced quick backlash, with protests breaking out across the country and many lawmakers speaking out against it, the president on Monday issued a new revised order on immigration which revised the original one by exempting green card holders, removing Iraq from the list of banned countries, and being phased in over a period of time. It still bans travelers from six mostly-Muslim countries from entering the United States for 90 days and bans all refugees from entering the country for 120 days.

  According to a briefing schedule set forth in documents filed in federal court by the state of Hawaii on Tuesday, the federal government will file its response by Monday and oral arguments would take place on March 15.

  The Trump Admin & State of Hawaii have jointly asked the Ct for oral argument on 3/15. 2/2 https://t.co/9IcEayHeoF

  — Neal Katyal (@neal_katyal) March 8, 2017

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• The Next Domino To Fall: Commercial Real Estate

  Via Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

  Unless the Federal Reserve intends to buy up every dead and dying mall in America, this is one crisis that the Fed can't bail out with a few digital keystrokes.

  Just as generals prepare to fight the last war, central banks prepare to battle the last financial crisis–which in the present context means a big-bank liquidity meltdown like the one that nearly toppled thr global financial system in 2008-09.

  Planning to win the next war by assuming it will be a copy of the last confict is an excellent strategy for losing the next war. The same holds true for the next financial crisis: reckoning that it will be a repeat of 2008 is an excellent way to be caught completely off-guard.

  Crises may rhyme, but they don't repeat. The next Global Financial Meltdown won't start in subprime mortgages–that sector has been wiped out, written down, or passed on to the poor tax-donkey taxpayers.

  The next crisis also won't arise on money-center banks, either. Central banks have figured out how to bail out the banks, and have rebuilt the bank balance sheets by stripping hundreds of billions of dollars in interest from savers.

  (Sorry, widows and orphans–your interest income had to be transferred to the big banks. We're sure you understand why the banks are more important than you are as you enjoy yet another meal of canned beans and saltine crackers.)

  The central banks and state treasuries around the globe may be confident they can bail out the banks, but what if the next domino to fall isn't a bank? What if it is a "safe, high yield asset" held by institutional owners such as pension funds, insurance companies and REITs (real estate investment trusts)?

  What if the next crisis isn't a spot of bother caused by excessive leverage, but a systemic collapse of collateral as an entire sector–retailers holding millions of square feet of bricks-and-mortar store space–falls off a cliff?

  Consider this chart of sky-high commercial real estate (CRE) valuations…

  

  and this photo of a decimated major mall…

  

  and this partial list of retail closures, some due to bankruptcy, others due to downsizing, and others that claim to be downsizing but are actually the initial stages of liquidation.

  

  Talk about an overvalued market set up for a fall. It isn't just malls becoming empty retail wastelands–it's Corporate America shifting to flex-work and work-at-home, slashing the need for floor after floor of costly business-park office space.

  It's about restaurants moving to smaller spaces as they move to serving more meals via delivery services.

  Commercial real estate is grossly overbuilt in retail and office space. Combine sky-high valuations with cratering demand and billions in short-term CRE loans that must be rolled over into new loans, and we don't have a liquidity crisis, we have a collateral crisis— the assets supporting the debt are no longer worth the loan balance.

  Unless the Federal Reserve intends to buy up every dead and dying mall in America, this is one crisis that the Fed can't bail out with a few digital keystrokes. Gordon T. Long and I discuss this brewing crisis and its potentially devastating consequences in our program Is Retail CRE The Next Financial Implosion? (YouTube)(34:12).

  

  

• If You Think Your Job Is One That Cannot Be Automated, You're In For A Rude Awakening

  Via Duane of FreeMarketShooter.com,

  It is pretty accepted knowledge that a number of lower-skilled jobs will disappear in the coming 5-10 years, due to the human element being replaced by autonomous machines. 

  

  One of the most at-risk professions is that of Truck Driver, which as 13D Research points out, is one of the no.1 reasons you rarely (if ever) hear President Trump discuss automation in the workplace:

  A widely circulated NPR graphic shows “truck driver” was the most common job in more than half of the U.S. states in 2014?—?in part because how the Bureau of Labor Statistics sorts common jobs, such as educators, into small groups. Indeed, truck driving is one of the last jobs standing that affords good pay (median salary for tractor-trailer drivers, $40,206) and does not require a college degree. According to the American Trucking Association, there are 3.5 million professional truck drivers in the U.S. Entire businesses (think restaurants and motels) and hundreds of small communities, supporting an additional 5.2 million people, have been built around serving truckers crisscrossing the nation. That’s 8.7 million trucking-related jobs. It also represents one of Trump’s most important voting blocs?—?working-class men.

  And while it may be further out on the timeline, if you think your job requires a higher, special element of skill and mental acuity that just cannot be automated, you are probably very mistaken.  In fact, there are few (if any) jobs in which a machine would be inferior to a person.  And this is not as far out in the future as you may think.

  Just imagine, how Truck Drivers would have reacted if ten years ago, you told them that they would be at risk of being replaced by a machine?  And this isn’t some far-off vision of the future… it is happening now:

  But like many of the blue-collar jobs the President promised to save during his campaign, the future of these 3.5 million trucking jobs is less than certain. Fully automated trucks could put half of America’s truckers out of a job within a decade, The Los Angeles Times reported last year. This isn’t an imagined future. It’s already happening. Otto, an automated trucking company acquired by Uber, made a delivery of beer last year and has been approved to travel two routes in Ohio.

   

  Last year, Noel Perry, an analyst at industry research firm FTR Transportation Intelligence, told The International Business Times: “Despite a shortage in high-quality drivers, pay hasn’t gone up in five years. Trucks are easier to drive.” So-called “soft-automation” features, like automatic braking and lane assist, mean the trucks can already be driven by less experienced operators commanding smaller salaries. Even ahead of automation, the profession is losing traction. Perry’s final remark to IBT strikes to the heart of the matter?—?“The free market produces jobs, the government doesn’t.”

  

  Now imagine, telling lower level lawyers, doctors, programmers, accountants, etc, that their jobs are at risk now.  While many people would scoff at the notion, they are likely the same people who scoffed at the notion of trucks being automated ten years ago.  Denis Sproten explained a lot of the history and future of automation of labor recently:

  A short introduction, first there were the luddites, destroying machinery, which automated mundane tasks. People tell us, we should be happy that we don’t need to do these anymore. This is all history, from which we moved on:

  • Working the fields / weaving: Let’s assume that required a machine with IQ 80 or MIQ of 80, production increased and more products were sold on markets, consumption increased, transportation was needed and distribution of goods into shops. More roads were needed etc, we found a replacement occupation in the next layer.
  • Working as a driver / service industry : assume it requires a machine of IQ 100-110, more complex tasks, product knowledge, navigation, forms to be filled, start of knowledge industry. These jobs are being replaced now as we get automated trucks, drones delivering, online shops replacing shops on the street.
  • Working in an office Knowledge Industry : assume it requires an IQ of 100-120, even more complex tasks, which involve creation of new products, design, programming, lawyers, accountants, doctors etc. We are not there yet, but we soon will have AI which can do basic tasks of doctors, writing news articles, design thinking, algorithms which categorise knowledge and lets you search it.

   

  People are being pushed to become Data Scientists, AI programmers, math geniuses writing algorithms, all jobs which likely require an IQ of 130+. Programs can now write music and are starting to be creative.

   

  

   

  The trend I see is that, yes we will be able to find new jobs, but they will require really highly intelligent people, which covers only a small percentage of the population, no matter how much education they have received. Maybe becoming cyborgs will be the answer, if we believe Elon Musk.

  More “intelligent” machines below the scale of a true “A.I.” means a growing number of jobs will be “outsourced” to machines, and they will never be coming back.  Even now, you likely find yourself with less reason to visit the doctor, because you can just go on WebMD and see if there is a simple solution to what ails you.  Imagine that function being extrapolated across a series of machines at the basic level of medicine, to serve your needs for more common medical questions/issues.  Wouldn’t that eliminate the need for a significant number of medical professionals?

  Medicine is just one example, because truly nothing is off limits.  “Humans Need Not Apply” explained this masterfully over two years ago – if you think your job is “safe” because “a machine could never do it,” you better think again.

  (Note: This video is 15 minutes long, and while I’m hesitant to post lengthy videos, since the attention span of viewers for short clips drops significantly after one minute, you may reconsider your job security after seeing this one.)

  All of this is a precursor to a topic I plan on discussing in the future – not if, but when, a machine is created that is as capable (or more likely, far superior to and more capable than) as a human being.  What will that machine look like and be capable of?  How will it view and process the existence of humans, and/or threat human beings pose to its own existence?  It is something you have seen in many sci-fi movies, and discussed by many billionaire business moguls and scientists.  Still, there are many aspects of A.I. that have not been touched on by the ongoing discussion, mostly related to how a machine would react, knowing that it is superior to its human creators.

  In the meantime, while the machines created today and in the near future might not be more capable than their human creators, they are going to become exceedingly efficient at the jobs they are built to do.  And one of those jobs a machine might replace, is yours.  Whether this is something that a politician is willing to discuss or not, you should think long and hard about what it will take for a machine to replace you in the workplace, and what you will do with your life if that happens to you while you’re still in your working years.

  

  

  

• Snowden: What The Wikileaks Revelations Show Is "Reckless Beyond Words"

  While it has been superficially covered by much of the press – and one can make the argument that what Julian Assange has revealed is more relevant to the US population, than constant and so far unconfirmed speculation that Trump is a puppet of Putin – the fallout from the Wikileaks’ “Vault 7” release this morning of thousands of documents demonstrating the extent to which the CIA uses backdoors to hack smartphones, computer operating systems, messenger applications and internet-connected televisions, will be profound.

  As evidence of this, the WSJ cites an intelligence source who said that “the revelations were far more significant than the leaks of Edward Snowden.”

  Mr. Snowden’s leaks revealed names of programs, companies that assist the NSA in surveillance and in some cases the targets of American spying. But the recent leak purports to contain highly technical details about how surveillance is carried out. That would make them far more revealing and useful to an adversary, this person said. In one sense, Mr. Snowden provided a briefing book on U.S. surveillance, but the CIA leaks could provide the blueprints.

  Speaking of Snowden, the former NSA contractor-turned-whistleblower, who now appears to have a “parallel whisteblower” deep inside the “Deep State”, i.e., the source of the Wikileaks data – also had some thoughts on today’s CIA dump.

  In a series of tweets, Snowden notes that “what @Wikileaks has here is genuinely a big deal”, and makes the following key observations “If you’re writing about the CIA/@Wikileaks story, here’s the big deal: first public evidence USG secretly paying to keep US software unsafe” and adds that “the CIA reports show the USG developing vulnerabilities in US products, then intentionally keeping the holes open. Reckless beyond words.”

  He then asks rhetorically “Why is this dangerous?” and explains “Because until closed, any hacker can use the security hole the CIA left open to break into any iPhone in the world.“

  His conclusion, one which many of the so-called conspiratorial bent would say was well-known long ago: “Evidence mounts showing CIA & FBI knew about catastrophic weaknesses in the most-used smartphones in America, but kept them open — to spy.”

  To which the increasingly prevalent response has become: “obviously.”

  Still working through the publication, but what @Wikileaks has here is genuinely a big deal. Looks authentic.

  — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) March 7, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  If you’re writing about the CIA/@Wikileaks story, here’s the big deal: first public evidence USG secretly paying to keep US software unsafe. pic.twitter.com/kYi0NC2mOp

  — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) March 7, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The CIA reports show the USG developing vulnerabilities in US products, then intentionally keeping the holes open. Reckless beyond words.

  — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) March 7, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Why is this dangerous? Because until closed, any hacker can use the security hole the CIA left open to break into any iPhone in the world. https://t.co/xK0aILAdFI

  — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) March 7, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Evidence mounts showing CIA & FBI knew about catastrophic weaknesses in the most-used smartphones in America, but kept them open — to spy. https://t.co/mDyVred3H8

  — Edward Snowden (@Snowden) March 7, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  

  

• Only In Cali – Strip Poker Playing Ex-Mayor Stole Money From Kids Programs To Fund Filipino Fetish

  Last summer we wrote about the arrest of Stockton, California’s mayor, Anthony Silva, after an FBI investigation resulted in charges of playing strip poker and providing alcohol to minors at a youth camp he ran for impoverished children (see “Politicians Gone Wild: Underage Strip Poker, Meth For Sex, & White Males Need Not Apply“).

  As if that weren’t bad enough, Silva is back in the news today after once again being arrested at the San Francisco International Airport on a whole new slate of charges including embezzlement, money laundering and grand theft with aggravated white collar crime enhancements.

  Charges were brought by the San Joaquin District Attorney and allege that between 2010 and 2014 Silva stole “hundreds of thousands of dollars” from the Boys and Girls Club of Stockton through a variety of embezzlement schemes.  That said, the depth of the embezzlement is still unknown as the DA is reviewing a total of $2.7 million that flowed out of Club accounts over the four year period in question. Per ABC 10:

  The DA alleges in the six felony counts, from January 1, 2010 to February 24, 2014, Silva defrauded and ripped off hundreds of thousands of dollars from the Stockton Kids Club.

   

  They allege he pocketed the cash into his own personal bank account, taking control of Kids Club bank accounts and credit cards.

   

  The DA said $2.7 million in a three year period flowed out of the Kids Club accounts in the form of “at best” 50,000 checks.

   

  “How and where it went, we don’t know,” Deputy DA Robert Himelblau said.

  So what did Silva spend the money on?  Well, apparently a good portion of the funds went to cover several trips to the Philippines as well as the monthly dues associated with an online dating website called “filipinocupid.com” and numerous stays at his local Motel 6.  We assume his Motel 6 stays were funded by the hour which helped to preserve at least some cash for the poor kids of Stockton.

  “He destroyed 45 years of good work at the Boys & Girls Club, a well-respected and heavily endowed institution for his own personal, ill gotten gains,” District Attorney Tori Verber Salazar said.

   

  Silva allegedly used the cash on dating website filipinocupid.com. He also allegedly used the money on trips to the Philippines, South Lake Tahoe, Motel 6 and Best Buy.

   

  Silva is also accused of what Himelblau called “double dipping.” He explained employees who work at the Stockton Kids Club are paid by the Stockton Unified School District.

   

  But, Himelblau said evidence was found that Silva also pocketed grant money given to the Kids Club by the national Boys & Girls Club.

   

  “Then what Mr. Silva did was create a duplicate set of time cards and submitted them to the national Boys & Girl Club. That’s the double dipping scheme. Those are the documents Mr. Silva signed saying he would not receive reimbursement for duplicate services,” Himelblau said

  Silva plead not guilty to all 6 charges and is currently being detained on a $1 million bail. 

  It’s no wonder that TV ratings are in the tank…it’s almost impossible to make up content salacious enough to compete with reality.

   

  http://interactive.tegna-media.com/video/embed/embed.html?id=2531501&type=video&title=Anthony%20Silva%20pleads%20'not%20guilty'%20to%20financial%20crimes&site=103&playerid=6918249996581&dfpid=32805352&dfpposition=Video_prestream_external§ion=home

  

  

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• The Government Is The Enemy Of Freedom

  Via John Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute,

  “Rights aren’t rights if someone can take them away. They’re privileges. That’s all we’ve ever had in this country, is a bill of temporary privileges. And if you read the news even badly, you know that every year the list gets shorter and shorter. Sooner or later, the people in this country are gonna realize the government … doesn’t care about you, or your children, or your rights, or your welfare or your safety… It’s interested in its own power. That’s the only thing. Keeping it and expanding it wherever possible.” – George Carlin

  My friends, we’re being played for fools.

  On paper, we may be technically free.

  In reality, however, we are only as free as a government official may allow.

  We only think we live in a constitutional republic, governed by just laws created for our benefit.

  Truth be told, we live in a dictatorship disguised as a democracy where all that we own, all that we earn, all that we say and do—our very lives—depends on the benevolence of government agents and corporate shareholders for whom profit and power will always trump principle. And now the government is litigating and legislating its way into a new framework where the dictates of petty bureaucrats carry greater weight than the inalienable rights of the citizenry.

  We’re in trouble, folks.

  Freedom no longer means what it once did.

  This holds true whether you’re talking about the right to criticize the government in word or deed, the right to be free from government surveillance, the right to not have your person or your property subjected to warrantless searches by government agents, the right to due process, the right to be safe from soldiers invading your home, the right to be innocent until proven guilty and every other right that once reinforced the founders’ belief that this would be “a government of the people, by the people and for the people.”

  Not only do we no longer have dominion over our bodies, our families, our property and our lives, but the government continues to chip away at what few rights we still have to speak freely and think for ourselves.

  If the government can control speech, it can control thought and, in turn, it can control the minds of the citizenry.

  The unspoken freedom enshrined in the First Amendment is the right to think freely and openly debate issues without being muzzled or treated like a criminal.

  In other words, if we no longer have the right to tell a Census Worker to get off our property, if we no longer have the right to tell a police officer to get a search warrant before they dare to walk through our door, if we no longer have the right to stand in front of the Supreme Court wearing a protest sign or approach an elected representative to share our views, if we no longer have the right to protest unjust laws by voicing our opinions in public or on our clothing or before a legislative body—no matter how misogynistic, hateful, prejudiced, intolerant, misguided or politically incorrect they might be—then we do not have free speech.

  What we have instead is regulated, controlled speech, and that’s a whole other ballgame.

  Protest laws, free speech zones, bubble zones, trespass zones, anti-bullying legislation, zero tolerance policies, hate crime laws and a host of other legalistic maladies dreamed up by politicians and prosecutors are conspiring to corrode our core freedoms purportedly for our own good.

  For instance, the protest laws being introduced across the country—in 18 states so far—are supposedly in the name of “public safety and limiting economic damage.”

  Don’t fall for it.

  No matter how you package these laws, no matter how well-meaning they may sound, no matter how much you may disagree with the protesters or sympathize with the objects of the protest, these proposed laws are aimed at one thing only: discouraging dissent.

  In Arizona, police would be permitted to seize the assets of anyone involved in a protest that at some point becomes violent.

  In Minnesota, protesters would be forced to pay for the cost of having police on hand to “police” demonstrations.

  Oregon lawmakers want to “require public community colleges and universities to expel any student convicted of participating in a violent riot.”

  A proposed North Dakota law would give drivers the green light to “accidentally” run over protesters who are blocking a public roadway. Florida and Tennessee are entertaining similar laws.

  Pushing back against what it refers to as “economic terrorism,” Washington wants to increase penalties for protesters who block access to highways and railways.

  Anticipating protests over the Keystone Pipeline, South Dakota wants to apply the governor’s emergency response authority to potentially destructive protests, create new trespassing penalties and make it a crime to obstruct highways.

  In Iowa, protesters who block highways with speeds posted above 55 mph could spend five years in prison, plus a fine of up to $7,500. Obstruct traffic in Mississippi and you could be facing a $10,000 fine and a five-year prison sentence.

  A North Carolina law would make it a crime to heckle state officials. Under this law, shouting at a former governor would constitute a crime.

  Indiana lawmakers wanted to authorize police to use “any means necessary” to breakup mass gatherings that block traffic. That legislation has since been amended to merely empower police to issue fines for such behavior.

  Georgia is proposing harsh penalties and mandatory sentencing laws for those who obstruct public passages or throw bodily fluids on “public safety officers.”

  Virginia wants to subject protesters who engage in an “unlawful assembly” after “having been lawfully warned to disperse” with up to a year of jail time and a fine of up to $2,500.

  Missouri wants to make it illegal for anyone participating in an “unlawful assembly” to intentionally conceal “his or her identity by the means of a robe, mask, or other disguise.”

  Colorado wants to lock up protesters for up to 18 months who obstruct or tamper with oil and gas equipment and charge them with up to $100,000 in fines.

  Oklahoma wants to create a sliding scale for protesters whose actions impact or impede critical infrastructure. The penalties would range from $1,000 and six months in a county jail to $100,000 and up to 10 years in prison. And if you’re part of an organization, that fine goes as high as $1,000,000.

  Michigan hopes to make it easier for courts to shut down “mass picketing” demonstrations and fine protesters who block entrances to businesses, private residences or roadways up to $1,000 a day. That fine jumps to $10,000 a day for unions or other organizing groups.

  Ask yourself: if there are already laws on the books in all of the states that address criminal or illegal behavior such as blocking public roadways or trespassing on private property—because such laws are already on the books—then why does the government need to pass laws criminalizing activities that are already outlawed?

  What’s really going on here?

  No matter what the politicians might say, the government doesn’t care about our rights, our welfare or our safety.

  How many times will we keep falling for the same tricks?

  Every despotic measure used to control us and make us cower and fear and comply with the government’s dictates has been packaged as being for our benefit, while in truth benefiting only those who stand to profit, financially or otherwise, from the government’s transformation of the citizenry into a criminal class.

  Remember, the Patriot Act didn’t make us safer. It simply turned American citizens into suspects and, in the process, gave rise to an entire industry—private and governmental—whose profit depends on its ability to undermine our Fourth Amendment rights.

  Placing TSA agents in our nation’s airports didn’t make us safer. It simply subjected Americans to invasive groping, ogling and bodily searches by government agents. Now the TSA plans to subject travelers to even more “comprehensive” patdowns.

  So, too, these protest laws are not about protecting the economy or private property or public roads. Rather, they are intended to muzzle discontent and discourage anyone from challenging government authority.

  These laws are the shot across the bow.

  They’re intended to send a strong message that in the American police state, you’re either a patriot who marches in lockstep with the government’s dictates or you’re a pariah, a suspect, a criminal, a troublemaker, a terrorist, a radical, a revolutionary.

  Yet by muzzling the citizenry, by removing the constitutional steam valves that allow people to speak their minds, air their grievances and contribute to a larger dialogue that hopefully results in a more just world, the government is deliberately stirring the pot, creating a climate in which violence becomes inevitable.

  When there is no steam valve—when there is no one to hear what the people have to say, because government representatives have removed themselves so far from their constituents—then frustration builds, anger grows and people become more volatile and desperate to force a conversation.

  Then again, perhaps that was the government’s plan all along.

  As John F. Kennedy warned in March 1962, “Those who make peaceful revolution impossible will make violent revolution inevitable.”

  The government is making violent revolution inevitable.

  How do you lock down a nation?

  You sow discontent and fear among the populace. You terrorize the people into believing that radicalized foreigners are preparing to invade. You teach them to be non-thinkers who passively accept whatever is told them, whether it’s delivered by way of the corporate media or a government handler. You brainwash them into believing that everything the government does is for their good and anyone who opposes the government is an enemy. You acclimate them to a state of martial law, carried out by soldiers disguised as police officers but bearing the weapons of war. You polarize them so that they can never unite and stand united against the government. You create a climate in which silence is golden and those who speak up are shouted down. You spread propaganda and lies. You package the police state in the rhetoric of politicians.

  And then, when and if the people finally wake up to the fact that the government is not and has never been their friend, when it’s too late for peaceful protests and violence is all that remains to them as a recourse against tyranny, you use all of the tools you’ve been so carefully amassing—the criminal databases and surveillance and identification systems and private prisons and protest laws—and you shut them down for good.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, once a government assumes power—unconstitutional or not—it does not relinquish it. The militarized police are not going to stand down. The NSA will continue to collect electronic files on everything we do. More and more Americans are going to face jail time for offenses that prior generations did not concern themselves with.

  The government—at all levels—could crack down on virtually anyone at any time.

  Martin Luther King saw it coming: both the “spontaneous explosion of anger by various citizen groups” and the ensuing crackdown by the government.

  “Police, national guard and other armed bodies are feverously preparing for repression,” King wrote shortly before he was assassinated. “They can be curbed not by unorganized resort to force…but only by a massive wave of militant nonviolence….It also may be the instrument of our national salvation.”

  Militant nonviolent resistance.

  “A nationwide nonviolent movement is very important,” King wrote. “We know from past experience that Congress and the President won’t do anything until you develop a movement around which people of goodwill can find a way to put pressure on them… This means making the movement powerful enough, dramatic enough, morally appealing enough, so that people of goodwill, the churches, laborers, liberals, intellectuals, students, poor people themselves begin to put pressure on congressmen to the point that they can no longer elude our demands.

  “It must be militant, massive nonviolence,” King emphasized.

  In other words, besides marches and protests, there would have to be civil disobedience. Civil disobedience forces the government to expend energy in many directions, especially if it is nonviolent, organized and is conducted on a massive scale. This is, as King knew, the only way to move the beast. It is the way to effect change without resorting to violence. And it is exactly what these protest laws are attempting to discourage

  We are coming to a crossroads. Either we gather together now and attempt to restore freedom or all will be lost. As King cautioned, “everywhere, ‘time is winding up,’ in the words of one of our spirituals, corruption in the land, people take your stand; time is winding up.”

  

  

• Prisoners Explain Why A Pack Of Mackerel Is The Gold Standard Of Currencies In America's Prisons

  In 2004, the U.S. banned cigarettes in all federal prisons and it was pretty much the best thing that could have happened to the packaged mackerel industry (yes, you read that correctly…the packaged fish).

  So how did a smelly package of fish become the gold standard of America’s federal prisons?  Well, for a variety of reasons (we’ll let your imagination run wild) prisoners are not allowed to possess actual currency.  Up until 2004, they used cigarettes as their currency of choice to purchase anything from illicit goods such as stolen food and home-brewed “prison hooch,” as well as services, such as shoeshines and cell cleanings.  But once cigarettes were banned, prisoners needed a replacement currency and the ‘mack’ was deemed to be the best choice because it was worth roughly $1 at the commissary and pretty much no one wanted to eat it.

  As one prisoner notes in the Wall & Broadcast video below, the ‘mack’ was also “inherently inflationary” because its supply was limited to 14 macks per week per inmate….

  “Mackerel had utility because it was inherently inflationary.  A certain amount of macks came into circulation every day.  Every inmate can only buy 14 mackerels per week.  14 times 500 inmates time 52 weeks is the amount of mackerels that are coming into circulation every year and that’s why it was a pretty good stable value of currency.”

   

  “The reasons mackerel had value is because inmates believed it had value.  Perfect example of that was mackerels expire after three years. But, people didn’t jut throw them away, these became known as “money macks” and retained 75% of the value of “eating macks” because people believed that they still had value and they were still being used in transactions.”

  …that is at least until prison guards confiscated a massive supply of macks from one prisoner and essentially flooded the market creating a hyper-inflationary environment.

  “I’ll never forget the day where the macks lost all their value almost overnight.  Someone had a huge amount of money macks and they got confiscated and the administration left them sitting in a bucket.  They essentially introduced hyperinflation.  They flooded the market with money macks.”

  Perhaps Yellen & Co. could learn a thing or two from this lesson in prison economics.

  

  

• US Begins Deployment Of Controversial THAAD Anti-Missile System To South Korea

  Well that escalated quickly. Just a day after North Korea's test firing of 4 missiles towards US bases in Japan, and hours after North Korea warned the world was "on the brink of nuclear war" due to US-South Korea "maneuvers," CNN reports the first pieces of the controversial US-built missile defense system (designed to mitigate the threat of North Korean missiles) arrived at the Osan Air Base in South Korea Monday night, according to the US military.

  

  The decision in January to deploy the Terminal High Altitude Area Defense (THAAD) missile system, had angered both Russian and Chinese officials:

  "We think the US-South Korean decision to deploy the THAAD missile defense system has seriously threatened China's security interest. For the region, it will also break the strategic balance. So it's completely understandable to see countries in the region firmly oppose this decision," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Lu Kang said. "China and other countries have to address our own legitimate security concerns and take necessary measures to safeguard our security interest."

   

  "Deployment of US missile defense systems in South Korea clearly goes beyond the tasks of deterring 'the North Korean threat,'" Russian Deputy Defense Minister Anatoly Antonov said in October, according to Russian state-run Tass news agency.

  And now – dramatically faster than expected – the deployment has begun.

  Some equipments including 2 launch pads for U.S. missile defense system known as Thaad arrived in South Korea on Monday and will continue to be brought in, Yonhap News says, citing unidentified South Korean military official.

  "Continued provocative actions by North Korea, to include yesterday's launch of multiple missiles, only confirm the prudence of our alliance decision last year to deploy THAAD to South Korea," Adm. Harry Harris, commander, US Pacific Command, said in a news release.

   

  US Secretary of Defense James Mattis and South Korean Defense Secretary Han Min-koo spoke over the phone last week and agreed that THAAD should be deployed "ASAP."

  White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer signaled the deployment Monday when he told reporters that the United States is "taking steps to enhance our ability to defend against North Korea's ballistic missiles, such as through the deployment of a THAAD battery to South Korea." U.S. defense officials confirmed to NBC News on Monday night that that meant delivery was already under way — not that the United States was simply restating its previous promises to send the system to South Korea sometime in the future.

  

  The US and its allies in the region, notably South Korea and Japan, tend to focus on THAAD's defensive nature. They tout its value as a system to prevent a missile from hitting a target and killing people.

  "This is purely a defensive measure that the alliance must take in light of the serious threat posed by North Korean missiles," Chris Bush, a spokesman for the US Forces in Korea said.

  But Beijing and Moscow don't see it that way.

  "We do not have any doubts that US, with support of their allies, will continue to build up the potential of the Asia Pacific segment of their global missile system, which will inevitably lead to disruption of established strategic balances both in the Asia Pacific and beyond."

  Interestingly, it's not just Russian and Chinese officials that are against the US deployment of THAAD; South Korean presidential candidate Lee Jae-myung and mayor of Seongnam City commented:

  "We have to realize clearly that THAAD cannot stop the nuclear missiles coming from the DPRK. How can the 48 missiles of THAAD stop the over 1,000 missiles from the DPRK? The north of Chungcheongbuk-do and the capital area jointly account for more than half of our population and most of our territory. THAAD cannot even cover these areas, but merely increases the regional military tensions. To be honest, deploying THAAD will hurt both us and China. No one will gain anything from it. The starting point of THAAD is wrong, so we have to reconsider it completely. Otherwise, our future will be gloomy, chaotic and insecure."

  Clearly the rush to get THAAD deployed counters any pre-emptive rejection by Lee. We are sure China's response will be swift at this apparent 'retaliation' by the US.

  As Strategic Culture's Nan Li previously noted, China is opposed to THAAD deployment for several reasons.

  First, Chinese analysts believe that THAAD in South Korea is intended to intercept missiles launched, not from North Korea, but from China and Russia. THAAD has an operational range of 200 kilometers (km) and is designed to intercept missiles at altitudes between 40 and 180 km. Such altitudes, according to analysts from the People’s Liberation Army (PLA), match the “terminal phase” of the intermediate, long-range and even intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM), or those with ranges exceeding 3,500 km. PLA analysts also claim that they match the “mid-course phase” of medium-range missiles, or those with ranges between 1,000 and 3,500 km, including China’s DF-21 and DF-26 missiles. Because the direct threats to South Korea — including the Seoul area, where 40 percent of the South Korean population resides — are North Korea’s long-range artilleries and short-range ballistic missiles, THAAD, they believe, is clearly a mismatch against such threats.

  Chinese analysts are particularly concerned about THAAD’s X-band radar. Even though it would be configured as a fire-control radar with a detection range of 600 km, it perhaps could be reconfigured as an early-warning radar, which allows a detection range exceeding 2,000 km. Such a range suggests that China’s missile activities on land and at sea in northern and eastern China may be mostly exposed. The radar allegedly can see the critical processes where warheads and decoys are released during China’s strategic missile tests. In times of war, it can undermine the reliability of China’s strategic deterrent because in comparison with Alaska-based radars, it is believed to be capable of acquiring more than ten minutes of early warning time against China’s strategic ballistic missiles. It can also differentiate real warheads from decoys. If integrated into the U.S. national missile defense network, this radar allegedly can increase the odds of success in intercepting Chinese missiles even at their “boost phase,” reducing further the reliability of China’s already small strategic deterrent and tilting the strategic balance in favor of the United States.

  Moreover, Chinese analysts believe that the Korean Peninsula has historically been a nearby sphere critical to China’s security. They worry that by deploying THAAD, South Korea could share data with the United States and Japan on air traffic control, air defense, and early warning. This may help to integrate South Korea-based systems with U.S. and Japanese sensors and sea-based Aegis systems, with the goal of forming a trilateral strategic alliance to contain China at China’s door steps. Chinese analysts believe that North Korean nuclear tests were only an excuse used by the United States to deploy THAAD, the real U.S. intention being to drive a wedge between South Korea and China at a time when China-South Korea relations were improving substantially, as reflected in the countries’ booming bilateral trade and Park Geun-hye’s attendance at the Victory Day Parade in Beijing in September 2015. THAAD deployment would bring the United States and South Korea closer at the expense of China’s security. This could help the United States to stabilize U.S.-South Korea relations and prevent the possible loss of the U.S. military foothold on the Korean Peninsula.

  Furthermore, Chinese analysts believe that THAAD deployment in South Korea may encourage Japan to import THAAD to compensate for the range deficiencies of its PAC-3 missile defense systems. They also believe that South Korea’s decision would not only harm South Korea-China relations, but also harm South Korea itself by removing its “strategic flexibility” in balancing among major powers and in handling North-South relations. By directly challenging China’s strategic security interests, some argue, South Korea has also set a bad example for China’s neighbors to follow if no substantial cost is incurred to South Korea. Finally, Chinese analysts claim that THAAD deployment would not deter North Korea from developing nuclear weapons, but instead may drive it to develop more and better nuclear weapons and missiles.

  Chinese analysts have proposed a wide range of countermeasures to retaliate against the THAAD deployment. They argue that to restore regional “strategic balance,” China should cooperate with Russia in developing strategic offensive weapons, particularly in developing “penetration” technologies that can defeat missile defense. Other proposed countermeasures include concealment and redeployment of China’s strategic capabilities to reduce their exposure to the THAAD radar, and accelerated development of China’s own missile defense systems. Other analysts argue for economic sanctions.

  

  

• Schlichter Warns "Watch The Liberals – All They Have Left Is Lies"

  Via Kurt Schlichter of Townhall.com,

  Suddenly the Democrats are coming out against their classic moves like cavorting with Russians to hack American elections and perjury (like you need a link), so who knows which of their foundational principles they will pull a 180 on and betray next: Climate scams? Free money for deadbeats? Jane Fonda?

  

  But they don’t really mean it – hell, without perjury they could never testify to anything. If you want to know what the liberals are up to, just listen to the lies they are telling about conservatives. They used to be able to get away with it too, but thanks to the interwebs Al Gore invented between buffet deep dives and sweaty masseuse gropes, the political playing field for liberal liars is now covered in rakes.

  Lying is what they do because that’s all they have left on the left. They have no foundational principles except power. Their entire ideology is transactional – it’s not based on ideas but on payoffs to Democrat sub-sets. Here’s some dough for the baby crunching industry! We’ll hassle some Christian bakers for the SJWs! Let’s put a bunch of cis-het males of pallor who don’t even listen to NPR out of work in West Tennetucky, or wherever they grow coal, to delight our global warming cultist pals!

  But today the Democrats hold no levers of power, and they can’t dispense goodies anymore. All they can do now is howl, whine, and lie, and try to mobilize the parasites burrowed into the federal bureaucracy to undercut the will of normal Americans. They do this by falsely accusing us and those who represent us of doing exactly what they are doing and what they intend to do once Trump is ousted. Their goal is to seize power again and permanently disenfranchise us – and they are happy to take the risk of literally ripping the country apart.

  The media is, of course, a willing and eager accomplice in this coordinated campaign of deception and slander. Notice how no one in the mainstream media pointed out how the Sessions perjury lie conveniently appeared simultaneously across the entire media just when the Democrats desperately needed to shift the narrative from their utter humiliation by Trump’s terrific joint address? The media hacks never mentioned it because they were part of it, the beat-boy skeletons to the David S. Pumpkins of progressivism. The left and its media’s problem, however, is that the new information reality means that they can start a controversy, but they can’t control it.

  Here’s the utterly predictable pattern. Spazzy Dems freak out about some imagined atrocity by a conservative then, within a few hours, it becomes clear that the alleged offender did nothing wrong while conservatives scour the web and start showing how Democrat hacks are on record doing exactly the same thing times a zillion. That’s the key – the media can no longer guide the lie to destroy the target. The internet lets us have a say – and to grab the wheel.

  Oh no, Jeff Sessions talked to a Russian then didn’t bring it up when not asked about it! Oh, we Democrats would never do that … except, thanks to us conservatives (and a President who’s willing to punch back twice as hard), here come the photos of Schumer and Ivan sharing a cup of Joe Stalin and here’s Pelosi’s partying with some Russkies after denying it and then the State Department turns out to have arranged it and FOR THE LOVE OF GAIA SOMEBODY SHUT DOWN THAT INTERNET MACHINE BECAUSE IT NEVER FORGETS!

  Frankly, I don’t think Sessions should have dignified their nonsense by recusing himself. I think he should have strolled out before the cameras and said, “Hey Chuckie, I got a big, fat recusal for ya right here!”

  We all kind of knew how the “Trump inspires anti-Semitic threats” meme was going to end up. Swedenpalooza was just a couple fake controversies ago and we all know how that went. Trump observes “Look at Sweden’s immigrant problem,” then the liberal media comes back with “Lies! Sweden is a herring-infused paradise of love and sharing!” at which point Sweden promptly gets on lit fire by Muslim refugees. All that’s missing was a woke, gender-fluid Viking wearing a “Flyktingar Välkommen” t-shirt blowing on a sad trombone.

  Then Jewish Community Centers started getting threats and, of course, it had to be Trump supporters because fanatically pro-Israel people always threaten Jews or something. Facts, shmacts – the bogus narrative must be preserved! So Trump condemns this scummery, but also notes, “Sometimes it’s the reverse, to make people — or to make others — look bad.” Of course, the fake news media went nuts, because no hate crime has ever been a hoax except for almost all of them, so we conservatives settled down with our tea and waited for the ending we totally saw coming. And, of course – of course – as every non-Fredoriffic conservative predicted, the FBI busted the slug responsible for a bunch of the threats and it turned out to be …. wait for it!

  Let’s see. Was it the conservative Trump supporter? Did he have a MAGA hat? Just like the media and the liberals would have you believe? Oh come on, we all knew it. Say it with me: “Leftist member of the media.”

  Um, awkward! Hey, look on the bright side. At least this particular leftist member of the media didn’t murder anyone.

  And, of course, there is the Trump the Authoritarian/Trump the New Hitler meme. Except Trump’s apparently not very good at authoritarianism, since no one seems to be being oppressed. He has a lot of policy ideas, which he openly explained to the American people in his speech, and which he will submit to Congress to be debated and voted upon before being enacted. That seems to correspond pretty closely to how I learned a bill becomes a law on Schoolhouse Rock.

  Well, maybe his enforcing the duly enacted laws passed by Congress to deport illegal aliens counts as authoritarian Hitler stuff, except it seems odd that a leader who is doing what the people’s representatives passed into law instead of unilaterally deciding on his own not to do what the people’s representatives voted to do, and thereby effectively ruling by decree, is a hitlery authoritarian.

  Obama unilaterally changed the immigration law by simply not enforcing it. That seems pretty undemocratic. He also seems to have tapped the communications of his political opponents and left some sleepers in the government dedicated to bringing down the new administration. Maybe I’m being fussy, but those seem super-undemocratic. Naturally, the mainstream media finds this all less disturbing than Kellyanne Conway’s Oval Office footwear.

  Watch the liberals. Listen to what they say, because their lies and their slanders are a road map to their plans for the future. Straightforward from here, given the chance, they absolutely intend to impose the kind of quasi-fascist rule they falsely accuse Trump of contemplating. But their problem is that we now recognize their lies, and we see their endgame, and the collapse of the media gatekeepers means they can no longer keep us blind and isolated. So when they lie, we are going to throw their hypocrisy right back in their withered, pruny faces and there’s nothing they can do to shut us up. Sorry, you lying sacks of socialism, we’re not about to let you rip our country apart.

  

  

• Shocking Video Footage Of Sprawling California Tent City

  California, 1 of only 6 states where Democrats control the governship, statehouse (with a super-majority nonetheless) and state supreme court, is perfectly setup to implement a Bernie Sanders-inspired socialist utopia where everyone makes the same amount of money, enjoys limitless social programs and is never exposed to the horrors of gender-based bathroom signs. 

  And while liberals would like for you to believe that their socialist agenda is the cure for poverty (in addition to pretty much every other problem plaguing the world), California’s reality paints a slightly different picture.  In fact, in just the latest example that all is not well in California’s socialist utopia, Dan Lyman recently exposed this shocking video footage of a sprawling tent city that is ‘home’ to an estimated 1,000 residents. 

  As Lyman points out, what was once a beautiful bike trail along the Pacific Ocean has now been transformed into a tent city, rife with crime, that reeks of garbage and human feces.

  Locals have become increasingly alarmed by the rapid spread of unregulated squatters and their belongings – and their waste.

   

  “As a cyclist who uses the trail to ride to the beach often, over this last year it has gotten substantially worse.  It is unsafe and unsanitary with loose dogs everywhere and human fecal matter scattered on the trail.”

   

  “The area is disgusting and reeks of trash and feces.”

   

  He reports that the bike trail, once popular with outdoors enthusiasts and families which runs for miles to beaches along the Pacific Ocean, has become unsafe as miscreants plot assaults and robberies on passing riders, even laying tripwires across the path.

   

  But California’s Democrats aren’t just failing the poor people that have been relegated to tent cities, as we pointed out last fall (see “Americans Fleeing Expensive, Over-Taxed Metro Areas In Pursuit Of Affordability“) people of all income brackets are fleeing the state in droves.  Not surprisingly, these domestic migrants are flocking to areas with a lower cost of living, lower/no state income taxes, less regulations and higher job growth (aka “Red” states). 

  

   

  Ironically, the dark areas on the map above seem to match perfectly with the dark areas on this map which indicate those with the highest state income tax rates. 

  

   

  But, if Jerry Brown can just get his $100 billion bullet train finished then we’re sure all will be well.

  

  

• CNN Does it Again: Network Suddenly Cuts Off Congressman After He Recited Refugee Crime Stats

  What is with you lunatics on the left and your obsession with refugees? You fucking idiots.

  CNN has a long rich history of suddenly losing connections to their guests, after said guests stumble on a series or words and phrases that goes against their talking points.

  Example 1

  Example 2

  Example 3

  And just now.

  Thank God for the ‘teevee gremlins.’

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

   

  

• How The Market Creates Jobs (And How Government Destroys Them)

  Via Walter Block of The Mises Institute,

  The Creation of Jobs

  If the media tell us that "the opening of XYZ mill has created 1,000 new jobs," we give a cheer. When the ABC company closes and 500 jobs are lost, we're sad. The politician who can provide a subsidy to save ABC is almost assured of wide spread public support for his work in preserving jobs.

  But jobs in and of themselves do not guarantee well-being. Suppose that the employment is to dig huge holes and fill them up again? What if the workers manufacture goods and services that no one wants to purchase? In the Soviet Union, which boasts of giving every worker a job, many jobs are just this unproductive. Production is everything, and jobs are nothing but a means toward that end.

  Imagine the Swiss Family Robinson marooned on a deserted South Sea island. Do they need jobs? No, they need food, clothing, shelter, and protection from wild animals. Every job created is a deduction from the limited, precious labor available. Work must be rationed, not created, so that the market can create the most product possible out of the limited supply of labor, capital goods, and natural resources.

  The same is true for our society. The supply of labor is limited. We must not allow government to create jobs or we lose the goods and services which otherwise would have come into being. We must reserve precious labor for the important tasks still left undone.

  Alternatively, imagine a world where radios, pizzas, jogging shoes, and everything else we might want continuously rained down like manna from heaven. Would we want jobs in such a utopia? No, we could devote ourselves to other tasks – studying, basking in the sun, etc. – that we would undertake for their intrinsic pleasure.

  Instead of praising jobs for their own sake, we should ask why employment is so important. The answer is, because we exist amidst economic scarcity and must work to live and prosper. That's why we should be of good cheer only when we learn that this employment will produce things people actually value, i.e., are willing to buy with their own hard,earned money. And this is something that can only be done in the free market, not by bureaucrats and politicians.

  The Destruction of Jobs

  But what about unemployment? What if people want to work, but can't get a job? In almost every case, government programs are the cause of joblessness.

  Minimum Wage. The minimum wage mandates that wages be set at a government-determined level. To explain why this is harmful, we can use an analogy from biology: there are certain animals that are weak compared to others. For example, the porcupine is defenseless except for its quills, the deer vulnerable except for its speed.

  In economics there are also people who are relatively weak. The disabled, the young, the untrained—all are weak economic actors. But like the weak animals in biology, they have a compensating advantage: the ability to work for lower wages. When the government takes this ability away from them by forcing up pay scales, it is as if the porcupine were shorn of its quills. The result is unemployment, which creates desperate loneliness, isolation, and dependency.

  Consider a young, uneducated, unskilled person, whose productivity is $2.50 an hour in the marketplace. What if the legislature passes a law requiring that he be paid $5 per hour? The employer hiring him would lose $2.50 an hour.

  Consider a man and a woman each with a productivity of $10 per hour, and suppose, because of discrimination or whatever, that the man is paid $ 10 per hour and the woman is paid $8 per hour. It is as if the woman had a little sign on her forehead saying, "Hire me and earn an extra $2 an hour."

  This makes her a desirable employee even for a sexist boss. But when an equal-pay law stipulates that she must be paid the same as the man, the employer can indulge his discriminatory tendencies and not hire her at all, at no cost to himself.

  Comparable Worth. What if government gets the bright idea that nurses and truck drivers ought to be paid the same wage because their occupations are of "intrinsically" equal value? It orders that nurses' wages be raised to the same level, which creates unemployment for women.

  Working Conditions. Laws which force employers to provide certain types of working conditions also create unemployment. For example, migrant fruit and vegetables pickers must have hot and cold running water and modern toilets in the temporary cabins provided for them. This is economically equivalent to wage laws because, from the point of view of the employer, working conditions are almost indistinguishable from money wages. And if the government forces him to pay more, he will have to hire fewer people.

  Unions. When the government forces businesses to hire only union workers, it discriminates against non-union workers, causing them to be at a severe disadvantage or permanently unemployed. Unions exist primarily to keep out competition. They are a state-protected cartel like any other.

  Employment Protection. Employment protection laws, which mandate that no one can be fired without due process, are supposed to protect employees. However, if the government tells the employer that he must keep the employee no matter what, he will tend not to hire him in the first place. This law, which appears to help workers, instead keeps them from employment. And so do employment taxes and payroll taxes, which increase costs to businesses and discourage them from hiring more workers.

  Payroll Taxes. Payroll taxes like Social Security impose heavy monetary and administrative costs on businesses, drastically increasing the marginal cost of hiring new employees.

  Unemployment Insurance. Government unemployment insurance and welfare cause unemployment by subsidizing idleness. When a certain behavior is subsidized—in this case not working—we get more of it.

  Licensing. Regulations and licensing also cause unemployment. Most people know that doctors and lawyers must have licenses. But few know that ferret breeders, falconers, and strawberry growers must also have them. In fact, government regulates over 1,000 occupations in all 50 states. A woman in Florida who ran a soup kitchen for the poor out of her home was recently shut down as an unlicensed restaurant, and many poor people now go hungry as a result.

  When the government passes a law saying certain jobs cannot be undertaken without a license, it erects a legal barrier to entry. Why should it be illegal for anyone to try their hand at haircutting? The market will supply all the information consumers need.

  When the government bestows legal status on a profession and passes a law against competitors, it creates unemployment. For example, who lobbies for the laws which prevent just anyone from giving a haircut? The haircutting industry—not to protect the consumer from bad haircuts, but to protect themselves against competition.

  Peddling. Laws against street peddlers prevent people from selling food and products to people who want them. In cities like New York and Washington, D.C., the most vociferous supporters of anti-peddling laws are established restaurants and department stores.

  Child Labor. There are many jobs that require little training—such as mowing lawns—which are perfect for young people who want to earn some money. In addition to the earnings, working also teaches young people what a job is, how to handle money, and how to save and maybe even invest. But in most places, the government discriminates against teenagers and prevents them from participating in the free enterprise system. Kids can't even have a street-corner lemonade stand.

  The Federal Reserve. By bringing about the business cycle, Federal Reserve money creation causes unemployment. Inflation not only raises prices, it also misallocates labor. During the boom phase of the trade cycle, businesses hire new workers, many of whom are pulled from other lines of work by the higher wages. The Fed subsidy to these capital industries lasts only until the bust. Workers are then laid off and displaced.

  The Free Market. The free market, of course, does not mean Utopia. We live in a world of differing intelligence and skills, of changing market preferences, and of imperfect information, which can lead to temporary, market-generated unemployment, which Mises called "catallactic." And some people choose unemployment by holding out for a higher paying job.

  But as a society, we can insure that everyone who wants to work has a chance to do so by repealing minimum wage law, comparable worth rules, working condition laws, compulsory union membership, employment protection, employment taxes, payroll taxes, government unemployment insurance, welfare, regulations, licensing, anti-peddling laws, child-labor laws, and government money creation.

  The path to jobs that matter is the free market.

  

  

• "The Reality Is, Half Of Americans Can’t Afford To Write A $500 Check"

  The CEO of Assurant appeared on Bloomberg TV to explain why demand for his services is likely to increase: the chief executive of the mobile phone insurer said he expects a surge in demand as carriers charge customers more to replace their devices. “If you think back five years ago, you as a consumer didn’t know how much that phone cost, you thought it was free or close to free,” Assurant’s Alan Colberg said Monday. “Now you’re paying $600, that’s a lot. So we’ve actually seen the attachment rate, or the number of people buying the product, going up a little bit in the last couple of years.”

  He then proceeded to give Bloomberg his traditional sales pitch: Assurant is counting on growth at its business covering phones and appliances to help counter a decline in the segment that insures foreclosed homes for lenders. While improvement in the real estate market has limited the number of vacant homes, Colberg said there are still many cash-strapped consumers.

  It is what he said next that caught our attention: “The reality is, half of Americans can’t afford to write a $500 check,” Colberg said. He spun that stunning statistic by saying that when US customers sign up for a cellular plan, they’re willing to buy protection in case “they lose that phone or something happens to it.”

  In other words, there are millions of Americans who don’t have $500 in the bank but are willing to dish out more than that on a cell phone, and then are stupid enough to make monthly payments that ultimately end up being far higher than $500 to protect their purchase… which they clearly couldn’t afford in the first place.

  * * *

  That said, we decided to look into the CEO’s claim about the woeful state of US finances. What we found is that according to a recent Bankrate survey of 1,000 adults, 57% of Americans don’t have enough cash to cover a mere $500 unexpected expense. Turns out the CEO was right. And while that may appear dire, it is a slight improvement from 2016, when 63% of U.S. residents said they wouldn’t be able to handle such an expense.

  The survey’s findings have shed light on how the so-called recovery of the past 8 years has skipped about half of the US population, which literally live paycheck to paycheck, and reflects a country in which many households continue to struggle with their basic finances more than seven years after the official end to the recession.

  Putting the numbers in context: despite steady job growth during the Obama administration – which have been focused on minimum wage industries – wages have been predictably slow to recover, with the typical American household still earning 2.4% below what they brought home in 1999, when income peaked. Meanwhile, costs for essentials such as housing and child care have surged faster than the rate of inflation, placing stress on household budgets and making the accumulation of wealth, i.e., savings, impossible.

  The bottom line:  About four out of 10 Americans said they had enough in savings to cover a surprise $500 expense. Another 21% said they would rely on a credit card, while 20% said they’d cut back on other expenses. Another 11% said they’d turn to family or friends for the money.

  

  What is even more striking is that among Americans who earn more than $75,000 per year – a third more than the typical U.S. household earns – almost half also said they wouldn’t be able to cover a $500 surprise expense. Ironically, Millennials represent the generation most equipped to handle an emergency cost, with 47 percent saying they have enough in savings to cover one.

  The Bankrate survey findings echoed research published last year by the Federal Reserve, which found that 46% of respondents said they would be challenged to come up with even less, or $400, to cover an emergency expense, and would likely borrow or sell something to afford it. When the Fed asked what types of emergency expenses Americans had actually faced in the last year, more than one out of five cited a major unexpected medical expense. The average expense: $2,782, or almost seven times higher than the Fed’s hypothetical $400 surprise bill.

  How do cell phones fit in all of this? When it comes to reducing spending, dining out is the first place where consumers would cut back, with 6 out of 10 respondents saying they would eat out less. What is the “stickiest” expense? According to Bankrate, the least likely expense to face the chopping block are mobile phone plans, with the survey finding that only 35% said they would cut back on their wireless plans to save money.

  In other words, Americans would rather be hungry than cell phone free. In retrospect, it may turn out be that Assurant’s CEO, whose business model is a big bet on human stupidity, just may have a goldmine on his hands.

  

  

• Wikileaks Releases Encrypted "Vault 7" Torrent, Will Unveil Password Tuesday 9am

  Last month, following a series of seemingly random tweets by Wikileaks, we reported that starting on February 4th, each day Wikileaks began sending out a series of cryptic question Tweets teasing the world about “Vault 7”. The questions were framed in Who, What, When, Where, Why, and How format (but not in that order). Each came with an image “clue”.

  Here they are in chronological order starting with the earliest.

  • What: The first tweet shows a picture of the Svalbard Global Seed Vault.
  • Where: The second tweet shows a picture of a vault in a former salt mine in Merkers, Germany where Nazis stored money, gold, paintings, and other valuables during World War II. This mine vault was captured by the United States in April 1945.
  • When: The third tweet shows a picture of a Pratt & Whitney F119 airplane engine, which is the engine for the Lockheed Martin F-22 Raptor. The picture in the tweet was taken on April 9th, 2010 at Langley Air Force Base as part of a story published on April 12th about the soundproof “hush houses” used for jet engine testing.
  • Who: The fourth tweet shows a picture of the Manning, Assange, and Snowden “infamous spies” posters released by the Defense Security Service.
  • Why: The fifth tweet shows a picture from the article Keeping Structures Strong, which discusses the 509th Civil Engineer Squadron’s work repairing infrastructure on Whiteman Air Force Base. The specific picture tweeted is captioned “Staff Sgt. Adam Boyd, 509th Civil Engineer Squadron structural supervisor, welds a box blade for a snow plow, Feb. 27. Structures Airmen perform jobs such as this one to save the Air Force from having to possibly spend money on parts made by civilian companies.”
  • How: Or, more specifically, “How did #Vault7 make its way to WikiLeaks?” The sixth tweet shows a picture of “Surveillance of mailboxes in Berlin”. The picture is caption “When mailboxes were being observed by Stasi agents, every person posting a letter was photographed. Some films found in the Stasi archives also show persons dressed in civilian clothing emptying the mailbox after the conclusion of the surveillance action.”

  While it is possible that Vault 7 is directly related to one of these pictures, these pictures may just be representative images, part of some sort of pattern, or clues about the answers to the corresponding questions. As the pictures are images of entirely different things (and no longer just pictures of vaults), each individual picture being related to the answer of the question tweeted along with it seems quite plausible.

  Then, after a flurry of appearances over a month ago, the topic of “Vault 7” faded away from the Wikileaks twitter account, until Monday evening, when in a tweet around 7:30pm, Wikileaks announced that it had released an encrypted ‘torrent’ file, just over 500 MB in size and which can be downloaded now at the following URL, will be made accessible for everyone tomorrow at 9am ET when Wikileaks releases the passphrase.

  ENCRYPTED RELEASE
  Use a ‘torrent’ downloader on: https://t.co/gpBxJAoYD5
  And ‘7z’ to decrypt.
  Passphrase will be made public at Tue 9am ET. pic.twitter.com/MxZQtoaCMK

  — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 7, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  In subsequent tweets,  Wikileaks provides further information on how to unzip the encrypted file contained in the torrent.

  How to unarchive a “.7z” (7zip) file: Use a 7zip program. Many are available for Windows/Mac/Linux. Internet search for “7zip”.

  — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 7, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  1) Install ‘transmission’ (https://t.co/DUxLqfVT74)
  2) download https://t.co/gpBxJAoYD5
  3) install ‘7zip’
  4) use it to unpack ‘.7z’ file

  — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 7, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  To unpack Vault 7, part one: “Year Zero”, on a Mac, you can use this ‘.7z’ unarchiver https://t.co/nDNzMv4Gkn https://t.co/uRI8d0w1z1

  — WikiLeaks (@wikileaks) March 7, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Why unveil the contents of “Vault 7”, which some have speculated is a form of an insurance policy for Julian Assange? It may have something to do with Saturday’s report that Guillermo Lasso, the  frontrunner in Ecuador’s presidential election, whose runoff round will take place on April 2, has warned that he will ask “Assange to leave our [London] embassy.” Or it could be something totally different.

  For now, there is no indication what is contained on the released torrent, although we are confident that many will have it downloaded and looking forward to tomorrow’s 9am release of the password to unlock the contents of the mysterious file.

  

  

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• Top NSA Whistleblower: Intelligence Agencies DID Spy On Trump

  Trump claims that the Obama administration bugged Trump Tower before the election.

  Sound nutty?

  Perhaps … but former Attorney General Michael Mukasey said that Trump is probably right that Trump Tower was bugged (by the Justice Department, not Obama personally).

  And chief Fox News Washington correspondent James Rosen – who Obama's Attorney General Eric Holder ordered be bugged … like many other reporters for well over a decade – said he thought Trump might be right:

  Washington's Blog asked the highest-level NSA whistleblower in history – Bill Binney – whether he thought Trump had been bugged.

  Binney is the NSA executive who created the agency’s mass surveillance program for digital information, who served as the senior technical director within the agency, who managed six thousand NSA employees.

  He was a 36-year NSA veteran widely regarded as a “legend” within the agency and the NSA’s best-ever analyst and code-breaker.

  Binney also mapped out the Soviet command-and-control structure before anyone else knew how, and so predicted Soviet invasions before they happened (“in the 1970s, he decrypted the Soviet Union’s command system, which provided the US and its allies with real-time surveillance of all Soviet troop movements and Russian atomic weapons”).

  Binney told Washington's Blog:

  NSA has all the data through the Upstream programs (Fairview/Stormbrew/Blarney)  [background] and backed up by second and some third party country collection.

   

  Plus the FBI and CIA plus others, as of the last month of the Obama administration, have direct access to all the NSA collection (metadata and content on phones,email and banking/credit cards etc.) with no attempt at oversight by anybody [background]. This is all done under Executive Order 12333 [the order which allows unlimited spying no matter what intelligence officials claim] ….

   

  FBI would only ask for a warrant if they wanted to be able to take it into court at some point given they have something meaningful as evidence. This is clearly true given the fact the President Trump's phone conversations with other country leaders were leaked to the mainstream media.

  In other words, Binney is saying that Trumps phones were bugged by the NSA without a warrant – remember, top NSA whistleblowers have previously explained that the NSA is spying on virtually all of the digital communications of Americans. – and the NSA shared the raw data with the CIA, FBI and other agencies.

  If the FBI obtained a warrant to tap Trump's phone, it was a "parallel construction" to "launder" improperly-gained evidence through acceptable channels.

  As we've previously explained:

  The government is “laundering” information gained through mass surveillance through other agencies, with an agreement that the agencies will “recreate” the evidence in a “parallel construction” … so they don’t have to admit that the evidence came from unconstitutional spying. This data laundering is getting worse and worse.

  So does it mean that the NSA spying on Trump Tower actually turned up some dirt?

  Maybe …

  But history shows that mass surveillance has long been used to blackmail opponents … including high-level officials.  And see this.

  And the former NSA director admitted that the mass surveillance is a power grab.

  So we won't know until the intelligence agencies actually show their cards … and reveal what evidence they've gathered.

  

• Worried You Might Buy Bitcoin or Gold, Report 5 Mar, 2017

  The price of gold has been rising, but perhaps not enough to suit the hot money. Meanwhile, the price of bitcoin has shot up even faster. From $412, one year ago, to $1290 on Friday, it has gained over 200% (and, unlike gold, we can say that bitcoin went up—it’s a speculative asset that goes up and down with no particular limit). Compared to the price action in bitcoin, gold seems boring. While this is a virtue for gold to be used as money (and a vice for bitcoin), it does tend to attract those who just want to get into the hottest casino du jure.

  Perhaps predictably, we saw an ad from a gold bullion dealer. This well-known dealer is comparing gold to bitcoin, and urging customers to stick with gold because of gold’s potential for price appreciation. We would not recommend this argument. Whatever the merits of gold may be, going up faster than bitcoin is not among them.

  We spotted an ad today from a mainstream financial adviser. The ad urged clients not to buy gold. This firm should have little need to worry. Stocks have been in a long, long, endless, forever, never-to-end bull market. Gold is not doing anything exciting now. $1234? “WhatEVAH (roll eyes)!” Stocks, well, the prices just keep on going up. Like we said, nothing whatsoever to worry about. Other than declining dividend yields. There’s more than enough irony to go around.

  Speaking of dividend yield, that leads us to an idea. Readers know that we like to compare the yield of one investment to another. This is why we quote the basis as an annualized percentage. You can compare basis to LIBOR easily. And also stocks. Or anything else.

  For example, the basis for December—a maturity of well under a year—is 1.2%. The dividend yield of the S&P stocks is just 1.9%. For that extra 70bps, you are taking a number of known risks, and some unknown risks too.

  It is worth noting that the yield on the 10-year Treasury is up to 2.5%. Yes, that’s right, you are paid less for the risk of investing in big corporations than you are for holding the risk free asset. Of course, the Treasury bond is not really risk free. But in any case, if the Treasury defaults then it’s safe to assume most corporations will be destroyed, if not our whole civilization.

  We have heard the mainstream theory so many times, our heads are hurting. Here are the myths: the Chinese are selling, inflation is coming, and the economy is picking up.

  China is selling. The Chinese people are selling the yuan to buy dollars. When they can get through the increasingly-strict capital controls. The People’s Bank of China takes the other side of the trade—selling dollars and buying yuan—to keep the yuan from collapsing. When a foreign central bank holds dollars, it does not hold paper notes. Nor does it deposit them in a commercial bank. It holds Treasury bonds. Its sales of Treasurys may look scary, but that is just the seen. The unseen is that the Chinese people are buying dollars. Those dollars come back to the Treasury market one way or the other.

  Inflation is coming. The Fed is printing, the quantity of money is going up, there will be demand-pull, etc. Well, if that were true then the last place you would want to be is in an asset whose price is set by the net present value of its future free cash flows. Or at least the price should be. If you think that stock prices have to rise in inflationary periods, look at what happened in the 1970’s.

  The economy is picking up. What can we say? There are two views on this. One has seen (or looked for) green shoots and nascent recoveries since the crisis. The other has seen rising asset prices, and with that a small wealth effect. We will not opine about Trump and the future of the economy here. We just wish to note that junk bonds have not sold off the way Treasurys have. Junk bonds have hardly sold off at all.

  Quite the opposite. They have been massively bid up (i.e. yield has been crushed). We submit for your consideration that if inflation was coming and/or the economy was picking up, you would do even worse in junk bonds than in S&P stocks.

  The 10-year Treasury hit its low yield (so far) of 1.3% in July. Since then, it has been a wild ride mostly up to 2.6% in December. Since then it’s been choppy but falling (i.e. prices rising a bit).

  July also happens to be when the yield on the Swiss 10-year government bond began rising. It made a low of -0.6% (yes, negative). Since then, the yield has gone up (i.e. bond price has gone down) to near zero in December. It is currently -0.1%.

  In Japan, the same occurred. Low yield on the 10-year government bond in July was -0.3%. High was hit in December. Still elevated now, but off the December high.

  It’s almost as if government bond yields around the world were moved by the same drivers, or even connected by some kind of arbitrage…

  Whatever the cause of this worldwide selloff of government bonds may be, it is not selling by China. It is not inflation. It is not expectations that the economy will take off under Trump.

  Maybe it’s just traders looking at price charts, buying because stocks are going up?

  This week, the prices of the metals dropped. As always, the question is what happened to the fundamentals?

  Below, we will show the only true picture of the gold and silver supply and demand. But first, the price and ratio charts.

  The Prices of Gold and Silver
  

  Next, this is a graph of the gold price measured in silver, otherwise known as the gold to silver ratio. It moved sideways again this week.

  The Ratio of the Gold Price to the Silver Price
  

  For each metal, we will look at a graph of the basis and cobasis overlaid with the price of the dollar in terms of the respective metal. It will make it easier to provide brief commentary. The dollar will be represented in green, the basis in blue and cobasis in red.

  Here is the gold graph.

  The Gold Basis and Cobasis and the Dollar Price
  

  This week, our old friend returned. He is the correlation between the price of the gold (i.e. inverse of the price of gold in dollar terms) and the cobasis (i.e. our scarcity indicator). They had been moving together.

  This week, they met up for old time’s sake. The dollar is up from 24.75mg gold to 25.20mg. And the cobasis is up from -0.41% to -0.16%. At least in the April contract which is rapidly approaching First Notice Day, and already under downward pressure. For farther contracts, the cobasis is up, but not that much.

  Our calculated fundamental price dipped twenty bucks. It’s still $150 over the market price.

  Now let’s look at silver.

  The Silver Basis and Cobasis and the Dollar Price
  

  The cobasis in silver move up big-time as well.

  The silver fundamental price also fell, about fifteen cents.

  © 2017 Monetary Metals

  

• A NEW SUPER HERO ON THE RIGHT ARISES: BEHOLD THE 'STICK MAN'

  It’s always darkest before the dawn. During Saturday’s pro-Trump rally in Berkley, CA, antifags attended and started to rabble rouse — spraying old men in the face with pepper spray, acting like reprobate vagabonds — deserving of the stick.

  Then out of nowhere, like the Phoenix rising out from the ash, a superhero appeared — smashing antifags in the heads for sport and pleasure — casting them back into their pits of hell.
  

  BEHOLD, the Stick Man.

  And here’s another video of his greatness — this time slowed down for dramatic effect.

  Heretofore, let this be a lesson to you leftarded anarchists out there trying to spoil all of the fun: stick man is out there, watching you, waiting to bash your brains in with his glorious stick.

  UPDATE: A REAL HERO
  

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

   

  

• "It's A Declaration Of War": South Africa's President Calls For Confiscation Of White Land

  After South Africa’s embattled president Jacob Zuma pledged, in a surprising address to parliament one month ago, to break up white ownership of business and land to reduce inequality (in a State of the Nation address which was disrupted by a fistfight), it now appears that Zuma’s intentions to convert what was until recently Africa’s most prosperous economy into a new Zimbabwe were all too real, and as the Telegraph reports, the South African president officially called on parliament to change South Africa’s constitution to allow the expropriation of white owned land without compensation.

  Zuma, 74, who made the remarks in a speech on Friday morning, said he wanted to establish a “pre-colonial land audit of land use and occupation patterns” before changing the law.

  

  “We need to accept the reality that those who are in parliament where laws are made, particularly the black parties, should unite because we need a two-thirds majority to effect changes in the constitution,” he said.

  In recent months, Zuma, who has lurched from one scandal to another since being elected to office in 2009, has adopted a more populist tone since his ruling African National Congress (ANC) party suffered its worst election result last August since the end of apartheid in 1994. The party lost the economic hub of Johannesburg, the capital Pretoria and the coastal city of Port Elizabeth to the moderate Democratic Alliance party, which already held the city of Cape Town.

  The ANC is also under pressure from the radical Economic Freedom Fighters, led by Julius Malema. Malema has been travelling the country urging black South Africans to take back land from white invaders and “Dutch thugs”. He told parliament this week that his party wanted to “unite black people in South Africa” to expropriate land without compensation.

  “People of South Africa, where you see a beautiful land, take it, it belongs to you,” he said. Although progress has been made in transferring property to black South Africans, land ownership is believed to be skewed in favour of whites more than 20 years after the end of apartheid. The Institute of Race Relations, an independent research body, said that providing a racial breakdown of South Africa’s rural landowners was “almost impossible.”

   

  “In the first place the state owns some 22 per cent of the land in the country, including land in the former homelands, most of which is occupied by black subsistence farmers who have no title and seem unlikely to get it any time soon,” the group said. “This leaves around 78 per cent of land in private hands, but the race of these private owners is not known.”

  As the Telegraph adds, Zuma’s comments caused outrage among groups representing Afrikaans speaking farmers on Friday.

  The Boer Afrikaner Volksraad, which claims to have 40,000 members, said its members would take land expropriation without compensation as “a declaration of war”.

  “We are ready to fight back,” said Andries Breytenbach, the group’s chairman. “We need urgent mediation between us and the government. “If this starts, it will turn into a racial war which we want to prevent.” As noted above, Zuma first mentioned the expropriation of land in his opening of Parliament speech last month, but Friday was the first time he called for a change in the law.

  In his February speech, he controversially called in the military to maintain “law and order” on the streets of Cape Town ahead of expected protests calling for him to step down.

  It was the first time in South Africa’s history, including the heavily militarised apartheid era, that the president has ordered the military to provide security at parliament.

  Meanwhile, the populist wave is spreading and as discussed at the end of February, the local police had to fire rubber bullets into a crowd after anti-immigrant protests turned violent in the capital Pretoria.

  President Zuma’s aggressive move toward redistribution comes as his African National Congress party prepares to elect a new leader to succeed him in December and as he finds himself under growing pressure over corruption allegations. It is disturbing that in order to deflect from his own failings as president, Zuma is willing to risk an economic fate reminiscent that of its neighbor to the north, Zimbabwe, where shortly after a similar confiscation of what land, the economy disintegrated into a hyperinflationary supernova.

  

  It took Zimbabwe 15 years to admit its mistakes, and invite white farmers back. It now appears that South Africa will have to learn from the mistakes of its northern neighbor in due course.

  

  

• Citi's Matt King: "We Think You Should Sell"

  With spreads at post-crisis tights, equities making new highs, and new issues oversubscribed, markets are clearly exuberant. But could it be rational this time? We’re not convinced.

        – Citi’s Matt King

  In a surprisingly bearish report, Citi’s Matt King has issued a new, long-awaited note in which he asks rhetorically “what’s a manager supposed to do when by early March your asset class has already exceeded your expectation for full-year returns? Take profit and take the rest of the year off, of course! And if it carries on rallying, go outright short!” And yet, he adds, “somehow nobody seems to want to.” The reason for that, according to King is that as we showed demonstrated last week using JPM and BofA data, “the rally owes more to inflows and short covering than to institutional investor exuberance. And part is that the economic data do seem genuinely to be improving.”

  Nonetheless, King’s assessment of the current environment is downbeat and to the point: “sell we think you should, not only in € credit (as we advised a couple of weeks ago) but also more broadly.“

  He then lays out seven reasons “not to trust your inner Trump”, which are as follows:

  1. The Fed may stop the inflow party

  The Citi strategist begins by noting that “perhaps the best reason to remain long is that institutional investors seem not to be.” He adds that the vast majority of the FI investors we have seen in recent weeks still believe in secular stagnation, and further notes that “to judge from our survey, overall positions have been creeping longer, but this is due overwhelmingly to positions among $ investors: those in € and £ credit have actually been falling (Figure 1).”

  King joins the strategist bandwagon pointing out to the source of recent inflows and states that “the principal driver of investors’ buying seems to have been a response to mutual fund inflows. Not only equity funds but also bond (including both credit and EM) mutual funds have had their biggest 4-week run of inflows since 2013 (Figure 2). Numbers in Europe have been slightly weaker than the US-dominated  global totals, but the pattern is similar.”

  

  There is a problem with that: “But while this too might normally be a reason for bullishness, we doubt that the current pace is sustainable.”

  Quite apart from the historical inability to maintain this flow rate for long, there is the small problem of the Fed. While at this point a hike on March 15 has been so well telegraphed that it ought not to cause a 2013-style tantrum, we do think much of investors’ willingness to pile into risky assets stems from the lack of return on cash. Each and every additional bp in risk-free yield is likely to make investors think twice about the risk they are running in order to generate return elsewhere.

  It is also worth noting that over the past two weeks, BofA has caveated that while retail inflows are seemingly relentless, institutions and hedge funds have recently turned sellers into the rally, and are aggressively offloading to retail, traditionally a market-top indicator. 

  2. A rise in real yields should weigh on risk assets

  King’s second reason why he thinks the rally has been so strong is that real yields have remained surprisingly low. Even as nominal yields have risen since the US election, almost all of the action has been in inflation (and growth) expectations (Figure 3). Traditionally this is positive for risk assets; in contrast, when real yields rise, it weighs on risk assets – albeit sometimes with a lag (Figure 4).

  

  Citi suspects that what has made this move possible is the market’s willingness to focus on all the potential growth positives and yet shrug off the increasing signs of hawkishness from the Fed. “Such a position seems increasingly untenable on two counts. First, rates markets have now finally adjusted to the new mood music from the Fed, and seem increasingly likely to be confronted with an actual hike; second, the rally in credit was starting to look out of whack even with today’s real yield levels, never mind following any proper adjustment to follow.”

  3. Central bank support is set to diminish

  While it is no secret that King has long been a closet adherent to Austrian Monetary Theory, in his latest piece King reminds regular readers that one of his favourite model for markets’ behaviour in recent years is their correlation with central bank liquidity. While the scale of their purchases over the past half-year or so has been close to record highs, it is already diminishing, and set to diminish further (Figure 5).

  

  He brings attention to BoJ purchases, which in recent months have almost halved since their shift to yield targeting; furthermore ECB purchases will be reduced by one quarter from this month on. In EM, FX reserves have held up well since February last year, and in recent months have been propped up as EM portfolio inflows have gone a long way towards offsetting a worrying trend towards net FDI outflows.

  But this too we suspect was aided by the Fed being on hold, and is liable to face renewed pressure as it returns to rate hikes. Besides, the extent of the rally once again seems excessive even for today’s level of CB purchases, never mind relative to its likely future trajectory (Figure 6).

  In short, absent a material shift in central bank posture, the traditional driver of risk asset upside will be gone for the foreseeable future.

  4. It’s the stimulus, stupid

  And then there is China. 

  As a recent NY Fed report pointed out, “China Accounts For Half Of All Global Debt Created Since 2005.” This echoes what we have been writing about for years, starting back in 2013 showing “How In Five Short Years, China Humiliated The World’s Central Banks“, when we showed that in just the brief period since the financial crisis “Chinese bank assets (and by implication liabilities) have grown by an astounding $15 trillion, bringing the total to over $24 trillion. In other words, China has expanded its financial balance sheet by 50% more than the assets of all global central banks combined.“

  This, too, is a worry for the Citi strategist, who writes that “continuing with the idea that market strength owes more to a wave of technical support than to fundamentals, we remain convinced that the recent explosion of credit in China – visible in the monthly total social financing numbers – is of greater global significance than is widely recognized.“

  King posits that while it is hard to prove empirically, at an anecdotal level almost every place you visit from San Francisco to Sydney seems to be awash with stories of Chinese investment propping up prices. While most of this is in real estate, King thinks the effects of credit creation spill over from one asset class to another, and increasingly from one region to another also.

  The punchline: “fully 80% of the world’s private sector credit creation at present is occurring in China. The evolution of this global total bears at least a passing resemblance to global asset prices (Figure 7).”

  

  Which leads us to the $64 trillion question: is this pace of credit expansion sustainable? Citi’s answer: “we rather doubt it.”

  Chinese numbers tend to reach a seasonal high in January as new lending quotas are granted but then to fall off sharply thereafter. And the positive impulse from the recent acceleration in credit creation in China will in any case be hard to sustain just because the absolute rate of growth is already so high. If anything, the recent tendency towards renewed FX outflows – even in the face of tightening capital controls – speaks to a reduction in demand for investment in China itself (Figure 8), itself encouraged by a series of measures designed to introduce brakes on lending, in the property sector in particular. To our minds the wave of recent strong data in China, and associated run-up in many commodity prices which has itself fuelled optimism about a global reflation trade, owes less to a durable upswing in growth – and more to an unsustainable temporary resurgence in credit – than has been reported.

  At this point it is worth reminding readers of a recent note from UBS which likewise looked at the global credit impulse and found that it had “suddenly collapse to negative”, primarily as a result of an annualized slowdown in Chinese credit creation.

  

  There is some hope that US or DM credit stimulus would be able to take over even if Chinese stimulus wanes – and indeed, exactly such a hope would seem to be one of the drivers of both the rally and the improvement in much DM survey data. The hope here is that abnormally high savings rates in various developing nations would propel a spending surge. However, King then quickly shoots down the suggestion saying that such an alternative source of credit creation “seems unlikely.” His skepticism is borne from a simple problem of scale: “Corporate balance sheets are already highly levered. Besides, the sheer scale of Chinese borrowing – $3tn/year relative to a mere $800bn in US and Europe combined – makes it difficult to see how these could substitute.“

  5. Just how strong are growth prospects really?

  To provide a counterpoint to his bearish points, King then asks “what of the counterargument to all this, namely that markets are merely responding to a marked pick-up in global growth prospects, sending secular stagnationists like ourselves scurrying for cover and raising the prospect of a longawaited return to ‘normal’ growth?” He admits that there has been a pickup in both growth and inflation data, and indeed in corporate earnings. And we do buy the argument that, while corporate capex has been weak relative to profits and to GDP, in outright terms it is not perhaps as moribund as pessimists (ourselves included) sometimes make it sound.

  Alas, for the Citi strategist, this may be as good as it gets when it comes to global growth, which as DB warned several weeks ago has already started to revert lower, and furthermore as we have been pounding the table for weeks, the improvement has been mostly focused in “soft”, survey-based data:

  We are much more skeptical of the likelihood of a continued and self-reinforcing cycle of growth from here. Economic surprises have a natural tendency towards mean reversion and in the US are already starting to come down. A number of commentators are starting to point to the fact that the improvement in economic numbers is heavily skewed towards survey data as opposed to actual production and consumption numbers. US jobless claims at 40-year lows in any case suggests that further hiring may begin to contribute more to inflation than to real GDP

  Meanwhile, on the corporate side, while leverage has been declining, recent reports fail to show any evidence of significant revenue growth – one of the vital missing ingredients that could conceivably lead to an acceleration of capex (Figure 11). Perhaps revenues were crimped by $ strength, but overall this suggests that the EPS growth everyone is getting excited about owes more to further cost cutting and perhaps currency moves (helping explain why the pick-up is greater in Europe than in the US) than it does to anything that will sustainably buoy the economy.

  

  As King notes, the market internals already point to this:

  Sadly, there are even signs that the equity market itself recognizes this likelihood. While the S&P has continued to rally at a headline level, our equity strategists have pointed out that it is again being driven by defensive sectors, not cyclicals – something historically more consistent with a rally in Treasury yields and a global reach-for-yield than with a growth-led reflation

  And then there is the political front: Citi writes that its take on the Trump speech to Congress – with its repeated reference to infrastructure spend but general lack of detail – is that prospects for widespread fiscal reform remain so contentious, even among Republicans, that the likelihood that they drive a significant near-term boost to growth is actually dimming. “Once again, this suggests that markets may be getting ahead of themselves.”

  6. The beast that refuses to die – European political risk

  And then there is Europe, and especially France where over the past few days, the market promptly assumed that any Le Pen risk overhang has been eliminated. Not so fast, according to King:

  To judge from the recent rally in OATs, you could be forgiven for thinking that Macron had been elected already, and that euro break-up risk was once again off the table. Without wanting to get too involved in the labyrinthine twists and turns of what is already turning out to be a decidedly antagonistic campaign, we doubt very much that this risk is gone for good.

  Citi then highlights four factors which keep it convinced European periphery risk and French domestic-law bonds are still a ‘sell’ here – and that renewed periphery widening may yet upset markets more broadly.

  • First, we still think there is the potential for significant nervousness among real money investors in the run-up to, and immediately after, the likely first-round Le Pen victory. Notwithstanding demand from domestic institutions for bonds that others wish to sell, experience suggests that there is nevertheless a point where domestics become full.
  • Second, we still meet too many investors convinced that the ECB will somehow come to the rescue, or even that the market would shrug off a Le Pen victory in the same way as it did Brexit. We could not disagree more strongly.
  • Third, even a Macron or Fillon victory seems unlikely to us to consign European political risk to the dustbin of history in the way some have been arguing. Populists everywhere still feel as though they are in the ascendant – just look at the disarray among Democrats in the US, or the heated response to Sir John Major’s and Tony Blair’s stands on Brexit in the UK.
  • Fourth and most persuasively, almost regardless of what you think the actual probabilities of euro break-up are, we still see too little by way of premia across markets to compensate investors for the potential risks. Central banks appear to have succeeded in squashing the volatility and fear out of markets without removing the underlying risk factors themselves. The more markets rally, the greater is the potential vulnerability.

  7. Finally, Valuations

  Last but by no means least, King brings up the most sensitive topic for the market: massively stretched valuations. His rhetorical question is simple: “Do you really want to be buying credit at post-crisis tights, or the S&P at a cyclically-adjusted P/E which has been exceeded only in 1998-2000 and 1929?”

  He then notes that the “only metrics on which € credit does not look expensive in our regular Valuations Report are those that are survey-based” and cautions that to the extent that investors want such upside, “we think they would be better served targeting assets that rallied less hard in the first place – albeit in small doses. And yet there, too, our outright inclination is more towards reduction and waiting for a better entry point than towards adding at current levels.”

  King’s Conclusion

  Having taken a several month sabbatical, the bearish Matt King is officially back: “To sum up, markets seem increasingly to be pricing all of the upside and none of the downside. When there was a risk premium in spreads, and when a wave of central bank and private credit creation seemed likely to carry everything tighter regardless of underlying fundamentals, we were happy to run with that. But we think that risk premium has long gone, and that markets’ strength owes more to those technicals than is widely recognized.”

  And a farewell anecdote from the bank’s leading strategist:

  When in the days of the Roman Republic generals were awarded the highest honour the Senate could bestow – the right to lead a “triumph”, or parade of the spoils of war, into the city – it is said that a slave was required to stand at their side and whisper constantly into their ear that they too were merely mortal. With the Ides of March approaching – and, rather neatly, coinciding both with an FOMC meeting and with the Dutch elections – we think the timing would be good for investors too to remember to what they owe their improvement in fortunes. We don’t think it’s the arrival of a new emperor.

  

  

• When Will The Left Come For You?

  Via JC Collins of Philosophy of Metrics.com,

  First they came for the Socialists, and I did not speak out—
  Because I was not a Socialist.
  Then they came for the Trade Unionists, and I did not speak out—
  Because I was not a Trade Unionist.
  Then they came for the Jews, and I did not speak out—
  Because I was not a Jew.
  Then they came for me—
  And there was no one left to speak for me.

   

  – From the Postwar War Anti-Nazi Lectures of Protestant Pastor Martin Niemöller.

  From a philosophical perspective I dislike breaking topics down into left and right ideologies. It minimizes and degenerates meaningful conversation into well rehearsed diametrical talking points which do little but entrench and promote ongoing political and social conflict. There have been some articles published which both use and explore these opposing positions, but the focus remains on the semi-engineered outcomes which are expected from such a left vs right political and socioeconomic paradigm.

  The term semi-engineered is used for the first time here and is reflective of an allowable and flexible margin related to an unpredictable human quality which exerts itself on all events and situations. The intent is to ensure that the actions and reactions of the electoral body remain predictable. The semi-engineered aspects take these human nature qualities into account and prepares strategies which flow to “natural” and “organic” outcomes. These join other terms such as “grassroots” to make up the talking points of the modern political lexicon.

  The Western systems of governance and education hammer the left and right ideologies through the use of mainstream media and alternative media, while using the bricks and mortar institutions of wisdom and learning as a degenerative weapon meant to promote and perpetuate the continued fragmentation and division of the electoral demographic composition.

  The argument can be made that this semi-engineering is a product of both extensive conspiratorial planning as well as the human predisposition to avoid change and stick with the known. Conspiratorial planning is not as difficult to define and accept as we have been conditioned to believe. The socioeconomic and geopolitical strategy of “divide and conquer” has been a part of the worlds history as much as anything else. It is more probable that conspiratorial groups of likeminded individuals have directed and shaped the course of human history than it is that all has simply been a result of chance or happenstance.

  In the book The Anglo-American Establishment by Georgetown University Professor Carrol Quigley we find that such groups have been defined and have in fact shaped the Western world through its use of the British Empire and subsequently the American hegemonic empire.

  Professor Quigley states the following in Chapter 9 titled The Creation of the Commonwealth:

  “The evolution of the British Empire into the Commonwealth of Nations is to a very great extent a result of the activities of the Milner Group. To be sure, the ultimate goal of the Group was quite different from the present system, since they wanted a federation of the Empire, but this was a long-run goal, and en route they accepted the present system as a temporary way station. However, the strength of colonial and Dominion feeling, which made the ideal of federation admittedly remote at all times, has succeeded in making this way-station a permanent terminal and thus had eliminated, apparently forever, the hope for federation. With the exception of a few diehards, the Group has accepted the solution of imperial cooperation and “parallelism” as an alternative to federation.”

  This paragraph defines for us the function of conspiratorial planning as well as its response to the unpredictable human quality, which in this case, supported Dominion over federation. The plan and strategy of the Group was adjusted and the engineering of the Western governance structures continued. These historical realities are indisputable and provide conclusive evidence of the existence of such conspiratorial groups and sub-groups.

  Subsequent groups from that defined above, which have continued the engineering of Western civilization and governance frameworks, have further developed the political left and political right ideologies as fine tuned “weapons of the weak”, which are meant to further erode civil liberties and consolidate power. This is the same objective and scope of work which the Milner Group was tasked with in its attempts to implement a federation but settled on the Dominion for the integration of sovereign regions under the Commonwealth of Nations.

  The left position has been established as existing in the progressive spectrum, while the right has been established as existing in the regressive spectrum. The natural and historical tendencies of the electoral population have been positioned on the traditional right. The political left has been attempting to push and pull the mass population and its demographic ideals towards the left spectrum. This is considered progressive and resistance to this program of engineering is labeled as regressive.

  From this basic setup the political tension we are experiencing today has developed. Those wanting to remain in the past, or the place from which we have been pushed and pulled, or any attempt to go back to that place, is regressive, while everything which is transforming the past and pulling our civilization further from that past is progressive.

  The consideration that everything progressive is not necessarily productive and aligned with the natural demands of homo-protoculture traditions is never considered. Everything left-progressive is positive and everything right-regressive is negative.

  The case is now being made by the disorganized mass of the electoral demographic that the left has become regressive while the right is now expressing the qualities of a progressive society. The core argument that the left is now regressive is best expressed in the spread and abuse of political correctness and social justice.

  The left-liberal ideology promotes so-called equality and human rights for all. On the face this would appear to be extremely reasonable and honourable. In the first years of this agenda no one could argue with its mandates and goals. It started with equal rights for women, which included voting and other legal alignments which had not before been in demand or expected.

  Those few who disagreed with these social objectives were rightly labeled as “chauvinist pigs” and promoters of misogyny. It was the first real movement from the traditional spectrum of the right. It is only in hindsight that we can see this, a rational social movement, as the first step towards a “progressive tyranny” and at the time it was only looked upon and considered a change for the betterment of Western civilization.

  The next phase of this progressive social justice built on the ending of slavery which re-manifested as the civil rights war. Like the origins of the feminist movement, the arguments were rational and no ethical and honourable citizen could disagree with equal rights for African-Americans.

  It was in the 1970’s that we first began to experience the open social expressions of the marginal segment of the population which represented homosexuality. Television programming such as Three’s Company began to condition and engineer the acceptance of the electoral demographic “right”majority.

  In the show Jack, played by the late John Ritter, pretended to be gay so he could live with two women in an apartment. The “homophobic” and “regressive” landlord Mr. Roper would only let Jack live there if he was gay and not straight, as his old school traditional ethics considered a man living in sin with two women as immoral. Hilarity ensued as Jack went through a series of challenges and obstacles to live a normal heterosexual life while maintaining the illusion of homosexuality to fool the simple and backwards Mr. Roper.

  Evenings as a child was spent watching Three’s Company and the humour of John Ritter with my family and laughing. It was considered good quality time and I remember laying on the carpet in front of the television with feelings of guilt as I knew late homework waited elsewhere.

  It is only now that I look back and see that the show was an early weapon used to marginalize a majority into accepting a social mandate which wasn’t very popular. Nobody wanted to be a fool like Mr. Roper, so we laughed and shut up about our own personal opinions and went about our business of school and work.

  The progression of the regressive-left continued through the decades with similar tactics and methods of social engineering. Everything from movies, music, and additional television programming pushed the mass population further away from the traditional roots where Western civilization began. The pendulum swing has gone so far to the left that equal rights for all has now morphed into anti-Christian, anti-white, anti-traditional, anti-male, and anti-Capitalism.

  For decades already movies have imagined every mastermind criminal as an evil Capitalist who wants to enslave and control the world. This social engineering is now so rampant that discussions supporting the Capitalist system turn into serious arguments with the liberal-left making accusations of identity politics for the purpose of demeaning and minimizing both the position and character of those promoting Capitalism.

  The same methods and techniques are now used on anyone who disagrees with the left ideology and its stated goals and mandates. The mass immigration which has been happening for decades already has taken on a new sense of urgency and panic as migrants and refugees from Islamic nations flood into the West. The differences in culture and beliefs between the West and Islamic cultures is obvious to most but open discussions and analysis are not permitted.

  It is beginning to appear that this so-called “Islamophobia”, which has built on the resentment surrounding the labels of Homophobia and Xenophobia, among others, is being established as a benchmark on hate and hate speech. Members of Academia, which have hijacked and used our Western educational institutions to promote the liberal-left agenda, are coming in force to condemn anyone who disagrees with mass Islamic migration and open borders.

  It was evenly recently stated that a database, or register, of those charged with hate crimes should be kept so the rights of those individuals can be restricted. The comparison is made to the databases which keep track of sexual offenders. The difference between hate crimes, which often, like Islamophobia, is not clearly defined and can be used to demonize unwanted behaviour from the right, and the actions of sexual offenders such as pedophiles and rapists , are massive. To marginalize a majority as Islamophobic and hateful because it does not want to lose its cultural identity to the onslaught of a culture who, by its very expressed purpose, wants to spread and take over the host culture, is one of the greatest travesties of our modern world.

  Creating and maintaining a database of such “offenders of the left” is a horrible suggestion and is reminiscent of the registries which Nazi Germany utilized to track and manage the “undesirables” such as Jews.

  There is a concerted effort to criminalize the behaviour and opinions which the liberal-left find undesirable. This is a serious threat to our civilization and the methods by which we ensure the continuation of freedom of speech, electoral voting, and the perpetuation of cultural segregation and division.

  A man who recently burned a copy of the Koran was charged with blasphemy. How is this even possible? Our governance system which has become dominated by the left, is using that very same system to restrict the rights of varying demographics. It is ironic that the liberal-left mandates, which were born in seeking equal rights for all, like women having the right to vote, is now attempting to restrict the rights of those who do not agree with its transformed goals and objectives.

  First they came for the traditionalists. Few said anything. Then they came for the Christians. Still, few said anything. Eventually they started coming for the males. Nothing. After males they started coming for the whites. Even this couldn’t get everyone to stand united against the tyranny. Now they are using a regressive ideology to take rights away from anyone who disagrees. Finally, some are speaking louder and beginning to be heard. But is it too late? When will the left come for you? Will you now speak out?

  

  

• Visualizing The US Debt Ceiling (In $100 Bills)

  The United States owes a lot of money. For now, there is no debt ceiling – it has been suspended – but in 10 days that changes, and who knows what happens then.

  For some context as to just how much money the US owes – and what the debt ceiling looks like – Demonocracy is back…

  One Hundred Dollars

  

  $100 – Most counterfeited money denomination in the world.
  Keeps the world moving.

  Ten Thousand Dollars

  

  $10,000 – Enough for a great vacation or to buy a used car.
  Approximately one year of work for the average human on earth.

  One Million Dollars

  

  $1,000,000 – Not as big of a pile as you thought, huh?
  Still, this is 92 years of work for the average human on earth.

  One Hundred Million Dollars

  

  $100,000,000 – Plenty to go around for everyone.
  Fits nicely on an ISO / Military standard sized pallet.

  The couch is made from $46.7 million of crispy $100 bills.

  $100 Million Dollars = 1 year of work for 3500 average Americans

  

  Here are 2000 people standing shoulder to shoulder, looking for a job.
  The Federal Reserve's mandate is to maintain price stability and low unemployment.
  The Federal Reserve prints money based on the assumption that increasing money supply will boost jobs.

  One Billion Dollars

  

  $1,000,000,000 – You will need some help when robbing the bank.
  Interesting fact: $1 million dollars weighs 10kg exactly.
  You are looking at 10 tons of money on those pallets.

  One Trillion Dollars

  

  $1,000,000,000,000
  The 2011 US federal deficit was $1.412 Trillion – 41% more than you see here.

  If you spent $1 million a day since Jesus was born, you would have not spent $1 trillion by now…
  but ~$700 billion- same amount the banks got during bailout.

  One Trillion Dollars

  

  Comparison of $1,000,000,000,000 dollars to a standard sized American Football field.

  Say hello to the Boeing 747-400 transcontinental airliner that's hiding in the back. This was until recently the biggest passenger plane in the world.

  You can see the White House with both wings to the right.

  "My reading of history convinces me that most bad government results from too much government." – Thomas Jefferson

  US Debt Ceiling – $20+ Trillion in 2017

  

  Statue of Liberty seems rather worried as United States national debt is soon to pass 20% of the entire world's combined economy (GDP / Gross Domestic Product).

  Here are some cool quotes from cool guys in the past saying the right things about the future and in a sense predicting today:

  “I predict future happiness for Americans if they can prevent the government from wasting the labors of the people under the pretense of taking care of them.” – Thomas Jefferson

  If the national debt would be laid in a single line of $1 bills, it would stretch from Earth, past Uranus.

  122.1 Trillion Dollars

  

  $122,100,000,000,000. – US unfunded liabilities by Dec 31, 2012. We have not upgraded the graphics for 2017 because it simply is pointless. The US government has no plan for fixing unfunded liabilites. This number is so far out there that it is uncomprehensible to most readers but a few mathematicians.

  Above you can see the pillar of cold hard $100 bills that dwarfs the WTC & Empire State Building – both at one point world's tallest buildings. If you look carefully you can see the Statue of Liberty.

  The 122.1 Trillion dollar super-skyscraper wall is the amount of money the U.S. Government knows it does not have to fully fund the Medicare, Medicare Prescription Drug Program, Social Security, Military and civil servant pensions. It is the money USA knows it will not have to pay all its bills. If you live in USA this is also your personal credit card bill; you are responsible along with everyone else to pay this back. The citizens of USA created the U.S. Government to serve them, this is what the U.S. Government has done while serving The People. The unfunded liability is calculated on current tax and funding inputs, and future demographic shifts in US Population.

  Note: On the above 122.1T image the size of the bases of the money stacks are $10 billion, and 400 stories @ $4 trillion.

  "It is incumbent on every generation to pay its own debts as it goes. A principle which if acted on would save one-half the wars of the world." – Thomas Jefferson

   

  "This is when you need to remember that when a nation's economy collapses, the wealth of the nation doesn't disappear, it only changes hands."

  Government Waste: Missing Money Infographic does a great job showcasing the Trillions lost through miss-management.

  Everyone needs to see this…

   

  

  

• The Most (And Least) Worthwhile Degrees

  For many young people, the decision of whether to extend their education careers and attend university is a tough one to make. With soaring costs, Statista's Martin Armstrong notes, not all that choose to do a bachelor's degree graduate with the feeling that it was all worthwhile.

  Emolument surveyed 1,800 graduates to reveal that the most regretted major is psychology. Only 33 percent of bachelors of this particular science said their degree was worth it. On the other end of the scale, 87 percent of chemistry and natural sciences alumni said they felt their studies were worth it.

  

  You will find more statistics at Statista

  We are reminded of The Mises Institute's Josh Grossman comments, that easy access to student loans has created demand for useless degrees.

  Last week, former Secretary of Education and US Senator Lamar Alexander wrote in the Wall Street Journal that a college degree is both affordable and an excellent investment. He repeated the usual talking point about how a college degree increases lifetime earnings by a million dollars, “on average.” That part about averages is perhaps the most important part, since all college degrees are certainly not created equal. In fact, once we start to look at the details, we find that a degree may not be the great deal many higher-education boosters seem to think it is.

  In my home state of Minnesota, for example, the cost of obtaining a four-year degree at the University of Minnesota for a resident of Minnesota, North Dakota, South Dakota, Manitoba, or Wisconsin is $100,720 (including room and board and miscellaneous fees). For private schools in Minnesota such as St. Olaf, however, the situation is even worse. A four-year degree at this institution will cost $210,920.

  This cost compares to an average starting salary for 2014 college graduates of $48,707. However, like GDP numbers this number is misleading because it is an average of all individuals who obtained a four-year degree in any academic field. Regarding the average student loan debt of an individual who graduated in 2013, about 70 percent of these graduates left college with an average student loan debt of $28,400. This entails the average student starting to pay back these loans six months after graduation or upon leaving school without a degree. The reality of this situation is that assuming a student loan interest rate of 6.8 percent and a ten-year repayment period, the average student will be paying $326.83 every month for 120 months or a cumulative total re-payment of $39,219.28. Depending upon a student’s job, this amount can be a substantial monthly financial burden for the average graduate.

  All Degrees Are Not of Equal Value

  Unfortunately, there is no price incentive for students to choose degrees that are most likely to enable them to pay back loans quickly or easily. In other words, these federal student loans are subsidizing a lack of discrimination in students’ major choice. A person majoring in communications can access the same loans as a student majoring in engineering. Both of these students would also pay the same interest rate, which would not occur in a free market.

  In an unhampered market, majors that have a higher probability of default should be required to pay a higher interest rate on money borrowed than majors with a lower probability of default. In summary, it is not just the federal government’s subsidization of student loans that is increasing the cost of college, but the fact that demand for low-paying and high-default majors is increasing, because loans for these majors are supplied at the same price as a major providing high salaries to its possessor with a low probability of default.

  And which programs are the most likely to pay off for the student? The top five highest paying bachelor’s degrees include: petroleum engineering, actuarial mathematics, nuclear engineering, chemical engineering and electronics and communications engineering, while the top five lowest paying bachelor’s degrees are: animal science, social work, child development and psychology, theological and ministerial studies, and human development, family studies, and related services. Petroleum engineering has an average starting salary of $93,500 while animal science has an average starting salary of $32,700. This breaks down for a monthly salary for the petroleum engineer of $7,761.67 versus a person working in animal science with a monthly salary of $2,725. Based on the average monthly payment mentioned above, this would equate to a burden of 4.2 percent of monthly income (petroleum engineer) versus a burden of 12 percent of monthly income (animal science). This debt burden is exacerbated by the fact that it is now nearly impossible to have student loan debts wiped away even if one declares bankruptcy.

  Ignoring Careers That Don’t Require a Degree

  Meanwhile, there are few government loan programs geared toward funding an education in the trades. And yet, for many prospective college students, the trades might be a much more lucrative option. Using the example of plumbing, the average plumber earns $53,820 per year with the employer paying the apprentice a wage and training.

  Acknowledging the fact that this average salary is for master plumbers, it still equates to a $20,000 salary difference between it and someone with a four-year degree in animal science while having no student loans as a bonus. Outside of earning a four-year degree in science, technology, engineering, math or, accounting with an average starting salary of $53,300, nursing with an average starting salary of $53,624, or as a family practice doctor on the lower end of physician pay of $161,000, society might be better served if parents and educators would stop using the canard that a four-year degree is always worth the cost outside of a few majors mentioned above. Encouraging students to consider the trades and parents to give their children the money they would spend on a four-year college degree to put a down payment on a house might be a better use of finite economic resources. The alternative of forcing the proverbial square peg into a round hole will condemn another generation to student debt slavery forcing them to put off buying a home or getting married.

  Loans Drive Overall Demand

  The root of the problem is intervention by the federal government in providing student loans. Since 1965 when President Johnson signed the Higher Education Act tuition, room, and board has increased from $1,105 per year to $18,943 in 2014–2015. This is an increase of 1,714 percent in 50 years. In addition, the Higher Education Act of 1965 created loans which are made by private institutions yet guaranteed by the federal government and capped at 6.8 percent. In case of default on the loans, the federal government — that is, the taxpayers — pick up the tab in order for these lenders to recover 95 cents on every dollar lent. Loaning these funds at below market interest rates and with the federal government backing up these risky loans has led to massive malinvestment as the percentage of high-school graduates enrolled in some form of higher education has increased from 10 percent before World War II to 70 percent by the 1990s. Getting a four-year degree in nearly any academic field seemed to be the way in which to enter or remain in the middle class.

  But just as with the housing bubble, keeping interest below market levels while increasing the money supply in terms of loans — while having the taxpayer on the hook for a majority of these same loans — leads to an avalanche of defaults and is a recipe for disaster.

   

  

  

• In WSJ Op-Ed, Peter Navarro Writes Deficits "Could Put US National Security In Jeopardy"

  At the end of January, the Euro soared following an FT piece in which Trump’s trade advisor and director of the White House National Trade Council, Peter Navarro, launched what was then seen as the first shot in the transatlantic trade wars, when he accused Germany of using a “grossly undervalued” euro to “exploit the US and its EU partners”, comments which triggered alarms in Europe’s largest economy.

  Navarro  told the Financial Times the euro was like an “implicit Deutsche Mark” whose low valuation gave Germany an advantage over its main partners. While not necessarily novel – Germany has often been accused of being the biggest winner from a weak euro at the expense of peripheral Europe – his views suggested the new administration is focusing on currency as part of its hard-charging approach on trade ties.

  Since then immediate worries about bilateral trade wars have taken a back seat after several paliative comments from Trump’s Treasury secretary, Steven Mnuchin as well as a de-escalation between Trump and Beijing after the president softened his rhetoric on the One China policy. However, worries about trade wars may reemerge following a Sunday evening op-ed in the WSJ by the same Peter Navarro in which he explains “why the White House worries about trade deficits” and highlights that “an imbalance imperils economic growth—and could put U.S. national security in jeopardy.”

  

  Needless to say, from that line alone it is safe to say that the op-ed is hardly USD-positive.

  Navarro asks “do trade deficits matter”, noting that the question is important because America’s trade deficit in goods (the Obama administration tends to ignore the trade surplus in services) is “large and persistent, about $2 billion every day.” His affirmative response boils down to the the observation that growth in real GDP depends on only four factors: consumption, government spending, business investment and net exports (the difference between exports and imports). “Reducing a trade deficit through tough, smart negotiations is a way to increase net exports—and boost the rate of economic growth” Navarro writes, by which he simply reflects that positive net trade translates into higher GDP, even if in practice it is never quite that simple as substantial shifts to global trade patterns usually result in subtantial changes in domestic consumption as a result of violent market rebalancing.

  Global trade nuances aside, Navarro uses the example of Carrier to demonstrate the “complex adjustments” resulting from changes to trade policy, and invokes the capital account to suggest that as a result of foreign investment in the US to plug the current account shortfall, foreigners may – to cite Warren Buffett – eventually own so much of the U.S. that Americans will wind up working longer hours just to eat and to service the debt.

  To better understand these complex adjustments, consider Carrier. Its management had announced the company would close its air-conditioner factory in Indianapolis and move to Mexico—and then sell products back into the U.S. tariff-free. But President-elect Trump and Vice President-elect Pence negotiated a deal to keep Carrier in the U.S. and expand its facilities. How will this show up in government statistics? Fixed nonresidential investment will increase rather than decrease. Imports from Mexico will be lower than they would be otherwise, and U.S. exports will be higher. In today’s parlance, that’s “all good.”

   

  The national-security argument that trade deficits matter begins with this accounting identity: Any deficit in the current account caused by imbalanced trade must be offset by a surplus in the capital account, meaning foreign investment in the U.S.

   

  In the short term, this balance-of-payments equilibrium may be benign, as foreigners return our trade-deficit dollars to American shores by investing in U.S. bonds and stocks and perhaps by building new production facilities. The extra capital keeps mortgage rates lower, the stock market abundantly capitalized, and Americans more fully employed.

   

  But running large and persistent trade deficits also facilitates a pattern of wealth transfers offshore. Warren Buffett refers to this as “conquest by purchase” and warns that foreigners will eventually own so much of the U.S. that Americans will wind up working longer hours just to eat and to service the debt.

  Navarro then interpolates his favorite topic, China, and what the consequences of this ascendant superpower’s trade relations with the US could mean for US national security in the long-term:

  Dark though it is, Mr. Buffett’s scenario may still be too rosy. Suppose the purchaser is a rapidly militarizing strategic rival intent on world hegemony. It buys up America’s companies, technologies, farmland, food-supply chain—and ultimately controls much of the U.S. defense-industrial base. How might that alternative version of conquest by purchase end for our sons and daughters? Might we lose a broader cold war for America’s freedom and prosperity, not by shots fired but by cash registers ringing? Might we lose a broader hot war because America has sent its defense-industrial base abroad on the wings of a persistent trade deficit?

  Supposedly, the theoretical answer to these questions is yes, although the practical response has yet to be written. Furthermore, all of the above is generic Econ 101 textbook stuff.

  So does Navarro make any practical trade policy recommendations besides his brief economics lesson?  For that we fast forward to the final two paragraphs which tie into Trump’s Feb. 28 Congressional address, in which he expounded on “FAIR” trade, as follows:

  Today, after decades of trade deficits and a mass migration of factories offshore, there is only one American company that can repair Navy submarine propellers—and not a single company that can make flat-panel displays for military aircraft or night-vision goggles. Meanwhile, America’s steel industry is on the ropes, its aluminum industry is flat on its back, and its shipbuilding industry is gathering barnacles. The U.S. has begun to lose control of its food-supply chain, and foreign firms are eager to purchase large swaths of Silicon Valley’s treasures.

   

  Much of Wall Street and most economists simply don’t care. But to paraphrase Mike Pence on the 2016 campaign trail, the people of Fort Wayne know better. The analysts at the Pentagon know better, too. That’s why, for both economic and national-security reasons, it is important to bring America’s trade back into balance—through free, fair and reciprocal trade.

  In retrospect, Navarro’s op-ed is less fiery than his initial “trade war” statement to the FT, even if it ultimately reverts to a core Trump theme, namely boosting exports to stimulate growth. Perhaps a better question than what is Navarro’s purpose by writing it, is why he is writing it, and does his use of a public forum like the WSJ mean that there is friction between him and Trump camp, especially since in recent weeks it appears that a core pillar of Trump’s trade policies, namely the border adjustability, appear to no longer be on the docket of actionable items. If BAT goes, what else will follow, and will any of Navarro’s trade deficit-cutting plans ever materialize?

  

  

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• America's Miserable 21st Century

  Via Nicholas Eberstadt of CommentaryMagazine.com,

  On the morning of November 9, 2016, America’s elite—its talking and deciding classes—woke up to a country they did not know. To most privileged and well-educated Americans, especially those living in its bicoastal bastions, the election of Donald Trump had been a thing almost impossible even to imagine. What sort of country would go and elect someone like Trump as president? Certainly not one they were familiar with, or understood anything about.

  I

  Whatever else it may or may not have accomplished, the 2016 election was a sort of shock therapy for Americans living within what Charles Murray famously termed “the bubble” (the protective barrier of prosperity and self-selected associations that increasingly shield our best and brightest from contact with the rest of their society). The very fact of Trump’s election served as a truth broadcast about a reality that could no longer be denied: Things out there in America are a whole lot different from what you thought. 

  Yes, things are very different indeed these days in the “real America” outside the bubble. In fact, things have been going badly wrong in America since the beginning of the 21st century.

  It turns out that the year 2000 marks a grim historical milestone of sorts for our nation. For whatever reasons, the Great American Escalator, which had lifted successive generations of Americans to ever higher standards of living and levels of social well-being, broke down around then—and broke down very badly.

  The warning lights have been flashing, and the klaxons sounding, for more than a decade and a half. But our pundits and prognosticators and professors and policymakers, ensconced as they generally are deep within the bubble, were for the most part too distant from the distress of the general population to see or hear it. (So much for the vaunted “information era” and “big-data revolution.”) Now that those signals are no longer possible to ignore, it is high time for experts and intellectuals to reacquaint themselves with the country in which they live and to begin the task of describing what has befallen the country in which we have lived since the dawn of the new century.

  II

  Consider the condition of the American economy. In some circles people still widely believe, as one recent New York Times business-section article cluelessly insisted before the inauguration, that “Mr. Trump will inherit an economy that is fundamentally solid.” But this is patent nonsense. By now it should be painfully obvious that the U.S. economy has been in the grip of deep dysfunction since the dawn of the new century. And in retrospect, it should also be apparent that America’s strange new economic maladies were almost perfectly designed to set the stage for a populist storm.

  Ever since 2000, basic indicators have offered oddly inconsistent readings on America’s economic performance and prospects. It is curious and highly uncharacteristic to find such measures so very far out of alignment with one another. We are witnessing an ominous and growing divergence between three trends that should ordinarily move in tandem: wealth, output, and employment. Depending upon which of these three indicators you choose, America looks to be heading up, down, or more or less nowhere.

  From the standpoint of wealth creation, the 21st century is off to a roaring start. By this yardstick, it looks as if Americans have never had it so good and as if the future is full of promise. Between early 2000 and late 2016, the estimated net worth of American households and nonprofit institutions more than doubled, from $44 trillion to $90 trillion. (SEE FIGURE 1.)

  Although that wealth is not evenly distributed, it is still a fantastic sum of money—an average of over a million dollars for every notional family of four. This upsurge of wealth took place despite the crash of 2008—indeed, private wealth holdings are over $20 trillion higher now than they were at their pre-crash apogee. The value of American real-estate assets is near or at all-time highs, and America’s businesses appear to be thriving. Even before the “Trump rally” of late 2016 and early 2017, U.S. equities markets were hitting new highs—and since stock prices are strongly shaped by expectations of future profits, investors evidently are counting on the continuation of the current happy days for U.S. asset holders for some time to come.

  

  A rather less cheering picture, though, emerges if we look instead at real trends for the macro-economy. Here, performance since the start of the century might charitably be described as mediocre, and prospects today are no better than guarded.

  The recovery from the crash of 2008—which unleashed the worst recession since the Great Depression—has been singularly slow and weak. According to the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA), it took nearly four years for America’s gross domestic product (GDP) to re-attain its late 2007 level. As of late 2016, total value added to the U.S. economy was just 12 percent higher than in 2007. (SEE FIGURE 2.) The situation is even more sobering if we consider per capita growth. It took America six and a half years—until mid-2014—to get back to its late 2007 per capita production levels. And in late 2016, per capita output was just 4 percent higher than in late 2007—nine years earlier. By this reckoning, the American economy looks to have suffered something close to a lost decade.

  

  But there was clearly trouble brewing in America’s macro-economy well before the 2008 crash, too. Between late 2000 and late 2007, per capita GDP growth averaged less than 1.5 percent per annum. That compares with the nation’s long-term postwar 1948–2000 per capita growth rate of almost 2.3 percent, which in turn can be compared to the “snap back” tempo of 1.1 percent per annum since per capita GDP bottomed out in 2009. Between 2000 and 2016, per capita growth in America has averaged less than 1 percent a year. To state it plainly: With postwar, pre-21st-century rates for the years 2000–2016, per capita GDP in America would be more than 20 percent higher than it is today.

  The reasons for America’s newly fitful and halting macroeconomic performance are still a puzzlement to economists and a subject of considerable contention and debate. Economists are generally in consensus, however, in one area: They have begun redefining the growth potential of the U.S. economy downwards. The U.S. Congressional Budget Office (CBO), for example, suggests that the “potential growth” rate for the U.S. economy at full employment of factors of production has now dropped below 1.7 percent a year, implying a sustainable long-term annual per capita economic growth rate for America today of well under 1 percent.

  Then there is the employment situation. If 21st-century America’s GDP trends have been disappointing, labor-force trends have been utterly dismal. Work rates have fallen off a cliff since the year 2000 and are at their lowest levels in decades. We can see this by looking at the estimates by the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS) for the civilian employment rate, the jobs-to-population ratio for adult civilian men and women. (SEE FIGURE 3.) Between early 2000 and late 2016, America’s overall work rate for Americans age 20 and older underwent a drastic decline. It plunged by almost 5 percentage points (from 64.6 to 59.7). Unless you are a labor economist, you may not appreciate just how severe a falloff in employment such numbers attest to. Postwar America never experienced anything comparable.

  

  From peak to trough, the collapse in work rates for U.S. adults between 2008 and 2010 was roughly twice the amplitude of what had previously been the country’s worst postwar recession, back in the early 1980s. In that previous steep recession, it took America five years to re-attain the adult work rates recorded at the start of 1980. This time, the U.S. job market has as yet, in early 2017, scarcely begun to claw its way back up to the work rates of 2007—much less back to the work rates from early 2000.

  As may be seen in Figure 3, U.S. adult work rates never recovered entirely from the recession of 2001—much less the crash of ’08. And the work rates being measured here include people who are engaged in any paid employment—any job, at any wage, for any number of hours of work at all.

  On Wall Street and in some parts of Washington these days, one hears that America has gotten back to “near full employment.” For Americans outside the bubble, such talk must seem nonsensical. It is true that the oft-cited “civilian unemployment rate” looked pretty good by the end of the Obama era—in December 2016, it was down to 4.7 percent, about the same as it had been back in 1965, at a time of genuine full employment. The problem here is that the unemployment rate only tracks joblessness for those still in the labor force; it takes no account of workforce dropouts. Alas, the exodus out of the workforce has been the big labor-market story for America’s new century. (At this writing, for every unemployed American man between 25 and 55 years of age, there are another three who are neither working nor looking for work.) Thus the “unemployment rate” increasingly looks like an antique index devised for some earlier and increasingly distant war: the economic equivalent of a musket inventory or a cavalry count.

  By the criterion of adult work rates, by contrast, employment conditions in America remain remarkably bleak. From late 2009 through early 2014, the country’s work rates more or less flatlined. So far as can be told, this is the only “recovery” in U.S. economic history in which that basic labor-market indicator almost completely failed to respond.

  Since 2014, there has finally been a measure of improvement in the work rate—but it would be unwise to exaggerate the dimensions of that turnaround. As of late 2016, the adult work rate in America was still at its lowest level in more than 30 years. To put things another way: If our nation’s work rate today were back up to its start-of-the-century highs, well over 10 million more Americans would currently have paying jobs.

  There is no way to sugarcoat these awful numbers. They are not a statistical artifact that can be explained away by population aging, or by increased educational enrollment for adult students, or by any other genuine change in contemporary American society. The plain fact is that 21st-century America has witnessed a dreadful collapse of work.

  For an apples-to-apples look at America’s 21st-century jobs problem, we can focus on the 25–54 population—known to labor economists for self-evident reasons as the “prime working age” group. For this key labor-force cohort, work rates in late 2016 were down almost 4 percentage points from their year-2000 highs. That is a jobs gap approaching 5 million for this group alone.

  It is not only that work rates for prime-age males have fallen since the year 2000—they have, but the collapse of work for American men is a tale that goes back at least half a century. (I wrote a short book last year about this sad saga.²) What is perhaps more startling is the unexpected and largely unnoticed fall-off in work rates for prime-age women. In the U.S. and all other Western societies, postwar labor markets underwent an epochal transformation. After World War II, work rates for prime women surged, and continued to rise—until the year 2000. Since then, they too have declined. Current work rates for prime-age women are back to where they were a generation ago, in the late 1980s. The 21st-century U.S. economy has been brutal for male and female laborers alike—and the wreckage in the labor market has been sufficiently powerful to cancel, and even reverse, one of our society’s most distinctive postwar trends: the rise of paid work for women outside the household.

  In our era of no more than indifferent economic growth, 21st–century America has somehow managed to produce markedly more wealth for its wealthholders even as it provided markedly less work for its workers. And trends for paid hours of work look even worse than the work rates themselves. Between 2000 and 2015, according to the BEA, total paid hours of work in America increased by just 4 percent (as against a 35 percent increase for 1985–2000, the 15-year period immediately preceding this one). Over the 2000–2015 period, however, the adult civilian population rose by almost 18 percent—meaning that paid hours of work per adult civilian have plummeted by a shocking 12 percent thus far in our new American century.

  This is the terrible contradiction of economic life in what we might call America’s Second Gilded Age (2000—). It is a paradox that may help us understand a number of overarching features of our new century. These include the consistent findings that public trust in almost all U.S. institutions has sharply declined since 2000, even as growing majorities hold that America is “heading in the wrong direction.” It provides an immediate answer to why overwhelming majorities of respondents in public-opinion surveys continue to tell pollsters, year after year, that our ever-richer America is still stuck in the middle of a recession. The mounting economic woes of the “little people” may not have been generally recognized by those inside the bubble, or even by many bubble inhabitants who claimed to be economic specialists—but they proved to be potent fuel for the populist fire that raged through American politics in 2016.

  III

  So general economic conditions for many ordinary Americans—not least of these, Americans who did not fit within the academy’s designated victim classes—have been rather more insecure than those within the comfort of the bubble understood. But the anxiety, dissatisfaction, anger, and despair that range within our borders today are not wholly a reaction to the way our economy is misfiring. On the nonmaterial front, it is likewise clear that many things in our society are going wrong and yet seem beyond our powers to correct.

  Some of these gnawing problems are by no means new: A number of them (such as family breakdown) can be traced back at least to the 1960s, while others are arguably as old as modernity itself (anomie and isolation in big anonymous communities, secularization and the decline of faith). But a number have roared down upon us by surprise since the turn of the century—and others have redoubled with fearsome new intensity since roughly the year 2000.

  American health conditions seem to have taken a seriously wrong turn in the new century. It is not just that overall health progress has been shockingly slow, despite the trillions we devote to medical services each year. (Which “Cold War babies” among us would have predicted we’d live to see the day when life expectancy in East Germany was higher than in the United States, as is the case today?)

  Alas, the problem is not just slowdowns in health progress—there also appears to have been positive retrogression for broad and heretofore seemingly untroubled segments of the national population. A short but electrifying 2015 paper by Anne Case and Nobel Economics Laureate Angus Deaton talked about a mortality trend that had gone almost unnoticed until then: rising death rates for middle-aged U.S. whites. By Case and Deaton’s reckoning, death rates rose somewhat slightly over the 1999–2013 period for all non-Hispanic white men and women 45–54 years of age—but they rose sharply for those with high-school degrees or less, and for this less-educated grouping most of the rise in death rates was accounted for by suicides, chronic liver cirrhosis, and poisonings (including drug overdoses).

  Though some researchers, for highly technical reasons, suggested that the mortality spike might not have been quite as sharp as Case and Deaton reckoned, there is little doubt that the spike itself has taken place. Health has been deteriorating for a significant swath of white America in our new century, thanks in large part to drug and alcohol abuse. All this sounds a little too close for comfort to the story of modern Russia, with its devastating vodka- and drug-binging health setbacks. Yes: It can happen here, and it has. Welcome to our new America.

  In December 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) reported that for the first time in decades, life expectancy at birth in the United States had dropped very slightly (to 78.8 years in 2015, from 78.9 years in 2014). Though the decline was small, it was statistically meaningful—rising death rates were characteristic of males and females alike; of blacks and whites and Latinos together. (Only black women avoided mortality increases—their death levels were stagnant.) A jump in “unintentional injuries” accounted for much of the overall uptick.

  It would be unwarranted to place too much portent in a single year’s mortality changes; slight annual drops in U.S. life expectancy have occasionally been registered in the past, too, followed by continued improvements. But given other developments we are witnessing in our new America, we must wonder whether the 2015 decline in life expectancy is just a blip, or the start of a new trend. We will find out soon enough. It cannot be encouraging, though, that the Human Mortality Database, an international consortium of demographers who vet national data to improve comparability between countries, has suggested that health progress in America essentially ceased in 2012—that the U.S. gained on average only about a single day of life expectancy at birth between 2012 and 2014, before the 2015 turndown.

  The opioid epidemic of pain pills and heroin that has been ravaging and shortening lives from coast to coast is a new plague for our new century. The terrifying novelty of this particular drug epidemic, of course, is that it has gone (so to speak) “mainstream” this time, effecting breakout from disadvantaged minority communities to Main Street White America. By 2013, according to a 2015 report by the Drug Enforcement Administration, more Americans died from drug overdoses (largely but not wholly opioid abuse) than from either traffic fatalities or guns. The dimensions of the opioid epidemic in the real America are still not fully appreciated within the bubble, where drug use tends to be more carefully limited and recreational. In Dreamland, his harrowing and magisterial account of modern America’s opioid explosion, the journalist Sam Quinones notes in passing that “in one three-month period” just a few years ago, according to the Ohio Department of Health, “fully 11 percent of all Ohioans were prescribed opiates.” And of course many Americans self-medicate with licit or illicit painkillers without doctors’ orders.

  In the fall of 2016, Alan Krueger, former chairman of the President’s Council of Economic Advisers, released a study that further refined the picture of the real existing opioid epidemic in America: According to his work, nearly half of all prime working-age male labor-force dropouts—an army now totaling roughly 7 million men—currently take pain medication on a daily basis.

  We already knew from other sources (such as BLS “time use” surveys) that the overwhelming majority of the prime-age men in this un-working army generally don’t “do civil society” (charitable work, religious activities, volunteering), or for that matter much in the way of child care or help for others in the home either, despite the abundance of time on their hands. Their routine, instead, typically centers on watching—watching TV, DVDs, Internet, hand-held devices, etc.—and indeed watching for an average of 2,000 hours a year, as if it were a full-time job. But Krueger’s study adds a poignant and immensely sad detail to this portrait of daily life in 21st-century America: In our mind’s eye we can now picture many millions of un-working men in the prime of life, out of work and not looking for jobs, sitting in front of screens—stoned.

  But how did so many millions of un-working men, whose incomes are limited, manage en masse to afford a constant supply of pain medication? Oxycontin is not cheap. As Dreamland carefully explains, one main mechanism today has been the welfare state: more specifically, Medicaid, Uncle Sam’s means-tested health-benefits program. Here is how it works (we are with Quinones in Portsmouth, Ohio):

  [The Medicaid card] pays for medicine—whatever pills a doctor deems that the insured patient needs. Among those who receive Medicaid cards are people on state welfare or on a federal disability program known as SSI. . . . If you could get a prescription from a willing doctor—and Portsmouth had plenty of them—Medicaid health-insurance cards paid for that prescription every month. For a three-dollar Medicaid co-pay, therefore, addicts got pills priced at thousands of dollars, with the difference paid for by U.S. and state taxpayers. A user could turn around and sell those pills, obtained for that three-dollar co-pay, for as much as ten thousand dollars on the street.

  In 21st-century America, “dependence on government” has thus come to take on an entirely new meaning.

  You may now wish to ask: What share of prime-working-age men these days are enrolled in Medicaid? According to the Census Bureau’s SIPP survey (Survey of Income and Program Participation), as of 2013, over one-fifth (21 percent) of all civilian men between 25 and 55 years of age were Medicaid beneficiaries. For prime-age people not in the labor force, the share was over half (53 percent). And for un-working Anglos (non-Hispanic white men not in the labor force) of prime working age, the share enrolled in Medicaid was 48 percent.

  By the way: Of the entire un-working prime-age male Anglo population in 2013, nearly three-fifths (57 percent) were reportedly collecting disability benefits from one or more government disability program in 2013. Disability checks and means-tested benefits cannot support a lavish lifestyle. But they can offer a permanent alternative to paid employment, and for growing numbers of American men, they do. The rise of these programs has coincided with the death of work for larger and larger numbers of American men not yet of retirement age. We cannot say that these programs caused the death of work for millions upon millions of younger men: What is incontrovertible, however, is that they have financed it—just as Medicaid inadvertently helped finance America’s immense and increasing appetite for opioids in our new century.

  It is intriguing to note that America’s nationwide opioid epidemic has not been accompanied by a nationwide crime wave (excepting of course the apparent explosion of illicit heroin use). Just the opposite: As best can be told, national victimization rates for violent crimes and property crimes have both reportedly dropped by about two-thirds over the past two decades.³ The drop in crime over the past generation has done great things for the general quality of life in much of America. There is one complication from this drama, however, that inhabitants of the bubble may not be aware of, even though it is all too well known to a great many residents of the real America. This is the extraordinary expansion of what some have termed America’s “criminal class”—the population sentenced to prison or convicted of felony offenses—in recent decades. This trend did not begin in our century, but it has taken on breathtaking enormity since the year 2000.

  Most well-informed readers know that the U.S. currently has a higher share of its populace in jail or prison than almost any other country on earth, that Barack Obama and others talk of our criminal-justice process as “mass incarceration,” and know that well over 2 million men were in prison or jail in recent years.⁴ But only a tiny fraction of all living Americans ever convicted of a felony is actually incarcerated at this very moment. Quite the contrary: Maybe 90 percent of all sentenced felons today are out of confinement and living more or less among us. The reason: the basic arithmetic of sentencing and incarceration in America today. Correctional release and sentenced community supervision (probation and parole) guarantee a steady annual “flow” of convicted felons back into society to augment the very considerable “stock” of felons and ex-felons already there. And this “stock” is by now truly enormous.

  One forthcoming demographic study by Sarah Shannon and five other researchers estimates that the cohort of current and former felons in America very nearly reached 20 million by the year 2010. If its estimates are roughly accurate, and if America’s felon population has continued to grow at more or less the same tempo traced out for the years leading up to 2010, we would expect it to surpass 23 million persons by the end of 2016 at the latest. Very rough calculations might therefore suggest that at this writing, America’s population of non-institutionalized adults with a felony conviction somewhere in their past has almost certainly broken the 20 million mark by the end of 2016. A little more rough arithmetic suggests that about 17 million men in our general population have a felony conviction somewhere in their CV. That works out to one of every eight adult males in America today.

  We have to use rough estimates here, rather than precise official numbers, because the government does not collect any data at all on the size or socioeconomic circumstances of this population of 20 million, and never has. Amazing as this may sound and scandalous though it may be, America has, at least to date, effectively banished this huge group—a group roughly twice the total size of our illegal-immigrant population and an adult population larger than that in any state but California—to a near-total and seemingly unending statistical invisibility. Our ex-cons are, so to speak, statistical outcasts who live in a darkness our polity does not care enough to illuminate—beyond the scope or interest of public policy, unless and until they next run afoul of the law.

  Thus we cannot describe with any precision or certainty what has become of those who make up our “criminal class” after their (latest) sentencing or release. In the most stylized terms, however, we might guess that their odds in the real America are not all that favorable. And when we consider some of the other trends we have already mentioned—employment, health, addiction, welfare dependence—we can see the emergence of a malign new nationwide undertow, pulling downward against social mobility.

  Social mobility has always been the jewel in the crown of the American mythos and ethos. The idea (not without a measure of truth to back it up) was that people in America are free to achieve according to their merit and their grit—unlike in other places, where they are trapped by barriers of class or the misfortune of misrule. Nearly two decades into our new century, there are unmistakable signs that America’s fabled social mobility is in trouble—perhaps even in serious trouble.

  Consider the following facts. First, according to the Census Bureau, geographical mobility in America has been on the decline for three decades, and in 2016 the annual movement of households from one location to the next was reportedly at an all-time (postwar) low. Second, as a study by three Federal Reserve economists and a Notre Dame colleague demonstrated last year, “labor market fluidity”—the churning between jobs that among other things allows people to get ahead—has been on the decline in the American labor market for decades, with no sign as yet of a turnaround. Finally, and not least important, a December 2016 report by the “Equal Opportunity Project,” a team led by the formidable Stanford economist Raj Chetty, calculated that the odds of a 30-year-old’s earning more than his parents at the same age was now just 51 percent: down from 86 percent 40 years ago. Other researchers who have examined the same data argue that the odds may not be quite as low as the Chetty team concludes, but agree that the chances of surpassing one’s parents’ real income have been on the downswing and are probably lower now than ever before in postwar America.

  Thus the bittersweet reality of life for real Americans in the early 21st century: Even though the American economy still remains the world’s unrivaled engine of wealth generation, those outside the bubble may have less of a shot at the American Dream than has been the case for decades, maybe generations—possibly even since the Great Depression.

  IV

  The funny thing is, people inside the bubble are forever talking about “economic inequality,” that wonderful seminar construct, and forever virtue-signaling about how personally opposed they are to it. By contrast, “economic insecurity” is akin to a phrase from an unknown language. But if we were somehow to find a “Google Translate” function for communicating from real America into the bubble, an important message might be conveyed:

  The abstraction of “inequality” doesn’t matter a lot to ordinary Americans. The reality of economic insecurity does. The Great American Escalator is broken—and it badly needs to be fixed.

  With the election of 2016, Americans within the bubble finally learned that the 21st century has gotten off to a very bad start in America. Welcome to the reality. We have a lot of work to do together to turn this around.

  

  

• Visualizing The Worrying Decline Of Freedom Around The World

  The 20th century was a bull market for literacy, freedom, prosperity, health, and technology.

  As a result of these gains, wealth has increased exponentially, and world poverty is now at all-time lows. Life expectancy continues to improve in most countries, global literacy is near 90%, and there are well over 100 democracies throughout the planet.

  But, as VisualCapitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes, not every positive trend can keep going forever. Sometimes things regress temporarily, only to be corrected later on. Other times things change more fundamentally – and that regression can be the beginning of a newer, long-term reality.

  The Decline of Freedom: An 11-Year Trend

  According to the Freedom in the World 2017 Report, which scores countries annually on various levels of freedom, there have been recent setbacks in political rights and civil liberties in a number of “Free” countries. These newest declines are partially the result of populist and nationalist forces making significant gains in democratic states.

  But Freedom House, the international watchdog organization that produces the annual report, says that this is not an isolated occurrence. In fact, based on their data and methodology, freedom has actually declined on a global basis for the last 11 years.

  Here are the aggregate gains and declines in freedom for each year – you can see that declines have been outweighing gains since 2006.

  11 Years of Decline

  

  While the trend is clear, the most worrying part is that the biggest aggregate declines happened in the two most recent years. Is that a coincidence, or is the decline of freedom accelerating?

  Here are the specific countries that have had the biggest declines in freedom over the last decade:

  Largest Aggregate Declines Over the Last Decade

  

  Countries like Yemen and Ethiopia, which are classified as “Not Free”, have lost further freedom. However, “Free” countries like Hungary or Nauru also lost 10 or more points in the index.

  2016: Another Year of Setbacks

  The biggest mover in 2016 was Turkey, a country that the Washington Post says is in a “permanent state of crisis”.

  A failed coup attempt, the assassination of a Russian ambassador, trouble in bordering Syria, and economic crises have accelerated the march to authoritarianism in the country – and it’s had a 15-point decline of freedom as a result, according to Freedom House.

  Biggest Movers in 2016

  

  Hungary and Poland are among the Western democracies that lost significant points in 2016, but the report also has its crosshairs on the United States for 2017. It notes the U.S. as a “country to watch” this year because of the Trump administration’s approach to civil liberties, as well as a potential redefinition of the United States’ role in the world.

  Here are where things stand as of now:

  Map: World Freedom in 2017

  

  For the whole report, which is a highly-recommended read, go here.

  

  

• Tolerant Left: Berkeley Antifa Cowards Pepper Spray Elderly Trump Supporter And Egg Homeless Advocate

  

  Angry unemployed children, AKA Antifa, held another Trump protest today in Berkeley, CA. It’s Trump’s fault of course that they took out 6 figure student loans and haven’t been approached by numerous employers to put those English majors to work.

  Unlike the UC Berkeley riots which shut down a Milo Yiannopoulos speech, several Trump supporters showed up today to counter-protest the Antifa idiots – resulting in civil discourse.

  Just kidding, an elderly Trump supporter and a homeless advocate were attacked:

  Elderly Trump supporter pepper sprayed by Antifa girl at a Berkeley rally. Girl runs away like a coward. #Berkeley #Antifa ???? pic.twitter.com/TWjPjiArWR

  — ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) March 5, 2017

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  Berkeley Antifa throwing eggs at Trump supporter holding up “House the Homeless” sign. #Berkeley #Antifa pic.twitter.com/w4PpyUo3XM

  — ZeroPointNow (@ZeroPointNow) March 5, 2017

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  Note the same guy in a green hat in both videos. Some have suggested he may be a paid agitator… 

  Who are the Nazis?

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com * Follow on Twitter @ZeroPointNow

  

• The Robots Sent Into Fukushima Just Keep Dying

  Via Yvette Tan of Mashable.com,

  The robots sent in to investigate the nuclear fallout at Fukushima just aren't good enough.

  

   

  Tokyo Electric Power Company's (TEPCO) head of decommissioning admitted on Thursday that more creativity was needed in developing its robots sent to the reactive zone.

  The Fukushima nuclear power plant was massively damaged in 2011, when three of the six nuclear reactors suffered meltdown after being struck by a 9.0-magnitude earthquake and associated tsunami waves.

  More than 100,000 residents of the nearby Fukushima Prefecture had to be relocated, and the government has spent the last five years struggling with the aftermath. The incident is regarded as the world's largest nuclear disaster since Chernobyl.

  http://mashable.com/videos/embed?video=5iH8SPQw&player=offsite

  Part of the clean-up includes robots, sent in to probe the site, because radiation levels are too high for humans.

  But earlier last month, a robot sent into Fukushima's No. 2 reactor was forced to abort its mission after it was blocked by deposits — believed to be a mixture of melted fuel and broken pieces of structure.

  Two previous robots had also failed in its missions after one was stuck in a gap and another was abandoned after being unable to find fuel during six days of searching.

  This is an example of one of the robots TEPCO had sent to probe the area in the past.

  https://www.facebook.com/plugins/video.php?href=https%3A%2F%2Fwww.facebook.com%2FOfficialTEPCOen%2Fvideos%2F1348040575255238%2F&show_text=0&width=560

  "We should think out of the box so we can examine the bottom of the core and how melted fuel debris spread out," TEPCO Head of Decommissioning Naohiro Masuda said.

  Mr Masuda also added that he wants another robot sent in before deciding on methods to remove the reactor's debris.

  Despite the failed probe missions, officials have added that they want to stick to their schedule of starting the site clean up in 2021. 

  Decommissioning the site is expected to cost tens of billions of dollars and last around 40 years.

  Fukushima's No. 2 reactor was found in February to have a radiation level of 530 sieverts.

  Exposure to four sieverts is enough to be lethal, according to the National Institute of Radiological Sciences.

  South Korea's low-cost carrier Jeju Air also announced on Tuesday that it would not use Fukushima Airport due to fears of radiation.

  Some of its customers had reportedly posted online that they would not use the airline because they didn't want to "board airplanes that flew over Fukushima."

  

  

• This House Was 3D-Printed In Under 24 Hours At A Cost Of Just $10,000

  While 3D-printing may have been faded away in recent years from the spotlight of core “disruptive” technologies, that may soon change again after a company managed to 3D-print an entire house in just 24 hours. Located in Russia, the following 400-square-foot home, or 37 square meters, was built in just a day, at a cost of slightly over $10,000.

  As profiled in the Telegraph, the company Apis Cor, 3D-printing specialists based in Russia and San Francisco, built the house using a mobile printer on-site. According to the company, the walls of the building were printed and painted in just 24 hours.

  

  What makes Apis’ process unique is that while 3D-printing a home usually involves creating the parts off-site and constructing the building later, Apis Cor uses a mobile printer to print their apartments on-site. As profiled here, in 2015 the world’s first 3D-printed apartment building was constructed in China, with the structures printed off-site.

  

  However, the Apis process is unique in that it eliminates the need to transfer the printed blocks to the contstruction site.

  “Printing of self-bearing walls, partitions and building envelope were done in less than a day: pure machine time of printing amounted to 24 hours,” the company said.

  The main components of the house, including the walls, partitions and building envelope are printed solely with a concrete mixture. Once the house has been completed, the printer is removed with a crane-manipulator and the roof is then added, followed by the interior fixtures and furnishings, as is a layer of paint to the exterior of the house.

  

  The total construction cost of the house: $10,134.

  The initial house consists of a hallway, bathroom, living room and kitchen and is located in one of Apis Cor’s facilities in Russia. The company has claimed that the house can last up to 175 years.

  

   

  Nikita Chen-yun-tai, the inventor of the mobile printer and founder of Apis Cor, explained his desire is “to automate everything”.

  “When I first thought about creating my machine the world has already knew about the construction 3D printing,” he explained. “But all printers created before shared one thing in common – they were portal type. I am sure that such a design doesn’t have a future due to its bulkiness. So I took care of this limitation and decided to upgrade a construction crane design.”

  He adds: “We want to help people around the world to improve their living conditions. That’s why the construction process needs to become fast, efficient and high-quality as well. For this to happen we need to delegate all the hard work to smart machines.”

  

  Apis Cor has claimed to be the first company to have developed a 3D printer than can print whole buildings on-site.

  For now the technology is in its infancy, however in a few years, the deflationary pressures unleashed by Apis-Cor and its competitors could results in a huge deflationary wave across the construction space, and would mean that a house that recently cost in the hundreds of thousands, or millions, could be built for a fraction of the cost, providing cheap, accessible housing to millions, perhaps in the process revolutionizing and upending the multi trillion-dollar mortgage business that is the bedrock of the US banking industry.

  http://mashable.com/videos/embed?video=Celty0cj&player=offsite

  

  

• Trump Asks If It's Legal For Obama To Wiretap Him… Here's The Answer

  Via Rachel Stockman of LawNewz.com,

  

  If you woke up Saturday morning scratching your head as to what the heck President Donald Trump was talking about when he tweeted that Obama had his “wires tapped” in Trump Tower just before his victory, you are not alone.

  Terrible! Just found out that Obama had my "wires tapped" in Trump Tower just before the victory. Nothing found. This is McCarthyism!

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

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   So what happened? 

  The best that we can tell, Trump is referring to a Breitbart article which was published Friday night that makes reference to attempts by U.S. intelligence agencies to obtain a warrant from the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA) to monitor communications involving Donald Trump and several advisers. The interesting thing is that this isn’t a new development. In fact, several outlets including Mother Jones, The Guardian, The National Review, and Heat Street have been reporting on this alleged activity over the last couple of months.

  Here is the best summary we could find of the Obama administration’s efforts to wiretap Trump associates. From a January 11, 2017 Guardian article:

  The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation

  Trump then questions in a Tweet on Saturday morning if this is legal and even makes analogies to Nixon/Watergate.

  Is it legal for a sitting President to be "wire tapping" a race for president prior to an election? Turned down by court earlier. A NEW LOW!

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

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  How low has President Obama gone to tapp my phones during the very sacred election process. This is Nixon/Watergate. Bad (or sick) guy!

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) March 4, 2017

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  So is it legal?

  While the analogies to Watergate are totally misplaced (as that involved an illegal break-in), the underlying questions about the legality of these wiretaps are indeed important ones. So far, there is no indication that the Obama administration acted “illegally” if they did indeed intercept communications from Trump Tower.

  “The problem with the President’s question is that the standards for FISA are so low and easily satisfied (with little judicial review) that it is difficult to establish any illegality under the law,” wrote George Washington Law Professor Jonathan Turley.

  The FISA procedures were put in place in the aftermath of the Nixon-era scandals. To obtain a FISA warrant, the government needs to demonstrate probable cause that the “target of the surveillance is a foreign power or agent of a foreign power.” On top of that, the agents must prove that the main purpose of the surveillance is to obtain “foreign intelligence information.”

  “It is true that, if the target is a ‘U.S. person’ there must be probable cause to believe that the U.S. person’s activities may involve espionage or other similar conduct in violation of the criminal statutes of the United States. However, citizens can be collateral to the primary target under FISA,” Turley explained.

  So bottom line: if the Obama administration intelligence agents followed the proper protocols, had evidence, got approved by Main Justice, and presented their application to a FISA judge, and were approved, it is likely that any wiretapping was legal under U.S. law.

  “Well, putting aside there is no indication Trump himself was the target of the FISA warrant (it appears to have been aimed at four of his associates), yes, it CAN be legally done,” Bradley Moss, an attorney and national security expert explained to LawNewz.com.

  Would President Obama have to sign off on this FISA warrant as Trump implies?

  No, not necessarily. Under the law, the warrant application needs to be signed off by the Attorney General. So based on the timing of these applications if the reports are true, it is likely that Loretta Lynch knew about them and approved them.

  “The President can technically request the warrant but it still has to go through the process. Obama couldn’t authorize it on his own. The AG still has to sign off and the FISA judge still has to authorize the warrant,” Moss explained.

  Trump is right that if the warrant involved four of his aides, some of his communications may have been intercepted too, and perhaps what happened warrants further investigation.

  “If somehow several people in DOJ all got together and were asked to fabricate evidence to present to the FISA judge that would be illegal,” Moss explained. “But so far that is not what we are hearing happened.”

  Turley further adds, “There is provisions stating that a U.S. person cannot be surveilled ‘solely upon the basis of activities protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States.’ Thus, if Trump aides were targeted for political reasons, the surveillance would be unlawful even under the dubious protections of FISA.”

  This matter is probably deserving of further investigation, but so far, there is no indication of anything illegal.

  

  

• Obama Slams "False" Trump Accusation, Says "Never Ordered" Wiretapping

  Moments ago, Barack Obama through his spokesman Kevin Lewis denied Trump’s accusation that he had ordered the Trump Tower wiretapped, saying neither he nor any member of the Obama White House, “ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”

  Follows the statement from Kevin Lewis, spokesman to former president Barack Obama

  “A cardinal rule of the Obama Administration was that no White House official ever interfered with any independent investigation led by the Department of Justice. As part of that practice, neither President Obama nor any White House official ever ordered surveillance on any U.S. citizen. Any suggestion otherwise is simply false.”

   

  MORE: Spokesperson for former Pres. Obama responds to Trump wiretap allegation, calls it “simply false.” https://t.co/cXyQHeSvNy pic.twitter.com/se2gno6wxz

  — ABC News (@ABC) March 4, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Yet while the carefully-worded statement, an exercise in semantics, claims Obama did not himself, or through members of his White House team, order a potential wiretapping, it does not deny an actual wiretapping of Trump (or Trump Tower), which as some have speculated in the past, did in fact take place after a FISA Court granted surveillance of Trump over accusations of Russian interference. It also does not preclude the FBI – which is the entity that would most likely have implemented such a wiretap – from having given the order.

  As a reminder, here is what the Guardian reported in early January:

  The Guardian has learned that the FBI applied for a warrant from the foreign intelligence surveillance (Fisa) court over the summer in order to monitor four members of the Trump team suspected of irregular contacts with Russian officials. The Fisa court turned down the application asking FBI counter-intelligence investigators to narrow its focus. According to one report, the FBI was finally granted a warrant in October, but that has not been confirmed, and it is not clear whether any warrant led to a full investigation.

  For the definitive answer, we suggest Trump ask Comey whether or not his building was being tapped in the days prior to the election.

  

  

• China Vows To Refrain From "Mega Economic Stimulus" As 'Two Sessions' Begins

  The US has Jeff Sessions, but China is about to have “two sessions”.

  Starting Sunday is a two-week period of heightened political discourse, if not exactly debate, among the top echelons of China’s Politburo, also known as China’s “two sessions.”

  The China People’s Political Consultative Conference (CPPCC) starts on March 3 and will conclude on the 13th. The National People’s Congress (NPC) will start on March 5 and last until the 16th. On March 5, Premier Li Keqiang will announce 2017 economic targets (e.g., GDP growth and CPI) and policy measures including fiscal and monetary policy (e.g., on-budget deficit, M2 and TSF) in the morning session of NPC. A number of senior economic officials, including Premier Li, will also hold press conferences during the meetings to provide further details/clarifications on policies in major economic fronts.

  In previewing what to expect from the “two sessions”, this week Xinhua reported that China will “not flood the economy with government investment as it pursues more stable, healthy economic growth,” an official with the top economic planner said Wednesday. “Instead, it will focus on supply-side reform for a modest expansion of aggregate demand,” said Li Pumin, secretary general of the National Development and Reform Commission, at a news conference.

  Li made the remarks when answering a question on whether China would roll out a major stimulus plan like in 2008.

  “Stimulus plans are used to prop up weak demand with government investment under special circumstances,” he said, adding it was different from the scale of fixed-asset investment (FAI). It was recently reported that 23 provincial-level regions had announced FAI volume totaling some 45 trillion yuan (about 6.54 trillion U.S. dollars) for 2017, stoking concern of a gigantic stimulus plan.

  Li dismissed the worries by saying FAI volume is the aggregate rather than newly-added investment and includes investment from the public and private sector. The FAI volume of 32 provincial-level regions rose 7.9 percent year on year to 60.65 trillion yuan in 2016 and is likely to hit 65 trillion yuan, Li said.

  After China’s economy entered a “new normal” stage, the major difficulties were a by-product of supply rather than demand, he said. The addition of excessive production capacity and redundant projects will be forestalled, and more efforts will be made to meet demand with effective supply, he added.

  The overarching theme over the past few years has been China’s attempt to transition its export- and investment-driven growth model into one that draws strength from consumption, innovation and the service sector. Consumption contributed 64.6 percent to China’s GDP growth in 2016, up 4.9 percentage points from 2015, official data showed.

  In the process, however, China has also been quietly fading out some of its legacy industries, such as coal, where as reported on Wednesday, Beijing warned it would have to “reallocate” some 500,000 mostly coal and steel workers (to start) into growth industries, such as ridesharing and taxicabs.

  “This year we will continue to cut capacity in coal and steel,” Yin Weimin, the head of China’s Ministry of Human Resources and Social Security, told reporters. “We will need to reallocate jobs to 500,000 workers,” he said, including assigning workers different jobs within the same or a different company, early retirement or encouraging them to become entrepreneurs.

   

  Weimin added that China will introduce a policy this year to encourage the development of new industries, for example internet-related industries, that will create new jobs, he said. In 2016, he said that China reallocated jobs to 726,000 coal and steel workers “without any major problems”, adding that China’s overall employment outlook in 2017 is expected to remain relatively stable, despite the government facing immense pressure to create jobs.

  Meanwhile, China has decided to adopt a “prudent and neutral” monetary policy this year to keep liquidity at an appropriate level and avoid large injections. Official data released Wednesday showed that China’s manufacturing purchasing managers’ index expanded for the seventh month in a row to hit 51.6 percent in February, further evidence that the world’s second largest economy is stabilizing amid the uncertain global outlook.

  In this context, the following Goldlman analysis puts in context the past two years of Chinese economic growth and momentum  and what has driven them. The chart below plots the decomposition of moves in China’s 5-year swap rates into the two market-implied macro drivers. The results provide an intuitive qualitative assessment of market moves since mid-2015.

  August 2015 to January 2016 – deteriorating growth expectations: From mid-2015 through the beginning of 2016, as policymakers began another round of RMB reform, growth expectations deteriorated sharply. Falling growth expectations weighed on interest rates, although the downward pressures were partially offset by an incremental hawkish shift in the markets’ expectation for monetary policy, perhaps given the backdrop of the substantial capital outflows that followed the RMB depreciation episodes in August 2015 and early January 2016.

  February to Oct 2016 – improving growth expectations, easier policy: From late January 2016, a broad improvement in growth expectations on the back of a meaningful quasi-fiscal credit impulse pushed towards higher swap rates. However, from the perspective of the interest rate markets, the improving growth expectations were more or less offset by expectations for easier policy, leaving swap rates broadly unchanged.

  Since Oct 2016 – tighter policy expectations, continuing improvement in growth expectations: Since October 2016 swap rates have moved higher by over 100bp. Our decomposition suggests that over two-thirds of the increase in swap rates through mid-December 2016 was related to a more hawkish shift in markets’ perception of monetary policy. The more hawkish shift in policy expectations also weighed on equities through the end of the year, although this has reversed recently as market growth expectations have continued to improve steadily.

  Hawkish shift in PBoC policy perceptions key driver of higher swap rates since October
  Contribution of growth and policy shocks to move in China 5-year swap rates

  

  Perhaps more than anything, the above implies that, as Deutsche and UBS both warned recently, the period of Chinese upside momentum and credit-impulse contribution to global growth is about to end. For those who missed it, here is what UBS said:

  “Our global credit impulse (covering 77% of global GDP) has suddenly collapsed” and explains that “as the chart below shows the ‘global’ credit impulse over the last 18 months is essentially mainly China (the green shaded bit), which even now is still creating new credit at an annualized rate of around 30pp of (Chinese) GDP. But the credit impulse is the ‘change in the change’ in credit and even the Chinese banks could not sustain the recent extraordinary pace of credit acceleration. As a result: whereas back in Jan ’16 the global credit impulse was positive to the tune of 3.8% of global GDP (of which China comprised 3.5% of global GDP) it has now fallen back to -0.1% of global GDP (China’s contribution is -0.3% of global GDP).

   

  

  So while it may seem rather distant and boring compared to the daily scandals emerging daily from the realm of US politics, the fate of global economic growth in the near-term will be determined in Beijing over the next 2 weeks. Our advice is to drown out the noise as much as possible, and follow developments in China closely. 

  

  

• A Lawmaker Is Trying To Ban Howard Zinn Literature From Public Schools

  Via Nick Bernabe of TheAntiMedia.org,

  A Republican Arkansas lawmaker has introduced legislation to ban the works of the late historian, activist, and writer Howard Zinn from publicly funded schools.

  The bill from Rep. Kim Hendren, just noted by the Arkansas Times, was introduced on Thursday and referred to the House Committee on Education.

  

  It states (pdf) that any “public school district or an open-enrollment public charter school shall not include in its curriculum or course materials for a class or program of study any book or other material” authored by Zinn from 1959 until 2010, the year in which he died.

  Here is the summary bill..

  

  And it may interest some that Hendren's other Bills include:

  HB1036 – TO PROHIBIT THE USE BY A STUDENT OF A PORTABLE ELECTRONIC DEVICE IN A PUBLIC SCHOOL; AND TO ESTABLISH A SECURE, DESIGNATED AREA WITHIN A SCHOOL WHERE A STUDENT WILL DEPOSIT HIS OR HER PERSONAL ELECTRONIC DEVICE DURING THE SCHOOL DAY.

  HB1364 – TO ESTABLISH THE PUBLIC POLICY OF THE STATE OF ARKANSAS ON THE USE OF ELECTRONIC DEVICES.

  The Zinn Education Project, which aims to “to introduce students to a more accurate, complex, and engaging understanding of United States history than is found in traditional textbooks and curricula,” noted Thursday that educators in the state may have a very different take from Hendren: “To date, there are more than 250 teachers in Arkansas who have signed up to access people’s history lessons from the Zinn Education Project website.”

  The project is also offering a free copy of Zinn’s seminal A People’s History of the United States to any Arkansas teacher who requests it:

  

  At least one high school class in northern Arkansas is making its opposition to the legislation clear already:

  @ZinnEdProject This AR APUSH class doesn't approve of the proposed ban on Zinn and wants its voice heard. pic.twitter.com/bVQuIERNP4

  — Dr. Cissy Dowdy (@cisdowdy) March 3, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Publisher Haymarket Books, meanwhile, tweeted in response to the news that people should read more of Zinn’s works.

  Read more Howard Zinn! https://t.co/rWHPyQiNlf

  — Haymarket Books (@haymarketbooks) March 3, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  It’s not first time in recent history the works of the legendary Zinn have been the target of suppression.

  Emails unearthed by the Associated Press in 2013, for example, revealed that former Governor of Indiana Mitch Daniels sought to ban Zinn’s works from that state’s classrooms, and the Tucson, Arizona school district in 2012 banned  A People’s History from all classrooms.

  Given the response in Indiana to the revelations of Daniel’s censorship attempt, however, Hendren may also find his own Zinn-banning efforts backfire.

  

  

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• The Mainstream Is Circling The Wagons: "They're Coming For All Of Us…It's An Orchestrated Attack Against Truth"

  Via Mac Slavo of SHTFPlan.com,

  Within hours of the election of Donald Trump the mainstream media, their politico counterparts and social media operatives began spreading the narrative that the President was only elected as a result of the dissemination of fake news. The term itself became a rallying cry for everyone from major search engines to massive social media websites who said they would create fact checking teams within their organizations to ensure only legitimate news and information would be listed on their respective platforms. Soon, the leftist media began spreading lists, none of which were backed with any actual evidence, of supposed “fake news” purveyors and Russian propaganda websites. The lists included some of the most highly trafficked non-mainstream websites and aggregators around the world. As these Silicon Valley behemoths and popular news organizations mobilized, so too did mainstream advertising agencies, one of which quickly pulled advertising from the purported king of fake news, conservative leaning news organization Breitbart.com.

  The battle was clearly on. And to this day, it continues in earnest. Legitimate news is being buried in feeds and search engine pages, while the effort to directly attack the revenue of alternative media websites continues to expand.

  Several weeks ago Mike Adams of NaturalNews.com penned an alert in which he reported that a shadow organization had contacted him with an offer to either help them take down Infowars founder Alex Jones, or be destroyed. Adams, being a long-time proponent of free speech and liberty, took to the internet to expose them instead. Naturally, the skeptics laughed it all off as another conspiracy theory.

  Except just days after Natural News posted the warning, Infowars was suddenly dropped by one of the world’s largest online advertising agencies, reportedly costing the network some $3 million in revenue. And within a week of that attack, the largest search engine in the world delisted some 140,000 NaturalNews.com pages from their search results.

  While this may seem like no big deal for the average reader today, what these recent actions demonstrate is that a conglomerate of traditional news media, big business and political operatives are actively working to suppress the reporting of information that runs counter to the mainstream agenda.

  First they come for the purveyors of truth and information that has remained hidden from the masses for decades. Next they will come for those who publicly discuss their views and and ideas on social media and other forums. And while you may not fall into any of these two categories, make no mistake, as SGT Report warns in the following must-watch report, one day they will come for you, too. 

  They’ll be coming for all of us… Because this is an orchestrated attack against truth… I cannot imagine living in a time in the United States of America where this is allowed to stand…

  As of this morning Google has reinstated NaturalNews.com, though the original reasons provided by Google, which claimed this was a technical issue involving a small number of outdated pages on the website, were unable to be duplicated by numerous well known SEO websites and cyber sleuths. Curiously, as Health Ranger Mike Adams notes in his statement on the censroship, the very same technical issues actively exist on mainstream websites like CNN and Huffington Post, though their pages have yet to be delisted in the same manner as Natural News.

  Based on the evidence, we are hard pressed to find any legitimate reason for why Mike Adams’ 140,000 pages would have been delisted, save for the fact that this was a direct attack against his alternative viewpoints on health, politics and a number of other issues. And though Google as an organization may not have been fully aware of the reasons behind the delisting, someone had to push the button. That the button push came just days after the aforementioned warning Mike received to either play ball or be destroyed is highly suspicious.

  There is a concerted effort to shut down views and ideas that run counter to the status quo. Today it has come in the form of silencing the most vocal critics. Tomorrow, they may try to silence you.

  Mike Adams discusses the delisting and reinstatement of his website on The Common Sense Show:

  

  

• NEW UNCOVERED INFORMATION: Why Central Banks Were Forced To Rig The Gold Market

  

  By the SRSrocco Report,

  According to newly uncovered information in the gold market, it provides additional evidence of why the Fed, Central Banks and the IMF were forced to RIG the gold market.  Not only was the dropping of the Gold-Dollar peg going to release a great deal of pressure on the manipulated gold price, but forecasts of a massive increase in gold demand was going to totally overwhelm supply.

  Thus, this new information provides clear evidence that the gold market was being assaulted on “two fronts.”  Not only was the gold market suffering from a decades of price suppression schemes via the Fed and Central Banks, but also that surging gold demand in the jewelry and industrial sectors was going to lead to severe shortages in the gold market.

  Which means, the gold market was experiencing a great deal more stress than complications stemming from the debasement of the U.S. Dollar due to massive money printing.  Actually, looking at this new information, I had no idea of the amount of Fed, Central Bank and IMF gold market intervention until I put all the pieces together.

  Now, when I say “new information”, it pertains to new information and data that I dug up from older official documents.  While most of the folks in the precious metals community realize that the Fed and Central Banks have sold gold into the market to depress the price, this new evidence puts the gold market it in an entirely DIFFERENT LIGHT.

   —————————————————————-

  PRECIOUS METALS INVESTORS…. if you think your getting the “BEST PRICE” for purchasing gold and silver, or you are receiving the best “FEE” for storing your metals, than you need not look any further.  However, if you haven’t checked out our new PRECIOUS METALS INVESTING section or our new LOWEST COST PRECIOUS METALS STORAGE page, I highly recommend you do.

  —————————————————————-

  Furthermore, additional data points to a “Gold Supply & Demand” situation that would have gone completely out of control, if the Fed, Central Banks and IMF did not step in.

  To preface this subject matter, the Central Banks dumped a lot of gold into the market during the 1960’s to maintain (suppress) the official gold price.  This was known as the “London Gold Pool” where an estimated 78 million oz (Moz) of gold were dumped into the market between 1961 and 1968.  I explained this in my THE GOLD REPORT- Investment Flows.

  However, when Nixon dropped the Dollar-Gold Peg on August 15, 1971, the problems with the global monetary system were just beginning.  In a report published in November, 1972, by the U.S. Congress and Subcommittee on International Payments of the Joint Economic Committee for the purpose of “De-emphasizing gold as a reserve asset”,it stated the following:

  

   

  Not only did the committee suggest and permit the “voluntary” sale of official gold into the market, but also to “prohibit” against Central bank purchases.  Which meant the committee was proposing a plan to only allow the DUMPING of gold into the market, but forbid any OFFICIAL BUYING.  This of course was supporting the “FREE MARKET” fundamentals for proper gold price discovery…. LOL.

  At the bottom of that quote, the committee went on to state that when the international monetary reform had been achieved (to an IMF SDR basket), all prohibitions of gold (investment) purchases by American citizens would be promptly abolished.

  So, the wonderful folks up in government had an ingenious method to their madness.  According to their assessment, it would have not been prudent to allow Americans to start purchasing and hoarding gold until the completion of the new fiat monetary system was achieved.

  Again, most of us in the precious metals community understand that the Central banks dumped a lot of gold into the market during the 1960’s London Gold Pool to maintain the official gold price.  However, new uncovered gold supply and demand data suggests there was another FACTOR that forced even more dumping of official gold during the 1970’s.

  Forecast Of Massive Gold Supply & Demand Imbalance

  The reason that Nixon dropped the Gold-Dollar Peg in August 1971 was to keep U.S. gold from flowing overseas as the U.S. Government had been printing a great deal of paper money.  Thus, countries such as France were exchanging Dollars for real gold.  This forced Nixon to drop the convertibility of Dollars into gold so the United States could hold onto its remaining gold reserves.

  But, and here is a BIG BUT… converting Dollars into physical gold was only one part of the monumental problem facing the gold market and industry.  Up until now, this was the only real problem that I was aware of as it pertained to the gold market in the 1970’s.  However, forecasts of future Gold Supply & Demand factors were going to totally disrupt the market unless the Fed and Central banks stepped in.

  This next quote comes from the USGS 1971 Gold Yearbook.  The highlighted area shows just how bad the gold supply and demand situation was going to be at the end of the decade:

  According to a gold expert at Consolidated Gold Fields Ltd., global gold demand was forecasted to reach 63 million oz (Moz) by 1980, up from 42.5-45 Moz in 1972.  You see… this was a BIG PROBLEM.  Why?  Because gold mine supply was also forecasted to decline to 38-41 Moz in 1980.  This would have resulted in a huge net deficit.

  So, how well did the Consolidated Gold Fields Ltd., forecast turn out?  Let’s look at the chart below:

  

  Actually, it turned out pretty darn accurate.  Global gold production declined from its peak of 46.5 Moz in 1970, to 38.8 Moz in 1980.  This was mainly due to the peak and decline of South African gold production.  I would imagine very few individuals in the precious metals community realize just how much gold South Africa produced.

  No other country has come anywhere near the record annual gold production achieved by South Africa at its peak in 1970:

  

  South Africa produced an amazing 1,000 metric tons of gold in 1970… 32 Moz.  Here are the annual peak production figures from three leading gold producing countries:

  1) China = 478 mt (15.4 Moz) 2014

  2) USA = 366 mt (11.8 Moz) 1998

  3) Australia = 276 mt (8.9 Moz) 2015

  China holds the second highest annual gold production record at 478 mt (15.4 Moz) set in 2014.  However, this is still less than half of the 1,000 mt that South Africa produced in 1970.  According to GFMS 2016 Gold Survey, South Africa’s gold production was 151 mt (4.8 Moz) in 2015.   The once mighty South African gold production has declined 85% from its peak in 1970.

  Now, taking the 1980 forecasted supply and demand data by Consolidated Gold Fields Ltd. above, here is the result:

  

  If the forecast of a 63 Moz gold demand figure was true, then the market would have suffered a 25 Moz deficit in 1980.  So, not only did U.S. President Nixon stop the bleeding of gold flows out of the U.S. Treasury, but in addition, public demand for gold that decade was going to explode.

  This just could not fly.  Which is why the Congress and the Subcommittee on International Exchange and Payments (listed above) were highly motivated to promote “Official Gold Sales” while prohibiting “Official Gold Buying.”  This was a “ONE-WAY PLAN” for gold… and that was the dumping of a massive amount of the yellow metal into the market.

  The Fed, IMF and Official Government Gold Sales During the 1970’s

  It’s hard to tell how much gold was dumped into the gold market during the 1970’s decade.  I have plans on putting together a more comprehensive report on the details of what took place in the gold market from the 1960’s to present.  This will include more detailed data on Official gold sales.

  However, we have some clues in the text from different USGS Gold Yearbooks.  First, we have foreign gold at the Federal Reserve sold into the market in 1973 and 1974:

  

  As we can see, 2.14 Moz of foreign held gold at the Fed were dumped into the market in 1974 and 1.69 Moz in 1973.  Unfortunately, official sales of gold into the market did not deter the rising gold price.  The gold price jumped from an average $65 in January 1973 to a high of $200 at the end of 1974.

  Well, the Central banks could not let this exploding gold price to continue.  Which is why the IMF made this official statement in August, 1975:

  

  The IMF – International Monetary Fund, announced in August, 1975 to sell one-sixth of its gold stocks.  At the time, the IMF held 153.4 Moz of gold.  Thus, it planned to sell 25.5 Moz over the next several years to supposedly provide capital for low-interest loans to developing countries.  I wonder why the IMF did not make this statement back in 1973 or 1974?  And why would the IMF have to sell gold to provide capital for developing countries??  Wasn’t there a new FIAT MONETARY REGIME??

  Wasn’t gold now a “Barbarous Relic?”

  With the IMF “strategic”announcement that it would sell 25.5 Moz of gold into the market, it had a profound impact on the gold price in 1975:

  

  After the IMF gold sale announcement, the gold price plummeted 21% in just one month from $165, down to a low of $130.  Before I came across this information, I just believed that the gold price was due for a correction…. stated by several websites, such as by analysts on King World News.  However, this wasn’t a typical market correction.  Rather… this was a MARKET INTERVENTION FORCED CORRECTION.  Big difference.

  So, why the IMF gold sale announcement?  Was it due to a response to the rapidly rising price.. or did rising demand play a part.  If we look at this next quote taken from the USGS 1974 Gold Yearbook, we find our answer:

  

  According to the data, private gold holdings and investment surged 5-fold in 1974 to 27.3 Moz.  The report also stated that total gold jewelry and industrial demand was 23 Moz in 1974.  Thus, total gold demand exceeded 50 Moz in 1974.

  I would imagine if private gold investment didn’t jump 5-fold from the previous year, the IMF would have not considered it necessary to announce the sale of 25.5 Moz of its gold reserves in 1975.

  In order to make good on its promise, the IMF did sell 3.9 Moz of gold in 1976 and another 6 Moz in 1977 into the market:

  

  

  In just the first two years after its proposed 25.5 Moz gold sale in August 1975, the IMF sold 9.9 Moz, or nearly 40% of its planned amount.  If we read the first quoted text above (1976), the gold price reached a low in August 1976 after the second IMF gold sale.

  Oh, did I forget to mention that another 2.14 Moz of foreign held gold at the Federal Reserve was dumped into the market in 1976??  So, between these two official institutions, over 6 Moz of gold were sold into the market in 1976 alone to guarantee there was a FREE MARKET PRICING mechanism for gold.

  I have to make a comment here.  I spend a lot of time at energy and precious metals blogs.  I am completely surprised at the lack of intelligence by individuals who are supposedly very “BRIGHT” in their respective industries.  When I hear comments that gold is nothing more than a “13th Century Middle Ages Relic”, and that digit currency is the new monetary system… the Good Lord Almighty must be enjoying one hell of a BELLY-ACHING LAUGH.

  These folks who seem to understand the ramifications of falling cheap energy production upon the global markets still cling to a FIAT MONETARY SYSTEM that needs an ever-increasing supply of cheap oil to survive.  How on earth are they unable to CONNECT THE FRICKEN DOTS is beyond me.

  Regardless, the Fed, Central banks and IMF have been rigging the gold market for quite some time… and continue to do so.

  During the 1960’s Gold Pool it was more a physical market intervention as they dumped 78 Moz of gold to maintain the official gold price of $35 an ounce.  Then when Nixon dropped the Gold-Dollar Peg in 1971, these official institutions combined “Physical gold dumping” along with the “Creation of a Paper Gold Futures Market in 1975” to rig the gold market during the wild 1970 decade.

  I don’t have a lot of data on the paper futures market in this article (will be in future Paid Report), but here is a tidbit on some of the trading volume:

  Global Paper GOLD EXCHANGE Annual Trading Volume:

  1975 = 84 Moz

  1977 = 190 Moz

  1979 = 1,027 Moz

  From the beginning of paper gold trading on the Global Exchanges, it increased from 84 Moz in 1975 to an astonishing 1,027 Moz (1.03 billion oz) in 1979.  The tremendous trading of paper gold contracts (later on including options) sucked in a massive amount of funds.  Thus, paper gold trading funneled a great deal of money away from physical gold and into worthless paper gold.

  As I mentioned, I don’t have a full reporting of all the official gold that was dumped into the market from 1971-1980.  That will be included in an upcoming report.  However, it was stated in the USGS 1980 Gold Yearbook, that the IMF did complete its final gold auction in May 1980.  This was their final gold sale that equaled a total of 25.5 Moz from 1976 to 1980.

  If we include this amount with the sales of foreign gold at the Federal Reserve and other official gold sales, the amount of gold sold during the 1970 decade was quite an impressive amount… probably something north of 50 Moz.

  Again, this was all done to guarantee a FREE MARKET price discovery for gold.  Today, most Americans and citizens around the world have no idea just how undervalued gold is.  No idea whatsoever.

  Since the peak of the gold price in 1980, the Fed and Central Banks continued to dump physical gold into the markets at various times up until 2009.  However, “Official gold sales” turned into net “Official purchases” in 2010.  This put a severe KINK in the Western Central Bank plan of gold market rigging.  Just seems like those problematic Chinese and Russians have a much different idea about REAL MONEY than the West.

  

   

  To continue rigging the gold market in the 1990’s and onwards, the West had to introduce “Gold Leasing” and more exotic “Gold Derivatives” to keep the gold price from going completely BONKERS.  Again, this has been done while the public remains completely in the dark.

  In conclusion, the Fed and Central banks were in serious trouble in 1971.  Not only was the dropping of the Gold-Dollar Peg in 1971 a sign that things were about to get very interesting with the gold price, but the forecast of exploding gold demand would have resulted in a 25 Moz deficit by 1980.  This forced the Fed, IMF and Central banks to dump a massive amount of gold into the market to meet the insatiable demand.

  Which means, gold became too valuable to be used as money in the U.S. and Global economy.  Yes, that sounds strange… but that is the truth.  I mentioned this in a previous article on why silver was removed from U.S. coinage.  It was due to the same reason.

  When I say, “too valuable to be used as money”, I mean it in the way that money has degraded to.  There are no real banks in the world.  A bank should hold stored “ECONOMIC ENERGY” as stated by Mike Maloney.  When someone deposits gold at a bank, that is REAL MONEY.  A bank is supposed to store real money.  Instead, banks store DIGITAL IOU balances, or worse yet, highly leveraged loans.

  Since Nixon dropped the Dollar-Gold Peg in 1971, the amount of debt in the world has skyrocketed.  The Central Banks designed a two-tiered system to remove gold as a reserve asset:

  1. Dump physical gold into the market to suppress or maintain price.  Then add a Paper Futures Market to funnel funds away from a limited supply of physical gold and into an unlimited supply of paper gold contracts.
  2. Increase world debt to such massive levels, that interest rates had to fall towards zero.. or negative.  Thus creating a 30+ year artificial Bond Market Rally.  If interest rates rise… the entire system BLOWS UP.

  While the ultimate revaluation of gold and silver has taken more time than most of us in the precious metals community anticipated, THAT DAY IS COMING.

  As I have mentioned in several articles and interviews, the timing of this event will be known by what takes place in the energy markets as they are the drivers of our economy… and the highly leverage Fiat Monetary System.

  Investors should not try to time the markets by selling Stocks, Bonds or Real Estate before the crash comes and then move into physical gold and silver.  Rather, that should be done on an ongoing basis as the TIMING of the event is impossible to predict.

  However, it is much wiser to do be in the metals a DAY EARLY than a DAY LATE.

  Lastly, if you haven’t checked out our new PRECIOUS METALS INVESTING section or our new LOWEST COST PRECIOUS METALS STORAGE page, I highly recommend you do.

  Check back for new articles and updates at the SRSrocco Report.

  

• Austria To Stop Giving Food, Shelter To Rejected Asylum Seekers

  In a bill aimed at encouraging asylum seekers to leave voluntarily, Austrian lawmakers are considering halting the provision of food and accommodation to migrants who are denied asylum and refuse to leave the country.

  

  Austria took in roughly 90,000 asylum seekers in 2015, more than 1 percent of its population, as it was swept up in Europe's migration crisis when hundreds of thousands of people crossed its borders, most on their way to Germany. As Reuters notes, it has since tightened immigration restrictions and helped shut down the route through the Balkans by which almost all those people – many of them fleeing war and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere – arrived. Asylum applications fell by more than half last year.

  Asylum seekers in Austria get so-called basic services, including free accommodation, food, access to medical treatment and 40 euros ($42.41) pocket money a month.

  But now, Austria's centrist coalition government on Tuesday agreed on a draft law which would allow authorities to stop providing accommodation and food to rejected asylum seekers who refuse to leave the country.

  “The first thing is basically that they don’t get anything from the Austrian state if they don’t have the right to stay here. Is that so hard to understand?”

  As Politico reports, Interior Minister Wolfgang Sobotka said, said the law, which will need approval by parliament, was designed to encourage rejected asylum seekers to leave voluntarily.

  

  According to the minister, some 4,000 people receive basic services but should have left the country. Of those, around half could be affected if the law is passed because they are deemed healthy enough to travel to their home countries.

  Most rejected asylum seekers in Austria in 2016 were from Afghanistan, Pakistan and Nigeria. Asylum applicants who lie about their identities face a €5,000 fine or three weeks in jail.

  The Austrian office of the United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees (UNHCR) said the bill was "highly questionable" and urged lawmakers to think hard about agreeing to it.

  

  

• "What Is To Be Done?"

  Via Paul Craig Roberts,

  The question in the title is V.I. Lenin’s question. His answer was to create a revolutionary “vanguard” to spread revolutionary ideas among the workers, the economic class that Karl Marx had declared to be the class rising to the ascendency of political power. Finally, democracy, frustrated by upper class interests in its earlier manifestations, would become reality. The workers would rule.

  Given the presence of evil and human failing, it did not work out in that way. But Lenin’s question remains a valid one. Americans whose economic life and prospects for their children have been destroyed by the offshoring of American manufacturing and tradable professional skills jobs, such as software engineering, answered the question by electing Donald Trump.

  The Americans, dispossessed by the offshoring corporations, elected Trump, because Trump was the only American running for a political office who called attention to the problem and declared his intention to fix it.

  By standing up for Americans, Trump alienated the global corporations, their executives and shareholders, all of whom benefit from stealing the economic life of Americans and producing abroad where labor and regulatory costs are lower. Neoliberal junk economists describe this labor arbitrage, which reduces the real incomes of the American labor force, as the beneficial working of free trade.

  These offshoring firms not only have destroyed the economic prospects of millions of Americans, but also have destroyed the payroll tax base of Social Security and Medicare, and the tax base of local and state governments, with the consequence that numerous pension systems are on the verge of failure. The New York Teamsters Road Carriers Local 707 Pension Fund has just failed. This failure, experts predict, is the beginning of a tsunami that will spread into municipal and state pension systems.

  When you add up the external costs of jobs offshoring that are imposed on Americans, the costs far exceed the value of the profits that flow to the One Percent. Clearly, this is an intolerable situation.

  Dispossessed Americans rose up. They ignored the presstitute media, or perhaps were driven to support Trump by the hostility of the media. Trump was elected by dispossessed America, by the working class.

  The working class is out of favor with the elite liberal/progressive/left which abhors the working class as racist, misogynist, homophobic, gun nuts who oppose transgendered toilet facilities. Thus, the working class, and their chosen representative, Donald Trump, are under full assault by the presstitutes. “Trump Must Go” is their slogan.

  And well he might. Trump, in a fit of stupidity, dismissed his National Security Advisor, Gen. Flynn, because Flynn did what he should have done and spoke with the Russian ambassador in order to avoid a Russian response to Obama’s provocation of expelling Russian diplomats at Christmas.

  Russians have been demonized and ascribed demonic powers. If you speak to a Russian, you fall under suspicion and become a traitor to your country. This is the story according to the CIA, the Democratic Party, the military/security complex, and the presstitute media.

  Once Trump put Flynn’s blood in the water, he set the situation for the sacrifice of other of his appointees, ending with himself. At the present time, “the Russian connection” black mark is operating against Trump’s Attorney General, Jeff Sessions. If Sessions falls, Trump is next.

  Let’s be clear. As a member of the Senate Armed Services Committee, Sessions met with the Russian ambassador, just as he met with a number of other countries’ ambassadors. There is nothing unusual or surprising about a US senator meeting with foreign diplomatic representatives.

  Those who accuse Sessions of lying are misrepresenting the facts. Sessions met with ambassadors in his capacity as a US Senator, not in his capacity as a Trump representative. As a former US Senate staffer, I can attest that it is perfectly normal for US Senators to meet with diplomats. John McCain and Lindsey Graham even fly to the Middle East to meet with terrorists.

  Despite the facts, the Washington Post, New York Times, CNN and all the rest of the CIA’s media whores are consciously and intentionally misrepresenting the facts. Americans do not need any more evidence that the entirety of the American media is totally devoid of integrity and respect for truth. The American media is a collection of whores who lie for a living. The presstitutes are despicable, the scum of the earth.

  The real question is how has contact with Russian government officials become criminalized, grounds for removing a National Security Adviser, an Attorney General, and impeaching a President himself. President John F. Kennedy had ongoing contact with Khrushchev, the head of the Soviet government, in order to resolve the Cuban/Turkish missile crisis without nuclear war. President Nixon had ongoing contact with the Russians in order to achieve SALT I and the anti-ballistic missile treaty. President Carter had ongoing contact with Russians in order to achieve SALT II. President Reagan worked with the Russian leader in order to end the Cold War. I know. I was there.

  But if President Trump wants to defuse the extremely dangerous tensions that the reckless Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes have resurrected with a powerful thermo-nuclear state that only wants peace with the US, President Trump and any of his appointees who spoke to a Russian are unfit for office! This madness is the position of the idiot liberal/progressive/left, the CIA, the Democratic Party, the right-wing morons of the Republican Party such as Lindsey Graham and John McCain, and the two-bit whores that comprise the Western media.

  Dear reader, ask yourself, how did communications with Russians in the interest of peace and the reduction of tensions become a criminal act? Have laws been passed that it is forbidden for US officials to speak with Russian officials? Are you so utterly stupid that a presstitute media that has never in your entire life told you anything that was truthful can convince you that those who seek to avoid a conflict between thermo-nuclear powers are “Russian agents”?

  I have no doubt that the vast bulk of Western populations are insouciant. But if there is no intelligence and awareness left anywhere in the population, and most certainly there is none whatsoever in the governments of the West or in the Western media or the Identity Politics of the liberal/progressive/left, then don’t expect to be alive much longer.

  The entirety of the world has been put on the knife edge of existence by the arrogance, stupidity, and hubris of the neoconservative pursuit of American world hegemony. The neoconservative ideology is perfect cover for the material interest of the military/security Deep State that is driving the world to destruction.

  

  

• Bacon Boom Busts

  Great news America – After soaring to the highest price in three years, wholesale prices for pork bellies, the cut used for making bacon, are heading for a 25% loss over two weeks.

  As Bloomberg notes, increased demand had more than doubled prices since August, but now bellies are so expensive that the high costs are stemming demand, according to David Kruse, president of Commstock Investments Inc.

  

   

  And while the average joe may see his so-called pocketbook better off as pork prices plunge (or will obviously purchase more bacon), the above-average-joes (who drive their Beamers and Benz's) are facing an ever increasing cost for their luxury lifestyles…

  

  The premium gasoline that fuels luxury cars made by Mercedes-Benz to Audi has always been more expensive than regular, but the difference keeps getting bigger.

  As Bloomberg points out, premium costs almost 50 cents a gallon extra, nearly doubling in the past four years. And don’t expect the trend to change — environmental rules limiting sulfur that kicked in this year could make the higher-octane fuel scarcer and even more costly in the future.

  So, it seems very clear that consumer confidence is soaring because bacon prices are plunging, not Trumptopian hope…

  

  Never mind the collapse in real wages.

  

  

• The West Submits To Blasphemy Laws

  Via Judith Bergmann of The Gatestone Institute,

  • "Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning…" — Muslim Brotherhood affiliate Samer Majzoub, Canadian Muslim Forum.
  • The motion still does not offer any definition or any statistics to support its claim that "Islamophobia" is a problem in Canada.
  • However, it should hardly shock anyone that the first motion condemning Islamophobia has so swiftly been followed up by a new motion demanding concrete government measures.

  The West is submitting to blasphemy laws. Denmark, for example, has apparently decided that now is the time to invoke a dusty, old blasphemy provision. Denmark still has a provision in the penal code against blasphemy, but until now, it has only been used three times. The last time was nearly half a century ago, in 1971. Denmark's Attorney General has nevertheless just charged a man for burning a Quran.

  In the West, blasphemy as a criminal offence has for centuries generally been considered a relic of the past. In a largely godless society, few people take offense to blasphemous comments or acts. Christians do not descend upon alleged blasphemers with guns and knives, and publishers do not worry about "offending" Christians.

  In 1997, Danish public service radio financed an artist burning a Bible and broadcast it on national television. No one was charged, even though there were complaints and the state prosecutor investigated the case.

  Yet, a Danish man will be prosecuted. He burned his own Quran in his own garden and then posted the video in a public Facebook group, "Yes to freedom, No to Islam," with the accompanying text, "Consider your neighbor, it stinks when it burns". Attorney General Jan Reckendorff stated:

  "It is the prosecution's view that the circumstances of the burning of holy books such as the Bible and the Qur'an implies that in some cases it may be a violation of the blasphemy provision, which deals with public mockery or scorn against a religion. It is our opinion that the circumstances of this case require that it should be prosecuted in order for the courts to have the opportunity to take a position on the matter."

  The Attorney General may have been mentioning the Bible only out of politeness. After all, no one has been prosecuted for burning the Bible in Denmark, as not even burning it on national television was considered sufficiently offensive. The Quran is clearly a very different matter.

  The decision has caused renewed debate about abolishing the blasphemy provision in Denmark — an issue that regularly pops up.

  In Norway, the provision against blasphemy was abolished in 2005. A poll conducted in January showed that 41% of Norwegian Muslims believe that blasphemy should be punished, and 7% believe that the penalty for blasphemy anywhere should be capital punishment.

  In Britain, at least one man has been prosecuted and sentenced for burning the Quran (in 2011) and several arrested in 2010 and 2014 .

  The enforcement of blasphemy provisions, so out of place in a largely post-Christian Europe, brings back the Middle Ages, when blasphemy was ferociously prosecuted by the Church. Is that really an era for modern European society to be aspiring to after centuries of fighting for freedom of speech?

  In Canada, meanwhile, anti-Islamophobia motions, aiming gradually to prohibit all criticism of Islam — and part of Muslim blasphemy laws — are being passed. The Ontario Provincial Parliament unanimously passed an anti-Islamophobia motion in February. The motion called on the legislature to "stand against all forms of hatred, hostility, prejudice, racism and intolerance; rebuke the… growing tide of anti-Muslim rhetoric and sentiments" and "condemn all forms of Islamophobia." Needless to say, no such motions were introduced to protect Judaism or Christianity.

  In October 2016, Canada's national Parliament unanimously passed an anti-Islamophobia motion, which was the result of a petition initiated by Muslim Brotherhood-affiliated Samer Majzoub, president of the Canadian Muslim Forum. At the time, no one knew what they were condemning: Criticism of Islam? Criticism of Muslims? Discussing whether ISIS is a true manifestation of Islam? No one knew, as no one had bothered to define it.

  

  The lack of definition, however, has not stopped Iqra Khalid, a Member of Parliament from the governing Liberal Party, from introducing a new motion on the back of the previous one, Motion M-103, in the Canadian parliament. The motion demands that "Islamophobia" not only be condemned, but that the government develop a comprehensive approach to reducing or eliminating Islamophobia. The motion still does not offer any definition, or any statistics to support its claim that "Islamophobia" is a problem in Canada. However, it should hardly shock anyone that the first motion condemning Islamophobia has so swiftly been followed up by a new motion demanding concrete government measures. After the first motion was unanimously passed, the man who initiated the original petition, Samer Majzoub, had this to say in an interview with the Canadian Muslim Forum:

  "Now that Islamophobia has been condemned, this is not the end, but rather the beginning… We need to continue working politically and socially and with the press. They used to doubt the existence of Islamophobia, but now we do not have to worry about that; all blocs and political figures, represented by Canada's supreme legislative authority, have spoken of that existence. In the offing, we need to get policy makers to do something, especially when it comes to the Liberals, who have shown distinct openness regarding Muslims and all ethnicities… All of us must work hard to maintain our peaceful, social and humanitarian struggle so that condemnation is followed by comprehensive policies."

  Does the West really want to go charging quixotically off to the Inquisitions of the Middle Ages again?

  

  

• TSA Launches "Invasive" Pat-Downs With "More Intimate Contact Than Before"

  As a result of a study, which found that weapons routinely make it past airport security, the TSA is introducing “more rigorous” and “comprehensive” physical inspections at airports around the country, according to Bloomberg. The security agency, which until now had the option of using five different types of physical pat-downs in the screening line, is eliminating the “options” and replacing them with a single, universal method which would involve heavier groping.

  The Transportation Security Administration made the announcement to its agents this week, and in the case of Denver International Airport employees, advised employees and flight crews on Thursday that the “more rigorous” searches “will be more thorough and may involve an officer making more intimate contact than before.”

  

  In an ominous warning, TSA spokesman Bruce Anderson told Bloomberg that “people who in the past would have gotten a pat-down that wasn’t involved will notice that the [new] pat-down is more involved.” The shift from the previous, risk-based assessment on which pat-down procedure an officer should apply was phased in over the past two weeks after tests at smaller airports. In their notice, Denver airport officials said employees are subject to search at random locations: “If a pat down is required as part of the operation, badged employees will be required to comply with a TSA officer’s request to conduct a full body pat down.”

  The new policy will also apply to pilots and flight attendants, classified as “known crewmembers” who generally receive less scrutiny at checkpoints. The TSA conducts occasional random searches of these employees, and airlines this week inquired as to whether their employees would be subject to more frequent pat-downs. The number of random searches for airline crews isn’t changing and will remain a “very small percentage” of the total, Anderson said. But airport employees may face more random checks.

  Anyone who declines use of the TSA’s existing conventional scanner screen will be subject to the new pat-down. The TSA currently screens about 2 million people daily at U.S. airports. The agency doesn’t track how many passengers are subject to pat-down searches after they pass through an imaging scanner.

  The TSA has been criticized in recent years for its overall screening techniques after an internal investigation by Homeland Security in 2015 found that the TSA failed an unbelievable 95 percent of airport security tests, allowing undercover agents to successfully and repeatedly smuggle mock explosives and banned weapons through checkpoints in the country’s busiest airports. As a result, the TSA has been in desperate need of change and the physical inspection would be a good place to start.

  That said, the agency has been ridiculed for years for causing delays at airports and being largely ineffective at detecting contraband. The good news is that while passengers may find the new patdown more intrusive, Anderson promised that the new screening procedure isn’t expected to increase overall airport security delays. However, “for the person who gets the pat down, it will slow them down.”

  As Bloomberg adds, in December, a CNN political commentator, Angela Rye, posted an article online describing her “humiliation” during a TSA agent’s search. Rye wrote in graphic detail about the pat down of her genitals during a search at the Detroit Airport before a flight to New York.

  TSA officials didn’t immediately address whether the new universal pat-down protocol will mandate touching of passenger genitals.

  While the physical screening process has been a stress point for the TSA practically since its inception, the agency has tried to make travelers more comfortable by pairing them up with people of the same gender for pat-downs and also giving people the option of being inspected in a private room, however at the cost of substantial travel delays. However, as some have mused out, it still doesn’t answer one of the most confounding questions about the TSA: “Is America really any safer because some underpaid worker grabbed a pussy at the airport?”

  

  

  

• Auto Lending Update – Someone Please Explain How This Is Not A Bubble

  Experian recently released their Q4 2016 Automotive Finance Market update which includes a lot of statistics that seem to confirm our frequently documented concerns about the sustainability of the current level of annual auto sales (see here, here and here for our recent notes on the topic).

  First, there is the staggering growth of auto loans outstanding.  It should be readily apparent to almost anyone that a 21% expansion in credit issuance over the course of just two years likely implies there has been at least some degradation in underwriting standards.

  

   

  But you don’t have to speculate as Experian lays out the facts…and, sure enough, the outstanding loan balances of “Deep Subprime” borrowers have increased by double the amount of any other bucket, other than the plain “Subprime” folks, of course.

  

   

  Of course, an impaired credit profile has, in no way, hampered America’s entitled consumers’ demand for driving around in style as average subprime loan balances actually exceed “Super Prime.”

  

   

  But don’t worry, those subprime borrowers can “afford” those loans because they simply offset higher interest costs with stretched out terms…

  

   

  …which keeps there average monthly payments low.

  

   

  But, despite all the financial engineering, a look at 60-day auto delinquencies around the country may imply that the auto party is slowly coming to an end.

  

   

  But sure, auto sales should be perfectly sustainable around 18mm per year…

  

  

• Middlebury Professor Assaulted, Injured While Escorting Conservative Speaker

  In the latest literal assault on free speech at an allegedly tolerant educational institution, a Middlebury College professor was injured by protesters on Thursday evening as she was escorting a controversial speaker from campus. She was treated at Porter Hospital and released, the Addison County Independent reported.

  The night’s event unfolded in two parts.

  At first, Middlebury students forced conservative American Enterprise Institute scholar Charles Murray –  a political scientist who has been criticized for his views on race and intelligence – to stop his address before a campus audience Thursday night.

  
  Charles Murray looking at an audience of students who had turned their backs on him

  Murray was invited to speak on campus by a student group, and was set to talk about his 2012 book, “Coming Apart,” and how its analysis of the white-working class explains politics in the age of President Donald Trump. But most of the controversy over the scholar’s appearance at the Vermont-based school related to his 1994 book, “The Bell Curve,” which connected genetics with socioeconomic outcomes and has long been criticized by the Left as “racist.”  The Southern Poverty Law Center has called Murray a “white nationalist” who has used “racist pseudoscience.”

  According to the Burlington Free-Press, and as seen on the video below, student protesters in the audience refused to give Murray a chance to speak as they turned their backs to him, and chanted and shouted for several minutes before faculty members moved the scheduled speaker to a private room to deliver his address via livestream video without a live audience.

  Has to be ten minutes now Murray stands. student chant. #middlebury pic.twitter.com/61j1n4C94c

  — Nicole H DeSmet (@NicoleHDeSmet) March 2, 2017

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  Despite attempts by faculty and more tolerant students to restore normalcy, the protesters refused to compromise. “We need to foster a climate where we can listen and respect differences,” Middlebury’s dean of students Baishakhi Taylor said in an attempt to calm down the student protesters, according to the Burlington Free Press. “We don’t have to agree with everything. How do we engage in civil discourse?”

  Not even appeals to the anti-Trump sentiment would sway the crowd: Alexander Khan, a leader of the American Enterprise Institute Club which invited Murray to speak, tried to appeal to the crowd by citing the scholar’s criticism of Trump. Demonstrators jeered that that doesn’t matter because Murray is “still a racist.”

  However, it was what happened next that was more troubling.

  As noted above, after the initial chaos, college officials led Murray to another location and a closed circuit broadcast showed him being interviewed by Stanger, the Russell J. Leng ’60 Professor of International Politics and Economics. As Stanger, Murray and a college administrator left McCullough Student Center last evening following the event, they were “physically and violently confronted by a group of protestors,” according to Bill Burger, the college’s vice president for communications and marketing.

  

  Burger said college public safety officers managed to get Stanger and Murray into the administrator’s car.

  “The protestors then violently set upon the car, rocking it, pounding on it, jumping on and try to prevent it from leaving campus,” he said. “At one point a large traffic sign was thrown in front of the car. Public Safety officers were able, finally, to clear the way to allow the vehicle to leave campus.”

  “During this confrontation outside McCullough, one of the demonstrators pulled Prof. Stanger’s hair and twisted her neck,” Burger continued. “She was attended to at Porter Hospital later and (on Friday) is wearing a neck brace.”

  Murray, who apparently was unhurt in the incident, is best known for his 1994 book, “The Bell Curve,” for which he was criticized for an assertion that people of different races have different economic outcomes because of their inherent difference in intelligence.

  The incident was so shocking it prompted even well-known neocon Bill Kristol to tweet:

  “What happened at Middlebury to Charles Murray threatens not just campus free speech, but free speech–indeed freedom in America–generally.”

  What happened at Middlebury to Charles Murray threatens not just campus free speech, but free speech–indeed freedom in America–generally.

  — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) March 3, 2017

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  He then said: “I may have missed them, but in light of Middlebury where are the statements by college presidents, scholars & writers defending free speech?”

  I may have missed them, but in light of Middlebury where are the statements by college presidents, scholars & writers defending free speech?

  — Bill Kristol (@BillKristol) March 3, 2017

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  In this particular case, Kristol is actually right, and one wonders if the tables were reversed and if a liberal speaker had been abused in similar fashion at one of America’s top liberal colleges, just what would the media’s reaction – which has largely ignored this incident – have been.

  

  

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• How To Counter Leftist Violence While Maintaining The Moral High Ground

  Via Brandon Smith of Alt-Market.com,

  

  Social division is an undeniable reality of human existence; it is also not necessarily a negative aspect of human existence. The moment a society is forced or manipulated into blindly agreeing on everything is the moment that society begins to die and the future of mankind in general becomes rather bleak. Ideas need to be tested, they need to be scrutinized and they need to be verified, perpetually. That said, there are right ways and wrong ways of doing this.

  Diving into a culture of zealotry is certainly the WRONG way. Zealotry requires a religious-like idolization of a particular idea or philosophy; it requires unverified faith and an unwavering devotion. Once people become zealots, they cannot be reasoned with, they cannot be debated, they cannot be dissuaded. They are, for all intents and purposes, automatons with only one mission — to spread their beliefs by any means necessary.  They do not care about being right, they only care about “winning.”  Because, in their minds, their position is unassailable.  They are righteous, and thus, the ends will always justify the means.

  The culture of the Left in the U.S. is beginning to embrace zealotry and the path can only get more ugly from here. This is evident not only in the violent behavior of more vocal groups like Antifa, but also in the lack of self criticism by many on the left that would consider themselves more moderate. There are very few voices among liberals and “progressives” today that are openly admonishing the counterproductive and thuggish actions of their more extreme members (this includes not only Antifa, but other groups like Black Lives Matter).  In many cases, “moderate” leftists even cheer such actions.

  There is this notion among some in the Liberty Movement that to even point out this dynamic is irresponsible because it only reinforces the concept of the false left/right paradigm. Most of these people I find are very new (newbies) to the Liberty Movement and don’t really understand what the false left/right paradigm is. When we talk about the Left and the Right as an illusion, we are talking about the elites who sit at the TOP of the sociopolitical sphere. Meaning, the elites have no loyalties to concepts on either the left or the right in politics. In fact, they often switch back and forth like chameleons depending on what they want from the public at the time. They have their own agenda which does not include the rest of us.

  To be clear, I was just as much against the fake conservatism of George W. Bush as I was against the fake liberalism of Barack Obama.

  This false paradigm does not, however, apply to regular citizens. The further away you get from the top of the pyramid, the more people tend to legitimately associate closer to one philosophy or the other. In times of crisis and uncertainty, these divisions become more pronounced. This is reality. Anyone who argues that there is no left/right paradigm when it comes to the average citizen has no idea what they are talking about.

  So, now that we have acknowledged that the problem exists, lets examine it more in depth…

  The Problem

  All one needs to do is observe the attitudes, insane demands and criminality of hardcore leftists in the past year to see that at least one side of the paradigm cannot be salvaged. They are a lost cause.

   

  This is a prime example of how it is impossible to win an argument when your position is fundamentally illogical. In most cases, these protesters can’t even specify their reasons for protesting, and they don’t really care to examine why they do what they do. They only know that their ideology is not being represented in totality.  They are unsuccessful at debating their ideas coherently and don’t have the intelligence to convince others that they are correct. They aren’t going to give up simply because they are wrong, so, their only other option is to slander the character of those who disagree, attack them physically and disrupt their ability to speak freely.

  Keep in mind, there is no moral conundrum for zealots. They believe they are completely justified in what they do because the other side represents a “greater evil.” Labeling their opponents as “fascists” is a get-out-of-conscience-free card for them.

  It is important to note that we are not quite at the moment of crisis yet, but I would consider 2017 a turning point. This is where our (conservatives and sovereignty champions) decisions now could affect the future for decades to come. I suspect that as we move closer to summer and warmer weather, riots designed to cancel conservative speaking events (and random riots with no specific purpose) will expand tenfold. Leftists seem to be more active in warmer weather (there is a reason most of them live near the coasts).

  All American citizens, regardless of their political leanings or personal ideals, have a right to speak and the right to listen to those speaking. All American citizens also have a right to redress grievances. This includes leftists. That said, it is important to make a distinction here — NO ONE has the right to silence speech in public spaces in the name of “activism,” and this is where the Left has gone off the rails. My right to speak and be heard is protected; their “right” to silence me is not protected.

  There is a line here that cannot be crossed. Conservatives must be allowed free speech in public places, and leftists must be allowed to protest in public places as long as that protest is PEACEFUL. Once an individual or group uses force to silence speech, they have given up the moral high ground.

  I recognize that there are paid provocateurs operating among liberal protesters and that this likely contributes to higher chances of violence and the madness of mobs. The presence of elitist money among leftist groups has been exposed on numerous occasions in reference to George Soros’ Open Society Foundation, which admitted to injecting $33 million dollars into the Ferguson protests (riots). WashingtonCAN! (another Soros-funded group) put out a Craigslist ad in Seattle offering to pay people $15-$20 an hour to “organize” anti-Trump rallies. WashingtonCAN claims this was merely an ad to hire “phone solicitors,” but they do in fact help organize protests, and nowhere in the ad is phone solicitation mentioned.  I do not think it is a stretch to suggest that these paid "organizers" are present at protests, nor do I think it is a stretch to suggest that they are contributing to the mob mentality.

  This should be taken into account as well. There are moments in any high-tension protest where the mob can be swayed to remain peaceful or to break out into thuggery. Usually, if the mob sees a few people getting away with violent attacks, this gives them license to unhinge as well.

  Is the proper response to crush all leftist protests simply because of the violence of a handful? No. The key is to disrupt individual provocateurs before they can entice the mob to forget themselves. Normally, this would be the job of police on the scene, but as I’m sure many of you have noticed recently (Berkeley being a prime example), the police have been reticent to intervene in a tactically intelligent manner, depending on what municipality they are operating. It seems that when it comes to state and local law enforcement there are only two modes of response, either they are mostly hands off, or, they go full crackdown.

  The issue that needs to be considered is when police or the federal government do initiate a full crackdown on all protests. Will conservatives cheer the measure?

  As I have noted in past articles including 'Globalists Want To Destroy Conservative Principles – But They Need Our Help', I believe the greatest danger today is not crazed leftists, but how we RESPOND to crazed leftists.

  To give some historical perspective, the Antifa movement, for example, is nothing new. It is an odd plagiarism of the “Anti-Facist” movements in Europe during the 1920s. Antifa was essentially an offshoot of communist movements in Italy opposed to the rise of Benito Mussolini, but it then spread to other European nations. It was in fact the belligerence of communist groups that actually inspired public support for fascist leaders like Mussolini and Hitler. As common people grew fearful of a monstrous Bolshevik-style revolution, the only other option offered to them was fascism, which at the time appeared to many to be a saving grace.

  Of course, it was not, and totalitarianism in the name of defeating the communists only led to atrocities equal to communist dictatorships. This is what I call a “morally relativistic choice;” a catch-22 that is usually engineered, forcing the populace to pick between the “lesser of two evils.”

  There are those who might argue that there is little chance of a similar development in America today, but consider this — conservatives movements were prodded and harassed for eight years by a constitution-trampling president who originally claimed he was going to undo the trespasses of the constitution-trampling president before him. This took place while leftist organizations imposed thought control and political correctness on us with relative glee. Conservatives have been organizing, training and arming themselves for nearly a decade in the event that globalist and Marxist ideologies take one more inch of rope, the expectation being that Hillary Clinton would attempt to take a mile.

  Now, with Trump in office, we are a hammer looking for a nail.

  This is what the left simply does not grasp. We are certainly not fascists now, but with continued violence from the left something in the collective conservative mind will eventually snap. My suspicion is that this is exactly what elites like George Soros want. They are using the left as sacrificial pawns in order to goad conservatives into going nuclear.

  There are millions of conservatives coming home from work right now, sitting with their families, and seeing news each day filled with leftist protesters trampling all over conservative events and in many cases getting away with it. These conservatives are becoming more and more angry; more and more willing to embrace an ends justify the means reaction. Ultimately, they may very well support a full spectrum government stranglehold on protests and the speech of those we disagree with. This will make us the villains of our little period in history, and this is something I would like to avoid.

  So, the question is, how do we counter violent leftists like those in Antifa without abandoning our constitutional principles?  Lets talk about solutions…

  The Solution

  There is a school of thought that suggests we should stand back, let the mobs tire themselves out and in this way we avoid “escalation.” I would point out that the Left has been escalating matters quite expertly without our intervention. When you have elitist funded organizations generating momentum at a constant pace, it is hard for me to back the notion of complete pacifism. On the other hand, moderation and an even hand rule the day.

  Countering leftist mobs requires a scalpel, not a bulldozer, metaphorically speaking.

  Conservatives are less likely to support police state intervention if they see that leftist attacks are already being countered in a rational way.  I would argue that this could be done by limited groups of civilian volunteers (around 50-100 men strong), without any government involvement, acting as security for speakers and the attendees of events.

  These people would have to be highly vetted — no criminal background, no background of mental instability or psychotropic usage, a professional demeanor, absolutely no ties to federal agencies, no propensity to be ruled by emotion, no stolen valor, etc. etc.  They would also have to be physically capable.

  Members would need previous training as well as updated training in self-defense and riot response, as well as defusing confrontation.  They would have to be invited by the event organizers in question and their goal would be to defend attendees from violence in a non-lethal manner.  Their purpose cannot be to stop a protest from happening, only ensuring that protesters do not overstep their bounds and harm others.

  Of course, the immediate accusation that will be used is that this kind of organizing is simply the formation of “brownshirts” for Trump.  This is why a security group of this caliber would have to also be willing to offer their services to ANY speaker or event, regardless of political affiliation.  It cannot be exclusively about Trump. If a mob of conservatives were threatening to use violence to shut down a liberal speaker, then the group would have to be willing to protect those people as well. I don’t see any examples of this happening anywhere, but again, the group’s concerns must focus on free speech and those that are trying to squash it, regardless of who they are.

  This civilian security organization would require funding at a grassroots level through donations from regular people. Large sums of cash from major political donors or non-profit foundations could not be accepted.  The group would have to be beholden to no one.  It would also need to be separate from any already existing organization and function as its own animal in order to prevent conflicting goals.

  Donations would be needed to fund travel and food expenses for volunteers, as well as some protective gear, the cost of initial training, the expense of background checks as well as legal defense. This organization would have to be limited in size to prevent confusion and a lack of structural discipline.  I suspect that such a venture would start small, and truly qualified people would be limited in the beginning anyway.

  I am willing to coordinate this effort with others depending on the level of enthusiasm that is generated and if donations are adequate. I am ready to help provide training for those who pass the vetting process.  Interested parties can contact me at: brandon@alt-market.com

  I am also willing to be present and in harms way at every single event that requires a security response.

  I have looked into money raising avenues like Kickstarter, but I believe strongly that these websites will not allow crowdfunding for this venture for political reasons. If there is a strong response to this idea, I will post regular updates to Alt-Market.com on money raised as well as progress made.

  It is entirely possible that I will not be able to find the support needed to make this volunteer venture happen. I can only present the concept and hope that people agree with it. Make no mistake though, if I do not do it, someone else eventually will. It is vitally important that these people are found trustworthy and have a track record of supporting Constitutional principles as well as a track record of competence.  Anyone that arrives on the scene from nowhere should not be trusted.  Anyone looking merely for notoriety and celebrity should not be taken seriously. Anyone looking to start a confrontation rather than prevent one should be dismissed.  We cannot allow ourselves to become what the left accuses us of being.  This is a time for extreme caution, and quiet professionalism.

  

  

• Navy Punishes "Special Warfare Unit" For Flying Trump Flag In Military Convoy

  About a month ago the Naval Special Warfare Group 2 of Virginia Beach set the Twittersphere ablaze after video surfaced of their military convoy flying a Trump flag on their lead vehicle.

  Photos and videos of the ‘event’ quickly spread around the internet and prompted a full Navy investigation into the incident.  Here’s a photo of the convoy:

  

   

  And here is the original video that made the rounds, complete with the full commentary of an obviously emotionally scarred Hillary voter.

  Navy SEAL convoy flies Commander-in-Chief Trump flag.. #USA #quote #socialmedia #fb #nfl #nba #tcot #breaking #newspic.twitter.com/CrEOpjz1Au

  — People’s Digest (@dinrout) February 3, 2017

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  Now, fast forward a month and Lt. Jacqui Maxwell has just announced that the world can go on spinning again because some of America’s finest soldiers have been appropriately disciplined for their ‘heinous’ crime.  Per the Washington Post:

  Lt. Jacqui Maxwell, a spokeswoman for Naval Special Warfare Group 2, said in a statement to The Washington Post that punitive actions were taken but declined to comment on the precise nature of the punishment or how many individuals were affected.

   

  “The inquiry was completed between the unit’s commanders and service members,” Maxwell’s statement said. “It has been determined that those service members have violated the spirit and intent of applicable DoD regulations concerning the flying of flags and the apparent endorsement of political activities. Administrative corrective measures were taken with each individual based on their respective responsibility.”

   

  “Department of Defense and Navy regulations prescribe flags and pennants that may be displayed as well as the manner of display,” Maxwell said last month.

   

  “Naval Special Warfare strives to maintain the highest level of readiness, effectiveness, discipline, efficiency, integrity, and public confidence,” her statement continued. “To this end, Naval Special Warfare leaders are committed to thoroughly and impartially investigating all non-frivolous allegations of misconduct. Where misconduct is present, the Naval Special Warfare commander responsible for ensuring good order and discipline within his unit will make a disposition decision as to the appropriate administrative and/or disciplinary action, if any.”

  We don’t know about you but we’re ever so thankful for this special snowflake who helped to expose the hateful and insensitive actions of these soldiers.  Imagine if they behaved this way during a deployment…they might offend some terrorists and start an international crisis.

  

  

• Paul Craig Roberts Fears "The Resurrection Of Armageddon"

  Via Paul Craig Roberts,

  “The U.S. intelligence community’s extraordinary campaign of leaks claiming improper ties between President Trump’s team and Russia seeks to ensure a lucrative New Cold War by blocking detente.” — Gareth Porter

  It only required 24 days for the Deep State to castrate President Donald Trump and terminate the promise that the high tensions with Russia created during the Clinton, George W. Bush, and Obama regimes would be terminated by Trump’s presidency.

  As Gareth Porter shows conclusively, the case against General Flynn, Trump’s 24-day National Security Adviser, and by implication against Trump himself, is a fake news creation.

  Obama’s CIA director, John Brennan, planted fake reports, none of which contained any evidence whatsoever, on the CIA-compliant media whores known as “presstitutes.” The CIA’s media whores knew that the reports were a CIA response to the threat to the $1,000 billion annual budget of the military/security complex that desperately needs “the Russian threat” for its justification. But the media whores—-principally the New York Times, Washington Post, CNN, MSNBC—-and all the rest as well are more dedicated to serving their CIA master than they are to serving peace between nuclear powers. Interesting, isn’t it, that the US and Western media are more committed to conflict with Russia than they are to peace, despite the brutal fact that 10 percent of the nuclear arsenal of either the US or Russia is sufficient to terminate all life on earth.

  As Patrick Lawrence says: “The lights upon us are dimming. We have been more or less abandoned by a press that proves incapable of informing us in anything approaching a disinterested fashion. As suggested, either the media are Clintonian liberals before they are newspapers and broadcasters, or they are servants of power before they serve us.” 

  All we have left, says Lawrence, is the alternative media. “To put this simply and briefly, they and we must learn that they are not ‘alternative’ to anything. In the end there is no such thing as ‘alternative media,’ as I often argue. There are only media, and most of ours have turned irretrievably bad.”

  The alternative media is the Internet media, websites such as this one, RT, the Intercept, USAWatchdog, Alex Jones, Information Clearing House, Global Research, Unz Review, etc. These independent news sites are under attack. Remember the list of 200 “Russian agents/dupes”? Every source of information that does not subscribe to the Deep States’ Matrix creation of “the Russian Threat,” which is the Deep State’s replacement for the orchestrated “Soviet Threat,” has been selected for shutdown. Apparently, Alex Jones is already having problems with Google. Several websites managed to get off the 200 List, and those that have seem to have collapsed as members of the opposition.

  As the Nazis said, all it takes is fear, and the people collapse.

  Trump’s presidency is effectively over. Even if he is permitted to remain in office, he will be a figurehead for the Deep State’s presidency. President Trump has already fallen into line with the military/security complex. He has said Russia has to return Crimea to Ukraine, whereas in fact Crimea returned itself to Russia. He has rejected a new strategic arms limitations treaty (START) with Russia, stating that he wants supremacy in nuclear armaments, not equality. Obama’s one trillion dollar upgrade of the US nuclear arsenal is likely to get a boost from Trump.

  After one month in office the goal has changed from reduced tensions with Russia to greater tensions. Greater tensions might soon be upon us. There are plans to occupy part of Syria with US troops in order to prevent Syria with Russia’s help from reuniting the country. http://www.globalresearch.ca/rand-corporations-plan-for-dicing-up-syria/5577009 Part of Syria is to go to Turkey, part to the Kurds, and Washington will keep a chunk. This way Washington can keep the turmoil going forever. The Russians brought this problem on themselves. Ever hopeful for Washington’s cooperation against ISIS, Russia dallied in cleaning out ISIS. The prospect that Trump would work with Russia as part of better relations assumed that Trump would actually be in charge, which has turned out to be delusional.

  It is difficult to know if the new Trump regime is more Iranophobic than Russophobic. The Trump regime’s inclination to jettison the Iran agreement and reopen the conflict means more conflict with Russia. Washington’s continued provocations of both Russia and China will dispel any lingering Russian expectations of better relations with Washington.

  It is bizarre to see the liberal-progressive-left allied with the warmongers against Trump. As the neoconservatives pull nuclear Armageddon out of the grave that Reagan and Gorbachev put it in, the American left demands the impeachment of the president whose goal was better relations with Russia. Once the champion of the working class, the left now champions Identity Politics. Trump’s goal of jobs for the working class leaves the leftwing cold. The left wants to destroy the “Trump deplorables,” which the left describes as “racist, misogynist, homophobic, gun nuts.” In Identity Politics, every identity is a victim except the oppressor identity—white heterosexual males.

  Where then is the opposition to the neoconservative ideology that is driving US foreign policy toward world hegemony? There are a few of us, but we are being cast as “Putin agents.” In other words, those who have sufficient intelligence to understand that Washington is not going to achieve hegemony over Russia and China or even Iran, but is likely to provoke nuclear war by trying, are relegated to the traitor class.

  The reason that there is still life on earth after more than a half century of nuclear weapons is that American presidents and Soviet leaders worked together to reduce tensions. During these decades, there were numerous false alarms of incoming ICBMs. However, because the leadership of both countries were working together to avoid nuclear conflict, the warnings were disbelieved both by the Soviets and Americans.

  Today the situation is vastly different. The last three US presidents, and now apparently Trump also, worked overtime to increase tensions between the two nuclear powers. Moreover, it was done in ways that convinced the Russian government that Washington is completely untrustworthy. The ongoing vicious lies about the Russian connections of Trump and his associates are so obviously false as to be laughable, but the Russians are seeing that the falsity of the charges notwithstanding, Trump’s National Security Adviser has fallen and Trump himself might be next.

  In other words, the Russians are observing that in America facts are not relevant to outcomes. The Russians have already experienced this with regard to themselves with the lies about Putin, the Ukraine, Georgia, and Russian intentions toward Europe. Putin is routinely called a “thug,” “murderer,” “the new Hitler” by US politicians, presstitutes, and the Democratic Party’s candidate in the recent presidential election. Ranking US generals describe Russia as the “principal threat to the US.” NATO commanders assert that the Russian Army could occupy the Baltics and/or Poland at any moment. These nonsensical accusations and predictions suggest to the Russians that the West is preparing its populations for an attack on Russia.

  In such a tense state of affairs, how will false alarms be interpreted? Will Americans convinced that Putin and Russia are evil incarnate believe the false alarms this time? Will Russians convinced that they have been set up for attack believe them this time?

  This is the extreme risk to which the insane neoconservatives, the idiot liberal-progressive-left, the greedy military/security complex, and the aggressive generals have exposed life on earth.

  And the few voices warning of the risk are dismissed as “Russian agents.”

  

  

• Tesla Admits It Still Hasn't Completed A Model 3 Beta Prototype

  With Tesla stock price down 15% in the last few weeks, amid a roaring market, it appears doubts about Elon Musk's omnipotence are creeping in once again… and rightly so. Despite the hype surrounding hundreds of thousands of pre-orders due to start production in H2 2017, buried deep within the company's most recent 10-K filing is an admission that there is still no Model 3 beta prototype.

  

  The fanfare surrounding the pre-order-fest for the Tesla Model 3 continues to support the stock in many analyst's (and investor's minds). However, with production due to begin in H2 2017 (just 4 months away) and delivery in 2018, doubts are starting to appear, judging by the stock's demise since earnings…

  

   

  And Car and Driver's Anton Wahlman – who appears to be one of the few who actualy read Tesla's 10-K filing – may have found the reason for the doubts…

  From the filing:

   

  “We expect that the next performance milestone to be achieved will be the successful completion of the Model 3 Beta Prototype, which would be achieved upon the determination by our Board of Directors that an eligible prototype has been completed. Candidates for such prototype are among the vehicles that we are currently building as part of our ongoing testing of our Model 3 vehicle design and manufacturing processes.”

  In other words, Wahlman points out, Tesla has not “completed” a Model 3 “beta prototype” as of, well, either of these two dates: December 31, 2016 (the period that the SEC filing covers), or March 1, 2017 (the date on which the document was filed). Pick your poison.

  We know that around mid-February 2017, Tesla is said to have started building the next stage of Model 3 prototypes. It is from this batch that they appear to be creating the first “beta prototype.”

  What does this mean for production? In theory, there is nothing that prevents Tesla from delivering what a normal car company would call a prototype test vehicle of some sort and simply declare victory on its original timeline. This is what Tesla did for the Model S in June 2012 and for the Model X in September 2015. After those events, it took at least another approximately three months—arguably a fair bit more—for proper volume production to take root.

  That is to say that, no matter how immature, Tesla could indeed deliver a Model 3 in July 2017 and declare victory. However, that is not to be confused with what a normal car company would call its start of sales to the general public.

  Basically, Car and Driver's Wahlman says, it comes down this:

  If it’s prudent to start production of an all-new car three to six months after the advent of a “beta prototype,” then why don’t all automakers do this? Why do they take approximately two years for the preproduction testing stages, if only three to six months are necessary?

  We will find out in the second half of this year.

  More smoke and solar panel mirrors?

  Still withcash burn at a billion dollars, there's probably nothing to worry about…

  

  

  

• Islam Will Surpass Christianity To Become The World's Largest Religion, New Report Says

  Via Michael Snyder of The End of The American Dream blog,

  

  If current trends continue, Islam is on track to become the largest religion in the entire world by the end of this century according a stunning new report that was just released by the Pew Research Center.

  

  While it is true that Christianity is still growing on a global basis, it is not growing nearly as rapidly as Islam. So unless something changes, Christianity will only be the second largest faith in the world by the year 2070. According to this newly released report, Islam is the only major religion that is growing faster than the global population overall, and it is being projected that the number of Muslims on the planet will rise by a staggering 73 percent between 2010 and 2050…

  Islam is the only religion growing faster than the world’s population, and it will be the largest in the world by 2070, research has found.

   

  US-based Pew Research Center analyzed demographic change among the world’s major religions and found that the world’s population of Muslims will grow by 73 percent between 2010 and 2050, compared to 35 percent for Christians, the next fastest-growing faith.

   

  The world’s population will grow by 37 percent over the same period. If those rates of growth continue past 2050, Muslims will outnumber Christians by 2070, the report found.

  

  Of course there are religious groups that are growing even faster than Islam, but they were not part of this study.

  For example, I have previously written about how witchcraft is the fastest growing faith in America, and yesterday I wrote about how membership in the Satanic Temple in the United States has been absolutely exploding since Donald Trump was elected.

  So it isn’t just Islam that is gaining ground.

  But without a doubt, Islam is now the dominant worldview on much of the planet. Many in the western world tend to think of it as a Middle Eastern religion, but the truth is that most Muslims actually live in the Asia-Pacific region…

  Some 62 percent of Muslims live in the Asia-Pacific region with large populations in Indonesia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Iran and Turkey, Pew researchers said.

   

  In 2050, India is set to take over from Indonesia as the country with the world’s largest Muslim population, according to the study.

  In India, there truly is a battle going on for the spiritual future of that nation right now. Christianity and Islam are both making a tremendous amount of progress, and this has greatly upset a lot of traditional Hindu groups.

  Islam is making a lot of progress in Europe as well. A tremendous amount of immigration has caused the number of European Muslims to surge in recent years, and this new report is projecting that 10 percent of all Europeans will belong to Islam by the year 2050.

  Here in the United States, Muslims still only make up a very small percentage of the population, but that percentage is growing too. The following comes directly out of the new Pew Research Center report…

  In 2015, according to our best estimate, there were 3.3 million Muslims of all ages in the U.S., or about 1% of the U.S. population. Pew Research Center’s 2014 Religious Landscape Study (conducted in English and Spanish) found that 0.9% of U.S. adults identify as Muslims. A 2011 survey of Muslim Americans, which was conducted in English as well as Arabic, Farsi and Urdu, estimated that there were 1.8 million Muslim adults (and 2.75 million Muslims of all ages) in the country. That survey also found that a majority of U.S. Muslims (63%) are immigrants.

   

  Our demographic projections estimate that Muslims will make up 2.1% of the U.S. population by the year 2050, surpassing people who identify as Jewish on the basis of religion as the second-largest faith group in the country (not including people who say they have no religion).

  Once the number of Muslims in the United States surpasses the number of Jewish people, what impact will that have on U.S. politics?

  That is something to think about.

  The report indicated that there are a couple of primary reasons why Islam is growing so rapidly around the world.

  First of all, Muslims tend to have larger families than everyone else. The report said that the average Muslim woman has 3.1 children during her lifetime, while all other groups only have 2.3 children per woman.

  So in the end, Islam could end up dominating the world just by simply making more babies than everyone else.

  Muslims are also younger on average than other religious groups. According to the report, on a global basis Muslims are “seven years younger than the median age of non-Muslims”.

  Unfortunately, when Muslims become dominant in a society they often want to impose their systems of government, law, economics, etc. on everyone else. That is why “sharia law” is such a sensitive issue, and the report found that in some Islamic countries an overwhelming majority of Muslims want to impose sharia law on everyone else…

  For instance, a Pew Research Center survey of Muslims in 39 countries asked Muslims whether they want sharia law, a legal code based on the Quran and other Islamic scripture, to be the official law of the land in their country. Responses on this question vary widely. Nearly all Muslims in Afghanistan (99%) and most in Iraq (91%) and Pakistan (84%) support sharia law as official law. But in some other countries, especially in Eastern Europe and Central Asia – including Turkey (12%), Kazakhstan (10%) and Azerbaijan (8%) – relatively few favor the implementation of sharia law.

  Nobody can deny that Islam is one of the most dominant forces on the entire planet in 2017, and it looks like it is going to become even more dominant in the years ahead.

  And that is troubling news for Christians and those of other faiths, because all you have to do is to look at countries such as Saudi Arabia, Afghanistan and Iran to see what happens to other faiths once Islam takes total control of a nation.

  In a truly Islamic state, there is no room for religious freedom, and so the growth of Islam is likely to be one of the greatest global threats to the free exercise of religion for the foreseeable future.

  

  

• Russian Foreign Ministry Spokeswoman to CNN: 'Stop Spreading Lies and Fake News'

  Russia’s outspoken foreign ministry spokeswoman, Maria Zakharova, had some choice words for CNN — after being confronted by their reporters over the AG Sessions’ hysteria. In a prepared statement, she called the event ‘media vandalism’ and a ‘disgrace’ — suggesting the US media is down in the depths of depravity and deceit.

  She stated the American media had “cross(ed) the line far beyond the professional ethics and their competence. They accuse and judge by simply fabricating false information.”

  “I have a question: is it rock bottom, which the US media has reached, or is there an even greater depth for them to dive?” Zakharova said.
   
  “The things that the US media affords itself to report are just an attempt at… a total disinformation of the public in America and worldwide,” Zakharova explained, adding the US audience is, of course, the main target.

   
  During the exchange, which was caught on camera and posted below, she laid into CNN — asking them to ‘stop spreading lies and fake news.’
  
  ‘Stop spreading fake news’, cuckburgers.

  Watch.

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

   

  

• Minimum Wage Hikes Don't Benefit Low-Income Families But Do Raise Youth Unemployment Rates

  As written by Jack Salmon and first appearing on The Hill

  With 19 states raising the minimum wage at the beginning of 2017, it seems that Sen. Bernie Sanders (I-Vt.) “Fight for 15” campaign is becoming a reality.

  While Democrats have been wholeheartedly behind the movement to increase the minimum wage, now Republican lawmakers are increasingly leaving the door open to minimum wage increases. The prevailing argument in favor of raising the minimum wage is that a higher minimum wage would reduce poverty and alleviate income inequality.

  So, what does the empirical research reveal about the effectiveness of the minimum wage to reduce poverty?

  From a lawmaker’s perspective, setting a higher minimum wage seems to be a viable remedy for lifting families out of poverty. However, it is important to note that the minimum wage targets individual low-wage workers, not low-income families. The merits of using minimum wage as a tool to combat poverty depend on the level at which poor families benefit from such policy changes.

  The statistics show that the relationship between being a low-wage worker and a low-income family is very weak. In fact, data from CPS suggests that the majority of poor families with heads of household of prime working age simply don’t work, so a minimum wage has no impact on these families.

  What’s more, a sizable proportion of low-wage workers are new entrants to the labor force, such as teenagers, who are not necessarily in low-wage families. Taking these facts into consideration, basic calculations indicate that a sizable share of benefits derived from a minimum wage increase does not go to impoverished families.

  In fact, if the federal minimum wage was hiked from $7.25 to $10.10, only 18 percent of resultant increases in income would go to poor families (based on 2010-2014 data), meanwhile 32 percent would go to families with incomes more than three times the poverty line. With a $15 minimum wage the corresponding figures would be 12 percent and 38 percent, respectively.

   

  Several studies have analyzed changes in the poverty rate between states that increase the minimum wage versus those that don’t. The conclusion these studies reveal is that there is no statistically significant relationship between raising the minimum wage and reducing poverty.

  What becomes increasingly clear from several studies on the targeted effects of minimum wage increases is that minimum wage is a very imprecise way to raise the relative incomes of the poorest families and may actually marginally benefit wealthier families.

  We know who wins, but who loses?

  The debate surrounding the negative effects of minimum wage increases on employment levels continues to take center stage. Some recent studies have even gone as far as suggesting that there is no negative impact on employment levels derived from an increase in the minimum wage.

  The opinions of a majority of labor economists, however, paint a very different picture. A national survey conducted by the University of New Hampshire found that over 73 percent of American Economic Association (AEA) labor economists believe significant increases in the minimum wage will lead to employment losses and 68 percent believe employers will be deterred from hiring low-skilled workers.

  A consensus on minimum wage studies conducted in the 1980’s finds that for every 10 percent increase in the minimum wage, employment of young and unskilled workers declines by 1-2 percent.

  With over half of minimum wage workers being aged 16-24, continuously raising the minimum wage simply guarantees that those young people, whose skills are not sufficient to justify that kind of wage, will instead remain unemployed.

  It’s clear that the minimum wage is an ineffective tool at reducing poverty and alleviating income inequality. The benefits of increases in the minimum wage are not targeted toward impoverished families and the costs of minimum wage increases deny youth the skills and experience they need to launch their careers.

  The basis of poverty is not low-paid workers, but those who are not in work altogether. Perhaps policymakers would be wise to consider reforms that will grow the economy, generate jobs and create the incentives to choose work over welfare.

  Jack Salmon is a Washington, D.C.-based researcher focused on federal fiscal policy. Salmon holds an M.A. in political economy with specializations in macroeconomics and comparative economic analysis from King’s College London.

  

  

• Mike Krieger Warns "America Is In Big Trouble"

  Via Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

  I hate to break it to you, but Donald Trump isn’t going to make America great again. He doesn’t have the insight or courage to stand up to the financial elite, and he’s insufferably authoritarian. This is not a recipe for greatness.

  Democrats are even worse. At the most ideal moment possible, the party was gifted an energetic populist movement primed for activism thanks to a non-Democrat who unified tens of millions of Americans sick of the ways thing were going, but couldn’t get behind Trump. How did the party respond? By rigging its primary and forcing down our collective throats one of the most corrupt, unethical, political monsters in American history. Afterwards, how did the party respond following her loss to Donald Trump? By making zero meaningful changes in party leadership, by endlessly propagating CIA-fueled Russia conspiracy theories and by very publicly rejecting Bernie Sanders and his supporters by choosing Tom Perez to run the DNC (for more read this excellent article).

  As demented as many of Trump’s views are, at least he’s talking about shaking up the system. The only things Democrats have done since the election is attempt to co-opt Bernie Sanders, dress in all white and hyperventilate about Russia. The party is so worthless, it doesn’t even deserve to exist anymore. Then there’s the corporate media. The elitist propaganda mouthpieces that are even more destructive than our two deranged political parties, and that’s saying a lot. We are in big trouble as a people.

  The past 36 hours have been really telling. The reaction to two events have demonstrated to me just how much trouble this country is in. The first event revolves around Trump’s speech to Congress. I watched the speech, and was thoroughly unimpressed. Like his critics, who falsely claim Trump is the root of all evil as opposed to a symptom of an evil system, Trump appears more interested in targeting symptoms as opposed to the core problems. While “draining the swamp” is a great slogan, he shows no intention of actually doing it. Rather, he’s filled his economic advisor positions with a cadre of particularly gross parasitic Wall Street cretins. This wasn’t the surprising part of Trump’s speech, however. The truly surprising, and disturbing part, was the tremendous praise heaped upon him by the corporate media afterwards, further proving the point that corporate media is worthless.

  Why did the corporate media like the speech so much? Mainly it had to do with the moment Trump honored Carryn Owens, the widow of slain Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens. Will this standing ovation do anything to improve the lives of struggling Americans? Does it tell us anything at all about how Trump will handle foreign policy and out of control militarism in order to prevent deaths like this going forward? Of course not. What it tells you is that all the corporate media cares about is pomp and circumstance. Corporate media is obsessed with the show, the red carpet, with superficiality. Even if you loved the speech, it was a freakin’ speech. I’m not comparing Trump to such men, but most of the most heinous thugs in human history were great at giving speeches. Actions, not words are what matter, as we should have learned from eight years of Obama.

  Moving along, the second event that solidified to me the amount of trouble we’re in as a nation relates to Jeff Sessions. As all of you already know based on my recent posts, I think Jeff Sessions is a dangerous, disconnected, goon. A fossil from another era, a hypocrite, and a terrible choice for Attorney General. That said, I think the controversy about what he told Congress related to his meetings with Russia is being blown grossly out of proportion. Here’s the clip in case you haven’t seen it:

  What’s the big deal here? From what we know, he was simply a Senator who met with the Russian Ambassador publicly. These meetings consisted of one at a Heritage Foundation event in July 2016, where other ambassadors were present. The other was in Sessions’ Senate office in September.

  As The Washington Post reported:

  Two months before the September meeting, Sessions attended a Heritage Foundation event in July on the sidelines of the Republican National Convention that was attended by about 50 ambassadors. When the event was over, a small group of ambassadors approached Sessions as he was leaving the podium, and Kislyak was among them, the Justice Department official said.

  These encounters seem pretty transparent, it’s not as if they were slinking around back allies handing-off envelopes filled with cash. It seems obvious to me that former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper lying to Congress about unconstitutional government spying on American citizens was far worse, and he wasn’t forced to resign.

  Of all the terrible things about Jeff Sessions, this is the least of my concerns. Naturally, it’s being portrayed as one of the greatest scandals in U.S. history by the corporate media as well as establishment Democrats (to understand why, see: How the Corporate Media Continues to Use the Russia Scapegoat as a Distraction from Status Quo Failure).

  Proving once again that the only thing Democrats can really get passionate about is anti-Russia hysteria. A hysteria which the corporate media is likewise obsessed with, despite countless really significant domestic issues which remain unaddressed.

  For example, take a look at the following images recently published by New York Magazine and The New Yorker.

  

  

  Do these publications realize how utterly ridiculous they look to anyone capable of critical thought?

  So what have we learned from all this? For starters, it should be abundantly clear by now that no one is coming to save us, and no one will be making America great again for us. We need to focus on making ourselves great. Once we do that, we will be able to surmount all obstacles and make this world a better place, but don’t think the path will be easy. I think we are in for an extraordinarily bumpy ride, and the only thing we’ll be able to depend on is the decency and goodwill of our fellow citizens. The government isn’t going to save us, we need to save ourselves.

  

  

• "Hillary For Mayor" Posters Popping Up All Around New York City

  Like a nagging case of “pneumonia” that brings with it random, yet inevitable, bouts of full-body paralysis, the rumors/threats of Hillary tossing her hat in the ring for the New York City Mayoral race simply won’t go away.

  Now, per a report from The American Mirror, it seems that a group of disaffected Hillary supporters in New York City are following in the footsteps of a recent movement in Paris to elect Obama as the next French President…when you can’t convince your chosen candidate to run for elected office we guess plastering a bunch of posters in public spaces and hoping for the best is the next most logical option.

  “Hillary for Mayor” signs popping up in NYC. pic.twitter.com/jozK9pySld

  — Michael Arria (@michaelarria) February 28, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

   

  Ironically, just last night we jokingly noted that “We sense an opening for you, Hillary” after incumbent Mayor Bill de Blasio faced public backlash, even from members of his own party, over his inability to control the homelessness crisis which is spiraling out of control in NYC.

  Unfortunately, particularly for a man seeking re-election later this year, the following stats on NYC homelessness are fairly damning.

   

  

   

  Meanwhile, as we pointed out in January, in a hypothetical matchup a Quinnipiac poll found that Hillary would crush de Blasio by 20 points.

  The latest example comes from a Quinnipiac University Poll which analyzed a hypothetical head-to-head match-up between Clinton and New York’s current mayor, Bill de Blasio.  Unfortunately for de Blasio, the poll found that, while he would beat almost everyone else whose name has been mentioned as potential contender, he would almost certainly be crushed by Hillary. 

  In a very hypothetical race for New York City Mayor, Hillary Clinton, running as an independent, tops incumbent Bill de Blasio, running as a Democrat, 49 – 30 percent, according to a Quinnipiac University poll released today.

   

  “New Yorkers aren’t in love with Mayor Bill de Blasio, but they seem to like him better than other possible choices – except Hillary Clinton, who probably is an impossible choice,” said Tim Malloy, assistant director of the Quinnipiac University Poll.

   

  “None of the possible contenders has made any real noise or spent any money, so this race still could get interesting.”

   

  In the Clinton – de Blasio matchup, Clinton leads 61 – 29 percent among Democrats and 45 – 31 percent among independent voters. Republicans back de Blasio 28 – 18 percent. She leads among men and women and black, white and Hispanic voters. She also leads in every borough except Staten Island, which goes to de Blasio 28 – 22 percent.

  

   

  Certainly this guy seems pretty stoked about the possibility.

  

  

  

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• Ihre Papiere, Bitte!: Are We Being Set Up For A National ID System?

  Via John Whitehead of The Rutherford Institute,

  

  You can’t have it both ways.

  You can’t live in a constitutional republic if you allow the government to act like a police state.

  You can’t claim to value freedom if you allow the government to operate like a dictatorship.

  You can’t expect to have your rights respected if you allow the government to treat whomever it pleases with disrespect and an utter disregard for the rule of law.

  If you’re inclined to advance this double standard because you believe you have done nothing wrong and have nothing to hide, beware: there’s always a boomerang effect.

  Whatever dangerous practices you allow the government to carry out now – whether it’s in the name of national security or protecting America’s borders or making America great again – rest assured, these same practices can and will be used against you when the government decides to set its sights on you.

  Nothing is ever as simple as the government claims it is.

  The war on drugs turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with SWAT teams and militarized police.

  The war on terror turned out to be a war on the American people, waged with warrantless surveillance and indefinite detention.

  The war on immigration will be yet another war on the American people, waged with roving government agents demanding “papers, please.”

  So you see, when you talk about empowering government agents to demand identification from anyone they suspect might be an illegal immigrant—the current scheme being entertained by the Trump administration to ferret out and cleanse the country of illegal immigrants—what you’re really talking about is creating a society in which you are required to identify yourself to any government worker who demands it.

  Just recently, in fact, passengers arriving in New York’s JFK Airport on a domestic flight from San Francisco were ordered to show their “documents” to border patrol agents in order to get off the plane.

  This is how you pave the way for a national identification system.

  Americans have always resisted adopting a national ID card for good reason: it gives the government and its agents the ultimate power to target, track and terrorize the populace according to the government’s own nefarious purposes.

  National ID card systems have been used before by oppressive governments—in Nazi Germany against the Jews, in South Africa against black citizens, in Rwanda against the Tutsis—in the name of national security, invariably with horrifying results.

  In the United States, post-9/11, more than 750 Muslim men were rounded up on the basis of their religion and ethnicity and detained for up to eight months. Their experiences echo those of 120,000 Japanese-Americans who were similarly detained 75 years ago following the attack on Pearl Harbor, a practice the U.S. Supreme Court has yet to declare illegal.

  Fast forward to the Trump administration’s war on illegal immigration, and you have the perfect storm necessary for the adoption of a national ID card, the ultimate human tracking device, which would make the police state’s task of monitoring, tracking and singling out individual suspects—citizen and noncitizen alike—far simpler.

  A federalized, computerized, cross-referenced, databased system of identification policed by government agents would be the final nail in the coffin for privacy.

  Granted, in the absence of a national ID system, “we the people” are already tracked in a myriad of ways. This informational glut—used to great advantage by both the government and corporate sectors—is converging into a mandate for “an internal passport,” a.k.a., a national ID card that would store information as basic as a person’s name, birth date and place of birth, as well as private information, including a Social Security number, fingerprint, retina scan and personal, criminal and financial records.

  The Real ID Act, which imposes federal standards on identity documents such as state drivers’ licenses, is the prelude to this national identification system.

  At some point, however, it will not matter whether your skin is black or yellow or brown or white. It will not matter whether you’re an immigrant or a citizen. It will not matter whether you’re rich or poor. It won’t even matter whether you’re driving, flying or walking.

  Eventually, all that will matter is whether some government agent—poorly trained, utterly ignorant of the Constitution, way too hyped up on the power of their badges, and authorized to detain, search, interrogate, threaten and generally harass anyone they see fit—chooses to single you out for special treatment.

  You see, the police state does not discriminate.

  It’s a short hop, skip and a jump from allowing government agents to stop and demand identification from someone suspected of being an illegal immigrant to empowering government agents to subject anyone—citizen and noncitizen alike—to increasingly intrusive demands that they prove not only that they are legally in the country, but that they are also lawful, in compliance with every statute and regulation on the books, and not suspected of having committed some crime or other.

  It’s no longer a matter of if, but when.

  In the case of a national identification system, it might start off as a means of curtailing illegal immigration, but it will end up as a means of controlling the American people.

  We have been down this road before.

  Reporting on the trial of Nazi bureaucrat Adolf Eichmann for the New Yorker in 1963, Hannah Arendt describes the “submissive meekness with which Jews went to their death”:

  …arriving on time at the transportation points, walking under their own power to the places of execution, digging their own graves, undressing and making neat piles of their clothing, and lying down side by side to be shot—seemed a telling point, and the prosecutor, asking witness after witness, “Why did you not protest?,” “Why did you board the train?,”

   

  “Fifteen thousand people were standing there and hundreds of guards facing you—why didn’t you revolt and charge and attack these guards?,” harped on it for all it was worth. But the sad truth of the matter is that the point was ill taken, for no non-Jewish group or non-Jewish people had behaved differently.

  The lessons of history are clear: chained, shackled and imprisoned in a detention camp, there is little chance of resistance. The time to act is now, before it¹s too late. Indeed, there is power in numbers, but if those numbers will not unite and rise up against their oppressors, there can be no resistance.

  As Arendt concludes, “under conditions of terror most people will comply but some people will not, just as the lesson of the countries to which the Final Solution was proposed is that ‘it could happen’ in most places but it did not happen everywhere.”

  It does not have to happen here.

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we do not have to condemn ourselves to life under an oppressive, authoritarian regime.

  We do not have to become our own jailers.

  We do not have to dig our own graves.

  We do not have to submit.

  

  

• De Blasio Vows To Spend $300mm On NYC Shelters As Homeless Crisis Spirals Out Of Control

  It’s fairly safe to say that Mayor Bill de Blasio has fallen ‘slightly’ short of his original campaign goal to remedy the homelessness crisis in New York City.  In fact, The New York Post summed up the current situation in NYC fairly succinctly back in July 2015:

  

   

  Unfortunately, particularly for a man seeking re-election later this year, the following stats on NYC homelessness are fairly damning.

  

   

  So what do you do when you’re up for re-election in about 8 months and realize that you oversaw a massive expansion of a problem you previously vowed to eradicate?  Well, you throw as much taxpayer money as necessary at that problem to make it go way, of course.  Per the New York Daily News:

  Mayor de Blasio unveiled an ambitious new plan Tuesday to address the vexing challenge of housing the homeless, vowing to build dozens more shelters but saying little about where he’d put them and acknowledging it won’t solve the crisis.

   

  In a speech in lower Manhattan, the mayor promised to stop using the expensive hotels and the private apartments in “cluster sites” that the city has been reluctantly utilizing to house a homeless population that grows each year.

   

  Instead, the mayor said he would move the homeless now staying in these places — many of which are plagued by decrepit conditions — into 90 new, traditional city shelters across the city.

   

  Although the mayor said nothing about funding during his hour-long speech, his aides said later the city will spend $300 million over five years to build the shelters.

  

   

  Meanwhile, even members of De Blasio’s own party blasted his lack of details and obvious attempt to just throw money at the the problem it hopes that it simple goes away.

  Assemblyman Erik Dilan, a Brooklyn Democrat who as a city councilman was chairman of the Housing Committee, raised concerns about the high number of shelters.

   

  “It’s going to be very difficult,” Dilan said. “There’s going to be an uproar in neighborhoods because they’d rather see people in permanent housing.”

   

  “I am disheartened. I see more aspiration than reality,” said Councilman Ritchie Torres (D-Bronx), whose district has the highest concentration of cluster sites in the city.

   

  “The city has been throwing the kitchen sink at the crisis, expending hundreds of millions of dollars, and none of it seems to be working,” he said.

   

  “Our community wants to be respected,” he said. “We’ve sort of heard this story before, so the proof will be in the pudding.”

  We sense an opening for you, Hillary.

  

  

• The Fed's Dependence On The Consumer Will Backfire

  Via C.Jay Engel of The Mises Institute,

  The story is that it is consumers that are going "to push the economy to grow more than 2 percent this year." That's Dallas Fed President Robert Kaplan's recently expressed view. It's the old fallacy of spending — rather than saving — our way into growth.

  It's remarkable that no one talks about the fact that the economy since 2008 was built on little but cheap debt, and therefore depends on the continued flow of such debt.

  

  To raise interest rates in that environment, will lead to the very conditions that the Fed fears the most. Of course, Austrians would praise such a blessed blow to the artificial boom. However, since the Fed, operating through a Keynesian lens, sees no inherent instability in such an economic environment. They don't see how much this would severely undermine the alleged stability they think they've achieved.

  Kaplan and the rest of them are depending on indebted consumers, exhausted by their credit levels, to push the economy all the way up to 2 percent growth. That it's come down to this speaks volumes about the Fed's alleged success over the years. Aside from the terrible labor participation rate is the fact that we are now supposed to be impressed by a GDP growth print above 2 percent. And even worse, the economy is so bad that in order to hit this 2 percent mark, we have to rely on the consumer. 

  Beyond this, we just got the 2016 fourth quarter GDP numbers and guess what: it came in at a seriously lousy 1.9 percent. The "expectations" were in the 2.1 percent range. It gets even better: this low number was in spite of a 3 percent increase in consumer spending. This of course means that the spending isn't helping. And without it, where would economic growth be then?

  If the Fed raises rates, where will the "recovery" go? Or more accurately, where will the facade of a recovery go?

  

  

  

• House Democrats Delayed Dismissal Of IT Staff 'Hackers' Because They Were Muslim American

  A month ago, three Muslim American brothers who managed office IT were barred from congressional computers (on suspicion that they accessed computers without permission). While many congressmen immediately relieved them of their duties, two House Democrats decided to delay the firing (until today) because their Muslim background, some with ties to Pakistan, could make them easy targets for false charges.

  Imran Awan seen below with Bill Clinton

  

  As we previously reported, the three brothers (Abid, Imran, and Jamal Awan) who managed office IT for members of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence and other lawmakers  were barred from computer networks at the House of Representatives Thursday, The Daily Caller News Foundation Investigative Group has learned.

  Three members of the intelligence panel and five members of the House Committee on Foreign Affairs were among the dozens of members who employed the suspects on a shared basis. The two committees deal with many of the nation’s most sensitive issues, information and documents, including those related to the war on terrorism.

   

  The brothers are suspected of serious violations, including accessing members’ computer networks without their knowledge and stealing equipment from Congress.

  The three men are “shared employees,” meaning they are hired by multiple offices, which split their salaries and use them as needed for IT services. It is up to each member to fire them from working…

  While many congressmen did fire them immediately (and barred them from congressional systems), Politico reports that, one month after being barred from congressional systems, Rep. Gregory Meeks (D-N.Y.) and Rep. Marcia Fudge (D-Ohio) have finally fired the IT staff…

  Meeks said he isn’t convinced Alvi and Imran Awan, both of whom worked in his office at different times, are involved in the alleged procurement scam but that Alvi was dismissed because the investigation was interrupting the day-to-day functions of his office.

   

  “As of right now, I don’t see a smoking gun,” Meeks said. “I have seen no evidence that they were doing anything that was nefarious.”

  

  Meeks said he was hesitant to believe the accusations against Alvi, Imran Awan and the three other staffers, saying their background as Muslim Americans, some with ties to Pakistan, could make them easy targets for false charges.

  “I wanted to be sure individuals are not being singled out because of their nationalities or their religion. We want to make sure everybody is entitled to due process,” Meeks said.

   

  “They had provided great service for me. And there were certain times in which they had permission by me, if it was Hina or someone else, to access some of my data.”

   

  Fudge told Politico on Tuesday she would employ Imran Awan until he received “due process.”

   

  “He needs to have a hearing. Due process is very simple. You don’t fire someone until you talk to them,” Fudge said.

   

  On Wednesday, Lauren Williams, a spokeswoman for Fudge, wouldn’t provide details about Imran Awan’s firing but did confirm he was still employed in Fudge’s office as of Tuesday afternoon.

  The bottom line is simple – these House Democrats decided it was better to be at risk of hacking and extortion than to be accused of racism.

  And just for good measure, Politico reports that Awan has long-standing relationships with Meeks, Wasserman Schultz and Fudge. Meeks was one of the first lawmakers Awan worked for after coming to Capitol Hill in 2004. He joined Wasserman Schultz’s office in 2005 and started working for Fudge in 2008. In addition, Meeks and, to a larger extent, Wasserman Schultz, are said to have a friendly personal relationship with Awan and his wife, according to multiple sources. Awan made nearly $2 million since starting as an IT support staffer for House Democrats in 2004, according to public salary data. Alvi, who worked for House Democrats beginning in 2007, earned more than $1.3 million as an IT staffer during that time.

  

  

• Van Jones Crushes College Safe Space Crusaders

  Via Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

  Nothing that Van Jones states in the clip below is novel. Many of us have making the exact same point for many years. Nevertheless, he delivers the argument in such a passionate and eloquent way, it is indeed worth applauding and sharing.

  This clip got me thinking about why those who oppose Trump seem so incapable of offering thoughtful, empowering resistance other than to quote George W. Bush or engage in CIA worship. I think part of the problem goes back to the fact that we’ve been telling young people that they’re victims for pretty much their whole lives. If you convince everyone that they’re a victim, they’ll start acting like victims.

  Victims are the last thing this society needs. We need strong, ethical, courageous men and women who are willing to step up the plate, challenge authority and make this world a better place. College safe spaces are simply assembly lines for creating future victims, and we’ve got more than enough of those.

  *  *  *

  Finally, as we have noted previously, and hope it is slowly being drummed into the small closed minds of millennials…

  The Only Safe Space Is Your Home

  

  No matter where you go in life, someone will be there to offend you. Maybe it’s a joke you overheard on vacation, a spat at the office, or a difference of opinion with someone in line at the grocery store. Inevitably, someone will offend you and your values. If you cannot handle that without losing control of your emotions and reverting back to your “safe space” away from the harmful words of others, then you’re best to just stay put at home. Remember, though: if people in the outside world scare you, people on the internet will downright terrify you. It’s probably best to just accept these harsh realities of life and go out into the world prepared to confront them wherever they may be waiting.

  

  

• Stockman: "Trump Will Create A Debt Crisis Like Never Before"

  Having warned that "everything will grind to a halt on March 5th" due to the under-appreciated debt-ceiling debacle that looms over Washington, and exclaiming that "what is going on today is complete insanity," former Reagan Budget Director David Stockman is rapidly losing faith that anything can be done… 

  "I've thrown in the towel because he’s not paying attention and he’s not learning anything and he’s making ridiculous statements."

  Reflecting on Trump's address to Congress, and what we know of The White House agenda, Stockman told Fox Business' Neil Cavuto:

  "We don’t need a $54 billion increase in defense when the budget already is ten times bigger than that of Russia. We don’t need $6 trillion of defense spending over the next decade because China is going nowhere except trying to keep their Ponzi scheme together."

  Stockman rejected Trump's dynamic scoring hope…

  "Trump is so deep in fiscal la-la-land, he won't even find the wrong envelope… he is saying crazy things."

  And wasn’t sold on Speaker Ryan’s Obamacare plan.

  “If you look at the Ryan draft that came out over the weekend, it’s basically Obamacare-like. It’s not really repealing anything,” he said.

   

  “It’s basically reneging and turning the Medicaid expansion into a block grant, turning the exchanges into tax credits [and] it’s still going to cost trillions of dollars.”

  Last week, Trump’s Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin, told FOX Business the administration is “focused on an aggressive timeline” to produce a tax reform plan by August Opens a New Window. , but in Stockman’s opinion, tax reform won’t happen this year.

  http://video.foxbusiness.com/v/embed.js?id=5341550706001&w=466&h=263

  Watch the latest video at video.foxbusiness.com

  He also warned that the administration’s run up against the debt ceiling this summer could lead to a debt crisis.

  “I don’t think we will see the tax cuts this year at all,” he said.

   

  “There is going to be a debt ceiling crisis like never before this summer and that’s what people don’t realize. They’ve burned up all the cash that Obama left on the balance sheet for whatever reason.”

  Stockman added that "…by the time we get to June or July, we are going to see a debt ceiling crisis like never before."

  

  As a reminder, Stockman warned last week: 

  “I think what people are missing is this date, March 15^th 2017.  That’s the day that this debt ceiling holiday that Obama and Boehner put together right before the last election in October of 2015.  That holiday expires.  The debt ceiling will freeze in at $20 trillion.  It will then be law.  It will be a hard stop.  The Treasury will have roughly $200 billion in cash.  We are burning cash at a $75 billion a month rate.  By summer, they will be out of cash.  Then we will be in the mother of all debt ceiling crises.  Everything will grind to a halt.  I think we will have a government shutdown.  There will not be Obama Care repeal and replace.  There will be no tax cut.  There will be no infrastructure stimulus.  There will be just one giant fiscal bloodbath over a debt ceiling that has to be increased and no one wants to vote for.”

  Stockman also predicts very positive price moves for gold and silver as a result of the coming budget calamity.

  

  

• AG Sessions Accused Of Lying To Congress Over Contact With Russian Ambassador

  Just when you thought the 'Russians-did-it' meme was fading, WaPo reporters manage to find DoJ officials who say then-Senator Jeff Sessions spoke twice last year with Russia’s ambassador to the United States – encounters he did not disclose when asked about possible contacts with Moscow during his confirmation hearing to become attorney general.

  //www.washingtonpost.com/video/c/embed/5350986c-fed4-11e6-9b78-824ccab94435

  At his Jan. 10 Judiciary Committee confirmation hearing, Sessions was asked by Sen. Al Franken, a Minnesota Democrat, what he would do if he learned of any evidence that anyone affiliated with the Trump campaign communicated with the Russian government in the course of the 2016 campaign.

  “I’m not aware of any of those activities,” he responded.

   

  He added: “I have been called a surrogate at a time or two in that campaign and I did not have communications with the Russians.”

  And now, as The Hill reports that according to The Washington Post report, President Trump's attorney general, Jeff Sessions, spoke twice with Russia's ambassador to the United States while Trump was on the campaign trail.

  Justice Department officials said one of the meetings was a private conversation between Sessions and Russian Ambassador Sergey Kislyak in Sessions's office. The private meeting reportedly took place during the same time intelligence officials have said Russia was interfering with the U.S. presidential election through a hacking campaign.

  Officials said Sessions did not consider the conversations relevant to the lawmakers’ questions and did not remember in detail what he discussed with Kislyak.

  “There was absolutely nothing misleading about his answer,” said Sarah Isgur Flores, Sessions’s spokeswoman.

  A Sessions spokeswoman said Sessions was acting as a member of the Armed Services Committee, not as a Trump surrogate, when he spoke with the ambassador, and was not trying to mislead senators when he said during his confirmation hearing that he had not had contacts with Moscow. She added that Sessions last year had more than 25 conversations with foreign ambassadors as a senior member of the Armed Services Committee, including the British, Korean, Japanese, Polish, Indian, Chinese, Canadian, Australian and German ambassadors, in addition to Kislyak.

  When asked to comment on Sessions’s contacts with Kislyak, Franken said in a statement to The Washington Post on Wednesday:

  “If it’s true that Attorney General Sessions met with the Russian ambassador in the midst of the campaign, then I am very troubled that his response to my questioning during his confirmation hearing was, at best, misleading.

   

  Franken added: “It is now clearer than ever that the attorney general cannot, in good faith, oversee an investigation at the Department of Justice and the FBI of the Trump-Russia connection, and he must recuse himself immediately.”

  And just like that, the "russians-did-it" meme is back on top of the news cycle into the weekend.

  We leave it to WaPo to conclude (with the narrative of choice)…

  The previously undisclosed discussions could fuel new congressional calls for the appointment of a special counsel to investigate Russia’s alleged role in the 2016 presidential election. As attorney general, Sessions oversees the Justice Department and the FBI, which have been leading investigations into Russian meddling and any links to Trump’s associates. He has so far resisted calls to recuse himself.

  We suspect Trump will tweet-splode again soon on the back of this – so much for the conciliatory "end the small-thinking" tone he called for in his congressional address.

  

  

• McDonald's Cunning Plan To Recover Millions In Lost Customers: Home Delivery

  Earlier today, the world’s biggest fast food retailer spooked its investors when it briefly halted trading in its stock ahead of its annual investor day. However, instead of some dramatic M&A deal revelation, McDonalds had a far less exciting announcement: it had decided to go back to basis in an attempt to recover some 500 million U.S. orders it had lost over the past five years to competition as a result of failed attempts to widen its customer base. So, after some deep soul-searching, the fast-food chain said it would finally embrace its identity as an affordable fast-food chain instead of a fancy coffee store or an all day diner, and stop chasing after people who will rarely eat there.

  In recent years, critics slammed the fast food chain to focus on its core customers, at a time when McDonald’s added more salads, snack wraps and oatmeal to its menu to attract health-conscious customers. Such gimmicks worked for a while then failed, resulting in an even bigger drop in the core client base. In recent months the chain pulled many of those slow-selling products. It also had experimented with higher-priced burgers that failed.

  During the investor day, CEO Steve Easterbrook said the company is more focused now on its core customers. “We’re not the same McDonald’s we were two years ago or even six months ago,” said Mr. Easterbrook, who marked his two-year anniversary as CEO on Wednesday.

  McDonald’s is not the only one scratching its head over how to stop its declining market share: chasing new customers is a pitfall that’s hurt other fast-food restaurants such as top competitor, Burger King, which after efforts to appeal to a broader, more health-conscious customer base failed, decided in recent years to return to its fast-food roots.

  The fast food chain’s decision to stop faking came after it conducted its largest-ever customer survey last year to understand “why it was losing customers.” The study showed that it was losing customers to other fast-food chains, not to fast-casual restaurants serving healthier fare. Chief Executive Steve Easterbrook said the company is more focused now on its core customers. “We’re not the same McDonald’s we were two years ago or even six months ago,” said Mr. Easterbrook, who marked his two-year anniversary as CEO on Wednesday.

  So what are the core pillars of McDonald’s restructuring? 

  • First, it would focus on improving the quality of its food to retain existing customers and regain lapsed ones according to the WSJ. One of its biggest challenges has been getting its burger offerings to resonate with people who have grown accustomed to better burgers from rivals, i.e., the food sucks. Alas, MCD didn’t share specific plans for making a better burger or provide a timeline but said it is testing new cooking methods to improve the texture and taste of its classic Big Macs and Quarter Pounders. The chain is also testing burgers made from fresh, rather than frozen beef, in Texas and Oklahoma.
  • Second, it will try to make coffee a top priority globally to take advantage of customers’ snacking habits. It plans to improve how its coffee is served and presented and to upgrade the pastries at its McCafe coffee stations within restaurants. Many would likely say that its time would be far better spent on the first point above.
  • Third, McDonald is planning to roll out mobile ordering and payment in 20,000 restaurants in some of its largest markets, including the U.S., by the end of the year. The chain also is testing curbside pickup in the U.S.
  • Fourth, the company said it would spend about $1.1 billion to renovate existing locations, including about 650 in the U.S. About 2,500 U.S. restaurants in all will be “Experience of the Future” restaurants that include self-order kiosks and table service by year-end. In other words, robot servers and virtually no (minimum wage) staff.

  Finally, and perhaps most amusing, McDonald’s will soon provide in-home delivery. McDonald’s, which has been offering delivery for many years in Asia and the Middle East, is now testing delivery in the U.S. and Europe and more Asian markets. In Florida, it has partnered with ride-sharing service Uber to deliver food. McDonald’s said that 75% of the population in its top five markets live within 3 miles of a McDonald’s and that more than one billion people globally live within five to 10 minutes of a McDonald’s.

  “Delivery is the most significant disruption in the restaurant industry in our lifetime,” Ms. Brady said.

  And so, as McDonald’s prepares to spend millions to “return to its roots”, supposedly by imitating a pizza delivery company, millions of Americans will get even fatter as the only effort required to get to that Big Mac will be to dial the nearest McDonald’s restaurant. And yet in a decade or two, there will still be many confused economists asking why America’s largest “GDP component” and government outlay is healthcare spending.

  Finally, it is fascinating how nobody has yet made the simplest connection: perhaps the reason why increasingly more lower income Americans are no longer frequenting even such a low-cost retailerlike McDonalds, is that those same “lost clients” simply don’t have the disposable income.

  

  

• "Dear President Trump: If You Want To Cut Healthcare Costs & Stem The Opiate Death Spiral, Legalize Marijuana"

  Via Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,

  You say you want bold solutions that unite us: start by fully legalizing marijuana.

  If there is anything the left and right, progressives and conservatives, and everyone in between can agree on, it's ending the counter-productive, destructive "war on drugs" that has generated crime and violence, a "we're number one in Gulags" prison complex and pushed people into harder, far more dangerous drugs (see chart of "legal" opioid deaths below).

  Dear President Trump: if you're truly serious about lowering healthcare costs and stemming the rising tide of opioid addictions and death, then fully legalize marijuana via executive order now.

  The usual justifications for continuing the criminalization of marijuana have moved from threadbare to completely disconnected from reality. We're told that marijuana is surrounded by violence–well duh–the violence is the direct consequence of Prohibition.

  What happened when alcohol was prohibited? Crime and violence exploded around the production and distribution of the outlawed drug. What was peaceful when legal becomes violent when outlawed. This is so obvious, yet we have "leaders" who are blind to the dynamic.

  By outlawing medical marijuana, we have pushed everyone with chronic pain into extremely addictive and increasingly deadly "legal" opiates. This is the height of insanity: outlaw natural substances with pain management potential while legalizing highly addictive and often deadly synthetic opiates.

  

  Legalizing marijuana would eliminate the violence, lower the costs of operating the Drug War Gulag and lower healthcare costs by reducing the dependence on addictive opiates for pain management. Yes, there are circumstances that require opiates–but does it make sense to make opiates the next step above over-the-counter pain relievers?

  The social, human and financial costs of the opiate pandemic are skyrocketing. Adding marijuana products to the spectrum of choices would reduce these costs and the death toll. Regardless of whatever critics may claim about the negative effects of marijuana, the truth is death by marijuana overdose is essentially non-existent.

  Compare that to the tens of thousands of deaths caused by "legal" opiates and the millions of lives destroyed by the "war on drugs" and its American Gulag. While those benefiting from operating the "war on drugs" and the American Gulag propagandize a completely false pathway from marijuana to opiates, the reality is grandmothers are benefiting from medical marijuana and it is the sick-care/Big Pharma cartels that are the pathway to opiate addiction and death.

  Dear President Trump: you say you want bold solutions that unite us: start by fully legalizing marijuana. Listen to your young advisors and those in law enforcement who see the counterproductive insanity of the "war on marijuana" first-hand. Listen to the elderly who are benefiting from medical marijuana.

  Do the right thing and fully legalize marijuana. It's time to move beyond addled fictions and deal with the ugly realities of a system that actively promotes "legal" opiate addiction and death while outlawing marijuana.
   

  

  

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• US Mint Releases New Fort Knox "Audit Documentation": First Critical Observations

  Submitted by Koos Jansen of BullionStar

  

   

  US Mint Releases New Fort Knox “Audit Documentation”: First Critical Observations

  In response to a FOIA request the US Mint has finally released reports drafted from 1993 through 2008 related to the physical audits of the US official gold reserves. However, the documents released are incomplete and reveal the audit procedures have not been executed proficiently. Moreover, because the Mint could not honor its promises in full the costs ($3,144.96 US dollars) of the FOIA request have been refunded.

  Thanks to my readers that donated to the crowdfunding campaign I’ve been able to force the US Mint through a Freedom Of Information Act (FOIA) request to hand over documents related to the physical audits of the US official gold reserves stored at the Mint; also referred to as Deep Storage gold. Although the PDF-package digitally sent to me is redacted, incomplete, includes pages copied twice and materials I didn’t ask for, it’s the closest thing that I’ve ever seen to physical audit documentation of gold at Fort Knox and the other Mint depositories drafted in between 1993 and 2008.

  What is worrying is that the reports now in my possession reveal the audit procedures have not competently been executed. Combine that with the fact the documents are incomplete and redacted, and the result is suspicion of fraud. In this blog post we’ll have a first critical look at the reports and the problems to be found within.

  This post is a sequel to A First Glance At US Official Gold Reserves Audits, Second Thoughts On US Official Gold Reserves Audits, US Government Lost 7 Fort Knox Gold Audit Reports, The Power Of The Gold Community: Crowdfunding For FOIA Request Fort Knox Audit Documents Completes Within 24 Hours, Dear US Mint, We Gave You The FOIA Funds, Now Give Us The Fort Knox Audit Documents! Also related are Where Did The Gold In Fort Knox Come From? and Former US Mint Director Clueless On Gold In Fort Knox.

  US Government Tight-Lipped About Fort Knox Audits

  For starters, allow me to expand on what I think happened at the Mint’s headquarter on the 8^th floor at 801 9^th Street NW Washington DC, before these documents were sent to me.

  It should be clear that the US Treasury (owner of the gold), US Mint (main custodian), Federal Reserve Bank Of New York (second custodian), and the Office Inspector General of the US Treasury (head auditor), are reluctant to disclose information about the audits of the gold at the four largest depositories that store over 8,000 fine metric tonnes. Consider that the most seasoned gold analysts aren’t even aware this gold is audited.

  About a year ago we read in the introduction of an interview with world-renowned gold commentators Jim Rickards, “unlike many today, Jim Rickards believes the gold is indeed in Fort Knox but has not been audited to avoid drawing attention to it and to downplay its role”. More recently, on 11 February 2017 the Financial Times wrote, “much of the world’s excavated gold is thought to be in Fort Knox, but nobody can be sure, since the US government will not allow the auditors in”.  No, auditing Fort Knox is not a topic only the mainstream media are confused about. Gold advocates are in the dark as well.

  

  What nobody knows is that according the US government 100 per cent of the Deep Storage gold has been audited in between 1974 and 2008 (page 4). This period can be divided in two chapters: the first runs from 1974 until 1986 when the Committee for Continuing Audit of the U.S. Government-owned Gold verified the majority of the Deep Storage metal. The second chapter covers 1993 until 2008 when the residual was examined under the supervision of the Office Inspector General of the US Treasury. In my previous posts on this subject we focused on the first chapter, what is written below skims the surface of the second. As promised, eventually I will publish a full in-depth analysis of all chapters (there are additional chapters in the fifties, from 1986-1993, in 2009, 2010 and 2011).

  Over the years my inquiries at the US government though regular channels have produced little intelligence about the physical audits of the Deep Storage gold. Some departments cooperated at first, but eventually they stopped replying emails or just hang up the phone while I was talking. The second layer of defense was raised when I started submitting FOIAs. Instead of honoring my requests they tried to delay and dodge most appeals. Clearly, the US government prefers not to answer my questions than to flaunt with the audit results.

  However, in 2016 I embraced the motivation to push through and find out how many gold bars were counted, weighed and assayed in between 1993 and 2008, when allegedly the last series of physical audits was conducted. Not surprisingly, zero US government departments could provide me the information I was looking for, but through certain FOIAs I obtained leads to submit new FOIAs, and so on 12 Augustus 2016 I demanded, inter alia, the “memoranda submitted by the US Mint Director’s representative regarding audits of the Mint Schedule of Custodial Gold and Silver Reserves to the Chief Financial Officer drafted from 1993 through 2008”. The Mint replied this request would costs me $3,144.96 dollars because it would take 40 hours to search the respective documents, 8 hours for review, and additional costs would be incurred to duplicate 1,200 pages. I thought this was hogwash – 1,200 pages seemed out of proportion for such memoranda, how hard can it be to find a few pages and how did they know it were going to be 1,200 pages if they had to search 40 hours for it – but decided to start a crowdfunding campaign to collect the money.

  Within 24 hours the campaign was completed and late August 2016 I sent the Mint a check, in the hopes to receive the documents a.s.a.p.. After the Mint pretended the check was missing for a few weeks, they communicated on 28 September 2016 the funds had arrived and they were working to get the requested documents out to me (exhibit 1).

  

  Months past but nothing happened. I sent several emails and called the Mint three times, but time and time again I was maintained with false excuses. Then, finally, on 23 December 2016 the Mint delivered the documents I paid for. Sort of. Instead of 1,200 pages I received 223 redacted pages that contained 68 pages of reports I didn’t ask for and 21 pages that were copied twice. Effectively, I got 134 pages related to my FOIA request.

  When I confronted the Mint I paid $3,144.96 dollars for a meager 134 pages they agreed the costs had been estimated to high and a refund was reasonable. Actually, they told me they never cashed the check. So, quickly I told my bank to cancel the check and ordered my crowdfunding platform to refund all my donors.

  As of now all donors to my crowdfunding campaign should have received their money back (if not, please write me an email, see below for my address). From the bottom of my heart I would like to thank everyone for the loan that made this operation possible¹!

  For me a slight doubt remained if the Mint had tried to fend me off by asking a disproportionate amount of money for a few pages that I assume are alphabetically archived, or that they handled my case in all honesty. A skeptical mind would think the former. To find out I read the internal emails of the Mint employees that handled my FOIA. Those are not directly publicly available, but I was told a trick by more experienced FOIA scholars that reached out to me after I published my previous blog posts on this subject, to ask the Mint for internal emails through, what else, a Freedom Of Information Act request (exhibit 2).

  

  And it worked! On 10 January 2017 I received all (I hope) emails from the Mint I was looking for. Including one wherein Audit Liaison at the United States Mint Tom Noziglia makes an estimate for the costs of my FOIA request of 12 August 2016. Read below (exhibit 3).

  

  At first sight it seems Noziglia and his office stick to prudent protocols. But possibly this email is a veil, meant to deceive me if I would ever read it. Actually, yes, I think it’s a cloak and I’ll share my theory.

  Let’s study Noziglia’s LinkedIn page:

  

  We can read from Noziglia, “as Audit Liaison at the US Mint, I [Noziglia] am responsible for the coordination of all external audit initiatives … I have extensive experience in precious metal inventory, … I … coordinate the execution of the annual OIG [Office Inspector General] Joint Seal Inspection of the Custodial Gold at the US Mint”. This page tells us Noziglia is one of the auditors of the US official gold reserves. So, the email above (exhibit 3) was written by the auditor who was involved in the procedures of which I requested the documentation. Noziglia must have known my inquiry could be simply honored by sending just a few pages of documentation, as he was a co-author of the documents in question.

  Firstly, with the benefit of hindsight we know Noziglia was lying in his email because by now I have the documents that count only 134 pages, and he was the coordinator of the annual inspections of custodial gold at the Mint. He must have known there were no “1,200 pages in 80 boxes” and so his $2640.00 dollar estimate is a hoax. I think Noziglia wrote the email expecting I would NOT pay the ludicrous amount of dollars, but possibly DID submit a new FOIA to view the Mint’s internal emails. Chances are slim someone could pay $3,144.96 dollars right? But I’m not the first who submits an additional FOIA to obtain internal emails. Hundreds of people went before me, this is a well-known trick for FOIA pundits, and many public servants in the US must be aware of this hazard. Hence I reckon public servants consciously write emails to colleagues, as if these will be publicly released some day. I’ve come to understand submitting and answering FOIAs is nothing but a cat and mouse game.

  Second, the Mint never cashed the check. If they really thought they would have to search 40 hours, why not cash the check immediately and get busy? I guess they knew very well there was no searching required.

  Third, in case Noziglia had never seen a “memoranda submitted by the US Mint Director’s representative regarding audits of the Mint Schedule of Custodial Gold and Silver Reserves to the Chief Financial Officer”, which is not likely but let’s give him the benefit of the doubt, he could have viewed the most recent version at his office that wasn’t sent to the National Archives (NARA) yet. By doing so he would have learned very effectively these annual memoranda count only a few pages.

  Fourth, Noziglia states in his email (exhibit 3) he’s not sure if he will find the documents at all. But this is impossible because he’s a dedicated Mint auditor so he must know what documents the Mint sends to NARA every year. In addition, there was no need for Noziglia to “order off site” boxes, because he simply could have commanded NARA staff to deliver specific documents – this is common practice.

  Fifth, in the CC of Noziglia’s email is Kenyatta Fletcher, who is the Chief of the Accounting Division of the Mint. If, which is a big if, Noziglia didn’t know what I was looking for, Fletcher would’ve known these documents wouldn’t count 1,200 pages. But still I was charged a laughable $3,144.96 dollars.

  Sixth, Noziglia’s estimate is $2.640.00 dollars, but I have no emails that clarify why $504.96 dollars were added for a total of $3,144.96 dollars I was charged. This indicates, Mint staff communicated in person or through phone calls to finalize my request, and so could have done likewise to handle it in general. Concluding, Noziglia’s email doesn’t paint the full picture of the internel communication.

  Seventh, please read what Noziglia’s colleague Grimsby replied to him after 4 minutes.

  

  “Great email”? Why would Grimsby praise Noziglia for his email? If Grimsby would have written,“I agree”, I can understand. But, “great email”? Perhaps Grimsby meant to write, “great calculation that makes no sense, but is likely deceive an ignorant FOIA requester if he would ever read it!”? It sure looks like it.

  My guess is that Noziglia, Grimsby and Saunders-Mitchell met in the hallway in the afternoon of 15 August 2016 and agreed for Noziglia to write a phony email that arrives at an amount of dollars aimed to scare me off. In the email below you can read Noziglia suggested to Grimsby to discuss in person in the afternoon of 15 August 2016 the estimate for the costs.

  

  So far we’re confirmed, again, that the US gold is held in secrecy. No surprises there. Moving on to the content of the documents.

  Audit Documents Released Are Incomplete    

  When one walks into a US Mint repository the main barrier will be the door to the vault room. In the case of Fort Knox this a 20-tonne door of which no one person is entrusted with the combination. Once inside the vault room the gold is stored in segregated compartments that are sealed since at least the fifties.

  The official narrative is that by 2008 the load of all 42 compartments had been physically audited. Every compartment had been opened, the gold inside counted, weighed and assayed, after which the gold was stacked in an adjacent compartment in the vault room (in several documents it’s described this is the way the gold is physically audited). Subsequently the target compartment door was closed and placed under Official Joint Seal, if during the verification no discrepancies had been found with the Mint’s bullion ledger. In most years until 2008 one or two compartments were opened for a physical bar examination, while the other compartments were merely inspected for any tampering of the Official Joint Seal (OJS). The purpose of joint seals is to avoid the necessity of verifying all assets in each annual audit.

  

  Thus the audits of the Deep Storage gold consist of two conventions gold verifications, which are the physical audits of gold bars inside the compartments. And OJS inspections, which are checks of the seals placed on the compartment doors. The superintendent in the audit procedures is the Office Inspector General of the US Treasury, in short, the OIG.

  When reading the audit documents delivered to me (the Memoranda hereafter) the distinction between gold verifications and OJS inspections is clear. Let me show you an example of Fort Knox. The first screen shots below are from a gold verification at Fort Knox in March 1998.

  

  Exhibit 7.1. Gold verification at Fort Knox March 1998, page 1.

  

  Exhibit 7.2. Gold verification at Fort Knox March 1998, page 2.

  

  Exhibit 7.3. Gold verification at Fort Knox March 1998, page 3.

  

  Exhibit 8.1. OJS inspection at Fort Knox June 1998, page 1.

  

  Exhibit 8.2. OJS inspection at Fort Knox June 1998, page 2.

  

  Exhibit 8.3. OJS inspection at Fort Knox June 1998, page 3.

  

  Exhibit 8.4. OJS inspection at Fort Knox June 1998, page 4.

  Click here and here to download all Memoranda sent to me by the US Mint.

  After I had organized the documents and imported all data in spreadsheets I noted the 134 pages exclude 27 OJS inspection reports and at least 3 gold verification reports. I’ve asked the Mint to deliver the missing Memoranda, although I’m not expecting them to ever comply.

  The fact 30 Memoranda are missing is of course highly problematic. Bear in mind, I offered the Mint $3,144.96 dollars to produce these documents.

  

  In case you’re wondering how I know what gold verifications reports I’m missing, this is because references are made to these physical audits in succeeding gold verification reports. Fort OJS inspection reports, those should be done every year.

  Below is an example of an Official Joint Seal. I obtained nearly all OJS copies from a separated FOIA request at the OIG.

  

  Exhibit 10. OJS Fort Knox compartment 29.

  Submitted a whole bunch of FOIA request at US government departments regarding Fort Knox today. #gold

  — BullionStar (@KoosJansen) July 30, 2016

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  Fort Knox Compartment 31 Was Opened In 1996 For Dubious Reasons

  There are a couple of disturbing lines written in the Fort Knox OJS inspection report of 1996. Although for an OJS inspection seals should only be examined for tampering, on 12 August 1996 at the Fort Knox OJS inspection two representatives of the General Accounting Office (GAO) showed up in the vault room and decided to select “a single joint sealed compartment for opening and inspection”.

  

  Unfortunately the report doesn’t say what was in the vault compartment; how many bars and fine troy ounces (FTO) it contained. Based purely on this document it would impossible to decipher what the GAO exactly did. However, by combining the info in the 1996 OJS inspection report with documentation obtained through a FOIA requests at the OIG, we do know what happened.

  Have another look at exhibit 10. We can read Fort Knox compartment 29 was sealed in 1998. But the content, 19,800 gold bars weighing 6,470,624.049 FTOs before assays samples were taken, was sourced from compartment 31 that was sealed on 12 August 1996. Was compartment 31 the one opened by the GAO in 1996? Yes, without a doubt.

  By examining all OJS copies – such as demonstrated in exhibit 10 – it shows there was no other vault segment freshly sealed on 12 August 1996 other than compartment 31. Moreover, the 1996 OJS inspection report mentions only one joint sealed compartment was breached. Therefore we know the GAO representatives opened Fort Knox compartment 31 comprising 19,800 gold bars weighing 6,470,624.049 FTOs on 12 August 1996.

  Furthermore, in the 1995 OJS inspection report we read there was one compartment – the number is redacted – that contained 19,800 gold bars weighing 6,470,624.049 FTOs. And in 1995, 1996 and 1997 there were no gold verifications at Fort Knox as far as I know, other than the GAO incident. Have a look below at a screenshot from the 1995 Fort Knox OJS inspection report.

  

  What happened is that on 12 August 1996 compartment 31 was opened by the GAO to “check a few bars”, but then two years later in 1998 the same gold was verified by the OIG; all the gold inside taken out of compartment 31, counted, weighed and assayed, to be stored across the hall in compartment 29. This is suspicious. I quote, “the purpose of joint seals is to avoid the necessity of verifying all assets in each annual audit”.

  I do not possess the official rules for US Mint OJS inspection and gold verification for the year 1996 (“MD 8H-1”), but based on the rules that prevailed in 1975, what the GAO did on 12 August 1996 was not done. Read with me.

  

  Exhibit 12. Source.

  My interpretation of the quote above is that if a compartment was opened all assets within should have been verified by the auditors, not just a few bars. If these rules still applied in 1996, what happened in Fort Knox compartment 31 was fraud. Unfortunately, but perhaps no coincidence, the GAO is exempt from FOIAs. On their website we read, “the Government Accountability Office (GAO) is not subject to the Freedom of Information Act”. (In July 7, 2004, the US GAO’s legal name was changed from the General Accounting Office to the Government Accountability Office.) I’ve submitted a FOIA at the Mint to obtain MD 8H-3 but it bounced. Currently I’m trying the OIG to provide these rules.

  How come the GAO could open a compartment? The OIG stated under oath in 2011, “since 1993, when we assumed responsibility for the audit, my office has continued to directly observe the inventory and test the gold” (page 4). If the OIG is responsible how come the GAO could break a seal?

  Let’s contemplate this: if the “random checks” the GAO performed in 1996 in compartment 31 formed an adequate gold verification, why did the OIG re-audit the exact same gold in 1998? And what was the intention of the GAO in 1996? The GAO couldn’t fully audit compartment 31, because they were present at Fort Knox only for one day (12 August), and no single person or flock of auditors can verify 19,800 large gold bars in one day. The fact these 19,800 gold bars were re-audited in 1998 underlines what the GAO did in 1996 was inappropriate at best.

  One theory is that the gold in compartment 31 was prepared in 1996 to be physically audited down the road. Remember what the Fort Knox gold verification report of 1998 stated (exhibit 7.2)? In 1998 the OIG, “selected predetermined individual bars to be drilled for assay”. Possibly, the OIG selected the exact bars in 1998 that were put in in 1996. If this is true the names and autographs of the perpetrators of this crime are on the seal of compartment 29 (exhibit 10).

  My succeeding post on this subject will expose that many other Deep Storage compartments at the Mint have been opened for dubious reasons as well. Which could be the reason the Mint didn’t provide us ALL the OJS inspection reports from Denver and West Point from 1993 through 2003 (exhibit 9).

  Weighing Sample Size Remarkably Low

  We need to discuss the sample size of the gold verifications. In 1998 at Fort Knox 19,800 gold bars were inspected but only 105 of them were weighed and assayed (exhibit 7.2). That’s not much in my humble opinion. In any case, I expected a higher sample size.

  In the 1953 audit at Fort Knox (download report here) in total 88,000 bars weighing 48,506,985 FTOs were counted for verification. About 10 % of those were weighed.

  During the Continuing Audits from 1974 through 1986 it seems 2 % of the gold counted was weighed. A huge decline from 1953.

  

  Exhibit 13. Audit report Fort Knox 1981.

  Although gold bars tested to be out of tolerance during a Fort Knox audit in 1977 at a sample size of 2 %, by 1998 the sample size had been further debased to 0.53 %. I’m not a professional auditor (if you are one please contact me), but common sense suggests that when irregularities are found the sample size should be increased, not decreased.

  To make matters worse, in 1999 at West Point the sample size was 0.52 %, and again, a melt appeared to be out of tolerance.

  

  Was the sample size increased after 1999? Not really. At Fort Knox in July 2000 the samples size was 0.65 % (93 bars weighed of 14,262 bars counted). But wait until I show you what numbnuts were entrusted handling the scale for the audits of the world’s greatest gold hoard. 

  Scale Didn’t Work, Repeatedly

  Let’s study the 2004 physical audit at West Point. Please read:

  

  Exhibit 15.1. Gold verification report West Point 2004.

  

  Exhibit 15.2. Gold verification report West Point 2004.

  When all parties tried to reconcile the weight of samples on 22 and 23 July 2004, they found out, “the scale was reading at ounces rather than fine troy ounces”, because, “a setting on the scale had not been properly changed”. Allegedly this is what caused alternative readings in the books of the Director of the Mint’s Representative and the OIG’s Representative. And presumably because nobody could figure out how to use the scale correctly they decided to postpone re-weighing the samples until 24 August 2004. This failure of how to use a scale is a colossal disaster for the credibility of the Deep Storage audit procedures.

  In 2004 a mere 71 bars were weighed and assayed, but it appeared that none of the auditors present knew how to rightly use the scale. The Memoranda mentions they found out the scale wasn’t properly functioning when weighing the assay samples, but what about the weighing of the actual bars? What about the weighing of every Deep Storage gold bar under the supervision of the OIG from 1993 until 2008? We have no guarantee this has ever been executed competently.

  To repeat, the official explanation for this blunder reads, “the scale was reading at ounces rather than fine troy ounces”, because, “a setting on the scale had not been properly changed”.

  First, in my mind there can be no imaginable circumstances in which setting of the scale should have been changed. The scale should read troy ounces to as many decimals all day long. That’s it. Why change the settings?

  Second, they say, “the scale was reading at ounces rather than fine troy ounces”, but scales don’t read fine troy ounces so this statement is fake. A scale reads troy ounces, or digital ones can be set to reading grams; it cannot smell what is the purity of the gold and thus display fine troy ounces. That’s what the assay test is for.

  In 2008 at West Point a similar disaster happened. Read with me:

  

  Exhibit 16.1. Gold verification report West Point 2008.

  

  Exhibit 16.2. Gold verification report West Point 2008.

  The auditors couldn’t clearly read the decimal point. After assay samples were drilled to be taken out, the auditors weighed the same amount of gold granules to replace the samples, in order for the Deep Storage FTOs to remain flat in 2008. But the assay lab, White Sands Missile Range, which is a division of the US Army, found out from the paper work that the weight of the assay samples didn’t match the weight of the granules. And so West Point compartment 10-H had to be re-opened on 22 September 2008 to put an exact 10.346 ounces of gold in, instead of 1.0346 ounces.

  What a catastrophe! Be aware that before weighing the granules the auditors weighed 86 gold bars and the assay samples. How do we know they properly weighed the assay samples and the totals of the 86 bars? The short answer is, we don’t.

  Thereby, anybody with a sense for gold can see the difference between 10 ounces and 1 ounce of yellow metal.

  Conclusion

  From the examples above it should be clear that the Deep Storage gold has not been audited by professionals, but the precious metals have been verified by imbeciles. Clearly the scale was repeatedly handled by amateurs, which throws a wrench at the integrity of the entire US official gold reserves auditing project. I’m not at all surprised the US Mint has tried everything to keep the records of the auditors out from the pubic domain. Fortunately most of it will be out in the open eventually. The citizenry of the world deserves to know everything there is about the Deep Storage gold.

  Let’s finish with one more comment from the West Point 2006 audit report.

  

  Exhibit 17.1. Gold verification report West Point 2006.

  The auditors couldn’t figure how to use the drill to take assay samples (how about pointing the tip to a bar and press the button). They also were oblivious how to calculate fine troy ounces. We must wonder if these people would be capable of tying their own shoelaces. In any case, the fact the US government chose to assign very inexperienced people widely opens the possibility that the audits are a complete hoax.

  

  

• Mapping America's Friends, Foes, & Frenemies

  Subject to change…

  

  Map created by reddit user ShilohShay

  Via BrilliantMaps.com,

  The map above shows which countries Americans consider their allies and friends and those they consider unfriendly or even their enemy.

  The data is based off a YouGov poll conducted between January 28 – February 1, 2017, which asked 7,150 adults living in the United States the question:

  “Do you consider the countries listed below to be a friend or an enemy of the United States?”

   

  Reddit user ShilohShay explains that:

  For the purpose of extrapolating more interesting data from the poll, I only added a country to “Don’t Know” in this map if 50% or more of Americans picked that option. Otherwise I went with the plurality opinion.

  Top 10 US Allies were:

  1. Canada
  2. Australia
  3. UK
  4. France
  5. Italy
  6. Ireland
  7. Israel
  8. Norway
  9. Sweden
  10. Germany

  Top 10 US Enemies were:

  1. North Korea
  2. Iran
  3. Syria
  4. Iraq
  5. Afghanistan
  6. Russia
  7. Libya
  8. Somalia
  9. Pakistan
  10. Palestine

  While many of the enemies are the ones you’d expect, only 11% of Americans consider China their enemy and just 9% consider Cuba their enemy.

  

  

• "'There Are No Moderate Rebels' – Tulsi Gabbard Destroys The Deep State's Syria Narrative

  Via Mike Krieger of Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

  Tulsi Gabbard has continued to impress ever since she came on the national scene last year with her courageous and very public support for Bernie Sanders in the rigged Democratic primary.

  Most recently, she continued to demonstrate her knowledge of geopolitics and willingness to stand up to America’s unelected government, aka the Deep State, in a recent interview with CNN’s Jake Taper.

  Note, the clip is about a month old, but important to watch if you haven’t. 

  If the Democrats have any hope of becoming a decent opposition party which not only resists the worst of Trump, but also rejects the perverted neoliberal/Deep State ideology currently embraced by establishment Dems, Tulsi Gabbard will have to play a key role.

  As I highlighted in last February’s post, It’s Not Just the GOP – The Democratic Party is Also Imploding:

  A rising star within the Democratic ranks, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard of Hawaii, cut herself off from the party’s establishment by resigning from her post as vice-chairman of the Democratic National Committee and endorsing Bernie Sanders for president.

   

  Her position with the DNC required her to stay neutral in the primaries, but she said that “the stakes are too high.” She announced her decision on Sunday on NBC’s “Meet the Press,” and made a video where she explained her reasoning.

   

  Gabbard, an Iraq war veteran, said she knows the cost of war firsthand. “I know how important it is that our commander-in-chief has the sound judgment required to know when to use America’s military power—and when not to use that power.”

  The importance of this move cannot be understated. In no uncertain terms, this gesture publicly exposes the weakness of the “Clinton brand.” She clearly isn’t afraid of Hillary or of any repercussions from the Democratic Party elite, a fact that is underscored by the fact she came out with her endorsement after he got pummeled in South Carolina.

  But let’s take a step back and think about this in the even bigger picture. You don’t get to Congress by being a political imbecile. On the surface, this move looks like career suicide, particularly since Hillary is probably about to clinch the nomination. Recall, Rep. Gabbard didn’t merely endorse Sanders after a bruising loss in South Carolina, she stepped down from her official position with the DNC to do so. This isn’t merely a statement, it’s the equivalent of dropping a neutron bomb on the Democratic establishment. So why did she do it?

  While I think she genuinely agrees with Sanders on key issues, the reason she came out so aggressively is because she sees the writing on the wall. She’s playing the long game, and in the long game, Hillary Clinton represents a discredited and failed status quo, while Bernie Sanders represents a push toward the paradigm level change that will define the future.

  When it comes to the Democrats, we need to see a lot less Pelosi and Schumer, and a lot more Gabbard.

  

  

• NY Teamsters Pension Becomes First To Run Out Of Money As Expert Warns "Pension Tsunami" Is Coming

  The New York Teamsters Road Carriers Local 707 Pension Fund has won the unfortunate award for “First Pension to Officially Run Out of Money.”  According to the New York Daily News, and a host of angry former truck drivers who’ve had their pension benefits slashed, the Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. (PBGC) has officially been forced to step in and take over payments to retirees of the Local 707, albeit at a much lower rate.

  Teamsters Local 707’s pension fund is the first to officially bottom out financially — which happened this month.

   

  “I had a union job for 30 years,” Chmil said. “We had collectively bargained contracts that promised us a pension. I paid into it with every paycheck. Everyone told us, ‘Don’t worry, you have a union job, your pension is guaranteed.’ Well, so much for that.”

   

  “It’s a nightmare, it has just devastated all of our lives. I’ve gone from having $48,000 a year to less than half that,” said Chmil, one of five Local 707 retirees who agreed to share their stories with the Daily News last week.

   

  “I don’t want other people to have to go through this. We need everyone to wake up and do something; that’s why we’re talking,” said Ray Narvaez.

  Of course, the Teamsters 707 and other Teamster pension boards attempted to submit plans that would have cut benefits in order to prolong payments to retirees but those plans were universally rejected by the Obama administration…better that the pensions just run out of cash completely.  Per Pensions & Investments:

  The Obama administration is in denial about the necessity of cutting pension benefits under the Multiemployer Pension Reform Act of 2014 to try to put distressed multiemployer plans on sounder financial footings and make them more sustainable. It must face reality and order the Treasury Department to stop blocking action.

   

  So far the department, required under the act to approve proposed reductions, has rejected proposals by the Teamsters Central States, Southeast & Southwest Areas Pension Plan and the Road Carriers Local 707 Pension Fund.

   

  Ten plans total have applied for cuts, including the New York State Teamsters Conference Pension and Retirement Fund, Syracuse, whose Aug. 31 application is too new to be listed on the Treasury’s website.

   

  The Road Carriers 707 application stated that the plan projects it will become insolvent in February — only about five months away — absent suspension of benefits.

   

  As desperate as the plan’s financial situation appears to be, the Treasury denied the application.

  And while the Local 707 pension was the first to dry up, it certainly won’t be the last…

  Also on the brink of drying up are the pensions for two Teamster locals — 641 and 560 — in New Jersey, union officials said. Plus 35,000 Teamster members upstate who are part of the money-hemorrhaging New York State Teamsters Pension Fund.

   

  Bigger than all of New York’s Teamster locals combined is the Central States Pension Fund — another looming financial disaster that could leave 407,000 retirees without pensions across the Midwest and South.

  

   

  Meanwhile, under the maximum benefits provided by the PBGC, many former Teamsters, like Ray Narvaez, said their monthly retirement checks have been slashed by two-thirds.

  Then Narvaez, like 4,000 other retired Teamster truckers, got a letter from Local 707 in February of last year.

   

  It said monthly pensions had to be slashed by more than a third. It was an emergency move to try to keep the dying fund solvent. That dropped Narvaez from nearly $3,500 to about $2,000.

   

  “They said they were running out of money, that there could be no more in the pension fund, so we had to take the cut,” said Narvaez, whose wife was recently diagnosed with cancer.

   

  The stopgap measure didn’t work — and after years of dangling over the precipice, Local 707’s pension fund fell off the financial cliff this month. With no money left, it turned to Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp., a government insurance company that covers pension.

   

  Pension Benefit Guaranty Corp. picked up Local 707’s retiree payouts — but the maximum benefit it gives a year is roughly $12,000, for workers who racked up at least 30 years. For those with less time on the job, the payouts are smaller.

   

  Narvaez now gets $1,170 a month — before taxes.

  Of course, as the Central States Pension General Counsel notes, the real “pension tsunami” will come when the massive “municipal and state plans go down next.”

  The same crisis now hitting Local 707 has been stewing among numerous Teamster locals around the country for the past decade, he said, and that includes in upstate New York.

   

  The trucking industry — almost uniformly organized by Teamsters — has suffered enormous financial losses in its pension and welfare funds due to a crippling combination of deregulation and stock market crashes, Nyhan said.

   

  “This is a quiet crisis, but it’s very real. There are currently 200 other plans on track for insolvency — that’s going to affect anywhere from 1.5 to 2 million people,” said Nyhan. “The prognosis is bleak minus some new legislative help.”

   

  And it’s not just private-sector industries that are suffering, he added.

   

  “Municipal and state plans are the next to go down — that’s a pension tsunami that’s coming,” he said. “In many states, those defined benefit plans are seriously underfunded — and at the end of the day, math trumps the statutes.”

  We’re looking at you Illinois…

  

  

• Trump Speech Post-Mortem – From Rebellion To Pouting Pelosi: "We Bleed The Same Blood"

  Just under 70 minutes, 4,825 words, and the message was clear – the speech was about "will" and "Americans"

  

  Additionally "Obamacare" was mentioned 5 times, "Historic" was mentioned 3 times, and "massive" twice.

  ..

  I am here tonight to deliver a message of unity and strength, and it is a message deeply delivered from my heart. #JointAddress

  — President Trump (@POTUS) March 1, 2017

  President Trump got a warm welcome…

  An extended standing ovation for the president as he takes his place on the rostrum. pic.twitter.com/lxGDA2m3wK

  — Mark Knoller (@markknoller) March 1, 2017

  To start with, for some reason Nancy Pelosi thought that Democratic women wearing white would make a statement…

  Tonight, our Democratic #WomenWearWhite in support of women's rights — in spite of a @POTUS who doesn't! pic.twitter.com/kKJpfV5iUE

  — Nancy Pelosi (@NancyPelosi) February 28, 2017

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  President Trump did not wear a red tie!!!

  THE TIE PIVOT HAS ARRIVED!#JointSession pic.twitter.com/2UqLdLyWLo

  — The Daily Show (@TheDailyShow) March 1, 2017

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  .@POTUS: "A new chapter of American Greatness is now beginning. A new national pride is sweeping across our Nation." https://t.co/dAlG7hq9Sd pic.twitter.com/oEN3rESfts

  — Fox News (@FoxNews) March 1, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Trump began by referring to his election as a "rebellion" against "mistakes of recent decades"…

  Then, in 2016, the earth shifted beneath our feet. The rebellion started as a quiet protest, spoken by families of all colors and creeds -– families who just wanted a fair shot for their children, and a fair hearing for their concerns.

   

  But then the quiet voices became a loud chorus — as thousands of citizens now spoke out together, from cities small and large, all across our country.

   

  Finally, the chorus became an earthquake – and the people turned out by the tens of millions, and they were all united by one very simple, but crucial demand, that America must put its own citizens first … because only then, can we truly MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.

  Trump then reminded Congress of his market gains…

  Since my election, Ford, Fiat-Chrysler, General Motors, Sprint, Softbank, Lockheed, Intel, Walmart, and many others, have announced that they will invest billions of dollars in the United States and will create tens of thousands of new American jobs.

  The stock market has gained almost three trillion dollars in value since the election on November 8th, a record. We’ve saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by bringing down the price of the fantastic new F-35 jet fighter, and will be saving billions more dollars on contracts all across our government.

  We have placed a hiring freeze on non-military and non-essential federal workers.

  Which Nancy Pelosi did not appreciate…

  "Draining the swamp" got a somewhat subdued rund of applause…

  We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption by imposing a five year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials –- and a lifetime ban on becoming lobbyists for a foreign government.

  Nancy Pelosi was not impressed…

  This reaction by @NancyPelosi is EVERYTHING #SOTU @Shareblue pic.twitter.com/nW9Qf8tSZS

  — Tommy Christopher (@tommyxtopher) March 1, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  As Trump turned to immigration…

  Trump will not allow "terrorism to form inside America. We cannot allow our nation to become a sanctuary of extremists." #JointAddress pic.twitter.com/eNslYVTIqu

  — New York Times Video (@nytvideo) March 1, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

   

  It is not compassionate, but reckless, to allow uncontrolled entry from places where proper vetting cannot occur. Those given the high honor of admission to the United States should support this country and love its people and its values.

   

  We cannot allow a beachhead of terrorism to form inside America — we cannot allow our Nation to become a sanctuary for extremists.

   

  I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible, as long as we focus on the following goals: to improve jobs and wages for Americans, to strengthen our nation’s security, and to restore respect for our laws.

   

  If we are guided by the well-being of American citizens then I believe Republicans and Democrats can work together to achieve an outcome that has eluded our country for decades.

  And free trade, quoting Lincoln…

  “The first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, warned that the “abandonment of the protective policy by the American Government [will] produce want and ruin among our people,” he says.

   

  Lincoln was right — and it is time we heeded his words. I am not going to let America and its great companies and workers, be taken advantage of anymore.

   

  I am going to bring back millions of jobs. Protecting our workers also means reforming our system of legal immigration. The current, outdated system depresses wages for our poorest workers, and puts great pressure on taxpayers.

  Obamacare was up next…The Republican side of the chamber jumps to their feet and cheers.

  Check out Nancy Pelosi's reaction to Trump calling Obamacare a "disaster" pic.twitter.com/h4r0T7kabf

  — Axios (@axios) March 1, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  The Democrats all remain seated, with some female politicians in white suits seen giving the thumbs down to Trump’s comments.

  Big applause from Republicans on "repeal and replace Obamacare." Some Dems signal thumbs down https://t.co/5iBV2jtl98 pic.twitter.com/ZTWDBrKNtS

  — Bloomberg (@business) March 1, 2017

   

  Mandating every American to buy government-approved health insurance was never the right solution for America. The way to make health insurance available to everyone is to lower the cost of health insurance, and that is what we will do.

  Trump offers some details on this…

  First, we should ensure that Americans with pre-existing conditions have access to coverage, and that we have a stable transition for Americans currently enrolled in the healthcare exchanges.

   

  Secondly, we should help Americans purchase their own coverage, through the use of tax credits and expanded Health Savings Accounts –- but it must be the plan they want, not the plan forced on them by the Government.

   

  Thirdly, we should give our great State Governors the resources and flexibility they need with Medicaid to make sure no one is left out.

   

  Fourthly, we should implement legal reforms that protect patients and doctors from unnecessary costs that drive up the price of insurance – and work to bring down the artificially high price of drugs and bring them down immediately.

   

  Finally, the time has come to give Americans the freedom to purchase health insurance across State lines –- creating a truly competitive national marketplace that will bring cost way down and provide far better care.

  Trump then discusses education, positioning it as a race issue.

  Education is the civil rights issue of our time.

   

  I am calling upon members of both parties to pass an education bill that funds school choice for disadvantaged youth, including millions of African-American and Latino children. These families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them.

  Ron Paul had some things to say on that…

  If you really want to reduce the violence in our cities…get rid of the drug war!

  — Ron Paul (@RonPaul) March 1, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Trump then turned to Military and veterans:

  “I am sending the Congress a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the Defense sequester, and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history,” says Trump.

   

  “My budget will also increase funding for our veterans.

   

  “Our veterans have delivered for this Nation –- and now we must deliver for them.”

  Carryn Owens, the widow of a US Navy Special Operator, Senior Chief William “Ryan” Owens, who died in a raid in Yemen in January, shortly after Trump’s inauguration, was in attendance and received a very length standing ovation as Trump paid him (and her) tribute…

  Widow of Ryan Owens, Navy SEAL slain in Yemen raid, acknowledged by Pres. Trump at #JointAddress https://t.co/abn2wubjTr pic.twitter.com/ysEatnaXyr

  — CBS News (@CBSNews) March 1, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  But Ron Paul once again made a noteworthy point…

  Warmongering is alive and well. Tragically. Focus on the widow. What a terrible use of tragedy for political purposes.

  — Ron Paul (@RonPaul) March 1, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Trump ended on a much more upbeat optimistic tone (especialy compared to his inaugural address)

  "My job is not to represent the world. My job is to represent the United States of America."

  "Everything that is broken in our country can be fixed"

  .@POTUS: "Everything that is broken in our country can be fixed" https://t.co/4ddqDrFK9s pic.twitter.com/fjfDJ6AhV4

  — POLITICO (@politico) March 1, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    

   

   

  .@POTUS: "We all bleed the same blood. We all salute the same flag. And we are all made by the same God." https://t.co/OJYBoBsiIM pic.twitter.com/l6TJ3oGut9

  — FOX Business (@FoxBusiness) March 1, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

   

  *  *  *

  Read the full Transcript here: President Donald Trump's address to Congress Tuesday as prepared for delivery.

  The former president of Mexico could not resist but comment…

  .@realDonaldTrump this is the wall I would pay to get it done as fast as possible. #FuckingWall #JointSession pic.twitter.com/rcnlaCyP9c

  — Vicente Fox Quesada (@VicenteFoxQue) March 1, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

   

  New DNC Chair Perez was unimpressed…

  When asked about the speech DNC Chair Perez sarcastically clapped: "oh, he read a TelePrompTer!! It's like my kid ate and didn't spill!"

  — Michael LaRosa (@MichaelLaRosaDC) March 1, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

   

  Twitter reports that…Trump Speech Was Most Tweeted SOTU, Joint Session Ever

  With 3M tweets, tonight's @potus speech most tweeted #sotu #jointsession on record (surpassing prior 2.6M). Also highlights from tonight: pic.twitter.com/R1Kf1MvCVU

  — Sally Shin ???? (@sallyshin) March 1, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  We leave it to Ron Paul – who has been very vocal tonight – to sum it up:

  Now the grades: His vision for the US at its 250th anniversary: A-
  His methods to achieve it? He gets: F.

  — Ron Paul (@RonPaul) March 1, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  Final grade on libertarian scale: Plans/strategy: F
  Overall: D-

  — Ron Paul (@RonPaul) March 1, 2017

  //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  

  

• This Chart Signals China's Housing Bubble May Burst Soon

  Via MauldinEconomics.com,

  The probability that a real estate bubble may burst in China is rising. The financial sector heavily depends on real estate, which in turn exposes the entire Chinese economy to systemic risk.

  This link means that a downturn in real estate could soon spread to other areas of the Chinese economy if banks face liquidity shortfalls.

  Also, falling housing prices could result in more non-performing loans (NPLs). While NPLs officially account for only 1.75 percent of all Chinese loans, the government is likely understating the figure. BMI Research, a financial consulting firm, estimated in a 2016 report that NPLs could be close to 20 percent of loans.

  

  As banks gave more credit to real estate developers and buyers, their profitability stalled. In theory, China’s economy is not based on capitalism and thus doesn’t revolve around profitability; but in practice, money needs to come from somewhere. A company that doesn’t make a profit can’t survive in the long run. The Chinese government can’t afford to let banks fail since it would threaten both the financial system’s health and the key lifeline to state-owned enterprises that provide jobs.

  This surge in China’s real estate prices, fueled by ongoing credit expansion, are forcing the government to choose between deflating the housing market and slowing growth.

  *  *  *

  Subscribe to George Friedman’s This Week in Geopolitics – Economic trends, social upheaval, stock market cycles, and more are all connected to powerful geopolitical currents that most of us aren’t even aware exist. Global-intelligence guru George Friedman gives you an in-depth view of these hidden forces in This Week in Geopolitics. Get it free in your inbox every Monday.

  

  

• Dallas Police Pension 'Wins' $2mm Settlement From Real Estate Fund That Lost Them Roughly $320mm

  In the first bit of good news to surface for the Dallas Police and Fire Pension (DPFP) in quite some time, the Dallas News is reporting the pension board has “won” a $2 million settlement against their former real estate fund advisor, CDK Realty Advisors.  Of course, the settlement falls slightly short of the $320mm in losses allegedly caused by CDK, but a win’s a win, right?

  Meanwhile, city officials who complain they had little control over the fund’s activities but are now being forced to find a way to bail it out, had mixed reactions to the settlement.

  “We need every dime possible coming into the fund, especially from those that played a role in its downfall,” Mayor Mike Rawlings said in a statement. “This settlement appears to be a small step in the right direction, though I still hope to see more transparency and details about the scope of the alleged wrongdoing by CDK.”

   

  Lee Kleinman, a City Council member and former member of the fund’s board, said he was “shocked CDK got off the hook for a mere $2 million considering the amount of fees they bilked out of the system over the past decade.”

   

  But others highlighted the importance of getting CDK’s cooperation. “We could have hammered these guys a lot harder perhaps” by taking the matter to trial, said Philip Kingston, another city councilman who serves on the fund’s board. “But getting their cooperation to chase down other potential sources of recovery I think was really important.”

  For those who missed it, here is some background on how CDK Realty same to find themselves to be the target of an FBI raid in April 2016 related to their management of real estate investments on behalf of the DPFP…turns out they may have had some issues marking their real estate portfolio to market (see “Dallas Cops’ Pension Fund Nears Insolvency In Wake Of Shady Real Estate Deals, FBI Raid“).

  To provide a little background, per the Dallas Morning News, Richard Tettamant served as the DPFP’s administrator for a couple of decades right up until he was forced out in June 2014.  Starting in 2005, Tettamant oversaw a plan to “diversify” the pension into “hard assets” and away from the “risky” stock market…because there’s no risk if you don’t have to mark your book every day.  By the time the “diversification” was complete, Tettamant had invested half of the DPFP’s assets in, effectively, the housing bubble.  Investments included a $200mm luxury apartment building in Dallas, luxury Hawaiian homes, a tract of undeveloped land in the Arizona desert, Uruguayan timber, the American Idol production company and a resort in Napa. 

  Despite huge exposure to bubbly 2005/2006 vintage real estate investments, DPFP assets “performed” remarkably well throughout the “great recession.”  But as it turns out, Tettamant’s “performance” was only as good as the illiquidity of his investments.  We guess returns are easier to come by when you invest your whole book in illiquid, private assets and have “discretion” over how they’re valued. 

  In 2015, after Tettamant’s ouster, $600mm of DPFP real estate assets were transferred to new managers away from the fund’s prior real estate manager, CDK Realty Advisors.  Turns out the new managers were not “comfortable” with CDK’s asset valuations and the mark downs started.  According to the Dallas Morning News, one such questionable real estate investment involved a piece of undeveloped land in the Arizona desert near Tucson which was purchased for $27mm in 2006 and subsequently sold in 2014 for $7.5mm.  Per the DPFP 2015 Annual Report:

  In August 2014, the Board initiated a real estate portfolio reallocation process with goals of more broadly diversifying the investment manager base and adding third party fiduciary management of separate account and direct investment real estate assets where an investment manager was previously not in place. The reallocation process resulted in the transfer of approximately $600 million in DPFP real estate investments to four new investment managers during 2015. The newly appointed managers conducted detailed asset-level reviews of their takeover portfolios and reported their findings and strategic recommendations to the Board over the course of 2015 and into 2016. A significant portion of the real estate losses in 2015 were a direct result of the new managers’ evaluations of the assets.

  Then the plot thickened when, in April 2016, according the Dallas Morning News, FBI raided the offices of the pension’s former investment manager, CDK Realty Advisors.  There has been little disclosure on the reason for the FBI raid but one could speculate that it might have something to do with all the markdowns the pension was forced to take in 2015 on its real estate book.  At it’s peak, CDK managed $750mm if assets for the DPFP.

  And for those curious what an actual FBI raid looks like…here you go…though it’s slightly less exciting than you might think.

   

  Of course, as you might expect, CDK has denied any wrong doing…

  A lawyer for CDK stressed Monday that the settlement is not an “admission of any wrongdoing or liability for any claims.”

   

  “CDK Realty Advisors was one of several commercial real estate managers hired by the Pension System,” Steven A. Schneider said in a statement. “CDK was not involved in or responsible for the design and construction” of the controversial  Museum Tower in the city’s Arts District. He said the firm was also not involved in the fund’s high-profile investments in luxury homes in Hawaii and a resort and vineyard in Napa County, Calif.

   

  The firm has contended in a court filing that the real-estate investments it recommended were profitable for the fund.

  …and it’s previous managers were able to quickly launch a new firm called “Harvest Interests” which is actively pitching the Lubbock Fire Pension Fund for new capital.

  CDK’s principals started a new firm last year called Harvest Interests. Cooley spoke to the Lubbock Fire Pension Fund in November about moving forward with real estate investments, according to meeting minutes.

   

  Cooley said “they had settled with Dallas Police and Fire, but the paperwork was still being worked through,” according to the minutes. Cooley told the Lubbock fund that CDK will become defunct at some point in the future after investments it manages are sold, the minutes say.

  What more is there to say really?

  

  

• President Trump's Address To Congress: Key Highlights And Full Text

  

  While the full Trump speech transcript is below, for those curious only in the key economic/trade excerpt, it is laid out below:

  My economic team is developing historic tax reform that will reduce the tax rate on our companies so they can compete and thrive anywhere and with anyone. At the same time, we will provide massive tax relief for the middle class. We must create a level playing field for American companies and workers.

   

  Currently, when we ship products out of America, many other countries make us pay very high tariffs and taxes — but when foreign companies ship their products into America, we charge them almost nothing. I just met with officials and workers from a great American company, Harley-Davidson. In fact, they proudly displayed five of their magnificent motorcycles, made in the USA, on the front lawn of the White House.

   

  At our meeting, I asked them, how are you doing, how is business? They said that it’s good. I asked them further how they are doing with other countries, mainly international sales. They told me — without even complaining because they have been mistreated for so long that they have become used to it — that it is very hard to do business with other countries because they tax our goods at such a high rate. They said that in one case another country taxed their motorcycles at 100 percent.

   

  They weren’t even asking for change. But I am. I believe strongly in free trade but it also has to be FAIR TRADE.

  While this is not an explicit mention of BAT, some read into the excerpt above as validation of border adjustability.

  Next, here is Trump on Obamacare:

  Obamacare is collapsing –- and we must act decisively to protect all Americans. Action is not a choice –- it is a necessity. So I am calling on all Democrats and Republicans in the Congress to work with us to save Americans from this imploding Obamacare disaster.

   

  Here are the principles that should guide the Congress as we move to create a better healthcare system for all Americans:

   

  First, we should ensure that Americans with pre-existing conditions have access to coverage, and that we have a stable transition for Americans currently enrolled in the healthcare exchanges.

   

  Secondly, we should help Americans purchase their own coverage, through the use of tax credits and expanded Health Savings Accounts –- but it must be the plan they want, not the plan forced on them by the Government.

   

  Thirdly, we should give our great State Governors the resources and flexibility they need with Medicaid to make sure no one is left out.

   

  Fourthly, we should implement legal reforms that protect patients and doctors from unnecessary costs that drive up the price of insurance – and work to bring down the artificially high price of drugs and bring them down immediately.

   

  Finally, the time has come to give Americans the freedom to purchase health insurance across State lines –- creating a truly competitive national marketplace that will bring cost way down and provide far better care.

  * * *

  The full Trump transcript is below:

  President Donald Trump’s address to Congress Tuesday as prepared for delivery.

  Mr. Speaker, Mr. Vice President, Members of Congress, the First Lady of the United States, and Citizens of America:

  Tonight, as we mark the conclusion of our celebration of Black History Month, we are reminded of our Nation’s path toward civil rights and the work that still remains.

  Recent threats targeting Jewish Community Centers and vandalism of Jewish cemeteries, as well as last week’s shooting in Kansas City, remind us that while we may be a Nation divided on policies, we are a country that stands united in condemning hate and evil in all its forms.

  Each American generation passes the torch of truth, liberty and justice –- in an unbroken chain all the way down to the present.

  That torch is now in our hands. And we will use it to light up the world. I am here tonight to deliver a message of unity and strength, and it is a message deeply delivered from my heart.

  A new chapter of American Greatness is now beginning.

  A new national pride is sweeping across our Nation.

  And a new surge of optimism is placing impossible dreams firmly within our grasp.

  What we are witnessing today is the Renewal of the American Spirit.

  Our allies will find that America is once again ready to lead.

  All the nations of the world — friend or foe — will find that America is strong, America is proud, and America is free.

  In 9 years, the United States will celebrate the 250th anniversary of our founding — 250 years since the day we declared our Independence.

  It will be one of the great milestones in the history of the world.

  But what will America look like as we reach our 250th year? What kind of country will we leave for our children?

  I will not allow the mistakes of recent decades past to define the course of our future.

  For too long, we’ve watched our middle class shrink as we’ve exported our jobs and wealth to foreign countries.

  We’ve financed and built one global project after another, but ignored the fates of our children in the inner cities of Chicago, Baltimore, Detroit — and so many other places throughout our land.

  We’ve defended the borders of other nations, while leaving our own borders wide open, for anyone to cross — and for drugs to pour in at a now unprecedented rate.

  And we’ve spent trillions of dollars overseas, while our infrastructure at home has so badly crumbled.

  Then, in 2016, the earth shifted beneath our feet. The rebellion started as a quiet protest, spoken by families of all colors and creeds -– families who just wanted a fair
  shot for their children, and a fair hearing for their concerns.

  But then the quiet voices became a loud chorus — as thousands of citizens now spoke out together, from cities small and large, all across our country.

  Finally, the chorus became an earthquake – and the people turned out by the tens of millions, and they were all united by one very simple, but crucial demand, that America must put its own citizens first … because only then, can we truly MAKE AMERICA GREAT AGAIN.

  Dying industries will come roaring back to life. Heroic veterans will get the care they so desperately need.

  Our military will be given the resources its brave warriors so richly deserve.

  Crumbling infrastructure will be replaced with new roads, bridges, tunnels, airports and railways gleaming across our beautiful land.

  Our terrible drug epidemic will slow down and ultimately, stop.

  And our neglected inner cities will see a rebirth of hope, safety, and opportunity.

  Above all else, we will keep our promises to the American people.

  It’s been a little over a month since my inauguration, and I want to take this moment to update the Nation on the progress I’ve made in keeping those promises.

  Since my election, Ford, Fiat-Chrysler, General Motors, Sprint, Softbank, Lockheed, Intel, Walmart, and many others, have announced that they will invest billions of dollars in the United States and will create tens of thousands of new American jobs.

  The stock market has gained almost three trillion dollars in value since the election on November 8th, a record. We’ve saved taxpayers hundreds of millions of dollars by bringing down the price of the fantastic new F-35 jet fighter, and will be saving billions more dollars on contracts all across our Government. We have placed a hiring freeze on non-military and non-essential Federal workers.

  We have begun to drain the swamp of government corruption by imposing a 5 year ban on lobbying by executive branch officials –- and a lifetime ban on becoming lobbyists for a foreign government.

  We have undertaken a historic effort to massively reduce job?crushing regulations, creating a deregulation task force inside of every Government agency; imposing a new rule which mandates that for every 1 new regulation, 2 old regulations must be eliminated; and stopping a regulation that threatens the future and livelihoods of our great coal miners.

  We have cleared the way for the construction of the Keystone and Dakota Access Pipelines — thereby creating tens of thousands of jobs — and I’ve issued a new directive that new American pipelines be made with American steel.

  We have withdrawn the United States from the job-killing Trans-Pacific Partnership.

  With the help of Prime Minister Justin Trudeau, we have formed a Council with our neighbors in Canada to help ensure that women entrepreneurs have access to the networks, markets and capital they need to start a business and live out their financial dreams.

  To protect our citizens, I have directed the Department of Justice to form a Task Force on Reducing Violent Crime.

  I have further ordered the Departments of Homeland Security and Justice, along with the Department of State and the Director of National Intelligence, to coordinate an aggressive strategy to dismantle the criminal cartels that have spread across our Nation.

  We will stop the drugs from pouring into our country and poisoning our youth — and we will expand treatment for those who have become so badly addicted.

  At the same time, my Administration has answered the pleas of the American people for immigration enforcement and border security. By finally enforcing our immigration laws, we will raise wages, help the unemployed, save billions of dollars, and make our communities safer for everyone. We want all Americans to succeed –- but that can’t happen in an environment of lawless chaos. We must restore integrity and the rule of law to our borders.

  For that reason, we will soon begin the construction of a great wall along our southern border. It will be started ahead of schedule and, when finished, it will be a very effective weapon against drugs and crime.

  As we speak, we are removing gang members, drug dealers and criminals that threaten our communities and prey on our citizens. Bad ones are going out as I speak tonight and as I have promised.

  To any in Congress who do not believe we should enforce our laws, I would ask you this question: what would you say to the American family that loses their jobs, their income, or a loved one, because America refused to uphold its laws and defend its borders?

  Our obligation is to serve, protect, and defend the citizens of the United States. We are also taking strong measures to protect our Nation from Radical Islamic Terrorism.

  According to data provided by the Department of Justice, the vast majority of individuals convicted for terrorism-related offenses since 9/11 came here from outside of our country. We have seen the attacks at home -– from Boston to San Bernardino to the Pentagon and yes, even the World Trade Center.

  We have seen the attacks in France, in Belgium, in Germany and all over the world.

  It is not compassionate, but reckless, to allow uncontrolled entry from places where proper vetting cannot occur. Those given the high honor of admission to the United States should support this country and love its people and its values.

  We cannot allow a beachhead of terrorism to form inside America — we cannot allow our Nation to become a sanctuary for extremists.

  That is why my Administration has been working on improved vetting procedures, and we will shortly take new steps to keep our Nation safe — and to keep out those who would do us harm.

  As promised, I directed the Department of Defense to develop a plan to demolish and destroy ISIS — a network of lawless savages that have slaughtered Muslims and Christians, and men, women, and children of all faiths and beliefs. We will work with our allies, including our friends and allies in the Muslim world, to extinguish this vile enemy from our planet.

  I have also imposed new sanctions on entities and individuals who support Iran’s ballistic missile program, and reaffirmed our unbreakable alliance with the State of Israel.

  Finally, I have kept my promise to appoint a Justice to the United States Supreme Court — from my list of 20 judges — who will defend our Constitution. I am honored to have Maureen Scalia with us in the gallery tonight. Her late, great husband, Antonin Scalia, will forever be a symbol of American justice. To fill his seat, we have chosen Judge Neil Gorsuch, a man of incredible skill, and deep devotion to the law. He was confirmed unanimously to the Court of Appeals, and I am asking the Senate to swiftly approve his nomination.

  Tonight, as I outline the next steps we must take as a country, we must honestly acknowledge the circumstances we inherited.

  Ninety-four million Americans are out of the labor force.

  Over 43 million people are now living in poverty, and over 43 million Americans are on food stamps.

  More than 1 in 5 people in their prime working years are not working.

  We have the worst financial recovery in 65 years.

  In the last 8 years, the past Administration has put on more new debt than nearly all other Presidents combined.

  We’ve lost more than one-fourth of our manufacturing jobs since NAFTA was approved, and we’ve lost 60,000 factories since China joined the World Trade Organization in 2001.

  Our trade deficit in goods with the world last year was nearly $800 billion dollars.

  And overseas, we have inherited a series of tragic foreign policy disasters.

  Solving these, and so many other pressing problems, will require us to work past the differences of party. It will require us to tap into the American spirit that has overcome every challenge throughout our long and storied history.

  But to accomplish our goals at home and abroad, we must restart the engine of the American economy — making it easier for companies to do business in the United States, and much harder for companies to leave.

  Right now, American companies are taxed at one of the highest rates anywhere in the world.

  My economic team is developing historic tax reform that will reduce the tax rate on our companies so they can compete and thrive anywhere and with anyone. At the same time, we will provide massive tax relief for the middle class.

  We must create a level playing field for American companies and workers.

  Currently, when we ship products out of America, many other countries make us pay very high tariffs and taxes — but when foreign companies ship their products into America, we charge them almost nothing.

  I just met with officials and workers from a great American company, Harley-Davidson. In fact, they proudly displayed five of their magnificent motorcycles, made in the USA, on the front lawn of the White House.

  At our meeting, I asked them, how are you doing, how is business? They said that it’s good. I asked them further how they are doing with other countries, mainly international sales. They told me — without even complaining because they have been mistreated for so long that they have become used to it — that it is very hard to do business with other countries because they tax our goods at such a high rate. They said that in one case another country taxed their motorcycles at 100 percent.

  They weren’t even asking for change. But I am.

  I believe strongly in free trade but it also has to be FAIR TRADE.

  The first Republican President, Abraham Lincoln, warned that the “abandonment of the protective policy by the American Government [will] produce want and ruin among our people.”

  Lincoln was right — and it is time we heeded his words. I am not going to let America and its great companies and workers, be taken advantage of anymore.

  I am going to bring back millions of jobs. Protecting our workers also means reforming our system of legal immigration. The current, outdated system depresses wages for our poorest workers, and puts great pressure on taxpayers.

  Nations around the world, like Canada, Australia and many others –- have a merit-based immigration system. It is a basic principle that those seeking to enter a country ought to be able to support themselves financially. Yet, in America, we do not enforce this rule, straining the very public resources that our poorest citizens rely upon. According to the National Academy of Sciences, our current immigration system costs America’s taxpayers many billions of dollars a year.

  Switching away from this current system of lower-skilled immigration, and instead adopting a merit-based system, will have many benefits: it will save countless dollars, raise workers’ wages, and help struggling families –- including immigrant families –- enter the middle class.

  I believe that real and positive immigration reform is possible, as long as we focus on the following goals: to improve jobs and wages for Americans, to strengthen our nation’s security, and to restore respect for our laws.

  If we are guided by the well-being of American citizens then I believe Republicans and Democrats can work together to achieve an outcome that has eluded our country for decades.

  Another Republican President, Dwight D. Eisenhower, initiated the last truly great national infrastructure program –- the building of the interstate highway system. The time has come for a new program of national rebuilding.

  America has spent approximately six trillion dollars in the Middle East, all this while our infrastructure at home is crumbling. With this six trillion dollars we could have rebuilt our country –- twice. And maybe even three times if we had people who had the ability to negotiate.

  To launch our national rebuilding, I will be asking the Congress to approve legislation that produces a $1 trillion investment in the infrastructure of the United States — financed through both public and private capital –- creating millions of new jobs.

  This effort will be guided by two core principles: Buy American, and Hire American.

  Tonight, I am also calling on this Congress to repeal and replace Obamacare with reforms that expand choice, increase access, lower costs, and at the same time, provide better Healthcare.

  Mandating every American to buy government-approved health insurance was never the right solution for America. The way to make health insurance available to everyone is to lower the cost of health insurance, and that is what we will do.

  Obamacare premiums nationwide have increased by double and triple digits. As an example, Arizona went up 116 percent last year alone. Governor Matt Bevin of Kentucky just said Obamacare is failing in his State — it is unsustainable and collapsing.

  One third of counties have only one insurer on the exchanges –- leaving many Americans with no choice at all.

  Remember when you were told that you could keep your doctor, and keep your plan?

  We now know that all of those promises have been broken.

  Obamacare is collapsing –- and we must act decisively to protect all Americans. Action is not a choice –- it is a necessity.

  So I am calling on all Democrats and Republicans in the Congress to work with us to save Americans from this imploding Obamacare disaster.

  Here are the principles that should guide the Congress as we move to create a better healthcare system for all Americans:

  First, we should ensure that Americans with pre-existing conditions have access to coverage, and that we have a stable transition for Americans currently enrolled in the healthcare exchanges.

  Secondly, we should help Americans purchase their own coverage, through the use of tax credits and expanded Health Savings Accounts –- but it must be the plan they want, not the plan forced on them by the Government.

  Thirdly, we should give our great State Governors the resources and flexibility they need with Medicaid to make sure no one is left out.

  Fourthly, we should implement legal reforms that protect patients and doctors from unnecessary costs that drive up the price of insurance – and work to bring down the artificially high price of drugs and bring them down immediately.

  Finally, the time has come to give Americans the freedom to purchase health insurance across State lines –- creating a truly competitive national marketplace that will bring cost way down and provide far better care.

  Everything that is broken in our country can be fixed. Every problem can be solved. And every hurting family can find healing, and hope.

  Our citizens deserve this, and so much more –- so why not join forces to finally get it done? On this and so many other things, Democrats and Republicans should get together and unite for the good of our country, and for the good of the American people.

  My administration wants to work with members in both parties to make childcare accessible and affordable, to help ensure new parents have paid family leave, to invest in women’s health, and to promote clean air and clear water, and to rebuild our military and our infrastructure.

  True love for our people requires us to find common ground, to advance the common good, and to cooperate on behalf of every American child who deserves a brighter future.

  An incredible young woman is with us this evening who should serve as an inspiration to us all.

  Today is Rare Disease day, and joining us in the gallery is a Rare Disease Survivor, Megan Crowley. Megan was diagnosed with Pompe Disease, a rare and serious illness, when she was 15 months old. She was not expected to live past 5.

  On receiving this news, Megan’s dad, John, fought with everything he had to save the life of his precious child. He founded a company to look for a cure, and helped develop the drug that saved Megan’s life. Today she is 20 years old — and a sophomore at Notre Dame.

  Megan’s story is about the unbounded power of a father’s love for a daughter.

  But our slow and burdensome approval process at the Food and Drug Administration keeps too many advances, like the one that saved Megan’s life, from reaching those in need.

  If we slash the restraints, not just at the FDA but across our Government, then we will be blessed with far more miracles like Megan.

  In fact, our children will grow up in a Nation of miracles.

  But to achieve this future, we must enrich the mind –- and the souls –- of every American child.

  Education is the civil rights issue of our time.

  I am calling upon Members of both parties to pass an education bill that funds school choice for disadvantaged youth, including millions of African-American and Latino children. These families should be free to choose the public, private, charter, magnet, religious or home school that is right for them.

  Joining us tonight in the gallery is a remarkable woman, Denisha Merriweather. As a young girl, Denisha struggled in school and failed third grade twice. But then she was able to enroll in a private center for learning, with the help of a tax credit scholarship program. Today, she is the first in her family to graduate, not just from high school, but from college. Later this year she will get her masters degree in social work.

  We want all children to be able to break the cycle of poverty just like Denisha.

  But to break the cycle of poverty, we must also break the cycle of violence.

  The murder rate in 2015 experienced its largest single-year increase in nearly half a century.

  In Chicago, more than 4,000 people were shot last year alone –- and the murder rate so far this year has been even higher.

  This is not acceptable in our society.

  Every American child should be able to grow up in a safe community, to attend a great school, and to have access to a high-paying job.

  But to create this future, we must work with –- not against -– the men and women of law enforcement.

  We must build bridges of cooperation and trust –- not drive the wedge of disunity and division.

  Police and sheriffs are members of our community. They are friends and neighbors, they are mothers and fathers, sons and daughters – and they leave behind loved ones every day who worry whether or not they’ll come home safe and sound.

  We must support the incredible men and women of law enforcement.

  And we must support the victims of crime.

  I have ordered the Department of Homeland Security to create an office to serve American Victims. The office is called VOICE –- Victims Of Immigration Crime Engagement. We are providing a voice to those who have been ignored by our media, and silenced by special interests.

  Joining us in the audience tonight are four very brave Americans whose government failed them.

  Their names are Jamiel Shaw, Susan Oliver, Jenna Oliver, and Jessica Davis.
  Jamiel’s 17-year-old son was viciously murdered by an illegal immigrant gang member, who had just been released from prison. Jamiel Shaw Jr. was an incredible young man, with unlimited potential who was getting ready to go to college where he would have excelled as a great quarterback. But he never got the chance. His father, who is in the audience tonight, has become a good friend of mine.

  Also with us are Susan Oliver and Jessica Davis. Their husbands –- Deputy Sheriff Danny Oliver and Detective Michael Davis –- were slain in the line of duty in California. They were pillars of their community. These brave men were viciously gunned down by an illegal immigrant with a criminal record and two prior deportations.
  Sitting with Susan is her daughter, Jenna. Jenna: I want you to know that your father was a hero, and that tonight you have the love of an entire country supporting you and praying for you.

  To Jamiel, Jenna, Susan and Jessica: I want you to know –- we will never stop fighting for justice. Your loved ones will never be forgotten, we will always honor their memory.

  Finally, to keep America Safe we must provide the men and women of the United States military with the tools they need to prevent war and –- if they must –- to fight and to win.

  I am sending the Congress a budget that rebuilds the military, eliminates the Defense sequester, and calls for one of the largest increases in national defense spending in American history.

  My budget will also increase funding for our veterans.

  Our veterans have delivered for this Nation –- and now we must deliver for them.

  The challenges we face as a Nation are great. But our people are even greater.

  And none are greater or braver than those who fight for America in uniform.

  We are blessed to be joined tonight by Carryn Owens, the widow of a U.S. Navy Special Operator, Senior Chief William “Ryan” Owens. Ryan died as he lived: a warrior, and a hero –- battling against terrorism and securing our Nation.

  I just spoke to General Mattis, who reconfirmed that, and I quote, “Ryan was a part of a highly successful raid that generated large amounts of vital intelligence that will lead to many more victories in the future against our enemies.” Ryan’s legacy is etched into eternity. For as the Bible teaches us, there is no greater act of love than to lay down one’s life for one’s friends. Ryan laid down his life for his friends, for his country, and for our freedom –- we will never forget him.

  To those allies who wonder what kind of friend America will be, look no further than the heroes who wear our uniform.

  Our foreign policy calls for a direct, robust and meaningful engagement with the world. It is American leadership based on vital security interests that we share with our allies across the globe.

  We strongly support NATO, an alliance forged through the bonds of two World Wars that dethroned fascism, and a Cold War that defeated communism.

  But our partners must meet their financial obligations.

  And now, based on our very strong and frank discussions, they are beginning to do just that.

  We expect our partners, whether in NATO, in the Middle East, or the Pacific –- to take a direct and meaningful role in both strategic and military operations, and pay their fair share of the cost.

  We will respect historic institutions, but we will also respect the sovereign rights of nations.

  Free nations are the best vehicle for expressing the will of the people –- and America respects the right of all nations to chart their own path. My job is not to represent the world. My job is to represent the United States of America. But we know that America is better off, when there is less conflict — not more.

  We must learn from the mistakes of the past –- we have seen the war and destruction that have raged across our world.

  The only long-term solution for these humanitarian disasters is to create the conditions where displaced persons can safely return home and begin the long process of rebuilding.

  America is willing to find new friends, and to forge new partnerships, where shared interests align. We want harmony and stability, not war and conflict.

  We want peace, wherever peace can be found. America is friends today with former enemies. Some of our closest allies, decades ago, fought on the opposite side of these World Wars. This history should give us all faith in the possibilities for a better world.

  Hopefully, the 250th year for America will see a world that is more peaceful, more just and more free.

  On our 100th anniversary, in 1876, citizens from across our Nation came to Philadelphia to celebrate America’s centennial. At that celebration, the country’s builders and artists and inventors showed off their creations.

  Alexander Graham Bell displayed his telephone for the first time.

  Remington unveiled the first typewriter. An early attempt was made at electric light.

  Thomas Edison showed an automatic telegraph and an electric pen.

  Imagine the wonders our country could know in America’s 250th year.

  Think of the marvels we can achieve if we simply set free the dreams of our people.

  Cures to illnesses that have always plagued us are not too much to hope.

  American footprints on distant worlds are not too big a dream.

  Millions lifted from welfare to work is not too much to expect.

  And streets where mothers are safe from fear — schools where children learn in peace — and jobs where Americans prosper and grow — are not too much to ask.

  When we have all of this, we will have made America greater than ever before. For all Americans.

  This is our vision. This is our mission.

  But we can only get there together.

  We are one people, with one destiny.

  We all bleed the same blood.

  We all salute the same flag.

  And we are all made by the same God.

  And when we fulfill this vision; when we celebrate our 250 years of glorious freedom, we will look back on tonight as when this new chapter of American Greatness began.

  The time for small thinking is over. The time for trivial fights is behind us.

  We just need the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts.

  The bravery to express the hopes that stir our souls.

  And the confidence to turn those hopes and dreams to action.

  From now on, America will be empowered by our aspirations, not burdened by our fears –- inspired by the future, not bound by the failures of the past –- and guided by our vision, not blinded by our doubts.

  I am asking all citizens to embrace this Renewal of the American Spirit. I am asking all members of Congress to join me in dreaming big, and bold and daring things for our country. And I am asking everyone watching tonight to seize this moment and —

  Believe in yourselves.

  Believe in your future.

  And believe, once more, in America.

  Thank you, God bless you, and God Bless these United States.

  

  

• "Time For Small-Thinking Is Over": President Trump's First Address To Congress – Live Feed

  "It's T-Day" as one trader put it this morning. President Trump will address a joint session of Congress tonight for the first time as president in a much anticipated speech in which he will tell lawmakers the “time for small thinking is over,” and “the time for trivial fights is behind us,” as he lays out his policy agenda.

  The Guardian reports that in a contrast to Trump’s gloomy inauguration day “American carnage” speech, the mood this evening is expected to be lighter.

  “My speech will be a message of optimism, hope, and love for the greatest country in history. I will lay out our agenda for a stronger, freer, and more prosperous America,” Trump said in an email to supporters this afternoon, calling on donations for his re-election.

   

  But while the administration is touting it as optimistic, advisor Steve Bannon, seen as Trump’s most influential advisor, spoke this week at CPAC about the three “verticals” the Trump administration will focus on, and it’s a less positive affair: national security and sovereignty; economic nationalism; and “deconstruction of the administrative state”.

  Bloomberg notes:

  • Trump to outline what he’ll pitch as benefits of more stringent immigration enforcement – it will “save billions of dollars and make our community safer for everyone”
  • Will pitch what he’ll call a “historic tax reform” plan in development; promising “massive tax relief for the middle class”
  • Trump to say U.S. needs to learn lessons of the past on foreign policy and conflict; adding “only long-term solution for these humanitarian disasters is to create the conditions where displaced persons can safely return home and begin the long process of rebuilding”
  • In possible nod to Russia, which he has said U.S. should have friendlier ties with: “America is willing to find new friends and to forge new partnerships were shared interests align”
  • On Islamic State, to say will work with allies incl. in Muslim world to “extinguish” ISIS

  Some key excerpts have been released (h/t @BradJaffy):

  Excerpt 1:

   

  The time for small thinking is over.

   

  The time for trivial fights is behind us.

   

  We just need the courage to share the dreams that fill our hearts.

   

  Excerpt 2:

   

  Think of the marvels we can achieve if we simply set free the dreams of our people, cures to illnesses that have always plagued us are not too much to hope.

   

  Excerpt 3:

   

  My budget will also increase funding for our veterans.

   

  Our veterans have delivered for this nation and now we must deliver for them.

   

  The challenges we face as a nation are great, but our people are  even greater and none are greater or braver than those who fight  for America in uniform.

  Live Feed (the president is due to speak at 9pmET)…

  *  *  *

  As The Hill notes, the speech isn’t an official State of the Union – that will come next year – but it’s a chance for Trump to set out his legislative priorities after a tumultuous first month that has at times rattled congressional Republicans.

  

  Here are five things to watch for in Trump’s speech…

  Will Trump stay dark or go light?

  The president’s first major address to the American people offered a grim view of the country he was elected to lead. At his inauguration, Trump painted a picture of a nation in decline, marked by “American carnage” such as “rusted-out factories scattered like tombstones across the landscape” and marauding criminal gangs plaguing major cities. Stephen Miller, the influential White House aide who wrote that speech, has been tasked with authoring this one, too. But White House officials say the address to Congress will present “an optimistic vision” aimed at how his administration will help Americans of all races, parties and economic status. He will also stress how his early actions, while controversial, have fulfilled campaign promises. Offering a positive message that appeals to people outside his base could help bring together a country that remains deeply divided over a presidential election in which Trump lost the popular vote. It would also break with the style that got Trump elected. And previous “pivots” telegraphed by his team have not panned out. Before the inaugural address, White House press secretary Sean Spicer, then a spokesman for the Trump transition effort, told reporters it would focus on “areas where he can unite the country.”

  Will there be specifics?

  After spending his first month handing down a flurry of executive orders, Trump looks ready to get down to business with Congress. Trump is not a policy wonk, and the White House says he’ll reaffirm his desire to work on broad goals such as tax reform and repealing and replacing ­ObamaCare .  But Trump will eventually need to take a side in specific policy debates if he wants to get his agenda passed. For example, he’s been grappling with what to do about Medicaid if the Affordable Care Act is repealed. Millions of Americans gained coverage under the healthcare law’s Medicaid expansion. Figuring out if or how to provide coverage to those people if federal funds supporting the expansion are eliminated is a difficult question for the GOP. The White House has largely left the specifics to congressional Republicans. “Nobody knew that healthcare could be so complicated,” Trump said during a meeting Monday with a group of governors.

  Will Trump challenge the congressional GOP?

  Trump’s relationship with the Republican Congress has been far from perfect, from the rocky rollout of his travel ban to simmering disagreements over tax policy, infrastructure and trade. Lawmakers have publicly and privately complained about Trump’s bombastic style and penchant to go it alone. And members are taking some heat themselves from the right. “Republican party should be sued for fraud,” Matt Drudge, founder of the conservative Drudge Report, tweeted earlier this month. “NO discussion of tax cuts now. Just lots of crazy. Back to basics, guys!” It’s unlikely that Trump will voice those same frustrations with the lawmakers he needs to pass his agenda. But they might not like what the president has to say on some issues. For example, Trump has been reluctant to throw his support behind the border-adjustment tax that’s at the center of Speaker Paul Ryan’s (R-Wis.) tax reform plan. Trump also hinted Monday that he would make a “big” announcement on infrastructure spending during his speech, something that could give heartburn to fiscal conservatives. Separately, GOP defense hawks said Trump’s plan to boost military spending in his 2018 budget didn’t go far enough. Despite those disagreements, GOP leaders emerged from a meeting with Trump Monday afternoon insisting they are on the same page. “We’re looking forward to a positive, upbeat presentation tomorrow night and then proceeding with our agenda, which is exactly the same as the Trump agenda,” Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) told reporters.

  Will Trump break with protocol?

  Trump has shown a penchant for shaking up staid Washington traditions, but it’s unclear whether he will veer from the usual format for State of the Union-style speeches. The joint-address format has remained relatively unchanged for years. The president makes a dramatic entrance into the House chamber and then delivers his speech from the Speaker’s rostrum to members of both chambers, Supreme Court justices, military brass and handpicked guests, with tens of millions of people watching live on television. Some past presidents have tinkered around the edges. Former President Obama released the entire text of his 2015 State of the Union on the online publishing platform Medium ahead of its delivery. The White House has not yet indicated what, if any, changes it will make, but it wouldn’t be a surprise if the former reality television star did something different. “The Trump address won’t be boring, because Donald Trump’s not boring,” counselor Kellyanne Conway said last week on Fox News.

  How will Democrats react?

  Democrats have vocally opposed nearly everything Trump has done in his first weeks as president. And the president has responded in kind by lobbing personal insults at top Senate Democrats. Many are wondering whether that feud will boil over in his Tuesday night address. If it does, it would certainly break with the typically civil tone during presidential joint addresses. Some Democrats are planning quiet forms of protests by filling the gallery with immigrants, ethnic minorities and LGBT individuals. In 2009, Rep. Joe Wilson (R-S.C.) shouted “You lie!” at Obama during an address on healthcare reform, a shocking moment at the time that earned him an official admonishment from the House. Trump has shown no qualms about verbally confronting critics and protesters at his campaign rallies, so such a disruption could cause him to break from his prepared remarks and respond. A typical speech to a joint session includes passages that win standing ovations from both parties, but it seems possible that some Democrats will sit for the entirety of Trump’s speech. “I hope a very robust and applause-filled reception,” Spicer said Monday when asked how Trump hopes he will be received by Democrats.

  We suspect it will look a little more like this…

  

  Axios reports some chatter of possible compromises on Obamacare and Immigration, but warns don't get too excited about the idea that President Trump is having a last-minute conversion to Jeb Bush-style immigration reform. We've been talking with conservatives in his orbit, and here's what you need to understand about how Trump and Attorney General Jeff Sessions view the issue:

  1. The people who are in this country illegally who haven't committed crimes have always been viewed as points of leverage in a negotiation over immigration, whether that's border security or any other deal that can be struck with Congress. As we've seen in the opening weeks of his administration, Trump is also willing to use existing law to get started on deportations without Congress.
  2. But that bargaining chip is down the road, and Trumpworld is wary about the example of Ronald Reagan, who is remembered by populist conservatives for allowing an amnesty before locking down better immigration enforcement.
  3. When Trump talks about comprehensive immigration reform, it's not on the terms of the Gang of 8. His orbit believes any deal will include extreme vetting and border security.
  4. Remember Trump's trip to Mexico, where Trump said nice things to President Nieto and then went to Arizona and delivered one of the most red meat speeches of his campaign.

  Remember: People will hear what they want to hear from Trump tonight, particularly on immigration. Some can take away that he's converting to Marco Rubio or Lindsey Graham-style conservatism, but his people still believe any immigration deal will be on the terms he set on the campaign.

  *  *  *

  

  U.S. Supreme Court Justice Ruth Bader Ginsburg always hugged President Barack Obama before his speeches to Congress; but sadly for President Trump, as Bloomberg reports, she doesn’t even plan to attend his first one.

  Ginsburg, who called Trump a "faker" during his campaign, intends to skip Tuesday night’s speech, leaving it to five of her colleagues to represent the court.

   

  Chief Justice John Roberts will join Justices Anthony Kennedy, Stephen Breyer, Sonia Sotomayor and Elena Kagan in attendance, court spokeswoman Kathy Arberg confirmed. All are regulars at the annual event. Justices Clarence Thomas and Samuel Alito aren’t planning to attend, continuing their past practice.

   

  Alito hasn’t gone to a speech since 2010, the year Obama criticized the justices’ just-issued Citizens United campaign-finance ruling. Obama accused the court of ignoring a century of precedent, a claim that prompted Alito to shake his head and mouth "not true" as Democratic lawmakers directly behind the justices rose to cheer.

   

  Thomas has gone sporadically over the years and hasn’t attended since Obama’s first speech in 2009. He said in 2010 the event had become so partisan that "it’s very uncomfortable for a judge to sit there."

   

  Roberts later likened the presidential addresses to a “political pep rally” and questioned whether justices should continue to attend. Even so, the chief justice hasn’t missed a speech.

   

  Ginsburg, a 1993 appointee of Democrat Bill Clinton, also skipped Republican President George W. Bush’s speeches. She attended all eight of Obama’s.

   

  Her attendance Tuesday night could have created an awkward moment given that the president typically greets members of the court before the speech. Trump called on Ginsburg to resign after she made the “faker” comment during the campaign.

  *  *  *

  The bond market is beginning to lose faith, will stocks?

  

  *  *  *

  For those who want to play along, here is the "President Trump Addresses Congress Official Bingo Game"

  

   

  And finally, thanks to Geoffrey Dickens at NewBusters, here is your reminder of the media gushing all over President Obama's first address to congress in 2009…

  "He took us to the mountain tops.”

   

  “Big and bold.”   

   

  “He wowed us!”

   

  No, these aren’t movie critic blurbs on a movie poster praising a star actor’s performance, these were the immediate reactions from the liberal media to President Barack Obama’s first address to Congress. Will Donald Trump’s speech tonight receive similar accolades? Given the press’s hostility to the new president, it seems unlikely.    

   

  But back in 2009, the first takes on Obama’s speech were effusive. MSNBC’s Chris Matthews gushed “He wowed us!” CNN’s Jack Cafferty proclaimed “He’s got what it takes to lead this country back into the sunlight.”ABC’s George Stephanopoulos cheered that Obama “began on hope” and “ended on hope.”

   

  Stephanopoulos’s colleague Terry Moran called the speech “big and bold” but never called it liberal, even though it was a wish list of leftist policies. On the other hand, Governor Bobby Jindal, who delivered the GOP response that night, was called a “Debbie Downer” by CBS’s Maggie Rodriguez. 

  The following is just a sampling of the most enthusiastic responses to Obama’s first address to Congress from the MRC archives:

  “He Wowed Us!”

  http://www.mrctv.org/embed/200736

  “It was his debut and he wowed us. That’s the running headline from last night’s presidential address to the Congress.”
  — MSNBC’s Chris Matthews opening Hardball, February 25, 2009.

  Applauding Obama’s “Start at Inspiring Hope”

  http://www.mrctv.org/embed/200936

  “[President Obama] came right out of the box and said, ‘make no mistake about it, we are going to recover.’ That’s the most important thing he wanted the country to hear last night. He began on hope. He ended on hope. Now, in between, there’s an awful lot of hard things to be done….But I think he made a start at inspiring hope out in the country.”
  — ABC's George Stephanopoulos on Good Morning America, February 25, 2009.

  Obama the “Excellent” Centrist

  http://www.mrctv.org/embed/201051

  MSNBC’s Keith Olbermann: “What can the Republican response be?…How do you come out against recovering the nation’s sense of self and its optimism? How do you come out against words like ‘boldly,’ ‘wisely,’ ‘swiftly,’ and ‘aggressively?’”

  Co-anchor Chris Matthews: “[Bobby Jindal]….is running for the outside rail of the Republican Party, the right-wing rail….That’s all the room that’s left on that side because Barack has grabbed the center with the charm he showed tonight in his excellent rhetoric.”
  — MSNBC’s live coverage following Obama’s speech to Congress, February 24, 2009.

  “Serene” Obama Will Lead Country “Back Into the Sunlight”

  http://www.mrctv.org/embed/201181

  “But our president seems remarkably unruffled by all of this, serene in an inner confidence that he’s got what it takes to lead this country back into the sunlight….It was quite a performance….It occurred to me watching the president last night, Wolf, that he was born to do exactly what he was doing. He had that place in the palm of his hand for the entire time he was in that room, and that can be a tough audience, a tough room to work.”
  — Host Jack Cafferty on CNN’s The Situation Room, February 25, 2009.

  Obama “Took Us Up to The Mountaintops”

  “A rousing speech, took us up to the mountaintops.”
  — Senior political analyst David Gergen on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, February 25, 2009.

  “Big and Bold” Obama

  “It was a big and bold speech by a new President facing deep challenges and huge expectations, delivered at a crucial moment when the country has been battered by talk of bailouts and the reality, the harsh reality of recession. And while President Barack Obama didn’t sugarcoat it —  he found bad guys on Wall Street and in Washington —  he did try to strike an optimistic tone and a hopeful note that with patience and personal responsibility and by working together, the country can prevail and thrive.”
  — ABC’s Terry Moran on Nightline, February 24, 2009. Moran offered no “liberal” label of Obama’s agenda.

  We Have a President Again

  http://www.mrctv.org/embed/200921

  “It made me feel pretty good. I mean, I thought it was a great speech….You know, a friend of mine said, ‘Oh my God, we have a President again!’ Now, in some ways, that’s not fair to Bush, but that’s the way you felt. You felt this was a guy who was totally in charge.”
  — NPR’s Nina Totenberg discussing President Obama’s address to Congress, February 27, 2009 Inside Washington.  

  Adoring “Ambitious” Obama’s Liberal Agenda

  “This was the most ambitious President we’ve heard in this chamber in decades. The first half of the speech was FDR, fighting for the New Deal. The second half was Lyndon Johnson fighting for the Great Society, and we’ve never seen those two presidents rolled together in quite this way before….’ I think we’re watching one of the greatest political dramas of our time.”
  — Senior political analyst David Gergen on CNN’s Anderson Cooper 360, February 24, 2009.

  Obama’s  FDR-Like Fireside Chat

  “This was actually a fireside chat. This is what I found so fascinating. From the very first sentence he basically said to the Congress ‘I’m not talking to you, I’m talking to the people who sent us here.’ And it reminded me, in some sense, of the radio speeches FDR gave where he talked about complicated issues in simple ways. Obama tried to explain how he got into this mess, why will my program make it better. Very intensely personal in the sense of talking to people at home watching one or two at a time in front of their TVs.”
  — Correspondent Jeff Greenfield during CBS’s live coverage of Obama speech, February 24, 2009.

  Public Loved Obama, Jindal Was “Debbie Downer”

  “And Americans loved it. The polls show that they’re very optimistic, and then out comes Bobby Jindal, Debbie Downer, saying ‘hated it, it’s not going to work.’” 
  — Co-host Maggie Rodriguez on CBS’s Early Show, February 25, 2009.

  We suspect the media's response – no matter what Trump says or does – will not be any of the above.

  

  

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• Demographic Panic: China Considering 'Birth Rewards' to Encourage Citizens to Have More Babies

  This will be the biggest challenge for developed nations over the next hundred years: depopulation.

  Expect strange things to happen in the western world and developed nations in Asia over the next fifty years —  marked by unusual foreign policy moves —  and a craven, almost desperate clamoring for middle eastern, south american and african migrants to replace their withering and decadent societies.

  Why?

  Credit expansion, or at a minimum, stasis.

  Due to one of the lowest birth rates in the world (1.5p per family), thanks to the one child policy, China is now considering offering incentives to its citizens to get out there and ‘screw for China’, a la Denmark.

  Source: Reuters

  The potential move was revealed by Wang Peian, vice-minister of the National Health and Family Planning Commission at a social welfare conference on Saturday, the newspaper said on Tuesday.
   
  Birth rates rose to 17.86 million in 2016, the highest level since 2000, after the country issued new guidelines in late 2015 allowing all parents to have two children amid growing concerns over the costs of supporting an aging population.
   
  “That fully met the expectations, but barriers still exist and must be addressed,” Wang was quoted as saying.
   
  “To have a second child is the right of each family in China but affordability has become a bottleneck that undermines the decision.”
   
  A poll conducted by the commission in 2015 found that 60 percent of families surveyed were reluctant to have a second baby largely due to financial constraints.
   
  China’s birth rate, one of the world’s lowest, is fast becoming a worry for authorities, rather than the achievement it was considered at a time when the government feared over-population.
   
  China began implementing its controversial “one-child policy” in the 1970s in order to limit population growth, but authorities are now concerned that the country’s dwindling workforce will not be able to support an increasingly aging population.

   
  Elon Musk has been an outspoken advocate about depopulation and ‘population implosion’.

  Watch:

  

  By 2050, India will surpass China in population — essentially leveling China’s population flat for the next 33 years.

  

  

   

  The deleterious effect upon China’s demographic trends was predicted by Brookings Institute in 2010 — saying its ‘dividend growth rate’ would erode to the point that by 2013 it would hamper economic growth. This is not only a Chinese problem, mind you, but a developed world problem. Both Japan and Italy is expected to lose half its population over the next 40 years — based on current trends. If this persists, what do you think this will do to global GDP?
   
  
   
  Looks legit to me.
   
  Source: Brookings Institute (2010)

  By 2013 China’s demographic dividend growth rate will turn negative: That is, the growth rate of net consumers will exceed the growth rate of net producers. Starting in 2013, such a negative growth rate will reduce the country’s economic growth rate by at least half a percentage point per year. Between 2013 and 2050, China will not fare demographically much better than Japan or Taiwan, and will fare much worse than the United States and France.
   
  As a result of China’s very low fertility over the past two decades, the abundance of young, inexpensive labor is soon to be history. The number of workers aged 20 to 29 will stay about the same for the next few years, but a precipitous drop will begin in the middle of the coming decade. Over a 10-year period, between 2016 and 2026, the size of the population in this age range will be reduced by about one-quarter, to 150 million from 200 million. For Chinese aged 20 to 24, that decline will come sooner and will be more drastic: Over the next decade, their number will be reduced by nearly 50 percent, to 68 million from 125 million.
   
  Such a drastic decline in the young labor force will usher in, for the first time in recent Chinese history, successive shrinking cohorts of labor force entrants. It will also have profound consequences for labor productivity, since the youngest workers are the most recently educated and the most innovative.
   
  As the young population declines, domestic demand for consumption may weaken as well, since young people are also the most active consumers of everything from wedding banquets to new cars and housing units. And because China is a major player in the global economy, the impact of the country’s demographic changes will not be limited by its borders.
   
  Fragile families, fragile society
   
  So far, observers of China’s demographic changes have focused most of their attention on consequences at the aggregate or societal level: the size of the labor force, of the elderly population, and of the number of men who will not be able to marry. Worries at this level of analysis generally relate to the country’s future economic growth and social stability. But the challenges that China will face as a result of its changing demographics go far beyond economic growth and other aggregate concerns.
   
  China’s unprecedented population control policy, the one-child policy, turned 30 this year. It has forcefully altered the family and kin structure of hundreds of millions of Chinese families. And families, in addition to their other functions, are first and foremost the primary source of support for dependents, the young and the elderly.
   
  Although the full extent of the one-child policy’s societal consequences will not be known until later, it is safe to predict that the social costs that China will need to pay, especially in terms of family support for aging parents, will be exceedingly high. In no small part due to implementation of the one-child policy, China by 2005 had accumulated nearly 160 million only children aged 0 to 30. That number has further grown in the past five years. These figures imply that over 40 percent of Chinese households have only one child.
   
  More generally, ever more Chinese parents in the future will not be able to count on their children in their old age. And many parents will face a most unfortunate reality: outliving their children and therefore dying alone. Given the current mortality schedule, the likelihood that an 80-year-old Chinese man will see his 55-year-old son die before he does is 6 percent. Because women live longer, the likelihood that an 80-year-old woman will outlive her 55-year-old son is 17 percent.
   
  Because of China’s continued mortality decline, and especially its sustained fertility decline to below replacement levels, the country has effectively entered an era of population decline.China’s current TFR of 1.5 implies that, in the long run, each future generation will be 25 percent smaller than the one preceding it. China’s population is still growing, albeit very slowly, because the country still has a relatively young age structure, which produces more births than deaths, even though on average each couple has fewer than two children. Had it not been for China’s relatively young age structure, the population would have begun declining in the early 1990s, almost two decades ago. The current growth, in other words, is a result of population momentum.
   
  The same force of momentum will work in the opposite direction soon. Given current mortality and fertility rates, and with a population age structure that is growing increasingly older, the number of deaths will soon exceed the number of births. China’s population is likely to peak less than 15 years from now, below a maximum of 1.4 billion. After that will come a prolonged, even indefinite, population decline and a period of accelerated aging.
   
  Even if China can restore fertility to replacement level within 10 years after the country reaches its population peak, population will still exhibit a decline nearly half a century long, with a net population loss of over 200 million, if not more. The median age of the Chinese population, at its peak, could be as high as 50 years.
   
  China is by no means unique in experiencing below-replacement fertility. In the past decade, below-replacement fertility has become a new global reality. Whereas in some parts of the world high fertility rates continue to pose severe challenges to women and children’s health, for more than half of the world’s population, below replacement fertility is now the norm.
   
  In Europe, North America, and East Asia, prolonged below-replacement fertility has already set in motion a negative population growth momentum.In the most extreme cases, such as Italy and Japan, population could be reduced by half in as few as 40 years or so if current rates of reproduction persist. A gradual but substantial reduction in population, especially with a concomitant aging of populations in the world’s richest countries, constitutes an unprecedented shift that is redefining the global demographic, economic, and political landscape.
   
  What makes China unique, however, is that it still has a state policy, unique in human history, that restricts the majority of Chinese families to one child per couple. At the time the policy was announced 30 years ago, it provoked great controversy both within and outside China; over the years it has extracted great sacrifices from Chinese families and individuals, especially from women. And although the policy was designed as an emergency measure to slow down China’s population growth, and was intended to last for only one generation, the government has not yet shown the willingness, or courage, to phase it out.
   
  China’s slow recognition and inaction in the face of its impending demographic crisis—inaction that persists despite appeals by almost all the country’s population experts to phase out the one child policy quickly—reflect policy makers’ lack of understanding of the changing demographic reality. Inertia also results from the resistance of the country’s birth-control bureaucracy, which formally employs half a million people.
   
  This exemplifies a characteristic feature of China’s regime—relegating difficult, long-term, structural challenges to the back burner, while giving priority to short-term crisis management and concerns about stability. The looming demographic crisis will largely define China in the twenty-first century. Given that demographic changes take time to develop, and that their ramifications are not only massive but also long-lasting, China’s inaction has already proved costly—and will only grow more so the longer it persists.

   
  In the words of the immortal Bill the Butcher, ‘this is a kill.’
   
  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

   

  

• Here's How The Deep State Is Trying To Lead Trump Into A Nuclear War

  Via Daniel Lang of SHTFplan.com,

  Before Donald trump took office, he promised to rebuild the US military by diverting a lot more funding into the armed forces. And when he made that promise, he wasn’t just talking about our conventional forces. He also proposed expanding America’s nuclear capability; a position he recently reiterated in an interview with Reuters. He stated that “It would be wonderful, a dream would be that no country would have nukes, but if countries are going to have nukes, we’re going to be at the top of the pack.”

  If Trump is really going to reinvigorate our nuclear program (a decision that many experts fear could spark another arms race), then he needs to be very careful about who he listens to. That’s because some of the high ranking officials in our government have some certifiably insane ideas on what a nuclear arsenal should look like. Recently a Pentagon panel known as The Defense Science Board, told the Trump administration that they need to remake our nuclear arsenal into a force that is capable of engaging in a “limited” nuclear war.

  According to the report, “The Defense Science Board … urges the president to consider altering existing and planned U.S. armaments to achieve a greater number of lower-yield weapons that could provide a ‘tailored nuclear option for limited use.’”

   

  The strategy behind limited nuclear use sounds deceptively simple. You need to escalate a conflict just enough to end it.

   

  As the theory goes, using low-yield nuclear weapons against an adversary’s conventional forces will demonstrate that you mean serious business and might be crazy enough to launch an all out nuclear attack. This will cause the enemy to “blink” and ultimately back down, rather than risk global thermonuclear war or continue conventional hostilities.

  There’s only one problem with the idea of engaging in a limited nuclear war. It simply can’t be done. Any limited nuclear war would eventually lead to a full scale nuclear war.

  

  The lynchpin of a limited nuclear war is the tactical nuke. These are nuclear weapons that have a much smaller yield than a strategic nuke. Whereas a strategic nuke might have a yield of half a megaton or more, a tactical nuke is usually somewhere in the ballpark with the atomic weapons that we used on Japan, but usually smaller than that. They’re for use on the battlefield, possibly within close proximity to friendly forces. And there’s a reason why our government has been slowly phasing them out for decades. Just because they make a smaller crater, doesn’t mean they make a smaller impact.

  When you use a tactical nuke, you’re still using a nuke. It doesn’t matter that it’s not large enough to destroy an entire city (though some of them can). By using them, you’re telling the enemy that you’re willing to use nukes. You’re saying that you’re willing to rain radioactive fallout on their territory. You’re willing to engage in total war.

  The only appropriate response to that is escalation. The enemy has to show you that they can do the same thing. In war, both parties aren’t thinking “gee, how the heck do I get out of this?” They’re thinking, “how do I win” and “how do I get back at the other guy” and “how do I teach my enemy a lesson he won’t forget.” Limited nuclear war doctrine doesn’t burn the bridge between conventional war and full on nuclear holocaust. It builds that bridge.

  This should be common sense. All you have to do is imagine what would happen if Russia dropped a relatively small, 10 kiloton nuke on an American military base in Europe. Would the US government respond with capitulation? Nobody in their right mind believes that.

  And let’s pretend for a moment that a limited nuclear war is possible. What would that do? It would normalize nuclear warfare. It would make nukes a viable option in every single war. Every conflict would leave behind a trail of radioactive fallout and mass civilian casualties.

  Hopefully brighter minds will prevail, because whoever is proposing this notion of limited nuclear conflict, needs to change out their dress uniform for a freaking straight jacket.

  

  

• Dr. Doom's Back: Marc Faber Warns Markets Will Fall "Like An Avalanche… Trump Can't Stop It"

  "One man alone cannot make 'America great again'. That you have to realize," warns Marc Faber, the editor of "The Gloom, Boom, & Doom Report," reminding the world that the US stock market is vulnerable to a seismic sell-off that won't be caused by any single catalyst. His argument: Stocks are very overbought and sentiment is way too bullish for the so-called Trump rally to continue.

  http://player.cnbc.com/p/gZWlPC/cnbc_global?playertype=synd&byGuid=3000596118&size=530_298

  "Very simply, the market starts to go down. As it goes down, it will start triggering selling, and then it will be like an avalanche," said Faber recently on CNBC's Futures Now. "I would underweight U.S. stocks."

  Faber, a supporter of President Donald Trump, isn't blaming the new administration for his bearish forecast:

  "Trump, unlike Mr. Reagan, is facing huge, huge headwinds — including a debt to GDP that is gigantic, as it is in other countries."

  Faber lists rising interest rates and record earnings and margins as additional risks to the historic rally.

  The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at a record level for a twelfth consecutive session today with the S&P 500 to see the fewest declines in February than in any month since May 1990.

  

  The investor said that markets in Mexico, Brazil, and Asia also have been picking up significant gains so far this year. However, Faber doesn’t expect the worst-case scenario for all countries that have been benefiting from a strong run.

  “China looks quite attractive. For the next three months, money can flow into China. The economy, surprisingly, has begun to do quite well. We see that in retail in Hong Kong. We see that in the hotel industry, and we see that in demand for commodities,” he said.

  Faber says that resource commodities such as copper and gold would probably bring the traders solid profits this year.

  “When you look at Trump and his administration, and the way the budget is, I think further money printing down the line is inevitable,” he said, stressing that such a policy could push commodities even higher.

  

  

• 50% Of College Students Believe Their Student Loans Will Be Forgiven By Federal Government

  LendEDU, a private firm that connects students and their families with student loans and loan refinancing, has finally revealed a clue that helps us better understand the mystery of why so many college students across the country have become so comfortable haphazardly taking out $100s of thousands of dollars in student loans to  fund their degrees in anthropology.  According to a survey of 500 current college students conducted by LendEDU, apparently 49.8% of America’s entitled youth is convinced that the federal government will simply forgive their student loans upon graduation…call it a nice little taxpayer funded graduation gift.

  Of course, as the US Department of Education points out, only a select few students who actually enter into public service jobs, teach in underserved areas or attend schools that shutdown within 120 days of their graduation actually qualify for federal loan forgiveness.

  The US Department of Education says that federal direct student loan borrowers can get off the hook if they enter public service jobs for a specified period of time, agree to teach in an underserved area, die or become permanently disabled, or if the school they attended shuts down while they are enrolled or within 120 days after they leave.

   

  “The biggest exemption is the Public Service Loan Forgiveness Program, and very few students go into public service,“ said Nate Matherson, who co-founded LendEDU in 2014.

   

  “With maybe 14 percent of the American workforce in a public service job, the actual numbers of those who may qualify for student loan forgiveness or discharge is maybe below 10 percent.

   

  “The fact that many students do not understand this means that they may be significantly underestimating the cost of financing a college education,” he added.

  

   

  Of course, maybe these students are just planning on never getting a job after college and thus relying on Obama’s executive actions on “income-driven repayment” (IDR) plans that would repay a portion of their loans if they fail to hit certain income thresholds (see report entitled “Federal Student Loans:  Education Needs to Improve Its Income Driven Repayment Plan Budget Estimates” from the Government Accountability Office).  In this scenario, the student loans of these 50% of college students would, in fact, fall into the $137 billion bucket that the GAO figures Obama saddled on the backs of taxpayers through his unilateral executive action.   

  For the fiscal year 2017 budget, the U.S. Department of Education (Education) estimates that all federally issued Direct Loans in Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans will have government costs of $74 billion, higher than previous budget estimates. IDR plans are designed to help ease student debt burden by setting loan payments as a percentage of borrower income, extending repayment periods from the standard 10 years to up to 25 years, and forgiving remaining balances at the end of that period. While actual costs cannot be known until borrowers repay their loans, GAO found that current IDR plan budget estimates are more than double what was originally expected for loans made in fiscal years 2009 through 2016 (the only years for which original estimates are available). This growth is largely due to the rising volume of loans in IDR plans.

   

  Education’s approach to estimating IDR plan costs and quality control practices do not ensure reliable budget estimates. Weaknesses in this approach may cause costs to be over- or understated by billions of dollars.

  

   

  Of course, we still kind of like this guy’s idea for repaying student debt…it’s a novel approach whereby borrowers are encouraged to stop playing video games in their parents’ basements and get a job…it just might be crazy enough to work.

  ???????? ???? ???? ???????? “It’s Horrible!!! You don’t understand!!! America is doomed!!! Trump is the &§$@#* President!!! pic.twitter.com/CWfQgg3EOW

  — tom alex (@rejialex7) November 29, 2016

  

  

• The Cultural Purge Will Not Be Televised

  Via Mark Jeftovic of EasyDNS.com,

  “The conscious and intelligent manipulation of the organized habits and opinions of the masses is an important element in democratic society. Those who manipulate this unseen mechanism of society constitute an invisible government which is the true ruling power of our country. We are governed, our minds are molded, our tastes formed, and our ideas suggested, largely by men we have never heard of…. It is they who pull the wires that control the public mind.”

  – Edward Bernays, Public Relations

  

  I’ve been trying not to write this post, because really, who needs a bunch of shrill, hysterical snowflakes calling you a racist nazi for committing the egregious sin of pointing out the many contradictions in the #deleteshopify boycott and the wider witch hunt mentality that pervades social discourse these days?

  The main factor holding me back is not cynicism but actually fear. For the first time in my life I’m afraid to speak my mind. The possible ramifications of exercising my inalienable right to free speech frighten the crap out of me. So much so that I really don’t want to do it. I’ve become known as the type of person who speaks candidly and frankly about some tough issues and I’ve never had a problem doing that in the past. I’ve gone up against some pretty intimidating forces such as the City of London IPCU and the US FDA, but I’ve never been as scared as I am now to speak out.  For that reason I’m just going to have to suck it up and do it.

  There is a cultural purge in progress.

  It is directed against not only those who are perceived as “pro-Trump” (which as a card carrying Libertarian I am not. I think that he’s no friend to free speech, privacy or the internet), but targeting even those who are not “anti-Trump enough”.

  This cultural purge has a two-pronged approach, from one side, from elements within the corridors of power (or those recently ejected from it) who have successfully floated the concept that free speech is not inviolable and that it would be a good thing for “truth” to be curated by “somebody” who knows better:

  “We are going to have to rebuild within this wild-wild-west-of-information flow some sort of curating function that people agree to… There has to be, I think, some sort of way in which we can sort through information that passes some basic truthiness tests and those that we have to discard, because they just don’t have any basis in anything that’s actually happening in the world…That is hard to do, but I think it’s going to be necessary, it’s going to be possible,”

  — Barack Obama in speech at Frontiers Conference, Pittsburgh, PA, Oct 13, 2016 (emphasis added)

  The other half comes from the trenches, comprised of manic flashmobs directing enmity against, literally, anything remotely connected to those deemed responsible for the greatest political upset of our time.

  The mainstream media, outlets like Washington Post and the New York Times, among others, are complicit, providing the glue or the lubricant between this pincer movement and its chilling effects. The combination gels into an echo chamber drowning out all rationality and renders differing philosophies and legitimate dissent as blasphemous.

  Let me explain my choice of title for this post and how it captures what I see going on here:

  This post title is obviously a riff on Gil Scott-Heron’s song ‘The Revolution Will Not Be Televised’, and the backstory behind this song is quite instructive to times like these:

  Gil Scott-Heron saw first hand how altruistically motivated social activism can turn ugly when a campus protest action he initiated went horribly overboard. After the death of one of Gil-Heron’s schoolmates, he started a grass roots movement with the goal of improving the medial conditions on his campus, including making the college infirmary operate 24×7, something he felt would have saved his friend’s life.

  The laudable aim of improving conditions on campus with the possibility of saving future lives derailed into a menacing fracas. A mob congregated on the front lawn of the infirmary’s doctor’s home where they proceeded to burn him in effigy:

  “The protest grew angry, culminating with some students hanging the doctor in effigy from a tree in his front yard and setting it on fire. The doctor came out of his house and swore that he wasn’t responsible for the deaths. As he proclaimed his innocence, he had tears in his eyes.

   

  When Gil arrived at the protest, he stood between the students and the doctor, looking at the doctor’s children staring out the window in fear. ‘A cold flash scampered across the back of my neck, ‘ wrote Gil later to describe his sudden fear that events could spiral out of control into violence, a fear which was allayed only when the students went back to their dorms.

   

  The realization that radical action sometimes leads to unintended consequences and violent overreactions haunted Gil, and that image of a distraught Dr. Davies lingered in his mind for months to come. The experience reinforced Gil’s instinct to avoid violence and militant action in the struggle for social change.”

  One should easily concede that today there are many reasons to petition for change. Our governments still have us all under wholesale surveillance, we are still involved in numerous unsanctioned wars, continue to provoke toward new ones, and the government continues to methodically destroy the economy via financial repression.

  But we should all take Gil Scott-Heron’s lesson to heart and try to keep in mind that we are all human beings. We all have rights, we should all be secure in our ability to speak and associate freely.

  But that isn’t what’s happening.

  Today, the mainstream media, rather than objectively and rationally report on facts, are instead complicit in a sustained, wide-ranging campaign of demonization of “all things non-Democrat”. There is blanket categorical denial of any valid basis for why the citizenry worldwide are rejecting what they increasingly see as an “Establishment Elite” agenda.

  Greece, Brexit, Trump and quite possibly soon, Marine Le Pen in France are all continuations of a theme. These events are referendums unto themselves and those “Global Elites” are on a losing streak. Instead of trying to understand the basis of these rejections (that the populace are sick and tired of having a two-tiered society in which their civil rights are eroded and they get saddled with all the debt, while the elites get to operate under a different set of rules and gobble up all the assets); they have mounted a concerted campaign of outright propaganda and mind-numbingly nonsensical narratives to dismiss away these acts of “defiance”.

  As alt-market.com’s Brandon Smith commentary  observes:

  “One of the most favored propaganda tactics of establishment elites and [those] they employ … is to relabel or redefine an opponent before they can solidly define themselves. In other words, elites [and their media] will seek to “brand” you (just as corporations use branding) in the minds of the masses so that they can take away your ability to define yourself as anything else.” (emphasis added)

  And this is exactly what’s happening. For example, when you say “Breitbart”, your average person is so inculcated from the repetition of the words “white supremacist”, “racist”, and “ nazi” that people just assume that’s what it is. From there people think that it’s ok to #boycottshopify simply for supplying basic online ecommerce services to them (where does it stop? Btw, Breitbart derives 100% of it’s revenues from the internet, perhaps everybody in a twist about it should do us all a favour and boycott that too).

  Is Breitbart really white supremacist, racist nazi hate site? Actually, no it isn’t. Most people think it is however, because they’ve been conditioned to believe it, and they’ve never actually gone there to see for themselves.

  How do I know that Breitbart isn’t really the white supremacist, neo-nazi hate-site that we are incessantly brainwashed  to believe it is? Well for one thing, I’ve seen the real deal. They look like this:

  

  This place is called “Shitskin Plantation”. They wound up on easyDNS (my company’s system ) for about a week by the time we kicked them. The fact that we did eject a real honest to god racist, neo-nazi hate site doesn’t bolster the #boycottshopify movement for three reasons:

  #1) Shitskin is clearly racist and contains actual language condoning violence toward an identifiable group. It was right there for anybody to see. Here in Canada such material is codified into law as “hate speech” under the Criminal Code.

   

  #2) We chose. We assessed our AUP, found them in violation and kicked them. Specifically we found them in violation of “the Non-Aggression Principle” in our plain english Terms of Service. The NAP has grey areas and subjective rabbit holes. Libertarians debate it relentlessly. But the important thing is that nobody else forced us to do it in the absence of due process. We made our own determination, and that’s important. Sacrosanct, in fact.

   

  And #3) Breitbart is an ultra-conservative, hard-right political opinion site. That’s all. They seem also have a penchant for inflammatory, click-bait headlines (who doesn’t these days?) You may not like it, I may not like it, but they absolutely have the right to be online and to publish.

  That anybody who has even the most tenuous affiliation with them is fair game for having their rights curtailed, their livelihood sanctioned or sabotaged is indefensible. The only legitimate mechanism for these people to suffer in their fortunes is through the failure of their ideas in the marketplace of thought. By being rejected, not through being repressed (see below).

  It is entirely reasonable for Shopify, or  any other vendor to keep supplying services to Breitbart (at present they have no services with easyDNS)

  It is also reasonable for any of those vendors to choose not to supply services to them of their own volition (you can’t have it both ways folks, you can’t force Shopify to dump Breitbart and simultaneously force some Bible-thumping redneck to bake a cake for a gay wedding).

  What isn’t reasonable is to coerce or compel anybody else to take any action they would not themselves take under their own judgement. It’s truly frightening that there is a growing sentiment that this is acceptable behaviour.

  Do you really want to live in a world where people sever business and personal relationships because a literal flash mob demands it? Where mobs get to pick and choose who you are allowed to associate with?

  Shopify has over 300,000 customers. You honestly expect them to sort through those and kick out the ones that you think are morally objectionable?

  In 2010, when easyDNS was itself embroiled in the Wikileaks debacle I was absolutely appalled when ranking politicians applauded the vendors for severing ties with them. Senator Lieberman congratulated Amazon and Paypal by name for “breaking their contracts”, he literally used those words. A ranking politician applauding behaviour that should rightly get you sued. The public backlash then was huge and pro-Wikileaks. In our own small way, we stood up for Wikileaks then, we maintain a congruent position now. I applaud Shopify for standing firm and refusing to sever their ties for the same reason.

  The “Right Side” of History

  Whenever I hear a lot of activists whining about the current situation I frequently hear references to being “on the right side of history”. Nobody wants to be on the wrong side of that. Actually that’s a nonsensical statement since history is amoral, or as Winston Churchill famously observed, “One damned thing after another”.

  However there is one rule of thumb I’ve formulated over the years which I think can keep one onside of the grand currents sweeping through time and society and helped me understand my sympathy with Libertarianism and anarcho-capitalism. That is to know the fine line between rejecting an idea that one finds immoral, unethical, obsolete or otherwise objectionable and repressing it.

  Morality is largely subjective. Very few people act in a way they themselves consider immoral. Almost everybody thinks that whatever they’re doing, they’re on the side of the angels. The tiny sliver of participants who are fully cognizant of their own immoral action and proceed anyway are criminals and sociopaths (the majority of them gravitate into politics).

  When enough people’s ethical compasses align you get a cultural or societal norm. One of the cultural norms that we fought hard for over the ages was that people have a right to free speech and free association. You can disagree with what I have to say but respect my right to say it.

  These rights were so hard won that they were codified into universal laws and into the very Constitutions that govern most civilized nations. I believe one of the more well-known words for it was “inalienable”.

  Until now. Now people are putting conditions around “free speech” and “free association”.

  The idea that free speech has its limits somewhere around the point where it hurts somebody’s feelings is beyond idiotic and dangerous.

  

  Tweet of person exercising her free speech to encourage economic harm to others…

  The world is not one big foam insulated, bubble wrapped safe space. This may come as a shock to you but there is a widespread sentiment, a backlash dare I say, against the idea that a Saviour State should watch over everything and smooth out all the world’s sharp edges.

  Besides…

  Boycotts usually backfire.

  Back in the mid-90’s, Bob Rae was the Premiere of Ontario and I was in a failed metal band out of London, Ontario. Mr. Rae wrote a nice song about multiculturalism called “Same Boat Now” and submitted it to various record labels who promptly rejected it and told him not to quit his day job. My band recorded a power-pop version of his song and released it on 7” vinyl. Our label  put an open letter to Mr. Rae on the back sleeve that was highly critical of his socialist political platform (albeit quite tame by today’s standards). I was mortified, fearing a media backlash but felt trapped. I called Jack Richardson, my former college prof from Fanshawe College’s Music Industry Arts program and widely credited with having single-handedly created the Canadian music industry and asked his advice.

  Before I finished relaying the details he was laughing. “Mark”, he said, “The only thing that truly matters is that they spell ‘Landslide’ right. That’s it”.

  This has been bourne out countless times since that event. I could list them here but the point is, boycotts usually invoke The Streisand Effect and actually bolster the target of the boycott. We can cite a couple brief examples:

  • During the Bob Parsons era of Godaddy, when he shot the elephant, or when he aired some super-sexist Super Bowl commercial, Godaddy numbers, in terms of net-new domains-in or registered usually  went up not down, in the face of consumer outrage and boycotts.

  • Wikileaks, again – when we did help their mirror sites get back online there was a counter-reaction against that. Every once in awhile I check the emails from the customers who sent me extremely hostile emails telling me they were leaving, and almost all of them remained (and some still do) customers to this day.

  • Shopify itself, who is publicly traded, has been on a tear in share price for most of the year, and it’s continued unabated since  #deleteShopify began.

  

  So what can you do?

  You can only govern yourself. Your only recourse is whether to associate or disassociate with somebody. Yes, you are perfectly within your rights to #boycottshopify but as I’ve outlined, you’re being naive doing so and will likely have the exact opposite effect if you’re enough of a loudmouth about it .

  But if this Cultural Purge proceeds we will actually, for real, lose what used to be inalienable rights. Our right to free speech, our right to free association and our rights to our own minds. If something you say is considered “hurtful” (which will more closely resemble dissent or criticism of the Official Narrative than anything else) you will be sanctioned. You will tow the line or you will be penalized – contracts severed, vendors disassociate themselves, boycotts ensue. Whatever you do, just don’t say or think the wrong thing, because not going along with the crowd will make you a pariah.

  If you want to prevent that:

  1) you have the duty to look at the issue first hand and decide for yourself if it has any merit. Don’t ever come to me and tell me “XYZ is white supremacist, neo-nazi hate speech” unless you can show me an article that has the hate speech in it. Show me the white supremacist rhetoric. If you tell me you believe it simply because that’s what Wapo told you then you are a fool. You are Wapo’s useful idiot. A Wapobot.

  2) you have to be prepared to call b/s whenever some whining snowflake demands safety from any contrary opinion, whenever some pundit robotically repeats the “white supremacist, hate speech, homophobe, Russian hackers” mantra, and whenever you’re asked to jump on some witchunt bandwagon against someone who dares to dispute the Official Narrative.

  3) you have to be able to take the heat. Guess what? You’ll be next. Speak out against this nonsense and you’ll be subjected to hysterionics, character assassination, guilt by the most tenuous of associations, distortions of fact and a co-ordinated piling on by mobs of unquestioning ideological berserkers.

  • You’ll be Peter Thiel (there was a popular outcry to remove him from Facebook’s board, why? Because he endorsed Trump.)

  • You’ll be Scott Adams (his crime? Correctly predicting that Trump was going to win)

  • You’ll be Ivanka Trump (facing a co-ordinated attack on her livelihood for her transgression of being born a Trump).

  That is a cultural purge.

  Hell, I’m probably next just for writing this piece. So be it. My credibility as a non-racist, free-speech Libertarian are unassailable and am categorically unaffiliated with Russian intelligence. My duty is to speak out precisely because it is becoming more dangerous to speak out.

  “In times of universal deceit, telling the truth is a revolutionary act”. — Unknown

  

  

• BofAML Explains Why The Ag Economy Isn't Likely To Get Much Better In 2017

  The fact that farm incomes have come under increasing pressure over the past couple of years should come as little surprise to our readers (for those who missed our latest update, see: “Midwest Farm Bubble Continues Collapse As Farm Incomes Expected To Crash In 2017“).  Unfortunately, at least according to Bank of America’s Global Ag Chemical team led by Steve Byrne, farmers shouldn’t expect a reprieve any time in the near future.

  As BAML points out, the grain commodity farmers of the U.S. are locked in a vicious cycle, the result of which is a perpetually oversupplied market.  To summarize the key takeaways, farmers continue to plant so long as cash profits are positive (because depreciation isn’t a real cost and who cares about returns on capital anyway…silly finance people) while yield growth continues to outpace demand growth which leaves markets perpetually oversupplied and commodity prices well below what would be required to provide a normalized profit level for farmers.  Meanwhile, since farmers seem to be incapable of unilaterally reducing supply, an external supply shock (e.g. a weather-related event) seems to be the only hope of the industry ever normalizing again.

  With that, here is a little more detail on the vicious ag cycle per BAML…

  Yield growth per acre continues to average 1-2% per annum…

  Yields continue to improve with no sign of abatement as seed technology improves and farmers utilize better information technology (precision ag) to gain better understanding of acreage and maximize yield potential. While weather can disrupt yields year-to-year, directionally yields have improved at a 1-2% CAGR for corn, soy and wheat since 2000. In our view, this will continue to place deflationary pressure on crop prices longer-term, particularly given the extent to which global yields trail yields in more developed ag economies.

  

   

  …which continues to drive new record highs in production despite an already weak pricing environment.

  Global corn production is similarly heading for a new record high in 2016/17, up 7% YoY and driven mostly by an almost equally big rise in yields. The US 2016/17 crop that was just harvested looks especially strong. Concerns over whether ear filling was impeded by the hot and dry summer weather are now fading as the harvest is done and the USDA revised up its yield estimate by 1% to 11.01mt/ha in November. Meanwhile, in LatAm farmers are currently planting for the 2016/17 harvest and production looks even stronger, up 26% on presumed yield normalization and exacerbated by a 7% increase in acreage.

  

   

  Meanwhile, global corn demand is expected to recover somewhat in 2016/2017 but no where near the expected 7% supply increase.

  Global corn demand growth slowed to just 2% per annum in the past two years, due to a drop in global pork production. Corn is the staple diet of the word’s more than 1bn pigs. The decline in pork production was mainly caused by an environmental crackdown in the Chinese farming sector, and the country’s pork production fell by 3% in 2015 and another 5% likely in 2016.

   

  Then in March 2016, China ended its domestic corn price floor, giving relief to pig farmers, and corn demand started picking up again. Corn demand from pig production will continue to rise structurally in the years to come on the ramp-up of new modern mega farms in Northern China. Overall global corn demand can recover to 3% growth this market year (2016/17) and hold up at 2-3% growth annually in the years to come, in our view. However, we have started to see signs of slowing feed demand as elevated corn prices have led to substitution to other feeds, in some instances. Global feed demand levels will be key in determining the aggregate corn demand picture.

  

   

  All of which is expected to keep global grain stocks at all time highs for the foreseeable future…

  World carryout corn stocks are likely to finish 2016/17 at a record high, with stock-to-use ratios up marginally from the year prior. There is debate over the level of Chinese stocks, with estimates ranging from China’s corn reserve estimate of 270Mmt vs USDA estimate of ~110mn mt. The USDA expects Chinese corn production to decline by ~3% in 2016/17, and inventory levels to decline by ~8% in 2016/17 after swelling from 81mn mt in 2013/14 to 110mn mt in 2015/16. Recent policy aimed at reducing production out of lower-yielding regions could also help alleviate China’s elevated inventory position. Media reports have also indicated more than 900 companies have applied for import quotas for 2017, which could be supportive of global prices. USDA data suggests soybean inventories in China remain elevated as well and account for over 20% of global stocks (Chinese stocks to use ration remains well over 100%). China accounts for over 60% of global soybean imports, and thus inventory levels in China are a key factor in gauging global demand expectations. A clear indication of a drawdown in Chinese soybean stocks could provide price support, in our view. Nonetheless, China’s inventory levels, trade data and policy direction will remain key components of corn and soybean prices in the coming year.

  

  

   

  And, of course, as long as cash margins remain positive then farmers keep planting…which doesn’t do much for that weak pricing environment.

  Farm income, planted acres of row crops, and commodity prices all peaked in 2012 following the prior decade long super-cycle. Prior periods of ag credit cycle downturns lasted 5 years (68-72) and 9 years (83-91) while ag business cycle downturns have averaged 2 years since 1960. Inflation adjusted crop prices have been declining for over 100 years as gains in productivity (+1-2%) and acreage expansion (0-1%) outpace gains in demand (1-2%). New technologies such as precision agriculture and gene editing could accelerate productivity gains in the medium term. Cyclical upside could occur from increased demand for protein, reduced supply from marginal acres, or a weather event.

   

  We expect cash margins for corn, soybeans and wheat to collectively be slightly higher than the prior year, but well below the ~2007-2014 profitability boom amidst elevated prices. We expect crop commodity prices for each to remain low amid elevated global stocks. Profitability will also likely remain a challenge and at similar levels to prior year levels exacerbated by elevated leverage, with US farm debt to net cash income at its highest level since 1984.

   

  In our view, cash margins may have room to fall before seeing a rational supply response. Margins are still above breakeven levels that occurred 15 years ago (1999-2003) and not at levels that could drive meaningful changes in farmer behavior, such as walking away from land rent or simply not planting acres in a given year.

  

   

  But, at least farmers have that whole trade war with Mexico to look forward to…luckily Mexico is just our second largest corn importer…

  In our view, the risk of a trade war with key importers of US crops remains a key risk for the US ag economy. Trade with China (14.8%) and Mexico (13.6%) represent top destinations for US ag export demand. Additionally, a potential border adjustment tax could significantly inflate fertilizer prices and together with lower grain prices could further impair farmer margins. Potential reform to the Renewable Fuel Standard is also a downside risk for US growers given 40% of domestic corn demand is derived from ethanol. A stronger USD resulting from proposed policies would also be a headwind for US growers. Washington will remain critical for agriculture with upside risks being the status quo and downside risks being more meaningful.

  

  

   

  It’s pretty rough when your only hope of making money in your chosen profession will come only after a devastating weather event that may or may not force you into bankruptcy.

  

  

• Boston Dynamics Unveils Its Latest "Nightmare-Inducing" Robot

  One year ago, when we showed readers the SkyNet-like robots produced by Boston Dynamics, a company acquired by Google in 2013 (which then tried to flip it to Toyota last year but reportedly failed)  we called the robotic creations “terrifying.” Little did we know that compared to Boston Dynamics’ next spawn, that particular batch was downright Johnny 5-friendly by comparison. Because after being briefly shown off at an event early this month, the robotic designed has officially revealed its latest creation, “Handle,” which the company’s founder previously described as “nightmare-inducing.”

  Four weeks ago, Boston Dynamics – which is best known for its bipedal and quadrupedal robots – revealed it had been experimenting with some radical new tech: the wheel. The company named its new wheeled, upright robot is named Handle (“because it’s supposed to handle objects”) and looks like a cross between a Segway and the two-legged Atlas bot according to the Verge. Handle, which had not been officially unviled yet, was shown off by company founder Marc Raibert in a presentation to investors. Footage of the presentation was uploaded to YouTube by venture capitalist Steve Jurvetson.

  Creating a more efficient robot that can, pardon the pun, handle basic tasks like moving objects around a warehouse would certainly be of benefit for Boston Dynamics. Although the company has consistently wowed the public with its robots, it’s struggled to produce a commercial product that’s ready for the real world. That may soon change.

  Raibert described Handle as an “experiment in combining wheels with legs, with a very dynamic system that is balancing itself all the time and has a lot of knowledge of how to throw its weight around.” He added that using wheels is more efficient than legs, although there’s obviously a trade-off in terms of maneuvering over uneven ground.

  “This is the debut presentation of what I think will be a nightmare-inducing robot,” said Raibert.

  He wasn’t kidding: as the video below reveals, Handle is officially about 6 foot 5, weights about 100lbs, and can roll around at around 9 mph, while preserving perfect balance and even engaging in complex aerial acrobatics: Handle can keep its balance over rough terrain, and can even jump 4 feet in the air, as well as going down stairs without an issue.

  While we are confident Amazon will promptly order a few thousands of these to bring even more streamline automation and efficiency to its behemoth warehouses while putting countless part-time workers out of work, we don’t know if to dread or yearn for the moment when RoboHandle emerges in a quiet patrol of your neighborhood street, armed and ready to use lethal force, and gradually replacing the local police force around the country.

  

  

• Up-Ending The Fed – Can Trump Reshape The Most Powerful Central Bank In The World?

  Via Danielle DiMartino Booth of DiMartinoBooth.com,

  

  “Remember Red, hope is a good thing, maybe the best of things, and no good thing ever dies.”

  Wiser words were never spoken on the big screen than those of The Shawshank Redemption’s main character Andy Dufrense. We are none of us beyond redemption, so we are taught by this banker from Maine, even when we are punished for crimes we did not commit. In briefly researching the movie, one comes to learn that it is based on Stephen King’s 1982 novella Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption. No doubt, Hayworth’s role in the movie stands out in all our minds, which is saying something as the superstar was no longer with us.

  Dig deeper and you learn that King’s longer than a short story, but shorter than a novel, was part of a series called, Different Seasons, subtitled Hope Springs Eternal. How reassuring if enigmatic. More perplexing still is this master of the horror genre’s inspiration — Leo Tolstoy’s God Sees the Truth, But Waits. It would seem that Carrie has met Anna Karenina.

  Clearly, it’s easier to judge those who write books by their most famous covers. But why not set such preconceived notions aside. You too can bask in King’s gorgeous prose from Shawshank and even Tolstoy’s beautiful words of inspiration: “If you want to be happy, be.” And redemption: “Everyone thinks of changing the world, but no one thinks of changing himself.”

  These words resonate so against the backdrop of a country that remains intent on fomenting division, on splitting itself at the seams, bent on self-destruction. Perhaps it will have to come down to one man and his ability to change himself, to draw in more than his avid followers but his doubters as well.

  For yours truly, it has thus been curious, nay fascinating that on matters of the Federal Reserve one Donald J. Trump has been silent as a mouse whose paws cannot bang out 140-character rants. Perhaps, just maybe, he is busy doing late night reading on the foundations of this venerable institution. If that’s the case, maybe he came across this little gem that was passed along recently:

  “In selecting the members of the Board, not more than one of whom shall be selected from any one Federal Reserve district, the President shall have due regard to a fair representation of the financial, agricultural, industrial, and commercial interests, and geographical divisions of the country.”

  Maybe that’s why the media has begun to dispense with the labels “hawk” and “dove” and is beginning to replace the aviary with simple human beings who have been there and done that, who have been on the receiving end of Fed policy for their entire careers. Take this from Kate Davidson at the Wall Street Journal:

  “After his campaign criticism of the central bank’s low-interest-rate policies, many observers speculated he would seek more “hawkish” candidates who would favor higher borrowing costs. But his choices may be driven less by these issues and more by their practical experience, judging from his early picks for other top economic policy posts in the administration—drawn from investment banking, private equity and business—and the pool of early contenders for the Fed jobs.” 

  Meanwhile, the Financial Times’ Gavyn Davies had this to say:

  “The last four Fed Chairs have all been clearly on the economist side of the line, and because they have all bought into the Fed’s economic orthodoxy, their actions have been considered somewhat predictable by the markets. A business person or banker might be less predictable, at least initially, and more prone to shake up the Fed’s orthodoxies, for good or ill.”

  With deference to Mr. Davies, there can be no ‘for ill’ in shaking up the Fed’s orthodoxies, if you can call them that. Orthodoxy, from the Greek word orthodoxia, implies officials are cleaving to a correct creed. But what if policymaking has devolved from correct to simply accepted?

  That would imply a good dose of heterodoxy, also Greek from heterodoxos, was in order, as in a departure from the official position. To be crystal clear, heterodoxy does not equate to heretical, from the Greek hairetikos, (pardon the digression but who gave the Greeks a monopoly on multisyllabic, cool words?). Even so, a bit of heresy would also do the Fed a world of wonders. The literal Greek translation means ‘able to choose.’

  A recent study determined the study of economics in academia had itself become incestuous with a great preponderance of students being trained in the same school of thought. This determination was not only disturbing and dangerous, it demands politicians introduce a bit of heresy into our nation’s central bank.

  Perhaps President Trump, his administration and all members of Congress should sit down for a tutorial on Heterodox Economics (nope, not making that one up), which refers to schools of economic thought which fall outside of mainstream — read Keynesian – economics, which is predictably referred to as orthodox economics. Maybe, just maybe, it’s high time a variety of schools are incorporated, as in the post-Keynesian, Georgist, social, behavioral and dare say, Austrian approaches.

  That last one, the Von Mises-inspired Austrian school of economics is apparently public enemy number one. The FT’s Davies goes on to warn that some candidates up for those open and opening positions on the Fed’s Board of Governors are ‘Austrian’ economists, “a school that has apparently influenced Vice President Pence. An “Austrian” candidate would certainly alarm the markets.”

  Davies has apparently done his homework. Back in 2010, one Mike Pence was serving in Congress as a representative of Indiana. In response to the Fed’s insistence on launching a second round of asset purchases, which the markets adoringly embraced as QE2, he blasted back that, “Printing money is no substitute for pro-growth fiscal policy.”

  Pence’s words certainly ring Austrian, as the school considers malinvestment to be a menace, as well any rational person would. Malinvestment (we can finally score one for the Latins!) is defined as a mistaken investment in wrong lines of production, which inevitably lead to wasted capital and economic losses, subsequently requiring the reallocation of resources to more productive uses.

  And we wonder why we’ve had such a long run of jobless recoveries that happens to coincide with the post-Greenspan era. Why would the markets abhor an Austrian? Clearly, we would not have starved productivity by overbuilding residential real estate in the years prior to the crisis. Nor would companies have gorged on record share buybacks in the years that followed. Agreed, these phenomena juiced returns. But to what end aside from protecting the legacy of the mythological ‘wealth effect’?

  As my dear friend Peter Boockvar wrote of the wealth effect in response to the Fed’s meeting minutes from its January meeting: “The concept, invented by Alan Greenspan, and carried on by Mr. Bernanke and Mrs. Yellen, is the unspoken third?mandate of the Fed. Well Fed, you certainly got what you wanted in terms of a dramatic rise in asset prices over the past 8 years (just look at the value of equities relative to the underlying US economy) but a wealth effect did not happen if the pace of personal spending in this expansion is any indication. For many, it’s the wages they earn and the savings they keep that drive spending decisions, not the value of their stock portfolios.”

  For taxpayers’ money, because they will pay in the end, it would seem we need Peter to fill one of those vacancies on the Fed’s Board. Just sayin’. Would the man who coined the term, ‘monetary constipation’ to describe the, “constant hemming and hawing over a rate hike…even in the face of a world that clearly changed on November 8th? and as we approach the 8th ?year of this expansion.”

  President Trump, can you hear Peter?? This is not the time to be obtuse. This is the time to bring back the good things in life, beginning with the best – hope. Dig as deep as you can and ask yourself some probing questions. Can you stand up to the orthodoxy that’s robbed the business cycle of its very cyclicality? Are you man enough to populate the Fed with leaders who are so strong there’s no need to audit the out-of-control institution? Pray God, does Mike Pence have your ear? You may be a debt kind of a guy, you’ve said so yourself. But you’re also beholden to no one and have a once-in-a-century opportunity to reshape the world’s most powerful central bank and in doing so safeguard the sanctity of the U.S. dollar.

  As Andy Dufrense explained to us all, “I guess it comes down to a simple choice, really. Get busy living or get busy dying.” It’s time we got back to the business of living in this country, every single one of us. Who are we to question if it takes a heretic to get us back to where we need to be?

  

  

• Gas Taxes Set To Surge In Roughly A Dozen States

  Nearly 20 states have raised gas taxes or recalculated gas-tax formulas in recent years to generate additional revenues.  Which, of course, is an extremely politically expedient way to raise taxes on the unsuspecting masses since when gas prices soar later those price increases can simply be blamed on those evil oil corporations.

  As the Wall Street Journal points out, the ease with which higher gas taxes have been passed through state governments over the past two years have emboldened at least a dozen more states, all of which are now actively considering additional gas taxes.

  Tennessee Gov. Bill Haslam is putting his fellow Republican lawmakers to the test, with a plan to raise the state’s gas taxes for the first time in nearly three decades.

   

  In Alaska, Gov. Bill Walker, an independent, proposed tripling the state’s gas tax to 24 cents a gallon by 2018. The state has the lowest gas tax in the country and hasn’t raised it since 1970. In his recent state of the state address, Mr. Walker said he is trying to deal with a $3 billion fiscal gap, after state revenues collapsed by more than 80% from four years ago due in large part to the drop in oil and natural-gas prices.

   

  New Jersey’s Republican Gov. Chris Christie raised the state’s gasoline tax last year by 23 cents a gallon, his first tax hike in two terms as governor, which he offset with some other tax reductions.

   

  On Thursday, the Republican-dominated Indiana House voted 61 to 36 in favor of increasing the state gas tax from 18 cents a gallon to 28 cents with annual adjustment increases possible through 2024. The bill now goes to the state Senate.

  In yet another map that looks eerily similar to the 2016 electoral college map, here is where states currently stand on gas taxes.  Of course, the irony here is that the ultra-liberal states of the Northeast and West coast have the highest gas taxes…and while that might play well with their global warming narrative, gas taxes are among the most regressive forms of tax as they disproportionately impact lower-income families.  And unfortunately, unlike the cost of other goods and services that are driven to artificially high levels by misinformed government policies (did someone say Obamacare?), we suspect you’ll never see the leftist states of America subsidizing gasoline for poor people.

  

   

  Despite serving as an easy scapegoat, as the U.S. Energy Information Administration notes, only 48% of the price that Americans pay at the pump actually goes to the evil oil companies for crude production.  Meanwhile, on average, nearly 20% of gas costs get sent to various federal, state and local government entities with the highest taxed states like PA, WA, NY and CA collecting even more.

  

   

  But, higher gas problems aren’t a significant long-term threat because everyone will just buy an $80,000 Tesla, right?  And, for those reading this post from the state of California please continue to ignore the fact that your Tesla is fueled by coal…

  

  

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• Curious Gold-Silver Ratio That Did Not Fall, Report 26 Feb, 2017

  This holiday-shortened week (Monday was President’s Day in the US), the price of the dollar fell. In gold, it fell almost half a milligram to 24.75mg, and prices in silver it dropped 30mg, to 1.7 grams of the white monetary metal. Flipped upside down, gold went up 23 notes from the Federal Reserve, and silver appears to go up by 41 cents.

  Below, we will show the only true picture of the gold and silver supply and demand fundamentals. But first, the price and ratio charts.

  The Prices of Gold and Silver
  

  Next, this is a graph of the gold price measured in silver, otherwise known as the gold to silver ratio. It moved sideways again this week, which would normally be odd for a time when the prices of the metals are rising.

  The Ratio of the Gold Price to the Silver Price
  

  For each metal, we will look at a graph of the basis and cobasis overlaid with the price of the dollar in terms of the respective metal. It will make it easier to provide brief commentary. The dollar will be represented in green, the basis in blue and cobasis in red.

  Here is the gold graph.

  The Gold Basis and Cobasis and the Dollar Price
  

  For a very long time, we would post graphs that looked almost the same. Oh, the specifics of month, price, and basis would be different. But they had a certain sameness. The price of the dollar (i.e. inverse of the price of gold, in dollar terms) would move along with the cobasis (i.e. scarcity of gold). So as the dollar would rise (i.e. the price of gold would fall), the scarcity would rise. And vice versa. This means changes in price were due to changes in behavior by speculators.

  And now we have a clear picture of … the opposite. The dollar has been falling since mid-December. And for that same time, the cobasis (scarcity of gold) has been rising.

  Yes, gold has been getting scarcer as it becomes pricier.

  How could this be possible? Doesn’t the law of supply and demand work for gold? You know, the standard “X” graph from Econ. 101?

  Gold has several unique properties. One is that it is not purchased for consumption, but for monetary reserves or jewelry (which in most of the world is monetary reserves). Contrast that to copper which is purchased by plumbing manufacturers to make pipe. It’s a competitive market, and if the price of copper plumbing goes up too much then home builders will switch to plastic. Demand drops as price rises. Also, the marginal copper mine will increase production. Supply rises as price rises. It is self-correcting.

  Gold, not being bought to consume, does not have a limit to demand as price rises. If anything a rising price (i.e. a falling currency) signals to people that holding gold is a good thing. They were wise to get out of their falling paper currency, and should consider buying more gold.

  Also, virtually all of the gold ever mined in human history is still in human hands. All of this gold is potential supply, at the right price and under the right conditions. Even if gold mining worked like copper mining, and miners could just produce more, changes in mine production at the margin are not material to the overall gold supply. By official estimates, the total inventory of gold would take over 70 years to be produced at current mine production rates (and we believe this is a low estimate).

  Readers may object that this question is a bit unfair, as any commodity can experience rising tightness and that will accompany its rising price for a while until the market can correct itself. That is true, but what we are looking at in gold is not that at all. When the market corrects itself—which we think is very likely, we do not see Armageddon just yet—it will not be because gold miners have cranked up their outputs, nor because gold users have substituted another metal. There is no substitute for monetary reservation, particularly as paper currencies are in the terminal stages of failure.

  Our calculated fundamental price is now up to almost $1,400.

  Now let’s look at silver.

  The Silver Basis and Cobasis and the Dollar Price
  

  The trend of falling dollar (i.e. rising price of silver) and rising cobasis (scarcity) is here in silver, too, but it’s weaker.

  Silver does not quite have the same stocks to flows ratio as gold, but it has far and away a higher ratio than copper or any ordinary commodity. That is why silver is the other monetary metal.

  The fundamental price of silver is now up to about $18.70. While this is over the market price of the metal, it’s not nearly so much above as gold.

  This is why we calculate a fundamental on the gold-silver ratio over 74.

  © 2017 Monetary Metals

  

• New Declassified CIA Memo Presents Blueprint for Syrian Regime Collapse

  Submitted by Brad Hoff via The Libertarian Institute,

  

  A newly declassified CIA document explored multiple scenarios of Syrian regime collapse at a time when Hafez al-Assad’s government was embroiled in a covert “dirty war” with Israel and the West, and in the midst of a diplomatic crisis which marked an unprecedented level of isolation for Syria.

  The 24-page formerly classified memo entitled Syria: Scenarios of Dramatic Political Change was produced in July 1986, and had high level distribution within the Reagan administration and to agency directors, including presidential advisers, the National Security Council, and the US ambassador to Syria. The memo appears in the CIA’s latest CREST release (CIA Records Search Tool) of over 900,000 recently declassified documents.

  A “severely restricted” report

  The memo’s cover letter, drafted by the CIA’s Director of Global Issues (the report itself was prepared by the division’s Foreign Subversion and Instability Center), introduces the purpose of presenting “a number of possible scenarios that could lead to the ouster of President Assad or other dramatic change in Syria.”

  It further curiously warns that, “Because the analysis out of context is susceptible to misunderstanding, external distribution has been severely restricted.” The report’s narrowed distribution list (sent to specific named national security heads, not entire agencies) indicates that it was considered at the highest levels of the Reagan administration.

  The coming sectarian war for Syria

  The intelligence report’s contents contain some striking passages which seem remarkably consistent with events as they unfolded decades later at the start of the Syrian war in 2011:

  Although we judge that fear of reprisals and organizational problems make a second Sunni challenge unlikely, an excessive government reaction to minor outbreaks of Sunni dissidence might trigger large-scale unrest. In most instances the regime would have the resources to crush a Sunni opposition movement, but we believe widespread violence among the populace could stimulate large numbers of Sunni officers and conscripts to desert or munity, setting the stage for civil war. [pg.2]

  The “second Sunni challenge” is a reference to the Syrian government’s prior long running war against a Muslim Brotherhood insurgency which culminated in the 1982 Hama Massacre. While downplaying the nationalist and pluralistic composition of the ruling Ba’ath party, the report envisions a renewal and exploitation of sectarian fault lines pitting Syria’s Sunni population against its Alawite leadership:

  Sunnis make up 60 percent of the Syrian officer corps but are concentrated in junior officer ranks; enlisted men are predominantly Sunni conscripts. We believe that a renewal of communal violence between Alawis and Sunnis could inspire Sunnis in the military to turn against the regime. [pg.12]

  Regime change and the Muslim Brotherhood

  The possibility of the Muslim Brotherhood spearheading another future armed insurgency leading to regime change is given extensive focus. While the document’s tone suggests this as a long term future scenario (especially considering the Brotherhood suffered overwhelming defeat and went completely underground in Syria by the mid-1980’s), it is considered one of the top three “most likely” drivers of regime change (the other scenarios include “Succession Power Struggle” and “Military Reverses Spark a Coup”).

  The potential for revival of the Muslim Brotherhood’s “militant faction” is introduced in the following:

  Although the Muslim Brotherhood’s suppression drastically reduced armed dissidence, we judge a significant potential still exists for another Sunni opposition movement. In part the Brotherhood’s role was to exploit and orchestrate opposition activity by other organized groups… These groups still exist, and under proper leadership they could coalesce into a large movement… …young professionals who formed the base of support for the militant faction of the Muslim Brotherhood; and remnants of the Brotherhood itself who could become leaders in a new Sunni opposition movement… [pp.13-14]

  The Brotherhood’s role is seen as escalating the potential for initially small Sunni protest movements to morph into violent sectarian civil war:

  Sunni dissidence has been minimal since Assad crushed the Muslim Brotherhood in the early 1980s, but deep-seated tensions remain–keeping alive the potential for minor incidents to grow into major flareups of communal violence… Excessive government force in quelling such disturbances might be seen by Sunnis as evidence of a government vendetta against all Sunnis, precipitating even larger protests by other Sunni groups…

   

  Mistaking the new protests as a resurgence of the Muslim Brotherhood, the government would step up its use of force and launch violent attacks on a broad spectrum of Sunni community leaders as well as on those engaged in protests. Regime efforts to restore order would founder if government violence against protestors inspired broad-based communal violence between Alawis and Sunnis. [pp.19-20]

  The CIA report describes the final phase of an evolving sectarian war which witnesses the influx of fighters and weapons from neighboring countries. Consistent with a 1983 secret report that called for a US covert operation to utilize then US-allied Iraq as a base of attack on Syria, the 1986 analysis says, “Iraq might supply them with sufficient weapons to launch a civil war”:

  A general campaign of Alawi violence against Sunnis might push even moderate Sunnis to join the opposition. Remnants of the Muslim Brotherhood–some returning from exile in Iraq–could provide a core of leadership for the movement. Although the regime has the resources to crush such a venture, we believe brutal attacks on Sunni civilians might prompt large numbers of Sunni officers and conscripts to desert or stage mutinies in support of dissidents, and Iraq might supply them with sufficient weapons to launch a civil war. [pp.20-21]

  A Sunni regime serving Western economic interests

  While the document is primarily a theoretical exploration projecting scenarios of Syrian regime weakening and collapse (its purpose is analysis and not necessarily policy), the authors admit of its “purposefully provocative” nature (see PREFACE) and closes with a list desired outcomes. One provocative outcome describes a pliant “Sunni regime” serving US economic interests:

  In our view, US interests would be best served by a Sunni regime controlled by business-oriented moderates. Business moderates would see a strong need for Western aid and investment to build Syria’s private economy, thus opening the way for stronger ties to Western governments. [pg. 24]

  Ironically, the Syrian government would accuse the United States and its allies of covert subversion within Syria after a string of domestic bombings created diplomatic tensions during the mid-1980’s.

  Dirty tricks and diplomacy in the 1980’s

  According to Patrick Seale’s landmark book, Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East, 1986 was a year that marked Syria’s greatest isolation among world powers as multiple diplomatic crises and terror events put Syria more and more out in the cold.

  The year included “the Hindawi affair”—a Syrian intelligence sponsored attempt to hijack and bomb an El Al flight to Tel Aviv—and may or may not have involved Nezar Hindawi working as a double agent on behalf of Israel. The foiled plot brought down international condemnation on Syria and lives on as one of the more famous and bizarre terror conspiracies in history. Not only were Syria and Israel once again generally on the brink of war in 1986, but a string of “dirty tricks” tactics were being utilized by Syria and its regional enemies to shape diplomatic outcomes primarily in Lebanon and Jordan.

  In March and April of 1986 (months prior to the distribution of the CIA memo), a string of still largely unexplained car bombs rocked Damascus and at least 5 towns throughout Syria, leaving over 200 civilians dead in the most significant wave of attacks since the earlier ’79-’82 war with the Muslim Brotherhood (also see BBC News recount the attacks).

  Patrick Seale’s book speculates of the bombings that, “It may not have been unconnected that in late 1985 the NSC’s Colonel Oliver North and Amiram Nir, Peres’s counter-terrorism expert, set up a dirty tricks outfit to strike back at the alleged sponsors of Middle East terrorism.”

  Consistency with future WikiLeaks files

  The casual reader of Syria: Scenarios of Dramatic Political Change will immediately recognize a strategic thinking on Syria that looks much the same as what is revealed in national security memos produced decades later in the run up to the current war in Syria.

  When US cables or intelligence papers talk regime change in Syria they usually strategize in terms of exploiting sectarian fault lines. In a sense, this is the US national security bureaucracy’s fall-back approach to Syria.

  One well-known example is contained in a December 2006 State Dept. cable sent from the US embassy in Syria (subsequently released by WikiLeaks). The cable’s stated purpose is to explore Syrian regime vulnerabilities and weaknesses to exploit (in similar fashion to the 1986 CIA memo):

  PLAY ON SUNNI FEARS OF IRANIAN INFLUENCE: There are fears in Syria that the Iranians are active in both Shia proselytizing and conversion of, mostly poor, Sunnis. Though often exaggerated, such fears reflect an element of the Sunni community in Syria that is increasingly upset by and focused on the spread of Iranian influence in their country through activities ranging from mosque construction to business.

  Another section of the 2006 cable explains precisely the same scenario laid out in the 1986 memo in describing the increased “possibility of a self-defeating over-reaction” on the part of the regime.:

  ENCOURAGE RUMORS AND SIGNALS OF EXTERNAL PLOTTING: The regime is intensely sensitive to rumors about coup-plotting and restlessness in the security services and military. Regional allies like Egypt and Saudi Arabia should be encouraged to meet with figures like [former Vice President Abdul Halim] Khaddam and [younger brother of Hafez] Rif’at Asad as a way of sending such signals, with appropriate leaking of the meetings afterwards. This again touches on this insular regime’s paranoia and increases the possibility of a self-defeating over-reaction.

  And ironically, Rif’at Asad and Khaddam are both mentioned extensively in the 1986 memo as key players during a speculative future “Succession Power Struggle.” [p.15]

  An Islamic State in Damascus?

  While the 1986 CIA report makes a case in its concluding paragraph for “a Sunni regime controlled by business-oriented moderates” in Syria, the authors acknowledge that the collapse of the Ba’ath state could actually usher in the worst of all possible outcomes for Washington and the region: “religious zealots” might seek to establish “an Islamic Republic”. The words take on a new and special importance now, after the rise of ISIS:

  Although Syria’s secular traditions would make it extremely difficult for religious zealots to establish an Islamic Republic, should they succeed they would likely deepen hostilities with Israel and provide support and sanctuary to terrorists groups. [pg.24]

  What continues to unfold in Syria has apparently surpassed even the worst case scenarios of intelligence planners in the 1980’s. Tinkering with regime change has proven itself to be the most dangerous of all games.

  

  

• Maine Drops 9,000 From Food Stamps After Refusal To Comply With Work Requirements

  Republican Governor Paul LePage dared to begin enforcing Maine's volunteer and work requirements for food stamp (SNAP) recipients to keep their benefits. The end result was more than 9,000 non-disabled adults getting dropped from the program.

   

  

  As CNS News' Eric Schiener reports, a Department of Health and Human Services (DHHS) spokesman tells the Associated Press that 12,000 non-disabled adults were in Maine’s SNAP program before Jan. 1 – a number that dropped to 2,680 by the end of March…

  The rules prevent adults, who are not disabled and do not have dependents, from receiving food stamps for more than three months unless they work at least 20 hours a week, participate in a work-training program, or meet volunteer guidelines for 24 hours out of the month.

   

  Any one of those three minimums getting met will result in an individual to retain their SNAP food benefits.

   

  DHHS Commissioner Mary Mayhew said the goal of the requirements is to encourage people to find work.

   

  "If you're on these programs it means you are living in poverty and so the more that we can help incentive people on that pathway to employment and self-sufficiency the better off they're going to be," Mayhew told the Associated Press.

  In Maine, once someone loses their benefits, they cannot regain assistance for three years.

  Patriot Chronicle points out, in Maine, 9,000 able-bodied people who are supposedly too poor to feed themselves couldn’t seem to handle that. In addition, those who lose their benefits in such a manner can’t reapply for assistance for three years.

  Liberals have sold government dependence so deliberately well, that even doing 24 hours of approved volunteer work a month for a capable adult became too much for more than 9,000 people.

   

  Either the Liberals have truly brain washed the voting masses into droning zombies, or they’re really not that needy for food.

   

  Either way, the taxpayers who work hard for their paychecks, can feel some satisfaction at knowing they won’t have to support as much mediocrity as they used to.

  As we noted previoulsy, thanks to many years of accelerated growth in the program under both George W. Bush and Barack Obama, 1 in 7 Americans now participate in the food stamp program.  There are, however, very large differences from state to state in how much the food stamp program has expanded. If we look at growth in the program from the year 2000 to 2015, we find growth varying from 641 percent growth in Nevada, to 54 percent growth in Wyoming:

  

  Regionally, the areas of the country with the most growth are the South and West:

  

   

  

  

• Citizen Militia Experiences Explosive Growth Following The Last Election

  Submitted by Daniel Lang via SHTFPlan.com,

  

  Until the 1990’s, civilian run volunteer militias weren’t all that common in the United States. They were the fringe of the fringe in our culture. But after Waco and Ruby Ridge, their ranks swelled and they became a common subject in the news and in pop culture.

  Their numbers fell again under President Bush, and then grew to new heights under President Obama.

  It’s an obvious pattern. Conservative militias multiply like crazy under Democratic presidents, and for good reason. When Democrats take the reigns of government, they always threaten to restrict gun ownership. They then decline under Republican administrations, when conservatives don’t feel as threatened.

  However, there may be a new trend emerging. CBS Atlanta recently did a piece on a militia called the Three Percenter Security Force (which obviously showed them in slightly negative light, given the source).

  http://WGCL.images.worldnow.com/interface/js/WNVideo.js?rnd=368994077;hostDomain=www.cbs46.com;playerWidth=630;playerHeight=355;isShowIcon=true;clipId=13125889;flvUri=;partnerclipid=;adTag=News;advertisingZone=;enableAds=true;landingPage=;islandingPageoverride=;playerType=STANDARD_EMBEDDEDscript;controlsType=fixed

  CBS46 News

  The organization is run by Marine Corps veteran Chris Hill, who says that their membership has grown from a few dozen, to roughly 400 members since November.

  The Marine told CBS that the militia would protect the Second Amendment under any administration, and that “The government or law enforcement agencies, disarming people, it’s a constant threat.”

  That doesn’t sound very different from the stated objectives of any conservative militia that has emerged since the 90s. So why is this militia’s membership growing so drastically during the early stages of a Republican administration? What’s different this time? The answer may lie in how the Left has responded to Trump being elected. According to Hill:

  “The level of violence I see coming from these protests is alarming, I think that creates more of a need for people like us to be there,” Hill said.

   

  Hill says, just as anti-Trump supporters have a right to organize and protest, his group wants to show their presence.

   

  “We have a duty to protect, our freedom, our liberty, our constitutional Republic.” Hill said. “That responsibility can’t be deferred to you know Congress.”

  So radical leftists and conservative militias are experiencing explosive growth at the same time, and neither of them are afraid to present themselves in the streets of America. While I do support the rights of militias, I have to say that this probably won’t end well.

  

  

• America's Border Patrol Budget: Spot The Obama Difference

  President Trump's crackdown in illegal immigration means more wall-building, more ICE agents, and a notably bigger budget for the border patrol program. As the following chart shows, that would be an extreme departure from the stagnant spending on our nation's borders by President Obama.

  As Statista's Dyfed Loesche notes, the overall enacted budget for the U.S. Border Patrol program has risen steadily since the 1990s… until 2011 – when President Obama appeared to kill any further spending…

  

  You will find more statistics at Statista

  Of course this budget entails spending for patrolling on all national borders. But it is perhaps noteworthy that the number of deportations plunged under president Obama…Under President Obama, the peak was reached in 2012 when almost 410,000 illegal immigrants were deported but it dipped in 2013, falling to 368,644.

  

  You will find more statistics at Statista

   

  Despite a surge in the number of immigrants during the same period of border patrol budget constraint…

  

  You will find more statistics at Statista

  Probably just a coincidence… or was that the plan all along?

  

  

• Welcome Aboard… But First US Marshals Will Scan Your Retina

  Submitted by Jeffrey Tucker via The Foundation for Economic Education,

  For some 15 years, airport security has become steadily more invasive. There are ever more checkpoints, ever more requests for documents as you make your way from the airport entrance to the airplane. Passengers adapt to the new changes as they come. But my latest flight to Mexico, originating in Atlanta, presented all passengers with something I had never seen before.

  We had already been through boarding pass checks, passport checks, scanners, and pat downs. At the gate, each passenger had already had their tickets scanned and we were all walking on the jet bridge to board. It’s at this point that most people assume that it is all done: finally we can enjoy some sense of normalcy.

  This time was different. Halfway down the jetbridge, there was a new layer of security. Two US Marshals, heavily armed and dressed in dystopian-style black regalia, stood next to an upright machine with a glowing green eye. Every passenger, one by one, was told to step on a mat and look into the green scanner. It was scanning our eyes and matching that scan with the passport, which was also scanned (yet again).

  Like everyone else, I complied. What was my choice? I guess I could have turned back at the point, decline to take the flight I had paid for, but it would be unclear what would then happen. After standing there for perhaps 8 seconds, the machine gave the go signal and I boarded.

  I talked to a few passengers about this and others were just as shaken by the experience. They were reticent even to talk about it, as people tend to be when confronted with something like this.

  I couldn’t find anyone who had ever seen something like this before. I wrote friends who travel internationally and none said they had ever seen anything like this.

  I will tell you how it made me feel: like a prisoner in my own country. It’s one thing to control who comes into a country. But surveilling and permissioning American citizens as they leave their own country, even as they are about to board, is something else.

  Where is the toggle switch that would have told the machine not to let me board, and who controls it? How prone is it to bureaucratic error? What happens to my scan now and who has access to it?

  The scene reminded me of movies I’ve seen, like Hunger Games or 1984. It’s chilling and strange, even deeply alarming to anyone who has ever dreamed of what freedom might be like. It doesn’t look like this.

  Why Now?

  I’ve searched the web for some evidence that this new practice has been going on for a while and I just didn’t notice. I find nothing about it. I’ve looked to find some new order, maybe leftover from the Obama administration, that is just now being implemented. But I find nothing.

  Update: a reader has pointed me to this page at Homeland Security:

  As part of U.S. Customs and Border Protection’s (CBP) border security mission, the agency is deploying new technologies to verify travelers’ identities – both when they arrive and when they leave the United States – by matching a traveler to the document they are presenting. CBP’s goal is to enhance national security and protect a traveler’s identity against theft through the use of biometrics.

   

  Biometric information (such as finger, face, or iris) measures a person’s unique physical characteristics. CBP incorporated fingerprints for biometric identification and verification in 2004, and is now testing facial and iris imaging capabilities to help improve travelers’ identity protection, the integrity of our immigration system, and our national security.

  I happened to be on the "one daily flight" that gets exit scanned.

  Another change has to do with new rules for Homeland Security just imposed by the Trump administration. They make deportation vastly easier for the government. I have no idea if these rules are the culprit for intensified emigration checks.

  What people don’t often consider is that every rule that pertains to immigration ultimately applies to emigration as well. Every rule that government has to treat immigrants a certain way also necessarily applies to citizens as well.

  Chandran Kukathas is right when he says that “controlling immigration means controlling everyone.”

  Regulating immigration is not just about how people arrive, but about what they do once they have entered a country. It is about controlling how long people stay, where they travel, and what they do. Most of all, it means controlling whether or not and for whom they work (paid or unpaid), what they accept in financial remuneration, and what they must do to remain in employment, for as long as that is permitted. Yet this is not possible without controlling citizens and existing residents, who must be regulated, monitored and policed to make sure that they comply with immigration laws.

  To be sure, there might have been some tip off that security officials received that triggered these special measures for this flight only. Maybe they were looking for something, someone, in particular. Maybe this was a one-time thing and will not become routine.

  The point is that it happened without any change in the laws or regulations. Whatever the reason, it was some decision made by security. It can happen on any flight for any reason. And who is in charge of making that decision?

  On the plane, finally, my mind raced through the deeper history here. Passports as we know them are only a little over a century old. In the late 19th century, the apotheosis of the liberal age, there were no passports. You could travel anywhere in the world through whatever means you could find. Nationalism unleashed by World War I ended that.

  And here we are today, with ever more controls, seeming to follow Orwell’s blueprint for how to end whatever practical freedoms we have left. And we are going this way despite the absence of any real crisis, any imminent threat? The driving force seems to be this: our own government’s desire to control every aspect of our lives.

  Think of it: there might be no getting out of the country without subjecting yourself to this process. It's a digital Berlin Wall. This is what it means to put “security” ahead of freedom: you get neither.

  

  

• Truth… Hurts

  What a difference one word can make…

   

  

  Source: Townhall.com

  

  

• Intellectual Intolerance – Stunning Speech From Stanford University Provost Exposes "The Threat From Within"

  In a remarkable – for its honesty and frankness – statement on the intellectual rot within America's Ivory Towers, Stanford University Provost John Etchemendy lay bare the challenges that higher education face in the coming, increasingly divisive, years.

  The Threat From Within

  Universities are a fundamental force of good in the world. At their best, they mine knowledge and understanding, wisdom and insight, and then freely distribute these treasures to society at large. Theirs is not a monopoly on this undertaking, but in the concentration of effort and single-mindedness of purpose, they are truly unique institutions. If Aristotle is right that what defines a human is rationality, then they are the most distinctive, perhaps the pinnacle, of human endeavors.

   

  I share this thought to remind us all why we do what we do – why we care so much about Stanford and what it represents. But I also say it to voice a concern. Universities are under attack, both from outside and from within.

   

  The threat from outside is apparent. Potential cuts in federal funding would diminish our research enterprise and our ability to fund graduate education. Taxing endowments would limit the support we can give to faculty and the services we can provide our students. Indiscriminate travel restrictions would impede the free exchange of ideas and scholars. All of these threats have intensified in recent years – and recent months have given them a reality that is hard to ignore.

   

  But I’m actually more worried about the threat from within. Over the years, I have watched a growing intolerance at universities in this country – not intolerance along racial or ethnic or gender lines – there, we have made laudable progress. Rather, a kind of intellectual intolerance, a political one-sidedness, that is the antithesis of what universities should stand for. It manifests itself in many ways: in the intellectual monocultures that have taken over certain disciplines; in the demands to disinvite speakers and outlaw groups whose views we find offensive; in constant calls for the university itself to take political stands. We decry certain news outlets as echo chambers, while we fail to notice the echo chamber we’ve built around ourselves.

   

  This results in a kind of intellectual blindness that will, in the long run, be more damaging to universities than cuts in federal funding or ill-conceived constraints on immigration. It will be more damaging because we won’t even see it: We will write off those with opposing views as evil or ignorant or stupid, rather than as interlocutors worthy of consideration. We succumb to the all-purpose ad hominem because it is easier and more comforting than rational argument. But when we do, we abandon what is great about this institution we serve.

   

  It will not be easy to resist this current. As an institution, we are continually pressed by faculty and students to take political stands, and any failure to do so is perceived as a lack of courage. But at universities today, the easiest thing to do is to succumb to that pressure. What requires real courage is to resist it. Yet when those making the demands can only imagine ignorance and stupidity on the other side, any resistance will be similarly impugned.

   

  The university is not a megaphone to amplify this or that political view, and when it does it violates a core mission. Universities must remain open forums for contentious debate, and they cannot do so while officially espousing one side of that debate.

   

  But we must do more. We need to encourage real diversity of thought in the professoriate, and that will be even harder to achieve. It is hard for anyone to acknowledge high-quality work when that work is at odds, perhaps opposed, to one’s own deeply held beliefs. But we all need worthy opponents to challenge us in our search for truth. It is absolutely essential to the quality of our enterprise.

   

  I fear that the next few years will be difficult to navigate. We need to resist the external threats to our mission, but in this, we have many friends outside the university willing and able to help. But to stem or dial back our academic parochialism, we are pretty much on our own. The first step is to remind our students and colleagues that those who hold views contrary to one’s own are rarely evil or stupid, and may know or understand things that we do not. It is only when we start with this assumption that rational discourse can begin, and that the winds of freedom can blow.

  We wish John well in his future endeavors as we are sure there will be a groundswell of hurt feelings demanding his resignation for dropping another truth bomb on their safe space.

  

  

  

• White House Launches Surprise Phone Checks On Staffers To Find "Leaker"

  In yet another ironic twist, the process (including random phone checks overseen by White House lawyers) by which Sean Spicer is cracking down on leaks from The White House has been leaked to Politico.

  

  The push to snuff out leaks to the press comes after a week in which President Donald Trump expressed growing frustration with the media and the unauthorized sharing of information by individuals in his administration, and as was leaked to Politico…

  Last week, after Spicer became aware that information had leaked out of a planning meeting with about a dozen of his communications staffers, he reconvened the group in his office to express his frustration over the number of private conversations and meetings that were showing up in unflattering news stories, according to sources in the room.

   

  Upon entering Spicer’s second floor office, staffers were told to dump their phones on a table for a “phone check," to prove they had nothing to hide.

   

  The phone checks included whatever electronics staffers were carrying when they were summoned to the unexpected follow-up meeting, including government-issued and personal cell phones.

   

  Notably, Spicer explicitly warned staffers that using texting apps like Confide – an encrypted and screenshot-protected messaging app that automatically deletes texts after they are sent – and Signal, another encrypted messaging system; was a violation of the Federal Records Act, according to multiple sources in the room.

  Spicer also warned the group of more problems if news of the phone checks and the meeting about leaks was leaked to the media – so much for that.

  It's not the first time that warnings about leaks have promptly leaked. The State Department's legal office issued a four-page memo warning of the dangers of leaks — that memo was immediately posted by the Washington Post.

   

  

  
  As a reminder, the costs of being caught are severe…

  First, there’s the prohibition against disclosure of classified information. This is the obvious one, since any publication of classified material to an unauthorized party is illegal. Under the Espionage Act, 18 U.S.C. § 798, a person guilty of this can end up in prison for 10 years and face a fine. If the leaks involved classified information that was sent to members of the press, the source could end up behind bars if they’re caught. Opponents of Hillary Clinton argued that she violated this with her handling of emails on a private server, but the FBI determined they did not have a strong enough case to prosecute. As LawNewz.com contributor Philip Holloway wrote, the information regarding Flynn’s wiretapped phone calls is Signals Intelligence (SIGINT), which is highly classified, so if one of the “current and former U.S. officials” is identified, they could be in trouble.

  The form of the leaks could also determine whether additional charges appropriate. If information was merely spoken to a reporter, that’s one thing, but if actual files or physical materials were transferred, then 18 U.S.C. § 641 could kick in. That law says that anyone who steals or provides for another person’s use “any record, voucher, money, or thing of value of the United States or of any department or agency” is guilty of a crime. If a source of a government leak turned over a physical record, they could face 10 years in prison and a fine for it.

  In addition to laws against revealing certain information, if the President discovers a source behind a leak, they could face additional charges if they lie about it. Besides perjury, which applies to anyone who lies under oath, false statements or covering up material facts in a federal investigation, either by the Department of Justice of Congress, can lead to five years in prison.

  

  

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