• BuzzFeed And The NYDN: Click-Bait Headlines, False Stories, And Virtually Nonexistent Retractions

  Submitted by Duane via Free Market Shooter blog,

  

  On Thursday, December 1st,  Yasmin Seweid was allegedly assaulted by Trump supporters in NYC.  According to BuzzFeed and the NY Daily News, the attack took place at the uptown 6 train stop at 23rd Street in midtown Manhattan.  The assaliants allegedly called Seweid a terrorist, broke her bag strap, followed her when she tried to get away from them, and tried but were unable to pull her hijab off of her head.

  Both Tamerra Griffin and Ben Kochman, the authors for BuzzFeed and the NYDN stories, did not include any additional sources for their story, other than Seweid’s personal account and a statement from police that the “investigation was ongoing” with no further comment.  It seems both read her Facebook post recounting her story (which has since been removed), and after speaking with her, they took it and her account of the incident as fact, without verifying her story anywhere else.  Even though Seweid was their sole source for the story, they didn’t even bother to include the word “allegedly” as I did in italics above.  The NY Daily News said Seweid stated the following:

  They kept screaming Trump’s name at her, and then said, “Oh look, a (expletive) terrorist,” she said.“ Get the hell out of the country!” they yelled during the train ride. “You don’t belong here!”

   

  When Seweid ignored them, they pulled on her bag to get her attention and the strap broke.“That’s when I turned around and said ‘can you please leave me alone,’ and they started laughing,” she said. She walked to the other end of the train, and they followed her and tried to pull off her hijab, a head covering worn by Muslim women.“ Take that thing off!” they hollered.

   

  “I put my hand on top of my head to hold it,” Seweid said. “Then I turned around and screamed ‘what the (expletive).’ ” Seweid got off the train at Grand Central Terminal on E. 42nd St. and reported the terrifying incident to police.

   

  Her father, Sayeed Seweid, 55, of New Hyde Park, L.I., said he was also angry that no one else stepped in to defend his daughter.“ Nobody even offered to help an 18-year-old girl,” he said. “That means something. Her phone was dying. You offer help — it doesn’t matter the race, religion, or the country.”

  Yes, in overwhelmingly “accepting” and liberal NYC, which voted 87% for Hillary Clinton and 10% for Donald Trump, a Muslim woman was attacked by Trump supporters on a subway platform directly under the Credit Suisse building in a very safe part of Manhattan.  Not only that, no one stepped in to help, and even more surprisingly, no one recorded the incident and splashed it all over social media.  And no police officer was able to readily verify her account to reporters with confirmation from the vast network of surveillance cameras that are omnipresent in NYC.

  The only time I would ever expect to hear this story is if it were prefaced with the words, “I’ll take stuff that never happened for $400, Alex.” 

  In fact, the story would have been much more believable if it was a Trump supporter who was being harassed and attacked.  Back in August, some guy who was wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat tried to walk through the public park surrounding City Hall.  Unfortunately for him, he just so happened to be walking through a police protest, but the protesters turned on him, shouting and shoving him out of the park to the chants of “racist out” and “fascist out”, while police stood by without intervening.  Of course, video of the whole incident was captured and posted on social media:

  Huge crowd of protesters escort out #Trump supporter at #ShutDownCityHallNYC pic.twitter.com/zHgD50mcXb

  — Alexander Rubinstein (@AlexR_DC) August 1, 2016

  As the NY Post reported, protesters took to the streets in force after Trump won the election, chanting “not my president” and “Trump Is Hitler” all over Manhattan, even using a noose to hang a Trump effigy in Columbus Circle.

   

  

  

  If you heard a story about a Trump supporter and an attack on an NYC subway, and just after this election, wouldn’t you expect it to be a Trump supporter getting attacked by a group of anti-Trump assailants, and not a group of Trump supporters doing the attacking?  And no matter what happened, wouldn’t you expect to see a video of the incident?

  You certainly should.  As an example, in the days after the election, GotNews founder Charles C. Johnson was on an NYC subway wearing a “Make America Great Again” hat, minding his own business, when he was repeatedly harassed by someone who was angry with Trump’s election.  Once again, the whole incident was captured on video and splashed all over the internet, like so many other confrontations, altercations and assaults that take place on public transit that have been made quite popular on websites like World Star Hip Hop and LiveLeak.

  And yet, BuzzFeed and the NYDN ran the Seweid story on her word alone, without any video, police or witness commentary to support her claim.  Notably, they presented her story as fact, never once stating that it could be fiction.  Given the attack’s alleged location and assaliants, if you were a journalist, wouldn’t you expect fiction to be the case, and not even bother running the story?

  My sentiments exactly.  Though the NYDN was careful to post a follow-up story detailing discrepancies and doubts in her story, it wasn’t until almost two weeks later when she was arrested and formally charged by police for filing a false report that the NYDN acknowledged that their original story was totally bogus.  According to police, Seweid finally told them, “she didn’t want to get in trouble for breaking her curfew after being out late drinking with friends”, even though “she had numerous opportunities to admit nothing happened and she kept sticking by her story.”  And somehow, the original story remains up on the NYDN website, unedited and readily accessible to NYDN readers, and no retraction was ever published.  

  As I have pointed out in the past, were any of the “fake news” websites listed by the MSM to do this, they would not only be called out by the MSM, they would instantly lose all of their viewers.  But somehow, people keep going back to the true purveyors of “fake news”, when they time and again demonstrate that they are not willing to hold themselves accountable for their mistakes.  Which is something that is readily apparent in the case of BuzzFeed, who has left their original story and click-bait headline up, and only posted the following addition below the title:

  UPDATE: The woman was arrested on Dec. 14 for filing a false police report and obstructing government administration, police said.

  TRUNEWS, who did an excellent job of covering a real, videotaped assault of a Trump supporter in Chicago, also did a superb job of summarizing the entire saga of the Seweid story.  I spoke with Edward Szall, the TRUNEWS correspondent who covered both stories, and he explained to me the specifics about how the Seweid story was run without question by the local news and the aforementioned outlets, noting the initial reaction to the story and the ensuing vilification of Trump supporters.  I’ve provided screenshots to the BuzzFeed comments section, which also remains up, so you have an idea of how exactly people reacted.

  

  

  

  Note that you can see the doubt in the minds of some of the commenters.  Shocking, but hardly surprising; even BuzzFeed’s own comment section sees holes in the story that author Tamerra Griffin didn’t even bother to acknowledge at all.

  And somehow, Seweid’s sister Sara is blaming the police for investigating the incident.  Yes, she really expects police to not be skeptical of a dubious allegation and not investigate her story.  WND reported what she stated in a Facebook post below:

  …she said she was concerned about the “mental state of young Muslim women who feel that they have to lie so intensively to survive.”

   

  She also wrote, “The NYPD should have never been involved in the first place even if the incident did happen. It became super clear to me these past two week [sic] that the police’s first instinct is to doubt your story and try to disprove it.”

   

  Sara Seweid also blasted the police: “The NYPD doesn’t care about us or our safety. Never did.”

   

  Then she went on to attack the media: “Things snowballed out of our control because of the media because by the next morning the news had started publishing stories. Reporters made things so much worse for my family.”

  As ridiculous as she sounds, Sara Seweid makes a good point – we never would have heard about this story if it wasn’t for irresponsible reporting from outlets like BuzzFeed and the NYDN.  But in her post, she of course omitted the obvious fact that Seweid retold her lie to the media on her own. 

  If journalists and publications plan to stay in business and retain readers, they will need to do a better job of providing tangible content that isn’t later proven to be completely fabricated.  If they don’t, they’ll soon find their names in the constantly growing list of defunct newspapers and websites.  BuzzFeed and the NYDN will need to learn that not only do they need to publish truthful stories that are credible and honest, they need to do a better job of owning up to their mistakes and retracting them.  It wouldn’t have taken more than a couple seconds to verify that Seweid’s story was dubious – they shouldn’t have posted it almost as much as Seweid shouldn’t have told it.

  Look, we’ve all been teenagers and made teenage mistakes.  I’ve certainly made much bigger mistakes than coming home “after curfew” and dating someone my parents didn’t approve of, and you probably have too.  But, I’ve always faced up to the consequences of my decisions.  With Seweid’s indiscretions now being front page news, its fair to say that she is certainly facing up to the multitude of mistakes she made, and it almost feels unnecessary to write this article as a result.

  But, Seweid needs to be held accountable for what she did.  Not only did she foolishly get the police and media involved in her ridiculous attempt to cover her tracks, she made a false accusation.  If someone ended up being accused of a crime against her, it could have been even more damaging personally and professionally as whatever Seweid is facing, from either the authorities or her parents.  What if it was you on that subway platform who was accused of assaulting her, and you got dragged before the police and falsely charged with a crime? 

  What should her punishment be?  You’ll have to trust the courts to sort that one out properly.  Should her parents have punished her over this incident and being “upset she was dating a Christian” by shaving her head and eyebrows prior to her arrest, and having her display it by not wearing her hijab?  You’ll have to decide that one for yourself.

  

  

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• Did Satellites Expose A Secret American Drone Hangar In A Saudi Desert?

  Buried deep in the heart of one of the most barren deserts in Saudi Arabia, and the entire planet for that matter, a commercial satellite happened upon what appears to be a very modern airport that suddenly appeared out of thin air from one year to the next.  What makes the airport even more mysterious is the fact that there are no planes on site and no government claims ownership of the facility.  So, is this airport a mere “Border Guard” facility, as Google Maps would suggest, or did this satellite just happen to reveal the location of a secret U.S. military airport used to conduct drone operations in Yemen?

   

  Certainly, the proximity to the Yemen border would make this an ideal location for drone operations.

  

   

  And it does seem somewhat odd that such a massive airport, with 3 large hangars, would be required to conduct “border operations.”  Moreover, while we understand that the Saudi border police are probably using some pretty sophisticated prop planes to conduct their operations, it does seem a bit odd that not a single plane would be visible at the airport. 

  

   

  While we may never know the true owner/function of this mysterious facility, we’re almost certain that Russia hackers are behind the leak of it’s location.

  

  

• 2016 Facts And Figures Quiz

  As Nick Colas writes, one thing is certain: 2016 was a truly historic year. 

  From Donald Trump’s unorthodox but successful campaign for President to the Brexit vote, popular votes shifted the course of global politics in ways very few could have imagined a year ago. Here is a brief quiz that highlights the year’s politics, developments in technology, and changes in the U.S. labor market/economic policy. 

  The idea here, Colas writes, is to (hopefully) shed a little light and (more importantly) humor on the events of 2016 and what they might mean for 2017. Which stock has most contributed to the Dow’s move this year to 20,000? How’s the FANG thing working these days?  And how has a “Real” (60/40 stock/bond) investor done since Election Day (not great actually…).  Read on for the answers and a few other questions about the year. 

  From Convergex’ Nick Colas

  I am a big fan of the weekly National Public Radio show “Wait, Wait, Don’t Tell Me.”  It is, by NPR standards, a nonpartisan news quiz show that uses humor to inform.  If you don’t know the show, check it out.  If you do, you’ll recognize the spirit of the questions below.

  The idea here is to highlight the most notable events of 2016 and place them into a greater context.  In conversations with scores of clients and friends in the last few weeks one theme comes up repeatedly: 2016 has been a truly momentous year.  Sometimes the years go by quickly because nothing much new happens.  This one is the opposite – 2016 feels like “You are there” history in the making.

  Today we will cover Trump/Brexit, and bit of technology and economics.  We’ll finish off tomorrow with a few other subjects.

  Topic #1: Donald Trump

  Question 1: President Elect Trump uses social media to deliver his message directly to his supporters.  How many tweets/retweets has he sent since setting up his @realDonaldTrump Twitter account in March 2009?

  1. 7,881
  2. 22,001
  3. 29,909
  4. 34,121

  Answer:  D. As of this Monday, Trump had sent a total of 34,121 tweets/retweets.  That is an average of 12 messages per day, every day.  And if you put this in historical context, not all that surprising.  FDR had his fireside chats using the then-relatively new medium of radio.  JFK’s good looks played well with television audiences.  Politicians understand that “The medium is the message”.

  Question 2: While Mr. Trump has over 17 million Twitter followers, he himself only follows 40 accounts. Which one of these people is on that select list?

  1. Geraldo Rivera
  2. Piers Morgan
  3. YouTube personalities “Diamond and Silk”, two sisters from North Carolina
  4. Ann Coulter

  Answer: All of the above.  Having the President-Elect follow you on Twitter is essentially the most exclusive club in the world.  By comparison, Augusta National Golf Club has more members, at about 300 currently.

  Question #3: Which one of these is listed as a “Signature cocktail” at the bar at Trump Tower NYC? (check all that apply).

  1. “You’re Fired”, the bar’s take on a classic Bloody Mary
  2. “Make America Great Again”, an Old Fashioned with either rye or bourbon
  3. “A Big Beautiful Wall”, a frozen margarita made with American-sourced tequila
  4. “The Billionaire Martini”, with Premium Chopin vodka

  Answer: A & D.  Worth noting: Mr. Trump himself does not drink alcohol. And if you want to try any of these cocktails, be ready for a wait.  Trump Tower is locked down tight at the moment, as anyone who has been to 56th and 5th can tell you.

  * * *

  Topic #2: Technology

  Question #4: On July 22, 2016, a Japanese company made the very last unit of a product that profoundly changed the way the world consumed entertainment and information.  What was it?

  1. A black and white television
  2. A stereo cassette deck
  3. A VCR machine
  4. A cathode ray tube (CRT) television

  Answer: C (VCR machine).  Phillips made the first mass market video cassette recorder available in 1972.  The product started to gain broad appeal in the late 1970s as popular movies became available for purchase or rental, allowing consumers to view content at home.  From there it is a straight line to Netflix streaming, Hulu and Apple TV.  And the global long term success of the VCR – 40-plus years in constant production – is a record that will likely never be broken.  For reference, consider that the iPhone is 9 years old.  Only 31 years to go….

  * * *

  Topic #3: Brexit

  Question #5: What do Boston (England, not MA) and Gibraltar have in common when it comes to the Brexit vote?

  1. They had the lowest turnout of any region/country for the referendum
  2. They represent the two most extreme votes for Remain/Leave of any region/country in the U.K.
  3. They were the only two regions/country perfectly indifferent (exactly 50/50 votes) to the outcome
  4. None of the above.

  Answer: B (the two extremes).  The town of Boston voted 76% to “Leave”, while Gibraltar polled 96% to remain, representing the extremes of the Brexit vote.  Also among the areas with a predominant “Remain” vote; many of the well-known cities in the U.K., including the City of London (75% Remain), Oxford (70%), Cambridge (74%), and Edinburgh (745).  “Remain”, however, only managed to win in three areas: Scotland (62%), London (60%) and Northern Ireland (56%).

  In what is, I think, the deepest commonality with the U.S. Presidential election, Secretary Clinton also handily won most of the large American urban centers.  These include Manhattan (90%), Boston (85%), Cook County Chicago (78%), San Francisco (90%) and Los Angeles (75%).  The populist schism that has punched its hallmark into 2016 is most easily understood as a divide between urban/non-urban dweller, which makes it difficult to see how this social rift begins to mend itself.

  * * *

  Topic #4: Economics

  Question #6: Who mused in a recent public speech about the merits of a “High pressure economy” where everything runs a little hotter than usual (wages, employment, inflation) to overcome the last vestiges of the Great Recession, and even cited their spouse to defend the merits of “Running hot”?

  1. Donald Trump
  2. Janet Yellen
  3. Mario Draghi
  4. Bill Dudley

  Answer: B (Janet Yellen, in a speech titled Macroeconomic Research After the Crisis).  The key question of 2017 will, of course, be just how much “High pressure” the Fed Chair is willing to accommodate.  The U.S. central bank may finally get the fiscal stimulus it has requested for years, thanks to Mr. Trump’s plans to cut taxes, reduce regulation and spur infrastructure spending.  Will Chair Yellen and the Fed allow the U.S. economy to run hotter than normal in 2017/2018, or will they work to tamp down the animal spirits that President Trump and Congress want to encourage?

  Question #7: By some measures, the U.S. labor market is back to essentially full employment.  But by others, it still shows troubling signs.  Which one of these issues still plagues the domestic labor market?

  1. Participation rates are still declining, with November’s reading below 60%.
  2. Teenage unemployment is higher than a year ago, at +16%
  3. Average weeks spent unemployed are still 30% higher than the prior worst-ever levels (back in 1984).
  4. Unemployment for those people with less than a high school degree is still over 10%.

  Answer: C (Average time spent unemployed is 26 weeks as of November 2016, still far worse than any post-World War II recession).  If you have a friend who has been unemployed for more than a few months, you know this is true.  Perhaps their skills don’t meet what employers need.  Or perhaps there is a negative bias to the long term unemployed.  Whatever the reason, there are still 1.9 million people in the U.S. who have been unemployed longer than 6 months and still want a job.  In every prior recovery, it has taken them less time to get back to work.

  * * *

  Topic #5: Markets

  Question #1: You probably know that Energy (up 29%) and Health Care (down 3%) are the best and worst performing large cap sectors in the S&P 500.  But what are the second best and worst sectors in terms of price performance?

  Answer: Industrials take silver with a 20% price return YTD, and Consumer Staples (up 4%) get the steak knives for second worst.

  Question #2: The Dow Jones Industrial Average is knocking at the door of 20,000.  What stock has contributed the most this year to getting the Dow to this level?

  Answer: Goldman Sachs (GS) represents 440 points of the Dow’s 2,480 point move this year, or 18% of the total.  Other major contributors: UnitedHealth (340 points), Caterpillar (230 points) and IBM (220 points).  Goldman now has an 8.2% weighting in the Dow, the largest of any of the 30 components, so watch that name in the final sprint to 20,000.  And in case you were wondering, Apple’s move this year (up 9%) only adds about 60 points to the Dow.

  
  Question #3: Over the last few years, everyone was talking about the FANG stocks (Facebook, Amazon, Netflix and Google).  How did this group do in 2016, assuming an even weighted portfolio?

  Answer: The average return for the FANG portfolio is 11.2% YTD, spot on the price return for the S&P 500) of 11.1%. 

  Question #4: The S&P 500 is up 6.2% from Election Day, but how much is the classic 60/40 stock/bond portfolio up over the same period?

  Answer: It depends on which bond proxy you use in the calculation, but a reasonable answer is a 2.6% return.  That is based on a broad bond market index, which is down 3% on a price basis since Election Day.  If you were only in long dated Treasuries over this period (down 9.2% since Election Day), you are actually flat.

  
  Question #5: If I asked you which ETF drew the most new money thus far in 2016, you’d probably guess SPY (SPDR S&P 500 ETF).  And you’d be right, with $20.3 billion of inflows YTD.  But which U.S. listed ETFs have seen the largest redemptions this year?

  Answer: The ETF with the largest outflows is the Wisdom Tree Europe Hedged Equity Fund ($8.1 billion out).  Other ETFs with more than $5 billion of outflows this year to date: Deutsche X-trackers MSCI Currency Hedged Equity Fund ($5.6 billion), PowerShares QQQ ($5.6 billion), WisdomTree Japan Hedged Equity ($5.8 billion) and iShares MSCI EMU ETF ($6.7 billion).  Don’t take that as any measure of investment merit, of course – this is a data point about investment themes. 

  Question #6: The long run average of the CBOE VIX is 20.  How many days in 2016 has the VIX closed higher than that?

  Answer: If you guessed less than 20, you are wrong (41 days is the answer).  But the error is understandable, because during the second half of the year the VIX has only closed above 20 on 2 days (November 3 and 4).

  
  Question #7: U.S. equity small caps have dramatically outperformed large caps this year, but the two most closely watched indices for this asset class have very different YTD returns.  The Russell 2000 is up 22%, where the S&P Small Cap 600 is up 27%.  Why?

  Answer: Sector weightings go a long way to explaining the disparity.  For example, the S&P Small Cap Index has a 19% weighting to Industrials, where the Russell is only 15% exposed to that strongly performing sector. 

  
  Question #8: President-Elect Donald Trump famously used Twitter as a cornerstone of his communication strategy during the campaign.  How much of a “Trump bump” did Twitter’s stock get this year from this high-profile use case for its technology?

  Answer: Hard to say.  The stock is down 16.3% year to date, so draw your own conclusions.

  
  Question #9: Simple question – which has done better in 2016: gold or silver?

  Answer: It’s not even close.  Silver is up 22% and gold is only up 9%.  Earlier in the year (August) silver was up close to 50% and gold was 28% higher. 

  
  Question #10: Who told Bob Woodward of the Washington Post back in April that “It’s a terrible time right now” to invest in U.S. stocks?

  Answer: An easy one to close things out, because I am pretty sure everyone knows it was President-Elect Donald Trump.  Total return for the S&P 500 since that story ran: 11.3%, with more than half of that return coming since Election Day.  Now, I suspect everyone (including Mr. Trump) hopes he is wrong.  Or at least that his future policies will “Make US stocks Great Again”.

   

  
  

  

  

• Stunning Visualization Of The Flow Of International Trade

  The interactive visualization you see in this post was created by data visualization expert Max Galka from the Metrocosm blog. (Also check out his new project, Blueshift, which allows users to upload data and visualize it on maps with no coding required.)

  Trade is an essential part of economic prosperity, but, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins asks, how much do you know about global trade?

  The stunning visualization below helps to map international trade on a 3D globe, plotting the exchange of goods between countries. It enables the abstract concept of trade to become more tactile, and at the same time the visuals make it easier to absorb information.

  Click here for full interactive chart, enabling users to select a country to see its share of trade alone, or spin/navigate the globe by using your mouse.

  EXPLORING THE MAP

  The great thing about interactive maps is that they allow you to take control.

  Here are a few things we found particularly interesting, as we scanned through the map:

  • When looking at the globe as a whole, trade is concentrated into obvious hubs. The United States, Europe, and China/Japan are the most evident ones, and they are all lit up with color.
  • There are also obvious have-nots. Take a look at most of the countries in Africa, or click on an individual country like North Korea to see a lack of international trade.
  • In fact, North Korea is completely vacuous, except for one lonely dot floating to China every so often. After taking a quick look at the data, it seems China takes in over 60% of North Korea’s exports, which are mostly raw materials such as coal, iron ore, or pig iron.
  • Now click on South Korea, and the situation is completely different. By the way, South Korea exports $583 billion of goods per year, while the hermit nation does just $3.1 billion per year.
  • This map also shows how dependent some countries are on others for trade. Look at Canada, a country that sends close to 75% of its exports to the United States. Mexico has a similar situation, where it does most of its business with the U.S. as well.
  • This is a stark contrast to Cuba, which doesn’t trade enough with any one partner to have it visualized on this scale at all. Cuba has exports of only $1.7 billion, and its largest trading partner is China, which only takes in $311 million of goods per year.

  Want to see more on international trade? Check out this set of maps that shows China’s rising dominance in trade, or the flow of oil around the world.

  

  

• How Come No One Involved in the Russian Hacking Conspiracy Talked?

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  The claims that the Russian government hacked US voting machines are absurd.

  Voting machines are not connected to the Internet. To hack a voting machine you have to be physically in proximity to the machine and use a hand held device.

   

  The machines can be programmed to throw the vote count to one candidate or the other, and there are other ways to interfere with elections.

   

  Possibly if a foreign power had server presence in the US, some precinct reports of results could be intercepted and altered, although a voice check over the telephone is an easy way to verify the electronic transmission. What is clear is that Russia cannot hack the voting machines.

  What about the claims that Russia hacked Hillary’s emails and used a network of 200 Internet websites to convince the American people to vote for Trump?

  Wikileaks, which released the emails, said they were a leak, not a hack, and that they did not come from Russians. The FBI and the Director of National Intelligence do not support the CIA’s claims. Or should we say claims attributed to the CIA as apparently the source of the claims, like the source of PropOrNot, is unknown.

  And look at the size of the alleged conspiracy—the Kremlin and 200 websites. Surely someone would have talked!

  John McCain says he is sure Russia did something and we need a congressional investigation to find out what.

  Why not start with an investigation of PropOrNot and what they are up to?

  We also need an investigation why Americans living in big cities on the NE and West coasts were immune to Russian fake news, whereas the geographical bulk of the country succumbed to the Russian fake news instead of to the presstitute fake news that conquered the NE and West coasts.

  The FBI says that the claims attributed to the CIA would not stand up in court.

  So what are the claims all about? Who is behind them?

   

  Are there elements within the CIA committing treason by working against president-elect Trump?

   

  Are there elements in the US Congress committing treason by trying to sway electors with fake news resting on unattributed claims that the Russians, not the American people, elected Trump?

   

  Why these claims in the absence of proof?

  What we are experiencing in the delegitimization of Donald Trump is an extraordinary rejection of democracy by elements in the government and by the presstitutes.

  

  

• Gartman's 2016 Year in Review

  From Slope of Hope: I realize that the year isn’t quite over, but it’s late enough in 2016 to put together a retrospective of ZeroHedge’s favorite “commodity king”, Mr. Dennis Gartman. This is the man, of course, frequently featured on CNBC, even though his daughter Courtney left the network earlier this year.

  Although Gartman mostly makes market commentary, he also declared quite plainly in late August that Trump had “no chance” of winning the presidential race.

  I did a couple of posts about the man, such as The Gartman Grid, which offers insight into how to interpret the often curious ponderings of DG, as well as a fanciful take at a new Broadway production Gartman The Musical.  

  A more serious (and time-consuming) undertaking was to go through all of the Gartman-specific posts on ZH that called out concrete buy or sell recommendations from Gartman. Now “concrete” is a little tough with a man who peppers his speech with words like “gently” and “slightly” and “very very lightly”, but I’ve tried my best. I can understand his reticence to make the bold declarations that he used to (e.g. “I have never been so bullish of oil”) given the tomato-throwing that often ensues when he’s wrong.

  Nevertheless, I have broken down all his equity buy/sell and crude oil buy/sell ideas. According to my analysis, he’s been right about 30% of the time overall, with equities (22.73% correct) being weaker than oil (45.45% correct). Well, they do call him the commodity king, right?

   

  

  You can access this analysis by clicking the image above or click here to see the Google Doc itself. I look forward to keeping up with the man’s declarations in 2017 and perhaps doing another analysis next December.

  

  

  

• "When Gold Goes Above 1430 We Whack It"

  Submitted by Allan Flynn via ComexWeHaveAProblem blog, 

  As it goes in silver, so it goes in gold. In London at least. 

  In a bid to have UBS reinstated as a defendant in a London Gold Fix antitrust lawsuit, plaintiffs documents submitted to a New York Court last week include explosive chat room transcripts of UBS and traders from different banks encouraging each other to “push,” “smack,” and “whack” gold prices.

  

  The transcripts are equally as startling as those described of banks of the London Silver Fix and UBS given to the court the previous day and described last week in this article.

  On December 6th attorneys for plaintiffs in a consolidated class action against banks of the London Gold Fix and UBS, asked the court for leave to amend with a Third Amended Complaint. The TAC includes additional facts based on a “limited set of cooperation materials” produced by former defendant Deutsche Bank, as part of a settlement agreement and further statistical analysis.

  Supporting documents say the amended complaint addresses the Court’s October finding that the previous complaint failed to plausibly plead firstly that UBS was part of the antitrust conspiracy, and secondly that the conspiracy existed prior to 2006.

  Also, for the first time a gold producer has been added to the class action of those claiming losses in gold trading due to the manipulation. Compania Minera Dayton, SCM the Chilean subsidiary of Australian resources company Lachlan Star is said to have “sold gold on many of the specific days on which Plaintiffs demonstrated manipulation of gold investments” totaling $287.4 million over the period 2004 to 2013.

  In support of allegations that UBS shared customer order information and executed coordinated trades to manipulate gold markets, samples of “dozens” of chat room messages between UBS and Deutsche Bank are contained in the revised document indicating "many efforts to artificially suppress gold prices, and to manipulate gold prices at the time of the Fixing.”

  Filings include the following script reminiscent of an 1980’s arcade game scene. Rather than competing for business in the marketplace, supposed competitors UBS and Deutsche Bank however are seen coordinating tactics as they anticipate the most illiquid of days to jointly execute their sell orders for greatest negative impact on the market.

  Deutsche Bank: bro japan holiday today

   

  Deutsche Bank: think it’ll be quiet

   

  Deutsche Bank: well, illiquid, not quiet haha

   

  Deutsche Bank: illiquid means wild wild west

   

  UBS:okay when gold pops 1430

   

  UBS: we whack it

   

  UBS: u sell your 50k

   

  UBS: i sell my 20k

   

  UBS: then we double that up and produce our on liquidity too

   

  UBS: that should be enough to cap it on a holiday

   

  Deutsche Bank: haha yeah

   

  Deutsche Bank: lol

  

  One chat see's a Deutsche Bank trader confirming with a UBS trader his trading had indeed influenced the Gold Fix: “u just said u sold on fix.”  The UBS traded replied “yeah,” “we smashed it good.”

  The secret associations between traders appear to be close knit, with the members willing to assist their opposite numbers at every chance: UBS “im feeling helpful to ubs today.”  The UBS trader then said “need to push this back wer,” to which the Deutsche Bank trader replied “ok,” and “lets do it.”

  Counter-intuitively, the banks special penchant to suppress the price of gold is repeated throughout the examples. As the gold ticker rose on this occasion the indignant traders teamed up to push it back down, commending themselves sarcastically meanwhile.

  Deutsche Bank: someone still trying to push our gold up

   

  UBS: so u should pay the mkt right away

   

  Deutsche Bank: nope

   

  UBS: cause chances are someone else got hit and u f*ck them up

   

  Deutsche Bank: no touchy

   

  Deutsche Bank: im short 15k

   

  Deutsche Bank: xau

   

  Deutsche Bank: too much fire

   

  UBS: im gonna sell more silver and gold

   

  Deutsche Bank: k

   

  Deutsche Bank: i really think we are on the right side today, being short

  Not only are they pushing the market down but also there appears to be intent to harm client interests as the November 2014 FINMA investigation loosely reported.

  

  Here a UBS trader gives information to a Deutsche Bank trader about a client’s order query on Nov 16th 2010, and strategizes to punish them by whacking the price lower if purchased from another party.

  UBS: boc sniffing around in gold

   

  Deutsche Bank: likewise

   

  Deutsche Bank: passed my bid

   

  Deutsche Bank: dude

   

  Deutsche Bank: so their round

   

  Deutsche Bank: is from u

   

  Deutsche Bank: to me

   

  Deutsche Bank: haha

   

  UBS: not always

   

  UBS: anyway good to give each other heads up

   

  UBS: if we find out side, whack it

   

  Deutsche Bank: yeah

  Bank of China, one of the largest state-owned commercial banks in China, and which offers customers “a wide range of gold investments in gold bars and gold bullion coins” have yet to respond to this author’s query if the bank could be the buyer referred to as “BOC” in the above conversation.

  A central tenant of this lawsuit is that the banks have chosen one particular part of the trading day to act secretly. The strategy of banks that "colluded around the PM Fixing to ensure prices moved the direction they wanted, when they wanted," was enabled in this case by the same Deutsche Bank trader who appears in multiple chats over a period of years with various others sharing their presumably winning strategies around the afternoon benchmark.

  2007

  During a trading day which had been less successful the Deutsche Bank trader assured his opposite trader from Bank of Nova Scotia that “at least the fix will be fun . . . make it all back there!!!!!! : ?”
   

  

   

  Another day the Deutsche Bank trader remarked to a different trader at Bank of Nova Scotia “hahahahaha, we were all short going into that fix.”

  2008

  The Deutsche Bank trader was informed by a HSBC trader: “i kick some out and take it back after the fix,” describing a tactic to sell gold high before the fix and buy it back after the fix at a lower price. Plaintiffs say the traders knew it would nearly always be cheaper after the fix. The Deutsche Bank trader replied ironically: “ yeah no one else is thinking that : – ?.”

  2011

  The Deutsche Bank trader this time to another HSBC trader: “everyone shrt into the fix i swear it’s the only time ppl trade,” to which the opposite party at HSBC replied “hahahhahahahahahahahha shocking absolutely shocking.”

  2012

  The Deutsche Bank trader said to his opposite number at Barclays, “im glad u are now interbank.” Barclays trader: "Why?" Deutsche Bank trader: “it’s a good alliance.”

  That day the Deutsche Bank trader informed another trader at Barclays, “im a tiny buyer at the mom.”  Barclays trader: “think im buyer too,” Deutsche Bank trader: “means we fix lower.”

  An example of further statistical analysis from plaintiff's Third Amended Complaint, TAC is a chart showing UBS spot gold price quotes over the period 2004-2012. The complaint says the bank "used its transactions and substantial presence in the gold market to drive prices downward, thus playing a key role in the conspiracy."

  

  Deutsche Bank's proposed settlement of the London Gold Fix class action amounting to $60 million including the provision of cooperation materials was given the Court's preliminary approval on December 9th subject to a Fairness Hearing. This follows the non-UBS defendant banks of the London Gold Fix; Bank of Nova Scotia, Barclays, HSBC, and Société Générale being ordered in October to face charges in the lawsuit along with London Gold Market Fixing Limited, LGMF a private company owned by the five banks. Deutsche Bank's settlement offer of $38 million including cooperation materials in a similar antitrust lawsuit involving the banks of the London Silver Fix was given the court's preliminary approval earlier.

  Opinion

  The new chat evidence in silver and gold described in this and other articles provides the missing narrative to the volumes of statistical analysis incorporated in the original and amended complaints closely scrutinized by court and counsel at the April hearings. It lifts the curtain for once and all on the dirty role of bank suppression in gold and silver markets, and its not just the London Fix. The Court has already acknowledged plaintiffs evidence of symbiosis between the London Fixes and the pricing of other silver and gold products. The Court's preliminary approval of the Deutsche Bank settlements may provide for class claims in bullion, coins, options, futures, spot and other markets including exchange traded funds, ETF's within the US.

  The collective evidence also neatly deals with the court's October supposition that further amending the complaint would be "futile."

  Given the damming nature of material against UBS particularly, it remains all the more mystifying why the 2014 Swiss Supervisory Market Authority FINMA report into foreign exchange and precious metals trading at UBS said so little comparatively about UBS' precious metals trading misconduct, and specifically nothing about gold trading misconduct. As discussed in an earlier article, the word “gold” is conspicuously absent from the 2014 report.

  Were it not for the early moral act of Deutsche Bank in providing the cooperation materials, which presumably gave them a settlement advantage, UBS directors might be sleeping much easier this week. If the remaining non-UBS defendants agree to settle, which is an increasing likelihood, there will be no need for the court discovery scheduled for 2017 and civil trial beyond. In the meantime we wait to see how long UBS hangs in there.

  The appearance of a precious metals producer among the class of plaintiffs will also see shareholders and directors reaching for the calculator. SCM is but one of thousands of producers who have sold precious metal in the US throughout the period and like any other plaintiff if the case is successful could be entitled to treble damages with interest if granted standing.

  Plaintiffs analysis indicates that manipulation of the London Gold Fix led to average losses of up to four basis points or four hundredths of a percentage point in the gold price on the days affected. Therefore, a small gold producer similiar to SCM with say $500 million of gold sales over 8 years could tally treble claims of $600,000 plus interest.

  Supposing as statute 28 U.S.C. 1961 directs, the present Treasury constant maturities nominal- 1-year interest rate currently at 0.83% is applied to this figure over an average sale date midway through the class period of say December 2008, and an optimistic successful conclusion of the lawsuit comes a year from now. Interest then of $54,793.64 could bring a theoretical claim of $654,793.64 for just one class member like this. In this context Deutsche Bank's $60 million, plus the cooperation materials supplied, appear to be money well spent.

  

  

• Obama "Housing Recovery" Crushes "Blacks, Young Adults" As Homeownership Rates Crash

  The Obama administration has a tendency to conflate the strong performance of Fed-induced "assets bubbles" with "strong economic growth."  Unfortunately, as is often the case these days, the "hard data" paints a slightly different picture than the "narrative" being pushed by Obama and his staff.

  Per a new report from the Pew Research Center, and as our readers are undoubtedly aware, home prices have indeed recovered to pre-recession levels with a little help from Janet Yellen and crew.

  

   

  That said, the Obama narrative breaks down from there as further research readily reveals that home prices have recovered despite a massive drop in overall homeownership rates. 

  

   

  Moreover, the folks that seem to have been hit the hardest are the ones that were the biggest supporters of Obama's "Hope & Change" agenda.  Per the table below, homeownership rates among "Young Adults" and "Blacks" are down 18% and 16%, respectively, since the peak in 2004.  And while that's definitely a big "Change," its somewhat lacking on the "Hope."

  

   

  But if "mainstreet" Americans didn't drive Obama's housing recovery then who did?  Perhaps the following Bloomberg headline can help answer that question:

  

   

  Yes, the benefits of Obama's "housing recovery" accrued to none other than his "archenemy," Wall Street, which poured $100's of millions into single-family houses on a weekly basis and $10's of billions over the past couple of years.

  Adding insult to injury, this massive pace of investment has re-inflated the housing price bubble, making it, once again, nearly impossible for "Young Adults" and "Blacks" to afford homes.  And, unlike in 2007 when subprime lending basically erased the need for down payments, homebuyers today are forced to "have some skin in the game" before banks will blindly give them $100,000's of dollars. 

  But, with the average American having about $3,000 in "financial assets," we're not sure that's feasible.

  

   

  But, as we always say, who needs facts when narratives are so much more fun.

  

  

• Princeton & NYU Professor Warns Of Dangers From Liberal Media's "False Narratives Of A New Cold War"

  Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

  

  We’re shut out now. There hasn’t been an op-ed in The New York Times or Washington Post editorial pages arguing that the United States is at least equally to blame for this new Cold War crisis. They simply will not accept those articles…So this is the problem. In a democracy we fight through discourse. If you can’t get to the mainstream media  and make the argument, then there’s no way of slowing the drift toward catastrophe.

   

  – Stephen F. Cohen, Professor Emeritus of Russian studies at Princeton University and New York University

  Stephen Cohen just recorded an incredibly trenchant interview regarding the extreme dangers of the recent explosion in Russia hysteria with Brian Lehrer on WNYC.

  This is what the sage-like Cohen said three years ago…

  The degradation of mainstream American press coverage of Russia, a country still vital to US national security, has been under way for many years. If the recent tsunami of shamefully unprofessional and politically inflammatory articles in leading newspapers and magazines—particularly about the Sochi Olympics, Ukraine and, unfailingly, President Vladimir Putin—is an indication, this media malpractice is now pervasive and the new norm.

   

  Even in the venerable New York Times and Washington Post, news reports, editorials and commentaries no longer adhere rigorously to traditional journalistic standards, often failing to provide essential facts and context; to make a clear distinction between reporting and analysis; to require at least two different political or “expert” views on major developments; or to publish opposing opinions on their op-ed pages. As a result, American media on Russia today are less objective, less balanced, more conformist and scarcely less ideological than when they covered Soviet Russia during the Cold War.

  And sure enough, what has come to pass.

  As the following paragraphs published in Politico earlier today show… While the article itself was embarrassingly biased toward standard U.S. government talking points, some valuable history can be found amongst all the noise. Such as the following:

  Related was Hillary Clinton’s enthusiasm for NATO’s further expansion into Eastern Europe. That process was based on the well-founded idea that Eastern Europe needed—indeed, was asking for—protection from Russia aggression. But Russia’s military establishment treated it as a slow-rolling invasion of their sphere of influence.

   

  This reaction, too, had its roots under Bill Clinton. An expanded NATO would help ensure democracy, prosperity and stability across Europe, he believed. Moscow took a sharply different view. After one 1994 summit at which Yeltsin gave Bill Clinton his blessing to the addition of new NATO members—including Poland and Hungary, both former Soviet satellites—a communist newspaper fumed about “the capitulation of Russian policy before NATO and the U.S.” One of Yeltsin’s main political opponents said he had allowed “his friend Bill [to] kick him in the rear.” He compared the agreement to the treatment of Germany at Versailles after World War I—a recurring theme among Russian officials since the Cold War’s end.

   

  Some of Bill Clinton’s top advisers correctly predicted that NATO expansion would produce a backlash in Moscow, and would create a handy narrative for would-be nationalists to posture against the West. Clinton’s secretary of defense, William Perry, told POLITICO this summer that he considered resigning over the issue out of concern for its effect on U.S.-Russia relations. But Clinton pressed ahead, kicking off a process that added a dozen new members over the next 20 years, from the Baltic countries of Latvia, Lithuania and Estonia through Eastern Europe (the Czech Republic and Romania) and into the former Yugoslavia—all places where Russia had once enjoyed uncontested influence.

   

  As Obama kept the NATO train rolling, his secretary of state was fully on board. “There can be no question that NATO will continue to keep its doors open to new members,” Clinton said in February 2010.

  Now without further ado, here’s perhaps the most important interview you’ll hear all month. Listen and share with everyone you know.

  

  

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• Obama Vows to Exact Revenge Against Russia for Unsubstantiated Russian Hacking Claims

  Those who deny the assertions put forth by the Washington Post, citing unnamed and nefarious CIA sources, regarding Russian intervention in the US elections, are being labeled as traitors. Conservatives view all of the Russian hysteria business as the final stage of grief being played out in public, by a completely broken and mentally addled globalist movement left in shambles. The media is attempting to up the rhetoric by moving past the discovery phase of the investigation, without ever having to actually prove that Russia meddled with the elections, in order to attempt to implicate the GOP and of course Donald Trump. Nevermind the fact that Julian Assange plainly stated today that Wikileaks did not receive the data from any state source, and certainly not Russia.

  Democrats are only capable of believing what they want to believe, which is that Russia helped Trump win. How else could they grasp the reality that America turned on them and their degradative policies that seek to annihilate the middle class?

  In an NPR interview today, President Obama promised revenge against Putin for his meddling. Note that this is extremely uncouth and unseemly — especially since he is a lame duck President. To start a conflagration before the next President takes office is nothing less than a slap in the face to Trump.

  Obama: The US will respond to Russia hacking at a time and place of our choosing. https://t.co/xJCwozgoeb

  — Maddow Blog (@MaddowBlog) December 16, 2016

  source: CNN

  “I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action and we will at a time and place of our own choosing,” Obama told National Public Radio.

  Describing potential countermeasures by the US, the President said “some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be.”

   
  He said he directly confronted Russian President Vladimir Putin about a potential US response, and said his counterpart acknowledged his stance.
  “Mr. Putin is well aware of my feelings about this, because I spoke to him directly about it,” Obama said.

  Obama and Putin conferred on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in China in September.

  Afterwards, Obama told reporters he raised cybersecurity with the Russian leader.

  Intelligence agencies in October pinned blame on Russia for election-related hacking. At the time, the White House vowed a “proportional response” to the cyberactivity, though declined to preview what that response might entail.

  Officials have said US actions against Russia may not be revealed publicly.

  Speaking Thursday at the White House, Press Secretary Josh Earnest declined to say whether the US had already begun its response to Moscow’s actions.

  “The President determined once the intelligence community had reached this assessment that a proportional response was appropriate,” Earnest said. “At this point, I don’t have anything to say about whether or not that response has been carried out.”

  Enter Keith Olbermann, the liberal elite left personified. They have no interest in democracy.

  Since Putin personally led attack on our election and coup against us, Electoral College must stop Trump and Treason pic.twitter.com/lBCaVnXy3o

  — Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) December 15, 2016

  The Russian Embassy in the UK’s response.

  DNC hacking is revealed as inside job: will Russia-bashers be left unemployed? (not likely) pic.twitter.com/2n8CpOCX8e

  — Russian Embassy, UK (@RussianEmbassy) December 15, 2016

   

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

  

• Silver Smoking Gun to Stop Dishonest Dealing

  By Bron Suchecki

  Last week ZeroHedge reported on the amended London Silver Fixing Antitrust Litigation which included damaging chat logs provided by Deutsche Bank that reveal collusion between bullion bank traders to “shade”, “blade”, “muscle”, “job”, “spoof” and “snipe” the silver market.

  While the amended complaint only provides selected examples from the 350,000 pages of documents and 75 audio tapes that the plaintiffs received as part of the settlement with Deutsche Bank, what has been provided shows cliques of traders who worked together against the interests of their clients.

  Below is a network map of these cliques, which shows every trader mentioned in the complaint with the lines indicating who chatted with whom (view the map online here).

   

  The key ringleader is DB Trader-Submitter A (submitter refers to their role submitting orders into the London Fix) and this sort of hub and spoke model is common in social networks. The two persons with a slash and two banks in their name indicate that they moved banks during the period of the complaint. This is not uncommon in bullion banking since it is a small industry and would increase the risk of collusion between former workmates, something the management of the banks should have been alert to.

  The lack of connection between these groups is likely due to them being in different timezones. The group of four in the top left corner are most likely in Singapore, given the use of Singlish terms like “lah” in the chats. The larger group is based mostly in London with one in New York, based on references in the complaint. The group of three at the bottom may be in Dubai, although that is speculation.

  The chats have a jovial feel with traders calling each other “bro”, “dude” and “mates” and show no care for clients on the other end of their schemes: for example, Deutsche Bank Trader B talks about “wanna ramp it up like really just buy at mmkt and fk everyone so bad”. No doubt these chats will now be a lot more stilted as traders realise that collusive behaviour brings with it personal consequences like jail terms, as it did with LIBOR.

  Nick Laird at goldchartsrus.com has collated all the chats in chronological order here with a chart of the silver price underneath to help put the chats in context of market price action at the time. In general, the chat logs show collusion to tactically/short-term manipulate the London Silver Fix and spot market (curiously, there is no mention of Comex futures, but the plaintiffs are only giving us a sample in this complaint).

  With the Deutsche Bank chat logs showing a collusive network across banks, it would seem unlikely that the defendants will be able to refute the antitrust claim by the plaintiffs. The next question is that of damages. As it stands, the tactical nature of the manipulations means that the defendants are likely to argue that the members of the class action can only claim damages if they traded at the same time as the chat evidence shows market manipulation.

  To cover the entire class and increase the damages, the plaintiffs need to show that the traders’ actions resulted in ongoing suppression of the silver price.

  In the chats the traders do not explicitly indicate any plans to suppress the price on an ongoing, multi-day/month/year basis or reference having to manage a large naked futures short position (which many have said is necessary for ongoing price suppression to exist). Monetary Metals have written on the naked short theory in the past, noting that it is not supported by observation of prices as contracts approach first notice day. To implement such an ongoing suppression using futures, the bullion banks would need to roll their oversized short position by purchasing the expiring contract and shorting the next contract. Such massive buying of an expiring contract would cause the basis to rise, yet the opposite occurs – see here for more details.

  Absent such explicit proof of suppression, the complaint masses a number of different econometric analyses to show that the London Silver Fix impacts other silver prices in the wider market.

  The analysis does not start off well where, on page 40, the plaintiffs fall for the “correlation proves causation” fallacy claiming that “the prices of COMEX silver futures contracts are directly impacted by changes in the Fix price, which determines the value of the physical silver underlying each COMEX silver futures contract” on the basis of a regression analysis between futures closing prices and the Silver Fix of 99.85%. The defendants will be able to rebut such claims by referring to papers like London or New York: where and when does the gold price originate? which show that neither London (spot) nor New York (futures) are dominant in terms of price and that the dominant market switches from time to time.

  We feel the plaintiffs are on stronger footing when comparing spot and futures price movements around the fix (see page 71 onwards, figures 24 to 28). The plaintiffs’ show a few charts demonstrating a spot to futures linkage but we would suggest that to win the case the analysis would benefit from looking the spread between spot and futures markets, or the basis, which we report on each week. For an example of the application of basis to forensic price analysis, see our November 13 report where we show that the drop of $30 in the gold price around the London Fix on November 11 was driven by selling of futures as the gold basis began to fall before the price did (see below).

  

  The final challenge for the plaintiffs is to prove that the impact of the banks’ manipulative actions persisted “well beyond the end of the Fixing Member’s daily conference call” (see pages 81-83). While the plaintiffs claim that this is proven because the mean of the cumulative unadjusted returns “on Down Days does not recover fully from the price drop that occurs at the start of the Silver Fix”, the very wide confidence interval implies that on a number of days it did recover. It will be interesting to see how the defendants response to this crucial claim.

  The Deutsche Bank chat logs have enabled the plaintiffs to get over the first huge hurdle of showing antitrust behaviour. The focus of media reports to-date on the colorful chats gives the impression this is a closed case but the lack of explicit chats discussing management of a large naked futures short position and/or plans to supress the price over months is unusual. One would expect that managing such a large ongoing supression would be the main focus of discussions between traders. It is possible that the plaintiffs may have withheld this evidence for strategic purposes but if not, this case may end up turning into a battle of the bookworms with academics arguing econometrics and questioning what does the “mean of the cumulative unadjusted returns” really mean.

  Whichever way the case develops, bullion banks now have increased costs of supervising and managing the risks that precious metals trading desk “bros” might be looking to “fk” their clients. Combined with the potential that the “cost of doing business will jump – perhaps by 300% on one estimate” due to Basel 3 rules, some may decide to do a Deutsche Bank and pull out of the market. The result may be further consolidation in bullion banking and give regulators more justification to push those that remain out of “dark” OTC trading and on to “lit” exchanges.

  

  

• What Is The Real Purpose Behind "Fake News" Propaganda?

  Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

  Here is the first problem with modern political discourse – too many people want to “win” arguments instead of getting to the greater truth of the matter. Discussions become brinkmanship. Opponents launch into immediate attacks instead of simply asking valid questions. They assert immediately that their position is the only valid position without verification. When confronted with rational responses and ample evidence, they dismiss everything instead of pondering what you have handed them. After this line is crossed, there is no point in continuing the debate. It will go on forever.

  This is one of the great tragedies of the Saul Alinsky method of political confrontation; it has bred entire generations of people who now believe that there is no objective truth. They think everything is relative. Because of this belief, they assume that there is no wrong or right side, no wrong or right goal. Instead, there are only goals that are MORE right than the goals of others. Everything boils down to a “lesser of two evils” mentality, and the ends therefore justify the means. Using dishonest measures to win the fight becomes acceptable.

  In the end, ideological combat actually prevents people from learning rather than helping them get to the root of the issue. We live in a world where truth is superfluous to the overall narrative. The only thing that is important is destroying your rivals.

  A classic strategy of dishonest debate and disinformation is to use every method possible to avoid confronting your ideological opponents legitimate arguments and to attack him personally. If you can’t beat him on fair ground using reason and evidence, then why not undermine his character so that the public will be influenced to avoid listening to him at all.  This is sometimes called “inoculation.”

  At first glance, this is what the entire “fake news” meme supported by the mainstream media seems to be about.

  The MSM has proven itself utterly ineffective against the rise of the alternative media. And as I have explained in recent articles, there is a very good and obvious reason for this. The alternative media is the closest thing to a “free market” of ideas that the world has had in a very long time.  Before web media, the public was strictly limited to a handful of corporate outlets that dictated information flow with an iron fist.  If you wanted to learn anything beyond the mainstream narrative, you had to data mine at the library in an infinitely slower fashion, or try to personally seek out people who represented sources and witnesses.

  Today, data mining happens at light speed. Facts and evidence are uncovered in real time. Video interviews and transcripts can be achieved as quickly as a phone call. They can be examined and witnesses can be cited without traveling across the country. The prevalence of visual media also makes it difficult for witnesses to lie about their original claims later down the road.

  Beyond this, the alternative media offers something the masses have rarely ever had — choice. People can now look at all sides of an issue and all available evidence and decide for themselves what conclusions make the most sense. The mainstream media has only ever offered one side, with highly regulated information and cherry-picked evidence.

  The mainstream media’s purpose has never been to convey the unfettered “news.”  Rather, their purpose has always been to manipulate public opinion, and we saw this revealed undeniably during the 2016 election as Wikileaks exposed journalist after journalist using their position of public trust as a weapon to influence the election outcome.

  Instead of admitting wrongdoing after this embarrassment, the MSM has decided to double down and escalate the accusation that the alternative media is “fake news.” Meaning, the MSM wants people to believe that we are liars and amateurs, that they are the “professionals,” and that the public should ignore everything the alternative media has to say from now on.  I have to point out, though, that the narrative of mainstream news versus “fake news” seems a little thin to me.

  Meaning, I believe there is more going on here than the MSM simply trying to save itself.

  Call me a “conspiracy theorist,” but the elitist controlled mainstream media does little to help itself through this strategy. Think about it; the MSM is already clearly dying if one looks at the ever shrinking size of their audience and the loss of younger viewers and readers. They have been deteriorating for years, while the alternative media has been exploding in influence. The promotion of the fake news meme requires these mainstream media outlets to actually LIST which sources they believe represent fake news.  This is what the Washington Post did with their promotion of liberal professor Melissa Zimdar’s list.

  So, forgive me if I am making too much of a leap here, but it seems that this tactic will only bring MORE web traffic to the sites listed, because the list does not really include any specific examples of “fake news” trespasses.  People who are curious will be compelled to then visit the alternative sites to see what all the fuss is about. Perhaps many of them will find something they like, rather than something they hate. To me, the entire set-up of the fake news meme hurts the mainstream news more than it helps them.

  The next major story linked to fake news has been the assertion by some in government (including the CIA) that the alternative media is actually a front for Russian hacking and propaganda. I predicted this development two years ago in my article 'When War Erupts Patriots Will Be Accused Of  Aiding “The Enemy.”'

  In that article, I argued that a war is being engineered between Eastern and Western powers (Russia and China vs. the U.S. and parts of Europe), and that this war will likely be an economic war.  I also pointed out that such a conflict might be used by the elites in the West to rout out the alternative media as agents of Russian propaganda.  Here’s a quote:

  “Another aspect of this plan, I believe, involves the hijacking of the image of the liberty movement. The liberty movement is essentially the most dangerous unknown element on the elite’s global chessboard. In fact, because we understand that international financiers and central bankers are the real enemy, we have the ability to leave the chessboard entirely and play by our own rules. Widespread economic or military conflict provides an opportunity to neutralize liberty activists who might turn revolutionary.

   

  Recently, I came across an article from The Atlantic titled Russia And The Menace Of Unreality. Now, some alternative analysts would read this article and immediately shrug it off as yet another attempt by the Western media machine to propagandize against Russia. Though their motivations are genuine, these analysts would be cementing the delusion that Russia is the “good guy” and the U.S. is the ever present “bad guy.” The Atlantic piece is a far more intricate manipulation than they would be giving credit for…”

   

  “…This was not as pressing an issue two years ago, when conflict with Russia was a ridiculous notion for many people. But today, conflict with Russia, at the very least on an economic scale, is an inevitability. If you read in full the linked Atlantic article, the narrative that is being constructed is clear — the establishment hopes to rewrite the history and image of the liberty movement by painting us as dupes radicalized by Russian propaganda, rather than being the originators of our own grassroots movement with our own philosophy and methodology. Through this, they take away our ownership of our own cause.”

  It would appear that everything I warned about two years ago is now happening.  That said, I would amend my original viewpoint to include a new dynamic. 

  The coming economic war will be based on a false paradigm — the false East/West paradigm.  Over the years I have outlined in great detail the evidence that Eastern nations are just as controlled by central banking elites and globalist interests as Western nations, including evidence that Vladimir Putin is an avid supporter of the International Monetary Fund’s push for a single global currency system using the Special Drawing Rights basket as a bridge. He is also now suddenly a supporter of the UN’s climate change and carbon taxation agenda.

  I consistently warned analysts within the liberty movement to be careful about cheerleading too much for Russia and Putin, not only because he is controlled opposition, but because eventually we would be caught up in a media war that would label us as enemy conspirators.  Remaining (rightly) critical of Putin was the best way to avoid being labeled as a member of the “fake news,” or a purveyor of Russian propaganda.

  It was my original belief that the elitist media would use the alternative media’s love affair with Putin as a means to undermine our credibility. However, today I would say that in a strange kind of way, the opposite is taking place.

  Confusing? Yes. Look at it this way; with the predominantly leftist mainstream media dying in an irreversible way, no amount of whining about “fake news” is going to save them. The rise of the “populists” is at hand, and as I have warned for the past year, this is by design.  Just as conservative anti-establishment movements are rising in geopolitical influence, so to is the anti-establishment media. We are sort of a package deal.

  My belief is that conservative movements and the alternative media are being allowed into a position of cultural authority. The globalists are stepping out of the way (for now) as we grow in power. They are doing this in preparation for the final stage of an economic collapse they have been gestating since at least 2008. They are doing this because their goal is to set us up as scapegoats for a global disaster that will be remembered for centuries to come. I was able to predict the success of the Brexit Referendum,  Donald Trump’s election win and the latest Federal Reserve rate hike based on this theory and I believe it will continue to prove itself.

  The globalists know that at this stage the fake news meme will only HELP US, rather than hurt us. That is to say, the elites are throwing the leftist media to the wolves and the Russian propaganda claims will only make the MSM look more ridiculous.  The globalists see the writing on the wall — in fact, with the level of web analytics at their disposal, they can read and predict shifts in social consciousness before almost anyone else is aware of them.

  Instead of trying to obstruct us or fight us directly, I believe the elites plan to co-opt us or co-opt our image. That is to say, they will let us grow in apparent influence, trigger a crisis, and either use certain alternative outlets as the new mainstream, or simply paint all of us as complicit in the failures of conservative governments and nationalism.

  The end game here is to destroy the underlying principles of liberty movements; to make future generations reel in horror at the very mention of conservatives and national sovereignty.  The elites are playing a very complex strategy of fourth-generation warfare. Nothing you see is exactly what it seems. The fake news label is not meant to disrupt the alternative media. In fact it will help us rise to a position in which we can be blamed for negative global influence.

  Some people will say I am reading too much into the situation, or that I am giving the elites “too much credit,” or attributing too much “omnipotence” to their position. They will probably reference the recent passage of the 'Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act' and claim that this is clearly meant to take down the alternative media.

  I would ask these people to consider a question, though — who will really have control over this legislation in the near future?  If I am right, and Trump enters the White House in January with a Republican majority in Congress and the Senate, will it not be Trump that most benefits from the legal framework? How then will it serve to undermine the alternative and conservative media?

  I predict, in fact, that conservatives are being given enough rope to hang themselves with. I predict that Trump will utilize this legislation to go after the mainstream media, not the alternative media, and that many conservatives will support him even though questions of constitutionality will increase. I believe the fake news meme will backfire and that the MSM will die off as a result.

  I believe that this is all part of a carefully crafted narrative in which the right wing gains unprecedented political sway, only to be met with economic and social disaster. I believe that the game is far from over in the fight between globalists and sovereignty activists. I believe they cannot defeat us directly, so they now hope to defeat us indirectly, or, trick us into defeating ourselves. In reality, the game is just beginning.

  

  

• Wall Street is Overly Optimistic on Trump Presidency (Video)

  By EconMatters

  
  

  

  We discuss some of the challenges Donald Trump has had in his past with just making good solid decisions, let alone being the savior that is currently priced into financial markets for the US Economy. The Stock Market is setup for a big letdown in 2017 if past performance of Donald Trump regarding his competency at doing anything right is analyzed in depth.

  I would really like to know how we are going to cut the corporate tax rate, and at the same time fund a large infrastructure project in a rising rate environment with a strong US Dollar and 20 Trillion Dollars in National Debt and climbing. Wall Street does understand that this is impossible and actually incompatible economic policy goals right?

   

  

  

  

  

  © EconMatters All Rights Reserved | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Email Digest | Kindle    

  

• Entire Police Department Quits After "Illegal, Unethical, And Immoral" Requests By Town Council

  The Town Council of the small town of Bunker Hill, Indiana, home to 888 residents, is likely wishing they had  “do-over” this morning after constant budget cuts and alleged “illegal, unethical, and immoral” requests from council members resulted in the entire police force quitting.  Per the Fox 59 affiliate in Indianapolis, the Bunker Hill town Marshall and his 4 deputies all walked off the job earlier this week and have no intention of returning. 
  

  An entire Indiana town has no police officers after every single one walked off the job. The officers blame the Bunker Hill Town Council for the situation.

   

  Thomison served as town marshal for four years until Monday night when he and four other officers handed over resignation letters to the council, telling them they have had enough.

   

  “They would not communicate with us or the officers and they kept scaling back,” said Thomison.

   

  In their resignation letters, the officers accuse council members of asking them to “do illegal, unethical, and immoral things.” They cited examples like asking police to run background checks on other town councilors to find their criminal history. The officers also claim they were threatened when they said no.

   

  Another issue they brought up in the letter was their safety. The officers say they were all forced to share one set of body armor, putting their lives on the line while they were out making arrests and serving warrants.

   

  “I did not want to send someone out there with bad body armor so I would take mine off and provide it to the other officers. I told them we have to provide this, there is an IC code that explains that and says that the town has to provide that body armor,” said Thomison.

   

  Meanwhile the Bunker Hill Town Council offered the following statement to residents saying that disagreements with the police force were “caused by the lack of funding available to the town” but that council members had never asked officers to “be involved in any illegal, unethical or immoral actions.”  Well, clearly it seems like someone is stretching the truth slightly.  

  Like most small towns, there have been from time to time, disagreements in the policy making process between the town council and other town departments. The current town council as well as prior councils have, on occasion, had disagreements with Mr. Thomison over a number of things. These disagreements have primarily been caused by the lack of funding available to the town to invest in the police department. However, the council denies that it has failed to provide body armor for the marshal or reserve deputies. The council is well aware of Indiana law on the topic and has complied with it fully. Further, the council absolutely denies that it has ever asked Mr. Thomison or any of the reserve deputies to be involved in any illegal, unethical or immoral actions.

   

  The council admits that it had made a number of cuts to the police department over the last few years. This was a decision the town made due to a lack of funding. Bunker Hill is diligently working to solve this problem for the coming year. The cuts made to the police department were not made with the intention of jeopardizing the safety of any of the town’s police officers. Over the last few years, the Council has made attempts to find additional money for the department. Mr. Thomison was instrumental in obtaining a large sum of money on behalf of the town. However, he fails to state that the police department received the benefit of a large portion of that funding.

   

  As Mr. Thomison has stated, there is currently a lawsuit pending against the town relating to Indiana’s Open Door Law. The council denies that it has violated Indiana’s Open Door Law in any manner. However, the council will not comment further on this topic as the litigation is still pending.

   

  The resignation of the entire police force has come as a shock to the council. It has never been the goal to dismantle or otherwise endanger the town police department or officers. The council thanks these officers for their service to the town. Bunker Hill is in the process of obtaining a new marshal and reserve deputies. The council asks for patience from the town residents in this process.

  If ever there was a time and a place for some drag racing on public streets…this is it for Bunker Hill residents…enjoy!

  

  

• Obama Vows Retaliation Against "Russia Hacking", To Hold Press Conference On Friday

  With last night’s top nationwide story, the NBC report that according to unnamed CIA sources, Vladimir Putin himself supervised the hacking of the US presidential election (it is still unclear precisely how Putin “hacked the election”, or for that matter, what if any proof exists ), making the rounds and as of this moment having been placed front and center on the front page of Reuters.com …

  

  … it was obvious that this story was not going away just four days before the Dec. 19, Electoral College vote.

  And sure enough, on Thursday evening CNN reported that President Barack Obama vowed retaliatory action against Russia for its meddling in the US presidential election, in effect telling Russia he is about to declare cyberwar on it.

  “I think there is no doubt that when any foreign government tries to impact the integrity of our elections that we need to take action and we will at a time and place of our own choosing,” Obama told National Public Radio. He is certainly right: the only doubt is that a foreign government did in fact try to “impact the integrity of our elections.”

  

  Describing potential countermeasures by the US, the President, confirming he had learned something from Donald Trump, said “some of it may be explicit and publicized; some of it may not be.“

  Obama also said he directly confronted Russian President Vladimir Putin about a potential US response, and said his counterpart acknowledged his stance. “Mr. Putin is well aware of my feelings about this, because I spoke to him directly about it,” Obama said.

  As CNN adds, Obama and Putin conferred on the sidelines of the G20 meeting in China in September. Afterwards, Obama told reporters he raised cybersecurity with the Russian leader. It was not clear if Obama had told Putin he was prepared to launch World Cyber War I against the Russian, just because Hillary won an election every “expert” in the country said Trump would lose.

  Intelligence agencies in October pinned blame on Russia for election-related hacking. At the time, the White House vowed a “proportional response” to the cyberactivity, though declined to preview what that response might entail.

  Russia has, of course, laughed off this escalating stupidity. Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov told state TV channel Rossiya-24 that he was “dumbstruck” by the NBC report of Putin’s alleged involvement.
  “I think this is just silly, and the futility of the attempt to convince somebody of this is absolutely obvious,” he said.

  Early on Thursday, Putin spokesman Dmitry Peskov told the AP the report was “laughable nonsense“, while Russian foreign ministry spox Maria Zakharova accused “Western media” of being a “shill” and a “mouthpiece of various power groups”, and added that “it’s not the general public who’s being manipulated,” Zakharova said. “the general public nowadays can distinguish the truth. It’s the mass media that is manipulating themselves.“

  That may be true, but Obama is set to give it one last try.

  As CNN further adds, officials have said US actions against Russia may not be revealed publicly.

  Speaking Thursday at the White House, Press Secretary Josh Earnest declined to say whether the US had already begun its response to Moscow’s actions. “The President determined once the intelligence community had reached this assessment that a proportional response was appropriate,” Earnest said. “At this point, I don’t have anything to say about whether or not that response has been carried out.”

  Meanwhile, at Hillary Clinton’s “thank you” party for billionaire donors, the topic of both Donald Trump and Russian hacking came up, and Hillary told her supporters not to “lose heart.”

  Spotted arriving at Hillary Clinton “thank you” donor party at The Plaza (former Trump property): Anna Wintour, Harvey Weinstein, Vera Wang

  — Monica Alba (@albamonica) December 16, 2016

  HRC talked Putin & Russian hacking tonight at NYC donor party, per source in the room — said she was proud to have stood up to Putin as SoS

  — Monica Alba (@albamonica) December 16, 2016

  Per source, Hillary Clinton did not mention Donald Trump in her remarks tonight but told supporters not to “lose heart”

  — Monica Alba (@albamonica) December 16, 2016

   

  Then there were other, unsubstantiated if more concerning reports:

  CNN is reporting that Trump's refusal to acknowledge Russia interference has made White House decide orderly transition isn't main priority

  — David Yankovich (@DavidYankovich) December 16, 2016

  * * *

  So what does it all mean? We’ll know the answer tomorrow early afternoon.

  According to Reuters, President Barack Obama will hold an impromptu press conference at the White House on Friday at 2:15 p.m. ET before leaving for his annual family vacation in Hawaii, the White House said on Thursday. It would be fitting if Obama announced he would start a cyberwar with Russia, then jetted off to the safety of a far off, golf-friendly island.

  

  

• Doug Casey: "Sell All Your Bonds"

  Via Casey Daily Despatch,

  [The following essay originally appeared in this month’s issue of The Casey Report.]

  So, Trump has won the election. Of course anything can happen between now and his presumed inauguration on January 20. Maybe the Swamp Creatures will succeed in causing a recount in so-called Purple States that could change the number of electors in Hillary’s favor. Maybe they’ll somehow influence Trump electors to vote for Hillary. None of this would have been an issue if Baby Bush II, Jeb, had been the Republican nominee, as was supposed to have happened. It all just shows what a transparent (a word these people love to use) fraud “democracy” has become.

  Let the hoi polloi cast a meaningless vote, so they have the illusion of being in control. Instead of seeing themselves as subjects, they’ll think they’re “we the people,” who actually have some say in what happens. That way they’ll pay their taxes willingly, enthusiastically sign on to aggressive wars on the other side of the world against people they know nothing about, and generally do as they’re told. Because it’s supposed to be patriotic. “Democracy” is a much more effective scam for controlling the plebs than kingship or dictatorship.

  That said, the Establishment, the Deep State, was genuinely shocked and appalled by Trump’s victory. As Baby Bush the First would have said, they misunderestimated how angry the average voter was. That’s because the Coastal Democratic Elite are totally out of touch with the common man. But they needn’t fret too much. They’ll be re-installed, with a vengeance, in four years.

  That will likely be true for two reasons:

  1. Simple demographics. The groups that vote Democrat (e.g., blacks, Hispanics, urban dwellers, immigrants, Millennials) are growing in numbers faster than those who vote Republican. Republicans are older people, and the Boomers (born 1946–1966) and the Silent Generation (1926–1946) are dying off. More people are moving to the cities, and that influences them to vote Democratic. More people (still, idiotically) are pursuing higher education, and that also influences them to vote Democrat.

  2. The Greater Depression. One definition of a depression is a period of time when distortions and misallocations of capital are liquidated. A time when bubbles caused by monetary expansion are popped. A time when unsound businesses fail. I re-emphasize this because the party on whose watch it happens is automatically kicked out. So, the Democrats actually got quite lucky not to be in office when the time bomb goes off. Trump could easily go down as Herbert Hoover II.

  What could change things? A serious war, much bigger than the sport wars the US is currently engaged in, is the biggest danger. That’s much less likely with Trump than Hillary, but these things have a life of their own. My guess for the next president is either a left-wing general (because Americans love and trust their military), or a left-wing populist, like Elizabeth Warren.

  But that’s crystal balling at this point. Let’s proceed on the assumption Trump is actually going to be the president for at least the next four years. Although problematical, he’s a vast improvement over Hillary. What will it mean for the US and the world? More importantly, what will it mean for your personal finances and freedom? Let’s look at the possibilities.

  Bonds—With bonds, we’re at the peak of the biggest financial bubble in world history. This is a very big deal.

   

  Interest rates move in very long cycles. They went up from the mid-1940s to the early ’80s, when long-term government bonds peaked at close to 16%, and T-Bills at over 16%. I thought they hit bottom years ago, but the cycle overshot.

   

  My guess is that they’re headed up in earnest now. And Trump, as someone who understands business (even though he doesn’t understand economics), will likely (I think…) do what he can to send them higher. Why? He understands the country needs to save, to rebuild capital. And higher rates will encourage saving and discourage debt.

   

  The risk is that, with all the debt that’s been put on in the last decade, debtors will be hard-pressed to service it. That includes the USG with $20 trillion of on-balance-sheet debt, and a lot more in the way of off-balance-sheet debt, guarantees, and contingent liabilities. Much of it will be activated if higher rates cause a lot of defaults.

   

  What should you do? Sell all your bonds.

   

  Real Estate—Property, at least in the English-speaking world, floats on a sea of debt. Interest rates go up, real estate prices go down. The economy goes down, so do property prices. Add to that the aging US population, which isn’t good for property; as people age, they downsize. Add to that the fact we’re in another real estate bubble, similar to what we saw in the mid-oughts. After bonds, property is likely the worst place to be. In fact, I’ll go so far as to say the great post–World War II property boom is at an end—but that’s a subject for another time. There’s not much that Trump can do to fix this.

   

  What should you do? Lighten up on property. Make sure any mortgages you keep are at fixed rates.

   

  Stocks—If Trump only follows through with his promise to cut taxes, and eliminate two old regulations for every new one, it would be wonderful for the economy. But the economy and the stock market are two different things; they only correlate over the long run. I suppose he’ll follow through with his promise to build lots of new infrastructure. Government deficits will soar, and only the Fed will be on hand to buy all that new debt.

   

  Infrastructure companies will get a fat slug of the newly printed money. But I find it hard to get enthusiastic for the stock market. In terms of dividends, P/E ratios, or book value, it’s already at one of the highest levels ever. Bear in mind that well-selected stocks can still go up, even if the market as a whole goes down.

   

  That said, I feel more comfortable with shorts than longs at this point.

   

  Gold and Commodities—Frankly, where do you put your money when almost everything is overpriced? Commodities are coming out of a five-year-long bear market. They’re about the only thing that’s cheap. That’s true relative to their cost of production (farmers, ranchers, and miners are breaking even, at best, all over the world). And it’s true relative to their history (they’re down 50% from the peak of 2011).

   

  In other words, commodities are a much safer place for your capital than stocks, bonds, or real estate (excepting agricultural property) for the foreseeable future. The problem is that it’s hard to hold a carload of wheat or ten tonnes of sugar.

   

  Remember that gold and other commodities aren’t “investments.” An investment is something that acts to create new wealth. They’re simply assets. Sometimes they can be excellent speculations. Gold, however, is money, and will remain so long after the US destroys its currency.

   

  I recommend, therefore, that you accumulate gold and silver instead of plunging into conventional investments. Check with the dealers we list in The Gold Book to see who you prefer to work with. [Editor's note: The Gold Book is exclusive to readers of The Casey Report, which you can sign up for at the end of today's essay.] But if you don’t have a significant position in the metals already, please get going.

  A final thought. It’s usually a mistake to count on any head of state to make things in a country better. It can certainly happen—as with Erhard in Germany after WW2, Pinochet in Chile, Thatcher in Britain, or even Reagan in the US. Maybe it will be true of Trump. He’s got a much stronger personality than Reagan, for openers. But the bigger and older a State gets, the harder it is to change. It’s comparable to trying to stop a fully loaded supertanker.

  

  

• Goldman Warns Bond Yields Are Now "A Threat To Risky Assets"

  At the end of November, when the 10Y yield had just cracked 2.3%, Goldman, together with SocGen, JPM, RBC and various other banks, gave its answer to what may be one of the most important questions for the market right now: how high can 10Y bond yields go before they start to hurt equities? Goldman answered that “the equity market is still at a level that can cope with moderately rising bond yields. We estimate that a rise in US bond yields above 2.75% or probably between 0.75-1% in Germany would create a more serious problem for equity markets: at that point we would expect the correlation between bonds and equities to be more positive – i.e., any further rises in yields from there would be a negative for stock returns.”

  2.75% is also the level above which JPM’s Marko Kolanovic said last week the 10 Year would begin to cause problems for stocks:

  Going into US elections, macro systematic investors (such as trend followers and various Var-based strategies) were long bonds. While the performance of these strategies suffered, the “risk on” nature of the market reaction (bonds down, equities up) prevented a more rapid deleveraging. Yet this risk is not entirely eliminated, and should bond yields continue increasing (e.g. 10Y beyond 2.75%) this will risk an equity sell-off that usually triggers a broader deleveraging of var-based strategies.

  Incidentally, according to other banks such as SocGen, the market is already in purgatory: at the end of November we showed an analysis by SocGen according to which at bond yields above 2.60%, stocks are rich relative to bonds.

  In any case, fast forward to today when Goldman has refreshed its cross-asset modelling, and reports that “US 10-year rates have now overshot our 3-month forecast of 2.30%, and are now close to our Bond Sudoku macro measure of ‘fair value’, which is currently around 2.60%. 

  US Treasuries Have Reached our Sudoku Fair Value of 2.6%
  

  

  This is the first time since 2013 Goldman reports the “valuation gap” is completely closed.

  The bank then notes that based on its bond impulse analysis – designed to identify which bond market is leading the others – the sell-off in global rates is solely led by the US.

  

  But the Goldman punchline is that with US Treasuries now at the bank’s measure of fair value, they are now “starting to become a problem for the risk complex.” To wit:

  As a result of the strengthening of the Dollar and the increase in long-term rates, US Financial Conditions are tightening on our preferred measure. The change in financial conditions since September is roughly equivalent to 70bp of cumulative Fed hikes. As we argued in a recent note, should US 10-year rates move above ‘fair value’, this would represent a threat to risky assets unless incoming data continue to sustain the optimism they now discount.

  The problem is that incoming data, if anything, indicate that the Fed is now not only behind its own curve, but that of Donald Trump, whose hundreds of billions in fiscal stimulus will only push the envelope further, and force the Fed to tighten even more aggressively as Yellen hinted during the FOMC press conference.

  For now, however, Goldman has issued its warning, although it is unclear if the hypnotized, euphoric market will even bother to listen.

  

  

• China Devalues Yuan To Weakest Fix Since May 2008

  Following last night’s bond bloodbath, The Fed fallout continues in China as The PBOC has devalued the official Yuan fix the most since Brexit to its weakest level since May 2008, breaking above 6.95/USD. Since the “one-off” devaluation in Aug 2015, the Chinese currency has now weakened almost 14% against the dollar.

  While the broad Renminbi basket has been “stable” against China’s global trading partners for 3 months…

  

   

  It appears the devaluation pressure has been focused back against the US Dollar…

  

   

  And bear in mind that the “stability” we described above came at the grand cost of a stunning quarter of a trillion in reserves ‘defending’ the outflow pressure in 2016…

   

  

   

  For now the China bond market has stabilized a little (by which we mean it is not collapsing).

  

   

  At some point this butterfly’s wings of turmoil will ripple across the world’s liquidity markets and punch all those with a plan in US banking stocks in the face… the question is, when?

  

  

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• Fed Fallout Escalates: China Bond Market Crashes Most On Record, Yuan Plunges

  After a bubblicious surge higher over the last few months (as China's hot money swishes from one trending-higher market to another), China's bond market is collapsing. As Chinese money-markets tighten into new year, yuan weakens, and capital outflows accelerate, so it appears the final bastion of safety has cracked. Chinese bond futures crashed overnight by the most on record, erasing in a week the gains of the last 18 months.

  The rally began in 2014, buoyed by slowing economic growth and a monetary-easing cycle that kicked off in November that year. Now that is over…

  

   

  As Chinese liquidity pressures ripple up from the short-term repo markets…

  

   

  Offshore Yuan has tumbled 5 handles since The Fed raised rates…

  

   

  And Japanese stocks cannot hold a bid despite the weaker yen.

  It appears Janet's message about Trump's fiscal plan is starting to sink in.

  

  

• Celebrities Unite to Ask Electors to Vote Against Trump on December 19th

  The fuckery is indeed very real.

  The fervor and energetic effort into preventing Trump from taking the Presidency, has taken on new levels of lunacy by the left — who are absurdly panicked and beguiled by paranoia to the point of making themselves into carnivale clown jackasses — all but assuring the reelection of Trump in 2020 and the Silver Fox in 2024.

  Springboarding off the hysterical media and their Russian fairytales of election tampering and raging Putin vendettas, a new organization has appeared — seemingly out of nowhere. They call themselves United For America and they are cucks.

  Here is their mission statement.

  

  According to their Whois data, the website was launched shortly after Thanksgiving, suggestive that plans to deny Trump the Presidency has been in motion for at least three weeks.

  

  Here is their sparsely followed Twitter account — again indicative of their irrelevancy and newness to the 2016 elections.

  

  And here is their video, a plea for help from the electors — practically begging them to ignore the will of the people and to vote against Trump on 12/19, saying they’d make history doing so and would be considered heroes for ‘voting their conscience’, somehow suggesting that the electors don’t really want to vote for Trump — but only do so because he won the god damned elections.

  This video shall forever immortalize the emotional collapse of the left — bedraggled snowflakes, crestfallen, deep in a stupor of their own making.

  Acceptance is the final stage of grief, something the illiberal left will soon be forced to endure — whether they want to or not.

   

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

  

• Jill Stein Spends $1mm Of Recount Donations On "Staff, Admin and Consultants"

  After promising to spend “every dollar” of the donations she raised from disaffected Hillary supporters on recount efforts, Jill Stein has just released the following budget which reveals that over $1mm (or nearly 15% of the total $7.3mm raised) was used to fund her “staff payroll,” “consultants,” “administrative expenses,” and “compliance costs.”  This looks eerily similar to some Clinton Foundation budgets we recently reviewed which claimed to have spent “every dollar” of their donations on “charity work.”

  

   

  Of course, to add insult to injury, Stein’s efforts in Wisconsin actually widened Trump’s margin of victory while recount efforts in Michigan and Pennsylvania were shut down by courts based on merit.  Therefore, given that Wisconsin’s net votes changed by a grand total of 131, Stein effectively paid $56,759 for each changed vote.  

  And while that may sound like a complete failure to most of us, Stein, in a press release posted to her website, was a bit more upbeat describing the recounts as a “resounding success.”

  “Thanks to over 161,000 donors and support from more than 10,000 volunteers, this historic recount pushed forward in three states, defying every political blocking tactic and clearing every bureaucratic and financial hurdle,” said Dr. Jill Stein, 2016 Green Party candidate for president. “It was an amazing affirmation of the power of the American people to have a voice in their voting system and demand elections with integrity. By revealing serious problems about our voting systems, out of date laws and recount procedures in three states, these recounts were a resounding success. Our efforts have shined a light on the urgent need for reforms to our electoral system, to election laws and to recount procedures. We look forward to continuing our work to make those reforms a reality. The fight for civil and constitutional rights of all Americans goes on today – stronger than ever before.”

  So congrats on the “resounding success” young Hillary voters!  You spent $7.3mm to widen Trump’s margin of victory and didn’t even “get a lousy hat.”

  
  

  

  

• Former UK Ambassador Says Source Of Clinton Emails Was "Disgusted" Democratic Whistleblower

  Just as the CIA/Democrat/Mainstream Media narrative of Russia's involvement in the election jumps the shark with fact-less accusations of Putin's personal involvement, The Daily Mail blows the entire 'hack' meme out of the water. As an evoy for Wikileaks, former UK ambassador Craig Murray claims he flew to Washington for a clandestine handoff with one source, who "had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks… Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians."

  

  Murray, who blasted The CIA's "blatant lies" in a recent op-ed, has now come forward with more details on how he knows they are lying… (as The Daily Mail reports)

  Craig Murray, former British ambassador to Uzbekistan and a close associate of Wikileaks founder Julian Assange, told Dailymail.com that he flew to Washington, D.C. for a clandestine hand-off with one of the email sources in September.

   

  'Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,' said Murray in an interview with Dailymail.com on Tuesday. 'The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.'

  While Murray is a controversial figure who was removed from his post as a British ambassador amid allegations of misconduct. He was cleared of those but left the diplomatic service in acrimony. His links to Wikileaks are well known.

  His account contradicts directly the version of how thousands of Democratic emails were published before the election being advanced by U.S. intelligence.

  Murray insisted that the DNC and Podesta emails published by Wikileaks did not come from the Russians, and were given to the whistleblowing group by Americans who had authorized access to the information.

   

  'Neither of [the leaks] came from the Russians,'  Murray said. 'The source had legal access to the information. The documents came from inside leaks, not hacks.'

   

  He said the leakers were motivated by 'disgust at the corruption of the Clinton Foundation and the tilting of the primary election playing field against Bernie Sanders.'

   

  Murray said he retrieved the package from a source during a clandestine meeting in a wooded area near American University, in northwest D.C. He said the individual he met with was not the original person who obtained the information, but an intermediary.

   

  

  His account cannot be independently verified but is in line with previous statements by Wikileaks – which was the organization that published the Podesta and DNC emails.

  Murray declined to say where the sources worked and how they had access to the information, to shield their identities.

   

  He suggested that Podesta's emails might be 'of legitimate interest to the security services' in the U.S., due to his communications with Saudi Arabia lobbyists and foreign officials.

   

  Murray said he was speaking out due to claims from intelligence officials that Wikileaks was given the documents by Russian hackers as part of an effort to help Donald Trump win the U.S. presidential election.

   

  'I don't understand why the CIA would say the information came from Russian hackers when they must know that isn't true,' he said. 'Regardless of whether the Russians hacked into the DNC, the documents Wikileaks published did not come from that.'

  Assange has similarly disputed that charges that Wikileaks received the leaked emails from Russian sources.

  'The Clinton camp has been able to project a neo-McCarthyist hysteria that Russia is responsible for everything,' Assange told John Pilger during an interview in November.

   

  'Hillary Clinton has stated multiple times, falsely, that 17 US intelligence agencies had assessed that Russia was the source of our publications. That's false – we can say that the Russian government is not the source.'

  As Murray concluded in his recent op-ed, the continued ability of the mainstream media to claim the leaks lost Clinton the election because of “Russia”, while still never acknowledging the truths the leaks reveal, is Kafkaesque.

  It is terrible that the prime conduit for this paranoid nonsense is a once great newspaper, the Washington Post, which far from investigating executive power, now is a sounding board for totally evidence free anonymous source briefing of utter bullshit from the executive.

  The worst thing about all this is that it is aimed at promoting further conflict with Russia. This puts everyone in danger for the sake of more profits for the arms and security industries – including of course bigger budgets for the CIA. As thankfully the four year agony of Aleppo comes swiftly to a close today, the Saudi and US armed and trained ISIS forces counter by moving to retake Palmyra. This game kills people, on a massive scale, and goes on and on.

  

  

• Report: House Intelligence Committee Abruptly Cancels Briefing After CIA Declined to Attend

  The current hysteria over Russian interference doesn’t infer that they hacked the voting itself, but instead made available true information about the Hillary Clinton campaign, by way of Wikileaks, which then swayed public opinion to vote in favor of Trump. In other words, Podesta, Clinton and their media shills are still corrupt bastards, beholden to Saudi Arabia and China — but had the American people never learned about it via the Wikileaks, well then, they might’ve voted for her instead of Trump.

  In a nut shell, that’s the democrat argument for fomenting war against Russia and to overturn the will of the people. Again, no one is questioning the validity of the votes, but the souls of men and how they felt after reading the Wikileaks.

  Fox News is reporting the House Committee has abruptly canceled a briefing scheduled for tomorrow — due to the CIA not making anyone available to attend. As of now, the CIA is refusing to comment on the matter, until their full assessment of the situation is made available to President Obama before 1/20/17.

  Source: Fox

  The House Intelligence Committee abruptly canceled a briefing set for Thursday on alleged Russian interference in the U.S. election, after the CIA declined to provide a briefer for the session, Fox News is told.

  Amid concerns about reports that conflict with details previously provided to the committee, Chairman Devin Nunes, R-Calif., had requested a closed, classified briefing Thursday for committee Republican and Democratic members from the FBI, CIA, Office of the Director of National Intelligence and National Security Agency.

  But Fox News is told the CIA declined citing its focus on the full review requested by President Obama, and the other agencies did not respond to the committee’s request, which is unusual given the panel is the most-senior committee with jurisdiction.

  “It is unacceptable that the Intelligence Community directors would not fulfill the House Intelligence Committee’s request to be briefed tomorrow on the cyber-attacks that occurred during the presidential campaign,” Nunes said in a statement. “The Committee is deeply concerned that intransigence in sharing intelligence with Congress can enable the manipulation of intelligence for political purposes.”

  “Last week, the President ordered a full Intelligence Community review of foreign efforts to influence recent Presidential elections – from 2008 to present,” the statement added. “Once the review is complete in the coming weeks, the Intelligence Community stands ready to brief Congress—and will make those findings available to the public consistent with protecting intelligence sources and methods. We will not offer any comment until the review is complete.”

  Separately, Fox News has learned additional details about the “full review” President Obama ordered from his intelligence agencies regarding Russian interference.

  The review is being led by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, and is a multi-agency effort. Investigators plan to take existing intelligence and reconstruct what happened.

  Fox News is told one focus is on whether there is new intelligence that substantiates analysis the interference was designed to ensure a Trump victory, or whether a review of the existing intelligence with “fresh eyes” leads to new conclusions.

  Some lawmakers, on both sides of the aisle, have backed calls for a separate congressional investigation, voicing concern that Obama’s intelligence agencies might not be able to conduct a thorough review before he leaves office.

  Given statements from the White House, Fox News is told there is considerable pressure on the intelligence community to declassify as much of the findings as possible before Jan. 20, when Trump is set to take the oath of office.

  As of yesterday, 55 electors are asking for information regarding the Russian scare and if Trump knew anything about it. What the fuck?

  The Electors require to know from the intelligence community whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations. We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States.

  Judging by libtards comments like the one featured below, there are many on the left who believe the election result isn’t conclusive.

  Thoughts? The electoral college is scheduled to vote on December 19th.

   

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

  

• The Conspiracy To Shut Down Truth, Donald Trump, & The American People

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  There is circumstantial evidence that the Washington Post, the New York Times, and the rest of the presstitute media are part of a conspiracy with the oligarchs, the military/security complex, the Hillary Democrats, and neoconized Republicans to shut down the dissident Internet alternative media and to deny Donald Trump the presidency.

  Consider the brand new website PropOrNot and its fake news list of 200 Internet Russian agents. PropOrNot is a website hidden behind multiple screens as would be an offshore tax avoidance scheme. In other words, no known, responsible entity is behind the site, which has libeled 200 other websites, or if it is, it is too ashamed of what it is doing to be associated with it publicly.

  Consider the expertise and money required to shield the identity of an organization, whether tax avoidance or website. This is not something that just anyone can do. This type of Klingon cloaking requires real money or the CIA.

  As long as it pretends to be a newspaper, the Washington Post is subject to journalistic ethics. But the PropOrNot story by Craig Timberg violated journalistic ethics. Unsupported accusations were leveled against 200 websites, a McCarthyism record.

  How did a story, which would have been instantly quashed by editors in my day as a Wall Street Journal editor get past Timberg’s editor?

  That is the question.

  Here we have the Post committing libel against 200 websites, all of whom can sue for damages. There go Bezos’ billions.

  Would a Washington Post editor of any intelligence have published such a libel-inviting story unless the owner, Bezos, gave the OK or the order?

  How can the Washington Post feel secure in an act of libel?

  Is it because Bezos is protected by his reported membership on a US government committee, along with the Google CEO, that is believed to conspire against the privacy of the American people?

  PropOrNot would have amounted to nothing except for the Washington Post. Craig Timberg’s story was written as if PropOrNot was the real goods. Yet, Timberg does not reveal who is behind PropOrNot.

  Add to this picture the hyping by the Washington Post, New York Times, and TV presstitutes of the unattributed CIA charge that Russia hacked the Hillary emails and used them to elect Trump with the help of Russian agent websites. This fake news charge is challenged by Wikileaks and by a number of experts who asked why unattributed allegations are accepted in the place of evidence, and the charge is not supported by the FBI. How do we know that the alleged unattributed CIA charges are actually made by the CIA or whether there is consensus within the agency?

  How can the presstitutes, such as the NYT and Washington Post give us all these claims without a shred of evidence or any attribution to the CIA officials allegedly reporting the story? What kind of journalism is this?

  The conspiracy against truth and against president-elect Trump is real. The oligarchs and their presstitutes, rogue elements of the CIA and the neocon establishment hope to drag alternative media before McCarthyite congressional hearings run by the American hegemonists who want power over the world.

  Whatever you think of Trump, clearly the oligarchs who rule us fear him. The oligarchs are trying to keep Trump out of the presidency, and they are trying to associate truthful reporting with foreign influence.

  Who wins this war determines the fate of America.

  

  

• Will Today's Selloff Continue: According To RBC, Here Is One Way To Find Out

  Having hit it out of the park recently with several fantastic cross-asset pieces, including “RBC Warns January Is Setting Up As A “Massive Mean-Reversion” Month” and “RBC Answers “THE” Question Every Investor Is Asking: “What Could Derail This Rally?””, today in the aftermath of the FOMC’s press conference, RBC’s cross-asset head Charlie McElligott is out with another must read report, explaining why we find outselves at a “dangerous fork in the road.”

  But before we present it to readers, a more topical point touched on by McElligott is how to determine what happens to markets tomorrow, specifically: whether today’s selloff will continue.  His answer:

  It’s likely that the very potent mix of higher $/Y and hits being taken in UST portfolios should induce further UST pressure from that specific audience. Sidenote:If they sell the Nikkei tonight despite the enormous weakening in yen today…I’ll start turning rather nervous for risk assets.

  If Charlie is right, tomorrow is not shaping up to be a pretty day for risk assets, because in the early Japanese session, the Nikkei was indeed being sold…

  • JAPAN’S NIKKEI 225 FALLS 0.1% TO 19,225.24 AT MORNING CLOSE

  … even as the Yen retraced just a modest part of its massive intraday move today.

  

  * * *

  Here is the rest of RBC’s note:

  **SPECIAL REPORT**: A DANGEROUS FORK IN THE ROAD

  #HOTTAKE: Geez. 

  The initial post-Fed takeaway was the collective “uh oh” from the buyside which was forced to suddenly shift to a worldview that the Fed is now “behind the curve,” with three hikes seemingly to come in ’17 (up from 2 in Sept projection), and then three more in each of the following two years.  Off the back of this reassessment, the more troubling observation came in the form of the exponential move in “real rates”:

  

  A violent move to this extent in real rates and USD (BBDXY seeing a +2.6SD move on day) is pure “FINANCIAL TIGHTENING,” which of course “mucks-up” the plumbing of a global economy funded in Dollars.  This is not supportive of the “reflation trade.”  We need some +++ inflation data, stat. 

  Rates blew through 2.50 on their way to 2.57, and now markets are fixating on 2.75 as the next stop.  These new levels brought out convexity sellers / swaps payers from the mortgage universe, but there is also seemingly a willingness from the leveraged-crowd to let their shorts ride / further pay in swaps, as it continues to generate so much positive PNL.  Into year-end with ever-diminishing liquidity / bank balance sheet, it would support the case for this to run.  Feedback too from the overseas ‘real money’ crowd also indicates that this rates-move can continue to run, as they won’t be buyers with yields closing at new highs (and especially above the ‘round #’ 2.50 level).  It’s likely that the very potent mix of higher $/Y and hits being taken in UST portfolios should induce further UST pressure from that specific audience (sidenote: if they sell the Nikkei tonight despite the enormous weakening in yen today…I’ll start turning rather nervous for risk assets).

  The potentially good news is that generally-speaking, the risk-parity community has gone through a massive deleveraging of their bond / duration length over the recent move, so there might not be the same scale of ‘unemotional selling’ as we’ve gotten accustomed-to during prior episodes of rate volatility….while too the only modest move in VIX (just +3.7% because out of the money call vols were down roughly equivalent to the marginal move higher in OTM put vols, mitigating one another—H/T Jon Simon) won’t bring out the ‘risk-control’ / ‘vol target’ universe in forced / mechanical risk-based deleveraging either.  Incredibly, 15-, 30- and 50-day historic SPX vols all sit below 10 still.

  Stocks acted largely as one would expect on an asymmetrical rates move higher: bond proxies / ‘low vol’ / defensives were absolutely crushed on account of the escalation of the duration unwind:

  

  The REAL issue for us ‘secular reflationists’ is that the recent positioning-pivot ‘winners’—small caps, high beta cyclicals, ‘value’ factor—were also beaten-up along-side the rates sensitives.  And in nearly perfect fit with the “January Effect” quant factor reversal strategy scenario (where quants go long Q4 ‘losers’ against short Q4 ‘leaders’), the two key factor inputs (being 1- December outperformance of “momentum market neutral” and 2- “anti-beta market neutral”) that we are watching as indicators were both ‘signaling’ again, with the two strategies as the two best-performing components in my thematic monitor today (green box):

  

  Optimally I think if markets come in to rates ripping to new highs tomorrow morning in sloppy-fashion, risk markets could be in for something.  But if we are able to expose some UST buyers and keep a lid on the rates move, it would allow financials / banks to work tomorrow, and stocks could very well likely “stop the bleeding.”  Per the script I’ve been outlining, I think then we have to set-up for the January ‘mean reversion’ potential where bonds rally against stocks, which in theory would allow re-setting of bond shorts and equities longs into a still picking-up backdrop of inflation and global PMIs. 

  Now instead, we must downshift that assessment and wait to take in new information in the coming-days with regards to this now very disruptive introduction of “financial tightening” and the implications for risky-assets. 
   

  

  

• Trumponomics: Going for a Ride on the Trump Train

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

  I’m afraid the Trump train is headed for a sharp economic curve that takes us further away from free-market capitalism. The US already pulled out of the free-market station a long time ago, but Trumponomics moves deeply into a “mixed economy,” an economy in which government funding and private funding are married. The bankster-baron confederation in the Trump cabinet is how business and government consumate their marriage.

  My pervious article about Trump’s cabinet lineup demonstrated a major economic shift forming in the presidential cabinet. This article explains what that shift means.

   

  How Trumponomics may radically change the US economy

   

  In Trumponomics, this is worked out by placing corporate giants in direct control over all the reins of government in order to make sure that government is compliant to corporate interests as an effective way of boosting the economy. Trump has stated that most of his infrastructure spending will come from private enterprise, and this confederation assures government funding and business funding align.

  While this union empowers rapid economic growth, the downside to Trumponomics is that a mixed economy easily sidetracks from its stimulus intentions to becoming the ultimate form of crony capitalism because government and industry become such intimate partners in development that you cannot tell where one begins and the other really ends. That entices a flow of money from public to private interests. The state risks becoming the weaker partner in this arrangement — a mere servant of corporate needs and wants — because those running the state have their former institutions, lifelong friends and their pocket books at heart.

  Purportedly, Trumponomics is for the economic betterment of the entire nation, which is accelerated by combining the strength of state and business as a team in a unified direction. (It worked well for Germany after World War I.) I believe the Donald intends it for the best; but another downside is that Government — instead of having purely regulatory roles (congress and the executive branch) and the judicial role — effectively subsidizes certain businesses in creating the projects that government wants to accomplish.

  Trump is proposing that government may, for example, pay half the cost of building a bridge while a private contractor pays the other half in exchange for owning the right to collect a toll at the bridge forever. A bridge can support a toll that will be profitable up to a certain cost of construction. Above that cost, no one will pay the toll. So, the government kicks in the full cost above what industry sees as leaving room for an acceptable margin of profit. Government also helps clear the hurdles for construction. That gets a lot more things done quickly, but at what risks?

  Trumponomics is a plan for petal-to-the-metal growth; but it leaves no one regulating businesses when business executives are placed in charge of all the regulatory agencies. Another pitfall is that government, instead of simply assuring a level playing field for all businesses, can slip into favoritism toward businesses that are highly regarded by the corporate executives who assume the government reins of power.

  Granted, the US hasn’t had a truly free market for decades. The Fed, which is corporately owned, already rigs the economy constantly by enticing banks to soak up government debt at practically no interest with its promises of buying the debt back from its member banks and by creating money that it gives freely to banks to invest in stocks.

  Trump, however, is moving the country further in the direction of a mixed economy. Instead of state ownership of the economy (communism), it is corporate ownership of the state by corporate control of state offices, potentially directing them to the opposite end from what those offices were originally created for as regulatory bodies.

  I’m not saying corporate leaders should never hold cabinet positions, but when the cabinet is stacked almost entirely in the direction of Trump placing his corporate cronies in power, it looks very problematic, whether they are truly cronies (as in friends) or just a clutch of high-power corporate colleagues.

   

  The early surprise effects of Trumponomics

   

  Trump is already boosting the economy, and he hasn’t even assumed office. His Wall-Street cabinet lineup and his enormous corporate tax gifts (See “Trump: Titan of Corporate Tax Cuts” and “Trump Tax Plan Turns the Donald into Trickle-Down King.”) coupled to his promise that the government will take out huge sums of debt to buy projects from corporate tycoons have all certainly goosed stock-market expectations. Investors now run long with hopes that Trump’s plans will further inflate the stock market bubble to all-time weather-balloon heights.

  Given how Trump railed against Wall Street in his campaign, it is ironic that Trumponomics has proven most outstanding for Wall Street where bank stocks have risen more than any other sector. Leading the leaders of the pack, Goldman Sachs has absolutely skyrocketed, up a massive 33% since Trump won the election earlier this month:

   

  

   

  The financial sector has taken off since the election, on the assumption that a Republican administration will foster a much more lenient regulatory environment than has been in place since the financial crisis…. In particular, Goldman Sachs — a previous employer of several key Trump advisers — has been on a tear…. Indeed, according to legendary trader Art Cashin, about one-third of the postelection increase in the Dow Jones Industrial Average came directly from Goldman Sachs’ performance. (Business Insider)

   

  Three of Trump’s key team members are former Goldman Sachs executives. Several others come from or own other major banks. To be sure, the Trump cabinet looks like a cabal of the world’s biggest bankers. It looks like a group you might find in Davos.

  This all builds a massive amount of steam to power economic growth (and, for that reason, it may be hard for Democrats to totally resist when confirmation time arrives, though they have manifold other reasons to object); but where does the Trump train end up?

  To what extent will the corporate interests that now saturate the Trump cabinet come to own government and use its potent economic fuel to power their own engines? Such massive economic changes certainly have the power to change my predicted 2016 schedule for the Epocalypse, made before anyone knew Trump would be the engineer of the nation’s new economic train — vastly different from Obama’s sputtering economy.

  That would be good, except I think the Trumponomics train arrives at the same station only with much more momentum as we power headlong into much greater government debt, crewed by a cabinet rife with conflicts of interest and enticements toward self-serving corporate corruption. We are either counting on the sterling reputation of the nation’s biggest bankers and oil barons to resist temptation or on Trump’s mighty ability to keep this rambunctious train on the rails and out of the swamps of corruption while running the locomotive at a head pressure greater than the engine’s normal operating capacity.

  Will we say at the end, “How the mighty have fallen?”

   

   

  

  Trumponomics ends in a train wreck if it doesn’t end before it even begins.

  

• Is Janet Yellen Concerned About "A Bubble In Stock Prices"? This Is Her Answer

  Three months ago, Janet Yellen was asked during the last FOMC press conference if she was “worried about bubbles in the economy because of our prolonged low interest rates?” Her 169-word response was the following:

  Yes. Of course we are worried that bubbles will form in the economy and we routinely monitor asset valuations, while nobody can know for sure what type of valuation represents a bubble, that’s only something one can tell in hindsight, we are monitoring these measures of valuation and commercial real estate valuations are high. Rents have moved up over time, but still valuations are high, relative to rents. And so it is something we’ve discussed. We called this out in our monetary report and in other presentations and we are, in our supervision with banks, and I indicated, we have issued supervisory guidance to make sure underwriting is strong on these loans and this is something that we’ve looked at in stress tests, the larger banks to see what would happen to their capital positions and to make sure that they hold sufficient capital. And of course, I think the soundness and state of the banking system has improved substantially, but of course we are focused on such things.

  Fast forward to today, when Yellen was served a variation of the same question – one which included mentions of both “bubble” and “irrational exuberance” – by a Fox Business reporter, who asked: “the Dow is about to hit 20,000. It’s up substantially since the election apparently on investor optimism about the potential impact of President-elect Trump’s policies on the economy and an approving economy. I wonder if you share that optimism, number one. And if not, are we seeing a bout of perhaps irrational exuberance right now or are you concerned at all about a bubble in equity prices that could create some financial instability in the economy?

  Her response:

  I don’t want to comment on the level of stock prices. They may have been boosted by expectations about tax policy, possible cuts in corporate tax rates that have been much discussed, or by expectations about growth, possible reductions in down side risk to the economy. But these are things that market participants are trying to view along with the likely paths of interest rates, and I think all of that factors in to movements in stock valuations. But I don’t want to offer a view as to whether they are appropriate.

  The reporter did not, however, give up and continued his questioning:

  On equity prices you talked about whether or not evaluations are still within historical ranges and norms. Is Dow 20,000 kind of within the historical norms, are you comfortable with that?

  To which, a frustrated Yellen responded:

  Rates of return in the stock market relative to – remember that the level of interest rates is low – and taking that into account. I believe it’s fair to say that they remain within normal ranges.

  So i) Yellen did not wwant to comment on whether stock prices are appropriate and ii) when pressed, she confirmed that yes, they are.

  Which is surprising, because over a year and a half ago, in May 2015, Yellen’s view was quite different. As Bloomberg reported at the time, Yellen – speaking at a Washington forum  – said that “I would highlight that equity-market valuations at this point generally are quite high,” She then added “they’re not so high when you compare the returns on equities to the returns on safe assets like bonds, which are also very low, but there are potential dangers there.”

  How does the market valuation in  May 2015 compare to December 2016 from a forward PE multiple basis? Here is the answer:

  

   

  So since Janet appears confused, here is a quick primer from Bank of America laying out all the ways that stocks are currently overvalued. According to the 20 most popular metrics, the stock market is  currently overvalued based on 17 of them by as much as 76%.

  

   

  Don’t believe Bank of America? Here’s Goldman showing that as of November 28, the S&P is expensive based on most metrics. It is even more expensive as of today.

  

  So what is a trader to do: ignore the fundamentals and trust Yellen when she says that “it’s fair to say that valuations remain within normal ranges”, or open one’s eyes and watch as the world’s most overvalued “market” keeps grinding higher? We will know the answer as soon as the next BTFD opportunity presents itself.

  

  

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• Tucker Carlson Takes on Idiot Huffpo Columnist Over Russian Hacking Claim

  Robert McElvaine has been a busy little bee on Huffington Post, fomenting strife, disunity and complete horseshit, following the electoral college win by Donald J. Trump.

  Let’s review some of his recent ‘work’ and then segue over to Tucker Carlson’s debate with the good Professor, attempting to get to the bottom of this great big Russian ordeal.

  Source: HuffPo

  12/12/16
  How Putin Would Be Able to Control Trump

  Ronald Reagan completed the winning of the Cold War. Donald Trump as president would be very likely to transform that American victory into a Russian triumph.
  Are Republicans prepared to live with that outcome? Those who aren’t need immediately to join with concerned Democrats and hammer out a Compromise of 2016 that will create a National Unity Government without a Putin puppet in the Oval Office.

  12/11/16
  Where Is the Outrage? Where Are the Patriots?

  We have only seven days to save the Republic from a hostile takeover by billionaire American oligarchs and their Russian backers. Are there no courageous patriots in the top ranks of the news media? How about political leaders from both parties who could come forward and work out a compromise Government of National Unity not including Trump, such as the one suggested here, that could be presented to the Electors. Are there not at least 38 Republican Electors who would be willing to put their nation above their party and do what the Framers of the Constitution intended Electors to do in a crisis such as this: prevent the election of a dangerous demagogue and a foreign power gaining, as Alexander Hamilton put it in The Federalist No. 68, “an improper ascendant in our councils … by raising a creature of their own to the chief magistracy of the Union?”

  12/10/16
  Save America through a Compromise of 2016

  After each side comes up with a proposal, leaders from each group can enter negotiations to reach an agreement acceptable to both by next weekend that can be announced before December 19, with a call on Electors from both parties to support the chosen candidates. In light both of her large margin of victory in the actual vote and of the Russian intervention against her, it is entirely reasonable that the president chosen in these negotiations should by Hillary Clinton, with a Republican Vice President. Only if acceptance of that outcome proves impossible to achieve should Mrs. Clinton agree to step aside and call for the Electors from both parties to join together in choosing a ticket of sane people not under the influence of Mr. Putin.

  12/07/16
  Hillary Can Be A Hero By Saving America From Trump

  Given the general disarray of the Trump campaign during the primaries, it is likely that a good number of the people chosen as Republican Electors in states that he carried are not particularly loyal to him. One, Chris Suprun of Texas, declared on Monday that he will not vote for Trump. “I am here to elect a president, not a king,” he said. He is leaning towards voting for Gov. Kasich. If Hillary Clinton and Democratic Electors get the ball rolling, it is likely that more Republicans who are fearful of what Trump might do can be brought into the compromise for the good of the nation.

  It is a no-lose proposition for Democrats, because, as Mr. Cannon says, “If Democrats believe Trump poses a unique threat to the republic, and signal this is not okay by reaching across the aisle to marginalize and stop him, then win or lose, Democrats could legitimately claim they put partisanship aside for the good of the country.”

   

  This is an opportunity that must be seized immediately. Go for it, Mrs. Clinton and Democrats! There’s not a moment to waste. This proposal can determine, in Lincoln’s words, whether we shall “nobly save or meanly lose the last best hope of earth.”

  Such a selfless, patriotic act would be a crowning achievement for Secretary Clinton’s career of public service.

  What in the actual fuck?

  You get the gist. Sorry to have put you through that drivel. Now bear witness to Professor Robert McElvaine’s complete and total destruction.

   

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

  

• Is Obama Setting-Up War With Russia By 'Unraveling' The Situation In Syria?

  Submitted by Eric Zuesse via Strategic-Culture.org,

  A 12 August 2012 U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency warning that the Obama Administration’s strategy might drive ISIS from Mosul in Iraq to Der Zor in Syria, is now being actually carried out as a plan instead of a warning — a plan to weaken and ultimately oust Syria’s non-sectarian President Bashar al-Assad and replace him with a Sunni Sharia-law regime (one led by jihadists). The DIA warning had called this scenario an “unraveling,” but Obama and the U.S. Congress are now actually choosing it, so as to set the incoming President Trump up with an opportunity to replace Assad’s government by one that the Sauds and their U.S.-made weapons will control. 

  The DIA warning in 2012 had said: 

  “C. IF THE SITUATION UNRAVELS THERE IS THE POSSIBILITY OF ESTABLISHING A DECLARED OR UNDECLARED SALAFIST [fundamentalist Sunni] PRINCIPALITY IN EASTERN SYRIA (HASAKA AND DER ZOR), AND THIS IS EXACTLY WHAT THE SUPPORTING POWERS [U.S., Saudi Arabia, Qatar, and Turkey] TO THE OPPOSITION WANT, IN ORDER TO ISOLATE THE [pro-Russian and pro-Iranian] SYRIAN REGIME.”

  Whoever wrote this assessment recognized that though the option would mean an “unraveling” of Syria, it’s what the U.S. and its allies were actually seeking.

  On September 17th, U.S. and UK jets bombed the compound of Syrian government troops who were fighting to oust jihadists from Deir Ezzor (or “Der Zor”), and killed 62 Syrian soldiers, with a hundred more injured, in that U.S.-led bombing attack. Der Zor was being softened-up for the coming U.S.-and-allied takeover.

  The brilliant anonymous military blogger “Moon of Alabama” then became the first reporter to notice the possible connection that the DIA’s warning might end up having to what is now the joint U.S.-Turkish-Iraqi operation against ISIS in Mosul; he headlined on 20 September 2016, “Deir Ezzor Attack Enables The ‘Salafist Principality’ As Foreseen In The 2012 DIA Analysis”, and he wrote:

  “Two recent attacks against the Syrian Arab Army in east-Syria point to a U.S. plan to eliminate all Syrian government presence east of Palmyra. This would enable the U.S. and its allies to create a ‘Sunni entity’ in east-Syria and west-Iraq which would be a permanent thorn in side of Syria and its allies [Russia and Iran]. A 2012 analysis by the Defense Intelligence Agency said” — and he then quoted the above DIA excerpt. 

  Then on October 12th, he bannered “The ’Salafist Principality’ — ISIS Paid Off To Leave Mosul And To Take Deir Ezzor?”, and reported that the Obama Administration had just negotiated with Turkish President Tayyip Erdogan, and with Saudi Prince Salman (who is the decision-maker in Saudi military matters), to provide safe passage into the large Syrian city of Deir Es Zor, for the ISIS jihadists who were occupying the large city of Mosul in Iraq.

  He cited also a tweet on the morning of October 12th, from the celebrated Syrian historian and journalist Nizar Nayouf, reporting: “Breaking news: Sources in #London say: #US&#Saudi_Arabia concluded an agreement to let #ISIS leave #Mosul secretly & safely to #Syria.”

  Furthermore, on October 15th, the Turkish government posted online a map showing the “‘Sensitive’ Operation Plan for Mosul” including six steps, one of which was “An escape corridor into Syria will be left for Daesh [ISIS] so they can vacate Mosul.” Though the U.S. government wasn’t public about this part of the plan — moving the jihadists “into Syria” instead of killing the jihadists (as Obama always claimed to be his intention) — the Turkish government was.

  Slightly beyond Der Zor is Palmyra — another Syrian city that the U.S.-Saudi alliance want to grab.

  On December 11th, Russian Television headlined “4,000 ISIS fighters regroup, make new attempt to capture Palmyra”, and reported that:

  “Over 4,000 Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) terrorists, reinforced by tanks, have started an offensive to retake the key Syrian city of Palmyra after regrouping themselves. … The terrorists have received considerable reinforcement, including heavy military hardware from the regions of Raqqa and Deir ez-Zor. …The terrorists are receiving support from jihadists coming from Iraq. … In October, Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov warned that terrorists ‘could flee from Mosul and go to Syria.’”

  That’s precisely what is now happening.

  So: the Obama Administration seems to be making considerable progress to set up the next U.S. President, Trump, with an “unraveling” situation in Syria, so as to enable Trump to continue Obama’s war against Russia and all its allies (such as Syria).

  Whether President Trump will continue Obama’s policy isn’t yet clear.

  *  *  *

  Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity

  

  

• China to Slap Penalty On Unnamed American Automaker for 'Monopolistic Behavior'

  Apparently, the Obama White House and republic shill, John McCain, didn’t do a good enough job cow towing to the demands of their Chinese overlords, following Trump’s outrageous behavior of receiving a phone call from the democratically elected Taiwanese President and also suggesting that the American people weren’t bound to accept the absurdity of a ‘One China’ policy.

  These people would’ve been great friends of Germany in the 1930s and 40’s, perhaps ceding to a ‘One Germany’ policy — pan Europe.

  In response to Trump’s lack of servile behavior, China has announced they will penalize an unnamed American automaker for price rigging.

  Source: Reuters

  China will soon slap a penalty on an un-named U.S. automaker for monopolistic behavior, the official China Daily newspaper reported on Wednesday, quoting a senior state planning official.

  Investigators found the U.S. company had instructed distributors to fix prices starting in 2014, Zhang Handong, director of the National Development and Reform Commission’s price supervision bureau, was quoted as saying.

  “We are unaware of the issue,” said Mark Truby, Ford’s chief spokesman for its Asia-Pacific operations.

  GM did not immediately respond to requests for comment.

  Following the Trump-Wallace interview, where he displayed an egregious level of disobedience to Chinese slavers, the White House scrambled  to appease Beijing with sweet words of surrender.

  The White House on Monday insisted that Washington’s “one China” policy should not be used as a “bargaining chip” with Beijing after President-elect Donald Trump said the United States did not necessarily have to be bound by its long-standing position that Taiwan is part of China.

   

  Signaling further resistance Trump will face in Washington if he tries to overturn a principle that has underpinned more than four decades of U.S.-China relations, Republican U.S. Senator John McCain said he personally backed the “China policy” and no one should “leap to conclusions” that the president-elect would abandon it.

  “I do not respond to every comment by the president-elect because it may be reversed the next day,” McCain told Reuters when asked about Trump’s statement in an interview broadcast over the weekend.

  Trump set off a diplomatic firestorm when he told Fox News: “I don’t know why we have to be bound by a ‘one China’ policy unless we make a deal with China having to do with other things, including trade.” This followed an earlier protest from China over the Republican president-elect’s decision to accept a telephone call from Taiwan President Tsai Ing-wen on Dec. 2.

  After Trump’s phone conversation with Taiwan’s president, the Obama administration said senior White House aides had spoken with Chinese officials to insist that Washington’s “one China” policy remained unchanged.

  Both Ford and GM have been posting record sales in China — representing their highest growth markets in the world. Sales for Ford vehicles in China have topped 1 million for 2016 — higher by 17.1% in November, or 124,113 vehicles. Ford Explorer sales were up 73% and Ford Edge sales were higher by 21%. (source: DetroitNews)

  “Ford is gaining more momentum in China each month and we are on pace for a record year in China,” Peter Fleet, vice president of marketing, sales and service for Ford Asia Pacific, said in a statement. “We are seeing increasing demand across our lineup, particularly our full family of SUVs.”

  GM sales in China leaped higher by 7% in November — recording sales of 371,740 vehicles. Buick, Cadillac and Baojun are all enjoying record sales and have sold upwards of 3.4 million vehicles in China for 2016 — an increase of 8.5%. (source: GMAuthority)

  “With less than a month to go, we are on track for record sales in 2016,” said GM Executive Vice President and GM China President Matt Tsien. “All recently launched products, such as the new-generation Buick GL8 and Baojun 310, have gotten off to a very good start of deliveries.”

  In a bizarro world, both $F and $GM will shoot higher on this news.

   

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

  

• Dallas Police Resignations Soar As "Insolvent" Pension System Implodes

  A few days ago we noted that the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System (DPFP) took the unprecedented step of halting withdrawals from their DROP fund after a “run on the bank” pushed to the entire pension system, and the City of Dallas, to the brink of liquidity crisis (see “In Unprecedented Move, Dallas Pension System Suspends Withdrawals“).  Now, a local CBS affiliate in Dallas is reporting that the pension crisis is driving a massive surge in police resignations.   

  Interim Dallas Police Chief David Pughes told city council members Monday that 99 officers have left the department since October 1.

   

  City councilman Philip Kingston is among those who blame the situation on the cash-starved police and fire pension fund.

   

  “It’s concerning, but it’s not very surprising with the turmoil surrounding the pension system,” said Kingston.

   

  In a statement, Mayor Mike Rawlings said, “This is why we are working so hard to address our pension crisis.”

   

  The Dallas Police Association said in any given year, about 180 officers leave the department — either to retire or work at higher-paying departments.

   

  About half the number have left in a two and a half month period.

  Of course, not surprisingly, the majority of the resignations came from older, tenured officers who had the most to lose.

  “I think most of those 99 were tenured officers, so those are our most experienced officers, the majority investigative detectives who solve crimes everyday,” said Mata.

   

  Councilman Kingston acknowledges the department’s challenge. “I think Chief Pughes is going to have to be creative. There’s nothing we can do to fix that in the short term. He has the number of officers he has and he has got to get results using those officers.”

   

  Meanwhile, just like any other government problem, Dallas city council members have decided that the appropriate solution to their liquidity crisis is to offer police officers a 27% pay increase to be phased in over the next three years…that should be “roughly” inline with inflation, give or take 25%.

  After months of negotiations, city council members will vote Wednesday on a new contract not only for police officers, but firefighters and paramedics as well.

   

  Under the terms, most police officers, firefighters and paramedics would receive merit increases of ten percent the first year, five percent the second year, and ten percent the third year.

   

  The Dallas Police Association and a city council member say they think the raises will help keep younger officers from leaving for other departments.

   

  “Those individuals who possibly were thinking of leaving, yes, I think this prevents them from leaving. It helps them stay,” said Mata. “So it was definitely a move in the right direction.”

   

  “It was important to get those numbers up what our younger officers can make at other places,” said Kingston. “It’s just the right thing to do in general.”

  As we’ve stated many times over the past several months of following the DPFP implosion, taxpayers will be the ultimate loser here…looks like that’s already starting to play out.

  * * *

  For those who missed it, here is what we recently posted after the DPFP decided to halt pension withdrawals.

  Two days after the Mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings, filed a lawsuit against the Dallas Police and Fire Pension system to block withdrawals, which he referred to as a “run on the bank” of an “insolvent” pension system in “financial crisis, the Pension’s board has finally taken steps to halt further withdrawals.  Of course, this delayed action has come only after $500 million in deposits have been withdrawn since just August. 

  According to the Dallas Daily News, an incremental $154mm in withdrawal requests were pending at the time the decision was made earlier today.

  The Dallas Police and Fire Pension System’s Board of Trustees suspended lump-sum withdrawals from the pension fund Thursday, staving off a possible restraining order and stopping $154 million in withdrawal requests.

   

  The system was set to pay out the weekly requests Friday. Pension officials said allowing the withdrawals would leave them without the liquid reserves required to sustain $2.1 billion fund.

   

  “Our situation is currently critical, and we took action,” Board chairman Sam Friar said.

  

  While Dallas citizens cheered the decision, even opponents of the Mayor’s admitted that the redemptions had to be halted if the city had any chance of saving the pension system from insolvency.

  Rawlings on Thursday afternoon told a crowd gathered at a Dallas Regional Chamber that “the bleeding has stopped. We can turn this ship around.”

   

  The crowd responded with cheers after the mayor’s announcement of the board’s decision.

   

  At the pension board meeting, the mood was more somber.

   

  Council member Scott Griggs said he couldn’t let the $154 million “go out the door” on Friday.

   

  His council colleague, Philip Kingston, a board trustee, said the mayor “unquestionably” forced the pension board’s hand. He said Thursday was “the worst day I’ve had in public office.”

   

  “Unfortunately, financially, this had to happen,” he said.

   

  The fund has about $729 million in liquid assets. It needs to keep about $600 million on hand, meaning the restrictions could have been coming at some point even without the mayor’s actions. The withdrawal requests this week alone would have meant the fund would dip below that level.

  

  Of course, not everyone was happy with the decision as at least one retired police officer threatened a lawsuit to force the fund to honor redemption requests while another declared that Mayor Rawlings had “successfully screwed over the retirees, the firefighters and the police officers.”

  One retired police sergeant, Pete Bailey, suggested a lawsuit could be in the offing if the system didn’t pay out the requests that were made Tuesday. Friar understood that they might deal with more litigation.

   

  “We may just have to deal with that, but that’s what the board decides,” Friar said. “We acted in the best interest of the pension fund today.”

   

  Retired Dallas police officer Jerry Rhodes, a pension meeting fixture, said he believed the board did what it had to do. Then he sarcastically lauded Rawlings.

   

  “Merry Christmas, mayor,” he said. “Hopefully you have a good Christmas because you have successfully screwed over the retirees, the firefighters and the police officers.”

  Perhaps future ponzi schemes pension systems will take note of Dallas’ current situation prior to guaranteeing 8% returns on retirees’ pension balances.  Who could have ever guessed that a decision like that could have backfired so badly?

  

  

• Oxford University Joins The List Of Liberal Institutions Urging "Gender Neutral Pronouns"

  The University of Oxford has joined many other bastions of liberalism in the U.S. who, in an effort to endlessly cater to our overly sensitive millennials, have urged students to ditch gender-based pronouns like “he” and “she” for the gender-neutral alternative “ze.”  Per EAG News, Oxford’s behavior code states that inadvertently using the wrong pronoun for someone is technically “considered an offense” while British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell said that giving people the gender-neutral “ze” option is just a “thoughtful, considerate move.”

  The university’s behavior code states that using the wrong pronoun for a transgender person is considered an offense, and a new leaflet distributed by the student union supposedly aims to cut down on hurt feelings and discrimination by encouraging students to use “ze” instead, the Independent reports.

   

  British gay rights activist Peter Tatchell applauded the move.

   

  “It is a positive thing to not always emphasize gender divisions and barriers,” he told the Daily Mail.

   

  “It is good to have gender-neutral pronouns for those who want them but it shouldn’t be compulsory,” Tatchell said. “This issue isn’t about being politically correct or censoring anyone. It’s about acknowledging the fact of changing gender identities and respecting people’s right to not define themselves as male or female.”

   

  “Giving people the ‘ze’ option is a thoughtful, considerate move,” he said.

  Meanwhile, a leaflet distributed on campus warned students to “veer away” from the completely ridiculous notion that there are “only two genders”…after all using such binary language as “boys and girls” tends to “subtly reinforce that gender is a significant difference about behavior patterns.” 

  

   

  Of course, American institutions of higher education are not immune to this insanity.  A few months back we pointed out that Princeton University was fed up with people using “gender binary” hate speech like “freshman” (see “Princeton University Kindly Requests You Stop Using “Gender-Binary” Hate Speech Like “Freshman”“) and had released an official guide on how to develop “gender-inclusive” speech. 

  Meanwhile, we also noted that the lunacy of the educated elitists in New England also spread, like an infectious disease, to schools south of the Mason-Dixon line.  As pointed out by the Daily Caller, Vanderbilt University’s “Faculty Senate Gender Inclusivity Task Force” recently posted the following flyers around campus urging students and faculty to announce their “preferred pronouns” when introducing themselves. 

  Offer your name and pronoun in faculty meetings, committees, and other spaces where students may not be present

  • “I’m Steve and I use he/him/his pronouns. What should I call you?”
  • “My pronouns are they/them/theirs. May I ask yours?”

  People who “identify” as “gender-fluid” were encouraged to use newly created pronouns “Ze/Zir/Zirs” or “Ze/Hir/Hirs.” 

  Finally, students and staff were encouraged to admit when they made a gender assessment mistake and learn from it for the next encounter.

  Graciously accept correction. Apologize and learn for next time.

   

  Take initiative. Do not expect others to remind you of their name and pronouns.

   

  “Thank you for reminding me. I apologize and will use the correct name and pronoun for you in the future.”

  

  Isn’t it amazing that 99.9% of us have managed to get through life without ever encountering this massive epidemic of hate crimes that have struck our elitist institutions in recent years…leave the poor kids alone you relentless, gender-binary hatemongers.

  

  

• Poised For Collapse: How "Unrest Could Become Real Revolution" Inside America

  There are many ways this could play out, but as SHTFPlan.com's Mac Slavo notes, few could deny that any number of critical factors are coming to a head right here at home.

  If economic collapse is particularly harsh, things could easily spiral out of control. Civil unrest could become the norm, and things could reach a very desperate point.

   

  But depending upon what specific events take place, the police and military may not remain on the side of the federal government, but may support and defend the American people, and what could be a violence, bloody and drawn out struggle to rebuild what once was. What do you think will happen?

  5 Factors That Could Transform Civil Unrest Into a Full-Blown Revolution

  Authored by former Jeremiah Johnson via ReadyNutrition.com,

  As mentioned in Part I of this series, the U.S. is (even after the election) on the cusp of a revolution.  The potential for revolution exists in all countries at any given time.  We will first list some of the factors that cause an uprising to transform into an all-encompassing revolution.

  1. Economic Factors: This could take the form of an economic collapse and/or runaway inflation/devaluation of a nation’s currency, as well as chronic or acute unemployment, lowered manufacturing base accompanied by firings or closure of positions or plants.
  2. Warfare: can lead to a country’s dissolution either by insurgency or occupation, followed by an attempt to resist (revolt) either against a foreign oppressor or a country that has (in the manner of the Hessians in the Revolutionary war) “invited in” an occupying army.
  3. Religious/Theological: in the form either of persecution of a culture’s predominant religion or factions/schisms leading to confrontation of conflict between two different religious groups.
  4. Government Oppression: in the form of excessive taxation, taxation with either no representation (as when an executive branch secures a ruling outside of actual legislative bodies or processes) or misrepresentation (a tax is declared for one thing and ends up being “sequestered” for another. Other forms of oppressive acts from a “legitimate” established government include martial law declarations or unlimited police power in the hands of the State.
  5. Civil Unrest: due to any of the above factors, with the added problems of cultural or racial strife in the citizenry, with revolution as recourse, when the people suffer from the (genuine or perceived) blight of believing/knowing there is no legislative or demonstrative recourse in a peaceful vein. It can also parallel economic factors when the abolition of the middle class occurs with a great disparity of wealth between the rich and the poor.

  Revolutions usually are not an instantaneous occurrence, but rather have a slow buildup toward their culmination or climax.  When a population suffers for a long period of time without any hope of change in a democratic fashion and their basic needs as individuals and families are not being met, many times matters are taken into their own hands.  This is not necessarily a “right” or a “wrong” issue: it just is.  Revolution is endemic, so to speak, of the human race.

  Societies and nations come into being as a result of revolutions, and usually follow a cycle: an upswing, or rise, followed by a peak where the country or culture is at its zenith, and then a slow (sometimes sudden) decline, and then collapse.  For some extra reading, the work “Collapse,” by Jared Diamond gives several examples of civilizations that have declined slowly or disappeared suddenly and swiftly that are really worth reading.

  The Founding Fathers of the United States were adamant when the nation was in its infancy that the Revolutionary War was intended to be a “one-time thing, not repeated” because (they so believed) the framework of our government was intended to be one of checks and balances.  These safeguards were meant to ensure that power does not accrue only into the hands of one branch (especially the executive branch) to prevent a dictatorship.

  They were not, however, able to envision a nation of 320 million people and the technological advances that enable almost a complete surveillance state to be set into place.  They also were (mostly) of English stock and forbears and did not foresee the ethnic, social, and cultural diversities and challenges that would arise with the influx of millions of immigrants in the 19th and 20th centuries.  In their wisdom, however, they placed the 2nd Amendment into the U.S. Constitution’s Bill of Rights: the purpose of this was not to enable hunting and marksmanship so much as it was to enable the people to have recourse to arms if a government ever became dictatorial or totalitarian.

  A government that is in the process of being overthrown always labels the rebels as “terrorists” or “criminals” because it is a process that overthrows the existing social and political order.  A government’s primary function is to perpetuate itself while quelling or preventing dissent or overthrow: survival of the entity and not the individual is the goal.  “Bloodless” revolutions never truly occur: a life will always be lost in the process somewhere.

  Revolution usually is (and should be) a last resort.  One of the greatest dangers in the overthrow of an existing government is that the revolutionaries will become the very thing they sought to overthrow: a dictatorship with no room for dissent in any way, shape, or form.  The most successful revolutions occur when the rebels muster up enough popular support that even when not supplied with men or materials, the populace (at bare minimum) stays neutral and gets out of the way of the rebels.

  In the U.S. we currently have a ton of demonstrations and protests regarding the presidential election (those just jumping on the bandwagon to be a part of a cause, although liberals at heart), paid disrupters/agents provocateur (on the Soros payroll to instigate, for example), and Clinton supporters.  These are not revolutionaries, although they view themselves as such.  They are not out to “overthrow” the government but to perpetuate the state of continuous “soft-socialism” we have been living under for the past 8 years.

  If a revolution occurs in the U.S. it will come as the result of clashes between the Right and the Left as the Left continues to jockey for position and attempt to discredit and reverse the election results, and the Right is just sort of standing around to see what happens. It may also come if the current administration refuses to end, either by a declaration of martial law or involvement in a new war that has catastrophic consequences that enable the executive branch to stay in power.  Only time will tell if one occurs in the U.S. as a result of these elections and any possible post-election chicanery, but make no mistake: the citizens are “keyed up” and we may just see it.  As Gary Franchi and his band so eloquently state it, “Revolution never comes with a warning,” and this is because it usually seethes on the back burner until the top blows off.

  

  

• The New York Times Explains How It Became An "Instrument Of Russian Intelligence"

  In a massive (in a literal sense, printing at 25 pages and over 8,000 words as there is little new information revealed in the piece itself) expose issued by the NYT tited “The Perfect Weapon: How Russian Cyberpower Invaded the U.S.” and meant to piggyback on the WaPo’s recent reporting and solidify the left-leaning media’s case that Hillary lost the election, the New York Times try to summarize all the recent publicly available information on alleged Russian hackings of everything from the DNC server to the Podesta email.

  While the 8,000 words do provide a good recap of the widely accepted mainstream media version of events, we hoped to find some actual incremental news, like, for example: proof, so we promptly scoured the report for any incremental evidence that Russia was indeed behind the hack – after all that’s what the NYT is writing about. Alas, we could not find it, instead there was nothing but more innuendo, more “believes”, and more “possible linkages.” Some examples:

  • American intelligence officials said they believed that the hackers were associated with two Russian intelligence agencies.

  • Investigators believe that the G.R.U., or a hacking group known as Fancy Bear or A.P.T. 28, was the second group to break into the D.N.C., but it has played a bigger role in releasing the committee’s emails.
  • A self-proclaimed hacker that investigators believe was a group acting as an agent of the G.R.U. It published documents itself and leaked a series of D.N.C. documents.
  • A hacking group possibly linked to the agency, the main successor to the K.G.B., entered Democratic National Committee servers undetected for nearly a year, security researchers said. The group was nicknamed Cozy Bear, the Dukes or A.P.T. 29 for “advanced persistent threat.”

  Finally, on Wikileaks:

  • The website released about 50,000 emails from the Democratic National Committee’s computer servers. It is unclear how WikiLeaks obtained the emails. But Russian intelligence agencies are prime suspects, researchers said.

  This, despite recent refutations by both Wikileaks, and those close to them, that the source is not Russian, although short of naming the disgruntled employee, this particular case of fingerpointing will remain an impasse indefinitely. Making matters for the mainstream narrative – i.e. the one pushed by the NYT – worse, overnight Reuters reported that the ODNI – the top US spy agency – refused to endorse the CIA’s “assessment” that Russia was behind the hacking, citing a “lack of evidence” – which just happens to be the weakest link in the attempt to demonize Putin – one which the NYT likewise fails to address.

  That out of the way, the NYT does an awesome job of presenting even more unconfirmed innuendo as undisputed fact, all of which points in one direction. Russia in general, and the Kremlin in particular, are responsible for Hillary’s failure: there are 98 instance of the word Russia or Russian in the article. Some examples:

  • At least one computer system belonging to the D.N.C. had been compromised by hackers federal investigators had named “the Dukes,” a cyberespionage team linked to the Russian government.
  • An examination by The Times of the Russian operation — based on interviews with dozens of players targeted in the attack, intelligence officials who investigated it and Obama administration officials who deliberated over the best response — reveals a series of missed signals, slow responses and a continuing underestimation of the seriousness of the cyberattack.
  • The D.N.C.’s fumbling encounter with the F.B.I. meant the best chance to halt the Russian intrusion was lost. The failure to grasp the scope of the attacks undercut efforts to minimize their impact. And the White House’s reluctance to respond forcefully meant the Russians have not paid a heavy price for their actions, a decision that could prove critical in deterring future cyberattacks.
  • The low-key approach of the F.B.I. meant that Russian hackers could roam freely through the committee’s network for nearly seven months before top D.N.C. officials were alerted to the attack and hired cyberexperts to protect their systems. In the meantime, the hackers moved on to targets outside the D.N.C., including Mrs. Clinton’s campaign chairman, John D. Podesta, whose private email account was hacked months later.
  • By last summer, Democrats watched in helpless fury as their private emails and confidential documents appeared online day after day — procured by Russian intelligence agents, posted on WikiLeaks and other websites, then eagerly reported on by the American media, including The Times. Mr. Trump gleefully cited many of the purloined emails on the campaign trail.

  In the case of those “Russian” hackers identified by the NYT, the publication itself admits that “attribution, as the skill of identifying a cyberattacker is known, is more art than science.”

  It is often impossible to name an attacker with absolute certainty. But over time, by accumulating a reference library of hacking techniques and targets, it is possible to spot repeat offenders. Fancy Bear, for instance, has gone after military and political targets in Ukraine and Georgia, and at NATO installations.

  And here, once again, comes inference which the NYT – and apparently the CIA – is happy to use in lieu of firm evidence:

  That largely rules out cybercriminals and most countries, Mr. Alperovitch said. “There’s no plausible actor that has an interest in all those victims other than Russia,” he said. Another clue: The Russian hacking groups tended to be active during working hours in the Moscow time zone.

  And hey, presto: it must be Russia. Which, incidentally, the Democrats quickly tried to spin in their favor:

  In mid-June, on Mr. Sussmann’s advice, D.N.C. leaders decided to take a bold step. Concerned that word of the hacking might leak, they decided to go public in The Washington Post with the news that the committee had been attacked. That way, they figured, they could get ahead of the story, win a little sympathy from voters for being victimized by Russian hackers and refocus on the campaign.

   

  But the very next day, a new, deeply unsettling shock awaited them. Someone calling himself Guccifer 2.0 appeared on the web, claiming to be the D.N.C. hacker — and he posted a confidential committee document detailing Mr. Trump’s record and half a dozen other documents to prove his bona fides.

  For Zero Hedge readers who have followed our writing over the past 6 months, there is really nothing new in the entire NYT article, with one exception: despite not providing any proof that Russia is behind the hacks, the article drowns the readers in constant accusations that the Russian government is the guilty party, to the point where this allegation becomes fact, and in the process the NYT itself succumbs to spreading, you guessed it, “fake news” and government “propaganda.” Amusingly , the NYT does realize this, and notes that “in recent days, a skeptical president-elect, the nation’s intelligence agencies and the two major parties have become embroiled in an extraordinary public dispute over what evidence exists that President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia moved beyond mere espionage to deliberately try to subvert American democracy and pick the winner of the presidential election.”

  So is there actual evidence? Alas, on this one most important topic, the NYT is silent: there are 5 instances of the word “evidence” in the entire 8000+ word piece, and 0 instances of “proof” – the authors had hoped that drowning readers with “Russia, Russia, Russia” would be sufficient. It also had no problem presenting belief as fact, as noted above. To wit:

  “There shouldn’t be any doubt in anybody’s mind,” Adm. Michael S. Rogers, the director of the National Security Agency and commander of United States Cyber Command said at a postelection conference. “This was not something that was done casually, this was not something that was done by chance, this was not a target that was selected purely arbitrarily,” he said. “This was a conscious effort by a nation-state to attempt to achieve a specific effect.”

  Well, Mr. Rogers, we do have some doubt: could you please show us the evidence that would eradicate it? Alas, so far not a single liberal publication has been able to provide that particular missing link, and is why the latest rift between the pro-Clinton CIA and the pro-Trump FBI has opened up. As the NYT writes, “This tale of ‘hacks’ resembles a banal brawl between American security officials over spheres of influence,” Maria Zakharova, the spokeswoman for the Russian Foreign Ministry, wrote on Facebook.

  Over the weekend, four prominent senators, two Republicans and two Democrats, joined forces to pledge an investigation while pointedly ignoring Mr. Trump’s skeptical claims.

   

  “Democrats and Republicans must work together, and across the jurisdictional lines of the Congress, to examine these recent incidents thoroughly and devise comprehensive solutions to deter and defend against further cyberattacks,” said Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, Chuck Schumer and Jack Reed.

   

  “This cannot become a partisan issue,” they said. “The stakes are too high for our country.”

  We agree: so let’s see the evidence that would align everyone on the same side of the argument. What, there is none? And instead the objective press is making an emotional appeal is lieu of actual proof? That does not sound very professional. In fact, it sounds very “fake news”-ish.

  One notable interlude is the previously reported story of one possible way that hackers penetrated John Podesta’s email. As the NYT explains, for those who missed it, the hack and eventual release of a decade’s worth of Hillary Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta’s emails may have been caused by a typo.  Last March, Podesta received an email purportedly from Google saying hackers had tried to infiltrate his Gmail account. When an aide emailed the campaign’s IT staff to ask if the notice was real, Clinton campaign aide Charles Delavan replied that it was “a legitimate email” and that Podesta should “change his password immediately.”

  Instead of telling the aide that the email was a threat and that a good response would be to change his password directly through Google’s website, he had inadvertently told the aide to click on the fraudulent email and give the attackers access to the account.  Delavan told the Times he had intended to type “illegitimate,” a typo “he still has not forgiven himself for making.”

  The email was a phishing scam that ultimately revealed Podesta’s password to hackers. Soon after, WikiLeaks began releasing 10 years of his emails. In late October the firm SecureWorks identified a Bit.ly account and WikiLeaks-released email that appeared to have been used to attack Podesta’s account.

  Naturally, the fact that – according to this narrative – the crack group of Russian cyber hacks had to resort to a simplistic, childish malware  attack to get to a person’s password, is seemingly completely ignored, as it the reality that if the “Russians” wanted Podesta’s email, there were countless many, far more sophisticated ways of obtaining it.

  But all is fair in “fake news” ans perpetuating a narrative.

  And since this particular narrative is extremely time consuming, here is a simplifying infographic that supposedly explains all anyone who wants to believe the government’s side of the story, needs to know.

  

   

  But wait a minute, if it was common knowledge that the Russians were hacking the DNC, Podesta and anyone else close to Clinton with a computer – but not her own server of course, that was impenetrable to hacking by Russia, just ask the FBI – why didn’t Obama call out the Russians? And here is the laugh out loud part of the entire NYT piece:

  Mr. Obama was briefed regularly on all this, but he made a decision that many in the White House now regret: He did not name Russians publicly, or issue sanctions. There was always a reason: fear of escalating a cyberwar, and concern that the United States needed Russia’s cooperation in negotiations over Syria.

   

  “We’d have all these circular meetings,” one senior State Department official said, “in which everyone agreed you had to push back at the Russians and push back hard. But it didn’t happen.”

   

  So the Russians escalated again — breaking into systems not just for espionage, but to publish or broadcast what they found, known as “doxing” in the cyberworld.

  That this is beyond stupid goes without saying, however if – in the odd chance it is also true – then it is not Russia, but president Obama who should be held accountable for not standing up to protecting US interests in what he clearly understood was a cyberwar.

  But let’s blame Putin for apparently outsmarting the entire US intelligence apparatus.

  Actually, Putin also outsmarted the New York Times itself: as the paper admits, “by last summer, Democrats watched in helpless fury as their private emails and confidential documents appeared online day after day — procured by Russian intelligence agents, posted on WikiLeaks and other websites, then eagerly reported on by the American media, including The Times. Mr. Trump gleefully cited many of the purloined emails on the campaign trail.”

  And the punchline:

  Though Mr. Assange did not say so, WikiLeaks’ best defense may be the conduct of the mainstream American media. Every major publication, including The Times, published multiple stories citing the D.N.C. and Podesta emails posted by WikiLeaks, becoming a de facto instrument of Russian intelligence.

  To which, all we can say, is well done comrades: Vladimir is very proud of you for helping take down the candidate you yourselves endorsed.

  Or something just as stupid, which continues the now month-old campaign of deflecting blame and accepting responsibility for Hillary’s campaign which failed not because of some “Kremlin mastermind hackers”, but because millions of disenfranchised workers in battleground states had had enough with a system that had forgotten all about them.

  And now we sit back and wait for the next “fake news”, “Russian hacker propaganda” hit piece to come out. Why not: after all just last week the Senate took the first step toward banning free speech with the passage of the “Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act.” If nothing else, once passed into law, it will help mainstream outlets like the NYT regain the narrative they so painfully lost control over in 2016.

  

  

• 40 Electors Demand Russian Interference Briefing Before They Vote

  Update: Forty members (up from 29 earlier) of the Electoral College on Tuesday signed a letter demanding an intelligence briefing on Russian interference in the election ahead of their Dec. 19 vote.

  As The Hill reports, ten electors originally signed the letter when it was published Monday, and 30 more have since added their names.

  Original 10:

  • Christine Pelosi (CA)
  • Micheal Baca (CO)
  • Anita Bonds (DC)
  • Courtney Watson (MD)
  • Dudley Dudley (NH)
  • Bev Hollingworth (NH)
  • Terie Norelli (NH)
  • Carol Shea-Porter (NH)
  • Clay Pell (RI)
  • Chris Suprun (TX)
     

  Newly Added Electors:

  • Edward Buck (CA)
  • Donna Ireland (CA)
  • Vinz Koller (CA)
  • Katherine Lyon (CA)
  • John P. MacMurray (CA)
  • Andres Ramos (CA)
  • Gail Teton-Landis (CA)
  • Olivia Reyes-Becerra (CA)
  • David Scott Warmuth (CA)
  • Gregory H. Willenborg (CA)
  • Jerad Sutton (CO)
  • Robert Nemenich (CO)
  • Nancy Shepherdson (IL)
  • Dori Dean (MA)
  • Jason Palitsch (MA)
  • Parwez Wahid (MA)
  • Paul G. Yorkis (MA)
  • Robert Leonard (MD)
  • Salome T. Peters (MD)
  • Melissa Mark-Viverito (NY)
  • Stuart Appelbaum (NY)
  • Stephanie Miner (NY)
  • Melissa Sklarz (NY)
  • Andrea Stewart-Cousins (NY)
  • Sam H.W. Sappington (OR)
  • Beth Caldwell (WA)
  • Bret Chiafalo (WA)
  • Deb Fitzgerald (VA)
  • Terry C. Frye (VA)
  • Jeanette Sarver (VA)

   

  The open letter — led by Christine Pelosi, the daughter of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) — urged Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to give a detailed briefing on President-elect Donald Trump's ties to Russia.

   

  “We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States,” the letter read.

   

  The Clinton campaign applauded the effort Monday, saying it had repeatedly warned about Russian interference aimed at swaying the election in Trump’s favor.

  However, while 40 electors would be enough to turn the election in Hillary Clinton's favor, the so-called "Hamilton Electors" are almost uniformly Democratic voters anyway and so with Ashley-Madison fan Chris Suprun the only Trump turncoat, for now the 'soft coup' remains a long shot.

  “I am not looking to be satisfied with just the vote on Dec. 19 or 20, but on January of 2030, when Mr. Trump has either served no time, one term or two terms,” Suprun told The Hill. “History is going to judge my actions on whether he turned out to be Ronald Reagan, Herbert Hoover or Richard Nixon.”

  But, as The Hill adds, Republican electors are coming under intense pressure to change their votes:

  Bob Muller, a GOP county chairman in North Carolina and a Trump elector, said he’s gotten correspondence from “everywhere from Maine to California” asking him to vote differently.

   

  “I just ignore them,” Muller said.

   

  So far, only a few Electoral College voters have publicly declared that they will not back the candidates that their states supported — including just one of the 37 Trump voters that the self-styled Hamilton Electors, a group of mostly Democrats, need to make any noise on Monday.

   

  And even if the rogue electors achieve their aims, they would only succeed in sending the election to a Republican-majority House, which would almost certainly certify Trump’s victory.

   

  Virtually all Republican electors reached by The Hill said they will vote enthusiastically for Trump.

   

  “I’m voting how the people of Florida have told me to vote,” said Brian Ballard, a Florida elector who raised money for Jeb Bush and Marco Rubio during the GOP primary. “I don’t know anyone who isn’t. I appreciate people using First Amendment rights to reach out and try to convince me otherwise, but I’m obligated to support Trump because he won Florida.

   

  “Also, I love the guy and want him to be president.”

   

  Faithless electors are rare but not unheard of in American history.

  At this point, the effort appears to be more about undermining Trump, complicating his ability to govern and following personal convictions — and less about actually winning the Electoral College for another candidate.

  *  *  *

  As we detailed earlier, Donald Trump could have the election legally stolen from him on either December 19th when the Electoral College casts their votes or on January 6th when a joint session of Congress gathers to count those votes. As The Economic Collapse blog's Michael Snyder notes, the establishment is in full-blown panic mode at this point, and they seem to have settled on "Russian interference in the election" as the angle that they will use to unleash this 'soft coup' as today, the Hill reports more Democratic electors are joining the call for an intelligence briefing before they cast their votes for president on Monday.

  Twenty-nine electors now are pressuring Director of National Intelligence James Clapper to disclose more information about the CIA’s conclusion that Russian interference helped sway the election in President-elect Donald Trump’s favor.

   

  On Monday, 10 electors — spearheaded by Christine Pelosi, the daughter of House Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi (Calif.) — wrote an open letter to Clapper, demanding more information ahead of next week's vote.

   

  “The Electors require to know from the intelligence community whether there are ongoing investigations into ties between Donald Trump, his campaign or associates, and Russian government interference in the election, the scope of those investigations, how far those investigations may have reached, and who was involved in those investigations,” the letter reads.

   

  “We further require a briefing on all investigative findings, as these matters directly impact the core factors in our deliberations of whether Mr. Trump is fit to serve as President of the United States.”

   

  Twenty-eight Democrats and one Republican have now signed the letter.

  On Monday, the Clinton campaign voiced support for the effort.

  “Each day that month, our campaign decried the interference of Russia in our campaign and its evident goal of hurting our campaign to aid Donald Trump,” said John Podesta, Hillary Clinton's campaign chairman, in a statement.

   

  “Despite our protestations, this matter did not receive the attention it deserved by the media in the campaign. We now know that the CIA has determined Russia's interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American.”

  But ultimately, as The Economic Collapse blog's Michael Snyder warns, this is not about Russian interference in our election.

  Rather, this is all about the elite doing whatever is necessary to stop Donald Trump.  The elite are going to fight against him every step of the way, and they are never, ever going to give up.  This is a point that I made during an interview with Alex Jones on Monday…

  The next key date that we need to be watching for is December 19th.

  On Monday, members of the Electoral College will gather in Washington D.C. and in all 50 state capitols to cast their votes.  We know that at least one Republican elector that is supposed to be pledged to Trump will not be voting for him, and that elector claims that there are others that also will not be voting for Trump.

  If 37 Republican electors can be persuaded to cast their votes for someone other than Trump, that would throw the election into the House of Representatives, and it is unclear what the House would do in that scenario.

  If Trump is not stopped at the Electoral College, there is also the possibility that he could be derailed when a joint session of Congress gathers to count the Electoral votes on January 6th.

  As I discussed yesterday, all it takes to force a vote on the validity of Electoral College votes is an objection in writing that is signed by at least one member of the House and one member of the Senate.  As the official House.gov website explains, if both the House and the Senate vote to approve the objection, the votes covered by the objection are not counted…

  Since 1887, 3 U.S.C. 15 sets the method for objections to electoral votes. During the Joint Session, Members of Congress may object to individual electoral votes or to state returns as a whole. An objection must be declared in writing and signed by at least one Representative and one Senator. In the case of an objection, the Joint Session recesses and each chamber considers the objection separately in a session which cannot last more than two hours with each Member speaking for no more than five minutes. After each house votes on whether or not to accept the objection, the Joint Session reconvenes and both chambers disclose their decisions. If they agree to the objection, the votes in question are not counted. If either chamber does not agree with the objection, the votes are counted.

  In both the Senate and the House, there are anti-Trump Republicans that would absolutely cherish the opportunity to deny him the presidency.

  I don’t know if it will happen, but this Russian interference issue is the kind of thing that could be used to justify taking this kind of action.

  Of course if the election was stolen from Donald Trump that would likely throw the entire nation into a state of chaos, but I think that at this point the elite would be willing to risk just about anything to keep Donald Trump out of the White House.

  * * *

  If you think this is all too far-fetched for modern-day Western democracies, here is Keith Olbermann literally losing it over "the Russian coup under way in America"…

  

  

• Bank Of Japan Intervenes, Boosts Bond Buy Ahead Of Fed Decision

  Having seen 10Y JGB yields spike to 10bps (highest since Feb), The Bank of Japan has decided enough is enough and intervened to bring yields back to the stable 0.00% level they decree as fair. The entire Japanese curve is bull-flattening as the long-end is also rallying after Kuroda and his cronies up their purchases to 200 billion yen, from 190 billion previously. All else equal, this will prompt more demand for US paper from Japanese sources.

  10Y Yields had risen to their highest since Kuroda unleashed NIRP.

  

   

  And so it was time to step in

  

   

  And the 30Y rallying even more

  

   

  As Bloomberg's Mark Cranfield noted, The Bank of Japan is back in the JGB market. Yields sliding across the longer end of the bond curve as the BOJ buys super longs. If the Fed does a dovish hike later today, that could be the end of rising yields for this year.

  This move also follows Jeff Gundlach's earlier bond bull case, noting that he's increasing duration and investor fear of bonds seems to be getting overdone.

  

  

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• Newt Gingrich on Democrat Russian Hacking Claim: 'This is About as Stupid as Anything I've Seen the Left Try'

  I’m not a particularly big fan of Newt, mainly due to his connections with CFR and neocon scum. However, on the teevee, he serves as a good source of entertainment when mocking and belittling the left — making them look like asinine children — pouting, kicking and screaming because their nuclear toys were taken away.

  On top of criticizing the left for pushing their paradoxical Russian hacking of the election charge, Newt also lays waste to the main stream media, a particularly fun hobby of mine — suggesting that they’re so butthurt by the abject rejection of the American people — they’ve become wholly uninterested in covering real news and instead live in a garish world of fantasy, festooned with lies and deception.

  ‘The cannot come to grips with the reality that the American people are turning against them.’

  Enjoy.

   

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

  

• There's A Psy-Op, All Right; But It Isn't "The Russians"

  Via DaisyLuther.com,

  Enough with “the Russians” already. This “Russian Disinformation” and “Russian Hacking” stuff is getting more ridiculous by the day.

  

  First, don’t let the irony escape you that most, if not all, of the pundits breathlessly blaming the Russians for “fake news” and “election interference” are the very ones who were saying that Hillary Clinton was a shoe-in for president. They’re the ones who were providing her campaign with questions in advance, and allowing her people to approve/disapprove of articles.

  Secondly, many of the entities blamed for spreading “Russian propaganda” were the ones with the audacity to tell the truth about the Clinton crime family and spread knowledge of the information released by Wikileaks. Obviously, I’m not including those Macedonian college kids in this, but keep in mind that they weren’t doing it for the Russians – they were doing it to make money.

  This isn’t about the Russians at all, which anyone with half a brain realizes is absolutely ridiculous.

  Here’s what this really is.

  This is a war on the Trump presidency. It’s an attempted coup.

  Maybe it’s even another effort to outright steal the presidency from Trump. Maybe there’s someone with a lot of money to throw into this “OMG THE RUSSIANS” rhetoric who really hates Russia and who really wanted Hillary Clinton to be the President. Maybe his name rhymes with “Doros.” I don’t know this for sure, but it’s at least a more likely story than “The Russians” hacking our election and deliberately spreading propaganda.

  And it’s working. Ten of the Electoral College delegates have asked to be briefed on the Russian “interference” before they cast their votes on the 19th.

  But that isn’t all. This is a two-for-one deal.

  It’s important to note that the MSM lost every single bit of their remaining credibility during the last election and they’re desperate to get it back. It reminds me of a high school kid who gets caught doing something she shouldn’t, who then makes up stories about another group of kids to get people talking about them instead of her. The MSM can’t accept the fact that Hillary Clinton lost, despite their dishonest but enthusiastic efforts to steal the election for her.   They’ll collude with whoever they have to in order to become relevant again.

  Do you really have any doubt that they’ll collude with whoever they have to in order to become relevant again?

  About “The Russians”

  The whole plotline about “the Russians” really took off when the Washington Post published an article listing a couple hundred websites as Russian “fake news” sites. (I know the owners of quite a few of these sites personally -as in, we’ve shared meals and wine together – and I can tell you, they’re as American as apple pie.” The Washington Post later backtracked on the accusations but did not retract the article.

  And today, the New York Times was at it with an article entitled, “C.I.A. Judgment on Russia Built on Swell of Evidence.”

  Except that when you consider that evidence by definition is definitive and the NYT admits everything they have is circumstantial, then, doesn’t that completely negates the headline? The article is sheer speculation, just like the WaPo article that named the “fake news” sites.

  What’s more, the FBI completely disagrees with the CIA, and they’ve been very public about it. They don’t believe that there is…well, evidence. I’ll quote from WaPo here.

  The competing messages, according to officials in attendance, also reflect cultural differences between the FBI and the CIA. The bureau, true to its law enforcement roots, wants facts and tangible evidence to prove something beyond all reasonable doubt. The CIA is more comfortable drawing inferences from behavior.

   

  “The FBI briefers think in terms of criminal standards — can we prove this in court,” one of the officials said. “The CIA briefers weigh the preponderance of intelligence and then make judgment calls to help policymakers make informed decisions. High confidence for them means ‘we’re pretty damn sure.’ It doesn’t mean they can prove it in court.”

  Give me a break. That, ladies and gentlemen, is why you should never, ever believe anything the Washington Post refers to as investigative journalism. They have no idea what proof or evidence even means.

  There’s a psy-op, all right, but it isn’t “the Russians” perpetrating it.

  It’s the CIA (keep in mind that psyops is part of their job) working hand in hand with the MSM.

  You just have to laugh at some of these headlines and quotes.

  For your entertainment, enjoy the following round-up of headlines promoting the “Blame Russia” sentiment.

  • Secret CIA assessment says Russia was trying to help Trump win White House (source)
  • House passes intelligence bill enhancing efforts against Russia (source)
  • Where’s the outrage over Russia’s hack of the US election?” (CNN)
  • Fake News, Russians, and Election Reversal (Town Hall)
  • A Powerful Russian Weapon: The Spread of False Stories (NY Times)
  • DID RUSSIAN AGENTS INFLUENCE THE U.S. ELECTION WITH FAKE NEWS? (Vanity Fair)
  • Experts Say Russian Propaganda Helped Spread Fake News During Election (NPR)
  • Media Wakes Up To Russia’s ‘Fake News’ Only After It Is Applied Against Hillary (Forbes)

  And then, have an eyeroll at some very silly quotes…

  From an interview on NPR:

  “But let’s remember, this was a very close vote where just, you know, a few tens of thousands of votes in a few states ended up making the difference. So I don’t know, if you believe that the kind of information that crashes through all of our social media accounts affects how we think and potentially how we vote, I think you would conclude that this kind of stuff does matter.” (source)

  From the NY Times:

  “RT [Russia Today] often seems obsessed with the United States, portraying life there as hellish. On the day President Obama spoke at the Democratic National Convention, for example, it emphasized scattered demonstrations rather than the speeches. It defends the Republican presidential nominee, Donald J. Trump, as an underdog maligned by the established news media.” (source)

  From a secret mystery source on CNN:

  “There was no way that any one could have walked out of there with that the evidence and conclude that the Russian government was not behind this.” (source)

  From CBS:

  Responding to intelligence officials’ report that Russia tried to influence the U.S. presidential election in favor of President-elect Donald Trump, Senate Armed Services Committee Chairman John McCain (R-Arizona) on Sunday said he doesn’t know what to make of Mr. Trump’s dismissal of the issue.

   

  “I don’t know what to make of it because it’s clear the Russians interfered,” he told CBS’ “Face the Nation.” “Whether they intended to interfere to the degree that they were trying to elect a certain candidate, I think that’s a subject of investigation. But facts are stubborn things. They did hack into this campaign.” (source)

  Politico reported:

  “Donald Trump’s insult-laced dismissal of reports that the CIA believes Russia hacked the 2016 election to help him is rattling a spy community already puzzled over how to gain the ear and trust of the incoming president.” (source)

  While some of the efforts are laughable, the end result could be incredibly serious.

  And by serious, I mean devastating. It could result in civil war. It could result in World War III.

  Despite the inadvertent hilarity, this is a blatant effort to keep President-Elect Trump out of the White House and to silence the opposition.

  When all dissenting voices are silenced, you’re only getting one part of the story. You’re only getting the part that those in power want you to hear. If we learned nothing else from Wikileaks, we learned that there are dark secrets about the evils of money, power, and manipulation. We learned how many conspiracy theories about the Clintons were actually facts, and we learned some things we can’t unlearn about the proclivities of some of the most powerful people in Washington.

  We learned that some people will do anything to remain in power.

  We’re watching them do anything right now.

  Never has an election been so vehemently contested. Never has our country been so divided. If the election results are cast aside, what do you really think will happen? Do you think Trump supporters will just sigh and accept it?

  And what about Russia?

  Just a few months ago, we were on the verge of war with them. By scapegoating “The Russians,” if this psy-op is successful, and Trump is kept out of office, what do you think is going to happen with tensions between the two countries?

  Enough with “the Russians” already. The real conspiracy is happening right here in America.

  

  

• "This Is Total Chaos" – Venezuela Shuts Colombia Border To Stop "Mafia" Currency Smuggling

  As if things were not already chaotic enough in the socialist utopia of Venezuela, following President Nicolas Maduro's decision to follow Indian PM Modi's playbook and announce that the nation's largest denomination bill (100-Bolivars – worth around 3c) will be pulled from circulation in 72 hours, he has tonight closed the border to Colombia to crackdown on currency smuggling by so-called "mafias".

  

  As AP reports, President Nicolas Maduro on Monday ordered the closure of Venezuela's border with Colombia for 72 hours in a crackdown on currency smuggling by what he has called "mafias" trying to destabilize the socialist-run economy.

  Maduro announced the decision after meeting with top economic aides. Earlier in the day, supporters of Maduro's socialist party circulated drawings on social media of criminals trying to smuggle cash into Venezuela like drugs.

   

  "This is an attack against Venezuela, so this is a necessary, unavoidable measure," Maduro said in announcing the border closure in a televised address alongside top economic aides. "It's the first of a series of decisions that we're going to be taking to defend our bolivar, our economy and our people."

   

  The border closure comes as Maduro is trying to curb Venezuela's galloping inflation and roll out a new range of bank notes after announcing on Sunday that the government would pull from circulation a 100-bolivar bill. It is currently the country's largest-denominated bill but worth only about 3 U.S. cents at the widely used black market rate.

   

  Maduro warned Sunday that people would not be allowed to bring back 100-bolivar bills from outside Venezuela to trade them in for the new bank notes.

  Maduro has long accused criminal gangs operating along the border of trying to smuggle everything from truckloads of subsidized food to gasoline sold in Venezuela at the world's cheapest prices.

  He compared the trade in cash to something like a centrifuge by which "mafias" operating from the Colombian border city of Cucuta buy scarce bolivars with hard currency and then recycle them back into Venezuela for a huge profit, driving down the currency's value in the process.

   

  He said that earlier Monday 64 million bolivars in cash had been seized coming across the border on dirt trails that proliferate along the 1,378-mile (2,219- kilometer) border.

   

  There was no immediate comment by Colombia's government. President Juan Manuel Santos and his top aides are visiting several European capitals after the Colombian leader over the weekend received the Nobel Peace Prize in Oslo.

  In closing the border again, Maduro tried to sound conciliatory to Santos, saying the two had discussed the issue previously. He also seemed to acknowledge the seriousness of Venezuela's cash crunch by announcing a series of measures to stimulate electronic-based transactions.

  Despite heavy printing of the 100-bolivar bills – 2.3 billion this year alone out of 6.1 billion in total – they are in short supply.

  

  Venezuelans rushed to spend their 100-bolivar notes Monday, before the government's Wednesday deadline for taking the note out of circulation, and there also were logistical concerns about how authorities would remove the more than 6 billion 100-bolivar bills in circulation, and whether replacement bills were ready. Furthermore, as Bloomberg notes, according to a report by Torino Capital, a New York investment bank, the 100-bolivar notes account for more than three quarters of Venezuela’s cash outstanding and 11 percent of the nation’s money supply, making Maduro’s decree a difficult task for a nation in the throes of an economic crisis.

  An estimated third of Venezuelans have no bank account and keep their savings in the soon-to-be-worthless bills. Venezuelans are in open revolt… (as Reuters reports)

  Luis Volcanes, 36, had for six weeks withdrawn cash every day but on Monday ran around with a big brown envelope trying to deposit that same money, only to find cash machines at four banks in a row were not working.

   

  "This seems crazy, like the government did this on a whim. I don't know what I'm going to do," Volcanes said as people trickled in and out of a bank in Caracas, complaining none of the machines worked.

   

  One man unable to deposit money yelled, "This is total chaos!"

   

  At least one shop owner threw his hands up in frustration.

   

  Lucio Colombo, 47, who sells gifts and snacks in Caracas' wealthy Chacao district, has asked clients to pay in cash for the last two weeks because his credit card reader no longer works.

   

  "So how do I get paid now?" he asked. "I was thinking of bringing my laptop so people can pay me by transfer – or I could just go on holiday. They are forcing me to stop working."

  Chaos, indeed, but just remember this is not the doing of the socialist government…

  The government said Machiavellian businessmen are hoarding goods and bloating prices to sabotage socialism. Interior Minister Nestor Reverol on Monday said criminals also were hoarding 100-bolivar bills in places such as Switzerland and Ukraine as part of a financial attack on Venezuela.

  He showed photos of stacks of bolivar bills but presented no further evidence.

   

  

  Economists scoff at the official line, pointing instead at strict currency controls and price fixing that hurt imports and reduce incentives for production. They said Maduro's measure will do nothing to improve product supply.

  "I've never studied or heard of an economic theory that explains this measure," said Carlos Miguel with Caracas-based economic consultancy Ecoanalitica.

  Adding to the aggravation, Monday was a bank holiday, meaning there were no tellers.

  While many business were not accepting 100-bolivar bills, poor people living day to day could not afford to reject cash and many were using the bills to buy food for the day.

   

  "I'll take everything you can give me to eat today," said taxi driver Jose Manuel Henrique, 49, whose cash income goes entirely to feeding his two children.

   

  Still, Henrique, a former supporter of late socialist leader Hugo Chavez, was annoyed. "The government can't get anything right. This wasn't thought out."

  

  A sign that reads 'We inform our clients that 100 bolivar notes will be accepted until Tuesday 12/13/16. Thank you,' is displayed at a bakery in the slum of Petare in Caracas.

  

  A 100 bolivar note is seen next to a sign that reads '100 bolivar notes are received until today,' at a store in the slum of Petare in Caracas

  The big question of course is how long before the new bills become truly worthless?

  

   

  And remember, as we noted earlier, Venezuela’s inflation has officially become the 57th official, verified episode of hyperinflation and been added to the Hanke-Krus World Hyperinflation Table.

  With Venezuela's move, we can now add the insolvent Latin American country to an increasingly large group of countries including India, Sweden, and Australia, which in recent months have been on a quiet crusade to eliminate all forms of paper money. Certainly, Venezuela will not be the last as only full control over a nation's currency will allow governments to enact global negative rates, something which is inevitable once the current "Trumpflation" euphoria finally ends.

  

  

• Penn Students Tear-Down Shakespeare Portrait "To Affirm More Inclusive Mission"

  Submitted by Anthony Gockowski via CampusReform.org,

  Students at the University of Pennsylvania removed a portrait of Shakespeare from a prominent location in the school’s English department after complaining that he did not represent a diverse range of writers.

  

  In fact, the chair of the department confirmed in a statement that the portrait was stripped from the wall by his students as “a way of affirming their commitment to a more inclusive mission for the English department,” The Daily Pennsylvanian reports.

  Additionally, Department Chair Jed Esty explained that the portrait was “delivered” to his office and replaced with a photograph of Audre Lorde, a celebrated African American feminist and author, in a move that was intended to send a message to Esty, whose department agreed to replace the portrait several years ago.

  Esty went on to confirm that the portrait of Lorde will remain in Shakespeare’s place until he and his colleagues can reach an agreement on what to do next, announcing the establishment of a “working group” to help monitor the process.

  According to a statement released by the school’s English department, the working group will help “declare and defend [its] departmental mission in the current political climate,” with Esty noting that the group will “initiate an open and collaborative conversation among students, faculty, and employees in English to come up with ideas for that public space.”

  Notably, the school’s “Code of Student Conduct” explicitly prohibits students from “stealing, damaging, defacing, or misusing the property or facilities of the university or of others.”

  

  Campus Reform reached out to the school for a comment on the matter, but did not receive a response in time for publication.

  

  

• Trump Picks Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson To Lead The State Department

  After days of speculation and strawmen, and following Mitt Romney's statement earlier, AP is reporting that President-elect Donald Trump has selected Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson to lead the State Department, according to two people close to Trump's transition team.

  The decision caps a lengthy process that often played out In public and exposed rifts within Trump's transition team. But Tillerson's close ties to Russia could still complicate his Senate confirmation hearings.

   

  Trump was set to formally announce Tillerson's nomination Tuesday morning. The people close to Trump's transition insisted on anonymity because they were not authorized to disclose the pick ahead of that announcement.

  If approved, Tillerson would be the first secretary of state in modern history without previous government experience, The Washington Post reported.

  

  As KCTV5 reports, he is being called a controversial pick, partly because of his ties with Russian leader Vladimir Putin. Putin gave the CEO a Russian government award three years ago after Exxon-Mobil cut a major oil deal with a Russian company.

  Russia has recently been accused of hacking in an effort to influence the result of the presidential election in Trump's favor. President Barack Obama ordered an investigation Friday into Russian influence on the election.

   

  Trump dismissed concerns about Russia in an interview with Chris Wallace on Fox News Sunday, deeming the matter “ridiculous.”

   

  The president-elect also used the interview to praise Tillerson for his business acumen and noted the CEO would be useful in matters regarding Russia because he “knows many of the players and he knows them well.”

   

  He tweeted Sunday about reports that Tillerson would be getting the nomination, calling the CEO “a world class player and dealmaker.”

  Trump tweeted this evening that his announcement will be tomorrow morning…

  I will be making my announcement on the next Secretary of State tomorrow morning.

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) December 13, 2016

  As we noted previously, the 64-year-old Texas oilman, whose friends describe as a staunch conservative, emerged as a Secretary of State contender only last week following a meeting with Trump, when it was speculated that he would consider the offer "due to his sense of patriotic duty and because he is set to retire from the company next year." Tillerson's appointment would introduce the potential for sticky conflicts of interest because of his financial stake in Exxon: he owns Exxon shares worth $151 million, according to recent securities filings.

  A quick biographical sketch of Tillerson courtesy of the WSJ:

  The son of a local Boy Scouts administrator, Tillerson was born in Wichita Falls, Texas. He attended the University of Texas, where he studied civil engineering, was a drummer in the Longhorn band and participated in a community service-oriented fraternity.

  He joined Exxon in 1975 and has spent his entire career at the company.

  For most of his adult life, he has also been closely involved with the Boy Scouts of America, even occasionally incorporating the Scout Law and Scout Oath into his speeches.  Mr. Tillerson played an instrumental role in leading the organization to change its policy to allow gay youth to participate in 2013, Mr. Hamre said. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates subsequently moved to lift the organization’s ban on gay adult leaders as Boy Scouts president in 2015.  “Most of the reason that organizations fail at change is pretty simple: People don’t understand why,” Mr. Tillerson said in a speech after the 2013 decision, urging leaders to communicate about the policy to help make it successful. “We’re going to serve kids and make the leaders of tomorrow.”

  * * *

  However it is not his Boy Scout exploits that will be the key talking point for pundits in the coming days, but rather his close relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

  According to the WSJ, few U.S. citizens are closer to Mr. Putin than Mr. Tillerson,  a recipient of Russia's Order of Friendship, bestowed by the president…

  

  … who has known Putin since he represented Exxon’s interests in Russia during the regime of Boris Yeltsin.

  “He has had more interactive time with Vladimir Putin than probably any other American with the exception of Henry Kissinger,” said John Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary during the Clinton administration and president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank where Mr. Tillerson is a board member.

  

  Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson with Vladimir Putin, then Russia’s prime minister, at
  a signing ceremony in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in August 2011.

  In 2011, Mr. Tillerson struck a deal giving Exxon access to prized Arctic resources in Russia as well as allowing Russia’s state oil company, OAO Rosneft, to invest in Exxon concessions all over the world. The following year, the Kremlin bestowed the country’s Order of Friendship decoration on Mr. Tillerson.

  The deal would have been transformative for Exxon. Mr. Putin at the time called it one of the most important involving Russia and the U.S., forecasting that the partnership could eventually spend $500 billion. But it was subsequently blocked by sanctions on Russia that the U.S. and its allies imposed two years ago after the country’s invasion of Crimea and conflicts with Ukraine.

  Tillerson spoke against the sanctions at the company’s annual meeting in 2014. “We always encourage the people who are making those decisions to consider the very broad collateral damage of who are they really harming with sanctions,” he said.

  As such, many have speculated that under his regime, the State Department may quietly drop any existing sactions against Russia.

  * * *

  Then there is the thorny issue of potential conflicts of interest, and his massive holdings of Exxon stock.

  One of the first issues Tillerson would have to resolve as secretary of state would be his holdings of Exxon shares, many of which aren’t scheduled to vest for almost a decade. The value of those shares could go up if the sanctions on Russia were lifted. 

  The shares would likely have to be sold under State Department ethics rules, Chase Untermeyer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Qatar, said in an interview. “He could not erase his strong relationship with a particular country,” Mr. Untermeyer said. “The best protection from a conflict of interest is transparency.”

  Tillerson will sell his $150+ million in XOM shares tax free, courtesy of the same tax break that was introduced in 1989 under the administration of President George H.W. Bush, which allowed Hank Paulson, Colin Powell and plenty of other public servants to dispose of their equity holdings without paying taxes: to get the tax relief, it must be deemed “reasonably necessary” for a public official to divest his shares, or a congressional committee must require the asset sale, according to section 1043 of the tax code, something which is virtually assured in the case of Tillerson.

  * * *

  Finally, the environmentalists will certainly be displeased with Trump's choice, even thought Tillerson helped shift Exxon’s response to climate change when he took over as CEO in 2006. He embraced a carbon tax as the best potential policy solution and has said climate change is a global problem that warrants action. That was a break from his predecessor, Lee Raymond.

  Still, Mr. Tillerson is a polarizing figure among Democrats and environmental activists. They have accused Exxon of sowing doubt about the impacts of climate change during Mr. Raymond’s tenure and say Mr. Tillerson hasn’t done enough to disclose the future impact of climate-change regulations on the company’s ability to get oil out of the ground.

  “This is certainly a good way to make clear exactly who’ll be running the government in a Trump administration—just cut out the middleman and hand it directly to the fossil-fuel industry,” said Bill McKibben, the environmental activist and founder of 350.org.

   

  Exxon has disputed the criticism and accused activists and Democratic attorneys general of conspiring against the company.

   

  The son of a local Boy Scouts administrator, Mr. Tillerson was born in Wichita Falls, Texas. He attended the University of Texas, where he studied civil engineering, was a drummer in the Longhorn band and participated in a community service-oriented fraternity.

  As secretary of state, Tillerson would be fourth in line to the presidency.

  

  

• China Admits Economic Data Is Fake: "Some Local Statistics Are Falsified"

  For years we’ve been writing about “fake data” coming out of China’s economic reports.  As an example, we reported the following chart on import data back in April (see “The Chart Proving That China’s Trade Data Has Never Been This Fake“).  Can anyone spot the outlier?

  

   

  Now, China’s “top statistician” has confirmed via an article in the “People’s Daily” newspaper that “some local statistics are falsified, and fraud and deception happen from time to time.”  Wow, so there’s a chance that China’s economy didn’t actually grow at a precise YoY rate of exactly 7.00% for the past decade…that always struck us as unlikely.  Per the Financial Times:

  China’s top statistician has acknowledged the country’s problems with falsification of economic data, pledging severe punishment for perpetrators in a nod to widespread suspicion that official numbers often fail to reflect true economic conditions.

   

  “Currently, some local statistics are falsified, and fraud and deception happen from time to time, in violation of statistics laws and regulations,” Ning Jizhe, director of the National Bureau of Statistics, wrote in a column for Communist party mouthpiece the People’s Daily on Thursday.

   

  Foreign economists and investors have long expressed doubts about China’s economic data. Most prominent are concerns about gross domestic product figures. Compared with other countries. China’s inflation-adjusted GDP growth rates are remarkably stable from quarter to quarter, even as nominal figures show considerable volatility. The NBS has denied charges that it manipulates inflation data to massage headline growth figures.

  While President Xi Jinping has called for “seriously punishing statistical falsification and fraudulent behavior,” others points out that political influence over statistical data is the precisely the problem, not the solution.  Of course, with local politicians evaluated on their ability to meet or exceed centrally planned growth targets, it’s no surprise that the “sum of provincial GDP figures” consistently exceeds the national calculations.
  

  In October a powerful Communist party task force led by President Xi Jinping issued policy guidelines calling for “increasing data accuracy” through methods including harsher penalties for falsification. Mr Ning’s article lauds the achievements of his agency in implementing these guidelines.

   

  “Seriously punishing statistical falsification and fraudulent behaviour benefits the rule of law and the upholding the credibility of the party and the government,” Mr Ning wrote.

   

  Critics of Chinese statistics have consistently argued that political interference in statistical compilation is the problem, not the solution. Communist party officials, especially at the local level, are still evaluated largely on their ability to meet or exceed economic growth targets. For many years, the sum of provincial GDP figures has far exceeded the national total. The party has taken tentative steps in recent years to reduce the role of economic growth targets in evaluating cadres’ performance, but strong incentives remain.

  Of course, while cynics may view this as a devastating admission, we suspect investors will promptly dismiss the potential impact of years of overstated GDP figures and quickly buy more stocks.

  

  

• 25 Cities On The Brink Of Disaster: "Don't Be Here When Things Get Violent, Unsafe, & Fragile"

  Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

  The 21st Century is inching ever closer towards chaos… and the time to get out of the big city is upon us.

  

  With economic conditions, growing crises, desperate populations looking to scratch by, and more hatred and division than at any previous point in American history, the city has become a dangerous and unruly setting – and finding yourseld in one that is falling apart could be the worst mistake you ever make.

  People are living in bigger urban zones than ever before… these megacities are the hotspots of global activity. But many are also proving to be the most dangerous place to be in a collapse. Crime is rampant, order is shaken and many people become willing to take advantage of the situation. Many areas are vulnerable to natural disasters, and have already lost control during past emergencies.

  In other places, widespread unemployment is simply taking its toll through increases in theft and violence. Whatever the reason, there are many places where things are falling apart, badly.

  As Wired reported, disaster is looming on a worldwide basis, but some are approaching total collapse, thanks to a storm of factors:

  Using data on 2,100 cities, Robert Muggah has found which factors make an area more likely to become violent, unsafe and fragile. The data show 30 cities on the brink of disaster and what could cause it.

  

  Infographic via Signal Noise.

  Cities were rated based on factors including: conflict, fragility, population growth, unemployment rate, access to services, income inequality, air pollution, homicide rate, killings in terrorist attacks, political violence and the risk of natural disaster.

  Natural disaster has proved very disruptive lately, as tsunamis and earthquakes have recently devastated New Zealand and rattled nearby Australia. Though things are fairly stable in these Western democracies, their geographical vulnerability to serious tectonic activity makes their civilization far than stable. Auckland, New Zealand made the list for risky cities.

  But Haiti was even harder hit. The 2010 earthquake caused widespread devastation in a place that was already one of the poorest on the planet. The 2016 hurricane in Haiti proved that despite billions of dollars in donation, philanthropy and intervention by the likes of the Clinton Foundation, Haiti was still extremely vulnerable. Hundreds of thousands of people were once again displaced as their homes were destroyed; local governments and global NGOs did little to nothing to secure basic necessities, and the place remains one crisis away from total instability. Port-au-Prince, the capital and most populous city there is already a very risky and poverty prone place, and could become much worse in the wake of a disaster.

  Of course, any number of urban areas in the war-torn Middle East and perpetual conflict zones of Africa has also made for very dangerous cities, with populations on the brink of disaster, and many individuals vulnerable to crime and violence on a daily basis. Ibb, Yemen, Kirkuk, Iraq, Aden, Yemen, Kabul, Afghanistan and Mosul, Iraq have become some of the worst locales, along with cities spread across the Congo, Mogadishu, Somalia and other highly disputed areas.

  Brazil’s megacities are so saturated with the urban poor, and short on basic resources including drinking water, they literally millions of people are on the brink. Riots are possible, and a survival crisis could factor in for Sao Paolo, where 8 million people are at risk of having no access to water. Predictably, many cities in Colombia remain extremely fragile due to the ongoing drug war conflicts that have claimed lives, and left millions of people at the mercy of gang rule.

  Venezuela has proven to be a special case, of near precision collapse, as its currency tanks and economic warfare brings people to their knees as they are forced to wait in line for rations, trade on the black market and deal in worthless cash. Socialism has worsened the problems created by the emergency drop in the oil prices. Caracas remains the biggest pool of hungry, poor and increasingly fed up people.

  Guatamala City, Mixco and Villa Neuva, Guetemala as well as San Pedro Sula, Honduras were identified as particularly vulnerable cities in Central America, as refugees continue to seek amnesty in the United States to escape the ongoing turmoil in their own countries.

  Perhaps surprising to some, many major European cities are quite vulnerable as well to global economic pressures via sharp increases in immigration, “rape” scandals and social concerns about terrorism.

  London, UK is one of the wealthiest cities, and yet it faces enormous pressures from overwhelming immigration, from growing economic disparity and from cultural clashes, threats of terrorism – and now, fighting between political factions over Brexit and other issues.

  The Eastern bloc is especially vulnerable to these pressures that could lead to a growing unrest. France, Germany, Sweden and Norway also face major instability over immigration and cultural issues.

  But some of the most unstable cities on the planet rank among those in the United States.

  Places like Baltimore, Detroit, Washington D.C., New York, Philadelphia and other cities across the map are still deeply divided often police and race issues. Many have seen serious riots, looting and unrest. These social wedge issues are still being pushed from moneyed political interests, while political divide after the direction of the country has become sharp.

  Dallas, Texas just suspended pension payments for some of its civil servants, a sign that financial insolvency could create an epidemic during the next crisis. Several states, like California, have over promised benefits to state employees in the pension programs, without ever planning to pay for them. If people lose it, Los Angeles, San Francisco, San Diego and the whole of the surrounding areas could simply erupt. Similar problems have left Detroit, Michigan and Puerto Rico, the commonwealth island, extremely vulnerable to bankruptcy and economic apocalypse that could contaminate the nation and global within hours.

  If a natural disaster, such as a hurricane, hits the East or Gulf Coast, tens of millions of people could be caught up in traffic, locked in cities without food, and desperate to cling to order and survive. Likewise, if a major earthquake hit the West Coast, millions could be displaced and left without many options. That’s when things turn ugly.

  The world is reaching a tipping point, and much chaos and instability could come crashing down anytime now. Many cities have made themselves open targets for collapse, with economic normalcy already hanging by a thread and populations already restless and growing increasingly discontent.

  Be prepared. These things are building, and there are quite a few places you’d rather not be when the SHTF.

  

  

• Top US Spy Agency Refuses To Endorse CIA's Russian Hacking Assessment Due To "Lack Of Evidence"

  When the WaPo posted last Friday’s story about a “secret” CIA assessment that Russian cyber attacks were aimed at helping Republican President-elect Donald Trump win the 2016 election, the readers of the Bezos-owned publication took it as gospel, despite, as we promptly noted, there being no evidence provided by the CIA, and as we learned today, the FBI openly resisting the CIA’s assessment. It now appears that once again the WaPo may have been engaging in “partial fake news”, as it did with its Nov. 24 story about “Russian propaganda fake media.”

  According to Reuters, the so-called overseers of the U.S. intelligence community as it supervises the 17 agency-strong U.S. intelligence community, the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), while not disputing the CIA’s analysis of Russian hacking operations – something which would be unprecedented for the US spy industry and would telegraph just how partisan and broken the country’s intelligence apparatus has become – has refused to endorse the CIA’s assessment “because of a lack of conclusive evidence” that Moscow intended to boost Trump over Democratic opponent Hillary Clinton.

  As Reuters conveniently notes, the ODNI position could give Trump fresh ammunition to dispute the CIA assessment, which he rejected as “ridiculous” in weekend remarks, and press his assertion that no evidence implicates Russia in the cyber attacks. The ODNI’s position confirms that Trump was once again, you guessed it, right.

  “ODNI is not arguing that the agency (CIA) is wrong, only that they can’t prove intent,” said one of the three U.S. officials. 

  As reported earlier, the FBI, whose evidentiary standards require it to make cases that can stand up in court, likewise declined to accept the CIA’s analysis – a deductive assessment of the available intelligence – for the same reason, the three officials said.

  The ODNI, headed by James Clapper, was established after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on the recommendation of the commission that investigated the attacks. The commission, which identified major intelligence failures, recommended the office’s creation to improve coordination among U.S. intelligence agencies.

  As a reminder, the first hint that the US would scapegoat Russia for an “unexpected election outcome” took place on October 7, when the U.S. government formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against American political organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election. Back then, president Barack Obama has said he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about consequences for the attacks. Reports of the assessment by the CIA, which has not publicly disclosed its findings, have prompted congressional leaders to call for an investigation.

  The narrative escalated rapidly last week, when outgoing president Obama ordered intelligence agencies to review the cyber attacks and foreign intervention in the presidential election and to deliver a report before he turns power over to Trump on Jan. 20.

  So how did the CIA come to its conclusion?

  According to Reuters, the agency assessed after the election that the attacks on political organizations were aimed at swaying the vote for Trump because the targeting of Republican organizations diminished toward the end of the summer and focused on Democratic groups, a senior U.S. official told Reuters on Friday. Moreover, only materials filched from Democratic groups – such as emails stolen from John Podesta, the Clinton campaign chairman – were made public via WikiLeaks, the anti-secrecy organization, and other outlets, U.S. officials said.

  The CIA conclusion – one of induction and no supporting evidence – was a “judgment based on the fact that Russian entities hacked both Democrats and Republicans and only the Democratic information was leaked,” one of the three officials said on Monday. “(It was) a thin reed upon which to base an analytical judgment,” the official added.

  Earlier Monday, Senator John McCain said on Monday also confronted the CIA’s assessment, saying there was “no information” that Russian hacking of American political organizations was aimed at swaying the outcome of the election. “It’s obvious that the Russians hacked into our campaigns,” McCain said. “But there is no information that they were intending to affect the outcome of our election and that’s why we need a congressional investigation,” he told Reuters.

  McCain also questioned an assertion made on Sunday by RNC Chair Reince Priebus, who said that there were no hacks of computers belonging to Republican organizations. “Actually, because Mr. Priebus said that doesn’t mean it’s true,” said McCain. “We need a thorough investigation of it, whether both (Democratic and Republican organizations) were hacked into, what the Russian intentions were. We cannot draw a conclusion yet. That’s why we need a thorough investigation.”

  Well, just because HIllary said that, it did make it true, so perhaps Reince is right as well?

  Meanwhile, in an angry letter sent to ODNI chief Clapper on Monday, House Intelligence Committee Chairman Devin Nunes said he was “dismayed” that the top U.S. intelligence official had not informed the panel of the CIA’s analysis and the difference between its judgment and the FBI’s assessment. Noting that Clapper in November testified that intelligence agencies lacked strong evidence linking Russian cyber attacks to the WikiLeaks disclosures, Nunes asked that Clapper, together with CIA and FBI counterparts, brief the panel by Friday on the latest intelligence assessment of Russian hacking during the election campaign.

  We, for one, can’t wait to hear his testimony – under oath – why in the span of one month so much has changed, and who precisely prompted the CIA to “infer” that Russia is responsible for Hillary Clinton’s loss. Or maybe we will just have to wait for Wikileaks, pardon Russia, to hack Podesta’s email account for that first?

  

  

• Clinton Campaign, Top Democrats Call For Intel Briefing, Commission Ahead Of Electoral College Vote

  Update: The push to delegitimize the election results continued after a trio of top Senate Democrats called for a nonpartisan commission to investigate allegations that Russia interfered in the 2016 presidential election.  Sens. Ben Cardin (Md.), Dianne Feinstein (Calif.) and Patrick Leahy (Vt.), the top Democrats on the Foreign Relations, Intelligence and Judiciary committees, back the creation an independent commission with 18 months to report its findings The Hill reports.

  “The American people deserve a nonpartisan, transparent, public investigation into this insidious attack on our democratic institutions,” Cardin said. “As a nation it’s time to get to the bottom of it and learn what we can do to prevent it from ever happening again.”

  The commission would be tasked with investigating allegations of Russian cyber attacks, trying to identify those responsible and recommending responses and future measures to prevent interference in U.S. elections.

  Feinstein added that the commission would determine if Russian hacks tried to undercut Hillary Clinton, the Democrat presidential nominee, or “undermine our democratic system.”

  “This bipartisan commission will help identify the specific ‘actors’ responsible and recommend a possible course of action to prevent this from ever happening again,” she said.

  The panel, according to the Democratic senators, would have access to both classified and unclassified information, as well as the ability to subpoena officials about Russian activities tied to the presidential race. 

  Leahy, the top Democrat on the Judiciary Committee, added on Monday lawmakers must “rise above the fray and engage in a serious, independent, and bipartisan investigation.”

  “This is larger than any one candidate or any one election,” he said. “This is about protecting our democracy now, and going forward.”

  Of course, none of these calls would have been made had Trump lost the election, and in fact he would have been crucified by the press for daring to question the outcome of the vote.

  * * *

  Earlier:

  And there it is.

  Just as we first laid out on Saturday following Friday night’s shock “report” that the CIA had concluded Russia had intervened in the presidential election on behalf of Trump, which we quickly assessed had all the marks of a “soft coup” attempt, and which culminated most recently with a report that up to 10 electors had requested a briefing on “Russian Interference” before the presidential vote, moments ago none other than the Clinton campaign, by way of its top political adviser John Podesta, said the campaign is supporting an effort by members of the Electoral College to request an intelligence briefing on foreign intervention in the presidential election, Politico reported.

  In his statement released on Monday, Podesta said “The bipartisan electors’ letter raises very grave issues involving our national security,” and added that “electors have a solemn responsibility under the Constitution and we support their efforts to have their questions addressed.”

  “Each day that month, our campaign decried the interference of Russia in our campaign and its evident goal of hurting our campaign to aid Donald Trump. Despite our protestations, this matter did not receive the attention it deserved by the media in the campaign. We now know that the CIA has determined Russia’s interference in our elections was for the purpose of electing Donald Trump. This should distress every American.”

  Podesta’s statement is the first public statement from the Clinton campaign raising questions about the legitimacy of Donald Trump’s victory.

  It follows the previously reported open letter from 10 presidential electors, including Democratic Leader Nancy Pelosi’s daughter Christine, requesting an intelligence briefing ahead of the Dec. 19 vote of the Electoral College.

  Why this push is curious, is because during today’s briefing Press Secretary Josh Earnest explicitly stated that “US intel agencies didn’t detect any malicious cyberactivity “that interfered w the casting and counting of ballots” on Nov. 8″, a narrative at odds with that concocted by the WaPo, in its interpretation of what the CIA allegedly concluded in its “secret” assessment, which thenbegs the question: who is lying?

  Shortly after Podesta’s statement, the Democratic National Committee disseminated a Politico story that revealed the electors’ call for a briefing. Two Democratic members of Congress have also suggested the Electoral College should take an active role in reassessing, or stopping, a Trump presidency.

  It was unclear which particular agency would provide the briefing, if it was permitted, especially in light of reports that there has been a shcism between the CIA and FBI in their interpretation of whether Russia had indeed intervened directly to push for a Trump election.

  While so far no proof has been provided by the CIA substantiating its claim, we doubt one will be forthcoming. After all as the WaPo itself reported some time ago, citing an official, “the intelligence community is not saying it has ‘definitive proof’ of such tampering, or any Russian plans to do so.” In other words, there is merely “extrapolation” based on a personal biases to reach a desired, goalseeked outcome, without any factual validation whatsoever.

  However, it is likely that should the Clinton Campaign’s request for a “breifing” be granted, that it would lead to a dramatic split among the already polarized US nation. As to whether the Electoral College would ultimately vote against Trump, we leave it up to readers to consider the possible, and very damaging for the US, consequences.

  

  

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• THe RuSSiaNS ARe CoMiNG…

  

  

• If You Are For Peace, You Are A Russian Agent!

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  Speaking of fake news, the latest issue of the National Enquirer at the supermarket checkout is giving the mainstream presstitute media a run for the money: “Castro’s Deathbed Confession: I Killed JFK. How I framed Oswald.”

  That’s almost as good as the fake news going around the presstitute media, such as the TV stations, the Washington Post, New York Times, and Guardian – yes, even the former leftwing British newspaper has joined the ranks of the press prostitutes – that the CIA has concluded that “Russian operatives covertly interfered in the election campaign in an attempt to ensure the Republican candidate’s victory.”

  If the CIA is actually stupid enough to believe this, the US is without a competent intelligence agency. Of course, the CIA didn’t say and doesn’t believe any such thing. The fake news stories in the presstitute media are all sourced to unnamed officials. Former British ambassador Craig Murray described the reports accurately: “bullshit.”

  So who is making the stories up, another anonomous group tied to Hillary such as PropOrNot, the secret, hidden organization that released a list of 200 websites that are Russian agents?

  Fake news is the presstitute’s product. Throughout the presidential primaries and presidential campaign it was completely clear that the mainstream print and TV media were producing endless fake news designed to damage Trump and to boost Hillary. We all saw it. We all lived through it. What is this pretense that Russia is the source of fake news?

  We have had nothing but fake news from the presstitutes since the Klingon regime. Fake news was used against Yugoslavia and Serbia in order to cloak the Clinton’s war crimes.

  Fake news was used against Osama bin Laden, Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia in order to cloak the Bush regime’s war crimes.

  Fake news was used against Libya and Syria in order to cloak the Obama regime’s war crimes.

  Without fake news these three blood-drenched presidencies would have been hauled before the War Crimes Commission, tried, and convicted.

  Can anyone produce any truthful statement from the presstitute media about anything of importance? MH-17? Crimea? Ukraine?

  Ironic, isn’t it, that it is those who purport to be liberal and progressive who are responsible for the revival of McCarthyism in America. Moreover, the liberal progressives are institutionalizing McCarthyism in the US government. There is clearly a concerted effort being made to define truth as fake news and to define lies as truth.

  Ironic, isn’t it, that it is the war criminal Hillary, responsible for the destruction of Libya and the near destruction of Syria until the Russians intervened, that the liberal progressive forces are desperate to have as president. Not only did the liberal progressive forces attempt to elect a war criminal president of the US, they are doing their best to delegitimize the president-elect who opposes the orchestrated conflict with Russia.

  Ironic, isn’t it, that the liberal progressive bloc refuse to give peace a chance.

  The faked news report from the imbeciles at PropOrNot, which was hyped by the fake news sheet, WaPo, claiming that I was a Russian agent was supposed to do my credibility harm. Instead, the 200 List told everyone where they could get good information, and my readership went up. Moreover, I almost got a Russian passport out of it. But before sending it along, Putin checked with Russian intelligence and was informed that I am not on their roster.

  The rumor is that if the House intelligence bill passes with Title V intact, those of us on the PropOrNot list could be called before congressional hearings in a replay of McCarthyism. If they waterboard me, I might breakdown and implicate Ronald Reagan, George H.W. Bush, Jim Baker, David Stockman, and all the rest. The evidence against us is pretty strong. Trump is suspect because he wants peace with Russia, and so did Reagan. From the standpoint of the Hillary forces and the presstitutes, anyone who wants peace with Russia is bound to be a Russian agent.

  The way the presstitutes have framed the issue, there are no legitimate reasons to be for peace.

  If Putin and those of us on the 200 List are the ones who actually got Trump elected, shouldn’t Putin or The List be Time magazine’s person of the year and not Trump? After all, if Putin and I did the work, shouldn’t we get the recognition? Why give the credit to the stooge we put in office?

  Why is Time magazine shoving those of us responsible off into the background?

  Eureka! Time magazine is also a Russian agent and is covering up for us by giving Trump credit for our work. Whew! I won’t be waterboarded after all.

  

  

• Foxconn Fires 25% Of India Workers As Demonetization Destroys Sales

  While piecemeal anecdotes and surveys have already exposed the devastation that PM Modi's demonetization plan has had on the Indian economy, tonight we see the first hard evidence as Foxconn has asked 25% of its workforce to leave after the cash ban caused sales to collapse by 50% forcing the company to slash production by half.

  Amid social unrest and loss of faith in the nation's currency, India's economy has ground to a halt with its Composite PMI crashing by a record in the last month as demonetization strikes.

  

  And now, as The Economic Times reports, the government’s move to ban Rs 500 and Rs 1,000 notes from November 9 has had a domino effect on the mobile phone industry, where a large majority of mobile phones are bought for less than Rs 5,000 and most of the transactions happen through cash.

  Consumer purchase power has been reduced dramatically – mobile phone monthly sales halved to Rs 175-200 crore post demonetisation – and sales revival is not looking up, as was perceived earlier, industry insiders said.

   

  Leading local players including Intex, Lava and Karbonn are planning to lay off or bench 10-40% of their workforce, as they cut production to control inventory pile-ups in retail channels with consumers delaying cash purchases after Nov 8 demonetisation sucked out cash from the market.

   

  Lava is shutting down its plant – which employs around 5000 people -for a week starting December 12, while others could soon follow, industry insiders said.

   

  Foxconn – which makes devices for China’s Xiaomi, Oppo and Gionee, besides Infocus and Nokia – along with Lava, Intex, Karbonn and Micromax account for around 50% of the handsets assembled in India, say experts.

   

  “The four plants in Sri City (Andhra Pradesh) are operating at 1.2 million capacity a month, down from 2.5 million that it has,” a senior industry executive aware of Foxconn’s manufacturing details said, asking not to be named. The company has put about 1,700 of its workforce on the bench, or on forced leave for two weeks during which they will get paid but the number of days would be cut from their earned leaves. Benching may continue if production – directly related to consumer demand – does not come to the 2 million a month levels by January, the person added.

  

  Will the workers come back? Will production come back? Well as we noted previously, Modi's move has shaken faith in the foundations

  A final philosophical point. Our entire monetary system depends on trust. A banknote is a piece of paper that says the RBI will give the bearer another similar piece of paper, or make an entry in an electronic ledger for that amount. The system works because everybody believes that those pieces of paper will be accepted by everybody else and therefore, money serves as an useful medium of exchange. This move has shaken that trust.

  

  

• Saudi "Shock And Awe" Sparks Buying Panic In Crude – WTI At 17-Month Highs

  Despite Saudi Arabia pumping record amounts of crude, the energy complex has spiked 6% higher tonight after two major headlines. First, Russia and other non-OPEC nations agreed to join the OPEC pledge to reduce production; and then, in what some are calling their "whatever it takes" moment, Saudi Arabia surprised the market by saying it will cut more than previously agreed.

  Saudi Arabia will “cut substantially” below the target agreed last month with OPEC members, Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih says.

   

  Al-Falih’s comments follow a deal by non-OPEC countries to join forces with the group and trim output by 558k b/d next year, the first pact between the rivals in 15 years.

   

  “This is a very powerful message that producers want to balance the market higher,” says Chris Weston, chief market strategist in Melbourne at IG Ltd. “As a statement of intent, this is about as bullish as it gets”

  Oil spiked up to its highest since July 2015…

  

  and perhaps most worrying for those inflation-watchers, is up 55% YoY…

  

  "This is shock and awe by Saudi Arabia," said Amrita Sen, chief oil analyst at Energy Aspects Ltd. in London. "It shows the commitment of Riyadh to rebalance the market and should end concerns about OPEC delivering the deal."

  The question is – what happens next? How long can the Saudis keep jaw-boning the market higher in true central bank-inspired 'forward guidance' before 'investors' get wise to them not actually cutting production?

  

  

• Speculation Grows Japan Will Tighten Next

  First it was the Fed, then the ECB (which last week tapered when it reduced the monthly amount of bond purchases under its QE program). Now attention shifts to the Bank of Japan, because as the WSJ writes, one of central banking’s most aggressive easers – Kuroda’s Bank of Japan – may soon have to think about tightening for the first time since 2007.

  

  While it has yet to permeate the markets (confirmation would send the Yen soaring), the latest buzz in Japanese monetary-policy circles is that the BOJ may have to lift the 10-year government-bond target from a recently set zero, in the process tightening financial conditions even more. Indeed, as the WSJ notes, such a changed view on BOJ policy is quite a turnaround.

  Just a few months back investors and economists world-wide were discussing what would be the next easing steps in the bank’s 15-year fight to boost the economy and produce inflation. More certainly seems needed: Japan’s economy grew more slowly than expected in the latest quarter and prices are falling.

  So why switch gears now? Blame Donald Trump, stupid, whose miraculously adverse impact on the Yen has been more profound than either of Japan’s recent QEs…. and that is before Trump is even inaugurated, or reveals any of the details behind his fiscal stimulus plans.

  The U.S. dollar and Treasury yields have been climbing since soon after Trump was elected president on Nov. 8, triggered by expectations that his policies would boost U.S. growth, inflation and interest rates. So far, that has been good for Japan, where the weaker yen is brightening exporters’ prospects, helping send Tokyo stocks to 11-month highs. A weaker yen bolsters their bottom lines by making their products cheaper overseas and inflating the value of repatriated income. As of Friday, one dollar buys ¥114.50, 9.6% more than the day before the U.S. election.

  While that may be fine as far as it goes, according to various central-bank watchers who spoke to the WSJ, the BOJ’s latest easing policy raises the risk of far greater, and potentially damaging, depreciation. That is because as a result of the curve “anchoring”, the wider the yield spread between JGBs and foreign bonds, the greater the outflows, the more aggressive the selling of the Yen. For example, since U.S. Election Day, U.S. 10-year Treasury yields have risen to 2.426% from 1.862%, far outstripping the Japanese benchmark bond’s rise to 0.056% from minus 0.064%.

  As yields rise around the world—led by the U.S., whose Federal Reserve is expected to raise rates on Dec. 14—the gap between Japan and other markets widens. That draws money out of Japan as investors search for better returns, which puts further pressure on the yen.

  So what happens if US TSY yields spike even higher (the 10Y was at 2.493% moments ago, the highest since June 2015)? Should 10Y yields climb to 3% or higher next year, as some economists think it could, “the BOJ may be forced to raise its yield target in response, even if it hasn’t achieved its policy goal of 2% inflation.“

  The pressure to raise the target could be especially intense if the yen weakens to levels like ¥130 to the dollar.

  While for those who believe an imploding yen is what the doctor ordered, referencing Abe’s plan to goose the economy with easy money, there are notable downsides. 

  Sure, a weaker yen could boost optimism and inflation expectations among Japanese companies, argues Abe adviser Etsuro Honda, making them more willing to invest and raise wages. If the result was increased upward pressure on bond yields, the “natural course of action” would be for the BOJ to raise the 10-year yield target a touch from zero, he said. Two months ago Mr. Honda was calling on the BOJ to lower its targets as an added jolt of easing.

  However for Abenomics skeptics, the yen’s deteriorating prospects ring alarm bells. BNP Paribas chief Japan economist Ryutaro Kono said in a recent note for clients that a fall to ¥115 to the dollar could upset consumers by raising the cost of living.

  The Yen is already below that level.

  When BOJ easing weakened the yen to ¥125 to the dollar from ¥110 between autumn 2014 and summer of 2015, it cast a chill over the economy as rising costs for imported food and necessities battered consumers while companies held back from raising wages.

  Then there is the yield curve argument: Japanese economists say the BOJ may have to raise its bond-yield target just to give more breathing room to the country’s banks, whose profits are dwindling as their longer-term lending rates fall dangerously close to what they’re paying on deposits.

  “It’s like they’re submerged under water and holding their breath,” said Kazuo Momma, a former BOJ executive director who is now executive economist at Mizuho Research Institute. “If this situation becomes protracted, they could drown.”

  Naturally, the BOJ – just like the ECB – which are both agreeable to steepening the yield curve even more (seemingly unaware that will also crash the housing market), is allergic to any discussions of tightening. After all, if there is one thing that could crash this market, it is further hints of tightening and the yanking of billions in reserves. Then again, just like in the case of the ECB, perhaps all Kuroda needs to do is come up with a fancy-sounding economic name for its imminent tightening, one which doesn’t wake up the algos. Perhaps “inverse massive QE” should do the trick…

  

  

• Russia Releases First Ever Video Footage Of Its Special Forces Operating In Syria

  In a first of its kind event, Russian television today showed what it says is the first footage of Russian special forces fighting on the ground in Syria. 

  Elite Russian units in Syria take part in search and rescue operations, assassinations of key rebel figures and coordination of air strikes, according to footage broadcast on state-owned channel Rossiya 24 on Sunday. Groups of heavily armed soldiers were shown coordinating sniper attacks, using robotic tanks and inspecting rebel corpses.

  The presenter of the weekly news program said the footage was filmed in Syria but did not give details.

  Russia first acknowledged the presence of its special forces in Syria during the re-capture of the city of Palmyra from Islamic State fighters in March, but it has provided no information on the number of deployed soldiers or their exact location.

  The video shows more than 8 minutes of fascinating footage which reveals that traditionally the most impactful developments “on the battlefield” take place just behind the scenes.

  And now we wait for similar footage from US special forces in Syria – after all, it is now effectively a contest – and hope that the Russian and US teams never “confuse” each other for the enemy. Meanwhile, watch – for the first time – how Russian special ops engage their enemies in Syria.

  

  

• Senate Quietly Passes The "Countering Disinformation And Propaganda Act"

  While we wait to see if and when the Senate will pass (and president will sign) Bill  “H.R. 6393, Intelligence Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2017″, which was passed by the House at the end of November with an overwhelming majority and which seeks to crack down on websites suspected of conducting Russian propaganda and calling for the US government to “counter active measures by Russia to exert covert influence … carried out in  coordination with, or at the behest of, political leaders or the security services of the Russian Federation and the role of the Russian Federation has been hidden or not acknowledged publicly,” another, perhaps even more dangerous and limiting to civil rights and freedom of speech bill passed on December 8.

  Recall that as we reported in early June, “a bill to implement the U.S.’ very own de facto Ministry of Truth has been quietly introduced in Congress. As with any legislation attempting to dodge the public spotlight the Countering Foreign Propaganda and Disinformation Act of 2016 marks a further curtailment of press freedom and another avenue to stultify avenues of accurate information. Introduced by Congressmen Adam Kinzinger and Ted Lieu, H.R. 5181 seeks a “whole-government approach without the bureaucratic restrictions” to counter “foreign disinformation and manipulation,” which they believe threaten the world’s “security and stability.”

  Also called the Countering Information Warfare Act of 2016 (S. 2692), when introduced in March by Sen. Rob Portman, the legislation represents a dramatic return to Cold War-era government propaganda battles. “These countries spend vast sums of money on advanced broadcast and digital media capabilities, targeted campaigns, funding of foreign political movements, and other efforts to influence key audiences and populations,” Portman explained, adding that while the U.S. spends a relatively small amount on its Voice of America, the Kremlin provides enormous funding for its news organization, RT.“Surprisingly,”

  Portman continued, “there is currently no single U.S. governmental agency or department charged with the national level development, integration and synchronization of whole-of-government strategies to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation.”  

  Long before the “fake news” meme became a daily topic of extensive conversation on wuch mainstream fake news portals as CNN and WaPo, H.R. 5181 would rask the Secretary of State with coordinating the Secretary of Defense, the Director of National Intelligence, and the Broadcasting Board of Governors to “establish a Center for Information Analysis and Response,” which will pinpoint sources of disinformation, analyze data, and — in true dystopic manner — ‘develop and disseminate’ “fact-based narratives” to counter effrontery propaganda.

  * * *

  Fast forward to this past Thursday, December 8, when the “Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act” passed in the Senate, quietly inserted inside the 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report.

  Here is the full statement issued by the generously funded Senator Rob Portman (R- Ohio) on the passage of a bill that further chips away at press liberties in the US, and which sets the stage for future which hunts and website shutdowns, purely as a result of an accusation that any one media outlet or site is considered as a source of “disinformation and propaganda” and is shut down by the government.

  Senate Passes Major Portman-Murphy Counter-Propaganda Bill as Part of NDAA

  Portman/Murphy Bill Promotes Coordinated Strategy to Defend America, Allies Against Propaganda and Disinformation from Russia, China & Others

  U.S. Senators Rob Portman (R-OH) and Chris Murphy (D-CT) today announced that their Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act – legislation designed to help American allies counter foreign government propaganda from Russia, China, and other nations – has passed the Senate as part of the FY 2017 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) Conference Report. The bipartisan bill, which was introduced by Senators Portman and Murphy in March, will improve the ability of the United States to counter foreign propaganda and disinformation by establishing an interagency center housed at the State Department to coordinate and synchronize counter-propaganda efforts throughout the U.S. government. To support these efforts, the bill also creates a grant program for NGOs, think tanks, civil society and other experts outside government who are engaged in counter-propaganda related work. This will better leverage existing expertise and empower local communities to defend themselves from foreign manipulation.

  “The passage of this bill in the Senate today takes us one critical step closer to effectively confronting the extensive, and destabilizing, foreign propaganda and disinformation operations being waged against us. While the propaganda and disinformation threat has grown, the U.S. government has been asleep at the wheel. Today we are finally signaling that enough is enough; the United States will no longer sit on the sidelines. We are going to confront this threat head-on,” said Senator Portman. “With the help of this bipartisan bill, the disinformation and propaganda used against our allies and our interests will fail.”

  “Congress has taken a big step in fighting back against fake news and propaganda from countries like Russia. When the president signs this bill into law, the United States will finally have a dedicated set of tools and resources to confront our adversaries’ widespread efforts to spread false narratives that undermine democratic institutions and compromise America’s foreign policy goals,” said Murphy. “I’m proud of what Senator Portman and I accomplished here because it’s long past time for the U.S. to get off the sidelines and confront these growing threats.”

  NOTE: The bipartisan Countering Disinformation and Propaganda Act is organized around two main priorities to help achieve the goal of combatting the constantly evolving threat of foreign disinformation. They are as follows:

  • The first priority is developing a whole-of-government strategy for countering foreign propaganda and disinformation. The bill would increase the authority, resources, and mandate of the Global Engagement Center to include state actors like Russia and China in addition to violent extremists. The Center will be led by the State Department, but with the active senior level participation of the Department of Defense, USAID, the Broadcasting Board of Governors, the Intelligence Community, and other relevant agencies. The Center will develop, integrate, and synchronize whole-of-government initiatives to expose and counter foreign disinformation operations and proactively advance fact-based narratives that support U.S. allies and interests.
  • Second, the legislation seeks to leverage expertise from outside government to create more adaptive and responsive U.S. strategy options. The legislation establishes a fund to help train local journalists and provide grants and contracts to NGOs, civil society organizations, think tanks, private sector companies, media organizations, and other experts outside the U.S. government with experience in identifying and analyzing the latest trends in foreign government disinformation techniques. This fund will complement and support the Center’s role by integrating capabilities and expertise available outside the U.S. government into the strategy-making process. It will also empower a decentralized network of private sector experts and integrate their expertise into the strategy-making process.

  * * *

  In other words, the Act will i) greenlight the government to crack down with impunity against any media property it deems “propaganda”, and ii) provide substantial amounts of money fund an army of “local journalist” counterpropaganda, to make sure the government’s own fake news drowns that of the still free “fringes.”

  So while packaged politely in a veneer of “countering disinformation and propaganda”, the bill, once signed by Obama, will effectively give the government a full mandate to punish, shut down or otherwise prosecute, any website it deems offensive and a source of “foreign government propaganda from Russia, China or other nations.” And since there is no formal way of proving whether or not there is indeed a foreign propaganda sponsor, all that will be sufficient to eliminate any “dissenting” website, will be the government’s word against that of the website. One can be confident that the US government will almost certainly prevail in every single time.

   

   

  

  

• The Eurodollar Market: It's Not Working!

  By Chris at www.CapitalistExploits.at

  Today we discuss the largest wholesale funding market in the world, the eurodollar market, and how its “normal” form of functioning has dramatically changed, causing all manner of problems in the global economy. 

  In last week’s post we discussed shadow banking at its finest: the eurodollar market. It was the precursor to this article and so if you’ve not read it then it’ll be useful to do so here before reading this article.

  In that article I mentioned that the eurodollar financing market has never returned to the levels prior to the GFC. Let’s first retrace the steps to understand what exactly has happened since the central banks all “saved us” from annihilation. In doing so I hope to lay the foundation for my belief as to why it is that some 8 years on the world is still mired in lacklustre growth, rising inequality, and this prolonged recession, which never seems to want to go away.

  Everyone senses that things have changed, they’re different, out of sync… wrong. But why?

  Let’s dig in…

  Killing Us Softly – Medicinal Cyanide

  Central bank responses to the GFC were that the federal funds target was at the zero lower bound as the Fed attempted to provide stimulus through unsterilized purchases of Treasury and mortgage-backed securities (MBS), or what is popularly referred to as quantitative easing (QE).

  

  Between 2009 and 2014, the Fed threw three rounds of QE at the global economic wall praying that at least one would stick. And so, like trying to carve a pineapple with a plastic spoon, failing, and then attacking the pineapple with yet more plastic spoons, the Fed took something NOT working to be evidence that quantity and size is the problem rather than strategy. Genius.

  The third round of QE was completed in October 2014 at which point the Fed’s balance sheet was $4.5 trillion — five times its pre-crisis size. Quite some price to pay, and for what?

  

  The Fed weren’t alone in this. Our sake drinking friends were at it too, giving new meaning to the phrase “big in Japan”, as were the Europeans and Brits. All in all, quite simply unprecedented and extremely unorthodox coordinated central bank actions.

  

  All this intervention by central banks was designed to get the credit markets cranking again. Lower interest rates being the primary mechanism and central bank balance sheets bearing the burden.

  Let me just say that for anyone who’s spent some time understanding how an economy functions, you’ll realise that shifting rates to negative is bat shit crazy. If you think about how the capitalist system operates, you realise that we need a complete overhaul of education systems in the developed world, if all it does is puke up the kind of intellect currently running central banks.

  Case in point:

  Ask any money manager what the risk free discount rate should be and they don’t have an answer for you. Risk managers, you know those guys managing your pension funds, the insurance portfolios, mutual funds, and quite frankly every asset manager on earth with just a fraction of a clue, has to use some rate in whatever model he’s constructed. Since it’s now so difficult to know what the “real” rate is, asset prices are wildly skewed as a consequence.

  Central banks, in trying to stimulate the global economy, created an environment where increasingly the risk free rate approaches 0%. I’ve seen some models whereby the risk free rate used accelerates towards infinity, using linear progression (I’ve spoken about linear thinking in a dynamic world before). Explain to me how that works because I can’t fathom it. In such a world or with such a theory risk disappears all together. Nirvana!

  That’s a real consequence of central banks actions. Severe distortions in asset prices globally.

  After QE

  Although QE at the Fed has since ended, they announced the intention to maintain the balance sheet at its current level for the time being. In September 2014, the Fed announced a framework for normalizing monetary policy after QE, explaining that they would raise interest rates despite a large balance sheet.

  The strategy was to mainly raise the rate of interest paid to banks on reserves and by engaging in reverse repurchase agreements (reverse repos). Quite a few money managers figured they were calling the markets’ bluff.

  So we’re all familiar with the monetary policies but let me bring this back to the eurodollar market.

  Signs That Things Aren’t Working

  Some of the most notable signs that the interbank lending market, of which eurodollars plays the most significant part, isn’t functioning correctly is seen in the repo market.

  Now think of all the government securities issued. Well, these securities can act as collateral much like your house can act as collateral for a mortgage. A repo is short for a repurchase agreement and they’re used for short term borrowing.

  So a dealer or any holder of a government security such as T-bills sells them to a lender and agrees to repurchase them at an agreed price at a future date. In this respect it’s a simple forward rate agreement.  They are therefore really attractive for 2 main reasons:

  1. They’re very short dated (overnight or up to 30 days or more), and
  2. They’re government backed.

  As a result they’re considered virtually risk free and typically super liquid.

  The problem, and this was highlighted to me by Jeff Snider at Alhambra Investment Partners (BTW, Jeff’s work is excellent) is that we’ve had repeated repo fails since 2014.

  Essentially what we have is the market refusing securities as collateral. Hmmm…

  Now, as a quick aside. Other collateral enters the system as reverse repos.

  So for example, if you want to enter the market but don’t have treasuries to provide as collateral, you can go into the secondary market and purchase those Treasuries using, say, junk bonds. You post your junk bonds as collateral, receive the Treasuries, and then use those Treasuries as collateral in the repo market. This naturally involves a higher spread cost but that’s essentially how it works.

  Now when any of the underlying collateral fails as happened in 2007 and 2008 when mortgage bonds were rejected as collateral the knock on effect is felt in the repo market and liquidity dries up in a hurry.

  Generally speaking in any crisis it’s reasonable to expect particular assets to be rejected as collateral as those assets are being repriced by the market. After all, if you’re unsure of what the price of any asset used as collateral is going to be tomorrow morning, then you’re a few sandwiches short of a picnic if you enter into any agreement to repurchase the asset again without figuring out how much risk you’re taking on the ultimate market price of the asset.

  Now, to be clear there are two reasons that the repo market can fail:

  1. Credit risk
  2. Liquidity risk

  Credit risk would be a sign that the collateral is not of high enough quality. And liquidity risk would be a sign of a dollar funding shortage.

  I believe that a combination of the two are at play. Government securities are still considered high quality collateral but other markets clearly are not. Junk bonds, mortgage backed securities, corporate paper, and so forth are in question.

  So we’ve had repeated repo fails. This means that funding as it should function isn’t taking place which is contractionary despite all the easing central banks have been doing, and this repudiation of existing collateral is highly contractionary. This contraction and failure in repos coincided with the USD breaking out of it’s decade long bear market in late 2014 which I spoke about here and here.

  To be clear, at the time I wasn’t aware of repo fails, though we spotted the asymmetry in this market and identified interbank lending constraints, which helped in determining the dollar shortage ahead of its subsequent rise – bully for us.

  It was only much later, recently actually, that I began to pick up additional pieces of this puzzle, which we’re discussing now. I believe they provide us with a much more granular and complete picture as to what’s going on. Important if we are to determine outcomes ahead of time and make some dough. In any case, let’s move on…

  Monetary Expansion But Where’s the Growth?

  The majority of the world’s assets and businesses over the last couple of decades have been created and sustained only by a falling interest rate environment. Without it many wouldn’t exist and without it many others would have subsequently been created. But they haven’t and this is the real tragedy.

  When central banks hold the cost of capital at zero, or at levels inconsistent with market forces, this induces mal-investment in the system. And the longer this environment persists the further this mal-investment is promoted.

  I think most people understand that but what this translates into is severe deterioration in productivity growth. After all, why build a productive business when you are forced to compete with unproductive competitors who are supported by mal-investment?

  So you get this stagnant economy as a result, and because the incentives are no longer market driven but policy driven, the return on capital naturally diminishes. This is quite dangerous and leads to the political upheaval I’ve been talking about and the breakdown in social contracts and much of the problems I discussed in the breakdown in Europe.

  Collateral Creation

  And so what we have is a global banking system that’s decided it’s no longer in its interests to provide the funding mechanism to the world. And this isn’t some cabal of cigar smoking, pointy shoed banker bastards. This is a structural decision made by tens of thousands of market participants globally. There is a fundamental reason for this and that reason is collateral shortage – a shortage actually created by central banks and their policies.

  What this means is that high quality collateral is NOT being created. Think of small businesses which are the lifeblood of any healthy economy. In addition to this the existing collateral is actually being sucked out of the system, meaning that the wholesale funding market (the eurodollar market) is short of collateral, and since it’s short of collateral, it’s short of dollars. This is one more and very important leg to the reason I think the dollar goes higher, much higher.

  Since collateral is a complex topic in itself, I’ll bring out the axe and attempt to chop it into pieces for you next week so make sure you’re on our mailing list so you don’t miss it.

  Oh, and I have a real treat for subscribers on Monday and Tuesday as I recorded one of the many conversations I have with the smartest investors on this ball of dirt. This one with Mark Yusko of Morgan Creek Capital who, if you’re not following, you are indeed doing yourself a disservice.

  – Chris

  “Our analysis leads us to believe that recovery is only sound if it does come from itself. For any revival which is merely due to artificial stimulus leaves part of the work of depression undone and adds, to an undigested remnant of maladjustments, new maladjustments of its own.”  — Joseph Schumpeter

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• 2007 All Over Again – Stock Valuations Enter "Crash" Territory

  Submitted by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

  The Trump Christmas stock market rally has taken valuations beyond a point that in the past has signaled trouble, which in turn has generated a lot of cautionary press like the following:

  Market indicator hits extreme levels last seen before plunges in 1929, 2000 and 2008

   

  (CNBC) – While the S&P 500 is reaching all-time highs on optimism over Donald Trump’s economic agenda, some Wall Street strategists are increasingly worried about a widely followed valuation measure that’s reached levels that preceded most of the major market crashes of the last 100 years.“The cyclically adjusted P/E (CAPE), a valuation measure created by economist Robert Shiller now stands over 27 and has been exceeded only in the 1929 mania, the 2000 tech mania and the 2007 housing and stock bubble,” Alan Newman wrote in his Stock Market Crosscurrents letter at the end of November.

   

  Newman said even if the market’s earnings increase by 10 percent under Trump’s policies “we’re still dealing with the same picture, overvaluation on a very grand scale.”

   

  

   

  The Shiller “cyclically adjusted price-to-earnings ratio” (CAPE) is calculated using price divided by the index’s average historical 10-year earnings, adjusted for inflation. Yale economics professor Robert Shiller’s research found future 10-year stock market returns were negatively correlated to high CAPE ratio readings on a relative basis. He won the Nobel Prize in economics in 2013 for his work on stock market inefficiency and valuations.

   

  Other academics agreed the current extreme CAPE ratio of 27.7 is a worrying sign for future returns versus bonds.

   

  “Only when CAPE is very high, say, CAPE is in the upper half of the tenth decile (CAPE higher than 27.6), future 10-year stock returns, on average, are lower than those on 10-year U.S. Treasurys,” Valentin Dimitrov and Prem C. Jain wrote in paper titled “Shiller’s CAPE: Market Timing and Risk” on Nov. 17.

   

  Even based on the more common price-earnings ratio, the market looks rich. The S&P 500’s P/E based on earnings of the last 12 months is 18.9, the highest in more than 12 years, according to FactSet.

  “U.S. valuations start off as being high both on a historical basis and also on a peer group. Certainly based on the Shiller PE, the equity market seems expensive,” Jefferies chief global equity strategist Sean Darby wrote on Nov. 29.

  The above chart requires a bit of interpretation, mainly because of that spike in 1999 which seems to imply a much higher ceiling for stock valuations. It probably doesn’t, because of the uniquely delusional nature of the tech stock bubble. That market was driven by newly-minted dot-coms and related companies that in many cases had minimal or no earnings, so prices weren’t related to profits. In other words, you can’t calculate a price/earnings ratio if there are no earnings.

  “Eyeballs” – that is, the number of people visiting at a dot-coms’ website – had temporarily replaced traditional valuation measures in the hearts of speculators. With disastrous results.

  Today’s market, in contrast, is made up of companies with actual earnings, so it might be safe to discount 1999 and use the rest of the chart for comparison. In which case current equity prices look extremely dangerous.

  On the other hand, today’s world has departed from past business-as-usual in other ways that might be relevant. Debt no longer seems to matter – witness the US, after doubling the federal debt in a single presidential administration, installing a new president whose platform calls for massive increases in borrowing and spending.

  And while monetary policy is past eras operated in an at least partially-constrained environment, today there are apparently no limits on how low interest rates can go or how many and what kinds of assets central banks can buy with newly-created currency.

  The Japanese and Swiss national banks, for instance, are already huge buyers of equities. If the Fed decides to join that party – something that Chairwoman Janet Yellen has already publicly considered – then it’s not clear whether P/E ratios will continue to matter. The unlimited printing press is definitely an argument for “this time is different.”

  So is it no longer possible to make predictions based on pre-QE history? Or are there financial and economic laws that apply no matter what crazy new tools the world’s governments decide to employ?

  Almost certainly the latter. Manipulating one part of the system – by, for instance, buying equities with newly-created currency – just shifts the pressure of financial imbalances to a different, harder-to-control place.

  Lately the bond market has begun to show signs of stress – because who wants to own zero-coupon long-term bonds in a world where governments need higher inflation and are willing to do pretty much anything to get it?

  What happens if governments respond to bond market turmoil by creating even more currency and buying up all the long-term bonds, as Japan is currently doing in its own market? The pressure will shift to the foreign exchange markets, because who will want to own fiat currencies that are being created at rates far exceeding the growth of the real economy?

  Fiat currencies are the one thing governments can’t buy up with newly-created money. All are at the moment falling in relation to artificially-inflated stock and real estate prices, though we don’t notice because currencies are valued against each other. But let a soaring money supply translate into rising general prices (something the bond market is now signaling) and it’s game over. Governments will face rising instability without tools capable of managing it.

  At which point we’ll return to the above chart and wonder why we didn’t trust history?

  

  

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• THE CIA MOVES TO INVALIDATE U.S. PRESIDENTIAL ELECTIONS BY BLAMING RUSSIAN HACKING

  It’s happening. After careful analysis of all the media punditry and the ‘leaks’ coming out from the CIA, I can only conclude that there is a concerted effort taking place to invalidate the U.S. elections, in an effort to unseat Donald Trump. Last night the Washington Post reported a leak from inside the CIA, saying they had a report that showed evidence that Russia hacked the elections in order to elect Donald Trump. They’re being very specific about that point. Pay attention.

  Source: Reuters
  The CIA has concluded that Russia intervened in the 2016 election to help President-elect Donald Trump win the White House, and not just to undermine confidence in the U.S. electoral system, the Washington Post reported on Friday.

  Citing U.S. officials briefed on the matter, the Post said intelligence agencies had identified individuals with connections to the Russian government who provided thousands of hacked emails from the Democratic National Committee and others, including the chairman of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign, to WikiLeaks.

  The officials described the individuals as people known to the intelligence community who were part of a wider Russian operation to boost Trump and reduce Clinton’s chances of winning the election.

   

  “It is the assessment of the intelligence community that Russia’s goal here was to favor one candidate over the other, to help Trump get elected,” the Post quoted a senior U.S. official as saying. “That’s the consensus view.”

  The Post said the official had been briefed on an intelligence presentation made by the Central Intelligence Agency to key U.S. senators behind closed-doors last week.

  The CIA, in what the Post said was a secret assessment, cited a growing body of evidence from multiple sources. Briefers told the senators it was now “quite clear” that electing Trump was Russia’s goal, the Post quoted officials as saying on condition of anonymity.

  In October, the U.S. government formally accused Russia of a campaign of cyber attacks against Democratic Party organizations ahead of the Nov. 8 presidential election.

  President Barack Obama has said he warned Russian President Vladimir Putin about consequences for the attacks. But Russian officials have denied all accusations of interference in the U.S. election.

  A CIA spokeswoman said the agency had no comment on the report.

  In response to the Washpo article, the Trump campaign issued the following statement.

  “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction,” Trump’s representatives said in a statement attributed to the transition team. “The election ended a long time ago … It’s now time to move on and ‘Make America Great Again.'”

  Bob Baer, former CIA and current ‘Hunting Hitler’ shill, said in an interview today that if the evidence regarding Russia hacking the elections are true, then the only logical thing to do is to hold new elections.

   ‘If the evidence is there, I don’t see any other way than to vote again.’  

   

  Bear in mind, this is all in response to the Wikileaks revelations about the abject corruptness of both the DNC and the Hillary Clinton camp, via the Podesta emails. Instead of offering an explanation for their egregious actions, the elite cadre inside of the Clinton camp have instead gone on the offensive to blame the messenger. The media is running with this story with long strides, not only suggesting that Russia hacked the elections, but also saying Trump was — in fact — a ‘witting asset’ of Moscow. What’s next, an arrest order for Trump and his campaign staff for being covert Russian spies?

   ‘This nation was attacked by a cyber warfare operation. ‘

  Whatever happened to the smug certainty that the elections wouldn’t be rigged? I suppose what Obama meant was they wouldn’t be rigged had Hillary won, yes? Paul Joseph Watson offers some valuable incite, in regards to the naked hypocrisy of America’s ruling elite.

  Russia interfered in the election! (no evidence).

  LEFT FREAKS OUT.

  Saudi Arabia provably bankrolled Clinton’s campaign.

  MEH.

  — Paul Joseph Watson (@PrisonPlanet) December 10, 2016

   

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

  

• "Hard-Core Clinton Fanatic" Manufactured "Viral Fake News" That MSNBC Used To Discredit Wikileaks

  Authored by Glenn Greenwald via The Intercept,

  The phrase “Fake News” has exploded in usage since the election, but the term is similar to other malleable political labels such as “terrorism” and “hate speech”; because the phrase lacks any clear definition, it is essentially useless except as an instrument of propaganda and censorship. The most important fact to realize about this new term: those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.

  One of the most egregious examples was the recent Washington Post article hyping a new anonymous group and its disgusting blacklist of supposedly pro-Russia news outlets – a shameful article mindlessly spread by countless journalists who love to decry Fake News, despite the Post article itself being centrally based on Fake News. (The Post this week finally added a lame editor’s note acknowledging these critiques; the Post editors absurdly claimed that they did not mean to “vouch for the validity” of the blacklist even though the article’s key claims were based on doing exactly that).

  Now we have an even more compelling example. Back in October, when WikiLeaks was releasing emails from the John Podesta archive, Clinton campaign officials and their media spokespeople adopted a strategy of outright lying to the public, claiming – with no basis whatsoever – that the emails were doctored or fabricated and thus should be ignored. That lie – and that is what it was: a claim made with knowledge of its falsity or reckless disregard for its truth – was most aggressively amplified by MSNBC personalities such as Joy Ann Reid and Malcolm Nance, The Atlantic’s David Frum, and Newsweek’s Kurt Eichenwald.

   

  Clinton camp chief strategist @benensonj: "I've seen things" in Wikileaks emails "that aren't authentic" #ThisWeek https://t.co/LPQJBfACqz

  — This Week (@ThisWeekABC) October 23, 2016

   

  That the emails in the Wikileaks archive were doctored or faked – and thus should be disregarded – was classic Fake News, spread not by Macedonian teenagers or Kremlin operatives but by established news outlets such as MSNBC, the Atlantic and Newsweek. And, by design, this Fake News spread like wildfire all over the internet, hungrily clicked and shared by tens of thousands of people eager to believe it was true. As a result of this deliberate disinformation campaign, anyone reporting on the contents of the emails was instantly met with claims that the documents in the archive had been proven fake.

  The most damaging such claim came from MSNBC’s intelligence analyst Malcolm Nance. As I documented on October 11, he tweeted what he – for some bizarre reason – labeled an “Official Warning.” It decreed: “#PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done.” That tweet was re-tweeted by more than 4,000 people. It was vested with added credibility by Clinton-supporting journalists like Reid and Frum (“expert to take seriously”).

  All of that, in turn, led to an article in something called “The Daily News Bin” with the headline: “MSNBC intelligence expert: WikiLeaks is releasing falsified emails not really from Hillary Clinton.” This classic fake news product – citing Nance and Reid among others – was shared more than 40,000 times on Facebook alone.

  

  

  

   

  Joe, Malcolm Nance & other experts have validated these emails have been forged & altered by Russia before passing them off to Wikileaks! https://t.co/gZ7rVQ6JJp

  — VLB (@BickiDoodle) October 27, 2016

  The media (@ABC, @CBSNews, @NBCNews and @PBS) must heed Malcolm Nance: "You should have ZERO CONFIDENCE in the contents" of Wikileaks dumps!

  — Thomas Gordon (@EarthOrb) October 23, 2016

  Joy now discussing WikiLeaks with security expert Malcolm Nance who says we can have zero confidence in authenticity of documents. #AMJoy

  — LaurenBaratzLogsted (@LaurenBaratzL) October 22, 2016

  

   

  From the start, it was obvious that it was this accusation from Clinton supporters – not the WikiLeaks documents – that was a complete fraud, perpetrated on the public as deliberate disinformation. With regard to the claim about the Podesta emails, now we know exactly who created it in the first instance: a hard-core Clinton fanatic.

  When Nance – MSNBC’s “intelligence analyst” – issued his “Official Warning,” he linked to a tweet that warned: “Please be skeptical of alleged #PodestaEmails. Trumpists are dirtying docs.” That tweet, in turn, linked to a tweet from an anonymous account calling itself “The Omnivore,” which had posted an obviously fake transcript purporting to be a Hillary Clinton speech to Goldman Sachs. Even though that fake document was never published by WikiLeaks, that was the entire basis for the MSNBC-inspired claim that some of the WikiLeaks documents were doctored.

  But the person who created that forged Goldman Sachs transcript was not a “Trumpist” at all; he was a devoted supporter of Hillary Clinton. In the Daily Beast, the person behind the anonymous “The Omnivore” account unmasks himself as “Marco Chacon,” a self-professed creator of “viral fake news” whose targets were Sanders and Trump supporters (he specialized in blatantly fake anti-Clinton frauds with the goal of tricking her opponents into citing them, so that they would be discredited). When he wasn’t posting fabricated news accounts designed to make Clintons’ opponents look bad, his account looked like any other standard pro-Clinton account: numerous negative items about Sanders and then Trump, with links to many Clinton-defending articles.

  In his Daily Beast article, published on November 21, Chacon describes how he manufactured the forged Goldman Sachs speech transcript. He says he did it prior to learning that the WikiLeaks releases of Podesta emails contained actual Clinton speech excerpts to Wall Street banks. But once he realized WikiLeaks had published actual Clinton transcripts, Chacon began trying to lure people he disliked – Clinton critics – into believing that his forged speeches were real, so that he could prove they were gullible and dumb.

  Sadly for Chacon, however, the people who ended up getting fooled by his Fake News items were the nation’s most prominent Clinton supporters, including supposed experts and journalists from MSNBC who used his obvious fakes to try to convince the world that the WikiLeaks archive had been compromised and thus should be ignored. That it was pro-Clinton journalists who spread his Fake News as real now horrifies even Chacon:

  The tweet went super-viral. It started an almost trending—but still going today—hashtag #bucketoflosers. A tweet declaring it a bad forgery was picked up by Malcolm Nance, an intelligence analyst for MSNBC among others, who tweeted to be wary of the WikiLeaks release. .

   

  That did not stop Nance, who with a firm intelligence background should have been able to easily spot the fake with “(chaos)” actually written in the side bar and “((makes air quotes))” written before the “bucket of losers” piece in the completely comical so-called transcript, from referencing the document and saying: “Official Warning: #PodestaEmails are already proving to be riddled with obvious forgeries & #blackpropaganda not even professionally done” . . . .

   

  At the end of the day, did this change anything? I don’t know. I think I inadvertently hurt WikiLeaks, which I’m not proud of—but I’m not too sorry about either. I suspect that some people came to realize that they were believing in fake things.

  That last sentence – that as a result of his fraud, “some people came to realize that they were believing in fake things” – is false, at least insofar as it applies to people like Eichenwald, Frum, Nance and Reid. Even though it was clear from the start to any rational and honest person that there was zero evidence that any of the WikiLeaks documents were doctored, and even though (as Chacon himself says) nobody minimally informed (let alone supposed “intelligence experts”) should have been fooled by his blatant Fake News, none of the journalists who lied to the public about these WikiLeaks documents have even once acknowledged what they did.

  Their Fake News tweets – warning people to view the WikiLeaks documents as fake – remain posted, with no subsequent retraction or acknowledgment of the falsehoods that they spread about the WikiLeaks archive. That includes MSNBC segments which spread this accusation.

  Indeed, not only should it have been blatantly obvious that Chacon’s anonymously posted document did not impugn the WikiLeaks archive, but also the slightest research would have revealed that the person who manufactured the forgery was a Clinton supporter, not a “Trumpist” or a Kremlin operative. Indeed, one of the Clinton-criticizing journalists who Chacon tried to trick, Michael Tracey, said exactly this at the time. But because his facts contradicted the MSNBC/Newsweek political agenda, they were ignored in favor of the lie that the WikiLeaks archive had been compromised and doctored:

   

  FYI: one of the accounts (@OmnivoreBlog) that circulated a fake HRC speech transcript is a pro-Clinton troll spreading disinformation. pic.twitter.com/HZ3UBm9pk8

  — Michael Tracey (@mtracey) October 11, 2016

   

  I will be shocked if any of them now acknowledge this even with Chacon’s confession. That’s because MSNBC has repeatedly proven that it tolerates Fake News and outright lies from its personalities as long as those lies are in service of the right candidate (when Democrats were smearing Jill Stein as a Kremlin stooge, Reid’s program aired Nance’s lie to MSNBC viewers that Stein had previously hosted her own show on RT: an utter fabrication that MSNBC, to this day, has never corrected or even acknowledged despite multiple requests from FAIR).

   

  On Reid's show, Malcolm Nance falsely claimed Jill Stein hosted an RT show, & they just refuse to correct/retract it. How is that allowed? https://t.co/FKb5J0HDKF

  — Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) October 19, 2016

   

  Every day, literally, you can turn on MSNBC and hear various people so righteously lamenting the spread of “Fake News.” Yet MSNBC itself not only spreads Fake News but refuses to correct it when it is exposed. How do they have any credibility to denounce Fake News? They do not.

  That journalists and “experts” outright lied to the public this way in order to help their favorite candidate is obviously dangerous. This was most powerfully pointed out – ironically – by Marty Baron, Executive Editor of the Washington Post, who told The New York Times’ Jim Rutenberg: “If you have a society where people can’t agree on basic facts, how do you have a functioning democracy?”

  Exactly: if you have prominent journalists telling the public to trust an anonymous group with a false McCarthyite blacklist, or telling it to ignore informative documents on the grounds that they are fake when there is zero reason to believe that they are fake, that is a direct threat to democracy. In the case of the Podesta emails, these lies were perpetrated by the very factions that have taken to most loudly victimizing themselves over the spread of Fake News.

  But the problem here goes way beyond mere hypocrisy. Complaints about Fake News are typically accompanied by calls for “solutions” that involve censorship and suppression, either by the government or tech giants such as Facebook. But until there is a clear definition of “Fake News,” and until it’s recognized that Fake News is being aggressively spread by the very people most loudly complaining about it, the dangers posed by these solutions will be at least as great as the problem itself.

  

  

• Mapping The Top States For Resettling Refugees In 2016

  The Obama administration admitted nearly 85,000 refugees into the United States in fiscal year 2016, the highest number since 1999.  Moreover, as we noted back in September, Obama’s administration has laid the groundwork to increase that number even further in fiscal year 2017 to 110,000 (see “Hillbama Administration Plans To Admit At Least 110,000 Refugees In 2017“). 

  Of course, not every state is doing their “fair share” to house the massive influx of immigrants with Pew Research Center recently pointing out that the top ten states are taking in 54% of refugees.

  

   

  As Pew points notes, California, Texas and New York alone resettled 24% of incoming refugees while Nebraska took in the most on a per capita basis.

  California, Texas and New York resettled the most refugees in fiscal 2016 (which began on Oct. 1, 2015, and ended Sept. 30, 2016), together taking in 20,738 refugees, or about a quarter (24%) of the U.S. total. Michigan, Ohio, Arizona, North Carolina, Washington, Pennsylvania and Illinois, which each received 3,000 or more refugees, rounded out the top 10 states by number of resettled refugees. Overall, 54% of refugees admitted to the U.S. in 2016 were resettled in one of these 10 states.

   

  At the other end of the spectrum, some states and the District of Columbia took in few or no refugees in fiscal 2016. Arkansas, the District of Columbia and Wyoming resettled fewer than 10 refugees each, while two states – Delaware and Hawaii – took in none.

   

  In fiscal 2016, Nebraska (76), North Dakota (71) and Idaho (69) resettled the most refugees per 100,000 residents. Other states like Vermont (62), Arizona (60) and Kentucky (54) far exceeded the U.S. national average of 26 refugees per 100,000 residents.

  Meanwhile, the Democratic Republic of the Congo was the top country of origin for refugees resettled in the U.S. in 2016 while Syria was a close second.

  The Democratic Republic of the Congo (16,370) was the top origin country among refugees resettled in 2016. Some 10% were resettled in Texas, 7% in Arizona and 6% in both New York and North Carolina.

   

  However, Syrian refugees – the second-largest origin group with 12,587 resettled in fiscal 2016 – have garnered more attention from state leaders, with 31 governors opposing this group’s resettlement in their states. Even so, resettlement patterns of Syrian refugees across the states are similar to the national average. California had the largest number (1,450) of resettled Syrian refugees in fiscal 2016, followed by Michigan (1,374) and Texas (912).

  And while the Obama administration has announced plans to admit even more refugees in 2017, we suspect president-elect Trump may have other ideas.

  Trump: Will suspend immigration from areas in the world where there is proven history of terrorism against U.S. https://t.co/rHkpUr7xiL

  — The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) June 13, 2016

  

  

• Trump Picks Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson As Secretary Of State

  In a move that is certain to infuriate those who see Trump as nothing more than a puppet of the Kremlin, moments ago NBC reported that Rex Tillerson, CEO of Exxon Mobil and late entrant into the SecState race after his first meeting with the president elect this past Tuesday at the Trump Tower, has been picked by Trump to serve as his next Secretary of State.

  JUST IN: Trump to name Exxon Mobil CEO Rex Tillerson as secretary of state, sources say https://t.co/kthwSkGc0j pic.twitter.com/vZmWztv0qn

  — NBC News (@NBCNews) December 10, 2016

  As NBC adds, Tillerson met Saturday with Trump at Trump Tower in New York, the president-elect’s spokesperson confirmed.  The selection of Tillerson comes after Trump and his transition team spent weeks searching for someone to fill the post of the top U.S. diplomat. Former Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney and former New York City Mayor Rudy Giuliani were reportedly in the running. Giuliani said Friday he had taken his name out of consideration.

  The 64-year-old Texas oilman, whose friends describe as a staunch conservative, emerged as a Secretary of State contender only last week following a meeting with Trump, when it was speculated that he would consider the offer “due to his sense of patriotic duty and because he is set to retire from the company next year.” Tillerson’s appointment would introduce the potential for sticky conflicts of interest because of his financial stake in Exxon: he owns Exxon shares worth $151 million, according to recent securities filings.

  A quick biographical sketch of Tillerson courtesy of the WSJ:

  The son of a local Boy Scouts administrator, Tillerson was born in Wichita Falls, Texas. He attended the University of Texas, where he studied civil engineering, was a drummer in the Longhorn band and participated in a community service-oriented fraternity.

  He joined Exxon in 1975 and has spent his entire career at the company.

  For most of his adult life, he has also been closely involved with the Boy Scouts of America, even occasionally incorporating the Scout Law and Scout Oath into his speeches.  Mr. Tillerson played an instrumental role in leading the organization to change its policy to allow gay youth to participate in 2013, Mr. Hamre said. Former Defense Secretary Robert Gates subsequently moved to lift the organization’s ban on gay adult leaders as Boy Scouts president in 2015.  “Most of the reason that organizations fail at change is pretty simple: People don’t understand why,” Mr. Tillerson said in a speech after the 2013 decision, urging leaders to communicate about the policy to help make it successful. “We’re going to serve kids and make the leaders of tomorrow.”

  * * *

  However it is not his Boy Scout exploits that will be the key talking point for pundits in the coming days, but rather his close relationship with Russian president Vladimir Putin.

  According to the WSJ, few U.S. citizens are closer to Mr. Putin than Mr. Tillerson,  a recipient of Russia’s Order of Friendship, bestowed by the president…

  

  … who has known Putin since he represented Exxon’s interests in Russia during the regime of Boris Yeltsin.

  “He has had more interactive time with Vladimir Putin than probably any other American with the exception of Henry Kissinger,” said John Hamre, a former deputy defense secretary during the Clinton administration and president of the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank where Mr. Tillerson is a board member.

  

  Exxon CEO Rex Tillerson with Vladimir Putin, then Russia’s prime minister, at
  a signing ceremony in the Black Sea resort of Sochi in August 2011.

  In 2011, Mr. Tillerson struck a deal giving Exxon access to prized Arctic resources in Russia as well as allowing Russia’s state oil company, OAO Rosneft, to invest in Exxon concessions all over the world. The following year, the Kremlin bestowed the country’s Order of Friendship decoration on Mr. Tillerson.

  The deal would have been transformative for Exxon. Mr. Putin at the time called it one of the most important involving Russia and the U.S., forecasting that the partnership could eventually spend $500 billion. But it was subsequently blocked by sanctions on Russia that the U.S. and its allies imposed two years ago after the country’s invasion of Crimea and conflicts with Ukraine.

  Tillerson spoke against the sanctions at the company’s annual meeting in 2014. “We always encourage the people who are making those decisions to consider the very broad collateral damage of who are they really harming with sanctions,” he said.

  As such, many have speculated that under his regime, the State Department may quietly drop any existing sactions against Russia.

  * * *

  Then there is the thorny issue of potential conflicts of interest, and his massive holdings of Exxon stock.

  One of the first issues Tillerson would have to resolve as secretary of state would be his holdings of Exxon shares, many of which aren’t scheduled to vest for almost a decade. The value of those shares could go up if the sanctions on Russia were lifted. 

  The shares would likely have to be sold under State Department ethics rules, Chase Untermeyer, a former U.S. Ambassador to Qatar, said in an interview. “He could not erase his strong relationship with a particular country,” Mr. Untermeyer said. “The best protection from a conflict of interest is transparency.”

  Tillerson will sell his $150+ million in XOM shares tax free, courtesy of the same tax break that was introduced in 1989 under the administration of President George H.W. Bush, which allowed Hank Paulson, Colin Powell and plenty of other public servants to dispose of their equity holdings without paying taxes: to get the tax relief, it must be deemed “reasonably necessary” for a public official to divest his shares, or a congressional committee must require the asset sale, according to section 1043 of the tax code, something which is virtually assured in the case of Tillerson.

  * * *

  Finally, the environmentalists will certainly be displeased with Trump’s choice, even thought Tillerson helped shift Exxon’s response to climate change when he took over as CEO in 2006. He embraced a carbon tax as the best potential policy solution and has said climate change is a global problem that warrants action. That was a break from his predecessor, Lee Raymond.

  Still, Mr. Tillerson is a polarizing figure among Democrats and environmental activists. They have accused Exxon of sowing doubt about the impacts of climate change during Mr. Raymond’s tenure and say Mr. Tillerson hasn’t done enough to disclose the future impact of climate-change regulations on the company’s ability to get oil out of the ground.

  “This is certainly a good way to make clear exactly who’ll be running the government in a Trump administration—just cut out the middleman and hand it directly to the fossil-fuel industry,” said Bill McKibben, the environmental activist and founder of 350.org.

   

  Exxon has disputed the criticism and accused activists and Democratic attorneys general of conspiring against the company.

   

  The son of a local Boy Scouts administrator, Mr. Tillerson was born in Wichita Falls, Texas. He attended the University of Texas, where he studied civil engineering, was a drummer in the Longhorn band and participated in a community service-oriented fraternity.

   

  As secretary of state, Tillerson would be fourth in line to the presidency.

  No matter how US diplomacy plays out under Tillerson, however, one thing is certain: at least Mitt Romney will not be setting US foreign policy for the next four years. This particular ritual humiliation has now been duly completed…

  REPORT: Mitt Romney May Be Forced to Publicly Apologize to Trump in Exchange For Sec of State Bid https://t.co/0qvuEsaDX1 pic.twitter.com/HBj6RqRVB7

  — Mediaite (@Mediaite) November 25, 2016

  Finally, as NBC also adds, Tillerson’s deputy secretary of state for day-to-day management of the department will be former U.N. Ambassador John Bolton.

  To summarize: a cabinet run by Wall Street and big oil (with a neocon backstop), and a handful of veteran generals thrown in. The writing should be on the wall as to what comes next.

  

  

• Clinton Aides "Soul Crushed" By Speculation Of Russian Election "Interference"

  As the debacle of the too-secret-to-show-you fantasy CIA report ‘proving’ Russia’s interference with the US election becomes the new news cycle narrative, Hillary Clinton staffers are reportedly “soul crushed” by these new ‘facts’.

  Following her screaming match with Trump campaign manager KellyAnne Conway last week, Clinton campaign manager Jennifer Plamieri tweeted this morning about her devastation at the ‘news’ of Russian interefence…

  Soul crushing are the only words I have. Can barely stand to read the story. https://t.co/Me5wUBfQTa

  — Jennifer Palmieri (@jmpalmieri) December 10, 2016

  “We shouted about this as loud as we could,” added former Clinton spokesman Josh Schwerin in another tweet. “Hardly anyone listened.”

  As The Hill reports, other former staffers took aim at Trump, whose transition team blasted the CIA in a statement Friday night following the report, saying, “These are the same people that said Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction.”

  Since being elected, Trump has
  – insulted CIA
  – refused intel briefings
  – slammed our generals
  – spurned State Dept
  – attacked US elections

  — Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) December 10, 2016

  kind of impressive that Hillary got more votes than any white man in history, including ~3M more than the guy Putin was boosting!

  — Jesse Lehrich (@JesseLehrich) December 10, 2016

  Likelihood @realDonaldTrump tweets something outrageous tonight or in the morning to change the topic? https://t.co/2Qvopxhmp2

  — Jesse Ferguson (@JesseFFerguson) December 10, 2016

  So with stories that a foreign govt interfered with US elections, his reaction is move on? No concerns for broader implications? https://t.co/CXro1h0dqN

  — Christina Reynolds (@creynoldsnc) December 10, 2016

  And so it is that ‘they’ lost the election due to Russian interference and the biased electoral college, and not in any way due to running ‘the most flawed candidate ever’ and promising more of the same?

  

  

• Keep The Federal Courts Out Of The Electoral College

  Submitted by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

  The United States was originally constructed in such a way that the states themselves would dominate the electoral process. Historically, states have determined who can vote, when they vote, and how they vote. Through this power states have also been given limited de facto power of determining citizenship.

  Over time, the federal courts have increasingly seized local prerogatives in this matter, but even today, states and counties are the primary government organizations that conduct elections, collect the votes, print the ballots, and determine the winners. 

  This is appropriate, of course, since the United States was intended to function on a confederation model in which it would be up to the states to decide for themselves how they would send representatives to Congress. There is no such thing as a "national election" in the United States because there wasn't supposed to be a single nation. 

  Unfortunately, in the wake of the 2016 election, opponents of the election's outcome have been petitioning the Supreme Court to step in and take even more power away from the states in deciding how presidents are selected through the Electoral College. Specifically, two electors in Colorado are suing in federal court to overturn a state law that requires members of the electoral college to support the winner of the statewide vote: 

  The two electors, Polly Baca and Robert Nemanich, are suing to overturn a Colorado law that requires them to support the winner of their statewide popular vote — Hillary Clinton — during the general election last month.

  In this case, the two electors who are suing are pro-Clinton, and Clinton won the statewide vote in Colorado. So, as electors, they'll be voting for the candidate they supported in the general election anyway. But, they're hoping their lawsuit will lead to the nullification of state laws over the electoral college, which could free up electors in other states. Currently, in addition to Colorado, 28 states and the District of Columbia have adopted laws mandating the electors vote for the winner of the statewide vote. Failure to comply with these mandates, however, generally bring only a fine. 

  This follows a mandate from the current US Constitution which states in Article II, Section 1 that: "Each State shall appoint, in such Manner as the Legislature thereof may direct, a Number of Electors, equal to the whole Number of Senators and Representatives to which the State may be entitled in the Congress."

  In other words, the text is explicit that the state legislature has nearly untrammeled control over how electors are appointed.

  Thus, by extension, the state legislature could also be entitled to force electors to legally pledge to support the winner of the statewide vote. 

  This method would also be reminiscent of methods used prior to the 17th Amendment when members of the legislature were pledged to appoint to the US Senate the winners of statewide votes. 

  Of course, the method that states use to appoint or bind electors is beside the point. States ought to be free to appoint, manage, remove, or regulate electors totally outside any interference from federal courts, federal regulators, or federal policymakers of any kind. If fifty states employ fifty different methods of assigning electoral votes, this would merely reflect the diversity of the American states. 

  Were the federal courts to step in and begin regulating states on how they manage their electoral college votes, it would be a significant swing in favor of federal centralization and greater federal power. 

  The Current System Favors the Democrats 

  As a final note, we might also look at how the current system of binding electors to the statewide vote in each state actually favors the Democrats. The fact that the state legislatures so often defer to the winner of the statewide vote limits legislative power, and puts electoral votes beyond the reach of the legislature once the votes are counted. This helps the Democrats in a period where the Republicans have an overwhelming advantage at the state-government level. 

  

  For example, given current party control of state government, were legislatures to reserve to themselves more active control over the electoral college, Republicans would be guaranteed victory in at least  23 states where the GOP has a so-called trifecta — control over all houses of the legislature and the governor's office. This means the GOP would get 248 out of the necessary 270 electoral votes right off the bat. The Democrats by this measure would win 7 states for a total of 86 electoral votes.  Once we add in other states where the GOP controls the legislature but not the governor's office, the GOP easily wins the necessary electoral votes. 

  This advantage will be even greater once the GOP's additional state-level gains in the 2016 election take effect next year. Post-2016, the GOP will have a trifecta in 24 states with 255 electoral votes. The Democrats will have a trifecta in 6 states with 83 electoral votes.

  

  

• Nate Silver "Calculates" Hillary Would Win If Not For Comey, Russia As Democrats Come Swinging

  In the immediate aftermath of last night’s WaPo article revealing a “secret” CIA assessment according to which Russia (without a shred of evidence) helped Trump win the election, we explained – in five points – how this was nothing short of a “soft coup” attempt by leaders of the US Intel community and Obama administration to influence the Electoral College vote. To wit:

  1. Announce “consensus” (not unanimous) “conclusion” based in circumstantial evidence now, before the Electoral College vote, then write a report with actual details due by Jan 20.
  2. Put a proven liar in charge of writing the report on Russian hacking.
  3. Fail to mention that not one of the leaked DNC or Podesta emails has been shown to be inauthentic. So the supposed Russian hacking simply revealed truth about Hillary, DNC, and MSM collusion and corruption.
  4. Fail to mention that if hacking was done by or for US government to stop Hillary, blaming the Russians would be the most likely disinformation used by US agencies.
  5. Expect every pro-Hillary lapdog journalist – which is virtually all of them – in America will hyperventilate about this latest fact-free, anti-Trump political stunt for the next nine days.

  Shortly thereafter, the prominent beacon of liberal thought, Paul Krugman, confirmed that this agenda was quickly taking shape when he tweeted that “we’ll have a president who lost the pop vote by 2.1%, got in thanks to FBI and Putin. And supporters will demand respect. Um, no.”

  He continued: “Also note CIA held findings until after election; FBI splashed its story — which turned out to be LITERALLY nothing — 10 days before”, and concluded furiously that “The big problem, for me at least, it how to keep the rage on a simmer, rather than boiling over. The path to justice will be long 9:24 AM – 10 Dec 2016.”

  That was the initial salvo. It was to be followed promptly by many other liberal voices who have not only concluded that if it not for Russia, Trump would not win, but that without the involvement of FBI director Comey and Vladimir Putin, Hillary would have won the key swing states, and thus the presidency. Case in point, statistician Nate Silver who, together with all other experts, called the election drastically wrong, and is now seeking scapegoats. He appears to have found them.

  Clinton lost 4 states (FL, MI, WI, PA) by ~1 point. If not for Comey/Russia, she probably wins them all by ~2 points & strategy looks great.

  — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) December 10, 2016

  And so, with Krugman laying out the ideological strawman, and “statistical genius” Nate Silver validating the fabricated strawman by calculating the odds of Hillary’s victory if it wasn’t for the FBI and evil Russian government hackers, the Democrats have come out swinging, with another liberal commentator, Keith Olberman, laying out the party line that “Priority now is preventing swearing in of Trump (R-Russia). From 9/28: “Is @realDonaldTrump Loyal To This Country?”…

  Priority now is preventing swearing in of Trump (R-Russia). From 9/28: “Is @realDonaldTrump Loyal To This Country?” pic.twitter.com/K6LCbe16HU

  — Keith Olbermann (@KeithOlbermann) December 10, 2016

   

  …followed the the punchline: getting the Electoral College to “realize” that Clinton would be the winner, if only the unproven intervention of Putin (and his lapdog, FBI diretor Comey) had not happened.

  Dem congressman: Electoral College has ‘right’ to weigh Russian hacking https://t.co/QZuam0hqzg pic.twitter.com/BeiUz7tO3Y

  — POLITICO (@politico) December 10, 2016

  From Politico:

  A Democratic congressman is suggesting that members of the Electoral College should be able to consider Russian interference in the presidential election — and whether it influenced the outcome — when deciding how to cast their vote.

   

  Cicilline appears to be the first member of Congress and the highest-ranking elected official in the country to endorse the notion that electors aren’t simply rubber stamps for their states’ popular vote. Earlier Saturday, he retweeted a Rhode Island-based national security expert who argued that the intelligence community “must brief electoral college about Russia before vote.”

   

  “To the extent that foreign interference in the United States presidential elections may have influenced the final result, I believe the electors have the right to consider that,” Rep. David Cicilline (D-R.I.) said in a statement to POLITICO on Saturday.

   

  Cicilline’s comments come amid the explosive determination by the U.S. intelligence community that Russia interfered in the presidential election in support of Donald Trump. Trump’s transition team has forcefully denied the conclusion.

   

  “EC exists to protect republic from candidate under foreign influence,” the expert, Salve Regina University researcher Jim Ludes, wrote.

   

  Cicilline stopped short of endorsing that sentiment in his statement to POLITICO. But in a second tweet on Saturday, he urged the White House to publicize information surrounding the CIA’s assessment that Russia intervened in the election to help Trump. “Before the Electoral College votes,” he added.

  If Trump isn’t profusely nervous at this very moment – when everyone from the Obama administration, to US intel, to every living, breathing liberal, to the “unbiased” press – will be screaming that Trump should not get the Dec. 19 EC vote and effectively engaging in a “soft coup”, then he is not paying attention.

  

  

• Officials Admit Radioactive Fish Off U.S. West Coast Have "Disturbing Fingerprint Of Fukushima"

  Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

  The entire Pacific Coast of the United States, Canada and Mexico has been contaminated with radioactive particles from Fukushima.

  And finally, it is being officially acknowledged. This is really happening…

  It is a stark reminder that the effects from Fukushima radiation continually spilling into the ocean have not been abated. The site continues to leak highly toxic radioactive material to this day. Nothing has stopped.

  via the Associated Press / CBS News:

  “Radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster detected on Oregon shores”

   

  • • • • •

   

  Seaborne radiation from Japan’s Fukushima nuclear disaster has been detected on Oregon shores, researchers say.

   

  Seawater samples from Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach indicate radiation from the nuclear disaster but at extremely low levels not harmful to humans or the environment.

  Of course, they claim that it is “safe” because the levels are low. USA Today emphasized the ridiculously minuscule dose of radiation that say, a swimmer would get at the beach – while admitted for the first time that those warning about the spreading radiation were, in fact, correct. exposure:

  “Should we be worried about Fukushima radiation?”

   

  • • • • •

   

  The levels are very low and shouldn’t harm people eating fish from the West Coast or swimming in the ocean, according to Ken Buesseler, a senior scientist at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

   

  […]

   

  Cesium-134, the so-called fingerprint of Fukushima, was measured in seawater samples taken from Tillamook Bay and Gold Beach in Oregon, according to researchers from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution.

  Of course, the idea that radiation was reaching California and the West Coast, and that fish were being contaminated by Fukushima radiation from thousands of miles across the Pacific was considered – yep – “fake news” at the time. The alarmist cries of conspiracy theorists and hypochondriacs were just non-sense, jibberish, delusions and paranoia. Typical hyperbolic non-sense from people caught up in an echo chamber.

  But now, it is an admitted fact that Fukushima radiation is impacting U.S. shores.

  Sorry to ignore and deride your claims, above group of deplorables. Turns out you were right, or at least on to something.

  The source in this story, as well as most of the other “big” stories on Fukushima over the past several years, is Ken Buesseler, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution in Massachusetts.

  He has been a consistent and authoritative voice on Fukushima, sharply criticizing the government role in ignoring the problem, and shedding light on the vast ripple that the nuclear disaster has caused in the biggest of ponds.

  Regardless, the linear thinking about “low levels” ignore the mounting scientific evidence about cumulative exposure to radioactive isotopes and other toxins and free radicals.

  What’s interesting is how much different the same Ken Buesseler is portrayed in different mainstream media accounts… where sometimes only half of the message gets through.

  While the The New Yorker pointed out the complexity of dealing with long-term health issues that could be connected to radiation, via Ken Beusseler’s comments from 2015:

  “Is Radioactive Water Worth Worrying About?”

   

  …

   

  Whether any of this actually matters depends on whom you ask. “There’s a nuclear-power side that’s very quick to be dismissive and say, ‘Don’t worry your pretty little heads, you’re not in harm’s way,’ “ Ken Buesseler, a marine-chemistry researcher at Woods Hole and the organizer of the sampling initiative, told me. “The flip side are the people screaming, you know, ‘Stay out of the Pacific, don’t swim in Monterey, I’m going to move, tell your friends, this is a catastrophe!’ “ At the levels detected in Ucluelet, Buesseler has calculated, you’d need to swim six hours a day for a thousand years to get the radiation equivalent of a dental X-ray.

   

  The full impact of nuclear fallout, however, depends on more than becquerels, which merely count the number of times per second that an unstable atom somewhere in the sample fires off a particle. These particles, and the differing amounts of energy with which they are ejected, have a wide range of effects on the body. We process cesium like an electrolyte, which means that it is diffused throughout the body and eventually excreted in urine. Half of the amount that is ingested is lost within a few months, which limits exposure.

   

  By contrast, strontium-90, another common component of nuclear waste, is a calcium-like “bone seeker” that becomes concentrated in the skeleton and teeth. Since it stays there for years rather than months, even relatively low doses increase the risk of conditions such as bone cancer and leukemia. From a human health perspective, Buesseler sees a potential strontium leak as far more worrying than a little cesium.

  So, as far as nuclear waste goes, cesium-134 is not as bad as strontium-90, but that doesn’t mean there are no harmful effects, and it doesn’t mean that strontium isotopes aren’t affecting the Pacific and West Coast as well – because it has been detected there, and more can be expected to be found:

  

  The biomagnification of the food chain – as low levels of radiation build up in lower life forms and in turn become consumed (and often concentrated) by higher life forms – will increase human exposure in ways that simple measures for exposure time simply do not account for. Its effects will be masked, but not impotent.

  What happens to man and the environment when he is exposed to low levels of radiation over the decades and many years that make up his life? What about its impact on DNA through epigenetics? science now knows that gene expression is changed when it is exposed to dangerous materials in the body.

  When blue fin tuna that migrate from Japan to the West Coast were found to contain radioactive particles, again, via Ken Buesseler, the mainstream media downplayed the risks, while alternative media sources sounded the alarm – something that shouldn’t be happening is:

  

  While the facts in the report remain the same, Forbes, among other mainstream outlets, downplayed the perception of the problem, and essentially giving credence to that idea that there isn’t a problem at all:

  

  Forbes even published this misleading ‘appeal to conservation’:

  

  And don’t forget Ann Coulter’s claim that radiation is good for you, too.

  It wasn’t until 2016 – a full five years after the meltdown – that Japanese officials, and in turn outlets like CBS News, admitted that there was indeed a cover-up, and a concerted effort not to use ‘branding’ and ‘perception’ words like “meltdown”… even though one was underway:

  

   

  Latent diseases and disorders have a way of subtly cropping up, creating a silent genocide of worn down people suffering from chronic disease and inflammation that gives way to cancers, heart and brain diseases, autoimmune disorders and the like.

  That is the biggest risk that Fukushima still poses today.

  Ignored since just after it happened in 2011, the authorities have FINALLY officially acknowledged what they dared not admit since the cover-up began in the wake of the earthquake and tsunami that crippled the nuclear power plant and began the long, slow poisoning of the Pacific Ocean, and all the life that is sustained from it.

  This is a horror, and the mainstream media as it is, with your interests above all others, has assured you that this ongoing disaster is, nonetheless, perfectly safe. Everything is fine, back to your regularly scheduled program….

  

   

  

  

• City Of Chicago Working Around Clock To Clear 18 Inches Of Bullet Casings From Streets

  Fact or Fiction?

  With cartridge accumulations reaching two feet or more in some areas, experts say Chicago is on track for the highest annual ammunition-depth total on record.

  
  

  

   

  Promising that every effort would be made to limit the impact on residents’ day-to-day lives, Chicago officials announced Wednesday that a fleet of plows was working around the clock to clear more than 18 inches of fresh bullet casings that had blanketed the metropolitan area overnight.

   

  Sources at the city’s Department of Streets and Sanitation confirmed that over 250 ammunition-removal vehicles had been deployed to deal with the knee-deep layer of spent cartridges, which have been steadily accumulating on Chicago’s streets, alleys, and pedestrian walkways since the previous evening.

   

  “Our crews have been out there all night trying to make our roadways passable, but given how quickly the handgun and semi-automatic shells have piled up, it’s going to take some time,” DSS commissioner Charles L. Williams told reporters, thanking the public for its patience while crews made their way across the stricken municipality. “We’re making good headway, but as you can imagine, it’s not an easy job, especially with casings continuing to fall throughout the city.”

   

  “So unless you have an emergency, we’re urging all citizens to stay put for the time being,” he added. “Right now, it’s just not safe to be out in such treacherous conditions.”

   

  Williams stated that as casing levels surpassed 12 inches, scores of extra workers from outside the city were called in to help keep pace with the buildup. In addition, numerous dump truck crews have reportedly been tasked with carting off entire trailers full of cartridges from the hardest-hit areas and depositing them in nearby landfills before circling back to pick up more.

   

  According to sources, by the morning rush hour, over 300 public and private schools in the Chicago area had been either closed or delayed due to concerns over the large amounts of ammunition covering the city. Citing increased hazards, officials further advised residents to stay off back streets and avoid venturing out at night.

   

  “Man, it’s brutal out there,” said Paul Bergeron, 34, a resident of the Lawndale neighborhood on Chicago’s West Side, showing reporters where plows had piled up over nine feet of empty casings in the parking lot of the grocery store across from his apartment. “I ran out to Walgreens, and on my way back, I nearly took a spill trudging through all the .40-caliber shells—I just wanted to get home as quickly as possible.”

   

  “Growing up in Kansas, I never saw anything nearly like this, but it is what it is,” he continued. “When you’re living here, you learn to deal with the bullets and adjust your life accordingly.”

   

  Some locals, however, have complained that the areas receiving priority attention from the city’s plows were not consistent with those that had been most severely affected. In Chicago’s western and southern neighborhoods, for example, eyewitnesses reported that cartridges had risen as high as some first-floor windows, making it difficult for the occupants to even open their front doors.

   

  “The plows always seem to get to the rich neighborhoods first, that’s for sure,” said Gloria Hawkins, 53, a lifelong resident of the South Side community of Auburn Gresham. “Down here, you have no choice but to go out there into the ammo and shovel your car out yourself. It can be pretty frustrating when things are really bad out, because by the time you finish clearing the walk in front of your house, there’s already an inch or two of fresh bullet casings piling up where you started.”

   

  “But we’ll get through it, just like we always do,” Hawkins continued. “This city is very much used to this sort of thing.”

  Source: The Onion

  

  

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• Cash Is No Longer King: The Phasing Out Of Physical Money Has Begun

  Submitted by Shaun Bradley via TheAntiMedia.org,

  As physical currency around the world is increasingly phased out, the era where “cash is king” seems to be coming to an end. Countries like India and South Korea have chosen to limit access to physical money by law, and others are beginning to test digital blockchains for their central banks.

  The war on cash isn’t going to be waged overnight, and showdowns will continue in any country where citizens turn to alternatives like precious metals or decentralized cryptocurrencies. Although this transition may feel like a natural progression into the digital age, the real motivation to go cashless is downright sinister.

  The unprecedented collusion between governments and central banks that occurred in 2008 led to bailouts, zero percent interest rates and quantitative easing on a scale never before seen in history. Those decisions, which were made under duress and in closed-door meetings, set the stage for this inevitable demise of paper money.

  Sacrificing the stability of national currencies has been used as a way prop up failing private institutions around the globe. By kicking the can down the road yet another time, bureaucrats and bankers sealed the fate of the financial system as we know it.

  A currency war has been declared, ensuring that the U.S. dollar, Euro, Yen and many other state currencies are linked in a suicide pact. Printing money and endlessly expanding debt are policies that will erode the underlying value of every dollar in people’s wallets, as well as digital funds in their bank accounts. This new war operates in the shadows of the public’s ignorance, slowly undermining social and economic stability through inflation and other consequences of central control. As the Federal Reserve leads the rest of the world’s central banks down the rabbit hole, the vortex it’s creating will affect everyone in the globalized economy.

  Peter Schiff, president of Euro-Pacific Capital, has written several books on the state of the financial system. His focus is on the long-term consequences of years of government and central bank manipulation of fiat currencies:

  “Never in the course of history has a country’s economy failed because its currency was too strong…The view that a weak currency is desirable is so absurd that it could only have been devised to serve the political agenda of those engineering the descent. And while I don’t blame policy makers from spinning self-serving fairy tales (that is their nature), I find extreme fault with those hypnotized members of the media and the financial establishment who have checked their reason at the door. A currency war is different from any other kind of conventional war in that the object is to kill oneself. The nation that succeeds in inflicting the most damage on its own citizens wins the war. ” [emphasis added]

  If you want a glimpse of how this story ends, all you have to do is look at Venezuela, where the government has destroyed the value of the bolivar (and U.S. intervention has further exacerbated the problem). Desperation has overcome the country, leading women to go as far as selling their own hair just to get by. While crime and murder rates have spiked to all-time highs, the most dangerous threat to Venezuelans has been extensive government planning. The money they work for and save is now so valueless it’s weighed instead of counted. The stacks of bills have to be carried around in backpacks, and the scene is reminiscent of the hyperinflation Weimar Germany experienced in the 1920s. Few Western nations have ever experienced a currency crisis before, meaning many are blind to the inevitable consequences that come from the unending stimulus we’ve seen since 2008.

  In order to keep this kind of chaos from spreading like a contagion to the rest of the world, representatives are willing to do anything necessary, but this comes at a cost. Instead of having to worry about carrying around wheelbarrows full of money, the fear in a cashless society will likely stem from bank customers’ restricted access to funds. With no physical way for consumers to take possession of their wealth, the banking interests will decide how much is available.

  The level of trust most people still have in the current system is astonishing. Even after decades of incompetence, manipulation, and irresponsibility, the public still grasps to government and the established order like a child learning how to swim. The responsibility that comes with independence has intimidated the entire population into leaving the decisions up to so-called  ‘experts.’ It just so happens that those trusted policymakers have an agenda to strip you and future generations of prosperity.

  Some of the few hopes in this war against centralization are peer-to-peer technologies like Bitcoin and Ethereum. These innovative platforms have the potential to open up markets that circumvent state-controlled Ponzi schemes. The future development of crypto-assets has massive potential, but being co-opted is a real danger.

  The greatest threat to individual freedom is financial dependence, and as long as your wealth is under someone else’s control, it can never be completely secure. Unfortunately, private blockchains are becoming increasingly popular, creating trojan horses for those just learning about the technology (in contrast, Bitcoin’s transaction ledger is public) . Without the decentralized aspect of a financial network, it is just a giant tracking database that can be easily compromised like any other.

  The World Economic Forum released a report on the future of financial infrastructure. Giancarlo Bruno, Head of Financial Services Industries at WEF stated:

  “Rather than to stay at the margins of the finance industry, blockchain will become the beating heart of it. It will help build innovative solutions across the industry, becoming ever more integrated into the structure of financial services, as mainframes, messaging services, and electronic trading did before it.”

  The list of countries who are exploring integrating blockchain technology into their central banking system is extensive. Just to name a few; Singapore, Ukraine, France,  Finland and many others are in the process of researching and testing out options.

  For those who appreciate more tangible wealth, diversifying into hard assets like gold and silver is a great first step. It’s not about becoming a millionaire or getting rich quickly, but rather, using precious metals as vehicles for investment in the long-term. Regardless of what events unfold over the decades to come, the wealth preserved in physical form is more secure than any other asset. Forty years ago it was possible to save your money in the bank and accumulate interest over time, but that opportunity no longer exists. Those who fail to adapt to this new financial twilight zone will likely find themselves living as slaves to debt for years.

  Control and confidence are two of the most important things in the system we live in. Once these digital spider webs have been put into place, the ability for an individual to maintain privacy or anonymity will all but disappear. Only through understanding the subversive actions being taken can people protect themselves from having to put their future in someone else’s hands. The cash that allows free transactions without tax burdens or state scrutiny won’t be around much longer. There will be many rationalizations for a cashless society in the years to come, but without fixing this broken financial system first, this will only ensure that despotism gains an even sturdier foothold.

  

  

• Trump's Bait And Switch?

  Submitted by Nomi Prins via TomDispatch.com,

  Given his cabinet picks so far, it’s reasonable to assume that The Donald finds hanging out with anyone who isn’t a billionaire (or at least a multimillionaire) a drag. What would there be to talk about if you left the Machiavellian class and its exploits for the company of the sort of normal folk you can rouse at a rally?  It’s been a month since the election and here’s what’s clear: crony capitalism, the kind that festers and grows when offered public support in its search for private profits, is the order of the day among Donald Trump’s cabinet picks. Forget his own “conflicts of interest.” Whatever financial, tax, and other policies his administration puts in place, most of his appointees are going to profit like mad from them and, in the end, Trump might not even wind up being the richest member of the crew. 

  Only a month has passed since November 8th, but it’s already clear (not that it wasn’t before) that Trump’s anti-establishment campaign rhetoric was the biggest scam of his career, one he pulled off perfectly. As president-elect and the country’s next CEO-in-chief, he’s now doing what many presidents have done: doling out power to like-minded friends and associates, loyalists, and — think John F. Kennedy, for instance — possibly family. 

  Here, however, is a major historical difference: the magnitude of Trump’s cronyism is off the charts, even for Washington. Of course, he’s never been a man known for doing small and humble. So his cabinet, as yet incomplete, is already the richest one ever. Estimates of how loaded it will be are almost meaningless at this point, given that we don’t even know Trump’s true wealth (and will likely never see his tax returns). Still, with more billionaires at the doorstep, estimates of the wealth of his new cabinet members and of the president-elect range from my own guesstimate of about $12 billion up to $35 billion. Though the process is as yet incomplete, this already reflects at least a quadrupling of the wealth represented by Barack Obama’s cabinet.

  Trump’s version of a political and financial establishment, just forming, will be bound together by certain behavioral patterns born of relationships among those of similar status, background, social position, legacy connections, and an assumed allegiance to a dogma of self-aggrandizement that overshadows everything else. In the realm of politico-financial power and in Trump’s experience and ideology, the one with the most toys always wins. So it’s hardly a surprise that his money- and power-centric cabinet won’t be focused on public service or patriotism or civic duty, but on the consolidation of corporate and private gain at the expense of the citizenry.

  It’s already obvious that, to Trump, “draining the swamp” means filling it with new layers of golden sludge, similar in color to the decorations that adorn buildings with his name, including the new Trump International Hotel on Pennsylvania Avenue near the White House where foreign diplomats are already flocking to curry favor and even the toilet paper holders in the lobby bathrooms are faux-gold-plated.

  The rarified world of his cabinet choices is certainly a universe away from the struggling working class folks he bamboozled with promises of bringing back American “greatness.” And yet the soaring value of his cabinet should be seen as merely a departure point for our four-year (or more) leap into what is guaranteed to be an abyss of inequality and instability. Forget their wealth. What their business conflicts, relationships, and ideological stances indicate about what they’ll do to America is far more worrisome. And though Trump promised (and tweeted) that he’d be “completely out of business operations,” the possibility of such a full exit for him (or any of his crew) is about as likely as a full reveal of those tax returns.

  Trumping History

  There is, in fact, some historical precedent for a president surrounding himself with such a group of self-interested power-grabbers, but you’d have to return to Warren G. Harding’s administration in the early 1920s to find it. The “Roaring Twenties” that ended explosively in a stock market collapse in 1929 began, ominously enough, with a presidency filled with similar figures, as well as policies remarkably similar to those now being promised under Trump, including major tax cuts and giveaways for corporations and the deregulation of Wall Street. 

  A notably weak figure, Harding liberally delegated policymaking to the group of senior Republicans he chose to oversee his administration who were dubbed “the Ohio gang” (though they were not all from Ohio). Scandal soon followed, above all the notorious Teapot Dome incident in which Secretary of the Interior Albert Fall leased petroleum reserves owned by the Navy in Wyoming and California to two private oil companies without competitive bidding, receiving millions of dollars in kickbacks in return. That scandal and the attention it received darkened Harding’s administration. Until the Enron scandal of 2001-2002, it would serve as the poster child for money (and oil) in politics gone bad. Given Donald Trump’s predisposition for green-lighting pipelines and promoting fossil fuel development, a modern reenactment of Teapot Dome is hardly beyond imagining.

  Harding’s other main contributions to American history involved two choices he made. He offered businessman Herbert Hoover the job of secretary of commerce and so put him in play to become president in the years just preceding the Great Depression.  And in a fashion that now looks Trumpian, he also appointed one of the richest men on Earth, billionaire Andrew Mellon, as his treasury secretary.  Mellon, a Pittsburgh industrialist-financier, was head of the Mellon National Bank; he founded both the Aluminum Company of America (Alcoa), for which he’d be accused of unethical behavior while treasury secretary (as he still owned stock in the company and his brother was a close associate), and the Gulf Oil Company; and with Henry Clay Frick, he co-founded the Union Steel Company.  

  He promptly set to work — and this will sound familiar today — cutting taxes on the wealthy and corporations. At the same time, he essentially left Wall Street free to concoct the shadowy “trusts” that would use borrowed money to purchase collections of shares in companies and real estate, igniting the 1929 stock market crash. After Mellon, who had served three presidents, left Herbert Hoover’s administration, he fell under investigation for unpaid federal taxes and tax-related conflicts of interest.

  Modernizing Warren G.

  Within the political-financial establishment, the more things change, the more, it seems, they stay the same. As Trump moves ahead with his cabinet picks, several of them already stand out in a Mellon-esque fashion for their staggering wealth, their legal entanglements, and the policies they seem ready to support that sound like eerie throwbacks to the age of Harding.  Of course, you can’t tell the players without a scorecard, so here are the top four of the moment (with more on the way).

  Secretary of Commerce Wilbur Ross (net worth $2.9 billion)

  Shades of Andrew Mellon, Ross, a registered Democrat until Trump scooped him up, made his fortune as a corporate vulture (sporting the nickname “the king of bankruptcy”).  He was notorious for devouring the carcasses of dying companies, spitting them out, and pocketing the profits.  He bought bankrupt steel companies, while moving $6.4 billion of their employee pension benefits to the rescue fund of the government’s Pension Benefit Guaranty Corporation so he could make company financials look better. In the early 2000s, his steel industry deals bagged him an impressive $267 million. Stripped of health-care benefits, retired steelworkers at his companies didn’t fare as well.   

  Trump, of course, has promised the world to the sinking coal industry and out-of-work coal miners. His new commerce secretary, however, owned a coal mine in West Virginia, notoriously cited for hundreds of violations, where 12 miners subsequently died in an explosion.  

  Ross also made money running Rothschild Inc.’s bankruptcy-restructuring group for nearly two-and-a-half decades. A member (and once leader) of a secret Wall Street fraternity, Kappa Beta Phi, in 2014 he remarked that “the one percent is being picked on for political reasons.” He has an art collection valued conservatively at $150 million, or 3,000 times the average American’s income of $51,000. In addition, he happens to own a Florida estate only miles down the road from Trump’s Mar-a-Lago private club.

  While Trump has lambasted China for stealing American jobs, Ross (like Trump) has made money from China. In 2010, one of that country’s state-owned enterprises, China Investment Corporation, put $500 million in Ross’s private equity fund, WL Ross & Company. Ross has not disclosed whether these investments remain in his fund, though he told the New York Post that if Trump believes there are conflicts of interest among any of his investments, he would divest himself of them. In August 2016, his company had to pay a $2.3 million fine to the Securities and Exchange Commission to settle charges for not properly disclosing $10.4 million in management fees charged to his investors in the decade leading up to 2011.

  In October, Ross assured Bloomberg that China will continue to be an investment opportunity.  As secretary of commerce, the world will become his personal business venture and boardroom, while U.S. taxpayers will be his funders. He is an ardent crusader for corporate tax cuts (wanting to slash them from 35% to 15%). As head of the commerce department, the man the Economist dubbed “Mr. Protectionism” in 2004 will be in charge of any protectionist policies the administration implements.

  Secretary of Education Betsy DeVos (family wealth $5.1 billion)

  DeVos, the daughter of a billionaire and daughter-in-law of the cofounder of the multilevel marketing empire Amway, has had no actual experience with public schools. Unlike most of the rest of America (myself included), she never attended a public school, nor have any of her children. (Neither did Trump.) But she and her family have excelled at the arithmetic of campaign contributions. They are estimated to have contributed at least $200 million to shaping the conservative movement and various right-wing causes over the last half-century.  As she wrote in the Capitol Hill newspaper Roll Call in 1997, “My family is the biggest contributor of soft money to the Republican National Committee.” That trend only continued in the years that followed. According to the Center for Responsive Politics, since 1989 she and her relatives have given at least $20.2 million to Republican candidates, party committees, PACs, and super PACs. 

  The center further noted that, “Betsy herself, along with her husband, Dick DeVos, Jr., has contributed more than $7.7 million to federal candidates, committees, and parties since 1990, including almost $4.8 million to super PACs.”  Her brother, ex-Navy SEAL Erik Prince, founded the controversial private security contractor Blackwater (now known as Academi). He also made two considerable donations to Make America Number 1, a super PAC that first backed Senator Ted Cruz and then Trump.

  So whatever you do, don’t expect Betsy De Vos’s help in allocating additional federal funds to elevate the education of citizens who actually do attend public schools, or rather what Donald Trump now likes to call “failing government schools.” Instead, she’s undoubtedly going to promote privatizing school voucher programs and charter schools across the country and let those failing government schools go down the tubes as part of a Republican war on public education.  

  Transportation Secretary Elaine Chao (net worth $25 million)

  As the daughter of a wealthy shipping magnate, a former labor secretary for George W. Bush, and the wife of Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, Chao’s establishment connections are overwhelming. They include board positions at Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp and at Wells Fargo Bank.  While Chao was on its board, Wells Fargo scammed its customers to the tune of $2.4 million, and incurred billions of dollars of fines for other crimes. She was silent when its former CEO John Stumpf resigned in a blaze of contriteness.   

  In 2008, Chao ranked 8th in Bush’s executive branch in terms of net worth at  $16.9 million. In 2009, Politico reported that, in memory of her mother who passed away in 2007, she and her husband received a “personal gift” from the Chao family worth between $5 million and $25 million. In 2014, the Center for Responsive Politics ranked McConnell, with an estimated net worth somewhere around $22 million, as the 11th richest senator. As with all things wealth related, the truth is a moving target but the one thing Chao’s not (which may make her a rarity in this cabinet) is a billionaire.

  Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin (net worth between $46 million and $1 billion)

  Hedge fund mogul and Hollywood producer Steven Mnuchin is the third installment on Goldman Sachs’s claim to own the position of Treasury secretary. In fact, when it comes to the stewardship of the country’s economy, Goldman continues to reign supreme.  Bill Clinton appointed the company’s former co-chairman Robert Rubin to Treasury in gratitude for his ability to bestow on him Wall Street cred and the contributions that went with it. George W. Bush appointed former Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Hank Paulson as his final Treasury secretary, just in time for the “too big to fail” economic meltdown of 2007-2008.

  Now, Trump, who swore he’d drain “the swamp” in Washington, is carrying on the tradition. The difference? While Rubin and Paulson pushed for the deregulation of the financial industry that led to the Great Recession and then used federal funds to bail out their friends, Mnuchin, who spent 17 years with Goldman Sachs, eventually made an even bigger fortune by being on the predatory receiving end of federal support while scarfing up a failed bank.

  In 2008, the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation (FDIC), formed in 1934 to insure the deposits of citizens at commercial banks, closed 25 banks, including the Pasadena-based IndyMac Bank. In early January 2009, the FDIC agreed to sell failed lender IndyMac to IMB HoldCo LLC, a company owned by a pack of private equity investors led by former Goldman Sachs partner Mnuchin of Dune Capital Management LP for about $13.9 billion. (They only had to put up $1.3 billion in cash for it, however.)

  When the deal closed on March 19, 2009, IMB formed a new federally chartered savings bank, OneWest Bank (also run by Mnuchin), to complete the purchase. The FDIC took a $10.7 billion loss in the process. OneWest then set about foreclosing on IndyMac’s properties, the cost of which was fronted by the FDIC, as was most of the loss that was incurred from hemorrhaging mortgages. In other words, the government backed Mnuchin’s private deal big time and so helped give him his nickname, the “foreclosure king,” as he became an even wealthier man.

  By October 2011, protesters were marching outside Mnuchin’s Los Angeles mansion with “Stop taking our homes” signs. OneWest soon became mired in lawsuits and on multiple occasions settled for millions of dollars. Nonetheless, Mnuchin sold the bank for a cool $3.4 billion in August 2015. Shades of the president-elect, he also left another beleaguered company, Relativity Media, where he had been co-chairman, two months before it filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy in 2015.

  Mnuchin’s policy priorities include an overhaul of the federal tax code (aimed mainly at helping his elite buddies), financial deregulation (including making the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010 significantly more lenient for hedge funds), and a review of existing trade agreements. He has indicated no support for reinstating the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933, which separated commercial banks that held citizens’ deposits and loans from the speculative practices of investment banks until it was repealed in 1999 under the Clinton administration.

  Gilded Government

  Hillary Clinton certainly cashed in big time on her Wall Street connections during her career and her presidential campaign. And yet her approach already seems modest compared to Trump’s new open-door policy to any billionaire willing to come on board his ship. His new incarnation of the old establishment largely consists of billionaires and multimillionaires with less than appetizing nicknames from their previous predatory careers. They favor government support for their private gain as well as deregulation, several of them having already specialized in making money off the collateral damage from such policies.

  Trump offered Americans this promise: "I'm going to surround myself only with the best and most serious people." In his world, best means rich, and serious means seriously shielded from the way much of the rest of the country lives. Once upon a time, I, too, worked for Goldman Sachs. I left in 2002, the same year that Steven Mnuchin did.  I did not go on to construct deals that hurt citizens. He did. Public spirit is a choice.

  Aspiring to run government as a business (something President Calvin Coolidge tried out in the 1920s with dismal results for America), Trump is now surrounding himself with a crew of crony capitalists who understand boardroom speak, but have nothing in common with most Americans.  So give him credit: his administration is already one of the great political bait-and-switch productions in our history and it hasn’t even begun.  Count on one thing: in his presidency he’ll only double down on that “promise.”

  

  

• NBC's Fake News King Brian Williams Launches Crusade Against "Fake News"

  Now this is rich.  Brian Williams, the disgraced ex-NBC journalist who was literally fired for falsely reporting that he was in a helicopter during the Iraq war that took on combatant fire, is now going on a crusade against “fake news.”  On his MSNBC show last night, Williams decided to attack retired General Flynn and Donald Trump for spreading “fake news” via their twitter accounts.

  “The retired Army 3-star general has passed on some gems himself.  Here are a few…Flynn retweeted accusations that Clinton is involved with child sex trafficking and has “secretly waged war” on the Catholic Church, as well as charges that Obama is a “jihadi” who “laundered” money for Muslim terrorists.

   

  As we talked about here last night, fake news played a role in this election and continues to find a wide audience.  A BuzzFeed news study of Donald Trump’s own tweets where they followed back news stories to their root source found more of them came from Breitbart originally than any other single source.”

   

  So, we should probably just ignore that time Williams simply “mis-remembered” being in a helicopter taking on combatant fire when he was actually completely safe in a convoy about an hour away.

  “I don’t know what screwed up in my mind that caused me to conflate one aircraft with another.”

   

  This pretty much sums it up…

  

   

  And, of course, more breaking news from Williams’ current employer, the beacon of impartiality and purveyor of “real news,” MSNBC.

  Breaking news from network that pays Brian Williams $10 million/yearhttps://t.co/toK3WxAhBU

  — David Burge (@iowahawkblog) December 9, 2016

   

  In conclusion:

  

  

  

• With 65% of ATMs Nonoperational, Goldman Warns India Is "Returning To Barter System"

  India continues to stagger from bad to worse followinhg Modi's demonetization. With just 35% of ATMs nationwide operational, Goldman warns the shortage of cash continues to incentivize the use of alternate payments, including extension of informal credit and a return to barter systems. Addtionally, the slowdown in activity is dramatically reflected in lower tax collections and discounts offered by luxury car companies.

  Goldman Sachs  recently introduced their India 'De-monetization dashboard' in which they track the progress of the Indian government's recent currency reform announced on November 8 via a variety of high-frequency data, including money supply, credit/deposit, interest rates, physical asset premia, real economic activity, price indicators and capital flows.

  This week’s update shows that cash availability at ATMs is still low. On real economic activity, there were no major data releases this week. However, PMIs and auto sales data released last week suggested a significant slowdown in activity. Separately, anecdotal evidence suggested continued weakness in activity as shown in the lower indirect tax collections and various discounts given by luxury car companies.

  Monetary infrastructure

  According to Livemint, 95% of ATMs (out of 200,000 in the country) have been re-calibrated to accept new notes but only 35% of the re-calibrated ATMs are operational. Banks are preferring to make cash available in their own branches instead of making cash available at ATMs. Daily data from ATMs in the four key metro cities – namely Bengaluru, Delhi, Kolkata and Mumbai – show that people are still facing a ‘cash crunch’ in about half of the ATMs. The shortage of cash continues to incentivize the use of alternate payments including electronic payment systems, extension of informal credit and a return to barter systems. The government has further announced various measures to promote digital and non-cash transactions including discounts on digital purchase of fuel, suburban train tickets, and service tax exemptions on transaction charges up to INR 2000 on December 8.
   
  Exhibit 1: Shortage of cash in ATMs continues

  

  Source: CashNoCash, Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research
   
  Exhibit 2: Still very elevated search interest for retailers accepting electronic payment

  Trends in Google searches for key financial terms in India

  

  Source: Google, Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research

  Real activity indicators

  On real activity, no major data was released this week. However, last week, India's Nikkei Markit manufacturing PMI moderated in November after rising to a 22-month high in October (Exhibit 3). The weakness was across the board, suggesting softening in manufacturing activity post the de-monetization announcement on November 8. The Nikkei Markit services PMI also dropped sharply in November driven by a significant decline in new business, also indicating the potential impact of the cash shortage.

  Separately, industry-wide November auto sales (Exhibit 4) showed commercial vehicle sales declined by over 18% mom s.a., car sales declined by 4% mom s.a. and two-wheeler sales dropped by 15% mom s.a. Furthermore, registrations of motor vehicle have fallen since November 2016.

  Exhibit 3: India's composite PMI declined sharply in November led by weak services PMI

  

  Source: Haver Analytics, Nikkei Markit
   
   
  Exhibit 4: Auto sales contracted sharply in November

  

  Source: CEIC, Company data, Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research
   
  Exhibit 5: Motor vehicle registrations have fallen

  (December data only partial month)

  

  Source: Road Transport Office, Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research
   

  The latest anecdotal evidence (Exhibit 6) suggests continued weakness in activity during the fourth week post announcement of de-monetization. The slowdown in activity is reflected in lower tax collections and discounts offered by luxury car companies.

  Exhibit 6: Real activity anecdotal evidence

  

  Source: Live Mint, The Economic Times, Times of India, Business Standard, Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research

  Monetary and financial indicators

  Money supply

  Reserve money expanded by 0.5% yoy as of the week ending December 2, 2016 after a decline of 16.8% yoy the previous week. This was mainly driven by a INR4.7 trillion increase in bankers' deposits with the RBI (+128.4%yoy) post the temporary increase in Cash Reserve Ratio (CRR) to absorb excess liquidity in the system on November 26 (Exhibit 7). This increase in CRR will be withdrawn from December 10 as announced by the RBI. The central bank also mentioned that they have distributed INR 4 trillion of new high denomination notes so far.

  Trends in hard assets premia

  Domestic gold and silver premia, as measured by the difference between USD-equivalent domestic prices and global prices, appear to have normalized after an initial spike. Bitcoin premia (we calculate this as the difference between the price of Bitcoin on India exchanges and those abroad) also moderated somewhat this week (Exhibit 15).
   
  Exhibit 15: Hard assets premia somewhat normalised four weeks post announcement

  

  Source: CEIC, Haver Analytics, Bloomberg, Unocoin, Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research
   
   
  Exhibit 16: Google Trends on gold prices have normalised while Bitcoin stayed elevated

  Trends in Google searches for key physical asset words

  

  Source: Google, Goldman Sachs Global Investment Research
   

  

  

• The Mainstream Media Is Asking For A Government Bailout Via Censorship

  Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

  

  The current controversy is different. Many people in Washington are irate over Wikileaks — not because the email were untrue but because they proved what many had long suspected . . . that Washington is a highly corrupt place full of truly despicable people. For people who make their living on controlling media and information, it was akin to the barbarians breaching the walls of Rome. So the answer is to call for government regulation to combat what will be declared “fake” news or propaganda. It is only the latest effort to convince people to surrender their rights and actually embrace censorship.

   

  – From Jonathan Turley’s: Washington Post Issues Correction To “Fake News” Story

  Watching Hillary Clinton attack “fake news” and calling for legislative action against free speech she doesn’t like got me thinking. Why is she doing this? Yes, it’s obviously related to her notorious personality trait of never taking responsibility for anything and attaching herself to an invented controversy in order to deflect blame for her monumentally embarrassing loss to Donald Trump. But there’s more going on here. A lot more.

  To set the stage, we need to examine the types of people who are most jumping on the “fake news” meme. What you’ll find is that it’s a who’s who of the most contemptible and corrupt people in America. As Glenn Greenwald so accurately noted in his piece published earlier today:

  Those who most loudly denounce Fake News are typically those most aggressively disseminating it.

   

  But the problem here goes way beyond mere hypocrisy. Complaints about Fake News are typically accompanied by calls for “solutions” that involve censorship and suppression, either by the government or tech giants such as Facebook. But until there is a clear definition of “Fake News,” and until it’s recognized that Fake News is being aggressively spread by the very people most loudly complaining about it, the dangers posed by these solutions will be at least as great as the problem itself.

  Just in case you think the above is an exaggeration, is there an individual in America more distrusted and more widely viewed as a compulsive liar than Hillary Clinton? The list of her outright lies is nearly endless (see: Video of the Day – Watch Hillary Clinton Lie for 13 Minutes Straight). Not only that, but Hillary Clinton was more than happy to promote obvious fake news stories one week before the election. Here’s the most egregious example:

  Computer scientists have apparently uncovered a covert server linking the Trump Organization to a Russian-based bank. pic.twitter.com/8f8n9xMzUU

  — Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) November 1, 2016

  This was fake news, but somehow I doubt Hillary will be looking for Congress to take her to task for legitimizing and spreading it.

  Then there’s the downright comical example of Brian Williams. You know, the NBC anchor who literally lost his job for promoting fake news about himself (see: NBC’s Brian Williams is Forced to Admit His Tale of Being on a Downed Helicopter in Iraq Was Pure Fantasy). Now he is one of the “esteemed pundits” railing against the terror of fake news. You can’t make this stuff up.

  The Hill reports:

  MSNBC anchor Brian Williams, who lost his job with NBC’s nightly news for exaggerating details of his time reporting in Iraq, slammed President-elect Donald Trump and members of his transition team for spreading fake news throughout the election.

  Pure comedy, but let’s get serious. At this point, I want to direct your attention to what is perhaps the most astute commentary on the fabricated “fake news” push to date. The following was the concluding paragraph to Jonathan Turley’s, Washington Post Issues Correction To “Fake News” Story:

  The current controversy is different. Many people in Washington are irate over Wikileaks — not because the email were untrue but because they proved what many had long suspected . . . that Washington is a highly corrupt place full of truly despicable people. For people who make their living on controlling media and information, it was akin to the barbarians breaching the walls of Rome. So the answer is to call for government regulation to combat what will be declared “fake” news or propaganda. It is only the latest effort to convince people to surrender their rights and actually embrace censorship. 

  This perfectly describes what is going on at the most macro level, and reminded me exactly of what Wall Street did in the aftermath of its destruction of the U.S. economy during the financial crisis. Faced with a potential loss of their fortunes, jobs and reputations, Wall Street invented a meme that the industry needed to be bailed out without consequences in order to “save Main Street.” This was one of the most brazen, yet successful examples of propaganda I have witnessed in my entire life.

  Wall Street got exactly what it wanted and then some. It proceeded to pay out record bonuses the very next year (2010) and not a single executive was held accountable or went to jail. Free market capitalism was completely suspended in order to save some of the wealthiest and most privileged people in America. They used the levers of the state to save themselves and preserve this key segment of status quo power.

  Fast forward eight years, and we witness yet another spectacular status quo failure. Due to its clownish and completely inaccurate coverage of the 2016 election, the mainstream media and the pundit class generally completely torched its reputation. As a result, alternative, independent media is eating their lunch. Rather than accept the consequences of this historic failure, legacy media has decided to take a page from the Wall Street playbook. They are asking for a government bailout. However, this bailout is far more dangerous than the one which preceded it.

  While the Wall Street bailout consisted of showering financial criminals with infinite sums of money until they were once again masters of the universe, the media is asking for a bailout via censorship. Yes, that’s right. Hillary Clinton and other status quo fake news peddlers are actively asking for Congressional action in order to silence their competition.  This isn’t just about protecting the status quo narrative for the sake of maintaining a transparently false manufactured reality. It’s equally about preserving the status, wealth, reputation and careers of individuals whose failures should have landed them on the street, unemployed for their almost incomprehensible and well documented incompetence. Just like we continue to suffer from incompetent criminal elites on Wall Street, the media now wants to build a similar government-sponsored wall around itself. Such an outcome would be an unmitigated disaster for this nation.

  Instead, what we actually need in this country (and what I expect to happen) was perfectly articulated in a recent article by Nathan J. Robinson in his must read article in Current Affairs titled, The Necessity of Credibility. He writes:

  Yet it is telling that after the election, the people who were most wrong during the campaign are still producing voluminous commentary. No outlet that wanted to regain trust and build audiences would be keeping such people on its staff. But “pundit tenure” is powerful. Thus is also likely that the quest for credible media will necessitate the creation of new media. CNN and The Washington Post have never shown a particularly encouraging capacity for introspection and self-improvement, and it’s unlikely that they’re contemplating major internal overhauls in their mission and accountability practices. Their institutional imperatives consist, after all, largely of seeking views and clicks. For them, the 2016 election was a success rather than a failure. A lot of people, after all, tuned in. Why should they do things any differently? Thus it would be useful to have fresh, truly independent outlets, ones that disclose their biases, are transparent in their methods, and are constantly trying to improve themselves rather than simply pursuing the same useless sensationalism and empty horse-race punditry. 

  The last thing this country needs is another bailout of establishment crooks.

  For related articles, see:

  ‘Then We Will Fight in the Shade’ – A Guide to Winning the Media Wars

  Obama Enters the Media Wars – Why His Recent Attack on Free Speech is So Dangerous and Radical

  Hillary Clinton Enters the Media Wars

  The Death of Mainstream Media

   

  Liberty Blitzkrieg Included on Washington Post Highlighted Hit List of “Russian Propaganda” Websites

  Additional Thoughts on “Fake News,” The Washington Post, and the Absence of Real Journalism

  

  

• Tucker Carlson Takes on Washpo Reporter Who Claimed Trump Won Because of 'Angry White Men'

  The warm blanket that democrats wrap themselves in at night is a dream that angry white men will die off in large enough numbers so that a true renaissance of psychotic illiberals — like Jennifer Rubin — can rise to power and lead America into the next phase towards its ultimate demise. It’s a very potent and divisive thing for journalists to say, pretending to know the spirit and soul of men based upon the color of their skin. The lie, or fake news, of massive hordes of white men descending from their trailer park thrones on election night to vote for Trump, en masse, is a myth.

  The same, so called racist, white men were the good folks  who voted for Obama twice, once in 2008 and again in 2012 —  so there’s always that.

  Specifically tackling the argument of who voted for Trump, the numbers don’t lie. He received less white votes than Romney and 3x the amount of black Americans. Perhaps the very nervous and mentally addled Jennifer Rubin should set aside her confirmation bias prior to making scathing allegations about a race of people. Then again, it’s rather trendy to deride and to shame white people these days, isn’t it?

  Jennifer Rubin and her ilk are perfect examples of why democrats have lost over 900 legislative offices over the past 6 years and hold just 11 governorships. The party, literally, is dying. When it comes to the discussion of race and moving on, I believe Morgan Freeman had the best public response to a journalist in recent times. It was short, poignant, and absolutely true.

   

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

  

• Don't Be Fooled. The Trump Rally Is Not A Sign Of Economic Health

  Submitted by Steven Horowtiz via The Foundation for Economic Education,

  The headlines tell us that the Dow Jones is up around 1,000 points since Donald Trump won the election on November 8th. The conventional wisdom is that this shows how much confidence people have in Trump’s ability to generate a healthy American economy. The argument is that if people are willing to buy stock in American firms, this indicates their belief that those firms will see improving profits over the next few years. They then draw the conclusion that more profitable firms indicate a healthier American economy.

  Although this argument is correct about stock prices reflecting an increasing belief in the profitability of US firms, it makes a major error in assuming that profitable firms necessarily mean a better economy.

  The Economy Isn't A Thing

  First, it’s important to understand that phrases like “a healthier economy” are themselves problematic. The “economy” is not the thing we should be concerned about. In fact, in some fundamental sense there’s no such thing as “the economy.” As Russ Roberts and John Papola memorably put it in the music video “Fight of the Century:”

  The economy’s not a car.
  There’s no engine to stall.
  No experts can fix it.
  There’s no “it” at all.
  The economy is us

  Things are not “good/bad for the economy.” They are good or bad for the people who comprise the market process, specifically in our capacity as consumers. All the economy amounts to is people engaging exchanges in order to better satisfy their wants. What we should care about is whether or not people are able to better satisfy those wants.

  And “better satisfy” here means not just more and better goods and services, but at cheaper prices too. Lower prices mean that consumers have income left over to purchase goods they otherwise couldn’t, enabling them to better satisfy their wants by satisfying more of them.

  Distorted Signals

  In a genuinely free market, the profitability of firms is a good reflection of their ability to better satisfy the wants of consumers. Our willingness to pay for their goods and services reflects the fact that we receive value from those products, so their profits are at least a general signal of having created that value and satisfied consumer wants.

  Trump’s policies may well enrich many firms, but they will impoverish the average American.

  In fact, consumers get much more value out of most innovations than is reflected in the profits of firms. A famous study by economist William Nordhaus estimated that profits made up only about 2.2% of the total benefits created by innovations. If you doubt this, ask yourself how much it would take for you to give up your smartphone and its connectivity. Then multiply that by all of the smartphone users in the world. Then compare that to the profits made off smartphones. The total value to consumers will dwarf the profits of smartphone producers.

  However, when markets aren’t free, profits do not necessarily reflect value creation. Firms who profit through privileges, protections, and subsidies from governments demonstrate that they are able to please political actors, not that they can deliver value to consumers by better satisfying their wants. The profits of cab companies with monopoly licenses reflect their ability to foreclose competition, not the quality of the services they provide.

  In a world of this sort of crony capitalism, profits are de-linked from a connection with consumers and we cannot say with confidence that any given firm’s profits reflect value creation.

  Notice though that such firms might still be profitable! In a world of cronyism, many firms will do very well, especially to the extent that they have connections with those in power, or are willing to do what they are told in order to curry such favor. To the extent that cronyism will make many firms profitable, that would be reflected in rising stock prices and stock indexes.

  That, I would argue, is precisely what we’re seeing today as Trump takes power.

  The Trump Effect

  Trump’s economic nationalism and cronyism will surely enrich a number of American firms. Tariffs on imported cars, for example, might well improve the profitability of US car manufacturers. The same would go for steel or agricultural products. Firms like Carrier that are willing to exercise political clout, or roll over in the face of demands or threats from various levels of government, could see their profits rise as a result of new government-granted privileges. The record-setting Dow Jones sure could be right that the profit stream for many US firms will increase under Trump.

  But don’t confuse that profitability with improved economic well-being. Trump’s policies may well enrich many firms, but they will impoverish the average American. We are not better off having to pay more for domestically produced goods thanks to a 35% tariff on imports. We are not better off when firms are given tax breaks or direct subsidies to keep their production in the US where labor or other inputs are more expensive, raising the costs of those goods and increasing our $20 trillion dollar national debt.

  Profits will be seen as the reward for knowing the right people, not innovation and efficiency.

  We are not better off when firms have to meet the conditions set by a strongman before he will “allow” them to operate in the US, which only serves to reorient the economy away from pleasing consumers to pleasing Trump.

  This sort of cronyism and discretionary use of power turns the positive sum social cooperation of the market into a negative sum battle among firms to curry favoritism and power from the state. Entrepreneurial energy that could have brought forth innovative technologies and cheaper, better goods and services is diverted to seeking profits through what Ayn Rand so memorably called the “aristocracy of pull.”

  This diversion of entrepreneurship will have profound long-term effects, as it severs the link between profit-seeking and satisfying consumer wants. Profits will be seen as the reward for knowing the right people and how best to curry favor from them, not from innovation and efficiency.

  And when profits become about favoritism not value-creation, the moral case for the market, or what’s left of it anyway, disappears as well. Profits can at least in principle be justified in terms of their link with consumer want satisfaction and the creation of value. As profits become increasingly arbitrary, even those firms who continue to create value will have a harder time justifying their profits. This loss of confidence in the ethical basis of the market will erode support for truly competitive markets even more, even as profits for many might increase.

  Don’t be fooled. The Trump rally is not a sign of economic health, but of what quite likely will be harm to all Americans through higher prices, fewer choices, and a reduction in entrepreneurial innovation.

  Profits and rising stock prices in truly free markets reflect real value creation and want satisfaction. Profits and rising stock prices in a system of economic nationalism and cronyism reflect the satisfaction of the desires of those with political power. Firms and political actors might win more power and influence, but average Americans, many of whom voted Trump and his crew into office, will be the big losers.

  

  

• Record High Lease Returns Set To Wreak Havoc On Used Car Prices

  About a month ago we warned that declining used car prices could spell disaster for subprime auto securitizations (see “Slumping Used Car Prices Spell Disaster For Subprime Auto Securitizations“).  While it’s always difficult to predict the exact timing of when bubbles will burst, a combination of record-high lease returns in 2017 and 2018, combined with rising interest rates could imply that the auto bubble is on the precipice.

  As Bloomberg recently pointed out, strong used car pricing is a critical component required to prop up the overall auto market.  While American’s love their brand new cars, if used car prices become too soft then substitution can hurt new car sales.  Add to that the impact of falling residual values on the finance arms of the auto OEMs and you have all the ingredients required for an auto market meltdown.

  Thanks in part to low interest rates, leasing has become an increasingly popular way to drive away a new car. It accounts for almost a third of all new car transactions in the U.S. and it’s also huge in the U.K., as I explained here. For BMW and Mercedes-Benz in particular, it’s been a boon for sales.

   

  Typically a lease lasts about three years, after which the customer returns to the showroom for another vehicle — which is when things could get difficult for the industry.

   

  “There’s going to be a lot of units coming back over the next several years,” Ford Motor Co. warned last month. “They’re going to get to levels that we have never seen on an absolute basis in the industry before”.

   

  In 2017,  about one million more off-lease vehicles will be available in the U.S. compared with 2015. That additional volume will put downward pressure on used car prices.

   

  If cars depreciate too quickly, consumers will be unwilling to pay high prices for new vehicles. High residual values also help to keep monthly lease payments low. In other words, if used car prices fall, the whole system comes unstuck: automakers’ earnings will likely fall and car finance companies (often a subsidiary of the manufacturer) may have to book writedowns on the value of their leased assets.  

  As the following chart depicts, with nearly 1mm more cars coming off lease in 2017 than 2015, it’s difficult to envision a scenario where used car prices don’t come under tremendous pressure.

  

   

  Of course, how we got here is fairly obvious.  The majority of Americans buy cars based on one factor: monthly payment.  And when it comes to managing your monthly payment to the lowest level possible, leasing is the way to go.  Per the Bank Rate calculator below, buying a $30,000 car comes with a monthly payment of around $600 while leasing the same vehicle might only cost $420 per month. 

  

   

  Of course, why buy a $30,000 Ford for a $600 monthly payment when you could lease a $40,000 BMW for $560?  You can afford it so long as you can cover the monthly payment, right?

  

   

  Not surprisingly, these dynamics have caused lease share of U.S. vehicles to skyrocketed in the wake of the “great recession” as people seek to maintain their excessive lifestyles on smaller budgets.

  

   

  Of course, the problem is that leased vehicles get returned to their originating lenders every 3 years for brand new leases…we wouldn’t want anyone driving around in a 5-year-old clunker now would we?  But, as we all know, vehicles have useful lives of 15-20 years.  Therefore, it doesn’t take too many excessive lease cycles to flood the market with used supply and bring the whole ponzi crashing down. 

  

  

• Joe Scarborough: ‘Hillary Clinton Cost Hillary Clinton the Election,’ Not Fake News

  Joe Scarborough dropped an epic dose of truth on Hillary and her disaffected, snowflake supporters this morning after Clinton herself took to the stage yesterday to blame “fake news” for her stunning loss.  Apparently not a buyer of the “fake news” excuse, Scarborough blasted Hillary, and democrats in general, saying that “Hillary Clinton cost Hillary Clinton the election.”

  “When you look at this ‘fake news,’ and you see what happened up at Harvard and you hear everybody writing articles saying millennials cost Hillary Clinton the election, and dogs with three legs cost Hillary Clinton the election, and comets passing in the night– Hillary Clinton cost Hillary Clinton the election.  Hillary Clinton’s campaign staff cost Hillary Clinton the election.”

   

  “Listen, if you care about Democrats digging out of the hole that they have put themselves in now, you’ve got to ask yourself; what have Democrats done to so offend Americans that they only have 11 governorships, they’ve lost control of the Senate, they’ve lost control of the House, they lost 900 legislative seats over the past six years?”

   

  “It wasn’t fake news.  It was something much, much bigger.”

  Meanwhile, Joe’s deflated co-host, Mika Brzezinski, could only muster this response: “Ugh, I don’t think people are ready to hear that, Joe.”

  Clinton addresses the ‘epidemic of fake news’ https://t.co/DlbqxmyfJJ

  — Morning Joe (@Morning_Joe) December 9, 2016

  

  

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• Congressman Calls Fox's Tucker Carlson A Russian Agent On Prime Time Television

  Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

  This is a remarkable, must watch interview between Fox News’ Tucker Carlson and California Congressman Adam Schiff.

  More than anything else, the primary takeaway is the completely clownish and pathetic manner in which Mr. Schiff represents himself and his office. The only reply he has to Carlson, which he uses on at least three occasions, is to blurt out “party of Reagan” in a childish attempt at guilting Tucker into a mutual embrace of neo-Cold War jingoism.

  "Ronald Reagan would be rolling over in his grave… You're carrying water for the Kremlin… you're gonna have to move your show to Russian Television… you're an apologist for the Kremlin."

  Great job by Tucker Carlson getting Schiff to expose his true colors. This is exactly how journalists should treat all political figures whenever they mislead and deceive, which most of them do 24/7.

  

  

• Understanding Evil: From Globalism To Pizzagate

  Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

  I have spent the better part of the last 10 years working diligently to investigate and relate information on economics and geopolitical discourse for the liberty movement. However, long before I delved into these subjects my primary interests of study were the human mind and the human “soul” (yes, I’m using a spiritual term).

  My fascination with economics and sociopolitical events has always been rooted in the human element. That is to say, while economics is often treated as a mathematical and statistical field, it is also driven by psychology. To know the behavior of man is to know the future of all his endeavors, good or evil.

  Evil is what we are specifically here to discuss. I have touched on the issue in various articles in the past including Are Globalists Evil Or Just Misunderstood, but with extreme tensions taking shape this year in light of the U.S. election as well as the exploding online community investigation of “Pizzagate,” I am compelled to examine it once again.

  I will not be grappling with this issue from a particularly religious perspective. Evil applies to everyone regardless of their belief system, or even their lack of belief. Evil is secular in its influence.

  The first and most important thing to understand is this — evil is NOT simply a social or religious construct, it is an inherent element of the human psyche. Carl Gustav Jung was one of the few psychologists in history to dare write extensively on the issue of evil from a scientific perspective as well as a metaphysical perspective.  I highly recommend a book of his collected works on this subject titled 'Jung On Evil', edited by Murray Stein, for those who are interested in a deeper view.

  To summarize, Jung found that much of the foundations of human behavior are rooted in inborn psychological contents or “archetypes.”  Contrary to the position of Sigmund Freud, Jung argued that while our environment may affect our behavior to a certain extent, it does not make us who we are. Rather, we are born with our own individual personality and grow into our inherent characteristics over time. Jung also found that there are universally present elements of human psychology. That is to say, almost every human being on the planet shares certain truths and certain natural predilections.

  The concepts of good and evil, moral and immoral, are present in us from birth and are mostly the same regardless of where we are born, what time in history we are born and to what culture we are born. Good and evil are shared subjective experiences.  It is this observable psychological fact (among others) that leads me to believe in the idea of a creative design — a god.  Again, though, elaborating on god is beyond the scope of this article.

  To me, this should be rather comforting to people, even atheists.  For if there is observable evidence of creative design, then it would follow that there may every well be a reason for all the trials and horrors that we experience as a species.  Our lives, our failures and our accomplishments are not random and meaningless.  We are striving toward something, whether we recognize it or not.  It may be beyond our comprehension at this time, but it is there.

  Evil does not exist in a vacuum; with evil there is always good, if one looks for it in the right places.

  Most people are readily equipped to recognize evil when they see it directly.  What they are not equipped for and must learn from environment is how to recognize evil disguised as righteousness.  The most heinous acts in history are almost always presented as a moral obligation — a path towards some “greater good.”  Inherent conscience, though, IS the greater good, and any ideology that steps away from the boundaries of conscience will inevitably lead to disaster.

  The concept of globalism is one of these ideologies that crosses the line of conscience and pontificates to us about a “superior method” of living.  It relies on taboo, rather than moral compass, and there is a big difference between the two.

  When we pursue a “greater good” as individuals or as a society, the means are just as vital as the ends.  The ends NEVER justify the means.  Never.  For if we abandon our core principles and commit atrocities in the name of “peace,” safety or survival, then we have forsaken the very things which make us worthy of peace and safety and survival.  A monster that devours in the name of peace is still a monster.

  Globalism tells us that the collective is more important than the individual, that the individual owes society a debt and that fealty to society in every respect is the payment for that debt.  But inherent archetypes and conscience tell us differently.  They tell us that society is only ever as healthy as the individuals within it, that society is only as free and vibrant as the participants.  As the individual is demeaned and enslaved, the collective crumbles into mediocrity.

  Globalism also tells us that humanity’s greatest potential cannot be reached without collectivism and centralization.  The assertion is that the more single-minded a society is in its pursuits the more likely it is to effectively achieve its goals.  To this end, globalism seeks to erase all sovereignty. For now its proponents claim they only wish to remove nations and borders from the social equation, but such collectivism never stops there.  Eventually, they will tell us that individualism represents another nefarious “border” that prevents the group from becoming fully realized.

  At the heart of collectivism is the idea that human beings are “blank slates;” that we are born empty and are completely dependent on our environment in order to learn what is right and wrong and how to be good people or good citizens.  The environment becomes the arbiter of decency, rather than conscience, and whoever controls the environment, by extension, becomes god.

  If the masses are convinced of this narrative then moral relativity is only a short step away. It is the abandonment of inborn conscience that ultimately results in evil. In my view, this is exactly why the so called “elites” are pressing for globalism in the first place. Their end game is not just centralization of all power into a one world edifice, but the suppression and eradication of conscience, and thus, all that is good.

  To see where this leads we must look at the behaviors of the elites themselves, which brings us to “Pizzagate.”

  The exposure by Wikileaks during the election cycle of what appear to be coded emails sent between John Podesta and friends has created a burning undercurrent in the alternative media. The emails consistently use odd and out of context “pizza” references, and independent investigations have discovered a wide array connections between political elites like Hillary Clinton and John Podesta to James Alefantis, the owner of a pizza parlor in Washington D.C. called Comet Ping Pong. Alefantis, for reasons that make little sense to me, is listed as number 49 on GQ’s Most Powerful People In Washington list.

  The assertion according to circumstantial evidence including the disturbing child and cannibalism artwork collections of the Podestas has been that Comet Ping Pong is somehow at the center of a child pedophilia network serving the politically connected. Both Comet Ping Pong and a pizza establishment two doors down called Besta Pizza use symbols in their logos and menus that are listed on the FBI’s unclassified documentation on pedophilia symbolism, which does not help matters.

  Some of the best documentation of the Pizzagate scandal that I have seen so far has been done by David Seaman, a former mainstream journalist gone rogue. Here is his YouTube page.

  I do recommend everyone at least look at the evidence he and others present. I went into the issue rather skeptical, but was surprised by the sheer amount of weirdness and evidence regarding Comet Pizza.  There is a problem with Pizzagate that is difficult to overcome, however; namely the fact that to my knowledge no victims have come forward.  This is not to say there has been no crime, but anyone hoping to convince the general public of wrong-doing in this kind of scenario is going to have a very hard time without a victim to reference.

  The problem is doubly difficult now that an armed man was arrested on the premises of Comet Ping Pong while "researching" the claims of child trafficking.  Undoubtedly, the mainstream media will declare the very investigation “dangerous conspiracy theory.”  Whether this will persuade the public to ignore it, or compel them to look into it, remains to be seen.

  I fully realize the amount of confusion surrounding Pizzagate and the assertions by some that it is a "pysop" designed to undermine the alternative media.  This is a foolish notion, in my view.  The mainstream media is dying, this is unavoidable.  The alternative media is a network of sources based on the power of choice and cemented in the concept of investigative research.  The reader participates in the alternative media by learning all available information and positions and deciding for himself what is the most valid conclusion, if there is any conclusion to be had.  The mainstream media simply tells its readers what to think and feel based on cherry picked data.

  The elites will never be able to deconstruct that kind of movement with something like a faked "pizzagate"; rather, they would be more inclined to try to co-opt and direct the alternative media as they do most institutions.  And, if elitists are using Pizzagate as fodder to trick the alternative media into looking ridiculous, then why allow elitist run social media outlets like Facebook and Reddit to shut down discussion on the issue?

  The reason I am more convinced than skeptical at this stage is because this has happened before; and in past scandals of pedophilia in Washington and other political hotbeds, some victims DID come forward.

  I would first reference the events of the Franklin Scandal between 1988 and 1991. The Discovery Channel even produced a documentary on it complete with interviews of alleged child victims peddled to Washington elites for the purpose of favors and blackmail.  Meant to air in 1994, the documentary was quashed before it was ever shown to the public. The only reason it can now be found is because an original copy was released without permission by parties unknown.

  I would also reference the highly evidenced Westminster Pedophile Ring in the U.K., in which the U.K. government lost or destroyed at least 114 related files related to the investigation.

  Finally, it is disconcerting to me that the criminal enterprises of former Bear Sterns financier and convicted pedophile Jeffrey Epstein and his "Lolita Express" are mainstream knowledge, yet the public remains largely oblivious.  Bill Clinton is shown on flight logs to have flown on Epstein's private jet at least a 26 times; the same jet that he used to procure child victims as young as 12 to entertain celebrities and billionaires on his 72 acre island called "Little Saint James".  The fact that Donald Trump was also close friends with Epstein should raise some eyebrows – funny how the mainstream media attacked Trump on every cosmetic issue under the sun but for some reason backed away from pursuing the Epstein angle.

  Where is the vast federal investigation into the people who frequented Epstein's wretched parties?  There is none, and Epstein, though convicted of molesting a 14 year old girl and selling her into prostitution, was only slapped on the wrist with a 13 month sentence.

  Accusations of pedophilia seem to follow the globalists and elitist politicians wherever they go. This does not surprise me. They often exhibit characteristics of narcissism and psychopathy, but their ideology of moral relativity is what would lead to such horrible crimes.

  Evil often stems from people who are empty. When one abandons conscience, one also in many respects abandons empathy and love.  Without these elements of our psyche there is no happiness. Without them, there is nothing left but desire and gluttony.

  Narcissists in particular are prone to use other people as forms of entertainment and fulfillment without concern for their humanity.  They can be vicious in nature, and when taken to the level of psychopathy, they are prone to target and abuse the most helpless of victims in order to generate a feeling of personal power.

  Add in sexual addiction and aggression and narcissists become predatory in the extreme. Nothing ever truly satisfies them. When they grow tired of the normal, they quickly turn to the abnormal and eventually the criminal.  I would say that pedophilia is a natural progression of the elitist mindset; for children are the easiest and most innocent victim source, not to mention the most aberrant and forbidden, and thus the most desirable for a psychopathic deviant embracing evil impulses.

  Beyond this is the even more disturbing prospect of cultism. It is not that the globalists are simply evil as individuals; if that were the case then they would present far less of a threat. The greater terror is that they are also organized. When one confronts the problem of evil head on, one quickly realizes that evil is within us all. There will always be an internal battle in every individual. Organized evil, though, is in fact the ultimate danger, and it is organized evil that must be eradicated.

  For organized evil to be defeated, there must be organized good. I believe the liberty movement in particular is that good; existing in early stages, not yet complete, but good none the less.  Our championing of the non-aggression principle and individual liberty is conducive to respect for privacy, property and life.  Conscience is a core tenet of the liberty ideal, and the exact counter to organized elitism based on moral relativity.

  Recognize and take solace that though we live in dark times, and evil men roam free, we are also here. We are the proper response to evil, and we have been placed here at this time for a reason. Call it fate, call it destiny, call it coincidence, call it god, call it whatever you want, but the answer to evil is us.

  

  

• PRoP Or NuTS?

  

  .

  .

   

  h/t Dana Kamide

  

• The Obamacare 'Dilemma' In One Infographic

  The future of Obamacare is uncertain, to say the least.

  President-elect Donald Trump has consistently called to repeal or replace the Affordable Care Act throughout his campaign, but, as Visual Capitalist's Jeff Desjardins notes, many pundits see this as being a catch-22 for the incoming administration.

  America’s healthcare system is already a global outlier (in a bad way), with disproportionate amounts of money being spent for very little return on life expectancy. For that reason, many people see the additional coverage of 20 million new people through Obamacare as a crucial step forward.

  However, this new coverage hasn’t come without major challenges. Obamacare is plagued by soaring premiums, insurers leaving the program, and coverage monopolies in certain states. This puts America’s healthcare at an inflection point, and no one really seems to know how to solve it.

  THE OBAMACARE DILEMMA

  The following infographic from Healthgrad sums up the most recent metrics on Obamacare, as well as showing the double and triple digit rises in premiums that some states are facing.

   

  

  Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

   

  As the infographic notes, the cost of healthcare has continued to escalate year after year, outpacing both inflation and wage growth. Obamacare has not been immune from this trend, and premiums are now being hiked because of low enrollment, mispriced plans, a dwindling pool of insurers, decreased competition in exchanges, and sicker patients than expected.

  Despite only 25% of Americans supporting the outright repeal of Obamacare, it’s looking more and more likely that the healthcare system of tomorrow won’t look quite like it does today.

  THE POST-OBAMACARE ERA

  Right now, nobody knows quite what the future holds for U.S. healthcare.

  Repealing or replacing Obamacare is fraught with at least six major issues, but perhaps the most significant one is a lack of decisiveness within the Republican party itself. What would Obamacare be replaced with, and how would that change be implemented?

  Interestingly, there are at least seven Republican plans that have been tabled to replace Obamacare. Within that group, two of the more prominent ones come from Georgia Rep. Tom Price and House Speaker Paul Ryan.

  Tom Price, who is Trump’s pick as the incoming secretary for the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS), has already published his consumer-driven healthcare model, and it already exists in legal language. In additional, Paul Ryan released his own proposal in the form of the A Better Way plan earlier this year, which also touches on other issues such as poverty, national security, and the economy.

  Despite the number of options, the problem is that no one can agree on a particular solution. The party is heavily divided, and Trump is already receiving heavy blowback from the Tea Party faction for telegraphing potential delays in repealing or replacing the act.

  

  

• Trump's Biggest Test So Far

  Authored by Eric Zuesse,

  On December 7th, was posed the biggest test so far of the mettle of America’s President-Elect, Donald Trump.

  He had said several times during his campaign, that if elected as President, he would seek a new, less-hostile, relationship between the U.S. and Russia. Now the moment has come when he must either make his first move forward with that historic commitment, or else – by his own inaction when the circumstances (such as right now) demand immediate action on this very promise – set his future U.S. Presidential Administration onto exactly the opposite path: following through with and accepting the existing hostilities, even when they are the most blatantly irrational and counter-factual on their American basis (as now is the case).

  The precipitating event here is this: NATO Secretary-General Jens Stoltenberg and German Foreign Minister Frank-Walter Steinmeier said on December 7th that they want to continue the existing hostilities against Russia: specifically the economic sanctions that U.S. President Barack Obama initiated against Russia after Russia had accepted the overwhelming (90%+) request of the residents in Crimea to restore Crimea’s pre-1954 status, of being for hundreds of years an integral part of Russia.

  The way Steinmeier phrased it was, “The necessary significant progress” by Russia in the implementation of the Minsk Peace Agreement for Ukraine, has not been achieved, and so the sanctions against Russia “will continue to exist.”

  By “the necessary significant progress” he was referring actually to the thing that has been blocking the carrying-out of the Minsk agreements: the Ukrainian Government’s refusal to adhere to provision #11 of the Minsk II Accords, the provision that says Ukraine will pass an amendment to its Constitution so as to provide “special administrative status” within Ukraine to the two breakaway regions, Donbass (where 90% of the residents had voted for the Ukrainian President whom U.S. President Barack Obama’s Administration had overthrown in a bloody coup in February 2014, which coup sparked Donbass’s breakaway), and Crimea (where 75% had voted for that deposed President, whose bloody removal by Obama’s operation sparked Crimea’s breakaway on 16 March 2014, three weeks after that coup).

  What Stoltenberg and Steinmeier ought to be demanding, then, certainly is not continuation of sanctions against Russia for something that Russia isn’t responsible for and actually opposes (a breaking of that promise by the Ukainian Goverment), which is Ukraine’s refusal to comply with provision #11 of the Minsk II Accords, but, instead, sanctions against the Ukrainian Government itself, and perhaps also against the U.S. Government, for their opposing and blocking implementation of that key provision of the Accords (and, perhaps belatedly, also for that coup).

  However, since NATO and Germany are not (such as they’re claiming to be) demanding Ukraine’s compliance with the Minsk Accords, perhaps other nations should instead consider imposing economic sanctions against NATO and Germany, as a possible alternative way of achieving implementation of those Accords, by penalizing NATO and Germany for pushing forward with this lie and moving in the opposite direction — toward war — from the direction (ending the West’s confrontation with Russia) which the U.S. President-elect had said he wants. And, of course, economic sanctions against the United States Government, for its having illegally imposed a coup-government in Kiev, and so precipitated the entire confrontation, might also be considered. Those options could be rational, but what Steinmeier and Stoltenberg are demanding is certainly not.

  U.S. President-Elect Donald Trump can eliminate any such necessity, however, and also fulfill his basic campaign promise regarding U.S.-Russian relations, by informing both NATO and Germany that, unlike his immediate predecessor in the U.S. White House (Obama), a President Donald Trump will push for an immediate end to the Obama-sanctions against Russia.

  This move on Trump’s part needn’t necessarily be accompanied by any official repudiation of his predecessor’s actions regarding Ukraine and regarding Russia, but it would, in and of itself, establish a new and far more peaceful future course in international relations, in which all nations will be able to unify around the common goal for international security, of wiping out jihadists — no longer any trumped-up accusations and hostilities that extend and needlessly continue old-style big-power rivalries, which unnecessarily drain the world’s resources and kill thousands of people, for merely partisan, and clearly counter-productive and potentially catastrophic, purposes.

  If President-Elect Trump declines to take advantage of this “blatant” opportunity to change course in a constructive direction on U.S. foreign relations, then what realistic expectation can there be that he ever will do so? Can a more “blatant” instance to initiate his promised change-of-direction be even imagined?

  *  *  *

  Investigative historian Eric Zuesse is the author, most recently, of  They’re Not Even Close: The Democratic vs. Republican Economic Records, 1910-2010, and of  CHRIST’S VENTRILOQUISTS: The Event that Created Christianity.

  

  

• California State Senator Files Legislation To Create "Safe Zones" For Illegal Immigrants

  Only in California.  California State Senator Kevin de Leon has introduced a bill, SB-54 or the “California Values Act” (because if you disagree with this legislation then you’re obviously just an immoral, racist asshole), that explicitly prohibits “state and local law enforcement agencies” from investigating, detaining, detecting, reporting or arresting people for “immigration enforcement purposes.”  Moreover, the bill would force “public schools, hospitals, and courthouses” to establish “safe zones” that “limit immigration enforcement on their
  premises.”

  Per SB-54:
  

  This bill would, among other things, prohibit state and local law enforcement agencies and school police and security departments from using resources to investigate, detain, detect, report, or arrest persons for immigration enforcement purposes, or to investigate, enforce, or assist in the investigation or enforcement of any federal program requiring registration of individuals on the basis of race, gender, sexual orientation, religion, or national or ethnic origin, as specified. The bill would require state agencies to review their confidentiality policies and identify any changes necessary to ensure that information collected from individuals is limited to that necessary to perform agency duties and is not used or disclosed for any other purpose, as specified. The bill would require public schools, hospitals, and courthouses to establish and make public policies that limit immigration enforcement on their premises and would require the Attorney General, in consultation with appropriate stakeholders, to publish model policies for use by those entities for those purposes.

  

   

  In support of the legislation, De Leon notes that “immigrants are valuable and essential members of the California community” and that attempts to enforce immigration laws simply create fear of the police among “immigrant community members” who then shy away from “approaching police when they are victims of, and witnesses to, crimes.”  Yes, by that logic we should probably stop enforcing all laws because we suspect that pretty much everyone that has broken a state or federal law is somewhat reluctant to approach the police…which is totally unfair!

  885.2. The Legislature finds and declares the following:

   

  (a) Immigrants are valuable and essential members of the California community. Almost one in three Californians is foreign born and one in two children in California has at least one immigrant parent.

   

  (b) A relationship of trust between California’s immigrant community and state and local law enforcement agencies is central to the public safety of the people of California.

   

  (c) This trust is threatened when local law enforcement agencies are entangled with federal immigration enforcement, with the result that immigrant community members fear approaching police when they are victims of, and witnesses to, crimes.

   

  (d) This act seeks to protect the safety and constitutional rights of the people of California, and to direct the state’s limited resources to matters of greatest concern to state and local governments.

  Meanwhile, per The Hill, De Leon has vowed that California will be the “wall of justice” for illegal immigrants “should the incoming administration adopt an inhumane and over-reaching mass-deportation policy.”

  The bill “will make it clear California public schools, hospitals, and courthouses will not be used by the Trump regime to deport our families, friends, neighbors, classmates and co-workers,” said Assemblyman Marc Levine (D), the bill’s chief sponsor in the lower chamber.

   

  The measure does not prohibit law enforcement agencies from transferring violent offenders into federal custody to be deported. But it does prohibit those agencies from acting as federal immigration officers and cooperating with Immigration and Customs Enforcement agents in order to deport other undocumented immigrants.

   

  “To the millions of undocumented residents pursuing and contributing to the California Dream, the state of California will be your wall of justice should the incoming administration adopt an inhumane and over-reaching mass-deportation policy,” de León said in a statement.

  Of course, all of this begs the question of why, if the State of California is allowed to pick and choose which federal laws it decides to enforce, would municipalities and local police departments have to enforce all state laws…perhaps we should take it one step further and just let each city police department pick which laws they want to enforce.

   

  Here is the full text of SB-54:

  

  

• Carrier & The Broken Window Narrative

  Submitted by Lance Roberts via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

  “Trump saves jobs in Indiana before even being President. This is how you make ‘America Great Again.” 

  Between promises to cut corporate taxes from 35% to 15%, reduce regulatory burdens and penalize companies who leave the U.S., markets, economists and analysts are all trying to figure out what it means. As I noted on Tuesday, the always bullish analysts are already pushing up corporate earnings to record levels while the mainstream media is fostering the idea of an economic resurgence to levels last seen during the Reagan Administration. In turn, this will result in higher inflation, higher interest rates and an end to the stagflationary environment that has gripped the economy over the last 8-years.

  Well, that is what is hoped for.

  I thought it might be useful to take a look at the specifics of the deal struck with Carrier and the reality of the current economic backdrop as it relates to fostering future job growth, higher wages and the avoidance of a recessionary outcome.

   

  The Art Of The Deal

  Supporters of Donald Trump have praised the president-elect for working out a deal to keep jobs at a manufacturing plant in Indiana from being moved to Mexico.

  The deal with Carrier, which makes heating, air conditioning, and refrigerator parts, meant that roughly 1,000 workers will keep their jobs in Indiana. However, in exchange for keeping those jobs in Indiana, Carrier will receive $7 million in tax credits and other incentives which will ultimately be picked up by the taxpayers of Indiana. Carrier also said it will invest $16 million in its Indianapolis plant.

  According to Carrier, they would have saved $65 million a year by moving operations to Mexico which begs the question of how tax credits and a company investment of $16 million will equalize the disparity of costs.

  For that answer let’s go to Greg Hayes, the CEO of Carrier, who appeared on Monday’s edition of “Mad Money” with Jim Cramer. (Transcript courtesy of Business Insider)

  JIM CRAMER: What’s good about Mexico? What’s good about going there? And obviously what’s good about staying here?

   

  GREG HAYES: So what’s good about Mexico? We have a very talented workforce in Mexico. Wages are obviously significantly lower. About 80% lower on average. But absenteeism runs about 1%. Turnover runs about 2%. Very, very dedicated workforce.

  JIM CRAMER: Versus America?

   

  GREG HAYES: Much higher.

   

  JIM CRAMER: Much higher.

   

  GREG HAYES: Much higher. And I think that’s just part of these — the jobs, again, are not jobs on an assembly line that people really find all that attractive over the long term. Now I’ve got some very long service employees who do a wonderful job for us. And we like the fact that they’re dedicated to UTC, but I would tell you the key here, Jim, is not to be trained for the job today. Our focus is how do you train people for the jobs of tomorrow?

  As I have discussed on the “Lance Roberts Show” in the past, and this is important, while foreign countries have cheaper labor (not demanding $15/hr minimum wages to flip burgers) they also have a more dedicated workforce willing to work the kind of low-skilled jobs American’s do not find attractive. To wit:

  GREG HAYES: The assembly lines in Indiana — I mean, great people, great people. But the skill set to do those jobs is very different than what it takes to assemble a jet engine.

  So, why did Hayes actually decide to cancel the move to Mexico?

  GREG HAYES: So, there was a cost as we thought about keeping the Indiana plant open. At the same time, and I’ll tell you this because you and I, we know each other, but I was born at night but not last night. I also know that about 10% of our revenue comes from the US government. And I know that a better regulatory environment, a lower tax rate can eventually help UTC in the long run.

   

  Offsetting Higher Costs

  So, as I asked earlier, how to do you equalize the cost of saving $65 million annually by moving to Mexico in exchange for $7 million in one-time tax credit and incentives.

  That is where the $16 million investment comes in.

  In order to justify keeping the Indiana plant open, the company will inject $16 million to drive down the cost of production to reduce the operating gap between the US and Mexico.

  GREG HAYES: Right. Well, and again, if you think about what we talked about last week, we’re going to make a $16 million investment in that factory in Indianapolis to automate to drive the cost down so that we can continue to be competitive. Now is it as cheap as moving to Mexico with a lower cost of labor? No. But we will make that plant competitive just because we’ll make the capital investments there.

   

  JIM CRAMER: Right.

   

  GREG HAYES: But what that ultimately means is there will be fewer jobs.

  The deal may have saved 1,000 jobs in Indiana today, but that doesn’t solve the structural employment dynamics of a 21st-century economy.

   

  The Broken Window

  The interesting thing about the Carrier deal is it is the very essence of the “broken window” narrative of economic creation. A window is destroyed, therefore the window has to be replaced which leads to economic activity throughout the economy.

  However, the fallacy of the “broken window” narrative is that economic activity is only changed and not increased. The dollars used to pay for the window can no longer be used for their original intended purpose.

  With the Carrier deal, while jobs may be retained, the dollars that would have belonged to the taxpayers are now diverted from their original use into assisting Carrier to keep existing jobs.

  In reality, the effect of the Carrier deal is a net negative for Indiana as dollars are diverted from taxpayers which would have created activity elsewhere in the economy. The jobs are still going to be lost at some point as they are displaced by advances in productivity.

  The issues surrounding the “Carrier” deal are problematic going forward as well.

  On Wednesday, in an interview with Time magazine’s Michael Scherer after being named Time’s Person of the Year, Trump said he wants to speak with the CEO of any company considering shipping jobs overseas. Trump told Reince Priebus, the next White House chief of staff:

  “‘Hey, Reince, I want to get a list of companies that have announced they’re leaving,’ he called out. ‘I can call them myself. Five minutes apiece. They won’t be leaving. OK?'”

  What deals will have to cut in order to keep these companies from leaving or simply automating their workforces? Who is going to pay for those deals? What is the true economic cost and benefit?

  There is no free lunch.

   

  It’s Structural

  Yes, reducing taxes, easing regulations and repatriating dollars held offshore which will increase corporate profitability and liquidity. But, will such increase employment, expand production and raise wages?

  Let’s use a simple example.

  • Company A manufactures and sells a “widget.” 
  • They sell 10,000 units a year with a domestic manufacturing cost of $15/hr and a net profit of $5 per unit AFTER taxes.
  • Trump reduces taxes from $35 to $15 which increases the net profit per unit to $5.73 per unit.
  • Net profit for the company rises from $50,000 to $57,300 annually.
  • They able to repatriate $10,000 held in offshore facilities. 
  • A specific regulation is eliminated which now reduces operational costs by $5000 annually. 

  What does the company do with their new found sources of profits and liquidity?

  While the company owners will experience a greater income annually from the tax savings, reduced regulatory costs and repatriation of dollars, there was no increase in the annual demand for their widgets. Since the demand for widgets has not risen in our example, there is no need to expand the production of widgets or increase employment.

  Yes, the owners of the company may opt to keep their employees in the U.S. for now because of increased income currently, but eventually, those $15/hr wages will be reduced to $5/hr through outsourcing as competition reduces the profit margins on “widgets.”

  Since there was no increase in actual demand from consumers, the best use of capital will return back to shareholder benefits. As Goldman Sachs recently noted about the use of repatriated dollars:

  “Buybacks will rise by 30% as companies repatriate cash held overseas. Dividends will rise by 6% in 2017, above the 4% growth rate currently implied by the dividend swap market.”

  Last time I checked, stock buybacks do not create jobs.

  Without an increase in demand, there is little reason to invest dollars into capacity which has been evident over the last few years. As shown in the chart below, personal consumption expenditures during the Reagan administration were 300% higher than today.

  

  Furthermore, consumer indebtedness was low and just beginning to rise allowing consumption to expand at faster rates versus the high levels of debt today.

  

  It is an interesting conundrum since rising production (jobs) leads to higher levels of consumption. However, it is the demand, real or perceived, for a company’s products or services which drives the need for employment and increased production. With consumers effectively “running on empty,” the ability for a further ramp in consumption to create the needed demand is simply lacking. 

  While the Carrier deal did save jobs, for now, what was missed is the need to focus on the structural employment shifts that have occurred since the turn of the century and will continue to occur in the future.

  As noted by Scott Sumner:

  “The FRED series shows total manufacturing output rising from 69.789 in 1987 to 129.129 in the most recent quarter. That’s an 85% gain.

   

  At the same time, manufacturing employment has fallen, from 17.499 million to 12.275 million. This represents a decline from 17.3% of total employment to only 8.5% of total employment. That’s the figure that has people so upset. But the cause is not trade; it’s automation.”

  

  Think about all of the disruptive technologies currently in play from Amazon, to Uber, to robotics and more. Every industry, business, and employee is under attack from increases in productivity, the drive for lower costs and higher profit margins.

  “When people say they are upset about trade, I think that what really bothers them is that automation is allowing us to produce 85% more manufactured goods with far fewer workers. That transition has been painful for many workers, but it’s not about trade—except in one respect.

   

  Trade allows the US to concentrate in industries where we have a comparative advantage (aircraft, chemicals, agricultural products, high tech goods, movies, pharmaceuticals, coal, etc.) We then import cars, toys, sneakers, TVs, clothing, furniture and lots of other goods. It’s likely that our productivity is higher in the industries where we export as compared to the industries where we import. So in that sense, trade may be speeding up the pace by which automation costs jobs. But probably only slightly; in previous posts I’ve shown that even within a given industry, such as steel, the job loss is overwhelmingly about automation, not trade.“

  There are certain low-skilled jobs being lost to other countries which have lower labor costs. They are also being lost to technology due to the lack of specific skill sets and a work ethic. Technological developments are a bigger threat to American workers than trade which is the trend of the future and the crux of the structural employment change.

  As Greg Hayes noted in the interview with Jim Cramer, companies like United Technologies are focused on how to “train people for the jobs of tomorrow.” 

  The “Carrier” deal, and future deals like it, only succeed in temporarily keeping the jobs of yesterday with a cost to taxpayers today.

  

  

• In Unprecedented Move, Dallas Pension System Suspends Withdrawals

  Two days after the Mayor of Dallas, Mike Rawlings, filed a lawsuit against the Dallas Police and Fire Pension system to block withdrawals, which he referred to as a “run on the bank” of an “insolvent” pension system in “financial crisis, the Pension’s board has finally taken steps to halt further withdrawals.  Of course, this delayed action has come only after $500 million in deposits have been withdrawn since just August. 

  According to the Dallas Daily News, an incremental $154mm in withdrawal requests were pending at the time the decision was made earlier today.

  The Dallas Police and Fire Pension System’s Board of Trustees suspended lump-sum withdrawals from the pension fund Thursday, staving off a possible restraining order and stopping $154 million in withdrawal requests.

   

  The system was set to pay out the weekly requests Friday. Pension officials said allowing the withdrawals would leave them without the liquid reserves required to sustain $2.1 billion fund.

   

  “Our situation is currently critical, and we took action,” Board chairman Sam Friar said.

  

  While Dallas citizens cheered the decision, even opponents of the Mayor’s admitted that the redemptions had to be halted if the city had any chance of saving the pension system from insolvency.

  Rawlings on Thursday afternoon told a crowd gathered at a Dallas Regional Chamber that “the bleeding has stopped. We can turn this ship around.”

   

  The crowd responded with cheers after the mayor’s announcement of the board’s decision.

   

  At the pension board meeting, the mood was more somber.

   

  Council member Scott Griggs said he couldn’t let the $154 million “go out the door” on Friday.

   

  His council colleague, Philip Kingston, a board trustee, said the mayor “unquestionably” forced the pension board’s hand. He said Thursday was “the worst day I’ve had in public office.”

   

  “Unfortunately, financially, this had to happen,” he said.

   

  The fund has about $729 million in liquid assets. It needs to keep about $600 million on hand, meaning the restrictions could have been coming at some point even without the mayor’s actions. The withdrawal requests this week alone would have meant the fund would dip below that level.

  

  Of course, not everyone was happy with the decision as at least one retired police officer threatened a lawsuit to force the fund to honor redemption requests while another declared that Mayor Rawlings had “successfully screwed over the retirees, the firefighters and the police officers.”

  One retired police sergeant, Pete Bailey, suggested a lawsuit could be in the offing if the system didn’t pay out the requests that were made Tuesday. Friar understood that they might deal with more litigation.

   

  “We may just have to deal with that, but that’s what the board decides,” Friar said. “We acted in the best interest of the pension fund today.”

   

  Retired Dallas police officer Jerry Rhodes, a pension meeting fixture, said he believed the board did what it had to do. Then he sarcastically lauded Rawlings.

   

  “Merry Christmas, mayor,” he said. “Hopefully you have a good Christmas because you have successfully screwed over the retirees, the firefighters and the police officers.”

  Perhaps future ponzi schemes pension systems will take note of Dallas’ current situation prior to guaranteeing 8% returns on retirees’ pension balances.  Who could have ever guessed that a decision like that could have backfired so badly?

   

  * * *

  For those who missed it, here is what we recently posted after Mayor Rawlings sued to halt pension withdrawals.

  Last week, Dallas Mayor Michael Rawlings sent a scathing letter to the Dallas Police and Fire Pension (DPFP) Board demanded that withdrawals be halted immediately until the “solvency and actuarial soundness of the Pension System is restored.”  That said, the Mayor’s request was seemingly ignored as he has now filed a lawsuit with the Dallas District Court to force the pension board to halt withdrawals amid a “run on the bank.”

  Within the suit, Rawlings notes that $500 million in lump-sum withdrawals have been made from the DPFP since August 2016 with $80 million of that amount being withdrawn in the first 2 weeks of November alone.  The suit continues on to allege that “this mass exodus of DROP funds amounts to a “run on the bank” and is exacerbating the financial peril of the Pension System as a whole.”

  In performing these ministerial duties, the Board has a duty to ensure that programs, such as the Pension System’s optional Deferred Retirement Option Plan (“DROP”), which is not a constitutionally protected benefit (or “benefit” at all), do not impair or reduce the Pension System’s core constitutionally protected benefits, e.g., service retirement benefits. The Board is willfully failing to perform these ministerial duties.

   

  The Pension System, which the Board oversees, is in the midst of a financial crisis. In early 2016, the Board was warned by its own actuary that absent radical change,the Pension System would become insolvent within 15 years—irrevocably eradicating the constitutionally protected service retirement benefits (and other constitutionally protected benefits) of police and firefighter personnel of the City and their beneficiaries.

   

  Critically, this 15-year projection of insolvency was based upon two overly optimistic assumptions that the Board has now known to be incorrect for several months. First, the actuary assumed that the Pension System’s $2.7 billion in assets would remain stable, even though approximately 56% of these assets were composed of optional DROP funds, which have historically been permitted to be withdrawn in lump-sums upon demand (even though this option was used infrequently before this year). Second, the actuary assumed that the Pension System would achieve its targeted 7.25% return or more on itsinvestments for the next 15 years.

   

  Publication of this looming insolvency scenario prompted some DROP Participants to withdraw their DROP funds in lump-sum, which created a “snowball”effect, leading a staggering number of other DROP Participants to withdraw nearly $500 million in optional lump-sum DROP funds from the Pension System from August 13, 2016 to present. Over $80 million of these lump-sum DROP withdrawals have occurred within the first two weeks of November 2016 alone. Over this three-month time period, the Board has knowingly allowed DROP funds to continue to be withdrawn at record levels even though it is aware that doing so is irreparably harming the Pension System’s solvency and liquidity.

   

  Lump-sum DROP withdrawals for 2016 are now on pace to be over 15 times higher than their historical average. This mass exodus of DROP funds amounts to a “run on the bank” and is exacerbating the financial peril of the Pension System as a whole.

   

  The DPFP contreversy comes as hundreds of police and firefighters have poured millions into “DROP” accounts in which they were guaranteed exorbitant returns of 8% while the pension board has proposed a $1 billion bailout from the city of Dallas. 

  The city estimates that, as of November, 517 police and firefighters have DROP accounts containing more than $1 million. One, belonging to an unnamed first responder, has $4.3 million in it, city figures show. On average, the city estimates that the average DROP account contains nearly $600,000.

   

  The controversy all comes at a time when the board has asked the cash-strapped city for a bailout over $1 billion. The board’s position is that they legally can’t stop the withdrawals, but the mayor disagrees.

  Of course, this all begs the question of whether the Dallas Police and Fire Pension will be the first pension ponzi to burst?

  Here is the full lawsuit filed by Dallas Mayor Michael Rawlings:

  

  

• "Then We Will Fight In The Shade" – A Guide To Winning The Media Wars

  Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

  

  Victorious warriors win first and then go to war, while defeated warriors go to war first and then seek to win.

  – Sun Tzu, The Art of War

  The ongoing battle between independent, alternative media and legacy corporate-government sponsored propaganda media is in full swing following Donald Trump’s victory in the 2016 election. While I’m no big fan of Trump, his win has so emotionally damaged the U.S. status quo they have begun to lash out in a hysterical and careless manner against those they feel prevented Her Highness, Hillary Clinton, from ascending to the throne.

  The escalation of this fight, which I have referred to as “The Media Wars” since the summer, was easy to foresee. As I noted in the post, Questioning Hillary’s Health is Not Conspiracy Theory:

  As I look at the landscape in 2016 to-date, I observe emergent signs that alternative media is finally beginning to take over from the legacy mainstream media when it comes to impact and influence. The mainstream media (unlike with John McCain in 2008), had decided that Hillary Clinton’s health was not an issue and chose not to pursue it. Many in the alternative media world took a different position, and due to mainstream media’s failure to inform the American public for decades, the alternative media drove that issue to the top of the news cycle.

   

  That’s power.

   

  This is an incredibly big deal, and the mainstream media intuitively knows what it means. It means a total loss of legitimately, prestige and power. All of which is well deserved of course.

   

  So here’s the bottom line. 2016 represents the true beginning of what I would call the Media Wars. Alternative media is now capable of driving the news cycle. Mainstream media now has no choice but to fight back, and fight back it will. It will fight back dirty. This is going to get very ugly, but by the time the dust has settled, I think much of the mainstream media will be left as a shell of its former self.

  2016 was the year when alternative, independent media went from being merely influential, to affecting the outcome of a Presidential election. As was widely reported, basically every single newspaper in the nation endorsed Hillary Clinton for President. The fact she lost anyway represented the greatest middle finger to the media (and the status quo generally) doled out by the American public in at least a generation.

  While genuinely fake Macedonia-based news sites certainly garnered a lot of clicks (and revenue) by inventing ridiculous stories, anyone who really thinks this is what led to Hillary’s defeat is simply in denial. We all know that independent websites taking Hillary to task on her very real and very deplorable track record of being a compulsive liar is what was truly decisive. The mainstream media knows this, which is why they haven’t actually been focusing on censoring provably fake news sites, but rather have been promoting an agenda to lump any non-establishment perspectives within the umbrella of “fake news” in order to destroy their competition and regain an upper hand in the national narrative. If those of us who value independent media want to thwart this nefarious plan, we need to fully understand what these cretins are up to.

  To that end, I want to turn your attention to one of the best articles I’ve read on the topic. Published at Counterpunch and titled, Manufacturing Normality, here are a few excerpts (definitely make sure to read the entire thing):

  Sometime circa mid-November, in the wake of Hillary Clinton’s defeat (i.e., the beginning of the end of democracy), the self-appointed Guardians of Reality, better known as the corporate media, launched a worldwide marketing campaign against the evil and perfidious scourge of “fake news.” This campaign is now at a fever pitch. Media outlets throughout the empire are pumping out daily dire warnings of the imminent, existential threat to our freedom posed by the “fake news” menace. This isn’t the just the dissemination of disinformation, propaganda, and so on, that’s been going on for thousands of years … Truth itself is under attack. The very foundations of Reality are shaking.

   

  Who’s behind this “fake news” menace? Well, Putin, naturally, but not just Putin. It appears to be the work of a vast conspiracy of virulent anti-establishment types, ultra-alt-rightists, ultra-leftists, libertarian retirees, armchair socialists, Sandernistas, Corbynistas, ontological terrorists, fascism normalizers, poorly educated anti-Globalism freaks, and just garden variety Clinton-haters.

   

  As I suggested in these pages previously, what we are experiencing is the pathologization (or the “abnormalization”) of political dissent, i.e., the systematic stigmatization of any and all forms of non-compliance with neoliberal consensus reality. Political distinctions like “left” and “right” are disappearing, and are being replaced by imponderable distinctions like “normal” and “abnormal,” “true” and “false,” and “real” and “fake.” Such distinctions do not lend themselves to argument. They are proffered to us as axiomatic truths, empirical facts which no normal person would ever dream of contradicting.

   

  In place of competing political philosophies, the neoliberal intelligentsia is substituting a simpler choice, “normality” or “abnormality.” The nature of the “abnormality” varies according to what is being stigmatized. Today it’s “Corbyn the anti-Semite,” tomorrow it’s “Sanders the racist crackpot,” or “Trump the Manchurian candidate,” or whatever. That the smears themselves are indiscriminate (and, in many instances, totally ridiculous) belies the effectiveness of the broader strategy, which is simply to abnormalize the target and whatever he or she represents. It makes no difference whether one is smeared as a racist, as Sanders was during the primaries, or as an anti-Semite, as Corbyn has been, or a fascist, as Trump has relentlessly been, or peddlers of Russian propaganda, as Truthout, CounterPunch, Naked Capitalism, and a number of other publications have been … the message is, they are somehow “not normal.”

   

  Why is this any different from the shameless smear jobs the press has been doing on people since the invention of the press and shameless smear jobs? Well, hold on, because I’m about to tell you. Mostly it has to do with words, especially binary oppositions like “real” and “fake,” and “normal” and “abnormal,” which are, of course, essentially meaningless … their value being purely tactical. Which is to say they denote nothing. They are weapons deployed by a dominant group to enforce conformity to its consensus reality. This is how they’re being used at the moment.

   

  The meaningless binary oppositions that the neoliberal intelligentsia and the corporate media are supplanting traditional opposing political philosophies with (i.e., normal/abnormal, real/fake), in addition to stigmatizing a diversity of sources of non-conforming information and ideas, are also restructuring our consensus reality as a conceptual territory in which anyone thinking, writing, or speaking outside the mainstream is deemed some kind of “deviant,” or “extremist,” or some other form of social pariah. Again, it doesn’t matter what kind, as “deviance” in itself is the point.

   

  Actually, the opposite of deviance is the point. Because this is how “normality” is manufactured. And how consensus reality as a whole is manufactured … and how the manufacturing process is concealed.

  The above hits the nails entirely on the head. It also explains why it took the Washington Post two weeks to even address the fact that it published a fake news article about “fake news.” Here’s how The Washington Post is “taking responsibility.”

  

  While absolutely pathetic, the editor’s note is equally telling in its sloppiness and arrogance. For instance, the article was a such a gross piece of journalistic malpractice, the only honest, professional move by the paper would be to fully retract the story and apologize; yet The Washington Post didn’t do that. Why?

  The reason is because the paper and its editors knew exactly what they was doing with the publication and promotion of this nonsensical fake news hit-piece. Sure, they’re now a bit embarrassed because they were called out by pretty much everybody, but the intent all along was to tie independent media sites with absolutely no connection to Russia, to Russia, in a desperate attempt to recapture the public narrative via blacklists and tech company censorship.

  As an aside, for specifics on how the status quo is attempting to use developers and social media companies to censor alternative opinion under the guise of fighting “fake news,” read this excellent article published at Naked Capitalism: Witch Hunt: “Fake News” Software Touted by CBS Smears Naked Capitalism, ShadowProof, TruthDig, Others; Creator Admits He Made Up Who Went on Hit List.

  Now that we know what they are up to, how worried should we be? Although I’m extremely optimistic about the future of decentralized, independent media, and the proliferation of individual voices generally, it’s quite obvious legacy media gatekeepers will not go down without a fight. The good news is they are the ones who are on the defensive, not us. They are the ones who are battling on our terms, not the other way around. A great example of this can be seen in how the “fake news” meme has been turned around against the mainstream media to great effect. As I tweeted earlier today:

  Mainstream media now panicking because "fake news" has been co-opted by alt. media and is being used against them.
  Best thing ever.

  — Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) December 8, 2016

  It is when you get desperate, scared and panicky that you make the biggest mistakes, and the legacy media is currently desperate, scared and panicky.  As Napoleon Bonaparte allegedly said:

  “Never interrupt your enemy when he is making a mistake.”

  Whether or not he actually said them, those words still ring true. We mustn’t get in the way of the legacy media’s inevitable self-destruction. Part of this means that we do not self-destruct in the process. We need to recognize that there’s a reason independent, alternative media is winning the battle of ideas in the first place. For all the warts, mistakes and bad actors, the emergence of the internet is indeed the historical equivalent of the invention of the printing press on steroids.

  Only a clueless self-important elitist actually believes that the smartest, most informed people in America are the pundits on tv and the journalists employed by the mainstream media. With a handful of companies and a few oligarchs in charge, you’d have to be the most naive fool on earth to not understand that legacy media is driven by well defined narratives, and that these narratives are not in your best interest. The rest of us understand that the Internet has served as a much needed countervailing force, and has been an incredible blessing to human knowledge, connectivity and the marketplace of ideas. Just because some people can’t distinguish truth from fiction, doesn’t negate the incredible progress that decentralized information dissemination provides. It is only those who do not wish to engage in public debate on the issues themselves who want to censor stuff. The rest of us are more than happy to have an open discussion.

  Many of us have spent years, if not decades, building up our online reputations and we should be careful not to squander all we have gained. There will be attempts at co-option, explicitly and otherwise. Be on guard. There will be hit-pieces and smear attempts. Stay cool and fight back from a position of strength and calm. However, I believe the greatest threat comes from the ever present danger of self-inflicted error. Part of the reason independent, alternative media has been so successful is legacy media has made it easy to look good by being so obviously captured, puerile and propagandistic. We must continue to be better than they are. As such, we must be more honest in our actions, less hypocritical in our analysis of events, and just more ethical overall. Given the competition, this shouldn’t be difficult.

  Another way the status quo will fight back is by attacking our means of surviving financially, which means readers must be prepared to donate to your favorite sites more than ever before (you can support Liberty Blitzkrieg here). The other way will be to prevent our content from appearing on social media sites or search engines, or when it does appear, it will come with a warning. If this is the tactic they choose, it’ll be relatively easy to fight back.

  Ten years ago it would’ve been hard to counter such a strategy, but not today. The cat is simply too far out of the bag. Too many of us reach too many people, and many of the people we reach are smart and influential. We have already sufficiently infiltrated and influenced the public discourse, so denying us a voice is no longer an option. If Facebook or Google start presenting Liberty Blitzkrieg, Zerohedge, or Naked Capitalism with warning labels, the intelligent amongst us with see right through this tactic and become disgusted.

  So let me end this with a warning to Facebook, Google, and all the other tech behemoths. You start this fight at your own risk. Any disingenuous attempt to smear genuine, independent media websites via blacklists and censorship will ultimately harm you more than it harms us. In a misguided attempt to destroy us, you will destroy yourselves. Tread carefully and be on the right side of history.

  To everyone else, stay strong. My writing would be irrelevant without you. It is not alternative media writers who will inflict the final blow against legacy media, it will be you, the readers. We are in this together and dependent on each other. Together we will win.

  For related articles, see:

  Obama Enters the Media Wars – Why His Recent Attack on Free Speech is So Dangerous and Radical

  Hillary Clinton Enters the Media Wars

  The Death of Mainstream Media

  Liberty Blitzkrieg Included on Washington Post Highlighted Hit List of “Russian Propaganda” Websites

  Additional Thoughts on “Fake News,” The Washington Post, and the Absence of Real Journalism

  

  

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• The Collapse Of 'Real' Media Credibility (In 3 Simple Images)

  Two words – “nailed it”

  What a difference 4 months makes… From Meltdown to Total Meltdown to Man Of The Year…

  

  h/t @insidegame

  As FoxNews notes however, while President-elect Donald Trump was named Time magazine’s Person of the Year on Wednesday, the honor basically ended there.

  While describing Trump as the real change-maker of 2016, the magazine also ragged on the Republican president-elect as a “huckster” and “demagogue” while reserving its most glowing praise for runner-up Hillary Clinton — whom the edition breathlessly described as “an American Moses.”

   

  In describing Trump, Time’s article almost exclusively used backhanded compliments. For instance, while the piece said he “did what no American politician had attempted in a generation,” it added that he “magnified the divisions of the present, inspiring new levels of anger and fear within his country.”

   

  …

   

  The article on Hillary Clinton is much different. Subtitled “The winner of the popular vote leaves a complicated legacy,” the tone is worlds away from the fulminating darkness that permeates the Trump piece.

   

  The opening paragraph reads more like the prologue of St. John’s Gospel than an essay on a presidential runner-up, saying of Clinton: “she became a symbol in a fight that was about much more than symbolism.”

   

  “She’s the woman who was almost President, she is what might have been and what will yet be.”

   

  “Like an American Moses, she was an imperfect prophet, leading women to the edge of the Promised Land. Now it’s up to another woman to enter it.”

  The big question is, will TIME name Putin ‘Man of the Year’ in 2017? 

  

  

  

• Yuan Strengthens After Rebound In China Exports, Trade Balance Disappoints

  It appears that devaluing your currency against by over 10% in a year against your major trading partners does have some affect (albeit delayed). China Exports (in Yuan terms) grew at 5.9% in November (the fastest growth since March) (well ahead of the expected 1% decline). Imports, however, also soared (by 13%) in Yuan terms. However, in USD terms, Imports rose by the most since Sept 2014 (and exports managed a small rise) as China's trade surplus slipped and missed expectations. Offshore Yuan is strengthening modestly on the print.

  A 10%-plus devaluation…

  

  And in Yuan terms, China Exports are surging…

  

   

  And in USD terms, Exports also managed a small improvement (as imports soared)…

  

   

  Big jumps in exports to US (+6.9% YoY), Taiwan (+6.5%), and Germany (+5.1% YoY) but exports to Russia soared 26.1% and Brazil by 36.9%.

  China import growth was centered on Japan (+17.2%) and Australia (+13.7%), but UK's massive 37.6% surge was the standout.

  As Bloomberg notes, Exports stabilizing suggests demand remains intact for now as the world’s largest exporter faces potential headwinds and policy uncertainty as Donald Trump prepares to take office Jan 20.

  Exports are getting a lift from "likely improvement in global demand," Song Yu, the Beijing-based chief China economist at Beijing Gao Hua Securities Co., the mainland joint-venture partner of Goldman Sachs Group Inc., wrote in a recent note.

  China's trade balance continues to trend lower however…

  

  And the immediate reaction is a modest strengthening in offshore Yuan…

  

  

  

• Rise Of The Machines: Millions Of American Jobs Will Be Wiped Out In The Next Five Years

  Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

  

  There is a paradigm shift coming and it is about to rewrite everything we know about economics, human labor, and government dependence.

  Earlier this week Amazon launched its first Amazon Go store, which allows a customer to walk in, grab the items they want, and simply walk out. Everything is tracked utilizing RFID chips, so the second you step out of the store Amazon knows exactly what you’ve purchased and automatically charges your account:

  Amazon Go is a system that marries physical stores with advanced algorithms and sensors to eliminate the need for a typical store checkout. Instead of packing all the things you need into a basket or cart and then dragged it through a tedious checkout process, you just grab whatever you need and walk out of the store.

   

  It sounds like a shaky concept at first, but only until you see just how advanced the technology really is. When you first walk into the store, you use your smartphone to open you virtual shopping cart. As you make your way around the store, a vast system of sensor tracks where you are, what you pick up, and what you take with you. The system even knows if you pick something up and then put it back, and will only charge you for things you actually intended to buy.

  Amazon’s latest move is simply the next evolution designed to make human labor obsolete.

  As Mike Shedlock recently pointed out at Mish Talk, the transition to automated systems like Amazon Go, as well as technologies like self-driving cars and long-haul trucks, has been fast tracked.

  We’re no longer talking decades, but rather, a few years before we start to see the direct effects on the labor market:

  Once again competition is the driving force that will guarantee success no later than a 2022-2024 time frame. By the end of that period, if not much sooner, long-haul truck jobs will vanish.

   

  …

   

  Perhaps drivers will be needed for final delivery in cities and remote locations, but the need for long-haul interstate and major state highway drivers will vanish.

   

  …

   

  My statement that “millions of long haul truck driving jobs will vanish in the 2022-2024 time frame” is likely way off on the low side if one counts Uber, taxi, and chauffeur driven vehicles.

   

  Take a look at Uber’s goal once again: “replace Uber’s more than 1?million human drivers with robot drivers—as quickly as possible.”

   

  That’s just Uber. And those jobs will vanish. All of them. What about Lyft? Taxis?

  We’re talking tens of millions of jobs. And they’ll be gone within half a decade’s time.

  The immediate response to such revelations is that there will be widespread societal upheaval.

  How will displaced human workers feed their families or keep roofs over their heads?

  The answer, according to Silicon Valley, which is driving the new paradigm full force, is quite simple and has been detailed in the highly rated documentary Obsolete from Aaron and Melissa Dykes (available free for Amazon Prime subscribers).

  It’s called “universal basic income,” or UBI, and essentially means that every member of society will be given a paycheck to meet their most basic needs.

  Aaron Dykes of TruthStream Media explains what’s coming in Obsolete:

  Basically, a general idleness, an aimlessness of people who could become revolutionary, who could be subjected to civil unrest… who will probably be on social welfare and benefits for the rest of their lives and have nothing else to look forward to.

  That’s the direction that the people in this country are actually headed towards.

   

  …

   

  Just a week and a half after Bilderberg’s June 2016 meeting it was reported that [Silicon Valley tech startup incubator] Y-Combinator was running a basic income experiment.

   

  Billed as the “Social Vaccine of the 21st Century,” in Oakland, California where some 100 families were chosen to receive $1000 or $2000 a month in order to collect valuable date in the pilot on how to implement, manage and scale further UBI incentives.

  Obsolete Documentary Trailer:

  The trend should be clear. Bilderberg members from around the world are preparing their governments and citizens for the inevitable.

  Robotics and artificial intelligence technology are advancing at a pace that will soon replace tens of millions of jobs in key economic sectors that include food service, grocery, transportation and customer service.

  What the end result will be is anyone’s guess, but we suspect the transition could destabilize the global economic system, complete with violence and revolution.

  

  

• Chinese Driven Vancouver Housing Bubble Moves To Seattle – "This Is Vancouver 2.0"

  Back in August we noted that the Vancouver housing market was doomed after the implementation of a 15% property tax on foreign buyers targeting the massive influx of Chinese money driving real estate prices to astronomical levels.  Sure enough, within a matter of weeks home prices had plunged and so had the volume of residential real estate transactions (see “As The Vancouver Housing Market Implodes, The “Smart Money” Is Rushing To Get Out Now“).

  Three weeks after we suggested that the Vancouver housing bubble had popped in the aftermath of the implementation of the July 25 15% property tax in British Columbia targeting the Chinese free for all in Vancouver real estate, we got confirmation of that last week when we reported that only one word could describe what has happened to Vancouver housing in the past month: implosion.

   

  Zolo, a Canadian real estate brokerage, which keeps track of MLS home sales in real-time and reports prices as an average rather than the “benchmark price”, showed as of last week a major correction underway in most Metro Vancouver markets. According to the website, the City of Vancouver currently has an average home price of $1.1 million, down 20.7% over the last 28 days and down 24.5% over the last three months. The average detached home is $2.6 million, down 7% compared to three months ago. 

  

  The number of transactions has likewise slammed shut: while August is typically one of the slowest months for real estate transactions, MLS sales data from the first two weeks of the month shows what many have been hoping for during the last few years of escalating prices. According to MLS listing data, there were only three home sales in West Vancouver between Aug. 1 and 14 this year, compared to 52 during the same period last year. That’s a decrease of 94%.

  

  But, of course, all that laundered Chinese money has to go somewhere…and preferably somewhere without a 15% penalty tax on foreign buyers.  So, at just a hop, skip and a jump across the border, wealthy Chinese citizens looking to move hot cash offshore have set their sites on Seattle.  According to Bloomberg, within days of the implementation of the new Vancouver tax, real estate brokers in Seattle saw a noticeable increase in inquiries from Chinese buyers.

  Just a few days after Vancouver announced a tax on foreign property investors, Seattle real estate broker Lili Shang received a WeChat message from a wealthy Chinese businessman who wanted to sell a home in Canada and buy in her area.

   

  After a week of showings, he purchased a $1 million property in Bellevue, across Lake Washington from Seattle. He soon returned to buy two more, including a $2.2 million house in Clyde Hill paid for with a single cashier’s check.

   

  Shang says she’s been inundated with similar requests from China and Hong Kong after Vancouver’s provincial government enacted a 15 percent tax on foreign homebuyers in August to help cool soaring real estate values. With Chinese investors — the largest pool of foreign capital — looking for a place to put their cash, the unintended consequence of the fee has been to push demand to cities such as Seattle and Toronto.

   

  “The tax was the trigger of this new wave of investment now coming to Seattle,” Shang said. “Why pay more for the same thing?”

   

  “Chinese money isn’t going to sit and wait,” said David Ley, a Vancouver-based professor at the University of British Columbia’s Department of Geography, who focuses on housing. “Investors are going to find another city,” and Toronto and Seattle are the top two contenders, he said.

  Home-purchase inquiries from China have jumped materially in Seattle and Toronto since the Vancouver tax was announced, according to Juwai.com, the country’s largest overseas property website.

  

   

  Just like Vancouver, the biggest impact from the influx of foreign capital is on the higher end properties in Seattle with one broker pointing out that the share of homes selling for over $1mm has doubled year-over-year.  And, in case there was any doubt about who was driving those high-end real estate prices higher, Sotheby’s notes that 50% of the houses it sells in the Seattle suburbs are now going to Chinese buyers, up from roughly 30% last year.

  While there are no figures specifically showing purchases made by offshore buyers, brokers say demand in Seattle and Toronto has been robust, particularly for the high-end properties Chinese investors tend to favor. In Seattle, about 12 percent of all homes this year sold for at least $1 million, double the share over the last decade, according to brokerage Windermere Real Estate. Single-family home prices in King County, where the city is located, jumped almost 15 percent in October from a year earlier, data from the local Realtors association show.

   

  The average price of a Greater Toronto home rose 23 percent in November from a year earlier to C$776,684 ($586,530), while sales soared almost 17 percent, the local real estate board reported Dec. 2. In Vancouver, meanwhile, sales have plunged since July and were down 37 percent last month compared with the prior year.

   

  Dean Jones, chief executive officer of Realogics Sotheby’s International Realty, which specializes in high-end properties and has a unit that caters to Asian buyers, estimates that about half of the homes his firm sells in Seattle’s suburbs are going to Chinese purchasers, with many of the transactions requiring the use of interpreters, international banks and multiple escrow deposits. That’s up from about 30 percent last year, he said.

   

  “This is Vancouver 2.0,” said Jones, who lived in the Canadian city about two decades ago, when the capital flow from Asia started to accelerate. “A lot of the same motivations and goals are being replicated in Seattle.”

  Well it should be fun to track exactly how many quarters it takes for Seattle’s high-end real estate prices to bubble over and crash…any guesses?

  

  

• Trump Is Correct – Boeing Is Gouging The Taxpayer On The New Air Force One

  Submitted by Duane via Free Market Shooter blog,

  

  The designation/callsign “Air Force One” has been around since around the time of WWII, with FDR being the first president to fly while in office.  Since 1943, with only a couple exceptions, the Air Force has been flying custom versions of Boeing commercial airliners for the presidential flight mission.  Most recently replaced in 1990, the president currently flies in a modified 747 with the military designation “VC-25”; two copies were produced for a cost of $325 million apiece, and the callsign “Air Force One” is only used when the president is onboard.

  Even though it is still extremely advanced, Air Force One is due for a replacement.  Currently, the operating cost for each VC-25 is $210,877 per hour; an extremely high figure, likely because of the dated nature and high maintenance costs of both the airframe and the avionics suite.

  However, with a total program cost estimated to be around $4 billion dollars, Boeing is clearly gouging the taxpayer.  The newest derivative of Air Force One will end up being over six times as expensive as the last one, which was built on the same airframe.  I guess Boeing just thought the higher price tag was going to slip through the cracks of a bloated DoD budget?

  The older 747-200 the current VC-25s were derived from has been out of production since 1991, with the 747-8 being the current variant under production.  Boeing has considered ending production of the 747 altogether, once its current backlog of 21 aircraft orders (including the VC-25 replacements) is fulfilled.

  The relative inefficiency of the 747 is the top reason for its decline.  It has lost the highest trafficked overseas routes to the Airbus A380, which the 747 once dominated.  Also, commercial and cargo airlines have largely switched to more efficient Boeing 777s and 787s, as well as the Airbus A340 and A350, with twin engines and newer, more efficient designs cutting their costs far below that of the 747.  While it could be argued that the Air Force should modify a twin-engine Boeing jet such as the 777 or 787 instead, their desire for a larger four-engine jet to transport our nation’s leader is understandable, given the dangers the jet could face.

  

  Which one of the two pictured is “Air Force One”?

  Critics have come out in force to justify the ridiculous cost of the Air Force One program, though they seem more interested in criticizing the president-elect than they do in explaining the aircraft’s price tag.  In a USA Today article detailing Trump’s attack on the cost of the AF1 program, aviation analyst Richard Aboulafia didn’t provide any evidence to support an increased cost for the jets, instead choosing to criticize the president-elect for daring to mention that the aircraft is grossly overpriced. 

  Richard Aboulafia, aviation analyst at the Teal Group, said the current Air Force One planes were made in the 1980s and have become obsolete. The planes are equipped with state-of-the-art communications technology and defense mechanisms to survive nuclear war or terrorist attacks, he said.

   

  Anything in the $3 billion to $4 billion range would be reasonable, and a belief otherwise is “completely ignorant,” he said.

   

  “This is the wrong place to talk about cost control,” Aboulafia said. “People aren’t upset in Washington about a relatively small program being canceled. They’re upset we have a president who doesn’t understand what is needed to be president.”

  Aboulafia wants you to believe that not only has the cost of replacing Air Force One gone up so drastically due to inflation, higher materials costs, redevelopment of an existing airframe, or whatever ridiculous expenditure he didn’t cite, he seems to be implying that the current VC-25s don’t already have similar EMP and nuclear/biological/chemical protections built into them already.  Of course, AF1 has all of that and more, and it is by far the most sophisticated VVIP transport plane in the world, even at 25+ years old.  Even the aircraft’s maintenance crews know that despite its age, it is anything but obsolete.

  There was no mention from USA Today that even the original contract estimation of $1.65 billion dollars for the pair of VC-25s was already a significant markup upon an airframe that had been previously modified by the Air Force for the AF1 role, and should not have been nearly that expensive to do again in the first place.  Bear in mind, as USA Today stated, the US Government Accountability Office (GAO) recently reappraised the program’s cost to the $4 billion dollar figure, noting it would be “including $2 billion for research and development”.  How exactly is this price tag considered “reasonable”?

  For reference, the other “most expensive” airplane in the Air Force’s inventory, the B-2 Spirit stealth bomber, is estimated to cost about the same $2 billion per copy as the new VC-25s.  However, the high per-unit cost of the B-2 is due to the buy being cut from 132 to 21, after the end of the cold war, averaging a high R&D cost across a much smaller number of aircraft.  Had the Air Force bought even another 20 of the planned units, they could have been purchased for $566 million each.  Coincidentally, the Air Force’s new stealth bomber, the B-21, is estimated to cost about $511 million a copy (before the appropriate cost overruns, of course).

  So the MSM, and our government for that matter, is OK with a replacement Air Force One being six times as expensive as its predecessor, and about as costly as four new copies of already ridiculously overpriced stealth bombers.  And the MSM is also somehow critical of the president-elect for bring this to light.  Is it any wonder they feel the need to defend their bias by calling alternative coverage “fake”?

  Trump is correct to call out Boeing for this injustice they are doing to the taxpayer.  Not only is he calling attention to another runaway military expenditure, he is putting all government contractors on notice.  Whether the MSM believes the president should be focusing his attention elsewhere or not, he is demonstrating that he is not afraid to call out any contract size or any contractor for gouging the taxpayer.

  Hopefully, Trump’s conduct will keep government contractors’ heads on swivels, and wary of the repercussions of overbilling on government contracts for as long as he is president.  Still, our government spends close to $4 trillion annually, and Trump cannot be everywhere at once.  Don’t be surprised when reports of more over-budget, behind schedule government programs appear during his presidency.

  

  

• Judge Dismisses Jill Stein's "Speculative Claims", Orders End To Michigan Recount

  The federal judge who ordered Michigan to begin its recount on Monday effectively ended it this evening, extinguishing his earlier order, ruling that Green Party candidate Jill Stein "speculative claims" had no legal standing to request another look at ballots.

  

  After chaos earlier in the week amid lawsuits flying back and forth in Michigan, as AP reports, the ruling tonight seals Republican Donald Trump's narrow electoral victory over Democrat Hillary Clinton in Michigan.

  U.S. District Judge Mark Goldsmith agreed with Republicans who argued that the three-day recount must end a day after the state appeals court dealt a blow to the effort. Stein, who finished fourth in Michigan on Nov. 8, didn't have a chance of winning even after a recount and therefore isn't an "aggrieved" candidate, the appeals court said.

   

  "Because there is no basis for this court to ignore the Michigan court's ruling and make an independent judgment regarding what the Michigan Legislature intended by the term 'aggrieved,' plaintiffs have not shown an entitlement to a recount," Goldsmith said of Stein and allies.

  It was Goldsmith's midnight ruling Monday that started the recount in Michigan. But his order dealt with timing – not whether a recount was appropriate. More than 20 counties so far are recounting ballots, and some are finished.

  Earlier Wednesday, the Michigan elections board said the recount would end if Goldsmith extinguished his earlier order.

   

  Stein got about 1 percent of the vote in three states where she's pushed for recounts — Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin. Trump narrowly won all three.

   

  Stein insists she's more concerned about the accuracy of the election. She alleges, without evidence, that the elections may have been susceptible to hacking.

   

  "They present speculative claims going to the vulnerability of the voting machinery — but not actual injury," Goldsmith said.

  Clinton needed all three states to flip in order to take enough electoral votes to win the election.

   So Michigan is over.

   

  A court hearing will be held Friday on a possible recount in Pennsylvania.

   

  Wisconsin's recount, which started last week, has increased Trump's margin of victory over Clinton thus far.

  As a reminder, Trump has 306 electoral votes to Clinton's 232 (270 are needed to win). Michigan has 16 electoral votes, Pennsylvania has 20 and Wisconsin has 10.

  Perhaps most important/entertaining from here is that 'Electors' will convene December 19th across the country to vote for president, and then we will see just what happens when the so-called "Hamilton Electors" are called to task.

  

  

• The Ultimate "Fake News" List

  Authored by Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones, originally posted at InfoWars.com,

  

  Isn’t it ironic how the mainstream media has the nerve to lecture everyone else about “fake news” when they are the primary source of fake news on a consistent basis stretching back years?

  Fake news stories and fake narratives put out by the mainstream media have resulted in deaths, destruction and people’s lives being ruined.

  The most harmful fake news is routinely published by the mainstream media. They are the main progenitors of fake news.

  – The fake news that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction and that Iraq was involved in 9/11, dutifully regurgitated without question by the mainstream media, resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead Iraqis, thousands of dead and injured U.S. troops, and the destabilization of an entire continent.

  

  – The fake news that the rebels in Syria were “moderates” who did not have jihadist sympathies and should be supported led to the destruction of Syria, Libya and the rise of ISIS.

  – The fake news narrative that the media was balanced in its coverage of the presidential election was completely obliterated when Wikileaks emails revealed that countless mainstream media reporters were in bed with the Clinton campaign, feeding them debate questions beforehand and conspiring with Hillary’s staff to portray her in a positive light.

  – The fake news that George Zimmerman was obsessed with Trayvon Martin’s race before the altercation that led to Martin’s death was accomplished by means of NBC deceptively editing an audio tape. This incident stoked racial tensions across the country and laid the groundwork for the violent ‘Black Lives Matter’ movement that was to follow.

  – The fake news that produced the “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative, which was proven to be completely fraudulent, led to riots, violent attacks and looting in Ferguson, Missouri, as well as numerous other U.S. cities. Even after the rioting began, the mainstream media continued to legitimize the unrest. Fake news outlets continued to parrot the “hands up, don’t shoot” narrative even after it was proven false.

  

  – The fake news that saw innumerable people accused of rape at college campuses across America, claims that were proven wrong, ruined people’s lives and perpetuated the myth (fake news) that one in five women are raped on college campuses.

  – The fake news that George W. Bush served dishonorably during his time in the Air National Guard was broadcast by CBS News with the aid of fake documents. In circulating this fake news, CBS tried to influence the 2004 presidential election but only ended up crucifying their own credibility, leading to Dan Rather’s resignation six months later.

  – The fake news that NBC anchor Brian Williams faced enemy fire while helicoptering into Iraq in 2003 was exposed when soldiers who were aboard the helicopter blew the whistle on his lies. Despite admittedly putting out fake news, Williams still has a career in broadcast journalism.

  – The fake news narrative that Donald Trump somehow represents the next coming of Hitler has provoked a hysterical anti-Trump hate crime wave across America, with people and property being attacked on a routine basis. The same hysterical fake news narrative was also responsible for violence and riots at Trump events throughout the campaign cycle, as well as assassination attempts on Trump’s life.

  – The fake news that Donald Trump had no chance whatsoever of winning the presidential election was proudly pushed by countless mainstream media outlets, with the Huffington Post even predicting that Hillary Clinton had a 98% chance of winning the presidency. When this fake news narrative was completely demolished on November 8, it swept away trust in political polling and the mainstream media to an even greater degree, prompting the backlash that you now see with the corporate press calling everyone else “fake news” when they are the real fake news.

  

  FULL LIST OF FAKE NEWS OUTLETS

  – The New York Times
  – The Washington Post
  – CNN
  – NBC News
  – MSNBC
  – CBS News
  – ABC News
  – Salon.com
  – The Huffington Post
  – Rolling Stone
  – BBC News
  – Sky News
  – Financial Times
  – Politico
  – New York Daily News
  – L.A. Times
  – USA Today
  – US News & World Report
  – CBC
  – Gawker
  – Newsweek
  – Time
  – Business Insider
  – Daily Beast
  – VICE
  – Yahoo News
  – Daily Kos
  – Young Turks
  – Slate
  – NPR
  – PBS
  – Raw Story
  – New Yorker
  – Buzzfeed
  – MoveOn
  – Think Progress
  – Media Matters
  – Wonkette
  – Center for American Progress
  – Little Green Footballs
  – The Economist

  Below is a list of fake news reporters who colluded with the Clinton campaign to promote fake news.

  

  This list is by no means exhaustive, and there are many reporters within these organizations who do not peddle fake news and have spoken out against the mainstream media’s effort to brand dissenting opinion as “fake news”.

  For example, Matt Taibbi (no fan of Infowars), has called the Washington Post’s fake news blacklist “disgusting” and “shameful”.

  Glenn Greenwald, who has worked with several of the organizations on this list in the past, also completely eviscerated the credibility of the “fake news list” being used by the Washington Post.

  The entire “fake news” narrative being pushed by the mainstream media has nothing whatsoever to do with concerns over people being misled.

  If that were the case, the mainstream media itself would stop habitually lying to the American people and it’s trustworthiness wouldn’t be in the toilet.

  The whole “fake news” narrative is clearly part of a dirty tricks campaign to pressure governments, Google, Facebook, Twitter, YouTube and other tech giants to censor information that is inconvenient to the establishment, for which the mainstream media serves as a mouthpiece.

  We are competing with the mainstream media and they’re not happy about dissident voices challenging their monopoly on reality. That’s why they’re forced to resort to underhanded and deceptive means through which to silence their ideological opposition.

  By circulating this article and this fake news list, we are not calling for these outlets to be censored, we are simply drawing attention to the fact that the very same entities who cry “fake news” are the primary sources for the most damaging, harmful and woefully inaccurate fake news stories in the history of modern journalism.

  

  

• ECB Preview: The Market's All-In But "There's A Significant Chance Draghi Disappoints"

  Blackrock's chief multi-asset strategist summed up tomorrow's anxiously awaited ECB meeting best by noting that "what’s priced into markets is a fully fledged extension of the [bond-buying] program," but warns that, thanks to a muted reaction to the Italy vote and recent encouraging data, "there’s a significant chance the ECB disappoints markets." As bond traders bet on a six-month QE extension, Citi warns, anything less will be seen as hawkish and send EUR surging.

  The ECB has a recent history of disappointing investors expecting more stimulus, and as The Wall Street Journal reports, with the bond-buying program scheduled to end in March, the ECB is running out of time to inform investors of its plans.

  Just last week, Bunds had a mini taper tantrum when rumors spread…

  

   

  And, even as investors expect more stimulus on Thursday, the debate with some analysts is moving to whether the ECB could start tapering its stimulus program in March.

  Like other investors, Edward Farley, head of European corporate debt at PGIM Fixed Income, expects a six-month extension to the ECB’s asset purchases. Still, he says he has been avoiding securities like southern European corporate bonds that look most vulnerable “if there is any accident with central bank policy.”

   

  There is little sign investors expect that on Thursday. Peripheral government bonds and corporate debt has rallied this week despite the “no” vote in Italy’s referendum which outgoing Prime Minister Matteo Renzi had presented as a way to revitalize Italy’s stuttering economy.

   

  Investors seemed unfazed by Mr. Renzi’s resignation after the vote even though it could bolster the fortunes of the populist 5-Star Movement which has called for a non-binding referendum on Italy’s membership of the euro.

   

  The gap between 10-year Italian and German bond yields has narrowed by around 0.1 percentage point this week to around 1.54 percentage points. Media reports that the Italian government was ready to take a controlling stake in troubled lender Banca Monte dei Paschi di Siena seemed also to fuel the rally.

   

  The spread to Germany, the bloc’s largest economy, also narrowed for Portuguese, Spanish and French bonds.

   

  

  As far as the actual policy decision goes, the biggest problem for the central bank remains, as Bloomberg points out, that underlying inflationary pressure is too weak and shows no signs of picking up. Headline inflation accelerated a little in November, broadly in-line with the ECB’s forecast of 0.5% for 4Q, but it looks to have done so thanks to movements in food prices. Core and services price inflation are stuck at 0.8% and 1.1%, respectively. And even though unemployment continues to fall, the wages data bring little cause for optimism. There’s unlikely to be much movement in the core inflation forecasts, but revisions downward are more likely than upward. It will also be the first time forecasts for 2019 will be published — how the ECB marks its own homework may help with understanding risks to the policy outlook.

  There remains no sign of underlying cost pressure building. Until there is, further easing looks inevitable. The Governing Council has faith in its tools — it thinks inflation would have been lower if they had not been deployed — and there is reason to keep using them. BI Economics therefore expects an extension to the program of asset purchases.

  Economists seem to be split between those expecting the ECB to announce an extension by three or six months.

  And with doves outnumbering hawks still on The ECB, it seems six months is more likely…

  

  Economists highlight good reasons for the ECB to keep buying bonds. The central bank has an inflation target of close to 2% but consumer prices in the Eurozone were only 0.6% higher in November than the same month last year.

  Others argue further stimulus isn’t warranted. The eurozone’s economic picture is brighter, with business activity growing at its fastest pace this year in November, according to a survey of manufacturers and service providers.

  As Citi strategist Steven Englander notes, nearly half of survey respondents expect ECB to extend QE by 6 months at current EU80b purchasing pace, writing that anything less than that outcome likely to be seen as hawkish and drive an “immediate EUR buying outcome."

  • 20% expect ECB to engage in “serious but limited” tapering
  • Two-thirds of respondents see ECB as being unaffected by Italian referendum

  Which confirms Bloomberg's consensus…

  • An announcement that asset purchases will continue until June 2017, or beyond if necessary, at the present pace of 80 billion euros a month (risk: tilted to longer)
  • An increase to the issue limit to address bond scarcity (risk: balanced)
  • No commitment to taper asset purchases (risk: balanced).

  And beyond December…

  • A further three-month extension of the asset purchase program to be announced in March 2017 (risk: tilted to longer)
  • Tapering of asset purchases to begin from September 2017 and for the program to end in March 2018 (risk: tilted to longer).

  However, the market’s subdued reaction to the Italian referendum may show that investors have become too reliant on the central bank to smooth over the eurozone’s probelms, a factor that may concern some ECB officials.

  “I don’t think that [argument] will win the day, but it’s a risk,” said Stefan Isaacs, deputy head of retail fixed income at M&G Investments. It would be “dangerous” for the ECB to pull back before it has succeeded in boosting inflation, Mr. Isaacs said.

  As a reminder, last December, the euro jumped more than four cents against the dollar, stocks tumbled and the price of riskier bonds fell after the bank delivered a smaller-than-expected package of stimulus measures.

  Finally, as we detailed previously, there is another problem: with the US tightening at a time when demand for US debt will have to stay constant or rise to fund Trump's fiscal stimulus, it would be up to Japan and Europe to provide the "helicopter money" to fund US economic growth as DB explained. Even a small hint that this is going away, and suddenly the Trump stimulus is looking very shaky.

  Sure enough, as Reuters admits, some proponents of the extension fear an ill-timed signal about reduced buying in future could heighten market volatility, potentially undoing some of the benefits of the scheme.

  To be sure, it is not a done deal yet:

  Extending the asset buys would require the ECB to ease some of its self-imposed restrictions, a sensitive debate as most options on the table raise legal or political concerns, facing varying degrees of opposition within the Governing Council.

   

  Still, ECB President Mario Draghi seemed to dismiss those concerns this week, arguing that the program was sufficiently flexible, suggesting that parameter changes would not stand in the way if policymakers opted for the extension.

  However, givem the current spate of economic and political events, it just may be that a tapering announcement by the ECB is the catalyst that finally blows over the house of cards market that has soared since November 8 on nothing but hope and lack of concrete news.

  

  

• Washington Post Appends "Russian Propaganda Fake News" Story, Admits It May Be Fake

  In the latest example why the “mainstream media” is facing a historic crisis of confidence among its readership, facing unprecedented blowback following Craig Timberg November 24 Washington Post story “Russian propaganda effort helped spread ‘fake news’ during election, experts say“, on Wednesday a lengthy editor’s note appeared on top of the original article in which the editor not only distances the WaPo from the “experts” quoted in the original article whose “work” served as the basis for the entire article (and which became the most read WaPo story the day it was published) but also admits the Post could not “vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s finding regarding any individual media outlet”, in effect admitting the entire story may have been, drumroll “fake news” and conceding the Bezos-owned publication may have engaged in defamation by smearing numerous websites – Zero Hedge included – with patently false and unsubstantiated allegations.

  It was the closest the Washington Post would come to formally retracting the story, which has now been thoroughly discredited not only by outside commentators, but by its own editor.

  The apended note in question:

  Editor’s Note: The Washington Post on Nov. 24 published a story on the work of four sets of researchers who have examined what they say are Russian propaganda efforts to undermine American democracy and interests. One of them was PropOrNot, a group that insists on public anonymity, which issued a report identifying more than 200 websites that, in its view, wittingly or unwittingly published or echoed Russian propaganda. A number of those sites have objected to being included on PropOrNot’s list, and some of the sites, as well as others not on the list, have publicly challenged the group’s methodology and conclusions. The Post, which did not name any of the sites, does not itself vouch for the validity of PropOrNot’s findings regarding any individual media outlet, nor did the article purport to do so. Since publication of The Post’s story, PropOrNot has removed some sites from its list.

  As The Washingtonian notes, the implicit concession follows intense and rising criticism of the article over the past two weeks. It was “rife with obviously reckless and unproven allegations,” Intercept reporters Glenn Greenwald and Ben Norton wrote, noting that PropOrNot, one of the groups whose research was cited in Timberg’s piece, “anonymous cowards.” One of the sites PropOrNot cited as Russian-influenced was the Drudge Report.

  The piece’s description of some sharers of bogus news as “useful idiots” could “theoretically include anyone on any social-media platform who shares news based on a click-bait headline,” Mathew Ingram wrote for Fortune.

  But the biggest issue was PropOrNot itself. As Adrian Chen wrote for the New Yorker, its methods were themselves suspect, hinting at counter-Russian propaganda – ostensibly with Ukrainian origins – and verification of its work was nearly impossible. Chen wrote “the prospect of legitimate dissenting voices being labelled fake news or Russian propaganda by mysterious groups of ex-government employees, with the help of a national newspaper, is even scarier.”

  Criticism culminated this week when the “Naked capitalism” blog threatened to sue the Washington Post, demanding a retraction. 

  Now, at least, the “national newspaper” has taken some responsibility, however the key question remains: by admitting it never vetted its primary source, whose biased and conflicted “work” smeared hundreds of websites, this one included, just how is the Washington Post any different from the “fake news” it has been deriding on a daily basis ever since its endorsed presidential candidate lost the elections?

  

  

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