• Dispelling The Norwegian Housing Myth

  Submitted by Alexander Grover in Oslo, Norway

  Recently, Dagens Næringsliv published an article where an economist from DnB (Norway’s largest bank) stated that Norway is not in a housing bubble although conditions resemble one and prices can still fall.  The article bases the current prices on the following assumptions:

  • High population growth
  • High development in household incomes and expectations
  • Good conditions on the labor market
  • Low-interest rates and high credit supply

  The article continues, differentiating the Norwegian housing market from the American one, basically stating that a socialist country with lots of benefits can handle higher debt levels than a capitalist one. It fails to acknowledge the impact of the eroding oil foundation on the long term economy.

  My previous article discusses and questions the above in detail. To further emphasize that housing’s best days are behind us, let’s take a look at prices in dollar and commodity terms:  

  

  Oslo Apartment Prices in Dollar Terms

  Regarding universal currency, this bubble already popped in 2013, now trying to stage a recovery. However, the long-term USDNOK rate will depend on oil prices, trade balances and interest rates.

  

  Housing Prices in Gold Terms          

  Gold is considered both the universal commodity and currency since it does not perish, easy to assay and disconnected from the Central bank’s hysterics.  In gold terms, the bubble burst back in 2007.

  

  Real Interest Rates

  As long as real rates are negative (and becoming more so), the economy is out of balance (since mid-2012), eroding the currency value and creating asset bubbles.  When people stop losing from saving at a bank and Norway finds an alternative to the oil industry, the economy can be considered stable.  Since my last article, the gap between inflation and benchmark rates have widened (from ca. -3.3 to -3.9), putting more pressure on the NOK and bringing us closer to a day of reckoning: uncontrollable inflation or an asset price correction via sudden and decisive rate hikes. 

  

  Source: Norges Bank and SSB

  Conclusion        

  Nevertheless, even though recent inflation figures make Norway reluctant to cut rates, they may do so, maintaining the illusion. House prices may increase in NOK terms, but they won’t buy much when sellers realize a profit. Remember, there are other investments than housing: dividend yielding stocks in companies with high equity ratios, precious metals, education and your own business.

  

  

• Marc Faber Rings the Alarm Bell, Predicts a 50% Near Term Correction in Stocks

   

   

  
  

  Marc Faber Rings the Alarm Bell, Predicts a 50% Near Term Correction in Stocks

  Written by Nathan McDonald (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)

  
  

  

  Volatility is the name of the game. Stocks are acting up, but standing strong. Oil is propelling higher and the US dollar is falling. Turmoil around the world has never been higher and an ominous shadow is lurking in the background, ready to strike.

   

  The situation that we now face is ultimately going to end in a collapse of epic proportion. The financial world is now a ticking bomb that is just waiting to explode – I know this, you know this and even if the masses don’t, they can feel it in their bones.

   

  The only ones that don’t seem to be aware of this dangerous situation are the elites who are currently profiting off of this heightened turmoil and their mainstream media mouthpieces who couldn’t be more happy to assist in the destruction of the Western financial world. After all, it would make for a good story, right?

   

  Unfortunately, I am not alone in this assessment of the current global situation. Marc Faber, a prominent voice in the financial community and the editor of the Gloom, Boom and Doom report has taken an ultra bearish view of the current economy.

   

  A recent CNBC article, highlights a recent interview they had with Marc Faber this past week, and states the following:

   

  The notoriously bearish Marc Faber is doubling down on his dire market view.

  
  

  The editor and publisher of the Gloom, Boom & Doom Report said Monday on CNBC’s “Trading Nation” that stocks are likely to endure a gut-wrenching drop that would rival the greatest crashes in stock market history.
  

  “I think we can easily give back five years of capital gains, which would take the market down to around 1,100,” Faber said, referring to a level 50 percent below Monday’s closing on the S&P 500.

  
  

  The S&P 500 is sitting at 2,184.29 at the time of writing! This would be a truly stunning collapse of the markets. One that would send the financial world plummeting out of control. Contagion would spread and the credit markets would utterly and completely seize up.

   

  What is equally as shocking as this claim of monumental collapse is the fact that Marc Faber believes this will happen in the near term future! This isn’t some far fetched 5-10 year prediction that no one will remember he made down the road. No, this is a bold statement from a man who accurately predicted the 2008 crisis and many of the drastic events that have unfolded in modern times.

   

  Marc Faber is just one more expert that is ringing the alarm bells. Sadly, the mainstream media continue to dismiss the experts who are trying to warn the masses, stating that we are conspiracy theorist and nothing more. Even though we have been proven right in our predictions time and time again, causing the trash can to nearly overflow with tin foil hats.

   

  I don’t know if the collapse is in the near term such as Marc Faber believes, but I know that it could occur at anytime. Whether it be a week, a month, or years from now, wouldn’t you rather be prepared? The risk is simply too great to not be.

   

  Please email with any questions about this article or precious metals HERE

   

   

   

  Marc Faber Rings the Alarm Bell, Predicts a 50% Near Term Correction in Stocks

  Written by Nathan McDonald (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)

  

• Follow The Money Trail For Source Of "Russian Threat" Paranoia

  Submitted by Neil Clark, originally posted op-ed via RT,

  You’d have to have been locked in a wardrobe if you live in the West not to have heard ominous phrases like “The Russian threat”, “Russian aggression in Europe” and “Russia set to invade Poland/Estonia/ Ukraine/Finland.”

  Certain people are trying to scare us witless about Russia and the “threat” the country apparently poses. The hysteria reminds one to the build up to the Iraq war, when we were warned every day about the “threat” of Saddam’s deadly WMDs, which – surprise, surprise – turned out not to exist.

  Now, we can talk for hours about grand, highfalutin theories in the field of geopolitics and international relations in attempts to explain why this is happening.

  But “follow the money” trail is all we really have to do. Ask yourself who benefits financially from all this scaremongering and then you’ll understand it.

  This week, The Intercept revealed how US defense contractors have been telling investors that the so-called “Russian threat” was good for business.

  Retired Army general Richard Cody, vice-President of the US’s seventh largest defense contractor, L-3 communications, bemoaned the fact that "when the old Cold War ended” defense budgets went south.” Now though a “resurgent Russia” meant an "uptick was coming.”

   

  There was a similarly upbeat message from Stuart Bradie, chief executive of CBR, who talked of the "opportunities" the current situation presents.

   

  The case for higher defense spending to counter the “Russian threat” has been made by a series of think-tanks. And guess what? The most hawkish of these lobbyists – sorry, “think tanks” – receive sizable funding from US defense contractors!

  The Intercept cites the examples of the Lexington Institute and the Atlantic Council.

  But there’s plenty others too. Back in February, I wrote about a “non-partisan” US policy institute called the Center for European Policy Analysis. The CEPA issued a paper attacking Russian media outlet Sputnik for giving a voice to "anti-establishment protest politicians" who were critical of NATO.

  And who funds the “non-partisan” CEPA? Recent donors include the US Department of Defense, Boeing, Raytheon Company, Textron Systems, Sikorsky Aircraft, Bell Helicopter and the Lockheed Martin Corporation.

  What’s happening in Europe today is the same that’s been happening in the Middle East for years.

  The US creates chaos, then goes in to sell countries in the region the latest military hardware to “protect” them from the chaos. It’s quite a racket and clearly modeled on the extortion schemes of the Mafia. Countries that don’t want to pay up, like Yugoslavia in 1990s, are likely to get bombed.

  Consider how the crisis in Ukraine started. The US spent billions of dollars in a “regime change” op to topple the democratically elected government of Viktor Yanukovych and replace it with a pro-US puppet administration. We even heard the State Department’s Victoria Nuland – after she had handed out cookies to anti-government protestors in the Maidan – discussing who should and shouldn’t be in the new “democratic” Ukrainian government, with US Ambassador Geoffrey Pyatt.

  When the people of Crimea predictably said “Nyet” to the State Department’s operation, and voted overwhelmingly to rejoin Russia in a referendum, Russia was cast as the “aggressor” who had “invaded” the Ukraine. The US would have known that its regime change op in Ukraine would cause chaos and increase tensions with Russia. And that’s exactly why they did it!

  To counter the new Russian “threat” not just to “democratic” Ukraine, but to other countries in eastern Europe, we’re told we need a big increase in NATO “defense” spending. And who does that benefit? Why, US defense contractors!

  Last year, as I reported here, Poland picked US-made Patriot Missiles – manufactured by Raytheon and Airbus military helicopters for a $5.53bn military upgrade.

  In November 2014, “threatened” Estonia purchased 80 Javelin missiles from the US at a cost of 40m Euros. In February, we heard that the country would be spending 818m euro on new weapons and equipment by 2020.

  As Charlie Chaplin commented in his classic 1947 black comedy Monsieur Verdoux, "Wars, conflicts, it’s all business!"

  By any objective assessment it's NATO – not Russia – with its build up of arms and soldiers on the borders of Russia, which threatens the peace of Europe. But anyone who points this out, and mentions the military alliance’s relentless Drang nach Osten, threatens the profits of US defense companies and is attacked as an “appeaser” or “Kremlin stooge” by those with a vested financial interest in keeping tensions high.

  Consider the hysterical attacks on British Labour party leader Jeremy Corbyn for his recent, very sensible comments on NATO and Russia. Corbyn was asked in a leadership television debate: "How would you as Prime Minister react to a violation by Vladimir Putin of the sovereignty of a fellow NATO state?"

  He replied: 

  You’d obviously try to avoid that happening in the first place. You would build up a good dialogue with Russia to ask them, support them in respecting borders. We would try to introduce a demilitarization between Russia and Ukraine, and all the other countries down on the border between Russia and Eastern Europe. What we cannot allow is a series of continuous build-ups of troops on both sides which can only lead to great danger in the future. It’s beginning to look awfully like Cold War politics at the present time. We’ve got to engage with Russia, engage with demilitarization in that area, in order to try and avoid that danger happening… I don’t wish to go to war, what I want to do is achieve a world where we don’t need to go to war, where there is no need for it. That can be done.

  As Carlyn Harvey, writing in The Canary, points out: "For millions of citizens around the world, this (Corbyn’s anti-war stance), is great news. But for those intent on maintaining the politics of power and the lucrative industries that support that, Corbyn’s vision is nothing short of a disaster.”

  Corbyn is portrayed by the endless war lobby as a “dangerous extremist” because if other western politicians followed suit, and promoted disarmament and dialogue, instead of confrontation and war, defense profits would take a big hit.

  It was a US President, Dwight D Eisenhower, who first warned us about the US military-industrial complex, back in 1961: “We must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military–industrial complex.”

  No one could accuse Ike, the Supreme Commander of Allied Forces in Europe in World War Two, of being a “pinko” or a “Kremlin stooge.” But the situation is much worse today than it was back in Eisenhower’s day.

  Neocons have embedded themselves in the corridors of power. They claim to be interested in spreading “democracy,” but the reality is that the neocon movement is all about money and profits. Henry “Scoop” Jackson, the US politician who railed against détente with the Soviet Union in the 70s, was, with very good reason, nicknamed the “Senator for Boeing.”

  Thirty years later, the first post-launch meeting of the Henry Jackson Society discussed how to get smears about the anti-war academic Noam Chomsky being a “denier” of the Srebrenica massacre into circulation.

  For some people it seems, the old Cold War never ended.

  How much longer will the citizens of the world put up with a situation in which warmongers with ties to the military-industrial complex are allowed to stoke up international tensions? The next time you read or hear someone issue stark warnings about the “Russian threat” – and why NATO needs to hike its spending to deal with it – just follow the money trail.

  It’s likely to be revealing.

  

  

  

• Meet The Hedge Fund Puppetmaster Behind The US Presidential Election

  In the world of hedge funds, few have achieved as much consistent success and profitable returns as Jim Simon’s Renaissance Technologies, the multi-billion fund which unleashed and popularized quant investing, and whose legendary “Medallion” fund, run mostly for fund employees, has been the object of LP lust for years. However, just as notable is that Jim Simons, who Forbes calculated recently is the 50th richest person in the world and who made $1.7 billion last year alone, is not only a prominent Democratic donor, but has been one of the most generous sponsors of Hillary Clinton’s presidential campaign.

  

   

  A recent analysis by the WSJ calculated that, of the $48.5 million donated by hedge funds to the Hillary presidential campaign, Renaissance, and mostly Jim Simons, is the second most generous with $9.5 million, a runner up only to Saban Capital Group with $10 million, followed by such Democrat stalwarts as Paloma Partners ($8.1 million), the Pritzker Group ($7.9 million), and of course Soros ($7.9 million).

  

  To be sure, Simons’ appreciation of Clinton has been duly noted in the past, most recently by the Observer:

  Mr. Simons’ Rennaissance Technologies has begun pouring millions of dollars into Hillary Clinton‘s campaign, as the hedge fund has donated over $2 million to Ms. Clinton so far this election cycle. Euclidean Capital—also owned by Mr. Simons—has given the Clinton campaign over $7 million in contributions, and the figures are likely to increase as Ms. Clinton slowly transitions her attention from Democratic Primary opponent Bernie Sanders to the presumptive Republican presidential nominee, Donald Trump. Renaissance Technologies was called out by Senator John McCain in 2014 for evading nearly $6 billion in taxes by disguising day-to-day investments as long term investments, and in 2015, Bloomberg ran an article describing how the firm lobbied the U.S. Labor Department for special tax evading privileges.

  More recently, Jim Simons spoke to CNBC and said that “if you compare the presidential candidates using the Sharpe ratio, presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump is ‘not a good investment.'”

  “Now even if those two candidates had the same expected return — which I doubt — but even if Trump’s was as good as Hillary’s, his volatility is so enormous that his Sharpe ratio is terrible,” Simons said. “So as an investment, Trump is not a good investment, no matter what you might think of his potential return. He’s just a wild man,” he said.

   

  Simons said that he is a supporter of Clinton, who he said would “make a fine president.” When asked what a Trump presidency would mean for the U.S. outlook, Simons said “it wouldn’t be good for the country.”

  Yet while Simons’ unabashed support for Clinton, both ideological and financial, and criticism of Trump is very public, what is perhaps less known is that Rentec’s Co-CEO, billionaire Robert Mercer, is the man who is now  pulling the string behind Donald Trump’s entire campaign.

  It did not start off that way. Robert Mercer began the presidential campaign by throwing millions, some $13 million to be exact, in financial donations at the person who was Trump’s final challenger, Ted Cruz, through a SuperPac run by Kellyanne Conway, Keep the Promise, before the republican’s campaign was extinguished by Donald Trump.

  

   

  Much more importantly, Mercer is the person who secretly instigated last week’s bloodless putch inside the Trump campaign, which saw the surprising overthrow of Paul Manafort as Trump’s campaign chairman (who subsequently resigned from the campaign due to allegations of undisclosed links to Ukraine lobbying and potential corruption which also implicated the consultancy firm of Tony Podesta), and the appointment of Breitbart’s Steve Bannon and Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway. Here are the details:

  Mr. Mercer, co-chief executive of the hedge fund Renaissance Technologies, has longstanding ties to both people elevated to top posts in the campaign on Wednesday. He and his daughter, Rebekah, had recommended both Breitbart News chairman Stephen Bannon and Republican pollster Kellyanne Conway, who already worked for the campaign, according to people familiar with the matter. The Mercers met privately with Mr. Trump at a fundraiser last weekend at the East Hampton, N.Y., home of New York Jets owner Woody Johnson, according to a person at the event.

  And just like that the man who Rentec’s founder, Jim Simons, said “is not a good investment” because his “Sharpe ratio is terrible”, has become the investment of RenTec’s CEO.

  Top Trump donors said the staff reshuffling showed the Mercers’ widening role in the campaign and was a potential setback for Trump campaign chairman Paul Manafort, who had sought to tailor Mr. Trump into a more traditional political figure. The expansion of a billionaire donor’s sway in the campaign follows more than a year of Mr. Trump criticizing major donors on the trail and casting his rivals as “puppets” for accepting the backing of super PACs.

  It’s not just Bob: it’s a family affair:

  Doug Deason, whose family was also a top contributor to the Cruz super PAC network, said Ms. Mercer and Ms. Conway worked together closely. “She and Kellyanne had a great working relationship and did a really good job of spending their dollars wisely,” he said. He called Ms. Mercer “very driven and very focused.”

  As for Mercer’s relationship with Steve Bannon, Trump’s new right hand man, it also has a simple trace: money. “Mr. Mercer has also funded Mr. Bannon’s employer Breitbart News, a conservative media outlet that delights in bashing the GOP establishment, and a nonprofit organization, the Government Accountability Institute, that was co-founded by Mr. Bannon, who runs it. Mr. Mercer’s daughter, Rebekah, is listed as a board member for the organization in 2014 tax filings.”

  Here another curious link emerged: “The Trump campaign recently hired Cambridge Analytica, a data analytics firm owned in part by Mr. Mercer that offers “psychographic” analysis related to the personalities and values of voters.”

  And while the emergence of the true puppetmaster behind Trump’s campaign is fascinating, we were more curious to dig deeper into the potential influence of Renaissance not on just one, but both candidates. We were not surprised by what we found.

  According to OpenSecrets, for the 2015-2016 period, Renaissance is not just generous; it happens to be the most “generous” financial contributor in the world, ranking 1 out of 16,867 tracked contributors.

  

  As a result, in the ranking of top contributors, RenTec is higher than such iconic names as Tom Steyer’s Farallon, Elliott Management, and Soros.

  

  Broken down by recipients…

  

  … we find that while the biggest recipients of cash is the Cruz-supporting Keep the Promise SuperPAC, whose effectively only donor was Robert Mercer, the second biggest recipient is the Clinton-supporting Priorities USA SuperPAC, where the top two donors are Jim Simons and George Soros.

  

   

  But what we find most fascinating is the dramatic ramp up in campaign spending by RenTec not just over the past two elections cycles, but most notably the current one, which is already bigger in one year than all previous contributions in RenTec’s entire donation history combined…

  

  … but the republican-democrat split. It’s effectively identical.

  

  Why this recent surge in political spending, and why the attempt to fund not just one both both presidential candidates’ campaigns? Some answers can be found in recent articles, such as “How RenTec Made More Than $34 Billion In Profits Since 1998: “Fictional Derivatives“, “Renaissance Said Probed by Senate Panel on Tax Maneuver” and “Senate Report: Tax Move Helped Hedge Funds Save Billions“, however not even the utmost determination to perpetuate a beneficial tax avoidance regime can explain this unprecedented level of campaign funding or, in the case of Mercer, micromanagement and orchestration.

  Perhaps the answer is far simpler: having learned that the best way to make virtually unlimited profits in the markets is to be as close to cornering them as possible (or being first, or cheating), RenTec’s executive team has applied the same philosophy to the presidential race, because if you are the primary source of strategy and/or cash for both presidential candidates, you are by definition, “perfectly hedged.” And, by that same definition, you are about to buy yourself a presidential election.

  

  

• Top 25 Corporate Pension Plans Alone Are Underfunded By Over $225 Billion

  Massively underfunded public and private pensions, and all the risks inherent therein, have been a frequent topic of conversation for us recently.  Today, Tobias Levkovich at Citigroup published a report pointing out just how dire the situation is for the S&P 500's largest corporate pension funds.  The study found that pensions of just the companies in the S&P 500 alone were over $375BN underfunded at the end of 2015 with the top 25 underfunded plans accounting for over $225BN of the underfunding.  Moreover, Citi pointed out that pensions don't seem to be participating in the massive equity rally that has grown ever so "bubbly" since 2009 (and issue we explained in detail here: "Pension Duration Dilemma – Why Pension Funds Are Driving The Biggest Bond Bubble In History").

  Pension under-funding continues to be a major issue for S&P 500 constituents as very respectable equity market gains over the last seven years have not substantially alleviated pension pressures. The S&P 500 has appreciated by more than 200% at the end of 2015 since the low in March 2009 but the aggregate underfunded status of $376 billion in December 2015 is now 22% higher than the $308 billion under-funding peak seen in December 2008 (see Figure 1). While the funding status in 2013 recovered by more than $225 billion versus 2012 alongside strengthening equity market performance and a higher discount rate, this trend reversed in 2014 and only improved moderately in 2015. Specifically, the slightly higher discount rate contributed to the progress in 2015’s pension funding status, not higher equity prices.

  Per the table below, S&P 500 corporate pensions went from being fully funded in 2007, in aggregate, to $375BN underfunded in just 8 years.  The primary problem, of course, is the Fed's low interest rate policies which are crushing both sides of the pension equation.  Pension assets have basically stagnated since 2007, up less than 10%, as pensions struggle to "find yield."  Meanwhile, lower yields on corporate bonds have driven discount rates through the floor causing the present value of liabilities to skyrocket over 40% over the same period. 

  After dipping in 2014, the discount rate rose modestly in 2015, causing pension obligations to ease but pensions remain severely underfunded. The present value of corporate pension obligations is heavily influenced by interest rates and thus lower yields typically cause deterioration in funding status. While forecasts for higher yields in the future should lead to decreased concerns over the underfunded status of US pensions, Other Post Employment Benefit (OPEB) accounts remain significantly under-funded as corporations attempt to shift these costs onto individuals, but that may take some time.

  

   

  Citi points out that all ten S&P 500 sectors remain underfunded, with Energy continuing to be the least funded sector. The pension review found that only 30 companies within the S&P 500 were fully funded at year-end 2015, with nearly half of the overfunded companies coming from the Financials sector.

  

   

  Finally, Citi points out that pensions have been pulling assets out of equities and moving into fixed income, a phenomenon they attribute to pensions being "unwilling to allocate assets towards stocks after two major equity pullbacks in the past 15 years."  But, as we've suggested before (see "Pension Duration Dilemma – Why Pension Funds Are Driving The Biggest Bond Bubble In History"), the problem is less likely due to fear of historical equity volatility and more related to a desire to match asset and liability duration.

  Pension funds appear unwilling to allocate assets towards stocks after two major equity pullbacks in the past 15 years clobbered pension programs leaving allocators and consultants relatively risk averse with LDI (liability driven investing) taking over the mindset. Moreover, current ERISA requirements call for companies to keep enough short-term cash and equivalents available to pay out current pension liabilities. Fortunately, corporate cash flow, free-cash flow, earnings and cash holdings are at or near record highs making required cash contributions to pension funds a much more manageable expense for S&P 500 constituents. Note that the funding status at 81.5% declined from the 87.8% level seen in 2013, which was the best reading in the past eight years, but remained markedly better than 2012’s 77.3%, which was the weakest point since 1991.

   

  S&P 500 constituents’ pension plan allocations to equities edged down to 42.4% in  2015 from 44.5% in 2014, the lowest level we have seen in the past nine years (see Figure 4). Interestingly, bond mutual funds saw a reversal of flows, as released by ICI, which saw more than $25 billion flow out of bond funds last year (vs inflows of roughly $58 billion so far this year), while US pension funds increased their fixed income allocation by almost one percent to 44.8% (see Figure 5).

  

   

  

   

  Equity markets have largely dismissed pension underfunding issues as they reach higher highs everyday.  That said, at some point the pension underfunding issue will deteriorate to a level that will be too large to ignore requiring either massive cuts in benefits for 1,000s of employees or taxpayer funded bailouts.  We suspect we know which will be the more palatable to our elected officials. 

  

  

• Idiocracy Director: It's Kind Of Scary How Quickly The Movie Became A Documentary

  Submitted by Carey Wedler via TheAntiMedia.org,

  For years, fans of the 2006 cult film Idiocracy have lamented society’s drift toward the fictional reality in which farmers and leaders water their crops with sports drinks but can’t figure out why they won’t grow.

  Earlier this year, the film’s screenwriter, Etan Cohen, tweeted, “I never expected #idiocracy to become a documentary.”

  I never expected #idiocracy to become a documentary.

  — Etan Cohen (@etanjc) February 24, 2016

    Now, Mike Judge, the film’s director, has weighed in on the growing similarities between his satirical, dystopian United States set hundreds of years in the future — and present-day America.   In the film, an “average Joe” from the Army participates in an experiment gone wrong that leaves him hibernating for centuries. When Joe Bowers awakens, he learns the intelligence of the general population has deteriorated so severely that he is one of the most intelligent people alive — so intelligent, in fact, that he is celebrated for suggesting people use water to nourish their crops.

  Judge, the creative mind behind Beavis and Butthead, Office Space, and HBO’s Silicon Valley, told the Daily Beast “it’s a tad bit scary” how closely the film and real world now parallel each other.

  “Three or four years ago, I started getting comments about it, people discovering it, and it just keeps building. Now every other Twitter comment I get is about Idiocracy, and how it’s a documentary now,” he said.

  He even pointed to specific instances where life is imitating art, not just in America, but around the world.

  “At first, I was just thinking, yeah, that’s nice to hear, but then very specific things, like Carl’s Jr. announcing that they were going to have a completely robotic, non-employee store — and it’s Carl’s Jr. in the movie.”

  Indeed, Carl’s Jr. has moved to employ robots.

  “Then there’s this thing called the Fellatio Café in Switzerland where you get blowjobs with coffee, and we had the Starbucks thing in there,” Judge said, referencing a scene from the film where Joe says he could use a coffee from Starbucks. “Yeah, well I really don’t think we have time for a hand job, Joe,” a character from the idiocracy tells him. They later pass a Starbucks and Joe learns they offer sexual services in addition to coffee.

  “And then Donald Trump being in the WWF [World Wrestling Federation] before, and talking about his penis size. It’s just one specific thing after another!” Judge continued, linking the Republican front-runner to the film’s President Dwayne Elizondo Mountain Drew Herbert Camacho, the ex-porn star and five-time wrestling champion who leads the futuristic United States.

  In fact, earlier this year, Judge and Cohen planned to produce a series of spots with Terry Crews, who played Camacho, to subtly criticize Trump.

  As the Daily Beast noted, “they were simply waiting on 20th Century Fox, which owned the rights to the film, to sign off on the ads.” But as word got out that the spots were intended to mock The Donald, Judge says the project “kind of fell apart.”

  “I wanted to put them out a little more quietly and let them go viral, rather than people announcing we’re making anti-Trump ads. Just let them be funny first. Doing something satirical like that is better if you just don’t say, ‘Here we come with the anti-Trump ads!’ Also, when Terry heard that announcement he wasn’t happy about it,” he said.

  When Daily Beast reporter Marlow Stern suggested notoriously right-wing Fox News might not have approved of the message, Judge replied, “Yeah. That’s the other thing. I think there was a roadblock there, too. I just heard that they were put on the shelf, so it looks like they’re not going to happen.”

  Though America is still a few years off from watering its crops with Gatorade — because electrolytes — the 2016 election continues to confirm Americans are struggling to maintain their intellectual (and moral) integrity.

  “It’s surreal. I didn’t want Idiocracy to get popular by the world getting stupider faster. I guess I was 450 years off! But yeah, it’s a tad bit scary!” Judge added with a laugh.

  But as Donald Trump, his supporters, Hillary Clinton, and the characters in Idiocracy might say:

  “I like money.”

  

  

• New Russia-China-Iran Alliance Could Push US Out Of Much Of The Middle East

  Submitted by Darius Shahtamasebi via TheAntiMedia.org,

  When the current Syrian conflict first erupted in 2011 – and then enflamed in 2012 – a small minority of the American public probably wondered why President Obama was not intervening to help the Syrian people as he had done in Libya (they were likely completely unaware the president had already been interfering heavily in Syria since the conflict began). However, some pundits speculated that Obama would eventually intervene directly, and that this intervention would be the beginning of the end of the American empire as we know it.

  What started out as a seemingly hollow prediction has become as true a statement as any. First, American involvement began with funding, arming, and training violent rebels to try to overthrow the Syrian government. Then came attempts to misrepresent so-called “intelligence” to justify military intervention against Assad in 2013. And finally, like a dream come true, Washington was then able to capitalize  on the growth of ISIS in Syria, a growth predicted by their own security establishment in 2012, which then became an excuse to start bombing Syrian territory in 2014. By interfering so forcibly in the affairs of Syria, the U.S. has forced a number of countries  — notably Iran, China and Russia — to step up and strike back at U.S. efforts to destabilize the region.

  Since the beginning of the conflict, Iran has been heavily involved due to the fact Syria is an important ally to the Islamic republic, bound by a mutual defense agreement. Much to the anger of the U.S., just this week, Iran allowed Russia to strike Syrian territory from its Hamadan air base. Iran is supplying ground troops, advisement, and high level training to Syrian pro-Assad forces. They are also providing a credit line, and Iranian involvement is growing in tandem with the two nuclear powers also working in defense of the Syrian regime.

  Russia has a history of being involved in Syria, but following its direct military intervention last year, they have shown they can set up their own no fly zone within the country at any moment (note that the Russian intervention is arguably legitimate given that they have received authority from the Assad regime to do so). Despite this, they have continued to extend a hand to Washington to achieve their stated goals of defeating ISIS together.

  China has sided with Russia and Syria for some time now, using its veto power at the U.N Security Council level to block resolutions on Syria – after Russia and China were completely duped by the Security Council resolution on Libya in 2011. China has warned the U.S. against attacking Syria and Iran, and now, they have officially stated they are looking to join the fight on the side of the Syrian government, further complicating the issue from Washington’s standpoint.

  Unless the U.S. wants to confront these players directly, it has no choice but to accept that they have lost a war they directly and indirectly started through covert CIA operations that began in 2011 (and as some would argue, well before that). This isn’t a loss in the Iraq or Vietnam sense — which are arguably victories in the eyes of the elite class. Rather, the Syrian war is an operation that has left them with less influence in the region than when the Syrian crisis began (cue picture of John Kerry dining with Bashar al-Assad in Damascus in 2009).

  It will be back to the drawing board for Washington, whose only real move is to continue arming and funding fanatical jihadists or encourage Saudi Arabia and Turkey to deliver on their threat to send ground troops into Syria. This will only delay the inevitable, however, and eventually they will have to either admit they have completely lost influence in the Shia-Crescent region of the Middle East — which has, in turn, been snatched up by Russia and China — or directly confront these nuclear powers in an all-out war.

  Or they can just wait until Hillary is elected president.

  

  

• As Predicted, Obamacare Is Absolutely Killing The Middle Class

  Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

  The critics of Obamacare have been proven right.  The Obama administration promised that health insurance premiums would go down.  Instead, they have absolutely skyrocketed.  The Obama administration promised that Obamacare would not kill jobs.  Instead, firms are hiring fewer workers because of suffocating health care costs.  As you will see below, even the Federal Reserve is admitting this.  The Obama administration also promised that the big health insurance companies would love the new Obamacare plans and would eagerly compete with one another to win customers in the new health insurance marketplaces.  Instead, many of the big health insurance companies are now dropping Obamacare plans altogether.

  We witnessed the latest stunning example of this phenomenon just a few days ago.  It turns out that Aetna has been losing hundreds of millions of dollars on plans sold through the health exchanges, and now they plan to pull out of the program almost entirely…

  Earlier this week, Aetna, which covers about 900,000 people through the health exchanges created under Obamacare, announced that it would dramatically reduce its presence those exchanges. Instead of expanding into five new states this year, as the insurer had previously planned, the company said that it would drop out of 11 of the 15 states in which it currently sells under the law.

   

  Aetna’s decision follows similar moves from other insurers: UnitedHealth announced in April that it would cease selling plans on most exchanges. Shortly after, Humana pulled out of two states, Virginia and Alabama. More than a dozen of the nonprofit health insurance cooperatives set up under the law—health insurance carriers created using government-back loans in order to spur competition—have failed entirely. While some insurers are entering the exchanges, even more are leaving.

  Another one of “the big five”, UnitedHealth, is going to lose more than half a billion dollars on Obamacare plans.  So just a few months ago they also announced that they would be dramatically scaling back their participation in the program.

  Because of the ridiculous costs, health insurance companies are either going to have to abandon the exchanges completely or they will have to raise rates substantially.

  Needless to say, the people that are going to ultimately feel the pain from all of this are consumers…

  Customers who are now forced to obtain insurance or pay a hefty fine that grows more costly over time are being left in a difficult position. Americans are essentially stuck between a rock and hard place, either losing coverage entirely, or having to cough up money for a plan they can’t afford.

   

  “Something has to give,” said Larry Levitt, a healthcare law expert at the Kaiser Family Foundation. “Either insurers will drop out or insurers will raise premiums.“

  On the low end of the spectrum, tens of millions of poor Americans benefit from government programs that provide health care at little or no cost.

  On the other end of the spectrum, the very wealthy can afford to pay the ridiculously high health insurance premiums that we are seeing under Obamacare.

  So what this means is that the people that are being hurt the most by Obamacare are those that belong to the middle class.

  As I mentioned above, employers are now hiring less workers because of Obamacare, and that is very bad news for the middle class.  One recent study conducted by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York discovered that nearly one out of every five firms is “employing fewer workers” because of this insidious law…

  According to a new survey by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, 20.9% of manufacturing firms in the state said they were employing fewer workers because of the Affordable Care Act, the healthcare law known as Obamacare, while 16.8% of respondents in the service sector said the same.

  And middle class Americans that have to pay for their own health insurance are being hit with much higher bills these days.  According to one recent study, it is being projected that the average Obamacare premium will go up 24 percent in 2016…

  Now, courtesy of a new study by independent analyst Charles Gaba – who has crunched the numbers for insurers participating in the ACA exchanges in all 50 states – we can also calculate what the average Obamacare premium increase across the entire US will be: using proposed and approved rate increase requests, the average Obamacare premium is expected to surge by a whopping 24% this year.

  Even NBC News, which is about as pro-Obama as you can get, is reporting on the crippling premium increases that are devastating the middle class…

  Millions of people who pay the full cost of their health insurance will face the sting of rising premiums next year, with no financial help from government subsidies.

   

  Renewal notices bearing the bad news will go out this fall, just as the presidential election is in the home stretch.

   

  “I don’t know if I could swallow another 30 or 40 percent without severely cutting into other things I’m trying to do, like retirement savings or reducing debt,” said Bob Byrnes, of Blaine, Minnesota, a Twin Cities suburb. His monthly premium of $524 is already about 50 percent more than he was paying in 2015, and he has a higher deductible.

  All over the nation people are getting hit like this.

  Personally, my health insurance company wanted to nearly double the rate I was paying when Obamacare fully kicked in.  So I searched around and found another plan that was only about a 30 percent increase, but at least it wasn’t nearly double what I had been paying before.

  But when the time came to renew that plan, they wanted to jump my premium up another 50 percent per month.

  Those of us that are in the middle are being crushed by Obamacare.  We aren’t poor enough to qualify for government assistance, and we aren’t wealthy enough for these ridiculous health insurance premiums not to matter.

  Just about everything that Barack Obama promised us about Obamacare has turned out to be a lie.

  So where is the accountability?

  This is one of the big reasons why nearly one out of every five U.S. adults lives with their parents or their grandparents these days.  Many young adults cannot afford the basics of life such as health insurance, and so they have got to find a way to cut back expenses somewhere.  If that means moving back in with Mom and Dad, that is what some of them are going to do.

  I am astounded that our system of health care has become so messed up.  But this is just more evidence of how our society is falling apart in thousands of different ways, and I am not optimistic that things will be turned around any time soon.

  

  

• Goldman Calls It For Oil: "OPEC Freeze Insufficient To Support Prices; The Price Rally Should Stall"

  Exactly 24 hours ago, we explained why – in our view – the oil rally was over, and gave four key reasons: i) after the biggest documented short squeeze in history, all the “weak hands” had been blown out and any incremental covering from here on out would be far more difficult; ii) an oil OPEC freeze will have no impact coming at a time when production by many cartel members is at all time highs, iii) the Niger Delta Avengers have agreed to a ceasefire meaning up to 300kbpd in Nigerian oil production would hit market shortly, and iv) the fundamentals suggest far more supply in the future, notably out of the US shale sector much of which has reorganized with cleaner balance sheets, which in the absence of rising demand (in fact demand out of China is falling) means lower price.

  Moments ago, Goldman energy analyst Damien Courvalin released a note titled “More worried about a thaw than a freeze”, in which he effectively confirmed everything we said yesterday, when the sellside strategist said that the “three remaining large sources of oil supply disruptions – Nigeria, Iraq and Libya – have all shown signs of increasing output since last Wednesday”, warning that “each country has the potential to move the global oil market back into surplus given our modest 230 kb/d expected deficit in 2H16″ and “as a result, we reiterate our view that the oil price and fundamental recovery remains fragile.”

  But worst of all, if only for the headline scanning algos, and Venezuela’s increasingly more desperate oil minister Eulogio Del Pino, Goldman now thinks that “while discussions of an OPEC freeze and a weakening dollar have been catalysts for the sharp reversal in oil prices this month, we believe neither will be sufficient to support prices much further. In our view, thawing relationships between parties in conflict in areas of disrupted production would be more relevant to the oil rebalancing than an OPEC freeze which would leave production at record highs and could prove counter productive if it supported prices further and incentivized activity elsewhere.”

  As for fundamentals, “supply continues to feature the cross currents of rising low-cost supply, declining high-cost production, and new project ramp up. In fact, marginally more bearish data recently than we had assumed suggests in our view that the recent price rally should stall.“

  Precisely what we said yesterday.

  Here are the details:

  More worried about a thaw than a freeze, by Goldman’s Damien Courvalin
  

  Three remaining large sources of oil supply disruptions in recent months have all shown signs of increasing output since last Wednesday. In Iraq, flows from the Baghdad controlled northern fields resumed on Kurdistan’s pipeline to Ceyhan. In Libya, a vessel started to load crude from the Zueitina port, one of the three ports slated to reopen following an agreement between the UN-backed Government of National Accord in Tripoli and the Petroleum Facilities Guard, one of Libya’s armed brigades. Finally on Sunday, the Niger Delta Avengers announced that they had agreed to a ceasefire.

  There is potential for another large decline in production disruptions from Nigeria, Iraq and Libya

  

   

  Uncertainty on the sustainability and magnitude of these improvements remains large: the new Iraqi energy minister decided to resume flows on the pipeline and the political instability in the country or attacks on the KRG pipeline are significant risks to the recent recovery. In Libya, the vessel is only intended to draw from Zueitina’s oil inventories, with the port still closed and stated opposition by local tribes to a ramp up of the ports supply fields. In Nigeria, an NDA statement specified that it could resume “warfare” at any point and another militant group called Niger Delta Green Justice Mandate claimed an attack on Saturday with the government yet to comment on the ceasefire.

  Nonetheless, these latest developments are the most tangible since headlines of higher production from these countries started to intensify over the past two months with crude oil physically moving. Further, in each case, they suggest signs of easing tensions between the relevant parties. In Iraq, where production from Kirkuk fields is up by 70 kb/d, the energy minister was named with the support of the KRG. In Libya, the loading suggests a possible de-escalation between the PFG and forces loyal to a separate government in eastern Libya which had recently threatened to conduct attacks on the port. Finally, in Nigeria, this is the first ceasefire officially recognized by the NDA.

  We had conservatively assumed in our balances that only a combined 100 kb/d of these disruptions would reverse in 2H16 (with Nigeria starting from our estimated 1.3 mb/d level in July vs. the IEA’s 1.5 mb/d) with an additional 200 kb/d improvement in 2017. This left us expecting a 230 kb/d average supply-demand deficit in 2H16, however, these recent developments risk pushing the global oil market back into a surplus: Kirkuk production growth alone is scheduled to increase by 150 kb/d this week. We note that any upside to Nigeria production is likely to be slower than the 250 kb/d June increase as much of the production interruptions then were due to damages to onshore pipelines which could be quickly repaired where most of the current outage is due to damage to two offshore export pipelines which could take months to bring back online.

  We expect a shallow deficit in 2H16

  

  Even if flows fail to materially increase in each country, we reiterate our view that the oil price recovery is tenuous. Further, until we see enough evidence to raise our production forecasts in Libya, Iraq or Nigeria, we maintain our view that oil prices will remain in a $45-50/bbl range through next summer. As we argued in May, uncertainty on the forward supply-demand balances remains significant even as uncertainty on the industry’s cost structure is diminishing. We therefore believe that oil prices will need to reflect near-term fundamentals with a lower emphasis on the more uncertain longer-term fundamentals. Should disrupted production sustainably rebound by 500 kb/d more than we assume, for example, we estimate that 2017 WTI prices would decline to $45/bbl vs. our current $52.5/bbl forecast to generate an offsetting decline in US production.

  Accommodating a 500 kb/d recovery in disrupted oil production would require 2017 oil prices at $45/bbl

  

   

  Oil’s round trip not driven by incrementally better oil fundamentals

  While oil prices have rebounded sharply since August 1, we believe this move has not been driven by incrementally better oil fundamentals, but instead by headlines around a potential output freeze as well as a sharp weakening of the dollar (and exacerbated by a sharp reversal in net speculative positions). A deal to freeze production when OPEC and some non OPEC producers meet in Algeria on September 26-28 is possible in our view, after six failed attempts, as it would show signs of cooperation from Saudi’s new energy minister. But the possibility may not be high – Russia’s energy minister commented on August 8 that he did not see the basis for such a freeze (with legislative elections taking place before the meeting). Further, Saudi and Iran continue to focus on market share and therefore appear unlikely to unilaterally accept a freeze or implement a jointly agreed one. Ultimately, freezing production at current levels would leave 2H16 output from OPEC (crude) and Russia at 44.6 mb/d, 400 kb/d higher than our forecast as we assume a seasonal decline in Saudi volumes. Longer term, a production freeze would also likely prove self-defeating if it succeeded in supporting oil prices further with the US oil rig count up 28% since May. Finally, the correlation to the dollar has not been steady and oil fundamentals, as they did in May, can drive divergence in asset prices. Further, our FX strategists view the recent strength of the US economic data as leaving risks to the dollar skewed to the upside, not downside.

  A freeze at current level would keep the global market in surplus in 2H16

  

  On the fundamental side, supply continues to feature the cross currents of rising low-cost supply, declining high-cost production, and new project ramp up. In fact, marginally more bearish data recently than we had assumed suggests in our view that the recent price rally should stall. Saudi production reached a new record high in July at 10.7 mb/d with Reuters reporting that Saudi production could reach a new record in August, with large cuts to its OSP for September as well. Iraq has agreed to new contract terms with oil majors to increase its southern output by up to 350 kb/d next year vs. our current expectation for flat production into 2017. Finally, projects continue to ramp up in line with our expectations (i.e. TEN in Ghana and Goliat in Norway) or even beyond what we are assuming (i.e. ENI’s guidance on Kashagan for next year). On the demand side, the 1H16 trend continues to be of strong demand growth, which is now nearing 2 mb/d, driven by India and China, and we continue to expect a moderation in demand growth in 2H16. Demand continues to be revised upward with the August IEA data showing a broad based 100 kb/d increase in 1H16 demand growth. Additionally, the early 3Q16 data is pointing to a slowdown in growth in India and stable growth in the US in line with our expectation. With no evidence that demand growth is weakening sharply, supply will remain in our view in the driving seat in coming weeks.

  

  

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