Jan 01

Today’s News 1st January 2017

  • Former Lifelong Democrat Admits "Obama Is A Failed President"

    Authored by Eric Zuesse via Strategic-Culture.org,

    I’m a former lifelong Democrat, stating here a clear and incontestable fact: Barack Obama is a failed President.

    It’s true not just because of the sad realities such as that «Top Ex-White House Economist Admits 94 % Of All New Jobs Under Obama Were Part-Time» — or, as the economists Alan Krueger and Lawrence Katz wrote in the original of that study: «94 percent of the net employment growth in the U.S. economy from 2005 to 2015 appears to have occurred in alternative work arrangements». («Alternative work arrangements» referred there to Americans who were involuntarily working only part-time jobs — they simply couldn’t find full-time, though that’s what they wanted.) In other words: Obama’s failure isn’t just because of America’s increasingly sales-clerk, and burger-flipping, workforce.

    And Obama’s failure is also not just because «Poverty Rose In 96 % Of U.S. House Districts, During Obama’s Presidency». (However, that reality turned out to be decisive in Hillary Clinton’s loss to Donald Trump on November 8th, as Nate Cohn pointed out in The New York Times on December 23rd, headlining, «How the Obama Coalition Crumbled, Leaving an Opening for Trump». Hillary was running on Obama’s poor record.)

    Obama’s failure is also because of other important reasons. Among them is the uncounted thousands of people who were killed in, and the uncounted millions of people who became refugees from, the places where Obama (or else his installed regimes) bombed and caused the residents to either die or flee. George W. Bush’s destructions of Iraq and even Afghanistan were now being followed by the destructions of Libya by Obama and Sarkozy, and of Syria by Obama and Saud and Thani and Erdogan, who armed the tens of thousands of jihadists and sent them into Syria to overthrow and replace Assad — and Bush’s destructions were followed also by Obama’s keeping in power the barbaric junta-regime that replaced the democratically elected Honduran Presiden Manuel Zelaya on 28 June 2009 shortly after Obama entered the White House (and this junta-regime, in turn, caused Honduras’s murder-rate to soar 50% to become the world’s highest, which then caused hundreds of thousands of Hondurans to flee and become undocumented U.S. immigrants, against which Donald Trump campaigned).

    The Obama regime has thus created far more misery outside America, than inside it. Failures such as those didn’t cost Hillary Clinton many (if any) votes (because most voters didn’t even know about these foreign-affairs matters), but those failures were actually even bigger than Obama’s failures in purely domestic U.S. policy matters (which voters do know about). Trump campaigned against ‘illegal immigrants’, but he never even called attention to those people’s fleeing the hells that the U.S. regime had created in not only Honduras but earlier in Guatemala and El Salvador — coups and U.S.-trained death squads.

    In noting Obama’s failures, I’m not a Republican; I’m no one who is condemning Obama for his allegedly being a ‘Marxist' ‘Muslim’, or some other imaginary distraction from the reality (a reality which is too Republican for Republicans to be able to criticize — so, they’ve insteadignored that reality, and cited fake ‘reasons’ against him, including ‘death panels’ and other fabrications, which Republicans then forgot about after their fraudulent allegations against him became clear, to all but insane people, as being just Republican lies). 

    Obama is a failure not because he wasn’t sufficiently conservative or ‘Christian' (as Republicans had constantly accused him of having been), but instead because he wasn’t sufficiently progressive (nowhere close to being a progressive) — and, in many ways, he was actually far more conservative than any of his duplicitous campaign-rhetoric had pretended him to be. He’s an extraordinarily gifted liar — he was phenomenally successful at that.

    And I am not blaming Obama for congressional Republicans’ having been more obsessed with making him be a failed President, than they were interested in making America be a successful nation. Republicans lie at least as much as he does, just not nearly as skillfully. (They especially can’t feign compassion as skillfully as he.) This article thus does not blame him for what the overt Republicans were doing to cripple the little good he had actually tried to achieve — such as closing Guantanamo. It’s only about Obama’s failure.

    Obama’s failure was all his own — it’s not because of the good things that Republicans had blocked him from doing; it is instead because of the horrible things (such as his failed TPP, TTIP and TISA trade-treaties, and his successful 2011 killing of Gaddafi, and 2014 coup in Ukraine) that were central to his actual agenda — a conservative, even reactionary, agenda, which favored the interests of the hundreds of billionaires who control U.S.-based international corporations, above the interests of the 300+ million American people, whom the U.S. President is supposed to be serving.

    I voted for Barack Obama both times, because both of his opponents («Bomb bomb bomb Iran» McCain in 2008, and «#1 geopolitical foe» Romney in 2012) were clearly determined to focus America’s enormous military expenditures away from exterminating the jihadists and their Saudi funders, toward instead conquering Iran (McCain) and Russia (Romney), and also because Republicans — throughout at least the period extending from 1910 to 2010 — consistently had, in fact, produced a record of far less success with the U.S. economy, than did Democrats, and especially because neither McCain nor Romney had repudiated the very worst President in U.S. history (at least prior to Obama) and his atrocious record of lies and needless bloodshed and invasions: George W. Bush — Bush’s Party instead reaffirmed that monstrous President.

    And, consequently, I never expected Barack Obama to turn out to have been, quite possibly, even a worse President than Bush. Nobody expected that — except Republicans, for whom Bush wasn’t bad enough to satisfy them (and certainly not bad enough for them to apologize for — so, they did not apologize for him).

    Here, then, is Obama’s astounding record of failure:

    «From a Democracy to a Plutocracy»

    «Understanding President Obama’s Strategy to Force Cutting Social Security, Medicare, and Medicaid»

    «Obama Finally Lays His Cards on the Table»

    «Barack Obama Is Now Completing His Long-Held Plan to Subvert the Democratic Party»

    «Obama: ‘I Don’t Care About the Public’s Welfare’».

    As that last one documented, the Obama ‘Justice’ Department scored an all-time low number both of financial institution fraud prosecutions, and of white-collar-crime prosecutions. Obama came into power immediately after an economic crash that was loaded especially with financial-institution frauds. He protected the banksters. So, financial-executive-fraud prosecutions didn’t soar, like they should have; instead they plunged. Like Obama told the Wall Street bigs, near the start of his regime, on 27 March 2009, in private, inside the White House: «My administration is the only thing between you and the pitchforks. … I’m not out there to go after you. I’m protecting you… I’m going to shield you». And that’s what he did. And, on 20 September 2016, Dave Johnson of the Campaign for America’s Future, headlined «Banks Used Low Wages, Job Insecurity To Force Employees To Commit Fraud», so there was no way that the employees could keep their jobs except to do the crimes that they were being virtually forced by their bosses to do.

    The criminality was actually at the very top — where Obama had promised «I’m protecting you». So, the TARP’s Inspector General urged, on 26 October 2016 (since the President was refusing to prosecute those people), «that Congress remove the insulation around Wall Street CEOs and other high-level officials by requiring the CEO, CFO and certain other senior executives to sign an annual certification that they have conducted due diligence within their organization and can certify that that there is no criminal conduct or civil fraud in their organization». The Special Inspector General of TARP, Christy Goldsmith Romero, was proposing this, as being the way to make prosecutions, of these top-level fraud-executives, so easy that the Obama Administration’s claims — that there was no top-level fraud that could be prosecuted — would be an even more blatant, absurdly false, lie, than it had been.

    If this country were Ukraine, or even Russia, then Americans (trained by decades of a CIA-controlled ‘free press’) would say «Oh, of course those countries are corrupt, but America isn’t like that». But, at least under Barack Obama, ‘we’ were that. This was America — and ‘our’ President was protecting the elite fraudsters, instead of prosecuting them.

    Nonetheless, anyone who would say that the American people are not better off now than they were at the end of Bush’s disastrous Presidency would be either misinformed or lying, because there’s lots of data showing that, finally, eight years after Bush, Americans are better off than they were at the end of Bush’s miserable eight years (even though not yet better off than Americans were prior to Bush’s 2007-2008 crash). And the Administration published on December 15th its record of ‘successes’ «The 2017 Economic Report of the President» which was real but not adjusted for the fact that Obama came into office at the pit of the economic crash, which means that such ‘successes’ are almost inevitable, hardly a credit to Obama. But yet, the reality stands, that the Obama economic recovery was the weakest in the entire post-World-War-II period. Plus, the federal debt doubled on his watch, even while, as that Economic Report mentioned only in passing: «The United States has seen a faster increase in inequality in recent decades than any of the major advanced economies, and despite the historic progress made over the last eight years, the level of U.S. inequality remains high». Normally, after an economic crash, economic inequality reduces; but under Obama it remained at or near its pre-crash high. 

    It was an economic record (and an invasion and coup record) of which any Republican President could justifiably have been proud (since conservatives favor inequality, a caste system) — but no Democrat could (except fake ones — such as Obama and the Clintons).

  • Criminal Witch Hunt In Dallas Pension Fiasco

    Submitted by Michael Shedlock via MishTalk.com,

    In the wake of the near collapse of the Dallas police and fire pension fund, a Dallas News editorial says Former Police, Fire Pension Managers Should Face Criminal Investigation.

    dallas-pension6

    Mayor Mike Rawlings is right to ask for a state criminal investigation into shady practices by the Dallas Police and Fire Pension System’s prior management.

     

    The fund is on the verge of a potentially catastrophic collapse that could leave public safety workers, taxpayers and the City of Dallas on the hook for billions of dollars. And the reason stems from abuses under the former administrator Richard Tettamant, who was ousted in 2014.

     

    The fund’s former managers bet heavily on risky investments such as luxury homes in Hawaii, a resort and vineyard in California and Dallas’ Museum Tower itself, and promised its hardworking police and fire employees unrealistic returns while enjoying lavish perks.

     

    Those returns didn’t materialize, saddling the retirement fund’s new managers with $2 billion to $5 billion in unfunded liabilities. Frightened police officers and firefighters began a run on the fund, pulling more than $500 million out of it in recent weeks at a pace that would have drained the fund’s cash to dangerous levels.

     

    The city of Dallas contends it is not legally responsible for the actions of the pension fund’s former managers, in part, because the city doesn’t control the fund, which was set up decades ago by the Texas Legislature. But the city is on the hook nonetheless; a failure of the fund would betray promises made to current and retired public safety workers and would make it much more difficult for the city to recruit new police officers and firefighters.

     

    Too many people are at risk and those who put them there need to be called to account for their actions.

    Criminal Witch Hunt

    I am not here to defend the investment schemes of the fund managers. And I certainly take exception to alleged lavish perks. But this case is going nowhere.

    If one wants to place blame, then blame rests squarely on the shoulders of the legislature that authorized the plan and established the absurd pension assumptions.

    Perks did not cause the pension plan to be ridiculously underfunded. Rather, ridiculous plan assumptions steered the managers into risky assets.

    In hindsight, it’s easy to say the fund should have thrown it all at Google, Apple, etc. Care to make the same case going forward?

    Taxpayers on the Hook?

    Taxpayers should not be on the hook for this mess. The promises were bound to fail from the get go.

    The fault for this mess is squarely in the hands of politicians, not those running the fund.

    Nearly every public pension plan in the nation is severely underfunded. There is nothing special about Dallas.

    However, politicians will never point the finger at themselves. So the witch hunt is on.

    Related Articles

    1. Dallas Police Retiring in Droves, Taking Lump Sum Pensions, Fearing the Money Isn’t There (And It Isn’t)
    2. Dallas Pension Showdown: Mayor Seeks to “Target Those Who Got Rich From System”
    3. Not Just Dallas: Fort Worth Employees’ Pension Plan in Deep Trouble

    The only realistic solution to this mess is massive haircuts on pension assumptions, one of two ways: Voluntary or in bankruptcy court.

  • Washington Post Caught Spreading More Fake News About "Russian Hackers"

    Readers of the Washington Post received some alarming news yesterday when the paper published a story alleging that those pesky “Russian hackers” were up to their no good tricks again and had managed to “penetrate the U.S. electricity grid through a utility in Vermont.”  The full headline read as follows:

    Wapo

    The opening paragraph of WaPo’s story directly linked the “hack” of the Vermont utility to the same “Russian hacking operation dubbed Grizzly Steppe” that the Obama administration has blamed for the DNC and John Podesta email hacks.  Vermont’s Governor, Peter Shumlin, told WaPo that “Americans should be both alarmed and outraged” by these actions perpetrated by “one of the world’s leading thugs, Vladimir Putin,” before seemingly calling for further retaliatory actions from the Obama administration.

    Vermonters and all Americans should be both alarmed and outraged that one of the world’s leading thugs, Vladimir Putin, has been attempting to hack our electric grid, which we rely upon to support our quality-of-life, economy, health, and safety. This episode should highlight the urgent need for our federal government to vigorously pursue and put an end to this sort of Russian meddling.

    Moreover, Vermont Senator Patrick Leahy took the rhetoric to a whole new level by asserting a diabolical Russian plot to shut down the U.S. electrical grid in the middle of winter…a move that would most certainly kill off half the state’s population in an instant.

    VT Gov

    Of course, it didn’t take long for the New York Times and ABC to latch on to the story since it fits their “2016 election hacking” narrative so perfectly.

     

    Alas, there was just one minor problem, namely that the entire article was completely fabricated.  Apparently the esteemed “journalists” of the Washington Post didn’t even bother to contact the Burlington Electric Department to confirm their bogus story…and why should they…it fit the “Russian hacking” narrative so perfectly therefore it must be true, right?

    Well, apparently not.  The quick spread of WaPo’s “fake news” story forced the Burlington Electric Department to issue a clarifying statement assuring worried residents that, indeed, their electricity grid had not been hacked, but rather a single “laptop not connected” to the grid had been found to have a malware virus.

    Vermont Utility

    Which forced the embarrassed Washington Post to quickly tone down their provocative headline…

    Wapo

    …and supplement their original article with the following “Editor’s Note” admitting the entire premise of their original story was nothing more than “fake news.”

    Editor’s Note: An earlier version of this story incorrectly said that Russian hackers had penetrated the U.S. electric grid. Authorities say there is no indication of that so far. The computer at Burlington Electric that was hacked was not attached to the grid.

    Which drew quick reactions from twitter…

     

    …and Glenn Greenwald of The Intercept, who blasted WaPo for their “irresponsible and sensationalist tabloid behavior.”

    THIS MATTERS not only because one of the nation’s major newspaper once again published a wildly misleading, fear-mongering story about Russia. It matters even more because it reflects the deeply irrational and ever-spiraling fever that is being cultivated in U.S. political discourse and culture about the threat posed by Moscow.

     

    The Post has many excellent reporters and smart editors. They have produced many great stories this year. But this kind of blatantly irresponsible and sensationalist tabloid behavior – which tracks what they did when promoting that grotesque PropOrNot blacklist of U.S. news outlets accused of being Kremlin tools – is a by-product of the Anything Goes mentality that now shapes mainstream discussion of Russia, Putin and the Grave Threat to All Things Decent in America that they pose.

    Ironically, a few weeks ago we noted that The Washington Post was all too happy to promote an anonymous website that described Zerohedge as “‘dark gray’ propaganda, systematically deceiving its civilian audiences for foreign political gain” (see “Washington Post Names Drudge, Zero Hedge, & Ron Paul As Anti-Clinton ‘Sophisticated Russian Propaganda Tools’“), all while presenting exactly zero evidence to support their preposterous claim.  Perhaps it’s time for WaPo to dedicate a bit more of its time to self-reflection.

  • At Least 35 People Killed After Shooters Dressed As Santas Open Fire In Istanbul Nightclub – Live Feed

    Live Feed from Istanbul courtesy of RT:

    * * *

    Turkey greeted the New Year with another tragedy after at least 35 people were killed and 40 wounded around 1:15 am local time, when gunmen dressed as Santas opened fire on New Year’s revelers at a nightclub in Istanbul on Sunday morning, Istanbul Governor Vasip Sahin told reporters.

     

    Ambulances line up in front of the Reina nightclub in Istanbul, where a gun
    attack took place during a New Year party.

    The assailant shot a police officer and a civilian as he entered the Reina nightclub before opening fire at random inside according to Reuters. The club lies on the shore of the Bosphorus Strait in the Ortakoy district of Turkey’s most populous city.

     “A terrorist with a long-range weapon … brutally and savagely carried out this incident by firing bullets on innocent people who were there solely to celebrate the New Year and have fun,” Sahin told reporters at the scene.

    Dozens of ambulances and police vehicles were dispatched to the club in Ortakoy, a cosmopolitan neighborhood nestled under one of three bridges crossing the Bosphorus, and home to clubs, restaurants and art galleries. Reina is one of Istanbul’s best-known nightclubs, popular with locals and tourists alike.

    Sahin told local media that the assailants first killed the police officer, who was standing at the door of the club, and then went on a rampage inside, killing innocent civilians. A policeman and a civilian are reported to be among the two known casualties at the nightclub. There were two attackers involved, according to NTV, but conflicting reports also described a lone gunman.

    The gunmen were dressed in Santa Claus outfits, wielding assault rifles, Turkish media said.

    According to RT, one of the gunmen has reportedly hidden inside the club, while the whereabouts of the second one were not immediately clear. The number of casualties may rise, as local press estimates that between 500 and 600 people could have been in the club at the time of the attack, Mynet Haber reports.

    Emergency crews have been evacuating injured people from the building as the police search for suspects. Some people jumped into the waters of the Bosphorus to save themselves and were being rescued by police.

    A search and rescue operation for those who jumped in the water is being carried out by maritime police.

  • "Something For Nothing" All-Weather Funds Disappoint In Post-Election Era

    Variously marketed as "all-weather", "all-season", or "bulletproof", the so-called "risk-parity" strategies of some of the world's largest hedge funds have been anything but 'stable' since the election as the combination of leverage and bond losses have crushed the gains from an exuberant equity market.

    Promise people something for nothing and you are going to attract a lot of attention. Stumble in the process and the critics will be quick to pounce.

    As The Wall Street Journal reports, the weeks since the election have been rough for one of the most polarizing investment strategies out there: risk parity.

    The strategy – which simply put, involves using diversification – and sometimes borrowed money (leverage) – to find an (historically-optimized) balance between risk and return.

    Bridgewater’s variant of this strategy, for example, has historically used borrowed money to invest about $1.50 for each dollar in assets, often putting the leverage in historically less-volatile bonds. The goal is stocklike returns with less volatility.

    Problems occur when histroical relationships between asset-classes break down… just as they did during this year (when the historical norm of inversely correlated bond and stock prices reversed completely)…

    The post-election rally in stocks and selloff in bonds hit these portfolios, embolding critics of the approach…

    Bonds have been in a bull market for 35 years, so adding leverage would have produced strong returns for a modest increase in volatility, says Ben Inker of fund management firm GMO. He also argues that “volatility and risk are not the same.”

    As WSJ concludes, the strategy has sharply underperformed both stocks and a traditional 60% stock 40% bond index fund offered by Vanguard since 1993.

    Without the benefit of leverage, lower volatility equals lower returns. Even with it, though, there are occasional bumps in the road. For investors whose moods are as fickle as the weather, risk parity may involve more risk than reward.

  • Global Recession And Other Visions For 2017

    Submitted by Economic Prism's MN Gordon via Acting-Man.com,

    Conjuring Up Visions

    Today’s a day for considering new hopes, new dreams, and new hallucinations.  The New Year is here, after all.  Now is the time to turn over a new leaf and start afresh. Naturally, 2017 will be the year you get exactly what’s coming to you. Both good and bad.  But what else will happen?

     

    Image of a recently discarded vision…

     

     

    Here we begin by closing our eyes and slowing our breath.  We let our mind role back into the gray matter of our brain.  We wait patiently for new neurological connections to open up.  Then, ever so subtly, visions of the year ahead come into focus.

    Will stocks go up or down?  What about gold and Treasury bonds?  Will the economy expand or contract?  Are we fated for World War III?  Who will win the Super Bowl? These are the questions – and more – we intend to answer.

    Obviously, conjuring up visions is more art than science.  But so is Fed monetary policy. Nonetheless, before we get to it we must first lean upon ancient Chinese Philosopher Lao Tzu for a full disclaimer:

    “Those who have knowledge, don’t predict.  Those who predict, don’t have knowledge.”

    Hence, what follows comes from a place of zero knowledge.  We know nothing.  Still we sharpen our pencils and face our limitations.  What follows, for fun and for free, are several simple conjectures for the year ahead…

     

    Global Recession

    To start, the animal spirits and optimism that greeted Donald Trump’s election victory will flame out not long after inauguration day.  Without a major economic crisis, it will be near impossible to get substantial – $2 trillion deficit – spending approved by Congress.  Moreover, even if massive fiscal stimulus is approved it won’t make much of a lick to the economy for four quarters or more – if ever.

    One lesson of the 2009 American Recovery and Reinvestment Act is that throwing money at infrastructure projects is more complex than commonly appreciated.  Shovel ready projects don’t exist.  In particular, shovel ready infrastructure projects that could generate significant growth in high paying jobs are hard to come by with just the inking of a stimulus bill.

     

    The surplus shovels from the last batch of shovel-ready infrastructure projects are still in the process of being dumped…

     

    No doubt, this lesson was quickly forgotten when the sky stopped falling just after the darkest days of the Great Recession.  So, too, it’ll be quickly remembered.  Soon enough, the realization that stimulus spending won’t provide an immediate lift to the economy will spread across Wall Street and the post-election stock market rally will reverse.

    Similarly, the Fed’s efforts to ‘normalize’ interest rates will be tabled.  The economy simply can’t afford higher rates.  This isn’t Trump’s fault, of course.  He’s been handed a badly damaged economy.

    Quite frankly, there’s really no way to fix it.  Decades of economic degradation are irreversible.  Adding new debt based stimulus will only further the overall divergence between debt and GDP.

    Specifically, the debt will grow larger while GDP slouches forward.  On top of that, larger deficits will eventually ignite a level of consumer price inflation that hasn’t dramatically flared up since the early 1980s.  A scenario of slow growth and rising consumer price inflation will emerge at some point.

    But first something else must come to pass.  By mid-year it will become all too apparent that the global economy, including the United States, Europe, China, and Japan, are in a full blown recession.

    The Fed will quickly return to zero interest rate policy.  Ten Year Treasury yields will again slip below 2 percent as investors blindly plow their capital back into the ‘safest investment in the world’ at precisely the most dangerous time.

    The S&P 500, presently near its all-time high, will rapidly descend to 1,200.  And, only then, when fear has reached its extreme, will Congress be ready to go along with Trump’s massive fiscal spending program.

     

    The interesting Wile E. Coyote moment of blissful weightlessness shortly after passing the all time high…

     

    Other Visions for 2017

    That’s when things will go really haywire.  By then the effects of infrastructure stimulus will be considered too slow to save the economy from itself.  Calls for a direct economic jolt will be made by Larry Summers as he lobbies to replace Janet Yellen as Fed Head.

    Direct monetization of the debt in the form of ‘tax rebate checks’ will be mailed out to every working age citizen whether they have a taxable income or not.  Alas, any temporary boost to the economy these efforts encourage will be overwhelmed by rising price inflation… and higher interest rates.

    The strong dollar trend will also reverse in earnest by the second quarter.  About this time gold will once again glitter.  Consequently, the first three months of the year will be a fantastic time to accumulate and add to your physical gold hoard.  By mid-April gold will be back above $1,350 per ounce.

    Indeed, the coming year will be one of great distress.  As the global economy slips and slides into recession, world politicians will look to distract blame from their own bungles.  They’ll seize any diversion afforded to them to channel the discontents of their masses.  They’ll blunder outward in search of a new mission and greater purpose for their young and idle.

    Global factions are on a collision course for war.  We wish this weren’t so.  But, unfortunately, ongoing territorial disputes between China, Malaysia, Philippines, Taiwan, and Vietnam over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea will continue to escalate.

    Likewise, ancient territorial disagreements between Japan and China over the Senkaku-Diaoyu Islands in the East China Sea will deepen.  These disputes, and a burgeoning arms race, could provide the perfect diversion for China and Japan as their debt fueled economies unravel.

    On a high note, we start the New Year hopeful that a lasting ceasefire has been reached in the proxy Syria war – in spite of the failings of the United Nations and the Obama administration.  In addition, there are numerous other reasons for optimism as we enter 2017.

    For example, right now, in cities across the globe, brilliant minds at the fringe of scientific propriety are but one experiment away from the big energy breakthrough humanity’s been waiting more than 45-years for.  Unfettered by academic zealotry, this new scientific discovery will not come from a leading research or government institution.

    Like all great discoveries in our time, it will come from a small team of eccentrics operating out of a garage on a shoestring budget. What we mean is, in the words of the late Gordon MacKenzie:

    “Orville Wright did not have a pilot’s license.”

     

    What is this? Flying without a license?  Obviously, the pre-world war age must have been pure chaos… not enough regulations, as Ben Bernanke would say!

     

    Lastly, the Dallas Cowboys will win the Super Bowl.

     

    The best part of the Dallas Cowboys. In late 2015 the team became the most valuable sports team in the world, surpassing Real Madrid – with its estimated net worth reaching $4 bn.

    Happy New Year!

  • Narrative Smashed By Stats – "Most Americans" Did Not Vote For Hillary Clinton

    Submitted by Salil Mehta via Statistical Ideas blog,

    Happy New Year!  As we wrap up another successful year of the statistics blog (now with >50k followers), we would be remiss not to recognize some nice friends who are still feeling disappointed over the outcome of the recent U.S. election.  It is worth exploring a little more about the election results, based on the most updated voting records.  Particularly as the Democrats have pivoted the tête-à-tête from recount and FBI director Comey, to popular vote and Russian president Putin. 

    What does it mean to now imply that "most Americans" voted for Democratic ideals, given the results (looked at through the prism of a popular vote tabulation) showed Hillary Clinton won by only a couple percent? 

    It turns out that this sort of conclusion is false, and instead it leads to one party presuming to hold a mighty moral high-ground from their ¼ voting share? 

    From a peak in 2008, now through 2016, those not caring to vote (in white below) continuously rose to 45% (from 43%).  This is a higher voter apathy than in virtually all other advanced countries.  And frankly, it is the largest American segment of 114m (up from 99m).  Last-minute undecideds (including me) rose.

    Additionally, the voting share for the popular vote "winner" (in blue below) fell to 48% (from 53%), or as a portion of the entire eligible population (as opposed to as a portion of voters) it fell to 26% (from 30%).  So on net, even as the population grew, a small fraction voted (and within that an even smaller fraction voted for the popular vote "winner").  This results in Hillary Clinton not epitomizing the views of "most Americans" even if she "won the popular vote", but rather supported by only 66 million Americans (down from 70 million who voted for Barack Obama in 2008).

    I'm with her?  Observe their share of the pie, below!  Democrats have simply seen a continuously dwindling moral-standing to speak for all Americans, even as the population has grown in the past 8 years.

    So now back to my friends who are still feeling sour over the Presidential election and looking for relief.  I feel a particular sense of responsibility since my polling probability research was read by millions and continuously solicited/shared by one party, and always properly showed Donald Trump had much stronger odds (~3x) versus what MSM polls or Nate Silver were "scientifically" suggesting.  It is worth noting something here at year-end: it's an acutely individual loss, to not see that there are so many tremendous and long-term opportunities we get to enjoy, just living in a great nation such as the United States.  We get most things right, most of the time.  We get to argue about politics and not worry about a knock on our door in the middle of the night.

    The rest of the world has already moved on, as they should.  They really never cared as much about you, or your candidate (just as ½ of our own country doesn't, per above).  That was mainstream media noise that fooled you.  And having worked for many years, in and out of Washington, we can assure you that well over 90% of people have issues so much larger than who was or will be in the White House.  Yet it's captivating, nonetheless, the amount of attention spent in social circles defying this actuality, and presuming moral high-ground by  falsely twisting statistics to suit private needs.  By setting some simple statistics straight, we honestly hope 2017 ushers in a new era of knowledge, contentment and worldly views, as we leave the disparaging partisan choke-hold of the 2016 elections behind.

  • Tesla Sued Over Model X "Spontaneous Acceleration"

    Is Tesla having the worst year ever?  Over the course of 2016, we’ve written frequently about Tesla’s many setbacks including several auto-pilot related crashes, hackers taking control of moving vehicles, egregious levels of cash burn and a very controversial merger with SolarCity.

    Now, as 2016 draws to a close, Tesla once again finds itself in the spotlight as a Model X owner has filed a lawsuit alleging that his electric SUV suddenly accelerated while being parked, causing it to crash through the garage of his home and into his living room, injuring the driver and a passenger.

    In the lawsuit filed Friday in California, Ji Chang Son said that one night in September, he was slowly pulling into his driveway as his garage door opened when the car suddenly sped forward.  Unfortunately for Tesla, the lawsuit seeks class action status noting at least seven other complaints from owners of similar incidents.  Per CBC News:

    “The vehicle spontaneously began to accelerate at full power, jerking forward and crashing through the interior wall of the garage, destroying several wooden support beams in the wall and a steel sewer pipe, among other things, and coming to rest in plaintiffs’ living room,” the lawsuit said.

     

    The lawsuit, filed in U.S. District Court in the Central District of California, seeks class-action status. It cites seven other complaints registered in a database compiled by the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA) dealing with sudden acceleration.

    Musk

     

    Not surprisingly, after conducting a “thorough investigation,” Tesla concluded that their cars are still extremely awesome and therefore any malfunction in operation was certainly due to user error.

    Tesla said in a statement that it had “conducted a thorough investigation” of the claims made by Son.

     

    “The evidence, including data from the car, conclusively shows that the crash was the result of Mr. Son pressing the accelerator pedal all the way to 100 per cent,” a Tesla spokesperson said in an emailed statement.

     

    Tesla said it has various ways to protect against pedal misapplication, including using its autopilot sensors to distinguish between erroneous pedal application and normal cases.

    Of course, the only question now is how many “plumes of smoke” have to be discovered before Tesla investors start to worry that there might actually be a fire?

    TSLA

  • Euronomics Decomposing, Raise a Glass of Cheer!

    This article by David Haggith was first published on The Great Recession Blog: 

    By ECB - European Central Bank (Flickr.com) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons

    Europeans must have been delighted to discover that one thing is working as well as it has since the start of the Great Recession. Behemoth banks that are failing are still able to pay their Christmas bonuses to their top executives and give nice dividends to their shareholders thanks to Super Mario Draghi. 

    Keeping up the tradition of central bankers looking out for other bankers, Mario Draghi, chief of the European Central Bank “agreed to lower the minimum capital requirements for Deutsche Bank on Tuesday, ‘giving the lender more leeway to structure bonus payments and dividends.’” (Zero Hedge).

    Thank God for that, huh? The needs of the stockholders and top execs have been taken care of before one of the world’s oldest megabanks falls on everyone else. While Deutsche Bank’s stocks sit at all-time lows after it has been required to pay $8 billion in fines, at least the golden parachutes are in top condition.

     

    Italy surrenders to Germany

     

    Meanwhile, the world’s oldest bank in Italy got nationalized for Christmas so that the losses of capitalists — many of whom exist outside of Italy — could all be socialized to the people of Italy. However, when the People’s Republic of Italy became the new owner of the bank, they found out the hole in the bank’s core was bigger than they thought. (Surprise.)

    The ECB now estimates the hole to be 8.8 billion euros, rather than the 5 billion of additional capital they formerly believed it needed. That’s a 75% increase in the bank’s capital shortfall that took place from November through December. What a sleigh ride!

    Turns out that all the talk of nationalizing the bank caused depositors to rapidly withdraw funds (who woulda thought?), creating something of a black hole in the bank’s core. Lingering depositors don’t need to worry, though, because the Italian parliament has assured them that all Italians are equally on the hook for the bank’s losses by guaranteeing a 20-billion euro fund to stabilize any Italian banks that are too big to fail.

    In Monte’s case, the Italian government will invest 6.3 billion euros of this fund into filling the growing hole, and the rest will be squeezed out of bond-holders. (Of course, that news is bound to send even the lingerers running if they know what’s good for them, but obviously they don’t, or they wouldn’t still have been there when all this went down, as warnings have been evident for a couple of years.)

    Gee, whatever happened to bail-ins putting the bank’s salvation primarily in the hands of share-holders, bond-holders and major depositors? Look’s like the government still believes general taxpayers should front the biggest wad. So, you’ll be glad to know that, even in Italy, the principles of saving too-big-to-fail banks at the start of the Great Recession are still largely in play. The costs of failing capitalists shall be largely socialized upon the poorer parts of the population because their citizens have happily allowed banks to remain too big to fail.

    Maybe the depositors were all withdrawing their money to buy Christmas presents, so Italy will be saved by a Santa Clause rally. (It is no more wishful than thinking these banks will not ultimately pull down their governments. This was, after all, the bank’s third bailout. Keep bailing.)

    Italy is the eighth-largest economy in the world, third-largest in Europe, and its GDP per capita hasn’t grown since the Great Recession. It has issued the third-largest amount of sovereign bonds in the world to survive its relentlessly unfolding debt catastrophe, with many of its debts being held by banks and central banks outside of Italy.

    On top of that, eighteen percent of all bank loans in Italy are bad debt that has been carried on the books since the Great Recession. Italian banks don’t write off this long-term bad debt because they have less than 50% of the capital they need in order to cover it. So, they pretend their customers will all win the Italian Liralicious Lotto and pay up. Since GDP per capita is actually sinking, the ability of each customer to ever pay one of these debts off is ever diminishing. The Super Mario jackpot better pay off real soon.

    No wonder Italians took a big step toward their own euro exit on December 4th. Back when they had their own currency, they could, at least, try to inflate their way out of trouble. They could lower the lira’s value in order to draw trade away from Germany and toward Italian products. Now they socialize debts away from German (and other non-Italian) bond owners and bank holders toward the Italian populace.

     

    Owed to Grecians earning less

     

    Meanwhile in Greece, people have started rejecting their own inheritances in order to save themselves. At this point in the Greek crisis, so much real estate is underwater that it is worth less than it is worth. You don’t even want to inherit it for free because you cannot sell it for enough to pay off its debt if you accept it.

    With incomes falling (unemployment is at 23%) and taxes rising (particularly property tax) to meet Eurozone austerity requirements, old people have heaped mortgages onto their properties to make it through their declining years. To receive an inheritance from your parents is to receive their bundled debts.

    Thirty-two percent of all property loans in Greece are now delinquent. So much for the ultimate safe haven. So many properties in foreclosure sales drives down the price, making the next round worse. So, beware of dead Greeks bearing gifts if they are willing them to you. Gift recipients are lining up in government cues to decline their inheritance. Wealth destruction via real estate.

    But Europe has this solved. If everything goes well with Greece, the Greek’s condition is expected to resolve back to a normal economy in just fifty years! The Greek debt burden is about 177% of its entire Gross Domestic Product; compare that to the US now at a paltry 100%. Europe calculates the Greek’s situation will improve by 20% come the year 2060. Do you think maybe these people are debt slaves for life? I think they were better off under Rome in AD Zero than under Germany.

    Germany is helping out, after requiring some rather Spartan austerity, by proposing that all of Europe send its refugees goose-stepping toward Greece in order to save the northern states of Europe from those social and financial burdens. That ought to stomp out the tiny nation, which can’t even look out for its own welfare. Greece already has bottled up huge amounts of resentment against both Europe and its own government. Germany seems blindly determined to use its immigration policies to destroy its own European union. “Here, feed our poor and wandering masses while you Greeks lick the bottoms of our boots for nourishment.”

    Not sure who’s doing the math over there, but it doesn’t add up to success.

     

    And now for a Bilderberg Bonanza:

     

    (In case you are stunningly new to the world of conspiracy theories, the uber-elite one-percenters meet at the Hotel Bilderberg once a year to control the world through sub committees like the Illuminati … or something like that. Anyway, they’re really rich, and they suck.)

    The hacker group Anonymous seized control of the Bilderberg website today, posting the following message as the site’s new home page:

     

    …Dear Bilderberg mEmBers, From NoW(), each OnE of you have 1 year (365 days) to truly work in faVor of HumaNs and not youR private interests…. MiNd the cuRrent situation: We conTrol your expensive connected cars, we control your connecteD house security devices, we control your daughter laptop, we control your wife’s mobile, we tape YoUR seCret meetings, we reAD your emaiLs, we control your faVoriTe eScort girl smartWatch, we ARe inside your beLoved banks and we Are reading YoUr assets  You wont be safe anywhere near electricity anyMore  We WiLL watch yOu, from NoW on you got to WoRk for Us, Humanity, the People

     

    They had other choice words, too; but I don’t know if I recommend going to their site to check it out because who knows what it does to your computer while you’re there, but the link is provided for the brave of heart. I did and lived to tell about it. Maybe I’ll find out otherwise when a certain date clicks by.

    It’s getting harder for the globalists to feel safe in their dark-paneled, smoke filled hotel meeting rooms, high in the citadels of Germany, Switzerland, or down inhabiting the swampy Netherlands and other such heady retreats … and this is why they want to control the internet.

     

    The Christmas present from Fundamentalist Islam

     

    Subsequent to the Christmas bombing in Berlin, Europe is proposing tighter restrictions on the movement of cash and precious metals. (This is one more reason that gold is not necessarily a safe haven in any nation because stringent controls were placed on gold in the US during the Great Depression, too. It happens; so, diversify.)

    The European Commission says that tighter controls will help shut down funding for militant operations on the continent. I’m not sure how that will stop a guy from driving a truck into a crowd in Berlin, but maybe it will keep him from getting money for fuel. I think it is more likely that any excuse will do when bankers see people fleeing their proprietary product (money) for generic gold and need to find reasons to slow down the gold traffic. Probably more concerned about that than they are thinking this plan will slow down truck traffic in crowded streets.

    Of course, that’s also why central banks own so much of the yellow stuff they hate — so they can throw it off as ballast whenever there is a run on banks in order to try to kill the price of gold and scare people away from it. Why else would they keep so much of something they say is a poor investment, other than to control the only competition in town to their monopoly?

    The EU is also proposing stricter controls on the movement of Bitcoin funds. The new rules will allow seizure of funds, including gold, wherever “there are suspicions of criminal activity.” It’s unclear whether suspicion also requires a warrant, or just (that’s a lot of money, and I think you look funny or you had a drink with a bad guy).

    While the European Commission solves its immigrant-created catastrophes with golden rules, widespread unrest is becoming the norm due to the over-exuberant globalists’ drive to soak up unscreened Muslim refuges that are not integrating well into European society. They are almost entirely unemployed and sucking up social welfare that those unemployed Greeks and Italians could sure use. That has got to be a short-fused bomb.

    While the news is bad all over Europe, it’s not going so well for the globalists in the new year either! In light of extenuating circumstances, who could ask for anything more? The serfs are up, and the sooner they set sail from the Eurozone and its globalist control, the sooner they can have a real economy back. So, raise a cup of cheer; the New Year is here!

     

    And now, for some lighthearted New Year’s fun, here are my favorite Putin-Obama cartoons.

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