Jun 25

Today’s News 25th June 2016

  • First The UK, Then Scotland… Then Texas?

    Submitted by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

    That didn't take long. Only hours after the final results came in for a British exit from the EU, political leaders in Scotland are talking about renewing their drive to secede from the United Kingdom. 

    Pointing to the fact that a large majority of Scots voted to remain in the EU, Scottish advocates for independence are now claiming (convincingly) that Scotland is leaving the EU against its will. 

    Many of us who advocated for Scottish secession in 2014 were, of course fine with Scottish secession at the time. And we're still fine with it now. Scotland should be free to say good bye and got its own way. 

    Some opponents of Scottish exit, however, have claimed that Scotland is too small "to go it alone." Defenders of Scottish independence call this the "too wee, too poor, too stupid" argument. 

    Even the most rudimentary analysis, however, shows that size is not an issue for Scotland. With an official GDP of approximately 245 billion, Scotland is not too much different from Ireland, Finland, and Denmark. It's economy is much larger than that of Iceland (16.7 bln) and New Zealand (172 bln).

    With a population of 5.3 million, this puts Scotland either similar to or larger than Denmark, Norway, Finland, New Zealand, and Ireland. 

    With a population this size, Scotland's GDP per capita comes out to around $45,000 which naturally is similar to the UK overall today, and also similar to Canada, the Netherlands, Austria, Finland, and a number of other European states, both large and small. 

    Some will argue that Scots cannot go it alone because they rely too much on English taxpayers for transfer payments such as pensions. This is no doubt partially true, although the UK government also extracts tax dollars from Scots, regulates Scottish trade with the EU and everyone else, and perhaps the Scottish simply want independence even if it means a temporary disruption in living standards. 

    Overall, though, there's no denying that Scotland even by itself is well within the realm of ordinary wealthy nation states, in terms of population, and the size of its economy. Scotland is in no way an outlier. 

    The claim that it is "too small" was repeated today, however, in this article by Roger Bootle at The Telegraph in which he writes: 

    Believe it or not, there is an extensive economic literature on the subject of the optimum size of a country, or more accurately, political association. From the economic point of view, as the size of political entities gets larger, there is scope for economies of scale in government and the provision of public goods such as defence. Equally, within a single political entity there are no restrictions on trade, such as tariffs or quotas so, other things being equal, the gains from trade are maximised as political entities grow larger.

     

    Yet there are limits to the desirable size of political entities, such that, as things stand anyway, a single world government would not be optimal. The larger, and certainly the more heterogeneous, a political entity is, the more resources are taken up with arguing about distribution, that is to say who should benefit from various sorts of public expenditure, and who should pay for it. The quality of government tends to deteriorate.

    Bootle is correct that there are certainly advantages of size when it comes to national defense. Obviously, it's much harder for a foreign invader to overrun Russia than Poland. What Bootle misses, however, is that these issues can be addressed through confederation rather than through political unification. The original purpose of the United States, of course, was to act as a confederation for purposes of national defense. Member, states, however, remained autonomous within their own borders. Similar structures have existed throughout history, from NATO to the Hanseatic league of northern Europe. 

    Scotland need not be part of the UK to enter into a defense agreement with the British. 

    The rest of Bootle's argument appears even more specious. It is not a given, for example, that larger states facilitate trade. As the UK experience has shown, membership in the EU has granted access to some markets, but it has cut off access and flexibility with other markets. (Norway and Switzerland have access to these same markets, by the way, without EU membership.) 

    This was also an enormous issue and source of conflict in the United States, in regards to southern states. Yes, membership in the United States facilitated trade among states, but trade between Southern states and foreign markets was hampered by US tariff policy. To claim that gains from trade are "maximised" by larger states is rather overstating it, to say the least. 

    In fact, there are many reasons to believe that the "optimal" size of state is considerably smaller than what Bootle suggests it is. (The subtext of Bootle's article, of course, is that Scotland is below the optimal size.)

    As Peter St. Onge wrote in 2014 about the Scottish referendum at the time: 

    So small is possible. But is it a good idea?

     

    The answer, perhaps surprisingly, is resoundingly “Yes!” Statistically speaking, at least. Why? Because according to numbers from the World Bank Development Indicators, among the 45 sovereign countries in Europe, small countries are nearly twice as wealthy as large countries. The gap between biggest-10 and smallest-10 ranges between 84 percent (for all of Europe) to 79 percent (for only Western Europe).

     

    This is a huge difference: To put it in perspective, even a 79 percent change in wealth is about the gap between Russia and Denmark. That’s massive considering the historical and cultural similarities especially within Western Europe.

     

    Even among linguistic siblings the differences are stark: Germany is poorer than the small German-speaking states (Switzerland, Austria, Luxembourg, and Liechtenstein), France is poorer than the small French-speaking states (Belgium, Andorra, Luxembourg, and Switzerland again and, of course, Monaco). Even Ireland, for centuries ravaged by the warmongering English, is today richer than their former masters in the United Kingdom, a country fifteen times larger.

     

    Why would this be? There are two reasons. First, smaller countries are often more responsive to their people. The smaller the country the stronger the policy feedback loop. Meaning truly awful ideas tend to get corrected earlier. Had Mao Tse Tung been working with an apartment complex instead of a country of nearly a billion-people, his wacky ideas wouldn’t have killed millions.

     

    Second, small countries just don’t have the money to engage in truly crazy ideas. Like Wars on Terror or world-wide daisy-chains of military bases. An independent Scotland, or Vermont, is unlikely to invade Iraq. It takes a big country to do truly insane things.

    A Lesson for American States 

    When Americans indulge in thought experiments about the possible secession of American states, it is often assumed that most US states are too small "to go it alone." Indeed, most Americans greatly underestimate the size of many American states in relation to numerous independent and prosperous existing nation-states. 

    Were Scotland a US state, for example, it would be only a medium-sized state, with a GDP smaller than the gross state products of both Missouri and Connecticut, making it about the 25th largest state in terms of GDP. Population-wise, Scotland is about equal to Minnesota and Colorado (I have removed China and the US combined economy from this graph to improve scale): 

    In this map, I've compared American states to foreign countries of similar GDP: 

    For more similar maps, see here. 

    Moreover, few Americans appreciate how enormous some American states are, especially the largest four states: California, Texas, New York, and Florida. 

    In terms of both population and GDP, California is about equal to Canada — and with much better weather. Texas is equal in economy and population size to Australia. Pennsylvania's economy is similar in size to Switzerland. 

    While secession of American states is often dismissed as absurd, there are few reasons to believe that a state like Texas – to name just one example – could not immediately transition from state to nation-state. With a large economy, port cities, oil, and easy access to European, Latin American, and even Asian economies by sea, economics arguments against such a separation fall flat. And of course, the success of smaller states like Norway, Denmark, and Switzerland illustrate that bigness is truly unnecessary. Naturally, many other states even beyond the biggest states — such as Pennsylvania, New Jersey, North Carolina and others — could do the same. These states would all be among the largest economies on earth were they to leave the US. 

    "But what about national defense!" some may argue. "Wouldn't Texas be constantly at war with the United States?" Experience suggests that Texas would be at war with the United States about as frequently as Canada has been at war with the United States: zero times since 1815. 

    International wars rarely erupt between countries with common languages, common histories, and common economic interests. Should Scotland secede, the UK won't be sending in the tanks, and Scotland could easily join the realm of independent nation states, just as many American states could do the same.

  • Hillary's Official Calendar Is "Missing" A Lot Of Entries

    Little by little the public is starting to learn more about Hillary Clinton’s time as US Secretary of State, beyond the official narrative . Most recently it was revealed that the State Department disabled its own security software to accommodate emails being sent from Hillary’s private server, and also that Clinton omitted a key email discussing that very topic when turning over records to the State Department.

    And now, courtesy of the AP, we learn that the official calendar that Hillary kept as secretary of state did not closely mirror the more detailed records of Clinton’s daily meetings provided by her aides. The detailed schedules were included in files the State Department turned over to the AP after it sued the government in federal court.

    When the AP compared Clinton’s 1,500 page official calendar with the detailed planning schedules, what the AP found was stunning. The names of at least 114 outsiders who met with Clinton were missing from her calendar, and at least 75 meetings with longtime political donors, Clinton Foundation contributors and corporate and other outside interests were not recorded or omitted from the official calendar.

    Additionally, more than 60 other events listed on the detailed planners were omitted entirely from Clinton’s calendar, noted as “private meetings”, none of which named names of anyone who Clinton met with.

    For example, in an entry on Clinton’s schedule in September 2009 didn’t contain the identities of major Wall Street and business leaders who met with Clinton for a private breakfast discussion at the New York Stock Exchange. The meeting occurred minutes before Clinton appeared in public at the exchange to ring the opening bell. However, the detailed planning schedules from the same day listed all of the names that were omitted from the official schedule.

    More from AP

    Despite the omission, Clinton’s State Department planning schedules from the same day listed the names of all Clinton’s breakfast guests — most of whose firms had lobbied the government and donated to her family’s global charity. The event was closed to the press and merited only a brief mention in her calendar, which omitted all her guests’ names — among them Blackstone Group Chairman Steven Schwarzman, PepsiCo CEO Indra Nooyi and then-New York Bank of Mellon CEO Robert Kelly.

     

    Besides Schwarzman, Nooyi and Kelly, Clinton’s other guests were Fabrizio Freda, CEO of the Estee Lauder Companies Inc.; Howard Schultz, CEO of Starbucks Corp.; Lewis Frankfort, chairman of Coach Inc.; Ellen Kullman, then-CEO of DuPont; David M. Cote, CEO of Honeywell International Inc.; James Tisch, president of Loews Corp.; John D. Wren, CEO of Omnicom Group; then-McGraw Hill Companies chairman Harold McGraw III; and James Taiclet, chairman of the American Tower Corp. Also attending was then-NYSE CEO Duncan Niederauer, who later accompanied Clinton when she rang the stock exchange bell.

     

    Four of the attendees — Schwarzman, Nooyi, Cote and Kullman — headed companies that later donated to Clinton’s pet diplomatic project of that period, the U.S. pavilion at the 2010 Shanghai Expo.

     

    All the firms represented except Coach lobbied the government in 2009; Blackstone, Honeywell, Omnicom and DuPont lobbied the State Department that year. Schwarzman and Frankfort have personally donated to the Clinton Foundation, and the other firms — except for American Tower and New York Bank of Mellon — also contributed to the Clinton charity.

    The AP noted that Clinton’s calendar also repeatedly omitted private dinners with political donors, policy sessions with groups of corporate leaders and “drop-bys” with old Clinton campaign hands and advisers. Among the names that were omitted from Clinton’s schedule but again were found on the detailed planning documents were longtime adviser Sidney Blumenthal, consultant and former Clinton White House chief of staff Thomas “Mack” McLarty, former energy lobbyist Joseph Wilson and entertainment magnate and Clinton campaign bundler Haim Saban.

    The lengths that AP had to go to in order to obtain these documents were significant, and no documents showed who specifically logged entries in Clinton’s calendar or edited material. Once again, we find deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin’s name in the mix, as Abedin held weekly meetings and emailed almost every day about Clinton’s plans. Also, a stunning finding was made in that Clinton’s official calendar was edited after each event.

    The AP first sought Clinton’s calendar and schedules from the State Department in August 2013, but the agency would not acknowledge even that it had the material. After nearly two years of delay, the AP sued the State Department in March 2015. The department agreed in a court filing last August to turn over Clinton’s calendar, and provided the documents in November. After noticing discrepancies between Clinton’s calendar and some schedules, the AP pressed in court for all of Clinton’s planning material. The U.S. has released about one-third of those planners to the AP, so far.

     

    The State Department censored both sets of documents for national security and other reasons, but those changes were made after the documents were turned over to the State Department at the end of Clinton’s tenure.

     

    The documents obtained by the AP do not show who specifically logged entries in Clinton’s calendar or who edited the material. Clinton’s emails and other records show that she and two close aides, deputy chief of staff Huma Abedin and scheduling assistant Lona J. Valmoro, held weekly meetings and emailed almost every day about Clinton’s plans. According to the recent inspector general’s audit and a court declaration made last December by the State Department’s acting executive secretary, Clinton’s aides had access to her calendar through a government Microsoft Outlook account. Both Abedin and Valmoro were political appointees at the State Department and are now aides in her presidential campaign.

     

    Unlike Clinton’s planning schedules, which were sent to Clinton each morning, her calendar was edited after each event, the AP’s review showed. Some calendar entries were accompanied by Valmoro emails — indicating she may have added those entries. Every meeting entry also included both the planned time of the event and the actual time — showing that Clinton’s calendar was being used to document each meeting after it ended.

     

    The State Department said Friday that “extensive records” from Clinton’s calendars were preserved. Spokesman John Kirby said he couldn’t speak in more detail about practices during Clinton’s tenure because of the AP’s ongoing lawsuit.

    Former department officials as well as government records experts said that secretaries of state have wide latitude in keeping their schedules, despite federal laws and agency rulings overseeing the archiving of calendars and warning against altering or deleting records.

    “It’s clear that any outside influence needs to be clearly identified in some way to at least guarantee transparency. That didn’t happen. These discrepancies are striking because of her possible interest at the time in running for the presidency” said Danielle Brian, executive director of the Project on Government Oversight.

    * * *

    So we learn now that not only did Clinton omit key emails to the government, often times the official schedule omitted – if not outright “redacted” – key names and events as well while Clinton was the Secretary of State. Ironically, just as the case was with Abedin submitted an email that Hillary chose to keep from the government, the daily planning schedules from Hillary’s aides now shines a light on the detail Clinton tried to keep from the public record once again. We’re sure that’s just an oversight on Clinton’s part though, she was probably just too busy to make sure the official calendar accurately reflected what was taking place and who the US Secretary of State was meeting with.

    Will anyone ask the question of what exactly was discussed when Hillary had these so called “private” meetings with Wall Street and big business? Probably not. However, for the sake of our readers and the so-called “posterity”, we have decided to document what the rest of the media will ignore, and we will not forget.

  • Peter Schiff: "Brexit Is Just What The Doctor Ordered"

    Submitted by Peter Schiff via Euro Pacific Capital,

    Janet Yellen should send a note of congratulations to Nigel Farage and Boris Johnson, the British politicians most responsible for pushing the Brexit campaign to a successful conclusion. While she’s at it she should also send them some fruit baskets, flowers, Christmas cards, and a heartfelt “thank you.“ That’s because the successful Brexit vote, and the uncertainty and volatility it has introduced into the global markets, will provide the Federal Reserve with all the cover it could possibly want to hold off on rate increases in the United States without having to make the painful admission that domestic economic weakness remains the primary reason that it will continue to leave rates near zero. 

    For months the corner that the Fed has painted itself into has gotten smaller and smaller. It continues to say that rate hikes will be appropriate if the data suggests the economy is strong. Then its representatives continually cite (arguably bogus) statistics that suggest a strengthening economy, which cause many to speculate that rate hikes are indeed on the horizon. But then at the last minute the Fed conjures a temporary reason why it can’t raise rates “right now,” but stresses that they remain committed to doing so in the near future. But each time they conduct this pantomime, they lose credibility. Sadly, Fed officials are discovering that their supply of credibility is not infinite, even among those who would like to cut them a great deal of slack.

    But the Brexit vote saves them from all this unpleasantness. Now when critics question the Fed’s unwillingness to deliver on the suggested rate hikes, given what they believe to be a strong economy, all the Fed needs to do is point to the “uncertainty” that will be in play now that the world’s fifth largest economy is disengaging from the European Union. And since this process is bound to be long, messy, and fraught with uncertainties (as there is no precedent for a country leaving the EU), this will be a handy excuse that the Fed will be able to rely on for years.

    Brexit could also place severe strains and uncertainties on the global currency markets. The fear of financial losses could encourage investors to seek safe haven assets like gold and, at least for now, the U.S. dollar. Given that there is already much concern that the dollar is valued too highly against most currencies, and that this has created imbalances in the global economy, any surge in the dollar that results from Brexit may have to be fought by the Federal Reserve through lower interest rates and quantitative easing. This would rule out the potentially dollar-strengthening interest rate hikes that they supposedly planned on delivering. So as far as Janet Yellen is concerned, the British have given her the gift that keeps on giving.

    On another level, the vote in the UK illustrates the fundamental inefficacy of the monetary and financial policies that have been implemented by the world’s dominant central banks and central bureaucracies. For years, global elites have been telling us that deficit spending, government regulation, and central bank stimulus is the best way to cure the global economy in the wake of the 2008 Financial Crisis. To prove these points, elite economists associated with the government, academia, and the financial sector have pointed to all kinds of metrics to show how their policies have been successful. But the man on the street perceives a very different reality. They know that their living standards have fallen, their cost of living has risen, and that their job prospects have deteriorated. They see a loss in confidence and economic stagnation when they are being assured the opposite.

    This disconnect has fueled anti-establishment sentiment on both sides of the Atlantic. In the United States, it has given rise to the insurgent candidacies of both Donald Trump and Bernie Sanders. The unexpected successes of both reflect a deep distrust of the establishment. Such discontent would not be in play if the positive stories being told by the elites had made any resonance with rank and file voters.

    The same holds true with the unexpected strength of the anti-EU voters in Britain. The “Remain” camp had the support of virtually all the elite members of the major UK political parties, the media, and the cultural world.  In addition, foreign leaders, including President Obama in a state trip to England, harangued British voters with warnings of economic catastrophe if the British were to make the grave error of defying the advice of their “best” economists.

    Given all this, poll numbers that suggested the vote could be close had been dismissed. The elites, as evidenced by recent drifts in currency and financial markets, had all but assumed that British voters would fall into line and vote to remain. Instead, the people revolted. After having been misled for so many years by the very elites who urged them to remain, the rank and file finally asserted themselves and voted with their feet.

    British voters may not know what they will get with an independent Britain, but they knew that something was rotten, not just in Denmark, but all over the European Union. The same holds true in the United States. Until our leaders can paint more realistic pictures of where we are and where we are going, we should expect more “surprises” like the one we got yesterday.

  • Friday Humor: What Comes After Brexit

    On a day full of tears, jeers, and fears for many, we thought a little humor might help…

    What comes after Brexit?

    In other words…

     

  • Was This The Deciding Factor For Brits To Vote "Leave"?

    While the blame for today’s historic moment in the collapse of crony capitalism could be laid at many feet – from Brussels totalitarianism to Cameron and Osborne’s scaremongering blowback – one look at the charts and it becomes pretty clear when exactly the inflection point occurred…

    April 22nd, Obama wrote his “Stay or screw the special relationship” Op-Ed followed by his apology tour visit.

    It appears The Brits don’t like being told what to do by other nations’ leaders…

    And then there is this little know fact…

     

    Good luck Hillary!

  • If The Public Shouldn't Have Them, Why Does The IRS Need AR-15s?

    Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

    Here we go again. Stuck in the aftermath of a horrific shooting and all politicians think to do is scheme about how to take more rights from the citizenry. There are no good guys here. The Democrats want to railroad over due process by denying firearms to people on Orwellian watch lists, while Republicans plot to give the FBI more warrantless surveillance powers. This is the authoritarian knee-jerk response to tragedy we get from the U.S Congress.

    Hypocritically, when it comes to foreign policy, all we hear are incessant calls for more militarism, more war and more regime change. As I warned in yesterday’s post, Is the Syrian War About to Experience a Major Escalation? — 51 State Department officials just issued a cable calling for the bombing of Syria’s Bashar al-Assad. An event likely to lead to direct confrontation with Russia.

    While all of that is bad enough, the U.S. government continues to eagerly and aggressively arm non-defense federal employees with weapons of war.

    As Adam Andrzejewski of Open the Books and former U.S. Senator Tom Coburn noted in a recent Wall Street Journal op-ed:

    The number of non-Defense Department federal officers authorized to make arrests and carry firearms (200,000) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000).

    For more, let’s take a look at a few excerpts from their piece, Why Does the IRS Need Guns?

    Special agents at the IRS equipped with AR-15 military-style rifles? Health and Human Services “Special Office of Inspector General Agents” being trained by the Army’s Special Forces contractors? The Department of Veterans Affairs arming 3,700 employees?

     

    The number of non-Defense Department federal officers authorized to make arrests and carry firearms (200,000) now exceeds the number of U.S. Marines (182,000). In its escalating arms and ammo stockpiling, this federal arms race is unlike anything in history. Over the last 20 years, the number of these federal officers with arrest-and-firearm authority has nearly tripled to over 200,000 today, from 74,500 in 1996.

     

    What exactly is the Obama administration up to?

     

    On Friday, June 17, our organization, American Transparency, is releasing its OpenTheBooks.com oversight report on the militarization of America. The report catalogs federal purchases of guns, ammunition and military-style equipment by seemingly bureaucratic federal agencies. During a nine-year period through 2014, we found, 67 agencies unaffiliated with the Department of Defense spent $1.48 billion on guns and ammo. Of that total, $335.1 million was spent by agencies traditionally viewed as regulatory or administrative, such as the Smithsonian Institution and the U.S. Mint.

    • The Internal Revenue Service, which has 2,316 special agents, spent nearly $11 million on guns, ammunition and military-style equipment. That’s nearly $5,000 in gear for each agent. 

    • The Department of Veterans Affairs, which has 3,700 law-enforcement officers guarding and securing VA medical centers, spent $11.66 million. It spent more than $200,000 on night-vision equipment, $2.3 million for body armor, more than $2 million on guns, and $3.6 million for ammunition. The VA employed no officers with firearm authorization as recently as 1995.

    • The Animal and Plant Health Inspection Service spent $4.77 million purchasing shotguns, .308 caliber rifles, night-vision goggles, propane cannons, liquid explosives, pyro supplies, buckshot, LP gas cannons, drones, remote-control helicopters, thermal cameras, military waterproof thermal infrared scopes and more.

     

    People from both ends of the political spectrum have expressed alarm at this trend. Conservatives argue that it is hypocritical, unconstitutional and costly for political leaders to undermine the Second Amendment while simultaneously equipping nonmilitary agencies with heavy weapons, hollow-point bullets and military-style equipment. Progressives like Sen. Bernie Sanders have raised civil liberties concerns about the militarization of local police with vehicles built for war and other heavy weaponry.

     

    Our data shows that the federal government has become a gun show that never adjourns. Taxpayers need to tell Washington that police powers belong primarily to cities and states, not the feds. 

    For more detail, check out the full report here: OpenTheBooks Oversight Report – The Militarization Of America.

    Open the Books is a nonpartisan, non-profit organization focused on providing transparency in government.

  • Donald Trump’s Entire Financial History In One Short Video

    Courtesy of The Money Project, a collaboration between Visual Capitalist and Texas Precious Metals that seeks to use intuitive visualizations to explore the origins, nature, and use of money.

    Donald Trump’s Entire Financial History In One Short Video

    In this motion graphic video, we break down the full story behind Donald Trump’s wealth.

    Not only do we examine his major business successes and failures, but we even look back at real estate’s prominent role in the history of the Trump family. To conclude, the video breaks down Trump’s net worth and financial history, while highlighting some of the help he has gotten along the way in building his fortune.

    Family Matters

    The story started well over a century ago with Donald’s grandfather, Frederick Trump. Real estate runs deep in the blood of the Trump family, and Frederick was actually the first Trump to own a hotel. During the famous Klondike gold rush in Canada, Frederick owned an inn and restaurant that served gold miners. When he passed away, he left an estate worth just under $500,000 in today’s dollars to his heirs.

    His eldest son, Fred Trump, carried on the Trump legacy by going into business with his mother, using the nest egg for seed money. Fred became a very successful builder in New York City’s outer boroughs. He built single family houses in Queens in the 1920s, helped pioneer the supermarket with the “Trump Market” during the Great Depression, and even built barracks for the Navy during World War 2.

    But Fred’s real cash cow came in 1949, when he got a government loan to build Shore Haven Apartments in Brooklyn. The Federal Housing Administration paid him $10.3 million, but he was able to build the apartments for significantly less.

    The government kept overpaying for houses in Brooklyn and Queens, and Fred kept building them. According to Donald, his father became “one of the biggest landlords in New York’s outer boroughs”. By the time of Fred’s death in 1999, it’s said that Fred Trump was worth between $250 and $300 million.

    Donald’s Vision

    Born in Queens, Donald J. Trump would join his father’s company early on in his career. His father’s cash cow was now gone, but Donald had a different vision for the Trump name anyways. He envisioned the “Trump” brand as being synonymous with luxury worldwide.

    To do this, in the mid-1970s, Donald went into real estate in Manhattan. Relying on the business connections and creditworthiness of his old man, he borrowed a “small sum” of 1 million dollars to get started.

    Trump’s Biggest Successes

    Trump’s top three business successes include the Grand Hyatt, 40 Wall Street, and the Apprentice.

    1. Grand Hyatt

    In 1976, Donald Trump and Hyatt partnered to buy the rundown Commodore Hotel near Grand Central Station. At the time, the whole neighborhood was in disarray with many nearby buildings on the verge of foreclosure. Trump negotiated contracts with banks and the city in an effort to fund the hotel and rejuvenate the area.

    The end result was the Grand Hyatt, a 25-story hotel, which Trump sold his share of for $142 million in 1996.

    2. 40 Wall Street

    Another big win for Trump was with 40 Wall Street, once the tallest building in the world. He bought it for $1 million after years of vacancy. Today, it’s prime real estate in the financial district, worth more than $500 million – a huge return.

    3. The Apprentice

    The Apprentice was also a financial home run for Trump. As the show’s host and executive producer, he raked in $1 million per episode for a whopping 185 episodes.

    Trump’s Biggest Failures

    Like many businessmen, Donald Trump’s career has also had his share of failures.

    1. Atlantic City

    Donald’s biggest failure may be his ill-fated venture into casinos in Atlantic City.

    The bleeding started in 1988 when he acquired the Taj Mahal Casino. Funded primarily by junk bonds, the massive casino would be $3 billion in debt within just a year of opening. Trump, who racked up $900 million in personal liabilities, had the business declare bankruptcy. To stay afloat, he ditched many personal assets such as half of his stake in the company, a 282-foot megayacht, and his airline.

    Things were dire, and Trump’s dad chipped in by providing a $3.5 million loan in the form of casino chips to help make a loan payment.

    Trump’s casino holding company would enter bankruptcy two additional times: in 2004, after accruing $1.8 billion in debt, and in 2009, after missing a bond payment during the Financial Crisis. Each time, Trump’s stake in the company fell.

    2. Other Businesses

     While three of Trump’s four bankruptcies involved Atlantic City casinos, he has also struggled in other ventures outside of real estate: Trump airlines, Trump Vodka, Trump: The Game, Trump Magazine, Trump Steaks, and Trump University were all destined for failure. Trump Mortgages was launched in 2006 right before the real estate crash, and it also imploded.

    Trump’s Net Worth

    According to Trump’s campaign, he is worth “in excess of TEN BILLION DOLLARS”. However, he has also been accused in the past of artificially inflating his net worth. Forbes and Bloomberg News both have drastically different estimates of his wealth at $4.5 billion and $2.9 billion respectively.

    Using the middle of the road figure from Forbes, here is how Trump’s wealth breaks down:

    • 48% is in New York City real estate
    • 7% is in cash and liquid assets such as investments
    • 8% is in golf courses
    • 4% is in “toys” such as helicopters, penthouse, or his Boeing 757 plane

    The remainder includes other real estate assets outside of New York City, as well as the value of the licensing agreements for hotels, real estate, or other Trump products.

  • Brexit: Individualism > Nationalism > Globalism

    Submitted by Jeff Deist via The Mises Institute,

    Decentralization and devolution of state power is always a good thing, regardless of the motivations behind such movements.

    Hunter S. Thompson, looking back on 60s counterculture in San Francisco, lamented the end of that era and its imagined flower-child innocence:

    So now, less than five years later, you can go up on a steep hill in Las Vegas and look West, and with the right kind of eyes you can almost see the high-water mark — that place where the wave finally broke and rolled back.

    Does today’s Brexit vote similarly mark the spot where the once-inevitable march of globalism begins to recede? Have ordinary people around the world reached the point where real questions about self-determination have become too acute to ignore any longer? 

    Globalism, championed almost exclusively by political and economic elites, has been the dominant force in the West for a hundred years. World War I and the League of Nations established the framework for multinational military excursions, while the creation of the Federal Reserve Bank set the stage for the eventual emergence of the US dollar as a worldwide reserve currency. Progressive government programs in Western countries promised a new model for universalism and peace in the aftermath of the destruction of Europe. Human rights, democracy, and enlightened social views were now to serve as hallmarks of a post-monarchical Europe and rising US.

    But globalism was never liberalism, nor was it intended to be by its architects. As its core, globalism has always meant rule by illiberal elites under the guise of mass democracy. It has always been distinctly anti-democratic and anti-freedom, even as it purported to represent liberation from repressive governments and poverty.

    Globalism is not, as its supporters claim, simply the inevitable outcome of modern technology applied to communication, trade,and travel. It is not “the world getting smaller.” It is, in fact, an ideology and worldview that must be imposed by statist and cronyist means. It is the civic religion of people named Clinton, Bush, Blair, Cameron, and Lagarde.

    Yes, libertarians advocate unfettered global trade. Even marginally free trade has unquestionably created enormous wealth and prosperity for millions around the world. Trade, specialization, and an understanding of comparative advantage have done more to relieve poverty than a million United Nations or International Monetary Funds.

    But the EU, GATT, WTO, NAFTA, TPP, and the whole alphabet soup of trade schemes are wholly illiberal impediments masquerading as real commercial freedom. In fact, true free trade occurs only in the absence of government agreements. The only legislation required is a unilateral one-sentence bill: Country X hereby eliminates all import duties, taxes, and tariffs on all Y goods imported from country Z.

    And as Godfrey Bloom explains, the European Union is primarily a customs zone, not a free trade zone. A bureaucracy in Brussels is hardly necessary to enact simple pan-European tariff reductions. It is necessary, however, to begin building what globalism truly demands: a de facto European government, complete with dense regulatory and tax rules, quasi-judicial bodies, a nascent military, and further subordination of national, linguistic, and cultural identities.

    Which brings us to the Brexit vote, which offers Britons far more than simply an opportunity to remove themselves from a doomed EU political and monetary project. It is an opportunity to forestall the juggernaut, at least for a period, and reflect on the current path. It is a chance to fire a shot heard around the world, to challenge the wisdom of the “globalism is inevitable” narrative. It is the UK’s last chance to ask — in a time when even asking is an act of rebellion — the most important political question of our day or any day: who decides?

    Ludwig von Mises understood that self-determination is the fundamental goal of liberty, of real liberalism. It’s true that libertarians ought not to concern themselves with “national sovereignty” in the political sense, because governments are not sovereign kings and should never be treated as worthy of determining the course of our lives. But it is also true that the more attenuated the link between an individual and the body purporting to govern him, the less control — self-determination — that individual has.

    To quote Mises, from his 1927 classic (in German) Liberalismus:

    If it were in any way possible to grant this right of self-determination to every individual person, it would have to be done.

    Ultimately, Brexit is not a referendum on trade, immigration, or the technical rules promulgated by the (awful) European Parliament. It is a referendum on nationhood, which is a step away from globalism and closer to individual self-determination. Libertarians should view the decentralization and devolution of state power as ever and always a good thing, regardless of the motivations behind such movements. Reducing the size and scope of any single (or multinational) state’s dominion is decidedly healthy for liberty.

  • Tony Robbins Asks Everyone To "Storm Across A Bed Of Hot Coals" – Dozens Get Injured

    Tony Robbins, the motivational speaker and author held an "Unleash the Power Within" seminar Thursday night in Dallas, and as a routine part of the seminar there was a fire walking event whereby participants walk over hot coals to practice mind over matter. It appears, however, that some attendees weren't quite focused enough that evening.

    Dozens of people who attempted the feat were injured reports the Dallas Morning News, and Dallas Fire-Rescue paramedics were called to the Kay Bailey Hutchison just after 11pm where 30 to 40 people were seen onsite. The severity of the injuries was unknown, but most people elected not to be taken to the hospital said Fire-Rescue spokesman Jason Evans.

    Pujan Patel from Dallas said thousands of people walked across the coals without a problem, and the people that burned their feet should have done a better job mentally preparing – "It was very easy, but there's always going to be 1 percent of people that are idiots"

    Ah, the old "the beatings will continue until morale improves" point of view.

    Zoe Tentoglou flew to Dallas from Sunnyvale, California to attend her first Robbins event and said that participants were told to repeat the phrase "cool mas" to themselves as they walked across the coals. "The crew walked us through every step. They were very cautious. They told us not to look at the coals as we walked across, to visualize walking across the coals, and then afterwards they sprayed our feet with water."

     

    * * *

    Robbins's website says: "Overcome the unconscious fears that are holding you back. Storm across a bed of hot coals"

    We can't help but liken this to central planning. Just as Tony Robbins asked people to walk across hot coals, and as a result people got burned, central planners are asking everyone to trust the process of monetary policies – and the world is getting burned. Sometimes, things such as overcoming fears by walking over hot coals and central planning entire global economies are best left in theory instead of practice.

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