- Gold Spikes To Record High In Euros As Geopolitical Risk Rises
Gold Spikes To Record High In Euros As Geopolitical Risk Rises
Gold (priced in USDollars) spiked dramatically overnight, pushing towards seven-year highs as tensions in the Middle East escalated. Then, once Trump and Zarif had tweeted de-escalations, gold (in USDollars) fell back to unchanged…
Spot Gold surged above $1600 overnight – its highest since March 2013…
Source: Bloomberg
And while gold is off the overnight highs, The Economist notes that the yellow metal has already been on a long rally.
“Nobody really understands gold prices, and I don’t pretend to understand them either,” Ben Bernanke, then chairman of the Federal Reserve, told America’s Senate Banking Committee in 2013, after a turbulent few months in the market for the metal (it hit its all-time peak in 2011, at the height of the euro-zone crisis and following a downgrade of America’s credit rating).
Yet it is not difficult to understand why the price of gold hit its highest level since early that year – $1,610 per ounce – on January 8th.
The jump to a near-seven-year high followed the drone strike that killed Qassem Suleimani, leader of the Quds Force of Iran’s Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps, three days earlier.
Investors typically seek sanctuary in gold when geopolitical risk soars.
The rise of 2.85% over two trading days is similar to those after other Middle Eastern flare-ups. (The killing of General Suleimani also caused oil prices to leap: Brent crude rose by 5%, briefly topping $70 a barrel for the first time since May.)
In fact, the price of gold (in USDollars) has been rising for a while, climbing by more than 25% since November 2018. The effect of General Suleimani’s death, at least so far, is just an additional upward tick. In fact, in Euros, the price of gold has never been higher…
Source: Bloomberg
John Pierpont Morgan, eponymous founder of America’s biggest investment bank, seems to have foreseen this, quipping that “gold is money, everything else is credit”.
Gold is also at 40 year highs in Yen…
Source: Bloomberg
And, in case you are unable to see the difference between judging the USDollar against its ‘fiat’ friends and a hard asset, the following chart should help…
Source: Bloomberg
And when the return for providing credit is close to zero, it is little surprise that investors want their money in gold.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/09/2020 – 01:00 - New Cambridge Analytica Leaks Reveal Psychological Manipulation Of Global Population
New Cambridge Analytica Leaks Reveal Psychological Manipulation Of Global Population
Authored by Derrick Broze via The Mind Unleashed,
On New Year’s Day 2020, Twitter account @HindsightFiles began posting documents from data firm Cambridge Analytica (CA) which expose the extensive infrastructure used to manipulate voters on a global scale.
More than 100,000 documents are said to be released in the coming months, revealing Cambridge Analytica’s activity in a shocking 68 countries, including elections in Malaysia, Kenya, and Brazil. The Guardian reported that the documents come from Brittany Kaiser, a former employee of Cambridge Analytica who turned whistleblower and star of the documentary The Great Hack.
Kaiser told the Guardian:
I’m very fearful about what is going to happen in the U.S. election later this year, and I think one of the few ways of protecting ourselves is to get as much information out there as possible.
The latest CA whistleblower has said the dumps will contain previously unreleased emails, project plans, case studies, and negotiations. The HindsightFiles twitter account has posted data on the relationship between Cambridge Analytica and John Bolton, former National Security Adviser to the Trump administration. In 2013, the John Bolton Super PAC paid Cambridge Analytica $650,000 for voter data analysis and digital video ad targeting.
The documents provide more details on that relationship, including using psychographics to play on voters hopes and fears. Psychographics is a methodology which focuses on consumers psychological attributes. Research firms attempt to develop a psychographic profile on various segments of the population by studying personality, opinions, interests, attitudes, values, and behaviors.
Known for aggressive foreign policy decisions leading to the #IraqWar, he had 3 goals w/#CambridgeAnalytica
– increase awareness of @AmbJohnBolton
– convince people that National Security is most important
– support @SenThomTillis vs Kay Hagan in #NorthCarolina #Hindsightis2020 pic.twitter.com/N82kvNkoWO— Hindsight is 2020 (@HindsightFiles) January 3, 2020
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Ads paid for by @AmbJohnBolton were psychographically targeted meaning they tapped into voter psyche via data collection. The ads used research on voter hopes + fears. Fear was a favorite tactic. This ad went to the category #NEUROTIC #Hindsightis2020https://t.co/IN2FpWYDge pic.twitter.com/dEnTNqsxK7
— Hindsight is 2020 (@HindsightFiles) January 3, 2020
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Cambridge Analytica first made headlines following the 2016 Presidential election after it was revealed the company had gained access to 87 million Facebook profiles. Whistleblower Christopher Wylie exposed how he helped set up CA and obtain the data of millions of Americans. This is when the public began to understand the scope of Cambridge Analytica’s operations.
In 2015, the UK-based political consulting firm, worked on behalf of Ted Cruz’s campaign to help him win the 2016 Republican nomination. Cambridge Analytica was also involved in campaigns to promote Brexit, as well as promoting the 2016 Trump Presidential campaign. Donald Trump would eventually hire Steven Bannon as the chief strategist for his White House. Bannon previously served as CA’s vice president and was the executive chairman of Breitbart News.
It was through Bannon that whistleblower Christopher Wylie and CA CEO Alexander Nix came to know billionaire Robert Mercer. Bannon arranged for Mercer to invest five million dollars into the creation of Cambridge Analytica. Mercer wanted to work with the group to influence the U.S. elections. When the public became aware of the manipulation by CA, Bannon denied having any knowledge of the scheme. Wylie, however, said Cambridge Analytica was Bannon’s “psychological warfare mindfuck.”
Cambridge Analyitca itself is a web of shadowy companies invested in behavioral researching and influencing mass behavior. Cambridge was born out of the Strategic Communications Laboratories (SCL), founded by Nigel Oakes and Alexander Nix. SCL claimed to have an expertise in Psychological Operations, and worked as part of military and political operations around the world. An article by the Register noted that SCL provided training to 15 (UK) Psychological Operations Group and had access to secret information.
The Great Hack documentary details how SCL started out as a military contractor called SCL Defense before shifting to using their data to influence elections. According to the New Yorker, SCL was born out of another organization created by Oakes, the Behavioral Dynamics Institute (BDI). Oakes told Marketing in a 1992 interview:
“We use the same techniques as Aristotle and Hitler. We appeal to people on an emotional level to get them to agree on a functional level.”
Although Cambridge Analytica has officially shut down, company executives set up a new company in 2017 called Emerdata Limited. It was also reported that SCL executives joined Emerdata, including Rebekah Mercer, daughter of billionaire Robert Mercer. The Mercer family have been consistent supporters of President Donald Trump.
The latest leaks from Cambridge Analytica seem poised to expose more lurid details of the inner workings of the disturbing relationship between big data and political operatives. Both the history of the company and its executives are a clear example of the growing trend of politicians seeking to use data gathered by social media companies to better understand and manipulate the minds of potential voters. Stay tuned to the Mind Unleashed for updates on this developing story.
* * *
Alt-Market’s Brandon Smith suggests that data mining through social media is more useful for identifying current and future trends than it is for manipulating large groups of people to vote a certain way.
When the globalists control both candidates in an election, they don’t necessarily need to manipulate the vote.
That said, I have long argued that the globalists NEEDED Donald Trump in particular to gain wide public support in 2016, because his job was to co-opt the conservative threat to the globalist agenda and derail it. The Trump campaign was tailor made to appeal to the growing influence of the liberty movement among conservative groups in the US. He used all the right key words and phrases, and composed a list of policies that would immediately strike a chord in voters. Once in office, he pulled a 180 on almost every promise he made during his campaign. Generally, in voting most people already have a set of principles they stand by and are unlikely to change them because of targeted ads, but the globalists could use data to CREATE a candidate that more effectively appeals to a group.
By exploiting individual web data, the elites might also be able to sway a certain smaller percentage of a vote one way or the other. Even just 5%-10% of a vote could determine the outcome of an election. The bottom line?
Elections are meaningless. Changes to government are never achieved through voting. It’s time for people to finally accept this fact and start implementing other measures.
To learn more about Psychographics watch this report from The Corbett Report.
Tyler Durden
Thu, 01/09/2020 – 00:05 - City Begs Homeless To Use Shelters By Offering To Clear Infractions
City Begs Homeless To Use Shelters By Offering To Clear Infractions
Homeless people in San Diego hate the city’s shelters so much that city officials have resorted to bribing them by offering to clear outstanding infractions if they agree to stay in one of the city’s large, tented bridge shelters for 30 days, according to the San Diego Union Tribune.
In this file photo from November, Alpha Project worker Sylvia Saliman sweeps up in the bridge shelter at 17th Street and Imperial Avenue in San Diego. (Nancee E. Lewis) According to San Diego police Captain Scott Wahl, the program would allow those who face ticketing or arrest to stabilize their lives and connect with vital social services, while police officers will have fewer issues to deal with.
“I feel like we’ve started this division because we wanted to be a positive impact on ending homelessness,” said Wahl, referring to the department’s neighborhood policing division which was created in 2018, and includes homeless out reach teams and officers tasked with enforcing quality-of-life laws.
“We’re all trying to do our part in ending homelessness, and we want to do it in a way that’s compassionate, but also has accountability,” added Wahl.
The incentive is a revision to a similar effort that began in July. Police officers last summer began offering shelter beds in lieu of citations to homeless people who had been contacted for encroachment, illegal lodging, littering or other minor quality-of-life infractions.
Wahl said about 300 people took the offer, but there was a problem.
“We noticed that 67 percent of people blew out the back door on the very first day,” he said about people who took the offer to avoid citations but had no intention of staying sheltered. “They’re circumventing the criminal justice system intentionally.”
The revised approach still offers shelter beds in lieu of citations, but the tickets aren’t torn up quite so soon. If somebody leaves the shelter before 30 days, the citation will be enforced. -San Diego Union Tribune
“They can still go outside,” said Wahl, adding “It’s not jail. They’re still free to come and go, but they have to be in at night.”
And while the first program that didn’t require a 30 day stay had a 67% rate of success, so far 46% of those who accepted the shelter deal are staying.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 23:45 - The Deeper Story Behind The Assassination Of Soleimani
The Deeper Story Behind The Assassination Of Soleimani
Authored by Federico Pieraccini via The Strategic Culture Foundation,
Days after the assassination of General Qasem Soleimani, new and important information is coming to light from a speech given by the Iraqi prime minister. The story behind Soleimani’s assassination seems to go much deeper than what has thus far been reported, involving Saudi Arabia and China as well the US dollar’s role as the global reserve currency.
The Iraqi prime minister, Adil Abdul-Mahdi, has revealed details of his interactions with Trump in the weeks leading up to Soleimani’s assassination in a speech to the Iraqi parliament. He tried to explain several times on live television how Washington had been browbeating him and other Iraqi members of parliament to toe the American line, even threatening to engage in false-flag sniper shootings of both protesters and security personnel in order to inflame the situation, recalling similar modi operandi seen in Cairo in 2009, Libya in 2011, and Maidan in 2014. The purpose of such cynicism was to throw Iraq into chaos.
Here is the reconstruction of the story:
[Speaker of the Council of Representatives of Iraq] Halbousi attended the parliamentary session while almost none of the Sunni members did. This was because the Americans had learned that Abdul-Mehdi was planning to reveal sensitive secrets in the session and sent Halbousi to prevent this. Halbousi cut Abdul-Mehdi off at the commencement of his speech and then asked for the live airing of the session to be stopped. After this, Halbousi together with other members, sat next to Abdul-Mehdi, speaking openly with him but without it being recorded. This is what was discussed in that session that was not broadcast:
Abdul-Mehdi spoke angrily about how the Americans had ruined the country and now refused to complete infrastructure and electricity grid projects unless they were promised 50% of oil revenues, which Abdul-Mehdi refused.
The complete (translated) words of Abdul-Mahdi’s speech to parliament:
This is why I visited China and signed an important agreement with them to undertake the construction instead. Upon my return, Trump called me to ask me to reject this agreement. When I refused, he threatened to unleash huge demonstrations against me that would end my premiership.
Huge demonstrations against me duly materialized and Trump called again to threaten that if I did not comply with his demands, then he would have Marine snipers on tall buildings target protesters and security personnel alike in order to pressure me.
I refused again and handed in my resignation. To this day the Americans insist on us rescinding our deal with the Chinese.
After this, when our Minister of Defense publicly stated that a third party was targeting both protestors and security personnel alike (just as Trump had threatened he would do), I received a new call from Trump threatening to kill both me and the Minister of Defense if we kept on talking about this “third party”.
Nobody imagined that the threat was to be applied to General Soleimani, but it was difficult for Prime Minister Adil Abdul-Mahdi to reveal the weekslong backstory behind the terrorist attack.
I was supposed to meet him [Soleimani] later in the morning when he was killed. He came to deliver a message from Iran in response to the message we had delivered to the Iranians from the Saudis.
We can surmise, judging by Saudi Arabia’s reaction, that some kind of negotiation was going on between Tehran and Riyadh:
The Kingdom’s statement regarding the events in Iraq stresses the Kingdom’s view of the importance of de-escalation to save the countries of the region and their people from the risks of any escalation.
Above all, the Saudi Royal family wanted to let people know immediately that they had not been informed of the US operation:
The kingdom of Saudi Arabia was not consulted regarding the US strike. In light of the rapid developments, the Kingdom stresses the importance of exercising restraint to guard against all acts that may lead to escalation, with severe consequences.
And to emphasize his reluctance for war, Mohammad bin Salman sent a delegation to the United States. Liz Sly, the Washington Post Beirut bureau chief, tweated:
Saudi Arabia is sending a delegation to Washington to urge restraint with Iran on behalf of [Persian] Gulf states. The message will be: ‘Please spare us the pain of going through another war’.
What clearly emerges is that the success of the operation against Soleimani had nothing to do with the intelligence gathering of the US or Israel. It was known to all and sundry that Soleimani was heading to Baghdad in a diplomatic capacity that acknowledged Iraq’s efforts to mediate a solution to the regional crisis with Saudi Arabia.
It would seem that the Saudis, Iranians and Iraqis were well on the way towards averting a regional conflict involving Syria, Iraq and Yemen. Riyadh’s reaction to the American strike evinced no public joy or celebration. Qatar, while not seeing eye to eye with Riyadh on many issues, also immediately expressed solidarity with Tehran, hosting a meeting at a senior government level with Mohammad Zarif Jarif, the Iranian foreign minister. Even Turkey and Egypt, when commenting on the asassination, employed moderating language.
This could reflect a fear of being on the receiving end of Iran’s retaliation. Qatar, the country from which the drone that killed Soleimani took off, is only a stone’s throw away from Iran, situated on the other side of the Strait of Hormuz. Riyadh and Tel Aviv, Tehran’s regional enemies, both know that a military conflict with Iran would mean the end of the Saudi royal family.
When the words of the Iraqi prime minister are linked back to the geopolitical and energy agreements in the region, then the worrying picture starts to emerge of a desperate US lashing out at a world turning its back on a unipolar world order in favor of the emerging multipolar about which I have long written.
The US, now considering itself a net energy exporter as a result of the shale-oil revolution (on which the jury is still out), no longer needs to import oil from the Middle East. However, this does not mean that oil can now be traded in any other currency other than the US dollar.
The petrodollar is what ensures that the US dollar retains its status as the global reserve currency, granting the US a monopolistic position from which it derives enormous benefits from playing the role of regional hegemon.
This privileged position of holding the global reserve currency also ensures that the US can easily fund its war machine by virtue of the fact that much of the world is obliged to buy its treasury bonds that it is simply able to conjure out of thin air. To threaten this comfortable arrangement is to threaten Washington’s global power.
Even so, the geopolitical and economic trend is inexorably towards a multipolar world order, with China increasingly playing a leading role, especially in the Middle East and South America.
Venezuela, Russia, Iran, Iraq, Qatar and Saudi Arabia together make up the overwhelming majority of oil and gas reserves in the world. The first three have an elevated relationship with Beijing and are very much in the multipolar camp, something that China and Russia are keen to further consolidate in order to ensure the future growth for the Eurasian supercontinent without war and conflict.
Saudi Arabia, on the other hand, is pro-US but could gravitate towards the Sino-Russian camp both militarily and in terms of energy. The same process is going on with Iraq and Qatar thanks to Washington’s numerous strategic errors in the region starting from Iraq in 2003, Libya in 2011 and Syria and Yemen in recent years.
The agreement between Iraq and China is a prime example of how Beijing intends to use the Iraq-Iran-Syria troika to revive the Middle East and and link it to the Chinese Belt and Road Initiative.
While Doha and Riyadh would be the first to suffer economically from such an agreement, Beijing’s economic power is such that, with its win-win approach, there is room for everyone.
Saudi Arabia provides China with most of its oil and Qatar, together with the Russian Federation, supply China with most of its LNG needs, which lines up with Xi Jinping’s 2030 vision that aims to greatly reduce polluting emissions.
The US is absent in this picture, with little ability to influence events or offer any appealing economic alternatives.
Washington would like to prevent any Eurasian integration by unleashing chaos and destruction in the region, and killing Soleimani served this purpose. The US cannot contemplate the idea of the dollar losing its status as the global reserve currency. Trump is engaging in a desperate gamble that could have disastrous consequences.
The region, in a worst-case scenario, could be engulfed in a devastating war involving multiple countries. Oil refineries could be destroyed all across the region, a quarter of the world’s oil transit could be blocked, oil prices would skyrocket ($200-$300 a barrel) and dozens of countries would be plunged into a global financial crisis. The blame would be laid squarely at Trump’s feet, ending his chances for re-election.
To try and keep everyone in line, Washington is left to resort to terrorism, lies and unspecified threats of visiting destruction on friends and enemies alike.
Trump has evidently been convinced by someone that the US can do without the Middle East, that it can do without allies in the region, and that nobody would ever dare to sell oil in any other currency than the US dollar.
Soleimani’s death is the result of a convergence of US and Israeli interests. With no other way of halting Eurasian integration, Washington can only throw the region into chaos by targeting countries like Iran, Iraq and Syria that are central to the Eurasian project. While Israel has never had the ability or audacity to carry out such an assassination itself, the importance of the Israel Lobby to Trump’s electoral success would have influenced his decision, all the more so in an election year .
Trump believed his drone attack could solve all his problems by frightening his opponents, winning the support of his voters (by equating Soleimani’s assassination to Osama bin Laden’s), and sending a warning to Arab countries of the dangers of deepening their ties with China.
The assassination of Soleimani is the US lashing out at its steady loss of influence in the region. The Iraqi attempt to mediate a lasting peace between Iran and Saudi Arabia has been scuppered by the US and Israel’s determination to prevent peace in the region and instead increase chaos and instability.
Washington has not achieved its hegemonic status through a preference for diplomacy and calm dialogue, and Trump has no intention of departing from this approach.
Washington’s friends and enemies alike must acknowledge this reality and implement the countermeasures necessary to contain the madness.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 23:25 - Baltic Dry Plunges Most Since 2008 As Tariff-Frontrunning Ends
Baltic Dry Plunges Most Since 2008 As Tariff-Frontrunning Ends
The Baltic Exchange’s main sea freight index fell for the 20th consecutive session to an eight-month low (the longest streak of losses since Nov 2015) as world trade continues to slump amid signs the so-called “front-loading” effect ahead of tariff deadlines has ended.
The Baltic Dry Index, which tracks rates for capesize, panamax and supramax vessels that ferry dry bulk commodities across the world, plunged 2.3%, or about 18 points, to 773 on Wednesday (according to Refinitiv data), the lowest level since April 2019:
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The capesize index .BACI fell 74 points, or 5.8%, to 1,197 – its lowest since May 8. Average daily earnings for capesizes, which typically transport 170,000-180,000 tonne cargoes including iron ore and coal, decreased $2 to $9,020.
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The panamax index .BPNI declined 42 points, or 5%, to 803 points, its lowest since Feb. 27.
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Average daily earnings for panamaxes, which usually carry coal or grain cargoes of about 60,000 tonnes to 70,000 tonnes, dipped $386 to $7,223.
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The supramax index .BSIS fell 18 points to 593.
Beleggers Belangen analyst Karel Mercx tweeted that “the Baltic Dry Index is the most important indicator for the rates of bulk shipping. The rate is determined based on the rates that are paid to transport raw materials on the 25 busiest shipping routes. Prices are falling sharply due to the cooling global economy.”
The Baltic Dry Index is the most important indicator for the rates of bulk shipping.The rate is determined based on the rates that are paid to transport raw materials on the 25 busiest shipping routes. Prices are falling sharply due to the cooling global economy. pic.twitter.com/lCQ0KUFY4H
— Karel Mercx (@KarelMercx) January 8, 2020
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With the index already tumbling the most since 2008, it may suggest the global economy is, in fact, continuing to decelerate.
The chart below makes clear that the spike in shipping rates was a one-off event spurred by importers front-running tariffs in 2019, now that is over, shipping rates are plunging as a manufacturing recession in the US deepens.
And while shipping demand tends to be an economic bellwether of the global economy, it seems that semiconductors have priced in a recovery that might be fantasy.
Plunging shipping rates suggests the global economy continues to decelerate, not accelerate like everyone is hoping.
The question is, what shocks people back into the view the macroeconomic headwinds counting to mount? Is it heighten geopolitical tensions in the Middle East?
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 23:05 -
- Come Home, America: Stop Policing The Globe And Put An End To Wars-Without-End
Come Home, America: Stop Policing The Globe And Put An End To Wars-Without-End
Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,
“Let us resolve that never again will we send the precious young blood of this country to die trying to prop up a corrupt military dictatorship abroad. This is also the time to turn away from excessive preoccupation overseas to the rebuilding of our own nation. America must be restored to a proper role in the world. But we can do that only through the recovery of confidence in ourselves…. together we will call America home to the ideals that nourished us from the beginning. From secrecy and deception in high places; come home, America. From military spending so wasteful that it weakens our nation; come home, America.”
– George S. McGovern, former Senator and presidential candidate
I agree wholeheartedly with George S. McGovern, a former Senator and presidential candidate who opposed the Vietnam War, about one thing: I’m sick of old men dreaming up wars for young men to die in.
It’s time to bring our troops home.
Bring them home from Somalia, Afghanistan, Iraq and Syria. Bring them home from Germany, South Korea and Japan. Bring them home from Saudi Arabia, Jordan and Oman. Bring them home from Niger, Chad and Mali. Bring them home from Turkey, the Philippines, and northern Australia.
That’s not what’s going to happen, of course.
The U.S. military reportedly has more than 1.3 million men and women on active duty, with more than 200,000 of them stationed overseas in nearly every country in the world. Those numbers are likely significantly higher in keeping with the Pentagon’s policy of not fully disclosing where and how many troops are deployed for the sake of “operational security and denying the enemy any advantage.” As investigative journalist David Vine explains, “Although few Americans realize it, the United States likely has more bases in foreign lands than any other people, nation, or empire in history.”
Don’t fall for the propaganda, though: America’s military forces aren’t being deployed abroad to protect our freedoms here at home. Rather, they’re being used to guard oil fields, build foreign infrastructure and protect the financial interests of the corporate elite. In fact, the United States military spends about $81 billion a year just to protect oil supplies around the world.
The reach of America’s military empire includes close to 800 bases in as many as 160 countries, operated at a cost of more than $156 billion annually. As Vine reports, “Even US military resorts and recreation areas in places like the Bavarian Alps and Seoul, South Korea, are bases of a kind. Worldwide, the military runs more than 170 golf courses.”
This is how a military empire occupies the globe.
Already, American military servicepeople are being deployed to far-flung places in the Middle East and elsewhere in anticipation of the war drums being sounded over Iran.
This Iran crisis, salivated over by the neocons since prior to the Iraq War and manufactured by war hawks who want to jumpstart the next world war, has been a long time coming.
Donald Trump, Barack Obama, George W. Bush, Bill Clinton: they all have done their part to ensure that the military industrial complex can continue to get rich at taxpayer expense.
Take President Trump, for instance.
Despite numerous campaign promises to stop America’s “endless wars,” once elected, Trump has done a complete about-face, deploying greater numbers of troops to the Middle East, ramping up the war rhetoric, and padding the pockets of defense contractors. Indeed, Trump is even refusing to withdraw U.S. troops from Iraq in the face of a request from the Iraqi government for us to leave.
Obama was no different: he also pledged—if elected—to bring the troops home from Iraq and Afghanistan and reduce America’s oversized, and overly costly, military footprint in the world. Of course, that didn’t happen.
Yet while the rationale may keep changing for why American military forces are policing the globe, these wars abroad (in Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Syria, Yemen and now Iran) aren’t making America—or the rest of the world—any safer, are certainly not making America great again, and are undeniably digging the U.S. deeper into debt.
War spending is bankrupting America.
Although the U.S. constitutes only 5% of the world’s population, America boasts almost 50% of the world’s total military expenditure, spending more on the military than the next 19 biggest spending nations combined.
In fact, the Pentagon spends more on war than all 50 states combined spend on health, education, welfare, and safety.
The American military-industrial complex has erected an empire unsurpassed in history in its breadth and scope, one dedicated to conducting perpetual warfare throughout the earth.
Since 2001, the U.S. government has spent more than $4.7 trillion waging its endless wars.
Having been co-opted by greedy defense contractors, corrupt politicians and incompetent government officials, America’s expanding military empire is bleeding the country dry at a rate of more than $32 million per hour.
In fact, the U.S. government has spent more money every five seconds in Iraq than the average American earns in a year.
Future wars and military exercises waged around the globe are expected to push the total bill upwards of $12 trillion by 2053.
Talk about fiscally irresponsible: the U.S. government is spending money it doesn’t have on a military empire it can’t afford.
As investigative journalist Uri Friedman puts it, for more than 15 years now, the United States has been fighting terrorism with a credit card, “essentially bankrolling the wars with debt, in the form of purchases of U.S. Treasury bonds by U.S.-based entities like pension funds and state and local governments, and by countries like China and Japan.”
War is not cheap, but it becomes outrageously costly when you factor in government incompetence, fraud, and greedy contractors. Indeed, a leading accounting firm concluded that one of the Pentagon’s largest agencies “can’t account for hundreds of millions of dollars’ worth of spending.”
Unfortunately, the outlook isn’t much better for the spending that can be tracked.
A government audit found that defense contractor Boeing has been massively overcharging taxpayers for mundane parts, resulting in tens of millions of dollars in overspending. As the report noted, the American taxpayer paid:
$71 for a metal pin that should cost just 4 cents; $644.75 for a small gear smaller than a dime that sells for $12.51: more than a 5,100 percent increase in price. $1,678.61 for another tiny part, also smaller than a dime, that could have been bought within DoD for $7.71: a 21,000 percent increase. $71.01 for a straight, thin metal pin that DoD had on hand, unused by the tens of thousands, for 4 cents: an increase of over 177,000 percent.
That price gouging has become an accepted form of corruption within the American military empire is a sad statement on how little control “we the people” have over our runaway government.
Mind you, this isn’t just corrupt behavior. It’s deadly, downright immoral behavior.
Americans have thus far allowed themselves to be spoon-fed a steady diet of pro-war propaganda that keeps them content to wave flags with patriotic fervor and less inclined to look too closely at the mounting body counts, the ruined lives, the ravaged countries, the blowback arising from ill-advised targeted-drone killings and bombing campaigns in foreign lands, or the transformation of our own homeland into a warzone.
That needs to change.
The U.S. government is not making the world any safer. It’s making the world more dangerous. It is estimated that the U.S. military drops a bomb somewhere in the world every 12 minutes. Since 9/11, the United States government has directly contributed to the deaths of around 500,000 human beings. Every one of those deaths was paid for with taxpayer funds.
The U.S. government is not making America any safer. It’s exposing American citizens to alarming levels of blowback, a CIA term referring to the unintended consequences of the U.S. government’s international activities. Chalmers Johnson, a former CIA consultant, repeatedly warned that America’s use of its military to gain power over the global economy would result in devastating blowback.
The 9/11 attacks were blowback. The Boston Marathon Bombing was blowback. The attempted Times Square bomber was blowback. The Fort Hood shooter, a major in the U.S. Army, was blowback.
The assassination of Iranian General Qasem Soleimani by a U.S. military drone strike will, I fear, spur yet more blowback against the American people.
The war hawks’ militarization of America—bringing home the spoils of war (the military tanks, grenade launchers, Kevlar helmets, assault rifles, gas masks, ammunition, battering rams, night vision binoculars, etc.) and handing them over to local police, thereby turning America into a battlefield—is also blowback.
James Madison was right:
“No nation could preserve its freedom in the midst of continual warfare.” As Madison explained, “Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes… known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.”
We are seeing this play out before our eyes.
The government is destabilizing the economy, destroying the national infrastructure through neglect and a lack of resources, and turning taxpayer dollars into blood money with its endless wars, drone strikes and mounting death tolls.
Clearly, our national priorities are in desperate need of an overhauling.
At the height of its power, even the mighty Roman Empire could not stare down a collapsing economy and a burgeoning military. Prolonged periods of war and false economic prosperity largely led to its demise. As historian Chalmers Johnson predicts:
The fate of previous democratic empires suggests that such a conflict is unsustainable and will be resolved in one of two ways. Rome attempted to keep its empire and lost its democracy. Britain chose to remain democratic and in the process let go its empire. Intentionally or not, the people of the United States already are well embarked upon the course of non-democratic empire.
This is the “unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex” that President Dwight Eisenhower warned us more than 50 years ago not to let endanger our liberties or democratic processes.
Eisenhower, who served as Supreme Commander of the Allied forces in Europe during World War II, was alarmed by the rise of the profit-driven war machine that emerged following the war—one that, in order to perpetuate itself, would have to keep waging war.
We failed to heed his warning.
As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, there’s not much time left before we reach the zero hour.
It’s time to stop policing the globe, end these wars-without-end, and bring the troops home before it’s too late.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 22:45 - Top Repo Expert Warns Fed Is Now Trapped: "It Will Take Pain To Wean The Repo Market Off Easy Cash"
Top Repo Expert Warns Fed Is Now Trapped: “It Will Take Pain To Wean The Repo Market Off Easy Cash”
Yesterday we reported that with the Fed’s first oversubscribed term repo in three weeks…
… coupled with a surge in amount of overnight repo submission, indicated that the funding situation in the repo market had again deteriorated sharply, which was odd since we are now two weeks into the new year and further away from the time when the repo market was supposedly in distress due to the year-end funding constraints.
Indeed, something appears amiss, because as Curvature Securities’ Scott Skyrm writes in his daily Repo Market Commentary note, the total overnight and term Fed RP operations on Friday were greater than on year end! On year-end, the Fed had pumped a total of $255.95 billion into the market verses $258.9 billion on Friday.
The problem with the broken repo market and the Fed’s respective Repo operations, similar to the problem observed with QE and the Fed’s balance sheet in general over the past decade, is that the market had gotten addicted to the easy Fed liquidity unleashed in September (via temporary repo ops), and then again in October (via permanent T-Bill purchases).
As Skyrm writes, “it’s easy to see how the Repo market can get addicted to easy cash from the Fed when the stop-out rates for the RP operations are 1.55% – behind the offered side of the market.”
But, as the repo strategist adds, as the Fed keeps injecting cash, the market gets used to it.
Which is great in the short-term as it sends risk assets soaring, but become a major issue over the long-term: “The long-term problem is that the some investor cash (real money cash) that was once going into the Repo market is now going elsewhere”, Skyrm explains.
Indeed, the problem is that repo rates are trading in the lower end of the fed funds target range. When GC rates were higher in the range, Repo general collateral, as an investment, was more competitive than other overnight rates. But now that cash has gone to other markets.
In short, just as the market got addicted to QE and the result was a 20% drop in the S&P in late 2018 when markets freaked out about Quantitative Tightening, the Fed’s shrinking balance sheet, and declining liquidity, Skyrm cautions that “it will take pain to wean the Repo market off of cheap Fed cash” since “it‘s a circle” which can be described as follows:
For the Fed to end daily RP ops, they need outside cash to come back into the Repo market. For the Repo market to attract cash, Repo rates need to move higher. For rates to move higher, the Fed needs to stop RP ops.
The problem is that stopping RP ops could spark another repo market crisis, especially with $259BN in liquidity pumped currently – more than at year end – via Repo. It also means that the Fed is now unilaterally blowing a market bubble with its repo and “NOT QE” injections, and yet the longer it does so the more impossible it becomes for the Fed to extricate itself from the liquidity pathway without causing a crash.
Or stated simply, the longer the Fed avoids pulling the repo liquidity band-aid, the bigger the market fall when (if) it finally does. The question then becomes whether Powell can keep pushing on the repo string until the November election, because a market crash in the months preceding it, especially since it will be of the Fed’s own doing, will result in a very angry president.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 22:25 - Surveillance Capitalism: Weaponizing The Web To Manipulate Behavior
Surveillance Capitalism: Weaponizing The Web To Manipulate Behavior
Authored by Shoshanna Zuboff via Project Syndicate,
Over the past two decades, an entirely new economic model has taken hold, seemingly right under our noses.
Whereas the Internet and digital technologies once promised to liberate humanity through disintermediation and shared connections, now they have been turned into tools for behavioral manipulation and exploitation.
As we enter a new decade, we are also entering a new era of political economy. Over the centuries, capitalism has evolved through a number of stages, from industrial to managerial to financial capitalism. Now we are entering the age of “surveillance capitalism.”
Under surveillance capitalism, people’s lived experiences are unilaterally claimed by private companies and translated into proprietary data flows. Some of these data are used to improve products and services. The rest are considered a “behavioral surplus” and valued for their rich predictive signals.
These predictive data are shipped to new-age factories of machine intelligence where they are computed into highly profitable prediction products that anticipate your current and future choices. Prediction products are then traded in what I call “behavioral futures markets,” where surveillance capitalists sell certainty to their business customers.
Google’s “clickthrough rate” was the first globally successful prediction product, and its ad markets were the first to trade in human futures. Already, surveillance capitalists have grown immensely wealthy from these trading operations, and ever more companies across nearly every economic sector have shown an eagerness to lay bets on our future behavior.
The competitive dynamics of these new markets reveal surveillance capitalism’s economic imperatives.
First, machine intelligence demands a lot of data: economies of scale.
Second, the best predictions also require varieties of data: economies of scope. This drove the extension of surplus capture beyond likes and clicks into the offline world: your jogging gait and pace; your breakfast conversation; your hunt for a parking space; your face, voice, personality, and emotions.
In a third phase of competitive intensity, surveillance capitalists discovered that the most predictive data come from intervening in human action to coax, tune, herd, and modify behavior in the direction of guaranteed outcomes.
This shift from knowledge to power transforms technology from a means of production to a global means of behavioral modification in order to achieve “economies of action.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 22:05 - California Judge Denies 'Gig Worker' Exemption To Freelance Journalists
California Judge Denies ‘Gig Worker’ Exemption To Freelance Journalists
A federal judge in California has refused to temporarily exempt freelance journalists from a new state labor law which cripples their income by limiting them to just 35 articles per year, according to CBS affiliate KPIX5.
Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez who introduced the measure. (Rich Pedroncelli / AP) US District Judge Philip Guiterrez in Los Angeles denied a request for a temporary halt to the law, AB5, by two freelancers’ organizations – ruling that they waited too long to file their opposition while he takes more time to consider their objections ahead of a March hearing.
The judge said the groups waited three months to sue after the bill was signed into law, and just two weeks before it took effect. They sought the temporary restraining order just a day before it became effective.
“Plaintiffs’ delay belies their claim that there is an emergency,” Gutierrez said in his ruling Friday. There would have been time for a full hearing had they “promptly filed” their objections, he wrote. –KPIX5
AB5, went into effect January 1st, and has already resulted in outlets like Vox Media cutting ties with hundreds of freelance writers in California. An attorney for one of the groups said on Monday that the harm to California freelance journalists has been immediate.
“Freelance journalists in California are losing work each day AB 5 remains in effect,” said Jim Manley, an attorney for the nonprofit libertarian Pacific Legal Foundation, although the judge’s decision to wait until March for a full hearing “is understandable given the gravity of the issues.”
The American Society of Journalists and Authors and the National Press Photographers Association contend that the law would unconstitutionally affect free speech and the media by imposing what their lawsuit calls an “irrational and arbitrary” limit of 35 submissions annually to each media outlet. –KPIX5
“I know many people who would hit that cap for an outlet in a single week, let alone in a year,” freelance journalist Alisha Grauso of Santa Monica, California told The Bold Italic. “The 35 submission cap might work for a writer at a traditional outlet or magazine who is writing a 5,000-word piece for a dollar a word, but the vast majority of writers have gigs that are far more versatile”
The law, designed to ‘protect’ Uber and Lyft drivers, along with those who deliver food for companies such as DoorDash and Postmates, does not apply to over 700,000 independent truckers after a different judge temporarily blocked AB5 from impacting them.
Uber and Postmates, meanwhile, have filed a separate lawsuit, arguing that it violates federal and state constitutional guarantees of due process and equal protection. They have filed to attach their objections to the freelancers’ lawsuit in front of the same judge.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 21:45 - Rickards: Here's Where Gold Will Be In 2026
Rickards: Here’s Where Gold Will Be In 2026
Authored by James Rickards via The Daily Reckoning,
Gold spiked after last Friday’s drone strike that took out a top Iranian military official and is trading at seven-year highs.
Yes, the news was dramatic and made a major impact. But geopolitics is just one factor driving gold. Even without the latest geopolitical tensions, gold is poised for a historic run.
The first two major gold bull markets were 1971–80 and 1999–2011. Today, gold is in the early stages of its third bull market in 50 years.
If we simply average the performance of the past two bull markets and extend the new bull market on that basis, we would expect to see prices peak at $14,000 per ounce by 2026.
What’s driving the new gold bull market?
From both long-term and short-term perspectives, there are three principal drivers:
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geopolitics,
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supply and demand and,
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Fed interest rate policy
(the dollar price of gold is just the inverse of dollar strength. A strong dollar = a lower dollar price of gold, and a weak dollar = a higher dollar price of gold. Fed rate policy determines if the dollar is strong or weak).
The first two factors have been driving the price of gold higher since 2015 and will continue to do so. Geopolitical hot spots like Iran, Korea, Crimea, Venezuela, China and Syria remain unresolved. Some are getting worse.
Each flare-up drives a flight to safety that boosts gold along with Treasury notes, as the latest incident shows.
The supply/demand situation remains favorable with Russia and China buying over 50 tons per month to build up their reserves while global mining output has been flat for at least five years.
The third factor, Fed policy, is the hardest to forecast and the most powerful on a day-to-day basis.
But there’s little chance that the Fed will be raising rates anytime soon. It’s much more likely to cut rates as the U.S. economy faces strong headwinds, especially from rising debt levels. Debt is growing faster than the economy.
Debt is now at the highest levels since World War II. We’re nearly in the same position on a relative basis as we were in 1945.
Because of the natural deflationary state of the world and the high debt-to-GDP ratio, growth has been snuffed out.
And based on Congressional Budget Office (CBO) projections — which I think are conservative — the debt-to-GDP ratio is going to keep going up.
There is no way out except inflation.
Add it all up and the environment is highly favorable for gold. But if you want evidence that owning gold is probably the best way to guard your wealth, just look at the “smart money.”
I’m sure you’ve seen plenty of billionaire hedge fund managers on business TV or streaming live from Davos. They like to discuss their investments in Apple, Amazon, Treasury notes and other stocks and bonds.
They love to “talk their book” in the hope that other investors will piggyback on their trades, run up the price and produce more profits for them.
What they almost never discuss in public is gold. After all, why have gold when stocks and bonds are so wonderful?
Well, I worked on Wall Street and in the hedge fund industry for decades. I also lived among the players in New York and Greenwich, Connecticut, at the same time. I’ve met the top hedge fund gurus in private settings. And here’s the thing:
I’ve never met one of them who does not have a large hoard of physical gold stored safely in a nonbank vault. Not one.
Of course, they won’t say so on TV because they don’t want to spook retail investors into dumping stocks and bonds. But watch what they do, not what they say.
If gold bullion is the go-to asset for billionaires, why don’t small investors have at least a 10% allocation to gold and silver bullion just in case?
Some do, but most don’t. They’ll find out the hard way what individuals have learned over centuries and millennia. Gold preserves wealth; paper assets do not.
A global monetary reset is coming, with gold at its center. It can either be an orderly process – or a chaotic one…
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 21:25 -
- The USA Has Been Bombing Iraq For 29 Years
The USA Has Been Bombing Iraq For 29 Years
Over the past days while little real debate over the Iran crisis has happened in Washington or Congress (instead it’s merely the default drones and “bombs away” as usual), the American public has been busy online and in living rooms debating the merits or lack thereof of escalation and potential war with Iran.
However, like with many other instances of US foreign policy adventurism, this is typically a “debate” lacking in necessary recent historical context or appreciation for how the domino effect of disasters now facing American security were often brought on by prior US action in the first place. As a case in point, it’s not recognized often enough in public discourse that it was the United States under the neocon Bush administration which handed Iraq over to “Iranian influence” and the Shia clerics in the first place.
It must be remembered that Saddam Hussein was a secular Sunni dictator presiding over a Shia majority population, and he was enemy #1 of Iran. Team USA’s short-sighted and criminal 2003 invasion and overthrow of Saddam based on WMD lies had the immediate benefit to Tehran of handing the Ayatollah the greatest gift that Iran waged a nearly decade-long war to accomplish, but couldn’t (the 1980-1988 Iran-Iraq War).
U.S. bombing of Baghdad in 2003. And the neocons within the bowels of the national security state have ever since been attempting to salvage their failed legacy in Iraq by the futile effort of trying to contain Iran and roll back Shia dominance in Baghdad, as Seymour Hersh detailed in his famous 2006 New Yorker piece The Redirection, which accurately predicted the ‘long war’ against the Hezbollah-Damascus-Baghdad-Tehran axis which would unfold, and did indeed unfold, especially in Syria of the past eight years.
To “situate” the past week’s dramatic events, it’s also crucial to understand, as The Libertarian Institute’s Scott Horton has pointed out, that “The U.S.A. has been bombing Iraq for 29 years. And it looks like it’s not over yet.”
Below is an essential timeline compiled by Horton of that nearly three decade long history where Iraq has been consistently subject to American bombs and intervention — yet ironically (and some might say predictably) the situation is still getting worse, more unstable, and more dangerous.
* * *
The U.S.A. has been bombing Iraq for 29 years. And it looks like it’s not over yet:
Iraq War I: January—February 1991 (aka The Gulf War, Operation Desert Storm, liberation of Kuwait)
Iraq War I 1/2: February 1991—March 2003 (The rest of Bush I, Bill Clinton years, economic blockade and no-fly zone bombings)
Iraq War II: March 2003—December 2011 (aka Operation Iraqi Freedom, W. Bush’s invasion and war for the Shi’ite side)
Iraq War III: August 2014—December 2017 (aka Operation Inherent Resolve, the war against the Islamic State, which America had helped to build up in Syria but then launched this war to destroy, on behalf of the Shi’ite government in Baghdad, after ISIS had seized the predominately Sunni west of the country in the early summer of 2014 and declared the Islamic State “Caliphate”)
Iraq War III 1/2: December 2017—January 2020 (The “mopping-up” war against the remnants of ISIS which has had the U.S. still allied with the very same Shi’ite militias they fought Iraq War II and III for, but are now attacking)
Iraq War IV: Now—?
NEW from me: We asked folks to identify Iran on an unlabeled map.
28% of them got it right. Here’s where they guessed. https://t.co/XhP5OU9s2n pic.twitter.com/IQ8HYFDKxE
— Joanna Piacenza (@jpiacenza) January 8, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
As Scott Horton suggests, the roots of the current crisis lie all the way back in the mid-20th century:
In 1953, the American CIA overthrew the elected prime minister of Iran in favor of the Shah Reza Pahlavi who ruled a dictatorship there for 26 years until in 1979 a popular revolution overthrew his government and installed the Shi’ite Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini in power.
So in 1980, President Jimmy Carter’s government gave Iraq’s Saddam Hussein the green light to invade Iran, a war which the U.S. continued to support throughout the Ronald Reagan years, though they also sold weapons to the Iranian side at times.
But then in 1990, Iraq invaded Kuwait in a dispute over debts from the recent war with Iran, with some encouragement by the U.S. government, leading to America’s Iraq War I, aka the first Gulf War or Operation Desert Storm at the beginning of 1991.
And that was merely the very beginning.
Read the rest of the story and the excellent brief history of how we got here over at The Libertarian Institute.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 21:05 - Virginia Wants To Close Non-Govt Gun Ranges And Create Ammo-Free Zones
Virginia Wants To Close Non-Govt Gun Ranges And Create Ammo-Free Zones
Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,
If you thought the law that would effectively ban semi-automatic weapons in Virginia was draconian, just wait. The General Assembly isn’t done trampling the Second Amendment yet. They have lots more potential felonies in store for gun owners.
Let’s take a look at HB567 and HB318.
HB567 wants to ensure gun ranges are government-owned.
In a blow not only to gun owners but also to small business owners, HB567 would outlaw many indoor gun ranges that are not owned by the state government. What’s more, the private ranges allowed would have to cater to law enforcement as their primary clientele. And they’re not done yet – the gun ranges would serve as data-collection points.
Here’s the text of the summary. (Emphasis mine)
As used in this section, “indoor shooting range” means any fully enclosed or indoor area or facility designed for the use of rifles, shotguns, pistols, silhouettes, skeet, trap, or black powder or any other similar sport shooting.
B. It is unlawful to operate an indoor shooting range in any building not owned or leased by the Commonwealth or the federal government unless (i) fewer than 50 employees work in the building or (ii) (a) at least 90 percent of the users of the indoor shooting range are law-enforcement officers, as defined in § 9.1-101, or federal law-enforcement officers, (b) the indoor shooting range maintains a log of each user’s name, phone number, address, and the law-enforcement agency where such user is employed, and (c) the indoor shooting range verifies each user’s identity and address by requiring all users to present a government-issued photo-identification card. (source)
So very small indoor gun ranges might be able to continue to operate (for now) but the large, high-quality ranges that also serve as instruction facilities or have attached gun stores could have too many employees to continue to operate if the new bill becomes a law.
It’s interesting that the state government claims to want to make the state safer, but at the same time, they want to close facilities where gun-owners hone their skills, accuracy, education, and safe usage of firearms.
The penalties for breaking this law would be civil, with a fine of up to $100,000 on the first infraction and an additional $5000 per day if the defiance continues.
HB318 would create ammunition-free zones.
Making about as much sense as the law that caused the original hullaballoo – the one that would ban weapons that “could” possess extended magazines, even if the owner has no such magazines – HB318 would send anyone in the possession of ammunition to prison for a currently-undetermined amount of time.
I suppose they’re concerned that someone might have ammo in a gun-free zone and throw it really hard, causing a mass casualty incident? This would-be law encompasses more than ammunition. It also includes the possession of stun weapons and knives with metal blades.
Here’s the text of the bill, again, emphasis mine.
A. If any person knowingly possesses any (i) stun weapon as defined in this section; (ii) knife, except a pocket knife having a folding metal blade of less than three inches;
or(iii) weapon, including a weapon of like kind, designated in subsection A of § 18.2-308, other than a firearm; or (iv) ammunition for a firearm, as defined in § 18.2-308.2, upon (a) the property of any public, private, or religious elementary, middle, or high school, including buildings and grounds; (b) that portion of any property open to the public and then exclusively used for school-sponsored functions or extracurricular activities while such functions or activities are taking place; or (c) any school bus owned or operated by any such school, he is guilty of a Class 1 misdemeanor.B. If any person knowingly possesses any firearm designed or intended to expel a projectile by action of an explosion of a combustible material while such person is upon (i) any public, private or religious elementary, middle or high school, including buildings and grounds; (ii) that portion of any property open to the public and then exclusively used for school-sponsored functions or extracurricular activities while such functions or activities are taking place; or (iii) any school bus owned or operated by any such school, he is guilty of a Class 6 felony. (source)
There are a few exemptions that would allow law enforcement officers, former law enforcement officers, and concealed carry permit holders or those who use knives with metal blades in their trades, to have their unloaded weapons locked securely in their trunk while they are in traffic circles and parking lots. However, a regular person who happens to have an extra cartridge floating around the bottom of her purse (who doesn’t?) could potentially become a felon if tried by some over-zealous, anti-2A prosecutor.
Those exceptions would exist initially but at the rate new laws are being proposed, I wouldn’t count on the exceptions on a long-term basis.
Coincidentally, Governor Northam has increased his detention budget.
You probably recall a member of the state congress’s threats about dispatching the National Guard to confiscate weapons and the Virginia Attorney General’s opinion that sanctuary municipalities have no legal weight.
But that’s not all. Governor Northam is going to be specifically funding gun control efforts with an additional quarter of a million dollars in the newly proposed state budget.
Included in the appropriation for this Item is $250,000 the first year from the general fund for the estimated net increase in the operating cost of adult correctional facilities resulting from the enactment of sentencing legislation as listed below. This amount shall be paid into the Corrections Special Reserve Fund, established pursuant to § 30-19.1:4, Code of Virginia.
1. Allow the removal of firearms from persons who pose substantial risk to themselves or others — $50,000
2. Prohibit the sale, possession, and transport of assault firearms, trigger activators, and silencers — $50,000
3. Increase the penalty for allowing a child to access unsecured firearms — $50,000
4. Prohibit possession of firearms for persons subject to final orders of protection — $50,000
5. Require background checks for all firearms sales — $50,000. (source)
So for those who say, “Nobody is trying to take your guns” the evidence in these proposals clearly disputes this opinion.
91% of the state is staunchly defiant.
Virginians have been defiant in the face of these attacks on the Second Amendment, with Tazewell County going as far as creating an official militia and the sheriff of Culpeper County vowing to deputize thousands of citizens to protect their rights.
Practically the entire state has vowed to protect the rights of gun owners and the movement is still growing, as shown by the map below.
A recent job listing for disarmament officers at the United Nations New York office has many concerned that confiscation efforts could go beyond calling up a National Guard that may be less than enthusiastic about taking away the rights of their friends, family members, and neighbors.
The votes on these gun control bills and budget appropriations will be held in the first couple of months of 2020.
“This is going to be an exciting couple of months,” Gov. Ralph Northam (D) said Monday. (source)
It certainly is, Governor Northam.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 20:45 - Antifa Critic Barred From Speaking By University Of British Columbia
Antifa Critic Barred From Speaking By University Of British Columbia
I have previously written about my criticism to Antifa and its anti-free speech agenda, including academics legitimizing efforts to violently curtail free speech on our campuses. It is tragically ironic therefore that the University of British Columbia has cancelled an event by a critic of Antifa, a decision that carries out precisely the goals of this vehemently anti-free speech organization.
Portland journalist Andy Ngo was scheduled to speak on campus when the school, reportedly without notice, canceled the event due to an unspecified “concern about the safety and security of our campus community.”
The reference to security is an all-too-familiar excuse of universities to shutdown speakers, particularly conservative speakers, while insisting that the move is not content-based discrimination. Berkeley and other schools like DePaul University have used the mob to justify cancelling speakers. That institutionalizes the “Heckler’s Veto” so that a mob need only threaten violence and the school then cancels the speech…which is what the mob was demanding.
Even an event with former Attorney General Jeff Sessions was disrupted by the protesters. The cancellation of the Sessions event was another disgrace for Northwestern which has yielded to such tactics by students. It was a triumph for those who want to deny free speech to those with whom they disagree. Censoring speech has become a badge of honor for some. It has not stopped at simply stopping speeches and classes.
We have been discussing the rising intolerance and violence on college campuses, particularly against conservative speakers. (here and here and here and here). Berkeley has been the focus of much concern over mob rule on our campuses as violent protesters have succeeded in silencing speakers, even including a few speakers like an ACLU official. Both students and some faculty have maintained the position that they have a right to silence those with whom they disagree and even student newspapers have declared opposing speech to be outside of the protections of free speech. At another University of California campus, professors actually rallied around a professor who physically assaulted pro-life advocates and tore down their display. In the meantime, academics and deans have said that there is no free speech protection for offensive or “disingenuous” speech. CUNY Law Dean Mary Lu Bilek showed how far this trend has gone. When conservative law professor Josh Blackman was stopped from speaking about “the importance of free speech,” Bilek insisted that disrupting the speech on free speech was free speech.
Ngo was invited to speak at a January 29th event on “Understanding ANTIFA violence.” Ngo was assaulted while covering a protest in Portland.
I remain highly skeptical of these claims of security concerns that seem to consistently be applied to critics of Antifa or conservative speakers. Universities cannot fulfill our core mission if we are going to yield to such mob threats and harassment. This is doing the work of the mob — a triumph of the heckler’s veto.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 20:05 - 75% Of Registered Voters Can't Identify Iran On A Map
75% Of Registered Voters Can’t Identify Iran On A Map
As thousands of American service members prepare for the worst in the Middle East following an American drone strike that killed Iran’s second-most powerful man, just 23% of registered voters can identify the Islamic republic on an unlabeled map of the globe, according to a Morning Consult/Politico survey.
When shown an unlabeled map of just the Middle East, the number rose to a still-abysmal 28%. Eight percent of those thought Iran was Iraq on the second map – just like Joe Biden.
Of those surveyed, men were around twice as likely as women to identify Iran on both maps – roughly in line with a 2017 Morning Consult experiment involving North Korea. Wealthier and more educated voters were also more likely to get it right.
Political affiliation and age were not significant factors.
News of Soleimani’s death — which 49 percent of voters reported hearing “a lot” about — brought new attention to U.S. policy in the Middle East, with high-profile Democrats questioning whether there was a strategy behind the attack at Baghdad International Airport ordered by President Donald Trump.
Voters were more likely to support (47 percent) the airstrike that killed Soleimani than oppose it (40 percent). Attitudes on Trump’s call fell neatly along partisan lines: 70 percent of Democrats disapproved of the strike while 85 percent of Republicans approved of it, including 61 percent of Republicans who strongly approved. –Morning Consult
Meanwhile, despite a majority of respondents backing the strike, 69% said they thought the Soleimani assassination made war with Iran more likely, and half said they think it made America less safe.
The survey, conducted Jan. 4-5 before Iran shelled two Iraq air bases housing US troops, was asked of 1,995 registered voters and has a margin of error of two percentage points.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 19:45 - Housing Data Consistent With A Recession In 2020
Housing Data Consistent With A Recession In 2020
Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,
Over the past year, 4 housing indicators have moved in ways consistent with patterns seen in 3 previous recessions.
Housing is Signaling a Recession
Despite optimistic talk from Fed regional presidents, a St. Louis Fed study concludes Housing Indicators Remain Consistent With a Broader Slowdown in 2020.
Key Takeaways
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Over the past year, four housing indicators have moved in ways consistent with patterns seen before three previous recessions.
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These indicators are mortgage rates, existing home sales, real house prices and the momentum of residential investment.
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More recent housing data still point to a slowdown, albeit a less severe one.
1: 30-Year Fixed Mortgage Rates
NOTES: The figure shows the average quarterly 30-year fixed mortgage rate minus the average of the previous three years (12 quarters). Each line shows three years of data before and after a recession; time zero is the quarter in which a recession began. The first quarter of the recession is indicated in the line label (key): the fourth quarter of 1990, second quarter of 2001 and first quarter of 2008.
Consistent with earlier cycles, the average 30-year fixed mortgage rate has declined significantly even though a recession has not begun. Figure 1 updates the path of this long-term mortgage rate through the third quarter of 2019.2 The last observation of about one-half of one percentage point below the most recent three-year moving average is identical to the level one quarter before the onset of the 2001 recession and is just below the level one quarter before the 1990-91 recession. Hence, this indicator remains consistent with—though still does not guarantee—an imminent recession.
2: Existing Home Sales
NOTES: The figure shows the percent difference between the current rate of existing single-family home sales (four-quarter average) and the average annualized sales rate during the previous three years (12 quarters).
The pace of existing home sales relative to their recent trend rate continued to slow during 2019. (See Figure 2.) Despite a modest upturn in the third quarter of 2019, this indicator remains firmly in the range observed prior to the 1990-91 and 2001 recessions. In contrast to the Great Recession, the decline in home sales since dipping below zero has been much more moderate.
3: Real House Prices
NOTES: The figure shows the four-quarter percent change in the CoreLogic Home Price Index, deflated by the Personal Consumption Expenditures (PCE) Chain-Weighted Price Index, minus the annualized percent change during the previous three years (12 quarters).
Qualitatively, the recent behavior of inflation-adjusted home-price growth relative to its recent trend rate (shown in Figure 3) is very similar to the patterns of the two previous indicators—that is, it mirrors the run-up to the relatively mild 1990-91 and 2001 recessions and is unlike the pattern just before the Great Recession.
4: Contribution of Residential Investment to GDP Growth
NOTES: The figure shows the four-quarter average contribution to real GDP growth minus the annualized contribution during the previous three years (12 quarters).
If any of the highlighted housing indicators hints at a departure from the typical recessionary pattern it is the contribution of residential investment to GDP growth. (See Figure 4.) Despite some improvement over the course of 2019, residential investment continued to be a drag on economic growth through the third quarter, albeit a slightly smaller one than before. Of all four indicators, this one most closely resembles the patterns seen before the two relatively mild recessions of 1990-91 and 2001 versus the more severe Great Recession.
Conclusion: Housing Indicators Still Signal Recession, Albeit a Less Severe One
The value of leading indicators – from housing variables to the slope of the yield curve – is that they offer an opportunity to prepare for a possible economic slowdown or outright downturn. A recent example is the Federal Reserve’s dramatic turn from a program of monetary tightening in 2018 to an easing of policy in 2019.
One hazard of leading indicators is that they can lead to misinterpretation and complacency. If the economic slowdown signaled by weakening housing indicators and some portions of the U.S. Treasury yield curve inverting in 2019 does not begin immediately, some observers may think the precautions undertaken in response to the signals, such as the Fed’s recent easing of monetary policy, can void the signals themselves and pre-empt a recession.
This would run counter to the historical patterns documented in this article: The Fed eased monetary policy and mortgage rates plunged in advance of each of the three previous recessions, yet the economy still went into a downturn. Thus, the value of leading indicators may lie more in their role as early warning signals that help us better prepare for, rather than outright prevent, a recession.
This time could be different, however, if the Fed’s timely interest rate cuts and other factors in fact help to prevent a recession in late 2019 or 2020. If that happens, we should re-examine the indicators that have been successful in signaling recessions in the past. In the meantime, we should not dismiss their salience.
Why Are Interest Rates Down?
This is certainly an interesting study and runs in sharp contrast to recent Fed statements that the economy is sound.
It also in contrast to those who suggest lower interest rate will revive housing.
Rather, rates are down precisely because the economy is weakening.
Service Sector Expansion
Earlier today I reported ISM Service Index Up, 11 Sectors Expanding, 6 Contracting.
But Guess What: Real Estate and Rental & Leasing are two of the sectors in contraction.
New Home Sales Badly Miss Expectations
On December 23, I reported New Home Sales Badly Miss Expectations
New home sales rose 1.3% in November but only because of huge downward revisions.
And here’s another Guess What: The St Louis Fed Study came out a week before that massive downward revision in new home sales.
Manufacturing
Also on December 23, I reported Economists Wrong on Durable Goods By an Amazing 3.9 Percentage Points.
Nine States in or Near Contraction
And please note that a Philadelphia Fed study projects Nine States Projected to Contract in 2020
Mideast tensions cannot possibly help.
So why would it stop at nine?
Other than that, everything is just dandy except of course leverage, hedge fund record long bets on S&P 500 futures, valuations through the roof, a huge slowdown in Germany, capital controls in China, and a big signal from gold that something is very wrong.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 19:25 -
- As Victoria's Secret Models Got Thinner, American Women Got Angrier
As Victoria’s Secret Models Got Thinner, American Women Got Angrier
A recent study suggests that Victoria’s Secret’s SJW critics, who last year helped kill the lingerie purveyors’ annual fashion show (much to the consternation of red-blooded straight men (and maybe some gay women), might be on to something.
Offering some insight into L Brands’ recent troubles (we’re not talking about Epstein) – something that we’ve explored in-depth in the past – one recent study purportedly quantified the trend of VS angels’ shrinking waists over the years. It found that the company’s models’ midsections have shrunk by about an inch since the company launched the show, from an average of 24.7 inches in 1995, to about 23.6 in 2018, the last year that it was held.
As one doctor who spoke to the New York Post explained, shaving an inch off one’s waist is extremely hard to do, especially when you’re already model thin. To achieve something like that, models reportedly undergo grueling prep routines that include workouts that would befit an Olympian, and crash diets that sometimes amount to just bone broth and water.
“To slim an inch off one’s waist – that’s very hard to do,” Dr. Neelam Vashi, the lead author of the research paper, told WBUR.
The company’s merchandise has been criticized for not reflecting the true physical proportions of most American women. And as analysts have pointed out time and time again, VS’s sizing has often deliberately excluded millions of American women, often to the detriment of sales growth.
Because how can a company sell more bras if the underwear they’re making are getting smaller, while the people who are supposed to be wearing it are getting bigger.
To underscore this point, the New York Post approached some shoppers at the VS flagship store near Herald Square on Sunday to ask about their experience.
Several shoppers coming out of the Victoria’s Secret near Herald Square on Sunday said their trip to the store was a bust – because everything was too small.
“I only got one bra because most of the stuff doesn’t fit women like us,” said 37-year-old Amy De La Cruz of herself and her daughters.
Another shopper said she only sometimes stops by VS for “perfume and lipgloss” because none of the clothes fit her.
A 47-year-old woman who would only give her first name, Andrea, said: “I mostly go for lipgloss and fragrances because I know they don’t have anything that fits me there.”
Many interpreted VS’s decision to cancel the fashion show as a harbinger of a more “woke” VS. Sales have apparently gotten to such a crisis point, that some of salespeople at VS retail locations have embraced the hard sell: encouraging customers to go lose some weight, then come back.
And 27-year-old Manhattanite Amy Issa called the study’s results “disappointing” and “devastating.”
“Even the people that work here they push you to lose weight they would say things like, ‘oh you can’t fit in this maybe next month if you lose a few pounds it’ll fit you,'” Issa said.
The clothing brand has already taken its first tentative steps toward embracing the body-positive movement by hiring its first size 14 model. We expect its next collection will move even further toward selling women “reality” instead of “fantasy.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 19:05 - Was Marx Right About Capitalism Destroying Itself From Within?
Was Marx Right About Capitalism Destroying Itself From Within?
Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,
What are the internal contradictions that could unravel capitalism from within?
One of the core tenets of Marx’s work is that capitalism will be undone by internal contradictions that would manifest as ever-greater crises that would eventually destroy the system from within.
As the global economy continues to unravel beneath the surface, it’s a good time to re-examine Marx’s claim. If if turns out the current version of global capitalism is indeed unraveling due to its internal contradictions, it would be valuable to understand this now rather than later.
Sartre once observed that students are only taught enough about Marx’s work to refute it. Despite the difficulty of Marx’s writings (only German philosophers can be so convoluted), its elevation to scripture by various academic tribes, and his failure to describe his “scientific socialism” alternative to capitalism in the same detail he devoted to his critique of capitalism, Marx’s work remains relevant and insightful.
Thus we continue to see articles such as Capitalism is unfolding exactly as Karl Marx predicted.
I’m not in either of the two camps, those trained to dismiss Marx’s critiques or those who devote their careers to jousting over Marxist minutiae. It’s been decades since I studied Marx in a college classroom, but I’ve continued to apply his core insights to our era.
To understand Marx’s critique of capitalism, we have to understand that he came to economics via philosophy, specifically the writings of Hegel. In other words, Marx did not approach the study of capitalism from the abstractions of classical 19th century economics (Marx was born in 1818) but from a profound interest in history, social and spiritual development and human alienation. Marx ended up devoting his life to an understanding of capitalism because it is a world-system that drives history and society.
Hegel believed human history wasn’t just “one damn thing after another;” he saw it as teleological, i.e. on a trajectory leading to higher social and spiritual development. Given this context, it’s little wonder that Marx viewed capitalism as a necessary stage of history creating the conditions for the next advancement.
Prior to Marx, classical economic theories focused on the dynamics of supply and demand, trade, credit and money. Adam Smith was also a philosopher (and a close friend of David Hume), and he devoted an entire book to the moral foundations of capitalism, The Theory of Moral Sentiments, before he wrote The Wealth of Nations, which focused on what he termed “commercial society,” what we now call political economy.
While Smith focused on the moral foundation of decentralized self-organizing markets that automatically benefit all participants (via “the invisible hand”), Marx focused on the conflicting interests of capital and labor, and on capitalism’s unending disruption of the social and economic orders, a dynamic captured in Marx’s famous observation that “everything melts into air.”
What are the internal contradictions that could unravel capitalism from within? I don’t claim this is an exhaustive list, or that it would gain the approval of academic overlords of Marxist scripture, but “in the spirit of Marxist thought,” these are potentially fatal dynamics that are unfolding in real time in the current version of global/monopoly/finance capitalism.
Each of these deserves a serious essay but for now, let’s just review the list in broad-brush.
1. Traditional social structures “melt into air” but have no replacement. The owners of Big tech would have us believe social media, search and endless entertainment are enough to to replace all that’s being dismantled, but that claim is both self-serving and absurd. Society is unraveling before our eyes and an addiction to small screens is not a replacement for what’s being lost.
2. Marx described the inevitability of overcapacity and overproduction as capital seeks to establish dominant market share (as one path to monopoly and pricing power), and we see this in industry after industry. As overcapacity expands, profits plummet, pushing capital into speculative gambles that inevitably blow up.
3. Capital gains, labor loses ground–to automation, over-supply of conventional labor and to consolidation as entire layers of management and distribution are wiped out. Thomas Piketty described how the rate of growth of capital far exceeds that of the real economy and labor’s share of that economy. As a result, we are reaching extreme concentrations of wealth and political power that are unleashing destructive disorder as elites struggle to maintain their control of the downwardly mobile masses.
4. Monopolies and cartels push prices higher, but not wages. As many of us have noted, costs of big-ticket essentials have been soaring for two decades while wages have been stagnant (when measured by purchasing power) for the bottom 95%. The stop-gap “solution” is to borrow money from future earnings to pay for life today, but this is a self-liquidating dynamic: eventually incomes are too overcommitted to support more debt, and defaults take down the entire system of debt and consumption.
5. Finance capital, i.e. financialization, has reached diminishing returns: there’s literally nothing left to monetize, leverage and securitize. Much of the “wealth” created in the 21st century is phantom wealth generated by financialization. There is no substitute sources for trillions of dollars in income and capital gains as the financialization sputters and then blows up as bets go bad, counterparties fail to pay and defaults overwhelm a system that must expand or die.
6. The unholy alliance of Capital and the State: we call it pay-to-play, but the unholy alliance of State and Capital goes much deeper. The State legalizes the looting and power of Capital, and Capital returns the favor.
7. Energy and waste. Marx did not foresee the depletion of irreplaceable energy sources, but the stupendous waste of resources built into our consumption-based, credit-based industrial economy falls within his critique of commodity fetishism.
That there is no substitute for high-density hydrocarbon fuels is a reality that elicits the most passionate forms of denial and magical thinking, and as we consume the cheapest-to-access energy to squander in global traffic jams, military misadventures, planned obsolescence, etc., the energy growth demanded by the system will fail to appear at a cost affordable to the bottom 80%. At that point the entire system implodes.
8. Marketing is the savior of capitalism. The most profitable and valuable enterprises globally are engaged in collecting and selling data–marketing. This is the savior of capitalism, which as noted above, has reached the end-game of financialization, globalization, etc.–what Immanuel Wallerstein characterized as “capitalism no longer works for capitalists.”
The assumption that marketing will save the system by generating new trillions in income and wealth assumes consumers have abundant disposable income (or credit) to spend. If incomes decline, and/or rising costs strip disposable income to the bone, then how valuable is all the data that’s being collected and sold as the key to profits and wealth? The unraveling of the credit-based consumer economy will also reveal the limits of marketing as the “industry” that will save capitalism from the decline of profits, capital and credit.
The power of this data-collection-as-unpaid-work is described in this article: You Are Literally Working for Silicon Valley and Don’t Know It The digital economy has been called ‘surveillance capitalism,’ but that doesn’t capture how insidious it really is.
A chart of the relentless concentration of wealth at the very apex of the wealth-power pyramid:
A chart of the relentless decline of wages’ share of the economy’s total income:
How many of these dynamics have to play out to collapse the current version of global/monopoly/finance capitalism? We have a ringside seat to the spectacle, and we’ll likely know within the next decade.
* * *
My recent books:
Will You Be Richer or Poorer? Profit, Power and A.I. in a Traumatized World (Kindle $6.95, print $11.95) Read the first section for free (PDF).
Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 (Kindle), $12 (print), $13.08 ( audiobook): Read the first section for free (PDF).
The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake $1.29 (Kindle), $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF)
Money and Work Unchained $6.95 (Kindle), $15 (print) Read the first section for free (PDF).
* * *
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Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 18:45 - Satellite Images Reveal Damage Of Iranian Strike On Iraqi Air Base
Satellite Images Reveal Damage Of Iranian Strike On Iraqi Air Base
National Public Radio (NPR) has published one of the first satellite images showing the damage from the Iranian missile strike at the Ain Assad Air Base located in Al Anbar Governorate of western Iraq, which hosts US and British troops.
The images, taken by Planet Labs and shared with NPR via the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey, show at least five sites on the base heavily damaged from the Iranian missile strike on Tuesday night.
David Schmerler, an analyst with the Middlebury Institute, told NPR that the high high-resolution satellite images of the base taken after the attack showed at least five damaged structures. “Some of the locations struck look like the missiles hit dead center,” Schmerler said.
Jeffery Lewis, a professor at Middlebury Institute, tweeted a before and after snapshot of one of the impact areas of the base. It appears two Iranian missiles hit a group of tents next to three helicopters.
Twitter handle Yuri Lyamin shared a Plant Labs satellite image of the base that appears to be dated Jan. 8, 2020, but doesn’t have the markings from Middlebury Institute and is a much broader view.
It appears Lyamin circled nine points of interest where possible damage was sustained from the Iranian missile strike.
President Trump tweeted Tuesday night after the attacks and said: “All is well! Missiles launched from Iran at two military bases located in Iraq. Assessment of casualties & damages taking place now. So far, so good! We have the most powerful and well-equipped military anywhere in the world, by far! I will be making a statement tomorrow morning.”
Schmerler said the Iranians might have targeted structures on the base that would minimize the loss of human life to thwart a retaliation strike by the US. “The buildings we’re tallying now seem to be used for storing aircraft,” he said. “There are other structures at the airbase that would be exclusively for people, so maybe they intended to strike sites with equipment over people.”
I’m not an Iran expert. But I am a military analyst. When I see the impact points of Iran’s strike on Asad air base, I don’t see purely symbolic strikes designed to avoid casualties, as some have speculated. The strikes appear to target the base’s military capability. pic.twitter.com/lx4nOTyrO4
— Dara Massicot (@MassDara) January 8, 2020
https://platform.twitter.com/widgets.js
As we noted on Wednesday, Iran has taken President Trump’s playbook in Syria: launch missiles and purposely miss their intended targets.
Iran has superior missile technology that can hit whatever they want – this could be in an attempt to save face as a public relations event for its citizens while attempting to de-escalate the situation and avoid war.
“The live situation was optically quite dramatic, but the important thing to focus on is the no-human-casualty dimension, which gives ample space to de-escalate the situation,” said Salman Ahmed, chief investment strategist at Lombard Odier Investment Managers.
“The Trump factor is the random factor, but what’s visible is that no one wants war, and that’s what markets are focusing on.”
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 18:25 - "Past Due": Court Declares Hunter Biden The Father Of Child In Arkansas
“Past Due”: Court Declares Hunter Biden The Father Of Child In Arkansas
In a long expected order, Arkansas Circuit Judge Holly Meyer has declared Hunter Biden, son of presidential candidate Joe Biden, to be the “biological and legal father” of a child he fathered with former GW student, 29-year-old Lunden Alexis Roberts.
Biden has long denied being the father and has refused to support the child. He has also refused to turn over information on his assets, part of discovery that Meyer referred to as “past due.” It was obviously not the only element past due for Biden with regard to this child.
Roberts, reportedly was a stripper at a Washington, D.C., club that Biden liked to party at while in Washington.
In the order, Meyer ordered the Arkansas Department of Health to issue a birth certificate listing Biden as the father.
Biden has children by at least three different women. Roberts filed papers that portrayed him as a deadbeat father, stating that Biden “had no involvement in the child’s life since the child’s birth, never interacted with the child, never parented the child,” and “could not identify the child out of a photo lineup.”
The next hearing is set for January 29th on child support. That could create some fireworks as Biden has resisted disclosures of his wealth — information that could reveal how much he received from dubious Ukrainian and Chinese contracts.
Ironically, Joe Biden has been attacked for a 1981 op-ed entitled “Congress is Subsidizing Deterioration of Family.”
In the column, Biden suggested that families with more income should not receive tax credits for child care because one parent should stay at home while the other works. Biden bemoaned the loss of “individual responsibility and said that day-care centers were “monuments to our growing unwillingness to accept personal responsibility.” Of course, that is particularly difficult when one of the parents not only does not support his child but denies that he ever had an intimate relationship with the mother.
When asked about the court previously ordering DNA tests confirming Biden’s status as the father, Joe Biden snapped at a reporter and said “No, that’s a private matter and I have no comment.”
He then told the Fox reporter “Only you would ask that. You’re a good man. You’re a good man. Classy.”
Joe Biden, like many presidential candidates, has long identified deadbeat dads as a major national problem.
He even used the issue to defend a controversial bankruptcy bill in 2001 when he was a senator. In a 2001 Senate floor speech, Biden defended the law by arguing that the bankruptcy bill would actually improve the situation for women and children.
By including a requirement that “deadbeat dads” who file for bankruptcy must make child support payments above nearly all other creditors, Biden insisted “this bill empowers women. It gives them a say in the bankruptcy proceedings relating to her absent spouse.”
Hunter Biden is also reportedly expecting a child with his new wife, Melissa Cohen Biden, whom he married this past May.
Tyler Durden
Wed, 01/08/2020 – 18:05
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