- Silver Futures Market Assistance, Report 12 Feb, 2017
This week, the prices of the metals moved up on Monday. Then the gold price went sideways for the rest of the week, but the silver price jumped on Friday. Is this the rocket ship to $50? Will Trump’s stimulus plan push up the price of silver? Or just push silver speculators to push up the price, at their own expense, again?
This will again be a brief Report this week, as we are busy working on something new and big. And Keith is on the road, in New York and Miami.
Below, we will show the only true picture of the gold and silver supply and demand fundamentals. But first, the price and ratio charts.
The Prices of Gold and Silver
Next, this is a graph of the gold price measured in silver, otherwise known as the gold to silver ratio. It fell this week.
The Ratio of the Gold Price to the Silver Price
For each metal, we will look at a graph of the basis and cobasis overlaid with the price of the dollar in terms of the respective metal. It will make it easier to provide brief commentary. The dollar will be represented in green, the basis in blue and cobasis in red.
Here is the gold graph.
The Gold Basis and Cobasis and the Dollar Price
Again, we see a higher price of gold (shown here in its true form, a lower price of the dollar) along with greater scarcity (i.e. cobasis, the red line).
This pattern continues. What does it mean?
First, it means the price of gold is being pushed up by buyers of physical metal. Not by buyers of futures (which would push up the basis, and reduce scarcity).
Second, if it continues too much more, it means nothing good for the banking system. There is one force that can make all the gold in the world—which mankind has been accumulating for thousands of years—disappear faster than you can say “bank bail in”. The force is fear of counterparties, fear of banks, fear of currencies, fear of central bank balance sheets… fear of government finances.
We want to emphasize that the gold basis is not signaling disaster at the moment. It is merely moving in that direction, for the first time in a long time. It has a ways to go yet.
Our calculated fundamental price is up another $40 (on top of last week’s +$40). It is now about $130 over the market price.
Now let’s look at silver.
The Silver Basis and Cobasis and the Dollar Price
Note: we switched to the May contract, as March was becoming unusable in its approach to expiry.
In silver, the story is a bit less compelling. The scarcity of the metal is holding, as the price rises. However, scarcity is not increasing.
Were we to take a guess, we would say there is some good demand for physical, and the price action had futures market assistance.
While the market price moved up 44 cents, our calculated fundamental price moved up … 46 cents.
© 2016 Monetary Metals
- "As Ye Sow…"
Submitted by Robert Gore via Straight Line Logic blog,
Our deranged world is a product of deranged minds.
Philosophy begins with invariably difficult questions. Why am I here? What is the purpose of life? Is there a god or gods? What is right and what is wrong? How should groups of people be organized and function together? Ironically, when such questions are infrequently asked, when philosophy is generally ignored or disparaged, as it is now, is when it’s needed the most.
Political philosophy is the branch that addresses the question of how coercive power is to be distributed in a society. It’s a knotty issue, but one question provides clarification, enabling further analysis and leading to useful conclusions. Who owns a political unit’s resources? This question differentiates between governments that protect individual rights and property and those that don’t. It also highlights a key problem: on planet earth, every government falls into the latter category.
The United States’ founding documents pay tribute to individual rights and private properly. Some of the founders may have thought they were establishing a government subordinated to protection of individual rights, which would have been an historical first. However, none thought such a government would be easy to maintain, and their fears were borne out. The US government places prominently on the inglorious list of governments claiming ownership over everything within their dominion, defined as any place where they can exercise their coercive power.
To those who say the institution of inviolate private property still exists in the US, what asset can the US government not seize? The income tax gives it first claim on income. No real estate is exempt from eminent domain. Intellectual property claims are at the sufferance of the patent, trademark, and copyright authorities. Financial assets held within the banking system can be “bailed in,” and plans are afoot to ban cash. The already extensive range of assets subjected to civil asset forfeiture continues to expand. More ominously, assets can be seized from parties never adjudicated guilty. Conscription grants to the government the lives of the conscripted. The US government is no exception to the general rule, nothing is inviolate expect perhaps a person’s thoughts, and undoubtedly it’s working on that.
Individuals who assert the right to initiate aggression against whomever they choose are philosophically unhinged, candidates for an asylum or a penitentiary. Rejecting the first principle that must guide human interaction—that no one may rightfully initiate force against another person—such individuals have no rational foundation for their thoughts or actions. The “garbage in” of their philosophical premises produces “garbage out” emotional states, mental processes, and ultimately, lives. Having abandoned reason for coercion and violence, reality becomes a chaotic, incomprehensible void.
Governments’ coercive power allow them to take: might makes right. A philosophy that recognized a right of some individuals to steal from others fails on first principles; there is no logical distinction possible between the privileged and the subjugated. Does the aggregation of individuals into a unit which calling itself a government give them a right which none of them have individually? One could say that the aggregate was for the protection of its constituents’ persons, property, and rights, but a government so limited is acting as their constituents’ subordinate agent, exercising and enhancing their right of self-defense. Efforts have been made, notably the American experiment, but no government has ever been restricted in this manner.
No matter its guiding “ism,” every government has granted itself the power to initiate violence against its citizens. Just because the ruling agglomerate asserts this privilege doesn’t render it philosophically valid. What it does is legitimate the initiation of violence for any and all causes—domestic and foreign—the government deems proper.
Having violated the first principle of nonaggression, nothing can stop that philosophical default from trickling down to the subject population. The ragged thief who holds up a liquor store lacks the polish and articulation of the politician who asserts the government’s first claim on a nation’s production, the central banker who depreciates its currency, or the general bent on global dominance who wages offensive wars, but philosophically they’re soul mates. In fact, the thief has a moral one up on the others: he doesn’t claim to be protecting the values he destroys.
Millions have decried the violence that prevented Milo Yiannopoulos from speaking at the University of California at Berkeley, just as millions on the other side decried mostly illusory violence among Trump supporters during the campaign. However, not one in a thousand of those denouncing the violence as violations of fundamental civil liberties denounce the daily violations of fundamental liberties visited upon them by their own government. America’s corruption is so complete that those who insist that they are not fodder for the government, that their lives are their own, and that the only proper government is one subordinated to the protection of their individual rights—and maintain positions consistent with those principles—could hold a convention and not fill a high-school gym.
This small group is the victim of a terrifying pincer movement from above and below. When a society abandons itself to violence, “legal” and otherwise, it abandons itself to mindless irrationality driven by hate and antipathy towards every positive value. Violence is not a means to any end other than destruction and death; violence itself is the end. Humanity has been fed the same tripe for centuries: noble ends justify evil means. Violation of the first principle—the stricture against initiated aggression—bars consideration of the purported ends. A “discussion” with a gun is no discussion. Violence exercised in self-defense protects positive values, but when violence is initiated, destruction, death, and the depraved pleasure of loathsome minds are its only ends.
An individual who claims by word or deed the right to initiate violence – and the consequent rights to subjugate, injure, and kill – is a rabid, deranged, and dangerous animal. A government that asserts that right is a pack. In self-defense, the virtuous, if they are to protect their liberty, rights, and lives, must quarantine or kill the rabid. A necessary corollary of the stricture against initiated aggression is that we have the right to use all means necessary to defend ourselves from it—with pity, perhaps, but no remorse.
The chaos, the terror, of our deteriorating world is a true and faithful reflection of souls abandoned to hate. The free mind and its methods—intrepid curiosity, truth, and logic—stand as their ultimate enemy. If those who would oppose this destruction and death abandon their souls, they become the mindless evil they opposed. Those who defend their rights, values, and lives without surrendering their morality will rebuild from the rubble the kind of world in which they deserve to live. They will do so unobstructed—hate inevitably leads to its own destruction.
- China Bonds, Stocks, Commodities Extend Gains As Yuan Tumbles To One-Month Lows After Renewed Liquidity Injection
As China got back to work after Golden Week, it appeared a renewed exuberance appeared in every orifice of liquidity provision (even as PBOC sucked up excess for 6 straight days). Stocks are up, bonds are up, and commodities are soaring (all as Yuan tumbles) and tonight authorities unleashed 100bn reverse-repo (for the first time in 7 days) as leverage seems nothing to worry about again yields drop and asset prices rise.
As Bloomberg reports, China’s central bank restarted the use of an instrument that adds cash to the financial system, helping ease liquidity concerns before $153 billion of funds come due this week.
The monetary authority sold a total 100 billion yuan ($14.5 billion) of reverse-repurchase agreements, the first auction after a six-day pause, a statement posted on its website showed. While the open-market operations resulted in a net withdrawal of 90 billion yuan because of maturing contracts, the resumption signals that policy makers don’t want a sudden tightening of money supply, according to Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (China) Ltd. The People’s Bank of China last week allowed 625 billion yuan of reverse repos to mature, mopping up cash after adding record funds in the days before the week-long Lunar New Year holidays. Some 900 billion yuan of the contracts are set to mature this week, as well as 151.5 billion yuan of loans under the Medium-term Lending Facility, data compiled by Bloomberg show. That adds up to 1.05 trillion yuan, or $153 billion.
“The PBOC restarted the use of reverse repos to stabilize market sentiment because large maturities are on the way,” said Li Liuyang, a Shanghai-based market analyst at Bank of Tokyo-Mitsubishi UFJ (China).
“The net result will probably continue to be a withdrawal this week, but the pace will be controlled to avoid any crunch. We also expect it to conduct MLF, given the maturities.”
And Lo and Behold – China soars…so much for all that worry about Trump trade wars!!
Stocks are up…
Bonds are up…
And every industrial commodity is exploding higher…
And all of this as the Yuan tumbles in a Trump-infuriating way… dropping to 5-week lows
- The Rats Are Fleeing The Sinking Bond Ships
Glen Hubbard, George Bush Jr.’s economic adviser, was a candidate
to replace Alan Greenspan as Federal Reserve Chairman. George Bush Jr. asked him if the economy
sputtered, what would he do. As he
described the typical monetary policy tool of adjusting the overnight Federal
Funds Rate, he said the net result would be to boost GDP by a half of a percent
to percent. I assume the same question
was asked to Ben Bernanke. Helicopter
Ben didn’t disappoint and won the appointment. As Chairman of the Federal Reserve, he got his
chance and threw everything including the kitchen sink at stimulating the
economy. He lowered the Federal Funds
rate down to zero and purchased trillions of bonds to expand the monetary base.
He unleashed the most excessively
accommodative monetary policy in history which was continued by current Federal
Reserve Chairman Janet Yellen. Fast
forward to today and we are on the cusp of a 3+% GDP, core inflation running
above 2% and full employment. However,
there are some perilous costs associated with such accommodative monetary
policy. The cost that should be the most
worrying is the unwinding of the ultra-low bond yields in the US and globally
that has just begun.Bond yields and market volatility are on the rise. This is
the result of more normalized growth and inflation levels, less perceived
global risks and hope for continued growth in the future. Fixed income investors
have just begun to adjust to the idea of more normal yields in the bond market. It may seem tempting to dip a toe into the
bond market waters with this back-up in yields. But these are dangerous waters.
Don’t lose a toe. After 10 years of bond
markets rallying the unwind is just beginning.Normalized markets for longer dated government bonds places
yields around 2% to 3% above the rate of inflation. And with inflation running at 2% and moving
higher, longer term bond yields should be greater than 5%, not the current 3%. If bonds yields backed up to the longer term
averages, market losses could be 40% or more for the longest maturity bonds.The trillions in bond purchases that drove yields to
all-time lows have abated and that’s bad news for bonds. Banks have finished adding regulatory bond
purchases and central banks have ended or are close to ending bond purchases
for monetary policy purposes. Government
bond purchases made to limit rising currencies have now turned into sales to
limit currency weakness. And oil
producing nations are no longer looking to put their surplus dollars from oil
sales to work in the bond market. They
are now selling bonds to fund the holes in their fiscal budgets stemming from
low oil prices.The last big purchaser of bonds still remains some very
large and leveraged hedge funds. Hedge
funds have been caught on the wrong side of the global bond trade and are now
trying to avoid selling their positions. Fear and greed had helped keep bond yields at
these low levels for longer than most would have thought. In fact, yields have been so low for so long,
anyone betting on higher yields has been fired, put out of business, or
probably has a laundry list of stress related health problems.Whatever backup in yields we’ve seen, it’s just the first
movement it what is sure to be an unharmonious symphony. The bond market has spent years below more
normal long-term yields while unprecedented accommodation was stuffed in the
system. It is highly probable and reasonable to believe that the bond market needs
to spend some time above the long run yield level. That, by definition, is how an average is
created.Now that the fixed income market has begun to adjust, losses
are piling up and will soon be reported to investors. The size of these losses are sure to shock the
investor community that has grown accustomedto steady gains from fixed income. In fact, when people open up their monthly account
statements and see excessive losses from bonds yielding low single digits, the
second movement in this symphony will begin. Disappointed bond investors will soon put in
sell requests and leveraged bond managers who were the last marginal buyer of
bonds will have to turn into sellers.
Market yields will have to adjust higher and find a level that attracts
the unlevered bond purchaser. And that
yield level appears to be much higher.So what is an investor to do? Many hedge funds are trying to hold off
liquidating bond trades by offering fee rebates to limit redemptions. This is always a leading indicator of more
pain to come. Just like rats that leave a sinking ship before it goes under,
redemptions are starting to line up at many bond hedge funds. These hedge fund captains are offering cheese by
reducing fees which is sure to entice the fat rats. After 10 years of easy
money in the bond market, these fat rats are incapable of swimming and will
choose the cheese. I remember when the over leveraged Long Term
Capital Management hedge fund first started to suffer losses in their bond
portfolio. They incorrectly believed
that if needed, more investor capital would be available to stabilize losing
trades. My advice to investors is to
take a lesson from history and don’t bet on this old proverbial dead cat
bouncing. When markets turn, it’s best
to move back to cash and let the markets readjust. After such a long period of low yields and
limited volatility, this market symphony will have many movements and we are
not even at intermission.
- A MeSSaGE FRoM MiSSiLe KiM…
- Canada's Problem? US Refugee Crossings "Epidemic" Amid Fear, Distrust Of Trump
In what some might call a 'win' for President Trump, Canadian immigration officials warn they are experiencing a "big surge [of refugees] coming across the border" with many of them proclaiming their distrust and fear of President Trump.
Sherali and Sarah Shah took in three asylum seekers who had been trying to get into Canada through the Emerson, Man., border Tuesday.
In the first official report of a group of "asylum seekers" who are malcontent refugees in the U.S. trying to become refugees in Canada being apprehended, U.S. border security guards and a local sheriff caught three Somali nationals trying to sneak across an open stretch of the U.S.-Canada border on Tuesday, according to CBC News.
Kris Grogan, a public affairs officer for U.S. Customs and Border Protection, said border officials on the U.S. side are becoming increasingly worried about asylum seekers trying to get into Canada.
"It is extremely dangerous to be putting yourself out into these elements where you could end up dying," he said.
As CBC News first reported in January, hundreds of asylum seekers have walked into Canada through fields near the Emerson border.
The issue came into the spotlight after two refugees from Ghana were hospitalized in Winnipeg after suffering frostbite on Christmas Eve while lost on Highway 75, near the Canada-U.S. border.
The refugees were so badly frostbitten, they lost fingers and toes. Since the story of the two men became public, dozens of other asylum seekers, including a mother and two-year-old child, have crossed into Manitoba.
As AFP reports, Farhan Ahmed hoped to find refuge in the United States after fleeing death threats in Somalia, but fear over a US crackdown on immigration sent him on another perilous journey — to Canada.
The 36-year-old was among nearly two dozen asylum seekers who braved bone-chilling cold on a February weekend to walk across the border, trudging through snow-covered prairies in the dead of night to make a claim in this country.
It was a record number of arrivals for a single weekend in the small border town of Emerson, and Canadian officials said Thursday they are bracing for more.
An agreement with the US prevents asylum seekers from lodging claims in Canada if they first landed stateside, but it only applies to arrivals at border checkpoints, airports and train stations.
Rita Chahal, executive director of the Manitoba Interfaith Immigration Council, described a "big surge coming across the border." According to Canada's Border Services Agency, numbers have roughly doubled in each of the last four years to 321 cases in fiscal 2015-2016. Since April, there have been 403 cases.
People often come from Djibouti, Ghana, Nigeria and Somalia, said Chahal, whose agency works out of a building designed by a top Canadian architect who was once himself a refugee.
The numbers are high, but the risky routes asylum seekers take are also alarming. "They're crossing through farmers' fields. Many of them are getting lost," Chahal said. The recent arrivals, she said, tell a common story: "'We're afraid of what's happening in the United States, we're not sure what's going to happen if I get sent back to my country.'"
Samatar Adam, 30, from Djibouti, arrived last month. Asked why he did not file a refugee claim in the US, he replied: "Donald Trump." He left soon after the inauguration. "It saddens me to see refugees flee not only their country but also a safe, democratic country like the United States," said the Immigration Partnership Winnipeg's Hani Al-Ubeady, himself an Iraqi refugee who now helps resettle others.
"They have to take another risky journey to make it to another safe place — Canada."
As a reminder, Canadian Prime Minister Justin Trudeau responded to Donald Trump’s immigration ban by saying Canada welcomes refugees who have been rejected from the US.
“To those fleeing persecution, terror & war, Canadians will welcome you, regardless of your faith. Diversity is our strength #WelcomeToCanada,” he tweeted.
And now it's Canada's problem? Will protesters blockade the northern border demanding US refugees stay in America? Will virtue-signaling have to be turned up to '11'? For now it seems Canada's "safe spaces" are safer than America's "safe spaces."
- Washington Post Admits Shutting Down 'Fake News' Will Move Us Closer To A Modern-Day '1984'
Submitted by Flemming Rose and Jacob Mchangama via The Washington Post,
Remember George Orwell’s Ministry of Truth? In his dystopian novel “1984,” its purpose was to dictate and protect the government’s version of reality. During the Cold War, Orwell’s book was banned behind the Iron Curtain, because readers perceived the novel as an allegory for their own repressive regimes.
It was a serious crime to distribute information defaming the Soviet social and political system. Such criminal laws were widely used by the Kremlin to silence dissidents, human rights activists, religious movements and groups fighting for independence in the Soviet republics. Similar laws were on the books in East Germany, Poland and other Eastern bloc countries.
Thankfully, today this landscape is much changed, but increasingly there are disturbing echoes of the past. Amid a debate about the rising influence of fake news and the danger it poses to the political and social order in the West, democratic politicians in Europe have proposed sanctions — and even prison terms — for those found responsible for distributing false information.
Euopean Union Justice Commissioner Vera Jourova has warned tech companies such as Facebook and Twitter that if they don’t find ways to eliminate hate speech and combat fake news, a law mandating action may be necessary. Commissioner Andrus Ansip reinforced that threat last month, albeit in softer language, prompting social-media giants and traditional media to announce a flurry of initiatives aimed at combating fake news.
Italy’s antitrust chief, Giovanni Pitruzzella, has said that E.U. countries should set up a network of government-appointed bodies to remove fake news and potentially impose fines on the media. Pitruzzella doesn’t hide his political agenda — he wants to target his opponents on the populist left and right. “Post-truth in politics is one of the drivers of populism, and it is one of the threats to our democracies,” he told the Financial Times.
In Germany, politicians eager to counter Russian meddling and populist movements in upcoming parliamentarian elections have issued similar calls. Justice Minister Heiko Maas argues that authorities need the power to impose prison terms for fake news on social media. “Defamation and malicious gossip are not covered under freedom of speech,” Maas said. “Justice authorities must prosecute that, even on the Internet. Anyone who tries to manipulate the political discussion with lies needs to be aware [of the consequences].”
It is understandable that liberal democracies are deeply worried about disinformation, which tears at the fabric of pluralistic democratic societies. John Stuart Mill famously argued that free speech would help exchange “error for truth” and create “the clearer perception and livelier impression of truth, produced by its collision with error.” Yet this justification weakens considerably if lies and disinformation become indistinguishable from truth. In such an environment, “Democracy will not survive a lack of belief in the possibility of impartial institutions,” political scientist Francis Fukuyama recently wrote. “Instead, partisan political combat will come to pervade every aspect of life.”
That is indeed a nightmare scenario to be avoided. But using legal measures to counter disinformation is likely to be a cure worse than the disease. One does not need to go back to the Cold War to worry about what happens when governments become the arbiters of truth.
In the past two years, Egypt has sentenced six Al Jazeera journalists to death or long prison terms for, among other things, allegedly spreading false news. In 2013, Gambia — until the recent ouster of Yahya Jammeh, one of Africa’s worst dictators — introduced a punishment of up to 15 years’ imprisonment and hefty fines for those who spread “false news,” citing a need for stability and the prevention of “unpatriotic behavior” and “treacherous” campaigns. Russia, ironically the source of so much of the disinformation menacing liberal democracies, uses broad and vague anti-extremism laws to prohibit news that the Kremlin views as propaganda — including prison sentences for social-media users who insist that Crimea is part of Ukraine.
Of course, Europe’s established democracies have little in common with the Soviet Union or other illiberal regimes. But the legal tools proposed by European politicians to suppress fake news sound alarmingly like those used by authoritarian governments to silence dissent. This is dangerous. Not only are such measures incompatible with the principle of free speech, but also they set precedents that could quickly strengthen the hand of the populist forces that mainstream European politicians feel so threatened by.
Europe may soon find itself with populists such as France’s Marine Le Pen and the Netherlands’ Geert Wilders with real power. Such leaders would draw the line between fake news and free speech very differently than mainstream politicians — perhaps aiming them at the supposedly corrupt established media rather than websites, blogs and social media trafficking in “alternative facts.” It is also unlikely that the increasingly illiberal governments of Poland and Hungary would agree with the European Commission or German Chancellor Angela Merkel on what constitutes false information or fake news.
And while the First Amendment prevents the U.S. government from overtly limiting press freedom, it’s clear that President Trump’s definition of fake news is vastly different from what his opponents or the media have in mind.
Above all, rather than strengthening established media institutions, banning fake news might very well undermine them in the eyes of the public.
If alternative outlets are prosecuted or shut down, mainstream media risk being seen as unofficial propaganda tools of the powers that be. Behind the Iron Curtain, nonofficial media outlets had more credibility than official media in spite of the fact that not everything they published was accurate or fact-checked. The hashtag #fakenews could become a selling point with the public if it were banned rather than rigorously countered and refuted.
As White House strategist Stephen K. Bannon replied when asked whether press secretary Sean Spicer, after making irrefutably false statements, had damaged his credibility with the media: “Are you kidding me? We think that’s a badge of honor.”
- Trump, Bannon Said To Weigh Firing Mike Flynn Over Russian Phone Calls Scandal
Top White House aide and policy adviser, Stephen Miller, sidestepped repeated chances during Sunday news shows to publicly defend embattled National Security Adviser Michael Flynn following reports that he engaged in conversations with Russian diplomat(s) about U.S. sanctions before Trump’s inauguration. The uncertainty came as Trump was dealing with North Korea’s apparent first missile launch of the year and his presidency, along with visits this week from the leaders of Israel and Canada.
Pressed repeatedly, Stephen Miller said it wasn’t up to him to say whether the president retains confidence in Flynn. “It’s not for me to tell you what’s in the president’s mind,” he said on NBC. “That’s a question for the president.”
While Trump has yet to comment on the allegations against Flynn, the White House said in an anonymous statement Friday the president had full confidence in Flynn. But officials have been mum since then amid fallout from reports that Flynn addressed U.S. sanctions against Russia in a phone call late last year. The report, which first appeared in The Washington Post, contradicted both Flynn’s previous denials, as well as those made by Vice President Mike Pence in a televised interview.
Now we know why the administration has been so quiet about the fate of Flynn. As the WSJ reports, the White House is reviewing “whether to retain Flynn amid a furor over his contacts with Russian officials before President Donald Trump took office, an administration official said Sunday.” Flynn has apologized to White House colleagues over the episode, which has created a rift with Vice President Mike Pence and diverted attention from the administration’s message to his own dealings, the official said.
“He’s apologized to everyone,” the official said of Mr. Flynn.
Still, the WSJ concedes that Trump’s views toward the matter aren’t clear. In recent days, he has privately told people the controversy surrounding Mr. Flynn is unwelcome, after he told reporters on Friday he would “look into” the disclosures. At the same time, Trump also has said he has confidence in Mr. Flynn and wants to “keep moving forward,” a person familiar with his thinking said. Close Trump adviser Steve Bannon had dinner with Mr. Flynn over the weekend, according to another senior administration official, and Bannon’s view is to keep him in the position but “be ready” to let him go, the first administration official said.
The paper also adds that Jard Kushner, Trump’s son-in-law and senior adviser, hadn’t yet weighed in on Flynn’s future yet as of Sunday evening.
For those who may not have followed the story, Flynn initially said that in a conversation Dec. 29 with the Russian ambassador, Sergey Kislyak, he didn’t discuss sanctions imposed that day by the outgoing Obama administration, which were levied in retaliation for alleged Russian interference in the 2016 presidential election. Flynn now concedes that he did, administration officials said, after transcripts of his phone calls show as much. He also admits he spoke with the ambassador more than once on Dec. 29, despite weeks of the Trump team’s insisting it was just one phone call, officials said.
If Flynn had promised any easing of sanctions once Mr. Trump took office, he may have violated a law that prohibits private citizens from engaging in foreign policy, legal experts have said. That would mark the first instance of a person close to Mr. Trump found to have inappropriate links to Russia, a subject U.S. officials have been investigating for months.
U.S. intelligence services routinely intercept and monitor conversations with Russian diplomats, officials have said. While the transcripts of the conversations don’t show Mr. Flynn made any sort of promise to lift the sanctions once Mr. Trump took office, they show Flynn making more general comments about relations between the two countries improving under Mr. Trump, people familiar with them said.
Flynn’s alleged lies have angered VP Mike Pence, who in television interviews vouched for Flynn, administration officials said. Pence and Flynn spoke twice on Friday, one official said quoted by the WSJ.
Reince Priebus is leading the Trump administration’s review of Flynn.
Some administration officials are hopeful Mr. Flynn would resign on his own, a person familiar with the matter said. Some people close to Mr. Trump already are speculating on possible successors, including retired Lt. Gen. Keith Kellogg, who advised Mr. Trump during the campaign and who is chief of staff of the National Security Council.
Jettisoning Mr. Flynn might end one controversy, but would potentially feed perceptions of a disorganized White House, some people close to Mr. Trump said. That’s one reason the White House might be hesitant to cut ties to Mr. Flynn, they added.
Meanwhile, Democrats smell blood and want Flynn out immediately.
As pressure built on White House officials, Democrats on Sunday pressed for an independent investigation into Mr. Flynn’s conversations with Russia’s ambassador.
“Either he was lying about discussing it or he forgot,” said Sen. Al Franken (D., Minn.), speaking Sunday on CNN. ”You don’t want a guy in either of those scenarios to be in that position.”
Franken has also called for an independent investigation into the Trump campaign’s and the administration’s ties to Russia, citing allegations of Kremlin interference in the 2016 U.S. election and Mr. Trump’s refusal to release his tax returns, as candidates have done since the 1970s. “We don’t know what [Mr. Trump] owes Russia,” Mr. Franken said. “We don’t know how many Russian oligarchs have invested in his business.” At the same time Lindsey Graham (R., S.C.) and Sheldon Whitehouse (D., R.I.), who lead the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subpanel on crime and terrorism, already have launched an investigation of Russia’s efforts to influence the U.S. election.
While the situation remains liquid, two things are certain: Trump will have a “kneejerk response” tweet momentarily, and the market will interpret this latest tremor inside the White House as even more bullish.
- Suggesting New York Times Isn't Dying, In Spite of Digital Subscription Growth, is Fake News
I’ve read a lot of drivel the past few weeks about the $NYT and how their burgeoning online digital ad business was booming — mostly by disaffected leftards who have somehow tethered themselves to the old gray lady in an effort to defy Trump.
Why? You’re fucking stupid.
The business has been cut in half since 2008. They’ve gone from raking in $300m per quarter in earnings to $40m. This isn’t a god damned online journal. The core business is print and there’s no way digital can make up for the lost ground in print, without having a profound effect on the way the company is staffed.
Does this revenue trend look healthy to you?
Earnings are down 50-75% since 2008.
The stock has been cut in half over the past 8 years.
That’s what a slow death looks like, not a revival spearheaded by amazing digital revenue growth.
Prove to me the New York Times isn’t dying.
Pro tip: you can’t.
Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com
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