Dec 29

Today’s News 29th December 2019

  • 'Mass Stabbing' At Jewish Hannukah Celebration In New York, At Least 5 Injured
    'Mass Stabbing' At Jewish Hannukah Celebration In New York, At Least 5 Injured

    At least 5 people have been stabbed after a black male entered Rabbi Rottenburg’s Shul, located in the Forshay neighborhood in Monsey, New York, and pulled out a machete.

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    Notably, today is the last day of Hannukah.

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    As VosIzNeias.com reports, the alleged assailant pulled off the cover and stabbed at least 5 people. One of the victims was stabbed in the chest. Two of the victims of the attack were taken into hospital as critical.

    One of the victims was stabbed at least 6 times.

    The fifth/least severe case had a cut in his hand.

    The perpetrator then ran out and escaped in a vehicle. His plates were spotted before he left (HPT-5757 per the person who saw it and we confirmed it with him directly – a Gray Nissan Sentra), and the police are currently searching for him.

    Videos of the stabbing attack began disseminating on social media.

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    Motti Seligson, director of media for Chabad.org, told The Jerusalem Post that the congregants, Hassidim, were gathered for a Hanukkah party and confirmed the preliminary details of the event.

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    The Orthodox Jewish Public Affairs Council said five people, all Hasidic, were transported to local hospitals with stab wounds. 

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    OJPAC also noted that “the perp’s face was partially covered with a scarf but skin showed him to be an African American.”

    New York Attorney General Letitia James tweeted support for the Jewish community shortly after the reported attack.

    “There is zero tolerance for acts of hate of any kind and we will continue to monitor this horrific situation,” the tweet read in part.

    “We are closely monitoring the reports of multiple people stabbed at a synagogue in Monsey, NY (Rockland County),” a representative of the New York City Police Department Counterterrorism Bureau tweeted.

    Hatzalah emergency response team is on scene and victims have been transferred to the hospital.

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    As JPost.com notes, this is the second stabbing attack in Monsey in the last two months.

    In November, a man jumped out of his car in stabbed a father on his way to synagogue, gauging his eye.

    In the last week, a spate of antisemitic crimes has swept the city.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 23:27

  • These Are The 10 Worst States For Millennials
    These Are The 10 Worst States For Millennials

    Even the most curmudgeonly boomer would probably agree that the millennial generation is struggling. Though they have no great wars to fight (in the West, wars are now fought by volunteers), millennials are facing enormous loads of student debt, stagnant wages, and an entrenched sense that the future looks bleak. Whatever skills they have learned will likely be rendered unmarketable thanks to AI, and anybody who isn’t programming the machines and computers who will run our future society should fear them.

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    As a group, those aged 23 to 38 earn less and have fewer assets than their parents. But across the US, there’s a pretty wide variance in living conditions, and for millennials who need to watch every penny, certain states make more hospitable homes than others.

    In a recent research project, Zippia.com determined the 10 worst states/territories for millennials. They are:

    • District of Columbia
    • Georgia
    • New York
    • Florida
    • North Carolina
    • California
    • South Carolina
    • Alabama
    • Louisiana
    • Mississippi

    As a region, the south is the most heavily represented on this list, accompanied by states with expensive urban enclaves where young people flock seemingly to live in penury while they follow their dreams chasing those entertainment and media jobs that will seemingly never provide a realistic paycheck (the share of millennials in their 20s and even into their 30s who depend on financial support from parents has never been higher).

    To arrive at its rankings, the researchers assigned number values for each of four categories: millennial unemployment rate, average student loan debt load, millennial home ownership and the percentage of millennials living in poverty.

    Which brings us to No. 1…

    Washington DC:

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    Unemployment: 6%

    Home Ownership: 18.38%

    Poverty Rate: 25%

    Student Loan Debt: $60,039

    A city known for its ridiculous housing prices, one in four millennials in our nation’s capital live in poverty. They also have the highest average student loan debt in the nation.

    Georgia:

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    Unemployment: 8%

    Home Ownership: 31.61%

    Poverty Rate: 20%

    Student Loan Debt: $37,284

    Though housing is relatively affordable in Georgia, and the student-debt burden is much lower than Washington DC, roughly one in five millennial Georgians live in poverty, which is enough to secure the No. 2 spot on this list.

    New York

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    Unemployment: 7%

    Home Ownership: 24%

    Poverty Rate: 19%

    Student Loan Debt: $38,734

    Low home ownership rates coupled with brutally high rents make New York a no-brainer for the No. 3 spot. Millennials also face high poverty rates and burdensome student debt loads.

    Florida

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    Unemployment: 7%

    Home Ownership: 29%

    Poverty Rate: 19%

    Student Loan Debt: $35,709

    The state best known as a sunny place for shady people, one in five of the state’s millennials live in poverty. Setting the numbers aside, the proximity to Florida Man can’t be easily quantified, but it definitely sucks.

    North Carolina

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    Unemployment: 7%

    Home Ownership: 32%

    Poverty Rate: 20%

    Student Loan Debt: $36,246

    The issues with North Carolina is low home ownership and high unemployment, coupled with a high student debt burden.

    California

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    Unemployment: 7%

    Home Ownership: 23%

    Poverty Rate: 17%

    Student Loan Debt $34,449

    Piss-poor policymaking in Sacramento has saddled Californians with expensive housing prices (because endless environmental regs make building so expensive), while nature is punishing the state with wildfires and a brutal drought that finally ended this year. Homeownership is simply out of reach for all but the wealthiest tech industry drones.

    South Carolina

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    Unemployment: 7%

    Home Ownership: 36%

    Poverty Rate: 22%

    Student Loan Debt: $37,249

    Alabama

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    Unemployment: 8%

    Home Ownership: 37%

    Poverty Rate: 23%

    Student Loan Debt: $34,861

    Alabama is very similar to the other southern states on this list: High unemployment and poverty.

    Louisiana

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    Unemployment: 8%

    Home Ownership: 37%

    Poverty Rate: 26%

    Student Loan Debt: $33,860

    Things aren’t easy for millennials down by the bayou. Like Alabama before it, young people face high rates of poverty and unemployment. But at least they can drink their troubles away in the Big Easy.

    Mississippi

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    Hardly a surprise. One of the only Southern states that’s entirely devoid of a large urban commercial center (the largest city is the capital, Jackson, and it’s the only municipality in the state with a population of over 100,000 people), Mississippi is known for grinding rural poverty in communities where jobs, solid housing and even basic services like supermarkets can be hard to come by.

    If your state isn’t listed above, you can see where it fell on the list here.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 23:00

  • Danger Ahead!!! Advice From A Former Militia Leader
    Danger Ahead!!! Advice From A Former Militia Leader

    Authored by David Brockett via DCDirtyLaundry.com,

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    Disclosure:

    During the 1990’s I served as a militia leader in Texas; it was after Federal agents killed Vickie Weaver and her son in Ruby Ridge, Idaho (1992), the Branch Davidian massacre in Waco, Texas (1993), the Assault Weapons Ban (1994), and the Oklahoma City bombing (1995). The nation was in turmoil.   The Clintons were in power with “Bloody Janet” Reno as Attorney General. Even the Home-Schooling movement was under fire by the Clinton cabal. We were told it “took a village’ to raise our children–but their village was full of unpatriotic idiots.

    Democrat Ann Richards (responsible for the illegal military involvement at the Waco massacre) was Governor of Texas, and we had almost no gun rights. You couldn’t even legally carry a pistol in your vehicle unless you could establish that you were “traveling” and staying away from home overnight (keep a suitcase in the trunk). By 1996 the militia movement was in full swing across the nation, with a bunch of poorly-trained men and women in camo, faced off against well-armed federal agents, law enforcement and the National guard. To say it was a powder keg would be an understatement. To make matters even more dangerous, the feds were using undercover operatives to stir up and instigate violence in militias.

    Today when I see people write about how close to a revolution we are, I understand the sentiment, but you ain’t seen nothing yet! Wait until you decide to group together, armed and wearing some kind of military uniform, making loud anti-government statements, and planning your resistance! Lots of interesting things will follow!

    Siren’s Song

    Oh, the romance of being a revolutionary: square-jawed, armed and dangerous, feared by men, admired by women and children–and your dog. But mostly it gives you a chance to buy loads of expensive, dangerous-looking toys and cool camo gear! Who could resist swaggering around with salty BVD’s, and a full complement of “weapons of war” strapped to your body? Then there are bivouacs where, after a hard day of standing around in the woods, you sit around a campfire talking shit. Maybe, if you’re lucky, one of the militia members has some acreage where you can waste a couple of hundred dollars praying and spraying ammo in the general direction of a target—it’s all about the noise! The member with the loudest gun wins. And let’s not forget the comradery forged in the fires of Hell as you and your buddies fight off mosquitos during practice night missions while humping the seventy pounds of gear (mostly useless to real guerilla fighters) someone convinced you to purchase.

    Brief History

    During the 1990s, the media managed to paint the militia movement as a dangerous bunch of kooks. Many will tell you that the bombing of the Murrah building in Oklahoma City was a government-initiated operation to further alienate the public. For many reasons I won’t get into here, I wouldn’t argue with those people.

    The Clinton administration was very unpopular, and the last thing they needed was a national uprising. Bill Clinton was cozy with the United Nations. Globalization had reared its ugly head in the form of NAFTA and the World Trade Organization (which followed GATT). I don’t have the space to cover how these organizations crippled the US economy or affected society, so you will have to do some research on your own. Suffice it to say that both Republicans and Democrats in Washington were working together (still are) on the financial demise of our nation and its sovereignty. The Assault Weapons ban was a bi-partisan fear-response to the threat posed by a well-armed civil resistance.

    To Be or Not to Be a Militia Member

    The first question you have to ask yourself is what you hope to gain by putting a government target on your back, and those in your family. In 1997 I hosted a national militia meeting on my property in Texas; it was a large encampment of militia leaders and members from all over the country. We even made the cover of Time Magazine as a “militia hotspot.” What was the goal of this get-together?

    Before I begin, let me tell you a funny story. During our camp set-up, we rented one of those huge blue and white striped tents (urban camo) and enough chairs to fill it. The day before our official agenda began, Channel Eight of Dallas sent a news chopper out to film our camp from the air. Seeing a bunch of people with AK’s slung over their shoulders, the chopper flew a wide circle around the camp–so wide they couldn’t get decent footage. They spent so much time flying this distant arc they ran low on fuel and had to leave. About thirty minutes later they came back, this time cautiously venturing in closer and closer; eventually, the side door opened and their cameraman began filming. I guess they decided we weren’t going to shoot them out of the sky. The point of the story is how the media had bought into their own militia boogeyman narrative.

    “They” will set you up

    Now back to the purpose of the meeting. Militia leaders were being picked off by the federales via entrapment schemes similar to what happened to Randy Weaver in Idaho. Government informants joined these groups and set up the leaders by doing things such as planting explosive devices (pipe bombs) on militia leader’s property to be “discovered” during federal raids. Other informants acted as instigators (our Texas group had one) prodding leaders and members into taking action that would unnecessarily put the unit in danger (physical and legal), and in a bad light to the public. Some informants got militia members on tape talking about planning illegal activities (this was actually a lot of empty bullshit boasting).

    The national meeting acted as a sounding board so that other militia leaders could be informed of the risks they were taking. I also believed that we needed a strong joint public statement about our mission and our intentions. So, we invited the FBI and any law enforcement members who might want to attend—we knew they would find their way in anyway. A local sheriff deputy sat in his car across the road, watching with binoculars; my neighbors kept goading him into going up the hill to our event. He declined. Back then police were taught to be afraid of militia members and mental patients. At least we were in good company.

    The negative government public relations campaign didn’t always work. During the national meeting, several families came to the gate with food and encouragement. My rural neighbors supported and encouraged what we were doing. When a Dallas news team gathered, interviewing people off our property, they only found one person (not a local) who said anything negative—guess which interview made the nightly news!

    I haven’t seen Clint Eastwood’s movie on Richard Jewel yet, but the Atlanta bomb that Jewel discovered was most likely planted as a false flag. Working as security, Jewel found the package and reported it. He paid the price for screwing up their operation. In a joint personal assault, the federal government and the media tried desperately to paint him as a domestic terrorist. Interestingly, the feds never investigated anyone else for this crime. See the movie.

    Who joins the militia?

    There were very few militia members with military experience. The ones, like myself, that had experience were Vietnam Vets. If you were around back then you will remember how vets were painted by the media as dangerous, wild-eyed camo-wearing kooks. It seemed that not a month went by without a violent incident involving a veteran. Just as school shootings are now, the media rushed to cover every veteran-involved incident. We were still wearing the scourge of the Vietnam War, and most media types came from the same liberal group that protested the war. Back then, no one knew anything about PTSD, and the VA denied such a malady existed (kind of like Agent Orange). The term “postal” was derived from Vietnam Vet Post Office employees losing it and shooting up the place. Occasionally a VA center would be the target. Eventually, many of these vets got help, but not nearly soon enough for them or their families. I digress.

    Most newbie militia members had no experience, and putting these well-intentioned, patriots in a real military-type operation would have been leading lambs to slaughter. A militia leader had to be realistic about his members and their capabilities. If you were lucky you would have at least a sprinkling of country people with firearms and woodland experience. At the time, people were coming in from everywhere because so many were concerned about a government mass round-up of dissenters and/or a societal breakdown where the bad guys could come from anywhere. I personally focused on gun safety, weapons familiarization, and marksmanship. Additionally, we worked on techniques for traveling safely during times of unrest, home defense, and survival.

    There was a reason so many people were worried about citizen internment. The plan for FEMA concentration camps was real. Former Congressman Henry B. Gonzales, R, of Texas, publicly admitted their existence and their purpose (contain people during a period of mass unrest). State troopers had been put on alert to be watchful for anyone who might be a militia member. Sheriffs and municipal police across the country were being fed scary bullshit by the FBI, and law enforcement was running around with hair-triggers during traffic stops.

    Nothing has changed–for the good

    I guess I have spent most of your time talking about how things were “back in the day,” but you can count on the same dynamics this millennium. The government is much more sophisticated in keeping an eye on citizens, and there are thousands more armed government agents. You have to assume that everything you do or say is being monitored by Big Brother. The good news is, if your group stays small and keeps their mouths shut, the feds are unlikely to bother with you. If you are looking for strength in numbers, assume you will have at least one informant in your group.

    Cull these members out immediately

    Gung-ho members who encourage aggressive illegal actions should be expelled immediately. Now, that may rub some patriots the wrong way, but to do otherwise is to set up your members for potential prison time. Just like in other relationships, everyone is not trustworthy. If you have a member(s) go off the rails and do something stupid, you are all guilty by association. If, on the other hand, you are willing to “take a stand” like they did at the Bundy Ranch in Nevada, just be aware it will be expensive and you risk your lives, family fortunes, and many years behind bars. Only you can know if the price is worth it. Also, be aware that if you have an informant or agitator in your group, your operation may be compromised in advance and your members put at risk, physically.

    Here is an article on what happened to members of a Michigan militia. 

    The FBI planted a secret informant and FBI agent in the militia in 2008 to record the activities of the group. The video and audio recordings became the crux of the federal case, including clips of the elder Stone making anti-government statements and remarks about killing police officers. The defendants all faced a maximum sentence of life in prison. Fortunately, after a very expensive and lengthy trial, most of the members were cleared of all charges. The leader and his son faced weapons charges.

    Explosive “experts” (guys who want to show you how to make illegal weapons like pipe bombs, grenades, etc.) should not be allowed in your organization unless you know them really, really, really well—even then you have to worry about other members who might inform on your group. In case you choose to train members on how to manufacture/store illegal explosives or weapons, the risk is great that they will be found and you will be prosecuted. Two militia leaders in South Carolina went to prison when two informants slipped onto their property and planted pipe bombs. The guilty verdict came even though there was testimony from several witnesses, including the informants, that the group had stated repeatedly that it was NOT interested in making explosives or doing anything illegal.

    In summary, there are fewer risks in forming your group around like-minded family members and close friends. As you can see from the Michigan Christian militia group–even they were infiltrated. Any stranger brings with them more risks than rewards. A family unit focused on self-protection and survival is your best option. If everyone is trained in survival skills, including marksmanship, and all members are equipped with everything they need, you should be prepared for almost anything coming your way. If society falls apart, or a government, foreign or domestic, imposes itself on the population, your group will have the option of joining with others if you so choose.

    With the threat of a “foreign” military (immigrant militias) operating in our country, danger could come from any quarter!

    Stay off the ridgeline and keep your powder dry!


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 22:30

    Tags
    War Conflict
    Politics

  • Wealth Of The Richest Surged By $1.2 Trillion In 2019
    Wealth Of The Richest Surged By $1.2 Trillion In 2019

    At the same time that dipshits future Nobel Prize winners at the Fed like Neel Kashkari are walking around pondering why the inequality gap continues to widen in the United States, monetary policy has catalyzed another year of surging wealth for the richest in the country while keeping its boot on the neck of the poorest. 

    In fact, as Bloomberg notes, the wealth of the 500 richest people surged 25% in 2019. And the riches are coming in atypical fashion. 

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    Among those are social media giants like Kylie Jenner, who became the youngest self-made billionaire this year after her cosmetic company signed an exclusive partnership with Ulta Beauty. She sold a 51% stake in her company for $600 million. 

    Similarly, the Korean family who helped popularize the Washington Nationals’ rally cry, “Baby Shark, doo-doo doo-doo doo-doo”, is now worth about $125 million.

    Another great example is Willis Johnson, who made his $1.9 billion fortune by building a network of junkyards to sell damaged cars.

    All of these are examples of just how much money made its way to the richest over the last 12 months. The Bloomberg Billionaires Index added $1.2 trillion, now placing their collective net worth at $5.9 trillion.

    Only 52 people on the ranking saw their fortunes decline during the year. Jeff Bezos, for example, lost $9 billion – but only due to his divorce. 

    Bloomberg noted the year’s biggest winners:

    • The 172 American billionaires on the Bloomberg ranking added $500 billion, with Facebook Inc.’s Mark Zuckerberg up $27.3 billion and Microsoft Corp. co-founder Bill Gates rose $22.7 billion.
    • Representation from China continued to grow, with the nation’s contingent rising to 54, second only to the U.S. He Xiangjian, founder of China’s biggest air-conditioner exporter, was the standout performer as his wealth surged 79% to $23.3 billion.
    • Russia’s richest added $51 billion, a collective increase of 21%, as emerging-market assets from currencies to stocks and bonds rebounded in 2019 after posting big losses a year earlier.

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    Newly minted billionaires included Anthony von Mandl, the man behind “White Claw” hard seltzer and Hong Kong’s Lo family, who are in the business of producing soy milk. 

    With the market hitting new highs every day and President Trump’s relentless pressure on the Fed to keep rates low, the gap will likely continue to widen heading into 2020 – a year politicians will undoubtedly spend bickering about proposed solutions to the problem, all the while failing to understand that the alarm is coming from the inside, right before their eyes. 

    The gains are an obvious continued indicator of flawed monetary policy that everybody – except those at the Fed (and Steve Liesman) seems to understand.

    As a result, currently, the 0.1% control the biggest share of the pie in the U.S. than at any time since 1929. 

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    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 22:00

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Experts Warn Global Outrage Levels May Reach Point Of No Return In 2020
    Experts Warn Global Outrage Levels May Reach Point Of No Return In 2020

    Via The Babylon Bee,

    The UN Panel on Outrage Change has confirmed the worst: global levels of outrage may reach the point of no return in 2020.

    Outrage levels previously reached dangerous highs during the Bush administration, but Obama was able to reverse the trend. He didn’t change much about the way Bush was handling things, but he was a Democrat, so outrage levels went back down as the press stopped reporting on scandals and corruption.

    However, in 2016, global outrage reached record highs, especially among Democrats. Republicans had been mildly outraged during the Obama years but mostly had to go to work so didn’t have much time to spew toxic, harmful outrage into the environment. Libertarians have generated almost no outrage since they are high all the time. 

    Experts believe the reelection of Trump in 2020 would be “catastrophic,” catapulting outrage levels well into the stratosphere.

    “If we do not cut our anger emissions immediately, the world will be consumed by fiery outrage by the end of next year,” said outrage expert Dr. Hal Gourd, pointing to a hockey-stick graph.

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    The audience responded by getting really mad, shaking their fists at the sky and making loud grunting noises.

    “Now, now, let’s all calm down,” Gourd said, but this only angered the crowd further.

    Finally, Gourd began to freak out as more and more bricks were lobbed his direction.

     “OK, FINE, IT’S TIME TO PANIC! AHHHHHH!!!!”

    He jumped out a window to his waiting luxury jet and flew away.

    Experts recommend everyone stop “yelling and stuff,” so we can prolong our inevitable death by outrage a few years. Those who do not wish to stop being outraged can purchase “outrage credits,” generated by people who are just chillin’.

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    If you value The Babylon Bee and want to see them prevail against Snopes and anyone else who might seek to discredit or deplatform them, please consider becoming a subscriber. Your support really will make a difference.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 21:30

    Tags
    Politics
    Environment

  • Musk Tweets Boring's Las Vegas Tunnel To Open In 2020 
    Musk Tweets Boring's Las Vegas Tunnel To Open In 2020 

    Elon Musk is on top of the world, has been able to capitulate shorts and send Tesla’s equity price above the $420 per share buyout level, to close at $430.380 on Friday.  

    With Musk’s ego higher than ever, he tweeted Friday night that Boring Company would complete a commercial tunnel in Las Vegas in the near term and be fully operational in 2020. 

    “Boring Co is completing its first commercial tunnel in Vegas, going from Convention Center to Strip, then will work on other projects,” Musk tweeted late on Friday. 

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    Last month, we noted how Boring officially won the contract from Las Vegas to build a “subterranean transit system” by undercutting the bids of established players in the engineering space.

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    We pointed out how Boring is going to have to prove that its technology and talent can scale to municipality size projects, instead of a test run using a go-kart on skates in 50 feet of tunnel. 

    In July, Boring raised $120 million in a round of funding from gullible cultists “disruptive investors.” 

    We noted earlier this year that Boring’s tunnel projects were debunked by PhDs and ridiculed by government officials as nothing new: “There’s no revolution here. Let’s be honest here: he’s driving a car through a sewer pipe,” Ph.D. chemist and video blogger Phil Mason recently said. 

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    With the test tunnel completed in Hawthorne, California, and other projects in Chicago and Washinton, D.C. to Baltimore, Musk has made a lot of promises in the past where his timelines don’t exactly come true. 

    …We’re still waiting for the one million “robotaxis” to hit the streets in 2020, another promise made by Musk. 

     


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 21:00

  • Cohen: How Impeachment Is Escalating The New US-Russian Cold War
    Cohen: How Impeachment Is Escalating The New US-Russian Cold War

    Podcast of John Batchelor Show

    Summary of Broadcast Produced by Yvonne Lorenzo:

    As the New Cold War gathers up speed and escalates, we are entering a “fact free world” as allegations are made that are proved not to be true are promoted; for example, the allegation that the DNC was hacked by Russia has been officially debunked—no one could name the seventeen intelligence agencies, the Coast Guard was one. The notion of the hacking was cooked up by two agencies: by the DNI’s head James Clapper and Brennan at the CIA. Nevertheless, recently News Anchor Chuck Todd of NBC (the most pro-Russiagate network, the ones who shamelessly accused presidential candidate Tulsi Gabbard of being a Russian asset) took it one step further: ignoring the facts, Todd again stated that seventeen intelligence agencies agreed that the Russians not only interfered in the election but that they swung the election to Trump. While interference is one thing, no one has previously made that allegation. Consequently, we are now in a fact-free discourse in America: no evidence is necessary to prove anything, falsehoods are taken up by the legacy media, what Professor Cohen would call a world of tabloid gossip media, except in their favor the tabloids, fearing lawsuits, will do some fact checking, which is conspicuous in its absence in the legacy media. And Professor Cohen noted that it’s hard to get traction and you can’t have a conversation with someone when you don’t agree upon the facts.

    In conversation on a cruise with fellow liberals, Professor Cohen noted most take the view that where there is smoke there is fire and there is something to these allegations of Russiagate and Putin’s control over Trump; they state the media wouldn’t continue to promote these conspiracy theories, these allegations about Trump’s nefarious relations with the Kremlin, without reason and so there must be something to them. Yet while facts have become absolutely critical Cohen notes you can’t get people to focus on the facts; for that reason, he feels despair and observes that for the first time in his life in his public discussions of Russia there are no basic premises that people accept any more, for if you say “If there’s smoke, there’s fire,” that is just not a logical way of thinking: you either have the facts or you don’t.

    Batchelor also points out in the impeachment charges there is a great deal of presumption; there are no facts regarding the president as well, and he cites Trump’s letter to Nancy Pelosi and poses this question: what does the Kremlin think about the impeachment?

    Cohen answers that the Russian high policy class in the 1990s – the America worship period – they and not just the youth, strongly believed that Russia’s future was with the West and America in particular, and now what strikes Russians most is the role of Russian intelligence services in the Western allegations. Pro-America Russians thought that American intelligence services didn’t play the role that the Soviet ones did. In Russian history classes and as a staple of popular culture, the sinister role of the “secret police” goes back to the Czarist era but what distinguished America was that it didn’t have anything comparable in abuses by its intelligence services—or so it was believed. Consequently, for those who looked up to America, it’s a source of disillusion and shock to learn that the American special services “went off the reservation” for quite a long time, not unlike Russia’s, and so they have become disillusioned while for those who tried to get Russians to be more nationalistic, their perspective is to say with gratification, “We told you so. Now will you please grow up!”

    Russians call the American agencies “the organs” perhaps not being clear on the difference between the CIA and the FBI and conflating them. For Russians, the role of such agencies is baked into the culture and this has resulted in rethinking not only about America but about their own special services. An Op-Ed piece in a Russian liberal newspaper the Russian liberal author wrote, after watching what’s unfolding in America, we used to beat up on our intelligence services for decades but now maybe we need them. Contrary to a “cult of the intelligence services,” Cohen thinks what must be determined is the role of the American intelligence services in creating Russiagate from the very beginning.

    Yet what is critical is to know how Russiagate began in America, with the Barr-Durham probe into the origins of Russia and Russiagate will continue to be a major issue in the 2020 election. What struck Cohen about the letter from Trump to Pelosi—which was so eloquent he doubts Trump wrote it—was that he understands it will be an issue in the 2020 elections, and it was a campaign document. That aside, Trump is aware that Democrats are campaigning still on Russiagate; nothing has turned up that it factual. Therefore, despite the absence of facts, this will be a major issue. Ukraine has turned into a stand-in for Russia.

    Jennifer Rubin of the Washington Post, once a quintessential conservative, published an article titled “Time to Call out and Remove Putin’s Propagandist in America.” While the article is slightly cagier than that headline, essentially she wants to shutdown and deprive access to media who aren’t espousing and promoting the Russiagate/Russophobic narratives. Cohen condemns that kind of behavior is that. On opposite side of Rubin, Cohen stated he himself has never advocated the silencing and removal of those who promote among other falsehoods the provably false Russiagate narrative. He asks where are things drifting and he answers discourse and relations are becoming ugly and awful.

    Returning to the past, he notes there was an assumption that Russia under Yeltsin would emerge as a replica and junior partner of America; Cohen believes those who promote the Russiagate narrative and demonize Trump because their “impossible dream” failed—Russia is too old, too vast to ever be a replica of America. What took Professor Cohen aback in the testimony from Fiona Hill and others was how deep and wide the Russophobia runs in the Washington think tanks. Until she spoke and testified he had no idea how much she—and the other Russia experts—hate Russia.

    Batchelor noted this is the language of civil war in Trump’s letter; Trump uses the term “Star Chamber of partisan persecution” and “coup” which are the language of a country torn in half and he asked the question whether the weakening of the civil contract to be an advantage to Putin and Russia.

    Cohen notes every newspaper and media source in America say Putin is delighted since it is his goal is to foment disarray in America.

    The fact is, however, this chaos and dysfunction and enmity is one of the last things Putin wants. Putin’s purpose is to rebuild Russia from the economic and political catastrophes of the 1990s; Putin’s role is to reverse the demographic trend—men died in their fifties in the 1990s—and spend funds on modernization; that would be his legacy. Four hundred billion dollars has been saved to implement the modernization program. That attempt would be taken with modernizing partnerships with the West. Therefore, the last thing he wants is a new Cold War; the last thing he wants is political turmoil in America or in any Western nation. Cohen points out President Macron of France appears to understand that; he called for a rethinking of relations and said there could be no European security without Russia. Macron has broken with Washington and there will be a hell of fight because Washington is against it. But the notion that Putin wants to disrupt American society is wrong; Putin wants stability and partners.

    Cohen still thinks that leadership—the new President of Ukraine, Trump and Putin—could make a difference.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 20:30

    Tags
    Politics

  • 'Former Trump Voter' Spotlighted In Democratic Ad Campaign Caught Lying; Didn't Actually Vote In 2016
    'Former Trump Voter' Spotlighted In Democratic Ad Campaign Caught Lying; Didn't Actually Vote In 2016

    A Pennsylvania man featured in a $3 million advertising campaign by Democratic ‘nerd virgin‘ commander David Brock’s Super PAC was found to be a total liar, after he feigned regret over voting for Donald Trump in 2016.

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    “I voted for Donald Trump in 2016 because I thought he would make a change,” claimed Mark Graham, a registered Republican who lives in Erie, PA.

    “Did he make a change?” asks Brock’s virgin, off camera.

    “Not for the good!” Graham replied.

    “If I could go back in time, I would tell myself to beware the changes that President Trump has made.”

    “Voting for Donald Trump in 2020 would be like putting gasoline on a fire.“

    Except Mark was full of shit. An investigation by local news outlet JET 24 action’s Chelsey Withers (as she reports in YourEerie) revealed that Mark didn’t vote at all in 2016, much less for Donald Trump.

    And according to PennLive, Mark’s lie caused the New York Times to issue corrections in two stories about swing voters and disaffected Trump supporters.

    “While Mr. Graham acknowledged misspeaking about his voting record, he said the Times article and the ad campaign accurately reflect his feelings about the 2016 race and President Trump’s performance in office.”

    Graham told Eerie News that he became involved with American Bridge through a 2018 focus group by Democratic Congressional Candidate Ron DiNicola.

    Graham said the focus group was comprised of local Republicans who supported DiNicola’s run for Congress. Former Erie County Director of Administration [G]erry Mifsud was working with DiNicola.

    “I sat through this focus group and a New York Times reporter had sought out [G]erry. How he got Jerry I don’t know.  Maybe it was DiNicola.  Maybe it was the Democratic Party,” Graham said.

    The reporter wanted to do a story on President Trump’s popularity in Erie.  He asked the focus group how they felt about the president. –Eerie News Now

    “That’s when I told him ‘It’s like if you re-elect this guy it’s like throwing gasoline on a fire.’ I just made it up.  He said, ‘I like that.  I’m going to use that,’ Graham told the outlet.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 20:00

    Tags
    Politics
    Business Finance

  • Media's Deafening Silence On The Biggest Scandal Of 2019 Is Chilling
    Media's Deafening Silence On The Biggest Scandal Of 2019 Is Chilling

    Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via CaitlinJohnstone.com,

    This is getting really, really, really weird.

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    WikiLeaks has published yet another set of leaked internal documents from within the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) adding even more material to the mountain of evidence that we’ve been lied to about an alleged chemical weapons attack in Douma, Syria last year which resulted in airstrikes upon that nation from the US, UK and France.

    This new WikiLeaks drop includes an email from the OPCW Chief of Cabinet Sebastien Braha (who is reportedly so detested by organisation inspectors that they code named him “Voldemort”) throwing a fit over the Ian Henderson Engineering Assessment which found that the Douma incident was likely a staged event. Braha is seen ordering OPCW staff to “remove all traces, if any, of its delivery/storage/whatever” from the organisation’s secure registry.

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    The drop also includes the minutes from an OPCW toxicology meeting with “three Toxicologists/Clinical pharmacologists, one bioanalytical and toxicological chemist”, all four of whom are specialists in chemical weapons analysis.

    “With respect to the consistency of the observed and reported symptoms of the alleged victims with possible exposure to chlorine gas or similar, the experts were conclusive in their statements that there was no correlation between symptoms and chlorine exposure,” the document reads.

    According to the leaked minutes from the toxicology meeting, the chief expert offered “the possibility of the event being a propaganda exercise” as one potential explanation for the Douma incident. The other OPCW experts agreed that the key “take-away message” from the meeting was “that the symptoms observed were inconsistent with exposure to chlorine and no other obvious candidate chemical causing the symptoms could be identified”.

    Like all the other many, many, many, many different leaks which have been hemorrhaging from the OPCW about the Douma incident, none of the important information contained in these publications was included in any of the OPCW’s public reports on the matter. According to the OPCW’s Final Report published in March 2019, the investigative team found “reasonable grounds that the use of a toxic chemical as a weapon took place. This toxic chemical contained reactive chlorine. The toxic chemical was likely molecular chlorine.”

    We now know that these “reasonable grounds” contain more holes than a spaghetti strainer executed by firing squad. This is extremely important information about an unsolved war crime which resulted in dozens of civilian deaths and led to an act of war which cost taxpayers tens of millions of dollars and had many far-reaching geopolitical consequences.

    Yet the mass media, freakishly, has had absolutely nothing to say about this extremely newsworthy story.

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    As of this writing, a Google News search for this story brings up an article by RT, Al-Masdar News, and some entries by alternative outlets you’ve almost certainly never heard of like UrduPoint News and People’s Pundit Daily.

    Make no mistake about it: this is insane. The fact that an extremely important news story of immense geopolitical consequence is not getting any mainstream news media coverage, at all, is absolutely stark raving insane.

    Up until the OPCW leaks, WikiLeaks drops always made mainstream news headlines. Everyone remembers how the 2016 news cycle was largely dominated by leaked Democratic Party emails emerging from the outlet. Even the relatively minor ICE agents publication by WikiLeaks last year, containing information that was already public, garnered headlines from top US outlets like The Washington Post , Newsweek, and USA Today. Now, on this exponentially more important story, zero coverage.

    The mass media’s stone-dead silence on the OPCW scandal is becoming its own scandal, of equal or perhaps even greater significance than the OPCW scandal itself. It opens up a whole litany of questions which have tremendous importance for every citizen of the western world; questions like, how are people supposed to participate in democracy if all the outlets they normally turn to to make informed voting decisions adamantly refuse to tell them about the existence of massive news stories like the OPCW scandal? How are people meant to address such conspiracies of silence when there is no mechanism in place to hold the entire mass media to account for its complicity in it? And by what mechanism are all these outlets unifying in that conspiracy of silence?

    We can at least gain some insight into that last question with the internal Newsweek emails which were published by journalist Tareq Haddad two weeks ago. The emails feature multiple Newsweek editors telling Haddad that they would not publish a word about the OPCW leaks for two reasons: (1) because no other outlets were reporting on them, and (2) because the US government-funded narrative management firm Bellingcat had published a laughably bogus article explaining why the leaks weren’t newsworthy. Haddad has since resigned from Newsweek.

    We may be certain that this story is being killed in news rooms all around the world in similar fashion, and possibly using those very same excuses. As long as no other “respectable” (i.e. establishment) outlets are covering this story, it can be treated as a non-story, using a deceitful US government-funded narrative management operation as justification as needed. If one journalist threw his life into chaos and uncertainty by resigning and blowing the whistle on this conspiracy of silence, we may be certain that the same is happening to countless others who don’t have to courage and/or ability to do the same.

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    Many alternative media commentators are highlighting this news media blackout on social media today.

    “Our fearless media watchdogs still maintaining complete blackout on OPCW whistleblower leaks debunking WMD attack in Douma. The leaks show that Trump—like Dubya— used fake WMDs to bomb Arab country—then strong-armed OPCW to cover up the lies,” tweeted journalist Mark Ames.

    “The US attacked Syria for a chemical attack by Assad last year. But official OPCW scientists who investigated the event didn’t find evidence the Syrian military used chemical weapons. The media has chosen to ignore this story and fire its own journalists who try to report on it,” tweeted author and analyst Max Abrahms.

    “This is the FOURTH leak showing how the OPCW fabricated a report on a supposed Syrian ‘chemical’ attack,” tweeted journalist Ben Norton. “And mainstream Western corporate media outlets are still silent, showing how authoritarian these ‘democracies’ are and how tightly they control info.”

    “Media silence on this story is its own scandal,” tweeted journalist Aaron Maté.

    But this spin machine is twirling off its axis trying to normalize this silence.

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    Bellingcat narrative jockeys such as “senior investigator” Nick Waters are already scrambling to perception manage everyone into believing their own eyes are lying to them. Waters has a thread on Twitter that’s being shared around by all the usual Syria spinmeisters claiming, based on no evidence whatsoever, that WikiLeaks is selectively publishing the documents it has to create a false impression of events in the OPCW. Waters falsely claims that an email by Sebastien “Voldemort” Braha — the guy at the center of the scandal — proves that Ian Henderson was not a part of the Fact-Finding Mission (FFM) in Douma, in contradiction to the claims made by the anonymous second OPCW whistleblower who goes by the pseudonym of “Alex”.

    As Waters is one hundred percent aware, Henderson absolutely was part of the Douma Fact-Finding Mission, and one of the FFM members who actually went to Douma no less. I’ve put together a Twitter thread refuting Waters’ ridiculous claims which you can read by clicking here, but in short an arbitrary distinction seems to have been made between the FFM and the “FFM core team”, or what is labeled the “FFM Alpha team” in a newly leaked email trying to marginalize Henderson’s assessment. Henderson actually went to Douma as part of the FFM, unlike almost all members of the so-called “core team” who except for one paramedic operated solely in another nation (probably Turkey).

    Of course, the distinction of whether Henderson was or was not “in the FFM” is also itself irrelevant and arbitrary, since we know for a fact that he is a longtime OPCW inspector who went to Douma and contributed an assessment which was hidden from the public by the OPCW.

    So this narrative being spun by the US government-funded propagandists at Bellingcat is bogus from top to bottom, but what’s infuriating is that we already know who editors in news rooms are going to listen to.

    https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js

    It’s absolutely amazing how tightly interlaced Bellingcat is with the upper echelons of mainstream news media and the public framing of what’s going on in Syria. Mere hours after the latest WikiLeaks drop, CNN pundit Brian Stelter shared an article about Bellingcat founder and former Atlantic Council Senior Fellow Eliot Higgins, who warns of the dangers posed by alternative media reporters who cover underreported stories like the OPCW scandal.

    “We have this alternative media ecosystem that is driving a lot of disinformation. It is not understood by journalists or anyone really beyond a very small group of people who are really engaged with it,” reads the ironic Higgins quote in the excerpt shared by Stelter.

    We’ve been seeing a mad rush from mass media pundits to give this US government-funded narrative management operation unearned and undeserved legitimacy, churning out tweets like Stelter’s and fawning puff pieces by The New York Times, The Guardian and The New Yorker. This unearned and undeserved legitimacy is then used by editors to justify looking to Bellingcat for instructions on how to think about important information on Syria rather than doing their own basic investigation and analysis. It’s a self-validating feedback loop which just so happens to work out very conveniently for the government which funds Bellingcat.

    It remains unknown exactly what’s transpiring in news rooms around the world to maintain the conspiracy of silence on the OPCW scandal, but what is known is that by itself this scandalous silence is enough to fully discredit the mass media forever. WikiLeaks has exposed these outlets for the monolithic propaganda engine that they really are, and they did it just by publishing extremely newsworthy leak after extremely newsworthy leak.

    In order to perception manage us any harder, these freaks are going to have to go around literally confiscating our ears and eyeballs.

    *  *  *

    Thanks for reading! The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My work is entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast on either Youtube, soundcloud, Apple podcasts or Spotify, following me on Steemit, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, purchasing some of my sweet merchandise, buying my new book Rogue Nation: Psychonautical Adventures With Caitlin Johnstone, or my previous book Woke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers. For more info on who I am, where I stand, and what I’m trying to do with this platform, click here. Everyone, racist platforms excluded, has my permission to republish or use any part of this work (or anything else I’ve written) in any way they like free of charge.

    Bitcoin donations:1Ac7PCQXoQoLA9Sh8fhAgiU3PHA2EX5Zm2


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 19:30

  • Democrats Want To Outlaw 'Racist' Single-Family Housing In Virginia
    Democrats Want To Outlaw 'Racist' Single-Family Housing In Virginia

    Democratic lawmakers in Virginia want to override local zoning laws and abolish single-family housing, which they say is racist and bad for the environment.

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    According to the Daily Caller‘s Luke Rosiak, “The measure could quickly transform the suburban lifestyle enjoyed by millions, permitting duplexes to be built on suburban lots in neighborhoods previously consisting of quiet streets and open green spaces. Proponents of “upzoning” say the changes are necessary because suburbs are bastions of segregation and elitism, as well as bad for the environment.”

    The proposed changes were introduced on Dec. 19 by VA House Delegate Ibraheem Samirah (D) as part of six housing measures.

    “Single-family housing zones would become two-zoned,” Samirah told the Caller. “Areas that would be impacted most would be the suburbs that have not done their part in helping out.”

    “The real issues are the areas in between very dense areas which are single-family zoned. Those are the areas that the state is having significant trouble dealing with. They’re living in a bubble,” he added.

    He said suburbs were “mostly white and wealthy” and that their local officials — who have historically been in charge of zoning — were ignoring the desires of poor people, who did not have time to lobby them to increase suburban density.

    In response to a question about whether people who bought homes in spacious suburbs have valid reasons, not based on discrimination, for preferring to live that way — including a love for nature and desire to preserve woods and streams — he said: “Caring about nature is very important, but the more dense a neighborhood is, the more energy efficient it is.”

    He said if local officials seek to change requirements like setbacks to make it impossible to build dense housing in areas zoned to preserve a nature feel, “if they make setbacks to block duplexes, there’d have to be a lawsuit to resolve whether those zoning provisions were necessary.” –Daily Caller

    “Because middle housing is what’s most affordable for low-income people and people of color, banning that housing in well-off neighborhoods chalks up to modern-day redlining, locking folks out of areas with better access to schools, jobs, transit, and other services and amenities,” Samirah wrote on Facebook, adding “I will certainly get pushback for this. Some will call it ‘state overreach.’ Some will express anxiety about neighborhood change. Some may even say that the supply issue doesn’t exist. But the research is clear: zoning is a barrier to more housing and integrated communities.”

    Fairfax County Republican Committee Chairman Tim Hannigan told the Caller that urban Democrats are waging war on the suburbs.

    “This could completely change the character of suburban residential life, because of the urbanization that would develop,” said Hannigan. “So much of the American dream is built upon this idea of finding a nice quiet place to raise your family, and that is under assault.”

    “This is a power-grab to take away the ability of local communities to establish their own zoning practices … literally trying to change the character of our communities.”

    Read the rest of the report here.

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    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 19:00

    Tags
    Social Issues

  • Taking The Hard Way Out – Gold & The "Big Bomb Of Debt Monetization"
    Taking The Hard Way Out – Gold & The "Big Bomb Of Debt Monetization"

    Authored by David Hay via Evergreen Gavekal blog,

    “You don’t make mistakes when you don’t have money. When you have too much money, you will make a lot of mistakes.”
    – Jack Ma, founder of Alibaba, the Amazon of China

    “My view is simple and starts with the observation that gold is a lot like religion. No one can prove that God exists…or that God doesn’t exist…Well, that’s exactly the way I think it is with gold. Either you’re a believer or you’re not.”
    – Howard Marks, founder of OakMark, whose newsletter Warren Buffett reads “religiously”

    “Because of Paul Volcker, our financial system is safer and stronger. I’ll remember Paul for his consummate wisdom, untethered honesty, and a level of dignity that matched his towering stature.”
    – Barack Obama

    “Every penny of QE undertaken by the Fed that cannot be unwound is monetized debt.”
    – CNBC regular and former senior advisor to the president of the Dallas Fed, Danielle DiMartino Booth

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    SUMMARY

    • Interest rates and inflation couldn’t be more different today than they were in the 1970s.

    • One of the shocking surprises of the last decade is that despite ultra-low, zero, or, even, negative interest rates inflation has generally fallen rather than risen.

    • Yet, when it comes to asset prices (US stocks, global bonds, and real estate), it has been a completely different story.

    • One asset class that hasn’t risen as swiftly as others is gold and other precious metals.

    • This underperformance has caused most American investors—be they retail or institutional—to give up on precious metals as an essential asset class.

    • However, John Hathaway, who is considered to be the “Warren Buffett of the precious metals space,” is much more bullish given all of the macro-economic factors at play.

    • In the short-term, John and top economist David Rosenberg anticipate we could have a recession in 2020.

    • This becomes much more probable should financial markets correct hard next year after this year’s historic and euphoric rally.

    • We are likely to see governments and central banks launch a coordinated blitz made up of additional trillions of pseudo-money and unbridled spending should a recession hit.

    • With most US portfolios heavily skewed towards paper assets (i.e. stocks and bonds) and nearly devoid of hard assets (i.e. energy producers/transporters, gold miners, copper producers, and agriculture nutrient companies) the stage is set for a significant paradigm shift over the next decade.

    TAKING THE HARD WAY OUT

    40 years is a very long time, at least in human terms. But when it comes to inflation, the not-so-fine 1979 seems like 400 years ago. It was in that difficult year — with spiking oil prices pushing the CPI up at close to a double-digit rate — President Jimmy Carter appointed Paul Volcker as the head of the Federal Reserve. Even in those days, Mr. Volcker was a larger than life figure—in more ways than one.

    He stood 6’7” and he had already earned a reputation as a “hard money” proponent, in contrast to the politically-pliant and inflation-prone Fed heads who had preceded him in the wake of the last strong Fed chairman, William Chesney Martin. The latter was one of the few men Paul Volcker looked up to, reputationally if not literally. He also was the creator of the line that in time would become immortal, at least in economic circles: “It’s the Fed’s job to take away the punch bowl just when the party gets going.”

    It was Mr. Martin’s propensity to be a punch-bowl cop that got him into hot water in 1965. He was reluctant to monetarily accommodate Lyndon Johnson’s Great Society and Vietnam war spending sprees. This resistance reportedly caused LBJ to slam his Fed chairman up against a wall at the President’s Texas ranch, bellowing: “Boys are dying in Vietnam and Bill Martin doesn’t care.”

    But care he apparently did. Even as the US economy boomed and inflation began to rise at a disturbing clip in 1966 and 1967, Martin only timidly raised interest rates. It was not until President Johnson shocked the world in March of 1968 by announcing he would not run for re-election that Mr. Martin let interest rates really fly. The Fed’s discount rate popped from 4.7% to 5.6% in just two months, the fastest increase in a decade.

    Mr. Martin’s lectures to Congress over his 19-year tenure at the Fed revealed a mindset that likely would have put him at odds with LBJ’s successor, Richard Nixon. At the bottom of one economic slump, Mr. Martin warned Congress that you can’t ”spend yourself prosperous.” (He no doubt would have added or “print yourself prosperous” but that was an activity Mr. Martin likely never dreamed his cherished Fed would one day pursue…and pursue…and pursue…and pursue—that’s a pursue for each version of its Quantitative Easings!)*

    *The Fed refuses to call its latest money creation blitz QE 4 but almost everyone else is.

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    Source: The MacroTourist and David Collum

    For good measure, he remarked on another occasion, ”A perpetual deficit is the road to undermining any currency.” Despite Nixon’s impeccable GOP credentials, Mr. Martin may have suspected an inflationary wolf in sheep’s clothing. He resigned in January 1970, just one year into Richard Nixon’s first term. The next year, Mr. Nixon pulled the US off the gold standard and then proceeded to bully Mr. Martin’s replacement, Arthur Burns, into maintaining excessively low interest rates. This sequence led to Mr. Nixon’s re-election in 1972 but also to the virulent inflation that would haunt America over the next decade. (Do you discern any similarities with what’s happening today?)

    Earlier this month, Mr. Martin’s kindred spirit, Tall Paul, passed away at age 92. While most post-mortem commentaries were laudatory, there were a surprising number of criticisms of his anti-inflation campaign which, at one point, raised short-term borrowing rates to 21 ½%. Undoubtedly, many small business owners suffered mightily with the cost of money nearly 10% over the prevailing 12% inflation rate. Some critics even called Mr. Volcker a union-killer, erroneously, in my view, blaming him for the long decline in American union membership that has occurred since the early 1980s.

    Of course, interest rates and inflation couldn’t be any different today. Instead of a fed funds rate far above inflation, presently it is below it, even using the Fed’s preferred cost-of-living measure. (More on that topic in a bit). And instead of trying to quash inflation, most leading central banks are striving to force it up to 2% which has, for some reason, become the Holy Grail for the global gods of monetary policy. In most of the “advanced” world, interest rates are negative and, accordingly, well below the inflation rate of that particular country.

    One of the shocking surprises of the last decade is that despite ultra-low, zero, or, even, negative interest rates—combined with around $15 trillion of manufactured money—inflation has generally fallen rather than risen. Actually, the popular notion seven or eight years ago, as rates collapsed and central banks began their various Quantitative Easing programs (QE, i.e, digital money fabrication), was that high inflation, potentially of the hyper variety, was nearly certain.

    These concerns centered on the CPI and its less well-known corollary, the PPI, or Producer Price Index (basically, wholesale vs retail inflation). Yet, as we are all aware, when it came to asset prices – especially US stocks, global bonds, and real estate—it was a totally different story… except for one slice of the investment world that many thought would be among the biggest beneficiaries of this worldwide attempt to create printing-press prosperity. That would be gold and the other precious metals.

    Early on, it looked like the assumed scenario would play out. As QEs spread around the planet in the early part of this soon-to-be-completed decade, the precious metals complex went postal. As usual in bull phases, silver had the greatest surge, rising by 452% from its lows during the Great Recession. Gold’s ascent was less spectacular, but it nonetheless vaulted almost 170% from where it bottomed in late 2008.   By the spring of 2011, both were far ahead of global stock markets, including the S&P 500, once again measured from the lowest points of the financial crisis.

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    Source: Bloomberg, Evergreen Gavekal

    Fast forwarding to right now, it’s a very different story, at least for the S&P. The most revered stock index on the Planet Earth is up a prodigious 498.5% (total return) from its 2009 low-point, while gold and silver have roughly doubled by comparison. However, they do look much better compared to the global stock market index, excluding the US, since then; this is due to how poorly international stocks have performed vis-à-vis the US. (Ironically, in 2011 and 2012, overseas shares were all the rage, especially emerging markets.) On the more embarrassing side, gold and silver returns aren’t that much better than bonds over the past decade, despite having a monster lead in the early years. (Platinum has performed even worse!)

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    Source: Bloomberg, Evergreen Gavekal

    This long performance lag has caused most American investors—be they retail or institutional—to give up on precious metals as an essential asset class. After all, if they couldn’t deliver during a time of ideal conditions (collapsing interest rates and binge-printing by central banks), what could possibly cause them to rise now? (Note: Central bank money fabrication causes their balance sheets to increase.)

    Chart of Gold vs Central Bank Balance Sheets

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    Source: Bloomberg, Evergreen Gavekal

    For an answer to this reasonable question, it might be helpful to review a summary created by Evergreen’s bright and inquisitive research team member, Michael Schaloum. Michael does this author a great favor by regularly listening to video interviews with many of the investment world’s brainiest inhabitants. He recently watched and summarized a debriefing on Real Vision TV with John Hathaway. For those of you that don’t know of John, he is considered to be the Warren Buffett of the precious metals space. He also lives near our family’s winter home and I’ve had the pleasure of meeting him on two occasions. Here is a bullet-point summary of Michael’s recap:

    • With $13 trillion of negative yielding bonds around the world, it’s evidence of systemic risk that is far bigger than the housing/mortgage crisis of last decade.

    • When interest rates do rise materially, it will trigger huge value declines for pensions and other institutions on their supposedly safe assets. He believes these losses will dwarf those seen in 2008.

    • Almost no one today expects an inflation resurgence. That’s why gold is cheap insurance should governments resort to attempting to inflate away entitlement obligations (social security, Medicare, Medicaid, etc).

    • We’re not going to see 1970s-type inflation, but it will be higher than we have now.

    • The dollar is constantly described as the best house in a bad currency neighborhood but that’s crazy because the “hood” is going down the

    • There’s a very good chance of a US recession next year.

    • Gold is the “third rail” of money management. It’s been in the penalty box for so long that an investment advisor can get fired for even mentioning it.

    • However, gold has recently broken out from a long basing period. The wind now appears to be at its back after six years of slogging. (Our “Going for the Gold” EVA in February, 2018, gave a strong endorsement to gold; since then it has generated a respectable 6% return.)

    • Gold miners now have a reserve life that is the lowest in 30 years. They are very reluctant to build new

    • Silver is gold on steroids. (Please refer back to the above chart of the former’s moonshot from 2008 to 2011.)

    Though apparently he didn’t mention it, John might have added that the Fed has now launched QE4 even though they refuse to call it that. Just since September, the Fed has whipped up another $500 billion of fake money. In this case, the precipitating factor was severe stresses in the repo, or repurchase agreement, market. This is where banks borrow and lend vast sums to each other on a very short-term basis, secured by treasury securities.

    It’s incredible, at least to me, that the Fed feels compelled to both cut rates and print money at a time when unemployment is at a 50-year low and the S&P 500 is cranking out record highs. Its rationale is partially due to fears of another repo market seize-up (which briefly drove the overnight lending rate to 10% in September) and its singular focus on an inflation measure almost no one else tracks, the PCE or Personal Consumption Expenditures.

    As storied money manager Stan Druckenmiller said last week, referring to the Fed’s preoccupation with the PCE:

    “Well, first of all, there’s 14 recognized measures of inflation.  Twelve of them are above 2%.  Their preferred measure, the core PCE is at 1.7%.  The risks they are taking with regard to misallocation of resources, bubbles, all that stuff because something is at 1.7% as opposed to two, and now they’re talking about a makeup period?” 

    His last point is that the Fed is now openly discussing letting inflation run over 2% for an extended period to compensate, or make up for, the years when it’s been below 2%. Frankly, I continue to wonder why 2% is a good inflation level when it erodes purchasing power in a big way over time. With 2% inflation over a twenty-year timeframe, a dollar depreciates by roughly one-third (compounding works in reverse when a value is shrinking). Long-term, the story is much more dismal.

    Ironically, prior to the creation of the Fed in 1913, US consumer prices were stable for most of America’s 130-year history, outside of the War of 1812 and the Civil War. The deflation in the non-war years prior to 1913 offset the brief inflation bursts, so that for over a century the dollar roughly retained its purchasing power. Since then, outside of the Great Depression and those eras when people like Bill Martin and Paul Volcker were in charge of the Fed, it’s been all downhill. The US dollar’s purchasing power is less than 5% of what is was when the Fed opened its impressive doors, on the eve of WWI.

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    Source: WSJ, Labor Department, & Historical Statistics of the United States

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    Source: Bloomberg, Evergreen Gavekal

    As Mr. Druckenmiller alludes to, and I wholeheartedly agree with, the Fed’s preoccupation with a debatable and minor shortfall by inflation has led to series of dangerous circumstances, including monetizing the federal debt. In English, this means financing the government’s trillion dollar plus deficits with funds whipped up by the Fed’s magical money machine. As noted previously in these pages, if I’d said years ago that the Fed would be doing this, particularly at a time of decent economic performance, EVA readers would have questioned my sanity…even more than they normally do.

    Due to the Fed’s frenzied efforts, the money supply is in a ripping bull market of its own. The correlation between M2 (the main money supply metric) and the stock market recently has been remarkable.

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    Source: Bloomberg, Evergreen Gavekal

    Other central banks have joined in opening up the liquidity fire hose. It’s certainly been glorious for investor portfolios as 2019 winds down but a rational person with a knowledge of history must realize the eventual payback. There’s never been a time in the past when central bank debt monetization hasn’t ultimately led to an unhappy ending. (Sorry for the double negative but this is a topic that deserves serious negativity!) Yet, it seems like almost no one is thinking about the eventual agonizing hangover these days; rather, it’s all about the intoxicating near-term returns.

    Referring back to John Hathaway’s comments about entitlement obligations, it’s almost inarguable that either benefits need to be drastically reduced or the US, and other developed world governments, must use inflation to reduce the nominal costs of those and the debt that is used to finance them. Since the former is politically untenable, the latter becomes the path of least resistance. Who seriously believes this current feckless cast of policymakers won’t take the easy way out?

    In the short-term, though, we could see a scenario that both John and another very wise man, David Rosenberg, anticipate. In their view, and I suspect they are right, we could have a recession in 2020. This becomes much more probable, in my opinion, should financial markets correct hard next year after this year’s historic and euphoric rally. It’s during the next recession that we are likely to see governments and central banks launch a coordinated blitz made up of additional trillions of pseudo-money (pseu-dough?) and unbridled spending (even more than we have today, which is expecting the truly surreal).

    To quote David: “Remember that what follows this period of recessionary deflation will be MMT or some facsimile thereof. That is the ‘big bomb of debt monetization that ends up sending gold beyond a bull market towards a parabolic surge.” In other words, the next recession and/or bear market (believe me, dear EVA reader these are both certain to happen again) will set off the chain reaction that leads to the atomic event which creates the inflationary burst central banks so dearly desire. It’s likely to be a classic case of “Be careful what you wish for—you may get it good and hard.”

    Another rich irony is that the central banks – the very perpetrators of this bizarre world in which we find ourselves, with all of its long-term inflationary implications – are in many cases buying gold in massive quantities. In 2018, central bank gold purchases were the highest in 50 years and 2019 might see a similar pace. Those based in the developing world and in Russia have been the most avid buyers. The former USSR now has almost 20% of its total foreign reserves in the yellow metal.

    In China, however, that number is under 3%, implying that gold could become a far larger component. This is particularly true given the trade war with the US and China’s increasingly dim view of the dollar’s long-term purchasing power. (I can’t blame them, can you?)

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    To reiterate a theme from several recent EVAs, Evergreen believes (or at least it’s Chief Investment Officer does) that the next decade will be very different than the past for financial markets. The last 10 years have seen receding inflation and interest rates, both of which have been jet-fuel for bonds and equity sectors such as consumer staples/discretionary, healthcare, and, of course, tech. These all fall under what I would call the “paper asset’ category.* Conversely, the “hard asset” sectors and sub-sectors like energy producers/transporters, gold miners, copper producers, and agriculture nutrient companies have been the ultimate St. Bernards—i.e., huge dogs. (Real estate is one hard asset that has flourished in the last decade, after its disastrous collapse in 2008 and 2009. However, the high degree of leverage and inflated prices that characterize much of the property market today is worrisome.)

    With most US portfolios heavily skewed toward the paper asset category and nearly devoid of hard assets, the stage is set for one of those paradigm shifts that is exceedingly painful for backward-looking, trend-following investors. As noted in last week’s EVA, that is everyone who is heavily involved with today’s most popular investment vehicles–US-focused stock index funds.

    Per Jack Ma’s quote at the opening of this EVA, when money is too abundant bad decisions are made and they typically involve the recent performance stars. There’s never been a time in American history when there has been this much excess liquidity greasing the markets for paper assets. If there was ever time to channel your inner contrarian, this is it—asap, if not sooner!


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 18:30

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Trump Exposes Pelosi And Son's Ties To Ukraine-Linked Energy Group
    Trump Exposes Pelosi And Son's Ties To Ukraine-Linked Energy Group

    Well, this is a little awkward…

    Having earlier called Speaker Nancy Pelosi “desperate,” a clearly frustrated President Trump told reporters this week, following a video teleconference with U.S. troops,

    “she hates the Republican Party. She hates all of the people that voted for me and the Republican Party.”

    Marc Short, chief of staff to Vice President Pence, said of Trump on “Fox News Sunday.”

    “He’s frustrated [with] what he found to be a completely unreasonable impeachment.”

    And that frustration boiled over as the president tweeted a link to something that the Democrats may have trouble fully explaining…

    “Wow Crazy Nancy, what’s going on? This is big stuff!”

    Shortly after his mother became the first woman speaker, Paul Pelosi Jr., was hired by InfoUSA for $180,000 a year as its vice president for Strategic Planning.

    Nancy Pelosi’s son Paul is also on the board of an energy company.

    As Patrick Howley reports, Nancy Pelosi’s son Paul Pelosi Jr. (who went to Ukraine in 2017) was a board member of Viscoil and executive at its related company NRGLab, which did energy business in Ukraine!

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    And Speaker Pelosi even appears in the company’s video commercials…

    And Howley confirms NGRLabs links to Ukraine…

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    Of course, while there is no allegations of wrongdoing in the Pelosi case (and certainly no political intervention which we know Biden admitted publicly), it does make you wonder just how deep the cookie jar goes in Ukraine…

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    And explains why the country suddenly became a key strategic ally.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 18:00

    Tags
    Politics

  • City Tells Church It Will Lose Religious Designation Because It Shelters Homeless People
    City Tells Church It Will Lose Religious Designation Because It Shelters Homeless People

    Authored by John Vibes via TheMindUnleashed.com,

    Earlier this week, on Christmas Eve, an order from the city of Cleveland was posted on the door of the Denison Avenue United Church of Christ, demanding that they kick out the homeless people that they had been allowing to sleep on their property or face losing their status with the city as a religious organization.

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    The order came from the Cleveland Division of Fire, citing code violations that they claim are dangerous for the inhabitants. The city is following the letter of the law, in this case, suggesting that it is illegal to change the official use of the building without first filling out the required paperwork and making significant changes to the property.

    According to the city’s building department, for the church to give shelter to homeless people, they would need to go through a costly process of not only updating the building but also getting the required permits and licenses that would designate the building as a homeless shelter.

    Pastor Nozomi Ikuta has promised to appeal the ruling, saying that the church has been battling the city for months over their right to help the homeless.

    “According to the city, it is improper for us to allow the Metanoia Project to use our building to provide overnight hospitality. They are telling us to apply to change the use of our building from a church to a shelter,” Ikuta told Cleveland.com.

    Ikuta said that the church is happy to make changes to their building to make it safer, but she doesn’t believe that the church should have to change its designated purpose.

    “In essence, this forces us to choose between our identity as a church and helping homeless people. We want to work with the fire department to resolve any concerns it might have, but we don’t think we should have to stop being a church just so we can help keep people off the street,” she said.

    Among the changes that are required by the fire department are updates to the building’s fire alarm system, adding fire extinguishers and exit sights, along with fire sprinklers and other safety measures.

    Local homeless advocates have argued that it is more dangerous to keep these people out on the streets than it is to house them in a building that may not be entirely up to code.

    “Six people have frozen to death over the past few years and the unsheltered homeless population continues to rise,” NEOCH executive director, Chris Knestrick told Scene.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 17:30

  • Auto Lenders Have Verified Income On Just 7% Of All Loans Since 2017
    Auto Lenders Have Verified Income On Just 7% Of All Loans Since 2017

    The auto industry in 2019 is starting to look a lot like the subprime mortgage market in 2007.

    One such example of an industry trying to move vehicle inventory by any means necessary was Mirna Lopez, a 65 year old who was able to buy a 2018 Nissan Pathfinder on monthly earnings of just $660. Her car loan’s monthly payment was slated to be $809.

    How was this possible? The Wall Street Journal reports that an employee at the dealership that sold her the car simply listed her monthly earnings at $7,833. Nothing creative, nothing fancy: just plain old fraud.

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    It’s no longer good enough for customers to be buying cars with debt only. Now, while the auto industry struggles to pull itself out of the recession it is mired in, some dealerships around the country are “dressing up” loan applications with fake incomes, according to consumer lawyers. Additionally, some large lenders have cut back on safeguards that could catch the fraudulent applications. 

    The result is usually a quick default on these loans and consumers destroying their credit. 

    Richard Feferman, a New Mexico lawyer who has sued dealerships and lenders said: “The consequence for a lot of people is to ruin them financially for five to 10 years.”

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    The amount of false applications is “hard to quantify” according to PointPredictive, which sells software to detect loan fraud. The company estimates that more than 20% of loans have inflated incomes. 

    Of course, dealers have the option to ask for documentation to prove income, but over the past few years some subprime lenders have stopped checking them – partly in response to dealers demanding faster decisions. In fact, lenders verified income on only about 7% of all loans since 2017, the Journal found.

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    And the share of loans that go delinquent after origination is rising, specifically among subprime loans. Satyan Merchant, SVP of TransUnion’s auto business said: “That can be a signal of fraud.”

    By the end of September, U.S. consumers had $1.3 trillion in auto debt outstanding, up $740 billion from a decade prior. 

    After disclosing their income to a salesperson in the financing office at a dealership, that information then sends an electronic loan application to banks and finance arms of the dealership, which then decide whether to fund the loan. 

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    “Problem loans” often start with borrowers making poor decisions about what they can afford. Many borrowers don’t even read their loan application or final contract. 

    Dealerships can add to the trouble, rushing borrowers through the process or only showing them a partial copy of the application.

    Sometimes, dealers will even “fill out one application with correct information and submit an incorrect one to lenders.” Others tell the consumer they can come back and refinance some months later to a lower interest loan, only to find out it isn’t really an option.

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    As we have reported on, dealers now make more money from financing than they do on the sale of vehicles. And the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau oversees auto lenders, but not dealerships, leaving room for dealers to act in bad faith. Last year, the FTC went after dealerships in Arizona and New Mexico for allegedly making up car buyers’ income. 

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    GM’s AmeriCredit verified incomes on roughly 70% of loans in some bond pools, while the auto financing arms of CarMax and Ally Financial were found to have verified income on less than 1% of loans, an analysis of 6 million prime and subprime loans showed. 


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 17:00

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Life Comes At Us Way Too Fast: One Banker's Striking Explanation Why Nothing Makes Sense Any More
    Life Comes At Us Way Too Fast: One Banker's Striking Explanation Why Nothing Makes Sense Any More

    Deutsche Bank’s postmodern philosopher-cum-credit strategist Aleksandar Kocic, who missed his true calling and instead of writing a sequel to Ulysses, Finnegan’s Wake or some other pomo stream of consciousness piece in the style of Lacan, Derrida, Deleuze (or even Foucault, Beckett, Ginsberg or Burroughs) was reduced, no pun intended, to predicting the future by describing the shift in yield curves or their “Greek” derivatives, has always had a way with words and he certainly uses them in his 2020 vol market outlook which can be summarized – and we use the term very loosely – as follows, in his own words: “We see last year as the final stage of an on-going process of vega collapse caused by the chronic lack of demand, disruption of the vol/leverage cycle, and activity of the Central Banks. At the core of these developments resides an emerging new perspective of uncertainty: On top of the structural drivers, low volatility levels, compressed vol risk premia, and flat vol forwards present an articulation of the flattening of horizons.”

    Like we said, “a way with words.”

    While it would be an injustice to the Deutsche Banker to summarize what he talks about in simplistic terms (the problem with post-modernism is that it can’t by definition be reduced, hence why nobody really reads it), what the Serbian strategist focuses on in broad strokes is the ongoing collapse of vega (and its deficit), which however may be approaching the “boundaries of vol decline” (i.e., the moment when the Fed loses control so to speak)…

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    … the persistence of low volatility risk premia, with Implied/Realized vol ratios free-falling from nearly 130% during the  summer to current 70-80% range, even as volatility risk premia away from rates remain above 100%, as central banks do everything to surpress rate vol…

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    … amid a structural shift in the vol market across two decades, the first culminating with the 2008 crisis, in which the “vol market was demand driven”, a period of “unprecedented systematization of mortgage hedging practices and concentration of negative mortgage convexity in a relatively small number of portfolios, as well as an aggressive growth of the hedge funds
    community…”

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    … which however was followed by a “new equilibrium” defined by the post-2008 regulatory changes, nationalization of mortgage negative convexity, reduction of risk appetite, and recentering of supply and demand. In this decade, Kocic proposes that “the most significant change was the disappearance of the mortgage related demand, severance of the transmission mechanisms and the new role of Central Banks.” To wit, the “Fed has transformed from uninvolved player to an active convexity manager and its major supplier.” And with mortgage hedgers’ role nowhere nearly as significant as before the crisis, “as a consequence of regulatory changes, vol market in the second decade has been operating in an insurance mode (with more flows in out of the money vol) resulting in lumpy negative convexity distribution.”

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    Putting these vol market shifts in context, Kocic notes that in contrast to the beginning of the first decade, when net demand was about 50MM, or about 5% of total flows, second decade’s finale is dominated by nearly 20MM of vega surplus, or about 2% of total flows.

    There is another observation of this ubiquitous collapse in vol: as Kocic “explains”, low volatility is no longer perceived as ominous, “its persistence emerges as likely while flat or inverted curve is no longer meant to be a forecast of recession. Volatility and curve are now causally trapped by each other: For volatility to return in a meaningful way, the right side of the (rates) distribution needs to open up and, for (long) rates to be liberated, risk (and volatility) has to be brought back.”

    Yet for those who have followed Kocic’s observations in the rates market over the past few years, the above is not new. What may be new, however, are Kocic’s latest thoughts on why the “new normal” no longer strikes even skeptics as surreal or bizarre.

    As the DB strategist writes, the persistence of low volatility levels and compressed risk premia together with their  continuous decline “remains particularly puzzling in the context of the current environment where long-term risks remain abundant and substantial.”

    This, of course, is another way of saying (much more simply) that vol should be far higher considering the accrued risks form a decade of capital misallocation, rising political instability, and a market that is now as illiquid and fragile as it was during the financial crisis.

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    So going back to what is new in Kocic’s latest report, is hiw interpretation of why the market no longer seems to care about, well, stuff. This is what he says: “in our view, such state of affairs reflects less the distribution of long-term risks then indifference to what lies ahead.”

    We can admit, that we live in a time when algos and traders all seem to ignore newsflow that does not fit a given, mostly bullish, narrative and blissfully trade purely based on irrelevant, non-discounting “signals” such as momentum, or frontrunning what others are doing. This in turn traps the Fed as markets, which are no longer efficient, discounting mechanisms as a result of central bank interventions – a theory first proposed by Citi’s Matt King in 2016 – get pushed even further from equilibrium, and force the Fed to intervene after even a modest drawdown as the alternative is nearly instant risk of catastrophic market collapse should markets be forced to reappraise assets in some fundamental value context.

    The implication is striking, because according to Kocic it suggests that reality itself has become too surreal:

    “Given the underlying political entropy and reality contortions which it continues to produce, we are forced to abandon as inadequate the tools and frameworks that used to provide insight and access beyond immediate future and, in the absence of their replacement, confine our efforts to short-term horizons.“

    What is the origin of this change in perspective? Here is Kocic again:

    Perspective is not a static concept, it is a function of condition under which it is formed. In skydiving, eyeballing consists in visually assessing our distance from the ground during the fall. We evaluate our altitude and work out the exact moment we need to open our parachute based on a dynamic visual impression. At 2000 meters, immediately after the jump, we cannot see the ground approaching. But when we reach the 800 to 600 meter mark, we start to see it “coming”. The sensation is very different than when observing the ground from a “static” perspective, e.g. from the plane at the same (600m) altitude. Speed affects our perspective: As the ground “rushes” towards us, the apparent diameter of objects increases faster and faster than our distance from the ground shrinks, and we suddenly have the feeling we are not seeing them closer but seeing them move apart suddenly, as though the ground were splitting open. Perspective is dependent on speed — it is a function of acceleration.

    And the punchline, which one can loosely paraphrase as “life comes at you too fast”:

    When extreme events begin to saturate the info-sphere on daily basis (sometimes even intraday), reality unfolds too fast – we no longer remember (or don’t care about) the headlines from two or three weeks ago. Our perspective and assessment of the horizon (“cognitive eyeballing”) is distorted. We are blinkered by intensity of information we have to process – overwhelmed by both its quantity and speed of its arrival – and no longer seem to be unable to properly assess the risks ahead of us, and have become insensitive to them. The distorted perspective downplays the risk of “hitting the ground”. The informational intensity transcends our capacity for statistical approximation and this rarefication of control affects the temporal regime of our decision making. As a consequence, our horizons flatten and everything that resides beyond immediate future is bundled as “long-term” — we appear to be indifferent to its temporal distance — it is all equally remote and equally out of grasp and we capitulate on our efforts to forecast beyond short term horizons.

    We find it amusing that it is the Wall Street strategist who tends to find delight in the absurd turns of the financial equivalents of post-modernism, not only in its linguistic realm but also its philosophy and how it applies to capital markets, that found it fitting to conclude his year ahead forecast with what can only be described as peak absurdity: to paraphrase Kocic, reality is now so perverted, with a barrage of flashing read headlines, news and events “coming at you” so fast that one can no longer discern what is signal and what is noise, that trying to not only predict the future but explain the present is at best an exercise in futility which is why markets no longer care and are “forced to abandon as inadequate the tools and frameworks that used to provide insight and access beyond immediate future”, instead focusing only on the moment.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 16:30

  • Biden Attempts To Defend Hypocritical Subpoena Refusal (That Trump Is Being Impeached For)
    Biden Attempts To Defend Hypocritical Subpoena Refusal (That Trump Is Being Impeached For)

    Despite previously demanding a “fair trial” in the Senate in which “all witnesses be seen and heard,” former VP Joe Biden appears to mean all witnesses except him and his son.

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    Having complained bitterly that President Trump did not comply with subpoenas in The House inquiry (and seeing Trump impeached for obstruction of Congress for such), Biden has said he will not comply with a Senate subpoena (which he has not received yet!).

    During an interview with the editorial board of The Des Moines Register, Biden stated that he would not play into the president’s “game.”

    “The reason I wouldn’t is because it’s all designed to deal with Trump doing what he’s done his whole life: trying to take the focus off him,” he said.

    “The issue is not what I did.”

    “This is all about a diversion,” Biden said to the newspaper.

    “And we play his game all the time. He’s done it his whole career.”

    The Democratic Party presidential nominee candidate’s comments came after Trump essentially said that if the Democrats want witnesses, we will have witnesses, but they will not like who they are.

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    However, after legal experts and commentators criticized Biden for his remarks to the Iowa newspaper, noting that the White House’s refusal to comply with congressional subpoenas was part of the reason why Trump had been impeached, Biden decided to clarify his remarks this morning.

    “I want to clarify something I said yesterday. In my 40 years in public life, I have always complied with a lawful order and in my eight years as VP, my office – unlike Donald Trump and Mike Pence – cooperated with legitimate congressional oversight requests,” Biden said on Twitter.

    “But I am just not going to pretend that there is any legal basis for Republican subpoenas for my testimony in the impeachment trial,” Biden added.

    Then Biden really exposed his perspective:

    “The subpoenas should go to witnesses with testimony to offer to Trump’s shaking down the Ukraine government — they should go to the White House.”

    Ironic really…

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    Or is that a deep-fake? A debunked conspiracy theory?


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 16:00

    Tags
    Politics
    Law Crime

  • "Eventually The Party Will Stop": Blain’s Financial Outlook For The 2020s
    "Eventually The Party Will Stop": Blain’s Financial Outlook For The 2020s

    Bill Blain’s Financial Porridge Outlook – 10 More Years… of what?

    “It was the era of risk, it is the era of sustainability, it was the age of unicorns, it is the age of wisdom, it was the epoch of renewal, it is the epoch of repair, it was the season of sure fire gains, it is the season of uncertainty, it was the spring of monetary policy, it is the winter of fiscal credulity, we had everything behind us, we have nothing ahead of us..”

    The Next Decade: The most exciting 10-years will be the next 10-years.

    Introduction

    The global market is a dynamic, energetic and malicious entity. It delights in confounding those who try to understand it. Blain’s Market Mantra No 1 states: “The market has but one ambition: to inflict the maximum amount of pain on the maximum number of participants.”

    The global economy is equally dynamic. It does not exist as a steady-state entity. It is constantly evolving with increasing rapidity. Competition among new unicorns demonstrates what we once held to be constant and forever, is now likely to be done, dusted and obsolescent over a very short-time frame, but also the fundamentals of good, profitable businesses don’t change.

    I am only a part-time market strategist – most of my day is spent trying to figure out who will buy my latest private debt deal, venture capital issue or where to finance yet another jet or block of commercial property. It does mean I spend my days actually talking with investors, traders, issuers, government and regulatory officials, rather than just looking at numbers. I’m sitting in the middle of a trading floor watching screens, hearing deals, and after 35 years of listening to market mumble-swerve with a trained broker ear… some of it is finally beginning to make sense!

    (Most traders my age retired long ago with the loot they amassed during their careers. Not me. I am addicted to sailing and yachts. It will say on my grave: “He spent it on fast boats, fast cars and fast women his wives, and squandered the rest….”)

    My greatest difficulty is collating what I hear, explaining my experiences, and putting them together into context as meaningful market insights… It’s fairly easy to do when I’ve got a time horizon of the next day – which I do on the Morning Porridge each day.

    To make this more difficult, I am going to give you a market outlook for the whole of the next decade – the 2020s.

    More Years – It’s all about Themes and the Narrative

    An awful lot happened over the last 10-years. Stock markets have risen dramatically. Bonds yields have never been so low. Passive index tracking has become the norm. Interest rates have never stayed so low so long. We have seen a European sovereign debt crisis and repeated country crisis in Latin America, Russia and Asia. Fintech, cryptocurrencies, unicorns, gaming, streaming and lots of other stuff we’d never heard of 10-years ago now dominate our current thinking. Our world has become much more complex, integrated, more fractious, innovative and changes far more swiftly.

    What word would you chose to sum up the last decade?

    • Credulous – the era of showing too great a readiness to believe.

    What word will sum up the next 10-years? Who knows? I suspect:

    • Cautious – eventually the party will stop…

    The pace and breadth of change across electorates, governments, businesses, and new opportunities over the next 10-years will have enormous implications for markets. There are so many potential points of divergence, it’s going to prove even more impossible to accurately predict the numbers, but we can certainly make educated guesses at what the themes are likely to be.

    Given an infinite number of economists, analysts and strategy geeks armed with computers, I suppose it would be possible to brainstorm the future and come out with proper predictions. Flying cars? 3D Star Trek replicators producing perfect steaks? Teleportation? Investment certainty? Dow to hit 100,000?

    I was going to start with one high-probability prediction: “this will be the last Decade Outlook I write”, but who knows: if interest rates remain this low, will I be able to afford to retire in my 60s?

    Markets are Event Driven, but trends are critical

    Economists and Strategists pepper their yearly outlooks with comments on the likelihood of recession, downturns, upturns, the shape of yield curves, overbought and undersold markets, sector developments and where gold, currencies, rates, and commodity prices are heading.

    Investment banks and fund managers are very good at producing pages and pages and pages of graphs, charts and pies showing just how the market will develop. Prices move in line with trends, which are set by events.

    Events can take form of a tiny little improvement to a product that increases its sales, right the way up to the scale to fundamental economic shifts, like a trade war or a surprise in politics. They can be momentary “no-see-ums” like an earthquake, or a culmination of a long-term trend, such as the unravelling of Unicorn tech valuations. Markets are determined by events. Some are predictable, some are not. The UK election illustrates how an event moves markets – on the back of increased Brexit certainty, sterling rallied, and we can predict businesses will move forward with new investment plans in terms of Capex, infrastructure, hiring and property plans. Even more prices move up and down.

    Themes are very different. They are the tides, currents and winds of markets around which events occur and trends follow. Skilled investors who can read these themes and use them to navigate the global markets by making educated guesses on where they will lead us next. Themes tend to merge and change as they encounter other narratives, becoming new market moving themes in themselves.

    Let me present a number of themes and narratives I reckon will play out during the next decade. Individually they might be limited, but it will be how they interreact with each other that will be most significant.

    Seven Major Themes

    There are 7 themes which I reckon will really matter:

    1) Market Distortion

    • Are the market distortions of the 2010s in terms of QE and monetary experimentation sustainable?
    • How damaging are the unintended consequences of distortion – inflated financial asset prices driving sub-optimal investment decisions and increasing income inequality across economies?
    • Can/will central banks continue to prop up markets and repress volatility via monetary policy?
    • Are central banks caught between a desire to normalise rates, but can’t?
    • If they withdraw monetary support, will markets tumble?
    • How violently could markets correct?
    • Are we still looking at lower for longer rates and zero inflation, or will inflation return?
    • Are deflation and Japanification greater threats than ongoing distortion?

    2) New Opportunities and business

    • A fourth industrial revolution is underway – Artificial intelligence, robotics, 3-D printing, nanotech, AR/VR, longevity, health, bio-pharma and climate cure tech will change business, employment and incomes.
    • The invention/innovation/commercialisation cycle is accelerating.
    • As the economy evolves, the need for new approaches to education and work will create bottlenecks.
    • Consumption, supply chains and work patterns will evolve.
    • New industry and manufacturing chains will require massive investment and financing to benefit.
    • Focus to shift back on profits, payback, competition and fundamental risks.

    3) Politics

    • Increasing dissatisfaction with politics, the political classes, and policies will lead to increasing unrest across democratic economies – raising the prospects of political event risk and/or gridlock.
    • Mature democracies may find new leaders emerging into the current political vacuum. Increased populism, especially on the right wing. Raised risk of charismatic leaders on right winning power.
    • 10 years of austerity will prove difficult to unwind through fiscal reflation in stressed debt markets – increasing political dissatisfaction.
    • Dissatisfaction with big-tech, surveillance capitalism, and Income inequality may spawn considerable voter pressure and regulatory backlash – ‘blame somebody’ theory.
    • Europe likely to suffer particular problems as the “committee” structure fails to agree fiscal policy, banking union, and how to enact fiscal support to struggling economies. Increasing imbalance and tensions between key members could pressure Euro.
    • US political cycle will continue to dominate markets and confidence in dollar and central banks.
    • Perversely, a period of potential calm for UK may beckon in early part of decade.

    4) Debt Crisis

    • If fiscal spending is the answer, will global debt levels test the limits of political credibility and thus the likelihood of rising rates and inflation?
    • Corporate debt levels look unsustainable and a result of distortion – will they break?
    • Liquidity issues will dominate any debt crisis.
    • Personal indebtedness is rising in line with diminished responsibility and victimhood society – it’s nobody’s fault but yourself does not play anymore.
    • Massive implications for risk – risk has been transferred from banks to asset managers. Can nonbanks manage rising fixed income risk?

    5) Geopolitics

    • Tensions between Europe, US, China and Russia will continue to rise.
    • Need for fundamental defence review and increased spend across democracies.
    • China likely to set own economic sphere using Chinese tech and Chinese government system – market driven communism.
    • Changing global supply chains will exacerbate tensions

    6) ESG/Sustainability and Fundamentals

    • ESG has emerged as a critical component of investment decision making over the last few years. It is likely to further develop as a theme.
    • It will become more thorough to prevent greenwashing, ensure sound governance and increasingly play to social themes.
    • Labels such as “Green Bond” will be redundant – everything will be expected to include a green element and be compliant.
    • Risk that potential regulatory capture of climate change agenda causes as much distortion as QE… for instance, disrupting supply chains by penalising fossils fuels and investments perceived as non-green.
    • Sustainability as an investment precept will become increasingly important; analysing firms, their business, and their place within the social and changing real environment as the critical issues in investment management. It’s a less proscriptive and more effective way to judge companies than ESG 101.
    • In a new global business environment of increased competition and shorter and shorter business life cycles, investors can’t wait aeons for profits. It will mark a return to fundamental investment based on rational expectations, profitability and sound businesses.
    • Opportunity to invest in efficient sectors damaged by excessive ESG.

    7) Climate Change

    • The easy one to predict– but the 2020s will likely confirm the reality of the environmental threat.
    • It raises increased sudden event risk from meteorological disasters, stressing the abilities of markets to cope with sudden large insurance and stranded costs.
    • Likely to create a massive new climate cure opportunity – inventing, innovating and commercialising climate cure technologies.
    • Perhaps the best way to address climate change is to stabilise populations – which could be done through education and jobs – but raising the issue of how to sustain growth while cutting emissions?

    And the rest…

    It’s a rule of markets that while things are never as bad as you think they might be, they are never as great as you hope. In a new era of financial realism and the re-establishment of monetary sanity, the new businesses claiming to have discovered a philosopher’s stone – for instance turning base automobiles into gold plated EVs worth trillions – are likely to be tested to destruction.

    Two Major Narratives

    There are multiple narrative possibilities, but two particular stories are most likely to dominate the next 10-years. From these flows many of the other themes, including geopolitics and how we react to Climate Change.

    Unravelling 10-years of Financial Repression: Past Performance is not an indicator of future performance.

    My first prediction for the next 10-years is: Markets are likely to hurt if and when they ever normalize. However, there is a possibility they remain distorted for far longer than we expect due to central banks fearing a stock or bond crash would trigger damaging global congestion.

    If you simply invested all your money in global stocks in 2010 you would have done rather well. Spreading it out to cover bonds also would have further enhanced your returns. If you did so, did you thank the Central Banks who funded your market upside?

    Can central banks continue to repress market volatility and push markets higher by throwing cash at them? That’s effectively what’s happened over the last 10-years. QE, ultra-low interest rates, and now the US Fed is repeating QE to stem a crisis in the repo market.

    The result has been massive market distortion – low rates chased investors down the credit risk curve in search of returns and into the equity markets; yield tourism. Corporate owners took advantage of low rates to leverage up and buy back stock, and spend on M&A.

    How complex will it get before it all breaks?

    We have to pay the piper not just for the last 10-years of distortion, but for the last 40 years spent in a bull interest rate environment. As yet there is little sign of inflation in the real economy – all the inflationary money created by central banks has flowed into the inflated financial assets. When I started in markets in 1985 the US 10-year Treasury was yielding around 12%, having fallen from 21% in 1980, and 15% in 1982 as I studied economics. Today its yielding 1.5%!

    Let’s remind ourselves how financial assets played out over the past 10-years:

    • US 10 Year Treasury – Rallied from 3.91% to 1.79%
    • Dow Jones – Rallied from 10,329 to 28,000

    What do such low interest rates tell us? Conventional economics would tell us low rates describe a global economy in slowdown, depression, limited inflation, minimal growth and few positive prospects. It sounds like the lower for longer economy many analysts predicted in 2010.

    Or you could look at the stock markets. Totally contradictory story. The US Dow is 3 times higher than 2010! It’s been driven by an insane mix of inspiration, insights and insolence as Unicorns reared and stumbled, corporate buybacks and low rates. A glance at stocks would suggest it remains a global boom time.

    The bottom line is simple. The last 10-years has been a story of massive central banking distortion to address the 2008 crisis. Now central banks face the consequences and are trapped. The distortion can’t go uncorrected indefinitely.

    10 years of monetary experimentation, QE, ultra-low interest rates fuelled and juiced an extension to an ongoing 30-year binge of irrational exuberance. It has fuelled massive inflation in financial assets – stocks and shares. Whatever lessons were learnt in 2008 have been quickly forgotten as investors followed the money and gorged on financial assets.

    Globally debt yields have tumbled. Most government bonds have flirted around negative yields. Even serial debt basket cases like Greece now trade within a few points of financial paragons like Germany. Ultra-low interest rates have meant debt levels are at a place that would have given bond analysts conniptions just a few decades ago.

    Equity prices are at record levels – juiced by corporates who have raised billions on the bond markets to buy back their own stocks and yield tourists looking for higher returns.

    Meanwhile, regulators have overseen rules that have resulted in risk being quietly transferred from banks to the investment sector – putting the savings of billions of pensioners and savers in peril

    • Analysts will tell you the markets can’t continue to hide the distortion.
    • Central bankers will privately admit there is nothing else they can do except maintain the distortion.
    • Traders will tell you to follow the money and buy the distortion

    The traders called it right for the last 10-years, backing their hunch central banks were trapped. They coat-tailed QE and low rates with a certainty global central banks have no alternative but to maintain low rates and keep juicing the markets.

    Analysts know it can’t continue indefinitely. Experienced traders know markets can remain irrational longer than investors can remain solvent. Global central banks know that to take their fingers off the monetary easy dead-man’s switch will destroy confidence. If they do extract the proverbial digit, then the all-out contagion consequences could make 2008 look like a slightly runny nose.

    The real threat would appear to be deflation and the Japanification of occidental economies. That may change if a crisis was to uncork the inflationary genie?

    How the end of financial distortion plays out depends on how other themes develop.

    Debt Markets depends on how much credibility Governments maintain.

    Prediction 2 – Global Debt is likely to Hurt. Lots.

    Global GDP is around $85 trillion, meaning the global economy is levered by a factor of some 3:1 – on $260 trillion of public and private debt, which is startling.

    The first question to ask about debt should always be: how will interest and principal be repaid? Have the trillions that have been raised in the last 10 years been spent in ways likely to return money to investors? Has the money been spent on building factories, creating jobs or building efficient infrastructure that will generate the returns necessary to repay the debt? Anyone looking in at how ultra-low interest rates have driven stock prices higher due to an orgy of debt-funded corporate buy-backs or to fund ill-advised M&A, or how massive populist-driven fiscal spending programmes are likely to increase
    government debt, would immediately assume the current debt markets are completely unsustainable…. The looming debt crisis of the 2020s will be complex and multifaceted. Even governments with access to magic money trees, who retain the keys to their own printing presses, are going to struggle to retain credibility and financial probity in the face of massive funding needs.

    Government Debt

    Over the next 10-years governments are going to be forced to correct the fact fiscal policy has effectively been ignored the last 10-years – buried in austerity budgets. There are two main factors that point to the need for massively increased government spending in coming years – populism and decay.

    Populism

    Electorates are angry. They increasingly perceive the last 10-years of monetary mistakes have made the rich richer by ramping financial assets and executive bonuses, while they were forced to pay through austerity public spending. The UK election illustrates the competition between politicians willing to buy votes through fiscal spending programmes. The revolting French illustrate the refusal of electorates to  accept tough decisions. Pensions, health services and other public goods including defence and educationdemand spending.

    Decay

    A massive infrastructure rebuild is required across the occidental economies – simply to maintain the current dilapidated occidental system. Yet infrastructure and government spending are massively inefficient in terms of cost overrun, delay and effectiveness.

    • Any significant infrastructure enhancements – including HS2 in the UK – are going to be luxuries, perhaps killed by other competing demands.
    • To replace ageing infrastructure with new climate-cure compliant rail, roads and port facilities, while rebuilding hospitals, schools and the housing stock to meet green goals is going to be massively expensive.
    • 10-years of government austerity programmes have created the need for massive social infrastructure catch-up spending. Education, health, benefits and care are all under pressure.
    • Rising geopolitical threats in an increasingly uncertain world where food and water security become the major issues means spending on defence will need to dramatically increase.

    The bottom line is government spending has to rise, at a time when rates are likely to be rising. Does that matter for economies that can create their own money? Not really, the choice is to create new money and call it debt.

    The factor that matters is credibility – if governments are credible and deliver credible spending plans then global investors will be prepared to fund debt at low prices. If credibility in the government wavers, the price of debt starts to increase.

    The problem here is not the amount of debt – because governments can create as much money as they care to. It’s the credibility of the government that sets the price of the debt – and that’s a political issue.

    Politics is the major factor likely to break the credibility of governments and trigger a succession of major global government debt crises.

    This is especially true in Europe where governments don’t hold the keys to the printing presses – they are owned by the committee called the ECB. This actually works in favour of some governments – where the credibility of the ECB outweighs the lack of credibility specific governments with investors who are willing to accept an implicit assurance the ECB will “do what it takes” to conditionally bail-out bad governments. What if that breaks? As it nearly did during the European sovereign debt crisis in 2010?

    Corporate Debt

    Corporate debt is dead simple. If interest rates rise, then lots of companies will struggle to repay debt and will go bust. Highly levered private companies that form the bulk of CLOs will probably collapse first, triggering a wave of panic around the market. Investors trying to exit corporate debt will find themselves trapped in illiquidity, driving prices swiftly down – which will look like a massive buying opportunity…. eventually.

    A few years later analysts will wonder why we allowed covenant-lite borrowing by barely solvent borrowers; why companies were allowed to bankrupt themselves by transforming equity into debt via buybacks; or how stockholders failed to constrain company managements.

    Corporate debt spreads show how the market is undervaluing risks. Corporates can’t make money the way governments do – they can’t create more; they have to borrow and most certainly pay it back. The risks of corporate debt are completely different to governments – the business ability to repay, the business environment etc. That risk is significant and isn’t covered when junk borrowers can issue debt a point over governments. When the market realises… it will be a wake-up moment.

    Personal Debt

    If you start your working career encumbered by £50k of student debt, with no chance of ever getting on the housing ladder, and with limited job prospects as careers are automated or digitised while workers are treated as anonymous resources to be hired/fired and employed by algorithms, then it’s hardly any wonder young Millennials, Gen X, Y and Z are increasingly angry. What else is there to do but spend money and borrow more.

    When a company can make workers redundant and skip paying wages or redundancy, and makes off with the pension pot, then what’s the incentive on the young workers to repay their pay-day lending? Go buy a car – what else would you spend your gig-economy wages on? If the delivery company lays you off because of a recession or replaces you with a drone – what can you do about it….

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    If personal debt flattens consumption, then the whole corporate party tumbles off the merry-go-round as consumers stop buying. Helicopter money?

    History repeats. Egyptian masons downed tools building pyramids and swiftly robbed graves when they weren’t paid. Peasants were revolting in Plantagenet England. A guillotine was erected in Paris on the back of bread riots and an ill-timed comment about cake instead. The Nazis arose from the inflation of the Weimar era.

    Rising personal debt in this age of fake, easy money is presented as a consumer choice and desirable outcome – it’s not. It’s a massive political threat.

    Details, just details

    The predictability of events ranges from a nailed-on dead certainty, to a completely unexpected “no-seeums”. Without intending to insult believers in the Cygnus Atrastus, the predictability of events is not digital – almost everything is predictable, especially from the perspective of hindsight! Themes are complex and are only doors to more and more questions. Investors should regard the themes and narratives I’ve described above as concepts to drill down into further.

    There is so much more I would like to find the time to write about.

    I have a massive list of things that will solve everything, like cracking the capacitance problem; doing away with inefficient batteries and making electric vehicles light and efficient. Or maybe we will see the fusion problem solved – fusion power could save us with unlimited power, and its only 30-years down the line. (Its been 30-years down the line since fusion was declared our energy messiah in the 1950s).

    I would love to write how opportunities to develop new technologies to clean the seas of plastic, to develop hydrogen and electric aircraft will develop, or how we can crack the water crisis with desalination and icebergs. These things are all  possible, but will require significant investment.

    Or I could look at areas like global aviation, berate both Boeing and Airbus for their failure to develop new cheap efficient regional aircraft using modern tech. Both got greedy and stuck with 1960s and 70s designs. Maybe the Chinese will win that one – surprising us all by introducing a competitor. Even a plane with similar capabilities to the current aircraft would cause a demand shock in aviation.

    Maybe I should spend time talking about market risks from defaults, distressed debt, a new EM crisis brewing… but there is only so much I can say without getting really boring.

    For instance:

    Animal Protein

    Cutting back on meat production will reduce methane. It will drive business opportunities for protein replacement in terms of fake meat, vegetable alternatives, and the prospect of increasing food security by replacing land used for meat production with crops for human production. It will spur the development of 3D meat printing.

    It will also trigger a luxury meat market – where countries that can produce Co2 efficient meat command premium prices.

    These sub-themes create multiple new narratives:

    The UK could benefit from a shift from meat to crop production – our damp climate produces superb pasture allowing the production of high-quality luxury animal protein with a limited carbon footprint (because we don’t have to hack down forest to provide grazing). It opens the opportunity to export our meat around the globe.

    In contrast, repurposing former rain forest that was slashed/burnt to create cattle ranges by planting food crops will require soil enhancement and new farming infrastructure across South America at a time when water security is becoming difficult – begging further questions!

    Or,

    How about China?

    How successfully can China under the new great helmsman Xi navigate the next 10-years? Will China end up on a path of tumbling into a new gerontocracy of elderly men whose experience was moulded as children during the pain of the cultural revolution and the great leap forward? Or will it find a new route forward to successfully manage its evolution from a developing country into superpower?

    What are the prospects for success? Can it innovate technical solutions to its demographic, environment and bureaucratic challenges? I reckon China faces as much pressure as any state to improve its environment, and far from being suspicious of its ongoing reliance on power, the fact its embraced renewables is fascinating. Can China sustain growth without a debt bubble or does that actually matter if the state simply prints money and internalizes debt? Where does the party take the country – domestic capitalism or state control?

    It looks like China will go its own way – developing its own tech ecosystem, hi-value goods in autos, aerospace, shipping and rail. It will stage its own industrial revolution – AI, robotics, energy, pharma and health. The Chinese economy is going to move forward – and in the face of the increasingly erratic behaviour of the US president, and the political gridlock apparent to anyone trying to read US politics, perhaps long-term relationships with China will be preferable to a relationship with a flaky USA?

    Finally…. Some predictions from readers:

    Markets

    “I am expecting to see a massive correction in the bond markets. 10 yr UST moving above 3%, 10 yr Bunds above 1%. Credit spreads blowing out and Stock markets falling 20 to 30%.”

    “We will not see much higher yields next year. There is no case for inflation. Rates will go back to January 2019 levels once Trump settles with China. There is a case for margins to widen. We need a couple of spectacular defaults and that could signal a turn in the market. A future crisis will not be with banks but with institutional investors who have to write-off a lot of debt in their balance sheet and will try and sell deals.”

    Fiscal Policy

    “2020 will be the year where we will hear much more about governments’ opening up the purse strings in response to widening inequality. This is likely to result in developed market bond yield curves meaningfully steepen and 10-year Bund yields turn positive as the Germans finally give in to some stimulus.”

    “2020: Who wants to invest in the long Euro government bonds at -.5% or -0.7% of the countries that need to borrow heavily, i.e. that are in deficit? Only if you are forced to…Therefore capital controls are coming in Euroland sooner or later!”

    US Politics

    “Donald Trump will be easily beaten in November 2020 and win fewer electoral college votes than John McCain managed in 2008. The US economy will grow nicely but the impact of Trump’s unpresidential behaviour and his deep unpopularity with women will be impossible to overcome. In the early part of 2020 speculation will emerge that Hillary Clinton will enter the democratic primary. She will be blocked from running however – centrist candidate Biden will win the Dem nomination and then the election.”

    “In 2020 markets will fret about the choice between four more years of Donald Trump or a Democrat elected on a “socialist” platform. The battle will mean delays in corporate, and investor, decision making suggesting a sluggish economy and a sluggish market.”

    Tech Unicorns

    “2020 will be the year when Silicon Valley investors are caught swimming without trunks. IPOs start to dry up for cash-guzzling companies that have followed the ‘blitzscaling’ growth strategy and that has a knock-on impact on sentiment amongst the funders that have supported them to date. VCs start to look for businesses that can achieve profitability even if their ambitions are more modest than dominating entire industries or creating new paradigms.”


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 15:30

    Tags
    Business Finance

  • Weinstein Accusers Balk After Lawyers Set To Make More Than Plaintiffs
    Weinstein Accusers Balk After Lawyers Set To Make More Than Plaintiffs

    Last week, a tentative settlement agreement for $25 million was reportedly reached between Harvey Weinstein and more than 30 women who have accused him of sexual misconduct. If approved by the court, the deal would bring an end to the majority of lawsuits pending against the disgraced Hollywood mogul.

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    Now that the details have come out, however, several of the women are objecting to attorney’s fees, which in some cases would hand the lawyers more than 10 times more than some of the accusers, according to The Guardian.

    Should we file this under ‘that’s how class-action lawsuits work’ or are the attorneys asking too much after two years of negotiations?

    Elizabeth Fegan, the lead attorney representing the women who are part of the original class action lawsuit and all future claimants who choose to join it, could receive up to 25% of the payout if the settlement goes ahead, legal observers said. They pointed out that sum could end up being 10 times or more the payment to individual victims, especially if more join the case and dilute the amount of the awards.

    Lawyer Douglas Wigdor says this is one of the grounds upon which he intends to fight the proposed settlement on behalf of two of his clients who have announced they will object.

    He says Fegan’s fee “could end up being significantly more than 10 times the amount” that individual plaintiffs will receive.

    “She stands to make millions of dollars in attorney fees if it settles and if it doesn’t, then she’s out of luck.” –The Guardian

    The proposed settlement with accusers is just one component of a $47 million deal which would also pay the Weinstein Company’s debts. Of it, $6.2 million would go to 18 accusers in the US, Canada and UK, while around $18.5 million would be set aside for class action participants – with more expected to join.

    Over a quarter of the overall settlement package, $12m, will go towards the legal costs of Weinstein, his brother Bob, and former members of the company’s board if the agreement goes ahead.

    According to attorney John Clune, who has advised several dissatisfied Weinstein accusers, “It certainly doesn’t seem fair that lawyers could be getting more than their clients … This is one of the things that I think the judge is going to have to take a close look at.”

    Fegan told The Guardian, “As in all class actions, attorneys’ fees are ultimately determined by the judge, who must evaluate and approve the percentage. If the court awards them 25% for fees, the attorneys will receive less than the value of time spent on the case using industry standard defined billing rates.”

    According to the report, New Zealand model Zoe Brock says she intends to file an objection to the proposed settlement – the fourth accuser to publicly say she will do so, adding that she feels “hopeless and defeated” by the proposed terms under which Weinstein wouldn’t be required to personally pay his accusers or admit any wrongdoing.

    Instead, the settlement would be paid by insurance companies representing the Weinstein Company.

    Brock, who was part of the original class action filed against Weinstein in November 2017, says she feels her hands are tied. “Even if I walk away I can’t take another suit against Harvey, or anyone connected to him, because the class action has already been filed,” she said.

    “I have been dealing behind the scenes with the weight of this negotiation for months and I have been very vocal about how unhappy I am about it with my legal team,” she told New Zealand radio station, Stuff.

    “They have been very careful in every email and every interview to say that no one is being forced into this settlement but I feel forced … I don’t feel like I have a choice.”

    Brock is among the Weinstein accusers who have sought outside advice from lawyers not involved in the settlement negotiations. –The Guardian

    Another Weinstein accuser who says she was sexually assaulted by the mogul in 2010, Dominique Huett, says she is also considering filing an objection, however she’s worried that if the settlement is not passed, nobody will be compensated.

    “I’m not sure I want to sign up to this,” she said, “but I feel I need to do what’s best for the collective and don’t want to get in the way of other women who feel this is their only option.”

    “It has been a very disturbing process. He [Weinstein] is still holding all of the power and all of the cards.”

    Meanwhile, Weinstein’s criminal trial is scheduled to begin January 6 in Manhattan, while he may also face charges in Los Angeles.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 15:00

    Tags
    Law Crime

  • Shattering The Overton Window
    Shattering The Overton Window

    Authored by Robert Gore via StraightLineLogic.com,

    Aim your rocks at glass houses.

    The Overton window is the range of policies politically acceptable to the mainstream population at a given time. It is also known as the window of discourse. The term is named after Joseph P. Overton, who stated that an idea’s political viability depends mainly on whether it falls within this range, rather than on politicians’ individual preferences. According to Overton, the window frames the range of policies that a politician can recommend without appearing too extreme to gain or keep public office given the climate of public opinion at that time.

    CIA Wikipedia

    Heaven forbid anyone appear too extreme. Our rulers keep discourse safely within the Overton window by allowing debate about the details of what the government does or doesn’t do. However, those who question the necessity of particular government agencies or programs, or government in general, are beyond-the-pale extremists and cast into the Abyss of the Unacceptable, one zip code over from the Abyss of the Deplorable.

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    The Federal Reserve has been much in the news lately. The term “repo” is shorthand for a repurchase agreement. The repo market allows those who own securities to sell them to lenders and repurchase them on a set day at a higher price. The difference between the sale and the repurchase price is interest to the lender. The repo market is huge, providing short-term financing for hundreds of billions of dollars worth of transactions daily, primarily in government and agency debt.

    On September 16 the repo market blew up. Short term repos usually carrying interest rates of 1 or 2 percent required rates approaching 10 percent for the market to clear. The Fed stepped in, offering massive fiat credit to push rates back down. It wasn’t just a one-time glitch. Since then, the repo market has required substantial and repeated injections of Fed fiat credit. The Fed has announced injections totaling close to half-a-trillion dollars, or $500 billion, over the next few weeks to prevent the market from seizing up over year-end, when demand for repo financing is traditionally brisk. That will take the Fed’s balance sheet to around $4.5 trillion, the high reached after the last financial crisis.

    There are plenty of articles about the causes of the blowup and its implications and SLL has reposted some of them. Not alone among commentators, SLL’s best guess is that markets are seizing up under massive and ever-expanding US government debt. Unless the Fed buys what nobody else wants, the market will crash and rates will skyrocket. Time will tell. Without getting further into those weeds, the incident follows a pattern inherent in any government-central bank sponsored system of fiat credit creation.

    Credit expands faster than underlying economic production until interest and principal can no longer be paid and credit begins to contract. Governments and central banks meet that inevitable consequence with a still greater expansion of fiat credit, setting the stage for the next contraction and expansion. How successful governments and central banks are in forestalling economic and financial catastrophe is merely a detail. The important point is that the cycle, each successive crisis larger than the previous one, is a feature, not a bug, of fiat credit systems. Eventually they all crash. 

    Will the repo market be the tipping point for the next credit contraction? Apparently it already is, judging by the Fed’s frantic response. However, focusing on the details keeps the debate within the Overton window. Instead, ignore the details and look at the destruction wrought by the fiat credit system since inception. The dollar is worth about 2 percent of what it was in 1913 when the Fed was created. The Fed has amplified rather than damped economic fluctuations (for a masterful exposition of the destructiveness of US, European, and Japanese central banks the last several decades, see “The Japanization of the European Union,” Jesús Huerta de Soto, SLL, 12/13/19). Which prompts the Overton window-shattering question: why do we need central banks in the first place? The Overton window-shattering answer: we don’t.

    We’re not yet to the point where shattering questions are asked about central banks or other government or government-aligned institution, but we’re well into stage one: the realization that the status quo is not working for anyone but a small sliver of the population. Stage two has also launched: recognition that promoters of the status quo lie incessantly. So too has stage three: things keep getting worse.

    The lying is incessant. The Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons’ (OPCW) official conclusions about an alleged chlorine attack in Douma, Syria were unsupported by the evidence and several OPCW investigators raised unaddressed objections at the time. The findings were skewed to support propaganda justifying retaliatory airstrikes by the US, UK, and France. Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz’s report detailed the FBI’s lies and deliberate omissions of exculpatory material to the FISA court. The Washington Post recently published what are being called the Afghanistan Papers, culled from a trove of Freedom of Information Act releases. Numerous military and civilian officials lied about America’s eighteen-year and counting war in Afghanistan from its inception. 

    This is a couple of weeks’ disclosures concerning official prevarication. The OPCW story hasn’t received much coverage in the mainstream media, while the IG report and the Afghanistan Papers have. They’re the tip of the iceberg. While more people are seeing the iceberg that’s above the water line, the Overton window and pervasive official secrecy still obscures the much larger part floating below the surface.

    It probably doesn’t matter. There is one bedrock truth about governments: they are based on coercion, violence, and fraud. It’s easy to mistake lack of public reaction to stories like the above for insouciance or mental sloth, but many people have internalized that governments repeatedly lie, they don’t need the details. They don’t have time to follow all the stories or to speak out and protest the undeniable lies and injustices—they have lives to lead. There are often nasty reprisals for those who speak out or protest, and they know that, too. But an ever-increasing percentage of the populace know in their bones that contemporary governance is rotten to its evil core. Whatever trust that once existed between government and the governed is long gone and it’s not coming back.

    What visibly agitates people are officially promoted issues and the attendant propaganda when they clearly see the effects on own their lives and well-being. Donald Trump rode immigration to the White House, astounding legions of pundits and self-proclaimed experts who endlessly assured us that illegal immigrants don’t take jobs, commit crimes disproportionate to their numbers, run drugs, or soak up welfare-state benefits. The unwashed masses rejected the assurances in favor of their own experience and knowledge.

    Once a person or institution loses trust, propaganda and “explanations” only increase skepticism and cynicism. The crowd promoting anthropogenic, apocalyptic global warming climate change is the same one that’s promoted open immigration, welfare and warfare states, and central banking, among other follies. Climate change is nothing more than a Trojan horse for more coercion, command, and control, ultimately leading to global government.

    The “deniers” reject the supposedly settled science. Science is never settled, there are only hypotheses that offer more explanatory and predictive power than previous hypotheses. Nobody listens to messages from messengers they don’t trust, and resorting to hysterically hectoring harpies doesn’t help the cause. AOC can take care of herself, but using a sixteen-year-old stooge is particularly reprehensible. Patriotism was once the last refuges of scoundrels, now it’s “the children” (see Clinton, Hillary, It Takes a Village: And Other Lessons Children Teach Us, 1996, Simon & Schuster).

    The 1910-1920 decade kicked off the long bull market in government.

    • In the US, we got the Federal Reserve, the income tax, direct election of senators, and Prohibition.

    • The world got World War I and the Treaty of Versailles, the Middle East sliced up into European satrapies, the Bolshevik Revolution, and the Spanish Flu.

    The next hundred years was a montage of government-sponsored horrors: the Great Depression, World War II, tyrannical dictatorships, mass slaughter, nuclear weaponry, terrorism, environmental degradation, the American military-industrial-intelligence-media-academic complex, and an unprecedented explosion of debt to pay for it all. Yet, after the bloodiest century in human history, in which governments killed an estimated 100 to 200 million people not counting the wars, questioning the legitimacy and necessity of governments is still outside the Overton window.

    Arctic blasts of reality are set to shatter that window and freeze all those who believed its double panes would protect them. It’s necessary because the current system is never going to improve itself. Only a full demonstration of the horrors of the old and unimproved will open people’s minds to the possibility of something different, something new and improved. Stage four is system collapse and we’re on the cusp. It will be the direct result of the last century’s follies and will spell the end of the bull market in government.

    The widespread dissatisfaction with the way things are, even before collapse, portends something much more ominous ahead. Brexit, Trump, Catalonia, Hong Kong, the Yellow Vests, and the other protests and unrest are relatively minor perturbations. Reform and separation are their predominant themes, not rebellion and overthrow. Reform, unfortunately, is impossible; entrenched elites’ money and power flow from the corruption. Separation and secession are the last, best hope for any kind of semi-peaceful resolution of the tensions besetting the world.

    The Civil War was fought to preserve the federal government’s control of the states. The Overton window puts beyond question that the Civil War permanently vanquished all consideration of secession. However, the centrifugal forces of decentralization and devolution are waxing. Eventually they will hurl present political arrangements against the wall. Doesn’t some sort of peaceful breakup make more sense than an inevitably bloody and doomed effort to preserve the unwieldy dominion of the corrupt, parasitic, and bankrupt federal government?

    For those of us bent on upending present political arrangements, it’s more logical to lay claim to part of the country as the US splats against the wall than to try and reconstitute a government to govern the sprawling American land mass, and a disparate and ideologically incompatible population of 330 million. Part of something is better than all of nothing. Texit or Appalachexit would be far easier than restoring a Constitutional republic to the whole of the United States. And there’s a tactical advantage to advocating for peaceful secession rather than violent revolt: the former won’t get you thrown in jail—yet, unless you’re in Catalonia or China—the latter might.

    Let those who want to remain safely within the Overton window have their welfare and warfare state, their central bank, their faltering empire, and their domination by parasitic government. Let the rest of us discover freedom, true peace, and self-sovereignty in one or more breakaway provinces.

    Surely if these outside-the-window notions are merely crackpot fantasies our efforts will fail and we’ll come skulking back, recognizing Washington as our one true master and begging for reunification. And if our efforts succeed? That’s stage five, a prospect we’re not to supposed to think of, dream about, or strive for, the stuff of our rulers’ nightmares. It’s why they installed the Overton window in the first place.


    Tyler Durden

    Sat, 12/28/2019 – 14:30

    Tags
    Politics

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