Jan 15

Today’s News 15th January 2017

  • The Clinton Foundation Is Shutting Down The Clinton Global Initiative

    In a “mass layoff” event reported late last week by the Department of Labor, the Clinton Foundation announced it would lay off some 22 employees at the Clinton Global Initiative, which attained notoriety during the John Podesta leaks, when the various details of the fallout between between CGI head Doug Band and Chelsea Clinton were revealed; it also emerged that long-time Bill Clinton friend Band was soliciting donations for Clinton through his PR firm, Teneo in an sordid example of “pay for play” which most of the mainstream media refused to cover, especially after Band emailed Podesta “If this story gets out, we are screwed.”

    Filed as mandated by the Department of Labor’s Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification, or WARN notice, on January 12, the Clinton Foundation’s Veronika Shiroka advised the DOL that as part of a “Plant Layoff” it would layoff 22 workers on April 15, with reason for the dislocation stated as “Discontinuation of the Clinton Global Initiative.” The layoffs are part of the Clinton plan put in motion ahead of the presidential election, to offset a storm of criticism regarding pay-to-play allegations during Clinton’s tenure as secretary of state.

    As the Daily Caller notes, the layoffs were reportedly announced internally in September, ahead of Clinton’s stunning loss to President-elect Donald Trump. Many other employees had already begun looking for or accepting other jobs at that time, as it had become clear the future of the initiative was in doubt. It’s unclear how many of the once 200 strong staff might remain at the Clinton Foundation in some other capacity.

    As a reminder, while the FBI has cleared Hillary Clinton of wrongdoing regarding her use of a private email server, a parallel probe into the Clinton Foundation regarding allegations of corruption is still ongoing.

    The decision to sunset the Clinton Global Initiative reportedly set off a dispute within Clinton Foundation circles regarding the best way to handle the fallout from the allegations. Some complained the layoff process was “insensitively” handled, Politico reported, while others took issue with the optics of allowing anyone with the Clinton Global Initiative to stay on.

    And while CGI is now officially being “discontinued”, the same fate likely awaits the Clinton Foundation itself following news in the aftermath of Hillary Clinton’s loss to Trump that Australia has cut its donations to the foundation to $0, while the far more generous Norway likewise slashed its donations by 87% as the political cout of the “charitable” organization dried up and as the opportunity for any future “quid pro quo” is now effectively gone.

  • We Are Getting Worried About Paul Krugman

    When a delicate snowflake is suddenly faced with a perceived reality so devastating as to be an existential crisis, the mind's reaction to dealing with this cognitive dissonance can be disabling for some. Certainly for The New York Times' flip-flopping, hate-mongering, fact-twisting, Keynesian poster-boy Paul Krugman it appears coping with "no" is not going well and his tirade last night in Twitter has us gravely concerned for his mental stability, which is ironic given how he began yesterday…

    But that was followed quickly by a six-tweet-rant nothing short of what we would expect from a dejected five-year-old who just got denied another scoop of ice cream…

    Krugman once again blames the ignorance of the deplorable masses (who just don't get what a "fraudster" Trump is) in shunning him and his "know-it-alls", but he has been heading down this hill of manic-depressive lashing out for weeks now having recently suggested Trump will unleash a 9/11-style attack to legitimize his presidency.

    Is he hoping to maintain a groundswell of "well, if he is not hitler… he must be worse" thoughts among those so easily led? Still, coming from a man who has prognosticated alien invasions as a global economic growth engine, we are not sure if he is mental situation is improving or deteriorating. We wish him well.

  • Will The CIA Assassinate Trump? Ron Paul Warns Of "More Powerful, Shadow Government"

    Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

    It isn’t just that Donald Trump routinely thumbs his nose at the establishment, insults media figures he sees as unfair and bucks conventional wisdom.

    It is that President-elect Trump is defying the will of the deep state, military industrial complex base of ultimate power in the United States. That is why he is treading dangerous waters, and risks the fate of JFK.

    Trump publicly dissed the intelligence community assessments on Russian hacking; they retaliated with a made up dossier about the alleged Trump-Putin ‘golden shower’ episode.

    While it may be a silly falsehood, it may also be serving as a final warning that they get to script reality, not him.

    Perhaps they want Trump to feel blackmailed and controlled by alluding to fake dirt, while reminding him of the real dirt they hold on his activities (whatever it may be).

    Insulting the credibility of the intelligence community in a public way – as the man elected to the highest office in the land – is liable to ruffle a few feathers, and it could provoke a serious response.

    Trump knows the power of the people he is taunting, but he may not be aware of where the line is between play in political rhetoric and actually irritating and setting off those who control policy.

    There is plenty of Trump misbehavior that can be simply written off, or trivialized, but cutting into the war and statecraft narrative of the shadow government steering this deep state is a deviation too far.

    It is one thing to play captain, but another to imagine that you steer the ship. They are happy for Trump to take all the prestige and privileges of the office; but not for him to cut into the big business of foreign conflict, the undercurrent of all American affairs, the dealings in death, drugs, oil and weapons, and the control of people through a manipulation of these affairs.

    If President Trump takes his rogue populism too far, he will suffer the wrath of the same people who took out Kennedy… there are some things that are not tolerated by those who are really in charge.

    And now leaders in the Senate are warning President-elect Trump about the stupidity of going against the national-security establishment.

    As Jacob G. Hornberger warns:

    In a truly remarkable bit of honesty and candor regarding the U.S. national-security establishment, new Senate minority leader Charles Schumer has accused President-elect Trump of “being really dumb.”… for taking on the CIA and questioning its conclusions regarding Russia.

     

    “Let me tell you, you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you…. He’s being really dumb to do this.”

     

    […]

     

    No president since John F. Kennedy has dared to take on the CIA or the rest of the national security establishment […] They knew that if they opposed the national-security establishment at a fundamental level, they would be subjected to retaliatory measures.

     

    Kennedy… After the Bay of Pigs, he vowed to tear the CIA into a thousand pieces and scatter them to the winds. He also fired CIA Director Allen Dulles, who, in a rather unusual twist of fate, would later be appointed to the Warren Commission to investigate Kennedy’s murder.

     

    Kennedy’s antipathy toward the CIA gradually extended to what President Eisenhower had termed the military-industrial complex, especially when it proposed Operation Northwoods, which called for fraudulent terrorist attacks to serve as a pretext for invading Cuba, and when it suggested that Kennedy initiate a surprise nuclear attack on the Soviet Union.

     

    […]

     

    Worst of all, from the standpoint of the national-security establishment, [Kennedy] initiated secret personal negotiations with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Cuban leader Fidel Castro, both of whom, by this time, were on the same page as Kennedy.

     

    […]

     

    Kennedy was fully aware of the danger he faced by taking on such a formidable enemy.

    And to the extent that President Kennedy consciously stood up to the system, he paid the price for his attempt at independent wielding of power from the Oval Office.

    It is a shuddering thought. A sharp lesson in history that must not be misinterpreted.

    The implications for Trump are quite clear. If his refusal to take intelligence briefings, or follow CIA advice is serious, then serious consequences will follow. If Trump is serious about peace with Putin when they insist on war, there will be a problem.

    There are several powers behind the throne that have wanted to ensure that presidents don’t let the power go to their head, or try to change course from the carefully arranged crisis-reaction-solution paradigm.

    True peace is not good for military industrial complex business; true peace, without the persistence of grave threats, and plenty of sparks of chaos to back it up, cannot be tolerated.

    As things have progressed today, making friendly with Putin, and calling off the war with Russia may simply be impermissible. If Trump is attempting to negotiate his own peace – and sing along with Frank Sinatra’s “My Way” at the inauguration, then he is in for a very rude awakening.

    If, on the other hand, he is the Trump card being played by this very same establishment, then things may develop according to the same ultimate objectives, albeit through a ‘wild card’ path styled after the ego of President Trump.

    With Goldman Sachs and neocon advisors filling up his administration, Trump may be simply nudged in the right direction. But the intelligence community is not willing to take many chances – and there are clearly contingencies in place.

    As SHTF has previously reported, the continuity of government “Doomsday” command-and-control planes were brought out after the election as a public show of power to Trump and the American people. The shadow government is real, and for now, maintains dominance.

    Former congressman and presidential candidate Ron Paul warned of the shadow government taking control of President Trump’s administration before it was even formed:

    You know, we look at the president, we look at what he said, we look at what he might do, and we look at his advisors, but quite frankly, there is an outside source, which we refer to as a deep state or a shadow government. There is a lot of influence by people that are actually more powerful than our government itself, our president and on up. I mean, you take for instance how our government gets involved in elections around the world, whether it’s in the Middle East or Ukraine.

    Trump is reportedly retaining his own private security, bucking the protocol of Secret Service detail… and this clearly a sign that he and his team have thought through security issues and the possibility of an inside job.

    This is prudent, but these deep state guys have access throughout the system at every level. They are anywhere, and everywhere. Probably someone that Trump trusts. There are certainly many threats.

    For the sake of the stability of this country, and President-elect Trump’s own life, let us hope that they stay several steps ahead of anyone who might want to do him harm.

    This is eerie, but real.

    *  *  *

    On a personal level, it seems wise to prepare for the possibility of widespread unrest due to political instability.

    Tread carefully at the scene of the inauguration, and any high profile political gatherings or demonstrations.

    Riots at the inauguration, or in cities throughout the country are possible, maybe even likely, as is an attempted assassination. Even if this scenario is a long shot, and taboo to even discuss, the role of the CIA in past coups, revolutions and uprisings is enough to warrant taking precautions.

    There is an element of chaos present during this unprecedented transfer of power to the 45th president, and a wounded animal in the defensive-attack posture.

    If you are at a protest, either as a participant, or as an observer, remain aware of the larger actions of the crowd, identify potential provocateurs and stay away from points of potential violence. Police could use anti-riot gear and spray the crowd, fire rubber bullet, use microwave heating or auditory devices, make mass arrests, or block off large portions of the city.

    If anything significant happens, use any available phone or camera to film it, but be prepared for confiscation or technologies to wipe phones. An EMF shielded bag could block this; live stream or upload instantly to as many video platforms as possible, but they have been known to jam cell phone signals at mass gatherings and demonstrations. Make copies and store a physical copy, and several back-ups.

    If you are at home, do not wait for the all clear signal from the authorities, shelter in place and prepare to ride out a storm, if something sensational or deadly takes place and panic spreads. Do not trust the media; and try to take notice if a coup has taken place, and constitutional authority subverted.

  • In His First Foreign Trip As President, Trump Plans To Meet With Putin In Reykjavik

    Donald Trump and his advisers have told British officials their administration’s first foreign trip will be a meeting with Russia’s Vladimir Putin in the capital of Iceland, the Sunday Times reported, citing an unidentified source, a move that is certain to unleash even more domestic and foreign criticism of Trump’s alleged proximity to the Russian leader.

    According to The Sunday Times, Trump hopes to conduct the Putin “summit” within weeks of his January 20 inauguration in the Reykjavik, “emulating Ronald Reagan’s Cold War deal-making in Reykjavik with Mikhail Gorbachev.”  

    The meeting with Vladimir Putin, which would be Donald Trump’s first foreign trip, is where Trump will start working on an agreement limiting nuclear arms within a “reset” in US-Russian relations. The Times adds that according to sources close to the Russian Embassy in London, Moscow would agree to a summit between the two heads of state.


    A summit between Putin and Trump could reset western relations with the Kremlin.

    The meeting would come just over 30 years since the historic summit on October 11-12, 1986, between Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, the second in a series of meetings that relaunched the relationship between the United States and the Soviet Union, and ultimately led to a material de-escalation in the raging, at the time, nuclear arms race between the USA and USSR.

    And, just like Ronald Reagan then, Trump wants to discuss nuclear disarmament with Putin, the Times reported, adding that sources said Trump wants to meet Putin outside of Russia and that Reykjavik was a strong contender.

    The latest report comes just a day after Trump told the WSJ he is open to lifting the sanctions against Russia “under certain conditions.” In an hour-long interview on Friday, Trump said he wants to keep the sanctions that the Obama administration recently imposed on Russia “at least for a period of time.” However, the President-elect added that he would consider lifting the restrictions, depending on how helpful the Russians are in the fight against terrorism, as well as assisting with other goals that he feels are key to the US.

    The meeting has not officially been announced by Trump team officials or Russian officials, and reports say Iceland has not been formally contacted about such an event. But more importantly, the talking points for all of Sunday’s news shows and media talking points are currently being updated to reflect this latest olive branch by the Trump administration toward the Kremlin, which will be promptly spun as further “proof” of Putin’s diabolical control over his brand news Oval Office puppet.

  • 2017: Change Can Be A Bitch

    Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

    2016 brought a lot of changes, or rather, brought them to light. In reality, the world has been changing for many years, but many prominent actors benefitted from the changes remaining hidden. Simply because their wealth and power and worldviews are better served that way.

    It’s entirely unclear whether we will ever get a chance to see to what extent the efforts to hide developments have been successful, or even been perpetrated at all, because we don’t know to what extent truth and reality will be accessible in the future.

    What we can say at this point in time is that the changes 2016 delivered were urgently needed. There are many people out there who just want to turn back the clock, and change everything back to how it was, but they can’t, and that’s a good thing, because the way things were was hurting too many people.

    2016 will go down in history as the year when a big divide between groups of people in the western world became visible, a divide that had until then been papered over by real or imaginary wealth, as well as by ignorance and denial.

    When politics and media conspire to paint for the public a picture of their choosing, they can be very successful, especially if that picture is what people very much wish to see, true or not. But as we’ve seen recently, our traditional media have become completely useless when it comes to reporting news; the vast majority have switched to reporting their own opinions and pretending that is news.

    On the one hand, there is a segment of society that either has noticed no changes, or is so desperate to hold on to what they have left, that they resist seeing them. On the other hand, there are those who feel left behind by that first group, and by the idea that the world that is still functioning and even doing well.

    The first group has been captivated by, and believed in, the incessantly promoted message of recovery from an economic, financial and gradually also political crisis. The second see in their lives and that of their friends and neighbors that this recovery is an illusion.

    It’s like the old saying goes: you can’t fool all of the people all of the time. And that’s why you have Brexit and Trump and why you’re going to have much more of that, certainly across Europe. Things are not going well, and there is no recovery, for a large enough percentage of people that their votes and voices now swing the debates and elections.

    It’s not even complicated. This week there was a report from Elevate’s Center for the New Middle Class that concluded that half of Americans, 160 million people, can’t afford to have a broken arm treated (at $1,400). And sure, you can say that perhaps that number is a bit too high, but there have been many such reports, that for instance say the majority of Americans have less than $1000 in savings, and can’t even afford a car repair.

    In Britain numbers are not much different. Over the past decade, the country has been very busy creating an entire new underclass. If your economy is not doing well, and your answer to that is budget cuts and austerity, it’s inevitable that this happens, that you create some kind of two-tier or three-tier society. And then come election time, you run the risk of losing.

    Both Britain and the US boast low unemployment numbers, but as soon as you lift the veil, what you see is low participation rates, low wages and huge numbers of part-time jobs stripped of all the benefits a job used to guarantee. It allows those who still sit pretty to continue doing that, but it’ll come right back to haunt you if you don’t turn it around, and fast enough.

    For many people, Obama, Merkel, Cameron and the EU cabal have been disasters. For too many, as we now know. That doesn’t mean that Trump will fix the economic problems, but that’s not the issue. People have voted for anything but more of the same. Which in Britain they’re not even getting either, so expect more mayhem there.

    In most places, some variety of right wing alternative is the only option available that is far enough removed from ‘more of the same’. Moreover, many if not most incumbent parties are in a deep identity crisis. Trump did away with the Republicans AND the Democrats, and they had better understand why that is, or they’ll be wholly irrelevant soon.

    In Britain, the most important votes in many decades was lost by the Tories, who subsequently performed a musical chairs act and stayed in power. You lost! Losers are not supposed to stay in power! But the other guys are all too busy infighting to notice.

    That identity crisis, by the way, is not a new thing. If you look across the western political spectrum, there are all these left wing and right wing parties happily working together, either in coalition governments or through other ‘productive’ forms of cooperation. So who are people going to vote for when they’re unhappy with what they’ve got? Where is that ‘change’ that they want? Not on the traditional left or right.

    So you get Podemos and M5S and Trump and UKIP and Le Pen. It’s not their fault, or the voters’ fault, it’s the political establishment that has tricked itself into believing in the same illusion it’s been promoting to voters.

    And yes, they have now proven that it’s possible to stave off, for a number of years, a deeper crisis, depression, by borrowing and printing ‘money’. Especially if you can at the same time hit the poorest in your society with impunity.

    But in the end no amount of fake or false news on the economic front will allow you to continue the facade for too long, because people know when they can’t afford things anymore. The evidence here is somewhat more direct than with regards to political fake news, though they may well both follow the same pattern of ‘discovery’.

    Our societies are still run as if there is no real crisis, as if it’s all just a temporary glitch, as if the incumbent models function just fine, and as if recovery is just around the corner. And we can make it look as if that is true, but only for an ever smaller amount of time, and for an ever smaller amount of people.

    The basic issue here is not a political one. It’s economic. Our economic systems have failed, and they can’t be repaired. We should always have realized that no growth is forever, but at least we now know. Or could know, it’ll take a while to sink in.

    Next up is a redo and revamp of those economic systems, but that is not going to be easy, and may not get done at all. The resistance may be too strong, warfare -economic or physical- may seem like a way out, there are many unknowns. We could, ironically, get quite far in that redo if we simply cut all the waste for our economic processes, but then again, that would have us find out that much of the system runs entirely on wasting stuff, and wasting less kills the system.

    However that may be, and however it may turn out, this is where we find ourselves. Protesting Trump and Brexit is inevitable, but it doesn’t address any core issues. From a purely economic point of view, Obama failed spectacularly, as did David Cameron, as does Angela Merkel. And as do, we will find out in 2017, many other incumbent ‘leaders’.

    Their successors, whatever political colors they may come from, will all come to power promising, and subsequently attempting, to restart growth. Which is no longer feasible across an entire country, or even if it were, it would mean squeezing other countries. With corresponding risks.

    Trump and Brexit are necessary, perhaps even long overdue, in order to break the illusion that things could go on as they were. But they are not solutions. America needs a big wake-up. Trump looks likely to deliver one. That is needed for the rest of the country to wake from its slumber. Ask yourself: are you going to get weaker from dealing with a Trump presidency? Maybe not the best question, or at least not before having asked: do you know how weak you are right now?

    For Britain to leave the EU is a great first step. As I’ve said many times, centralization is not an option without growth. And Brussels has shown us quite a few of the worst consequences of centralization. Nobody should want to be a part of that.

    Summarized: for most people, 2017 will be the year of the inability to understand where their favorite worldview flew off the rails. Change can be a bitch. But change is needed to keep life alive.

  • Harvard Is 'Billionaire-Making' University

    Want to learn about the history of economics, how to code with Ruby on Rails, or the essentials of string theory? It’s all out there for free on the internet, and anyone who has the time or energy can learn it directly from the experts.

    The Information Age grants us an unprecedented amount of access to the world’s knowledge – and some thinkers like James Altucher or Peter Thiel see this leading to a path where the role of colleges and universities will continue to diminish.

    We share that sentiment. The most recent crop of successful entrepreneurs like Evan Spiegel or Mark Zuckerberg already proves that entrepreneurs can make billions without spending a full four years in the classroom. The forthcoming generation will be even less tied to attending brick-and-mortar institutions.

    However, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes, there’s one caveat to this line of thought, however, and it coincides with this week’s chart. While one can say that the actual academic value of these institutions may be undermined by access to the digital world, the value of these as places to “rub shoulders” with up-and-comers still remains entrenched.

    Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist

     

    A BILLIONAIRE MAKING MACHINE

    Talk to any successful person in business and they will tell you that developing a strong network is half of the battle. As far as schools go, Harvard is the perfect example of the “network effect” at work.

    To date, a total of 35 of the richest 500 people in the world have emerged from the storied halls of Harvard. In fact, more billionaires have graduated from Harvard than all of those hailing from Saudi Arabia and Spain combined.

    The total net worth of the top 35 Harvard billionaire graduates? It’s $309 billion – roughly equivalent to the GDP of Hong Kong or Ireland. With alumni like Charlie Munger, Meg Whitman, John Paulson, Steve Ballmer, Paul Singer, Ken Griffin, Ray Dalio, and Michael Bloomberg among the ranks of Harvard graduates, it’s a powerful hub to tap into. Today’s Harvard students and professors take advantage of this prestigious network every day.

    Elite universities still serve as filtering mechanisms that only bring in students that are smart, well-connected, or both. Top schools like Stanford or Harvard have acceptance rates less than 6%, and this exclusivity gives graduating students a connected and privileged network from the get-go.

    One hundred years from now, will these institutions still have the same track records from the exclusivity factor alone? It remains to be seen, but for now they are still undisputed billionaire making machines until proven otherwise.

  • The Clinton Global Initiative is shutting down

    This article was originally posted at www.disobedientmedia.com

    A document from the New York State Department of Labor reveals that the Clinton Global Initiative is being discontinued.

    Filed on January 12, 2017, the document shows the layoff of a specialist employed by the Clinton Global Initiative as part of a “plant closure” and that the reason for their discontinuation was the “Discontinuation of the Clinton Global Initiative.”

    The news of the closure of the Clinton Global Initiative comes after reports emerged in the Fall of 2016 that they were laying off dozens of workers at their New York offices.

    The Clinton Global Initiative was founded in 2005 by Bill Clinton and associate Doug Band. Band and Clinton were dogged by accusations of corruption, which intensified after 2016 document releases by Wikileaks revealed that Band was soliciting large numbers of donations for Clinton through his public relations firm, Teneo.

  • Treasury Specs Are So Short, It Is Now A 4 Sigma Event

    With doubts that the “Trumpflation” trade is over creeping ever higher, leading to a precarious decline in the USD in recent days, and prompting comparisons to the Dollar’s move at the start of 2016 when the greenback’s ascent dramatically reversed…

    … resulting in a pick up in the long end, which has outperformed the Dow YTD in 2017…

    … it was surprising to see that traders, seemingly unfazed by recent price action, took their record shorts across the Treasury curve, and made them even recorder.

    According to the latest breakdown of short positions by Deutsche Bank, speculators increased their net shorts by $7.7 billion in 10Y cash equivalents to $99.4 billion, a third successive week of record low positions.

    The Breakdown by 5Y net specs…

    … 10Y net specs…

    … and 30Y net specs…

    … shows just how aggressive the short pile up has been.

    According to DB’s calculations, the net short position is now a four sigma event, having grown to nearly four standard deviations away from mean, even after adjusting for open interest.

    TY and FV net spec shorts reached new record highs of 395K (+50K) contracts and 437K (+27K) contracts, respectively. An exception was in TU futures where specs pared 35K contracts from their net shorts. Spec net short in Eurodollars also increased to a new record high of 2,442K (+326K) contracts.

    And while other asset classes were relatively unchanged, with the recent surge in net specs in oil, nat gas and copper all moderating slightly in recent weeks…

    … a separate observation by Bank of America suggest that the recent hedge fund infatuation with equities may be over, after hedge funds net sold the most S&P 500 contracts in a week since Jan. 2016., while the recent surge in Russell bullish bets also appears to have found a ceiling for now, and while buy-side net position in Russell 2000 was near record high (a “contrarian bearish” signal), a near term a move below 1347.2 would trigger a tactical bearish signal for the 1308.85 to 1300 area, according to Bank of America.

    Of all of the above, keep an eye on the record(er) TSY shorts: a few more indication that the Trump reflation rally is over, or worse, inverting especially if the recent spike in positive macro news tapers off, we may witness one of the most violent short squeezes across the rates complex in history.

  • Trump Has 6 Goldman Appointees- Swamp Drains You

     

    Dear Trump Voters: Goldman Wins Again.

     To the Trump voters scratching their heads at the PEOTUS’ recent appointments. This is the nexus of finance influencing politics in real time. Here is your chance to save yourselves years of denial, cognitive dissonance, regret, and therapy when you are forced to confront the reality that you were lied to. 

    Why Trump Voters are Stupid

    Via Soren K and Marketslant Once we cast our votes our egos have a stake in the outcome. Many become enamored with their “identity” decision. Like Obama voters before, some people actually believe things will be different this time under Trump. This bias only lets in facts corroborating their opinion. We see only what fits the identity narrative adopted. In an emergency, there are plenty of “safe spaces” we can find online to perpetuate the illusion.  

    And come on, Trump is the car salesman dripping in gold that attracts a certain type of car buyer, the status seeker. Maybe if I buy from him, I’ll be like him. Hillary is worse. At least Trump is transparent about his narcissism.

    Here’s the thing, people are slowly catching on to the lies that systems perpetuate on people by co-opting leaders. The people know now that Wall Street is about money first, and service second. People are beginning to sense that Obama was not an instrument of change. The Hillary and DNC emails should have stripped voters’ political delusions. Sadly that didn’t happen. The power of denial is strong

    Liberals are now the new bitter-clingers. They hug their idealistic but inflexible beliefs in globalism and a premature Kumbaya world. This is exactly how Obama described the right. He called them bitter-clingers to guns and G-d. 

    Meanwhile a whole generation of Republicans actually thinks  Trump is the answer to their prayers of hope and change. Wake up. Trump is so happy he’s on the inside now. He’s the Howard Stern of finance/politics. Ranting to be let in. Then kissing the ring of the ones who made campaign contributions to Hillary. 

    Trump Now has 6 Goldman Appointees

    1. Bannon – Sr. Adviser
    2. Scaramucci – Adviser
    3. Mnuchin – Treasury
    4. Powell – Counselor
    5. Cohn – NEC
    6. Clayton – SEC

    Goldman Sachs is a fraternal culture.  You never really “leave” Goldman, just like there are no EX-Marines. So the question any reasonable person should be asking is “Why so many Goldman people?”  The answer is we believe right now Trump and GS are building a symbiotic relationship. They are trading debt for influence via soft dollar transactions. But we have no factual evidence. We are not journalists with the resources to prove this. But there is plenty of history to tell. If there is a real journalist out there who isn’t worried about getting fired for taking the time to investigate a conflicted POTUS and an opportunistic bank with an amoral behavioral pattern now is the time to look. Not 4 years from now.

    Trump Org has a Lot of Debt

    As of Dec 12th here were 2 of Trump’s biggest corporate creditors and a simplified look at the issue each has with Trump. 

    1- Deutsche Bank: $364 million 

    • ?DB has DOJ issues in the amount of a $14 billion claim, major balance sheet problems and is in litigation with Trump on his debt.
    • DB’s DOJ issues are a huge conflict of interest if Trump is POTUS while the DOJ is investigating them

    2- Ladder Capital: $282 million

    • Trump is personally liable for $26MM
    • a POTUS who is personally liable for a debt has an enormous conflict of interest

     

    According to his own public disclosure,Trump, as of May, was on the hook for 16 loans worth
    at least $713 million. This list does not include an estimated $2 billion in debt     amassed
    by real estate partnerships that include Trump. One of those loans is a $950
    million deal that was cobbled together by Goldman Sachs and the state-owned
    Bank of China—an arrangement that ethics experts believe violates the Constitution’s emolument clause,     which prohibits foreign governments from providing
    financial benefits to federal officials. Mother Jones

    So, you can see that it is in Trump’s best interest to restructure these loans because of conflicts that could impede his objectivity as President. DB is in no position to risk more headlines that drive its stock even lower as it negotiates with the DOJ on a better settlement. And Ladder is reportedly struggling under the weight of its own balance sheet.

     

    Deutsche, Ladder, and Trump Need Help

    What we need here is someone who can do DB a favor and take the debt off their hands which would: alleviate them of Trump litigation, shrink their systemically risky balance sheet, and reduce chances of more DOJ headline risk tied to the new administration.

    For Ladder Capital, that hero must buy the debt and remove Trump’s personal liability.  Ladder had hired Citibank to help it find a buyer for the Trump debt according to Mother Jones.

    Meanwhile, Trump needs to divest himself of potential interest conflicts as well as make sure he is not a sitting president who can be sued by a creditor. What would be even cooler would be if somehow Trump could get his deals renegotiated at better terms. But how to reciprocate if someone did such a favor?

     

    Enter Goldman Sachs?

    Sources: GS had been buying Trump’s debt up from Deutsche and Ladder with totals so far around $400 mm. This is yet not confirmed, and we are not in the business of empty conjecture.  So lets see if there is a trade here.

    Like most people, we are kept in the dark fact-wise and fed a lot of crap by our elitist bettors. Some decision analysis is warranted.

    • Who Benefits?- Trump, DB, Ladder, and whoever buys the debt
    • Who has the ability to do it?- any Financial institution with good lawyers and weak ethics (all of them)
    • Who has done it in the past?- all of them 
    • How do Trump and the Debt Buyer materially benefit?
      •  Trump benefits because the debt terms under GS (or other bank) are probably better for him. (Lower rates, personal liability removed etc)
      • Trump Rewards GS (or other bank) with positions that afford  policy influence, “first to know”, status, etc
    • How does the Debt Buyer avoid conflict with Trump?
      • be squeaky clean with the DOJ- a white knight at the Buffet table always helps
      • have off balance subsids it can put debt in- e.g. former employees who run hedge funds that the former employer invests in
      • securitize debt and sell to client base- like subprime loans 
      • must be sharp  with a flat hierarchy and low bureaucratic latency- a firm that aggregates risk but decentralizes decision making (Marines, not Army)

    Here is your chance right now to acknowledge what your gut is already telling you before 4 years go by. Trump is full of shit and out for himself only. If something good comes of his administration it will not be because of him. It will likely be in spite of him. Intervention in markets and economies only helps in the direction of the trend.

     

    Why We Feel Goldman is Buying the Debt

    So empirically speaking, not as politicians who claim objectivity in their process but use rhetoric to manipulate facts, we can say 2 things:

    1. Based on evidence, belief, and past behaviors it is highly likely that some firm is going to accumulate Trump’s debt.
    2. And based on Trump’s appointees, GS culture and acumen, we put Goldman Sachs at the top of that list.

    When the data suggests or drifts in another direction we will adjust our opinion. We are careful to test our own biases and acknowledge them

     So we don’t know if Goldman is running around collecting Trump’s chits. But we damn sure expect someone is because there is a need for it on both sides of the equation. DB and Ladder need out, and Trump needs out. And we don’t see 10 guys from DB or CITI being hired. We see Goldman guys getting jobs. 

    And if we are wrong, that’s ok too. Because someone is buying that debt. DB and Ladder definitely do not want it.  

     

    Goldman and the  Emolument Clause

    There is one other large loan that already directly involves Goldman Sachs. It’s the one discussed in context of the Constitution’s emolument clause.

    Time: “It appears that Trump’s largest debt obligation is tied up with his 30% stake in the building at 1290 Avenue of the Americas, which is near Rockefeller Center. The financial obligation on that building is $950 million. Trump is responsible for 30% of that debt. It is, by far, the single biggest debt obligation among his signature properties. Were it to become a troubled asset for any reason, it would cause an immense and immediate problem for the bottom line of his business. There are two big lenders involved with the complicated debt structure on this asset, the Times reported. One of them is the state-owned Bank of China. The other is Goldman Sachs.”

    Legally, we are sure Trump will have a defendable argument. But biased and objective in his duties as POTUS? Doubt it.

     

    There is no Conclusive Proof, and There Never Will Be Again

    The brilliance of society’s embracing deductive reasoning banished opinions without facts being represented as truth. But unethical people find a way to pervert it now. They say things like: No body, no murder… “f they don’t have proof, just deny it...  and “What is the definition of IS?”  Facts are only the purview of higher ups. Its kind of a class warfare thing.

    The result is, no-one asks ( or is afraid to ask) the questions anymore that lead to the facts that prove or dismiss the intuition. Everyone is a fucking lawyer now. Did you see your child take the cookie? Then you can’t be sure, can you? Nothing gets investigated unless we have metaphysical certitude now. The Gold and Silver manipulation case is an example. The perpetrators do not care. They are off shearing sheep in Asia now after manipulating metals for 20 years.

    No-one will call that yellow thing with the orange beak a duck until it: drinks the water, lays an egg, and bites you on the face these days.

    Evidence Drift

    So when something cannot be proven factually, but the consilience of accumulated data using different measuring methods points to a likelihood of truth, adjust your behavior accordingly. We do not know if Trump is cutting deals that compromise his status, but we believe he is and will act accordingly.  We will stay away from the thing that looks like a duck until proven otherwise. 

    Good Luck

    H/T Vlanci@echobay.com

     

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