- Why People Love And Hate Trump
A Washington Post/ABC News poll released Sunday put President Trump’s six-month approval rating at a historic 70-year low amid controversy over connections between the White House and Russia. Interestingly, as Statista’s Niall McCarthy notes, most of Trump’s detractors actually dislike him due to his personality and character, rather than specific issues and policy, according to a Gallup poll published late last week.
You will find more statistics at Statista
When the same research was conducted in 2009, it found that Obama’s disapprovers primarily lacked faith in the president’s policy and stance on specific issues. Gallup found that people who approve of Trump generally give him the thumbs up on a range of broad issues including the president’s general performance, as well as policies and personality.
Broken down, the polling found that 29 percent of disapprovers said that Trump is either not presidential, has a bad temperament, is arrogant or obnoxious, Inexperience was cited by 10 percent while 7 percent of those polled said he is doing a poor job.
When it comes to approval, 12 percent of respondents said Trump is doing a good job or the best he can under difficult circumstances. 11 percent said that the president is keeping his promises and 10 percent think he is doing what’s best for the United States.
Trump’s low approval ratings are being driven by his unconventional style and non-normative pattern of White House behaviour rather than his actual policies and views. According to Gallup, the president is highly unlikely to alter his behavior and style, meaning his detractors are unlikely to change their minds about him. However, this could be influenced if Trump enjoys some major international and domestic successes that overshadow his behaviour.
- North Korea's Fuel Prices Soar After China Suspends Exports
Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,
Diesel and gasoline prices in North Korea have jumped since China National Petroleum Corp (CNPC) halted sales of fuel to Pyongyang, Reuters reported on Monday, citing data on prices collected by North Korean defectors.
At the end of last month, reports emerged that CNPC, the main supplier of diesel and gasoline to North Korea, has suspended fuel sales to North Korea because it is worried that it may not receive payments.
North Korea imports all the oil and oil products it consumes – mostly from China – and a prolonged suspension by CNPC would choke out supplies at a time when the international community is increasing pressure on North Korea to stop its nuclear and missile ambitions, and is intensifying checks over Chinese business relations with Pyongyang.
According to a Reuters analysis of data by the Daily NK website – which is run by North Korean defectors who collect price data via phone calls with fuel traders in North Korea – private dealers in the north were selling gasoline at US$2.18 per kilogram, or US$2.92 per liter, as of July 5, a 50-percent surge compared to US$1.46 per kg on June 21. Gasoline prices fell slightly to US$2.05 per kg by July 12, but still, they were more than double compared to prices at the beginning of the year, Reuters’ analysis of the data shows.
Diesel prices jumped by 20 percent in the three weeks to July 12. After the initial price surges in early July, prices of both diesel and gasoline have stabilized, probably because North Korea has encouraged fuel smuggling across the Chinese border, according to defector Kang Mi-jin who is in communication with traders in North Korea.
“After North Korea’s frequent missile tests including its very first ICBM test, the international community has vowed to tighten sanctions and China simply cannot exclude itself from the recent movement, although it probably does not want to indefinitely cut off fuel sales to the North,” Kang told Reuters.
China said in February that it was suspending until the end of this year all imports of coal from North Korea as part of its effort to implement United Nations Security Council sanctions aimed at stopping the country’s nuclear weapons and ballistic-missile program.
In April, gas prices in North Korea jumped on reports that China may be mulling an oil embargo.
- As Farmers Go Broke, John Deere Ramps Up It's Captive Financing Operation To Keep The Ag Party Going
So what do you do when your John Deere and your entire business revolves around selling really expensive equipment to farmers who have been absolutely decimated financially by low crop prices and can no longer convince commercial banks that they’re worthy of additional debt needed to buy fancy new tractors? Well, you take some plays from the automotive industry, that’s what. Here’s how it works:
Step 1: Setup a captive financing arm to underwrite all of the credit risk that no reasonable commercial ag bank would touch with a 10 foot pole.
Step 2: Boost your tractor sales volumes by financing every farmer who walks through your door with a soybean dream and pulse.
Step 3: When you run out of farmers willing to buy your brand new shiny green tractors then just start selling all your production volume to yourself and then lease it to customers at an attractive price. This way you can still show sales growth and never have to cut production volume.
Step 4: Finally, when it all goes horribly wrong because used tractor prices crash due to the flood of off-lease volume and brings down the new market with it then you take a one-time charge to write-off the losses, wall streets forgives you...it was just a 1x charge, right…and then you promptly rinse and repeat.
From the looks of the charts below, we’d say John Deere is currently on the tail end of ‘Step 3’ as loan and lease balances are soaring and write-offs are just starting to spike.
As the Wall Street Journal points out today, John Deere has literally become the 5th largest agricultural lender in the country behind commercial banks Wells Fargo , Rabobank, Bank of the West and Bank of America, according to the American Bankers Association. But it’s not just equipment financing risk the John Deere is underwriting these days as they’ve also started financing short-term working capital loans to help farmers buy everything from seed to chemicals and fertilizers and equipment spares.
Since 2013, the total value of equipment leases held by Deere is up 87%. Loans for farm equipment purchases, meanwhile, have fallen 10% since peaking in 2014, reflecting sliding machinery sales.
Short-term credit accounts for farmers—used for items such as crop supplies and equipment parts—are up 38% since the end of 2015. As of early 2017, the bank operation of Deere Financial had handed out about $2.2 billion. It is close on the heels of the No. 4 agricultural lender, Bank of America, which has about $2.6 billion out.
“Deere Financial is a massive force,” said Robert Wertheimer, a Barclays analyst. Deere, which accounts for about two-thirds of all the big tractors sold in the U.S., “is able to influence this market. They have more market power than most companies.”
Of course, the best possible thing for an industry plagued by oversupply and below market commodity prices is for someone to step in and subsidize even more production…it’s just basic economics really.
In shoring up the ailing sector, Deere’s loans may be helping draw out the pain for farmers, allowing them to continue to rack up debt despite a glut of grain world-wide that is keeping a lid on crop prices. The increase in equipment leasing, meanwhile, is weakening Deere’s own market for sales.
If crop prices remain subdued, “you’re just prolonging the agony and potentially building up [farm] losses instead of cutting the pain, cauterizing the wound and stanching the flow of financial blood now,” said Scott Irwin, an agricultural economist at the University of Illinois.
Meanwhile, John Deere shareholders have been handsomely rewarded for the company’s strict adherence to the 4-step plan we outlined above which would seemingly serve to prove that selling extremely expensive equipment into and extremely cyclical end market is, in fact, recession proof and immune from the ag cycle…who knew?
“Our core mission is to support sales of equipment,” said Jayma Sandquist, vice president of marketing for the U.S. and Canada for John Deere Financial, the company’s financing unit. “It’s a cyclical industry. We’ve built a business that we can manage effectively across all cycles, and our performance would indicate we can do that.”
The financing arm has shielded the Moline, Ill., company from the worst of the farm slump, keeping factories and dealers intact and investors satisfied with profits. Despite a 37% drop in sales of its farm equipment since a record high in 2013, Deere’s stock price is up 72% from its recent low in early 2016 and up 22% since the start of 2017.
Of course, we’ve seen how this movie ends before. As it turns out, there’s a step-by-step guide to that process as well:
Step 1: A flood of off-lease volume crushes pricing for used ag equipment
Step 2: New sales and lease volumes tank due to more attractive deals for used equipment
Step 3: John Deere buries its head in the sand and refuses to cut production volumes because that would be an admission to shareholders that recent volume declines were something more than ‘transitory.’ So production is maintained and new dealer inventories around the country surge.
4. Now, it’s only a matter of time before new equipment prices crash as well….
5. …and that’s when the write-downs start…
Then again, maybe we’re wrong and ‘everything actually is awesome’.
- Zombies R Us: "We, The People" Are The Walking Dead Of The American Police State
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
RIP George Romero (1940-2017).
Romero – a filmmaker hailed as the architect of the zombie genre – is dead at the age of 77, but the zombified police state culture he railed against lives on.
Just take a look around you.
“We the people” have become the walking dead of the American police state.
We’re still plagued by the socio-political evils of cultural apathy, materialism, domestic militarism and racism that Romero depicted in his Night of the Living Dead trilogy.
Romero’s zombies have taken on a life of their own in pop culture.
Zombies also embody the government’s paranoia about the citizenry as potential threats that need to be monitored, tracked, surveilled, sequestered, deterred, vanquished and rendered impotent.
Case in point: in AMC’s hit television series The Walking Dead and the spinoff Fear the Walking Dead, it’s not just flesh-eating ghouls and cannibalistic humans that survivors have to worry about but the police state “tasked with protecting the vulnerable” that poses some of the gravest threats to the citizenry.
Why the fascination with zombies?
Perhaps it’s because zombie fiction provides us with a way to “envision how we and our own would thrive if everything went to hell and we lost all our societal supports.” As Time magazine reporter James Poniewozik phrases it, the “apocalyptic drama lets us face the end of the world once a week and live.”
In other words, zombies are the personification of our darkest fears.
Fear and paranoia have become hallmarks of the modern American experience, impacting how we as a nation view the world around us, how we as citizens view each other, and most of all how our government views us.
The propaganda of fear has been used quite effectively by those who want to gain control, and it is working on the American populace.
Despite the fact that we are 8 times more likely to be killed by a police officer than by a terrorist, we have handed over control of our lives to government officials who treat us as a means to an end—the source of money and power.
We have allowed ourselves to become fearful, controlled, pacified zombies.
Most everyone keeps their heads down these days while staring zombie-like into an electronic screen, even when they’re crossing the street. Indeed, a Nielsen study reports that American screen viewing is at an all-time high.
Psychologically, such screen consumption is similar to drug addiction, transforming viewers into a more passive, nonresistant state. Historically, television has been used by those in authority to quiet discontent and pacify disruptive people. Prisons officials actually use TV to keep inmates quiet.
We are being controlled by forces beyond our control.
This is how the police state takes charge.
As the Atlantic notes, “The villains of [Fear the Walking Dead] aren’t the zombies, who rarely appear, but the U.S. military, who sweep into an L.A. suburb to quarantine the survivors. Zombies are, after all, a recognizable threat—but Fear plumbs drama and horror from the betrayal by institutions designed to keep people safe.”
What we are experiencing is a betrayal of the very core values—a love of freedom, an adherence to the rule of law, a spirit of democracy, a commitment to accountability and transparency, and a recognition that civilian rule must always trump military methods—that have guided this nation from its inception.
The challenge is not whether we can hold onto our freedoms in times of peace and prosperity, but whether we can do so when all hell breaks loose.
Anyone who has been paying attention knows that it will not take much for the government—i.e., the military—to lock down the nation in the event of a national disaster.
The government is not out to keep us safe by monitoring our communications, tracking our movements, criminalizing our every action, treating us like suspects, and stripping us of our means of defense while equipping its own personnel with an amazing arsenal of weapons.
No, this is not security. It is an ambush. And it is being carried out in plain sight.
For example, for years now, the government has been carrying out military training drills with zombies as the enemy. In 2011, the DOD created a 31-page instruction manual for how to protect America from a terrorist attack carried out by zombie forces. In 2012, the CDC released a guide for surviving a zombie plague. That was followed by training drills for members of the military, police officers and first responders.
The zombie exercises appeared to be kitschy and fun—government agents running around trying to put down a zombie rebellion—but what if the zombies in the exercises are us, the citizenry, viewed by those in power as mindless, voracious, zombie hordes?
“We the people” or, more appropriately, “we the zombies” are the enemy in the eyes of the government.
So when presented with the Defense Department’s battle plan for defeating an army of the walking dead, you might find yourself tempted to giggle over the fact that a taxpayer-funded government bureaucrat actually took the time to research and write about vegetarian zombies, evil magic zombies, chicken zombies, space zombies, bio-engineered weaponized zombies, radiation zombies, symbiant-induced zombies, and pathogenic zombies.
However, in an age of extreme government paranoia, this is no laughing matter.
The DOD’s strategy for dealing with a zombie uprising using surveillance, military drills, awareness training, militarized police forces and martial law is for all intents and purposes a training manual for the government in how to put down a citizen uprising or at least an uprising of individuals “infected” with dangerous ideas about freedom.
If there is any lesson to be learned, it is simply this: as I point out in my book, Battlefield America: The War on the American People, whether the threat to national security comes in the form of actual terrorists, imaginary zombies or disgruntled American citizens infected with dangerous ideas about freedom, the government’s response to such threats remains the same: detect, deter and annihilate.
It’s time to wake up, America, before you end up with a bullet to the head (the only proven means of killing a zombie).
- 3 California Counties File Multi-Billion Dollar Lawsuits Against "Big Oil" Over Rising Sea Levels
Just when you think you’ve seen it all, the snowflake capital of the world finds new, creative and amazing ways to shock your system. In it’s latest attempt to do just that, three California counties, two in the Bay Area and one in Southern California, have filed a lawsuit against 37 of the world’s biggest oil and coal companies alleging they’re ultimately responsible for the public’s usage of fossil fuels and the greenhouse gas emissions they create which will ultimately contribute to rising sea levels and lay waste to their cities…at least that seems to be the ‘logic’ as far as we can tell.
According to The Chronicle, Marin County, San Mateo County and Imperial Beach (located in San Diego County) filed separate but nearly identical lawsuits in their respective Superior Court offices that seek to tie fossil fuel development to climate-related problems in coastal areas. Attorneys for the three counties worked together on their lawsuits and noted that their residents have already experienced more frequent flooding and beach erosion as well as the possibility that water will eventually inundate roads, airports, sewage treatment plants and other real estate.
Of course, we would love to know just how many polar bear-killing private flights these taxpayer-funded legal teams took back and forth between San Francisco and San Diego while drafting their highly practical lawsuit.
Moreover, wouldn’t it be more appropriate to sue the owners of the 27 million, give or take, vehicles registered in California, more than any other state by a very wide margin by the way, who are shamelessly destroying the planet by commuting back and forth to work each day? Afterall, if there were no demand for fossil fuels then none of these companies would exist.
Of course, the lawyers contend that the oil companies knew about the damage their actions were causing, denied it and sought to discredit scientific findings that greenhouse gas emissions were heating the Earth’s atmosphere.
The suits are just the latest in a small but growing effort to hold Chevron, ExxonMobil, BP, Shell and other major energy companies accountable for the effects of climate change. Legal experts say the challenge is more comprehensive than previous endeavors, and is based on ‘better climate science’ and more evidence to support a claim of conspiracy among oil company executives.
“This is a long-anticipated move in climate litigation,” said Michael Burger, executive director of the Sabin Center for Climate Change Law at Columbia University. “You’ll find pieces of it in other cases, but bringing it together like this is different than what’s been done before. You can expect there will be a great deal of interest in how this litigation proceeds.”
“There’s tremendous concern for us as a county on how do we address these issues,” said Marin County Supervisor Kate Sears. “This case is about fairness and accountability and standing up for our residents and businesses.”
“We think we meet the elements of the public nuisance,” Beiers said, “but obviously we recognize this as the first lawsuit of its kind.”
So how much are these snowflake havens seeking in damages? Well the exact cost of the total death and destruction that will ultimately befall America’s left coast has apparently not yet been calculated with any level of specificity but it’s at least $55 billion according to San Mateo and Marin counties.
The two Bay Area counties and Imperial Beach are seeking reimbursement for current and future losses caused by climate change, as well as punitive damages. The suits don’t specify the value of losses so far, but estimate that the total will be in the billions of dollars over coming decades.
San Mateo County says the Bayshore Freeway, BART lines, San Francisco International Airport and $39 billion worth of assessed property are threatened by projected sea-level rise. Marin County counts $15.5 billion worth of North Bay real estate in harm’s way, along with ferry terminals, SMART rail tracks and Highway 101 and Interstate 580.
Of course, if you discount that $55 billion at 7%, the same rate the CalPERS uses to discount their pension obligations, for a period of 250 years to adjust for when the damages are actually expected to occur then the present value of the asserted damages is roughly $2,500. Perhaps Exxon and Chevron should just split the cost and move on…
- How To Solve The Healthcare Conundrum: "Make 'Them' Pay"
Over the last decade there’s been no other subject more debated and central to people’s lives, than the current healthcare debacle making its way through the economy. Since the inception of what is colloquially known as Obamacare, the entire complex that was once the envy of the world seems to now be circling around the edge of some giant sinkhole before it renders itself to the forces of gravity, and finally descends into the abyss, taking everything with it in some horrifying sucking sound.
If you try to garner any information on how to solve this current debacle (and people like to gloss over this very point) from any of the so-called “smart crowd.” All one gets are mumbo-jumbo filled constructs about why the issue is so difficult to fix and more. It’s moved beyond resembling any sense of intellectual type arguing. Now – it’s pure emotional screaming, crying, and incoherent mumblings making kindergarden look scholarly in comparison. It’s beyond pathetic. Yes – on both sides.
I don’t get into politics and I’ve always stated: “You should not know which side of the political aisle I stand on if I’m making my arguments correctly.” Today is no different, for this isn’t about politics per se – this is about business, especially small business, the life blood of America , its economy, as well as the nations main employer. And the current draconian measures being thrust upon them gets little to no attention via the main stream press is not only appalling – it’s damn near criminal.
Why? Because it’s killing not only them, but with them goes, as it destroys, the areas of the economy that most people get their first leg up into the economy. This is where people looking for decent work, or chances to prove themselves, or maybe try to put back together, or reinvent from a recently shattered past or life: rebuild, relaunch, or reinvent. Sometimes themselves- sometimes the business itself. All for the better.
This is where people go apply for a job face-to-face to an owner looking for a chance as to prove their worth. Or if they can’t find one – invent one. Not send 100’s of applications to H.R. computer screening black-holes that will disqualify an applicant for not dotting some i, or crossing a t, literally.
Think: your local market, retailer, sub shop, distributor, manufacturer et al with about 50 or 100 employees give or take. The Small Business Administration has different criteria as in up to “500 employees” and more, but for this discussion, it’s about what most understand as “small.” It’s these businesses that are the dynamism for most towns.
Without the relief that was expected (and sold) to the entire small business community – it is at risk, even more so, than it already is. That alone should make politicians on both side take notice, but currently it’s like they’re (small business) screaming in a vacuum. And no one seems to care. Not the politicians, and certainly not the Chamber of Commerce.
Small business used to look to agents such as this for help in having their voices heard. But now? It’s more like lip service, then, “Have you sent in a donation?” It’s now moved beyond pathetic.
So in this vein I’m going to wave my usual fees (and I don’t do that lightly) and will now detail precisely how to fix the entire healthcare question and return it, along with its once lofty reputation, for being the best in the world. To wit:
1. As has already been suggested: Repeal the current law (Obamacare) in its entirety today, with a two-year delay for full compliance.
2. Make all politicians, staff, along with all government employees: to have to purchase and acquire insurance plans that are available to the general public. No special provisions, no special carve-outs. If the general public can’t purchase it? Neither can a politician or other government employee. And if for any reason “insurance” or “healthcare” is part of their compensation? A stipend equivalent to, and no more than: the median or average of available plans. No work around, no exceptions. Period.
If those two solitary provisions were met – the entire healthcare/insurance fiasco would be solved at a minimum “on time”, and probably for the first time – ahead of schedule.
Everyone would benefit near immediately (and would be covered regardless of anything prior or existing) the moment the politicians had to pay, and abide, by what their constituents have, especially if full payment was only for “the median.” This would take the “median” or “average” plan standards to stratospheric heights (along with pushing down its costs via the competitive model and market) making today’s “gold” standard look more like fools-gold.
Again: Make that second item in the list above into law? America begins getting back to work far faster, and far healthier, than we have in decades.
The above is worth $Trillions, upon $Trillions of potential GDP gains along with employing many of the millions currently being forced off jobs everywhere just because they are number 50 in the employee roster. And the effects, along with affects, would be felt throughout the nation with near immediacy. All at no charge from me – and more importantly – no charge to the nation.
In fact: The only “charge” will be; what is heard from America’s business sector once the shackles of Obamacare are cast aside. Something they’ve been wanting to scream for years.
- Most Americans Are Unwilling To Pay More For "Made In The USA" Products, Poll Finds
President Donald Trump swept into office in November after promising to protect downtrodden American manufacturers by imposing trade barriers that would make US goods more competitive in the US, and around the world.
Yet to the relief of US retailers, Trump has, for now, at least, shelved his threats to impose strict tariffs on Chinese goods – assuming President Xi Jinping follows through with his promise to help the US curb North Korea’s nuclear capabilities. And just yesterday, US Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer 17-page outline of a "tough negotiating strategy" to revise the 1994 North American Free Trade Agreement, meant to reduce trade imbalances with Mexico and Canada. In the early days of his presidency, Trump repeatedly criticized companies – car companies in particular – for moving production outside the US.
But while many blue-collar Americans lament the loss of their once reliable manufacturing jobs, a recent poll by Reuters belies the perception that Americans want to see the shelves of local retailers piled high with goods that were made in the US. To wit: While most Americans support Trump’s “buy American” conceit, few are eager to shoulder the higher costs typically associated with goods both manufactured and sold in the states.
“A Reuters/Ipsos poll released on Tuesday found 70 percent of Americans think it is “very important” or “somewhat important” to buy U.S.-made products.
Despite that sentiment, 37 percent said they would refuse to pay more for U.S.-made goods versus imports. Twenty six percent said they would only pay up to 5 percent more to buy American, and 21 percent capped the premium at 10 percent.”
On Monday, Trump released a state-by-state "Made in America Product Showcase" that included AMES wheelbarrows, according to Reuters. Yet at the AMES Companies Inc. factory in Harrisburg, Penn., the wheelbarrows coming off the assembly line once every six seconds cost the company more to there than abroad, but US retailers generally will not charge more for them because consumers would balk, AMES President Mark Traylor said.
Ironically, lower-income Americans were the most enthusiastic about buying US goods, the poll showed, despite being the least able to afford them.
The biggest U.S. retailer is well aware of the priority buyers place on price above all else. A spokesman for Wal-Mart Stores Inc said customers are telling them “that where products are made is most important second only to price.”
Nearly all US manufacturers face the same squeeze.
As Reuters points out, domestic manufacturers could be in trouble if they fail to capitalize on perceptions about the quality of their products while also keeping a tight lid on costs. That perception is American-made goods are sturdier, and tend to outlast and outperform cheap imports.
“We don’t have to be as cheap as imports,” says Traylor, who estimated he sells his wheelbarrows to U.S. retailers for about 10 percent more than importers.
Factors like cheaper domestic freight and a desire among retailers to carry lower inventories can help make up some of the cost differential.
AMES is also better positioned than overseas suppliers to help retailers who need products on short notice. When spring comes early, for example, AMES can respond quickly to ship goods to stores, Traylor said, something importers can't do.
Another strategy embraced by manufacturers is likely to disappoint Trump and his supporters. They might find that, even if Trump succeeds in enticing US firms to move their factories back to the US, that those factories will be staffed mostly by machines, not humans.
“Traylor said another secret to success for U.S. manufacturers is investing in technology to cut costs.
AMES, a subsidiary of New York-based Griffon Corp, is pouring $50 million into upgrades at several locations. The Harrisburg factory, built in 1921, is dotted with aged machinery that has been fitted with robotic attachments to reduce reliance on human labor.
AMES' annual sales are $514 million.”
AMES told Reuters that it recently convinced a major retailer, who they did not want to identify, to switch from Mexican-made wheelbarrows to carry its products.
The company added that business is so strong it’s hiring 100 employees across its five Pennsylvania locations, including the Harrisburg factory. However, despite its plans to expand, bringing more workers back from overseas could be difficult.
The company said it recently convinced a major retailer, who they did not want to identify, to switch from Mexican-made wheelbarrows to carry their product.
In late April, Trump marked his 100th day in office with a visit to the AMES plant. He asked if every part of the wheelbarrows was made in America. Everything, he was told, except the Chinese-made tires.
That’s because US manufacturers stopped large-scale production of air-filled tires for garden equipment years ago, and the cost of setting up production now would be hard to justify for the low-margin product. Some rubber makers still manufacture solid rubber tires in the US, Reuters reported, but the last time AMES bought any they cost nearly twice the roughly $7 they pay for a Chinese tire, a big added cost for a wheelbarrow that often retails for less than $100.
“Is it feasible to get U.S.-made tires?” asked Mark D’Agostino, the company’s vice president for supply chain. “We don’t know yet.”
To be sure, some manufacturers can command a big premium for American-made products.
“Klein Tools Inc, a privately held company based outside Chicago with annual sales of $500 million, makes hand tools that are highly sought after by electricians and other workers.
A pair of 9-inch Klein pliers sells for about 30 percent more than a comparable import.”
But betting on the allure of American-made goods can be risky.
In 2012, High Point, North Carolina-based Stanley Furniture Co brought back production of cribs and other baby furniture from China to a U.S. plant, wagering that parents worried about a string of Chinese factory quality scandals would pay $700 for cribs nearly identical to imports selling for $400.
Customers refused to bite, however, and the High Point factory closed in 2014.
Still, Stanley Chief Executive Glenn Prillaman said the Trump administration’s emphasis on American-made goods is a hopeful sign that resonates with “people that work for a living,” because they can see how it impacts their own jobs.
"The lower-end consumers certainly care, and that’s a good thing,” he said. “But they’re also not in a position to pay the premium.”
The Reuters/Ipsos poll was conducted online in English throughout the US between May 24 and May 31. It gathered responses from 2,857 people, including 593 adults who made less than $25,000 per year, 1,283 who said they earned between $25,000 and $74,999, and 805 people who earned more than $75,000. The poll has a credibility interval of 2 percentage points for the entire group, 5 points for the low-income respondents, 3 points for the middle-income respondents and 4 points for the high-income respondents.
- Snyder Rages "We Need To Build Trump's Wall, And We Need To Build It Tall & Strong"
Authored by Michael Snyder via The American Dream blog,
Did you know that Mexico is the second deadliest nation on the entire planet? The drug war down there continues to spiral completely out of control, and often the violence spills over to our own side of the border. Thanks to President Trump, security along the border is improving, but we still have a long, long way to go. Ultimately what we need is a physical barrier, because large numbers of illegal immigrants continue to pour through the soft spots in our border security.
I know that a lot of liberals don’t like the idea of a wall, but that is the only way that we are going to make sure that everyone comes into this country through the front door.
The United States is a nation of immigrants, and we will always need a certain level of immigration from other nations. But prior to the Trump administration, our approach to immigration policy was absolutely insane. We had made the legal immigration process an extremely costly and complicated nightmare that hardly anyone could understand or navigate, and yet we had kept the back door completely wide open for drug dealers, gang members, terrorists, sexual predators and anyone that just wanted to take advantage of the system.
We have got to make our legal system of immigration less costly and less complicated, and at the same time we need to slam the back door completely shut so that everyone is forced to come in to the U.S. through the front door.
To illustrate why this is such an incredibly important issue, I would like to share the story of Estefania Soto with you. Thanks to a drunk illegal immigrant, Soto lost her boyfriend and her baby recently in a horrific traffic accident…
Estefania Soto has spent her days in various hospital rooms since the crash on June 10. She and her boyfriend, 28-year-old Raul Diaz, Jr., were on a motorcycle on Farm to Market 973 near FM 969 in east Travis County when they were hit head-on by a truck.
The crash killed Diaz and resulted in the premature birth of their child. Soto, 26, was only six months pregnant. Their baby was delivered through a C-section after the crash and passed away shortly after.
Soto has had 15 surgeries over the past month including a leg amputation.
If Trump’s wall had already been in place, 38-year-old Cesar Corona-Quiterio may have never had the chance to enter this country illegally and Estefania Soto may still be looking forward to a new life with her husband and her baby.
Another tragedy that could have potentially been averted by a wall on the southern border was the brutal rape of a 14-year-old girl at a high school in Rockville, Maryland. The following comes from Fox News…
Jose O. Montano, 17, from El Salvador, and Henry E. Sanchez-Milian, 18, from Guatemala, were charged with first-degree rape and two counts of first-degree sexual offense after they allegedly attacked the girl at 9 a.m. last Thursday.
“The victim was walking in a school hallway when she met two male students, identified as Montano and Sanchez. Montano asked the victim to walk with him and Sanchez. Montano asked the victim to engage in sexual intercourse. She refused,” Montgomery County Police said in a statement.
“Montano asked the victim again and then forced her into a boy’s bathroom and then into a stall. Montano and Sanchez both raped the victim inside the bathroom stall.”
How would you feel if that was your own daughter?
I don’t understand how people can be against the wall. We literally have a war zone on the other side of the border, and CNN has reported that the drug war down in Mexico claimed an astounding 23,000 lives last year…
It was the second deadliest conflict in the world last year, but it hardly registered in the international headlines.
As Syria, Iraq and Afghanistan dominated the news agenda, Mexico’s drug wars claimed 23,000 lives during 2016 — second only to Syria, where 50,000 people died as a result of the civil war.
And the rising violence in Mexico and much of the rest of central America has been slowly spreading to communities all across the United States. For example, just check out what has been happening on Long Island…
With MS-13 blamed for a trail of 11 corpses of mostly young people found since the start of the school year in Brentwood and Central Islip, the nation’s focus has turned on how the Central American street gang built such a presence here.
The bloodshed in the two blue-collar towns has gotten the attention of President Donald Trump, who says the killings are the result of lax immigration policies that let too many criminal ‘scum’ slip through.
Attorney General Jeff Sessions gave a speech Friday not far from a park where the bodies of four young men were found this month bearing MS-13’s hallmarks: repeated slashes from a blade that left the victims nearly unrecognizable.
Are you starting to understand why I am so adamant about building Trump’s wall?
We need to build it high, we need to build it strong, and we need armed guards patrolling every inch of it.
One of the fundamental duties of the federal government is national security, and for decades prior to the Trump administration we had leaders that absolutely refused to secure our borders.
Thankfully, now we have a president that is determined to do something about this national crisis, but we still have a Congress that is intent on blocking him every step of the way.
Every member of Congress that doesn’t want Trump’s wall needs to go, and they need to be replaced by new blood that is ready to do whatever is necessary in order to protect the American people.
- Fighting inflation with FX, a real traders market
(GLOBALINTELHUB.COM) Dover, DE — 7/18/2017 — Hidden in plain site, as the Trump administration finally released something of substance regarding the so called promised “Trade Negotiation” we see FX take center stage in the global drama unfolding. As noted on a Zero Hedge article:
The much anticipated document (press release and link to full document) released by U.S. Trade Representative Robert Lighthizer said the Trump administration aimed to reduce the U.S. trade deficit by improving access for U.S. goods exported to Canada and Mexico and contained the list of negotiating objectives for talks that are expected to begin in one month. Topping Trump’s list is a “simple” objective: “improve the U.S. trade balance and reduce the trade deficit with Nafta countries.” Among other things the document makes the unexpected assertion that no country should manipulate currency exchange to gain an unfair competitive advantage,which according to Citi’s economists was the only notable surprise in the entire document: That line of focus centers on FX: “Through an appropriate mechanism, ensure that the Nafta countries avoid manipulating exchange rates in order to prevent effective balance of payments adjustment or to gain an unfair competitive advantage.” ..While Canada and Mexico are not formally considered currency manipulators by the US Treasury, the reference in the list of objectives will likely set a template for future trade deals such as the pending negotiation to modify a 5 year old free trade deal with South Korea, a country in far greater risk of being branded a currency manipulator as it sits on the Treasury’s monitoring list for possible signs of currency manipulation.
As we have explained in previous articles and in our book Splitting Pennies – Trade is FX. Tariffs can discourage trade, but so can a high price – effectively they are the same thing. Conversely, a cheap price encourages trade. This is why Japan has logically and rationally destroyed the value of its own currency in order to boost trade, in their case – exports – because Japan is not only a net exporter, they are a near 100% OEM manufacturer.
But it’s not clear that whoever wrote this document understands FX – every currency is currently a ‘manipulator’ – including Japan, and the US Federal Reserve Bank. In fact, the global FX market has become a race to the bottom, with each currency competing with each other who can go down more, faster. It’s a race into oblivion. Contrary to what you may read in the current doom journalism popular online, the global financial collapse is happening right before our eyes – over a long time horizon. The big mistake that many economists, analysts, and investors have made in the ‘doom and gloom’ crowd is that they all expected a ‘date’ or a ‘time’ when everything would ‘collapse’ – they didn’t think that it can happen over a period of 50 years. We are in the demise, it’s happening right before our eyes.
Today someone asked me if Bitcoin can really be 500,000 – and why not? My answer was that, it isn’t that Bitcoin is going UP it’s that the value of the US Dollar is going DOWN. So if Bitcoin is 500,000 – that property in the hamptons that’s listed for $150 Million, it will be listed for $15 Billion, or why not $1 Trillion. There is no limit to the amount of money the Federal Reserve can create – but there is a limited amount of Bitcoin. Those who have lived in exSSR countries or Russia for example, understand how quickly money can be worthless. Quantitative Easing is itself a global ‘reset’ if you understand how it works, and it happens over a long timeframe.
So where is one to invest, to protect from the deteriorating value of FX? Bitcoin is by itself not a solution and by no means even something that should be part of any portfolio, it’s a test of the new world order’s global currency payments and monetary control system, whatever you want to call it – and it’s very volatile – just as it goes up 100% it can go down 90%. The answer is that even with Bitcoin – the point is to TRADE it not INVEST in it. Let’s dissect FX to understand this. Take a look at this Daily EUR/USD chart going back 3 years:
The EUR/USD goes up, it goes down. There’s an election in France, an election in the US. It’s practically one currency. But the ECB has a similar QE program that’s destroying the value of the Euro as well. So the way to protect yourself here is to ‘trade’ this. For example, take a look at a snapshot from 2016 of Magic FX Strategy, that has returned on average 1.5% per month for the last 4 years:
This is not a solicitation of this particular strategy, simply it provides a good example of how to ‘trade’ FX for a consistent profit, to combat inflation. Investing in CDs and other interest rate products are not going to give you the 15%+ per year needed to stay ahead of the Fed. This is the game of hot potato that Elite bankers have designed that’s built into the modern electronic financial system. The stock market is great unless there’s a down year, but still just barely keeps you ahead of the game (if you stick to the traditional blue chips, industrials, utilities, etc) and certainly is not going to give you the 15% – 30% per year returns needed to really grow your portfolio. 30% + is the magic number Elite portfolios target (ironically, it’s about a 2x allocation to Magic FX strategy, in line with the natural fluctuations of the FX market, using reasonable, modest leverage).
If you’re not making 15% + per year inflation is eating you away. So where can you invest and get 15% with reasonable risk? The answer is practically no where in the markets, maybe in the private equity world, complex real estate, and other special situations but clearly there is no vanilla answer like “Buy Gold” or “Buy Bitcoin” as there may have been post 9/11. This will be more and more true as QE matures, because QE is distorting asset prices in complex ways. This is the ‘trap’ which has been set. Not only does it cull the herd, as the Elite like to do every 20 years or so, it forces investors into a situation where they have to take more risk – if they don’t, their assets will ultimately be eaten away by inflation. They have to play the game because if they sit on the sidelines they will lose out. Of course it’s not fair – but that is the nature of the global capitalist financial system, at the moment, and it’s not going to change in our lifetime, so one can understand it and master it, or be the victim of it, SIMPLE!
And in the case of FX it’s not so complex to understand. Let’s look quickly at the last currency of investment, the Swiss Franc.
Here’s a historical chart of CHF/USD (usually it’s quoted USD/CHF which is the inverse – opposite)
Investors in Swiss Francs over this period – which includes Americans just sending their money to Switzerland, enjoyed a 400%+ return over the 40 year period, non-compounded, without considering interest (just FX). The small blip in the 80s when this investment declined was due to the US Dollars aggressive double digit interest rates, but that ended in 1986 when Swissie just took off and never looked back. That was until the post 2008 world, where Switzerland became the target of a number of investigations by hungry US agencies looking for someone to blame and money to pay for damage done by the credit crisis, including the IRS, FBI, and DOJ in general, but there were a number of other US interests interested in financially ‘toppling’ the Gnomes of Zurich – namely, by closing the only way out of QE. The Swiss Franc (CHF) was really the only currency that had any value, it was 40% backed by Gold, and upheld by a 1,000 + year banking tradition, a stable economy, and banking privacy laws.
In order to solidify the US Dollar as the primary world’s reserve currency, that had to be smashed. So they did it in a number of ways, including but not limited to activating assets there such as corrupt central bankers (which really was a non-issue) and squeezing the Gnomes back into submission. So the conclusion to this drama is now the CHF previously being the only real currency to invest in for the long term and forget about it, is now a central bank manipulated currency that is subject to SNB interventions, caps, trading ranges, and other direct central bank manipulation (like all other currencies).
So the reason for that story is simply that there is no where to just ‘invest’ your money and forget about it anymore (there was, such as the example of the Swiss Franc). The good news though, FX is a traders market. If investors are not too greedy, there’s a number of strategies in FX that can return the 15% + needed to beat inflation and possibly even grow. Magic FX is certainly not the only strategy in the world with such low-volatility and consistent returns. But due to the recent Dodd-Frank regulations such strategies are only available to ECP investors, which is a step above being accredited – basically you need to be liquid for $10 Million. Oh, and to make fighting inflation really fun for the retail US investor, you aren’t allowed to hedge (no buying and selling of the same currency) and you must exit your positions in the same order in which you entered them (FIFO) and you have reduced leverage. Basically, the Fed is creating pressure forcing the hand of investors to trade to stay ahead of the game, and the regulators are making it difficult (and in fact, more risky) to trade. With US rules it’s a miracle any US retail investor can be profitable. The rules have really turned FX into the casino that people are afraid of, because they are literally telling you when to exit your trades (FIFO).
In conclusion – FX is a real traders market. It’s better than stocks, bonds, options, futures, etc. Now with the influx of Cryptocurrencies FX is about to get even more interesting. By trading FX successfully, or finding a manager who can do it for you – it’s the only way to fight inflation, to at least maintain the value of your hard earned dollars. As we mentioned earlier in the article, there are of course other methods such as private equity and niche businesses (such as lawyers selling rights to settlements) that can generate the 30% + needed to grow a portfolio – but it’s not available publicly, in the markets. But FX is there – it’s there for the taking – and it’s not going away anytime soon.
Open a Forex Account or Learn Forex with Fortress Capital Trading Academy.
Article written by Elite E Services for Global Intel Hub.
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