• The Real Reasons Why Another American Civil War Is Possible

  Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

  You have to hand it to the regressive left, when they conjure propaganda they really know how to run with it. When their indoctrination doesn’t take, and the public stops them cold with a wall of skepticism, they don’t give up! No — the little buggers double down and go for broke!

  I would point out, however, that this seemingly boundless drive to forsake all logic and reason in the name of ideology is not due to these people being special in their ambition. Rather, they are following a somewhat successful historic model; the model of communism. And by successful, I mean successfully destructive.

  With Donald Trump on the way to the White House in January, along with a Republican majority in Congress and the Senate, leftists long accustomed to dominating the public narrative through the mainstream media have found themselves without leverage. Now, they must resort to ankle biting with efforts like the “fake news” meme, which is designed to undermine the alternative media through ad hominem.  Obviously this will fail.  It is far too late for the mainstream media to gain back any social capital, and they will have to adapt or die out.

  With this avenue closing for the left, the next stage will be direct asymmetrics; they will use subversion at a more localized level; working to provoke “marginalized” groups into taking extreme action in order to illicit a negative and totalitarian response from conservatives.

  I am rather well versed on the history of communist insurgencies, and one simple reality that consistently stands out to me is that wherever communist movements exist, war follows.  They may claim to be peaceful in their aims and methods, they may claim to want what is best for society as a whole, but when these movements are denied access to social evolution, they almost always revert to violent means.  The primary reason for this, I believe, is that they really do assume at their very core that their ideal is the ONLY ideal.

  They think they are heroes, awakened to a world view that the rest of us are incapable of comprehending. In their minds, anyone seeking to obstruct them is either dangerously ignorant or a fascist hellbent on sabotaging humanity’s “natural progression” into the leftist utopia.   Therefore any and all actions are justified on their part.  They are fighting “evil.”  And, of course, conservatives like you and I are the physical manifestations of that evil.  We are the super-villains that must be destroyed at all costs in the leftist fantasy world.

  As I noted in my last article, Order Out Of chaos: The Defeat Of The Left Comes With A Cost, regressives in the form of social justice warriors are currently more cute in their provocations than dangerous, but this is only an early stage of their movement.  When these people do not get what they want, when they realize that propaganda methods are not effective, they will inevitably turn toward militancy and aggressive mob action.  This is the problem with zealots: they are infinitely capable of moral relativity.  They are monsters in people suits just waiting to be unleashed, but made even more dangerous by their self-image as guardians.

  There is nothing worse than a psychopath with a desperate desire to nurture you.

  After my last article, some readers responded that they understood my basic premise — that the left versus right dynamic is being instigated by global elites, and that this could result in both sides moving to opposing extremes of the political spectrum; communism versus fascism.  That said, they also wanted to know what I thought should be done about the left in particular?  Sure, the elites are the root cause of the threat, but what about all the crazed leftists the elites hide behind and exploit?  Don’t we have to deal with them at some point as well?

  I would say yes, though our reaction must be measured or we risk falling into the paradigm trap the elites have constructed for us.

  So, here is the reality — when a movement like the social justice cult reverts to zealotry, there is nothing that can be done to persuade them otherwise.  Some will leave the movement behind, but the majority will refuse to acknowledge that their ideology has failed to sway the masses, and that this might be due to the fact that their ideology is highly flawed. They will seek instead to FORCE us into compliance. This ensures that a violent conflict will eventually arise.

  The danger is that while conservatives now appear to hold the keys to the behemoth that is government after wrestling it from the left (again, at least in appearance), we will be tempted to swing the cannons of the bureaucratic battleship towards our foes and in our favor.  I’ll have to use the old Lord of the Rings analogy once again here — big government is like the “one ring;” it will always result in evil, no matter who is wearing it.  Good people will take hold of it thinking they can resist abusing it and that they will exploit its incredible power to help others; and they will fall into darkness like everyone else.

  The solution?  Conservatives must face leftist extremists on equal ground. We must avoid the temptation of using government as a weapon to extinguish them.  We must avoid stooping to their level.  Otherwise, there is an serious risk that we will falter in our principles and become just as bad if not worse than the regressive left.  And yes, this means a decentralized civil war — a war in which government is denied as a player.  As long as conservatives refuse to wield government as a sword in our arsenal, we will win against all enemies.  The second we wimp out and beg government to aid us in our fight, we will be co-opted and assimilated by the elites.

  But what would this conflict look like?

  I could see an insurgency versus an insurgency scenario, but this is only if the right refuses to join with government to exact its goals.

  In the meantime, I welcome you to look at theories on this from the left side of the spectrum. Check out this article, referencing military “experts” from the ever regressive and dwindling Cracked Magazine titled 6 Reasons Why A New Civil War Is Possible And Terrifying, published at the beginning of November.

  While Cracked does briefly address the notion that a civil war could be triggered by the left in the U.S., their article was published before the election, clearly with the assumption that Donald Trump was bound to lose and that “right wing extremists” were the greatest threat to peace and stability in the wake of a Clinton presidency. The majority of their list is composed of scenarios in which “anti-government” right wingers could undermine social cohesion and was no doubt supplemented thoroughly by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

  I also want to quickly point out that the No. 2 threat on the Cracked list of civil war threats was the Thermal Evasion Suit I designed!  Or at least, the notion that we have the ability and knowledge to build these kinds of countermeasures.  Here’s a quote from the article:

  "But in my lurking on militia sites, I did occasionally run into information that looked like it had its basis in something other than a manual. Take this guide to evading drones published by the Oath Keepers, an anti-government group made up of former military and police veterans."

   

  [Cracked never actually links to the video, they just show a still photo.  Clearly they did not want people watching it and deciding for themselves what my intent was.]

   

  "I had a former drone operator review the video. He said their “thermal evasion suit” was based on a “decent premise”, although he said it would only work well if the shooter was stationary. It’s impossible to know if the info in this video came from someone with direct (albeit outdated) drone experience. In his time among America’s many militias, Bill said, “…I’ve probably ran into direct training” of groups by military veterans, “…five or six times, in five different states. It’s incredibly prevalent."

  I’m not sure exactly who their “expert” was.  Apparently he thought I was building an invisibility suit because he mentions the problem of “movement,” which no suit I know of can hide. They also state something about “outdated drone experience,” yet don’t actually qualify that with anything of substance. Finally, they insinuate that I somehow received help from military insiders with top-secret knowledge, and this is how I managed to design a thermal evasion system.  In fact, I came up with the design and materials on my own and brought it to Oath Keepers, who aided in the testing phase.  Not one drone expert was on hand to feed me design information.

  The point is, these people have no idea what they are talking about. Cracked never contacted me about the suit even though my face and email address are all over the video. It was not “impossible to know” if I received insider information; all they had to do was ask.  The left in their zealotry likes to jump to conclusions. They also assume we are a bunch of dumb hillbillies, when we are in fact much smarter and more innovative than they are.

  While Cracked and their so-called “experts” are hopelessly naive in many respects, they do make a few solid observations.

  First, they present the issue of lack of trust in government and police forces on the part of the public. They seem to suggest this is a bad thing by claiming that distrust of government leads to insurgency.  I would say distrust of government is the healthiest state a society can exist in.

  That said, I would remind readers that conservatives will take over the helm of the government ship as of 2017.  And, as I warned when I predicted a Trump election win back in June, the elites have allowed us into authority at a time when trust in government is at historic lows.  We have been handed the reigns of power, but I say this is not a cure, but a curse. We will no longer be considered freedom fighters.  We will be considered the jackboot stomping on the face of America.

  Second, Cracked brings up the problem of infrastructure interference, such as highway bombings and other methods of breaking down travel and supply routes.  They mention this based on the premise that we right wingers might set up IEDs using tannerite to terrorize road networks.

  We’ve already seen something like this, but not from the right wing.  Leftists are notorious lately for building human walls across major roads in order to shut down movement.  I would suggest that they will do this with more frequency (and with more violence) once winter winds down (leftists can’t stand the cold, which is why most of them live near beaches). Communists like to disrupt supply chains and production; they know this is the quickest path to instigating mass panic.

  Third, the Cracked article argues that right wingers might adopt the methods of ISIS in our bid for supremacy, which is extraordinarily absurd if you know anything at all about conservatives.

  It is actually the left that has shown time and time again their affinity for Muslim extremism.  They defend it openly and publicly. You would think all the social justice feminists and gay rights groups would view the Muslim world as a carnival of horrors being that in almost any Muslim controlled nation on the planet they would be enslaved, stoned to death or thrown off a tall building. But no, instead, SJWs champion mass Muslim immigration without question.

  Understand that forced Muslim immigration standards in Europe and in the U.S. are a product of global elitism under the Cloward Piven strategy.  The elites like to use incompatible cultures as a tool to destabilize target societies.  But, leftists are also more than happy to go along with this program.  I believe it is because the left is inherently weak when it comes to direct confrontation, and many progressives secretly enjoy the idea of having their own hitmen (Muslim extremists or Black Lives Matter) on speed dial just in case.

  If any group has shown a willingness to work with the likes of ISIS, it is the left. Set aside the fact that the Department of Defense under Obama admits in its own white papers supporting the rise of the Muslim terrorist network.

  Finally, Cracked and their experts suggest the idea that a second American civil war will not be two-sided, but multi-sided.  This is the only intelligent notion in the entire article and I agree with it wholeheartedly.

  Here is the problem — multiple groups on the left and the right have entirely different concepts on what the final American product should look like.  Some on the left are anarchists, some are communists, some just want the continuation of the democratic process (but still think Trump should be supplanted). On the right, there are hardcore neo-cons and war hawks that want to nuke the Middle East into oblivion, women and children included.  There are libertarians that just want a return to small government and constitutionalism.  There are anarcho-capitalists that seem to want the erasure of government and the constitution entirely but live in a world of theory rather than practicality (I call them egghead libertarians).  There are even Christian factions that long for a Christian-based theocracy.

  Then, there are people like me, who just want to get to the root of the problem and hang the globalists from lampposts (after a speedy trial of course).  We don’t necessarily have a beef with any other group as long as they stay out of our way.  We would like to circumvent the danger of a civil war altogether if possible.

  Unfortunately, I think Cracked and their experts are right on this, and that a second American civil war will be multifaceted.  And, while we are all at each others throats, the elites will be lounging on the riviera sipping mojitos and laughing.  The most dangerous faction (besides the elites) will be the catalyzing faction; the regressive left.  They will be the group that initiates all other hostilities.

  What leftists do not know is that they have always been useful idiots for the global elites, and, they will be thrown in the garbage once the elites are finished with them.  I hope that every leftist could watch the following interview with Soviet KGB defector Yuri Bezmenov, in which he examines the process by which free nations are brought to chaos by the elites through the exploitation of the regressive left in order to establish a totalitarian system.

  I leave you with this thought — civil war is unavoidable. The left is too crazy, and the right has now been given the weapon of government too enticing to overlook. Consider for a moment which “faction” in the world benefits most from this arrangement and then you will understand that the left is ultimately a distraction from the greater enemy. Remove the globalists from the picture, and the left will sort itself out.

  

  

• China Curbs Gold Imports To Slow Capital Flight

  While all eyes were on India (as rumors swirled of an imminent gold import ban), The FT reports that China curbed gold imports in the wake of government attempts to clamp down on capital leaving the country, according to traders and bankers.

  Some banks with licences have recently had difficulty obtaining approval to import gold, they said — a move tied to China’s attempts to stop a weakening renminbi by tightening outflows of dollars, the banks added.

   

  The hit to gold imports comes as China tightens restrictions on overseas deals by state-owned companies in an effort to limit capital outflows that has seen the renminbi fall to its lowest against the dollar in eight years.

  When the headline hit, gold futures legged lower, but are rebounding…

  

  As The FT notes, quotas for importing gold have been cut during quarterly assessments this year. Banks also have dollar quotas, some of which must be used when buying gold.

  The limits on imports bite as the weakening renminbi raises Chinese investors’ interest in gold. Lower gold prices have also triggered more buying.

   

  The combination of tighter quotas and an uptick in demand caused the premium for gold in China over the international gold price to jump as high as $46 in the past few weeks, according to data from Wind Information. Normal levels are about $2 to $4.

   

  In an effort to ease that premium, Chinese banks have been allowed to import gold under their quotas using the offshore renminbi, one banker said. Although still high, the premium for gold on the Shanghai Gold Exchange has since fallen to $26, according to Wind data.

  If the restrictions on imports are sustained that could raise questions about China’s moves to open its gold market to international traders. The world’s largest consumer of the precious metal has moved to have a greater voice over the price of gold.

  

  

• $1 Trillion Money Manager Downplays The OPEC Deal

  Submitted by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

  The market should not be overly enthusiastic over today’s oil price surge on reports that OPEC has managed to reach some kind of a deal to reduce supply, David Hunt, chief executive at asset manager PGIM, said in an interview with Bloomberg Television on Wednesday.

  Hunt, CEO of the asset management group that manages US$1 trillion in assets, said the oil price surge today is “probably not” sustainable.

  Earlier today, OPEC managed to reach the much-hyped agreement to cut output in a bid to boost oil prices. The ministerial meeting in Vienna is said to have clinched a deal to cut output by 1.2 million barrels per day to 32.5 million barrels per day, but the deal may come with a condition that non-OPEC producers also cut production, by some 600,000 bpd.

  Oil prices are soaring on the OPEC deal news, and as of 10:50 AM (EST), WTI Crude was surging 7.21 percent at US$48.49, and Brent Crude was soaring by 7.65 percent at US$50.94, staying above the US$50 mark for a couple of hours now.

  “For us who are long-term investors, we tend to look at the group of people who are gathering in Vienna and say ‘they’re fighting against history… The cost of producing crude, largely due to fracking technology, has dramatically changed the marginal economics of oil,” Hunt told Bloomberg Television.

  According to Hunt, long-term investors like PGIM see the longer-run market fundamentals and sentiment as “much more important than whether we get a bounce of a couple of dollars on Brent today or not. Fundamentally the economics of oil have changed and we now need to work that through how different industries are pricing, and how commodities are priced on the basis of that”.

  Hunt also cautioned against investors being too optimistic in the long run about equity indexes’ continued rally since Donald Trump was elected U.S. President.

  

  

• Obama Still Can't Process Hillary's Loss; Blames "Fox News In Every Bar And Restaurant"

  President Obama apparently still hasn’t come to terms with Hillary’s stunning loss on November 8th.  When asked about the 2016 election by Rolling Stone magazine in a recent interview, Obama relayed his view that “Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country” was a big part of the reason democrats lost the White House.

  In this election, [they] turned out in huge numbers for Trump. And I think that part of it has to do with our inability, our failure, to reach those voters effectively. Part of it is Fox News in every bar and restaurant in big chunks of the country, but part of it is also Democrats not working at a grassroots level, being in there, showing up, making arguments. That part of the critique of the Democratic Party is accurate. We spend a lot of time focused on international policy and national policy and less time being on the ground. And when we’re on the ground, we do well. This is why I won Iowa.

  Yes, because Fox News didn’t exist in 2008 and 2012 in the MidWest and CNN, ABC, CBS, NBC, MSNBC, NYT, Reuters, AP, etc., etc., etc. are all extremely impartial news outlets…not extensions of the democratic party. 

  Pres Obama blames ‘Fox News being in every bar and restaurant’ as to why Democrats lost the election pic.twitter.com/eaquFLdkP5

  — FOX & Friends (@foxandfriends) November 30, 2016

   

  No, it certainly can’t be that the following memo, revealed by WikiLeaks that was sent to pretty much everyone in the mainstream media and intended to “give reporters there first thoughts” and “frame the HRC message and race”, implies any sort of bias in the overwhelming majority of the media outlets in the U.S.  God forbid that reporters be allowed to form their own “first thoughts”…no, first impressions are too important and had to force fed to the press by Hillary’s team.   

  But sure, Obama, Fox News is definitely the problem…
  

  

  Oddly, we would note that Fox News was the one major media outlet excluded from Hillary’s invite list…hmmm

  

  

• Philadelphia City Attorney Linked To Anti-Trump Grafitti

  Philadelphia police have launched an investigation into an assistant city attorney in connection with anti-Trump graffiti found on the side of an upscale supermarket in Chestnut Hill on November 25th, according to the Inquirer; meanwhile an angry local Republican Party wants him fired.

  Surveillance footage released overnight, shows two men walking along in Chestnut Hill, around midnight on Friday by the Fresh Market located at 8200 Germantown Avenue. One wears a blue blazer, khakis and a rakishly-tied scarf, and carries a glass of wine. What at first appeared like a calm end to a night out in an upscale part of the city, changed when the second man was seen spray painting a message on the wall of a newly-constructed grocery store: “Fuck Trump.”

  The damage is estimated at between $3,000 and $10,000.

  While the sprayer remains unidentified, the man in the blazer turns out to be Assistant City Solicitor Duncan Lloyd. No charges have been filed and as of Wednesday evening, the city was awaiting more information before taking any administrative action.

  According to Philly.com, First Deputy City Solicitor Craig Straw confirmed Lloyd, who has worked for the law department since 2011, is one of two men in the video. “We do not condone this type of behavior from our employees,” Straw said. “To my knowledge, Mr. Lloyd has already contacted the Philadelphia Police and is cooperating with them. We will decide on a course of action once we obtain more information about the investigation.”

  Lloyd, 32, is a University of Pennsylvania and Temple’s Beasley School of Law graduated, according to his Linkedin page and makes $63,207 a year, representing the city mostly in federal and state discrimination lawsuits. On his Linkedin page he wrote of the job, “As a result of these responsibilities, I hear the craziest stories – ones regularly driven by the unreasonable mores of lust, anger, passion, and envy.”

  This incident is hardly news: The Inquirer reports that since election day, anti-Trump graffiti has been reported throughout the city. In early November, spray-painted swastikas, racist graffiti and references to Donald Trump and Nazi Germany appeared in South Philadelphia. Anti-Trump graffiti has been reported on bus shelters and on the exterior wall of City Hall, where “Not my President,” was spray painted and removed Nov. 12. Mayor Kenney has denounced the destruction of property, which mirrors similar incidents nationwide. However, on no prior occasions was the alleged perpetrator dumb enough to be a public servant calmly drinking wine while on closed-circuit camera.

  * * *

  To Lloyd the graffiti incident may have seemed like a childish prank, but the chair of the Philadelphia Republican Party, Joe DeFelice, is out for blood demanding his immediate firing. In a statement released this afternoon, DeFelice said the following:

  “If the image of an upper-middle class city attorney clad in a blazer and sipping wine while vandalizing an upscale grocery store with an anti-Trump message strikes you as perhaps the most bourgeois sight imaginable, that’s because it is. Nothing can better represent the hysterical pearl-clutching of the ‘progressive’ elite in response to this earth-shattering election, when residents of Chestnut Hill and similar neighborhoods across the country discovered – gasp – that other people have a voice too. The assistant city solicitor in question had ostensibly taken the law into his own hands, since a democratic election didn’t yield his preferred outcome.

   

  “For somebody with extensive legal training to feel entitled to vandalize a newly opened super-market strikes us at the Philadelphia Republican Party as an astonishing feat of idiocy. Did the extra glass of Shiraz give him some sort of delusional confidence that there are no cameras on Germantown Ave? The taxpayers should be entrusting exactly none of our faith into this man. He should be fired from our city’s law department immediately.”

  No arrests, or terminations, have been made so far.

  

  

• A MeSSaGe To SaNTa TRuMP…

  

  

• "Metals Traders On Red Alert" – Chinese Commodity Bubble 2.0 Just Imploded

  Industrial metals commodity prices plunged by the most since March in the last 2 days as China’s exchanges (once again) clamped down on speculation by tightening trading rules. As Bloomberg reports, for the second time this year, trading has exploded on the nation’s exchanges, pushing prices of everything from zinc to coal to multi-year highs and sending authorities scrambling to deflate the bubble before it bursts.

  Metals brokers described panic earlier this month as the frenzy spread to markets in London and New York, prompting wild swings in prices that show no signs of abating.

  “I can recall only two other occasions in my career where there was such panic and devastating price action in copper but this market today is far less transparent,”

   

  While billions of yuan have poured in from herd-like Chinese retail investors who show little regard for market fundamentals, brokers and traders say even more is coming from an expanding army of deep-pocketed hedge funds. They’re chasing better returns in commodities as stocks and real estate fade, often using algorithms and trading late into the night, when markets in London and New York are most active.

   

  “There is no doubt that the price moves and the bigger volumes worldwide are being driven by the Chinese, and by professional speculators and financial players,” said Tiger Shi, managing partner at brokerage BANDS Financial Ltd., which counts several of those funds as clients. “The western hedge funds and institutional investors don’t really know what’s going on. Often they were used to trading macro factors or Fed policy, but now they find they have fewer advantages.”

  And it was never going to end well…

  Zinc Futures have plunged over 10% in the last 2 days (after surging over 27% since the start of November).

  

   

  Steel Rebar is tumbling…

  

   

  And Iron Ore futures have collapsed more… twice…

  

  Think it's the Trump-Trade? Think again. Fundamentally, as Bloomberg highlights, there is massive oversupply. Iron ore port inventories in China are near the highest since September 2014 and are up 19 percent this year, according to Shanghai Steelhome Information Technology Co. Top producer Vale SA reiterated its output guidance of 360 million to 380 million tons for 2017 on Tuesday and expects to produce 400 million to 420 million tons the year after.

  So what is it? What had driven this panic-buying in industrial commodities? Simple – another Chinese speculative bubble…

  Iron ore and steel futures trimmed their second monthly advance as bourses in Dalian and Shanghai moved to deflate a boom driven partly by speculative trading.

   

  The Dalian Commodity Exchange raised margin requirements and the Shanghai Futures Exchange capped some positions. These measures have taken some speculative steam out of the market, according to Justin Smirk, a senior economist at Westpac Banking Corp.

  As the Chinese commodity bubble of March/April is back and trading volumes explode relative to open interest…

  

  NOTE: SHFE updated their Zinc "control measures" once again tonight, capping new positions at 1500 lots.

   

  

  

   

  Thank to hot money flows…

  “Commodities market volatility is liquidity driven, as money from commercial bank wealth management products and private banking accounts flow into the market seeking higher return,”

  And an increase in algos…

  The use of algorithmic trading, in which computers execute multiple orders in milliseconds, is turbo-charging volume and volatility, according to Fu Peng, a portfolio manager at Lianzhan Global Macro Fund Management Co. About a third of activity on Chinese exchanges is executed by automated commands, which generates more volume and greater momentum on global markets, Shi estimates.

   

  “The machine component in the market is now so much bigger as is the onshore retail and fund involvement on the Shanghai Futures Exchange and OTC options.”

  Similar to the last frenzy in April, the government-owned exchanges have stepped in to cool trading by raising fees and margins, or cutting the number of new positions allowed daily. In the latest move, the Shanghai Futures volume and turnover have since come off their highs but prices are still swinging.

  So with the China Commoditty Echo Bubble now bursting, the big question is, where does the hot money flow next? As Socgen shows, Chinese 'gamblers' have chased stocks (and lost), dumped capital (Yuan loss), piled into commodities (in March/April) and lost, rotated into housing (until the government choked that off), and then sent bond yields to record lows…

  

  As Fu at Lianzhan Global Macro Fund noted:

  “The nation’s supply-side reforms had a big impact on the market balance, and that’s the fundamentals behind the trading,”

   

  “But at the same time, we’ve got too much money there. There have been no returns from investment in industries. The stock market is neither dead nor alive. Investment in real estate also got curbed. So all the money is rushing into commodities.”

  But now, Chinese housing is at record highs, Chinese stocks are falling, Chinese bonds are falling, and Chinese commodities are tumbling… the only thing with momentum for the hot money to chase in the currency… and we suspect (by recent liquidity withdrawals) that The PBOC has had enough of that.

  “The massive and unprecedented surge in Chinese trading volume in base metals over the past month — but especially since the election — has put LME metals traders on red alert,” Tai Wong, director of commodity products trading at BMO Capital Markets in New York.

  

  

• Reddit To Ban "Most Toxic" Trump Supporters After CEO Abused With "Personal Message Harassment"

  Just a few days after getting caught editing user comments, the CEO of Reddit, Steve Huffman, is threatening to ban 100’s of the site’s “most toxic users,” most of whom are Trump supporters from the popular r/The_Donald subreddit thread.  Just so we’re clear, Huffman pissed off a bunch of users by edited their comments without their consent, was forced to apologize publicly, got a lot of blowback for his ridiculous behavior and is now banning users who called him out?  According to Yahoo News, that sums it up fairly accurately.
  

  Social media website Reddit Inc, known for its commitment to free speech, will crack down on online harassment by banning or suspending users who target others, starting with those who have directed abuse at Chief Executive Steve Huffman.

   

  Huffman said in an interview with Reuters that Reddit’s content policy prohibits harassment, but that it had not been adequately enforced.

   

  “Personal message harassment is the most cut and dry,” he said. “Right now we are in an interesting position where my inbox is full of them, it’s easy to start with me.”

   

  As well as combing through Huffman’s inbox, Reddit will monitor user reports, add greater filtering capacity, and take a more proactive role in policing its platform rather than relying on community moderators.

  Of course, this all comes just a couple days after Huffman used his administrative privileges to redirect abuse he was receiving on a thread on r/The_Donald to the community’s moderators – making it look as if it was intended for them. Huffman has subsequently said it was all an innocent “prank,” though the apology he posted last week seemed to indicated it was more akin to a nervous breakdown.

  Huffman offered the following apology admitting that he “messed with the “fuck u/spez” comments” and that “as the CEO, I shouldn’t play such games.”

   

  

   

  Huffman notes that, in the past, Reddit relied on community moderators to enforce site rules but Trump supporters are apparently just too unruly.

  In the past, Reddit has worked with moderators of communities to try to enforce its rules.

   

  With r/The_Donald in particular, “we haven’t found that to be particularly effective. We might see flashes of success, but things kind of revert,” Huffman said.

   

  Under its new strategy, Reddit will take a more active role in dealing with troublemakers, who Huffman said were an “infinitesimal” portion of Reddit’s 250 million monthly visitors.

  And while he insists the move to ban certain users isn’t political, Huffman admits that the “first wave of bans will likely be skewed to the r/The_Donald community.”

  He stressed that the move was not political.

   

  “We don’t want to be censoring political beliefs, but then they do misbehave,” he said. “That’s why we have worked so closely with the r/The_Donald community. We tell them: don’t force us to ban you.“

   

  The first wave of bans will likely be skewed to the r/The_Donald community because “that is a catalyst for a lot of this right now. That community is stirred up,” Huffman said.

   

  In a draft of a blog post to be published on Wednesday, Huffman said he had been asked by many Reddit users “to ban r/The_Donald outright, but he had rejected that idea, because “if there is anything about this election that we have learned, it is that there are communities that feel alienated and just want to be heard, and Reddit has always been a place where those voices can be heard.”

  Since Huffman suddenly seems quite concerned with enforcing Reddit’s harassment rules in a fair and non-partisan way, we’re curious whether Reddit also has rules against soliciting advice on how to violate the Federal Records Act and Congressional subpoenas?  If so, we’d suggest he take a look back through Paul Combetta’s history.

  

  

  

• Obama Student Loan Foregiveness Plan To Cost Taxpayers $137 Billion, GAO Finds

  To our complete shock, the Government Accountability Office has released a report blasting the Education Department’s understanding of basic mathematics and accounting concepts after finding the department drastically underestimated the costs of Obama’s student loan forgiveness programs.  The 100-page report entitled “Federal Student Loans:  Education Needs to Improve Its Income Driven Repayment Plan Budget Estimates” found that taxpayers could be on the hook for $137BN of student loans to be forgiven over the coming years as a result of Obama’s executive actions on “income-driven repayment” (IDR) plans.

  For the fiscal year 2017 budget, the U.S. Department of Education (Education) estimates that all federally issued Direct Loans in Income-Driven Repayment (IDR) plans will have government costs of $74 billion, higher than previous budget estimates. IDR plans are designed to help ease student debt burden by setting loan payments as a percentage of borrower income, extending repayment periods from the standard 10 years to up to 25 years, and forgiving remaining balances at the end of that period. While actual costs cannot be known until borrowers repay their loans, GAO found that current IDR plan budget estimates are more than double what was originally expected for loans made in fiscal years 2009 through 2016 (the only years for which original estimates are available). This growth is largely due to the rising volume of loans in IDR plans.

   

  Education’s approach to estimating IDR plan costs and quality control practices do not ensure reliable budget estimates. Weaknesses in this approach may cause costs to be over- or understated by billions of dollars.

  

   

  As the Wall Street Journal points out, the so-called IDR plans set caps on borrowers’ monthly student loan payments at 10% of discretionary income, which is defined as earnings above 150% of the poverty level.  Then, whatever principal balance is left over on the loans at their maturity date is simply forgiven. 

  The report, to be released on Wednesday by the Government Accountability Office, shows the Obama administration’s main strategy for helping student-loan borrowers is proving far more costly than previously thought. The report also presents a scathing review of the Education Department’s accounting methods, which have understated the costs of its various debt-relief plans by tens of billions of dollars.

   

  Senate Budget Committee Chairman Mike Enzi (R., Wyo.) ordered the report last year amid a sharp increase in enrollment in income-driven repayment plans, which the Obama administration has heavily promoted to help borrowers avoid default. The most generous version caps a borrower’s monthly payment at 10% of discretionary income, which is defined as any earnings above 150% of the poverty level.

   

  That formula typically reduces monthly payments of borrowers by hundreds of dollars. Any remaining balance is then forgiven after 10 or 20 years, depending on whether the borrower works in the public or private sector.

   

  Enrollment in the plans has more than tripled in the past three years to 5.3 million borrowers as of June, or 24% of all former students who borrowed directly from the government and are now required to be making payments. They collectively owe $355 billion.

  Congress approved the IDR plans in the 1990s and 2000s, but Obama used executive actions, starting in 2010, to extend the most-generous terms to millions of borrowers.  Ironically, that is precisely when loan volumes under the program started to skyrocket.

  

   

  While there are numerous viewpoints on how to address the student loan crisis in America, we kind of like this guy’s idea that borrowers should stop playing video games in their parents’ basements and get a job…it just might be crazy enough to work.

  ???????? ???? ???? ???????? “It’s Horrible!!! You don’t understand!!! America is doomed!!! Trump is the &§$@#* President!!! pic.twitter.com/CWfQgg3EOW

  — tom alex (@rejialex7) November 29, 2016

  

  

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• "Dear President Putin…"

  Submitted by Paul Craig Roberts,

  Vladimir Putin
  President of Russia
  Moscow
  28 November 2016

  Dear President Putin,

  Now that CIA agent Craig Timberg posing as a Washington Post reporter has blown my cover and exposed me as a Russian agent, I was wondering if I might ask you for a Russian passport and a bit of diplomatic cover, perhaps assistant press officer at the Russian embassy in Washington, until I can get out of the country. I saw that you gave a passport to Steven Seagal, so I am hopeful that being a Russian agent is as important as teaching martial arts to Russians.

  I don’t know what the pay scale for Russian agents is, but whatever I have coming to me please deposit in a Russian bank. The Swiss banks are no longer useful as the Swiss government allowed Washington to write its banking laws. Perhaps also you could line me up with a publisher for my memoirs—“My Life As A Putin Stooge.”

  We need to get on with this ASAP as the Washington Post has the FBI on my tail. They will be very angry at me for deceiving them all those years when I held top secret and higher security clearances while I was a Russian agent. Any day now the Washington Post might discover that my fellow KGB agent Ronald Reagan and I cut taxes on the rich in order to make capitalism so oppressive that the American people would rise up and overthrow it. Boy did we fool the left-wing!

  I regret that the Washington Post got wise to me being a Russian agent, but it wasn’t my fault. I think the leak came from one of those Atlanticist Integrationists you are stuck with in your government. Better check up on it as 200 of the Russian financed websites have already been exposed.

  Better have someone bring me the passport and diplomatic appointment. I would be nabbed by TSA if I fly to Washington to collect the documents. A diplomatic appointment is better than asylum, because Washington, like the old Soviet Union, doesn’t recognize political asylum. Just ask Julian Assange.

  Don’t let the Atlanticist Integrationists convince you that my exposure as a Russian agent is just a CIA ruse to plant an agent on you. My criticism of Washington’s policy of raising tensions between nuclear powers and support of your policy of reducing tensions is not spy cover. I really do prefer that the world not be blown up in thermo-nuclear war. This is a suspect view in the US, but I hope it is an acceptable one in Russia.

  Looking forward to that passport.

  Paul Craig Roberts

  

  

• Steve Mnuchin Selected by Trump for Treasury Secretary, a Look at Previous Secretaries and Affiliations

  Trump selected Steve Mnuchin to be the next Treasury Secretary. Steve is a Goldman man. What else is new? Let’s have a look at the recent men who’ve filled this role in government and their affiliations.

  Steve Mnuchin: Parter at Goldman Sachs, Yale, Dad worked for Goldman for three decades, brief gig at Soros hedge fund, Hollywood producer.
  Jack Lew: COO of Citi prop trading unit that correctly bet on housing collapse in 2008, Harvard, Council on Foreign Relations.
  Hank Paulson: Former CEO of Goldman Sachs, Dartmouth, worked at Pentagon and in Nixon administration.
  John Snow: Former CEO of CSX, Chairman Cerberus Capital Management, served under several administrations and shilled on a sundry of boards.
  Paul O’Neil: Former CEO of Alcoa, Member of Carnegie Mellon University’s dean’s advisory council.
  Larry Summers: Former President of Harvard, managing partner at DE Shaw, Chief Economist at the World Bank.
  Robert Rubin: 26 Years at Goldman Sachs, London School of Economics, Yale, Co-Chair of the Council on Foreign Relations, Chair of Citi
  Lloyd Bentsen: University of Texas, WW2 Vet, promoted to Lt. Col and discharged in 1947, wanted to Nuke N. Korea, served on board of Lockheed Martin, helped convince republicans to pass NAFTA while serving under Clinton.

  Nice group of guys.

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

  

  

• China Liquidity Crisis Deepens, Spreads Across Asia

  Having exposed the deepening liquidity crisis in China previously, tonight's action across AsiaPac money-markets suggests – despite US equity record highs – all is very much not well below the surface of the global financial system. Short-term China repo rates have exploded to 20-month highs, Hong Kong Dollar money-market rates have jumped to the highest since May 2009, and Yen basis swaps are showing the most extreme demand for dollars since Lehman…

  China liquidty conditions have gone from bad to worse with 14-day repo spiking to 6.00% – the highest in 20 months…

  

  To be clear this means a Chinese bank was willing to pay 6% to ensure liquidty for the next 2 weeks (compared to 2.5% yesterday!)

  Also notable is the upward pressure this has put in Offshore Yuan versus the dollar…

  

   

  Pushing Hong Kong Dollar HIBOR up to its highest since May 2009…

  

   

  It appears that Japan is suffering too as USD-JPY basis swaps have crashed to record lows – the most desperate demand for USDollar liquidity since Lehman…

  

   

  Finally, it's not just AsiaPac as our index of global dollar liquidity (BIS' new 'fear' index) is in grave trouble, trumbling to 4-month lows…

   

  

   

  As we noted previously, quoted by Bloomberg, Wu Sijie, bond trader at China Merchants Bank said "tightening interbank liquidity and the expectation of even higher short-term borrowing costs are driving up swap costs and affecting sentiment on the cash bond market."

  Meanwhile, signalling no change at all in its posture, overnight the PBOC drained funds in open-market operations for the fourth consecutive day, bringing the total withdrawal to 130 billion yuan.

  Why is all of the above relevant? Because while so far the global capital markets have been immune to the substantial tightening in financial conditions resulting from the sharp rise in the US Dollar and US interest rates, a similar tightening in China – which is now clearly taking place – will be far more difficult for global risk assets to ignore.

  

  

• All Aboard! Trump's Express Train To The Future

  Authored by Bonner & Partners' Bill Bonner, annotated by Acting-Man's Pater Tenebrarum,

  Free Money!

  Last week, the Dow punched up above 19,000 – a new all-time record. And on Monday, the Dow, the S&P 500, the Nasdaq, and the small-cap Russell 2000 each hit new all-time highs. The last time that happened was on the last day of December 1999.

   

  

  Ironically, two events that were almost universally expected to trigger large stock market declines were followed by quite rapid and strong gains. Would the market have fallen if Hillary Clinton had won the presidential election? That would have confounded expectations as well. Also, the S&P 500 declined for nine days in a row (even if not by much) just before the election – at the time Clinton was still widely expected to win. it remains to be seen whether and for how long the recent discounting of Nirvana will last – click to enlarge.

  Just a few months later, the dot-com bubble burst and the tech-heavy Nasdaq lost 80% of its value. And the U.S. stock market, overall, lost about 50%. But investors are bullish. They believe President-elect Trump will be good for stocks.

  He is supposed to arrive in Washington for his inauguration and march directly over to the Capitol to demand a tax cut. This will return over $6 trillion to the private sector over the next 10 years… not to mention a proposed $1 trillion splurge on “infrastructure.”

  As Trump’s chief adviser (and former Goldman alum), Stephen Bannon, explained to Michael Wolff of The Hollywood Reporter last week:

  “Like [Andrew] Jackson’s populism, we’re going to build an entirely new political movement,” he says. “It’s everything related to jobs. The conservatives are going to go crazy. I’m the guy pushing a trillion-dollar infrastructure plan. With negative interest rates throughout the world, it’s the greatest opportunity to rebuild everything. Shipyards, iron works, get them all jacked up. We’re just going to throw it up against the wall and see if it sticks.”

  Whew!

  Everybody’s talking about the feds’ opportunity to “invest” free money.   It makes us nervous; we know how hard it is to get a good return on investment – especially when you don’t know what you’re doing.

  The government pays just over 2% on 10-year loans. If inflation over the next decade is anywhere near its long-term average, the real cost of funds is roughly zero.  The money, say the Big Spenders in Washington, will be free.

   

  

  And henceforth it will be getting fed for free!

   

  All Aboard!

  In the pages of the Financial Times is another voice for investing money that doesn’t exist. Here’s Fed Vice Chairman Stanley Fischer speaking to the Council on Foreign Relations think tank:

  “Macroeconomic policy does not have to be confined to monetary policy,” said Mr. Fischer…

   

  “Certain fiscal policies, particularly those that increase productivity, can increase the potential of the economy,” he said.

  This is a train that’s going to sell out fast. Everyone is going to want to board. Free money. Jobs. Inflation. Infrastructure. What’s not to like? Who will not want to be a passenger on this express train to Fantasyland?

  Already on board, near the head of the train, is our friend Richard Duncan at Macro Watch. Richard, a specialist in credit analysis who has worked with the World Bank, shares our view: The world economy is a giant bubble waiting to pop.

  But his prescription is different. We would happily get out a pin and give the bubble a prick. Not that we like to see innocent people suffer. But we hate to see guilty people not suffer.

  Richard, on the other hand, is a kind-hearted soul, an optimist with a warm and uplifting view of human nature. He can’t bear thinking about the widows and orphans stuck in “another Great Depression,” which he believes would result if the credit bubble bursts.

  All it would take is a big enough increase in interest rates. With so much debt in the world, he says, higher rates would be catastrophic. How to avoid it? Richard:

  “Very large-scale government investment in the industries and technologies of the future will lift America’s poor out of poverty. It will save the middle class. And it will make the most prosperous segments of our society wealthy – and healthy – beyond their wildest dreams.”

  In an open video-letter to Donald Trump, he proposes that the feds should identify 10,000 of America’s “most promising entrepreneurs.” They should all have good ideas for the future – biotech, nanotech, green tech, whatever – but it should have a “tech” at the end. Then the feds should invest in their businesses, forming public-private partnerships.

   

  

  Allocation of scarce resources by government bureaucrats – what could possibly go wrong?

   

  Hell Train

  Our cynical heart stops for a second. All that money up for grabs. All those cost-plus contracts! Architects’ phones must be ringing already; insiders are planning new wings for their Aspen vacation pads. These are government “investments” – no need to ever satisfy a customer or ever show a profit.

  And we’re talking 10 times more money than the $100 billion in Corn Belt giveaways… or the penny-candy subsidies to sugar tycoons, the Fanjul brothers (who, taking no chances, put on Miami campaign fundraisers for both Clinton and Trump). But Richard is already in the observation car, enjoying the sun on his face, dreaming.

  “Imagine what that would do,” he suggests, adding helpfully, “It would really Make America Great Again.”

  Our imagination is not up to the challenge. We close our eyes. We scrunch up our face. We just can’t do it. We can’t imagine a group of hacks, has-beens, and bureaucratic chair warmers capable of identifying the “industries of the future.”

   

  

  Richard Duncan probably figures that they will be helped by experts… and miracles will occur as well! It’s almost fool-proof…

   

  No one else has been able to foresee the future. How could they? Venture capitalists, even when their own money is at stake, are notoriously bad at backing successful futuristic enterprises. The feds, “investing” other people’s money, are bound to bet on the wrong ones.

  But wait –  our imagination has finally rebooted. And what’s this?  No train to the future? What we see is a runaway locomotive. Incompetence at the throttle, flimflam stoking the engine, and impossible, pie-in-the-sky hocus-pocus putting on a show for the passengers.

  A hellish train, in other words – loaded with trillions of dollars of looted resources – misallocated, stolen, and frittered away.

   

  

  The express train to hell. It is possible that tickets for the train to the future were sold out. Better luck next time.

  

  

• Horseman Capital Asks "Is China Running Out Of Money"

  At the start of 2016, many financial pundits mocked Kyle Bass and a handful of other China skeptics for predicting that China’s economic difficulties, and accelerating capital outflows, would translate into a continued devaluation for the Yuan. Less than a year later, with the Yuan plunging to all time lows, just shy of USDCNH 7.00, they were right.

  And, as Horseman Capital’s Russell Clark writes in his latest Market Views note, in which he asks if “China is running out of money”, adding that “if Chinese foreign reserves continue to fall and the PBOC wants to maintain control of the exchange rate, they will need to face some difficult choices,” the one most difficult choice facing Beijing may be the one which assures far more weakness for the Yuan in the near future: a devaluation.

  Here are Clarke’s thoughts.

  IS CHINA RUNNING OUT OF MONEY?

  Since the global financial crisis, China has had a very strong currency, even with the recent devaluation of the Chinese Yuan.

  

  China has a managed exchange rate. The People’s Bank of China (PBOC) has had to step in to the exchange market to buy any USD coming into China. To buy the USD coming into China, the PBOC has had to create CNY for this purpose. Typically, to soak up these new CNY, the PBOC has issued CNY bonds, as well as having very high reserve requirements on the banks to control the supply of CNY.

  The PBOC is like any other bank, and it needs to match assets with liabilities. On the asset side, by far its biggest assets are foreign reserves. On the liability side are domestic deposits. For many years, foreign reserves were much larger than deposits, but now the gap is shrinking rapidly as foreign currency assets fall.

  

  If Chinese foreign reserves continue to fall and the PBOC wants to maintain control of the exchange rate, they will need to face some difficult choices. First of all, it could raise interest rates to try and make the Yuan more attractive and reduce outflows. This however would be negative for growth, a priority of the Chinese Communist Party. The other option is to reduce the holdings of deposits at the PBOC. The large holdings of deposits at PBOC is driven by the very high reserve requirements of the Chinese banking system, and previous cuts in the reserve requirements have reduced deposits at least temporarily.

  

  This leaves the PBOC with a dilemma. Raising rates will restrict growth but defend the currency, while cutting rates or reserve rates for banks will encourage more currency weakness. One way to think about how high interest rates need to rise to stop a currency from falling is to look at how weak a currency has been over the last twelve months. You then compare this to the difference in 10 year bond rates, and the movement in the exchange rate over the last 12 months to get an idea of the interest rates increase needed to attract US dollars. The idea is that if a currency has been weak, but interest rates are relatively high, then you are being adequately compensated. Conversely, if the currency has been weak, and the interest rates are relatively low, then rates will need to rise. Currently, it suggests Chinese 10 year rates need to be 6.5% higher, to halt currency weakness.

  

  Given the large increase in rates needed to slow Chinese Yuan devaluation, devaluation must start to look like the more likely move. South Korea faced a very similar situation in 1997. In the mid-90s, Korean foreign reserves began to fall, like they are in China today. We have added Japanese foreign reserves to show that the fall in reserves was a Korean specific issue.

  

  Like the Chinese Yuan, the Korean Won was a managed exchange rate that began to depreciate slowly then quickly.

  

  Below we produce the same graphs, but replace Korea with China.

  

  Given the huge increase in debt in China in recent years, such a rate increase seems very unlikely to me. Investors should be prepared for bigger falls in the Chinese Yuan.

  

  

• Why Are So Many Among The Elite Building Luxury Bunkers In Preparation For An Imminent "Apocalypse"?

  Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

  Do they know something that the rest of us do not?  There are tens of millions of ordinary Americans that are feeling really good about the future now that Donald Trump has won the election, but meanwhile the elite are feverishly constructing luxury bunkers at a pace unlike anything we have ever seen before.  So why are so many among the elite preparing for an imminent “apocalypse” when tens of millions of other Americans are anticipating a new era of peace and prosperity?  Are they smarter than most of the rest of us, or are they simply being paranoid?

  Without a doubt, something is going on among the elite.  Earlier today, WND published an article that discussed the fact that wealthy people “are quietly moving away from major cities” all over the globe because of concerns about security…

  Widespread media reports as well as independent investigations from groups such as New World Wealth suggest wealthy people around the globe are quietly moving away from major cities because of fears of social instability. Increasing crime, terrorism and rising racial tensions have all been identified as factors driving the exodus. Even the Daily Beast reported the introduction of large numbers of Muslim refugees into Europe has made once prosperous areas fraught with danger, in the opinion of some security experts.

  And just a few weeks ago a Hollywood Reporter article entitled “Panic, Anxiety Spark Rush to Build Luxury Bunkers for L.A.’s Superrich” talked about how “Oscar winners, sports stars and Bill Gates are building lavish bunkers” because of their anxiety about what is coming next.  The following is a short excerpt from that article…

  Given the increased frequency of terrorist bombings and mass shootings and an under-lying sense of havoc fed by divisive election politics, it’s no surprise that home security is going over the top and hitting luxurious new heights. Or, rather, new lows, as the average depth of a new breed of safe haven that occupies thousands of square feet is 10 feet under or more. Those who can afford to pull out all the stops for so-called self-preservation are doing so — in a fashion that goes way beyond the submerged corrugated metal units adopted by reality show “preppers” — to prepare for anything from nuclear bombings to drastic climate-change events. Gary Lynch, GM at Rising S Bunkers, a Texas-based company that specializes in underground bunkers and services scores of Los Angeles residences, says that sales at the most upscale end of the market — mainly to actors, pro athletes and politicians (who require signed NDAs) — have increased 700 percent this year compared with 2015, and overall sales have risen 150 percent. “Any time there is a turbulent political landscape, we see a spike in our sales. Given this election is as turbulent as it is, we are gearing up for an even bigger spike,” says marketing director Brad Roberson of sales of bunkers that start at $39,000 and can run $8.35 million or more (FYI, a 12-stall horse shelter is $98,500).

  This is all very odd, because among the general population interest in “prepping” has hit a multi-year low.  In fact, sales of emergency food and supplies are way down at the moment across the entire industry.

  So once again the question must be asked – do the elite know something that the rest of us do not?

  If they don’t, why are they spending so much time, effort and money on such extraordinary preparations?

  For instance, down in Texas one group of investors is constructing “a $300 million luxury community replete with underground homes”…

  An investor group is planning for a doomsday scenario by building a $300 million luxury community replete with underground homes. There will also be air-lock blast doors designed for people worried about a dirty bomb or other disaster and off-grid energy and water production.

   

  The development, called Trident Lakes, is northeast of Dallas.

   

  Residents will enjoy an equestrian center, 18-hole golf course, polo fields, zip lines and gun ranges. Retail shops, restaurants and a row of helipads are also in the works. For those looking to “get away,” they’ll also be able to enjoy three white sand beaches and a neighborhood spa.

  Most of us could hardly even imagine such luxury, and this is yet another example of the growing gap between the ultra-wealthy and the rest of us in this country.

  If you do happen to be one of the ultra-wealthy, perhaps you may be interested in purchasing one of the extremely expensive U-shaped “Earthships” that one company has been constructing for the elite…

  Billionaires are buying up “indestructible” alien boltholes to seek sanctuary in during alien Armageddon or more-likely nuclear war and disaster.

   

  The US company creating the $1.5million “Earthship” eco-structures says humans “must evolve” and insists they “will soon be a necessity” for our species “to survive on this planet.”

   

  The bizarre U-shaped hideaways, which can reportedly survive in any climate, can be deployed to any part of the world and are self-sufficient enough to survive in isolation – during a killer virus outbreak or a radiation catastrophe.

  I have to admit that I felt a twinge of jealousy when I first learned about these “Earthships”.  They are completely self-sufficient, they are environmentally-friendly, and they sound like they are quite comfortable. 

  

  The following is what one reporter discovered when she visited a community of these “Earthships”…

  In addition to the cord-cutting power and self-sustaining water supply, each abode contains its own greenhouse. I could forage for figs, bananas, pineapple, broccoli, rosemary and chives in my fluffy socks. Or if the zombies weren’t looking, I could dash over to my neighbor’s place for supper. The Phoenix, a three-bedroom that sleeps six, dedicates one-third of its space to food production. Its tropical jungle supports parakeets and cockatiels (not for consumption) and a garden bursting with fruits and vegetables, including grapes, artichokes, lemons, melons, kale, squash, hot peppers and mushrooms that cling to a log.

   

  Chickens cluck around the back yard, which features a sunken den with a grill for coop-to-kebob meals. An indoor fishpond once contained a robust stock of tilapia before a group of guests threw a fish fry. Now, the littlest survivors swim laps with koi. For the dairy course, the staff is considering resident goats.

  It sounds wonderful.

  But once again, why go to all of this effort if a new era of peace and prosperity for humanity is right around the corner?

  I really like what Carl Gallups had to say about this.  Carl is the author of Be Thou Prepared, and this is what he told WND about the preparations that the elite are making…

  “I think that the rich and elite are becoming increasingly aware of the dangerous and potentially unstable world in which we now reside,” he warned. “Massive instances of civil unrest, even in America, are becoming a very real possibility. Internal terror attacks, swelling illegal alien populations, an influx of Islamic refugees, increasing racial discord, ambushing police officers, the rule of law continually being trampled by the political elite and an almost complete collapse of trust in the mainstream media – all of this has led to widespread cynicism and distrust among the population as a whole.”

   

  Gallups noted “the rich usually have deeper connections to reliable information and prediction sources, and most of them have the means to take immediate action.”

  I believe that Carl Gallups is right on the money.

  Normally I am extremely hard on the elite, but in this case I believe that they are showing much more wisdom than the general population.

  So many people are crying “peace and safety” right now, and yet we are right in the middle of what I have labeled “the danger zone“.

  Our world is becoming more unstable with each passing day, but there is so much apathy among the American people at the moment.

  I just don’t understand it.

  The self-destructive behavior that we are engaging in as a nation is a recipe for national suicide, and the warning signs are all around us, but because disaster has not struck yet most people seem to believe that the warnings that they have been hearing are not true.

  Meanwhile, the elite are preparing extremely hard for an imminent “apocalypse”, and I have a feeling that they are going to end up looking like the smart ones once it is all said and done.

  

  

• Aussie Housing Market Collapses: Building Approvals Crash 25%

  Following September's 9.3% MoM plunge in Aussie home approvals, hopes were high that October would see a bounce (expectations were for a 2% gain) as central bankers jawboned confidence higher. However, it didn't… Building approvals collapsed 12.6% MoM and a shocking 24.9% year-over-year decline is equal to the worst drop since Lehman. Ironically, just this month Aussie Treasurer eased restrictions on foreign buyers (otherwise known as bag holders it would seem).

  It's been weak year anyway but this is an utter disaster as the Aussie housing bubble finally pops… (on a non-seasonally-adjusted basis the year-over-year drop is 28% – the biggest since Nov 2008)

  

  This is the lowest level of building approvals per capita in 2 years as it seems China's credit impulse has faded entirely.

  The cracks have been showing with default rates on the rise (as AFR reports)

  Mirvac said it experienced a rise in the default rate for the settlement of off-the-plan residential sales, above its historic average of 1 per cent.

  On top of defaults, the Australian apartment markets – which boomed in the last four years – are facing other fresh risks…

  On Friday, HSBC said an oversupply of apartments in Melbourne and Brisbane could send unit prices down by as much as 6 per cent in 2017.

   

  The apartment building boom, an ongoing concern for the Reserve Bank of Australia, especially in inner city Melbourne is likely to "start showing through" in price drops of between 2 per cent and 6 per cent in that city next year, HSBC chief economist Paul Bloxham said in a note.

   

  It's a similar story in Brisbane where apartment prices are forecast to fall by as much as 4 per cent.

   

  "A national apartment building boom, which has been part of the rebalancing act, is likely to deliver some oversupply in the Melbourne and Brisbane apartment markets, which is expected to see apartment price falls in these markets," Mr Bloxham said.

  "A modest shakeout in the inner-city apartment markets in Brisbane and Melbourne, as we are forecasting, is not expected to have a broad-based impact on the overall housing market or economy."

  Which perhaps explains why Aussie Treasurer Scott Morrison said the government will make changes to the foreign investment framework to allow foreign buyers to buy an off-the-plan dwelling that another foreign buyer has failed to settle as a new dwelling.

  The federal government has announced it will make it easier for foreigners to buy new apartments amid concerns of a looming glut that will drive down prices.

   

  Previously, on-sale of a purchased off the plan apartment was regarded as a second hand sale, which is not open to foreign buyers. Foreign buyers can only buy new dwellings.

   

  The move effectively opens up the pool of buyers who can soak a potential flood of apartments hitting the residential markets due to failed settlements.

  Hoping for some of the capital taking flight from China to rush down, we are sure.

  By way of reminder, here is David Llewellyn-Smith via Acting-Man.com, to explain why the Australian property bubble is on a scale like no other…

  Yesterday Citi produced a new index which pinned the Australian property bubble at 16 year highs:

  Bubble trouble. Whether we label them bubbles, the Australian economy has experienced a series of developments that potentially could have the economy lurching from boom to bust and back. In recent years these have included:

  •  the record run up in commodity prices and subsequent correction;
  •  the associated boom in mining investment and current reversal;
  •  record low bond yields;
  •  the boom in housing construction, specifically apartments, that was spurred by the low interest rates.

   

  Housing indicators in the bubble meter are at record highs but interest rates remain at record lows. Typically monetary policy is well into tightening mode at this stage in the housing cycle. A destabilizing housing burst (both in activity and prices) is a clear risk, particularly the longer the upswing runs.

   

  

  Click to enlarge.

   

   

  The size of the Australian property bubble is old news. It’s extreme in valuation terms:

  

  Click to enlarge.

   

  

  Click to enlarge.

   

  Underpinned by world-beating household debt:

  

  Click to enlarge.

   

  And nose-bleed levels of foreign borrowing:

  

  Click to enlarge.

   

  What is less well understood is how such a large and sustained bubble has distorted the Australian political economy.  The bubble has been running for twenty years (which some argue proves it is no such thing) and every time it has been threatened it was saved by luck or a bailout which sold off a little more of Australia’s liberal democracy.

  In 2003, the bubble first threatened to burst as the Reserve Bank raised interest rates. But the bubble was rescued by the combined forces of demand side fiscal stimulus for first home buyers in the form of large cash grants, and the arrival the Chinese commodity boom that flooded the economy with people and income. The government of the day learned its lesson and economic reform has been dead ever since!

  In 2008, the bubble was jeopardised again when the pipeline of offshore debt froze solid and major Australian banks were rendered insolvent given they could not roll over their enormous foreign debts. The government of the day rode to their rescue with guarantees to all offshore funding, directly bought mortgage backed securities (which it still holds), unleashed the largest proportional fiscal stimulus in the world, doubled the first home buyer grants, opened the spigots on foreign investor buying, and other measures. Almost all of it violated existing financial sector architecture and governance and virtually none of it has been wound back. No housing market in the world enjoyed such wholesale and limitless support.

  In 2011, the bubble again faltered when the China commodity boom returned and raised interest rates. But, when threatened, the bubble was bailed out, this time by a central bank that desperately cut interest rates to all-time lows because it had over-estimated the durability of the commodities boom, and an influx of Chinese capital that was allowed to price-out local buyers with barely a word of protest from regulatory authorities.

  While those three saves of the bubble have been widely admired as solid Keynesian policy-making, and have allowed Australia to claim a “miracle” economic expansion of 25 years, they have also transformed its economy and political economy.

  The Australian economy is now structurally uncompetitive as capital inflows persistently keep its currency too high, usually chasing land prices that ensure input costs are amazingly inflated as well. Unsurprisingly, Australian manufacturing’s share of outlook has collapsed to 5.8% of GDP (even before the exit of car manufacturing scheduled for the next 12 months) half that of the supposedly “hollowed out” US and UK economies, and on a par with the financial haven of Luxembourg. Wider tradables sectors have been hit hard as well and Australian exports are now a lousy 20% of GDP despite the largest mining boom in history.

  The other major economic casualty has been multi-factor productivity. It has been virtually zero for fifteen years as capital was consistently and massively mis-allocated into unproductive assets. To grow at all today, the nation now runs chronic twin deficits with the current account at -4% and Budget deficit of -3% of GDP.

  But the damage is in some ways even worse in the political economy. How have Australian authorities responded to this growing crisis? By egging it on.

  Not only are they running unsustainable deficits into looming sovereign downgrades, they have sustained historically very high rates of immigration to attempt to back-fill and support property prices. These levels have been so aggressive in the major eastern cities, which are now projecting a near doubling of their populations within 40 years (from four-plus to eight million), that elections are now routinely won and lost on issues of choked infrastructure, and a vehemently anti-immigration movement is afoot in the polity. Younger generations are also boiling over with anger at being locked out of housing markets. A full half of first home buyers rely upon parents for equity and their numbers have collapsed to just 12% of total sales.

  Five prime ministers in six years have come and gone as standards of living fall in part owing to massive immigration inappropriate to economic circumstances and other property-friendly policy. The most recent national election boiled down to a virtual referendum on real estate taxation subsidies. The victor, the conservative Coalition party, betrayed every market principle its possesses by mounting an extreme fear campaign against the Labor party’s proposal to remove negative gearing. This tax policy allows more than one million Australians to engage in a negative carry into property in the hope of capital gains. In a nation of just 24 million, 1.3 million Australians lose an average of $9k per annum on this strategy thanks to the tax break.

  The campaign against tax reform was led by former head of Goldman Sachs Australia, Prime Minister Malcolm Turnbull, who is a large Australian property-holder, and Treasurer Scott Morrison, who is the former head of research at the Property Council of Australia, the nation’s leading realty lobby. Australia’s 225 politicians hold a combined property portfolio worth over $300m.

  The property corruption has even undermined the nation’s strategic outlook. The large wave of Chinese immigrants and investors have been accompanied by a hard-edged soft power drive from Beijing that is sorely undermining Australia’s commitment to its traditional US alliance partner. Chinese bribery scandals have erupted in the parliament, usually from property-based sources, and have clearly perverted policy-making. So much so, that Australia’s defence and espionage agencies are in a rising panic that Australia is literally auctioning its strategic outlook to Chinese property speculators.

  How could all of this happen without the media holding it to account? As the economy gets ever more reliant upon its great foreign-funded housing ponzi scheme, and the political economy wraps ever more tightly around it, Australian media has been engulfed as well. Aussie media is a duopoly divided between a conservative Murdoch press and liberal Fairfax press. But both are largely loss-making old media empires whose only major growth profit centres are the nation’s two largest real estate portals, realestate.com.au and Domain. Thus neither reports real estate with any objective other than the further inflation of prices. Indeed newspaper (print and online) operations are nothing more than loss-leaders for over-excited real estate eyeballs. In the event that the Australian bubble were to pop then Australians will certainly be the last to know and the propaganda is so thick that they may never find out until they actually try to sell!

  Before the year 2000, the Australian economy was a vibrant mix of world-leading productivity growth, liberalised tradable sectors balanced between commodities, services and manufacturing, solid household wealth, a reasonable external position, a clean public balance sheet and reliable institutions.

  Today, it is a wildly imbalanced propertocracy with enormous offshore debts, a polity soaked by a Goebbels-like property propaganda machine, and a government run by realty carpet-baggers willing to sell their children to Chinese communists so long long as they pick up a three bedroom apartment along with little Johnny.

  In a world replete with bubbles, rarely has one been quite so complete!

  

  

• Trump Reaches Deal To Keep 1,000 Carrier Jobs In The U.S.

  Nine months ago the video of a plant-full of American workers getting the news that they were 'fired' due to Carrier International moving its air-conditioning plant from Indiana to Mexico went viral and became a meme for Trump's "America First" plans. Today, according to CNBC's David Faber, the Trump team and United Technologies have reached an agreement on keeping close to 1,000 factory jobs at the Carrier plant in Indiana.

  As a reminder, this is what happened in February when United Technologies decided to reinforce both of these trends all at once, when the company announced it would be eliminating 1,400 jobs at a Carrier plant in Indianapolis in favor of hiring some new "foreign-born" employees – only these "foreign-born" workers will be hired in Mexico.

  "Two Indiana plants that make products for the heating, ventilating and air conditioning industry are shifting their manufacturing operations to Mexico, which will cost about 2,100 workers their jobs," The Indianapolis Star reports.

   

  "Carrier is shuttering its manufacturing facility on Indianapolis' west side, eliminating about 1,400 jobs during the next three years [and] United Technologies Electronic Controls said that it will move its Huntington manufacturing operations to a new plant in Mexico, costing the northeastern Indiana city 700 jobs by 2018."

  Watch below as 1,000 soon-to-be Donald Trump voters react to the announcement:

  Trump frequently railed against the move and pledged to force Carrier to keep its jobs in the U.S. while on the campaign trail.

  "Here's what's going to happen," Trump told a crowd in Indianapolis in April. "I'll get a call from the head of Carrier and he'll say, 'Mr. President, we've decided to stay in the United States. That's what's going to happen — 100 percent."

  And now, as CNBC's David Faber reports, Trump appears to have been right.

  Trump Admin and $UTX reach agreement on keeping close to 1000 factory jobs in Carrier plant in Indiana- sources.

  — David Faber (@davidfaber) November 30, 2016

  Deal terms to keep Carrier jobs in Indiana include new inducements from state. Deal spear headed by former Indiana Gov Pence.

  — David Faber (@davidfaber) November 30, 2016

  More from the NYT:

  On Thursday, Mr. Trump and Mike Pence, Indiana’s governor and the vice-president elect, plan to appear at Carrier’s Indianapolis plant to announce they’ve struck a deal with the company to keep a majority of the jobs in the state, according to officials with the transition team as well as Carrier.

   

  Mr. Trump will be hard-pressed to alter the economic forces that have hammered the Rust Belt for decades, but forcing Carrier and its parent company, United Technologies, to reverse course is a powerful tactical strike that will rally his base even before he takes office.

   

  In exchange for keeping the factory running in Indianapolis, Mr. Trump and Mr. Pence are expected to reiterate their campaign pledges to be friendlier to business by easing regulations and overhauling the corporate tax code. In addition, Mr. Trump is expected to tone down his rhetoric threatening 35 percent tariffs on companies like Carrier that shift production south of the border.

  On its behalf, Carrier announced on Twitter shortly after the announcement that it was "pleased to have reached a deal with President-elect Trump & VP-elect Pence to keep close to 1,000 jobs in Indy." We expect more companies to follow in these anti-offshoring footsteps.

  We are pleased to have reached a deal with President-elect Trump & VP-elect Pence to keep close to 1,000 jobs in Indy. More details soon.

  — Carrier (@Carrier) November 30, 2016

  We expect more details of the deal tomorrow but as The NY Times reports, roughly 10 percent of United Technologies’ $56 billion in revenues comes from the federal government, with the Pentagon its single largest customer. Its Pratt & Whitney division, for example, supplies the engines for the Air Force’s most advanced fighters and host of other planes. So perhaps some quid pro quo.

  On the heels of the reported 'deal' with Ford, it seem president-elect Trump is starting to make good on some promises (but we can't help but wonder why President Obama did not do these things?)

  

  

• Trump, Romney Spotted Having Dinner Inside Trump Hotel Amid Cabinet Speculation

  With Donald Trump set to make his official announcement of Steven Mnuchin’s appointment to the Treasury Secretary post tomorrow at 6:30am, in the process placing yet another former Goldman banker in one of the most important US government positions, a move which has already led to accusations of selling out by members of his core support base, is Trump preparing to serve up another major cabinet surprise?

  As was reported earlier by ABC, Donald Trump and Mitt Romney would be having dinner this evening amid ongoing “cabinet speculation” that Romney is one of the leading contenders for the Secretary of State position.

  While we don’t know what the two have said to each other, and it is still unknown if Trump has or will offer Romney – a person many define as the embodiment of the “swamp” – the top US diplomat position, we do know where the two met – the Jean George restaurant located at the Trump International Hotel & Tower New York next to both CNN and Central Park – and we also have an almost intimate dinner-side coverage of how the dinner between the two, who were joined by RNC Chairman Reince Priebus, progressed courtesy of the omnipresent Twitter.

  Donald Trump’s motorcade is rolling. He’s on his way to dinner with Mitt Romney at an as-yet-undisclosed location.

  — Hunter Walker (@hunterw) November 30, 2016

  Donald Trump and Mitt Romney are eating dinner at Jean Georges. The motorcade just arrived.

  — Hunter Walker (@hunterw) November 30, 2016

  Exclusive: Trump, Romney and Priebus arrive for dinner at Jean Georges in NYC pic.twitter.com/aGGhZTTqXd

  — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) November 30, 2016

  I was allowed in to see President-elect Trump, @Reince and Mitt Romney eating dinner. pic.twitter.com/bITd35PRWy

  — Hunter Walker (@hunterw) November 30, 2016

  Trump crossing his arms for a good while now as Romney smiles and speaks.

  — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) November 30, 2016

  Trump, Romney and Priebus having a very warm but animated discussion right now. Trump started talking first. Now Romney chiming in.

  — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) November 30, 2016

  I asked Trump how the dinner was going and he gave a big thumbs up.

  — Hunter Walker (@hunterw) November 30, 2016

  Fresh marshmallows are prepared as Trump, Romney and Priebus dine. pic.twitter.com/JI5KvPgnLT

  — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) November 30, 2016

  Here’s some more shots of the Trump-Mitt dinner date summit. pic.twitter.com/UvK3yYhRjE

  — Hunter Walker (@hunterw) November 30, 2016

  *record scratch*

  *freeze frame*

  Yup, that’s me. You’re probably wondering how I ended up in this situation … pic.twitter.com/VC9XZblMGY

  — Hunter Walker (@hunterw) November 30, 2016

  Trump, Romney and Priebus have moved onto dessert. Romney laughing as Trump talks and gestures. No sign of any animosity from campaign.

  — Jim Acosta (@Acosta) November 30, 2016

  Here’s the Romney/Trump dinner menu. pic.twitter.com/TKWaVAVq9q

  — Hunter Walker (@hunterw) November 30, 2016

  And this is why the media has a nervous breakdown any time Trump forgets to inform it that he is leaving for dinner.

  

  

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• Speculation Soars As Mike Pence Says "There Will Be Very Important Announcements Tomorrow"

  With the Trump cabinet filling up, but a number of key positions still to be announced, vice-president-elect Mike Pence told Fox News tonight that "there will be very important announcements tomorrow."

   

  Vice President-elect @mike_pence: There will be very important announcements tomorrow. #NewsAlert pic.twitter.com/VOAXMsBhMa

  — Fox News (@FoxNews) November 29, 2016

   

  So who will it be?

  POSTS ALREADY FILLED

  WHITE HOUSE CHIEF OF STAFF

  * Republican National Committee Chairman Reince Priebus

  CHIEF WHITE HOUSE STRATEGIST AND SENIOR COUNSELOR

  * Steve Bannon, former head of the conservative website Breitbart News

  ATTORNEY GENERAL

  * Jeff Sessions, Republican U.S. senator from Alabama and senior member of the Senate Judiciary Committee (subject to Senate confirmation)

  CENTRAL INTELLIGENCE AGENCY DIRECTOR

  * Republican U.S. Representative Mike Pompeo from Kansas (subject to Senate confirmation)

  NATIONAL SECURITY ADVISER

  * Michael Flynn, retired Army lieutenant general and former director of the Defense Intelligence Agency

  UNITED NATIONS AMBASSADOR

  * Nikki Haley, Republican South Carolina governor (subject to Senate confirmation)

  EDUCATION SECRETARY

  * Betsy DeVos, Republican donor and former chair of the Michigan Republican Party

  HEALTH AND HUMAN SERVICES SECRETARY

  * Tom Price, Republican U.S. representative from Georgia, orthopedic surgeon

  *  *  *

  CONTENDERS

  Below are people mentioned as contenders for senior roles as the Republican president-elect works to form his administration before taking office on Jan. 20, according to Reuters sources and media reports.

  TREASURY SECRETARY

  * Steven Mnuchin, former Goldman Sachs Group Inc executive and Trump's campaign finance chairman

  * Jeb Hensarling, Republican U.S. representative from Texas and chairman of the House Financial Services Committee

  * Tom Barrack, founder and chairman of Colony Capital Inc

  * John Allison, former chief executive officer of BB&T Corp

  * David McCormick, president of hedge fund Bridgewater Associates LP

  SECRETARY OF STATE

  * Mitt Romney, 2012 Republican presidential nominee and former Massachusetts governor

  * Rudy Giuliani, former Republican mayor of New York City

  * John Bolton, former U.S. ambassador to the United Nations under Republican President George W. Bush

  * Bob Corker, Republican U.S. senator from Tennessee and chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee

  * Zalmay Khalilzad, former U.S. ambassador to Iraq

  DEFENSE SECRETARY

  * James Mattis, retired Marine general

  * David Petraeus, former CIA director and retired Army general

  * Tom Cotton, Republican U.S. senator from Arkansas

  * Jon Kyl, former Republican U.S. senator from Arizona

  * Duncan Hunter, Republican U.S. representative from California and early Trump supporter, member of the House Armed Services Committee

  * Jim Talent, former Republican U.S. senator from Missouri who was on the Senate Armed Services Committee

  * Rick Perry, former Republican Texas governor

  * Stephen Hadley, former national security adviser under President George W. Bush

  HOMELAND SECURITY SECRETARY

  * Michael McCaul, Republican U.S. representative from Texas and chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee

  * David Clarke, Milwaukee county sheriff and vocal Trump supporter

  * Joe Arpaio, outgoing Maricopa County, Arizona, sheriff who campaigned for Trump

  * Kris Kobach, Kansas secretary of state

  * Frances Townsend, homeland security and counterterrorism adviser to former Republican President George W. Bush

  ENVIRONMENTAL PROTECTION AGENCY ADMINISTRATOR

  * Jeff Holmstead, energy lawyer, former EPA official during George W. Bush administration

  * Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in private equity firm Gryphon Investors

  * Leslie Rutledge, Republican Arkansas attorney general

  * Carol Comer, commissioner of the Indiana Department of Environmental Management

  * Scott Pruitt, Oklahoma attorney general

  ENERGY SECRETARY

  * Harold Hamm, Oklahoma oil and gas mogul, chief executive of Continental Resources Inc

  * Kevin Cramer, Republican U.S. Representative from North Dakota

  * Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in private equity firm Gryphon Investors

  * Larry Nichols, co-founder of Devon Energy Corp

  * James Connaughton, chief executive of Nautilus Data Technologies and a former environmental adviser to President George W. Bush

  * Rick Perry, former Republican Texas governor

  INTERIOR SECRETARY

  * Sarah Palin, former Alaska governor, 2008 Republican vice presidential nominee

  * Jan Brewer, former Republican Arizona governor

  * Forrest Lucas, founder of oil products company Lucas Oil

  * Harold Hamm, Oklahoma oil and gas mogul, chief executive of Continental Resources Inc

  * Robert Grady, venture capitalist, partner in private equity firm Gryphon Investors

  * Mary Fallin, Republican Oklahoma governor

  * Ray Washburne, chief executive of investment company Charter Holdings

  * Cathy McMorris Rodgers, U.S. representative from Washington state and Republican Conference chair

  COMMERCE SECRETARY

  * Wilbur Ross, billionaire investor, chairman of Invesco Ltd subsidiary WL Ross & Co

  * Linda McMahon, former World Wrestling Entertainment executive and two-time Republican Senate candidate

  DIRECTOR OF NATIONAL INTELLIGENCE

  * Admiral Mike Rogers, director of the National Security Agency

  * Ronald Burgess, retired lieutenant general and former Defense Intelligence Agency chief

  * Robert Cardillo, director of the National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency

  * Pete Hoekstra, former Republican U.S. representative from Michigan

  * Rudy Giuliani, former Republican mayor of New York City

  U.S. TRADE REPRESENTATIVE

  * Dan DiMicco, former chief executive of steel producer Nucor Corp

  LABOR SECRETARY

  * Andrew Puzder, chief executive officer of CKE Restaurants

  * Victoria Lipnic, U.S. Equal Employment Opportunity Commission commissioner and former Labor Department official during the George W. Bush administration

  TRANSPORTATION SECRETARY

  * Elaine Chao, former labor secretary and deputy transportation secretary under Republican Presidents George W. Bush and George H.W. Bush, respectively. Chao is married to Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell

  * Harold Ford, former Democratic U.S. Representative from Tennessee

  HOUSING AND URBAN DEVELOPMENT SECRETARY

  * Dr. Ben Carson, former 2016 Republican presidential candidate and retired neurosurgeon

  SUPREME COURT VACANCY

  The Trump transition team confirmed he would choose from a list of 21 names he drew up during his campaign, including Republican U.S. Senator Mike Lee of Utah, and William Pryor, a federal judge with the 11th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals.

  

  

• Assad On Verge Of Biggest Victory Since Start Of Syrian War With Imminent Capture Of Aleppo

  The battle for one of the most contested Syrian cities in the nation’s long-running civil war, Aleppo, is approaching its climax. According to Reuters, the Syrian army and its allies announced the capture of a large swath of eastern Aleppo from rebels on Monday – by some estimates as much as 40% of the militant held part – in an accelerating attack that threatens to crush the opposition in its most important urban stronghold.

  In a major breakthrough in the government’s push to retake the whole city, regime forces captured six rebel-held districts of eastern Aleppo over the weekend, including Masaken Hanano, the biggest of those. On Sunday, the 13th day of the operation, they also took control of the adjacent neighborhoods of Jabal Badra and Baadeeen and captured three others.

  

  As is customary, when it comes to describing events in Syria, one has two biased narratives to choose from: one from the perspective of the Western forces, for whom the protagonist are the Syrian rebels, and Assad is the enemy, and then there is the Syrian/Russian point of view, in which the rebels are aligned with the Islamic State (and are supported by the US) and the liberation of the country entails removing both at the same time.

  Covering the former “angle” first, Reuters writes that two rebel officials said the insurgents, facing fierce bombardment and ground attacks, had withdrawn from the northern part of eastern Aleppo to a more defensible front line along a big highway after losses that threatened to split their enclave. The Syrian Observatory for Human Rights – a UK funded “think tank” operated by just one man, who in 2013 was responsible for the Assad “chemical attack” fabricated YouTube clip – said the northern portion of eastern Aleppo lost by the rebels amounted to more than a third of the territory they had held, calling it the biggest defeat for the opposition in Aleppo since 2012.

  Thousands of residents were reported to have fled. A rebel fighter reached by Reuters said there was “extreme, extreme, extreme pressure” on the insurgents. Part of the area lost by the rebels was taken over by a U.S.-backed Kurdish militia from another part of Aleppo in what rebels described as an agreed handover, a rare example of cooperation between groups that have fought each other.

  What appears to be the imminent loss of Aleppo by rebel forces has sent shockwaves of demoralization across the war-torn country, and hundreds of miles to the south, people have started to leave the rebel-held Damascus suburb of Khan al-Shih for other parts of the country controlled by insurgents under a deal with the government, the Observatory said.

  As Reuters adds, capturing eastern Aleppo would be the biggest victory for President Bashar al-Assad since the start of the uprising against him in 2011, restoring his control over the whole city apart from a Kurdish-held area that has not fought against him.

  For Assad, taking back Aleppo would shore up his grip over the main population centers of western Syria where he and his allies have focused their firepower while much of the rest of the country remains outside their control. More importantly, it would be seen as a victory for his allies, Russia and Iran, which have outmanoeuvred the West and Assad’s regional enemies through direct military intervention. It would be a major slap in the face for the US and its allies.

  “What happened in the last two days is a great strategic accomplishment by the Syrian army and allies,” a fighter with a militia on the government side in the Aleppo area said.

  Meanwhile, animosity toward the US is building even among its erstwhile “friends” as rebels said their foreign patrons including the United States have abandoned them to their fate in Aleppo.

  While some of the rebels in Aleppo have received support from states such as Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar and the United States during the war, they say their foreign backers have failed them as Assad and his allies unleash enormous firepower.

   

  “The situation is very bad and the reason is the round the clock shelling with all types of weapons,” said Abdul Salam Abdul Razaq, military spokesman for the Nour al-Din al-Zinki group, one of the main Aleppo rebel factions.

   

  “There is very fierce fighting going on now and the regime and its supporters are destroying whole areas to allow themselves to advance,” he told Reuters. Another fighter said there was heavy attrition in “people and ammunition”.

  Assad has gradually closed in on eastern Aleppo this year, first cutting the most direct lifeline to Turkey before fully encircling the east, and launching a major assault in September. A military news service run by Hezbollah declared the northern portion of eastern Aleppo under full state control. The Russian Defence Ministry said about 40 percent of the eastern part of the city had been “freed” from militants by Syrian government forces.

  Russian President Vladimir Putin discussed the Syrian army’s advances with members of his Security Council on Monday, Russian news agencies quoted Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov as saying.

  To preserve some pride, officials with two Aleppo rebel groups said rebels had withdrawn to areas they could more easily defend, particularly after losing the Hanano housing complex area on Saturday.

  “It is a withdrawal for the sake of being able to defend and reinforce the front lines,” an official in the Jabha Shamiya rebel group told Reuters.  In other words, it’s not a defeat, just a strategic retreat.

  * * *

  Meanwhile, the same narrative from a biased Russian angle, as reported earlier by RT, sounds as follows:

  More than 3,000 civilians have left the eastern part of the besieged Syrian city of Aleppo in the last 24 hours, the Russian Center for Reconciliation said. It later reported that about 40 percent of the militant-held part of the city has been liberated. Some 3,179 people, including 1,519 children – among them 138 newborn babies – have left Eastern Aleppo through the ‘humanitarian corridors’ set up by Syrian government forces, Russian Reconciliation Center said on Monday. The center reported that 12 neighborhoods, comprising roughly 40 percent of the territory previously controlled by the militants, have been cleared.

   

  According to the Russian Center for Reconciliation, more than 80,000 people live in the newly liberated areas of the eastern part of the city. It added that more than 5,000 people fled from the southern districts of eastern Aleppo, which are still controlled by the militants, to the areas held by government forces. More than 100 militants laid down their arms and left eastern Aleppo through the special corridors, the statement said.

   

  Despite joint humanitarian efforts undertaken by the Syrian government and Russia, thousands of civilians are still kept in the eastern part of the city by militants. To minimize damage to the civilian population, the Russian and Syrian militaries suspended airstrikes and set up ‘humanitarian corridors’ for both non-combatants and militants willing to leave the area.

   

  However, the corridors are vulnerable to militant small arms fire and shelling, which complicates the evacuation of civilians. RT’s Lizzie Phelan, reporting from Syria, said the government army’s advance in the eastern part of Aleppo “has enabled civilians to leave the area,” and that there are thousands of people desperate to flee. Those who managed to escape told RT crew the militants deprived them of all means to survive, including food and water.

   

  “The militants are lying, they are holding us there, even now they are holding families [in the area]. They don’t let people go,” one man said.

   

  “Every time we tried to flee they caught us and turned us back,” a young woman added.

  As RT concludes, “currently, the Syrian Army is continuing their large-scale offensive in eastern Aleppo, targeting Al-Nusra Front and other radical militants still controlling the area. The troops have already established control over important blocks and districts in the eastern part of the city.”

  * * *

  Readers can decide which narrative they like better, but no matter how one spins it, whether Assad’s ongoing acts are of barbaric brutality or altruistically humanistic, should Aleppo fall to the Assad regime, the Syrian civil war will enter into a new phase, one where the regime will now have the clear upper hand, and will set back the US allied effort years, giving Trump few options if he wants to reengage in Syria: expand the US presence by orders of magnitude, including overt ground forces, or simply withdraw.

  

  

• Trump Ups the Ante Over Alleged Voter Fraud: Attacks CNN and Introduces New Hashtag #CorruptHillary

  From the layman, those still inside of the matrix — bluepilled — fat and stupid off government sponsored roasted beef, the recent comments by Trump might appear to be coarse, almost petty. But if you take these comments under the context that Trump is in fact a 4 dimensional chess player and is laying a trap for bird brained Hillary supporters — which will soon be executed — laying waste to a cadre of people too stupid to see it coming, they are in fact brilliant. This evening Trump went on a twitter rampage, fucking with Jeff Zeleny, shill reporter from CNN, about his special AC360 report depicting Trump as a sore winner — merely shitposting on Twitter to distract people from the true source of angst: TRUMP LOST THE MEANINGLESS POPULAR VOTE (gasp!). What’s noteworthy here is the rhetoric by Trump towards the former #CrookedHillary, seemingly graduating her crime status to #CorruptHillary by retweeting someone’s comments — making her title more conducive to a legal framework — perhaps laying the groundwork for a jail granting prosecution. His comments regarding democrat voter fraud are purposeful and I wouldn’t be surprised if Trump appointed someone to audit the election results once he took office. I seriously doubt this is an unpaved road the haggard democrats want to travel now — especially when all they have to ride on are Tim Kaine tricycles.

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

  

  

• Worried You Are Putin's Pawn? Mainstream Media's Checklist For Avoiding Fake News

  Submitted by Justin Raimondo via AntiWar.com,

  No one outside of a few obsessed cranks would’ve noticed it if the Washington Post hadn’t given it front page prominence last week: a formerly obscure web site, propornot.com, which purports to identify a “Russian active measures” campaign with some very specific goals in mind As Post “reporter” Craig Timberg put it:

  “The flood of ‘fake news’ this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation.”

  While the Post piece doesn’t link directly to the propornot site – because doing so would’ve exposed its laughably amateurish “methodology” for all to see – Timberg does mention their list of online Boris Badenovs, including not only Antiwar.com but also the Drudge Report, WikiLeaks, David Stockman’s Contra Corner, the Ron Paul Institute, LewRockwell.com, Counterpunch, Zero Hedge, Naked Capitalism, Truthdig, Truth-out, and a host of others. These sites, according to the Post, not only promoted a barrage of “fake news” with the aim of defeating Mrs. Clinton, but they did so at the behest of a “centrally-directed” (per propornot) intelligence operation undertaken by the Russians. So what did this “fake news” consist of? Timberg “reports”:

  “Russia’s increasingly sophisticated propaganda machinery – including thousands of botnets, teams of paid human ‘trolls,’ and networks of websites and social-media accounts – echoed and amplified right-wing sites across the Internet as they portrayed Clinton as a criminal hiding potentially fatal health problems and preparing to hand control of the nation to a shadowy cabal of global financiers. The effort also sought to heighten the appearance of international tensions and promote fear of looming hostilities with nuclear-armed Russia.”

  Never mind that it was Hillary Clinton herself who heightened international tensions by threatening military retaliation against the Russians for supposedly unleashing via WikiLeaks a flood of embarrassing emails. In a speech touted as outlining her foreign policy platform, she railed:

  “You’ve seen reports. Russia’s hacked into a lot of things. China’s hacked into a lot of things. Russia even hacked into the Democratic National Committee, maybe even some state election systems. So, we’ve got to step up our game. Make sure we are well defended and able to take the fight to those who go after us.

   

  “As President, I will make it clear, that the United States will treat cyber attacks just like any other attack. We will be ready with serious political, economic and military responses.”

  According to the “experts” at propornot – granted anonymity by Timberg due to alleged fear of “Russian hackers” – to so much as note this clear threat is to brand oneself as a “Russian agent of influence.”

  And what about Mrs. Clinton’s health problems – was reporting on this driven by Russian spies embedded in the alternative media? Or was it occasioned by this video, which saw her falling to the ground after leaving the 9/11 ceremony early? Are the folks at propornot and their fans at the Washington Post saying the amateur videographer who took that footage is a Russian secret agent? Were the television networks and other outlets that showed the footage “useful idiots,” to employ a favorite cold war smear revived by propornot? Given their criteria for labeling people agents of the Kremlin, the answer to these questions has to be yes – and now we are falling down the rabbit hole, in a free-fall descent into lunacy.

  Propornot’s “criteria” for inclusion on their blacklist is actually an ideological litmus test: if you hold certain views, you’re in the pay of the Kremlin, or else an “unwitting agent” – as former CIA head Mike Morell said of Trump. If you say anything at all positive about Russia or Putin – or a long list of entities, like China or “radical political parties in the US or Europe” (does this include the GOP?) – it’s a dead giveaway. We’re told to “investigate this by searching for mentions of, for example, ‘russia’, on their site by Googling for ‘site:whateversite.com Russia’, and seeing what comes up.”

  If only Sherlock Holmes had had Google at his disposal, those detective stories would’ve been a lot shorter!

  The propornot site is filled with complex graphs, and the text is riddled with “scientific”-sounding phrases, but when you get right down to it their “methodology” boils down to this: if you don’t fit within a very narrow range of allowable opinion, either falling off the left edge or the right edge, you’re either a paid Russian troll or else you’re being “manipulated” by forces you don’t understand and don’t want to understand.

  Did you cheer on Brexit? You’re Putin’s pawn!

   

  Are you worried about “World War III, nuclear devastation, etc.” instead of being content in the knowledge that their preferred policy – unmitigated hostility toward Russia — would “just result in a Cold War 2 and Russia’s eventual peaceful defeat, like the last time”? Well, then, clearly you’re either on Putin’s payroll, or else you’d like to be.

   

  Other proscribed opinions include: “gold standard nuttery and attacks on the US dollar,” believing “the mainstream media can’t be trusted,” and “anti-‘globalism.’” And to underscore their complete lack of self-awareness, we’re told that additional warning signs of Putinism are “hyperbolic alarmism” and “generally ridiculous over-the-top assertions.”

   

  In their world, it isn’t hyperbolic alarmism to point to ramshackle Russia, with a GDP equal to Spain’s and a declining military budget that pales before our own, as an existential threat to the West. And if you’re a reporter for the Washington Post, which has destroyed what reputation it had by effectively becoming the house organ of the Democratic National Committee, generally ridiculous overt-the-top assertions, such as those proffered by propornot, are “news.”

  The Post piece also cites an article published on the “War On The Rocks” web site (which is exactly what it sounds like). The authors, a triumvirate of neocons, avers that they’ve been “tracking” “Russian propaganda” efforts since 2014, and they’ve concluded that the Grand Goal of the Russkies is to “Erode trust between citizens and elected officials and democratic institutions” – as if this process isn’t occurring naturally due to the depredations of a corrupt and arrogant political class.

  Another insidious theme of Russian “active measures” as identified by these geniuses is “Stoking fears over the national debt, attacking institutions such as the Federal Reserve, and attempts to discredit Western financial experts and business leaders.” So we mustn’t talk about the national debt – because to do so brands one as a cog in Putin’s propaganda machine. Gee, based on these criteria, we can only conclude that every vaguely conservative politician running for office in the last decade or so is part of the Vast Russian Conspiracy, not to mention numerous economists.

  And that’s not all – not by a long shot. Here’s a list of more Forbidden Topics we’re not supposed to discuss, except maybe in whispers in the privacy of our own homes: “Police brutality, racial tensions, protests, anti-government standoffs, online privacy concerns, and alleged government misconduct are all emphasized [by the Vast Russian Conspiracists – ed.] to magnify their scale and leveraged to undermine the fabric of society.” After all, Russia Today is “emphasizing” these issues – so mum’s the word!

  Yes, these people are serious – but why should anyone take them seriously? Why is the Washington Post “reporting” this nonsense – and putting it on the front page, no less? In short, what’s the purpose of this virulent propaganda campaign? After all, Hillary Clinton has been defeated, along with her campaign theme of “A vote for Trump is a vote for Putin.” What does a continuation of this losing mantra hope to accomplish?

  The folks at propornot are explicit about their goal: they want the government to step in. They want to close down these “agents of influence.” In their own words, they want the FBI and the Department of Justice to launch “formal investigations” of the sites on their blacklist on the grounds that “the kind of folks who make propaganda for brutal oligarchies are often involved in a wide range of bad business.” They accuse the proprietors of the listed web sites – including us, by the way – of having “violated the Espionage Act, the Foreign Agents Registration Act, and other related laws.”

  Oh, but they say they want to “avoid McCarthyism”! They just want to shut us down and shut us up.

  These people are authoritarians, plain and simple: under the guise of fighting authoritarianism, they seek to ban dissenting views, jail the dissenters, and impose a narrow range of permissible debate on the public discourse. They are dangerous, and they need to be outed and publicly shamed.

  To be included on their list of “subversives” is really a badge of honor.

  

  

• Former CNN Anchor Lays Out Rules For Covering Trump – "Be Relentless"

  Former CNN White House correspondent, Frank Sesno, has taken it upon himself to define the guidelines by which the news media should cover Donald Trump.  The rules were published by The Hill, where Sesno is a contributor, and urge reporters to be “relentless” yet “fair” and describes Trump is the “adversary.”

  1. Be fair. Give Trump his due: He won. As his appointments and policies emerge, they should be examined in turn and in detail, looking at their component parts. Separate news from opinion. Be sure people know the difference between analysis and commentary. Get rid of pundits who are nothing more than partisan propagandists.

   

  2. Be relentless. Relentless reporting means that journalists should demonstrate an attention span that goes beyond the last deadline or latest insult. Stay on the story. Focus on choices and tradeoffs that affect people’s lives. Tax cuts. Health care. Infrastructure. Immigration.

   

  Zero in on the particulars. Cite examples. Use data, real numbers and real people. Seek out other views, different angles. Draw upon not only “experts” but also people across the country, including the voters who upended this election.

   

  3. Focus on substance. The president-elect never laid out the deep detail behind his tweets and sound bites that got so much traction: repeal ObamaCare, rip up trade agreements, walk away from climate commitments, back off regulation, dump Dodd-Frank, rethink NATO.

   

  The media can do less horse race and more human race. Go beyond personalities and politics. Do series reporting. Cable news — with 24 hours to fill  can produce longer segments with graphics and serious conversation to dive deep. Talk radio should do less arguing and more asking.

   

  4. Respect the adversary. The adversarial nature of the press — which Trump doesn’t like and takes personally — is the cornerstone of a free press. It is the a bedrock principle by which we hold the powerful to account and ferret out incompetence, hypocrisy and corruption. Thomas Jefferson was treated that way. So was Abraham Lincoln. And Ronald Reagan. They didn’t like it, but it was power’s price of admission.

   

  Among the most dangerous sounds to come out of Trump’s mouth has been his disrespect, not just for individual journalists, but for journalism itself. Turning reporters from adversaries into enemies, inciting the crowd to the point that some reporters needed personal security protection during the campaign is the kind of horrific thing we expect to see in Venezuela or Russia or Cuba.

  After months of not holding a press conference amid multiple FBI investigations and Clinton Foundation scandals, this is how the “news media” handled Hillary’s first press conference.  We would very much appreciate Sesno’s opinion on whether or not the “How was your labor day weekend?” question fit within his guidelines…doesn’t seem all that relentless and maybe a little light on the substance as well…but we’re just a bunch of “Putin’s useful idiots” peddling “fake news”…what do we know?

   

  Of course, language like Sesno’s opening paragraphs below simply prove that the crusade against Trump is nothing more than a personal vendetta against a candidate that repeatedly exposed, embarrassed and humiliated the mainstream media for their biased coverage. 

  He summons network anchors and top execs to complain about unfair coverage and unflattering photos. He upbraids cable networks for their unrelenting coverage. He cancels a session with The New York Times, suggesting his media war is just beginning, and then reschedules the meeting. He’s on the record, then off the record. He posts a two-and-a-half-minute YouTube video that lays out the first executive actions he plans to take, shunning the journalists he distrusts so much.

   

  Last week’s acrimonious dance between President-elect Donald Trump and the media is just the warmup.

  And while Sesno claims the high ground by asserting that journalists play a key “mediating role in our democracy,” the electorate just proved that they know better.  While journalists should play a “key mediating role in our democracy”, the news media has proven time and again that they simply use their “access to decision-makers” to push carefully crafted narratives supporting their chosen political candidates and therefore can’t be trusted.

  Say what you will about the news media, but journalists run interference between the public and the public officials who govern us.

   

  Reporters have experience and, often, expertise. They can compare one comment, one promise to another. They have access to decision-makers and the loyal opposition. They play a mediating role in our democracy, where we hold government leaders accountable.

   

  The best journalists are stand-ins for citizens, paid to go up close and ask tough questions.

  Alas, as we’ve said before, the Trump administration welcomes this kind of frustrated backlash from disaffected reporters as it simply serves to maintain the focus of America’s anger on the corrupt media and almost ensures a Trump re-election in 4 years.

  

  

  

• The FT Asks "Is This The Elites' "Marie Antoinette" Moment?"

  Authored by Wolfgang Munchau, originally posted at FT.com,

  Some revolutions could have been avoided if the old guard had only refrained from provocation. There is no proof of a “let them eat cake” incident. But this is the kind of thing Marie Antoinette could have said. It rings true. The Bourbons were hard to beat as the quintessential out-of-touch establishment.

  They have competition now.

  Our global liberal democratic establishment is behaving in much the same way. At a time when Britain has voted to leave the EU, when Donald Trump has been elected US president, and Marine Le Pen is marching towards the Elysée Palace, we — the gatekeepers of the global liberal order — keep on doubling down.

  The campaign by Tony Blair, former UK prime minister, to undo Brexit is probably the quaintest example of all. A more serious incident was the forecast by the Office for Budget Responsibility in the UK, which said last week that Brexit would have severe economic consequences. Coming only a few months after the economics profession discredited itself with a doomy forecast about the consequences of Brexit, this is an astonishing reminder of the inadequacy of economic forecasting models.

  The truth about the impact of Brexit is that it is uncertain, beyond the ability of any human being to forecast and almost entirely dependent on how the process will be managed. “Don’t know” is the technically correct answer. Before the referendum, Project Fear was merely a monumental tactical miscalculation. Today it is stupidity. One of the debates was whether people should be listening to experts. We have moved beyond that. Because of a tendency to exaggerate, macroeconomists are no longer considered experts on the macroeconomy.

  Out-of-touch former leaders and the economic establishment are not unique. In Italy, the political establishment is considering amending recently modified electoral law solely to keep Beppe Grillo’s rebellious Five Star Movement from power. This is intertwined in a complex way with next Sunday’s referendum on constitutional reform.

  The electoral law that came into force in July gives the strongest party quasi-dictatorial powers. It was a stitch-up agreed in 2014 between Prime Minister Matteo Renzi’s Democratic party and former prime minister Silvio Berlusconi’s Forza Italia. Neither man then believed the Five Star Movement would ever be in a position to shake the cosy duopoly. No matter how the referendum on constitutional reforms ends, expect to see one of the most glaring efforts of gerrymandering in modern politics. But Mr Renzi’s problem is not the Five Star Movement. It is the voters.

  The EU itself, too, is doubling down whenever it can. The trade agreement with Canada, and the yet to be concluded Transatlantic Trade and Investment Partnership, are about as popular today as the stationing of medium-range nuclear missiles in the 1980s. A popular insurrection is under way against them because people fear a reduction in consumer protection and a power grab by multinationals.

  Why is this happening? Macroeconomists thought no one would dare challenge their authority. Italian politicians have been playing power games forever. And the job of EU civil servants is to find ingenious ways of spiriting politically tricky legislation and treaties past national legislatures. Even as the likes of Ms Le Pen, Mr Grillo and Geert Wilders of the far-right Dutch Freedom party head towards power, the establishment keeps acting this way. A Bourbon regent, in an uncharacteristic moment of reflection, would have backed off. Our liberal capitalist order, with its competing institutions, is constitutionally incapable of doing that. Doubling down is what it is programmed to do.

  The correct course of action would be to stop insulting voters and, more importantly, to solve the problems of an out-of-control financial sector, uncontrolled flows of people and capital, and unequal income distribution. In the eurozone, political leaders found it expedient to muddle through the banking crisis and then a sovereign debt crisis — only to find Greek debt is unsustainable and the Italian banking system is in serious trouble. Eight years on, there are still investors out there betting on a collapse of the eurozone as we know it.

  Mr Renzi could have used his ample political capital to reform the Italian economy instead of trying to cement his power. And imagine what would have been possible if Chancellor Angela Merkel had spent her even larger political capital on finding a solution to the eurozone’s multiple crises, or on reducing Germany’s excessive current account surpluses. If you want to fight extremism, solve the problem.

  But it is not happening for the same reason it did not happen in revolutionary France. The gatekeepers of western capitalism, like the Bourbons before them, have learnt nothing and forgotten nothing.

  

  

• Defense Department Launches Probe Of Petraeus Sex Scandal Leaks

  As reported earlier today, in what may be a tiebreaker option for Secretary of State in Trump’s administration with both Romney and Giuliani seemingly unable to get enough internal support to make it over the hurdle, the president elect met with David Petraeus, a former U.S. military commander in Iraq whose sharing of classified information with his biographer mistress, led to his resignation as CIA chief in 2012, to evaluate him for the top diplomatic position in the US government.

  

  Petraeus said after meeting Trump that the New York businessman “basically walked us around the world” in their discussion. “He showed a great grasp of the variety of challenges that are out there and some of the opportunities as well,” Petraeus told reporters.

  Trump’s initial response appeared favorable:  “Just met with General Petraeus–was very impressed!” Trump tweeted shortly after the meeting which lasted one hour at Trump Tower in Manhattan.

  Just met with General Petraeus–was very impressed!

  — Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) November 28, 2016

  After he resigned from the CIA in November 2012, he avoided a criminal trial by agreeing to a plea deal in April 2015. It required him to serve two years on probation and pay a $100,000 fine on a misdemeanor charge of unauthorized possession of classified information. While that may create the unusual prospect of a cabinet secretary who could still be on criminal probation for his first months in office, Trump said during the presidential campaign that Petraeus’s violations paled compared to those of Trump’s opponent, former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who shared classified information on a private e-mail server.

  So will Petraeus’ past come back to haunt him?

  According to a  reports by Reuters, the answer may, surprisingly, be no: “Petraeus’ past mishandling of classified documents is unlikely to be an obstacle to Trump offering him a top government post, said a source who has advised the transition team on national security. That is despite Trump harshly criticizing Democratic rival Hillary Clinton during the election campaign for using a private email server while she was secretary of state.”

  “Other lives, including General Petraeus and many others, have been destroyed for doing far, far less,” Trump said at a rally in October. “This is a conspiracy against you, the American people, and we cannot let this happen or continue.”

  However, as Bloomberg notes, FBI’s notorious director James Comey, who oversaw both the Petraeus and Clinton investigations, disagreed. In a July 7 hearing, he told the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee that Petraeus’s behavior was worse than Clinton’s, saying that he deliberately “lied” when first questioned by investigators. Regarding Hillary, Comey has said there was no evidence that Clinton or her aides had intended to break the law through careless handling of sensitive information. Federal prosecutors said Petraeus knew black binders he shared with Broadwell contained classified information, but he nonetheless provided them.

  “So you have obstruction of justice, you have intentional misconduct and a vast quantity of information” that was highly classified, Comey said. “He admitted he knew that was the wrong thing to do. That is a perfect illustration of the kind of cases that get prosecuted.”

  The issue could be an impediment for Petraeus in a confirmation hearing before the Foreign Relations Committee, according to Republican Senator Rand Paul of Kentucky, a libertarian who is opposed to most U.S. intervention abroad. “The problem they are going to have if they put him forward is there are a lot of similarities to Hillary Clinton,” Paul said Monday on CNN.

  Now add one more: according to a report by AP this afternoon, the Defense Department has launched a leaks investigation related to the sex scandal that led to the resignation of former CIA Director David Petraeus.   A U.S. official told the AP that investigators are trying to determine who leaked personal information about Paula Broadwell, the woman whose affair with Petraeus led to criminal charges against him and his resignation. AP adds that the information concerned the status of Broadwell’s security clearance.

  Disclosure of the Broadwell information without official permission would have been a violation of federal criminal law.

  The latest twist in this case – oddly similar to the reopening of the FBI probe into Hillary Clinton’s email server – will likely complicate Petraeus’ prospects of obtaining a Cabinet position in the Trump administration, resurfacing details of the extramarital affair and FBI investigation that ended his career at the CIA and tarnished the reputation of the retired four-star general.

  Of course, in Hillary’s case, the FBI quickly closed its reopened probe into her email just over a week after it was reopened after her emails mysteriously emerged on the notebook computer of Anthony Weiner’s computer. For the Petraeus case to be a carbon copy, any renewed probe into his conduct would similarly have to be closed in a matter of days. We doubt that will happen, which is why as of this moment, absent a material change, it is likely safe to say that the former general can be counted out from the running for the Secretary of State position under the Trump administration.

  

  

• Furious Democrats Blast Stein's Recount Effort As Nothing But A "Scam"

  With the passing of each new day, it’s growing more and more difficult to find anyone that is actually supportive of Jill Stein’s recount efforts (aka fundraising scam).  The Obama administration has already weighed in saying that the election results “accurately reflected the will of the American people” while Clinton’s campaign attorney even confirmed they had not “uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology.”

  Now, even prominent democratic strategists are turning on Stein as Joe Trippi described her efforts as a “waste of time and money.” Worse, in an accusation that may have more substantial consequences,  some Democrats have gone so far as to echo Trump’s charge that re-tallying votes from the presidential race is just a “scam” being advanced by Stein, who has raised more than $6 million to fund potential recounts in Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania, three states critical to the Republican nominee’s win.

  “It’s a waste of time and money. It is not going to change anything,” said Democratic strategist Joe Trippi, who served as campaign manager for former Vermont Gov. Howard Dean’s 2004 presidential campaign.

   

  “I think it probably was the Stein people looking for a way to stay relevant, raise some money and take the stink off of them. Instead of everybody screaming, ‘You made Trump happen,’ she is counting the votes to change that whole narrative.”

  Moreover, democrat strategist Robert Shrum confirmed that the “Clinton people would have preferred this not to happen” while adding that there is “no chance” that the recounts will change the election’s outcome.
  

  Aides to former Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton have sought a middle ground on Stein’s push. The remaining Clinton campaign team will “participate” in the effort but is not actively supporting it.

   

  In a Medium post on Saturday, Clinton lawyer Marc Elias wrote, “Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves.”

   

  The Clinton team’s involvement will likely be limited to having lawyers or other experts at recount sites to watch over the proceedings.

   

  “My sense is that the Clinton people would have preferred this not to happen and are going to be involved only in a monitoring capacity,” said Robert Shrum, a Democratic strategist and a veteran of several presidential campaigns, including that of 2004 nominee John Kerry.

   

  Shrum added that he believed “people are way over-excited about the thing.” There is, he added, “no chance” that it will change the election’s outcome.

  Meanwhile, the practical and logistical hurdles to success are starting to mount for Stein.  In order to get a state-wide recount in Pennsylvania, Stein needed affidavits from three residents in each of Pennsylvania’s 9,000 precincts to be filed by 5pm EST…something she apparently just thought about earlier today.

  #Recount2016 in Pennsylvania can only be initiated by voters in each precinct submitting affidavits. Get started: https://t.co/NAN4Ryf6Pw

  — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) November 28, 2016

   

  Moreover, this afternoon the state of Wisconsin released their official “Presidential Election Recount Cost Estimate” which came in at $3.5mm, or a mere 3x more that the $1.1mm that Stein had originally estimated and more than half of the $6.4mm she’s raised so far.

  So, while you may be “With Her”, dear Jill, pretty much no one is with you.  Though we’re sure you enjoyed extending your 15 minutes of fame and profiting from your fundraising scam, it’s now long past time for you to fade back into irrelevance and exit the national spotlight for good.

  

   

  Finally, perhaps PJW summarizes the Jill Stein recount farce the best:

  

  

• 'Real' Money & Why You Need It Now, Part 2

  In these volatile times, gold is more important than ever. Bonner & Partners' Bill Bonner explains in this two-part series (Part 1 here), the importance of 'real money' and why you need it now…

  Why You Will Need Gold

  What troubles my sleep is what is not in the textbooks.

  Central banks are in the process of making trillions in government debt disappear. Governments borrow money that doesn’t exist. The debt is bought up by the central bank, which creates money for that purpose. The interest paid to the central bank on the debt is paid back to the U.S. Treasury (that’s the deal between the Fed and the U.S. government).

  Then, when the bond matures, the “normal” thing would be for the borrower – the U.S. government – to repay the loan. This repayment money would have to come out of the economy and into the Fed’s vaults, thus reducing the amount of money in circulation and triggering an economic slump.

  The federal government would have to run a surplus in order to actually be a net payer of debt rather than a net borrower. That’s not going to happen. Instead, it borrows more – to repay the old loan – and adds further fuel to hot asset markets. The debt is never settled… it goes on forever… eternally unpaid, forgotten in the bank’s vaults. It is as if it had disappeared completely.

  The debt may disappear. But the credit – the money put into the economy to create the debt – lives on. It spends its days chasing asset prices. Stocks, bonds, real estate, art – all go up. Bread and automobiles remain more or less where they were. Who complains?

  Keynesian economists Larry Summers of Harvard and Paul Krugman of Princeton practically drool when they think of it… a paradise where governments can redistribute wealth and undertake huge capital investment projects – roads, hospitals, bridges, harbors – at no cost. The feds get to borrow money, hire people, and spend on pet projects. Then, as if by magic, the debt vanishes. What could be better?

  The only thing that might be better would be negative interest rates, in which the government is actually paid to borrow. That is already happening. In Europe, rates have fallen so low that currently, Switzerland can borrow for 10 years at a MINUS 0.2% rate.

  This allows the government – and only the government, because it is the only institution that can positively, absolutely guarantee that you will get your money when you are supposed to – to go to heaven without dying.

  Further disturbing my sleep has been a report from Japan that the central bank has intervened directly in the stock market. The significance of this is staggering. Because now, the feds have in place the means – apparently – to take control of nearly all our wealth.

  The government borrows. The central bank buys its debt. Then it never asks to be repaid.

  As Japan shows, it can also buy stocks with the same free money. Bidding against a buyer who gets his money for nothing will be impossible. Gradually, the feds could acquire a controlling interest in almost all the world’s publicly listed companies. And who would object? Stock prices would go through the roof.

  As for the nation’s debt – public and private – who minds if the feds buy it… and disappear it? Nobody.

  As the price of debt goes up, the financial industry becomes richer. And government – and recipients of government money – are happy, too; the money just keeps flowing in their direction.

  Leading economists – notably Ken Rogoff of Harvard and Willem Buiter of Citigroup – also encourage the feds to outlaw cash… giving them a trifecta of financial control. They would have a grip on America’s equity, debt, and bank accounts.

  Already, government-sponsored agencies Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac are backing approximately 60% of new U.S. mortgages since 2008. Meaning the feds effectively own $4.8 trillion worth of U.S. housing. The Federal Reserve owns a further $4.5 trillion in debt. And through the student loan program, 40 million young people count on the feds to not foreclose on their lives.

  The only significant asset that remains out of their grasp is gold. And they may grab that soon.

  It wouldn’t be the first time. In 1933, Franklin Roosevelt’s Executive Order 6102 decreed that all gold should be turned in to the U.S. Treasury at $20 an ounce. Then, after the gold was in his hands, he was able to devalue the U.S. dollar by 75%, pricing gold at $35 an ounce.

  Gold was cash back then. And Roosevelt was trying to avoid the very thing we’ve seen happen in Argentina, Cyprus, and, most recently, Greece – a dash for cash.

  With free money available to them, the feds today could easily close that door, too – declaring private gold reserves illegal. They might offer to buy it for, say, $1,500 an ounce. Who would object to a 25% premium?

  The feds are the lenders and buyers of last resort. As the quality of assets declines, more and more assets – debt and equity – end up in their hands. Gradually, they control more and more of the capital structure – bought with free money under cover of financial necessity. Gradually, there is less and less “free” in free enterprise. And gradually, there is less and less real wealth created.

  Gradually, too, the noose tightens around your financial neck, as there are fewer and fewer doors open and fewer places that are safe to keep your wealth.

  No one likes to have his wealth “nationalized” at the point of a gun. But everyone likes having it bought from him for more than it is worth.

  This is what has happened already in the QE programs in Europe and America… and even more so in Japan’s QE program (with an extra helping of equity buying). How much more of it the world can take is anybody’s guess. No one knows how far this can go. But as far as I know, no economy has ever been successfully Sovietized by printing money and using it to buy assets.

  Don’t Sweat the Ice Age

  Many economists are foretelling a long period of sluggish growth and low price inflation. The economy may want to go into a deflationary hibernation, they say. But since the feds can print and spend with impunity, it may be a long time coming. Plus, if the government is able to force people into bank accounts – and out of cash – it will be able to tax savings and further stimulate spending.

  With these new tools, the feds should be able to prevent a real correction for many years. They suggest that we prepare for an economic “Ice Age,” with little change year to year.

  Asset prices won’t fall because the central bank is actively buying bonds, and maybe even stocks, adding new money to the financial economy. Consumer prices won’t rise because there is no real growth in demand. Debt will increase – but it is hidden and forgotten in central-bank vaults.

  Maybe so. But I don’t think you should expect it. It could lead to a dangerous complacency. The feds might be able to hold this together and they might not. This Ice Age formula – dousing a debt-soaked economy with more debt – is not a way to build a healthy economy. It is just a way to shift real resources to the government and its cronies without causing either a frightening spell of inflation or deflation.

  It might work for a while. But the falcon of asset prices becomes deaf to the falconer of the real economy. Then, in a kind of financial never-never land, he gets lost completely and flies into a tree. Asset prices fall to the ground. Investors panic. Lenders call their loans. Art investors rush to auction off their tableaux. Lines form at ATMs.

  I am not going to speculate on how or when this occurs.

  “If you’re in a theater and one person walks calmly to an exit, it doesn’t attract much notice,” said Vern Gowdie, an Australian colleague. “Two… three… probably not much reaction either. But if you have three people suddenly run for an exit, you’ll have a panic.”

  What then?

  

  

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• Let’s bring capital back to USA, too

  It’s laudable that Trump wants to bring factories back to USA.  But how about virtual, monetary factories?  Moving financial institutions such as banks, insurers, brokerage houses, exchanges, and other institutions brings the most bang for the buck when it comes to revitalizing America’s economy.

  As we explain in Splitting Pennies, even though money doesn’t exist, it’s the most important part of a healthy economy.

  The business climate in USA is about to change greatly, pro-business.  But let’s not forget that capital is portable, we can bring capital back to USA too- not just factories.  Capital has been fleeing USA faster and faster.  Let’s stop the leaks and then bring it home.  We printed it – it’s our money!  – @FXBanker

  It’s laudable that Trump wants to bring factories back to USA.  But how about virtual, monetary factories?  Moving financial institutions such as banks, insurers, brokerage houses, exchanges, and other institutions brings the most bang for the buck when it comes to revitalizing America’s economy.

  No doubt, re-building America’s factories, previously the manufacturing base of the world, should be a priority for a number of reasons.  Not only does it provide jobs and stimulate the local economy – it’s a security issue.  Since when is it ‘politically correct’ to ‘outsource’ military technology development to foreign countries?  60% of the actual activities of the CIA are outsourced, many of them by companies that do not operate in America!  For example, the system used by Prisoners to call friends and relatives involves special features such as call tracking, call recording, and other functions for obvious criminal tracking purposes.  The company who provides this software to prisons, is based in Israel.  Nothing against Israel – but it seems to be a conflict of interest?  At least for functions such as finance, the military, security, software encryption, and other critical infrastructure – it shouldn’t be outsourced.  Brining an H1B genius to Charlotte, NC from India is one thing, outsourcing development to a firm in Mumbai, is another.  The difference is like, the enemy manufacturing the weapons; there’s no telling when guns will ‘misfire’ due to an ‘error.’  While this didn’t happen on a large scale in a glaringly obvious smoking gun fashion as we saw during 9/11 – subtle security breaches are so common it’s become a niche black industry, stealing and selling data on the black market.  Well they aren’t stealing it, they have it – it’s just a grey area, how data is ‘lost’ and then ‘found’ by partner companies. 

  To a large extent, the fact that ‘technology’ has been offshored & outsourced was due to bad planning and cost saving.  The majority of Intellectual Property (IP) remains in USA with companies that are heavy outsourcers like Amazon, Google, Apple, and others.  They went into China and India at a time when it was the ‘hip’ thing to do, and Steve Jobs knew a lot about India, practically being a Yogi himself (or anyway, a wannabe Yogi).  The logistic thought of moving all those machines, which would all need to be retooled, to USA is practically impossible.  But if they were once built in China – why can’t they be built in Oklahoma?  You know, there’s cheap labor in USA too.  I heard recently about someone who writes for a blog that is paid $10 for 200 words, a US Citizen.  Oh yes, factory work, the unions, the unions.. But what about California wineries and other fairly large businesses using illegals anyway?  The lines of states and countries have become so blurred, especially when ‘American’ companies may have non-US investors, an HQ office in Chicago, factory in Costa Rica, and a European sales force.  Of course, all their IP is owned by a Luxembourg based holding company which they pay ‘licensing fees’ to tax free, even though they’ve never been to Luxembourg or even know what it is (a town, right?).  Actually, Luxembourg actually participates in the Olympics.

  There’s one consideration too that Trump needs to be aware of – if he’s going to court Silicon Valley and get them to ‘bring it home’ he’s going to have to offer them some serious benefits.  USA’s biggest taxpayers, “Big Oil” (Chevron, Exxon) pay the top maximum tax every year, billions upon billions of dollars.  They don’t use tax loop holes, but they get a huge benefit of working with the government, as their customer.  They get the US military protecting their international assets, they get the CIA opening up new markets for them (and squashing the competition, literally).  They get direct access to politicians on a number of levels and issues without the need of lobbyists (although, they employ them too).  They don’t protest the government like the liberal left coast, they practically own it.  It’s another approach toward crony capitalism.

  Capital is so portable now, Trump will have to sell the billionaire class which fought against him during the campaign through their Illuminati puppet HRC.  There’s literally nothing stopping JP Morgan from moving to Canada in 2 weeks.  They don’t even have to get plane tickets, they can purchase 18 wheelers and other transport vehicles and build a small city outside of Toronto.  Not a likely scenario just to outline how easy it is for money to flow in and out of an economy in today’s world, without capital controls.  

  Best example is Forex – billions flowed quickly outside of USA to trade this new and exciting market.  A change in the Forex rules could quickly see those billions and more flow back, within a short time period of Dodd-Frank FX rules being deleted,  as
  explained in this article on Global Intel Hub.

  Join the Delete FX Rules in Dodd-Frank Petition today by
  clicking here. 

  To get a quick primer on
  what this is all about, checkout Splitting Pennies Understanding Forex – the world’s
  first “REAL” FX book.

  

  

• "Governments Are Running Out Of Excuses" Paul Craig Roberts Exposes "The Western War On Truth"

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  The “war on terror” has simultaneously been a war on truth. For fifteen years—from 9/11 to Saddam Hussein’s “weapons of mass destruction” and “al Qaeda connections,” “Iranian nukes,” “Assad’s use of chemical weapons,” endless lies about Gadaffi, “Russian invasion of Ukraine”—the governments of the so-called Western democracies have found it essential to align themselves firmly with lies in order to pursue their agendas. Now these Western governments are attempting to discredit the truthtellers who challenge their lies.

  Russian news services are under attack from the EU and Western presstitutes as purveyors of “fake news.” Abiding by its Washington master’s orders, the EU actually passed a resolution against Russian media for not following Washington’s line. Russian President Putin said that the resolution is a “visible sign of degradation of Western society’s idea of democracy.”

  As George Orwell predicted, telling the truth is now regarded by Western “democratic” governments as a hostile act. A brand new website, propornot.com, has just made its appearance condemning a list of 200 Internet websites that provide news and views at variance with the presstitute media that serves the governments’ agendas. Does propornot.com’s funding come from the CIA, the National Endowment for Democracy, George Soros?

  I am proud to say that paulcraigroberts.org is on the list.

  In the West those who disagree with the murderous and reckless policies of public officials are demonized as “Russian agents.” The president-elect of the United States himself has been designated a “Russian agent.”

  This scheme to redefine truthtellers as propagandists has backfired. The effort to discredit truthtellers has instead produced a catalogue of websites where reliable information can be found, and readers are flocking to the sites on the list. Moreover, the effort to discredit truthtellers shows that Western governments and their presstitutes are intolerant of truth and diverse opinion and are committed to forcing people to accept self-serving government lies as truth.

  Clearly, Western governments and Western media have no respect for truth, so how can the West possibly be democratic?

  The presstitute Washington Post played its assigned role in the claim promoted by Washington that the alternative media consists of Russian agents. Craig Timberg, who appears devoid of integrity or intelligence, and perhaps both, is the WaPo stooge who reported the fake news that “two teams of independent researchers” – none of whom are identified – found that the Russians exploited my gullibility, that of CounterPunch, Professor Michel Chossudosky of Global Researh, Ron Paul, Lew Rockwell, Justin Raimondo and that of 194 other websites to help “an insurgent candidate” (Trump) “claim the White House.”

  Note the term applied to Trump – “insurgent candidate.” That tells you all you need to know. You can read here what passes as “reliable reporting” in the presstitute Washington Post, and here.

  Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, which somehow escaped inclusion in The 200, unloads on Timberg and the Washington Post here.

  Western governments are running out of excuses. Since the Clinton regime, the accumulation of war crimes committed by Western governments exceed those of Nazi Germany. Millions of Muslims have been slaughtered, dislocated, and dispossessed in seven countries. Not a single Western war criminal has been held accountable.

  The despicable Washington Post is a prime apologist for these war criminals. The entire Western print and TV media is so heavily implicated in the worst war crimes in human history that, if justice ever happens, the presstitutes will stand in the dock with the Clintons, George W. Bush and Dick Cheney, Obama and their neocon operatives or handlers as the case may be.

  

  

• Is It Over? Dow Futures Drop As USDJPY Tumbles Most Since July

  After 16 days in a row without a meaningful decline, Asia trading has opened with USDJPY dumping back from almost 114.00 to 111.50 – the biggest drop since July 29th. The USD Index is down most since Trump's win but for now the moves in equities (Japanese and US) are modest (but down)…

   

  Yen is heavily bid as Asia trading opens

  

   

  The biggest drop in USDJPY since July…

  

   

  As the post-Trump surge in the dollar has seemingly stalled…

  

   

  Japanese equities are getting hit…

  

   

  but for now, the Friday spike in US equities at the close is stalling (though modestly)…

  

  

  

• 60% Of New Yorkers Are One Paycheck Away From Homelessness

  More than half of all New Yorkers don’t have enough money saved to cover them in the event of a lost job, medical emergency, or other disaster, according to a new report by the Association for Neighborhood & Housing Development.

  Click image for massive legible version)

  

   

  As The Gothamist reports, nearly 60 percent of New Yorkers lack the emergency savings necessary to cover at least three months’ worth of household expenses including food, housing, and rent, but that statistic isn’t spread evenly across the five boroughs.

  The Bronx has the highest rate of families without adequate emergency savings: in Mott Haven, Melrose, Hunts Point, Longwood, Highbridge, South Concourse, University Heights, Fordham, Belmont, and East Tremont, 75 percent of families have inadequate emergency savings. The Staten Island neighborhoods of Tottenville and Great Kills have the lowest rate, with just 41 percent of families lacking the funds necessary to cover three months’ worth of expenses.

   

  Without these savings, families who face emergencies could be at risk of eviction, foreclosure, damaged credit, and even homelessness.

   

  In Brooklyn, families in Brownsville (70%), Bed-Stuy (67%), Bushwick (68%), East New York (67%), and South Crown Heights/Prospect Heights (67%) are the most at-risk—in Manhattan, an average of 67 percent of families in Harlem, Washington Heights, and Inwood lack necessary savings.

   

  In Queens, the neighborhoods with the highest percentage of these households were Elmhurst/Corona (64%), Rockaway/Broad Channel (60%), Sunnyside/Woodside (59%), and Jackson Heights (59%).

   

  Read more here…

  As The ANHD report above shows, there are a litany of other statistics that, when looked at together, paint a picture of a neighborhood’s potential (or lack of it) for economic opportunity: incarceration, unemployment, poverty rates for each neighborhood are included, as are each neighborhood’s percentage of small businesses, percentage of households without internet, and percentage of rent-burdened households.

  Now the question is – is this fake news? is this peddling fiction? Since it sure doesn’t add up to the utopia that Clinton/Obama/Dems have spewed to their identity-divided supporters.

  

  

• Ron Paul Lashes Out At WaPo's Witch Hunt: "Expect Such Attacks To Continue"

  WaPo publishes article that says @RonPaulInstitut (and others) are "sophisticated Russian propaganda" https://t.co/r8QPFEH92X pic.twitter.com/E7wVbKY0vW

  — Ron Paul (@RonPaul) November 26, 2016

   

  Washington Post Peddles Tarring of Ron Paul Institute as Russian Propaganda, via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

  

   

  The Washington Post has a history of misrepresenting Ron Paul’s views. Last year the supposed newspaper of record ran a feature article by David A. Fahrenthold in which Fahrenthold grossly mischaracterized Paul as an advocate for calamity, oppression, and poverty — the opposite of the goals Paul routinely expresses and, indeed, expressed clearly in a speech at the event upon which Fahrenthold’s article purported to report. Such fraudulent attacks on the prominent advocate for liberty and a noninterventionist foreign policy fall in line with the newspaper’s agenda. As Future of Freedom Foundation President Jacob G. Hornberger put it in a February editorial, the Post’s agenda is guided by “the interventionist mindset that undergirds the mainstream media.”

  On Thursday, the Post published a new article by Craig Timberg complaining of a “flood” of so-called fake news supported by “a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy,” To advance this conclusion, Timberg points to PropOrNot, an organization of anonymous individuals formed this year, as having identified “more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season.” Look on the PropOrNot list. There is the Ron Paul Institute for Peace and Prosperity’s (RPI) website RonPaulInstitute.org listed among websites termed “Russian propaganda outlets.”

  What you will not find on the PropOrNot website is any particularized analysis of why the RPI website, or any website for that matter, is included on the list. Instead, you will see only sweeping generalizations from an anonymous organization. The very popular website drudgereport.com even makes the list. While listed websites span the gamut of political ideas, they tend to share in common an independence from the mainstream media.

  Timberg’s article can be seen as yet another big media attempt to shift the blame for Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton’s loss of the presidential election away from Clinton, her campaign, and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) that undermined Sen Bernie Sanders’ (I-VT) challenge to Clinton in the Democratic primary.

  The article may also be seen as another step in the effort to deter people from looking to alternative sources of information by labeling those information sources as traitorous or near-traitorous.

  At the same time, the article may be seen as playing a role in the ongoing push to increase tensions between the United States and Russia — a result that benefits people, including those involved in the military-industrial complex, who profit from the growth of US “national security” activity in America and overseas.

  This is not the first time Ron Paul and his institute has been attacked for sounding pro-Russian or anti-American. Such attacks have been advanced even by self-proclaimed libertarians.

  Expect that such attacks will continue. They are an effort to tar Paul and his institute so people will close themselves off from information Paul and RPI provide each day in furtherance of the institute’s mission to continue and expand Paul’s “lifetime of public advocacy for a peaceful foreign policy and the protection of civil liberties at home.” While peace and liberty will benefit most people, powerful interests seek to prevent the realization of these objectives. Indeed, expect attacks against RPI to escalate as the institute continues to reach growing numbers of people with its educational effort

  

  

• The U.S. Silver Market Experienced Two Signficant Developments

  

  By the SRSrocco Report,

  According to the USGS most recent report, the U.S. silver market experienced two significant developments in August.  From the data published in the USGS August Silver Mineral Industry Survey, U.S. silver production declined significantly while silver imports surged to near record highs.

  First, U.S. silver production in August is down a stunning 14% compared to the same month last year and down 10% versus the previous month:

  

  This is certainly a big decline compared to the trend earlier in the year where the average U.S. silver mine supply was approximately 95 metric tons a month.  What makes this quite surprising is that the price of silver hit a high of $20.7 in August, nearly $5 higher than during January-March.  So, why is U.S. silver production declining so much as the price continued higher??

  I called up the USGS Silver Specialist and left a message on their answering service as to the details why silver production in the U.S. declined so much in August.  However, no reply was forthcoming in the following days.

  Secondly, the U.S. silver imports hit a near record high of 581 metric tons (mt) in August versus 502 mt in July and 464 mt in June:

  

  This large jump in U.S. silver imports is interesting as demand for the iShares Silver ETF was basically flat in August.  Even though the SLV ETF silver inventories surged during the first half of the year, it was relatively flat in July and August.

  What I found also quite interesting is that the U.S. imported 55 mt of silver from Poland in August which was half of their total monthly mine supply.  Poland produces about 105 mt of silver a month.  Normally, Poland exports no more than 10-20 mt of silver a month to the United States.

  For whatever reason, U.S. silver imports surged as the price hit a record high of $20.7 in August.  As I mentioned, this silver did not make its way into the iShares Silver SLV ETF as their inventories remained flat.  So, where did it go?

  Well, according to the information from the COMEX, total inventories on the exchange increased from 153 million oz (Moz) at the beginning of August to 163 Moz by the end of the month.  Thus, the COMEX silver inventories increased 10 Moz or 311 metric tons in August.  Thus, some of the nearly 80 metric tons imported by the United States in August made its way into the COMEX silver inventories.

  Of course, that is if the COMEX holds all the silver it states in its inventories or if each silver bar doesn’t have several owners.

  Regardless, to see such a large decline in U.S. silver production in August was quite surprising.  Furthermore, the Silver Institute just put out their 2016 Interim Silver Report which they state that world silver production is forecasted to decline in 2016.

  Unfortunately, once U.S. and global oil production starts to head south in a big way, world silver production will most certainly follow suit.  More about this in future articles.

  Lastly, I will begin posting articles by The Hills Group on the oil and energy market this weekend.  Bedford Hill of The Hills Group, has a wealth of knowledge on the oil industry, their ETP Oil Model as well as other aspects of the energy industry.  I posted The Hills Group short response to the USGS announcement of a new 20 billion barrel oil resource in the Wolfcamp Shale formation in Texas.

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

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

  

• Is This The Democrats' Real Strategy In Launching Recounts?

  Over the past couple of days we’ve written numerous times about Jill Stein’s recount efforts in WI, MI and PA (see here, here and here).  And while it’s clear that Stein intends to move forward with recounts in all three states (she’s now up to $6.1mm in donations), what is unclear, and quite perplexing, is exactly why she’s pursuing these recounts in the first place.  Here are the potential justifications from Stein’s perspective, as we see them:

  1. Personal self-interest? – Obviously, No.  With less than 1% of the vote in WI, MI and PA, Stein obviously has no shot of winning any of the states in question.
  2. Hopes of recount tipping states to Hillary? – No.  Multiple experts and even Hillary campaign insiders have admitted that overturning election results with a margin of victory of several 1,000 votes is extremely unlikely.  To win, Hillary would have to flip WI, MI and PA even though she trails by ~20k, ~12k and ~70k votes in each of those states, respectively…not going to happen.
  3. Exposing voting machine hacking? – No.  Even the Obama administration has confirmed the the election was “free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective” and that votes “accurately reflect the will of the American people.”  By failing to present even a shred of evidence of vote tampering in her WI recount petition, instead choosing to focus on wild conspiracy theories, Stein effectively also admits that there was no “hacking” of voting machines.
  4. Fundraising scam to get millions in donations from disaffected Hillary voters? – Maybe.  As of right now, Stein has raised ~$6mm of the $7mm she says she needs to fund recount efforts.  Assuming Stein goes through with recounts in all three states and her cost estimates are reasonably accurate then she won’t really have that much money left over to be added to the general Green Party coffers.

  So, with no practical reason for forcing recounts, what exactly is Jill Stein up to?

  

   

  One theory is that Stein is simply hoping to disrupt the electoral college process to push the 2016 election into the hands Congress while drawing the legitimacy of Trump’s presidency into question.

  As Edward Foley, an expert in election law at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University, pointed out to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel, electors from around the country have to meet by December 19th to cast their electoral college votes.  To the extent recounts in WI, MI and PA have not been completed by that time, which experts assign a high probability that they will not, there is a chance that the electoral votes from those three states wouldn’t be counted leaving neither candidate with the required electoral votes to win the presidency (electoral count would be Trump 260 versus Hillary 232). 

  If the electoral college process fails to select a President then the election would be left in the hands of Congress to decide.  Given that the Senate and House are both controlled by Republicans, in theory they would then choose Trump/Pence, though in this election cycle nothing is a certainty.  Moreover, even if Trump/Pence are chosen, the whole process of being appointed by Congress, combined with a loss of the popular vote, would then cast a dark shadow over their administration.

  Wisconsin’s recount will likely begin late next week, once the state has tallied a cost estimate and received payment from Stein’s campaign, said Michael Haas, administrator of the Wisconsin Elections Commission.

   

  Political scientist Barry Burden, the director of the Elections Research Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, said it would be extremely difficult to complete the recount on time.

   

  “You may potentially have the state electoral votes at stake if it doesn’t get done by then,” said Haas.

   

  A lawyer with Stein’s campaign has said it wants the recount done by hand. That would take longer and require a judge’s order, Haas said.

   

  Perhaps the most important deadline is Dec. 19, when electors around the country must meet to cast their Electoral College votes, said Edward Foley, an expert in election law at Moritz College of Law at Ohio State University.

   

  “That is a hard deadline and if a state were to miss that deadline, it would be technically in jeopardy of not having its electoral votes counted,” he said.

  Of course, if this theory is even partially true then it’s extremely disturbing on a variety of levels. That a person with absolutely no standing. in terms of personal damages, and no presentation of credible evidence of wrongdoing could unilaterally disrupt a presidential election is not only a failure of Stein’s personal character but it’s a failure of our election rules and procedures that such reckless behavior would be permitted.   

  

  

• Up To Eight Italian Banks May Fail If Renzi Loses Referendum

  Just as we were concluding our write up on the return of Europe’s solvency crisis, facilitated by Donald Trump’s NATO funding demands and the end of the ECB’s unprecedented can kicking exercise, the FT reported that as many as eight of Italy’s troubled banks “risk failing” if prime minister Renzi loses next weekend’s constitutional referendum and ensuing market turbulence deters investors from recapitalizing them, citing senior bankers.

  This particular rather adverse outcome is captured by the lower-right, glowing red box in the Danske Research flowchart shown below

  

  Renzi, who has previous said he will quit if he loses the referendum although has since changed his tune, has championed a market solution to solve the problems of Italy’s €4tn banking system and avoid a vote-losing “resolution” of Italian banks under new EU rules. A resolution restructures and, if necessary, winds up a bank by imposing losses on both equity and debt investors, particularly controversial in Italy, where millions of individual investors have bought bank bonds.

  The following chart from the ECB demonstrates why a bail-in of Italian banks would be the equivalent of political suicide: the vast majority of bail-inable Italian debt is held domestically, read savers and pensioners. Should they be impaired, it would lead to an overnight social crisis.

  

   

  However, if Renzi is already on his way out post a “No” vote, which most polls have assured is the most likely outcome, he will have far less motivation to seek a private bail-out, making a bail-in far more likely, boosting the chances of an adverse social reaction. As the FT adds, in the event of a “No” vote and Mr Renzi’s exit, bankers fear protracted uncertainty during the creation of a technocratic government. Lack of clarity over a new finance minister may lethally prolong market jitters about Italy’s banks. Italian lenders have more than halved in value this year on concerns about their non-performing loans.

  For those who have followed the neverending saga of Italy’s insolvent banks, the details are familiar: the “boot” has eight banks known to be in various stages of distress: its third largest by assets, Monte dei Paschi di Siena, mid-sized banks Popolare di Vicenza, Veneto Banca and Carige, and four small banks rescued last year: Banca Etruria, CariChieti, Banca delle Marche, and CariFerrara.

  As warned here since 2011, the biggest problem facing Italy’s (and Europe’s banks) is the inordinate share of NPLs: Italy’s banks have €360bn of problem loans versus €225bn of equity on their books after successive regulators and governments failed to tackle a bloated financial system where profitability was weakened by a stagnant economy and exacerbated by fraudulent lending at several institutions.

  The problem is that a market rescue of the insolvent banks has proven nearly impossible due to fears over the full magnitude of the bad debt problem: 

  But the market solutions, including a JPMorgan plan to recapitalise Monte Paschi and the efforts of a government-sponsored private vehicle Atlante to backstop problems at smaller banks, are looking shaky in the face of expected market turbulence if a “No” vote wins, said officials and bankers.

   

  Lorenzo Codogno, a former chief economist at the Italian Treasury and founder of LC Macro Advisors, argued that the “biggest concern” in the aftermath of the referendum is its impact on “the banking sector and implications for financial stability”.

   

  “The capital increases of Italian banks due to be announced right after the referendum may become even trickier than currently perceived in the case of a “No” vote”,” Mr Codogno said.

  What is the worst case scenario (for now)? The answer: the third consecutive failure of Monte Paschi (which would likely have significant downstream consequences on all other Italian banks). Senior bankers and officials said that the worst-case scenario was where a failure of Monte Paschi’s complex €5bn recapitalisation and bad-debt restructuring demanded by regulators would translate into a wider failure of confidence in Italy and imperil a market solution for its ailing banks.

  Under this scenario, officials and senior bankers believe that all eight banks could be put into resolution. They fear that contagion from the small banks could threaten a €13bn capital increase at UniCredit, Italy’s largest bank by assets and its only globally significant financial institution, planned for early 2017.

  Should the Monte Paschi bailout deal fail, “all theories are possible” including “a resolution of the eight banks”, especially if a “No” vote led to Mr Renzi quitting office and a period of protracted political uncertainty, according to the FT. Indeed, the prospectus for the recapitalisation of Monte Paschi, which includes a debt for equity swap that begins on Monday, warns that the vote weighs on its chances of success. The Bank of Italy has warned of market volatility around the vote. Critics of Mr Renzi have accused the central bank of fear-mongering ahead of the vote.

  No matter what, a renewed focus on BMPS would likely be the catalyst for the next Italian, and shortly after, Europen banking crisis. At that point the Italian dominos would – once again – be in free fall.

  To be sure, the market has already sniffed out much of the risks with spreads on Italian government bonds versus German Bunds rising above 190 points on Friday, a level not seen since October 2014, as markets priced in expectations of turbulence.

  

  One possibility is bailing out any domestic investors who get bailed in as a last ditch workaround to prevent a full-blown banking panic:

  Bankers and officials can envisage a technocratic government agreeing with Brussels and Frankfurt a systemic “bail-in” of vulnerable Italian banks which emerged among Europe’s weakest in stress tests two years ago and again this summer. Under a bail-in, which forces losses on bond holders, Brussels could allow for some compensation for vulnerable retail investors, officials said.

  Germany, however, would be less than enthused by such an outcome. Unfortunately, no matter the political framworks, Italy’s banks are only going to deteriorate following next Sunday’s vote:

  Nicolas Véron, senior fellow at think tank Bruegel, argued that “if anything the ECB has been very lenient in addressing the system-wide banking situation [in Italy] that has been very visible since the comprehensive assessment two years ago”. “It is a very difficult moment but it is not sustainable. The problem of banking fragility is not going away. It is not something that resolves itself with time,” Mr Veron said.

  All hope is not lost, however. The Economist, the once reputable economic and financial publication half-owned by the Rothschilds, has had a terrible track record of advising its declining readers on how to vote in critical political events: from urging a “Bremain” vote this past June, to begging for a vote for Hillary on November 8, the Economist has gotten virtually every major political event wrong. Which is why the fact that over the weekend the publication came out with an article “Why Italy should vote no in its referendum” may be the best hope Renzi has to remain in power.

  

  

  

• Trump And Draghi May Bring A Return Of The "European Solvency Crisis": Barclays

  Since Drahi’s infamous “whatever it takes” warning in the summer of 2012, European bond yields have been a one way street lower, and until the recent Trumpflation rally, had tumbled to all time lows, in many cases well below 0%.  There are two catalysts, however, that may be ending Europe’s QE-driven free ride, and according to a recent report by Barclays, their names are Donald Trump and Mario Draghi.

  First, when looking at the impact of Trump, Barclays notes that his election as US president may have created an additional burden on European budgets: defence spending.

  The president-elect has suggested that European NATO members should reach the 2% GDP military spending target, as pledged under the NATO treaty. In 2015, the 22 EU countries that are also NATO members spent on average only 1.4% of GDP on defence, or 1.3% excluding the UK, while the US spent 3.6%. This is a shortfall of USD94bn, or 0.7% of the total GDP of EU-NATO members.

  Those countries whose debt to GDP ratios already exceed 100% (Italy, Spain and Portugal) are also the ones with low defence spending and would need to add 0.7-1.1% of GDP in defence spending if they were to reach the 2% target as shown in the figure below.

  

  In Trump carried out his threat and enforced a mandatory topping of contributions, and Italy had to boost its annual defence spending permanently to 2% of GDP (all else equal), its primary surplus would more than halve, from 1.7% currently to 0.7% of GDP. For France, Fillon and Juppe are arguing to increase military spending progressively to 2% of GDP by 2025, while they do not envisage any significant change in stance towards NATO.

  It’s not just Trump’s NATO policies: there is also the impact of the ECB’s QE which sooner or later will be tapered off. That, however, will result in the tide going out, and exposing just how naked Europe’s economies have been all along.

  As Barclays also writes, “the ECB‘s QE has been an important driver of EA growth and public debt dynamics, but at the cost of moral hazard.”

   Barclays finds that QE-generated growth, more so than low interest rates, has significantly contributed to a slowdown in the rise of the public debt, particularly in Italy and Spain. As shown in Figure 2, public debt would have risen an alarming 12% in these countries without QE.

  

  The British bank’s analysis also suggests that those countries with the most significant bond market pressure also pursued the most reforms. But rather than using the temporary relief created by QE to reform and repay public debt, fiscal policy in Italy and Spain became expansionary and reforms ground to a halt. In other words, as we warned all along, all QE does is kick the ball into the ECB’s court, while giving lazy, incompetent politicians the justification to do, well, nothing – certainly nothing that may threaten their careers – and simply watch as the stock maret rises, giving the false impression that “things are good.”

  Debt sustainability issues will likely therefore resurface not only due to higher interest but also, critically, because long-term growth prospects are poor without reforms, and it is now entirely recognized that it was the ECB’s fault why Europe’s nations – all badly in need of structural reform – abandoned all such efforts; after all why bother when “Mr. Chairman will get to work.”

  Here are Barclay’s details on why solvency concerns will re-emerge for Europe the moment Draghi even whispers a hint that QE is about to get tapered, let along end:

  With funding costs at historical lows and QE expected to remain in place for the foreseeable future, few investors are worrying about the long-term sovereign solvency of the euro area. But this could change. Draghi reminded us of the obvious in September, namely that “QE is not forever”. When the tide turns, many euro area sovereigns may very well be confronted with higher “r-g”, not only because of higher r (as monetary policy tightens) but, critically, because of low g, as long-term growth prospects are dismal without reforms.

   

  Compounding the problem of sensitivity to the assumptions (for r and g) is the issue of interdependence across variables. Primary balances and fiscal stances in general affect both interest rates and growth rates while growth rates affect the fiscal performance. If it is indeed the case that low interest rates – supported by ultra-accommodative monetary policy – delays necessary fiscal consolidation and supply-side reforms, arguably low r means low future g. Growth plays a critical role into debt dynamics through direct and indirect effects: the largest public debt contribution of QE came from the growth channel. If our assessment is correct, and governments fail to raise the long-run growth rates of their economies owing to complacency, it is plausible that the European economy will remain stuck in a low-growth equilibrium, where permanent QE is required to keep funding costs down, which coincidentally leads to delay in important reforms.

  There is another problem, in fact the biggest problem of all from day one: massive debt loads, which were never reduced in the aftermath of the great financial crisis, and which need soaring prices to be reflated away, however in the process of rising rates, those same debt balances effectively assures a financial crisis. Quote Barclays:

  The political landscape across the euro area argues against very high primary balances; in fact, we have seen how the primary balance has recently worsened and fiscal accommodation has increased. For Italy, public debt is currently at 134% of GDP, the primary balance at 1.5% of GDP, nominal r is at c. 3.2% and g is c. 1.5% (i.e., r-g = 1.7%). A small increase of r-g to say 2 or 2.5% would put debt/GDP along a rapidly growing path.

   

  In theory high debts do not necessarily imply a sovereign crisis, especially if the government spends its money wisely and collects taxes efficiently. But if it does not, solvency concerns could re-emerge, sovereign interest rates quickly rise above the average funding costs, and the 2010-11 adverse market dynamics could return. The big difference is that this time there would be far less monetary, fiscal, and political space to confront them.

  Two conclusions: i) as Barclays puts it, “the great fiscal success of QE could therefore turn out to be its biggest downfall in due course” and ii) everything that has happened since Draghi’s infamous “whatever it takes” gambit nearly 5 years ago, has been one great can-kicking detour, and the moment he market even gets a whiff that Draghi will punt on record QE, Europe’s crisis is back with a bang.

  On, and there is the whole “Trump” wildcard, not only as a result the wildcards from his NATO funding policies, but also because should the global reflation scare accelerate, then the ECB may have no choice but to tighten/taper/end QE sooner than anticipated as inflation worries spread to Europe, which in turn will catalyze the next leg of the Europea solvency crisis, which is inevitable as Europe failed miserably to engage in reform in the five years since Draghi’s words pushed European interest rates to all time lows.

  

  

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• The Washington Post: Useful-Idiot Shills For A Failed, Frantic Status Quo That Has Lost Control Of The Narrative

  Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

  Don't you think it fair and reasonable that anyone accusing me of being a shill for Russian propaganda ought to read my ten books in their entirety and identify the sections that support their slanderous accusation?

  I was amused to find my site listed on the now-infamous list of purportedly Russian-controlled propaganda sites cited by The Washington Post. I find it amusing because I invite anyone to search my 3,600-page archive of published material over the past decade (which includes some guest posts and poems) and identify a single pro-Russia or pro-Russian foreign policy entry.

  If anything, my perspective is pro-US dollar, pro-liberty, pro-open markets, pro-local control, pro-free-press, pro-innovation, and pro-opportunities to rebuild America's abandoned, decaying localized economies: in other words, the exact opposite of Russian propaganda.

  My "crime" is a simple one: challenging the ruling elite's narrative. Labeling all dissent "enemy propaganda" is of course the classic first phase of state-sponsored propaganda and the favorite tool of well-paid illiberal apologists for an illiberal regime.

  Labeling everyone who dissents or questions the ruling elite's narrative as tools of an enemy power is classic McCarthy-era witch-hunting, i.e. a broad-brush way of marginalizing and silencing critics with an accusation that is easy to fabricate but difficult to prove.

  Such unsupported slander is a classic propaganda technique. It has more in common with Nazi propaganda than with real journalism.

  The real useful-idiot shills are the editors and hacks paid by the Washington Post, who are busy penning articles such as "Why the electoral college should choose Hillary Clinton". Isn't this fundamentally a call to over-ride the Constitutional framework of the republic's democracy?

  In other words, the ruling elite's candidate lost, so let's subvert democracy to "right this terrible wrong" that was wrought by fed-up debt-serfs.

  Substitution is a useful technique to reveal propaganda: if Trump had lost by a thin margin, would the The Washington Post publish an article "Why the electoral college should choose Donald Trump"?

  Any site suggesting such an outlandish subversion of American democracy would of course by labeled Russian-controlled propaganda by The Washington Post. In other words, it's OK for the organs of Imperial Propaganda to call for the subversion of the Constitution, but if someone else dares to do so, you know the drill: they're labeled a tool of Russian propaganda.

  Just as a reminder, this is the status quo / ruling elite's handiwork The Washington Post shills/propagandists support: a status quo of institutionalized privilege, corruption and systemically soaring wealth and income inequality:

  The institutionalized impoverishment of non-elite students:

  

  The institutionalized impoverishment of the bottom 99.9%:

  

  The institutionalized impoverishment of everyone below the protected technocrat-insider class of shills, apparatchiks and professionals:

  

  This is what The Washington Post is pushing: a parasitic, predatory, exploitive, ruinously corrupt and venal ruling class and its army of apologists/lackeys/factotums.

  The fundamental source of the Post's hysterical accusations is the ruling elite has lost control of the narrative. This is the source of the mainstream media's angst-tinged hysteria and frantic efforts to marginalize and discredit any dissenting narratives that undermine or question the power of a corrupted, self-serving ruling elite that has failed the nation and its citizens.

  This is why Donald Trump was routinely labeled a Russian shill by the mainstream media during the campaign. Regardless of what you think of Trump or Clinton, what can we say about a supposedly responsible media that so cavalierly spews fact-free accusations of foreign control? This is the height of irresponsible propaganda being passed off as "journalism."

  Free speech implicitly carries the responsibility of the reader/listener/viewer to make a critical assessment of the content, its source and its aim: who benefits if we accept the narrative being pushed?

  The delicious irony of The Washington Post's hysterical campaign to smear dissenters as tools of Russian propaganda is that it only serves to discredit the Post itself. For my part, I invite you to read all ten of my books and make your own critical assessment of the content and answer these questions:

  1. Did you find even a single passage in the thousands of pages that favored Russian policies?

  2. Did you find any passages that favored domestic resilience and self-reliance, localized economic development, and the promotion of innovations that favored the many rather than the few?

  3. Don't you think it fair and reasonable that anyone accusing me of being a shill for Russian propaganda ought to read my ten books in their entirety and identify the sections that support their slanderous accusation?

  If they can't support it, then isn't their accusation the very propaganda they claim to be identifying?

  Just as a reminder: here's my chart of the Ministry of Propaganda (from 2007):

  

  When Does "Managed Perception" Become Reality? (May 1, 2011)

  *  *  *

  Join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. My new book is #8 on Kindle short reads -> politics and social science: Why Our Status Quo Failed and Is Beyond Reform ($3.95 Kindle ebook, $8.95 print edition) For more, please visit the book's website.

  

  

• College Students Demand Police Investigate "Suck It Up, Pussies" Post-It Note As Hate Crime

  Today we learn of yet another campus full of disaffected Hillary snowflakes who were triggered by a post-it note suggesting that they should stop whining about the election and just “suck it up, pussies.”  This latest example comes to us from Edgewood College in the ultra-liberal bastion of Madison, Wisconsin via Campus Reform.

  Apparently the simple post-it note was determined to be a “hate crime” by the college’s “diversity offices” and students with knowledge of the incident were encouraged to contact campus police.  To our complete shock, a message from Edgewood’s Vice President for Student Development pinned the blame for the “hate crime” on Trump, saying that it is part of a growing trend of “covert micro-aggressions and overt macro-aggressions” that have “taken on new fervor in higher education since our national election.”

  “Over the past week, there have been increasing reports of hateful acts on college and university campuses across the country.  Covert micro-aggressions and overt macro-aggressions appear to have taken on new fervor in higher education since our national election.  The frequency, boldness, and severity with which hateful acts have been occurring has, for many, signaled a new era of intolerance, fear, and mistrust in higher education.”

   

  “A great deal of fear, sadness, and anger among students, faculty, and staff resulted, especially for those that gather in the [office space].  The message was hateful and harmful toward members of our community. It violated every value that this institution considers to be at its core.”

  Here is the full letter sent to Edgewood students:

  

   

  In conclusion, we would simply say:

  

  

  

• Even Obama Slams Stein's Recounts: The Results "Accurately Reflect The Will Of The American People"

  Jill Stein’s credibility seems to be sinking fast as both the Obama administration and the Clinton campaign have released statements this morning indicating they’ve failed to uncover a single shred of election hacking evidence.  The Obama administration confirmed their confidence in the election results via comments made to the New York Times saying that the election was “free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective” and that votes “accurately reflect the will of the American people.”

  The Obama administration said on Friday that despite Russian attempts to undermine the presidential election, it has concluded that the results “accurately reflect the will of the American people.”

   

  The statement came as liberal opponents of Donald J. Trump, some citing fears of vote hacking, are seeking recounts in three states — Wisconsin, Michigan and Pennsylvania — where his margin of victory was extremely thin.

   

  In its statement, the administration said, “The Kremlin probably expected that publicity surrounding the disclosures that followed the Russian government-directed compromises of emails from U.S. persons and institutions, including from U.S. political organizations, would raise questions about the integrity of the election process that could have undermined the legitimacy of the president-elect.”

   

  That was a reference to the breach of the Democratic National Committee’s email system, and the leak of emails from figures like John D. Podesta, Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman.

   

  “Nevertheless, we stand behind our election results, which accurately reflect the will of the American people,” it added.

   

  The recount efforts have generated pushback by experts who said it would be enormously difficult to hack voting machines on a large scale. The administration, in its statement, confirmed reports from the Department of Homeland Security and intelligence officials that they did not see “any increased level of malicious cyberactivity aimed at disrupting our electoral process on Election Day.”

   

  The administration said it remained “confident in the overall integrity of electoral infrastructure, a confidence that was borne out.” It added: “As a result, we believe our elections were free and fair from a cybersecurity perspective.”

  

   

  The statement from the White House was followed by a statement from Hillary’s general counsel, Marc Elias, who confirmed that they too “had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology.”

  Because we had not uncovered any actionable evidence of hacking or outside attempts to alter the voting technology, we had not planned to exercise this option ourselves, but now that a recount has been initiated in Wisconsin, we intend to participate in order to ensure the process proceeds in a manner that is fair to all sides. If Jill Stein follows through as she has promised and pursues recounts in Pennsylvania and Michigan, we will take the same approach in those states as well. We do so fully aware that the number of votes separating Donald Trump and Hillary Clinton in the closest of these states—Michigan—well exceeds the largest margin ever overcome in a recount.

  Of course, while Stein reiterated numerous allegations of foreign
  hacking that were well circulated, yet never officially linked to a specific source, before the election, her petition didn’t offer a single shred of actual, tangible evidence that the election results in Wisconsin were in anyway tampered with. 

  In August 2016, it was widely reported that foreign operators breached voter registration databases in at least two states and stole hundreds of thousands of voter records.

   

  Around that time, hacker infiltrated the e-mail systems of the Democratic National Committee and a campaign official for Democratic presidential candidate Hillary Clinton.  These e-mails were then published online. 

   

  On October 7, 2016, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and the Office of the Director of National Intelligence on Election Security issued a joint statement regarding these breaches.  The statement reads, in pertinent part, as follows:  “The U.S. Intelligence Community (USCI) is confident” that there have been “recent compromises of e-mails from US persons and institutions, including from US political organizations.”  It also states that “[t]here thefts and disclosures are intended to interfere with the US election process” and that “similar tactics and techniques [have been used] across Europe and Eurasia…to influence public opinion there.”  In the statement, DHS urges state election officials “to be vigilant and seek cybersecurity assistance” from that agency in preparation for the presidential election.

   

  In Wisconsin, there is evidence of voting irregularities in the 2016 presidential election that indicate potential tampering with electronic voting systems.  Specifically, there was a significant increase in the number of absentee voters as compared to the last general election.  This significant increase could be attributed to a breach of the state’s electronic voter database.

   

  The well-documented and conclusive evidence of foreign interference in the presidential race before the election, along with the irregularities observed in Wisconsin, call into question the results and indicate the possibility that a widespread breach occurred.

  

   

  Even her so-called “computer science expert” offered up nothing more than baseless theories on “plausible” explanations of how the Wisconsin results may have been hacked.  Sure, because it’s just so impossible to believe that a flawed candidate with multiple ongoing FBI criminal investigations may have simply lost the election.   
  

  

   

  So, the question becomes how will Jill Stein respond now that the establishment seems to be turning on her and what exactly will happen to the $5.8mm she raised if recount efforts are suspended?  Somehow we suspect the disaffected Hillary donors won’t simply get their money back.

  

  * * *

  As an update, after coming under attack from almost everyone today for her unfounded recount crusade, Jill Stein has lashed out against her critics with a tweet storm of her own.  Among other things, Stein vowed to file recount petitions in any state where the applicable deadlines had not passed and lashed out at the other parties for not participating amid “so many questionable results.” Might we respectfully suggest, Ms. Stein, that more people may take an interest in your efforts if you could offer up a single shred of evidence to support your wild accusations.

  Has anyone wondered why no other campaign has requested a recount with so many questionable results? #Recount2016

  — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) November 26, 2016

  I will do a recount in any state where the deadline has not passed. Help my staff find state deadlines: https://t.co/VsruD0r8FR #Recount2016

  — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) November 26, 2016

   

  Apparently, suggestions that Stein is merely serving as a pawn of the Clinton campaign also struck a nerve.

  Why would Hillary Clinton—who conceded the election to Donald Trump—want #Recount2016? You cannot be on-again, off-again about democracy.

  — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) November 26, 2016

  Why would Hillary Clinton—who holds “public” and “private” positions—want to engage in something as transparent as #Recount2016?

  — Dr. Jill Stein (@DrJillStein) November 26, 2016

   

  Finally, perhaps the following tweet sums up the whole ludicrous situation the best:

  Jill Stein took advantage of the massive desperation of the liberal base and bilked them out of millions. Congrats! LOL
  Best election ever!

  — RockPrincess (@Rockprincess818) November 25, 2016

  

  

• More Lies From The 'Experts': "Get Trump At All Costs"

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  As flyover America has been suffering economically for many years, these Americans were immune to the oligarchy’s anti-Trump propaganda. However, everyone else in the country was taken in by the propaganda – liberals, progressives, the remnant of the leftwing, and even Patrick Martin of the World Socialist Web Site who normally writes intelligent commentary.

  Like Green candidate Jill Stein, Patrick Martin wants a vote recount that could be manipulated to put Hillary in the White House. Apparently, Martin is unfamiliar with Hillary and her record of war crimes. Instead of expressing relief that the agent of the military/security complex, who has threatened military action against Russia and demonizes the Russian president as “the new Hitler,” was not elected, Martin unloads on Trump who has stated his goal of reduced tensions between nuclear powers. Trump’s government, Martin writes, “will undoubtedly be the most reactionary, militaristic and dictatorial government in American history.”

  If war and dictatorship aren’t enough, Daniel Altman tells us that Trump will bankrupt us as well. We are on our way to debtors’ prison, says Daniel Altman in Foreign Policy:

  Americans already know what happens when this strategy comes to Washington. Reagan and the younger Bush let the nation live beyond its means, too, stealing from legions of unborn Americans to fund their grand ideas. They also stole from as-yet unelected presidents; whoever followed them in power would be the ones to pay the piper. Their own party would return when times were good again.

   

  A combination of rapidly rising deficits and higher interest rates could make the nation’s debt unsustainable even within Trump’s four-year term — and that’s if his stimulus works. If he stays true to his record in business, another bankruptcy could be on the horizon. This time, though, there won’t be any second chances, and all Americans will be left holding the bag.

  Altman doesn’t seem to know any more about his subject than Martin knows about Hillary. Altman writes as if the tax and spending policies of Ronald Reagan and “the younger Bush” are responsible for the national debt by letting the nation “live beyond its means, stealing from legions of unborn Americans to fund their grand ideas.”

  As economist J.W. Mason has shown, Reagan did not increase the national debt. During the Reagan years, the growth in the national debt was due to the high interest rates imposed by the Federal Reserve (in my opinion in the Establishment’s attempt to wreck the Reagan program).
  Mason shows that it was the Fed-imposed increase in interest rates on the debt that raised the national debt.

  The standard historical narrative about President Ronald Reagan's budgets goes like this: He slashed taxes for the rich, spent a ton of money on the military, and the national debt exploded.

   

  Now, that is a fair description of his policies. But it turns out Reagan may have gotten a bad rap on the debt charge.

   

  In fact, the major culprit was another, often overlooked player: interest payments. Just why exactly this happened is extremely interesting, and also carries very important lessons for budgetary and monetary policy today. Put short, the conventional wisdom about debt and monetary policy is almost entirely wrong.

   

  So when centrist types argue for austerity or greater interest rates as some kind of self-evident proposition, remember Reagan's bum rap. Remember, too, that the whole point of all this budget and monetary policy is to facilitate the business of human life, and not the other way around.

  In contrast, despite the Fed’s accommodation of the Oligarchy’s puppet, Obama, with zero interest rates, holds the record for the greatest increase in US national debt.

  Obama added $8 trillion dollars to the national debt…:

  One way to measure the debt by President is to sum all his budget deficits.

   

  That's because the President is responsible for his budget priorities. Each year's deficit takes into account budgeted spending and anticipated revenue from proposed tax cuts or hikes.

   

  But there's a difference between the deficit and the debt by President.

   

  That's because all Presidents can employ a sleight of hand to reduce the appearance of the deficit. They can borrow internally from other government sources. For example, the Social Security Trust Fund has run a surplus since 1987. That's because there were more working people contributing via payroll taxes than retired people withdrawing benefits. The Fund invests its surplus in U.S. Treasury notes. The President can reduce the deficit by spending these funds instead of issuing new Treasuries.

   

  *  *  *

   

  Barack Obama – The national debt grew the most dollar-wise during President Obama's two terms. He added $7.917 trillion, a 68 percent increase, in seven years. Obama's budgets included the economic stimulus package. It added $787 billion by cutting taxes, extending unemployment benefits, and funding job-creating public works projects. The Obama tax cuts added $858 billion to the debt in two years. Obama's budget included increased defense spending to between $700 billion and $800 billion a year.

   

  Federal income was down, thanks to lower tax receipts from the 2008 financial crisis. He also sponsored the Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act. It was designed to reduce the debt by $143 billion over ten years. But these savings didn't show up until the later years. For more, see National Debt Under Obama.

   

  George W. Bush – President Bush added the second greatest amount to the debt, at $5.849 trillion. But that was a 101 percent increase to the debt. It was $5.8 trillion on September 30, 2001. That's the end of FY 2001, which was President Clinton's last budget. Bush responded to the 9/11 attacks by launching the War on Terror. That drove military spending to record levels of between $600-$800 billion a year. It included the Iraq War, which cost $807.5 billion. President Bush also responded to the 2001 recession by passing EGTRRA and JGTRRA. These were known as the Bush tax cuts and they further reduced revenue. He approved a $700 billion bailout package for banks to combat the 2008 global financial crisis.  Both Presidents Bush and Obama had to contend with higher mandatory spending for Social Security and Medicare. For more, see President Obama Compared to President Bush Policies.

   

  Franklin D. Roosevelt – President Roosevelt increased the debt the most percentage-wise. Although he only added $236 billion, this was a 1,048 percent increase over the $23 billion debt level left by President Hoover's last budget. Of course, the Great Depression took an enormous bite out of revenues. The New Deal cost billions. But FDR's debt major contribution to the debt was World War II spending. He added $209 billion to the debt between 1942-1945. For more, see FDR Economic Policies.

   

  Woodrow Wilson – President Wilson was the second largest contributor to the debt percentage-wise. Although he only added $21 billion, this was a 727 percent increase over the $2.9 billion debt level of his predecessor. Wilson had to pay for World War I. In fact, the Second Liberty Bond Act was enacted during his Presidency, giving Congress the right to adopt the national debt ceiling.

  So, simply put, the leftist lies continue in their effort to besmirch the president-elect "at all costs."

  

  

• These Are The 48 Organizations That Now Have Access To Every Brit's Browsing History

  Last week, in a troubling development for privacy advocates everywhere, we reported that the UK has passed the “snooper charter” effectively ending all online privacy. Now, the mainstream media has caught on and appears to be displeased. As AP writes today, “after months of wrangling, Parliament has passed a contentious new snooping law that gives authorities — from police and spies to food regulators, fire officials and tax inspectors — powers to look at the internet browsing records of everyone in the country.”

  For those who missed our original reports, here is the new law in a nutshell: it requires telecom companies to keep records of all users’ web activity for a year, creating databases of personal information that the firms worry could be vulnerable to leaks and hackers. Civil liberties groups say the law establishes mass surveillance of British citizens, following innocent internet users from the office to the living room and the bedroom. They are right.

  While Edward Snowden previously blasted the law, none other than Tim Berners-Lee, the man credited with inventing World Wide Web, tweeted news of the law’s passage with the words: “Dark, dark days.”

  Coming at a time when the mainstream media is lashing out at non-traditional websites, which it brands either with the derogatory “altright”, or simply slams as “Russian propaganda” to deflect from the fact that the MSM has been exposed as being a PR arm of the ruling establishment, the Investigatory Powers Bill-  called the “snoopers’ charter” by critics –  was passed by UK Parliament this month after more than a year of debate and amendments, and with its passage shifts “1984” from the fiction to the non-fiction section, as the formation of the surveillance police state is now effectively complete.

  The charter will become law when it receives the formality of royal assent next week but – as AP notes – big questions remain about how it will work, and the government acknowledges it could be 12 months before internet firms have to start storing the records.

  “It won’t happen in a big bang next week,” Home Office official Chris Mills told a meeting of internet service providers on Thursday. “It will be a phased program of the introduction of the measures over a year or so.”

  The government says the new law “ensures powers are fit for the digital age,” replacing a patchwork of often outdated rules and giving law-enforcement agencies the tools to fight terrorism and serious crime.

  In a move right out of the Soviet Union’s darkest days (which never even imagned central planning to the extent that modern “developed market” central bankers have unleashed this decade), the law requires telecommunications companies to store for a year the web histories known as internet connection records — a list of websites each person has visited and the apps and messaging services they used, though not the individual pages they looked at or the messages they sent.

  The government has called that information the modern equivalent of an itemized phone bill. But critics say it’s more like a personal diary. Julian Huppert, a former Liberal Democrat lawmaker who opposed the bill, said it “creates a very intrusive database.”

  “People may have been to the Depression Alliance website, or a marriage guidance website, or an abortion provider’s website, or all sorts of things which are very personal and private,” he said.

  Officials won’t need a warrant to access the data, and the list of bodies that can see it includes not just the police and intelligence services, but government departments, revenue and customs officials and even the Food Standards Agency. “My worry is partly about their access,” Huppert said. “But it’s much more deeply about the prospects for either hacking or people selling information on.”

  Even worse, the new law also makes official — and legal — British spies’ ability to hack into devices and harvest vast amounts of bulk online data, much of it from outside the U.K. In doing so, it both acknowledges and sets limits on the secretive mass-snooping schemes exposed by Edward Snowden.

  * * *

  Which government agencies have access to the internet history of any British citizen? Here is the answer courtesy of blogger Chris Yuo, who has compiled the list:

  • Metropolitan police force
  • City of London police force
  • Police forces maintained under section 2 of the Police Act 1996
  • Police Service of Scotland
  • Police Service of Northern Ireland
  • British Transport Police
  • Ministry of Defence Police
  • Royal Navy Police
  • Royal Military Police
  • Royal Air Force Police
  • Security Service
  • Secret Intelligence Service
  • GCHQ
  • Ministry of Defence
  • Department of Health
  • Home Office
  • Ministry of Justice
  • National Crime Agency
  • HM Revenue & Customs
  • Department for Transport
  • Department for Work and Pensions
  • NHS trusts and foundation trusts in England that provide ambulance services
  • Common Services Agency for the Scottish Health Service
  • Competition and Markets Authority
  • Criminal Cases Review Commission
  • Department for Communities in Northern Ireland
  • Department for the Economy in Northern Ireland
  • Department of Justice in Northern Ireland
  • Financial Conduct Authority
  • Fire and rescue authorities under the Fire and Rescue Services Act 2004
  • Food Standards Agency
  • Food Standards Scotland
  • Gambling Commission
  • Gangmasters and Labour Abuse Authority
  • Health and Safety Executive
  • Independent Police Complaints Commissioner
  • Information Commissioner
  • NHS Business Services Authority
  • Northern Ireland Ambulance Service Health and Social Care Trust
  • Northern Ireland Fire and Rescue Service Board
  • Northern Ireland Health and Social Care Regional Business Services Organisation
  • Office of Communications
  • Office of the Police Ombudsman for Northern Ireland
  • Police Investigations and Review Commissioner
  • Scottish Ambulance Service Board
  • Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission
  • Serious Fraud Office
  • Welsh Ambulance Services National Health Service Trust

  In other words, everyone.

  * * *

  While privacy groups unsucessfully battled to stop the new legislation, and now will challenge it in court, public opposition has been largely muted in part because the bill’s passage has been overshadowed by Britain’s vote to leave the European Union and the scandalous upheaval that has followed.

  How did that old saying go… “don’t let a crisis go to waste.” Well, the UK is now independent from Europe, and in the process its population quietly lost all of its internet privacy.

  Renate Samson, chief executive of the group Big Brother Watch, said it would take time for the full implications of the law to become clear to the public.

  “We now live in a digital world. We are digital citizens,” Samson said. “We have no choice about whether or not we engage online. This bill has fundamentally changed how we are able to privately and securely communicate with one another, communicate with business, communicate with government and live an online life. And that’s a real, profound concern.”

  It remains to be seen if the UK’s citizens will be able overturn the law once it does become clear to the public what has just happened.

  

  

• Who Pays What Taxes In The US

  Every presidential election brings with it a renewed debate on taxes: should tax rates be increased or decreased (which in turn forces economists to break out their textbooks to brush up on their Laffer curve definitions)? Traditionally, the question eventually boils down to one thing: what should the tax treatment of the “rich” be: should the wealthy pay more or less in taxes?

  Why the particular focus on the rich? The answer is simple: while those American who declare $500,000 and above in income represent less than 1% of total tax returns, they account for a quarter of taxable income and – more importantly – are responsible for 37% of government revenues collected through individual income taxes.

  

  And with approximately $1.55 trillion in individual income tax expected to be collected in 2016, this means that less than 1% of US taxpayers will be responsible for more than a third, or roughly $575 billion in government revenue, nearly double what corporate income taxes ($300 billion) are expected to bring in.

  To any readers surprised by this, here are further details from the St Louis Fed’s Fernando Martin and his recent note “A Closer Look at Federal Taxes“

  * * *

  The first table provides a snapshot of revenues collected by the U.S. federal government for fiscal year 2016. Total revenue was $3.3 trillion, or roughly 18 percent of gross domestic product (GDP). Almost half of this revenue comes from individual income taxes. About one-third comes from payroll taxes, which are collected to fund Social Security, Medicare, and other social insurance benefits. Only 9 percent of total revenue comes from corporate income taxes, while another 9 percent comes from various sources (e.g., excise taxes, estate and gift taxes, and custom duties). These proportions have been stable in recent years.

  

  Given the prominent role individual income taxes play in financing the federal government, this essay inspects these taxes in more detail. The second table breaks down individual income taxes by adjusted gross income brackets and four categories. The first three are relative to total filings: the share of returns; the share of taxable income generated (note that about one-third of returns report zero taxable income); and the share of tax revenue collected. The final category is the implied average tax rate. The data are for fiscal year 2014, the latest available for tax revenue by income levels. Notably, the data do not distinguish between single or joint (filed with a spouse) tax returns.

  The differences in individual income tax collection at the extremes of the income distribution are striking. Filers earning less than $50,000 annually account for nearly two-thirds of all tax returns but contribute 7 percent of total revenue. Around half of the filers in this group report zero taxable income4; for those with taxable income, the average income tax rate is 12 percent.5 In contrast, filers making at least $1 million annually account for 0.3 percent of all tax returns and contribute 27 percent of total revenue. Their average tax rate—31 percent—is almost triple that of filers in the lowest income bracket.

  Due to the progressive nature of the U.S. income tax code, average tax rates increase up the income ladder. Each income group’s contribution to total revenue, however, depends not only on their tax rate but also on the number of filers in the group and how much income they generate. For example, tax filers earning between $100,000 and $199,999 annually face an average income tax rate of 17 percent but contribute 22 percent of revenue, very close to the proportion contributed by those earning $1 million or more. The reason is that there are many more filers in the former group (12 percent versus 0.3 percent), who together generate about one-quarter of total taxable income (versus 17 percent for the highest earners).

  These properties of the income distribution have profound implications for the likely effects of tax reform. For example, tax cuts for the middle class, even minor ones, would imply big declines in revenue; and collecting significantly more revenue from the rich would necessitate large tax hikes.

  To illustrate this point, consider a simple back-of-the-envelope calculation. Suppose the desire is to cover the deficit by increasing the tax rates of the top income earners. The current deficit estimate for fiscal year 2016 is $590 billion. Income taxes collected from filers earning $500,000 or more annually (the top 1 percent) add up to roughly the same amount as the deficit. The tax rate of this group would need to double to collect enough revenue from the group to cover the deficit. Specifically, their average tax rate would need to increase from 30 percent to around 60 percent. A tax increase of this magnitude, however, might decrease the incentives for high-income earners to work as hard and encourage them to seek new ways to shield their income. Hence, in practice, the tax rate may need to be raised further and even then might not be enough to raise all the additional revenue.

  Individual income taxes only partially reveal how the burden of federal taxation is distributed among different income groups. For low-income earners, payroll taxes constitute a significant portion of tax liabilities. The current Social Security and Medicaid withholding rates are 6.20 percent and 1.45 percent, respectively (in addition, employers must also match these contributions). Thus, the average tax rate faced by an individual making less than $50,000 annually and reporting positive taxable income is 12 percent in income taxes plus 7.65 percent; that is, almost 20 percent of income. Since wages contribute less to total income for higher-income earners, payroll taxes play a less significant role at the top. In other words, payroll taxes are regressive. Note, however, that the benefits they provide are progressive, as-high income earners rely more heavily on other sources of funding for retirement and healthcare (e.g., a 401(k) retirement plan).

  

  

• Iran Loses Nuclear Device, Sparks GCC Concerns

  The Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC) is concerned over a missing radioactive device from Iran’s Bushehr nuclear reactor, Saudi-owned Arab newspaper Asharq al-Awsat reported on Thursday.

  

  Furthermore, as OilPrice.com's Tsvetana Paraskova notes, aside from the security concerns, at the forefront in the GCC’s mind is what impact the radioactive device – wherever it may be today – could have on water supplies.

  According to the newspaper, the device went missing after the car transporting it was stolen. Thankfully, the vehicle was recovered, but the radioactive nuclear device was not so lucky.

  The GCC has contacted the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) over the incident – both organizations are concerned that Iran’s nuclear program may pollute the waters in the Gulf, Asharq al-Awsat quoted GCC Emergency Management Center chairman, Adnan al-Tamimi, as saying.

  Most members of the GCC – which includes Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, the UAE, Qatar, Bahrain, and Oman – desalinate sea water from the Gulf. If contamination from the device were to reach desalination stations, an already critical situation becomes even more critical.

  The missing device is set to lose half of its power after 74 days of inactivity, Tamimi said, noting that it still should be handled with care even after that period.

  Speaking to Asharq al-Awsat, the Arab official criticized Iran’s low security and safety levels at the Bushehr reactor, adding that the lack of Iranian transparency about its nuclear program adds further concerns and anxiousness for the Arab Gulf states.

  Iran’s nuclear program has recently entered the spotlight again after Donald Trump won the U.S. presidential election. In March of this year, Trump said in a speech addressing the American Israel Public Affairs Committee:

  “My number-one priority is to dismantle the disastrous deal with Iran.”

  If Trump were willing and able to deliver on that promise by tearing up the deal, Iran would once again impact the oil market, dragging down Iran’s oil exports from the near-pre-sanctions levels it has almost reached in recent months.

  Last week, the U.S. House of Representatives voted overwhelmingly in favor of extending the Iran Sanctions Act (ISA) from 1996 through December 31, 2026. The act—adopted long before the most recent international sanctions against Tehran—was aimed at punishing investments in the Iranian energy industry and deterring the country from pursuing the development of nuclear weapons.

  Last week’s bill to extend the ISA after its expiry next month still needs Senate approval and President Obama’s signature to become law.

  

  

• Towards An 'America First' Trump Trade Policy

  Submitted by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

  Donald Trump’s election triumph is among the more astonishing in history.

  Yet if he wishes to become the father of a new “America First” majority party, he must make good on his solemn promise:

  To end the trade deficits that have bled our country of scores of thousands of factories, and to create millions of manufacturing jobs in the USA.

  Fail here, and those slim majorities in Michigan, Pennsylvania and Wisconsin disappear.

  The president-elect takes credit for jawboning William Clay Ford to keep his Lincoln plant in Louisville. He is now jawboning Carrier air conditioning to stay in Indiana and not move to Mexico.

  Good for him. But these are baby steps toward ending the $800 billion trade deficits in goods America runs annually, or bringing back factories and creating millions of new manufacturing jobs in the USA.

  The NAFTA Republicans tell us the plants and jobs are never coming back, that we live in a globalized world, that production will now be done where it can be done cheapest — in Mexico, China, Asia.

  Yet, on Nov. 8, Americans rejected this defeatism rooted in the tracts of 19th-century British scribblers and the ideology of 20th-century globalists like Woodrow Wilson and FDR.

  America responded to Trump’s call for a new nationalism rooted in the economic principles and patriotism of Hamilton and the men of Mount Rushmore: Washington, Lincoln, Jefferson and Theodore Roosevelt.

  The president-elect has declared the TPP dead, and says he and his negotiators will walk away rather than accept another NAFTA.

  Again, good, but again, not good enough, not nearly.

  The New International Economic Order imposed upon us for decades has to be overthrown.

  For the root cause of the trade deficits bleeding us lies in U.S. tax laws and trade policies that punish companies that stay in America and reward companies that move production overseas.

  Executives move plants to Mexico, Asia and China for the same reason U.S. industrialists moved plants from the Frost Belt to the Sun Belt. Given the lower wages and lighter regulations, they can produce more cheaply there.

  In dealing with advanced economies like Japan, Germany, and the EU, another critical factor is at work against us.

  Since the Kennedy Round of trade negotiations, 50 years ago, international trade deals have reduced tariffs to insignificance.

  But our trade rivals have replaced the tariffs with value-added taxes on imports from the USA. Even to belong to the EU, a country must have a VAT of at least 15 percent.

  As Kevin Kearns of the U.S. Business and Industry Council writes, Europeans have replaced tariffs on U.S. goods with a VAT on U.S. goods, while rebating the VAT on Europe’s exports to us.

  Some 160 countries impose VAT taxes. Along with currency manipulation, this is how European and Asian protectionists stick it to the Americans, whose armed forces have defended them for 60 years.

  We lose at trade negotiations, even before we sit down at the table, because our adversaries declare their VAT nonnegotiable. And we accept it.

  Trump has to persuade Congress to deal him and our trade negotiators our own high cards, without our having to go to the WTO and asking, “Mother, may I?”

  Like this writer, Kearns argues for an 18 percent VAT on all goods and services entering the United States. All tax revenue raised by the VAT — hundreds of billions — should be used to reduce U.S. taxes, beginning by ending the income tax on small business and reducing to the lowest rate in the advanced world the U.S. corporate income tax.

  The price of foreign-made goods in U.S. stores would rise, giving a competitive advantage to goods made in America. And with a border VAT of 18 percent, every U.S. corporate executive would have to consider the higher cost of leaving the United States to produce abroad.

  Every foreign manufacturer, to maintain free access to the U.S. market of $17 trillion, greatest on earth, would have to consider shifting production — factories, technology, jobs — to the USA.

  The incentive to produce abroad would diminish and disappear. The incentive to produce here would grow correspondingly.

  Inversions — U.S. companies seeking lower tax rates by moving to places like Ireland — would end. Foreign companies and banks would be clamoring to get into the United States.

  With a zero corporate tax, minority businesses would spring up. Existing businesses would have more cash to hire. America would shove China aside as the Enterprise Zone of the world.

  Most important, by having Americans buy more from each other, and rely more on each other for the necessities of life, U.S. trade and tax policies would work to create a greater interdependence among us, rather than pull us apart as they do today.

  Why not write new tax and trade laws that bring us together, recreating the one nation and people we once were — and can be again?

  

  

• Risk Parity Funds Suffer Worst Month Since 2015 As Breadthless, Fearless Stock Market Soars

  The market moves since the US elections have been both big and surprising, and as JPMorgan notes, fund managers have been either too slow or too reluctant to jump into the Trump trade. However, algo-based Risk-Parity funds suffered the most with their biggest loss since Dec 2015 as market 'fear' tumbles to 9 month lows (and stocks are the most overbought in 13 years).

   

  

  Risk Parity funds were hurt as their equity gains were not enough to offset the sharp selloff in bonds on which Risk Parity funds are typically exposed by four times as much as equities. Correlation between stocks and bonds has normalized thanks to this huge post-Trump divergence (but we note the last time the regime shifted like this was ahead of August 2015's equity plunge)…

  

   

  U.S. stock markets are signaling calm waters ahead. As Bloomberg reports, the Credit Suisse Fear Barometer has tumbled 25% since the day before the presidential election, while the S&P 500 Index reached an all-time high. The gauge that compares bearish options prices with bullish ones three months from now has dropped to its lowest level since February.

  

   

  So 'Fear' is absent, and as CNN notes, Greed is on the rise…

  

   

  Greed indeed – with Small Caps up and almost unprecedented 15 days in a row. The last time they were this overbought (in 2010), the Russell 2000 fell 21% in the following two months…

  

   

  Bonds are the most oversold since 2007 (after which they exploded higher in price, lower in yield)

  

   

  And equity market breadth certainly not supportive…

  

  

  

   

  Of course, with The Fed about to hike rates (with certainty) and financial conditions tightening drastically, what could possibly go wrong?

  

  

Digest powered by RSS Digest

• Trump The Great?

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  Liberals, progressives, and the left-wing (to the extent that one still exists) are aligning with the corrupt oligarchy against president-elect Trump and the American people.

  They are busy at work trying to generate hysteria over Trump’s “authoritarian personality and followers.” In other words, the message is: here come the fascists.

  Liberals and progressives wailed and whined about “an all white male cabinet,” only to be made fools by Trump’s appointment of a black male and two women, one a minority and one a Trump critic.

  The oligarchs are organizing their liberal progressive front groups to disrupt Trump’s inauguration in an effort to continue the attempt to delegitimize Trump the way the paid Maidan protesters were used in Kiev to delegitimize the elected Ukrainian government.

  To the extent any of the Trump protesters are sincere and not merely paid tools of oligarchs, such as George Soros, military and financial interests, and global capitalists, they should consider that false claims and unjustified criticism can cause Trump and his supporters to close their ears to all criticism and make it easier for neoconservatives to influence Trump by offering support.

  At this point we don’t know what a Trump government is going to do. If he sells out the people, he won’t be reelected. If he is defeated by the oligarchy, the people will become more radical.

  We do not know how Washington insiders appointed to the government will behave inside a Trump presidency. Unless they are ideologues like the neoconservatives or agents of powerful interests, insiders survive by going along with the current. If the current changes under Trump, so will the insiders.

  Trump got elected because flyover America has had all it can take from the self-dealing oligarchy. The vast bullk of America has seen its economic prospects and that of children and grandchildren decline for a quarter century. The states Hillary carried are limited to the liberal enclaves and oligarchy’s stomping grounds on the NE and West coasts and in Colorado and New Mexico, where effete wealthy liberals have located because of the scenary. If you look at the red/blue electoral map, geographically speaking Hillary’s support is very limited.

  We know that Hillary is an agent for the One Percent. The Clintons $120 million personal wealth and $1.6 billion personal foundation are proof that the Clintons are bought-and-paid-for. We know that Hillary is responsible for the destruction of Libya and of much of Syria and for the overthrow of the democratically elected government in Ukraine. We know that the Clinton regime’s sanctions on Iraq resulted in the deaths of 500,000 children. These are war crimes and crimes against humanity. We know Hillary used government office for private gain. We know she violated national security laws without being held accountable. What we don’t know is why groups that allegedly are liberal-progressive-leftwing are such fervent supporters of Hillary.

  One possible answer is that these groups are mere fronts for vested interests and are devoid of any sincere motives.

  Another possible answer is that these groups believe that the important issues are not jobs for Americans and avoiding war with nuclear powers, but transgender, homosexual and illegal alien rights.

  Another possible answer is that these groups are uninformed and stupid.

  What these protesters see as a threat in Trump’s strong and willful personality is actually a virtue. A cipher like Obama has no more ability to stand up to the oligarchy than a disengaged George W. Bush so easily stage-managed by Dick Cheney. Nothing less than an authoritarian style and personality is a match for the well-entrenched ruling oligarchy and willful neoconservatives. If Trump were a shrinking violet, the electorate would have ignored him.

  Trump did not purchase his presidency with the offer of handouts to blacks, the poor generally, teachers unions, farmers, abortion rights for women, etc. Trump was elected because he said: “Those who control the levers of power in Washington and the global special interests they partner with, don’t have your good in mind. It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities. The only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you.”

  It has been a long time since the electorate heard this kind of talk from someone seeking public office. Trump’s words are what Americans were waiting to hear.

  As willful as Trump is, he is only one person. The oligarchy are many.

  As impressive as Trump’s billion dollars is, the oligarchs have trillions.

  Congress being in Republican hands will spare Trump partisan obstruction, but Congress remains in the hands of interest groups.

  As powerful as the office of the president can be, without unity in government changes from the top don’t occur, especially if the president is at odds with the military with regard to the alleged threat posed by Russia and China. Trump says he wants peace with the nuclear powers. The military/security complex needs an enemy for its budget.

  It is absolutely necessary that a lid be put on tensions between nuclear powers and that economic opportunity reappears for the American people. Trump is not positioned to benefit from war and jobs offshoring. The only sensible strategy is to support him on these issues and to hold his feet to the fire.

  As for the immigration issue, the Obama Justice (sic) Department has just worsened the picture with its ruling that American police departments cannot discriminate against non-citizens by only hiring citizens as officers. Now that US citizens face arrest in their own country by non-citizens, the resentment of immigrants will increase. Clearly it is nonsensical to devalue American citizenship in this way. Clearly it is sensible to put a lid on immigration until the US economy is again able to create jobs capable of sustaining an independent existence.

  If Trump can defeat the oligarchy and save America, he can go down in history as Trump the Great. I think that this prospect appeals to Trump more than more wealth. Instead of trying to tear him down in advance, he should be supported. With Trump’s determination and the people’s support, change from the top down is possible. Otherwise, change has to come from the bottom up, and that means an awful lot of blood in the streets.

  

  

• Marc Hanson: "Houses Have Never Been More Expensive To Buyers Who Need A Mortgage"

  From Marc Hanson of M Hanson Advisors

  Houses have NEVER BEEN MORE EXPENSIVE to end-user, mortgage-needing shelter buyers. The recent rate surge crushed what little affordability remained in US housing. It now it requires 45% more income to buy the average-priced house than just four years ago, as incomes have not kept pace it goes without saying.

  The spike in rates has taken “UNAFFORDABILITY” to such extremes that prices, rates, and/or credit are now radically out of scope.

  At these interest rate levels house prices are simply not sustainable even in the lower-end price bands, which were far more stable than the middle-to-higher end bands (have been under significant pressure since spring).

  * * *

  The Data (note, for simplicity my models assume best-case 20% down and A-grade credit, which is the “minority” of lower-to-middle end buyers).

  1) The average $361k builder house requires nearly $65k in income assuming a 4.5% rate, 20% down, and A-grade credit. Problem is, 20% + A-credit are hard to come by. For buyers with less down or worse credit, far more than $65k is needed.

  For the past 30-YEARS income required to buy the average priced house has remained relatively consistent, as mortgage rate credit manipulation made houses cheaper.

  Bottom line: Reversion to the mean will occur through house price declines, credit easing, a mortgage rate plunge to the high 2%’s, or a combination of all three. However, because rates are still historically low and mortgage guidelines historically easy, the path of least resistance is lower house prices.

   

  2) The average $274k builder house requires nearly $53k in income assuming a 4.5% rate, 20% down, and A-grade credit. Problem is, 20% + A-credit are hard to come by. For buyers with less down or worse credit, far more than $53k is needed.

  For the past 30-YEARS income required to buy the average priced house has remained relatively consistent, as mortgage rate credit manipulation made houses cheaper.

  Bottom line: Reversion to the mean will occur through house price declines, credit easing, a mortgage rate plunge to the high 2%s, or a combination of all three. However, because rates are still historically low and mortgage guidelines historically easy, the path of least resistance is lower house prices.

  

   

  3) Bonus Chart … Case-Shiller Coast-to-Coast Bubbles

  Bottom line: IT’S NEVER DIFFERENT THIS TIME. Easy/cheap/deep credit & liquidity has found its way to real estate yet again. Bubbles are bubbles are bubbles. And as these core housing markets hit a wall they will take the rest of the nation with them; bubbles and busts don’t happen in “isolation.”

  Case-Shiller’s most Bubblicious Regions

  • Ask Yourself: If 2005-07 was the peak of the largest housing bubble in history with “affordability” never better vis a’ vis exotic loans; easy availability of credit; unemployment in the 4%’s; the total workforce at record highs; and growing wages, then what do you call “now” with house prices at or above 2006 levels; high unaffordability; tighter credit; higher unemployment; a weak total workforce; and shrinking (at best) wages?
  • Logical Answer: Whatever you call it, it’s a greater thing than the Bubble 1.0 peak.

  The mind-numbing Case-Shiller regional charts below are presented without too much comment. The visual says it all.

  

  

  

• Lone Blogger Rages Against The Washington Post's Russian "Hit List"

  Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

  I have to admit I’m quite honored to see that Liberty Blitzkrieg was recently included on a list of some of the most illustrious, impactful and successful alternative news websites on the planet.

  The list was created by an anonymous group of status quo crybabies who simply can’t handle the fact their beloved chosen oligarch was defeated in a democratically held election by Donald Trump (who I didn’t even support). As such, they are lashing out at alternative news outlets deemed most effective in countering the smothering and nonsensical pro-Hillary narrative tirelessly propagated by the fake mainstream news media.

  The group in question calls itself PropOrNot, and self-describes in the following manner:

  PropOrNot is an independent team of concerned American citizens with a wide range of backgrounds and expertise, including professional experience in computer science, statistics, public policy, and national security affairs. We are currently volunteering time and skills to identify propaganda – particularly Russian propaganda – targeting a U.S. audience. We collect public-record information connecting propaganda outlets to each other and their coordinators abroad, analyze what we find, act as a central repository and point of reference for related information, and organize efforts to oppose it.

   

  We formed PropOrNot as an effort to prevent propaganda from distorting U.S. political and policy discussions. We hope to strengthen our cultural immune systems against hostile influence and improve public discourse generally. However, our immediate aim at this point is to empower the American voter and decrease the ability of Russia to influence the ensuing American election.

  Unfortunately, this is apparently all we know so far about this shadowy organization, which is simply hilarious considering the group deems any alternative news source that does not agree with the U.S. government narrative to be either outright Russian propaganda, or “useful idiots.”

  Here’s “the list:”

  

  What’s particularly interesting about this list, isn’t the fact that a bunch of anonymous whiners decided to demonize successful critics of insane, inhumane and ethically indefensible U.S. government policy, but rather the fact that the Washington Post decided to craft an entire article around such a laughably ridiculous list. This just further proves a point that is rapidly becoming common knowledge amongst U.S. citizens with more than a couple of brain cells to rub together. The mainstream media is the real “fake news.”

  Let’s take Liberty Blitzkrieg for example. Despite the fact that my site is mentioned on “the list,” nobody from PropOrNot bothered to contact me while doing their “research.” They could’ve asked very simple questions about how the site is run, who owns it, and who makes decisions about editorial content. Furthermore, I doubt they did any such research with regard to any of the mentioned sites before slandering them.

  Since they failed to do any real work, let me answer several of these questions. I, Michael Krieger am the 100% owner of Liberty Blitzkrieg. I, Michael Krieger am the only person who makes decisions on what to publish and when. I have absolutely no connections, financial or otherwise, to the Russian government, Russian interests, or the interests of any other government or government related group. Moreover, there is simply nobody on planet earth who has any influence on what I write or what I publish. I left a very successful and financially lucrative job to do what I do now because my passions and ethical grounding pushed me in this direction. If I was interested in making enormous sums of money, I could’ve easily stayed on Wall Street.

  Moreover, I rarely write about Russia, with the exception of trying to prevent insane neocons and neoliberals in our government from actively seeking a military confrontation, because I — like most normal human beings — would prefer not to contribute to the manifestation of World War 3. Likewise, I try to prevent war breaking out in all circumstances where I think it can and should be avoided. I intentionally almost never use RT as a source, and I’ve never quoted anything from Sputnik. Unlike The Washington Post, I try to be extremely diligent about not publishing fake news, but I am a very strong critic of U.S. government policy, because much of U.S. government policy is certifiably insane and unethical. You can disagree with my opinion on that all you’d like, but I challenge anyone to find anything that could reasonably be considered pro-Russia propaganda on my website. If Liberty Blitzkrieg really is a Russian propaganda site, this should be easy to do since I’ve published thousands of articles over the years.

  For those who ask why I focus on the transgressions of the U.S. government as opposed to foreign governments, the answer should be quite obvious. I am a U.S. citizen. My responsibility is not to change the policies of foreign governments, but to make my own country as honorable and accountable as possible. As Noam Chomsky so eloquently noted:

  One of the most elementary moral truisms is that you are responsible for the anticipated consequences of your own actions. It is fine to talk about the crimes of Genghis Khan, but there isn’t much that you can do about them. If Soviet intellectuals chose to devote their energies to crimes of the U.S., which they could do nothing about, that is their business. We honor those who recognized that the first duty is to concentrate on your own country. And it is interesting that no one ever asks for an explanation, because in the case of official enemies, truisms are indeed truisms. It is when truisms are applied to ourselves that they become contentious, or even outrageous. But they remain truisms. In fact, the truisms hold far more for us than they did for Soviet dissidents, for the simple reason that we are in free societies, do not face repression, and can have a substantial influence on government policy. So if we adopt truisms, that is where we will focus most of our energy and commitment. The explanation is even more obvious than in the case of official enemies.

   

  Naturally, truisms are hated when applied to oneself. You can see it dramatically in the case of terrorism. In fact one of the reasons why I am considered “public enemy number one” among a large sector of intellectuals in the U.S. is that I mention that the U.S. is one of the major terrorist states in the world and this assertion, though plainly true, is unacceptable for many intellectuals, including left-liberal intellectuals, because if we faced such truths we could do something about the terrorist acts for which we are responsible, accepting elementary moral responsibilities instead of lauding ourselves for denouncing the crimes official enemies, about which we can often do very little.

   

  Elementary honesty is often uncomfortable, in personal life as well, and there are people who make great efforts to evade it. For intellectuals, throughout history, it has often come close to being their vocation. Intellectuals are commonly integrated into dominant institutions. Their privilege and prestige derives from adapting to the interests of power concentrations, often taking a critical look but in very limited ways. For example, one may criticize the war in Vietnam as a “mistake” that began with “benign intentions”. But it goes too far to say that the war is not “a mistake” but was “fundamentally wrong and immoral”. the position of about 70 percent of the public by the late 1960s, persisting until today, but of only a margin of intellectuals. The same is true of terrorism. In acceptable discourse, as can easily be demonstrated, the term is used to refer to terrorist acts that THEY carry out against US, not those that WE carry out against THEM. That is probably close to a historical universal. And there are innumerable other examples.

  The fake mainstream news media is completely failing. It is failing because rather than informing the public and criticizing the powerful, it has become merely a giant public relations organ for the U.S. government. The American public clearly sees through the bullshit, in large part due to the efforts of alternative news media. Think about it. Liberty Blitzkrieg doesn’t have a single outside employee. Other than the heroic efforts of my tech person (who spends very little of his time on this site), there’s really no one else contributing in any material way to the operation of this blog. So for a website run by a relatively unknown person to have made it onto this slanderous list (subsequently highlighted by the Washington Post), is not only a great honor, but a testament to the impact one person can have in an environment dominated by a transparently fake and desperate mainstream media.

  As I noted on Twitter earlier today.

  I'm one guy writing on a website with zero employees and no budget, and the Washington Post is threatened by me. Hilarious.

  — Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) November 25, 2016

  and

  Twitter follower count already exploding higher thanks to being included on "the list."
  Thanks fake mainstream news media!

  — Michael Krieger (@LibertyBlitz) November 25, 2016

  To further demonstrate how desperate the failing mainstream media is to demonize its scrappy alternative news competitors, here’s how The Washington Post “reported” on the PropOrNot list:

  Another group, called PropOrNot, a nonpartisan collection of researchers with foreign policy, military and technology backgrounds, planned to release its own findings Friday showing the startling reach and effectiveness of Russian propaganda campaigns.

   

  The researchers used Internet analytics tools to trace the origins of particular tweets and mapped the connections among social-media accounts that consistently delivered synchronized messages. Identifying website codes sometimes revealed common ownership. In other cases, exact phrases or sentences were echoed by sites and social-media accounts in rapid succession, signaling membership in connected networks controlled by a single entity.

   

  PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times.

  Interesting. I’d love to see what their “analytics tools” say about Liberty Blitzkrieg. Furthermore, what about that “common ownership” claim. As I mentioned before, I am the sole owner of Liberty Blitzkrieg. It seems PropOrNot is merely making shit up about successful websites they consider a threat. If The Washington Post’s decision to highligh such a list isn’t “fake news,” I don’t know what is.

  Further proving The Washington Post’s lack of any sort of journalistic standards, it highlights PropOrNot despite the fact that…

  “The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers. “It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign. . . . It worked.”

  I mean, this is simply embarrassing.

  To conclude, the mainstream media is getting exactly what it deserves. Its impact is spiraling into irrelevance, its “journalists” bordering on the comical, and its standards beneath those of individual bloggers with zero staff and no budget. To conclude, the only thing I can ask of readers is the following: Support alternative media now more than ever. Put your money where your mouth is and help defeat the fake news mainstream media once and for all.

  To that end, I’d ask that you please visit the Liberty Blitzkrieg Support Page and consider contributing.

  I’ve written on this topic on several occasions. For more, see:

  Zerohedge Included in What NY Magazine Calls ‘Extremely Helpful List of Fake and Misleading News Sites’

  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

  

  

• The Battle Of Black Friday: Visualizing The Winners And Losers

  Black Friday – the name elevates images of people standing in long lines, fighting the crowds to grab the best bargains of the year, and filling the shopping carts to the rims. But, as FreeShippingCode.com notes, from another perspective Black Friday is the day when retailers try to push their sales to the last limits in order to maximize their profits, i.e. move from red (loss) column to the black (profit).

  While the shoppers try to grab the best bargains of the year, the retailers, on the other hand, try to achieve their Black Friday sales targets, this battle continues till the end of the day to mark the winners and losers of this battle.

  

  Source: FreeShippingCode.com

  The Changing Battlefield

  Black Friday sales reached record levels in the last year, but if you are wondering why you did not see those long lines and scenes of shoppers fighting for the best bargains, it is because most of the Black Friday shopping last year was done online. Sales data from last year reveals that 51% Black Friday shoppers used their smartphones to shop online and only 49% headed to the shopping malls and big retail stores. Shoppers have all the good reasons to justify their choice of using their mobile phones and desktops to do their Black Friday shopping online.

  A Look At Some Of The Winners

  The online shopping landscape has dramatically changed the shopping behavior of Black Friday shoppers, as a result, many big retail giants with profound online presence and popularity are enjoying good sales and profits. Let us have a look at some of the major retailers who were able to make it to the victory stands last year.

  Amazon came first with a big chunk of the online sales (35%) in the last Black Friday season. Apple with its popular iPad and iPod brands also enjoyed a good Black Friday season last year. Similarly, REI despite its early announcement to remain closed on the big day recorded 26% increase in the online traffic.

  Every year Black Friday creates demand for thousands of new jobs. Retailers hire more than 70,000 part time seasonal workers and offer them handsome packages and bonuses to perform various tasks like managing distributions, dealing with customers, running store operations and stocking new inventories. These season workers are always the winners in this battle of sales and bargains.

  A Look At Some Of The Losers

  At the end of every epic Black Friday shop-a-thon, there are winners and there are losers. Let us have a look at some of the losers of Black Friday 2015.

  The brick and mortar shopping trend, in general, experienced a great decline in last year's Black Friday shopping event. ASDA, a Walmart subsidiary that introduced this event in the UK market failed to survive. Similarly, a lot of other big retail stores in the UK like Primark, John Lewis, Oasis, and Argos also reduced their participation or canceled it altogether. A lot of the online retail stores failed to handle the heavy traffic load and experienced downtime. John Lewis, for example, reported that one minute of downtown accounted for £75,000 in lost sales.

  In addition to the lost sales faced by the retailers, the consumers also faced losses in terms of injuries and deaths while shopping for discounted items on this one-day shopping bonanza. Since 2006 almost 98 people faced various injuries and 7 lost their lives to win this battle of sales and bargains.

   

  

  

• "The DryShips Market" – What Comes Next Is Anyone's Guess

  Authored by Mark St.Cyr,

  Since we are in the Thanksgiving lull of the “markets.” I wanted to express something that takes place in my own head around these times. Where I (and believe others) may also share some of the same conflicted feelings as we not only try to give thanks, we simultaneously ponder thoughts to what the future might portend, and how we are going to move with it. For in the game of business as is life: the decision process never rests.

  I used the term “conflicted” for a reason. If you’re anything like me (and I believe we’re all the same, it’s only how we deal with things that makes all the difference) they run the gamut from not just the good or bad, but some may range from the exuberantly spectacular – to the down right terrifying.

  Then last, but certainly not least, buffeted with either a single-minded focus – to outright scatter-brained confusion, notwithstanding the myriad of combinations of some, if not all of them at once.

  Nobody knows what the future may portend. Everything (and I do mean everything) is a best guess with whatever evidence you have at your disposal; a willingness to believe in your gut, and your abilities; and the willingness and fortitude to live with/by your decisions. That sounds simple enough, yes. However, it’s in the application, and the willingness of follow through, which makes all the difference. That’s the hard part.

  So why am I making these observations today one might ask? Well, it all started the other day when I received a note from a colleague questioning my thoughts after they read the following headline. To wit:

  “Traders Are Now 100% Sure The Fed Hikes Rates In December”

  Their question? “Have you rethought your call about the Fed. in December? It would seem you’re not just in the minority: you are the minority!”

  It’s a fair question, as well as a point. However, with that said: No. (as I’ve previously stated I’m currently 85/15 favoring that they won’t.)

  This isn’t some form of relentless death-grip to be contrarian just for the sake of it. Far from it. Rather, I am becoming even more steadfast in that position based on what I believe or “see” as compelling evidence that the Fed., regardless of what it may want to do, will have their hands tied (once again) by “international developments.” e.g. China.

  Whether or not that turns out to be correct is anyone’s guess. For it is all guessing, no matter who says differently.

  Yet, here is where a “spectacular” bull____ run up in “markets” may turn into a truly “terrifying” off-a-cliff stampede should just one metric change. That metric? The Yuan.

  As I sit here today typing, the Chinese currency is not only still in free fall, it is resting precariously so close to the “cliffs edge” (e.g. 7.00 USD/CNY) if it falls over – it will take all markets with it. Emphasis on all. For if one thinks Aug. of 2015 was scary? Let me use this for analogy:

  Aug. 2015 will look like a kiddie rollercoaster as compared to what the “markets” newest amusement park has constructed in the last few weeks if it all goes awry. And China – not the Fed. – is the one contemplating on whether or not it will open sooner, rather than later. And the clock is ticking.

  Dec. 14th is the Fed’s stated “grand opening.” i.e., (they’re really, really, really going to “do it” this time) Any day in between now and then – is China’s to decide. In other words: whether to preempt or not. Or stated differently: Whatever China decides it will, or won’t do during this period dictates what the Fed. will, or won’t be able to do. Period.

  If you think China is going to sit idly by so the Fed. can just raise rates, to then watch their currency tumble into oblivion forced by circumstances not of their own volition, causing capital outflows of historic proportions, which may, or may not exacerbate civil unrest within its borders, when it has (as in knows precisely the mechanism as to manipulate a possible delay to their own benefit) I believe is fool-hearty at best, willingly blind at worst.

  Since I used the term “amusement” and “rollercoaster” for an analogy, let me use a current chart (or charts) to express precisely what I’m speaking to. For there seems to be quite a lot of P.T. Barnum-ing when it comes to describing these “markets” post U.S. election. And it’s not just the main-stream media, but also every next in rotation fund manager, or Ivory Towered economist who can get to a microphone or camera. And be careful not to get in their way – for you will be trampled upon. So here’s that chart. To wit:

  

  DryShips stock chart from about 2 weeks ago

  The problem? Again, to wit:

  

  Here they are as of the Wednesday’s close

  Much like you have seen the U.S. markets with its most nascent accent, so too was DryShips.

  For all intents and purposes this company was at one time regarded and held as the be-all, tell-all, bellwether (especially for one CNBC™ buy,buy,buy king) for global trade. And when the “markets” displayed a “Trump winning means we’re building again!” Everything jumped in unison to match what the so-called “smart crowd” was touting as more causation, rather than correlation. i.e., “The markets are a forward-looking indicator. So get on the bandwagon quick before it passes you by!”

  As I’ve said many times before: “Beware when everyone’s on the bandwagon – except the band.”

  And it would seem that’s precisely what a lot of people noticed (or at least recognized one mother of a short squeeze for what it was) and thought better of it. Sadly, for those who bought into that whole “causation” premise that was being touted across the financial/business media at large and did the whole “Buy,buy, buy!” thing? You have my sympathies – once again.

  So here we are, and one needs to ponder which way, or view, is the correct one?

  Here’s what I know: Nobody knows. And I mean just that: no – body.

  It’s all a best guess scenario regardless of who says different. All you can do is try to decipher clues from the clutter as best you can, make a decision as to what you believe is the most probable outcome if correct, put yourself in the best place as to if it works in your favor (or if your proved to be right) you can, at the least, benefit from it. Whether benefit means capitalize, or alleviate any potential harm. Then, and most importantly – live with, and by, your decisions.

  You can always reevaluate and adjust going forward.

  I say this because I’ve been there. I’ve made some bad decisions, (actually more like terrible) and some good ones. Many of those decisions were in direct opposition to people (and what seemed to be the world-at-large) who were touted to be smarter, more experienced, better looking (much better actually) more seasoned, better educated, and with far more money or wealth than I ever had. That, and a whole lot more.

  I have stood in the face of all of that saying : “What makes you so right?” And then demanded they either give a cogent argument, or, just shut up and go away. Especially when it has come down to business and/or life decisions. More often than not, the “cogent” part never materialized. My record (I’m proud to say) of right or wrong stands on its own. Yes, warts and all.

  You find out as one moves along in life more things are based on “because I said/think so” rather than anything resembling a real thought process. You need to research, evaluate, then decide for yourself. Then, let the chips fall where they may.

  That isn’t always easy. (Trust me, I know!) But it is the only way.

  So once again, who knows what will happen from here, but I’ll end all this using a video link and song that pretty much sums up my stand today as my battle cry in response to my colleague’s inquiry to what I think may, or may not think happen as it pertains to the Fed.

  I believe it fits today as it did for me back long ago. Where I remember and give thanks during this holiday time. For it wasn’t all that long ago when it wasn’t only myself contemplating going up against a world that said “What makes you think you can? ” as to try and grasp the “brass ring” of life. But also, for few friends of mine that were facing the same issues, at the same time. I know because we discussed them. (you can read a little about that here, and here if you wish)

  The song and video title says it all, “I Stand Alone” And the name of those friends? They’re known as Godsmack.

  What comes next? Again, nobody knows for sure. All I know is the clock is now ticking into December 14th, that is irrefutable. That, and believing the “alarm” doesn’t go off before, and is totally under the Fed’s purview, is the only thing which everyone seems complacent in. Which to my mind – is just plain nuts.

  

  

• Australia Cuts Clinton Foundation Donations To $0

  For months we’ve been told that the Clinton Foundation, and it’s various subsidiaries, were simple, innocent “charitable” organizations, despite the mountain of WikiLeaks evidence suggesting rampant pay-to-play scandals surrounding a uranium deal with Russia and earthquake recovery efforts in Haiti, among others.  Well, if that is, in fact, true perhaps the Clintons could explain why wealthy foreign governments, like Australia and Norway, are suddenly slashing their contributions just as Hillary’s schedule has been freed up to focus exclusively on her charity work.  Surely, these foreign governments weren’t just contributing to the Clinton Foundation in hopes of currying favor with the future President of the United States, were they?  Can’t be, only an useless, “alt-right,” Putin-progranda-pushing, fake news source could possibly draw such a conclusion. 

  Alas, no matter the cause, according to news.com.au, the fact is that after contributing $88mm to the Clinton Foundation, and its various affiliates, over the past 10 years the country of Australia has decided to cease future donations to the foundation just weeks after Hillary’s stunning loss on November 4th.

  And just like that, 2 out of the 3 largest foreign contributors to the Clinton Foundation are gone with Saudia Arabia being the last remaining $10-$25mm donor that hasn’t explicitly cut ties or massively scaled by contributions.

  

   

  News.com.au confirmed Australia’s decision to cut future donations to the Clinton Foundation earlier today.  When asked why donations were being cut off now, a Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade official simply said that the Clinton Foundation has “a proven track record” in helping developing countries.  While that sounds nice, doesn’t it seem counterintuitive that these countries would pull their funding just as Hillary has been freed up to spend 100% of her time helping people in  developing countries?

  Australia has finally ceased pouring millions of dollars into accounts linked to Hillary Clinton’s charities.

   

  Which begs the question: Why were we donating to them in the first place?

   

  The federal government confirmed to news.com.au it has not renewed any of its partnerships with the scandal-plagued Clinton Foundation, effectively ending 10 years of taxpayer-funded contributions worth more than $88 million.

   

  News.com.au approached the Department of Foreign Affairs and Trade for comment about how much was donated and why the Clinton Foundation was chosen as a recipient.

   

  A DFAT spokeswoman said all funding is used “solely for agreed development projects” and Clinton charities have “a proven track record” in helping developing countries.

  Of course it’s only fitting that Australia’s Prime Minister is none other than Malcolm Turnbull, the former Chairman of Goldman Sachs Australia.  Goldman Sachs only pays for results Madam Secretary. 

  Meanwhile, this new comes just after the Norwegian newspaper Hegnar pointed out earlier this week that Norway is expected to slash their contributions to the Clinton Foundation by 87% now that Hillary has lost the presidency.  After contributing roughly $5mm per year to the Clinton Foundation between 2007 – 2013, the Norwegian government decided to boost their donations to ~$15mm and ~$21mm in 2014 and 2015, respectively.  Ironically, that boost in contributions corresponded with Hillary’s decision to run for President in 2016…but we’re sure it was just a coincidence.  That said, it is fairly interesting that, since Hillary’s loss, Norway, like Australia, also decided to scale back their contributions by 87% in 2017…things that make you go “hmm”.

  After a record contribution from Norway to the disputed Clinton Foundation before the election year, is the contribution now in freefall. Financial newspaper can tell that next year’s contribution is down 83 percent from the peak year of 2015.

   

  For 2016, the planned payments to Clinton Health Access Initiative totaling 35.9 million kroner, writes communications advisor Guri Solberg at the Foreign Ministry, in an email to Finance newspaper.

   

  It is one-fifth of last year’s contribution, when nominating election campaign before the US primaries was in full swing, and the Clinton Foundation came under the spotlight in the US press.

   

  According to Finance newspaper lay the annual Norwegian contribution of NOK 40 million on average from 2007 to 2013. In 2014, the contribution more than tripled, to 129 million. And in 2015 they increased to 174 million.

   

  The money has gone to two of the Foundation’s programs, primarily Clinton Health Access Initiative (CHAI), but also the Clinton Climate Initiative (CCI).

   

  For 2017 it is planned payments to Clinton Health Access Initiative 23 million, Solberg wrote in an email to Finance newspaper. It is further down 36 percent from the current year. By comparison, ran this program 169 million in 2015.

  But, no doubt these are just more “plumes of smoke” for which Hillary has absolutely no explanation.

  

  

  

• The 2014 Economy Lingers On Under The Hope For Something Different

  Submitted by Jeffrey Snider via Alhambra Investment Partners,

  For the month of July 2014, total durable goods orders exploded higher in a fit of Boeing. The growth in aircraft orders in percentage terms was so large as to be meaningless. On a seasonally-adjusted basis, total durable goods (using the latest benchmarks) went from $236.3 billion that June to $290.8 billion for July. Coming as it did in the middle of 2014 when it had seemed as if everything was on the up, it was just more embarrassment of riches for the US as the “cleanest dirty shirt” just about to be put into the washer.

  Of course, the surge in transportation orders heralded nothing for the actual economy, as by the time those estimates were published (and originally the overall estimate for that month was nearly $300 billion) at the end of August 2014 the economic direction had already taken the opposite route. It was just another in a long line of positive numbers, and truly a big one, that have been consistently taken for recovery. An actual growth period, by contrast, is not one with an occasional big number, but one where those become the norm and therefore small positives are the aberration to be set aside.

  We are seeing something of a repeat if in miniature with durable goods for October 2016. The seasonally-adjusted estimate for September was $228.4 billion, jumping to $239.4 billion in the latest update. Civilian aircraft orders, notoriously volatile, were up almost 140% while military aircraft orders grew by a third. Commentary has been, as you would expect, extremely positive.

  

  

  Underneath, however, we find the same economy dragging on in place since the aircraft surge in July 2014. Durable goods new orders ex transportation were flat again year-over-year (-0.07%) in October for the second straight month. Likewise durable goods shipments were also practically unchanged (-0.24%). Capital goods, on the other hand, continue to contract. New orders for cap goods minus aircraft and defense orders were down 4% for the second straight month; shipments fell more than 6% in October after declining more than 5% in September.

  

  

  This is, again, the same languishing US economy that has been an enormous drag on the global system. There aren’t any meaningfully different changes as indicated by durable goods by which to generate appropriate excitement. Economists and the media have, obviously, been intermittently positive about a great many positive numbers over the past 27 months of slow, uneven contraction. What has seized “market” attention is not what is clear the same but what might be different.

  At this stage of almost relatively euphoric sentiment, up-to-date economic statistics will be less meaningful because “markets” are seeing what they want to see about a future that is no longer captured strictly by more of the same. That means central banks no longer so pasted to just QE or ZIRP, but more willing to try different things. As it pertains to the election, there is a Trump administration that could, in theory, provide “stimulus” and not just in the same wasteful, ARRA manner; changes to taxation, regulation, etc.

  In other words, the future has suddenly become a blank canvas upon which to project all the positives that were once claimed about “stimulus” in the generic sense. People largely still believe that it works; if anything is different especially after 2015 and the start to 2016 it is more that the public now clearly sees at the very least QE and central bank “stimulus” wasn’t of the wrong quantity but at least the wrong kind. If the prior regime was populated by the “wrong” stimulus, then it might be a far better future should the next one find the “right” methods.

  No matter what durable goods, or any economic account for that matter, shows about the current economy it will be difficult to overcome this irrationality, which is now almost purely focused on what could be just over the horizon. Since the figures for the rest of 2016 will be rightly considered as part of the “old” “stimulus” regime that failed, unless they start to indicate a more serious slide I can’t imagine the mainstream will give them much thought at all – except where, like aircraft orders, it might seem to fit the narrative of a pickup.

  The only real question is whether or not what central banks or the Trump people might do different is actually different. A second ARRA is going to produce the same results as the first, which included a great deal of tax cuts. Some have started to suggest that it would amount to a practical “helicopter” of stimulus without explaining why those practical “helicopters” before didn’t work, either.

  

  In a bigger sense, however, there does not seem to be any willingness anywhere to actually take account of why the economy for more than two years has been stuck in a state of low growth and even, as the goods economy, steady contraction. It is a curious incuriosity, particularly given the irrational hope for different efforts equaling different results. If “we” don’t really know why the economy fell off rather than surged ahead as ecnomists had predicted after July 2014, then why would there be any reasonable expectation for “different” right at the start?

  After all, the people who will be still running “stimulus” are those who had no idea what was going on then, less idea what that meant for the immediate future, and still today can’t explain what did happen. By that I mean all economists in general, and as far as I can tell that includes those of the forming Trump administration, as well as (for now) those in place at the Federal Reserve who are very likely to press ahead a second time to confirm that they think there isn’t actually anything immediately wrong with the economy to begin with.

  It seems to be a corollary to Einstein’s definition of insanity; keep the intellectual paradigm in place but doing slightly different things and expecting very different results. Durable goods confirm that the same 2015-16 economy still lingers, a fact that none of them thought likely or even possible. It’s nice to contemplate how “new” blood might finally get it right, but is what is being proposed now actually new and different? Can you really claim to have the right answers when it seems clear that you don’t know the questions?

  I suspect we are about to find out, all over again, the hard way.

  

  

• Trump Bypasses Media With Direct YouTube/Twitter Distribution As Feud With Mainstream Outlets Rages

  For the past year and a half the Trump team has played the mainstream media like a fiddle.  During the republican primary, he was granted millions of dollars of free air time as the unwitting mainstream outlets thought they were boosting one of Hillary’s chosen “pied piper” candidates that could be easily defeated in the general election.  Then, after helping to catapult him to the republican nomination the media predictably turned on him in a blatant effort to elect their chosen candidate.  Unfortunately for the mainstream media, none of their plans to destroy Trump came close to working and, in fact, he used their corrupt, biased coverage to rally his supporters which is likely a big reason for his ultimate victory.

  Perhaps no one has summarized Trump’s relationship with the media and establishment institutions better than Michael Moore who famously predicted two weeks before election day that Trump’s election would be the “biggest fuck you ever recorded in human history”:

  “They [working class voters] see that the elites who ruined their lives hate Trump.  Corporate American hates Trump.  Wall Street hates Trump.  The career politicians hate Trump.  The media hates Trump, after they loved him and created him and now hate him.  Thank you, media.  The enemy of my enemy is who I’m voting for on November 8th.”

  But now that the campaigning is finally over, the true panic is setting in for the mainstream media as Trump is threatening to cut off the one thing they have left:  access.

  While Trump’s decision to bypass the media in recent days (starting with the message below posted on YouTube which has received millions of views) by speaking directly with the American electorate through direct distribution outlets like YouTube and Twitter may not seem like a big deal, it has the potential to be quite revolutionary.  After running a campaign that proved that blatant, and frankly insulting, pandering to various minority groups and endless cash hoards weren’t necessarily direct determinants of election success, Trump seems intent upon proving that the mainstream media can be completely bypassed in the modern world…and it is glorious to watch.

   

  Of course, we suspect this is part of the reason for the mainstream media’s recent crusade against “fake news” outlets, of which we’re apparently one.  To the extent they can discredit competitive news sources then they get to maintain their monopoly on ideas and information, and the blatant manipulation of those ideas into their own customized narratives.

  As The Hill points out, Trump’s distaste for the media is starting to sow fear and panic in the mainstreamers.  For evidence of that fact, one has to look no further than the outrage expressed when Trump decided to ditch the press to have a steak dinner with his family.  Where was that same outrage when Hillary ditched the press on 9/11 because of her pneumonia?

  White House reporters are worried about access to Trump, who didn’t allow reporters on his campaign plane and ditched media staking out Trump Tower last week to have dinner with family at New York’s 21 Club.

   

  The president-elect’s frequent threats to the press have added to a sense that the rules for covering this White House might be different.

   

  “Every incoming president has basic, generally agreed upon rules of the road,” said Joe Lockhart, who served as White House press secretary for President Bill Clinton.

   

  “The Trump team has decided they’ll blow up and the road and build a new one. Where it goes from here will be a test of how far the new president and his team want to push things, and the strength and will of the press to push back.”

  As The Hill further notes, Trump has little incentive to go through traditional media outlets.  Not only have they proven time and again to be an extension of the democratic party but with his social media following, Trump’s direct distribution of his message gets just as much coverage as a press conference would.

  But Trump has little incentive to go through traditional media channels, some experts say.

   

  Facebook and Twitter combine to give him one of the most powerful social media presences in the world.

   

  He has former Breitbart executive Stephen Bannon at his side in the White House, giving him a powerful ally in the massively influential world of right-wing news.

   

  And when Trump releases a straight-to-camera video to announce his 100-day agenda — as he did this week, in lieu of a press conference — it elicits the same volume of coverage as a press conference would.

   

  Trump was lavished with billions of dollars worth of free airtime and exposure during the campaign, irrespective of how he chose to engage.

   

  Press advocates are worried that the president-elect appears to be holding all the cards.

  As the head of the advocacy group Free Press points out “over the last 20 to 30 years, each White House has thrown up more obstacles and become more obsessed with controlling their own message, but this is a new apex, and it’s really dangerous.”  While we tend to agree that the disintermediation of the corrupt media may be dangerous for their employees…we suspect the rest of us will be just fine.

  

  

• Europe: Let's Self-Destruct!

  Submitted by Judith Bergman via The Gatestone Institute,

  • A reasonable question that many Europeans might ask would be whether it is not perhaps time to review priorities?
  • Perhaps the time has come to look at whether it remains worth it, in terms of the potential loss of human life, to remain party to the 1961 Convention, which would prohibit a country from stripping a returning ISIS fighter of his citizenship in order to prevent him from entering the country?
  • The terrorist as poor, traumatized victim who needs help seems to be a recurring theme among European politicians. But what about the rights of the poor, traumatized citizens who elected these politicians?

  Roughly 30,000 foreign and European Islamic State fighters from around 100 different countries, who have gone to Syria, Iraq and Libya, could spread across the continent once the terror group is crushed in its Iraqi stronghold, warned Karin von Hippel, director-general of the UK military think tank, Royal United Services Institute, speaking to the Express on October 26:

  "I think once they lose territory in Iraq and Syria and probably Libya… they will likely go back to a more insurgent style operation versus a terrorist group that wants to try and hold onto territory… There has been about 30,000 foreign fighters that have gone in from about 100 countries to join. Not all of them have joined ISIS, some have joined al-Qaeda, Kurds, and other groups, but the vast majority have gone to join ISIS. These people will disperse. Some of them have already been captured or killed but many will disperse and they'll go to European countries…They may not go back to where they came from and that is definitely keeping security forces up at night in many, many countries".

  Perhaps these scenarios are really keeping security forces up at night in many countries. Judging by the continued influx of predominantly young, male migrants of fighting age into Europe, however, one might be excused for thinking that European politicians themselves are not losing any sleep over potential new terrorist attacks.

  According to a report by Radio Sweden, for example:

  "Around 140 Swedes have so far returned after having joined the violent groups in Syria and Iraq. Now several municipalities are preparing to work with those who want to defect. This could include offering practical support to defectors."

  The municipality of Lund has dealt with this issue, and Malmö, Borlänge and Örebro have similar views. As Radio Sweden reports:

  "Lund's conclusion is that defectors from violent extremist groups should be handled like defectors from other environments, such as organized crime. After an investigation of the person's needs, the municipality can help with housing, employment or livelihood."

  According to Sweden's "national coordinator against violent extremism," Christoffer Carlsson:

  "…You need to be able to reintegrate into the job market, you may need a driver's license, debt settlement and shelter. When people leave, they want to leave for something else, but they do not have the resources for it, so it is difficult for them to realize their plan. If they do not receive support, the risk is great that they will be unable to leave the extremist environment, but instead fall back into it."

  Anna Sjöstrand, Lund's municipal coordinator against violent extremism, says that people who have served their penalty should all have support. Last year, the Municipality of Örebro received criticism for offering an internship to a young man who returned after having been in Syria.

  "There may be such criticism, but for me it is difficult to think along those lines. They get the same help as others who seek help from us. We cannot say that because you made a wrong choice, you have no right to come back and live in our society," says Anna Sjöstrand.

  According to Sweden Radio, several of the municipalities stress that people who commit crimes should be sentenced and serve their penalties before they can receive support. According to Amir Rostami, who works with the national coordinator against violent extremism:

  "If you are suspected of a crime, the investigation of the crime always comes first. But as long as there is no suspicion of a crime, then it is in our own interest to help those that come out of this extremist environment. The consequences for society are quite large if you do not."

  So, in Sjöstrand's words, travelling to Syria and Iraq to join ISIS, a bestial Islamic terrorist organization with its sexual enslavement of women and children, rapes, brutal murders of Christians, Yazidis, and other Muslims is just "a wrong choice." You know, similar to embezzling money or getting into a drunken brawl at a bar, just ordinary garden-variety crime, which should not intervene with your "right to come back and live in our society". In other words, it seems to support the standard European idea that the terrorist is the victim, not the innocent people he is out to maim, rape, and kill.

  According to the Swedish view, burning Christians and Yazidis alive, gang-raping and murdering women and children, and other such "wrong choices" should not get into the way of one's "rights." It also seems to ignore the rights of members of the peaceful society who are vulnerable to being attacked. It would be logical to posit that traveling for the express purpose of joining a terrorist organization such as ISIS, which has as its explicit goal the destruction of Western nations such as Sweden, should actually lead to the forfeiture of the "right to come back and live in our society" — especially as those former ISIS fighters evidently do not consider Swedish society "their society."

  Another word that comes to mind is treason. But not for Sweden, such logical moral and political choices. Better to have another go at politically correct policies, doomed to failure, at the expense of the security (and taxpayer money) of law-abiding Swedish citizens, whose rights to live without fear of violent assault, rape and terrorism clearly ceased to matter to Swedish authorities a long time ago.

  This hapless attitude towards ISIS increasingly resembles criminal negligence on the part of Swedish authorities. It was recently reported that Swedish police received a complaint of incitement to racial hatred, after an unnamed Syrian-born 23-year-old used a picture of the ISIS flag as a profile picture on social media. Prosecutor Gisela Sjövall decided not to pursue legal action against the man. The reason, according to Sjövall?

  "IS expresses every kind of disrespect; it is against everyone except those who belong to IS itself. There is the dilemma, it [offends] too big a group… You could say that merely waving a flag of IS in the current situation cannot be considered hate speech. It is not an expression of disrespect towards any [particular] ethnic group. It has been said there could possibly be some form of incitement, that IS urges others to commit criminal acts such as murder, but that is not the case."

  Since ISIS hates absolutely everybody, according to Swedish law they can apparently engage in as much hate speech as their hearts desire. The terrorists, who are vying for a world-dominating caliphate, must be laughing their heads off.

  Sjövall added that because the Nazi swastika is intrinsically linked to inciting anti-Semitism, this contravenes Swedish laws, and that maybe the ISIS flag would be considered as contravening Swedish law in 10 years.

  At the rate that Swedish society is self-destructing, there may not even be much of Sweden to speak of 10 years from now.

  On June 7, 2016, it was reported that British citizen Grace "Khadija" Dare had brought her 4-year-old son, Isa Dare, to live in Sweden, in order to benefit from free health care. In February, the boy was featured in an ISIS video, blowing up four prisoners in a car (pictured above). The boy's father, a jihadist with Swedish citizenship, was killed fighting for ISIS.

  In neighboring Denmark, in March 2015, a Danish MP for the Social Democrats, Trine Bramsen, said about returning ISIS fighters:

  "Some constitute a danger or can become dangerous. Others need help. We have actually seen that many of those who come home have experienced such horrors that they need psychological help".

  The terrorist as poor, traumatized victim who needs help seems to be a recurring theme among European politicians. But what about the rights of the poor, traumatized citizens who elected these politicians?

  Denmark happens to be the European country with the most ISIS fighters returning from Syria, according to a report released in April by the International Centre for Counter-Terrorism in The Hague. The report shows that 50% of the people who left Denmark to fight with ISIS in Syria have returned to Denmark. The UK is second, with 48%, and then come Germany (33%), Sweden (29%), France (27%), and Austria (26%).

  In Denmark, four Syrian ISIS fighters were arrested in April when they returned from Syria.

  The head of the Strategic Institute of the Defense Academy in Denmark, Anja Dalgaard-Nielsen, told a Danish newspaper in April that there are not enough resources to monitor all returning ISIS fighters and thereby ensure their arrest, adding:

  "But then again, not all [ISIS fighters] are identical. Some will come home and be a threat to society, whereas others will return disillusioned. If we treat everyone in the same manner, we risk pushing some of those who are in doubt even further in. If someone returns and it cannot be proven that he has committed crimes and if he, besides that, is disillusioned, then he should get help to get out."

  How do you determine with certainty that someone is "disillusioned," when he could in fact be a ticking bomb waiting to commit terror?

  In Denmark, the authorities decided on a prohibition to travel to Syria to join ISIS. That, however, does not solve the problem of what to do with the returning ISIS fighters. It also does not do much to prevent those potential ISIS fighters who have been frustrated in their efforts to join ISIS, from unleashing their terror on European soil instead — as ISIS has in fact commanded them to do.

  Several countries, including the United Kingdom and Australia, have considered revoking the citizenship of returning ISIS fighters, thereby preventing them from returning. This is certainly feasible in those cases where the person in question has dual citizenship. Political obstacles aside, however, one of the main legal obstacles to countries taking this path is the 1961 UN Convention on the Reduction of Statelessness, which prohibits governments from revoking a person's nationality if it leaves them stateless.

  A reasonable question that many Europeans might ask would be whether it is not perhaps time to review priorities? Perhaps the time has come to look at whether it remains worth it, in terms of the potential loss of human life, to remain party to the 1961 Convention, which would prohibit a country from stripping a returning ISIS fighter of his citizenship in order to prevent him from entering the country?

  Presumably, the European people care more about staying alive than the intricacies of international law. When will European leaders mobilize the political will to act?

  

  

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• Washington Post Spends Thanksgiving Lamenting Over Fake News and the Russian Scare

  Craig Timberg from Washington Post must be bored this Thanksgiving, spending his time concocting a rich and imaginative tale of fake news websites swaying the billion dollar Clinton campaign from no brainer win to a horrible loss. Here we are, once again, with the faux claims out of Washpo — spreading their own ironic fake news of Russian hacking conspiracies and a furious — and all of a sudden — flood of fake news websites that worked in concert to elect Donald Trump. After all, how could anyone vote for a man who’s credo was Americanism over globalism. Don’t you like cheap prices at Walmart? To date, hard evidence of Russian interference in our elections has yet to materialize — which was at the vanguard of the democrat response to embarrassing Wikileaks revelations that painted the party as wantonly corrupt and spirit cooking depraved. Since the election results shocked the establishment elite, there has been an absolute fervor across the media, led by Obama and his shills, to place the blame for Hillary’s cosmically hilarious defeat on websites that challenge falsehoods and media cuckery . Washpo chimes in on the issue — fueled by a McCarthy era styled list of Russian propaganda websites — provided by shills at some bullshit website called ProporNot.

  The flood of “fake news” this election season got support from a sophisticated Russian propaganda campaign that created and spread misleading articles online with the goal of punishing Democrat Hillary Clinton, helping Republican Donald Trump and undermining faith in American democracy, say independent researchers who tracked the operation. PropOrNot’s monitoring report, which was provided to The Washington Post in advance of its public release, identifies more than 200 websites as routine peddlers of Russian propaganda during the election season, with combined audiences of at least 15 million Americans. On Facebook, PropOrNot estimates that stories planted or promoted by the disinformation campaign were viewed more than 213 million times.  “The way that this propaganda apparatus supported Trump was equivalent to some massive amount of a media buy,” said the executive director of PropOrNot, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to avoid being targeted by Russia’s legions of skilled hackers. “It was like Russia was running a super PAC for Trump’s campaign. .?.?. It worked.”

  On ProporNot’s list of websites to avoid, due to Russian propaganda risk, includes infowars.com, nakedcapitalism.com, wikileaks.org, zerohedge.com — amongst many others. Propornot even provides their readers with a wonderful chrome browser extension to rout out these evil sites. Instead of reading propaganda, maybe you should read Snopes instead (serious eyeroll action). If you want to continue the discussion, go head on over to their Reddit page — where another 26 people are interested in the complete shit they spew. According to recent Alexa rankings, these butthurt libtards are talking to themselves, literally, except for the moron singular shill from Washpo who wrote this absurd story. The quintessential picture of failure

  I can sit here and claim alt-left sites like MotherJones and DailyKos are merely Chinese shills, working in concert with the Democratic Party, in an effort to elect democrats in order to  continue to pursue a brand of globalism that favors the hollowing out of America’s middle class, transferring vast amounts of wealth from here to there. In spite of the fact that everything I just said, as a matter of policy, is 100% accurate — the cucks from Daily Kos had little to do with it.

  The fake news conspiracy theories being promoted by very low and disingenuous news agencies, who’ve proven to be corrupted and co-opted by the Democratic Party, is embarrassing for the 4th estate. Instead of bucking up and dealing with their short comings, the fact that no one believes their shit anymore, they’ve gone apeshit hysterical over the success of Breitbart and other conservative leaning sites — simply branding them as fake and actively working with Appnexus, Facebook and Google to demonetize them.

  Welcome to the Chinafication of the American media.

  Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

  

  

• Paul Craig Roberts Asks "What If Trump Fails?"

  Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

  Did Donald Trump win the election because he is a racist and misogynist and so are the American people?

  No. That’s BS from the Oligarchs’ well-paid whores in the media, “liberal progressive” activist groups, think tanks and universities.

  Did Trump win because he stole the election?

  More BS. The Oligarchs controlled the voting machines. They failed to steal the election, because the people outsmarted them and told the pollsters that they were voting for Hillary. This led to the presstitutes’ propaganda that Hillary was the certain winner, and the Oligarchs believed their own propaganda and didn’t believe it necessary to make certain of their victory.

  Trump won the presidency because he spoke directly and truthfully to the American people, telling them what what they knew to be true and had never before heard from any politician:

  “Our movement is about replacing a failed and corrupt political establishment with a new government controlled by you, the American people. The establishment has trillions of dollars at stake in this election. Those who control the levers of power in Washington and the global special interests they partner with, don’t have your good in mind. The political establishment that is trying to stop us is the same group responsible for our disastrous trade deals, massive illegal immigration and economic and foreign policies that have bled our country dry.

   

  “It’s a global power structure that is responsible for the economic decisions that have robbed our working class, stripped our country of its wealth and put that money into the pockets of a handful of large corporations and political entities. The only thing that can stop this corrupt machine is you. The only force strong enough to save our country is us. The only people brave enough to vote out this corrupt establishment is you, the American people.”

  Trump did not promise voters a bunch of handouts. He didn’t say he would fix this and that. He said that only the American people could fix our broken country and identified himself as an agent of the people.

  The people won the election, but the Oligarchy is still there, as powerful as ever. They have already launched their attack using their whores in the media and liberal progressive groups in attempts to delegitimize Trump with protests, petitions, and endlessly false news reports. George Soros, using the money he made by his attack on the British currency, will pay thousands of protesters to attempt to disrupt the inauguration.

  What about Trump’s government? As Trump discovered, finding appointees who are not part of the Oligarchy’s economic and foreign policy establishment is very difficult.

  Washington is not a home for critics and dissidents. Consider Pat Buchanan, for example. As a White House official in two administrations and a two-time presidential candidate, he is experienced, but Washington has marginalized him.

  Moreover, even if there were a stable of outsiders, they would be eaten alive by the insiders. Trump will have to take insiders. But he has to pick insiders who are to some extent their own person. General Michael Flynn as National Security Adviser is not a bad pick. Flynn is the former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency who advised the Obama regime against employing ISIS against Syria. Flynn has publicly stated on television that the appearance of ISIS in Syria was a “willful decision” of the Obama regime. In other words, ISIS is Washington’s agent, which is why the Obama regime has protected ISIS.

  Trump’s chief of staff (Priebus) and chief strategist (Bannon) are reasonable choices.

  Sessions (Attorney General) and Pompeo (CIA) are disturbing appointments based on their media-created reputations. But in the US where there is no honest media, we don’t know the truth of the reputations. Nevertheless, if Sessions does support torture, he is disqualified as attorney general, because the Constitution prohibits torture. The US cannot afford yet another attorney general who does not support the US Constitution.

  If Pompeo actually is so poorly informed that he opposed the Iran settlement, he is not fit to be CIA director. The CIA itself said that Iran had no nuclear weapons program, and with Russia’s help the matter was resolved. Does Trump want a CIA director who neoconservatives could use to restart the conflict?

  The views of Sessions and Pompeo could be products of the time and not visceral. Regardless, Trump is a strong and willful person. If Trump wants peace with the Russians and Chinese, appointees who get in the way will be fired. So let’s see what a Trump government does before we damn it.

  Presstitute reports of extreme neoconservative John Bolton and former US attorney and NY Mayor Rudy Giuliani being candidates for Secretary of State do not seem credible. If Trump intends to get along with Putin, how can he do that if his Secretary of State wants war with Russia? Trump should find an experienced diplomat who negotiated with the Soviets. Richard Burt, who had a major role in the Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, is the sort of person it would make sense to consider. Another sensible candidate would be Jack Matlock, Reagan’s Ambassador to the Soviet Union.

  If Trump wants peace with Russia, the Secretary of State is the important appointment.

  If Trump wants to stop the Oligarchy’s rip off of the American people, the Secretary of the Treasury is the important appointment.

  Under the last three presidents, treasury secretaries have been agents for the banks-too-big-to-fail and for Wall Street. It is now a tradition for the financial gangsters to own the Treasury. It remains to be seen if the tradition is too strong for Trump to break.

  The Oligarchy is trying to discredit the Trump Presidency before it exists. This effort is discrediting liberal and progressive groups by identifying them with nonenforcement of the immigration laws and with homosexual and transgender rights, issues not on the agenda of an electorate whose economic fortunes have been declining and who are tired of 15 years of war that serves only the hegemony agenda of the neoconservatives and the profits and power of the military/security complex.

  According to The Saker, Putin has begun removing the Atlanticist Integrationists, Russia’s Fifth Column, from influence. Let’s see if Trump can remove our fifth columnists—neoconservatives and neoliberal economists—who have sold out the American people and America’s integrity.

  If Trump fails, the only solution is for the American people to become more radical.

  

  

• Dollar Shortage Goes Mainstream: When Will The Fed Confess?

  Last week we posted the report by ADM ISI’s Paul Mylchreest “Dollar Liquidity Threat is Getting Critical and the Fed is M.I.A” which summarized some of the key points in the ongoing, second phase of global dollar shortage, profiled here first in the start of 2015 and validated recently by the BIS. We discussed the bitter (and all too predictable) irony that the Federal Reserve doesn’t “get it”, having recently declared that that liquidity in financial markets was “adequate.”

  It isn’t.

  More than 68,000 hits later, we suspect that many ZH readers are tracking the dollar liquidity crisis (and Fed ignorance) via the negativity in Cross Currency Basis Swaps (CCBS). The 3-month Yen/Dollar CCBS has made a new low of 81.75 bp (swapping Yen into dollars for 3 months costs 81.75bp annualised above covered interest parity) implying that the structural dollar shortage is deteriorating.

  

  While we’ve been writing about dollar shortages since the GFC, Mylchreest traced the timeline of the current shortage back to the first RMB devaluation in February 2014. He noted that it’s the one thing that even the central banks struggle to control… think Swiss Franc peg (SNB), impact on carry trade and the Yen (BoJ) and the severe weakness that we’re seeing in the RMB (PBoC). Indeed, a “glaring omission” is the failure of the Fed to set-up a dollar swap arrangement with the PBoC.

  Mainstream economists and media are playing catch-up. For example, Carmen Reinhart referenced the “dollar shortage” last month, as did Bloomberg, citing a new report by former Fed economist Zoltan Pozsar which summarizes everything we have said for years.

  In his latest “Global Money Notes” report, “From Exorbitant Privilege to Existential Dilemma”, Credit Suisse’s Zoltan Pozsar argues that “an FOMC determined to normalise interest rates has no choice but to become a Dealer of Last Resort in the FX swap market and provide qunatitative Eurodollar easing (“QEE”) for the rest of the world through its dollar swap lines.”

  According to Pozsar, Basel III and the money market reforms are tightening dollar funding markets causing an “existential trilemma” for the Fed in which “it is impossible to have constraints on bank balance sheets (restraining capital mobility in global money markets), a par exchange rate between onshore dollars and Eurodollars, and a domestically oriented monetary policy mandate. Something will have to give. It’s either the cross-currency basis, the foreign exchange value of the dollar or the hiking cycle. It’s either the Fed’s regulatory and monetary objectives, or control over the Fed’s balance sheet size. It’s either quantities or prices…”

  In terms of CCBS, Pozsar expects “Cross-currency bases will have to go more negative before the Fed steps in, and -150bp on the three-month dollar-yen basis is not an unlikely target”, which would probably lead to a severe bout of Yen weakness from here. The three month dollar-euro basis swap has declined to -43.9bp, closing in on its recent low of -58.8bp during the Deutsche Bank panic nearly two months ago. As an aside, it’s telling that fears about European banks still cause a scramble for dollar liquidity in a deja vu all over again. 

  Pozsar, like Mylchreest, highlights how a dollar funding crisis tightens monetary policy for the rest of the world and could shred the RMB as it means “tighter financial conditions for the rest of the world. In turn, tighter financial conditions point to slow, not faster global growth as foreign banks pass on higher costs to their customers or worse: de-lever their books…If the Fed leaves the intermediation of all of the rest of the world’s marginal dollar needs to American bank’s constrained balance sheets, offshore financial conditions may tighten and the dollar may strengthen to the point where they are no longer consistent with the path envisioned for the funds rate: rounds of RMB devaluation would follow which also won’t help interest rate normalization.”

  So, the rest of the world is left to hang around, waiting to see if the Federal Reserve wakes up to what’s happening to dollar liquidity, and the threat it poses to the global economy and to its own (glacially slow) tightening cycle.

  And now that they may be finally catching on, we would like to see some economists or journalists sit Janet Yellen down and interrogate her about dollar funding markets. Although we doubt that they could extract a confession, it might be entertaining to watch.

  

  

• The Perfect Storm Set To Pop Aussie Apartment Bubble Bringing The Economy Down With It

  Submitted by Guy Manno via Crush the Market

  The Aussie apartment boom that has turned into an epic bubble with record, sky-high prices, is showing all the signs for the perfect storm which will ultimately pop. With the popping of the apartment boom, it will simultaneously bring down the Australian economy, as the apartment market is set to have a sizeable correction in 2017 and 2018.

  A short Look At Australia’s Real Estate Market

  Australian real estate prices have been going up for over 25 years with hardly a pause in between since the late 80’s. The last time real estate prices fell considerably was when Australia last had an official economic recession back in 1987, when interest rates skyrocketed to around 17-18%.

  The chart below show the price growth of real estate, rents and CPI since mid 1987. Initially the price growth of Australia’s real estate market climbed steadily taking 11 years to double in 1988. From there the price growth continued to accelerate with the next 100% increase in price taking 4.5 years to reach.

  An interesting observation on the chart below is that real estate prices have risen by over 700% since 1987, yet rents have risen  just under 300% over the same period. This chart clearly shows that the majority of the price growth was not supported by a fundamental increase in rents to support the higher prices, but rather a massive surge in mortgage debt over the same period drove prices higher.

  

   

  Rising Credit Leads To Booms & Contractions In Credit Lead to Busts

  Professor Steve Keen in the interview shown below highlights his own reasons why he sees a recession coming in 2017 for Australia.

  Steve highlights a number of reasons for his prediction, including deteriorating terms of trade, the ending of the mining investment boom, the Government’s pursuit to cut spending and a reduction in foreign buyers for real estate, among others. However, the most important reason is a deceleration of credit / mortgage debt. Based on Steve’s research and economic models the deceleration of mortgage debt growth is the leading cause for all economic downturns globally including the US, Japan and Europe economic recessions, with a correlation close to -1. What all his research shows is that the deceleration of mortgage debt growth leads to a collapse in real estate prices which then lead to an economic recession in those countries.

  Due to this research, Steve believes Australia will react the same way as other countries based on slowing growth in mortgage debt. Especially, as the conditions have already begun to slow based on the bank’s tightening their standards overall. However, most of the lending restrictions imposed from the banks are for off the plan apartments and existing apartments within most major cities around Australia.

   

  Given Australia was recently ranked number 4 in the world in the UBS global real estate bubble index, see: Australia’s debt addiction fuels record real estate bubble, its easy to see that prices could fall over 20% as lending conditions continue to tighten and their effects take hold.

  Why Are Banks Tightening Lending Conditions With Record Real Estate Prices?

  The simple reason is that the banks do not want to be caught in a credit crunch like they faced back in 2008 and 2009 where they had to have the RBA and the US FED provide considerable financial assistance to keep them afloat.

  Right now the banks can see what everyone else can see if you look at all the data publicly available. Australia will face a major oversupply of apartment dwellings over the next 1 – 3 years from a major ramp up of approvals of apartments. The growth of approvals over the last 7 years which you can see in the chart below, is leading to a big jump in the construction of apartments with a number of them being competed in the next 18 months.

  

   

  Due to the rapid increase in approvals, there has been a massive spike of cranes currently being deployed in Australia, to handle the apartment boom that is currently taking place. As you can see below in the chart Sydney and Melbourne are leading the way in Australia, dwarfing most major cities in the US including New York and LA.

  

   

  With all the current construction for apartments taking place from the buildup of approvals, especially in the last 3 years, Australia is facing a glut of new apartments that are about to be completed in 2017 and 2018.

  Knowing the upcoming glut of apartment completions is about to come available on the market soon, the banks have taken action to protect their capital by providing most of their tightening around new and existing apartments within the CBD’s of Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane where most of the construction has taken place.

  

   

  Highest Housing Completions = Biggest Housing Price Fall

  The chart below shows a comparison of house prices in Australia, UK, Spain, US and Ireland with an accompanying housing completions chart.

  The most obvious data from the chart is both Ireland and Spain had the biggest fall in prices during the GFC in 2008 relative to the other countries shown. Those 2 countries also had the largest ramp up of new housing completed from 2000 – 2007.

  

   

  Surging Bond Yields Leads To Higher Mortgage Rates In Australia.

  Back in October US Government 10 yr bond yields were sitting at around 1.55%. Fast forward one month and rates are now sitting at around 2.3%.  A 0.8% increase from the October levels (see chart below). The reason why this is a big deal, is that the US Government bond yields are what are utilized to benchmark most of the different types of retail and commercial loans.

  In Australia the banks also rely heavily on overseas markets and especially the US markets to provide the necessary funding to support their loan book. So as bond yields have skyrocketed in such a short period in the US, it has already led to the banks in Australia lifting rates by between 0.20% – 0.60% on their fixed loans as their funding costs have jumped dramatically.

  With mortgage rates rising and lending conditions being tightened its becoming more difficult for developers to sell their off the plan apartments as investors find it more difficult to access bank lending to finance their purchases, resulting in a slump in demand for off the plan apartments.

  Melbourne Developer Offers $21,000 To Encourage Buyers

  In an attempt to lure buyers to a new off the plan development in Melbourne, a large well known developer is now offering $21,000 to investors in an attempt to sell their $420,000 1 br apartments in Southbank Melbourne. The idea is to match the investor or first time buyer’s 5% deposit of $21,000 to assist them in meeting a 10% deposit.

  The problem that this Melbourne developer and other developers will find, is even with this huge financial incentive, many of the banks in Australia have lifted their minimum deposit requirements for off the plan apartments in major cities to between 15% – 25%.

  

   

  Apartment Bubble Bursting Leading To Australian Recession

  Similar to Professor Steve Keen’s prediction that a recession is coming to Australia in 2017 or early 2018, I also believe that the perfect storm of conditions are developing that will soon pop the apartment bubble that has been taking place in Australia.

  When the correction in apartment prices takes hold, it will have a domino effect on the Australian economy, leading to a contraction in economic activity in Australia. The reason for this is because the real estate industry and related industries now has the largest contribution to GDP at around 28%. (See chart below)

  With record amount of apartment construction taking place over the last few years, fueling a considerable amount of GDP growth, I believe the slowing of the construction industry will start to subtract heavily on GDP growth in 2017 and 2018 leading to Australia’s first recession in over 25 years.

  

  

  

• October Was The Worst Month For Hedge Funds Yet This Year

  Another month, and the pain for the hedge fund industry just keeps getting more intense.

  According to the latest Evestment report, investors redeemed an estimated net $14.2 billion from hedge funds in October. Year-to-date, there has been  a net $77.0 billion removed from the industry.  October’s outflow was the fourth month of redemptions in the last five and seventh in 2016. Due to the  breadth of products experiencing outflows, and the persistence of redemptions outweighing new allocations, it is clear the industry is experiencing a crisis -like wave of negative investor sentiment.

  One almost wonders how much higher the market can keep rising with redemption requests flooding countless back offices. We hope to find out soon.

  Here are the rest of the details on the latest, ongoing, troubles facing the hedge fund industry which, unless something drastically changes soon may end up being a “zero hedge” industry:

  • The breadth of redemption pressure in October was the industry’s largest in 2016 with 61% of reporting funds estimated to have net outflow during the month. The last five months have accounted for the majority of the industry’s redemptions in 2016, a time frame which aligns with investors’ processes for analyzing 2015 results, and taking actions on those decisions.

  

  • While investors broadly reduced investments in hedge funds in October, the bigger issue was the lack of meaningful new investment. The portion of funds losing greater than 2% or 5% of their AUM from redemptions was only slightly above average in October, however the portion with new allocations greater than 2% or 5% of their AUM were well below average. Essentially, flows in October were poor not necessarily because investors redeemed from the industry, but no one is really allocating with any enthusiasm.

  

  • One major issue that arose in October, investors appear to be turning their backs on the one segment which had supported industry flows in 2016, managed futures. Performance issues, as anticipated, appear to have swayed investor sentiment toward the group negative. After aggregate performance declines in each of the last three months, and six of the last eight, managed futures funds had their second largest month of outflows in almost two years in October. With performance losses intensifying in October, the outlook for flows for the universe is not positive.
  • Event driven funds continue to be a major source of redemption pressures for the industry. October and YTD flows by size and prior year return illustrate the issue well; too many large funds performed  poorly last year, and they have been the major source of redemption pressures through the year, and into October. Why that occurred is particular to each fund, however the negative sentiment in response has been universal.
  • August marked fifteen months of investors voting in favor of commodity strategies, but after recent losses, investors have begun to head to the exits. Redemptions in October were the second consecutive month of outflows after persistent losses re-emerged in July.
  • If pressed for a bright spot, investors were net allocators to multi-strategy hedge funds in October. Inflows were not large, however it may be a positive sign that the seven months of positive returns prior to October have resulted in positive flows in two of the last three months. July’s nearly $8 billion in redemptions may ultimately prove to be the moment investor sentiment bottomed out toward the strategy.
  • The outlook for macro hedge funds may actually be positive, despite October being the tenth monthly net outflow for the universe within the last year. Eight consecutive months of positive asset-weighted performance, against the backdrop of a rapidly evolving macro economic landscape could be positive for flows. There remains the risk for investors to select managers who most appropriately interpret global influences, as the universe has proven that not all will get it right, and several may get it very wrong.

  • Distressed, the industry’s best performing strategy of 2016, had slightly positive flows in October. Distressed investing, in a hedge fund structure, has endured 22 months of negative investor sentiment prior to October. The interest in private credit funds, whose structures are designed to be specifically aligned to opportunities in distressed or special situation credit markets, have likely had an impact on distressed hedge fund net flows.

  There is a silver lining. Here is evestment’s conclusion:

  Hedge funds are facing difficult times, but the $3 trillion industry is not on the verge of disappearing. The issues of expensive access to increasingly marginalized and potentially replicable returns streams, has and will continue to force change. Savvy institutional investors have more choices, more technology and more influence on their side than ever before. The largest allocators may find it more cost effective to bring resources in-house rather than to pay fees for mediocrity. Others may turn to replication strategies, ETFs, but also increasingly to private markets where there is the perception that value  has more potential to be realized, and manager expertise is more critical in that process. The result for the hedge fund industry, for now, appears to be stagnation at best, and erosion at worst. What may provide hope to the industry is a change which disrupts the homogeny of public markets over the last several years. There are sparks of change emerging over the globe, but whether professional discretion can prevail is not yet evident.

  

  

• Trump, OPEC, & Game Theory

  Submitted by Emad Mostaque via GovernmentsAndMarkets.com,

  “It’s not whether you win or lose, but whether you win!”. Source: Reddit

  

   

  Nobody has any real idea what President-elect Donald Trump has planned.

  It is quite possible he himself doesn’t know.

  As President-elect we are all forced to take him seriously, but the consequences of taking him literally or not are so wide that most are in a state or confusion.

  However, if we look at the situation more closely there may be method to the madness and some potential hints on where we go from here.

  Candidate Trump was incredibly successful in covering up his weaknesses by, in effect, making the US election a referendum.

  The election was a referendum on the status quo and a vote for Trump was a vote for change, not a vote for the huge range of messages and proposals he put out.

  Indeed, by putting out so many messages and controversial statements he attracted different voters for different reasons. So the blue collar worker may have voted against free trade, but the Pennsylvanian Latino may have voted against health insurance premiums jumping 50%. The extreme proposals echoed his negotiation style as he made a bold first step, then walked it back, also allowing voters to justify ignoring his more odious statements.

  The opponents of Trump preferred to take him at his word, ignoring the real passions his grievance narrative and promise of a better (different) tomorrow stirred up, looking to fight him on topics his supporters found ephemeral.

  This strategic ambiguity in his message changed the game and was a key component of his ability to beat Clinton by going outside the system and making it a game of persuasion over politics. The falsehoods leading to furious fact checking were also reminiscent of the theoretical foundations of non-linear war put in place by the Russians, building on the work of prior autocrats. We can expect this to continue with Trump TV and direct communication through social media.

  The normalization of Candidate Trump has occurred faster than anyone could have imagined as the world is now forced to take him seriously as President-elect.

  The narrative has moved quickly to a positive one of a structural change with decreased regulation, lower taxes and huge infrastructure spending. Leading figures are overlooking extreme statements and focusing on President Trump as a more reasonable, settled and somewhat magnaminous chap after he ‘won’ the negotiation.

  However, little is certain and this presents an interesting situation to look at through the lens of game theory.

  The USA has been the global superpower for decades, much to its own benefit and that of the rest of the world (overall).

  Free trade and globalization trends combined in a cooperative game where participants benefited, although some, like global multinational organisations and owners of capital, gained more than others such as domestic blue collar workers. These trends also helped pull hundreds of millions out of poverty worldwide and trade in a truly positive sum outcome.

  The most recent cooperative equilibrium has been the gospel belief in the power of Central Banking that has dominated markets and investment moves in recent years. This has been the primary narrative around the market and most price moves have been described in relation to Central Bank actions as opposed to more idiosyncratic factors.

  Cooperative equilibria like this are slow to form, but relatively stable.

  Until they aren’t.

  Political factors and a slowing of global trade has been placing increasing pressure on this narrative and the election of Donald Trump into the most powerful position in the world has accelerated this process, with a key flip in the dominant narrative towards fiscalism and stimulus spending over austerity and low rates.

  More importantly, the role of the USA has changed sharply in terms of its likely behaviour under a Trump administration as it will no longer be a cooperative player, but a competitive one.

  This moves us into a different class of competition, such as the familiar games of chicken and the prisoner’s dilemma, where there are drastically different equilibrium conditions.

  Competitive players in competitions where there is a key enforcer and dominant player such as the USA can be handled through a variety of means, but when the dominant player changes its tack to claw back some the shared gains for itself, the game can rapidly change to a zero-sum or even negative-sum one.

  This is where the fear of trade wars comes in and, looking at prior instances, the narrative is likely to rapidly shift across a spectrum of outcomes as each player in the game makes their competitive moves to get “ahead” of the game.

  The “pricing for perfection” of the current narrative is fragile in this environment given the difficulty of implementation and the probability of continued extreme comments from the President-elect and his transition team. Curiously, the likely continued impact of these statements means the US will likely trade in a similar manner to autocratic Emerging Markets, unsurprising when Trump’s executive Presidency has more power than even rulers like President Erdo?an.

  The uncertainty created by the dichotomy between the outcomes of Candidate and President Trump also add an additional wrinkle to this, placing the new normal into a category known as competitive games under uncertainty.

  The most prominent recently example of this is OPEC and Saudi Arabia’s decision not to cut. A number of classical models can be employed to understand OPEC (generally a Stackelberg competition given Saudi’s role is a good starting point), but the presence of US shale changed the equation.

  In this case, a cut, for example, of 1mbpd by Saudi Arabia (say 10% of 10mbpd of production), would be sensible if they expected the price to rise 10%, particularly if everyone else chipped in, something other players are not incentivised to do due to lack of enforceability by OPEC.

  This would cost Saudi Arabia $18bn in forgone production revenue over 12 months if oil prices stayed at $50. If US shale output was elastic as oil prices rose however, with rigs firing up once more and stabilising the price, US shale would make $18bn at the Saudi’s expense.

  This uncertainty changed the game and equilibrium conditions until we headed into the recent Saudi bond issuance and in the next period ahead of a potential Saudi Aramco IPO as this completely changes the payoff structure. OPEC is still an unstable competition, but there are alternative oil balancing approaches that are not.

  Going into the OPEC meeting at the end of the month the optimised structure would have Iran being included once more in the exclusions and an overall cut target announced but flexible country quotas. The negotiating position of Saudi Arabia simply is not very strong given the changing conditions. This may not be enough to push oil prices above $60, but a failure in the deal would push prices well into the $30 range. I remain very bullish for 2017.

  As he has a huge popular mandate having eschewed using the GOP power structure, the rational approach for President Trump is to continue with his classical negotiation tactics in bringing the House, Senate and foreign powers in line with his long-term wishes under an environment of competition and uncertainty to gain an edge.

  The proximate impact of this shift is to increase the probability of market-altering moves such as a Chinese currency free float, with a periodic shifting between multiple unstable equilibria as each side tries to get ahead. We are already seeing this with the Yuan drifting to multi-year lows and JP is very bearish on the potential for a Q1 shock in China as outlined here.

  The world seems a very uncertain place at the moment as the foundations of many of our political, economic and market models shift underneath us.

  However, this may be a feature, not a bug of the new regime and it may be possible to adapt and understand where we might be headed if we build the right structural models in a methodological way. The likely path to a new stable status quo is likely to be a rocky one, with plenty of opportunities and dangers to keep us on our toes.

  Bonus: Learn how to play the game

  

  

• Silver Enters Bear Market As Hedgies Flee

  After tagging $19 the night of Trump's victory, Silver prices have tumbled 15% (the biggest drop since Summer 2013's taper tantrum). However, as large speculators dumped their longs en masse, this week also marked another milestone as Silver drops 24% from its post-Brexit peak (above $21) and entered a bear market once again.

  As the dollar surges, Bloomberg reports that gold and silver holdings in exchange-traded funds are set for the biggest monthly drop in more than three years.

  “Everyone is looking for a December rate hike, and that’s what’s been priced into gold and silver at the moment,” Tom Kendall, head of precious metals strategy at ICBC Standard Bank Plc, said by phone from London.

   

  

   

  “The dollar remains a key driver.”

  And, just as we have seen in gold futures, hedge fund speculative longs in silver are also decling rapidly…

  

   

  And this selling pressure has slammed Silver to six-month lows (down 24% from Brexit highs in June)…

  

   

  But, as Dana Lyons' Tumblr explains, Silver prices are testing a confluence of potential support levels.

  We often get questions about our technical analysis on specific assets or securities, especially as it pertains to potential support or resistance levels on the chart. We don’t post many of those types of charts anymore but we present one today in the chart of the popular iShares Silver Trust, ticker, SLV. The impetus was partially because of the amount of attention on PM’s, but primarily due to a potential inflection point on the chart.

  Everyone asks “when is XYZ going to bottom”? There is no way to ever know for sure. The best thing you can do is identify the most likely points of support in order to put the best odds of success on your side. And the best setups are always when multiple key potential support levels line up in the same vicinity. Such a setup may be present now in the chart of SLV, in our view.

  So what are the potential support levels?:

  • The 61.8% Fibonacci Retracement of the November-August Rally ~15.62
  • The 500-Day Simple Moving Average ~15.64
  • The June 7 closing price (15.60) from which SLV gapped up, launching it on its final run to 19.71

  As the chart shows, SLV is testing this level today. In fact, the low of the day was exactly 15.60.

  

  So will this 15.60 level hold? Obviously nobody knows for sure. At least there are multiple key levels of potential support there, however. That puts decent odds of success with the silver bulls – as well as giving them a level with which to play off of. If SLV remains above there, it can bounce. If it closes below there without an immediate reversal, perhaps there is more downside to come for silver prices.

  How far will SLV bounce if it holds? Obviously, we can’t know that either. There appears to be considerable potential resistance near 16.80 and just above 18.00, if the SLV does bounce. So, that would be about 7-15% of upside – without even breaking the post-summer intermediate-term downtrend. It would take a lot more strength to convince us that the post-2015 uptrend is resuming. So, even holding this level doesn’t mean it’s up, up and away again for silver.

  For now, precious metals fans will have to be satisfied with, “Hi Ho Silver, A-Bounce!”

  *  *  *

  More from Dana Lyons, JLFMI and My401kPro.

  

  

• On A Personal Note…

  With raw newsflow in the financial, political, economic and geopolitical realms hurtling ever faster – scrambling toward some yet unknown climax – facilitated by a world that has never been more interconnected, and where the noise to signal ratio (especially over the past few months courtesy of certain… events) has hit unprecedented levels, sometimes we get so focused on trying to share our own, unique (we hope) vision and take on things, that we lose connection, and direct communication, with the only thing that really matters for this little project: our readers.

  That would be you.

  Without you, dear reader, this website would not exist.

  The truth is that while we always try to represent, interpret and explain events as they happen objectively and in real time (a challenge which at times is literally painful) we may not get everything right or accurate, but we try.

  We try to do as well as we can within the confines of our modest staffing, infrastructure and financial capabilities. Unlike media behemoths and “titans” of industry, many of whom have infinitely more in resources and outside “access”, our growth is only possible if you – dear reader – keep coming back. Incidentally, and contrary to various amusing rumors, Zero Hedge does not, and has never had any financial, political, or any other affiliation or relation to an external entity or organization; no we are not funded by the KGB, no we are not on Trump’s secret payroll, no we have never raised one dollar of outside funding. From day one, all our revenue has been through advertising, and your kind donations.

  Which, simply stated, means that we write what we believe in, even if it is ultimately proven to be dead wrong. And always remember: there is no such thing as “absolute truth.”

  Which is not to say readers should accept everything, or anything, at face value. Quite the contrary: as we have warned since the very start, our main intention, while informing readers, has been to make them think critically – to present a different side to things, even if it is ultimately dead wrong. For pete’s sake, this a blog after all, not some established pillar of the fourth estate with editors, sub-editors, reporters, journalists, crossword puzzle makers, back office, and so forth. 

  This should be nothing new: for those still unfamiliar, here is a brief excerpt from our “full disclosure” policy, which we hope most of you are familiar with:

  The reality is, critical readers should read analytic posts and the rest of Zero Hedge with the blanket assumption that the author is totally “conflicted.”  (Phrased more logically, that the author stands to benefit from being right- imagine that).  This turns the conversation to the content, and away from the author, the author’s biography and the contents of their IRA account / blind trust.  This (the content) is, of course, where the focus should be.  If you think otherwise you might be one of those people who thinks it was a good idea for a news program hosted by Dan Rather, and where viewers spend 66% of the non-commercial time watching his mug, to be in HDTV.  If you still get something out of our writing with the assumption that we are invested in our position and stand to gain personally from you believing us, well, we’ve done our job.  If not, then our being “unconflicted” isn’t going to change the fact that we have a weak argument or poorly reasoned prose.  At least, if you’re not one of the “optics” idiots.

   

  People, you don’t test a safe under ideal conditions for the safe and call it good.  You test it with all the advantages to the burglar.  And then you let the burglar cheat.  If it still remains closed after that, then it’s secure.

  We wrote the above in 2009. In light of the recent unprecedented implosion of trust in the “mainstream”, it has never been more relevant, and we bring it up because in recent weeks the tension between the so called “mainstream” and “alternative” medias has never been greater.  Perhaps that’s a good thing.

  However, no matter how the growing conflict within the fourth estate turns out, we would like you – our reader – to know that we have survived this long, nearly eight years since our modest start in January 2009, in the process clocking in nearly three billion page views, because of your faith in us and the fact that you – for whatever reason – keep coming back.

  And for that, from the entire tiny staff here at Zero Hedge, we thank you.

  

  

• All Aboard The Post-TPP World

  Authored by Pepe Escobar, originally posted op-ed via Strategic-Culture.org,

  A half-hearted near handshake between US President Barack Obama and Russian President Vladimir Putin before and after they spoke «for about four minutes», standing up, on the sidelines of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) summit in Lima, Peru, captured to perfection the melancholic dwindling of the Obama era.

  

  A whirlwind flashback of the fractious relationship between Obama and «existential threats» Russia and China would include everything from the Washington-sponsored Maidan in Kiev to Obama’s «Assad must go» in Syria, with special mentions to the oil price war, sanctions, the raid on the ruble, extreme demonization of Putin and all things Russian, provocations in the South China Sea – all down to a finishing flourish; the death of the much vaunted Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) treaty, which was reconfirmed at APEC right after the election of Donald Trump.

  It was almost too painful to watch Obama defending his not exactly spectacular legacy at his final international press conference – with, ironically, the backdrop of the South American Pacific coast – just as Chinese President Xi Jinping all but basked in his reiterated geopolitical glow, which he already shares with Putin. As for Trump, though invisible in Lima, he was everywhere.

  The ritual burial, in Peru’s Pacific waters, of the «NATO on trade» arm of the pivot to Asia (first announced in October 2011 by Hillary Clinton) thus offered Xi the perfect platform to plug the merits of the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP), amply supported by China.

  RCEP is an ambitious idea aiming at becoming the world’s biggest free trade agreement; 46% of global population, with a combined GDP of $17 trillion, and 40% of world trade. RCEP includes the 10 ASEAN nations plus China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.

  The RCEP idea was born four years ago at an ASEAN summit in Cambodia – and has been through nine rounds of negotiations so far. Curiously, the initial idea came from Japan – as a mechanism to combine the plethora of bilateral deals ASEAN has struck with its partners. But now China is in the lead.

  RCEP is also the fulcrum of the Free Trade Area of the Asia-Pacific (FTAAP) – a concept that was introduced at an APEC meeting in Beijing by, who else, China, with the aim of seducing nations whose top trade partner is China away from entertaining TPP notions.

  RCEP – and even FTAAP – are not about a new set of ultra-comprehensive trade rules (concocted by US multinationals), but the extension of existing deals to ASEAN and key nations in Northeast Asia, South Asia and Oceania.

  It didn’t take experienced weathermen to see which way the Pacific winds are now blowing. Peru and Chile are now on board to join RCEP. And Japan – which was negotiating TPP until the very last breath – has now steered the drive towards RCEP.

  The Sultan gets into the action

  Meanwhile, Putin and Xi met once again – with Putin revealing he’s going to China next spring to deepen Russian involvement in the New Silk Roads, a.k.a. One Belt, One Road (OBOR). The ultimate objective is to merge the Chinese-led OBOR with the development of the Russia-led Eurasia Economic Union (EEU).

  That’s the spirit behind 25 intergovernmental agreements in economy, investment and nuclear industry signed by Russian Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev and Chinese Premier Li Keqiang in St. Petersburg in early November, as well as the set up of a joint Russia-China Venture Fund.

  In parallel, almost out of blue, and with a single stroke, Turkey President Tayyip Erdogan, on the way back from a visit to Pakistan and Uzbekistan, confirmed what had been all but evident for the past few months; «Why shouldn't Turkey be in the Shanghai Five? I said this to Mr. Putin, to (Kazakh President) Nazarbayev, to those who are in the Shanghai Five now… I think if Turkey were to join the Shanghai Five, it will enable it to act with much greater ease».

  This bombshell of course refers to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO), which started in 2001 as the Shanghai Five – China, Russia and three Central Asia nations, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan (Uzbekistan joined later) – as a security bloc to fight Salafi-jhadism and drug trafficking from Afghanistan.

  Over the years, the SCO has evolved much further – into an Asia integration/cooperation mechanism. India, Pakistan, Iran, Afghanistan and Mongolia are observers, with India and Pakistan to be admitted as full members arguably by 2017, followed by Iran. Turkey (since 2013) and Belarus are SCO «dialogue partners».

  Wily Erdogan made his SCO opening in conjunction to stressing Turkey did not need to join the EU «at all costs». That’s been more than evident since Erdogan survived the July coup and unleashed a hardcore crackdown that’s been met with horror by Brussels – where the 11-year (so far) negotiations for Turkish accession are all but stalled. And France, the number two EU power after Germany, will inevitably block it further on down the road, whoever is elected President next year.

  Turkey joining the SCO, in the long run, alongside Iran, India and Pakistan, would represent yet another key node of Eurasia integration, as the SCO is progressively interlocked with OBOR, EEU, China’s Silk Road Fund, the Asian Infrastructure Investment Bank (AIIB) and even the BRICS’s New Development Bank (NDB), which will start financing projects for group members and then expand to other nations in the Global South. Moscow and Beijing would welcome Ankara with open arms.

  Whatever the contours of Trump’s China/Asia foreign policy, Eurasian integration will proceed unabated. China is advancing its own simultaneously internal and external pivot, involving the tweaking of financial, fiscal and tax policies to drive consumption in retail, health, travel and sports in parallel to the OBOR drive all across Eurasia, all the way to solidifying an economic superpower.

  TPP – or NATO on trade, the Asian version – is just a scalp in a long and winding road. And on the South China Sea, dialogue is slowly edging out the confrontation fomented throughout the Obama administration.

  At APEC, Xi also met with Philippines President Rodrigo Duterte – and called for China and the Philippines to go for maritime cooperation. A practical result is that Philippine fishermen will continue to have access to Scarborough Shoal, the fertile fishing ground inside the Philippines’ exclusive economic zone (EEZ) that has been under Chinese control since 2012. Beijing also pledged assistance to Philippine fishermen in alternative industries – such as aquaculture.

  Call it the Trans-South China Sea Partnership.

  

  

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• Order Out Of Chaos: The Defeat Of The Left Comes With A Cost

  Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

  As I noted in my last article World Suffers From Trump Shellshock – Here’s What Happens Next, there are two primary consequences of a Trump presidency that actually serve globalists and elites in the long run.

  The first is the consequence of a perfect scapegoat for the economic crisis which the elites have been gestating since 2008.  Trump enters the White House with a clear political mandate, a mandate that supposedly gives conservatives more power than at any other time in U.S. history.  This mandate might seem like a miracle, a free hand of power to sovereignty and liberty champions to defeat the collectivist tyranny of cultural Marxists on the Left once and for all.  However, it could also backfire, because under this mandate EVERYTHING bad that happens under Trump’s watch can be blamed on Trump and his followers.  Conservatives have been given almost absolute influence over government (or apparent influence); by extension, they also inherit absolute responsibility, whether they like it or not.

  I examined this first consequence in detail in numerous articles leading up to the 2016 election.  In fact, it is the primary reason why I was so certain Trump would be president.  He is the perfect scapegoat, or the perfect conduit.  Under Trump, the last stage of economic collapse can finally be initiated by the financial elites and most of the world including half the population of the U.S. will immediately and without question blame conservatism, nationalism, sovereignty advocates and Trump for the disaster.  They won’t think twice about looking in the direction of global bankers.

  For those that immediately scoff at such a notion, I highly recommend they research the concept of 4^th Generation Warfare.  I also highly recommend study into a Department of Defense paper called 'From Psyop To Mindwar: The Psychology Of Victory', written by Major Michael Aquino (a self proclaimed “satanist”) and Colonel Paul Vallely (today a self proclaimed liberty champion).  I would also compel people to read 'The Art Of War' by Sun Tzu, the same manuscript that all recruits of the CIA are required to read.

  The essence of the most advanced form of warfare is the ability to defeat an opponent, or a population, without having to fight at all.  Instead, the master tactician seeks to influence his opponent to surrender without fighting, or, to influence his opponent to destroy himself.  This is accomplished primarily through propaganda, subversion, asymmetric warfare (terrorism and insurgency) and most importantly, co-option.

  As I noted in my last article, if you want to be able to accurately predict future events, you must understand the minds of the people with the most influence over those events.  The financial elites, highly motivated and highly organized, are the single most important gatekeepers to geopolitical change today.  Know their mind, and you will know the general path tomorrow will take.

  This is not to say that the elites are “omnipotent.”  Frankly, they don’t need to be.  With the utter lack of vigilance and awareness within our society, the elites only need to be relatively intelligent and exceedingly morally bankrupt to manipulate the masses. When skeptics argue with me that the elites would “have to be omnipotent to influence the social narrative in the manner I describe,” I have to laugh.  Any person of above-average intelligence and unlimited capital (as the financial elites have) can do considerable damage to a society, bring empires to their knees and condition the populace to think and react in a specific fashion.

  If I had the same resources at my disposal as the elites have (and the same lack of conscience), I could probably do a far better job than they when manipulating geopolitical outcomes. They make numerous mistakes if you pay close attention to their actions.  I hardly consider myself the smartest person around, let alone “omnipotent.”  This is a silly notion.  The reality is, the more ignorant the population, the easier it is to control and misdirect them.  To the ignorant, the elites might seem “omnipotent.” They aren’t; they merely have more-intelligent-than-average people at their disposal and printing presses to pay for everything they want.

  The smarter and more vigilant any given population, the more difficult it is to influence them through deception.  This is very simple.  To put it even more bluntly, the elites get away with subversive tyranny because there are too many willfully stupid people.

  Following this line of thinking, there is a second consequence of Election 2016 that greatly concerns me — the potential for co-option of the Liberty Movement, the only existing opposing force to globalism.  Co-option requires the centralization of a group in thought and deed under the influence of a small number of hands, or a single white knight figure.  As I noted in my article Will A Trump Presidency Really Change Anything For The Better?, published in March of this year:

  "The other ingenious aspect of the Trump campaign is really who he is running against — Hillary Clinton, a rabidly liberal candidate even more hated than Barack Obama. A candidate with a potentially serious criminal record and a penchant for an outright communistic world view far beyond that of Bernie Sanders. Those of us who have been in the writing field for a long time and have dabbled in fiction know that in order to create a fantastic hero, you must first put even more work into creating a fantastic villain. The hero is nothing without the villain."

  The unmitigated horror inherent in the prospect of a Hillary Clinton presidency is like adding jet fuel to the Trump campaign. (And yes, I am assuming according to the results of the primaries so far that the final election will be between Trump and Clinton).

  And, as I explained in my article Clinton Versus Trump And The Co-Option Of The Liberty Movement published in September:

  "Whenever you have a rebellion focused on the inherent ideals of freedom, totalitarian institutions struggle to intervene. The issue is, freedom is not only moral, but practical. Wherever true freedom exists, people are not only happier, but more productive and prosperous. It’s hard for a tyrant to fight a rebellion based on freedom because the idea is more powerful than any weapon or any form of treachery. No matter how advanced the tyranny is, and no matter how many rebels they imprison or kill, the idea of freedom endures.

   

  The only way to destroy a rebellion like this, a rebellion like the liberty movement, is to make it about something other than freedom. The powers that be have to convince that movement to support policies that are destructive to their own ideals. If this can be done, then that rebellion has lost the advantage of principle — the only advantage that really matters."

  The co-option of the liberty movement is not necessarily direct.  It can be achieved through what I call “absorption.” Take note that the mainstream media and elitists avoid using the label “liberty movement” at all costs because this is something we labeled ourselves many years ago.  Instead, they seek to control what we are called; labeling us “populists” of the “Alt-Right.”  The liberty movement has been fighting the globalists in the information war for a long time.  The average conservative Republican is new to this party, and yet the liberty movement is being called the “Alt-Right?”

  Even Bloomberg pointed out with relative glee that the Tea Party (liberty movement), a movement which leftists despise with every fiber of their being, could be devoured by Trump’s campaign and reconstituted into something else.  Read their editorial The Tea Party Meets Its Maker, but only if you have a strong stomach.

  In the battle against the Marxist left, it is important that we do not lose track of our original identity, or the elites at the top of the pyramid.  Also important is that we do not forsake our original principles in order to achieve “victory” over our adversaries.  This is a very difficult problem to discuss when you consider who we are fighting against.

  I have always said that it was the social justice cult and their zealotry that drove the rise of Trump.  It was they that created the public firestorm with their open contempt for our right to free thought and free expression.  But keep in mind, this has all happened before, and with terrible results.

  In Europe during the 1920s and early 1930s, the overall rise of Fascism was in direct response to economic crisis and the insurgency of communism.  Communism is essentially collectivism on the far left side of the political spectrum. Fascism is a collectivist trap the "Right" sometimes falls into.  Both lead to centralization and tyranny.

  Communism is tyranny in the name of undermining the strong and independent in order to make room for the weak.  Fascism is tyranny in the name of routing out the weak to make room for the strong.

  It is these two political extremes that the elites have used over the past century to dominate geopolitical outcomes.  Again, for those who are skeptical I highly recommend the extensive research and evidence presented by Antony Sutton, who outlined succinctly the FACT that both the Bolshevik Revolution and the rise of the Third Reich were funded and managed by Wall Street moguls and international banking interests.

  The elites are notorious for playing the extreme left against the right in order to drive conservatives to the opposite extreme.  My concern is not only that through Trump the elites can easily scapegoat conservative movements for a global economic crisis, but also that through the intense vitriol of the social justice left, infuriated by their loss to Trump in the election, conservatives may be driven to abandon their constitutional ideals and become the monster they hoped to destroy.

  Carroll Quigley, CFR elitist and mentor to Bill Clinton, was highly open about the plans of globalists to establish one world governance in his book “Tragedy And Hope.”  The following quote from Carroll Quigley’s Dissent: Do We Need It? could be taken as anti-right propaganda, but I take it as a warning that the elites see potential exploitation of the political right in America:

  “For example, I’ve talked about the lower middle class as the backbone of fascism in the future. I think this may happen. The party members of the Nazi Party in Germany were consistently lower middle class. I think that the right-wing movements in this country are pretty generally in this group.”

  Again, the liberty movement cannot be defeated by the globalists directly.  If the fight comes down to an open confrontation between freedom versus globalism, the globalists will inevitably lose.  Instead, it appears to me that the globalists are more than happy to either allow Trump into the White House, or to install him in the White House as a means to rewrite the liberty movement into a villainous character, rather than the rebellious hero of our story.

  So far it would seem that the temptations to revert to fascism are many.  Set aside the threat of ISIS terrorism and think about the insanity showcased by the Left.

  When I mentioned in my last article the crippling of social justice, I did not mention that this could have some negative reverberations.  With Trump and conservatives taking near-total power after the Left had assumed they would never lose again, their reaction has been to transform.  They are stepping away from the normal activities and mindset of cultural Marxism and evolving into full blown communists.  Instead of admitting that their ideology is a failure in every respect, they are doubling down.

  When this evolution is complete, the Left WILL resort to direct violent action on a larger scale, and they will do so with a clear conscience because, in their minds, they are fighting fascism.  Ironically, it will be this behavior by leftists that may actually push conservatives towards a fascist model.  Conservatives might decide to fight crazy with more crazy.

  The mainstream media and popular media largely controlled by leftist elements are only pouring gasoline on the fire, with major pundits and media personalities steadily hinting at “revolution” in the face of a “Trumpist” America.  But here is the thing, these people are kidding themselves.

  The alternative media is eclipsing corporate media today.  Their time is coming to an end.

  Leftists including groups like Black Lives Matter are also ill equipped to violently combat a conservative movement with a lifetime of experience in arms and the will to use them.  If the Left leaps into the realm of violent Marxist revolution, they will lose in America.  That said, there is a cost.

  The cost could very well be the heritage of freedom that conservatives desire to protect.  The alternative media may overrun the corporate media, but will we become the corporate media in the process?

  If under Trump conservatives fall to temptation and exploit the “ring of power” that is government to exert dominance in the name of stopping the Left, then they will ultimately be destroyed as well.

  In this case history will not remember conservatives as freedom fighters rebelling against globalist machinations, but as evil “populists” that caused global economic collapse and the re-establishment of the institution of fascism.  The globalists can swoop in after the dust has settled and use the American collapse fable as a story to tell children for the next century.  A reminder that nationalism and sovereignty are harbingers of war and death.  Conservatism will be abhorred as “deplorable,” an ugly ideal akin to Nazism.

  At this point, the globalists will have won, for no other philosophy contrary to globalism will ever exist again.  No one would want to associate themselves with historical “villains” and bogeymen.

  As I have mentioned consistently, I have no idea whether or not Donald Trump is aware of this potential trap.  I also have no idea if he was sincere in his campaign or simply telling people what they wanted to hear.  At this time, his consideration of neo-con political elites and Goldman Sachs bankers for cabinet positions does not leave a positive impression.  And, his seeming refusal to commit to prosecution of Hillary Clinton (which I also predicted) for her obvious crimes is a warning bell of liberty advocates.

  My position is that the Liberty Movement must always remain the Liberty Movement if conservatives and sovereignty proponents want a chance to survive.  We have to be willing remain just as watchful and critical of Trump as we would have been with Hillary Clinton.  And, if he breaks his promises or goes against his oath to the constitution, we must be willing to go to war with him, just as we would have with Clinton.

  This puts us in a tenuous position — fighting the Left is bad enough.  Going against Trump if he steps out of line is worse, because then we can be labeled leftists as well.  This is the essence of 4^th Generation warfare — cornering an opponent so that each move he makes is a sacrifice.  If the opponent is not careful, he might just destroy himself.

  There is a way to undermine this strategy by the elites; as conservatives we must treat Trump like a new employee.  We have to put him on probation and watch him, not give him the keys to the store on the first day.  We must also continue to educate fellow conservatives (and any on the Left that have the sense to listen) that this fight is FAR from over.  In fact, it has just begun.  In the end, our strategy must be for the Liberty Movement to absorb the "Alt-Right", instead of being absorbed.  And, we must focus our efforts and actions against top globalists and their organizations rather than only focusing on the regressive left.

  People must understand that the real threat in all of this has been and always will be the globalists.  Instead of fighting each other in a futile theater of the absurd, we must fight and remove them from the chess board, wherever and whenever they show their faces in the daylight.

  

  

• Mexican Cement Company Offers To Help Trump Build His "Big, Beautiful, Powerful" Border Wall

  As Trump gears up to take the oval office, vendors are already lining up to get a piece of his massive infrastructure projects, including his “Big, Beautiful, Powerful Border Wall.”  Ironically, one of the first vendors to publicly announce their interest in bidding on the border wall is none other than Mexican cement producer, Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua.  While Trump’s border wall has been fiercely protested by numerous senior elected officials in Mexico, including former President Vicente Fox, Grupo Cementos’ CEO admits “we can’t be choosy.”

  A Mexican cement maker is ready to lend its services to U.S. President-elect Donald Trump to build the wall he wants to erect on the southern border of the United States to curb immigration.

   

  “We can’t be choosy,” Enrique Escalante, Chief Executive Officer of Grupo Cementos de Chihuahua (GCC) said in an interview. “We’re an important producer in that area and we have to respect our clients on both sides of the border.”

   

  Based in Chihuahua, a large northern state bordering Texas and New Mexico, GCC is one of the biggest construction materials companies in Mexico. It generates around 70 percent of its sales in the United States, where it also has three plants.

   

  Escalante said Trump’s plans to invest in energy and infrastructure in the United States augured well for the firm.

   

  “For the business we’re in, Trump is a candidate that does favor the industry quite a bit,” Escalante said.

  Luckily for Trump, and Grupo Cementos, the National Enquirer has already drawn up “construction plans & blueprints.”

  Pro-Trump tabloid celebrating his victory/sending him a message? pic.twitter.com/5vhBkyINSg

  — Brian Stelter (@brianstelter) November 23, 2016

   

  Meanwhile, as TMZ points out, “Bikers 4 Trump” have already started building a commemorative border wall of their own just outside of Atlanta.  For the bargain price of $60 per brick, or $100 for two, you too can purchase a custom-etched brick for the wall.

  Bikers 4 Trump tells TMZ they’ve been plugging away for a couple months on a brick border wall of their own, which they plan to move to the Mexican border should Trump ever get the real deal constructed.

   

  We’re told they already have 200 bricks stacked in Atlanta next to State Hwy 49, and they feature names like Antonio Sabato Jr. and Joe Bonsall ?of The Oak Ridge Boys. Bricks have also been purchased in Scott Baio, Ted Cruz and Ted Nugent’s names — although none made their own donation.

  

   

  And, lest you thought this was a joke, here is some video of the newly etched bricks hot off the press and bound for the Atlanta wall.

  Welcome @DGallup to the wall! She is a 100% Disabled Vet & she ordered 2 Bricks @ https://t.co/cGkVjf2Psh#RETWEET pic.twitter.com/wli5ZcY9QP

  — Bikers 4 Trump (@Bikers4Trump) August 15, 2016

   

  What more is there to say?  The next 4 years are going to be surreal.

  

  

  

• Startling Look At How Much Money Food Stamp Recipients Spend On Junk Food

  A new study just released by the USDA, offers a very detailed look at exactly how participants in the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program” (SNAP, aka Food Stamps) spend their taxpayer-funded subsidies.  Unfortunately for taxpayers, the amount of money spent on soft drinks and other unnecessary junk foods/drinks is fairly staggering.  But, we suppose it’s a nice taxpayer funded subsidy for the soda industry…so score one for Warren Buffett and the Coca Cola lobbyists.

  Per the study, nearly $360mm, or 5.4% of the $6.6BN of food expenditures made by SNAP recipients, is spent on soft drinks alone.  In fact, soft drinks represent the single largest “commodity” purchased by SNAP participants with $100mm more spent on sodas than milk and $150mm more than beef.

  Soft drinks were the top commodity bought by food stamp recipients shopping at outlets run by a single U.S. grocery retailer.

   

  That is according to a new study released by the Food and Nutrition Service, the federal agency responsible for running the Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), commonly known as the food stamp program.

   

  By contrast, milk was the top commodity bought from the same retailer by customers not on food stamps.

   

  In calendar year 2011, according to the study, food stamp recipients spent approximately $357,700,000 buying soft drinks from an enterprise the study reveals only as “a leading U.S. grocery retailer.”

   

  That was more than they spent on any other “food” commodity—including milk ($253,700,000), ground beef ($201,000,000), “bag snacks” ($199,300,000) or “candy-packaged” ($96,200,000), which also ranked among the top purchases.

  

   

  Even worse, when we added up all of the commodities that would typically be considered “junk food” (i.e. soft drinks, candy, cakes, energy drinks, etc.), we found that roughly $950mm, or just over 14% of the aggregate $6.6BN of food expenditures made by SNAP recipients, is spent on unnecessary, unhealthy products.

  

   

  As CNS News points out, the study was conducted by IMPAQ international and analyzed the sales of a single national retail chain back in 2011. 

  The dollar amount that food stamp recipients spent on soft drinks and other commodities comes from data a retailer provided to a data analysis company the federal government hired to find out what kind of foods people on foods stamps—and Americans not on foods stamps—were buying.

   

  “The Food and Nutrition Service (FNS) awarded a contract to IMPAQ International, LLC, to determine what foods are typically purchased by households receiving Supplemental Nutrition Assistant Program (SNAP) benefits,” the study explained. “This study examined point-of-sale (POS) food purchase data to determine for what foods SNAP households have the largest expenditures, including both SNAP benefits and other resources, and how their expenditures compare to those made by non-SNAP households.”

   

  “POS transaction data from January 1, 2011 through December 31, 2011 from a leading grocery retailer were examined for this study,” the report said.

  It’s a good thing democrats re-branded Food Stamps as the “Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program”….otherwise we would have confused it for a blatant waste of taxpayer money on sodas and energy drinks.
  

  

  

• Obama Admin Fines, "Forces Sheriff's Dept. To Hire" Illegal Immigrants

  Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

  The lawlessness of the Obama Administration knows no bounds.

  

  Not only has President Obama made every move he can through executive order to create and foster amnesty for illegal immigrants, but his Justice Department is now attempting to force people to hire undocumented workers.

  Ironically, the agency on the other end of intimidation is the Denver County Sheriff’s Office.

  Incredibly backwards…

  via the Daily Caller:

  Denver County’s sheriff office has been slapped with a fine by the Department of Justice (DOJ) because it refused to hire non-citizens as deputies.

   

  From the beginning of 2015 through last March, the Denver Sheriff Department went on a major hiring binge, adding more than 200 new deputies. But those jobs ended up only going to citizens, because the department made citizenship a stated requirement on the job application. The department admitted as much in a new settlement with the U.S. government, which requires it to pay a $10,000 fine.

   

  The department will also have to comb through all of its job applications from the past two years, identifying immigrants who were excluded from the hiring process and giving them due consideration.

  How can someone be hired to enforce the law, if they are living in violation and ignorance of it?

  How can counties, state agencies, small businesses or individuals be forced to hire in violation of the law, in order to comply with non-discrimination?

  Obviously the system has a logical loop failure, either that, or someone wants this country to eat itself.

  

  

• Truth in Numbers- Bad math as a propaganda and sales tool

  It’s no surprise that the largest employer of mathematicians in the United States is the National Security Agency.  These jobs are not all ‘codebreakers’ – why does the NSA employ so many mathematicians, second only to Wall St.?  

  The biggest secret propaganda and sales tool used by experts in the modern world is the deliberate twisting and false presentation of data, specifically – numbers and ‘statistics.’  They do so in such a subtle way, that the argument leads into a heated debate about the inference of the obvious conclusions – NOT the calculation of the numbers themselves!  Very rarely are the methods of statistical calculations, data collection, formulations, and other operations ever questioned.

  This is used by governments, to paint a picture they want, in the case of the military, to ‘sell war’ – as outlined eloquently by mathematician Nassim Taleb:

  When Pasquale Cirillo and I examined the historical accounts of wars for our statistical analysis of violence, we discovered huge holes –people take numbers for gospel, yet many accounts were fabrications. Many historians, political “scientists”, and others for fall for them, then get to write books. For instance we saw that the scientific entertainer Steven Pinker based his analysis of the severity of the An Lushan rebellion on a shoddy overestimation –the real numbers of casualties could to be lower by an order of magnitude. Much of Pinker’s thesis of drop in violence depends on the past being more violent; it thus gets further discredited (the thesis is shaky anyway as Pinker’s general assertions conflict with the statistical data he provides). Peter Frankopan, in his magesterial The Silk Roads, seem to get the point: estimations of casualties from the Mongol invasions were inflated as their accounts exaggerated the devastation they caused in order to intimidate opponents (war is not so much about killing as it is about bringing submission). Our main (technical) paper is here.  But it is not just the bullshitting of Steven Pinker: numbers for many wars seem to have been pulled out of a hat. Some journalist cites some person at a conference; it finds it way to Le Monde or the New York Times, and that number becomes fixed for future generations. For our attempt to build a rigorous method of quantitative historiography, we devised statistical robustness techniques: they consist in bootstraping “histories” from the past, considering the past a realization between the lowest and the highest estimate available, producing tens of thousands of such “historical paths” and evaluate how “robust” an estimator to changes in the aggregate. More depressingly, we found that no historian had bothered to do similar cleaning up work or robustness check –yet the statistical apparatus is there to help.

  (In case you haven’t heard of Nassim Taleb this book is a MUST READ as a primer for any trader or investor to understand MATH as it pertains to the MARKETS:  Fooled by Randomness: The Hidden Role of Chance in Life and in the Markets.  Taleb is no academic he runs a multi-billion dollar hedge fund).

  Inflated numbers of enemy casualties, or deflated numbers of aggressor casualties, pose an obvious example of why such agencies would use bad math to display data in such a way as to further their argument, for one side or another.  But what other examples?  Why would Wall St. use such a strategy, considering their entire business is numbers?

  Consider the example of the Fed and interest rate policy.  If the current interest rates are 1%, and the Fed hikes to 2%, that’s a 1% increase but in percentage terms, it’s a 100% increase!  If you had interest rate derivatives, you could with no leverage potentially earn a 100% return on your money, in a day (supposing it was a surprise and the market wasn’t already pricing in the hike). 

  Another popular statistical misconception, is that of loss recovery.  Recovering from a loss is not linear.  For example, if your fund has a 10% loss, you need 11.11% just to break even.  This becomes more extreme, the deeper the loss hole.  If you start with 100 units, lose 10% of them – you have 90.  But to increase from 90 back to your original starting 100, you need 11.11 units, which is 11% just to get back your lost 10 units.  Yes!

  And speaking about performance, let’s knock the industry standard performance capsule and its big gaping hole.  According to most reporting standards, such as prescribed by NFA, FINRA, and many others – funds report monthly performance based on a ‘snapshot’ of performance during that month.  This sounds reasonable until you actually calculate monthly performance numbers and see that it’s really only performance based on a 1 or 2 day period intra-month.  If there was a big profit or a big loss on the days taken as ‘snapshots’ that’s what will show in the capsule.

  

  What’s misleading about this, it doesn’t represent to investors what happened DURING the month.  For many strategies, this is not relevant – but for some strategies, it is very relevant.  For example, imagine a scenario where there was a huge 30% loss and then recovery, and the month ended up being 2% positive.  It would seem to be a low-volatility fund, and likely attract conservative investors, like Pension funds.  They wouldn’t know about the intra-month risk, unless the manager told them (but why would they, it’s not in the required documents, and maybe THEY don’t even know about it).

  However you add it up, the difference between balance and equity can be misleading.  Skipping the monthly performance capsules that 99% of Wall St. uses, if one has access to it, one can compare the balance and equity curves over time.  For those who don’t know, balance is closed positions, equity includes live trades.  So if a position is still open, the floating profit or loss will show up in the equity.  Take a look at this discrepancy:

  

  The red line is the balance, yellow/orange line is the equity.  These lines must separate when trades are placed, otherwise an account would never lose or gain.  But how wide are these gaps, how frequent are they?  Absent of rigorous statistical analysis as done by Taleb in his war casualties paper, comparing these 2 lines is the most basic form of drawdown analysis.  What caused the lines to diverge?  What dates did they diverge on, and what forces caused them to converge?  These are questions astute investors should be asking.  

  For a full education on statistical analysis, checkout Fortress Capital’s Introduction to Foreign Exchange.  For a pocket guide designed to make you a due diligence expert, checkout Splitting Pennies – Understanding Forex for only $6.11 on kindle, or get some awesome financial books here.

  

  

• Risky Parity Panic Strikes As Correlations Crash To Record Low

  Having exploded higher in the run-up to the election, market expectations of the correlation between stocks within the S&P 500 have completely collapsed since to new record lows.

  Simply put, massive systemic overlays were placed ahead of the election event, and were forced to be unwound increasingly aggressively as the post-Trump rally caught everyone offside (the unwind would mean relatively heavy selling of Index protection relative to single-name protection).

  

  As a reminder, implied correlation measures the relative demand for macro overlays (index hedges) vs micro risk (individual stock hedges/concerns). The higher it is, the more systemically worried investors are and the more traders believe a high correlation 'event' is due (typically the high correlation event is a big downturn in stocks).

  As The Wall Street Journal reports, sectors and styles in the S&P 500 index have started to move independently after seven years of depressed volatility and tighter correlations.

  

  While the S&P 500 climbed to a record for a second day on Tuesday, “there are elements of a bull market and a bear market at the same time,” said Andrew Wilkinson, chief market analyst at Interactive Brokers.

  “You’re seeing pressure on different sectors. In a typical bull market, you’re going to get all stocks going higher.”

   

  “It makes it very interesting for the stock picker and the active manager who’s on his game,” Mr. Wilkinson said.

   

  The relationship between growth and value stocks in the benchmark equity measure has also decoupled, with the rolling correlation between the two groups sliding since voting day, FactSet data show. A Republican sweep of the U.S. presidency and Congress has boosted the inflation outlook, pushing investors into value names. Before the election, investors crowded into growth companies in 2015 amid a sluggish economy and then poured money into low-volatility equities in the first half of this year.

  But it is not just correlations between individual stocks that is crashing. The correlation between bonds and stocks has collapsed back to its norms…

  

   

  Which, as we noted previously, is raising notable concerns over a risk-parity fund blow up. As BofA warns: "Latent risk remains worth monitoring, as (i) leverage is still near max levels across a variety of risk parity  parametrizations, (ii) bond allocations are historically elevated, and (iii) markets continue to be sceptical of a 2016 Fed hike."

  If BofA is correct, it would mean that a day which sees a -4% SPX drop and +1% bond rally (good diversification) would generate no selling pressure, "underscoring the critical role played by bond-equity correlation in governing the severity of risk parity unwinds."

   

  However, a troubling scenario is one where even a relatively benign 2% selloff of the S&P coupled with just a 1% selloff of the 10Y could result in up to 50% deleveraging, which in turn would accelerate further liquidations by other comparable funds, and lead to a self-fulfilling crash across asset classes.

   

  Which incidentally sounds like precisely the scenario that could happen when the Fed tries to raise rates, and is also why asset classes continue to move without fear of any rate hike, as they now realize – very well – just how trapped the Fed truly is. That said, in short order, we will see if the Fed, for once, has the intestinal fortitude to actually raise rates in the face of the extreme volatility awaiting equities in the event they do… we doubt it.

  As RBC's Charlie McElligott notes, the classic risk-parity pain-trade ensues— developed mkt sovereign bonds, stocks, EM, credit and commodities (ex-crude) all under the cosh right now at the same time (shocker–a strategy built on a core concept of ‘negative correlation btwn bonds and risk stocks’ is going to be exposed in a regime change of this magnitude).

  And as the chart below shows, Risk Parity funds are plunging…

  

  As is clear, he massive decoupling between stocks and risk-parity funds is not unpredented… but has not ended well in the past (for stocks).

  

  

• Half Of The Population Of The World Is Dirt Poor – And The Global Elite Want To Keep It That Way

  Submitted by Michale Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

  Could you survive on just $2.50 a day?  According to Compassion International, approximately half of the population of the entire planet currently lives on $2.50 a day or less.  Meanwhile, those hoarding wealth at the very top of the global pyramid are rapidly becoming a lot wealthier.  Don’t get me wrong – I am a very big believer in working hard and contributing something of value to society, and those that work the hardest and contribute the most should be able to reap the rewards.  In this article I am in no way, shape or form criticizing true capitalism, because if true capitalism were actually being practiced all over the planet we would have far, far less poverty today.  Instead, our planet is dominated by a heavily socialized debt-based central banking system that systematically transfers wealth from hard working ordinary citizens to the global elite.  Those at the very top of the pyramid know that they are impoverishing everyone else, and they very much intend to keep it that way.

  Let’s start with some of the hard numbers.  According to Zero Hedge, Credit Suisse had just released their yearly report on global wealth, and it shows that 45.6 percent of all the wealth in the world is controlled by just 0.7 percent of the people…

  As Credit Suisse tantalizingly shows year after year, the number of people who control just shy of a majority of global net worth, or 45.6% of the roughly $255 trillion in household wealth, is declining progressively relative to the total population of the world, and in 2016 the number of people who are worth more than $1 million was just 33 million, roughly 0.7% of the world’s population of adults. On the other end of the pyramid, some 3.5 billion adults had a net worth of less than $10,000, accounting for just about $6 trillion in household wealth.

  And since this is a yearly report, we can go back and see how things have changed over time.  When Zero Hedge did this, it was discovered that the wealth of those at the very top “has nearly doubled” over the past six years, and meanwhile the poor have gotten even poorer…

  Incidentally, we tracked down the first Credit Suisse report we found in this series from 2010, where the total wealth of the top “layer” in the pyramid was a modest $69.2 trillion for the world’s millionaires. It has nearly doubled in the 6 years since then. Meanwhile, the world’s poorest have gotten, you got it, poorer, as those adults who were worth less than $10,000 in 2010 had a combined net worth of $8.2 trillion, a number which has since declined to $6.1 trillion in 2016 despite a half a billion increase in the sample size.

  If these trends continue at this pace, it won’t be too long before the global elite have virtually all of the wealth and the rest of us have virtually nothing.

  Perhaps you are fortunate enough to still have a good job, and you live in a large home and you will sleep in a warm bed tonight.

  Well, you should consider yourself to be very blessed, because that is definitely not the case for most of the rest of the world.  The following 11 facts about global poverty come from dosomething.com, and I want you to really let these numbers sink in for a moment…

  1. Nearly 1/2 of the world’s population — more than 3 billion people — live on less than $2.50 a day. More than 1.3 billion live in extreme poverty — less than $1.25 a day.
  2. 1 billion children worldwide are living in poverty. According to UNICEF, 22,000 children die each day due to poverty.
  3. 805 million people worldwide do not have enough food to eat. Food banks are especially important in providing food for people that can’t afford it themselves. Run a food drive outside your local grocery store so people in your community have enough to eat. Sign up for Supermarket Stakeout.
  4. More than 750 million people lack adequate access to clean drinking water. Diarrhea caused by inadequate drinking water, sanitation, and hand hygiene kills an estimated 842,000 people every year globally, or approximately 2,300 people per day.
  5. In 2011, 165 million children under the age 5 were stunted (reduced rate of growth and development) due to chronic malnutrition.
  6. Preventable diseases like diarrhea and pneumonia take the lives of 2 million children a year who are too poor to afford proper treatment.
  7. As of 2013, 21.8 million children under 1 year of age worldwide had not received the three recommended doses of vaccine against diphtheria, tetanus and pertussis.
  8. 1/4 of all humans live without electricity — approximately 1.6 billion people.
  9. 80% of the world population lives on less than $10 a day.
  10. Oxfam estimates that it would take $60 billion annually to end extreme global poverty–that’s less than 1/4 the income of the top 100 richest billionaires.
  11. The World Food Programme says, “The poor are hungry and their hunger traps them in poverty.” Hunger is the number one cause of death in the world, killing more than HIV/AIDS, malaria, and tuberculosis combined.

  So how did we get here?

  Debt is the primary mechanism that takes wealth from ordinary people like you and me and puts it into the hands of the global elite.

  In my recent article entitled “Why Donald Trump Must Shut Down The Federal Reserve And Start Issuing Debt-Free Money“, I discussed how the Federal Reserve was designed to entrap the U.S. government in an endless debt spiral from which it could never possibly escape.  And that is precisely what has happened, as the U.S. national debt has gotten more than 5000 times larger since the Federal Reserve was created in 1913.

  In that very same year, the federal income tax was instituted, and that is a key part of the program for the global elite.  You see, the income tax is how wealth is transferred from us to the government.  And then a continuously growing national debt is how that wealth is transferred from the government to the elite.

  It is a very complicated system, but at the end of the day it is all about taking money from us and getting it into their pockets.

  And at this point more than 99.9 percent of the population of the world lives in a country with a central bank, and almost every nation on the planet has some form of income tax.

  It is a global system that is designed to create as much debt as possible, and I recently shared with my readers that the total amount of debt in the world has hit a staggering all-time record high of 152 trillion dollars.

  The borrower is the servant of the lender, and the global elite have used various forms of debt to turn the rest of the planet into their debt slaves.

  As debt levels race higher and higher all over the planet, the elite are using the magic of compound interest to grab a bigger and bigger share of the pie.

  Given enough time, those at the very top would have virtually everything and the rest of us would have virtually nothing.  The middle class is shrinking all over the globe, and the gap between the wealthy and the poor continues to grow at an astounding pace.

  But the vast majority of people out there have no idea how money, debt, taxes and central banks really work, and so they have no idea that this is purposely being done to them.

  The truth is that we don’t have to have this much global poverty, and if we correctly identify the root causes of this poverty we can start working on some real solutions.

  

  

• Russia Is Reviving Soviet Era ICBM-Carrying "Nuclear Trains"

  Russia has conducted successful intercontinental ballistic missile tests intended for its Barguzin “nuclear-train” program. 

  The tests for Russia’s “railway-based combat rocket system” took place on Plesetsk cosmodrone two weeks ago, Interfax reports and were “fully successful” according to a military source, which would “pave the way for further flight tests.” The tests were held to test the missiles’ launch readiness, Russian press added. 

  
  A BZhRK with a Molodets missile erected to launch position

  The mobile weapons platform, made up of several train carriages designed to conceal the launchers of six Yars or Yars-M thermonuclear ICBMs and their command units, are expected to enter service between 2018 and 2020.

  After first announcing the return of the nuclear trains, which had previously been banned, in 2014 Russia’s military then confirmed the trains are expected to be put into service in 2019. The nuclear trains, dubbed Berguzin after the strong eastern wind that blows over the Lake Baikal, aim to counter US’s Conventional Prompt Global Strike project, which would give the Pentagon the capability of launching attacks and precision strikes at any target in the world in one hour.

  The Berguzins, which act as mobile platforms to transport and launch nuclear missiles, will be able carry up to 6 RS-24 Yars missiles, the International Business Times reported.  According to RT, Yars missiles can reportedly carry four warheads for a total yield of between 0.4 and 1.2 megatons.  While the missiles are less destructive than their predecessors, the Molodets missiles, they are more accurate, have a greater range and weigh roughly half as much. The lighter weight means that trains on which they are loaded do not require reinforced wheel-sets to carry the load.

  This makes it harder for enemy spy satellites to identify the trains, as the carriages can be easily disguised as refrigerator cars. Once the trains are deployed, Russia will be in possession of 36 megatons of mobile and ready-to-fire nuclear missiles.

  The commander of the Strategic Missile Forces, Colonel-General Sergei Karakayev, said the state-of-the-art Barguzin complex would outstrip its Soviet predecessor in all respects, including accuracy and range. Once launched, the complex will be in service until 2040.

  During Soviet times, the Strategic Missile Forces had three divisions of rail-mobile missile systems “Molodets” (NATO reporting name SS-24 “Scalpel”). They were stationed in the Kostroma, Perm and Krasnoyarsk regions.

  There were 12 “nuclear trains” in total, each carrying three missiles. The complexes entered service in 1987, just a few years prior the collapse of the USSR. The West dubbed the Soviet weapon “ghost trains.” The rail mobile missile complexes were disposed of from 2003 to 2005 without extending their life.   The “Molodets” nuclear trains were part of the START-2 Treaty for arms reductions.

  The new Barguzin project does not have a goal to revive the erstwhile Soviet military project. This is an entirely new development. One of the obvious advantages of Barguzin trains is their mobility, although Soviet rail-mobile missile complexes were too heavy. It is worthy of note that the development of such systems does not come contrary to the START-3 agreement.

  Russia’s latest advancement in its nuclear weapons technology comes shortly after the Kremlin announced the deployment of nuclear-capable missiles to the Kaliningrad exclave, as was reported previously. President Vladimir Putin’s spokesman, Dmitry Peskov, told reporters that the Russian military needs to respond to what he described as Nato’s aggressive moves.

  “Russia is doing what is necessary to protect itself amid Nato’s expansion toward its borders,” Mr Peskov said adding that “the alliance is a truly aggressive bloc, so Russia does what it has to do. It has every sovereign right to take necessary measures throughout the territory of the Russian Federation.”

  According to overnight press reports, Moscow also deployed new anti-ship missiles on Pacific islands controlled by Russia but also claimed by Japan. Bal and Bastion missile systems have been stationed on the islands, called the southern Kurils by Russia and the Northern Territories by Japan, the Boyevaya Vakhta (Combat Duty) newspaper of Russia’s Pacific Fleet reports.

  The disagreement over the islands, seized by the Soviet Union at the end of World War II, has kept the two countries from signing a peace treaty formally ending their wartime hostilities.

  

  

• Another Day, Another Record High… "This Is A No Brainer"

  Some thoughts for tomorrow…

   

  First things first… Small Caps were up again today – of course – the 14th straight day of gains and the longest streak since Feb 1996. Russell 2000 is the most overbought since 2003…7th Intraday recod high in a row… 8th record close in a row, most since 1996

  

   

  The nasdaq closed red today as S&P scrambled into the green at the close…

  

   

  With that silliness out of the way… As Americans give thanks for Donald Trump's wealth creation miracle, we thought some context for the last few weeks might be useful…

  The US Dollar spiked today near 102.00 – and is at almost 14 year highs…

  

   

  China's Yuan has crashed as the dollar soars – breaking above 6.95/$ today – 8 year lows…

  

   

  Emerging Market Currencies plunged to new lows…

  

   

  Gold has been monkeyhammered (jammed below $1200 today), back to 10 month lows…

  

   

  And as Gold collapses, so Small Caps have soared… (do those moves look human at all? perfectly linear ramp squeeze)

  

   

  As The record squeeze continues…

  

   

  But while stocks have continued to soar, long-bonds have trodden water for 8 days (though 30Y did breakout to the upside briefly today)…

  

   

  Even though the short-end has seen yields spike to the hghest since April 2010…

  

   

  And everywhere we look relationships have broken…

  Stocks and volume…

  

   

  US equity factors have decoupled…

  

   

  Small Caps and credit sensitivity has broken…

  

   

  And Small Cap and Mega Cap Tech have decoupled…

  

   

  Banks and the yield curve have snapped…

  

   

  Bank stocks and bonds have no idea…

  

   

  EM Bonds and Stocks…

  

   

  Bond yields are above stocks…

  

   

  As Yuan crashed today, Treasury yields decoupled…

  

   

  Oil price and protection costs have decoupled…

  

   

  US Treasury yields are notably underperforming global developed market bonds…

  

   

  Gold broke below $1200 today…

  

   

  As Gold/Silver rolls over from Brexit highs…

  

   

  Gold and The Dow are equal YTD…

  

   

  And finally, while Americans luxuriate in their feats tomorrow, consider that post-Trump the aggregate of Global stock markets and developed market bonds have lost $1.4 trillion since the US election…

  

  

  

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• 4-Star General Convinces Trump to Reconsider Pro-Torture Stance

  I slammed Trump in March for calling for more torture and waterboarding.

  I pointed out that the overwhelming majority of military and intelligence experts say that torture prevents the ability to obtain helpful information, makes us less safe, decreases national security and only creates more terrorists.

  Saturday, Trump met with a very high-level military man: Four-Star General James Mattis , former head of the U.S. Central Command, Unified Combatant Command and  U.S. Joint Forces Command, as well as being Supreme Allied Commander Transformation.

  The New York Times reports:

  On the issue of torture, Mr. Trump suggested he had changed his mind about the value of waterboarding after talking with James N. Mattis, a retired Marine Corps general, who headed the United States Central Command.

   

  “He said, ‘I’ve never found it to be useful,’” Mr. Trump said. He added that Mr. Mattis found more value in building trust and rewarding cooperation with terrorism suspects: “‘Give me a pack of cigarettes and a couple of beers, and I’ll do better.’”

   

  “I was very impressed by that answer,” Mr. Trump said.

   

  Torture, he said, is “not going to make the kind of a difference that a lot of people are thinking.”

  Exactly …

  

• Is "Fake News" The New 'Conspiracy Theory'?

  Via The Daily Bell,

  Barack Obama on fake news: ‘We have problems’ if we can’t tell the difference The US president denounced the spate of misinformation across social media platforms, including Facebook, suggesting American politics can be affected. -Guardian

  Is fake news the new “conspiracy theory.” We’ve read that it may be, and it seems likely to us.

  That’s because “conspiracy theory” has seemingly lost credibility as a way of dismissing anti-mainstream critiques, and it can be argued that “fake news” is being substituted.

  We recently wrote about the decline and fall of “conspiracy theory” as an effective denigration of Deep State critiques. You can see the article here.

  This make sense to us because the CIA was apparently responsible for disseminating the initial “conspiracy theory” meme, and “fake news” could certainly have been developed to take its place.

  Secondly, as reportedly some 50 percent of Americans now believe in so-called “conspiracies,” it’s very obvious a elite replacement was needed.

  Some caveats: Regarding this second point, it’s very likely that many more than 50 percent of Americans believe in conspiracy theories. And the substitution of “fake news” is a very unappealing alternative.

  More:

  President Barack Obama has spoken out about fake news on Facebook and other media platforms, suggesting that it helped undermine the US political process.

   

  “If we are not serious about facts and what’s true and what’s not, if we can’t discriminate between serious arguments and propaganda, then we have problems,” he said during a press conference in Germany.

   

  Since the surprise election of Donald Trump as president-elect, Facebook has battled accusations that it has failed to stem the flow of misinformation on its network and that its business model leads to users becoming divided into polarized political echo chambers.

  Our mission is to cover elite memes – propaganda that scares people into giving more control to the government – and having Obama comment on “fake news” is part of a standard meme reinforcement.

  The “fake news” meme is all over search-engine news and prominent people like Obama are speaking out about the meme and basically endorsing it.

  But it all strikes us as rather desperate.

  Conspiracy Theory is far less prone to analysis than “fake news.” It has persisted so long and been so successful because it is difficult to quantify a “conspiracy” and thus the dismissal cannot be either confirmed or denied.

  “Fake news” however, lends itself to fact-checking. One may not wish for a variety of reasons to delve into “conspiracy theory,” but if someone is told he or she is espousing fake news, the resultant irritation may move that person to further research.

  When we coined the term Internet Reformation, our idea was that the information available via the ‘Net would generate a gradual process of enlightenment – and an accretion of truth. In fact, this process is occurring, in fits and starts.

  If “conspiracy theory” really has lost impact – and apparently it has – as a way of debunking criticism of the Deep State, this is certainly a setback for modern propaganda.

  Additionally, “when it comes to “fake news,” the mainstream media is going to have to speak with one voice in order to disparage factual information.

  But fewer and fewer people believe the mainstream media. Thus, if the media places its communicative muscle behind tarring certain cogent criticisms as “false,” it will likely only speed up the decline of mainstream credibility.

  Conclusion: Of course, those in power could ban the Internet outright, but it’s probably too late for that – and wouldn’t work effectively in any case.

  

  

• Is The US Next: Facebook "Quietly" Develops Censorship Tool In Chinese Market Push

  In what is surely a mere coincidence, at the same time as Facebook has been embroiled in a scandal involving the dissemination of “election tipping” stories, which prompted Zuckerberg to release a 7-point plan to eradicate “fake news” and which many conservatives believe is a preamble toward wholesale banning of so-called “fake news” websites (as arbitrarily defined by an ultra-liberal,  Trump-bashing “professor”) by the social networks (when ironically, Wikileaks revealed that Google was actively engaged in developing a “strategic plan” to help the Democrats win the election and track voters), we learn that in an attempt to penetrate the Chinese market, Facebook has “quietly” developed a censorship tool to appease China’s politburo in hopes the social network will finally get the blessing to address the world’s largest market.

  According to the NYT, which first reported Facebook’s strategy, the social network “has quietly developed software to suppress posts from appearing in people’s news feeds in specific geographic areas, according to three current and former Facebook employees, who asked for anonymity because the tool is confidential. The feature was created to help Facebook get into China, a market where the social network has been blocked, these people said. Mr. Zuckerberg has supported and defended the effort, the people added.”

  Why would Zuckerberg support an effort that goes fundamentally against the premise of free speech? Why ad revenue, and profits, of course, because while it remains to be seen if organic revenue growth in the rest of the world is topping out, suddenly getting access to the Chinese market means making a compromise unlike any done previously in Facebook’s history.

  To be sure, Facebook has restricted content in other countries before, such as Pakistan, Russia and Turkey, in keeping with the typical practice of American internet companies that generally comply with government requests to block certain content after it is posted. According to its own data, Facebook blocked roughly 55,000 pieces of content in about 20 countries between July 2015 and December 2015, for example. But the censorship tool in China takes a step further by preventing content from appearing in feeds in China in the first place.

  The NYT adds that Facebook does not intend to suppress the posts itself. Instead, it would offer the software to enable a third party — in this case, most likely a partner Chinese company — to monitor popular stories and topics that bubble up as users share them across the social network, the people said. Facebook’s partner would then have full control to decide whether those posts should show up in users’ feeds. In effect, Facebook is willing to admit its sold out its integrity to a third-party Chinese vendor and arbiter, simply to boost revenue, and its stock price (we are confident FB’s stock price will rise on the news that the company may be close to penetrating the Chinese market, no matter the cost).

  Of course, there is the possibility that once the story becomes public that Facebook is now officially in the censorship game, that it may shelve plans: after all, the last thing Zuckerberg needs now is to be accused not only of spreading “fake news” but of engaging in premeditated censorship due to ideology or bias. The Facebook employees the NYT spoke with cautioned that the software is one of many ideas the company has discussed with respect to entering China and, like many experiments inside Facebook, it may never see the light of day. The feature, whose code is visible to engineers inside the company, has so far gone unused, and there is no indication that Facebook has offered it to the authorities in China. Although, it is hard to imagine why Facebook would spend millions developing such a project if it had no intention of using it.

  Worse, the project illustrates the extent to which Facebook may be willing to compromise one of its core mission statements, “to make the world more open and connected,” to gain access to a market of 1.4 billion Chinese people. Even as Facebook faces pressure to continue growing — Mr. Zuckerberg has often asked where the company’s next billion users will come from — China has been cordoned off to the social network since 2009 because of the government’s strict rules around censorship of user content.

  But what may be the most interesting part of this story, is that Facebook’s creeping censorship may have led to an internal “whistleblower” with a conscience: a Facebook “Snowden: if you will:

  Several employees who were working on the project have left Facebook after expressing misgivings about it, according to the current and former employees.

  An official statement from the company was non-committal: a Facebook spokeswoman said in a statement, “We have long said that we are interested in China, and are spending time understanding and learning more about the country.” She added that the company had made no decisions on its approach into China.”

  Censorship notwithstanding, Zuckerberg may have trouble breaching the Chinese market even purely on its “redacted” merits: coming at a time when Trump is actively preparing for trade war with China, the last thing Xi Jinping will want to do is make a political concession that grants Facebook market share in China at the expense of protected domestic companies.

  Indeed, as NYT adds, the current climate for internet companies in China may not help Facebook. In August, the ride-hailing giant Uber gave up an expensive battle to crack the Chinese market, selling its Chinese business to an incumbent rival, Didi Chuxing. More broadly, China has streamlined and tightened its controls over the internet under President Xi, targeting influential social media celebrities and adding new reviews to popular online video sites.

  However, China may allow Facebook to enter, on one condition: that it is used to root out political dissidents, making the social network into a “snitch”:

  Some officials responsible for China’s tech policy have been willing to entertain the idea of Facebook’s operating in the country. It would legitimize China’s strict style of internet governance, and if done according to official standards, would enable easy tracking of political opinions deemed problematic. Even so, resistance remains at the top levels of Chinese leadership.

  Ultimately, what Facebook may end up doing is transforming itself into a mutant, minority version of itself where it keeps a portion of the upside, while letting a bigger partner deal with the local political headache: analysts have said Facebook’s best option is to follow a model laid out by other internet companies and cooperate with a local company or investor. Finding a partner — and potentially allowing it to own a majority stake in Facebook’s China operation — would take the burden of censorship and surveillance off the Silicon Valley company. It would also let Facebook rely on a local company’s government connections and experience to deal with the difficult task of communicating with Beijing, the NYT notes.

  Facebook currently sells advertising for some Chinese businesses from its Hong Kong office. Among its customers are state-media sites that act as the propaganda arm of the Chinese government, and that operate official accounts where they post articles. Chinese citizens who wish to gain access to Facebook must tunnel in using a technology known as a virtual private network, or VPN.

  * * *

  Going back to the censorship tool, it is unclear when it originated, but the project is said to have picked up momentum in the last year, as engineers were plucked from other parts of Facebook to work on the effort, the current and former employees said. The project was led by Vaughan Smith, a vice president for mobile, corporate and business development at Facebook, they said. Like Mr. Zuckerberg, Mr. Smith speaks a smattering of Mandarin.

  Unveiling a new censorship tool in China could lead to more demands to suppress content from other countries. The fake-news problem, which has hit countries across the globe, has already led some governments – most notably Germany – to use the issue as an excuse to target sites of political rivals, or shut down social media sites altogether.

  Curiously, for whatever reason, several Facebook employees who were working on the suppression tool left the company over the summer. Internally, so many employees asked about the project and its ambitions on an internal forum that, in July, it became a topic at one of Facebook’s weekly Friday afternoon question-and-answer sessions.

  Mr. Zuckerberg was at the event and answered a question from the audience about the tool. He told the gathering that Facebook’s China plans were nascent. But he also struck a pragmatic tone about the future, according to employees who attended the session.

  “It’s better for Facebook to be a part of enabling conversation, even if it’s not yet the full conversation,” Mr. Zuckerberg said, according to employees.

  And if Facebook is willing to go the full distance and compromise its core mission statement in China just to pick a few basis points of growth, how long until the social network will do the same in the US, where a witch-hunt against “fake news” unlike any other, has exploded in recent days and which effectively grants Facebook the ability to censor anyone it disagrees with. After all, we now know that the tool is in place – all Zuckerberg has to do is flip a switch.

  

  

• Obama Legacy Already Crumbling As Federal Judge Blocks Overtime Rule

  Ever a big fan of unilateral “rule changes,” back in May of this year Obama and the Department of Labor implemented a new overtime regulation that was set to take effect on December 1st.  The rule change called for increasing the minimum salary threshold at which employers would have been required to pay overtime to workers from $23,660 to $47,476, or a mere 101%.  The rule would have required employers to pay time-and-a-half to salaried workers making less than $47,476 per year for any time worked in excess of 40 hours per week.  According to the Wall Street Journal, the new regulation would have cost employers about $2BN per year.

  But, all that changed today when a federal judge in the Eastern District of Texas signed a preliminary injunction (attached at the end of this post) temporarily blocking the rule from taking effect next week to allow more time for litigation.  Of course, the delay will be viewed by the Plaintiffs, and many employers around the country, as an outright victory as it likely postpones any final decisions until Trump takes over over the White House in January.  And with Trump already signaling his intentions to roll back many of Obama’s “job-killing” regulations we suspect this one will get moved to the top of his list.   

  The National Federation of Independent Business (NFIB) praised the court’s decision as a huge victory for small business owners, 44% of which they claim would be directly impacted by the rule change.

  “This is a victory for small business owners and should give them some breathing room until the case can be properly adjudicated,” NFIB President and CEO Juanita Duggan said in a statement.

   

  The NFIB claimed that 44 percent of small businesses employ at least one person who would have been subject to the higher overtime pay.

   

  Duggan said the NFIB would continue to fight against the rule, which she said would raise small business expenses by forcing them to pay their employees overtime.
  

  Of course, the “political hacks” (as Trump refers to them) in the Department of Labor have asserted that the impact of this simple “rule change” would all accrue to the benefit of employees as American corporations and shareholders would simply allow the increased costs to flow straight through to their bottom lines.  Per the DOL:

  • Put more money into the pockets of many middle class workers—or give them more free time.
  • Prevent a future erosion of overtime protections and ensure greater predictability.
  • Strengthen overtime protections for salaried workers already entitled to overtime and provide greater clarity for workers and employers.
  • Improve work-life balance.
  • Increase employment by spreading work.
  • Improve workers’ health.
  • Increase productivity.

  

   

  But, as our readers certainly understand, in the real world these increased regulations inevitably just lead to higher unemployment over the long-term as the higher costs simply make returns on automation and mechanization capital projects that much more attractive.

  As the Wall Street Journal points out, employers have spent the last 6 months frantically trying to figure out how to comply with the new rule amid uncertainty as to whether or not it would survive multiple open lawsuits and/or a Trump reversal once he takes over the White House in January.  While some companies had already taken actions to comply with the new law, it is now looking increasingly like those actions were premature.

  U.S. employers have spent months adjusting employee schedules, job duties and pay ahead of a new overtime rule that takes effect Dec. 1.

   

  The regulation, which makes millions more workers eligible for overtime pay, was intended as one of President Barack Obama’s signature achievements, and a way to meaningfully raise incomes for people in front-line roles in retail, food service and beyond.

   

  The fate of the rule, however, is far from assured as it faces both a strong challenge in the courts and, in Donald Trump, the president-elect, who has vowed to roll back business regulations.

   

  Employers who have made or are considering big changes in their workforce—either by raising managers’ salaries to the newly set threshold for overtime pay or eliminating job categories like assistant manager—say the uncertainty is adding to the challenge of preparing for the rule.

   

  The Labor Department rule will require employers to start paying overtime to workers earning salaries of less than $47,476 a year—a threshold the business community says is too big a jump from the current $23,660, which was last updated in 2004. Some workers whose salaries exceed the threshold can qualify for overtime pay depending on job duties.

  Per the Department of Labor, the overtime rule change would impact 4.2mm workers across the country with California, Texas, Florida and New York bearing the brunt of the impact.

  

   

  The Department of Labor even created this lovely propaganda video to sale everyone on the merits of Obama’s latest regulation…which we’re sure cost taxpayers millions of dollars.

   

  Meanwhile, the CEO of Fazoli’s beautifully illustrates our point above that the practical implementation of “rule changes” imposed by “political hacks” is often very different than what’s expected.

  Fazoli’s Chief Executive Carl Howard said his restaurant chain couldn’t afford to raise salaries for its 125 assistant general managers to the new threshold. (They generally earn in the low $30,000s, he said.) Yet, he wanted them to continue working 45 hours a week, as they do now, without cutting pay.

   

  So Mr. Howard will make them hourly employees at rates low enough to fund a 45-hour week, including five hours of overtime at time-and-a-half.

  How many times will the uninformed left try to impose new regulations that actually hurt the people they’re trying to help before finally learning the error of their ways?

   

  

  

• Obama Pressured To Free Central American "Asylum Seekers" Before Trump Takes Over

  Just two days ago we shared our complete shock that Obama’s justice department agreed to stay a federal court case, that would have granted amnesty to 4 million illegal immigrants, citing a “change in Administration” (see “Trump Wins Again – Obama DOJ Halts Amnesty Lawsuit In Uncharacteristic Display Of Humility“).  But some immigration advocates are refusing to give up the fight and, as Bloomberg notes, are urging Obama to use his last couple of months in office to release nearly 4,000 “asylum seekers” from Central America currently being held in “jail-like” facilities in Texas and Pennsylvania.

  Immigration advocates are asking the Obama administration to release thousands of detained Central American women and children who want asylum in the U.S., citing concerns that Donald Trump will deport them after his inauguration in January.

   

  Representatives of groups including the Women’s Refugee Commission and the American Immigration Lawyers Association met with White House officials last week to discuss a host of immigration issues, including the fate of about 4,000 Central American detainees, some as young as two years old, who have fled violence in their home countries. They’re housed in jail-like facilities in Texas and Pennsylvania, some for more than a year, as they wait for the government to process their asylum pleas.

   

  “The family detention infrastructure is something that President Obama built, and unless he tears it down in the next two months this will be part of his presidential legacy,” said Carl Takei, staff attorney at the the American Civil Liberties Union’s National Prison Project.

  

   

  Meanwhile, proving once again that the rules mean absolutely nothing to the left, democrats have called on President Obama to go one step further and “pardon” 750,000 illegal immigrants brought to the U.S. as small children.  That said, even the Obama administration admits that its power only extends so far and can’t be used to grant legal status to illegal aliens. 

  Separately, advocates for about 750,000 young undocumented immigrants granted protection from deportation under Obama’s Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, have pressed the White House to ensure Trump can’t use data compiled by the program to instead target and remove the people from the country. House Democrats called on Obama last week to issue a presidential pardon for the immigrants, who were brought into the country as children and have grown up as “Americans,” Obama said in Nov. 14 news conference.

   

  The White House said last week that the president’s clemency power can’t be used to confer legal status on undocumented residents. Pete Boogaard, a White House spokesman, declined to comment on whether the administration has the authority to release the asylum seekers.

  

   

  Of course the urgency comes as Trump is set to take office in less than two months and has promised to deport millions of illegal immigrants from the U.S., starting with those that have criminal records.  Meanwhile, panic is setting in along the border as migrants staying in cramped shelters or
  church basements are trying to leave the border region for cities
  farther north such as Baltimore or New York…“there’s literally not enough commercial bus space to get the people out….they’re all terrified.” 

  Trump has promised to crack down on undocumented border crossers while also restricting refugees from terror-prone countries, but he has yet to articulate a policy for the thousands of asylum seekers who enter the U.S. each year. Trump’s top immigration advisers, including Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and Alabama Senator Jeff Sessions, a Republican who Trump plans to nominate as attorney general, have argued that Obama has been too easy on migrants.

   

  “Instead of removing illegal immigrants, the President has expended enormous time, energy, and resources into settling newly arrived illegal immigrants throughout the United States,” Sessions wrote in a January 2015 “immigration handbook” for Republicans.

   

  Under Trump, the advocates fear, the government could broaden the use of expedited removal -– fast-track deportation proceedings that take place without a judge — a practice that is already being used more frequently with asylum seekers.

  “There is an added urgency to make sure that the families that are here get an opportunity to be heard in front of a judge,” said Ben Johnson, executive director at the American Immigration Lawyers Association. “There is some concern that those families under the new administration will never have that chance.”

  Stay tuned, though Obama has refused to take any unilateral actions on immigration since election day, we wouldn’t be shocked if he dropped a couple of surprises on the American people before departing the White House in two months.

  

  

• Privatize to Get Rid of Passports and Resolve Immigration
  
  

  Via The Daily Bell

  Privatize to Get Rid of Passports and Resolve Immigration

  To silence dissidents, Gulf states are revoking their citizenship  Many are left stateless as a result. – The Economist

  The Economist “newspaper” is worried that nations are beginning to use passports as a way to punish people that leaders don’t like.

  This article focuses mainly on the Middle East, especially Bahrain, which the article calls an “energetic stripper.”

  More here:

  Bahrain’s … Sunni royals have dangled the threat of statelessness over its Shia majority to suppress an uprising launched in 2011, during the Arab spring.

  In 2014 it stripped 21 people of their nationality. A year later the number was up tenfold. “Gulf rulers have turned people from citizens into subservient subjects,” says Abdulhadi Khalaf, a former Bahraini parliamentarian whose citizenship was revoked in 2012 and now lives safely in Sweden.

  “Our passports are not a birthright. They are part of the ruler’s prerogative.”  Neighbouring states are following suit. Kuwait’s ruling Al-Sabah family have deprived 120 of their people of their nationality in the past two years, says Nawaf al-Hendal, who runs Kuwait Watch, a local monitor.

  Qatar is another big stripper. It suspended citizenship of an entire clan — the Ghafrans— some 5,000 Ghafrans since 2004. But it’s not just travel that is affected when a passport is revoked, but also in many cases jobs, house ownership, even the ability to own a phone or maintain a bank account.

  If you are abroad, you cannot return, nor can the birth of a child be recorded, nor even a marriage. The laws allowing passport revocation are broader now, according to The Economist, and include the “terrorism,” which can be defined loosely.

  Loyalty is beginning to be used as a reason for passport removal, and the West is not exempt. Britain will remove passports based on the contravention of the “public good.” And many EU nations cite terrorism for some passport confiscations

  In the US, passports may be suspended by the IRS if overseas citizens owe more than $50,000 and the IRS has filed a notice of lien. However, the largest issue regarding passports remains unexamined by this article. And that issue has to do with the necessity for passports in the first place.

  It can be argued of course, that passports are an absolute necessity for nation-states, but passports are basically an invention of the 20th century. The Guardian tells us, “Passports were not generally required for international travel until the first world war.” Before then, passports were issued in a haphazard manner.  Here, from the Guardian:

  Following an agreement among the League of Nations to standardise passports, the famous “old blue” was issued in 1920. Apart from a few adjustments to its duration and security features, the old blue remained a steady symbol of the touring Briton until it gradually began to be replaced by the burgundy-coloured European version in 1988.

  INTERPOL is another form of global control that is less than 100 years old. Post-World War II, the United Nations has played a more active role in resuscitating and formalizing INTERPOL, see here.

  Thus, international control of people’s movements and actions has drastically increased in the 20th and 21st century. Passports are now starting to represent regions rather than countries. A pan-African passport was announced earlier this year at the African Union (AU) summit in the Rwandan capital Kigali. From the report:

  With the launch of the new pan-African document, the continent moved up a notch towards the free cross-border movement of goods and people—in direct opposite to Brexit, the decision by British voters to exit the European Union.

  Of course, one could argue that expanding a passport’s operational function is not the same as reducing the power of a passport. In fact, even as passports expanded in power and scope in the 20th century,  there were many high-level discussions about getting rid of them.

  From an article posted at Business Insider:

  In 1947, the first problem considered at an expert meeting preparing for the UN World Conference on Passports and Frontier Formalities, was “the possibility of a return to the regime which existed before 1914 involving as a general rule the abolition of any requirement that travelers should carry passports”.

  But delegates ultimately decided that a return to a passport-free world could only happen alongside a return to the global conditions that prevailed before the start of the first world war.

  By 1947, that was a distant dream. The experts advised instead a series of bilateral and multilateral agreements to attain this goal.

  World leaders were still talking about banning passports as late as 1963, when the UN Conference on International Travel and Tourism recognised “the desirability, from both an economic and social point, of progressively freer international travel”. Once again, it was estimated that “it is not feasible to recommend the abolition of passports on a world-wide basis.”

  Now, neither the public nor governments consider passports as a serious obstacle to freedom of movement, though any would-be traveller from Yemen, Afghanistan or Somalia would no doubt argue differently.

  The world survived without passports for thousands – tens of thousands – of years. Likewise, the necessity of an expanding, global police force has not historically been a matter of discussion, much less implementation. Yet today the passport system is globally ubiquitous and growing. INTERPOL is merging some operations with the UN and becoming evermore aggressive and empowered.

  The Economist article promotes the idea that passports ought to be seen as travel documents, not weapons of punishment. This is logical as far as it goes. But it never occurs to The Economist editors to argue that passports ought not to exist to begin with.

  The Economist like most of the mainstream media is always apt to criticize the powers that government has but never to suggest that the real solution is to do away with those powers.

  Even a passing familiarity with free-market economics would yield up options other than merely re-calibrating government power.

  Private property is the key to a better and more rational world. If people – rather than their governments – owned a substantial portion of the world’s real estate, immigration might soon cease to be a problem. People themselves would decide who would come and go. The poisonous immigration battles now taking place would be at least mitigated.

  Likewise, government abuse of passports would be considerably reduced if it were generally accepted that people had a right to invite people onto their own property without government permission.

  The argument then comes up that “terrorism” necessitates passports and government control over immigration. But even a cursory examination of the history of al Qaeda and ISIS will show that the West and especially the US fostered these terrorist groups to begin with.

  Here, from GlobalResearch.com:

  The so-called “War on Terror” should be seen for what it really is: a pretext for maintaining a dangerously oversized U.S. military. The two most powerful groups in the U.S. foreign policy establishment are the Israel lobby, which directs U.S. Middle East policy, and the Military-Industrial-Complex, which profits from the former group’s actions.

  Since George W. Bush declared the “War on Terror” in October 2001, it has cost the American taxpayer approximately 6.6 trillion dollars and thousands of fallen sons and daughters; but, the wars have also raked in billions of dollars for Washington’s military elite.

  Those controlling government are ever jealous of their prerogatives and the wealth they have access to. They will create an endless amount of crises to justify and expand their control. Government itself, based on monopoly power and resultant force, is purveyor of the problem, always.

  Conclusion: Reshaping public solutions does no good. Jettisoning them to greatest degree possible is the only viable solution.  

  Editor’s Note: The Daily Bell is giving away a silver coin and a silver “white paper” to subscribers. If you enjoy DB’s articles and want to stay up-to-date for free, please subscribe here. 

  More from The Daily Bell:

  Rand Corp. Blasts ‘Truth Decay’ – Wants Facts Determined by Appropriate Leaders

  How Deep Will Trump’s Truths Go?

  India Bans Cash, Now Gold?

   

   

  

• A Highly Respected Medical Journal Just Declared 'The War On Drugs' An Epic Failure

  Submitted by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,

  “The war on drugs has failed,” the editors of the peer-reviewed British Medical Journal declared this week, arguing that doctors should lead the global effort to reform drug policy.

  Fiona Godlee, the journal’s editor-in-chief, and Richard Hurley, its features and debates editor, penned an analysis citing academic and scientific reports to argue global policies on drug use — including the United Nations’ — have fallen drastically short.

  Godlee and Hurley note the annual cost of prohibition, which entails criminalizing “producers, traffickers, dealers, and users,” totals at least $100 billion annually.

  “But the effectiveness of prohibition laws, colloquially known as the ‘war on drugs,’ must be judged on outcomes,” they write. “And too often the war on drugs plays out as a war on the millions of people who use drugs, and disproportionately on people who are poor or from ethnic minorities and on women.”

  The authors cite a variety of reasons why the global war on drugs has been a failure.

  Citing an academic study on international drug policy from the Lancet medical journal, the authors argue that “prohibition and stigma encourage less safe drug consumption and push people away from health services.”

  These policies have other negative consequences. Godlee and Hurley highlight the current situation between Russia and Crimea, “where patients in Crimea died after the Russian invasion because they were forced to stop taking methadone, which is viewed as opioid misuse and illegal in Russia.”

  Further, though opioid addiction is a growing epidemic, “drug control policies effectively deny two-thirds of the world’s population—more than five billion people—legitimate access to opioids for pain control.”

  Another problem [pdf] with prohibition policies, they argue, is that “they impede research into medical use of cannabis and other prohibited drugs despite evidence of potential benefit.”

  This is the case in the United States, where the federal government’s designation of cannabis as a Schedule I drug has hampered the ability of scientists to research the medical effects of the plant. The Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) recently ruled to maintain this classification. This decision was largely deemed hypocritical, especially considering the United States government holds a patent on cannabis for its antioxidant properties. The federal government’s National Cancer Institute also admits cannabis can help treat the symptoms of cancer and that “[c]annabis has been shown to kill cancer cells in the laboratory.” In spite of the promise of the plant, it remains prohibited under federal law.

  Still, Godlee and Hurley argue, the effects of the drug war aren’t limited to health. They extend to the realm of human rights:

  “All wars cause human rights violations, and the war on drugs is no different. Criminally controlled drug supply markets lead to appalling violence—causing an estimated 65 000-80 000 deaths in Mexico in the past decade, for example [pdf]. Mandatory sentencing for even minor drug offences has helped the United States attain the highest rate of incarceration in the world [pdf]. The Philippines has seen 5000 extrajudicial killings [pdf] since July, after President Rodrigo Duterte’s call for vigilantism against drug dealers.”

  The paper also cites countries around the world that have moved to lessen the invasiveness of the drug war. They cite Portugal, which famously removed criminal penalties for drugs 15 years ago.

  Further, they note:

  “Jurisdictions such as Canada, Uruguay, and several US states, now including California, and have gone further, to allow regulated non-medical cannabis markets, retaking control of supply from organised crime. The Netherlands has tolerated regulated cannabis sales for decades.”

  The editors of the BMJ acknowledge drugs can cause harm. But they argue “governments should decriminalise minor drug offences” and “strengthen health and social sector approaches,” as well as move toward regulated drug markets.

  Most importantly, they assert doctors should play a key role in developing drug policy.

  “Health should be at the centre of this debate and so, therefore, should healthcare professionals. Doctors are trusted and influential and can bring a rational and humane dimension to ideology and populist rhetoric about being tough on crime.”

  The BMJ editors are not the first to condemn the war on drugs. Earlier this year, over 1,000 world leaders, scientists, and medical experts condemned the U.N.’s half-hearted effort to reform its drug policies. In a separate criticism of the U.N.’s proposed solutions, 194 advocacy groups also expressed disappointment.

  Similarly, a group of doctors in the United States called Doctors for Cannabis Regulation has advocated an end to marijuana prohibition in favor of regulation of the market.

  BMJ acknowledges efforts like these but asserts “such calls are far from universal—and far from loud enough.”

  “Doctors and their leaders have ethical responsibilities to champion individual and public health, human rights, and dignity and to speak out where health and humanity are being systemically degraded.”

   

  “Change is coming,” they conclude, “and doctors should use their authority to lead calls for pragmatic reform informed by science and ethics.”

  

  

• "Emotionally F**king Pissed" Media Blows Embargo And Lashes Out At Trump – "F*ck Him"

  Just yesterday Trump called a summit of all the major mainstream media executives and anchors at Trump Tower.  While many expected the meeting to be an oppotunity to ask questions of the president-elect, the media elites apparently got the surprise of their lives when Trump spent the majority of the meeting attacking they’re blatant biased coverage the 2016 presidential elections referring to the room as a bunch of “dishonest, deceitful liars.”  One participant in the meeting described it as a “f—ing firing squad” after “Trump started with Jeff Zucker and said “I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed….”  We suspect that was rather less cordial than they expected.

  Despite the conversation being completely off the record, many of the “emotionally fucking pissed” media anchors have decided to blow their embargoes and lash out at Trump.  According to one source interviewed by the New Yorker, the meeting at Trump Tower was “fucking outrageous.”  The same source also questioned how he could remain impartial after the meeting saying “How can this not influence coverage?”…yes, because coverage was so impartial up until yesterday.
  

  Another participant at the meeting said that Trump’s behavior was “totally inappropriate” and “fucking outrageous.” The television people thought that they were being summoned to ask questions; Trump has not held a press conference since late July. Instead, they were subjected to a stream of insults and complaints—and not everyone absorbed it with pleasure.

   

  “I have to tell you, I am emotionally fucking pissed,” another participant said. “How can this not influence coverage? I am being totally honest with you. Toward the end of the campaign, it got to a point where I thought that the coverage was all about [Trump’s] flaws and problems. And that’s legit. But, I thought, O.K., let’s give them the benefit of the doubt. After the meeting today, though—and I am being human with you here—I think, Fuck him! I know I am being emotional about it. And I know I will get over it in a couple of days after Thanksgiving. But I really am offended. This was unprecedented. Outrageous!”

   

  Participants said that Trump did not raise his voice, but that he went on steadily at the start of the meeting about how he had been treated poorly. “It was all so Trump,” one said. “He is like this all the time. He’ll freeze you out and then be nice and humble and sort of want you to like him.”

   

  “But he truly doesn’t seem to understand the First Amendment,” the source continued. “He doesn’t. He thinks we are supposed to say what he says and that’s it.”

  And, as the eloquent Kellyanne Conway pointed out in her opening response last night on the Megyn Kelly show, negative reactions, like the one above, went a long way toward helping Trump win the presidency.

  “Fairness is actually not having presumptive negativity written about you and always assuming the worst about you.  And I think that Donald Trump has faced an unprecedented avalanche of critical coverage when he was running and frankly i think, in part, he owes his victory to that.  There was a backlash against the elites, a backlash against those who were telling Americans what is important to them.”

   

  What are the chances that the mainstream media figures out before 2020 that by relentlessly attacking Trump they’re actually helping him?

  * * *

  Here is our full coverage of the Trump “media summit” that was described by some as a “f—ing firing squad”:

  Earlier today we reported that in a “summit” organized by Trump’s campaign manager Kellyanne Conway, executives and anchors from the major US media outlets, including CNN president Jeff Zucker, ABC News president James Goldston, Fox News co-presidents Bill Shine and Jack Abernethy, and NBC News president Deborah Turness, visited Donald Trump at his Trump Tower penthouse for an off the record meeting.

  Courtesy of the Post, we have a complete list of the participants at the Trump media meeting: the hour-long powwow included top execs from network and cable news channels. Among the attendees were NBC’s Deborah Turness, Lester Holt and Chuck Todd, ABC’s James Goldston, George Stephanopoulos, David Muir and Martha Raddatz, CBS’ Norah O’Donnell John Dickerson, Charlie Rose, Christopher Isham and Gayle King, Fox News’ Bill Shine, Jack Abernethy, Jay Wallace, Suzanne Scott, MSNBC’s Phil Griffin and CNN’s Jeff Zucker and Erin Burnett.

  The contents of what was discussed were initially unclear.

  

  Wolf Blitzer

  Now, according to the Post and Politico, we learn that the President-elect “exploded at media bigs in an off-the-record Trump Tower powow on Monday.”

  “It was like a f—ing firing squad,” one source told the Post.

  According to the Post’s recound of the conversation, “Trump started with Jeff Zucker and said I hate your network, everyone at CNN is a liar and you should be ashamed….”

  
  Jeff Zucker (left)

  “The meeting was a total disaster. The TV execs and anchors went in there thinking they would be discussing the access they would get to the Trump administration, but instead they got a Trump-style dressing down,” the source added. A second source confirmed the encounter.

  The Post adds that “the meeting took place in a big board room and there were about 30 or 40 people, including the big news anchors from all the networks…”

  “Trump kept saying, ‘We’re in a room of liars, the deceitful dishonest media who got it all wrong. He addressed everyone in the room calling the media dishonest, deceitful liars. He called out Jeff Zucker by name and said everyone at CNN was a liar, and CNN was network of liars.

  “Trump didn’t say Katy Tur by name, but talked about an NBC female correspondent who got it wrong, then he referred to a horrible network correspondent who cried when Hillary lost who hosted a debate – which was Martha Raddatz who was also in the room.

  “Gayle did not stand up, but asked some question, ‘How do you propose we the media work with you?’ Chuck Todd asked some pretty pointed questions. David Muir asked how are you going to cope living in DC while your family is in NYC? It was a horrible meeting.”

  Politico adds further details, according to which “Trump complained about photos of himself that NBC used that he found unflattering, the source said. Trump turned to NBC News President Deborah Turness at one point, the source said, and told her the network won’t run a nice picture of him, instead choosing “this picture of me,” as he made a face with a double chin. Turness replied that they had a “very nice” picture of him on their website at the moment.”

  Amusingly, since the meeting was off the record, meaning the participants agreed not to talk about the substance of the conversations, it means they will most likely be unable to confirm or deny the Post’s report.

  Politco’s recollection of events was slightly less dramatic:

  The New York Post on Monday afternoon portrayed a much more heated meeting, including a quote from one source who said the encounter was “like a f–ing firing squad.” The Post also said Trump called CNN journalists “liars” and that they should be “ashamed.” The source who spoke with POLITICO characterized the meeting as less intense, and said the discussion included Trump expressing the possibility of a “reset” of the tumultuous relationship between the president-elect and the media and that all he wants is “fairness.”

   

  Asked how he defines fairness by a network executive, Trump said simply, “The truth.” But aside from the few moments of contention in the beginning, the source said the meeting was largely substantive.

  Politico also adds that Trump, flanked by chief of staff Reince Priebus and campaign manager Kellyanne Conway at the table, also expressed annoyance at the protective press pool and the complaints over him ditching the press when he went out to dinner last week with his family after reporters were advised he was in for the night. But Priebus assured the attendees that the protective press pool will be taken care of and it would all work out.

  Other attendees at the meeting from Trump’s team included chief strategist Stephen Bannon, Trump’s son-in-law Jared Kushner, spokesman Jason Miller, and Republican National Committee chief strategist and communications director Sean Spicer.

  Asked for comment, Miller referred POLITICO to Conway’s comments to reporters after the meeting, in which she echoed the sentiments made in the meeting about turning over a new leaf with the media.

   

  “There was no need to mend fences,” Conway said. “It was very cordial, very genial. But it was very candid and very honest. From my own perspective, it’s great to hit the reset button.”

   

  Conway later on Monday hit back at the New York Post report. “He did not explode in anger,” she said.

  While one can have a subjective interpretuation of the nuances at the meating, one thing was clear: Trump’s attempt at a ‘reset’ will be frowned at by the media which is not used to this kind of treatment, even if the “kindler, gentler” version of events as reported by Politico is accurate.

  It also means that what has already been a conventional war between the various US media organizations and Trump, is likely about to go nuclear.

  

  

• Scientists Find "Persuasive Evidence" Of Vote Hacking, Demand Clinton Recount In 3 States

  Between the so-called 'Hursti Hack', questions over Soros-linked voting machines, some peculiarities in Texas, and the media furore over Trump's democracy-threatening questioning of the election outcome; it is perhaps ironic that, after being soundly beaten across the vast majority of counties in America, NY Mag reports, a group of prominent computer scientists and election lawyers are urging the Clinton campaign to call for a recount in three swing states won by Donald Trump after allegedly finding "persuasive evidence" of vote hacking.

  The group, which includes voting-rights attorney John Bonifaz and J. Alex Halderman, the director of the University of Michigan Center for Computer Security and Society, believes they’ve found persuasive evidence that results in Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania may have been manipulated or hacked.

  New York Magazine reports that sources confirmed that the activists held a conference call last Thursday with Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta and campaign general counsel Marc Elias to make their case…

  The academics presented findings showing that in Wisconsin, Clinton received 7 percent fewer votes in counties that relied on electronic-voting machines compared with counties that used optical scanners and paper ballots.

   

  Based on this statistical analysis, Clinton may have been denied as many as 30,000 votes; she lost Wisconsin by 27,000.

  Notably, however, it’s important to note the group has not found proof of hacking or manipulation, they are arguing to the campaign that the suspicious pattern merits an independent review – especially, as New York Magazine so gleefully points out, in light of the fact that the Obama White House has accused the Russian government of hacking the Democratic National Committee.

  As a reminder, via MishTalk.com, Geographically speaking, Trump won at least 80% of the Nation.

  The only states Hillary carried are Vermont, Massachusetts, and Connecticut.

   

  

   

   

  Trump won every county in Oklahoma and West Virginia. Trump won all but one county in Wyoming, and Kansas. Trump won all but two counties in North Dakota, Kentucky, Tennessee, Utah, and Nebraska.

   

  Nearly the entire state of Minnesota, Illinois, New York, Oregon, Iowa, Missouri, Ohio, Michigan, etc., went for Trump. 

   

  Geographically speaking, except for big cities and a few isolated areas, the country cannot stand Hillary.

  So the big question is – could she win? Well the answer is complicated…

  According to current tallies, Trump has won 290 Electoral College votes to Clinton’s 232, with Michigan’s 16 votes not apportioned because the race there is still too close to call.

   

  It would take overturning the results in both Wisconsin (10 Electoral College votes) and Pennsylvania (20 votes), in addition to winning Michigan’s 16, for Clinton to win the Electoral College.

   

  There is also the complicating factor of “faithless electors,” or members of the Electoral College who do not vote according to the popular vote in their states. At least six electoral voters have said they would not vote for Trump, despite the fact that he won their states.

  The Clinton camp is running out of time to challenge the election. NYMag notes that according to one of the activists, the deadline in Wisconsin to file for a recount is Friday; in Pennsylvania, it’s Monday; and Michigan is next Wednesday.

  Of course, should this happen, we can only imagine what carnage it would cause to global financial markets as the Trump Bump hope fades into the Clinton crash.

  Finally, it appears that far from a frivolous flight of fancy, Huma Abedin's sister, Heba Abedin, has been encouraging her Facebook followers to call the Justice Department to have vote in key states audited.

  On Facebook, Huma Abedin's sister, Heba Abedin, encourages her followers to call the Justice Department to have vote in key states audited. pic.twitter.com/y4BPazFPmL

  — Yashar (@yashar) November 22, 2016

  None other than Nate Silver is now chiming in on these ‘scientists’ claims…

  Good chance there'll be a whole cottage industry of "STATISTICS PROFESSOR PROVES ELECTION RIGGED" posts at HuffPost, etc., though.

  — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016

  Which is also wonderfully ironic, though he does point out one glaring hole in their ‘hacking theory’…

  And Michigan has paper ballots everywhere, so not even sure what claim is being made there. pic.twitter.com/4YKrZEhTJl

  — Nate Silver (@NateSilver538) November 23, 2016

  

  

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• When It Comes To Fake News, The U.S. Government Is The Biggest Culprit

  Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

  “We Americans are the ultimate innocents. We are forever desperate to believe that this time the government is telling us the truth.”—Former New York Times reporter Sydney Schanberg

  Let’s talk about fake news stories, shall we?

  There’s the garden variety fake news that is not really “news” so much as it is titillating, tabloid-worthy material peddled by anyone with a Twitter account, a Facebook page and an active imagination. These stories run the gamut from the ridiculous and the obviously click-baity to the satirical and politically manipulative.

  Anyone with an ounce of sense and access to the Internet should be able to ferret out the truth and lies in these stories with some basic research. That these stories flourish is largely owing to the general gullibility, laziness and media illiteracy of the general public, which through its learned compliance rarely questions, challenges or confronts.

  Then there’s the more devious kind of news stories circulated by one of the biggest propagators of fake news: the U.S. government.

  In the midst of the media’s sudden headline-blaring apoplexy over fake news, you won’t hear much about the government’s role in producing, planting and peddling propaganda-driven fake news—often with the help of the corporate news media—because that’s not how the game works.

  Why?

  Because the powers-that-be don’t want us skeptical of the government’s message or its corporate accomplices in the mainstream media. They don’t want us to be more discerning when it comes to what information we digest online. They just want us to be leery of independent or alternative news sources while trusting them—and their corporate colleagues—to vet the news for us.

  Indeed, the New York Times has suggested that Facebook and Google appoint themselves the arbiters of truth on the internet in order to screen out what is blatantly false, spam or click-baity.

  Not only would this establish a dangerous precedent for all-out censorship by corporate entities known for colluding with the government but it’s also a slick sleight-of-hand maneuver that diverts attention from what we should really be talking about: the fact that the government has grown dangerously out-of-control, all the while the so-called mainstream news media, which is supposed to act as a bulwark against government propaganda, has instead become the mouthpiece of the world’s largest corporation—the U.S. government.

  As veteran journalist Carl Bernstein, who along with Bob Woodward blew the lid off the Watergate scandal, reported in his expansive 1977 Rolling Stone piece, “The CIA and the Media”:

  “More than 400 American journalists … in the past twenty?five years have secretly carried out assignments for the Central Intelligence Agency… There was cooperation, accommodation and overlap. Journalists provided a full range of clandestine services… Reporters shared their notebooks with the CIA. Editors shared their staffs. Some of the journalists were Pulitzer Prize winners, distinguished reporters… In many instances, CIA documents show, journalists were engaged to perform tasks for the CIA with the consent of the managements of America’s leading news organizations.”

  Bernstein is referring to Operation Mockingbird, a CIA campaign started in the 1950s to plant intelligence reports among reporters at more than 25 major newspapers and wire agencies, who would then regurgitate them for a public oblivious to the fact that they were being fed government propaganda.

  In some instances, as Bernstein shows, members of the media also served as extensions of the surveillance state, with reporters actually carrying out assignments for the CIA.

  Executives with CBS, the New York Times and Time magazine also worked closely with the CIA to vet the news. Bernstein writes: “Other organizations which cooperated with the CIA include the American Broadcasting Company, the National Broadcasting Company, the Associated Press, United Press International, Reuters, Hearst Newspapers, Scripps?Howard, Newsweek magazine, the Mutual Broadcasting System, the Miami Herald and the old Saturday Evening Post and New York Herald?Tribune.”

  For example, in August 1964, the nation’s leading newspapers—including the Washington Post and New York Times—echoed Lyndon Johnson’s claim that North Vietnam had launched a second round of attacks against American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin. No such attacks had taken place, and yet the damage was done. As Jeff Cohen and Norman Solomon report for Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting, “By reporting official claims as absolute truths, American journalism opened the floodgates for the bloody Vietnam War.”

  Fast forward to the early post-9/11 years when, despite a lack of any credible data supporting the existence of weapons of mass destruction, the mainstream media jumped on the bandwagon to sound the war drums against Iraq. As Los Angeles Times columnist Robin Abcarian put it, “our government … used its immense bully pulpit to steamroll the watchdogs… Many were gulled by access to administration insiders, or susceptible to the drumbeat of the government’s coordinated rhetoric.”

  John Walcott, Washington bureau chief for Knight-Ridder, one of the only news agencies to challenge the government’s rationale for invading Iraq, suggests that the reason for the media’s easy acceptance is that “too many journalists, including some very famous ones, have surrendered their independence in order to become part of the ruling class. Journalism is, as the motto goes, speaking truth to power, not wielding it.”

  If it was happening then, you can bet it’s still happening today, only it’s been reclassified, renamed and hidden behind layers of government secrecy, obfuscation and spin.

  In its article, “How the American government is trying to control what you think,” the Washington Post points out “Government agencies historically have made a habit of crossing the blurry line between informing the public and propagandizing.”

  Thus, whether you’re talking about the Cold War, the Vietnam War, the Gulf War, the government’s invasion of Iraq based upon absolute fabrications, or the government’s so-called war on terror, privacy and whistleblowers, it’s being driven by propaganda churned out by one corporate machine (the corporate-controlled government) and fed to the American people by way of yet another corporate machine (the corporate-controlled media).

  “For the first time in human history, there is a concerted strategy to manipulate global perception. And the mass media are operating as its compliant assistants, failing both to resist it and to expose it,” writes investigative journalist Nick Davies. “The sheer ease with which this machinery has been able to do its work reflects a creeping structural weakness which now afflicts the production of our news.”

  But wait.

  If the mass media—aka the mainstream media or the corporate or establishment media—is merely repeating what is being fed to it, who are the masterminds within the government responsible for this propaganda?

  Davies explains:

  The Pentagon has now designated “information operations” as its fifth “core competency” alongside land, sea, air and special forces. Since October 2006, every brigade, division and corps in the US military has had its own "psyop" element producing output for local media. This military activity is linked to the State Department's campaign of "public diplomacy" which includes funding radio stations and news websites.

  This use of propaganda disguised as journalism is what journalist John Pilger refers to as “invisible government… the true ruling power of our country.”

  As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we no longer have a Fourth Estate.

  Not when the “news” we receive is routinely manufactured, manipulated and made-to-order by government agents. Not when six corporations control 90% of the media in America. And not when, as Davies laments, “news organizations which might otherwise have exposed the truth were themselves part of the abuse, and so they kept silent, indulging in a comic parody of misreporting, hiding the emerging scandal from their readers like a Victorian nanny covering the children’s eyes from an accident in the street.”

  So let’s have no more of this handwringing, heart-wrenching, morally offended talk about fake news by media outlets that have become propagandists for the false reality created by the American government.

  After all, as Glenn Greenwald points out, “The term propaganda rings melodramatic and exaggerated, but a press that—whether from fear, careerism, or conviction—uncritically recites false government claims and reports them as fact, or treats elected officials with a reverence reserved for royalty, cannot be accurately described as engaged in any other function.”

  So where does that leave us?

  What should—or can—we do?

  I’ll close with John Pilger’s words of warning and advice:

  Real information, subversive information, remains the most potent power of all — and I believe that we must not fall into the trap of believing that the media speaks for the public. That wasn’t true in Stalinist Czechoslovakia and it isn’t true of the United States. In all the years I’ve been a journalist, I’ve never known public consciousness to have risen as fast as it’s rising today…yet this growing critical public awareness is all the more remarkable when you consider the sheer scale of indoctrination, the mythology of a superior way of life, and the current manufactured state of fear.

  [The public] need[s] truth, and journalists ought to be agents of truth, not the courtiers of power. I believe a fifth estate is possible, the product of a people’s movement, that monitors, deconstructs, and counters the corporate media. In every university, in every media college, in every news room, teachers of journalism, journalists themselves need to ask themselves about the part they now play in the bloodshed in the name of a bogus objectivity. Such a movement within the media could herald a perestroika of a kind that we have never known. This is all possible. Silences can be broken… In the United States wonderfully free rebellious spirits populate the web… The best reporting … appears on the web … and citizen reporters.

  The challenge for the rest of us is to lift this subjugated knowledge from out of the underground and take it to ordinary people. We need to make haste. Liberal Democracy is moving toward a form of corporate dictatorship. This is an historic shift, and the media must not be allowed to be its façade, but itself made into a popular, burning issue, and subjected to direct action. That great whistleblower Tom Paine warned that if the majority of the people were denied the truth and the ideas of truth, it was time to storm what he called the Bastille of words. That time is now.

  

  

• Equity Market Melt-Up Continues: Dow Futures Top 19,000, S&P Breaks 2,200

  In the words of the great philosopher Buzz Lightyear, “to infinity and beyond.” Oil’s incessant liftathon – on hopes that a production freeze at record highs will seriously impact a record seasonal glut – appears to have sparked more panic-buying in stocks overnight as no news whatsoever has the machines incessantly bidding futures, pushing Dow futures over 19,000 and S&P futures over 2,200. Bonds are flat, USDJPY is flat, and offshore yuan is modestly weaker once again.

   

  After the squeeze-fest from the Trump win, oil is now in charge tick for tick of stocks…

  

   

  Just another manic-monday-melt-up…

  

  

   

  Leaves stocks once again pushing to new record highs post-Trump lows…

  

  

  

• Minimum Wage Protesters Call For "Day Of Disruption" In 340 US Cities

  In what may be an early crisis test for the president-elect, on November 29, the nationwide campaign to increase the federal minimum wage in the United States has calling for a “Day of Disruption”, namely strikes and civil disobedience, on November 29 in the latest push to raise the minimum wage in the US to $15.

  The Fight for 15 group is preparing to protest in 340 cities across the United States, and is calling for airport and fast-food workers to strike.

  Group representatives have stated that they expect subcontracted service staff at roughly 20 airports to participate. It is anticipated to be the largest day of protest in the organization’s four year history, coinciding with the anniversary of the launch of the movement.

  “Tuesday, November 29, the #FightFor15 is staging a national day of disruption. We won’t back down,” the Fight for 15 Twitter account posted on Monday morning.

  BREAKING: Tuesday, November 29, the #FightFor15 is staging a national day of disruption. We won’t back down.
  RSVP: https://t.co/4pJIXGkLjq pic.twitter.com/eJcUdCQJIE

  — Fight For 15 (@fightfor15) November 21, 2016

  On its website, the campaign writes the following statement: “For too long, McDonald’s and low-wage employers have made billions of
  dollars in profit and pushed off costs onto taxpayers, while leaving
  people like us – the people who do the real work – to struggle to
  survive. That’s why we strike.”

  Fight for 15 began in New York City, as fast-food workers went on strike demanding $15-an-hour pay, as well as union rights. The movement was successful, and in April of this year NY Governor Andrew Cuomo signed a law to increase wages to a $15 minimum by the end of 2018 in New York City, and by 2021 in other counties, including Nassau, Suffolk and Westchester.

  For the rest of the state, the minimum wage will be raised to $12.50 by the end of 2020.

  The movement has since spread to over 300 cities on six different continents, and has seen additional successes, winning $15 an hour in the state of California, and in large cities such as Seattle. Other cities, including Portland and Chicago, have seen significant minimum-wage increases.

  While previously the group’s demands have been ignored at the Federal level, in a potential complication this July, then-Republican presidential candidate Donald Trump broke from his party’s platform, promising to increase the federal minimum wage, which may boost the leverage of the protesting organization.

  However, Trump acknowledged that states with more expensive urban regions need to have a higher minimum wage than lower-cost rural areas.

  Minimum-wage regulations, Trump noted, are most feasible when they are based on the living costs in each particular area, rendering the federal wage level regulations largely irrelevant to the economic reality in different regions of the US.

  With a $10/hour federal minimum wage, individual states, he claims, could go above that threshold. “I would leave it and raise it somewhat. You need to help people and I know it’s not very Republican to say but you need to help people,” Trump said in his July interview.

  

  

• Why America Called 'Bullshit' On The Cult Of Clinton

  Submitted by Brendan O'Neill via Reason.com,

  The one good thing about Trump’s win? It shows a willingness among Americans to blaspheme against saints and reject the religion of hollow progressiveness.

  

  If you want to see politics based on emotionalism over reason and a borderline-religious devotion to an iconic figure, forget the Trump Army; look instead to the Cult of Clinton.

  Ever since Donald Trump won the presidential election, all eyes, and wringing hands, have been on the white blob who voted for him. These "loud, illiterate and credulous people," as a sap at Salon brands them, think on an "emotional level." Bill Moyers warned that ours is a "dark age of unreason," in which "low information" folks are lining up behind "The Trump Emotion Machine." Andrew Sullivan said Trump supporters relate to him as a "cult leader fused with the idea of the nation."

  What's funny about this is not simply that it's the biggest chattering-class hissy fit of the 21st century so far — and chattering-class hissy fits are always funny. It's that whatever you think of Trump (I'm not a fan) or his supporters (I think they're mostly normal, good people), the fact is they've got nothing on the Clinton cult when it comes to creepy, pious worship of a politician.

  By the Cult of Hillary Clinton, I don't mean the nearly 62 million Americans who voted for her. I have not one doubt that they are as mixed and normal a bag of people as the Trumpites are. No, I mean the Hillary machine—the celebs and activists and hacks who were so devoted to getting her elected and who have spent the past week sobbing and moaning over her loss. These people exhibit cult-like behavior far more than any Trump cheerer I've come across.

  Trump supporters view their man as a leader "fused with the idea of the nation"? Perhaps some do, but at least they don't see him as "light itself." That's how Clinton was described in the subhead of a piece for Lena Dunham's Lenny Letter. "Maybe [Clinton] is more than a president," gushed writer Virginia Heffernan. "Maybe she is an idea, a world-historical heroine, light itself," Nothing this nutty has been said by any of Trump's media fanboys.

  "Hillary is Athena," Heffernan continued, adding that "Hillary did everything right in this campaign… She cannot be faulted, criticized, or analyzed for even one more second."

  That's a key cry of the Cult of Hillary (as it is among followers of L. Ron Hubbard or devotees of Christ): our gal is beyond criticism, beyond the sober and technical analysis of mere humans. Michael Moore, in his movie Trumpland, looked out at his audience and, with voice breaking, said: "Maybe Hillary could be our Pope Francis."

  Or consider Kate McKinnon's post-election opening bit on SNL, in which she played Clinton as a pantsuited angel at a piano singing Leonard Cohen's "Hallelujah," her voice almost cracking as she sang: "I told the truth, I didn't come to fool ya." Just imagine if some right-leaning Christian celeb (are there any?) had dolled up as Trump-as-godhead and sang praises to him. It would have been the source of East Coast mirth for years to come. But SNL's Hallelujah for Hillary was seen as perfectly normal.

  As with all saints and prophets, all human manifestations of light itself, the problem is never with them, but with us. We mortals are not worthy of Hillary. "Hillary didn't fail us, we failed her," asserted a writer for the Guardian. The press, and by extension the rest of us, "crucified her," claimed someone at Bustle. We always do that to messiahs, assholes that we are.

  And of course the light of Hillary had to be guarded against blasphemy. Truly did the Cult of Hillary seek to put her beyond "analysis for even one more second." All that stuff about her emails and Libya was pseudo-scandal, inventions of her aspiring slayers, they told us again and again and again.

  As Thomas Frank says, the insistence that Hillary was scandal-free had a blasphemy-deflecting feel to it. The message was that "Hillary was virtually without flaws… a peerless leader clad in saintly white… a caring benefactor of women and children." Mother Teresa in a pantsuit, basically. As a result, wrote Frank, "the act of opening a newspaper started to feel like tuning in to a Cold War propaganda station."

  Then there was the reaction to Clinton's loss. It just wasn't normal chattering-class behavior. Of course we expect weeping, wailing videos from the likes of Miley Cyrus and Perez Hilton about how Clinton had been robbed of her moment of glory; that's what celebs do these days. But in the media, too, there was hysteria.

  "'I feel hated,' I tell my husband, sobbing in front of the TV in my yoga pants and Hillary sweatshirt, holding my bare neck," said a feminist in the Guardian. Crying was a major theme. A British feminist recalled all the "Clinton-related crying" she had done: "I've cried at the pantsuit flashmob, your Saturday Night Live appearance, and sometimes just while watching the debates." (Wonder if she cried over the women killed as a result of Hillary's machinations in Libya? Probably not. In the mind of the Hillary cultists, that didn't happen—it is utterly spurious, a blasphemy.)

  Then there was Lena Dunham, who came out in hives—actual hives—when she heard Clinton had lost. Her party dress "felt tight and itchy." She "ached in the places that make me a woman." I understand being upset and angry at your candidate's loss, but this is something different; this is what happens, not when a politician does badly, but when your savior, your Athena, "light itself," is extinguished. The grief is understandable only in the context of the apocalyptic faith they had put in Hillary. Not since Princess Diana kicked the bucket can I remember such a strange, misplaced belief in one woman, and such a weird, post-modern response to someone's demise (and Clinton isn't even dead! She just lost!).

  It's all incredibly revealing. What it points to is a mainstream, Democratic left that is so bereft of ideas and so disconnected from everyday people that it ends up pursuing an utterly substance-free politics of emotion and feeling and doesn't even realize it's doing it. They are good, everyone else is bad; they are light itself, everyone else is darkness; and so no self-awareness can exist and no self-criticism can be entertained. Not for even one second, in Heffernan's words. The Cult of Hillary Clinton is the clearest manifestation yet of the 21st-century problem of life in the political echo chamber.

  Mercifully, some mea culpas are now emerging. Some, though not enough, realize that Hillaryites behaved rashly and with unreason. In a brilliant piece titled "The unbearable smugness of the liberal media," Will Rahn recounts how the media allowed itself to become the earthly instrument of Clinton's cause, obsessed with finding out how to make Middle Americans "stop worshiping their false god and accept our gospel."

  Indeed. And the failure to make the gospel of Hillary into the actual book of America points to the one good thing about Trump's victory: a willingness among ordinary people to blaspheme against saints, to reject phony saviors, and to sniff at the new secular religion of hollow progressiveness. The liberal political and media establishment offered the little people a supposedly flawless, Francis-like figure of uncommon goodness, and the little people called bullshit on it. That is epic and beautiful, even if nothing else in recent weeks has been.

  

  

• After Trump Win, Ad Agencies Admit They're Clueless On How To Market To Midwest Consumers

  Donald Trump’s election taught politicians several valuable lessons, including, but certainly not limited to, the following:

  1. More spending doesn’t necessarily equate to victory
  2. You can speak your mind without alienating voters…actually, a lot of voters kind of like/respect it
  3. The American electorate is smart enough to see through blatant pandering based on race, gender, etc.
  4. Rural populations in “flyover states” are absolutely fed up with the ruling elites of the establishment

  But politicians aren’t the only ones learning valuable lessons from Trump’s stunning victory as advertising agencies have also been forced to admit that they have no idea how to market to the Midwest.  As the CEO of McCann Worldgroup pointed out the Wall Street Journal, Trump’s victory highlighted the error of gearing marketing programs exclusively “toward metro elite imagery” saying that future efforts need to incorporate a bit more “Des Moines and Scranton” and a little less NYC and Los Angeles.

  In the wake of Donald Trump’s election as U.S. president with a wave of support from middle American voters, advertisers are reflecting on whether they are out of touch with the same people—rural, economically frustrated, elite-distrusting, anti-globalization voters—who propelled the businessman into the White House. Mr. Trump’s rise has them rethinking the way they collect data about consumers, recruit staff and pitch products.

   

  “Every so often you have to reset what is the aspirational goal the public has with regard to the products we sell,” said Harris Diamond, McCann’s CEO. “So many marketing programs are oriented toward metro elite imagery.” Marketing needs to reflect less of New York and Los Angeles culture, he said, and more of “Des Moines and Scranton.”

  

   

  Like the large hedge funds and investment banks of wall street, most the people employed by the large, successful ad agencies happen to reside in NYC and Los Angeles.  And, while those offices are well staffed to target consumers in the large metropolitan cities of the U.S. , they are uniquely unqualified to speak to the hearts and minds of people living in the “flyover” states that they loathe to visit.  As one advertising CEO points out, a diversity hire “can be a farm girl from Indiana as much as a Cuban immigrant who lives in Pensacola.”

  Some marketers, concerned that data isn’t telling them everything they need to know, are considering increasing their use of personal interviews in research. Meanwhile, some ad agencies are looking to hire more people from rural areas as they rethink the popular use of aspirational messaging showcasing a ritzy life on the two metropolitan coasts. One company is also weighing whether to open more local offices around the world, where the people who create ads are closer to the people who see them.

   

  “This election is a seminal moment for marketers to step back and understand what is in people’s heads and what actually drives consumer choice,” said Joe Tripodi, chief marketing officer of the Subway sandwich chain.

   

  Even as many ad agencies try to improve their gender and racial diversity, industry executives say they also need to ensure their U.S. employees come from varied socioeconomic and geographic backgrounds.

   

  A diversity hire “can be a farm girl from Indiana as much as a Cuban immigrant who lives in Pensacola,” said John Boiler, chief executive of the agency 72andSunny, whose clients include General Mills Inc. and Coors Light. The agency plans to expand its university recruitment programs to include rural areas.

  Like the pollsters who completely missed Trump’s victory, advertising agencies admit that their customers will likely reduce spending over the next several months as everyone “re-calibrates” their models to reflect the fact that not everyone lives in NYC, San Francisco and Los Angeles.

  Advertising executives also said the surprising outcome to the election would likely hamper advertising spending next year, as marketers try to figure out what implications the new administration’s decisions will have on businesses.

   

  WPP’s GroupM, the largest ad buying firm in the world, had been anticipating U.S. ad spending would grow 3% to $183.9 billion next year. Kelly Clark, global CEO of GroupM, now said he anticipates ad spending growth in the U.S. will likely decline a few percentage points over the next six months. “We do believe that investment decisions will be delayed,” said Mr. Clark.

   

  If agencies internalize the societal changes the election reflected, the content or tone of advertising could change, some ad executives predicted.

   

  “The election will have spooked the liberal elite away from high concept, ‘make the world a better place’” advertising to “a more down-to-earth ‘tell me what you will do for me’ approach” said Robert Senior, worldwide chief executive of Saatchi & Saatchi, a creative firm owned by Publicis Groupe.

  Isn’t it just glorious to see the Ivy League-educated, coastal elites admit that they know absolutely nothing about roughly 50% of the people residing in their own country?

  

  

• Japanese Troops Deploy To South Sudan Risking First Overseas Conflict Since World War II"

  Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

  

  The re-miliarization of Japan has been on my radar and caused me much concern in recent years. I’ve covered the topic on several occasions, with the most recent example published over the summer in the post, Japanese Government Shifts Further Toward Authoritarianism and Militarism. Here are the first few paragraphs:

  One of the most discomforting aspects of Neil Howe and William Strauss’ seminal work on generational cycles, The Fourth Turning (1997), is the fact that as far as American history is concerned, they all climax and end with massive wars.

   

  To be more specific, the first “fourth turning” in American history culminated with the Revolutionary War (1775-1783), the second culminated with the Civil War (1861-1865), while the third ended with the bloodiest war in world history, World War II (1939-1945). The number of years between the end of the Revolutionary War and the start of the Civil War was 78 years, and the number of years between the end of the Civil War and the start of World War II was 74 years (76 years if you use America’s entry into the war as your starting date). Therefore, if Howe & Strauss’ theory holds any water, and I think it does, we’re due for a major conflict somewhere around 75 years from the end of World War II. That brings us to 2020.

   

  The more I look around, the more signs appear everywhere that the world is headed into another major conflict. From an unnecessary resurgence of a Cold War with Russia, to increased tensions in the South China Sea and complete chaos and destruction in the Middle East, the world is a gigantic tinderbox. All it will take to transform these already existing conflict zones into a major conflagration is another severe global economic downturn, something I fully expect to happen within the next 1-2 years. Frighteningly, this puts on a perfect collision course with the 2020 area.

  Although I felt World War 3 was a virtual lock under Hillary Clinton, the election of Trump does not negate historical cycles or current geopolitical trends, and the world continues to move in a very dangerous direction.

  While the below snippet from a Reuters article published today may not seem like a big deal, it’s just a small part of a much larger trend.

  Via Reuters:

  A contingent of Japanese troops landed in South Sudan on Monday, an official said – a mission that critics say could see them embroiled in their country’s first overseas fighting since World War Two.

   

  The soldiers will join U.N. peacekeepers and help build infrastructure in the landlocked and impoverished country torn apart by years of civil war.

   

  But, under new powers granted by their government last year, they will be allowed to respond to urgent calls for help from U.N. staff and aid workers. There are also plans to let them guard U.N. bases, which have been attacked during the fighting.

   

  The deployment of 350 soldiers is in line with Japanese security legislation to expand the military’s role overseas. Critics in Japan have said the move risks pulling the troops into conflict for the first time in more than seven decades.

  All it would take is a sharp global economic downturn to push world “leaders” towards overseas conflict in order to distract from problems at home. The risk is very real.

   

  *  *  *

  For prior articles on the trend toward militarization in Japan, see:

  Unusually Massive Protests Erupt in Japan Against Forthcoming “War Legislation”

  Video of the Day – Brawl Breaks Out in Japanese Parliament Over “War Bill”

  How Japan’s “Stealth Constitution” Destroys Civil Rights and Sets the Stage for Dictatorship

  

  

• Generational Wealth Transfers Create 1,700 New Millionaires A Day As Middle Class Continues To Suffer

  Trump won the 2016 presidential election, in large part, due to the support of the working class population in the Midwest that has suffered for decades as manufacturing wages have stagnated and jobs have been transplanted to lower cost regions like Mexico and China.  On election night, Trump vowed to change the fate of the American middle class by pledging that “the forgotten men and women of our country will be forgotten no longer.”

  That said, with a significant amount of America’s wealth held by a tiny fraction of households and a widening income gap, it’s unclear what, if anything, Trump can do to reverse the collapse of America’s once thriving middle class.  As the St. Louis Fed points out, the median family in the U.S. today has accumulated roughly 30% less wealth than their counterparts in 1989 which has been a consistent trend now for decades.

  The median family today is significantly poorer at any given age than their counterparts would have been 25 years earlier, according to the St. Louis Fed. For example, people born in 1970 have had about 40 percent less wealth at any given age, compared with people born in 1940. The median middle-aged family in 2013 had 31 percent less wealth than its counterpart in 1989, while the median young family had 28 percent less wealth than its 1989 counterpart. Meanwhile, the median wealth gap between young and old families has widened.

  As Bloomberg points out, just 8mm households, or roughly 6% of the 125mm total households in the U.S., control a substantial portion of the country’s overall financial wealth.

  

   

  And, with middle class incomes stagnating, the wealth gap is only expected to grow wider over time.

  

   

  Meanwhile, more than 50% of the people with $25mm or more in financial wealth cite “inheritance” as the source of their “success.”

  Others were just born lucky, as in: They inherited their cash. More than half of U.S. investors with over $25 million said inheritance was a factor in their wealth, according to a new survey by Spectrem Group, a consulting firm that specializes in polling the rich. Among these people, a whopping 73 percent of those aged 50 or younger said inheritance was a factor.

   

  George Walper, Spectrem’s president, said there’s been an uptick in the last few years in the number of respondents who cite inheritance as a factor in their wealth. To be fair, the very wealthy people surveyed by Spectrem also cite hard work, education, and smart investing as playing a role in their riches.

   

  But it’s become harder to build a fortune on hard work alone. Americans in their late seventies, eighties, and nineties began their careers in the midst of the U.S.’s postwar boom. More recent generations haven’t had the same economic tailwinds.

  

   

  All of which leads to the inevitable conclusion that the growing pool of “old money” in the U.S. and stagnating incomes has resulted in a fairly grim outlook for millennials.

  

   

  With the “old money” families taking an increasing portion of the overall American wealth pie while the overwhelming majority of American’s live month-to-month with no potential to save, it is no wonder that the American electorate has grown more divided over time.  Certainly, the democratic party has used the income divide over the years to rally their base of support.  But, with an economy that is dependent on consumers levering and spending every single dollar they make and a central bank that has removed every possible incentive to save, we suspect the income gap won’t narrow anytime in the near future.

  

  

• Canadian Bank Starts Charging Negative 0.75% Rate On Most Foreign Cash Balances

  Despite speculation over the past year that Canada may join Japan and Europe in the NIRP club and launch negative interest rates, so far the BOC has stood its ground. However, starting on December 22, for the broker dealer clients of one of Canada’s most reputable financial institutions, BMO Nesbitt Burns, it will be as if the Canadian bank has cut its deposit rate on most currencies, to match the deposit rate of Switzerland.

  In an internal letter sent today from management, the bank explains that its current policy with respect to cash balances of foreign currencies held in client accounts – excluding U.S. dollars – has been that it “does not pay or charge clients interest on these balances.” As a result, the bank writes, clients have traditionally tended not to hold non-U.S. dollar foreign currencies in a BMO Nesbitt Burns account for any extended period. However, the notice continues, “given the current global interest rate environment, which has extended much longer than anticipated, we have seen an increase in foreign currency cash reserves across accounts; indicating clients are, in fact, moving these funds into their BMO Nesbitt Burns account in order to avoid negative interest charges on cash holdings in other accounts they maintain.” 

  Welcome to the age of connected monetary vessels, where globally fungible money allows savers to bypass their own domestic “financial repression” and negative interest rates, by shifting their funds to offshore bank accounts. Or at least it did for clients using BMO Nesbitt Burns as a custodian of offshore money. Because as the bank adds, it has become necessary for the bank to update its current policy and selectively implement negative rates to avoid precisely this global interconnection. To wit:

  Effective December 22, 2016, we will begin charging clients a market-rate negative interest charge of 75 basis points on cash balances of all foreign currencies held in their account(s), excluding U.S. dollars. Interest is calculated on the average daily balance during the interest period. The first negative interest charge will cover the period of December 22, 2016 to January 21, 2017, and will be charged to all applicable client accounts on January 23, 2017.

  How long will BMO continue this unprecedented financial repression of its foreign clients? Simple: as long as NIRP in other nations forces funds to be parked in banks like the Bank of Montreal.

  This rate will be regularly reviewed to ensure it remains competitive and will continue until to be charged until such time as foreign interest rate policies negate the need to apply this charge to client accounts. Please note that negative monthly interest charges below $5.00 will not be charged to client accounts.

  What happens then? Well, if BMO depositors (of whom we wonder just what percentage are Chinese) take their money to another Canadian bank, that bank will promptly follow suit and implement a similar “negative rate” provision for foreign clients, until eventually every single bank, and not just in Canada, has a bifurcated deposit rate policy: one for account held in Canadian and US Dollars, and another for all other currencies, which will demand an annual fee of 0.75% for the privilege of holding their funds.

  What is BMO Nesbitt Burns’ advice to advisors with clients that have any foreign, non-U.S. dollar foreign currencies on deposit? They are encouraged to contact these clients and advise them that they may wish to consider purchasing an alternative short-term investment denominated in the foreign currency, or another available product, as otherwise there is no evading the -0.75% fee.

  

  

• Venezuela's State-Owned Oil Company Misses Bond Coupon Payments Due To "Glitch", Bonds Tumble

  Just a month after dodging a default bullet thanks to a last-minute bond swap, Venezuela’s state-owned oil company PDVSA missed coupon payments due on its bonds, according to JPMorgan. However, PDVSA president Del Pino raged on Twitter that “the information about a PDVSA default spread by the enemies of the fatherland is totally false,” but the bonds saw prices tumble despite his statement.

  PDVSA in October swapped $2.8 billion in bonds due in 2017 for new bonds maturing in 2020... but that bounce is now dead…
  

  
  

  As Bloomberg reports, PDVSA has activated a 30-day grace period after not meeting the full coupon payments on its 2021, 2024 and 2035 bonds that were due last week. About $400 million was due on those bonds, while PDVSA did pay $135 million due on its 2026 debt last week, JPMorgan’s Javier Zorrilla writes, citing information from the paying agent on the bonds.

  “We still believe PDVSA will make these payments during the grace period,” Zorrilla wrote in the report.

   

  “However, this highlights the cash difficulties and mismanagement of PDVSA with regards to its liabilities.”

  But, as Reuters reports, PDVSA, in a statement, said it had paid “punctually” its obligations due this month for 2021, 2024 and 2026 papers, and was also “in the process of executing” interest payments for the 2035 bond.

  “In this way, PDVSA honors its commitment … ratifying the financial solidity of Venezuelans’ main industry,” it said.

  Prior to PDVSA’s response, Reuters reports that Torino Capital had said the reported delay appeared to be “a technical mistake” rather than an indication of default.

  It noted that payments were being made “through accounts not conventionally used for these purposes” and that some PDVSA management changes had occurred, both of which could have contributed to a delay.

   

  “Our tentative conclusion is thus that the delay in payments likely reflects administrative and technical issues of the type that the 30-day grace period is designed to handle,” wrote its chief economist Francisco Rodriguez in a note to clients.

   

  “We do not believe it reflects a change in authorities’ willingness to service its international obligations.”

  Venezuela bonds trade at distressed levels as a result of investor concern that a steep recession and spiraling inflation will leave it without resources to meet heavy commitments.

  The country’s sovereign bonds on average pay 26 percentage points more than comparable U.S. Treasury Notes, according to JPMorgan’s Global Diversified Emerging Markets Bond Index.

  But there is always a dip-buyer ready to scoop up collapsing bonds…

  “I hope it gets cheaper so I can buy more,” said Diego Ferro, co-chief investment officer of Greylock Capital Management LLC in New York. “It’s a non-event most likely.”

  Well the 2037s jut got a lot cheaper Mr. Ferro…

  

   

  And all this on the day when the Bolivar crashed through 2000/$ on the black market for the first time… 

  

  

  

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