Nov 18

Today’s News 18th November 2016

  • Welcome To The Brave New (Trumpolitical/Trumponomic) World

    Authord by Pepe Escobar, originally posted op-ed via Strategic-Culture.org,

    This does not mean that the Soros regime change racket and its multiple tentacles, in parallel to the Clinton machine-dominated DNC, will quit. Plan A – Maidan in the USA – is not exactly a winner among the masses. Thus Plan B – long-term harassment – was decided this past weekend at a summit in a Washington hotel.

    The endless snowflake whining – we lost the presidential election because of «rogue» FBI, WikiLeaks, the Russians, etc. – was predictable. Yet among the corrupt-to-the-core DNC it seems like no apparatchik has ever read Guy Debord’s Society of the Spectacle. Or is familiar with how showbiz – and talk radio – works.

    Paris is arguably the world capital of critical thinking. Perplexed Parisian intellectual circles at least have found out that the current pan-Western crisis is not only about economics, politics, finance, security and immigration; it’s about «political discourse» itself.

    The easy chic café diagnostic is that Trump’s victory is the symptom of language distorting reality by playing to emotions. It’s true that complex rational discourse does not deliver anymore. The masses don’t read 3,000-word essays; this is for the elites and self-described «experts». But they do respond to outrageous tweets. More than ever, perception is indeed reality.

    Thus the amalgam between Trump and the Front National (FN) in France, led by Marine Le Pen, also a master communicator capable of turning primary emotions into political reality. No wonder «white supremacist» Breitbart News – Trump’s informal Ministry of Information – will increase its exposure in France and support Le Pen.

    What the Paris debate gets right is that nationalist isolationism across the West – using amalgam and clever terminological shortcuts – has become a credible solution to «cure» national identity. Thus the appeal of ditching the EU, among countless Europeans, as a credible alternative against unemployment, as well as a means of increasing security. It’s a Trump Remixed syndrome; barbed wire (metaphorical and otherwise) as a possible choice for re-launching economic growth.

    With Trump’s victory being analyzed as the defeat of political discourse, or the victory of the controversial word, what the Paris debate gets totally wrong is promoting lofty exhortations to «reconcile oneself with complexity» as the only solution. The challenge is actually how to do nuance and complexity in only a few words at a time.

    Words, words, words

    What sophisticated intellectual analyses don't get is that Team Trump strategized a running reality show showcasing – what else – a brand. Dialogue was kept to a – tweet – minimum. Trump himself unveiled it; «These are just words». The Clinton (cash) machine fell into the trap and took these words literally. These were in fact metaphors – understandable by a fourth grader and delivered by a «man boy» impersonating a fourth grader,

    In his CBS interview this past Sunday, Trump admitted the obvious; he won because of the power of social networks, despite the Clinton cash machine spending «much more money than I did». Trump has over 28 million followers combined on Twitter, Facebook and Instagram. This supposedly «hidden minority» dribbled any poll modeling available. And outside the Beltway and Hollywood, they were everywhere.

    Trump perfected the art of simplified political discourse cutting off the middlemen – while reducing corporate/mainstream media, in the process, to no more than a pathetic footnote. The New York Times – «all the news that are irrelevant to print»? – has been a sorry show in itself, promising on the record to «report world news more accurately».

    It’s not that Trump, on the record, had not sent a warning; «I’m very highly educated. I know words. I have the best words». And he knows how to get maximum effect out of minimum (word) investment. Mega-investor Peter Thiel totally got it, telling the National Press Club in Washington how «the media is always taking Trump literally».

    Thiel stressed, shortly before the election, that «a lot of voters who vote for Trump take Trump seriously but not literally, so when they hear things like the Muslim comment or the wall comment, their question is not, ‘Are you going to build a wall like the Great Wall of China?’ or, you know, ‘How exactly are you going to enforce these tests?’ What they hear is we’re going to have a saner, more sensible immigration policy».

    So what if Trump was killing syntax via his loud and inarticulate outbursts? The meaning was always clear. The pile up of exploding rhetorical devices was always targeted at tapping into raw emotion. Thus the avalanche of «us and them»; «yuuuuge» superlatives («amazing», «tremendous potential», «wonderful»); all kinds of hyperbole; non-stop repetition; calculated stutter enhancing his trademark «improvised» delivery; and a sea of euphemisms («grabbing women by the pussy?» Nah; just plain old «locker room talk»).

    Snowflakes meanwhile were endlessly re-comforted by their standard interpretation of Trump as a con artist invented by mass media who first excelled on reality TV and then turned politics into a circus. They did not see him capitalizing on his monster advertising dollars/ratings pulling power; they did not see that the more (hated) corporate media attacked him, the better he looked for the «invisible minority»; and they did not see how the Trumpian brand of «magic realism» played all kinds of tricks with «reality».

    Social Darwinism run amok

    Zygmunt Bauman, the foremost conceptualizer of liquid modernity – and a huge influence in my 2007 book Globalistan – correctly observed how Trump has offered a unique, once in a lifetime occasion for a condemnation, without appeal, of the whole political system.

    Bauman’s on to something when he notes how traditional mechanisms such as the Montesquieu-style division of power between Executive, Legislative and Judiciary, as well as the Anglo-Saxon checks and balances, may be increasingly deprived of meaning to the benefit of an agglutination of power in authoritarian mode.

    Bauman perfectly understood how Trump married identity politics to economic angst – condensing all aspects of the existential angst consuming what’s left of the working class and the middle class. Thus the success of the lightning fast solution – the expulsion of the ethnically diverse.

    The US electorate that bothered to vote – very important; 43 percent did not – may have bought, according to Bauman, a strongman not as poison but as antidote; a «doer» capable of deploying instantaneous solutions with immediate effects. If and how he will be able to deliver is another story.

    What’s certain is that the seesaw across the West between conservatives and social democracy is not a see saw anymore. When in power, everyone was just reproducing slight variations of neoliberalism.

    Yet as we have now seen, liberalism has been dealt a serious body blow – even as the so-called progressive Left has utterly failed to «sell» to the masses a serious, history-based critique of neoliberalism.

    Meanwhile, civil war – national and global – is now raw, everywhere; social Darwinism run amok. We have an Atlanticist Wall – from Brexit to the Rio Grande – in the process of being erected against the Global South. We have the Declining White Man against minorities that in many cases have become majorities. We have Western elites pitted against «Islam» – an absurdity, because the real enemy is Salafi-jihadism, a derivation of Wahhabism. And ultimately, we have The Ultimate Predator – Man – relentlessly decimating Nature.

    In a Gramsci sense, the old order has completely collapsed, but the new order has not yet been born. It might be a new order based on the BRICS – mostly Russia, India and China. The progressive Left must find the conceptual road map to be part of it – and influence it.

    Meanwhile, we will be living among the myriad debris originated by the Trumpolitics IED. America invented the politically correct. Trump bombed politically correct. America is proud of corporate media. Trump bombed corporate media. These are already two important victories.

    Trump launched an IPO over the White House. Now he’s the CEO. If – and that’s a mighty if – he manages to run it like a sound business, that’s bound to be a good deal not only for the US but to the whole planet.

  • Constitutional Law Experts Confirm Trump's "Muslim Registry" Not Illegal

    Despite post-election threats that if the president-elect attempts "to implement his unconstitutional campaign promises, we’ll see him in court," Politico reports that three constitutional lawyers say the ACLU won’t have much of a shot before a judge. The Supreme Court has "consistently reaffirmed the power of the president to control the entry and exit from the country as a matter of national security," giving Trump’s administration a decided advantage in any litigation.

    A week after the ACLU tweeted…

    Reuters reports that the president-elect’s team is considering an immigration system modeled after a controversial one implemented in the months after the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks. It fulfills Trump’s promise of “extreme vetting” for immigrants from countries affected by terrorism, a threshold he has yet to flesh out more fully. As Politico notes,

    That program, labeled the National Security Entry-Exit Registration System, required those entering the U.S. from a list of certain countries — all but one predominantly Muslim — to register when they arrived in the U.S., undergo more thorough interrogation and be fingerprinted. The system, referred to by the acronym NSEERS, was criticized by civil rights groups for targeting a religious group and was phased out in 2011 because it was found to be redundant with other immigration systems.

     

    Robert McCaw, director of government affairs for the Council on American-Islamic Relations, said a reinstitution of NSEERS would be akin to “just turning back the clock.” CAIR will lobby heavily against the system as not only discriminatory but also ineffective, McCaw said, if it ends up being proposed by the Trump administration.

     

    He also accused Kobach, an architect of the original NSEERS program when he was with the Justice Department under the George W. Bush administration, of having “a long ax to grind with the Muslim community.”

     

    “NSEERS and registries like it are totally ineffective and burdensome and they’re perceived by Muslims and other minorities as just being a massive profiling campaign that, in the past, targeted Muslim travelers solely based on their religion and ethnicity,” he said. “When every country on that list happens to be a majority-Muslim country, it is religious profiling. Because there are threats from other nations and other communities and groups that don’t make it on NSEERS.”

    But, as Politico concludes, a program like NSEERS would likely pass constitutional muster before a judge, multiple experts said, in part because it already has. The system was never struck down by a court in the nearly nine years it was in place.

    Jonathan Turley, a law professor at George Washington University, said Wednesday that “a president’s power is at its apex at the nation’s borders” and that the Supreme Court has “consistently reaffirmed the power of the president to control the entry and exit from the country as a matter of national security.” Such precedent, he said would give Trump’s administration a decided advantage in any litigation.

     

    University of Virginia international law professor emeritus David Martin said the NSEERS program is constitutionally sound but fraught with issues as a matter of policy. He said even when it was in effect, NSEERS was “more and more seen as potentially counterproductive” as the Sept. 11 attacks receded in America’s rear-view mirror and the government developed “more of an appreciation that doing certain things that singled out Muslims and were seen as discriminatory were strategically unsound.”

    But  the cries of discrimination that have already begun from organizations like CAIR and others carry tremendous moral and political weight.

    “It’s kind of an American tradition to claim that things you disagree with are unconstitutional, and sometimes are out of keeping with the spirit of constitutional values, even if ultimately a court might uphold them,” Martin said. “So, I think it’s quite legitimate to argue on the basis of constitutional values even if you don’t absolutely have a Supreme Court precedent that clearly establishes your point.”

    President-Elect Trump's immigration group had also discussed ways of overturning President Barack Obama's 2012 executive action that has granted temporary deportation relief and work permits to more than 700,000 undocumented people or "dreamers" who came to the United States as children of illegal immigrants.

  • "Are You Still Crying Wolf?"

    Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

    Scott Alexander has just penned what is perhaps the most brilliant, and important, post-election article I have read. It’s titled, You Are Still Crying Wolf, and here are the first few paragraphs:

    [Content warning: hate crimes, Trump, racism. I have turned off comments to keep out bad people who might be attracted by this sort of thing. Avoid sharing in places where this will attract the wrong kind of attention, as per your best judgment. Please don’t interpret anything in this article to mean that Trump is not super terrible]

     

    [Epistemic status: A reduction of a complicated issue to only 8000 words, because nobody would read it if it were longer. I think this is true but incomplete. I will try to discuss missing parts at more length later.]

     

    I. A New York Times article from last September that went viral only recently: Crying Wolf, Then Confronting Trump. It asks whether Democrats have “cried wolf” so many times that nobody believes them anymore. And so:

     

    When “honorable and decent men” like McCain and Romney “are reflexively dubbed racists simply for opposing Democratic policies, the result is a G.O.P. electorate that doesn’t listen to admonitions when the genuine article is in their midst”.

     

    I have a different perspective. Back in October 2015, I wrote that the picture of Trump as “the white power candidate” and “the first openly white supremacist candidate to have a shot at the Presidency in the modern era” was overblown. I said that “the media narrative that Trump is doing some kind of special appeal-to-white-voters voodoo is unsupported by any polling data”, and predicted that:

     

    If Trump were the Republican nominee, he could probably count on equal or greater support from minorities as Romney or McCain before him.

     

    Now the votes are in, and Trump got greater support from minorities than Romney or McCain before him. You can read the Washington Post article, Trump Got More Votes From People Of Color Than Romney Did, or look at the raw data (source).

     

    screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-1-13-45-pm

     

    Trump made gains among blacks. He made big among Latinos. He made gains among Asians. The only major racial group where he didn’t get a gain of greater than 5% was white people. I want to repeat that: the group where Trump’s message resonated least over what we would predict from a generic Republican was the white population.

     

    Nor was there some surge in white turnout. I don’t think we have official numbers yet, but by eyeballing what data we have it looks very much like whites turned out in equal or lesser numbers this year than in 2012, 2008, and so on.

     

    [EDIT: though see here for an alternate perspective]

     

    The media responded to all of this freely available data with articles like White Flight From Reality: Inside The Racist Panic That Fueled Donald Trump’s Victory and Make No Mistake: Donald Trump’s Win Represents A Racist “Whitelash”.

     

    I stick to my thesis from October 2015. There is no evidence that Donald Trump is more racist than any past Republican candidate (or any other 70 year old white guy, for that matter). All this stuff about how he’s “the candidate of the KKK” and “the vanguard of a new white supremacist movement” is made up. It’s a catastrophic distraction from the dozens of other undeniable problems with Trump that could have convinced voters to abandon him. That it came to dominate the election cycle should be considered a horrifying indictment of our political discourse, in the same way that it would be a horrifying indictment of our political discourse if the entire Republican campaign had been based around the theory that Hillary Clinton was a secret Satanist. Yes, calling Romney a racist was crying wolf. But you are still crying wolf.

     

    I avoided pushing this point any more since last October because I didn’t want to look like I was supporting Trump, or accidentally convince anyone else to support Trump. But since we’re past the point where that matters anymore, I want to present my case.

    I realize that all of this is going to make me sound like a crazy person and put me completely at odds with every respectable thinker in the media, but luckily, being a crazy person at odds with every respectable thinker in the media has been a pretty good ticket to predictive accuracy lately, so whatever.

    That’s just the tip of the iceberg from a spectacular piece of writing. It’s lengthy, but don’t let that scare you away. If you don’t have the time, make the time. Then share it with all your friends who are obsessed about how Trump signifies that white nationalism is ascendant, while at the same time failing to consider many of the more acute and realistic risks that a man like Trump represents. Here is the link, once again: You Are Still Crying Wolf.

    Observing Trump primarily through the largely media/Democratic Party lens of extreme bigotry is not only wrong, it is very dangerous. Not because I’m a Trump supporter (I didn’t support Trump or Clinton), but because the public resistance to him will then focus its energy around this one-dimensional notion that the main battle is to fight back against the white supremacist who has taken over the White House. This “crying wolf” takes everybody’s eye off the ball, divides the citizenry based on what is largely a false narrative, and it subdues and confuses the needed resistance to Trump on other, but less emotionally powerful, matters of public importance. It’s sort of like how the media and politicians successfully fear-mongered the public into sacrificing their civil liberties after 9/11, despite the fact that being killed by a terrorist is extraordinarily unlikely.

    As I’ve been saying for years, if we really want to make progress, we need to find those issues that unite us as Americans, and fight together to achieve them. If we allow ourselves to be divided and conquered on the basis of identity politics, or anything else, we are truly doomed.

    Finally, let’s take a break from saying “Trump is literally Hitler” and recognize the following.

     

     

    screen-shot-2016-11-17-at-1-10-50-pm

  • Hillary "Attack Dog" David Brock Plotting With Soros, Steyer, Sussman To "Kick Trump's Ass"

    The last time we encountered David Brock, Hillary Clinton’s so called media “attack dog”, was two months ago when we exposed a money laundering scheme involving over a dozen of his Pro-Clinton SuperPACs. Now, it appears that unable to concede defeat, the man who aligned his career with Hillary Clinton, is going for blood, and is soliciting the help, but mostly money, of Clinton’s top donors.

    According to Politico, Brock is launching his own Koch-brothers-like donor network to finance attacks on President-elect Donald Trump and to rebuild the political left after Trump’s stunning victory over Clinton last week. In an email sent out on Thursday night, Brock emailed more than 200 of the biggest donors on the left, including finance titans George Soros, Tom Steyer and Donald Sussman all of whom invested millions of dollars in Clinton’s campaign with nothing to show for it, inviting them to a private retreat in Palm Beach during inauguration weekend to assess what Democrats did wrong in 2016, figure out how to correct it and raise cash for those initiatives.

    “This will be THE gathering for Democratic donors from across the country to hear from a broad and diverse group of leaders about the next steps for progressives under a Trump Administration,” Brock wrote to the donors in an email.  “What better way to spend inaugural weekend than talking about how to kick Donald Trump’s ass?” Brock said.

    The retreat, which is planned as the first in a series of regular gatherings, will feature appearances by an array of Democratic elected officials, operatives and liberal thinkers and group officials, Brock explained in an interview.

    While it is unclear how many of the addressed billionaires confirmed their presence at this “secret” gathering, Brock predicted there would be significant interest, noting that the keynote address at his last major donor conference, back in 2013, was delivered by former President Bill Clinton. It is unclear how much Clinton received for one hours of his time.

    Brock is a self-described “right-wing hitman-turned-Clinton enforcer” who has used his relationships with some of the left’s wealthiet supporters and billionaire donors to build an armada of aggressive political outfits that have become pillars of the institutional left and that raised a combined $65 million during the 2016 cycle. As profiled previously, Brock’s groups include the conservative media monitoring non-profit Media Matters, the opposition research super PAC American Bridge and the legal watchdog Citizens for Responsibility and Ethics in Washington.

    That’s not all: other groups in his network include the liberal media-funding vehicle American Independent Institute, the media-training non-profit Franklin Forum and the for-profit social media operation ShareBlue, which The New York Times described as “Hillary Clinton’s Outrage Machine.” A seventh group, a super PAC called Correct the Record that was created to coordinate directly with Clinton’s campaign, is winding down, though Brock said that a number of its functions and personnel likely will be absorbed by his other groups.

    And yet one wonders if Brock’s attempt to square things up with Trump isn’t too little, too late, especially for a many who like Huma Abedin, has been so closely associated with Hillary and her now defunct political career: Brock acknowledged in the interview: “There is no question that we poured our heart and soul into this election for Hillary, but these institutions were built before her campaign and were intended to outlast it.”

    To separate himself from the Clintons whom he server so well over the years, Brock said in his email to donors that he created Media Matters more than a decade ago to help the left push back during George W. Bush’s presidency.

    “In 2005, we were part of a successful progressive effort to regroup, retool and recover,” he wrote. “While today’s situation is more dire, media matters more than ever.”

    But the biggest problem for Brock is that he is likely stepping on the very toes of those whose money he is after: as Politico notes, the Palm Beach retreat seems to be a challenge to the 12-year-old Democracy Alliance, a club of liberal financiers that was started by Soros and a handful of other major donors to fund the institutional left. In fact, the club, which held its annual winter meeting this week in Washington, helped launch Media Matters, and many of Brock’s donors belong to its ranks. Brock said he’s inviting the president of the DA, as the club is known, to his Palm Beach retreat.

    There is one way Brock’s network hopes to differentiate itself: while the Democracy Alliance at its winter meeting discussed ways to push back on the Trump administration, many of the group’s members have tried to train its focus on pressuring Democrats from the left on issues like fighting climate change, money in politics and drug laws; Brock however is more overtly and aggressively political, and has been “largely agnostic on the philosophical divisions with which Democrats are grappling.”

    “We don’t think of this as representing a faction of the Democratic Party, but a cross-section of it, so we’re not going to precook things ideologically,” he said. “It is very politically minded, and there is an urgency to it.”

    At this point two questions emerge: one of the main reasons why Clinton lost is precisely due to behind the scenes scheming such as this, where political “attack dog” operatives would meet with billionaires and strategize how to shift public perception on any number of items. That has now been proven to be a losing strategy. Have the democrats truly not learned anything from their most shocking failure in history?

    The next question is just how much more “overtly and aggressively political” will Brock, whose organizations have been alleged to be behind a number of the anti-Trump riots in recent months, be in his quest to take down, or rather “kick the ass” of Donald Trump. Because if there is one thing that is so far missing from the most scandalous political election in recent history, it is an attempt to physically eliminate the president. We can only hope that the “hitman-turned-Clinton enforcer” will not decide to go that far.

  • Great News On Trump Appointments

    Flynn for the Win!

    Preface:  I’ve slammed Trump when I thought he might appoint bad guys.  But there’s now cause for celebration.

    Trump has purportedly offered General Michael Flynn a post as National Security Advisor.

    This is GREAT news …

    Flynn  – a 3-star general – is former head of the Defense Intelligence Agency and director of Intelligence for the Joint Special Operations Command.

    Why do we like Flynn?

    Because he:

    I am hopeful that Flynn will help overturn decades of Neocon and Neoliberal warmongering…

    What Liberals Should Like About Steve Bannon, Trump’s Chief Stategist

    I’d never heard of Steve Bannon until Trump named him as chief strategist and senior counselor.

    I soon learned that Bannon is executive chairman of Breitbart, which the media labels an “alt right” news source (I’ve only read a few articles on Breitbart, when linked from other websites).

    I’ve also heard a lot of accusations that Bannon is a racist, sexist and homophobe. If true, that’s despicable.

    Indeed, Democrats are so upset by Trump’s naming of Bannon that the Senate Minority Leader (Harry Reid) has demanded that Trump rescind Bannon’s appointment.

    But there’s one reason that liberals should applaud Bannon’s appointment. The Fiscal Times explains:

    On Tuesday, BuzzFeed News released a transcript of remarks Bannon delivered to the Christian conservative Human Dignity Institute in 2014. In a lengthy discourse on the causes and aftereffects of the 2008 financial crisis Bannon, himself a former managing partner at Goldman Sachs, blamed the financial crisis and subsequent recession on the “greed” of his fellow bankers and expressed anger at the fact that no bank executives faced criminal prosecution.

     

    “Think about it — not one criminal charge has ever been brought to any bank executive associated with 2008 crisis,” Bannon said. “And in fact, it gets worse. No bonuses and none of their equity was taken. So part of the prime drivers of the wealth that they took in the 15 years leading up to the crisis was not hit at all, and I think that’s one of the fuels of this populist revolt that we’re seeing as the tea party.”

     

    He continued, “[T]he underpinning of this populist revolt is the financial crisis of 2008. That revolt, the way that it was dealt with, the way that the people who ran the banks and ran the hedge funds have never really been held accountable for what they did, has fueled much of the anger in the tea party movement in the United States.”

     

    Some of Bannon’s remarks sound as though they could have come not from the close aide to an incoming Republican president, but rather from liberals like Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders or populist Massachusetts Sen. Elizabeth Warren. Among other things, he discussed what he sees as the need to limit the activities that financial institutions are allowed to engage in, such as forcing commercial banks to focus on lending, and blocking investment banks from trading in securities.

    Bannon criticized steps taken at the outset of the financial crisis to prevent widespread failures in the financial services industry, arguing that the burden of paying for the bailout was on taxpayers while the benefits flowed to “crony capitalists.”

     

    ***

     

    Here’s how capitalism metastasized, is that all the burdens put on the working-class people who get none of the upside. All of the upside goes to the crony capitalists.

     

    “The bailouts were absolutely outrageous, and here’s why: It bailed out a group of shareholders and executives who were specifically accountable. The shareholders were accountable for one simple reason: They allowed this to go wrong without changing management … And we know this now from congressional investigations, we know it from independent investigations, this is not some secret conspiracy. This is kind of in plain sight.”

     

    Bannon described an alliance of law firms, accounting firms and other influential players in Washington who collectively pressured politicians and prosecutors to look the other way as, in his telling, the same people who caused the crisis in the first place benefited lavishly from the efforts to repair the damage they had done.

    But it was his promise — made nearly a year before Trump declared his candidacy and almost two years before Bannon became CEO of his campaign — that will likely cause the most concern in Wall Street boardrooms.

     

    “And they’ve never been held accountable today,” Bannon said. “Trust me — they are going to be held accountable.”

    Bannon’s statements mirror what top liberal  economists (and top economists from across the political spectrum) have repeatedly said.

    For example:

    Prosecuting Fraud

    Greed

    Disgorging Ill-Gotten Gains

    Popular Anger

    Banks Should Be Limited to Banking

    Bailouts

    Crony Capitalism

    Benefiting from Wrongdoing

    So whatever you think of Bannon on a personal level, he could – if his statements reflect his real beliefs, and if he champions them in the Trump White House – help fix our broken financial system …

  • Rutgers "Beyoncé Professor" Loses It Over Trump Victory; Sent To Bellevue For Psych Evaluation

    Up until November 8th, Kevin Allred was just another run-of-the-mill “Professor of Beyoncé” at Rutgers University.  But that all changed when Trump won the Presidency and Allred decided to live-tweet his nervous breakdown.

    It all started with the following tweet in which Allred threatened to “shoot at random white people.”

    Rutgers

     

    Apparently, the administrators at Rutgers were not all that amused by the threat and sent the police to Allred’s house setting off the following glorious tweet storm.

    Rutger

     

    And, of course, the tweet storm continues on today as Allred attempts to paint himself as the victim rather than the perpetrator who threatened the lives of 1,000 innocent, white snowflakes at Rutgers.

     

    But, as is true with most things, we suspect Allred has other motivations behind extending his new-found fame…perhaps it has something to do with his desire to publish his “Politicizing Beyonce” book?

    Rutgers

  • Raoul Pal Warns "Trump Will See A Recession In 2017"

    Authored by Raoul Pal via The Global Macro Investor,

    US Presidential Elections and Recessions

    As you know, I follow the business cycle, which describes the ebb and flow of the economy from boom to bust that drives asset prices and thus our investment choices.

    Linear models in a cyclical world

    Most economic models don’t use the business cycle even though it clearly exists, which strongly suggests that economic linear models are wrong, yet economists sadly persist in this flawed linear analysis. This lack of acknowledgement of the business cycle is why so many economists are almost always wrong in their forecasts. Steady state analysis is proven time and time again to be junk.

    Austrian economists (and a few others) do however accept the business cycle as given but they endlessly debate what causes this ebb and flow in the economy. In general, most opt for the credit cycle as the explanation without thought as to what creates the credit cycle and thus they fall into the economic model trap again.

    The practical world

    I live in the world of practical economics – where the investment rubber meets the economic road – so I ponder less about the detailed why and try to instead look at the when in terms of timing of the booms and busts.

    Recession and Elections

    I recently noted that since 1910, the US economy is either in recession or enters a recession within twelve months in every single instance at the end of a two-term presidency… effecting a 100% chance of recession for the new President.

    No recession without an election

    I then spent some time looking at US recessions in general, and found that every single one occurred during, or just after, an election, without exception.

    Not every single election sees a recession, only every two-term incumbent change. Some two-term Presidents saw recessions at their first-term re-elections too (Wilson and Eisenhower).

    The following chart shows every NBER recession since 1910 (in yellow) with the new President after a two-term election marked in white and the new Presidents after a single-term presidency in red. Wilson and Eisenhower appear as both. Only Coolidge saw more than a year (sixteen months) from his second-term election and the onset of the subsequent recession at the end of WWI…

    click image to enlarge

    Just to be 100% clear, the coloured vertical lines show the election date. Every President’s name written in white followed a two-term presidency. They each suffer recessions early in their presidency. And those names in red also suffered immediate recessions but after a single-term change of presidency. No recession except that of 1979 (clarified below) is not explained by its proximity to an election.

    Some observers might suggest that the correlation between recession dates and election dates is spurious but I simply refuse to believe that based on the chart above. It is not a coincidence.

    Why some new governments, after a change of a single-term presidency, don’t see an immediate recession remains a mystery, but those instances are few: Clinton, Carter and Johnson. Of these only Johnson and Clinton did not see a recession at all. Carter got his recession at the end of his presidency, but don’t forget Ford was not voted in so no election cycle occurred.

    In the last 100 years, the recession of 1979 is the only recession not to occur around an election date (again, Carter came into office after Ford who did not undergo the election cycle).

    Just mull that over…

    Every single US recession bar one (with explainable circumstances) occurred around an election. Only two Presidents in history did not see a recession and they were inaugurated after single-term Presidents.

    There are a few other things to note from this analysis:

    Politics creates recessions

     

    Firstly, it is the political cycle that is the key driver of recessions – governmental cycles in one way or another are an essential component. I am really not yet sure of the reason why two-term presidential cycles are so spectacularly consistent in provoking recessions but I do know that election dates are super helpful for predicting recessions and thus asset prices. The investment game is all about odds, and odds of 100% – even from a small data sample – are incredibly useful. Sure, it might not remain 100% forever but the probability is still going to be extremely high and that’s all we need to make successful forecasts and investments.

     

    [If you are not yet familiar with the relationship between the business cycle and asset prices, I’d suggest watching the video on the subject that I produced for Real Vision Television.]

     

     

    Politicians care about themselves

     

    Secondly, it makes you question whether the governmental system in general has politicians’ best interests at heart, or that of the country. It is difficult to believe it is primarily the country’s economic wellbeing that the politicians care about when this cycle is so evident.

     

    Trump will see a recession in 2017

     

    Finally, bearing in mind the above, we have to acknowledge that there is an extremely high chance of a recession within the coming year with the imminent change of government in the US after a two-term presidency. History would suggest that the odds are 100%.

    Should you really be betting on growth and inflation for 2017?

    I very much doubt it.

    I think that the current euphoria for equities and hatred for bonds is going to be exactly the wrong trade for 2017.

  • "Violent Rotations" – Record Equity ETF Inflows, Record EM Debt Outflows… And It's Just Beginning

    Over the weekend, we reported that as a result of the Trump victory, the market underwent some truly staggering asset rotations and fund flows, leading to trillions in gains (for equities) and losses (for credit). Today, after the latest Lipper and EPFR fund flow data, we can say that the unprecedented fund flows have continued with numerous records being made out across the board.

    According to Lipper data, in the week ended November 16, investors flooded $23.6 billion in new cash on U.S.-based stock funds over the latest week, the most in nearly two years and the third-largest haul for those funds on record. This number consisted of a record $27 billion inflow into equity ETFs, suggesting that even during moments of peak euphoria, active managers are unable to get funding: US-based equity mutual funds posted yet another $3.4 billion in outflows in the past week.

    Meanwhile, as expected, US-based taxable bond funds saw substantial outflows, amounting to $5.9 billion in the 3rd straight week of outflows between mutual funds and ETFs. And don’t even bring up Emerging Market bonds: those just saw record outflows.

    This means that after years of predictions of a Great Rotation from stocks to bonds, it finally took place… but if you blinked too long, you missed it.  Indeed, as The Long View twitter account puts it, “the democratization of investing has risks. Hot money creates skew as bigger crowds rush through illiquid exits en masse.” Well, this week they were rushing out of anything rates related and flooding into equity linked products.

    For a different perspective, this time through the eyes of EPFR, we go to Bank of America’s Michael Hartnett who summarizes that week’s events with two words: “Violent rotation”, and goes on to list why:

    Record inflows to equity ETFs, record inflows to financial sector funds, biggest bond redemptions in 3½ years, record redemptions from EM debt.

    “Great Rotation” flows: largest equity inflows in 2 years ($28bn), biggest bond outflows in 3½ years ($18bn); widest weekly disparity between stock & bond flows ever.

    Trading a secular inflection point: if BREXIT marked 5,000 year low in global interest rates, Trump marked moment investors started to position for bond bear market; note yields can rise quickly…price action always violently big at secular inflection points as overshoots corrected quickly (e.g. Jul’80-Oct’81 US bond yields surged from 10% in 16%; by Oct’82 yields back at 10%).

    Bond vs Equity flows: past decade $1.5tn inflows to global bond funds vs $0 for global equity funds (Chart 4); mutual fund flows (excluding ETFs) show extreme divergence of $1.1tn bond inflows vs $1.3tn equity outflows (Chart 5).

    Bond bloodbath: this week largest EM debt redemptions on record (Chart 2); largest muni bond outflows in 3½ years; largest Treasury outflows in 12 months. Dollar pain trades: surge in DXY>100 causes largest precious metals outflows in 3½ years & largest EM equity outflows in 14 months.

    Inflation rotation: record financials inflows (monster $7.2bn – Chart 1); largest materials inflows in three years; 23rd week of TIPS inflows ($0.8bn); inflows to bank loan funds 18 of past 20 weeks.

    Passive smashing active: note astounding contrast this week between record inflow to equity ETFs ($34bn) & 37th straight week of equity mutual fund outflows; since 2002, $2.1tn inflows to “passive” funds vs $1.8tn outflows from “active” funds (Chart 3).

    Violence vs peace: what could temporarily arrest Nov stampede out of bonds…weak data…1st post-Trump data was strong weekly initial unemployment claims & poor weekly mortgage applications… numbers next week represent 1st “clean” post-election  data…mortgage apps more imp for us…2nd consecutive weak mortgage applications reading (30-year mortgage rates up 40bps to 3.94% since  election) needed to calm bond markets (data released 23rd).

    Some more details on what has been a truly historic week:

    Asset Class Flows

    • Equities: largest inflows in 2 years ($27.5bn) ($34bn inflows to ETFs offset by $7bn outflows from mutual funds)
    • Bonds: largest outflows since Jun’13 ($18.1bn)
    • Precious metals: largest outflows since Jun’13 ($2.7bn)

    Fixed Income Flows:

    • Record outflows from EM debt funds ($6.6bn)
    • Largest outflows from muni bond funds since Jun’13 ($3.0bn)
    • Largest outflows from Govt/Tsy funds in 12 months ($3.4bn)
    • Chunky $3.8bn outflows from HY bond funds (3 straight weeks)
    • $2.4bn outflows from IG bond funds
    • 23 straight weeks of TIPS inflows ($0.8bn)
    • Inflows to bank loan funds in 18 of past 20 weeks ($0.6bn)

    Equity Flows 

    • EM: largest weekly outflows in 14 months ($5.4bn)
    • US: largest weekly inflows in 2 years ($30.7bn)
    • Europe: rare $0.8bn inflows (largest in 9 months)
    • Japan: $1.0bn outflows (outflows in 3 of past 4 weeks)
    • By sector: monster inflows to financials ($7.2bn) & healthcare ($3.1bn); largest materials inflows in 3 years ($1.4bn); 7 straight weeks of consumer outflows ($0.8bn)

    * * *

    And keep in mind this is just one week after the election results: the flow party is just getting started.

    Traditionally, during such times of violent rotations, numerous hedge funds don’t survive simply because they get caught up in the margin calls, are unable to sell at modeled prices and fail to reposition fast enough. We should know the names of the first casualties within days.

  • "Triggered" Lena Dunham Checks Into Posh Arizona Resort For "Vision Quest"

    Last week we noted an article written by Lena Dunham for the feminist blog Lenny Letter, entitled “Don’t Agonize, Organize,” in which Dunham chronicled her complete devastation on election night after she realized that “something had gone horribly wrong”. 

    The three hours I spent at the Javits Center Tuesday night, surrounded by campaign staffers and fellow surrogates for Hillary Clinton, are blurred and spotty. At a certain point it became clear something had gone horribly wrong. Celebrants’ faces turned. The modeling had been incorrect. Watching the numbers in Florida, I touched my face and realized I was crying. “Can we please go home?” I said to my boyfriend. I could tell he was having trouble breathing, and I could feel my chin breaking into hives. Another woman showed me her matching hive, hidden by fresh concealer.

     

    At home I got in the shower and began to cry even harder. My boyfriend, who had already wept, watched me as I mumbled incoherently, clutching myself. “It wasn’t supposed to go this way. It was supposed to be her job. She worked her whole life for the job. It’s her job.”

    Since election day we’ve been peppered by one outburst after another from the disaffected snowflake who can’t seem to come to terms with the results of the democratic process.  She recently went so far as to share her utter “terror” that a “predator will soon be residing in the White House.”

    Now, apparently the post-election stress has just overwhelmed the sensitive Dunham to the point that she has checked herself into a posh resort in Sedona, Arizona to recover from her misery.  Per the Instagram post below, Dunham has resorted to desert “vision quests” to help with her suffering.

    Asked the Canyon for some guidance. She said this week is going to be revolutionary, and so I threw my arms open and said “bring it.” (Good thing we got the week’s first true smile on camera.) Loving you all and whispered some wishes for you into the big red rock.

     

    While we wish her the best of luck as she wanders aimlessly in the desert, we would just like to remind Dunham that travel arrangements are still set to the extent she wants to follow through on her pledge to move to Vancouver. 

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