- Democratic Leadership ADMITS that Clinton Lost the Election Because of Voters’ Economic Worries
Democratic Leadership ADMITS that Clinton Lost the Election Because of Voters’ Economic Worries
We’ve repeatedly said that Trump mainly won the election because voters thought that the status quo would hurt them economically.
Today, the Los Angeles Times reports that the Democratic leadership itself admits that the economy is the issue that sunk Clinton:
The Democratic leadership is admitting that it has to focus on changing its economic message.
Lambert Strether – who is extremely knowledgeable about political horseraces – adds additional evidence:
First, the swing from Obama to Trump was greater in counties that were economically stressed. FiveThirtyEight:
Instead, to understand what drove Trump’s victory, we can look at how Trump’s margin against Clinton in 2016 compared with Romney’s against President Obama in 2012. Sure enough, the swing toward Trump was much stronger in counties with a higher share of routine jobs; the swing toward Trump was also stronger where unemployment was higher, job growth was slower and earnings were lower. It is clear that the places that voted for Trump are under greater economic stress, and the places that swung most toward Trump are those where jobs are most under threat. Importantly, Trump’s appeal was strongest in places where people are most concerned about what the future will mean for their jobs, even if those aren’t the places where economic conditions are worst today.
Notice that job crapification (“routine jobs”) is part of economic stress.
Second, economic optimism among Black voters was much lower than in 2012. WaPo:
“Pre-election research showed that among African Americans, their feelings of economic optimism were precipitously lower in this election than in 2012,” said Geoff Garin, a pollster for Priorities USA who conducted this research independently of the super PAC. “And their feeling that Clinton’s economic policies would help people like them were substantially lower. “Those kinds of things affect people’s willingness to come out to vote.”
Third, primary counties with high Case-Deaton death rates voted for Trump. WaPo:
In every state except Massachusetts, the counties with high rates of white mortality were the same counties that turned out to vote for Trump.
We’re focusing on middle-aged whites because the data show that something has gone terribly wrong with their lives. In a study last year, economists Anne Case and Angus Deaton pointed out that mortality rates for this group have actually been increasing since the ’90s.
Economic struggles have likely contributed as well. Case and Deaton also found that the increase in the death rate has been driven by people with less education. For those without a college degree, the economy in recent decades has been increasingly miserable. This may explain why some have turned to self-destructive behaviors, such as drug and alcohol abuse.
The people I’ve been describing — this distressed, dying demographic slice of America — are similar to the people who tend to vote for Trump, according to phone and exit polls. Trump supporters are mostly white; skew older; and are less likely to have college degrees than other Republicans.
(“Less educated” is a proxy, for “working class.”)
Fourth, the swing from Obama to Trump was greater in counties that where housing costs were high. WaPo:
According to the analysis, respondents in hundreds of surveys were more likely to view Trump favorably if they lived in Zip codes with heavy mortgage-interest burdens relative to local incomes, after taking into account a range of socioeconomic factors.
Trump Won Among White Women, Among Women Without College Degrees, and Among Rural Women
Clinton supporters assumed that women would vote for her.
But the Guardian reports:
A majority of white women voted for Trump. And while Clinton did carry the female vote overall, her advantage among women was a percentage point less than Obama had enjoyed over Romney in 2012.
***
As John Cassidy points out in the New Yorker, not only did Trump carry white women, so did Romney in 2012, McCain in 2008 and Bush in 2004. Presumably, many white women have conservative views, whether on taxes or abortion, and neither Trump’s misogyny nor Clinton’s anatomy could override those commitments.
Trump also appealed to many women who feared downward mobility and poverty, winning a majority of women without college degrees, as well as rural women. He denounced the trade deals that they felt had wrecked their economies, and vowed to create jobs by rebuilding America’s decaying infrastructure. Meanwhile, Clinton partied with her funders in the Hamptons. She represented an out-of-touch elite, and many women felt that deeply and resented her – or simply didn’t care about her campaign.
Clinton also failed to excite some of the women who were part of the traditional Democratic base. She did win among poor women (those making under $50,000 a year), young women, Latinas and, overwhelmingly, black women. But turnout among some of these groups was disappointing. She won black women by two percentage points less than Obama did in 2012. And compared with Obama, her margin even among the much-vaunted Latina vote was about eight points lower.
Newsweek adds:
White women without college degrees [went] for him two to one.
Vanity Fair notes:
Even educated women white voters just barely leaned toward Clinton; 51 percent of white women with college degrees voted for her ….
Overall, a slim majority of women voters – 54% – went for Clinton.
And see this.
- World Suffers From Trump Shell Shock – Here's What Will Happen Next
Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
I’ve been saying this for a long time, and I’ll say it again here — in life there are only two kinds of people: those who know and those who don’t. Some might claim there is a third option: those who don’t want to know. In any case, if you want to be able to foresee geopolitical and social trends, you have to be one of the people who know.
Above all else, in order to know you must be willing to step outside of the confusion and theater of the circus and look at developments from above. If you are biased and retain too many sacred cows you will never understand how the world works. You will be too busy trying to reinforce your own fantasies to see anything else.
Beyond this, you must also understand that political and social developments are not random; they are either reactions to deliberate policies of special interests or they are driven by policies of special interests. Therefore, these developments are predictable and can be calculated (to a point).
I usually refer to these “special interests” as global elites, or globalists, because that is how they often refer to themselves. The point is, most of the events you see in the political world are engineered events designed to elicit a specific psychological response from you and the people around you. You are not a human being to these people; you are either an asset to be molded or an obstacle to be disposed of. This is how our world works. Period. And until we fully understand this and accept it, things will never change.
So, to be clear, if you understand the minds of globalists and understand what they want, you can understand the basic direction of the future.
It is this philosophy which has allowed me to consistently and accurately predict geopolitical and economic events that very few other people have been able to predict. For example, I correctly predicted the Federal Reserve taper of QE, I predicted the inclusion of China in the IMF’s Special Drawing Rights years in advance, I predicted the exact timing of the first Fed rate hike, I predicted the success of the Brexit referendum when most of the world and the liberty movement said it was never going to happen, I predicted that the Saudi 9/11 bill would pass, that Barack Obama would veto it and that congress would override his veto, I predicted that Hillary Clinton would be the Democratic candidate and that Donald Trump would be the Republican candidate for president of the U.S. and, for the past five months, I have been predicting that Donald Trump would win the 2016 election.
People can either attribute these series of successful predictions to pure “luck,” or they can consider the possibility that I know what I am talking about. I’ll leave that to them.
The real issue, though, is not that my predictions were correct. What is more important is WHY they were correct. To begin with, I am often correct because it is a fact that globalists influence events. Globalists are human (at least partially); thus, they are predictable, making events predictable. If you can see from the perspective of a globalist, you will know what they want and what they are likely to do to get it.
In a world without globalists I would have a hard time successfully predicting anything.
I never make a cold prediction without a concrete rationale for why I hold that view. I always break down the reasons and evidence that bring sense to them. Some analysts might be content to simply flip a coin and make a call without explanation; I am not.
As far as the Trump election win is concerned, this is what I said in June of this year:
“In light of the Brexit I’m going to have to call it here and now and predict that the most likely scenario for elections will be a Trump presidency. Trump has consistently warned of a recession during his campaign and with the Brexit dragging markets lower over the next few months, he will probably be proven “prophetic.”
… Even if Trump is a legitimate anti-establishment conservative, his entry into the Oval Office will seal the deal on the economic collapse, and will serve the globalists well. The international banks need only pull the plug on any remaining life support to the existing market system and allow it to fully implode, all while blaming Trump and his conservative supporters.
The mainstream media has been consistently comparing Trump supporters to Brexit supporters, and Trump himself has hitched his political wagon to the Brexit. This fits perfectly with the globalist narrative that populists and conservatives are killing the global economy and placing everyone at risk.”
All of my predictions are rooted in a particular premise; that the global elites have been, since 2008 at least, deliberately setting the stage for an evolving international financial crisis greater than any other seen in modern history. This crisis is a means to an end. Globalists use one strategy above all others to achieve their goals — the Hegelian Dialectic; problem, reaction, solution.
As I have documented for years, the elites openly call for the ultimate eradication of national sovereignty and the formation of a single world economy, a single world currency and, eventually, a single world government. In order to make this omelet, they intend to break a few eggs (and collapse a few economies). By blaming "national sovereignty" (and the people that defend it) for this crisis, they hope to convince the masses that the only practical solution is total centralization. You can read my in-depth analysis and evidence of this in my article “The Economic End Game Explained.”
I also specifically predicted the Brexit and the Trump win based on another premise; that the elites are allowing conservative movements to take political power in certain regions, only to remove stimulus support from the global economy afterward. That is to say, I successfully predicted the Brexit and the Trump win because I understand and accept the reality that conservatives and liberty activists are not “winning;” we are being set up as scapegoats for a financial crash that the globalists already created.
Again, people can either say I am lucky, or that there is something to my position, but the fact of the matter is I have been right and I will probably continue to be right. This brings us to what will happen going into 2017.
The election of Donald Trump signals a sea change in not only global politics, but more importantly, global economic stability and social developments. As frenetic and insane as 2016 has been, 2017 will be drastically more chaotic. Some of these changes will be obvious, some of them will once again only be visible to a handful of people in the world. Lets start first with my happier predictions…
The Death Of The Mainstream Media
This is an easy one. The mainstream media, with its insane regressive-progressives and elitist bias, misrepresented the “Alt-Right,” the Trump campaign and anti-social justice movements during the entirety of the election process. Not only this, but through Wikileaks the leftist media was made naked as numerous journalists and outlets were exposed; colluding directly with the DNC and the Hillary campaign to first bushwhack Bernie Sanders and then rig debates and polling numbers to show Clinton in a farcically superior position to Trump.
The mainstream media is now seen by the majority of Americans on the left and right as a lumbering rotting propaganda corpse that needs to be decapitated before it spreads its disease to anyone else. I predict MSM outlet readership and viewership (with the exception of FOX News) will collapse even further than it already has and that many outlets will be forced to consolidate until they fade out of existence.
As I have said for years, the mainstream media is dead, they just don’t know it yet. Well, after this election, everyone knows. The alternative media will take the place of the mainstream media. We will be adopting their viewership and growing explosively over the next year while they shrivel.
They decided that their job was not to report the facts, but to manipulate public opinion. They are liars and a disgrace to true journalism. Good riddance.
That said, some people will argue that my position that the elites wanted a Trump presidency is not tenable exactly because the liberal media worked so hard to rig public opinion against Trump. I will explain in my next article why these people are missing the bigger picture.
The Crippling Of Social Justice Warriors
The SJW cult is not dead, but it has been crippled. It is now a drooling bedridden quadriplegic eating its meals through a straw; a malfunctioning shell of a movement destined to be put out of its misery.
When I think of social justice warriors I think of the Island of Misfit Toys; nobody wants these people. They are a detriment to everything they touch, including the Democratic party. It was the zealotry of SJWs that caused conservatives to rally in anger around Trump. It was they that awakened the sleeping giant.
One reason I was so certain Clinton had set herself up for a loss was her insistence that the Democrats openly adopt these hell spawn and their ideology. By embracing politically correct rhetoric and accusing all opposition of being “deplorable” racists, sexists and homophobes, Clinton doomed her campaign from the very beginning. Anyone with any sense could see the massive tide against SJWs growing on the internet. In fact, I propose that the globalists, using the advanced web analytics at their disposal, saw it even before the rest of us did.
SJWs are a tiny minority in American society. Their only strategy has been to use Alinsky tactics to make their movement appear much larger than it really is. Through mutual aid and elitist supporters in popular media, SJWs presented a fabricated consensus. They made it seem as though they were the majority view and, thus, the "superior" view.
One fantastic result of the 2016 election has been the realization by conservatives that they are not isolated on the fringes of society. In fact, in America at least, we are a considerable force to be reckoned with. There is an old story of a Roman Senator 2,000 years ago who suggested the idea of forcing slaves to wear armbands to make them easily identifiable. Another senator admonished the notion, stating “No, if they realize how many of them there really are, they may revolt.”
This is what Election 2016 did for conservatives — we have seen that millions of us have arm bands, and we are now in revolt.
I rarely comment on race issues because I don’t really see race as very relevant in most cases; but it has been the tactic of social justice cultists to constantly and brutally target straight white males as the monsters of history and therefore responsible for the ills and failures of every minority group from today to eternity. At this point I think it is safe to say that we will NO LONGER sit idly by as whipping boys for sad, deluded people clamoring for victim group status.
The End Of Mainstream Polling
I was also confident in my prediction of a Trump win based on my knowledge of inconsistencies in modern polling methods. The fact of the matter is, polling suffers from the same lack of objectivity that any other “science” can at times suffer from — the results will always be vulnerable to influence from the observer. If the observer wants a particular outcome for the numbers, they will consciously or unconsciously rig their method to produce the desired result.
I saw this happen time and time again during the Brexit polls leading up to the referendum, and, as I stated many times before the U.S. election, the campaign polls seemed to be behaving the same way. This is how you get media sources like Reuters claiming a 90 percent chance of a win by Hillary Clinton just before the election. When pollsters weight their polls with far more democrats than republicans and when they poll the same groups repeatedly they are not going to get varied or honest data.
In the end, polls become propaganda tools rather than litmus tests. The mainstream has tried desperately to explain why their polls were so utterly wrong, but it is too late for them. After the Brexit and the U.S. election, no one is going to trust these numbers again.
Liberty Groups Will Get Some Breathing Room (For A Little While)
The steady drum beat of government antagonism for “patriot groups” is probably going to subside for a short time. I happen to know that many militia groups and preparedness networks are breathing a heavy sigh of relief today after eight years of a hostile Obama presidency, the IRS sniping at liberty organizations and individual activists based purely on political zealotry, the DHS profiling liberty activists as terrorists and the SPLC frothing at the mouth like rabid animals looking to use their ties to the feds as a means to sink their teeth into any conservatives with the guts to refuse participation in the mainstream narrative.
With conservatives launching into 2017 with complete control of government and a Trump mandate, it would seem that liberty groups have “won the fight” and have nothing to worry about.
That said, don’t get too comfortable, folks, because now we are going to discuss my negative predictions going into next year…
The Final Stage Of Economic Collapse
Economic collapse is a process, not a singular event; stock markets play only a minor part in this process. Most Americans’ only relation to the economy is through the daily rise and fall of the Dow Jones. If they see the Dow in the green, they go on with their day. If they see the Dow in the red, they stop and question what is happening. The election of Donald Trump has surprised many with a sudden rise, rather than fall, in stock markets. But, as I told my readers before the election, it would be wise to wait a couple of weeks before trying to analyze these markets because that is how long it will take just to absorb the election results.
I predict first that central banks around the globe will further cut stimulus measures and that the Fed is now guaranteed to raise interest rates, probably in December before Trump even enters the White House. I also believe that the process of initiating a market crisis will take approximately six months to become widely visible to the public. As a consequence of the Fed pulling the plug on markets, I predict Trump and the Fed will enter into open hostilities against each other, which will erode international faith in the U.S. dollar as the world reserve currency.
By extension, Trump’s presence in the White House will exacerbate already-existing tensions with Saudi Arabia. The Saudi 9/11 bill is just the beginning. As a result, I believe Saudi Arabia will dump the U.S. dollar as the petro-currency, influencing numerous other OPEC nations to do the same. I believe this will happen by early 2018.
In my view, for now, oil prices will be the best indicator for where stocks are headed in the next few months.
This is not something many Trump supporters want to hear. The response in the liberty movement to my prediction that the elites would allow Trump into office was rather predictable as well. In my article 'Why The U.S. Election Has The Entire World Confused' I stated:
“I have not taken this position just to be contrary. If I think about it honestly, my position is truly a losing position. If I am mistaken and Clinton wins on the 8th then I’ll probably never hear the end of it, but that’s a risk that has to be taken, because what I see here is a move on the chess board that others are not considering. If I’m wrong, then I’m wrong.
That said, if I am right, then I still lose, because Trump supporters and half the liberty movement will be so enraptured that they will probably ignore the greater issue — that Trump is the candidate the elites wanted all along.”
This seems to be the reaction from about half the liberty movement so far; a general blind faith and bias, clinging to the idea that the election (just like the Brexit) was a victory, and that conservatives had just won the culture war and defeated the globalists. It’s funny how it wasn’t much of a controversy when everyone thought I was wrong about Trump winning in the first place.
There are two primary arguments that come up with these people. First, that my view on the influence of the elites is “unrealistic” and that the elites would have to be “omnipotent” in order to succeed in directing the outcome of these events so effectively. I will address this argument in detail in my next article on the Trump presidency and what the consequences will be for us all if Trump turns out not to be a constitutionalist.
The second argument they present is that the elites “will never succeed” in blaming Trump and conservatives for an economic crisis that was decades in the making. To the people that embrace this argument I say — I understand mass psychology far better than you do.
The reality is, half of America is ALREADY primed to blame Trump for everything that happens over the next four years (if we even make it that long). Possession is nine-tenths of the law in the minds of many. Beyond that, every meme in the global media and on the left is promoting the idea that Trump is an apocalypse in the making. Even Germany’s 'Der Spiegal' published its after-election magazine with a cover depicting Trump’s head as a giant comet hurtling towards the Earth. Don’t tell me that Trump cannot be blamed for an economic crisis. Only a complete idiot would suggest that he is anything other than the perfect scapegoat.
At bottom, it does not matter whether people believe the above predictions or not. I have hundreds of emails from readers who called me a “tinfoil hatter” in the past and are now apologizing. So, if you plan to react in a knee-jerk fashion to the notion that Trump and conservatives are being set up by the elites for a final financial flagellation, be sure to write two letters — one for today saying I’ve lost touch, and the other for tomorrow when you find out I was right once again.
- Illinois Pension Funding Ratio Sinks To 37.6% As Unfunded Liabilities Surge To $130 Billion
As we’ve noted before, Defined Benefit Pension Plans are, almost by definition, a ponzi scheme. Current assets are used to pay current claims in full in spite of insufficient funding to pay future liabilities: classic Ponzi. But unlike wall street and corporate ponzi schemes no one goes to jail here because the establishment is complicit. Everyone from government officials to union bosses are incentivized to maintain the status quo – public employees get to sleep better at night thinking they have a “retirement plan,” public legislators get to be re-elected by union membership while pretending their states are solvent and union bosses get to keep their jobs while hiding the truth from employees.
That said, certain states are better at the ponzi game than others and the great state of Illinois, we must say, is one of the best. As we noted a few months ago, Illinois governor Bruce Rauner even admitted to being a willing participant in his state’s pension ponzi warning that should his largest public pension fund do what it should have done long ago, it would put a big dent in the state’s already fragile finances and lead to “crippling” pension payment hikes. But, if you ignore the problem then surely it will just go away…good plan.
And, while the pension ponzi can likely outlast Rauner’s term as governor, eventually funding for current claims can only be borrowed from future generations for so long before finally running out of cash. As the latest “Special Pension Briefing” report from Illinois’ Commission on Government Forecasting and Accountability (CGFA) points out, that time may be getting very near.
Per the latest actuarial valuations, the 5 largest publicly-funded Illinois pensions are now $130BN underwater and only 37.6% funded.
As a guide, here is a recap of the acronyms used by CGFA:
TRS = Teachers’ Retirement System
SERS = The State Employees’ Retirement System
SURS = State Universities Retirement System
GARS = General Assembly Retirement System
JRS = Judges’ Retirement System
Illinois’ unfunded liabilities really started to surge in 2008 due a combination of lower returns on assets and lower corporate bond yields which drive down discount rates used by actuaries resulting in substantial increases in the present value of liability streams. As we’ve pointed out in the past, given the long duration of pension liabilities, even small swings in discounts can have a material impact on underfunding levels.
Meanwhile, even though Illinois has taken the prudent step of reducing their assumed returns on assets…
…they apparently didn’t reduce them enough as only 1 of the 5 largest pension funds managed to actually generate a positive return in FY 2016. That said, we’re sure a lot of hedge funds were still able to collect very nice fees for generating these negative returns.
But, don’t worry, there is hope for Illinois pensioners yet. As CGFA points out, all the state has to do is funnel $10-$20 billion of taxpayer money into these pension funds each year and earn a consistent 7% annual return on assets and in a matter of just 28 years the funds should be 90% funded! That seems like a very reasonable plan.
But don’t worry teachers of Illinois, just keep electing politicians who tell you that everything is fine and we’re sure this problem will just go away.
- Will Donald Trump End The American Unipolar Moment?
Submitted by Federico Pieraccini via Strategic-Culture.org,
We are facing an unprecedented breakthrough: a global change that potentially could definitively overwhelm the unipolar world order created after the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and sent into overdrive by the 9/11 so-called War on Terror. The victory of Donald Trump is the most emblematic representation of a total repudiation by the American population of the so-called establishment and its interests.
The American elections have ended with an unexpected verdict that has confounded all forecasts. Trump won the election in the United States, home and capital of the western system, redefining the logic by which a President is normally elected. Largely for this reason, it is an extraordinarily important victory. All the apparatus of American power, such as the media, politicians, experts and intellectuals, were not enough to stop the people from expressing a vote that is more of an explicit protest.
The victory of Trump also spells the end of the Bush and Clinton dynasties, as well as the unexpected conclusion of Obama's mandate, the betrayal of which is the biggest in US history. Elected to solve problems such as inequality, racial divisions, poverty and social injustice, he failed on all fronts, becoming one of the major causes of a dissenting vote in favor of Trump. Barack Obama has ironically been one of Donald Trump’s biggest sponsors. Obama’s voters in 2008 and 2012 were not deceived by Clinton’s promises, and after voting for Sanders as a last hope, they preferred to stay home or even vote for Trump as an ultimate expression of contempt for the status quo represented by Democrats, Republicans, and by the Washington establishment. Above all, it represented the victory and the will of the working class, tired of their economic condition worsening over more than three decades.
The victory of Brexit in England, Duterte in the Philippines, the 2013 Five Star movement in Italy, the phenomena of Le Pen in France, Syriza in Greece, and the continuously rejected European treaties — all these are part of the same theme connecting different voting issues. The continuous rejection of the idea of globalization and globalism has occupied the majority of the people. Identified as the great evil, it is considered the main cause for the continuing need for governments to subordinate national interests for international interests. This inevitably leads to a deadly embrace with an international model based on Wall Street finance, the main cause of the 2008 financial crisis, compounded by American wars around the world, a source of insecurity and prolonged terrorism.
The root of this pushback is the concept of multipolarity. In a unipolar model, power and the money is concentrated in the hands of a tiny percentage, producing an imbalance of wellbeing that is the base of common frustration of Western citizens. The success of the multipolar model derives primarily from the ability to choose without without facing unilateral imposition. Whether it is leaving the EU or the victory of a candidate not linked to the political establishment, multipolarity is the most effective way to respect the popular will, a huge difference when compared to unipolarity, where people are left with no alternative. We have been transitioning for nearly a decade into the digital domain, a world where an infinite range of options is available to achieve one’s objectives.
In the real world, the unipolar approach is outmoded and inadequate, creating the need for any alternative proposal, whether it be Trump or Brexit. We cannot otherwise explain why in recent years anyone who proposes an anti-establishment model in Europe or in the United States is considered a credible alternative. It is not the message one conveys that is important, it is simply enough to be something different from the status quo, simply an alternative.
The power of finance has devoured the few rights left for people, giving priority to interests whose greed is insatiable and has led many Western nations to the brink of collapse in the financial crisis of 2008. Since then, nearly 10 years later, nothing has changed, and people’s economic well-being has declined alarmingly, reaching unprecedented levels. The promises made by politicians after the 2008 crisis have been broken, and the middle class and poor have continued to pay for it all, generating a level of frustration that is expressed at the ballot boxes, with votes for Brexit or for Trump in the United States.
In addition to the economic situation, numerous wars have succeeded in antagonising Americans, with costs nearing six trillion dollars serving to further erode the confidence of the average voter in the Washington establishment. While the average American voter does not care about the foreign policy of their country, if the results are an increase in terrorism, a decrease in domestic investment, creating a general feeling of helplessness, then US foreign policy becomes something harmful, unnecessary or even counterproductive to the American voter.
It is amazing to see how in the most recent US elections all these considerations have become central in Trump’s arguments. For the first time in US history the media and establishment’s one-sided narrative has been broken. What has been shown is that a presidential campaign can be ran independently of the Democrats or Republicans on issues revolving around Wall Street, the Washington Consensus, exporting democracy, and the defamation of geopolitical opponents. For the first time, the vision of a unipolar American hegemony has been defeated by a multipolar vision of reality, a vision that simply places an alternative to the status quo of the past 25 years. The people were offered, first in the Republican primaries and then the election, the opportunity to express a vote that seemed more a referendum with a question that essentially amounted to: “Are you happy with your current condition?” The answer was a huge middle finger to the establishment expressed through the Trump vote.
Clinton, being a product of the establishment and representing the status quo, did not offer what the majority of Americans wanted, namely a break with the elites. Even if unconsciously, the majority of Americans rejected in their vote the unipolar economic, financial and military model, giving the rest of the world an unexpected hope for change.
The United States woke up the day after the elections with a more divided country than ever before, a reflection of a broader division that runs through the West. These are the consequences of a changing world that is drifting away from a unipolar vision with its one financial, economic and military system represented by Washington and Brussels. Back on the old continent, growing nationalist sentiment, the rejection of European institutions and the Brexit vote should have rang alarm bells for the elite some time ago. The US elections have confirmed that the globalist establishment both in Europe and America are living in their own world. They are completely detached from normal people, and the system they relied upon to influence and manipulate, with the hope of extending the unipolar domain (economic, military and financial), is no longer effective.
While globalization has brought wealth to the elite, it has also allowed the spread of the Internet, which is becoming more and more effective as a mass-communication tool. The concept of multipolarity is intrinsic to the Internet: everyone can open their own blog, write there own opinion, and spread it to millions of people, influencing the overall narrative. The alternative information, when printed on paper, was reserved for a niche of the population. Now such diffusion of information has become mainstream, relegating the corporate media to an increasingly narrow segment of the population. Compared to 30 years ago, the Internet has reversed the paradigm. Think of yourself: you read this analysis with, I hope, a sense of trust and belief that this information cannot be obtained from CNN, Fox News or the BBC. This is the true and genuine revolution. Trump has been able to interpret these feelings in a masterly manner, collecting all the major frustrations of the American people towards the elite, and making them his own. He has combined his personal passion into an impossible challenge, providing the desperate needs of the people with a voice “at the top” that will scream and yell on their behalf. The anger and the political incorrectness of Trump have been interpreted in a positive way by voters, almost like a concrete gesture of dissatisfaction with the elites of Wall Street, Washington and the giant American corporations.
Trump represents the first step, after Brexit, of the West recognizing a reality that is already multipolar. The American model based on the dollar is in trouble as a result of international institutions related to BRICS. The AIIB created by Beijing, and the IMF’s moves to include the yuan in an international basket, are another indicator. Countries not aligned with US desires, such as China, Russia and Iran, have been joining forces over the last few years to build an alternative economic and financial system to that of the dollar and federal reserve, undermining the US hegemony that is guaranteed by the petrodollar. In the military sphere, NATO is no longer the only global power, and the current situation in the Middle East is a reflection of this. The involvement of Moscow and the alliance with Iran have for the first time prevented the complete destruction of a country like Syria, providing an alternative ending to that experienced by Iraq in 2003. All signs are that America's unipolar moment is gone forever.
The last blow was the political change following the economic and military ones; first in Europe, with the decreasing popularity of politicians, an anti-establishment expression; then with the exit of Britain from Europe; and finally with Trump’s victory in the United States.
From the point of view of national and international policies, Trump’s triumph is yet to be tested and confirmed. As a result, the international balance could yet remain intact. The world is at its biggest crossroad in modern history. The election in the United States, caused by a spreading multipolar contagion, will eventually affect and change forever the international relations of Brussels and Washington. While the rest of the world is already fully part of this epoch-making revolution, the elites of Europe and the US continue to show that they want to fight to the end to reject the new advancing world order.
The American and European oligarchy is faced with a choice: either declare war on everyone and everything, including their own people, or embrace this global shift and try and carve out their own space within it. The challenge is to recognize and accept not being in absolute control of the levers of power but now having to share power with other centers of power like Moscow, Beijing and Tehran. It is a difficult task but certainly not impossible.
Trump offers the possibility of real change in international relations, and the words expressed by leaders like Xi and Putin are the first signs of a real attempt to change 20 years of impositions from Washington’s unipolar domination over the rest of the planet.
On November 9, 2016, much of the world's population, ideally, has united in one voice and with all its energy declared aloud to Washington and to all the systems of power that have made our planet insecure and an economic disaster that enough is enough!
After Brexit and the victory of Trump, the Euro-American elites are faced with a choice that will shape the coming decades: either accept the coming multipolarity and decide to work together with other nations of the world, or descend into prolonged conflict. No one can rule out an attempt to sabotage Brexit or the assassination of Trump, especially if he decides to fulfil his promises. But one thing is certain: they will never be able to stop the progress of these inevitable changes.
If there is something clear from Trump’s victory, it is how an important part of Europe and America’s population has forever broken out of the isolation bubble where it was confined by the elite. They have understood that what has been told to them for decades is false, biased and completely against their interests. The world has changed forever, and there is nothing that the promoters of globalism can do to prevent it.
- Yen Tumbles After Kuroda Admits Lost Control Of JGB Market
We warned last night that the runaway yields on Japanese Government Bonds were a worrisome signal that the Bank of Japan had lost control (as short-dated yields rose above target and 10Y broke above policy 0.00% levels). Sure enough, it appears Kuroda hit the panic button tonight as it announced it first ficed-rate unlimited bond purchase operation.
Simply put this is a government guarantee to bid on any and all offers for short-dated bonds at their mandated yield level until the selling abates.
Yen tumbled..
And bond yields obeyed – dropping back to BOJ policy levels for now…
As Bloomberg reporets, the central bank said on Thursday in statements it will carry out two operations, one to buy securities maturing in one to three years, and another for debt of three to five years maturity.
A selloff in Japanese bonds had threatened to test Governor Haruhiko Kuroda’s determination to keep yields stable with unlimited debt purchases — a weapon he had so far kept in reserve. He had said in September that the bank would hold unlimited purchases as needed, setting a fixed rate, in order to control yields.
Ten-year sovereign yields turned positive this week for the first time since Sept. 21, when the Bank of Japan announced a shift in policy aimed at pegging them near zero percent. Kuroda added the option of holding purchase operations at fixed rates with no set amount to his toolkit following that decision.
“The market is testing the BOJ’s tolerance for higher yields, but the BOJ may actually challenge the market back by letting yields rise,” Jun Fukashiro, a senior fund manager in Tokyo at Sumitomo Mitsui Asset Management, said earlier. “The reason the BOJ can allow a rise in yields above zero is that, when it needs to, it has the weapons to stop it.”
- Dollar Illiquidity Getting Critical: A $10 Trillion Short Which The Fed Does Not Understand
In the latest report from ADM ISI’s strategy team, “Dollar Liquidity Threat is Getting Critical and Fed is M.I.A.”, Paul Mylchreest argues that mainstream economic luminaries (like Carmen Reinhart) are finally acknowledging the evolving crisis due to the dollar shortage outside the US, a topic which even the head researcher at the BIS shone a spotlight on yesterday suggesting that the strength of the dollar, not the VIX is the new “fear indicator”.
The bitter irony is that the institution which appears to have very little understanding of what’s actually happening is the Federal Reserve. We noted Stanley Fischer’s speech yesterday when he argued that liquidity is “adequate”…. at least he didn’t say “contained.”
Yet Dollar illiquidity has been one thing that central banks can’t control…think SNB and Swiss Franc, BoJ and Yen (full report on this below) and now the PBoC as the RMB looks at 6.90. Mylchreest points out that Fischer could take a look at dollar cross currency basis swaps (chart below) and the dollar liquidity problem would be immediately obvious.
Fischer could take a look at dollar cross currency basis swaps (chart below) and the dollar liquidity problem would be immediately obvious.
While everybody is now waiting for the Fed to wake up, here at ZH we have been tracking the issue of a global dollar shortage well ahead of the mainstream, starting back in 2009 and continuing with “The Global Dollar Funding Shortage Is Back With A Vengeance And ‘This Time It’s Different” in March 2015 and “Global Dollar Shortage Intensifies To Worst Level Since 2012” in October 2015.
If the dollar continues to strengthen, it will spell trouble for the recently adopted market narrative that Trump brings higher inflation and higher rates. Another major rotation and market reversals are the last thing that active managers need, or can can afford, in the run up to year end.
From the first section of the report:
We know the narrative…Trump equals higher inflation, a tailwind for commodities and a headwind for bonds. We are “Endgame Inflationistas”, but declining US dollar liquidity threatens this narrative near-term.
Dollar illiquidity is something that even central banks struggle to control, e.g. Swiss Franc peg, BoJ losing control of the Yen and now the PBoC/RMB.
The price of the dollar acts like a “Global Fed Funds Rate”. A rising dollar tightens economic conditions globally, adding considerable deflationary pressure as is clear from the chart below.
Most commentators are not making the link between a rising dollar and a shortage of offshore dollars (Eurodollars). China’s financial system is vulnerable and it’s being reflected in RMB weakness.
The lack of a dollar swap between the Fed/PBoC is a glaring omission. We expect BRICS nations to become increasingly irritated about the current dollar-based system.
In his recent speech, “Is There a Liquidity Problem Post-Crisis?”, Fed Vice Chairman, Stanley Fischer, concluded that liquidity is adequate. Sadly, that is incorrect and a glance at the chart (below) of negative Cross Currency Basis Swaps for dollar funding illustrates the error all too easily. A US$10 trillion Eurodollar short is a more dangerous and risky beast if the Fed doesn’t understand it!
The table below shows the Cross Currency Basis Swap (CCBS) for US dollars using the average for Euros, Yen, British Pounds, Swiss Francs and Canadian Dollars. We discuss the CCBS in more detail below but, in essence, it is the additional cost of borrowing dollars via FX swaps in these currencies compared with what it should be according to interest rate differentials. The more negative the CCBS the more it implies a structural dollar shortage and a liquidity problem in dollar funding markets.
While the problem has been building for more than 2 years, mainstream economic luminaries are (belatedly) starting to take notice. This was Harvard’s Carmen Reinhart last month.
“Today, seven decades later, despite the broad global trend toward more flexibility in exchange-rate policy and freer movement of capital across national borders, a ‘dollar shortage’ has reemerged.”
* * *
Much more in the full report below.
- Mike Krieger Rages At The 'Fake News' Debacle: "It's An All Out Media War"
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Before I get into the meat of this article, I want to remind you of a few paragraphs I wrote back in the August post, Questioning Hillary’s Health is Not Conspiracy Theory:
As I look at the landscape in 2016 to-date, I observe emergent signs that alternative media is finally beginning to take over from the legacy mainstream media when it comes to impact and influence. The mainstream media (unlike with John McCain in 2008), had decided that Hillary Clinton’s health was not an issue and chose not to pursue it. Many in the alternative media world took a different position, and due to mainstream media’s failure to inform the American public for decades, the alternative media drove that issue to the top of the news cycle. That’s power.
This is an incredibly big deal, and the mainstream media intuitively knows what it means. It means a total loss of legitimately, prestige and power. All of which is well deserved of course.
So here’s the bottom line. 2016 represents the true beginning of what I would call the Media Wars. Alternative media is now capable of driving the news cycle. Mainstream media now has no choice but to fight back, and fight back it will. It will fight back dirty. This is going to get very ugly, but by the time the dust has settled, I think much of the mainstream media will be left as a shell of its former self.
With Hillary’s loss, the mainstream media and its distressed and discredited allies are in a panic like we have never seen before. They understand that alternative voices now influence the public as much, if not more so, than the mainstream press, and they are now out to destroy those voices. The way they are going about this is by placing anti-establishment voices under the blanket umbrella of “fake news,” or in the case of Twitter, they just seem to purge people they don’t like from the platform altogether.
The gloves are now completely off following the publication, and wide distribution by legacy media, of a list compiled by Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication at Merrimack College in Massachusetts, of “False, misleading, clickbait-y and satirical ‘news’ sources.” What you’ll find, is that some of your favorite websites, including Zerohedge are represented in this ridiculous list.
What do almost all of these sites have in common? They published a lot of anti-Hillary Clinton articles over the course of the election, which collectively helped to swing the contest for Trump. That’s the real transgression committed by these websites.
Interestingly, I didn’t see Slate on this list despite publishing one of the most blatant pieces of fake, pro-Hillary news propaganda of the year just a few days before the election with the following, quickly debunked, monstrosity:
Even Snopes rapidly dismissed the claim, yet Slate is nowhere to be seen on the “fake news” list. If you are pro-Hillary, you apparently cannot be “fake, misleading, or clickbait-y.”
This whole story hits close to home for me. Zerohedge has been publishing my writing since 2010, years before I had my own website. It has been instrumental in providing an outlet for my own voice, as well as countless others, when legacy media never would. As such, I reached out to Zerohedge for a comment. Here is what they said:
It’s funny and sad at the same time – have they done any actual rigorous analysis on what they determine to be “fake” news, or perhaps the assumption is that the public should just take their word again… like when the NYT assured its readers that Hillary Clinton had a 90% chance of winning? When it comes to “fake vs fact” on Zero Hedge, we have a simple solution: we source everything, and all the data can be replicated by anyone.
Ultimately this push will likely boost traffic to the “fake” websites – something the “credible” legacy media, which just had its worst year ever, desperately needs.
But what is more troubling is that this sets the framework for “banned media”, especially when one considers it was the outspoken “liberal” voices within the 4thestate who were in arms that Trump would unleash precisely this kind of media witch hunt. Apparently the objective media does not need a president to prompt it to start its own book burning project.
Moving along, who cares that some assistant professor made a list of sites she doesn’t like and warns people about them? Why should we pay attention?
We should care because it is being promoted heavily by the mainstream media. For example, look at how a writer at New York Magazine promoted the list (seems kinda “clickbait-y” doesn’t it):
This is as close as you can get to a publication totally endorsing the list. Moreover, the story is currently the #1 most read article on New York Magazine’s website today.
Naturally, New York Magazine would never resort to the sort of “clickbait-y” tactics perpetrated by these so-called fake news sites. Perhaps I was hallucinating when I saw its recent cover photo:
Then when you actually click through to the cover story, the following image pops out at you:
This, you see, is what real news looks like.
It’s not just New York Magazine either. The Los Angeles Times today published an article titled, Want to Keep Fake News Out of Your Newsfeed? College Professor Creates List of Sites to Avoid. Here’s how it begins:
During the election, many people fell prey to fake news stories on social media — even the president-elect ended up retweeting fake statistics. A professor of communication has created a list of unreliable news sites to help people do better.
Melissa Zimdars, an assistant professor of communication at Merrimack College in Massachusetts, put together a publicly available Google doc cataloging “False, misleading, clickbait-y and satirical ‘news’ sources.” It’s been making the rounds on social media as people seek to cleanse their newsfeeds of misinformation.
The article then ends with the following:
Both Facebook and Google have recently announced they will take steps to block fake news sites from accessing their advertising services.
One has to wonder what sort of criteria Facebook and Google will be using in its determination of “fake news.” If it ends up with anything resembling the above list, we should all be very concerned.
It’s not as if these mainstream media outlets are promoting this list to sow doubts in the sites’ already existing readers; rather, the intent is to keep their own readers away. It’s a nefarious attempt at preventing current readership from being open to alternative information, and we should all hope it backfires spectacularly.
Of course, this is just one battle in the status quo’s attempt to silence alternative voices. Twitter is on its own mission following Hillary Clinton’s election loss. As USA Today reported this morning in its post, Twitter Suspends Alt-Right Accounts:
SAN FRANCISCO — Twitter suspended a number of accounts associated with the alt-right movement, the same day the social media service said it would crack down on hate speech.
Among those suspended was Richard Spencer, who runs an alt-right think tank and had a verified account on Twitter.
The alt-right, a loosely organized group that espouses white nationalism, emerged as a counterpoint to mainstream conservatism and has flourished online. Spencer has said he wants blacks, Asians, Hispanics and Jews removed from the U.S.
Heidi Beirich, spokeswoman for the Southern Poverty Law Center, told USA TODAY that the center had asked Twitter to remove more than 100 accounts of white supremacists who violated Twitter’s terms of service. She also pointed to two alt-right accounts that had been verified by Twitter, including Spencer’s.
This Spencer character doesn’t appear to be a particularly nice guy, and Twitter can do whatever it wants, but what concerns me is the overall trend. Namely, how information gatekeepers are suddenly panicking to demonize or ban alternative voices following Trump’s election victory.
The message here is simple: It’s Game On. The legacy media has taken the gloves off entirely and we are now engaged in all out media war.
* * *
For prior articles on the topic, see:
Obama Enters the Media Wars – Why His Recent Attack on Free Speech is So Dangerous and Radical
Hillary Clinton Enters the Media Wars
- Trump Brings America Together – Everyone (Dems & Reps) Agrees On One Thing Post-Election
Watching TV these days, or reading any media, one could easily be forgiven for thinking Democrats and Republicans incapable of agreeing on anything as months of divisive programming have embedded record levels of cognitive dissonance.
So imagine our glee when we glanced at Gallup’s latest economic confidence survey.
First, Americans are now overwhelmingly more confident in the economy since before the election, moving from a slightly negative evaluation (-10) to a slightly positive one (+3). Gallup’s U.S. Economic Confidence Index had been consistently negative throughout the year leading up to the election.
And Second, Democrats and Republicans are in almost perfect agreement on whether the economy is getting better or worse (around 44-49% of them).
Of course, as the chart above shows, this ‘coming together’ of opinion still shows dramatic bias:
After Trump won last week’s election, Republicans and Republican-leaning independents now have a much more optimistic view of the U.S. economy’s outlook than they did before the election. Just 16% of Republicans said the economy was getting better in the week before the election, while 81% said it was getting worse. Since the election, 49% say it is getting better and 44% worse.
Conversely, Democrats and Democratic-leaning independents’ confidence in the economy plummeted after the election. Before the election, 61% of Democrats said the economy was getting better and 35% worse. Now, Democrats are evenly divided, with 46% saying it is getting better and 47% saying it is getting worse.
The bottom line is – for now – that the election of Trump has transformed the way Republicans and Democrats view the economy, particularly in their assessments of whether it is getting better or worse. However, it’s too early to say whether these are sustainable gains in confidence.
- Two-Thirds Of Workers In Developing Nations To Be Replaced by Robots, Report Warns
Submitted by Jake Andersen via TheAntiMedia.org,
An alarming new report from the United Nations is the latest in a litany of studies suggesting that the coming age of automation and workforces dominated by robots will be upon us much faster than previously thought. The U.N. now claims two-thirds of the human labor force in developing nations will be replaced by automation.
The U.N. says a Universal Basic Income will be necessary as a stop-gap for the 75% of humans left without work.
Anti-Media previously reported on predictions that half the American workforce could be replaced by automation within the next two decades. Another report’s statistics suggested automated software could fleece 1.7 million truckers of their jobs within a decade.
The U.N.’s UNCTAD report notes that taken on a global scale, we’re seeing“premature deindustrialization.”
“The increased use of robots in developed countries risks eroding the traditional labor-cost advantage of developing countries,” the report explains.
A disturbing additional report from the World Bank observes:
“The share of occupations that could experience significant automation is actually higher in developing countries than in more advanced ones, where many of these jobs have already disappeared.”
Developing countries are advised to react to new ‘disruptive technologies’ by embracing radical digital technology and “supportive macroeconomic, industrial and social policies.”
A larger looming question concerns how people will react to such job losses. How will the 1.7 million truckers who are primed to lose their jobs to automation take this? Transhumanist candidate Zoltan Istvan warned it wouldn’t be a pretty sight and that in fact, it could lead to violent uprisings, which is why Istvan supports a UBI.
As Anti-Media previously reported:
“Zoltan says the coming age of robots replacing humans in the workforce could be a net positive, allowing humans explore education and leisure in a way previous generations couldn’t have imagined. He advocates for a Universal Basic Income and a federally-provided social safety net that would reduce the chances of chaos and rioting when the robot economy goes into full swing.”
But this vision of a future transhumanist utopia smacks of American and Western exceptionalism.
People in developing countries may not have a Universal Basic Income available to them, and even if they do, their general impoverished living conditions and anemic social infrastructure may eclipse opportunities for leisure and entrepreneurship.
These are questions that will be asked with increasing frequency in the next 10 years. The age of automation threatens the very nature of human labor and may require us to reimagine the role of the human being within post-industrial societies.
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