- Friday Night "Intelligence Community" Leak: Russia Bragged About Flynn Connections in Private
This has now reached TMZ styled gossip. Now the ‘intelligence community’, aka the CIA, are leaking private conversations between unnamed Russian officials who bragged about how they could influence Trump via Flynn? Who actually believes this malarkey?
Let’s think this through for a minute.
It’s fairly obvious the CIA/NSA/FBI loathe President Trump and have decided they want to remove him, or at least greatly diminish his power. These are the sort of leaks, however, that make them look desperate. How are we to believe an unnamed source intercepted the conversations of unnamed Russian officials who discussed how they could control Trump via their influence over Flynn?
More importantly, I’ve never seen a man, who has otherwise served his nation with great distinction (Flynn), get ripped apart like this on a daily basis. It’s important to remember that Flynn’s son was a big pedogate/pizzagate theorist and had drawn the venomous ire of the left after John Podesta’s emails were obtained by the public.
Content originally published at iBankCoin.com - Paul Craig Roberts Laments "The Assault On Trump"
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
We are witnessing an assault by the national security state and its liberal media on a President of the United States that is unprecedented.
Wild and unsupported accusations of treasonous or illegal Russian connections have been the mainstay of the news since Trump’s campaign for president. These accusations have reached the point that there is an impeachment movement driven by the national security state and its liberal media and endorsed by Democrats, the American leftwing which has turned against the working class as “Trump deplorables,” and luminaries such as Harvard Law Professor Larry Tribe. The Washington Post, which was not present at the meeting of President Trump with Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov, purports to know that Trump gave Lavrov US national security information.
The Russian government has offered the presstitute media a transcript of the meeting, but, of course, the pressitutes are not interested.
The latest story is that Trump tried to bribe FBI Director Comey, before he fired him, not to investigate Trump as part of the “Russian investigation.” Clearly there is no intelligence left in the American media. The President doesn’t need to bribe someone he can fire.
What we are witnessing is the determination of the national security state to keep their prized “Russian Threat” in its assigned role as the Number One Threat to the US. The liberal media, owned by the CIA since the 1950s is in accord with this goal.
The American media is so accustomed to its enslavement by the national security state that it does not think of the consequences. But Professor Stephen Cohen does. I agree with him that the greatest threat to national security “is this assault on President Trump.”
Cohen said that there is a 4th branch of government, the intelligence community, which obstruts the management of American foreign affairs by the executive branch and Congress.
As an example, he reminded us that “In 2016, President Obama worked out a deal with Russian President Putin for military cooperation in Syria. He said he was going to share intelligence with Russia, just like Trump and the Russians were supposed to do the other day. Our department of defense said it wouldn’t share intelligence. And a few days later, they killed Syrian soldiers, violating the agreement, and that was the end of that. So, we can ask, who is making our foreign policy in Washington today?”
In the 1960s, President John F. Kennedy thought he was in charge, and he was assassinated for his belief. JFK blocked an invasion of Cuba, the Northwoods project, a preemptive nuclear strike on the Soviet Union, and spoke of ending the Cold War.
In the 1970s President Nixon was driven from office, because he thought he was in charge of foreign policy. Like Kennedy, Nixon was a threat to the national security state. Nixon pushed through SALT 1 and the anti-ABM Treaty, and he opened to China, defusing those tensions as well. The military/security complex saw its budget dwindling as the threat dwindled. Nixon also determined to withdraw from Vietnam, but was constrained by the national security state. Nixon, the most knowledgeable president about foreign affairs, was forced from office, because his efforts in behalf of peace constituted a threat to the power and profit of the military/security complex.
It is important to understand that there is no evidence whatsoever against Nixon in the Washington Post “investigation.” The Post’s reporters simply put together a collection of inuendoes that cast aspersion on Nixon, whose “crime” was to say that he learned of the Watergate buglary at a later date than he actually did. Nixon kept the burglary quiet until after his reelection, because he knew that the CIA’s Washington Post would use it in an effort to prevent his reelection.
The “crime” for which Nixon was really removed was his success in establishing more peaceful and stable relations with Russia and China.
Trump, being in real estate and entertainment, was unaware of the landmines on which he was stepping when he said it was time to normalize relations with Russia and to rethink the purpose of NATO.
The US military/security complex sits on a budget extracted from very hard-pressed American taxpayers of $1,000 billion dollars annually. By threatening to normalize relations with the enemy which was created in order to justify this vast budget, Trump presented as the major threat to the American National Security State’s power and profit.
This is why Trump will be broken and/or removed as President of the United States.
Once again democracy in American is proving to be powerless. There is no one in Washington who can help Trump. Those who could help him, such as myself, cannot be confirmed by the US Senate, which is owned lock, stock, and barrel by the military/security complex, Wall Street, and the Israel Lobby.
Trump tried to connect the suffering American people to their government, an act of treason against the oligarchy, who are now making an example of Trump that will dissuade politicians in the future from making populist appeals to the people.
- "ShadowBrokers" Hacking Group Launches Subscription Service Selling Nuclear Secrets
The hacking group known as 'The Shadow Brokers' is pushing a monthly subscription service offering members top secret information including "compromised network data" from the nuclear and ballistic missile programs of Russia, China, North Korea and Iran.
As a reminder, we have noted in the past, many security experts believe the Equation Group is the National Security Agency, and that the Shadow Brokers may be part of a psychological operations campaign run by Russian intelligence.
Shadow Brokers first emerged last August, offering to auction hacking exploits it said were used by the NSA’s elite hacking team known as Equation Group (officially named Tailored Access Operations). NSA whistleblower Edward Snowden and others confirmed the leak was authentic.
In December, Shadow Brokers cancelled its auction and offered to sell the exploits.
In April, the group released passwords to the rest of the hacking exploits in a move described as a protest against President Donald Trump for abandoning his base.
The release included a Windows SMB [Server Message Block] exploit, EternalBlue, which was leveraged in the recent WannaCry global ransomware attack.
In its Tuesday blog post, the group expressed its surprise that governments or tech companies didn’t bid in its past auctions.
It said is has always been about “the shadowbrokers vs theequation group,” and implied the NSA is a cohort of tech companies like Microsoft.
And now, as RT reports, the group’s monthly data dump could also include hacking exploits for web browsers, routers, and operating systems including Windows 10.
"TheShadowBrokers Data Dump of the Month" is a new monthly subscription model, the group said.
Payment will likely be made in the cryptocurrency Bitcoin given the group’s ransom demands in previous cyber attacks.
The group also promised to include compromised financial data from the SWIFT international payment order system, used by banks to transfer trillions of dollars each day, as well as confidential data from several central banks.
In a blog post published Tuesday, titled, ‘Oh Lordy! Comey Wanna Cry Edition’ the group accused the NSA of paying Microsoft to keep vulnerabilities in its software (and did not hold back in its accusations)
If theshadowbrokers is telling the peoples theequationgroup is paying U.S technology companies NOT TO PATCH vulnerabilities until public discovery, is this being Fake News or Conspiracy Theory?
Why Microsoft patching SMB vulnerabilities in secret? Microsoft is being embarrassed because theequationgroup is lying to Microsoft. TheEquationGroup is not telling Microsoft about SMB vulnerabilities, so Microsoft not preparing with quick fix patch. More important theequationgroup not paying Microsoft for holding vulnerability. Microsoft is thinking it knowing all the vulnerabilities theEquationGroup is using and paying for holding patch.
Douche bag, dumbass, libtard, rich prick Head Microsoft Lawyer is running his cock holster because he is having ruff weekend doing real work. Head Microsoft Lawyer being angry because he is missing leisurely weekend playing the skin flute behind the country club.
Real work is not being for executives. Real work is being for dirty foreign H1B workforce, happily working for less than stupid lazy American workers.
Shadow Brokers finished its post saying if a responsible party were to buy “all lost data before it is being sold to the peoples” then the group would have no more financial incentives and would “go dark permanently.”
- UK Government Moves Aggressively To Censor & Control The Internet
Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
The following dystopian excerpts come from today’s UK Independent article titled, Theresa May to Create New Internet that Would Be Controlled and Regulated by Government:
Theresa May is planning to introduce huge regulations on the way the internet works, allowing the government to decide what is said online.
Particular focus has been drawn to the end of the manifesto, which makes clear that the Tories want to introduce huge changes to the way the internet works.
“Some people say that it is not for government to regulate when it comes to technology and the internet,” it states. “We disagree.”
Thanks for clearing that up.
Senior Tories confirmed to BuzzFeed News that the phrasing indicates that the government intends to introduce huge restrictions on what people can post, share and publish online.
The plans will allow Britain to become “the global leader in the regulation of the use of personal data and the internet”, the manifesto claims.
It comes just soon after the Investigatory Powers Act came into law. That legislation allowed the government to force internet companies to keep records on their customers’ browsing histories, as well as giving ministers the power to break apps like WhatsApp so that messages can be read.
The government now appears to be launching a similarly radical change in the way that social networks and internet companies work. While much of the internet is currently controlled by private businesses like Google and Facebook, Theresa May intends to allow government to decide what is and isn’t published, the manifesto suggests.
The manifesto even suggests that the government might stop search engines like Google from directing people to pornographic websites. “We will put a responsibility on industry not to direct users – even unintentionally – to hate speech, pornography, or other sources of harm,” the Conservatives write.
“Other sources of harm.” Can’t wait to see the ever-expanding government definition of that.
Perhaps most unusually they would be forced to help controversial government schemes like its Prevent strategy, by promoting counter-extremist narratives.
The manifesto also proposes that internet companies will have to pay a levy, like the one currently paid by gambling firms. Just like with gambling, that money will be used to pay for advertising schemes to tell people about the dangers of the internet, in particular being used to “support awareness and preventative activity to counter internet harms”, according to the manifesto.
The Conservatives will also seek to regulate the kind of news that is posted online and how companies are paid for it. If elected, Theresa May will “take steps to protect the reliability and objectivity of information that is essential to our democracy” – and crack down on Facebook and Google to ensure that news companies get enough advertising money.
If internet companies refuse to comply with the rulings – a suggestion that some have already made about the powers in the Investigatory Powers Act – then there will be a strict and strong set of ways to punish them.
Given how willing tech companies have been to comply with government spying in the past, it’ll be interesting to see how they respond to this dangerous, authoritarian power grab.
- Rising Occupancy In China's Fake Manhattan Is "Mostly Government Driven"
China's copy of Manhattan is no longer a ghost town, Bloomberg reports. But that doesn't mean it has forever forestalled a "day of reckoning" for its debt-fueled growth.
The northern city of Tianjin drew negative press coverage a few years ago because of a newly built replica of Manhattan complete with a mock Rockefeller Center that was created as part of a massive government infrastructure project but for years was little more than a ghost town. But the city is now occupants are finally clocking to the city: Bloomberg reports that once empty skyscrapers, vacant office towers and unfinished hotels and apartments are gradually filling up amid the central government’s renewed push to refashion the city into a crucial gateway for a revitalized Northern China.
There still may still be a financial reckoning for Tianjin looming in the future, but right now there are green shoots of economic life in the urban districts at the center of the city’s unprecedented construction boom.
But there's a catch, of course: As is true for the broader Chinese economy, the growth in Tianjin "is mostly government driven, though there are signs private industry is coming."
Here's more from Bloomberg:
In the Binhai district, empty offices are filling up with staff from private companies as well as employees of some of the biggest state-owned enterprises, such as China National Chemical Corp., railcar manufacturer CRRC Corp., and China Poly Group Corp., a conglomerate with businesses ranging from explosives manufacturing to real estate." While many local governments across the country are struggling with heavy dependence on debt-fueled growth, Tianjin benefits more than almost any city from its position at the vanguard of two of the country’s biggest national projects.
* * *
Bloomberg saves one notable detail for the last paragraph of the story, citing an official who offers some local perspective: The city is supposed to play in important role in China's "one belt, one road" initiave, another massive debt-fueled trade and transport infrastructure project meant to replicate the ancient Silk Road trade routes that connected Europe and Asia. The government-funded expansion aims to join Beijing with the surrounding Hebei Province to create a mega city of 100 million people.
It should come as no surprise that Tianjin has…backing from heavy hitters in the party.
"We want the city to become one of the world’s largest ports like Singapore or Hong Kong," said Xiao Sheng, vice director of the free trade zone in Tianjin. "We want to develop a new business and development model that could be promoted to other regions in China."
But even as China signs up foreign partners for its latest scheme, offering financial inducements like a $50 billion infrastructure investment in Pakistan, a key U.S. ally, some at least are showing unease at the massive debt-fueled spending necessary to bring the project into reality.
In a diplomatic showcase years in the making, Chinese President Xi Jinping invited leaders from 29 countries to hear his pitch about the "one belt, one road." But what's notable is that India, the worlds fastest growing and second-most populous country, didn't even bother to send a delegation, warning that the "unsustainable debt burden" required to launch the project would be a disaster for the countries involved.
The story notes that though Tianjin's growth rate slipped to 8% last year – down from 9% the year before – it still outpaced 6.8% YoY rate for the broader Chinese economy in 2016. But that's a pretty low bar: China's economy grew in 2016 at its slowest pace in 26 years.
- Venezuela: Forty Years Of Economic Decline, Part 2
Authored by Jose Nino via The Mises Institute,
This is Part Two of a two-part series. Part One is here.
The brunt of the blame for Venezuela’s current economic catastrophe should fall on Hugo Chávez and his successor Nicolás Maduro. However, this does not mean that all was well in Venezuela before Chávez arrived on the scene. The ideological and institutional seeds of the current crises were sown decades earlier. A rising tide of government interventions in the marketplace during the 1960s and 1970s would soon lead to a host of new problems for Venezuela.
The Oil Boom Party Ends
The 1970s looked like a never-ending boom period for Venezuela thanks to high oil prices. The then-President Carlos Andrés Pérez took full advantage of this boom to implement his lavish social spending program. Eventually, the boom period came to a crashing halt by the early 80s, and Venezuela had to face a harsh economic downturn.
Luis Herrera Campins would succeed Carlos Andrés Pérez’s government. From the start, he came to the realization that Pérez’s spending bonanza was unsustainable. In fact, Herrera had choice words for Pérez's policies, claiming that Pérez left him a "mortgaged" country.
Although Herrera was correct in his assessment of the Pérez administration’s fiscal irresponsibility, he would ironically continue more of the same cronyist policies as his predecessor. The chickens eventually came to roost as Venezuela experienced its very own “Black Friday.”
What once was one of the world’s most stable currencies, the Bolívar, experienced it’s most significant devaluation to date. Unfortunately, Herrera’s administration responded with heavy-handed exchange controls to stem capital flight. These controls would be administered by an agency called the “Differential Exchange Rate Regime” (RECADI), effectively creating a multi-tiered system of exchange rates.
Considerable corruption scandals emerged during the succeeding government of Jaime Lusinchi, as countless members of the political class would exploit the multi-tiered exchange rate system for their own gain.
Despite its abolition in 1989, RECADI would serve as a precursor to the byzantine exchange rate systems that the Commission for the Administration of Currency Exchange (CADIVI) and its successor, the National Center for Foreign Commerce (CENCOEX), would later preside over during the United Socialist Party of Venezuela’s period of dominance throughout the 2000s.
All in all, Venezuela’s Black Friday devaluation marked the beginning of a lost decade of sorts for Venezuela throughout the 1980s that set the stage for subsequent devaluations, currency controls, and irresponsible fiscal policy further down the line.
IMF to the Rescue?
Rising poverty rates, increased foreign and public debt, corrupt state enterprises, and burdensome regulations contributed to an environment of growing social tension and economic malaise throughout the 1980s. Venezuela’s previous growth miracle became an afterthought at this point. And it’s golden goose, oil, could not bail it out thanks to the low oil prices of the 1980s.
For Venezuela to right its ship, it would have to undergo painful fiscal reforms.
Ironically, it was Carlos Andrés Pérez that was entrusted with reigning in the excessive government largesse; the very same leader that established Venezuela’s profligate welfare state and laid the foundations for its collapse in the 1980s.
In 1988, Pérez campaigned on a platform that promised to bring back the splendor and prosperity of the 1970s. But once he assumed the presidency, Pérez realized that the Venezuela before him was on the verge of bankruptcy and crippled by excessive state intervention in the economy.
Under the auspices of the IMF, Pérez made a half-hearted attempt in reforming Venezuela’s broken petrostate. When broken down and analyzed, these reforms consisted of tariff reductions, tax hikes, flawed privatizations, and marginal spending cuts that ultimately did not address the underlying problems with the Venezuelan political economy — its flawed monetary policy, burdensome regulatory framework, and entrenched crony capitalist policies.
However, these reforms were too much for Pérez’s very own party, Acción Democrática (AD). AD was incensed by these reforms that hacked away at certain facets of the cronyist petrostate that it depended on to maintain its political power.
Of note, the phasing out of gas subsidies by the Pérez government — a popular social program that artificially kept gas prices low for the impoverished sectors of Venezuelan society — was used by the AD to channel discontent among the general populace.
Enter Hugo Chávez
Countless individuals would then take to the streets and protest the so-called “austerity” policies of the Pérez government. This eventually led to the infamous “Caracazo” incident in 1989, where the capital city of Caracas was engulfed in a series of protests, lootings, and riots. The government responded in a heavy-handed manner, leaving hundreds dead.
In the midst of the political chaos, radical groups took advantage of Venezuela’s political turmoil to advance their agenda. One of the most famous was then Lieutenant Colonel Hugo Chávez´s group, Revolutionary Bolivarian Movement-200 (MBR-200).
Chávez took advantage of the political disarray by consolidating an anti-government movement within the ranks of the Venezuelan military. This culminated in the failed coup attempts of 1992.
Even though Chávez was imprisoned for his coup attempt, Chavez’s agitation was enough to put the whole bipartisan Punto Fijo model into question. Eventually, corruption scandals and rising degrees of social unrest would whittle away at the Pérez administration’s legitimacy. The final nail in the coffin came when Pérez was impeached for corruption charges in 1992, thus putting the Punto Fjio model on the ropes.
Collapse of the Punto Fijo Model
Two coup attempts and the impeachment of Carl Andrés Pérez, marked the beginning of a tumultuous 1990s for Venezuela. The Venezuela of the 50s to 70s — characterized by its unprecedented economic prosperity and political stability — was starting to become a distant memory.
By 1994, the Punto Fijo model was in shambles as Rafael Caldera assumed the presidency under a new coalition, Convergencia (Convergence), of disaffected political parties.
Policywise, Rafael Caldera did not rock the boat. He pursued several of the IMF’s half measures, while not addressing structural problems such as the privatization of the oil industry, Venezuela’s downward spiraling monetary policy, and big business’s cozy relationship with the state. In addition, Caldera pardoned Hugo Chávez in 1994, rehabilitating him politically.
Thanks to the failed land reforms and housing subsidization polices pursued by the two major social democrat parties (AD and COPEI) during previous decades, major metropolitan areas like Caracas, Maracaibo, Maracay, and Valencia began to be populated by a growing subsect of impoverished Venezuelans. Chávez would tap into this low stratum of Venezuelan society and effectively turn them into shock troops for his campaign to radically transform Venezuela into a full-blown socialist state.
The Failure of the Social Democratic Era
It is undeniable that Venezuela’s social democratic consensus delivered sub-optimal results. From 1958 to 1998, Venezuela’s per capita GDP growth was a paltry -0.13 % indicating that the Venezuelan populace grew faster than the wealth produced in that time frame. In his book, Introduction to Economic Growth, Charles I. Jones classified the Venezuelan case as an example of a “growth disaster.” Venezuela was one of two countries in Latin America that suffered negative growth during this 40-year period, the other being Nicaragua, a country that suffered a costly civil war and was under the rule of a socialist government.
Chávez capitalized on this stagnation by launching a campaign against the bipartisan political consensus that ruled Venezuela at the time. Branding himself as a “Third Way” candidate, Chávez sought to provide an alternative to the perceived corruption of the Punto Fijo political order.
Despite the rosy rhetoric, Chávez was surrounding himself with hardened Marxists and other collectivist figures that were hell-bent on subverting Venezuela’s already fragile political order. Little did the disillusioned voters that cast a ballot for Chávez know what they were about to get themselves into.
Chavismo: Interventionism on Steroids
While Chávez may have been correct in pointing out the corruption of the old Punto Fijo order, he would ironically continue many of its failed policies throughout his regime, amplifying their disastrous effects and implementing them in a tyrannical fashion.
Currency controls, expropriations, price controls, and the use of the state-owned oil company, PDVSA, to finance lavish social spending programs were fixtures of Hugo Chávez’s socialist economic policy.
In addition, Venezuelan political institutions were completely eviscerated, media outlets were suppressed, and political activists were subject to numerous human rights violations under Chávez’s heavy-handed rule.
Chávez had the luxury of high oil prices from 2003 to 2010 to finance his socialist schemes and channel the petroleum rents to consolidate political support in the short term. But once oil prices plummeted, the laws of economics reared their ugly head and the system began to unravel in no time.
Even with Chávez’s death in 2013, his brand of tyrannical socialism has continued unabated under the rule of his successor, Nicolás Maduro.
The Venezuela that stands before us is a failed state. In an atavistic sense, Venezuela has returned to its 19th century state as an increasingly fragmented, political backwater.
Time will tell if the Venezuelan nation will continue to exist as a cohesive whole, or if certain sectors of Venezuelan society decide to blaze their own trail and start to break up the country.
Lessons Learned
If Venezuelans want to restore Venezuela to its once prosperous state, they must look back and understand the genesis of Venezuela’s current crisis.
It is myopic to pit the blame solely on demagogues and believe that things will be perfectly fine once the “right people” are put in charge. Political events like the rise of Hugo Chávez do not occur in a vacuum. Astute observers of political economy must analyze the overarching institutions and policies that create the type of political environment that enables authoritarians like Hugo Chávez to come into power.
The Venezuelan case serves as a strong warning to many a European country with crumbling welfare states and growing social discontent. Sooner or later, unsustainable transfer systems are bound to collapse and social disorder ensues.
Left unchecked, socialism only creates a vicious cycle of interventionism that leads to more chaos and misery. To reach the light at the end of the tunnel, Venezuela must completely abandon socialism and embrace the capitalist path to prosperity.
- Structured Credit Bubble 2.0: Asian Investors Binge On "Boom-And-Bust" CLOs; Issuance Up 97% YoY
Back in 2006, some of the wall street banks (ahem, Goldman) managed to layoff quite a bit of their mortgage risk to unwitting European and Asian investors who, in their desperate ‘search for yield’, had no idea they had just been conned into stepping in front of a freight train. Now, it seems that the same thing may be happening yet again with another favorite wall street structured product, Collateralized Loan Obligations (CLOs).
According to Bloomberg, money managers in Korea, Japan and China are piling into CLOs, and often into the most junior tranches no less, at an alarming rate which has resulted in a staggering 97% increase in YoY new issuance volume.
Faced with near record-low interest rates at home, money managers in Korea, Japan and China have been piling into complex and increasingly risky structured loan products in America. Their investments in collateralized loan obligations — including the high-yield “equity’’ tranches most exposed to defaults — have helped drive a doubling of issuance in 2017.
The bets have performed well so far. But some observers worry that Asian buyers are overlooking risks. Headwinds in the retail and energy sectors have raised the specter of defaults, while Moody’s Investors Service has stopped evaluating one type of CLO product amid concern that buyers will end up holding less creditworthy positions than they anticipated.
“CLOs are a difficult investment universe, and CLO equity is a boom-and-bust product,’’ said Mike Terwilliger, a New York-based portfolio manager at Resource America Inc., which oversees more than $9 billion and invests in CLOs. “Investors need to make sure they’re being adequately compensated.’’
“U.S. CLO equity is starting to look a little less attractive,” Tyler said. “Investors may want to lighten up on this space before there’s a turn in the credit cycle given the illiquid nature of CLO structures.”
Meanwhile, non-U.S. money managers’ share of American CLO tranches with single-A credit ratings more than tripled to 21% last year, mostly due to surging demand from Asia, according to Citigroup Inc.
Korea Post, which manages about $102 billion of savings and insurance products, said in March it had been adding to CLO holdings. Japan Post Bank Co. has made plans to boost exposure to the safest tranches, people familiar with the matter said in January. Gopher Asset Management, a Chinese investment firm that oversees $17.5 billion, is currently raising money for a second global credit fund that may invest in CLOs, said Chief Investment Officer PV Wang.
Some “super-aggressive’’ Korean funds are buying equity tranches, according to Eugene Chun, who helps manage about $100 million of CLOs as a Seoul-based executive managing director at HDC Asset Management. Others are purchasing what’s known as combination notes, Chun said. The products blend investment grade and equity tranches to deliver higher yields while still maintaining adequate credit ratings.
Helped by strong Asian demand, CLO issuance has totaled about $32 billion so far this year, up 97% from the same period in 2016, according to data compiled by Bloomberg.
Of course, the reasoning is fairly simple and quite familiar for those of us who lived through the ‘great recession’. With all-in yields on even the riskiest U.S. debt hovering at just over 5.5%, much lower than even the 2006/2007 bubble levels…
…wall street has a convenient product that takes ‘safe’ levered loans, packages them up in a nice little bundle and then sells them to folks all over the world with juicy yields and an investment grade rating. It’s a win-win-win…lower risk, higher yield and IG rating…
Haven’t we seen this movie before?
- Chinese Media Warns US Social Division Shows "Western Democracy Is Crumbling"
Well known government mouthpiece, The China Global Times, published an op-ed overnight that was shockingly frank about the state of America (in their eyes) and did little to confirm President Trump's opinion that he and Premier Xi are best-buddies…
President Trump's Troubles Are Not Going Away
US President Donald Trump appears to be in big trouble. A memo by former FBI director James Comey exposed by The New York Times shows Trump had asked Comey to end an investigation into former national security adviser Michael Flynn in a meeting on February 14. US mainstream media and the Democratic Party accused Trump of obstruction of justice.
Earlier, US media had reported that Trump leaked highly classified intelligence on the Islamic State to visiting Russian foreign minister Sergey Lavrov, yet Washington failed to share the same information with its allies to protect the source.
As the attacks on Trump ramp up, many are now calling for him to be impeached. According to one poll, 48 percent supported impeachment, while 41 percent opposed. The numbers don't bode well for Trump.
The American elite still refuse to accept Trump after his 100 days in the Oval Office. He is at odds with the mainstream media; insiders have constantly leaked information to the media. Now some commentators have compared the exposure of the Comey memo to the Watergate scandal. As Congress is under Republican control, few believe there will be a move to impeach the president, but these latest revelations will certainly further erode Trump's presidential authority.
At the beginning of the corruption scandal, few believed that South Korean president Park Geun-hye would be impeached either. Could this be a reference for Trump's case? But evidence of Park's illegal activities was solid, while it will be more complicated to make determinations over whether Trump obstructed justice and leaked classified intelligence.
To impeach Trump will need more evidence from further investigation. To completely discredit Trump among voters, the present scandal is not enough as it does not add to the negative image of Trump. Many just think Trump often speaks off the cuff, which ends up in silly blunders.
If there is a major substantive scandal over and above him speaking out of turn then that will be another thing. But this is not the case at the moment.
Every country has its own troubles. The US model represents Western democracy, but it is crumbling, and the resulting social division has become more and more serious. The US Deputy Attorney General Rod J. Rosenstein appointed a special counsel to oversee the investigation into link between Russia and the 2016 US presidential election and related matters on Wednesday. More juicy details will continue to appear and the rifts may become wider. Trump will become one of the most frequently accused Americans.
The US won't be engulfed by chaos if its president is caught in a lawsuit. Someone has pointed out that no matter how chaotic the White House and Capitol Hill are, the overall operation of the US will not be a major problem as long as the enterprises and social organizations in the country are stable. This is seen as an advantage of the American system.
Although American society is relatively stable, the political tumult can't be taken as an advantage of the US system. The fact is that US politics is in trouble, and the benefits brought by its system are being squandered.
With friends like that, who needs North Korean enemies?
- Journalists Drink Too Much, Are Dumber Than Average, Study Finds
A recent scientific study just proved something that viewers of CNN have probably suspected for years: Journalists' brains function at a lower level than the rest of the population.
A study conducted by neuroscientist Tara Swift and the London Press Club determined that "the highest functions of journalists brains were operating at a lower level than the average population, due to dehydration, self-medicating, and fueling their brains with caffeine and high-sugar foods"
"However, the pressures of the job are not affecting journalists ability to endure and bounce back from adversity in the long term, due to a belief that their work has meaning," according to a press release from the London Press Club.
Journalists' brains show a lower level of executive function – that is, the ability of the brain to regulate emotions, suppress biases, switch between tasks, solve complex problems and think flexibly and creatively – than the average person because to their heavy drinking, and caffeine consumption. They also eat too many high-sugar foods, and don't devote enough time to mindfulness.
Dr Swart recruited 31 journalists from across the industry to participate in the study. Participants were required to record their eating and drinking habits, answer a brain profile questionaire, take blood tests, and wear heart-rate variability monitors.
The study was initially launched to examine how journalists manage to "survive and thrive" while managing such high levels of occupational stress. "Journalism," the press release notes, "is one of many industries under an increasing amount of pressure in the digital age. Low pay, frequent deadlines, and high levels of accountability all contribute to high reported stress levels."
Digest powered by RSS Digest
Saving...