Feb 15

Today’s News 15th February 2017

  • Top Neocon, Bill Kristol, Exposes His True Undemocratic Feelings During High Moment on Twitter

    Bill Kristol’s father was one of the founders of the neocon movement. Essentially, they were former communists who were loyal to Trotsky who toiled to overthrow Stalin, in an effort to spread communism. After the USSR collapsed, they coopted the GOP and used ‘democracy’ as their call for global revolution, which was essentially code for empire through war.

    Naturally, they’ve been part of the government for a long time, via Kissinger and Brzezinski, but they only truly came out in the open under the idiot Bush.

    Here’s an excellent piece discussing them.

    And now here he is laid bare. Do we need any further proof that these people are a threat to democracy?

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

     

     

    Content originally generated at iBankCoin.com

  • Coming Soon To A City Near You: The US Military's Plan To Take Over America

    Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

    “Our current and past strategies can no longer hold. We are facing environments that the masters of war never foresaw. We are facing a threat that requires us to redefine doctrine and the force in radically new and different ways. The future army will confront a highly sophisticated urban-centric threat that will require that urban operations become the core requirement for the future land-force. The threat is clear. Our direction remains to be defined. The future is urban.”

     

    -“Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command

    The U.S. military plans to take over America by 2030.

    No, this is not another conspiracy theory. Although it easily could be.

    Nor is it a Hollywood political thriller in the vein of John Frankenheimer’s 1964 political thriller Seven Days in May about a military coup d’etat.

    Although it certainly has all the makings of a good thriller.

    No, this is the real deal, coming at us straight from the horse’s mouth.

    According to “Megacities: Urban Future, the Emerging Complexity,” a Pentagon training video created by the Army for U.S. Special Operations Command, the U.S. military plans to use armed forces to solve future domestic political and social problems.

    What they’re really talking about is martial law, packaged as a well-meaning and overriding concern for the nation’s security.

    The chilling five-minute training video, obtained by The Intercept through a FOIA request and made available online, paints an ominous picture of the future—a future the military is preparing for—bedeviled by “criminal networks,” “substandard infrastructure,” “religious and ethnic tensions,” “impoverishment, slums,” “open landfills, over-burdened sewers,” a “growing mass of unemployed,” and an urban landscape in which the prosperous economic elite must be protected from the impoverishment of the have nots.

    And then comes the kicker.

    Three-and-a-half minutes into the Pentagon’s dystopian vision of “a world of Robert Kaplan-esque urban hellscapes — brutal and anarchic supercities filled with gangs of youth-gone-wild, a restive underclass, criminal syndicates, and bands of malicious hackers,” the ominous voice of the narrator speaks of a need to “drain the swamps.”

    Drain the swamps.

    Surely, we’ve heard that phrase before?

    Ah yes.

    Emblazoned on t-shirts and signs, shouted at rallies, and used as a rallying cry among Trump supporters, “drain the swamp” became one of Donald Trump’s most-used campaign slogans, along with “build the wall” and “lock her up.”

    Funny how quickly the tides can shift and the tables can turn.

    Whereas Trump promised to drain the politically corrupt swamps of Washington DC of lobbyists and special interest groups, the U.S. military is plotting to drain the swamps of futuristic urban American cities of “noncombatants and engage the remaining adversaries in high intensity conflict within.”

    And who are these noncombatants, a military term that refers to civilians who are not engaged in fighting?

    They are, according to the Pentagon, “adversaries.”

    They are “threats.”

    They are the “enemy.”

    They are people who don’t support the government, people who live in fast-growing urban communities, people who may be less well-off economically than the government and corporate elite, people who engage in protests, people who are unemployed, people who engage in crime (in keeping with the government’s fast-growing, overly broad definition of what constitutes a crime).

    In other words, in the eyes of the U.S. military, noncombatants are American citizens a.k.a. domestic extremists a.k.a. enemy combatants who must be identified, targeted, detained, contained and, if necessary, eliminated.

    Welcome to Battlefield America.

    In the future imagined by the Pentagon, any walls and prisons that are built will be used to protect the societal elite—the haves—from the have-nots.

    We are the have-nots.

    Suddenly it all begins to make sense.

    The events of recent years: the invasive surveillance, the extremism reports, the civil unrest, the protests, the shootings, the bombings, the military exercises and active shooter drills, the color-coded alerts and threat assessments, the fusion centers, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, the distribution of military equipment and weapons to local police forces, the government databases containing the names of dissidents and potential troublemakers.

    This is how you prepare a populace to accept a police state willingly, even gratefully.

    You don’t scare them by making dramatic changes. Rather, you acclimate them slowly to their prison walls. Persuade the citizenry that their prison walls are merely intended to keep them safe and danger out.

    Desensitize them to violence, acclimate them to a military presence in their communities and persuade them that there is nothing they can do to alter the seemingly hopeless trajectory of the nation.

    Before long, no one will even notice the floundering economy, the blowback arising from military occupations abroad, the police shootings, the nation’s deteriorating infrastructure and all of the other mounting concerns.

    It’s happening already.

    The sight of police clad in body armor and gas masks, wielding semiautomatic rifles and escorting an armored vehicle through a crowded street, a scene likened to “a military patrol through a hostile city,” no longer causes alarm among the general populace.

    Few seem to care about the government’s endless wars abroad that leave communities shattered, families devastated and our national security at greater risk of blowback. Indeed, there were no protests in the streets after U.S. military forces raided a compound in Yemen, killing “at least eight women and seven children, ages 3 to 13.”

    Their tactics are working.

    We’ve allowed ourselves to be acclimated to the occasional lockdown of government buildings, Jade Helm military drills in small towns so that special operations forces can get “realistic military training” in “hostile” territory, and  Live Active Shooter Drill training exercises, carried out at schools, in shopping malls, and on public transit, which can and do fool law enforcement officials, students, teachers and bystanders into thinking it’s a real crisis.

    Still, you can’t say we weren’t warned.

    Back in 2008, an Army War College report revealed that “widespread civil violence inside the United States would force the defense establishment to reorient priorities in extremis to defend basic domestic order and human security.” The 44-page report went on to warn that potential causes for such civil unrest could include another terrorist attack, “unforeseen economic collapse, loss of functioning political and legal order, purposeful domestic resistance or insurgency, pervasive public health emergencies, and catastrophic natural and human disasters.”

    In 2009, reports by the Department of Homeland Security surfaced that labelled right-wing and left-wing activists and military veterans as extremists (a.k.a. terrorists) and called on the government to subject such targeted individuals to full-fledged pre-crime surveillance. Almost a decade later, after spending billions to fight terrorism, the DHS concluded that the greater threat is not ISIS but domestic right-wing extremism.

    Meanwhile, the government has been amassing an arsenal of military weapons for use domestically and equipping and training their “troops” for war. Even government agencies with largely administrative functions such as the Food and Drug Administration, Department of Veterans Affairs, and the Smithsonian have been acquiring body armor, riot helmets and shields, cannon launchers and police firearms and ammunition. In fact, there are now at least 120,000 armed federal agents carrying such weapons who possess the power to arrest.

    Rounding out this profit-driven campaign to turn American citizens into enemy combatants (and America into a battlefield) is a technology sector that has been colluding with the government to create a Big Brother that is all-knowing, all-seeing and inescapable. It’s not just the drones, fusion centers, license plate readers, stingray devices and the NSA that you have to worry about. You’re also being tracked by the black boxes in your cars, your cell phone, smart devices in your home, grocery loyalty cards, social media accounts, credit cards, streaming services such as Netflix, Amazon, and e-book reader accounts.

    All of this has taken place right under our noses, funded with our taxpayer dollars and carried out in broad daylight without so much as a general outcry from the citizenry.

    It’s astounding how convenient we’ve made it for the government to lock down the nation.

    So what exactly is the government preparing for?

    Mind you, by “government,” I’m not referring to the highly partisan, two-party bureaucracy of the Republicans and Democrats.

    I’m referring to “government” with a capital “G,” the entrenched Deep State that is unaffected by elections, unaltered by populist movements, and has set itself beyond the reach of the law.

    I’m referring to the corporatized, militarized, entrenched bureaucracy that is fully operational and staffed by unelected officials who are, in essence, running the country and calling the shots in Washington DC, no matter who sits in the White House.

    This is the hidden face of a government that has no respect for the freedom of its citizenry.

    What is the government preparing for? You tell me.

    Better yet, take a look at the Pentagon’s training video.

    It’s only five minutes long, but it says a lot about the government’s mindset, the way its views the citizenry, and the so-called “problems” that the military must be prepared to address in the near future. Even more troubling, however, is what this military video doesn’t say about the Constitution, about the rights of the citizenry, and about the dangers of using the military to address political and social problems.

    The future is here.

    We’re already witnessing a breakdown of society on virtually every front.

    By waging endless wars abroad, by bringing the instruments of war home, by transforming police into extensions of the military, by turning a free society into a suspect society, by treating American citizens like enemy combatants, by discouraging and criminalizing a free exchange of ideas, by making violence its calling card through SWAT team raids and militarized police, by fomenting division and strife among the citizenry, by acclimating the citizenry to the sights and sounds of war, and by generally making peaceful revolution all but impossible, the government has engineered an environment in which domestic violence has become almost inevitable.

    Be warned: in the future envisioned by the military, we will not be viewed as Republicans or Democrats. Rather, “we the people” will be enemies of the state.

    As I make clear in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we’re already enemies of the state.

    For years, the government has been warning against the dangers of domestic terrorism, erecting surveillance systems to monitor its own citizens, creating classification systems to label any viewpoints that challenge the status quo as extremist, and training law enforcement agencies to equate anyone possessing anti-government views as a domestic terrorist. What the government failed to explain was that the domestic terrorists would be of the government’s own making, whether intentional or not.

    “We the people” have become enemy #1.

  • NYTimes Reports Trump Aides' "Repeated Contact" With Russian Intel Officials, Admits No Collusion Discovered

    As The White House tries to put the Flynn disappointment behind them, The New York Times appears to be resurrecting an old story with a new angle to keep the 'blame the Russians' narrative alive. Following FISA court approval (to spy on Trump's campaign), intercepted calls reportedly show "repeated contact" between Trump advisor Paul Manafort and senior Russian intelligence officials… but reveal no collusion.

    Intercepted phone calls and phone records show that several aides and allies to President Trump's campaign were in repeated contact with senior Russian intelligence officials, according to the New York Times. As The Hill explains,

    Current and former officials that spoke with the Times would not give many details, and it's not clear exactly who, both from the U.S. and Russia, were part of the conversations or what they talked about, including if discussions centered on Trump himself.

     

    Officials told the publication that they have seen no evidence of collusion in regards to hacking or the election.

     

    Three of the four current and former officials who spoke with the Times said the contacts were discovered during the same time that U.S. intelligence agencies were investigating Russia's extensive hacking campaign, later determined to be aimed at helping Trump win the White House.

     

    The Times' sources said Paul Manafort, Trump's former campaign chairman, was picked up on the calls. Manafort left the campaign after several months as reports swirled about his business ties in Russia and the Ukraine.

    The officials would not name any other Trump aides or supporters captured in the conversations.

    As a reminder, it was not just Paul Manafort that was involved in FBI probes, but Tony Podesta – the brother of Hillary Clinton's campaign director John Podesta – who had set up secret meetinsg woth Ukraine officials.

    Manafort, who has not been charged with any crimes, exclaims To Britain's Telegraph that "this is absurb,"

    “I have no idea what this is referring to. I have never knowingly spoken to Russian intelligence officers, and I have never been involved with anything to do with the Russian government or the Putin administration or any other issues under investigation today.”

     

    Mr. Manafort added, “It’s not like these people wear badges that say, ‘I’m a Russian intelligence officer.’"

    Several of Mr. Trump’s associates, like Mr. Manafort, have done business in Russia, and it is not unusual for American businessmen to come in contact with foreign intelligence officials, sometimes unwittingly, in countries like Russia and Ukraine, where the spy services are deeply embedded in society. Law enforcement officials did not say to what extent the contacts may have been about business.

    Finally, buried deep in The New York Times' story – which is sure to run the narrative during tomorrow's media cycle (and already is a hot topic of conjecture on CNN) – the author admits, rather sheepishly that…

    The intelligence agencies then sought to learn whether the Trump campaign was colluding with the Russians on the hacking or other efforts to influence the election.

     

    The officials interviewed in recent weeks said that, so far, they had seen no evidence of such cooperation.

    Which confirms what The FBI said back in November.

    *  *  *

    The bottom line here is that the only incremental news is that Manafort knowingly or unknowingly came into contact with Russian intelligence officials during his business dealings but no election-collusion was discovered. We leave it to Ari Fleischer to sum it all up perfectly…

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

  • Democrats At Pennsylvania College Invite Students To Wear White Pins As Reminder Of Their "White Privilege"

    Students at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania are being encouraged by the campus Democrat club to wear a white pin for a year to help them reflect on their “white privilege and the impact white privilege has on people of color.”  The campaign was launched over the weekend by the Elizabethtown College Democrats, who say it aims to make students at the small and private liberal arts college in Pennsylvania more introspective about issues of race, especially in their predominantly white region of Lancaster County.

    Reached by College Fix via email, the President of the Elizabethtown College Democrats said that no matter how accepting white people are it “doesn’t stop them from being part of a system based on centuries of inequality.”

    “Discussions about race are often perceived as being only open to people of color, but I think it is just as important for white people to partake in conversations about race,” Aileen Ida, president of the College Democrats, told The College Fix via email.

     

    Ida said white people are continually allowing for a societal system of oppression to occur unless they work against it. The white puzzle piece pin represents racial struggles of all sorts.

     

    “No matter how accepting someone is, that doesn’t stop them from being part of a system based on centuries of inequality,” she said, adding the campaign transcends politics.

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

     

    Asked if all white students are ‘privileged’, Ida quickly dropped some of the knowledge she’s managed to accumulate in here vast 18ish years of worldly experiences by responding with a simple, “yes”…what more is there to say really?  While conceding that she doesn’t think all whites are socioeconomically privileged, Ida, to our complete shock, declined to cite specific examples of white privilege…way to act on your convictions supported by carefully considered facts and figures, Ida.

    She also clarified that it’s not just white students who can wear the pins, that students of all races should take part to start a campuswide discussion that crosses racial divides.

     

    Yet, she notes most people of color already have to live with racism while white people don’t.

     

    “I believe that this [inherent white privilege] can be seen in the day-to-day life of people of color versus the day-to-day life of white people,” Ida said. “Most people of color don’t have a choice but to consider how their race affects their life on a daily basis, this is not true for most white people.”

    Meanwhile, a Facebook post by the “Etown College Dems” helped to shed some additional light on the effort.

    The Elizabethtown College Democrats are proud to announce a campaign being launched this weekend! This project, which is slightly modified for our use, was started by a ELCA Lutheran Pastor from Wisconsin named Barb Girod. Barb made a commitment to wear a white puzzle piece pin every day for a year to force herself to think about her white privilege and the impact white privilege has on people of color. This project, along with ours, forces everybody to think about racial issues people face daily.

     

    The project sponsored by the Elizabethtown College Democrats will follow Barb’s inspiring initiative to create the conversation greatly needed in Central Pennsylvania. Students on campus and in the community are encouraged to join our campaign to think about one thing – how race affects their life, whether directly or indirectly. Following the launch of our pin campaign, a sister campaign will be launched where students have the opportunity to anonymously tell personal stories about how race affects their everyday lives.

     

    There will be a kick-off at the Mosaic House (346 E. Orange Street, Elizabethtown, PA) Sat., Feb. 11 at 7 p.m. where the project will be explained in full and guest speakers will present on the topic of racial privilege and the importance of such a conversation. There will be food and drinks! This event is free and open to the public.

    And, our parting thoughts…

    Full Retard

  • Michael Moore Melts Down; Tells Trump To "Resign By Morning" Or Face "Impeachment You Russian Traitor"

    Michael Moore, the ultra-liberal documentary filmmaker who infamously predicted a Trump victory well before election night last November by stunningly calling Michigan, Wisconsin, Ohio and Pennsylvania for the Republican nominee, has, over the past 24 hours, decided to broadcast his latest nervous breakdown over Twitter for all to see. 

    It all started with the following tweet storm posted by Moore in the wee hours of the morning saying that, among other things, “Flynn DID NOT make that Russian call on his own” but rather “was INSTRUCTED to do so.”  Moore went on to insist that Flynn was just the first of several senior Trump advisors that would inevitably be fired and predicted that “Miller & Bannon” would be next before calling on Trump himself to “Resign by morning!”

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

     

    And, lest you thought he was just joking and/or slept off his temporary “mental incapacitation” and decided to move on with his life, Moore just lit up the Twittersphere again this afternoon asking Trump “What part of “vacate you Russian traitor” don’t you understand?” while threatening that “We can do this the easy way (you resign), or the hard way (impeachment).”

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    //platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

     

    But, while we certainly respect his November prognostication and admire his tenacity, we suspect his calls for a Trump resignation may be premature…just a hunch.

  • Judge Rules Health Insurance Companies Matter More Than Taxpayers

    Submitted by Tho Bishop via The Mises Institute,

    Largely overlooked last week in the wake of President Donald Trump’s court battle was another controversial judicial ruling.

    On Thursday the US Court of Claims rewarding Moda Health, an Oregon-based health insurer, $214 million for losses it took participating in the high risk insurance pools established under the Affordable Care Act. The dispute came after Republicans eliminated funding for tax payer subsidies to those firms that lost money writing insurance for high risk individuals.

    As Judge Thomas Wheeler wrote:

    The Court finds that the Government made a promise in the risk corridors program that it has yet to fulfill. Today, the Court directs the Government to fulfill that promise. After all, to say to [Moda], 'The joke is on you. You shouldn't have trusted us,' is hardly worthy of our great government.

    Of course history shows that this behavior is quite characteristic of "our great government."

    After all, Obamacare itself was sold to the public based on multiple (and intentional) lies. These included, the cost of Obamacare and the impact it would have on individuals pre-existing insurance coverage, as well as their ability to keep their doctor. The Supreme Court was only able to maintain Obamacare by interpreting the individual mandate as a tax, after the legislation’s defenders explicitly argued it wasn’t.

    The result of all of this was government effectively telling its citizens, "The joke is on you. You shouldn’t have trusted us."

    Of course it is not Moda Health’s fault that government lied through its teeth, and it is easy to find sympathy in their plight. As they argued in this case, the company only “aggressively” engaged in the ACA’s high risk insurance pools because they had an expectation to be compensated by government, as initially outlined in the law. As such, the company has been suffering severe losses and almost went into receivership based on their dire fiscal situation.

    Yet it is not the Obama Administration that will be left paying Moda Health hundreds of millions of dollars, but the taxpayers who themselves were victims of fraud. Further, since Moda is just the first of many health insurers suing the government of the change in policy, if this precedent continues the costs to taxpayers will end up being billions of dollars.

    At the end of the day, Moda was not forced to enter the high risk market and did so knowing this was a highly controversial piece of legislation that was subject to change, and with a government that has a history of not upholding its promises. Just as contracts based on Ponzi schemes and other fraudulent forms of financing are not held up in court, Moda Health and other health insurance companies should not be entitled to the money Obamacare’s victims.

    All last week’s court ruling demonstrated was that the interests of health insurance companies are to be protected at the expense of the American people. Unfortunately, that mindset also explains how America’s health system became what it is today.

     

  • Detroit 'Wins' Award For Most Unhealthy City In The U.S.; Here's Where Your City Ranks

    A couple of years ago, in the midst of its bankruptcy proceedings, we posted a series of stunning pictures illustrating the “Death And Decay Of Detroit.”  Once a beacon of America’s manufacturing prowess, a series of time lapsed pictures revealed how, in just a few years following the ‘great recession’ of 2008, the once vibrant metropolis became the poster child for urban decay. 

    Unfortunately, at least according to a new study from WalletHub, Detroit’s crumbling commercial and residential infrastructure isn’t the only thing deteriorating rapidly in “America’s Comeback City.”  The study, which ranks America’s 150 largest cities based on overall health, pegged Detroit ‘dead’ last. 

    Of course, in many ways, the map of America’s most healthy cities mimics an electoral college map with the Northeast and West Coast ranking generally more healthy while residents of the Southeast and Texas suffered the consequences of their love for fried foods.

    //d2e70e9yced57e.cloudfront.net/wallethub/embed/31072/geochart.html

    Source: WalletHub

     

    Meanwhile, the map of “least healthy” cities is pretty much the inverse of the following map of the “fattest” cities.

    //d2e70e9yced57e.cloudfront.net/wallethub/embed/10532/geochart-obesity4.html

    Source: WalletHub

     

     

    Among other things, the health of America’s metropolitan areas was ranked by the prevalence of obese residents and access and health and wellness facilities at reasonable costs.

    To reach their findings, WalletHub graded each city using 34 categories as metrics along with a specific weight for each category. The categories were split among four groups that accounted for 25 points each: health care, food, fitness, and green space. The higher the score, the healthier the city.

     

    Categories considered in the study included mental health counselors per capita, cost of medical visit, and quality of public hospitals for health care; healthy restaurants per capita, share of obese residents, and produce consumption for categories under food; fitness clubs per capita, weight loss centers per capital, and share of residents who engage in any physical activity for categories in fitness; and quality of parks, bike score, and walking trails per capita among the categories for green space.

    And here are your top and bottom 10 most/least healthy cities.  Unsurprisingly, the health conscious, liberal bastions of California dominate the most healthy cities while Texas and the Southeast dominated the least healthy cities.

    Healthy Cities

     

    Apparently people in CA, OR and WA love to eat their fruits and vegetables while the folks of LA, AL, MS and AR are still looking for a viable way to deep fry their strawberries before partaking.

    Healthy Cities

    But, keep you head up Detroit…we’re sure things will turn around for you at some point.

  • Mayor de Blasio Paradrops Leaflets Over Schools: "We Will Not Turn Our Back On Immigrant Brothers & Sisters"

    In what appears to be an effort to quell the fear rising in the 'legal' immigrant community about President Trump's 'illegal' immigration policies, New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio – not one to shy away from scare-mongering that very fear into 'legal' immigrants – has leaflet-bombed the city's public schools reassuring 'immigrants' that they will not be bothered by President Trump’s 'illegal' immigration efforts.

    "The City of New York supports all its residents. Everyone, including undocumented immigrants, can access most City services, such as going to school or using the healthcare system or other City services.

     

    City employees will not ask about immigration status unless it is necessary to do their jobs. They must keep immigration status information confidential."

    Quick translation: [undocumented] = [illegal] but the former connotes no ill-will and implied they are pending documentation whereas the latter is what it is – the immigrants are in the country illegally, the noting of which will likely hurt someone's feelings.

    Full leaflet below:

    h/t Breaking911.com

    As Mayor Bill de Blasio complained when President Trump's executive order was issued:

    "As an American and the grandson of immigrants I am profoundly saddened by the President’s Executive Order on immigration issued today. The United States has been a beacon of hope to the world. We are a country founded on the belief of religious pluralism and equality. Today the President sent a shamefully different message. He has temporarily suspended nearly all refugee admissions, indefinitely banned refugee admissions from Syria, and imposed a 90-day ban on all immigration from a number of Muslim-majority countries. These policies do not reflect the values of the United States or of New York City. We must continue to embrace refugees in need who are victims of terror, not terrorists. We must protect and celebrate religious pluralism. In this great city of immigrants we will remain true to our values and always welcome all who yearn to breathe free."

    Presumably his grand-parents were 'legal' immigrants?

  • What Catalyst Will Start The Next Bear Market: Here Is Wall Street's Response

    In the latest monthly Fund Managers Survey conducted by Bank of America, virtually none of the biggest “tail risks” noted by Wall Street’s smart money (the 175 respondents to the survey collectively run a total of $543 billion) in February was touched upon in January, suggesting Wall Street has a whole new set of things that keep it up at night.

    As the following chart shows, when asked what the biggest ‘tail risks’ are this month, 36% responded European elections raising disintegration risk; 32% said Trade war; while only 13% said “Crash in global bond markets.”

    On the other hand, another notable, recurding question: “what do you think is the most crowded trade”, lead to similar responses as those seen last month: a vast majority 41% said being long the US Dollar, 14% said shorting government bonds (a modest increase from the prior month), and only 13% said being long US/EU corporate bonds.

    But the most interesting question was one we had not noticed before in the BofA survey, namely “What will be the most likely catalyst to cause an end to the 8-year equity bull market?”

    The responses: “protectionism” = 34%, “higher rates” = 28%, “financial event” = 18%, “weaker EPS” = 15%.

    A follow up question asked “What economic outcome do you expect new “populist policies” to induce?” The answers suggested a curious split – on one hand Wall Street has voted that Trump’s policies would be beneficial for stocks as seen by yet another all time high in the S&P; on the other half, more than half of respondents said that should Trump truly unleash his “populist policies”, the outcome would be either stagflation, recession, or stagnation. Go figure.

    In this context, another interesting question – and answers – when BofA asked “Which of the following investments would perform best if the world shifted decisively toward protectionism?” the answer was clear.

    Finally, one tangential if very important question in this age of rising rates: “What level of sustained 10-year Treasury yields would cause an equity bear market?” The answer is that – for now at least – yields are too low to hurt stocks, with 64% saying that 10-year Treasury yields of 3.5%-4% required for equity bear market.

    * * *

    As an added bonus, BofA’s Michael Hartnett says anyone who is brave enough to be a contrarian to the prevailing thought on Wall Street, i.e., a contrarian macro bear (expecting weaker growth) would sell banks, US dollar, Japan, and buy bonds, utilities, staples. Meanwhile the contrarian macro bull (expecting higher inflation) would reduce cash, sell REITs, tech, and buy sterling, EM, industrials.

Digest powered by RSS Digest