- The Glue Holding America Together Is No Longer Binding
Often cited as an important reason for US success as a global power, our diversity has finally come home to roost, and it’s taking a destructive, cruel toll. A unique magic glue that we somehow thought would keep myriad groups in America working at unison with a common goal forever, has unhardened, lost both its adhesive properties and cohesive strength, leaving us with a divided America. No; not as a simplistic two-part nation, but as a fragmented Humpty Dumpty beyond the conservative-liberal political fray.
Almost two centuries ago, French political theorist Alexis de Tocqueville in his book “Democracy in America” (1835) not only gave us a sociological perspective on America’s equality and individualism but what might be construed as a study on economic success. His travels in 1831 along geographically-expanding America, in the midst of an agrarian evolution, as well as an industrial revolution, gave him an insight that we might consider preluding today’s globalization. Tocqueville saw a surging nation without any apparent geographical borders [that could be readily enforced by other nations]; a very rapidly increasing immigrant population fleeing the economic woes in Europe; and the lack of commercial barriers (duties) imposed by small governmental units.
And within a century of Tocqueville’s travels, the United States did become a miracle, colossus-nation that combined an enormous contiguous land mass; a productive large population; and a government which provided 80-plus percent of the population with what could be described as reasonable socio-economic mobility and, yes, freedom.
By virtue of these gigantic, multi-faceted economies of scale, the United States was able to create a sizeable economic middle class, and thus become the microcosmic model for later multi-nation common markets and our present “big bang” globalization – what is becoming the ultimate global economy of scale, although we may still be a generation or two away from reaching its apex.
It was this economic advantage over most other countries in the world that created a much higher standard of living, the glue that kept the diversity that was America united. The United States of America became an economic and geopolitical success, a phenomenon of modern times that some social scientists described, and most politicians exploited, with an illusionary and adulatory jargon that bred self-pride and patriotism: American exceptionalism, the American dream; now fading mythical terms.
As globalization is starting to show a leveling impact throughout much of the world, the more advanced economies are left with the irrefutable reality that their middle class will have to subsidize, at least in part, the increase in the standard of living of the surging, less-advanced economies. That although globalization has a synergistic effect, such effect is small relative to the transfer of productive wealth in the middle classes; and that transfer has affected the United States, quantitatively and qualitatively, far more negatively than any other advanced economy. And “we ain’t seen nothing yet,” as 80+ percent of our population has been, or will be, thrown by our Tweedledee-Tweedledum career politicians, and America’s imperial power-elite, under the bus.
The worst socio-economic woes are still ahead, as the magic glue slowly disappears and we are left naked in our diversity… each group pulling in a self-serving direction, keeping us fragmented without common, mutually-beneficial goals; and, what’s worse, with a government concerned with one-fifth of the population, letting the other four-fifths join their pariah-peers in the world.
Now that there is little magic glue left to bind us, to keep us strong, we are left with a political-economic life preserver: our vote. Except that the life preserver appears as the ultimate joke, offering two undesirable options from which to choose: a deceiving, chameleonic neoliberal woman; and an insane, ignorant bully-man. Yet, these two characters, Hillary Clinton and Donald Trump, have been given monopolistic imprimatur by a corporate press that appears more interested in entertaining buffoonery than addressing the political crises that beset the United States in aspects that will determine its very existence: crisis in a flawed foreign policy; crisis in the economic well-being of its people; crisis in a racial divide that is continuously unaddressed; and crisis in the very future of this nation as it tries to compete, non-militarily, in a very competitive world.
Both ruling parties, Democrats and Republicans, appear unwilling, or incapable, to draft a plan for 21st Century America, as shown by the leaders they have chosen to represent the unheard voices of 80 percent of us. And the powerful corporate media refuses to become the only logical catalyst for change… megaphoning other voices, such as those of Greens and Libertarians, to compete on equal terms as democracy intends, such as incorporating them in the debates. In this 48th presidential election, as anger and discontent have become pandemic, we shouldn’t have to go to the polls forced to vote for the lesser-evil.
- Japanese Stocks Tumble As USDJPY Plunges To Post-Brexit Lows
Following last night’s disappointing GDP data and amid an illiquid summer holiday in Japan, USDJPY is extending its losses nearing 100.00 once again following weaker than expected US macro data (and a weaker USD)…
Yen is the strongest in 6 weeks – with USDJPY getting close to post-Brexit lows…
Nikkei 225 is getting slammed tick for tick…
Luckily, the US equity market is in a world of its own… for now…
Maybe this week’s minutes will change that?
- The Ugly Truth About Millennials
Today I asked my followers how would they describe Millennials and this is what I got:
“lazy”, “thin-skinned”, “spoiled”, “selfish”, “undisciplined”, “self-absorbed”, ”fragile”, “oblivious”, etc.
…and I can agree on this. This generation is really what you call it. But there was one description that is the most accurate.
“Raised by neglectful, over-compensating for inadequacy, self-serving parents.”
You’re in charge. You insisted your children and grandchildren have to get higher education instead of taking a blue-collar job or just entering the workforce after school like your generation did. Most of you pay for that (often unnecessary) higher education. You are overprotective and prevent your children from playing outside and making mistakes you had a chance to make to gain that thick skin. You don’t let your 12-year-old kid stay at home alone because they are too young. And who is wrong when your child has a conflict at school? I bet you always blame the other side, not your “special snowflake”. And how you get surprised that the whole generation gets offended by facing the truth: they are not special. It must hurt, right?
They have never been taught how to debate and formulate an argument, as another follower noticed. Now you may start shouting about terrible school education, but it’s the family which is to blame.
Millennials are the product of your parenting. You spoiled your child and now you’re asking why they are demanding everything for doing nothing. See the correlation here?
And if you’re reading this and you’re not a parent yet, please, do some research on raising a responsible person and let your child make mistakes, it will help them in the future. I bet you don’t want your child to be triggered by “manspreading”. Do yourself a favor, raise your child right.
BONUS for Millennials:
1) You shouldn’t be offended if it was not intended to offend you.
2) Being offended is a choice you make. Nobody is responsible for that choice but you.
3) Even if it was intended, functioning adults understand that they must move on and not cry over a rude comment on the Internet
4) You should stop whining on the Internet. It’s too annoying.
- GoldMoney = Gold as Money?
Open letter to the CEO of GoldMoney-BitGold, Roy Sebag
Dear Roy,Recently viewed your presentation during a panel discussion about the Nature of Money. First off, I’d like to take this opportunity to compliment your delivery, very professional.Although you presented your thesis very well, I do have a few straightforward reservations for your consideration.You began your talk by skillfully articulating the following three maxiums, which most should agree with:1) Gold is unequivocally the most genuine, the most trusted and the most honest form of real money. (This fact is categorically obvious for any thinking person.)2) Gold is the surest store of value for one’s hard earned labor. (No man nor apparatus can alter its inherent standard of value, which even includes nature as we know it.)3) Since 1 & 2 are empirically true, by default Gold is the most objective unit of accounting.However, as a means of exchange in the modern world of finance, the GoldMoney platform will always fall short. Here is why……………..
For the GoldMoney model to directly compete with the minimal transactional costs of today’s digitized fiat based government issued currency, it would require economies of scale which could only be achieved through the mass adoption of its platform. A most challenging task indeed, even for someone as formidable as yourself, as this would necessitate near universal understanding and acceptance of the credibility of gold as a more honest means of exchange. We must also keep in mind that unlike fiat paper currency, GoldMoney will always have physical storage costs associated with it.
Moreover, the Libertarian quest for gold backed currency will continue to be unequivocally repressed by any and all governing authority, which completely covets and never relinquishes the absolute power of monetary control. To wit, in the modern world, every collapsed fiat based currency has inevitably and invariably been replaced by another fiat based money, even those that were momentarily backed by gold, which in it of itself should tell you something. This would even hold true for a global currency, as all authority inherently requires and imposes monetary control. One need only look to the IMF’s idealistic SDR, even if it eventually adds some measure of gold to the so called basket.
Due to the fundamental certainties previously stated, your business model is inherently flawed, completely unadaptable to 21st century monetary exchange regimes. As such, your innovative firm GoldMoney in its noble and courageous quest to democratize gold will inevitably fail, simply by running out of advertising/promotional dollars over time. Yours is a cause not a business. You can’t pay your way with fiat currency to establish hard currency, just can’t get there from here.
The one and only essential benefit of the hard asset class to modern finance lies in its imperative as wealth protection insurance during periods of monetary uncertainty, disruption and/or geopolitical strife. In the modern money world, Gold plays a vital role as a long standing store of value, which is particulalrly important during transitional monetary periods.
That’s it my friend, and please feel free to correct me should I have entirely missed something.
Best regards,Bruno de Landevoisin
- Obamacare Sticker Shock: Average 2017 Premium Surges 24%
Two weeks ago, we asked readers to spot the “odd inflation out” when looking at the map below.
The reference, of course, was to the state by state surge in proposed 2017 Obamacare premiums, contrasted with what the government contends is a modest 1.0% inflation rate.
Now, courtesy of a new study by independent analyst Charles Gaba – who has crunched the numbers for insurers participating in the ACA exchanges in all 50 states – we can also calculate what the average Obamacare premium increase across the entire US will be: using proposed and approved rate increase requests, the average Obamacare premium is expected to surge by a whopping 24% this year.
As Politico notes, Cigna and Humana recently revised their rate requests in Tennessee, and the new filings are dramatically higher. Cigna is now asking for a 46% average increase, up from 23%, and Humana is requesting a 44% increase, up from 29%, The Tennessean reported on Friday. Expect these numbers to rise even more as insurance companies exit even more states.
So far, the average approved rate increase is roughly 17% according to weighted averages across just five states, Mississippi, New York, Oregon, Rhode Island and Vermont, Gaba reports. “Combined, all [five states] only make up around 6.3 percent of the total population,” Gaba writes. “The numbers will no doubt jump around quite a bit as additional, larger states are plugged into the mix.”
Here is what Charles Gaba calculated:
[I] noted that since I originally crunched the numbers for some states as far back as April, the situation in some states has likely changed somewhat due to carriers dropping out, joining in or re-submitting their rate request filings.
There have been significant changes to the requested rate filings in at least four states: Arizona, Connecticut, Maryland and Tennessee. In all four cases, I’m afraid the statewide weighted average has increased, either due to resubmitted filings, a carrier dropping out or both.
As a result of these updates, the national average increase requested now stands at 23.9%, up from the previous average of 23.3%.
Gaba will have to redo his numbers again, as moments ago Aetna announced that in 2017 it would exit 11 of 15, or more than two thirds, of Obamacare state exchanges in which it was a participant as of this calendar year. The only states in which Aetna will continue to provide Obamacare, are Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska and Virginia. Here is what CEO Mark Bertolini said in a statement:
“Following a thorough business review and in light of a second-quarter pretax loss of $200 million and total pretax losses of more than $430 million since January 2014 in our individual products, we have decided to reduce our individual public exchange presence in 2017, which will limit our financial exposure moving forward. More than 40 payers of various sizes have similarly chosen to stop selling plans in one or more rating areas in the individual public exchanges over the 2015 and 2016 plan years, collectively exiting hundreds of rating areas in more than 30 states. As a strong supporter of public exchanges as a means to meet the needs of the uninsured, we regret having to make this decision.
Aetna will reduce its individual public exchange participation from 778 to 242 counties for the 2017 plan year, maintaining an on-exchange presence in Delaware, Iowa, Nebraska and Virginia. The company will continue to offer an off-exchange individual product option for 2017 to consumers in the vast majority of counties where it offered individual public exchange products in 2016.
And while as a result of this latest exit, rates are set to go up even more, here is how much more citizens in various US states can expect to pay for their health insurance.
- The Greatest Threat To Our Freedoms: A Government of Scoundrels, Spies, Thieves, And Killers
Submitted by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“There is nothing more dangerous than a government of the many controlled by the few.”—Lawrence Lessig, Harvard law professor
The U.S. government remains the greatest threat to our freedoms.
The systemic violence being perpetrated by agents of the government has done more collective harm to the American people and our liberties than any single act of terror.
More than terrorism, more than domestic extremism, more than gun violence and organized crime, the U.S. government has become a greater menace to the life, liberty and property of its citizens than any of the so-called dangers from which the government claims to protect us.
This is how tyranny rises and freedom falls.
As I explain in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, when the government views itself as superior to the citizenry, when it no longer operates for the benefit of the people, when the people are no longer able to peacefully reform their government, when government officials cease to act like public servants, when elected officials no longer represent the will of the people, when the government routinely violates the rights of the people and perpetrates more violence against the citizenry than the criminal class, when government spending is unaccountable and unaccounted for, when the judiciary act as courts of order rather than justice, and when the government is no longer bound by the laws of the Constitution, then you no longer have a government “of the people, by the people and for the people.”
What we have is a government of wolves.
Worse than that, we are now being ruled by a government of scoundrels, spies, thugs, thieves, gangsters, ruffians, rapists, extortionists, bounty hunters, battle-ready warriors and cold-blooded killers who communicate using a language of force and oppression.
Does the government pose a danger to you and your loved ones?
The facts speak for themselves.
We’re being held at gunpoint by a government of soldiers—a standing army. While Americans are being made to jump through an increasing number of hoops in order to exercise their Second Amendment right to own a gun, the government is arming its own civilian employees to the hilt with guns, ammunition and military-style equipment, authorizing them to make arrests, and training them in military tactics. Among the agencies being supplied with night-vision equipment, body armor, hollow-point bullets, shotguns, drones, assault rifles and LP gas cannons are the Smithsonian, U.S. Mint, Health and Human Services, IRS, FDA, Small Business Administration, Social Security Administration, National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, Education Department, Energy Department, Bureau of Engraving and Printing and an assortment of public universities. There are now reportedly more bureaucratic (non-military) government civilians armed with high-tech, deadly weapons than U.S. Marines. That doesn’t even begin to touch on the government’s arsenal, the transformation of local police into extensions of the military, and the speed with which the nation could be locked down under martial law depending on the circumstances. Clearly, the government is preparing for war—and a civil war, at that—but who is the enemy?
We’re being robbed blind by a government of thieves. Americans no longer have any real protection against government agents empowered to seize private property at will. For instance, police agencies under the guise of asset forfeiture laws are taking property based on little more than a suspicion of criminal activity. In one case, police seized $53,000 from the manager of a Christian rock band that was touring and raising money for an orphanage in Thailand. Despite finding no evidence of wrongdoing, police kept the money. Homeowners are losing their homes over nonpayment of taxes (for as little as $400 owed) and municipal bills such as water or sewer fees that amount to a fraction of what they have invested in their homes. And then there’s the Drug Enforcement Agency, which has been searching train and airline passengers and pocketing their cash, without ever charging them with a crime.
We’re being taken advantage of by a government of scoundrels, idiots and cowards. American satirist H.L. Mencken calculated that “Congress consists of one-third, more or less, scoundrels; two-thirds, more or less, idiots; and three-thirds, more or less, poltroons.” By and large, Americans seem to agree. When you’ve got government representatives who spend a large chunk of their work hours fundraising, being feted by lobbyists, shuffling through a lucrative revolving door between public service and lobbying, and making themselves available to anyone with enough money to secure access to a congressional office, you’re in the clutches of a corrupt oligarchy. Mind you, these same elected officials rarely read the legislation they’re enacting, nor do they seem capable of enacting much legislation that actually helps rather than hinders the plight of the American citizen.
We’re being locked up by a government of greedy jailers. We have become a carceral state, spending three times more on our prisons than on our schools and imprisoning close to a quarter of the world’s prisoners, despite the fact that crime is at an all-time low and the U.S. makes up only 5% of the world’s population. The rise of overcriminalization and profit-driven private prisons provides even greater incentives for locking up American citizens for such non-violent “crimes” as having an overgrown lawn. As the Boston Review points out, “America’s contemporary system of policing, courts, imprisonment, and parole … makes money through asset forfeiture, lucrative public contracts from private service providers, and by directly extracting revenue and unpaid labor from populations of color and the poor. In states and municipalities throughout the country, the criminal justice system defrays costs by forcing prisoners and their families to pay for punishment. It also allows private service providers to charge outrageous fees for everyday needs such as telephone calls. As a result people facing even minor criminal charges can easily find themselves trapped in a self-perpetuating cycle of debt, criminalization, and incarceration.”
We’re being spied on by a government of Peeping Toms. The government is watching everything you do, reading everything you write, listening to everything you say, and monitoring everything you spend. Omnipresent surveillance is paving the way for government programs that profile citizens, document their behavior and attempt to predict what they might do in the future, whether it’s what they might buy, what politician they might support, or what kinds of crimes they might commit. The impact of this far-reaching surveillance, according to Psychology Today, is “reduced trust, increased conformity, and even diminished civic participation.” As technology analyst Jillian C. York concludes, “Mass surveillance without due process—whether undertaken by the government of Bahrain, Russia, the US, or anywhere in between—threatens to stifle and smother that dissent, leaving in its wake a populace cowed by fear.”
We’re being ravaged by a government of ruffians, rapists and killers. It’s not just the police shootings of unarmed citizens that are worrisome. It’s the SWAT team raids gone wrong that are leaving innocent citizens wounded, children terrorized and family pets killed. It’s the roadside strip searches—in some cases, cavity searches of men and women alike carried out in full view of the public—in pursuit of drugs that are never found. It’s the potentially lethal—and unwarranted—use of so-called “nonlethal” weapons such as tasers on children for “mouthing off to a police officer. For trying to run from the principal’s office. For, at the age of 12, getting into a fight with another girl.”
We’re being forced to surrender our freedoms—and those of our children—to a government of extortionists, money launderers and professional pirates. The American people have been repeatedly sold a bill of goods about how the government needs more money, more expansive powers, and more secrecy (secret courts, secret budgets, secret military campaigns, secret surveillance) in order to keep us safe. Under the guise of fighting its wars on terror, drugs and now domestic extremism, the government has spent billions in taxpayer dollars on endless wars that have not ended terrorism but merely sown the seeds of blowback, surveillance programs that have caught few terrorists while subjecting all Americans to a surveillance society, and militarized police that have done little to decrease crime while turning communities into warzones. Not surprisingly, the primary ones to benefit from these government exercises in legal money laundering have been the corporations, lobbyists and politicians who inflict them on a trusting public.
Whatever else it may be—a danger, a menace, a threat—the U.S. government is certainly no friend to freedom.
To our detriment, the criminal class that Mark Twain mockingly referred to as Congress has since expanded to include every government agency that feeds off the carcass of our once-constitutional republic. In fact, there’s a very good reason you don’t hear much in the way of specifics about the government’s tyranny from politicians: it’s because they can’t afford to upset the apple cart (i.e., jeopardize their posh lifestyles).
So no matter which party wins the White House, controls Congress or appoints future Supreme Court justices, rest assured that the menace of the shadow government—the permanent, unelected bureaucracy that operates beyond the reach of the Constitution, the courts and the citizenry—will continue uninterrupted.
Our backs are against the proverbial wall.
The government and its cohorts have conspired to ensure that the only real recourse the American people have to express their displeasure with the government is through voting, which is no real recourse at all. The penalties for civil disobedience, whistleblowing and rebellion are severe. If you refuse to pay taxes for government programs you believe to be immoral or illegal, you will go to jail. If you attempt to overthrow the government—or any agency thereof—because you believe it has overstepped its reach, you will go to jail. If you attempt to blow the whistle on government misconduct, there’s a pretty good chance you will go to jail.
For too long, the American people have been made to act like puppets dancing to a tyrant’s tune.
We have obeyed the government’s dictates, no matter now extreme. We have paid its taxes, penalties and fines, no matter how outrageous. We have tolerated its indignities, insults and abuses, no matter how egregious. We have turned a blind eye to its indiscretions and incompetence, no matter how imprudent. We have held our silence in the face of its lawlessness, licentiousness and corruption, no matter how illicit.
We have suffered.
How long we will continue to suffer depends on how much we’re willing to give up for the sake of freedom.
America’s founders provided us with a very specific explanation about the purpose of government and a roadmap for what to do when the government abuses its authority, ignores our objections, and establishes itself as a tyrant.
We must choose between peaceful slavery (in other words, maintaining the status quo in servitude to the police state) and dangerous freedom. That will mean carving out a path in which we begin to take ownership of our government, starting at the local level, challenging the status quo, and raising hell whenever a government official steps out of line.
- Is "Special Government Employee" Huma Abedin The Smoking Gun In Hillary's "Pay-To-Play" Scheme?
Having previously warned that Hillary "is often confused," Clinton's top aide, Huma Abedin – previously best known for standing by her husband Anthony Weiner after his sexting scandal – is now at the center of the Clinton Foundation – State Department debacle. As Bloomberg reports, for the final eight months of Clinton's reign as Secretary of State, Abedin worked for both The Clinton Foundation and as a "special government employee" at The State Department.
Huma Abedin was previously most infamous as the "good wife" standing by her sexting scandal husband Anthony Weiner…
And then, as we previously noted, Abedin gained some more infamy for admitting about Hillary that "she's often confused"…
Source: Judicial Watch vs State emails
But, as Bloomberg now reports, Abedin's overlapping jobs bring a renewed focus on Clinton's conflicts of interest while at the State Department…
Huma Abedin stepped down from her post as deputy chief of staff at the State Department and Hillary Clinton’s ever-present personal assistant on June 3, 2012. Only she didn’t really leave.
Instead, in a reverse twist on a program intended to bring talented outsiders into government, Abedin was immediately rehired as a “special government employee.” She also took paying jobs with the Clinton Foundation and Teneo Holdings, a consulting firm with international clients that was co-founded by a foundation official who also was Bill Clinton’s long-time personal aide.
Abedin’s multitasking in the final eight months of Hillary Clinton’s time as the top U.S. diplomat — and her role as intermediary for some of the same players before that — are drawing renewed scrutiny after a conservative watchdog group’s release last week of a new batch of e-mails to and from Clinton aides. Abedin has become the personification of an election-year debate over whether the nonprofit foundation will create conflicts of interest if Clinton wins the White House.
Clinton was rated trustworthy by just 41 percent of likely voters in a Bloomberg Politics national poll conducted Aug. 5-8. More than half said that the Clinton Foundation’s acceptance of foreign contributions while she was secretary of state bothers them “a lot.”
“The Clinton Foundation for Hillary Clinton is kind of a walking conflict-of-interest problem,” Meredith McGehee, policy director for the nonpartisan Campaign Legal Center, said in an interview. “Clearly this notion that it could continue to operate while she was secretary of state — it was a built-in problem. If you’re really looking at what should happen if she’s elected, neither her husband nor her daughter, certainly no relative, should have any connection with the foundation.”
…
When Clinton was awaiting confirmation as President Barack Obama’s secretary of state in 2009, she wrote a letter to the State Department’s chief ethics officer promising that she wouldn’t “participate personally and substantially in any particular matter that has a direct and predictable effect upon this foundation, unless I first obtain a written waiver or qualify for a regulatory exemption.”
But that “did not preclude other State Department officials from having contact with the Clinton Foundation staff,” just as they “are regularly in touch with a wide variety of outside individuals and organizations,” department spokeswoman Elizabeth Trudeau told reporters last week.
That’s where Abedin came in.
Abedin’s arrangement as a “special government employee” has been challenged since 2013 by Republican Senator Chuck Grassley of Iowa, who has questioned whether she was overpaid and wrote her that “you allegedly sent or received approximately 7,300 emails on your official Department of State address that involved Mr. Douglas Band,” the Bill Clinton aide and Clinton Foundation official who co-founded Teneo.
In a 2013 letter to State Department officials, Abedin said she left her full-time post because “the birth of my son in December 2011 led me to decide to spend the bulk of my time in New York City where my family lived.” She said she stayed on as an hourly employee working for “the Secretary of State in her personal capacity to help prepare for her transition from public service.”
Abedin wrote that she provided “strategic advice” to Teneo’s management team but never did “any work on Teneo’s behalf before the department” nor provided information from government sources to help its clients make investment decisions, as Republicans had suggested.
Abedin’s arrangement was questioned in a 2013 civil lawsuit by Judicial Watch, the conservative watchdog group, which pressed for documents under the Freedom of Information Act. After Clinton’s use of a private e-mail server when she was secretary of state became public, the group got the the case reopened and has been obtaining — and publicizing — a steady barrage of e-mails and deposition transcripts on the e-mail system and other topics.
Last week, Judicial Watch produced e-mails including a 2009 exchange in which Band wrote Abedin that it was “important to take care of” an individual, whose name was redacted. Abedin replied that “personnel has been sending him options.”
In another 2009 exchange, Band asked Abedin and Cheryl Mills, Clinton’s chief of staff, to put Lebanese-Nigerian billionaire Gilbert Chagoury in touch with a State Department "substance person" on Lebanon. The Chagoury Group co-founder has given between $1 million and $5 million to the Clinton Foundation, according to a list of donors posted online.
The debate over the Clinton Foundation simply shows “the way Washington works,” said Scott Amey, general counsel at the Project on Government Oversight.
“It’s instances like this that cause the public to have a negative view of how our government works, and it really gives people the impression that deals are done in back rooms and based on who you know rather than what you know,” Amey said in an interview.
While Abedin hasn’t said whether she’d return to Washington and the White House to serve again in a Clinton administration, the Clintons have acknowledged that they would have to forge a new relationship with the foundation they started. But they haven’t provided details.
- House Republicans Push Justice Department To Open Clinton Perjury Probe
Despite trustworthiness levels that would make Nixon blush, Hillary Clinton remains ahead in the polls and while we detailed the five potential scenarios that could crimp her lead, there is one word that looms large over her campaign: perjury. Just when you thought the whole lying-under-oath thing was yesterday's news, The Hill reports, leading House Republicans on Monday laid out detailed instructions for the Justice Department to file perjury charges against the Democratic presidential nominee.
Following news that the department would not indict Clinton, multiple Republicans noted apparent contradictions between what she said in public and what the FBI discovered to be true. In particular, The Hill notes that they pointed to statements that Clinton had made under oath before the Benghazi Committee last October.
For one, Clinton repeatedly claimed that none of the material she sent or received via her personal email account was marked as classified. The FBI later declared that at least three emails on her machine contained some classified markings, although they were incomplete and apparently done in error.
Additionally, Clinton previously claimed that her lawyers had gone through each of her emails individually; that all of her work-related emails were given back to the State Department in 2014; and that she used only one server throughout the course of her tenure as the nation’s top diplomat. Each of those points was proven incorrect, the GOP lawmakers claimed.
"The four pieces of sworn testimony by Secretary Clinton described herein are incompatible with the FBI’s findings," they wrote. "We hope this information is helpful to your office’s consideration of our referral."
And now, as The Hill details, more than a month after first requesting the department open a criminal probe into Clinton for alleged misstatements she made under oath, the GOP heads of the House Judiciary and Oversight committees told a federal prosecutor specifically where they believed Clinton had lied to Congress about her email setup at the Department of State.
In at least four separate occasions during a marathon appearance before the House Select Committee on Benghazi, the lawmakers alleged, the former secretary's claims were at odds with what the FBI has now discovered to be the truth about her private server.
"Although there may be other aspects of Secretary Clinton’s sworn testimony that are at odds with the FBI’s findings, her testimony in those four areas bears specific scrutiny in light of the facts and evidence” provided by FBI Director James Comey, Reps. Bob Goodlatte (R-Va.) and Jason Chaffetz (R-Utah) told the U.S. attorney for the District of Columbia, Channing Phillips. Goodlatte leads the Judiciary Committee and Chaffetz runs the Oversight Committee.
Monday’s letter is a sign that Republicans are committed to pressuring the Justice Department to act against Clinton, even after it notably declined to prosecute her for mishandling classified information.
The GOP chairmen also appear to be making a public case for an indictment, perhaps building off widespread unease with the decision not to prosecute the former first lady, as the Oversight Committee also released a 2.5-minute video detailing apparent inaccuracies in Clinton’s testimony…
- Is California Farmland Overvalued By $70 Billion?
Six years ago we wrote a post entitled "Is TIAA-CREF Investing In Farmland A Harbinger Of The Next Asset Bubble?" in which we predicted that "farms (or "real assets" as they are known in polite company) are about to become the next big bubble." Turns out we were right as Midwest farm prices are starting to crash (see our recent post "Farmland Bubble Bursts As Ag Credit Conditions Crumble").
But the Midwest is not the only place where farmland has bubbled over. California farmland has been bubbling up for years now with unplanted farm ground with "decent" access to water currently selling for $20,000 – $30,000 per acre. Land with mature almonds, California's cash crop, is more likely to trade at $30,000 – $40,000 per acre. This bubble, like so many others, has been caused in large part by institutional capital "reaching for yield" in a low interest rate environment…yet another Fed bubble lurking under the surface.
The plan was relatively simple, in the absence of attractive fixed income yields, large asset managers (like TIAA mentioned above with $850BN of AUM) decided to purchase hard assets like farmland instead. Farmland could then be planted with the highest value crop, which just happens to be almonds in California, to drive attractive ROICs on invested capital. A few simple charts illustrate perfectly how the story played out.
Per the chart below, planted almond acreage in California nearly doubled from 2003 – 2016…
Similarly, almond production doubled over the same time period while the industry worked to open up new markets in China and India to adsorb the excess supply.
And it all worked really well right up until China stopped buying and almond inventories skyrocketed…
…causing almond prices to crash…Turns out if you "grow it" they won't necessarily "buy it."
Now with almond prices at $2.50 per lbs, down from $5.00 per lbs in 2015, land owners are lucky if they're earning a 4% ROIC, down from 16%, on land they likely purchased for north of $35,000 per acre.
We don't know about you but we're not sure about underwriting California farmland to a 4% return particularly in light of that "minor" little drought issue they're facing. We would be looking for ROICs closer to 8% – 10%, at a bare minimum, which, at current almond prices, implies that acreage needs to come down around 45%-55% from the $35,000 per acre level.
But the story doesn't end with almond acreage which only represents about 1mm of the total 8mm acres of irrigated farmland in California (see data from the United States Department of Agriculture). So if we assume that California's 8mm acres are worth $25,000 per acre on average that implies roughly $200BN worth of farmland in total. Now, even if that number is only inflated by 35% (and not the more draconian 45%-55% we suggested above) it implies that farmland owners, many which are New York institutional buyers, in California alone are sitting on $70BN worth of losses.
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