- Three Big Lies That Pervade America's 'News' Media
Authored by Eric Zuesse via Strategic-Culture.org,
(This news-report is being submitted to virtually all U.S. national ‘news’ media, almost all of which are the very same ‘news’ media that hide these historical truths, which facts thus remain as «news» in America, since they still haven’t yet been reported as «news», even though they’ve now become history — history that’s suppressed in America.)
The Big Lies that pervade the U.S. ‘news’ media are the ones that are essential to sustain in order for the deceived American public to accept the fraudulent basis upon which the U.S. regime of Barack Obama has ‘justified’ his economic sanctions against Russia, and his pouring of U.S. troops and weapons onto and near Russia’s borders:
1: Calling the bloody U.S. coup that overthrew the democratically elected President of Ukraine in February 2014 instead a ‘democratic revolution’ against him, which established ‘democracy in Ukraine,’ instead of established adictatorship and a civil war there.
As even that scholarly source calling it a ‘democratic revolution’ acknowledged, this ‘democratic revolution’ «featured civic self-organization aided by the use of Internet-based social media, neighborhood initiatives, and online news sites,» and this online operation (directed mainly at neo-Nazis in Ukraine) fits precisely the «tech camps» that started inside the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine on 1 March 2013, after Google’s CEO Eric Schmidt and Google’s and the U.S. State Department’s Jared Cohen had deceived wikileaks’ founder Julian Assange into informing them, on 23 June 2011, how to foment massive public demonstrations online.
Schmidt asked Assange there: «One of the questions I have is how do you decide which ISPs [to use]…
JA: OK. That's a very good question.
ES: Yeah, it is a pretty complicated question.
JA: Yeah, so I will give you an example of how not to choose them. So we dealt with a case in the Cacos islands where there was a great little group called the TCI journal. The Turks and Cacos Islands Journal, which is sort of a best use case of the internet. So who are they? Well they are a bunch of legal reformers… People are going from… young people are going from apolitical to political. It is a very very interesting transition to see».
Assange even bragged to Schmidt and Cohen (who was very close to Cohen’s other boss Hillary Clinton) «Something I am certain about is that we changed the outcome of the Kenyan election in 2007». Assange, at that time, seems to have had no idea at all, that he was actually telling this to coup-plotters, instead of to democracy-champions.
Only in retrospect did Assange come to recognize that, as he headlined in October 2014, «Google Is Not What It Seems». That’s when he noted, «Jared Cohen could be wryly named Google’s 'director of regime change'».
This coup (called ’the Maidan revolution’ or «Euromaidan») started being organized inside the U.S. Embassy in Ukraine by no later than 1 March 2013, but wikipedia says instead: «Euromaidan started in the night of 21 November 2013 when up to 2,000 protesters gathered at Kiev's Maidan Nezalezhnosti and began to organize themselves with the help of social networks». (Nothing was mentioned there about the U.S. Embassy’s having organized them.)
The Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, and other sales-promotion operations for Lockheed Martin etc., blame the increased misery in Ukraine after the coup, on Ukrainians, such as: «Under attack from within and without, Ukraine cannot build a democratic future without Western support [from Western taxpayers, to fund those weapons-sales]. Both financial and security assistance are critical to the [new fascist Ukrainian] state’s survival. Yet there is one caveat: Ukraine’s friends should recall their experiences providing aid to other post-communist countries, and enforce strict conditionality, especially regarding control over powerful elites [such as those who actually worked with Obama’s coup], to ensure that their support achieves its desired aims. Constructing a new democracy in Ukraine will take extraordinary care and vigilance». In other words: ‘we’ tried our best; ’they’ failed. ‘We’ didn’t impose this bloody outcome on them; ‘they’ — America’s victims — did it to themselves.
This coup and its aftermath (ethnic cleansing to get rid of the people in the area of Ukraine that had voted 90 % for the man Obama overthrew) were the most-censored news story of 2014, and the U.S. ‘news’ media still don’t report any of it, because for them to report it truthfully would be for them to acknowledge what they’d been covering-up and lying about ever since the February 2014 coup — and they never report about their own cover-up operations.
2: Ignoring that the breakaway of Crimea from Ukraine, and that the 90+% vote of Crimeans, for Crimea to rejoin Russia (of which Crimea had been a part until the Soviet dictator transferred it to Ukraine in 1954), resulted directly from America’s violent overthrow of the Ukrainian President, for whom 75% of Crimeans had voted.
On 20 February 2014, at the very height of the bloody U.S. coup that ended democracy in Ukraine, the Obama Administration’s rabidly Russia-hating nazi-inspired thugs beat and brutally killed many Crimeans who were escaping from Kiev after having been peacefully demonstrating there against the U.S.-nazi overthrow-Yanukovych operation. This «Korsun massacre» is ignored in the ‘news’ accounts in America, but it played a key role in terrifying the Crimean population against the coup-installed regime and in motivating them to seek the protection of Russia by voting, on 16 March 2014, for Crimea to rejoin Russia.
3: Lying to say that a majority of Syrians want to replace Bashar al-Assad as Syria’s President, and to say that the Obama regime wants a democratic Syria and that the Russian government does not.
Of course, because the U.S. used to be predominantly a democracy, the myth of America’s still being a ‘democracy’ is considered acceptable to promulgate even today. However, not only was today’s U.S. government one of only three governments at the U.N. voting to oppose a resolution condemning nazism and denial of the Holocaust, but on at least two occasions the U.N. Secretary General Ban ki-Moon criticized the Obama Administration’s insistence that in the next Syrian Presidential election the Syrian people must be prohibited from being allowed to vote for Bashar al-Assad.
* * *
Most Americans still don’t know any of these facts, because the U.S. ‘news’ media refused to report these — and many other important — facts to them. Can such a country even possibly be an authentic democracy?
It’s no different than the lies that were stenographically reported as ‘truth’ about ‘Saddam’s WMD’, except that, this time, the lies can produce nuclear war with Russia.
- The Greater Depression – Part 2: "Cinderella Man"
Submitted by Jim Quinn via The Burning Platform blog,
In Part One of this article I made a fact based case that most Americans are experiencing an economic depression on par with the Great Depression of the 1930’s. In Part Two I will compare and contrast two very different men who raised the spirits of the common man during difficult economic times. As we approach the perilous portion of this Fourth Turning, it will take more than hope to get us through to the other side.
Cinderella Man
Likening Braddock to Trump might seem far-fetched, until you think about parallels between the economic conditions during the 1930’s and today, along with the deepening mood of crisis, despair and anger at the establishment. Braddock’s career coincided with the last Fourth Turning. James J. Braddock was born in 1905, to Irish immigrant parents Joseph Braddock and Elizabeth O’Toole Braddock in a tiny apartment on West 48th Street in New York City. His life personified that of a GI Generation hero. One of seven children, Jimmy enjoyed playing marbles, baseball and hanging around the old swimming hole on the edge of the Hudson River as a youngster. He discovered his passion for boxing as a teenager.
Braddock refined his skills as an amateur fighter and in 1926 entered the professional boxing circuit in the light heavyweight division. Braddock overwhelmed the competition, knocking out multiple opponents in the early rounds of most fights. As a top light heavyweight, he stood over six feet two inches, but seldom weighed over 180 pounds. But his powerful right hand was no match for opponents that weighed close to 220 pounds. His star was ascending. He earned a shot at the title in 1929. On the evening of July 18th 1929, Braddock entered the ring at Yankee Stadium to face Tommy Loughran for the coveted light heavyweight championship. Loghran avoided Braddock’s deadly right hand for 15 rounds and won by decision. Less than two months later the stock market crashed and the country plunged into the Great Depression.
As thousands of banks failed and unemployment swept over the land like a plague, Braddock, like so many other millions of Americans lost everything. He labored to win fights so he could put food on the table for his wife and three young children. His career hit the skids as he lost sixteen of twenty-two fights and shattered his right hand landing a punch. As his boxing career spiraled downward, like the economy, he ended up working on the docks as a longshoreman. When even that job couldn’t feed his family, Jim swallowed his pride, hung up his boxing gloves and filed for government relief to help support his family. The strength, spirit and tenacity that had made him a contender were drained from his demeanor. He became just another down on his luck palooka struggling to survive during the Great Depression.
Thanks to a last-minute cancellation by another boxer, Braddock’s longtime manager and friend, Joe Gould, offered him a chance to fill in for just one night and earn cash. The fight was against the number-two contender in the world, Corn Griffin, on the undercard of the heavyweight championship fight between Max Baer and Primo Carnera. Braddock stunned the boxing experts and fans with a third-round knockout of his formidable opponent. He believed that while his right hand was broken, he became more proficient with his left hand, improving his boxing ability. Over the next nine months he upset John Henry Lewis and Art Lasky to become an unlikely contender for the heavyweight title of the world.
Braddock remembered the humiliation of having to accept government relief money and paid it all back with the prize money he earned from his fights. He also made frequent donations to various Catholic Worker Houses, including feeding homeless guests with his family. He never forgot where he came from. He was one of the common men. When his rags to riches story got out, renowned sportswriter Damon Runyon dubbed him “The Cinderella Man“, and before long Braddock came to represent the hopes and aspirations of the American public struggling during the Great Depression. The year was 1935, with the majority of Americans still facing a bleak daily existence.
Max Baer, the heavyweight champion, had a reputation as a destructive puncher and possibly the hardest hitter of all time. He had killed a man in the ring in 1930. On the evening of June 13th 1935 at Madison Square Garden Braddock, an 8 to 1 underdog, entered the ring to face Baer. Jim knew he could beat Baer if he stayed away from his hammering right hand, and that’s just what he did. In an amazing feat of courage and determination, Braddock won the 15 round decision to become the new heavyweight champion of the world. It was considered one of the greatest upsets in boxing history. The “Cinderella Man” had fulfilled the dreams and hopes of the common people, giving them a reason to battle on through those tough times.
Damon Runyan described the event in newspapers across the country the next morning:
Coming into the ring on the short end of the unheard-of price of 8 to 1 with even money he does not come out for the tenth round, and with his chances so little regarded that the crowd does not half fill the “graveyard of champions,” Braddock fights from the opening bell with the desperation of a man leading a forlorn hope.
Brought back from Hasbeenville by the magic wave of the wand of sheer chance, after being such a down-and-outer that he had to go on relief in his home State of New Jersey at $24 per month to provide food for his wife and three children, James J. Braddock at 29 years of age suddenly finds himself occupying the pinnacle of the pugilistic heap, with an utterly new life before him.
At the close of the fight, while the fighters are awaiting the announcement of the decision, the crowd begins filing out, knowing beforehand what the verdict will be, and so ends the fistic fairy tale, as all fairy tales should end, with the poor abused hero finding his pumpkins of failure turned into prancing white steeds of glittering success and his feet incased in the glass slippers of happiness, if you can follow all this twisted metaphor.
Anyway, so ends the strange story of James J. Braddock “the Cinderella Man” of Fistiana. And you cannot match his story anywhere in the realm of the most fantastic fiction.
Braddock lost his heavyweight title two years later in an 8 round KO to “The Brown Bomber”, Joe Louis. He retired after a final win over Tommy Farr in 1938. The beacon of hope for millions had done his part to revive the spirits of a country in crisis. And in true GI Generation fashion, at the age of 37, Jim and his manager both enlisted in the U.S. Army in 1942 where they became 1st Lieutenants. Upon his return, he helped construct the Verrazano Bridge, raising his family, and living out his life as a business owner, happily married to his wife Mae until the day he died in 1974. He was the epitome of everything noble, good, honorable and proud about this country.
Trump – The Anti-Cinderella Man
It may seem like a reach to equate Donald Trump to James J. Braddock, but it really isn’t about the specific person. It’s about the mood of the country during tragically grim economic times and how average middle class (or former middle class) working Americans respond to the message and actions of celebrities they choose to follow or emulate.
Their life stories couldn’t be more divergent.
Braddock was born into poverty, had to work like a dog to gain a higher stature in life, always maintained a soft spoken humble nature, evoked sympathy and admiration for his rags to riches story, and ultimately inspired generations of Americans to experience a sense of redemption during the Great Depression through his boxing feats. Braddock was a man for his times.
Donald Trump was born into wealth. He was born on third base, thinking he hit a triple. His is a story of riches to greater riches. His real estate developer father left him $100 million and the family business. To his credit, he turned the $100 million into billions. He’s been a deal maker and risk taker his entire life. He’s had spectacular successes and miserable failures. He has an ego the size of the Empire State Building. There isn’t a humble bone in his body. He’s brash, boisterous and prone to making outrageous declarations. His personality is more on par with Muhammed Ali’s among boxing legends. His is not a Cinderella story like Braddock’s. He is the anti-Cinderella man. Over the last year he has become the great last hope of the downtrodden middle class, as they struggle through their very own Greater Depression.
This unlikely billionaire champion of the silent majority has defied all odds to become the Republican nominee for president, despite the scorn and ridicule of the GOP establishment, neo-cons, political pundits and both the right and left wing corporate media. He defeated more than a dozen GOP establishment lackeys who spent far more on their campaigns than he, with the largest primary vote tally in GOP history. Just as Braddock was considered washed up and a has been after losing sixteen of twenty two fights, Trump was considered a washed up reality TV parody of himself until he announced his intention to run for president. I, among millions of others, scoffed at him and thought it was nothing more than a publicity stunt to generate some new TV program.
The press scoffed at the comeback of Braddock after he was given a new lease on life. Every time he prepared to fight a supposedly more talented opponent the odds makers and “experts” in the media expected him to get knocked out. But no one ever knocked him out and he defied the odds to earn a shot at the heavyweight championship of the world. The GOP establishment had crowned Jeb Bush the champion of their party, but Trump KO’d him in the 2nd round. He methodically knocked out the rest of his opponents on the way to the coming heavyweight championship fight in November against the hand-picked heavyweight contender of the political establishment, Wall Street, the fallacious corporate media, the military industrial complex, and the rest of the Deep State apparatus.
Max Baer was a monster of a man and a killer in the ring. He looked down upon his opponent as out of his league. His smug know it all demeanor was evident to all. He was not loved by the common man. He was respected for his pugilistic talents, but he didn’t inspire the crowds to root for him. He brimmed with over-confidence and took his opponent lightly. He underestimated the amount of fight still left in Braddock. The “experts” all but guaranteed an overwhelming victory for Baer, likely a knockout in the 1st or 2nd round.
Hillary Clinton is the ultimate Washington establishment insider, with a reputation as a killer. She’s been hand-picked to continue the policies put in place by the establishment to benefit the establishment. She is loved by no one. She inspires adoration from no one. She can barely fill an auditorium without paying people to attend. She never mingles with the peasants. She collects hundreds of millions from her Hollywood elite friends, Wall Street titans, Soros, Buffett, the House of Saud and the rest of the billionaire oligarch class. She stays above the fray, letting her handlers set the agenda and telling her what to do and say. She sees blacks, Hispanics, and the working poor as voting blocs – not as real human beings deserving of respect.
Her thirst for power and control is sociopathic as she will stop at nothing to quench that thirst by being elevated to the throne of the presidency. And she’ll hit below the belt to achieve that victory. She openly despises and denigrates her opponent. She believes she is intellectually and morally superior to Trump and believed the political pundit “experts” who declared she would win in a landslide. Overconfidence, hubris and believing the press clippings from an overwhelmingly liberal media are coming home to roost with two months to go until the election.
In the Baer – Braddock fight of the century, Baer came out firing looking for the knockout punch in the early rounds. But Braddock took his best shots and kept plugging away. Hillary and her corner men have spent over $120 million on negatives ads to Trump’s $20 million in the early rounds. Her 10% post-convention lead has dwindled to zero as Trump has taken her best punches and is still standing. As the bout entered the middle rounds Braddock took control and Baer began to tire. Braddock dominated the late stages of the fight and won in a unanimous decision as the crowd went wild and average Americans around country glued to their radios reveled in jubilation as one of their own became champion.
As Hillary’s lies, deleted emails, selling influence through her crooked Clinton Foundation, smashing blackberries with hammers, and brain damage weigh her down, Trump keeps firing punches. Her stamina is in question. Other than CNN (Clinton News Network) and the rest of the Hillary cheerleading press, a large swath of the American people are questioning her honesty, competency, and health. The demoralized and subjugated silent majority are hopeful Trump can deliver them from a political establishment that threw them under the bus thirty years ago. We’ve entered the late rounds and Trump shows no signs of tiring or allowing Hillary to land any knockout blows.
The odds maker “experts” like Nate Silver (who was 90% sure Trump wouldn’t win the GOP nomination) still have Hillary winning in a landslide. The candidate of the ruling class, who pledges to maintain the status quo, is not the change agent of the masses. A victory by Hillary would be a victory for Wall Street, billionaire oligarchs, neo-con warmongers, propaganda media outlets, and corporate cronyism. A Trump victory would boost the morale of a middle class that has been abused, denigrated, belittled, ignored, and taken advantage of by the ruling class for decades. The hopes and dreams of millions are riding on a victory by the anti-Cinderella man. His popularity rides on a sea of rightful resentment, anger, and fury at how the average American has been screwed by the ruling class (both parties) for decades.
I have no illusions Donald Trump can single handedly reverse decades of bad policies, bad choices, bad government, bad politicians, and shamefully horrendous Federal Reserve monetary policies designed to impoverish millions through man made inflation and debt issuance. His election would be the upset of the century and spit in the eye of the establishment.
It would lift the spirits of disillusioned, angry Americans experiencing depressionary economic conditions who want to take this country back from the vested interests. James J. Braddock lifted the morale of a nation in the midst of a Great Depression, but he lost the championship two years later as the Great Depression eventually led to the bloodiest conflict in word history.
If Trump can win an upset victory in November, the initial surge of confidence and anticipation of game changing policy changes will shortly be replaced by the left hook of reality. Trump will likely be thwarted at every turn by the corrupt members of both parties. Debt will continue to pile up at a $1 trillion per year rate. Trump’s volatile nature will inflame passions both domestically and abroad.
His election would not change the nature of politics in Washington, but could be the push which brings this teetering welfare/warfare empire of debt crashing down. The destruction of the existing social order is the only chance for real change and Donald Trump is the only person who could trigger that change. His pugilistic demeanor may come in handy as our country confronts the final bloody stages of this Fourth Turning.
The climax year of the American Revolution happened in 1781. Almost like clockwork, the Civil War climax year of 1863 followed 82 years later. The Great Depression/World War II climax year of 1944 followed 81 years later. This would put the climax year of our current Fourth Turning around 2025, at the end of an eight year presidency of Clinton or Trump (both Prophet Generation leaders). The years leading toward the climax of a Fourth Turning have always been chaotic, dangerous and bloody. The core elements of debt, civic decay, and global disorder will accelerate the chain of events leading to the climax, whatever it may be.
No matter who is elected in November, the next eight years will try men’s souls and the outcome for our country could be glory or destruction. The technology exists to extinguish all life on the planet and human nature does not change. All it would take would be human malevolence, disastrous decision making by flawed leaders, and some bad luck to destroy the world. Who do you trust to lead during the most dangerous period of this Fourth Turning? Our choices do matter.
“Imagine some national (and probably global) volcanic eruption, initially flowing along channels of distress that were created during the Unraveling era and further widened by the catalyst. Trying to foresee where the eruption will go once it bursts free of the channels is like trying to predict the exact fault line of an earthquake. All you know in advance is something about the molten ingredients of the climax, which could include the following:
- Economic distress, with public debt in default, entitlement trust funds in bankruptcy, mounting poverty and unemployment, trade wars, collapsing financial markets, and hyperinflation (or deflation)
- Social distress, with violence fueled by class, race, nativism, or religion and abetted by armed gangs, underground militias, and mercenaries hired by walled communities
- Political distress, with institutional collapse, open tax revolts, one-party hegemony, major constitutional change, secessionism, authoritarianism, and altered national borders
- Military distress, with war against terrorists or foreign regimes equipped with weapons of mass destruction”
The Fourth Turning – Strauss & Howe
- One Trillion Euros Spent & This Is What Draghi Has To Show For It
It's been 16 months since the European Central Bank began its voyage into the unknowable in March 2015, and as The FT notes, this week marks a milestone – it has now purchased over EUR 1 trillion in government (and corporate) bonds since it began QE.
The ECB buys bonds through the eurozone’s national central banks and in line with a member state’s overall contribution to eurozone GDP.
Among its three largest economies, the ECB has snapped up a total of €238bn in German Bunds, €189bn in French paper, and €164bn in Italian bonds since last March.
Policymakers announced they would begin buying non-bank corporate debt earlier this year. Total ECB holdings of company bonds now stand at €20.5bn, with asset backed securities hitting €19.91bn.
The ECB will be meeting for its lateset monthly policy decision on Thursday and is poised to announce a six-month extension to its QE programme until September 2017.
According to estimates from Credit Agricole, the ECB will have hoovered up over half the eligible universe of government debt by the end of the year, forcing policymakers to tweak their QE rules in a bid to keep hitting its €80bn a month purchase target.
The trillion euro surge is driving the ECB's balance sheet up towards The Fed's…
The big problem is – it's not helping the real world…
But don't expect it to stop anytime soon. If the following utterly insane words from another ECB member show…
- *ECB'S NOWOTNY: MON POLICY PROVED `MORE POTENT' THAN THOUGHT
- *ECB'S NOWOTNY: EUROSYSTEM HAS SHOWN IT CAN ALWAYS DO MORE
That's just total bullshit…
Simply put – it's either pure propaganda-driven lies or the people pulling the strings are blinded by faith and aiming for the cognitively dissonant world record.
- Guest Post: Being A 'Famous Liberal Woman' Means… Never Having To Say You're Sorry
Authored by Kurt Schlicher, originally posted at Townhall.com,
Love means never having to say you’re sorry, and apparently so does being a famous liberal woman. In fact, being a famous liberal woman apparently means being exempt not only from basic social conventions but from actual laws whose breaking would result in lesser humans – meaning everyone who isn’t a famous liberal woman – being forced into a years-long journey involving the transformation of large rocks into many smaller rocks.
Being a famous liberal woman makes you special and I guess us peasants ought to just get used to it.
Re-entering our collective consciousness this week is famous liberal woman and scourge of Golden Corrals everywhere, Lena Dunham. She had faded from view for a blessed while after Hollywood realized that its inexplicable campaign to make her a superstar was cratering. She did not help it when she outed herself as history’s worst babysitter, nor when her HBO show became the only series in the history of cable television to lose ratings because of too much nudity.
But now she’s back, with her dead cow eyes and her utter conviction that the world is waiting for her to verbalize every single random thought that wanders through the vast, empty expanse of her noggin. In July she complained that the poster for that new Jason Bourne movie none of us saw showed a pistol. It would have been hilarious if she had whined about it in terms of slamming Matt Damon’s gun fascist hypocrisy, but no, it was more of an aesthetic complaint. She just doesn’t think we should see guns because she doesn’t like guns. Then she committed her own aesthetic crime, unleashing upon an unsuspecting world un-retouched shots of her modeling lingerie. Caution: These visual IEDs are unsafe for work and everywhere else. You’ve been warned.
But now she has gone beyond merely asserting her entitlement to decide for all of us what posters may depict and to redefine what is and is not attractive. Now she is demanding that black men adore her. Talking to Amy Schumer, another whiny Hollywood quarter-wit who puts the “over” in “over-rated,” Dunham said:
"I was sitting next to Odell Beckham Jr., and it was so amazing because it was like he looked at me and he determined I was not the shape of a woman by his standards. He was like, ‘That's a marshmallow. That's a child. That's a dog.’ It wasn't mean — he just seemed confused.
The vibe was very much like, 'Do I want to f*** it? Is it wearing a … yep, it's wearing a tuxedo. I'm going to go back to my cell phone.
It was like we were forced to be together, and he literally was scrolling Instagram rather than have to look at a woman in a bow tie. I was like, 'This should be called the Metropolitan Museum of Getting Rejected by Athletes.'"
Yes, Whitey McMayonaise was outraged that an African-American man somehow resisted her – the nerve of him, preferring to bury himself in his iPhone instead of fussing and cooing over her awesomeness! “I was not the shape of a woman by his standards…” How dare he have standards – if that catches on, Dunham and Schumer and the cast of the new Ghostbusters and the rest of the hard threes Hollywood seems intent on forcing down America’s throat are doomed.
Maybe, just maybe, Beckham looked over at her and saw an ugly person – not physically, but in terms of her sense of entitlement and narcissism. There’s a word for this whole sorry scene, and no Lena, it’s not “sexism” or even “fatism.” It’s more like “racism.” Imagine how the social justice warriors would go on the social justice warpath if some wealthy conservative jerk pulled a Margaret Dumontesque “Well, I never!” when a minority dared to reject her dubious charms. But hey, Lena’s a famous liberal woman and special rules apply.
Of course, it’s all fun and games with Lena Dunham, unless you’re her sister or that guy she falsely accused of sexually assaulting her.
But there’s another famous liberal woman who is ignoring the rules too, blatantly, openly, and without apology. And these are not mere social convention kind of rules. These are laws, the kind of laws where other people who break them go to jail. And these are laws involving the security of our country.
That famous liberal woman is, of course, Hillary Clinton.
Just the other day – you know, late afternoon on the Friday before Labor Day – the FBI released more documents and reports related to her email shenanigans. What they revealed was, of course, that a situation that was already terrible was actually about ten times more terrible than we ever imagined. Not only did the Woman Most Qualified Ever To Be President not know how classification works, and not only did the bar-failing, chronically sick crone forget pretty much everything she ever did or said or heard, but she also managed to lose about a dozen Blackberry phones that she used to transmit classified materials.
Now, for those of you who have not worked with classified material and the equipment that transmits it, let me share with you how it might go for someone who, say, was a military guy and not a famous liberal woman:
Hi Colonel. How’s it going? By the way, I think I misplaced about 13 of those communication devices we use for classified materials. Wacky me, right? I forget where. Maybe I left them out at the range, or maybe at the base Burger King. I was getting one of those Whopperritos – yum!
Say Colonel, you don’t look so good. You’re all ashen and sweaty. Did you accidentally click on those Lena Dunham lingerie photos? Are you hungry? Do you want a bite of my Whopperito?
Cue the lockdown of the base, the 24/7 search for the missing gear, and the MPs to come and haul away Lieutenant Schmuckarelli. Oh, but don’t worry about Hillary’s lost gear. Some of those missing phones were hit with hammers, which apparently Huma and Company believes magically erases electronic data, so I guess it’s all good.
Are you freaking kidding me? If it wasn’t a famous liberal woman the elite is dying to install as president, this person would be Cool Hand Lukeing it in Leavenworth until the year 2100.
But famous liberal women don’t have to play by the rules. They can be bizarrely racist and the trained seals of the media will happily clap their fins. They can commit clear, unequivocal crimes and the FBI will eagerly do on its reputation what a bear does in the woods to excuse her. Because, after all, unlike us peasants, famous liberal women are special.
- WTF Chart Of The Day: "Mother's Milk" Is Drying Up Fast
As the bottom-up EPS estimate declined during the first two months of the quarter, the value of the S&P 500 increased during this same time frame.
From June 30 through August 31, the value of the index increased by 3.4% (to 2170.95 from 2098.86). This quarter marked the 16th time in the past 20 quarters in which the bottom-up EPS estimate decreased during the first two months of the quarter while the value of the index increased during the first two months of the quarter.
The blended earnings decline for Q2 2016 is -3.2% (with 2 companies yet to report). The second quarter marked the first time the index has seen five consecutive quarters of year-over-year declines in earnings since Q3 2008 through Q3 2009.
But that doesn't matter… the drying up of the "mother's milk" of the stock market has become entirely irrelevant…
- Obama Tucks Tail, Officially Cancels Meeting With President Who Called Him "Son Of A Bitch"
*Update – Earlier we reported that Obama was considering cancelling his meeting scheduled for tomorrow with Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte after being called a "son of a bitch." Well, the cancellation is now official.
.@POTUS will no longer be meeting with Philippines President Duterte in Laos, White House says
— Jeff Mason (@jeffmason1) September 5, 2016
_____
After calling President Obama a "son of a bitch," both Philippine President Rodrigo Duterte and Obama have called into question whether a meeting between the two will go ahead as planned for tomorrow. Obama expressed doubts the two could have "constructive, productive conversations" while Duterte responded to questions on whether the meeting would go ahead as planned by simply saying "Maybe, if I feel good."
Last week the White House announced that Obama would meet with Duterte on Tuesday to discuss tensions in the South China Sea, among other issues. The meeting would be the first between the world leaders since Duterte took office in June. That said, Obama apparently now has questioned whether sitting down with someone who recently called him a "son of a bitch" would be "productive." In comments from the G-20 summit in China, Obama said that before having a meeting he likes to make sure "it's actually productive and we're getting something done." Per Reuters:
"Obviously the Filipino people are some of our closest friends and allies and the Philippines is a treaty ally of ours. But I always want to make sure that if I'm having a meeting that it's actually productive and we're getting something done."
"I'm going to make an assessment … What is certainly true is that the issues of how we approach fighting crime and drug trafficking is a serious one for all of us, and we've got to do it the right way."
For his part, Duterte has made clear that he will not be lectured by Obama about the war on drugs in the Philippines, noting "it is rude." Despite objections from the Obama administration, Duterte has vowed to continue his brutal crackdown on drug manufacturers that has already led to the deaths of about 2,400 people since he became president two months ago.
"Plenty will be killed until the last pusher is out of the streets. Until the (last) drug manufacturer is killed we will continue."
"I am a president of a sovereign state and we have long ceased to be a colony."
"Who is he to confront me? As a matter of fact, America has one too many to answer for. Everybody has a terrible record of extrajudicial killings."
Of course, we can understand the conflict between the two. Duterte's war on drugs comes just as President Obama (aka the "Cummuter-in-Chief") rushes to commute the sentences of 100's of convicted felons serving time for drug-related offenses in the U.S.. Per Pardon Power, Obama has already commuted more sentences in a single year than any president since at least 1885 and he still has several months left. Call it a fundamental difference on opinion on how to fight the war on drugs.
- Investors Are Sticking With Pavlov's Dog Until Everything Breaks
Remember when “bad news is good news” first leapt into common parlance? At first it was used as a way to describe the reaction function of Fed policy-makers. It was taken as a cute turn of phrase in encapsulating the state the of the world. Over time, as Bloomberg's Richard Breslow explains, it’s morphed into an ugly and cynical way of justifying mindless investing behavior.
Central banks that cultivated and encouraged irrational exuberance as their main transmission mechanism of monetary policy are now hopelessly caught in its infinite loop. Seemingly feeling the need to continue doing more of the same, no matter the efficacy.
Too many investors now believe, or hope, there will be no policy reversal for the balance of their careers. They explain the world in terms that justify the status quo. It’s become their world view and they’re sticking with it and hope to get out of town before the market gets trickier.
It’s a sad commentary, that the term was actually coined by two psychologists in the 1990s studying faults in human decision-making.
After last Friday’s non-farm payroll report, analyst’s joyfully leapt to the hasty conclusion that it was sure to once again derail a hapless FOMC. No one dare seriously consider September as a legitimate possibility. No discussion of probabilities. The answer is no. Happy days.
Wait for it. Wait for it. There they were. Banner headlines celebrating, “Jobs data saves the day,” “SPX surges on payrolls.”
And the good feelings have carried through the weekend with “Asian stocks rally most in eight weeks on weak U.S. jobs data.” Ignore bond yields, what do they know, anyway?
Departing India RBI Governor Raghuram Rajan reminded us over the weekend that low global interest rates risk distorting markets and are very hard to abandon. That countries become “trapped” by the fear that rate rises could harm growth.
He was not arguing that, therefore, any excuse not to raise rates should be sought. Quite the contrary. Nor was Fed Chair Yellen when she said the case for higher interest rates had strengthened.
Forward guidance may be lower for longer, but it most certainly has moved away from nothing for as far as the eye can see. And Kahneman and Tversky would have pointed out that Behavioral Economics isn’t the study of the Pavlovian Response.
- Trump Slams Yellen: The Fed Has Created A "Stock Bubble" And "A False Economy" To Boost Obama
One month ago, Donald Trump urged his followers to sell stocks, warning of “very scary scenarios” for investors, and accused the Fed of setting the stage for the next market crash when he said that “interest rates are artificially low” during a phone interview with Fox Business. “The only reason the stock market is where it is is because you get free money.”
Earlier today, speaking to a reporter traveling on his plane who asked Trump about a potential rate hike by the Fed in September, Trump took his vendetta to the next level, saying that the Fed is “keeping the rates artificially low so the economy doesn’t go down so that Obama can say that he did a good job. They’re keeping the rates artificially low so that Obama can go out and play golf in January and say that he did a good job. It’s a very false economy. We have a bad economy, everybody understands that but it’s a false economy. The only reason the rates are low is so that he can leave office and he can say, ‘See I told you.'”
He then lashed out at Yellen, whom he accused of having a political mandate when conducting monetary policy: “So far, I think she’s done a political job. You understand that.”
On whether we can have a rate hike in September: “Well, the only thing that’s strong is the artificial stock market. That’s only strong because it’s free money because the rates are so low. It’s an artificial market. It’s a bubble. So the only thing that’s strong is the artificial market that they’re created until January. It’s so artificial because they have free money… It’s all free money. When rates are low like this it’s hard not to have a good stock market.“
His conclusion: “At some point the rates are going to have to change.”
Indeed they will, and that’s precisely what almost every bank, from Goldman yesterday to Citi today, and many others inbetween, have been warning about in recent months.
Until recently, Trump’s latest anti-Fed outburst would have been swept under the rug as just another example of the deranged ramblings of an anti-Fed conspiracy theorist (trust us, we’ve been there). However, considering the spike in anti-Fed commentary in recent weeks coming from prominent, and established institutional sellside analysts all the way to the WSJ, it may be that Trump was once again simply saying what everyone else thought but dared not mention.
- Son Of China's "Grand General" Reveals Reason Behind China's Capital Flight"
Over the past year, two recurring China-related themes have generated substantial media attention: the first is what we dubbed in early March, China’s wave of bizarro M&A, or what passed for “China’s most innovative capital outflow yet.” As we explained then, in China’s relentless eagerness to transfer funds and capital abroad (and thus, away from the domestic banking system which locals are well aware just how precarious it is), numerous Chinese corporations were engaged in seemingly idiotic deals with zero cost-discrimination, just so they had a legal basis to funnel cash abroad.
- Take Zoomlion, a lossmaking Chinese machinery company that is partially state-owned: its total debt stands at 83 times its EBITDA.
- Or how about Fosun, a serial Chinese acquirer that spent $6.5bn on stakes in 18 overseas companies during a six-month period last year, had a a 55.7x total debt/EBITDA in June 2015. “Fosun has bought brand names such as Club Med and Cirque du Soleil as well as a host of other assets including the German private bank Hauck & Aufhaeser.”
- Or maybe the highly publicized purchase of China Cosco Holdings of the Greek Piraeus Port Authority for €368.5m. Cosco has promised to invest €500m in the Greek port despite having total debt at 41.5x its EBITDA!
- Or Cofco Corporation, which recently reached an agreement with Noble Group under which its subsidiary, Cofco International, would acquire a stake in Noble Agri for $750m (in the process preventing the insolvency of the biggest Asian commodities trader), has total debt equivalent to 52 times its EBITDA!
- Or how about Bright Food, which bought the breakfast group Weetabix for $1.2bn last year, and has total debt at 24 times EBITDA!
Which brings us to theme number two: when it comes to offshore M&A activity, nobody had come anywhere close to one of China’s biggest conglomerates, Anbang Insurance Group. The relatively obscure Anbang is best known for two things: being the company which tried to buy Starwood Hotels, and pulled out in the last moment without providing a reason (as it turned out, it could not provide a legitimate source of funds). The other reason behind Anbang’s fascination is because so very little is known about it.
Actually, that is not exactly true: over the last few months, there have been several insightful exposes on the mysterious sources of cash behind Anbang’s quiet facade, the latest such report coming from the NYT which last week posted a must-read two piece report on the conglomerate (we urge readers to skim both “Behind China’s Anbang: Empty Offices and Obscure Names” and “A Chinese Mystery: Who Owns a Firm on a Global Shopping Spree?”).
However, what especially attracted our attention was not so much the narrative of Anbang’s cash provenance, but a tangent explaining why China’s upper echelons are all so eager to quietly transfer their local funds and park them abroad, whether in Vancouver housing, in US corporations, or any of the other “8 Things The Chinese Are Scrambling To Buy In America.” It was the following:
Luo Yu, the son of a former chief of staff of China’s military, said China’s most politically powerful families had been transferring money out of the country for some time.
“They don’t believe they will hold on to power long enough — sooner or later they would collapse,” said Mr. Luo, a former colonel in the Chinese Army whose younger brother was a business partner with one of Anbang’s founders. “So they transfer their money.”
As a recent VOA interview with Luo Yu explains, he “has a special status. He is a princeling who knew Xi Jinping personally. His father was Luo Ruiqing, one of the ten Grand Generals (ranking lower than ten Marshalls but higher than other Generals) that China conferred in 1955, after the Chinese Communist Party (CCP) took over in China.”
Luo Yu, son of revolutionary Chinese at an interview with Epoch Times and NTD TVTo be sure, If anyone is aware of the thinking behind the scenes of China’s grand capital flight, especially among China’s top power echelons, Yu is likely one of them. Which is disturbing, because what he told the NYT is that it is only a matter of time before China does what it tends to do every so often: have a revolution, and as such the oligarchs of the current regime are urgently moving their cash away from the mainland.
And while they are able to circumvent with ease the traditional capital controls like China’s limit of $50,000 in outbound cash, the bigger concern is that the broader population, which holds tens of trillions in deposits in China’s banking system will likewise do the same, leading to the worst case scenario for China’s banking system: a bank run.
Finally, if the surge in capital outflows over the past year has been any indication, and if Yu is correct, the “collapse” which China’s rich and powerful families are preparing for, appears to be getting perilously close.
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