- Victor Orban's 5 Tenets To Rebuild Europe
…I have formulated five tenets for the project of building up Central Europe.
The first is that every European country has the right to defend its Christian culture, and the right to reject the ideology of multiculturalism.
Our second tenet is that every country has the right to defend the traditional family model, and is entitled to assert that every child has the right to a mother and a father.
The third Central European tenet is that every Central European country has the right to defend the nationally strategic economic sectors and markets which are of crucial importance to it.
The fourth tenet is that every country has the right to defend its borders, and it has the right to reject immigration.
And the fifth tenet is that every European country has the right to insist on the principle of one nation, one vote on the most important issues, and that this right must not be denied in the European Union.
In other words, we Central Europeans claim that there is life beyond globalism, which is not the only path. Central Europe’s path is the path of an alliance of free nations.
* * *
It’s amazing when you consider that exhibiting common sense now makes you a “right-wing extremist”.
- Spain: New Gateway To Europe For Mass-Migration
Authored by Thomas Paul Wiederholen via The Gatestone Institute,
On July 26, some 800 migrants from sub-Saharan Africa violently stormed the border fence between Morocco, where they were living illegally, and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. According to Spanish authorities:
“In an attempt to stop the Guardia Civil getting close to the break-in area, the migrants … [pelted] officers with plastic containers of excrement and quicklime, sticks and stones, as well as using aerosols as flame-throwers.”
Many people were wounded in the clash, and 602 migrants succeeded in entering Spanish territory.
Pictured: A section of the border fence between Morocco and the Spanish enclave of Ceuta. (Image source: David Ramos/Getty Images)
Two weeks earlier, the rescue ship Aquarius, operated by the French NGO Sos Méditerranée, picked up 629 Sub-Saharan migrants off the coast of Libya. After both Italy and Malta refused to take in the migrants, with Italian Interior Minister Matteo Salvini declaring, “No to human trafficking, no to the business of illegal immigration,” Spain welcomed the ship, and two other vessels carrying illegal migrants, at the port of Valencia.
Prime Minister Pedro Sánchez, the head of Spain’s newly-formed socialist government — which has promised free healthcare to the migrants and says it will investigate every asylum claim individually — said in mid-June: “It is our duty to help avoid a humanitarian catastrophe and offer a safe port to these people, to comply with our human rights obligations.”
According to a July 27 report about Spain in The Telegraph:
“The country is now the largest gateway for migrants crossing the Mediterranean to Europe, with 20,992 people landing on its shores so far this year… Arrivals to Italy now trail Spain by almost 3000 – a gap that just a week ago was 200.”
This, the report says, has completely “overwhelmed” the Spanish coastguard, which is issuing an urgent call for additional resources to help deal with the massive influx.
You will find more infographics at Statista
According to a 2017 report by the European Commission:
“The geographic distribution clearly reveals that a majority of irregular migrants rescued in the Central Mediterranean are most likely not refugees in the sense of the Geneva Convention, given that some 70 % come from countries or regions not suffering from violent conflicts or oppressive regimes.“
Absorbing the large numbers of migrants is not the only problem that Spain has to contend with, however. According to a December 2016 report in the Financial Times, based on confidential reports it obtained, the European Border and Coast Guard Agency (Frontex) accused some charitable organizations that support rescues in the Mediterranean of collaborating with human traffickers. This claim was also made by the pan-European think tank, Gefira, which posted a YouTube video listing the NGOs that have been abetting – regardless of their “high-minded intentions” – the criminal practice of smuggling people into Europe for financial gain.
According to The Independent:
“At the last European Council summit in Brussels at the end of June, EU national leaders agreed on the need to set up secure centres to process asylum claims, as well as agreeing a raft of hardline stances on migrants – such as condemning NGO-operated rescue boats operating off the Libyan coast.”
…
“Leaders also in principle agreed another proposal for “disembarkation platforms” based in North Africa where EU officials could process asylum claims outside EU territory …”
However, despite the agreement between EU members, “no north African country has yet agreed to host migrant screening centres to process refugee claims,” according to Dimitris Avramopoulos, the European commissioner for migration.
The Speaker of Egypt’s House of Representatives, Ali Abdel Aal, told the German newspaper Welt am Sonntag on July 1, “EU reception facilities for migrants in Egypt would violate the laws and constitution of our country.”
Abd al-Aal recalled that a high number of migrants are already living in his country. “We already have about ten million refugees from Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Palestine, Sudan, Somalia and other countries,” said Ab al-Aal. In Egypt, all refugees have a right to health care and education. “This means that our capacities are already exhausted today. It is therefore important that Egypt receives support from Germany and the EU.”
In an interview with the German news outlet Bild on July 19, Libyan Prime Minister Fayez al-Sarraj said:
“We have created refugee shelters for tens of thousands of people, but there are hundreds of thousands of illegal migrants in our country. This has heavily impaired the security situation. They include terrorists, criminals, and human traffickers who do not care about human rights. It’s horrible. In order to improve the situation, we must fight these structures. But we also need more international help for this. It begins with our country’s borders. It is imperative that they be better controlled.”
…
“We are strictly against Europe officially placing illegal migrants who are no longer wanted in the EU in our country. We also won’t agree on any deals with EU money about taking in more illegal migrants. The EU should rather talk to the countries that people are coming from and should put pressure on these countries instead. There won’t be any deals with us.
“I am very surprised that while nobody in Europe wants to take in migrants anymore they are asking us to take in further hundreds of thousands.”
In an article for Gatestone in March 2018, Uzay Bulut sheds light on why the migrant crisis has become a problem that many European governments are beginning to recognize: “demographic jihad.”
Bulut cites Turkish MP Alparslan Kavaklıoğlu, a member of President Recep Tayyip Erdogan’s ruling Justice and Development Party (AKP), and the head of the parliament’s Security and Intelligence Commission, who stated:
“… Europe is going through a time that is out of the ordinary. Its population is declining and aging… So, people coming from outside get the jobs there. But Europe has this problem. All of the newcomers are Muslim. From Morocco, Tunisia, Algeria, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iraq, Iran, Syria, and Turkey. Those who come from these places are Muslim. It is now at such a level that the most popular name in Brussels, Belgium is Mohammed… [If this trend continues], the Muslim population will outnumber the Christian population in Europe… Europe will be Muslim. We will be effective there, Allah willing. I am sure of that.”
The Turkish leadership’s assessment echoes a sermon delivered at the Al-Aqsa Mosque in Jerusalem on September 11, 2015 (the 14th anniversary of the 9/11 attacks) by Imam Sheikh Muhammad Ayed, who stated, in part:
“They [Westerners] have lost their fertility… We will give them fertility! We will breed children with them, because we shall conquer their countries. Whether you like it or not, oh Germans, oh Americans, oh French, Oh Italians, and all those like you. Take the refugees! We shall soon collect them in the name of the coming Caliphate… We will say to you: These are our sons. Send them or we will send our armies to you.”
The act of migration has a strong basis in the Qu’ran. For example, Verse 9:20states:
“The ones who have believed, emigrated and striven in the cause of Allah with their wealth and their lives are greater in rank in the sight of Allah. And it is those who are the attainers [of success].”
Verse 22:58 states:
“And those who emigrated for the cause of Allah and then were killed or died – Allah will surely provide for them a good provision. And indeed, it is Allah who is the best of providers.”
None of the above, however, appears to have put a dent in the policies or ideology of the left-wing parties supporting the new Spanish government. On June 29, following the European summit, Sanchez tweeted:
“…The EU is beginning to move in the right direction: to give a European perspective to a European challenge such as migration.”
Sanchez was correct, but for all the wrong reasons. The “European perspective” that he and fellow EU members should be embracing is that of democracy and freedom, not one that allows the unfettered entry of millions of penniless and unskilled illegal migrants, among whom are radical Islamists whose beliefs are antithetical to European values.
In case Sanchez has not been paying attention, the influx of illegal immigrants from the Middle East and Africa has been taking a serious toll on Europe. According to a recent Heritage Foundation report:
“Over the past four years, 16 percent of Islamist plots in Europe featured asylum seekers or refugees… Radicalization of plotters generally occurred abroad although in the most recent plots, more commonly within Europe itself. Europe’s response to migration flows has been inadequate and inadvertently increased the terrorist threat dramatically…”
In the book Europe All Inclusive by former Czech President Václav Klaus, co-authored by the Arabic-speaking economist Jiří Weigl, the authors sum up the role that the Left plays in the migrant crisis:
“Europe, and especially its ‘integrated’ part, is riddled with hypocrisy, pseudo-humanism and other dubious concepts. The most dangerous of them are the currently fashionable, and ultimately suicidal, ideologies of multiculturalism and humanrightism. Such ideologies push millions of people towards resignation when it comes to concepts like home, motherland, nation and state. These ideologies promote the notion that migration is a human right, and that the right to migrate leads to further rights and entitlements including social welfare hand-outs for migrants… Europe is weakened by the leftist utopia of trying to transform a continent that was once proud of its past into an inefficient solidaristic state, turning its inhabitants from citizens into dependent clients.”
As the “largest gateway” for migrants now entering Europe, Spain has a particularly great responsibility to wake up to and deal with reality.
- "Leave Immediately Or You Will Pay" – China Sends Radio Warnings To Philippines
China is increasingly issuing radio warnings to the Armed Forces of the Philippines operating near the heavily contested and militarized islands in the South China Sea, The Associated Press (AP) reported Tuesday.
The warnings are much different from before, as officials believe the radio transmissions are coming directly from China’s artificial islands, where Beijing has recently deployed jamming technology, surface-to-air missiles, anti-ship ballistic missiles, and even heavy bombers.
According to the AP, a new Philippine government report showed that in the second half of 2017, Philippine military aircraft received 46 Chinese radio warnings while on patrol in the South China Sea near the Spratly Islands.
The radio warnings were “meant to step up their tactics to our pilots conducting maritime air surveillance in the West Philippine Sea,” the report said, which used the Philippine name for the South China Sea.
Earlier this year, Philippine officials voiced their concern over the aggressive radio communications with Chinese counterparts in Manila, which primarily focused on resolving territorial disputes in the region, according to government officials who spoke on condition of anonymity with the AP because the knowledge they shared was not yet available in the public domain.
The AP says that the threatening Chinese radio messages are a new phenomenon and emerged after China transformed seven disputed reefs into militarized islands, located near Vietnam, the Philippines and Taiwan (a region that military strategists considered the Powderkeg of Asia).
The report specifies radio communications were being transmitted from Chinese coast guard ships in the last several years but now are relayed from Beijing-held artificial islands, where military-grade communications and surveillance equipment have been installed along with missile defense systems.
“Our ships and aircraft have observed an increase in radio queries that appear to originate from new land-based facilities in the South China Sea,” Commander Clay Doss, a public affairs officer for the US 7th Fleet, told the AP.
“These communications do not affect our operations,” he added, noting that when communications with foreign militaries are this absurd, “those issues are addressed by appropriate diplomatic and military channels.”
A Philippine Air Force plane on patrol near the disputed islands received a warning message in Janurary when it was threatened by Chinese forces that it was “endangering the security of the Chinese reef. Leave immediately and keep off to avoid misunderstanding,” according to the Philippine government report.
Chinese forces also said: “Philippine military aircraft, I am warning you again, leave immediately or you will pay the possible consequences.” The Filipino pilot later “sighted two flare warning signals from the reef,” said the report, which was identified as the Beijing-held island of Gaven Reef.
In another incident, Chinese forces told two Philippine military aircraft carrying the country’s senior defense and military leaders, along with top secuity officials and 40 journlaist, to turn around immediatly to avoid any mishap. The pilots responded by saying they were over Phillipine territory, said the report.
Despite many Chinese warnings threatening the Philipines, Washington has made it clear that it will maintain and increase an active presence in the region.
“International law allows us to operate here, allows us to fly here, allows us to train here, allows us to sail here, and that’s what we’re doing, and we’re going to continue to do that,” Lt. Commander Tim Hawkins told the AP in February.
The Pentagon said: “The United States military has had a lot of experience in the Western Pacific taking down small islands,”Lt. General Kenneth McKenzie, the director of the Joint Staff, informed reporters in may, adding: “It’s just a fact.”
As China and its militarized islands in the South Sea prepare for a military conflict, we must ask the very simple question: What could possibly go wrong?
- Paul Craig Roberts: Who Does America Really Belong To?
Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,
Not to Americans…
The housing market is now apparently turning down. Consumer incomes are limited by jobs offshoring and the ability of employers to hold down wages and salaries. The Federal Reserve seems committed to higher interest rates – in my view to protect the exchange value of the US dollar on which Washington’s power is based. The arrogant fools in Washington, with whom I spent a quarter century, have, with their bellicosity and sanctions, encouraged nations with independent foreign and economic policies to drop the use of the dollar. This takes some time to accomplish, but Russia, China, Iran, and India are apparently committed to dropping or reducing the use of the US dollar.
A drop in the world demand for dollars can be destabilizing of the dollar’s value unless the central banks of Japan, UK, and EU continue to support the dollar’s exchange value, either by purchasing dollars with their currencies or by printing offsetting amounts of their currencies to keep the dollar’s value stable. So far they have been willing to do both. However, Trump’s criticisms of Europe has soured Europe against Trump, with a corresponding weakening of the willingness to cover for the US. Japan’s colonial status vis-a-vis the US since the Second World War is being stressed by the hostility that Washington is introducing into Japan’s part of the world. The orchestrated Washington tensions with North Korea and China do not serve Japan, and those Japanese politicians who are not heavily on the US payroll are aware that Japan is being put on the line for American, not Japanese interests.
If all this leads, as is likely, to the rise of more independence among Washington’s vassals, the vassals are likely to protect themselves from the cost of their independence by removing themselves from the dollar and payments mechanisms associated with the dollar as world currency. This means a drop in the value of the dollar that the Federal Reserve would have to prevent by raising interest rates on dollar investments in order to keep the demand for dollars up sufficiently to protect its value.
As every realtor knows, housing prices boom when interest rates are low, because the lower the rate the higher the price of the house that the person with the mortgage can afford. But when interest rates rise, the lower the price of the house that a buyer can afford.
If we are going into an era of higher interest rates, home prices and sales are going to decline.
The “on the other hand” to this analysis is that if the Federal Reserve loses control of the situation and the debts associated with the current value of the US dollar become a problem that can collapse the system, the Federal Reserve is likely to pump out enough new money to preserve the debt by driving interest rates back to zero or negative.
Would this save or revive the housing market? Not if the debt-burdened American people have no substantial increases in their real income. Where are these increases likely to come from? Robotics are about to take away the jobs not already lost to jobs offshoring. Indeed, despite President Trump’s emphasis on “bringing the jobs back,” Ford Motor Corp. has just announced that it is moving the production of the Ford Focus from Michigan to China.
Apparently it never occurs to the executives running America’s offshored corporations that potential customers in America working in part time jobs stocking shelves in Walmart, Home Depot, Lowe’s, etc., will not have enough money to purchase a Ford. Unlike Henry Ford, who had the intelligence to pay workers good wages so they could buy Fords, the executives of American companies today sacrifice their domestic market and the American economy to their short-term “performance bonuses” based on low foreign labor costs.
What is about to happen in America today is that the middle class, or rather those who were part of it as children and expected to join it, are going to be driven into manufactured “double-wide homes” or single trailers. The MacMansions will be cut up into tenements. Even the high-priced rentals along the Florida coast will find a drop in demand as real incomes continue to fall. The $5,000-$20,000 weekly summer rental rate along Florida’s panhandle 30A will not be sustainable. The speculators who are in over their heads in this arena are due for a future shock.
For years I have reported on the monthly payroll jobs statistics. The vast majority of new jobs are in lowly paid nontradable domestic services, such as waitresses and bartenders, retail clerks, and ambulatory health care services. In the payroll jobs report for June, for example, the new jobs, if they actually exist, are concentrated in these sectors: administrative and waste services, health care and social assistance, accommodation and food services, and local government.
High productivity, high value-added manufactured jobs shrink in the US as they are offshored to Asia. High productivity, high value-added professional service jobs, such as research, design, software engineering, accounting, legal research, are being filled by offshoring or by foreigners brought into the US on work visas with the fabricated and false excuse that there are no Americans qualified for the jobs.
America is a country hollowed out by the short-term greed of the ruling class and its shills in the economics profession and in Congress. Capitalism only works for the few. It no longer works for the many.
On national security grounds Trump should respond to Ford’s announcement of offshoring the production of Ford Focus to China by nationalizing Ford. Michigan’s payrolls and tax base will decline and employment in China will rise. We are witnessing a major US corporation enabling China’s rise over the United States. Among the external costs of Ford’s contribution to China’s GDP is Trump’s increased US military budget to counter the rise in China’s power.
Trump should also nationalize Apple, Nike, Levi, and all the rest of the offshored US global corporations who have put the interest of a few people above the interests of the American work force and the US economy. There is no other way to get the jobs back. Of course, if Trump did this, he would be assassinated.
America is ruled by a tiny percentage of people who constitute a treasonous class. These people have the money to purchase the government, the media, and the economics profession that shills for them. This greedy traitorous interest group must be dealt with or the United States of America and the entirety of its peoples are lost.
In her latest blockbuster book, Collusion, Nomi Prins documents how central banks and international monetary institutions have used the 2008 financial crisis to manipulate markets and the fiscal policies of governments to benefit the super-rich.
These manipulations are used to enable the looting of countries such as Greece and Portugal by the large German and Dutch banks and the enrichment via inflated financial asset prices of shareholders at the expense of the general population.
One would think that repeated financial crises would undermine the power of financial interests, but the facts are otherwise. As long ago as November 21, 1933, President Franklin D. Roosevelt wrote to Col. House that “the real truth of the matter is, as you and I know, that a financial element in the larger centers has owned the Government ever since the days of Andrew Jackson.”
Thomas Jefferson said that “banking institutions are more dangerous to our liberties than standing armies” and that “if the American people ever allow private banks to control the issue of their currency, first by inflation, then by deflation, the banks . . . will deprive the people of all property until their children wake-up homeless on the continent their fathers conquered.”
The shrinkage of the US middle class is evidence that Jefferson’s prediction is coming true.
- Debunking 8 Myths About AI In The Workplace
The interplay between technology and work has always been a hot topic.
While technology has typically created more jobs than it has destroyed on a historical basis, Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins notes that this context rarely stops people from believing that things are “different” this time around.
In this case, it’s the potential impact of artificial intelligence (AI) that is being hotly debated by the media and expert commentators. Although there is no doubt that AI will be a transformative force in business, the recent attention on the subject has also led to many common misconceptions about the technology and its anticipated effects.
DISPROVING COMMON MYTHS ABOUT AI
Today’s infographic comes to us from Raconteur and it helps paint a clearer picture about the nature of AI, while attempting to debunk various myths about AI in the workplace.
Courtesy of: Visual Capitalist
AI is going to be a seismic shift in business – and it’s expected to create a $15.7 trillion economic impact globally by 2030.
But understandably, monumental shifts like this tend to make people nervous, resulting in many unanswered questions and misconceptions about the technology and what it will do in the workplace.
DEMYSTIFYING MYTHS
Here are the eight debunked myths about AI:
1. Automation will completely displace employees
Truth: 70% of employers see AI in supporting humans in completing business processes. Meanwhile, only 11% of employers believe that automation will take over the work found in jobs and business processes to a “great extent”.2. Companies are primarily interested in cutting costs with AI
Truth: 84% of employers see AI as obtaining or sustaining a competitive advantage, and 75% see AI as a way to enter into new business areas. 63% see pressure to reduce costs as a reason to use AI.3. AI, machine learning, and deep learning are the same thing
Truth: AI is a broader term, while machine learning is a subset of AI that enables “intelligence” by using training algorithms and data. Deep learning is an even narrower subset of machine learning inspired by the interconnected neurons of the brain.4. Automation will eradicate more jobs than it creates
Truth: At least according to one recent study by Gartner, there will be 1.8 million jobs lost to AI by 2020 and 2.3 million jobs created. How this shakes out in the longer term is much more debatable.5. Robots and AI are the same thing
Truth: Even though there is a tendency to link AI and robots, most AI actually works in the background and is unseen (think Amazon product recommendations). Robots, meanwhile, can be “dumb” and just automate simple physical processes.6. AI won’t affect my industry
Truth: AI is expected to have a significant impact on almost every industry in the next five years.7. Companies implementing AI don’t care about workers
Truth: 65% of companies pursuing AI are also investing in the reskilling of current employees.8. High productivity equals higher profits and less employment
Truth: AI and automation will increase productivity, but this could also translate to lower prices, higher wages, higher demand, and employment growth.Still worried about AI’s impact on your career?
Here’s a list of 10 skills that will help you survive the rise of the robots in the workplace.
- The Real "Fake News" From Government Media
Authored by Scott Lazarowitz via ActivistPost.com,
Facebook has announced its campaign against “fake news.” But, according to some workers’ own admission, conservatives are being censored.
And Google also wants to censor “fake news.” But Google also was shown to treat conservative websites, but not liberal ones, as “fake news.”
The same thing seems to be going on with Twitter. And again, conservatives are complaining.
But who is to decide what is “fake news”? Who will be Facebook and Google’s sources for realnews?
In 2013 the U.S. Senate considered a new a shield law to protect journalists. In the lawmakers’ attempts to narrow the definition of a journalist, some Senators including Sen. Dianne Feinstein only wanted to include reporters with “professional qualifications.”
“Professional” publications such as the New York Times, the “Paper of Record,” would apparently be protected.
So one can conclude that the New York Times can be a source of “real” news for Facebook or Google, despite all the Times‘ errors, screw-ups, and corrections, right?
According to one NYT former reporter, the Times has been a “propaganda megaphone” for war. Also a partner with the CIA to promote Obama’s reelection bid.
Or CNN, “The Most Trusted Name in News” which wins its own “fake news” awards with its errors, screw-ups and corrections.
During the 2016 U.S. Presidential campaign, there were collusions between then-CNN contributor and DNC operative Donna Brazile, who was outed by WikiLeaks in her giving candidate Hillary Clinton questions in advance for a CNN Town Hall.
Other emails that were leaked to WikiLeaks informed us that reporters obediently followed instructions from the Hillary Clinton campaign on how to cover the campaign. These include reporters from the New York Times such as Maggie Haberman who said the campaign would “tee up stories for us,” and Mark Leibovich, who would email Clinton flunky Jennifer Palmieri for editing recommendations.
And Politico reporter Glenn Thrush asked Clinton campaign chairman John Podesta for approval of stories on Clinton. Thrush was then hired by the New York Times. After Thrush was then suspended from NYT over allegations of sexual misconduct, the Times ended the suspension, stating that while Thrush had “acted offensively,” he would be trained to behave himself. Hmm.
But all this from the 2016 campaign reminded me of the “JournoLists,” the group of news journalists who participated in a private forum online from 2007-2010. The forum was to enable news reporters to discuss news reporting and political issues in private and with candor, but also, it was revealed, to discuss ways to suppress negative news on then-2008 presidential candidate Barack Obama.
For instance, according to the Daily Caller, some members of the group discussed their criticism of a 2008 debate in which Obama was questioned on his association with the controversial Rev. Jeremiah Wright. The Nation‘s Richard Kim wrote that George Stephanopoulos was “being a disgusting little rat snake.” The Guardian‘s Michael Tomasky wrote that “we all have to do what we can to kill ABC and this idiocy.”
Spencer Ackerman, then with the Washington Independent and now of the Daily Beast, wrote, “If the right forces us all to either defend Wright or tear him down, no matter what we choose, we lose the game they’ve put upon us. Instead, take one of them — Fred Barnes, Karl Rove, who cares — and call them racists.”
The Nation‘s Chris Hayes wrote, “Our country disappears people. It tortures people. It has the blood of as many as one million Iraqi civilians — men, women, children, the infirmed — on its hands. You’ll forgive me if I just can’t quite dredge up the requisite amount of outrage over Barack Obama’s pastor.”
(But has Hayes criticized Obama’s assassination program, or Obama’s bombings or the blood on Obama’s hands? Just askin’)
In an open letter, according to the Daily Caller, several of the JournoList members called the ABC debate a “revolting descent into tabloid journalism,” because of the moderators’ legitimate questions on Rev. Jeremiah Wright.
So, in today’s Bizarro World, objectively questioning a candidate on a controversial issue is now “tabloid journalism,” but making things up like “Trump-Russia collusions” and repeating the propaganda over and over – that’s not “tabloid journalism.”
The JournoLists also included reporters from Time, the Baltimore Sun, the New Republic, Politico, and Huffington Post.
Now, are those the sources of “real news” that Facebook, Google and Twitter want to rely upon to combat “fake news”?
And who exactly were the “JournoLists” promoting? Obama?
Regarding Obama’s own crackdown on actual journalism, Fox News reporter James Rosen was accused by the feds of being a “co-conspirator” with State Department leaker Stephen Jin-Woo Kim in violating the Espionage Act. Rosen’s correspondences with Kim were seized by Obama’s FBI, along with Rosen’s personal email and phone records. The FBI also used records to track Rosen’s visits to the State Department.
Apparently, then-attorney general Eric Holder went “judge-shopping” to find a judge who would approve subpoenaing Rosen’s private records, after two judges rejected the request.
Commenting on James Rosen and the FBI’s abuse of powers, Judge Andrew Napolitano observed that “this is the first time that the federal government has moved to this level of taking ordinary, reasonable, traditional, lawful reporter skills and claiming they constitute criminal behavior.”
And there was the Obama administration’s going after then-CBS News investigative reporter Sharyl Attkisson, possibly for her reporting on Benghazi and Fast and Furious. Attkisson finally resigned from CBS news out of frustration with the company’s alleged pro-Obama bias and with CBS’s apparently not airing her subsequent reports.
In 2013 CBS News confirmed that Attkisson’s computers had been “accessed by an unauthorized, external, unknown party on multiple occasions.” In 2015 Attkisson sued the Obama administration, claiming to have evidence which proves the computer intrusions were connected to the Obama DOJ.
In Attkisson’s latest lawsuit update, after her computer was returned to her following the DOJ Inspector General’s investigation, her forensics team now believes her computer’s hard drive was replaced by a different one.
Now back to “fake news.”
After Donald Trump locked up the Republican Presidential nomination in May, 2016, there were significant events in the next two months. Fusion GPS and former British spy Christopher Steele colluded to get opposition research on behalf of Hillary Clinton, the FBI applied for FISA warrant to spy on Trump campaign associates, and Donald Trump, Jr., Paul Manafort and Jared Kushner had a possibly set-up meeting with a Russian lawyer at Trump Tower.
Also within that same period, the DNC claimed that its computers were hacked but the DNC wouldn’t let FBI investigate. The Washington Post published an article claiming, with no evidence presented, that “Russian government hackers” took DNC opposition research on Trump.
It was very shortly after the November, 2016 Presidential election that the Washington Postpublished an article on a “Russian propaganda effort to spread ‘fake news’ during the election.” To escalate the media’s censorship campaign perhaps?
The campaign against “fake news” coincided with Obama minions at FBI, DOJ and CIA apparently panicking over a possible Trump presidency and their allegedly abusing their powers to attempt to take down Trump.
So the news media seem to be on a crusade to fabricate “Trump-Russia collusions” and repeat it over and over, and to vilify, ignore and squash actual investigative research and reporting on what exactly the FBI and DOJ bureaucrats have been doing. Call such real investigative reporting “fake news,” “conspiracy theory,” and so forth.
In the end, Facebook, Twitter and Google might want to reconsider relying on the mainstream news media led by the New York Times, the Washington Post and CNN, and instead include citizen journalists and non-government-sycophant media to provide news and information.
UCLA law professor Eugene Volokh has noted that the Founders generally viewed the freedom of the Press to apply to every citizen to print, publish or express accounts of events. We really need to highlight that kind of old-fashioned, honest journalism.
- The Student Debt Crisis Is Hitting These Ten States The Hardest
The student debt crisis in America continues to expand. According to the latest figures from the New York Federal Reserve, the total Student Loans Owned and Securitized, Outstanding (SLOAS) grew to over $1.52 trillion in July. Although the debt crisis affects millions of Americans, the debt is not spread evenly across the country, as millennials in some states are much more likely to be weighed down by student loans.
A new study by personal finance website GOBankingRates revealed that graduates in the northeastern states have the heaviest financial burdens. Of these states, millennials in New Hampshire have outstanding student loans around $36,367 — that is the highest rate in the country, according to the Institute for College Access and Success’s 12th Annual Student Debt report.
Geographically, GOBankingRates noticed an alarming trend of northeastern states made the top ten list for highest average debt and highest percentage of graduates with debt. As shown below, New Hampshire and Pennsylvania made the list while Connecticut, Maine, Massachusetts and Rhode Island were among the highest for average debt.
States With the Highest Average Student Debt
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New Hampshire Average student loan debt: $36,367 Percent of graduates with debt: 74%
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Pennsylvania Average student loan debt: Percent of graduates with debt: 68%
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Connecticut Average student loan debt: $35,494 Percent of graduates with debt: 60%
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Delaware Average student loan debt: $33,838 Percent of graduates with debt: 63%
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Minnesota Average student loan debt: $31,915 Percent of graduates with debt: 68%
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Massachusetts Average student loan debt: $31,563 Percent of graduates with debt: 60%
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South Dakota Average student loan debt: $31,362 Percent of graduates with debt: 75%
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Maine Average student loan debt: $31,295 Percent of graduates with debt: 55%
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Alabama Average student loan debt: $31,275 Percent of graduates with debt: 50%
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Rhode Island Average student loan debt: $31,217 Percent of graduates with debt: 61%
It makes sense that the Northeast states are carrying higher student loan debt, according to Adam Minksy a lawyer specializing in student loan law. “Certain states have less robust, affordable state education systems,” Minsky tells CNBC.
States like California and Florida have major state universities systems that are affordable, so many millennials chose those institutions with the least amount of debt, Minsky added.
GOBankingRates also noticed states like Utah, New Mexico, and California had the lowest percentage of graduates with debt at just 43 percent and the lowest average debt around $20,000. In fact, the states with the second- and third-lowest percentages of graduates with debt, Wyoming and Arizona, were also both among the ten states with the lowest debt.
As a slowdown in the economy nears, high school graduates and their families are starting to discover that the debt ball and chain via student loans is not a winning strategy when it comes to picking a college. “I was told by everyone to go to the best school you can get into, even if it’s more expensive, it will be a good investment,” Minsky says. “Now we’re starting to see a shift toward making responsible financial choices about college.”
* * *
Heavily indebted millennials might have a shot at paying off their student debt via a new game show on TruTV called “Paid Off.” Contestants must have lots of student loans and could have the chance to answer trivia questions – and if they win, the game show will pay off their student debt.
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- Nomi Prins: The Disrupter-In-Chief & Five Financials Uncertainties For 2018
Authored by Nomi Prins via TomDispatch.com,
The Entropy Wars – Five Financial Uncertainties of 2018 (So Far)
Here we are in the middle of the second year of Donald Trump’s presidency and if there’s one thing we know by now, it’s that the leader of the free world can create an instant reality-TV show on geopolitical steroids at will. True, he’s not polished in his demeanor, but he has an unerring way of instilling the most uncertainty in any situation in the least amount of time.
Whether through executive orders, tweets, cable-news interviews, or rallies, he regularly leaves diplomacy in the dust, while allegedly delivering for a faithful base of supporters who voted for him as the ultimate anti-diplomat. And while he’s at it, he continues to take a wrecking ball to the countless political institutions that litter the Acela Corridor. Amid all the tweeted sound and fury, however, the rest of us are going to have to face the consequences of Donald Trump getting his hands on the economy.
According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, entropy is “a process of degradation or running down or a trend to disorder.” With that in mind, perhaps the best way to predict President Trump’s next action is just to focus on the path of greatest entropy and take it from there.
Let me do just that, while exploring five key economic sallies of the Trump White House since he took office and the bleakness and chaos that may lie ahead as the damage to the economy and our financial future comes into greater focus.
1. Continuous Banking Deregulation
When Trump ran for the presidency, he tapped into a phenomenon that was widely felt but generally misunderstood: a widespread anger at Wall Street and corporate cronyism. Upon taking office, he promptly redirected that anger exclusively at the country’s borders and its global economic allies and adversaries.
His 2016 election campaign had promised not to “let Wall Street get away with murder” and to return the banking environment to one involving less financial risk to the country. His goal and that of the Republicans as a party, at least theoretically, was to separate bank commercial operations (deposits and lending) from their investment operations (securities creation, trading, and brokerage) by bringing back a modernized version of the Glass-Steagall Act of 1933.
Fast forward to May 18, 2017 when Trump’s deregulatory-minded treasury secretary, “foreclosure king” Steven Mnuchin, faced a congressional panel and took a 180 on the subject. He insisted that separating people’s everyday deposits from the financial-speculation operations of the big banks, something that had even made its way into the Republican platform, was a total nonstarter.
Instead, congressional Republicans, with White House backing, promptly took aim at the watered-down version of the Glass-Steagall Act passed in the Obama years, the Dodd-Frank Act of 2010. In it, the Democrats had already essentially capitulated to Wall Street by riddling the act with a series of bank-friendly loopholes. They had, however, at least ensured that banks would set aside more of their own money in the event of another Great Recession-like crisis and provide a strategy or “living will” in advance for that possibility, while creating a potent consumer-protection apparatus, the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau (CFPB). Say goodbye to all of that in the Trump era.
Dubbed “the Choice Act” — officially the Economic Growth, Regulatory Relief, and Consumer Protection Act — the new Republican bill removed the “living will” requirement for mid-sized banks, thereby allowing the big banks a gateway to do the same. When Trump signed the bill, he said that it was “the next step in America’s unprecedented economic comeback. There’s never been a comeback like we’ve made. And one day, the fake news is going to report it.”
In fact, thanks to the Trump (and Republican) flip-flop, banks don’t need to defend themselves anymore. The president went on to extol the untold virtues of his pick to run the CFPB, meant to keep consumers from being duped (or worse) by their own banks. Before Trump got involved, it had won $12 billion in settlements from errant banks for the citizens it championed.
However, Kathy Kraninger, a former Homeland Security official tapped by Trump to run the entity, has no experience in banking or consumer protection. His selection follows perfectly in the path of current interim head Mick Mulvaney (also the head of the Office of Management and Budget). All you need to know about him is that he once derided the organization as a “sick, sad” joke. As its director, he’s tried to choke the life out of it by defunding it.
In this fashion, such still-evolving deregulatory actions reflect the way Trump’s anti-establishment election campaign has turned into a full-scale program aimed at increasing the wealth and power of the financial elites, while decreasing their responsibility to us. Don’t expect a financial future along such lines to look pretty. Think entropy.
2. Tensions Rise in the Auto Wars
Key to Trump’s economic vision is giving his base a sense of camaraderie by offering them rallying cries from a bygone era of nationalism and isolationism. In the same spirit, the president has launched a supposedly base-supporting policy of imposing increasingly random and anxiety-provoking trade tariffs.
Take, for instance, the automotive sector, which such tariffs are guaranteed to negatively impact. It is ground zero for many of his working-class voters and a key focus of the president’s entropic economic policies. When he was campaigning, he promised many benefits to auto workers (and former auto workers) and they proved instrumental in carrying him to victory in previously “blue” rust-belt states. In the Oval Office, he then went on to tout what he deemed personal victories in getting Ford to move a plant back to the U.S. from Mexico while pressuring Japanese companies to make more cars in Michigan.
He also began disrupting the industry with a series of on-again-off-again, imposed or sometimes merely threatened tariffs, including on steel, that went against the wishes of the entire auto sector. Recently, Jennifer Thomas of the industry’s main lobbying group, the Alliance of Automobile Manufacturers, assured a Commerce Department hearing that “the opposition is widespread and deep because the consequences are alarming.”
Indeed, the Center for Automotive Research has reported that a 25% tariff on autos and auto parts (something the president has threatened but not yet followed through upon against the European Union, Canada, and Mexico) could reduce the number of domestic vehicle sales by up to two million units and might wipe out more than 714,000 jobs here. Declining demand for cars, whose prices could rise between $455 and $6,875, depending on the type of tariff, in the face of a Trump vehicle tax, would hurt American and foreign manufacturers operating in the U.S. who employ significant numbers of American workers.
Though President Trump’s threat to slap high tariffs on imported autos and auto parts from the European Union is now in limbo due to a recent announcement of ongoing negotiations, he retains the right if he gets annoyed by… well, anything… to do so. The German auto industry alone employs more than 118,000 people in the U.S. and, if invoked, such taxes would increase its car prices and put domestic jobs instantly at risk.
3. The Populist Tyranny of the Trump Tax Cuts
President Trump has been particularly happy about his marquee corporate tax “reform” bill, assuring his base that it will provide jobs and growth to American workers, while putting lots of money in their pockets. What it’s actually done, however, is cut the corporate tax rate from 35% to 21%, providing corporations with tons of extra cash. Their predictable reaction has not been to create jobs and raise wages, but to divert that bonanza to their own coffers via share buybacks in which they purchase their own stock. That provides shareholders with bigger, more valuable pieces of a company, while boosting earnings and CEO bonuses.
Awash in tax-cut cash, American companies have announced a record $436.6 billion worth of such buybacks so far in 2018, close to double the record $242.1 billion spent in that way in all of 2017. Among other things, this ensures less tax revenue to the U.S. Treasury, which in turn means less money for social programs or simply for providing veterans with proper care.
As it is, large American companies only pay an average effective tax rate of 18% (a figure that will undoubtedly soon drop further). Last year, they only contributed 9% of the tax receipts of the government and that’s likely to drop further to a record low this year, sending the deficit soaring. In other words, in true Trumpian spirit, corporations will be dumping the fabulous tax breaks they got directly onto the backs of other Americans, including the president’s base.
Meanwhile, some of the crew who authored such tax-policies, creating a $1.5 trillion corporate tax give-away, have already moved on to bigger and better things, landing lobbying positions at the very corporations they lent such a hand to and which can now pay them even more handsomely. For the average American worker, on the other hand, wages have not increased. Indeed, between the first and second quarters of 2018 real wages dropped by 1.8%after the tax cuts were made into law. Trump hasn’t touted that or what it implies about our entropic future.
4. Trade Wars, Currency Wars, and the Conflicts to Come
If everyone takes their toys to another playground, the school bully has fewer kids to rough up. And that’s exactly the process Trump’s incipient trade wars seem to be accelerating — the hunt for new playgrounds and alliances by a range of major countries that no longer trust the U.S. government to behave in a consistent manner.
So far, the U.S. has already slapped $34 billion worth of tariffs on Chinese imports. China has retaliated in kind. Playing a dangerous global poker game, Trump promptly threatened to raise that figure to at least $200 billion. China officially ignored that threat, only inciting the president’s ire further. In response, he recently announced that he was “willing to slap tariffs on every Chinese good imported to the U.S. should the need arise.” Speaking to CNBC’s Squawk Box host Joe Kernen on July 20th, he boasted, “I’m ready to go to 500 [billion dollars].”
That’s the equivalent of nearly every import the Chinese sent into the U.S. last year. In contrast, the U.S. exports only $129.9 billion in products to China, which means the Chinese can’t respond in kind, but they can target new markets, heighten the increasingly tense relations between the world’s two economic superpowers, and even devalue their currency to leverage their products more effectively on global markets.
Global trade alliances were already moving away from a full-scale reliance on the U.S. even before Donald Trump began his game of tariffs. That trend has only gained traction in the wake of his economic actions, including his tariffs on a swath of Mexican, Canadian, and European imports. Recently, two major American allies turned a slow dance toward economic cooperation into a full-scale embrace. On July 17th, the European Union and Japan agreed on a mega-trade agreement that will cover one-third of the products made by the world economy.
Meanwhile, China has launched more than 100 new business projects in Brazil alone, usurping what was once a U.S. market, investing a record $54 billion in that country. It is also preparing to increase its commitments not just to Brazil, but to Russia, India, China, and South Africa (known collectively as the BRICS countries), investing $14.7 billion in South Africa ahead of an upcoming BRICS summit there. In other words, Donald Trump is lending a disruptively useful hand to the creation of an economic world in which the U.S. will no longer be as central an entity.
Ultimately, tariffs and the protectionist policies that accompany them will hurt consumers and workers alike, increasing prices and reducing demand. They could force companies to cut back on hiring, innovation, and expansion, while also hurting allies and potentially impeding economic growth globally. In other words, they represent an American version of an economic winding down, both domestically and internationally.
5. Fighting the Fed
President Trump’s belligerence has centered around his belief that the wealthiest, most powerful nation on the planet has been victimized by the rest of the world. Now, that feeling has been extended to the Federal Reserve where he recently lashed out against its chairman (and his own appointee) Jerome Powell.
The Fed had been providing trillions of dollars of stimulus to the banking system and financial markets though a bond-buying program wonkily called “quantitative easing” or “QE.” Its claim: that this Wall Street subsidy is really a stimulus for Main Street.
Unlikely as that story may prove to be, presidents have normally refrained from publicly commenting on the Federal Reserve’s policies, allowing it to maintain at least a veneer of independence, as mandated by the Federal Reserve Act of 1913. (In reality, the Fed has remained significantly dependent on the whims and desires of the White House, a story revealed in my new book Collusion.) However, this White House is run by a president who couldn’t possibly keep his opinions to himself.
So far, the Fed has raised (or “tightened”) interest rates seven times since December 2015. Under Powell, it has done so twice, with two more hikes forecast by year’s end. These moves were made without Trump’s blessing and he views them as contrary to his administration’s economic objectives. In an interview with CNBC, he proclaimed that he was “not thrilled” with the rate hikes, a clear attempt to directly influence Fed policy. Sticking with tradition, the Fed offered no reaction, while the White House quickly issued a statement emphasizing that the president “did not mean to influence the Fed’s decision-making process.”
Ignoring that official White House position, the president promptly took to Twitter to express his frustrations with the Fed. (“[T]he United States should not be penalized because we are doing so well. Tightening now hurts all that we have done. The U.S. should be allowed to recapture what was lost due to illegal currency manipulation and BAD Trade Deals. Debt coming due & we are raising rates — Really?”)
Fed Chairman Powell may want to highlight his independence from the White House, but as a Trump appointee, any decisions made in the framework of the president’s reactions could reflect political influence in the making. The bigger problem is that such friction could incite greater economic uncertainty, which could prove detrimental to the economic strength Trump says he wants to maintain.
When Entropy Wins, the World Loses
Trump’s method works like a well-oiled machine. It keeps everyone — his cabinet, the media, global leaders, and politicians and experts of every sort — off guard. It ensures that his actions will have instant impact, no matter how negative.
Economically, the repercussions of this strategy are both highly global and extremely local. As Senator Ben Sasse (R-NE) noted recently, “This trade war is cutting the legs out from under farmers and [the] White House’s ‘plan’ is to spend $12 billion on gold crutches… This administration’s tariffs and bailouts aren’t going to make America great again, they’re just going to make it 1929 again.”
He was referring to the White House’s latest plan to put up to $12 billiontaxpayer dollars into those sectors of American agriculture hit hardest by Trump’s tariff wars. Let that sink in for a moment and think: entropy. In order to fix the problems the president has created, allegedly to help America become great again, a deficit-ridden government will have to shell out extra taxpayer dollars.
Subsidizing farmers isn’t in itself necessarily a bad thing. It is, in fact, very New Deal-ish and Franklin Delano Roosevelt-esque. But doing so to fix an unnecessary problem? Under such circumstances, where will it stop? When those $200 billion or $500 billion in tariffs on China (or other countries) enflames the situation further, who gets aid next? Auto workers? Steel workers?
What we are witnessing is the start of the entropy wars, which will, in turn, hasten the unwinding of the American global experiment. Each arbitrary bit of presidential pique, each tweet and insult, is a predecessor to yet more possible economic upheavals and displacements, ever messier and harder to clean up.
Trump’s America could easily morph into a worldwide catch-22. The more trust is destabilized, the greater the economic distress. The weaker the economy, the more disruptable it becomes by the Great Disrupter himself. And so the Trump spiral spins onward, circling down an economic drain of his own making.
- "Downward Correction In Hamptons Real Estate Market" As Caution Spreads To New York Elites
Last Friday’s report on US economic growth drove President Donald Trump to Twitter for yet, another victory lap after it showed gross domestic product grew at a 4.1 percent annual rate — the quickest in nearly four years. However, the figures had an unpleasant detail deep within that Trump did not want to share: Residential investment, which included construction and brokers’ fees, contracted in the second quarter. Compound this with a housing affordability crisis, and Jerome Powell rocketing the federal funds rates higher before the next recession, it is a perfect concoction for a nasty slowdown sometime in the not too distant future.
From London to Sydney and Beijing to New York, real estate markets in some of the world’s most expensive cities are peaking. In this report, we examine the slowdown seeping into the South Fork real estate market, otherwise known as the Hamptons.
As the bubbly may be flowing in Southampton this summer, second-quarter sales plummeted 12.8 percent from 2017 level, according to data prepared for Douglas Elliman by Miller Samuel Real Estate. The median home price dropped 5.3 percent to a $975,000, compared with $1.03 million last year.
The report suggested that homebuyers in the region should not panic (yeah, sure.), and residents should look at other metrics, including growth in the $5 million to $8 million range.
“There is a downward correction in Hamptons market,” said Carl Benincasa, a Douglas Elliman regional vice president of sales, who spoke with Southampton Press. “Buyers are always aware of it before sellers. But now the sellers are finally figuring out where buyers are and they are making the adjustments they need to meet them. That’s why you are seeing prices drop; that’s why you are seeing houses are being sold faster; that’s why you are seeing listing discounts go down: because sellers are pricing their homes more reasonably.”
Mr. Benincasa indicated that the second quarter serves as a “transition period” when buyers and sellers are coming together with a reasonable agreement about price, and he expects many more transactions in the third quarter.
“One of the characteristics of the high-end housing markets around the region, whether we are talking about New York City or the outlying suburbs, is a sales decline,” said Jonathan Miller, the president and CEO of Miller Samuel, “and the Hamptons is no different.”
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The report specified that sales activity of homes in the $1 million to $5 million price range (“Hamptons middle”) took the hardest hit, which accounted for a majority of the quarter’s loss.
“But the 10-year quarterly average is 474 homes sold—Q2 2018 was 601; Q1 2018 was 441; Q2 2017 was 689—sales are not necessarily low in the Hamptons. The Hamptons is known for the luxury market. While the overall inventory of the Hamptons is steady or declining, the actual inventory in the luxury market, meaning the top 10 percent, jumped and is continuing to rise.”
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— Hamptons Luxury Agents (@HamptonsAgents) July 30, 2018
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In a separate interview with the Financial Times, Miller also said: “The middle is where you have more leverage being used in acquisitions, so rising mortgage rates are a factor, the new tax laws are a factor,” he said. “General uncertainty applies more to that segment than any other.”
The inventory of homes listed above $4.25 million rose 36.5 percent y/y in the second quarter to 329, according to Miller Samuel. Sales in the luxury segment of the market plummeted 11.6 percent from last year’s level.
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“The prices really ran up quickly and a lot of inventory built up,” said John F Wines, a broker at Saunders & Associates in Southampton. “Now sellers have had to get a little more realistic.”
Judi Desiderio, chief executive at Town & Country Real Estate in East Hampton, warned there is a “glut in the market,” with pricing pressures on the luxury real estate segment.
“Those homes are being brought down significantly,” said Ms Desiderio. “We have seen houses listed at $15m brought down to $12m, and maybe trading at $9m or $10m.”
Desiderio said the Hamptons saw only one sale closing for more than $20m, compared with four in the same period last year.
The property in East Hampton sold for $40 million in April. It had been initially listed for $69 million in 2016, for which the closing price represents a 42 percent discount.
It seems as the Hamptons real estate market is raising a large red flag for America’s housing market that could signal a peak.
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