- Freedom And Central Planning Can Never Coexist
Submitted by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,
The average person is a statist, whether he realizes it or not. It is important that liberty activists recognize and accept this fact because the truth of our limitations as a movement determines the kinds of solutions into which we should ultimately put our time and energy. The fantasy of a final grand march of an awake and aware majority on the doorsteps of power is just that: a fantasy. Some people might argue that given more time, such an event could be organized or could happen spontaneously. But these people seem to forget that the immediacy of any crisis inspires awareness and cuts the bindings of complacency for only a certain percentage of any given population. With “more time” often comes more complacency, not less.
So, history becomes a kind of balancing act, with crisis generating the necessity of intelligent and moral action in some people but rarely, if ever, in most people (even during the American Revolution, in which patriots represented a stark minority). The reason that the culture of freedom consistently plateaus and remains stuck at underdog status is because human beings are, first, often acclimated to the idea that crises are things that only happen to other people, and, second, they are obsessed with the idea that governments should retain prohibitory and administrative power over the public as a means to "prevent" crisis from occurring (the sheepdog and sheep mentality).
Not all people necessarily “love” their current government, but many citizens tend to see the idea of government as an inevitability of a stable society. They assume pre-eminence of the state because they have never known anything else. Not only that, but as people separate into political and ideological factions, often based on false paradigms (such as the false left/right paradigm), they covet government as a kind of tool or weapon that can be used for “the greater good” if only their side had total control of it. Very few people in this world want to shrink government down to a manageable size comparable to that which existed just after the American Revolution, and even fewer would entertain the idea of erasing central governments entirely. The allure of the federalized state as a means to impose ideological control over others is intoxicating.
Central planning acolytes see society as a a single unit, or engine, in which all the people are parts rather than autonomous individuals. They believe that if any part acts outside of the bounds of the engine, the entire machine could break. According to their fuzzy logic, everything you do as an individual affects everyone else, therefore, the collective state must mold and control each individual's behavior in order to ensure that what you do as a singular person does no harm to the whole. This philosophy is the primary rationale for EVERY push for centralization, but it is based on a faulty premise.
Governments are run by people, people commonly more flawed and corrupt than the average citizen. Central planners adore the use of government as a means to reign in populations and to compel conformity and "oneness", but centrally planned systems always revert to a divided structure in which a criminal minority separates itself from the collective in order to rule over that collective. The elites actions violate the integrity of the engine as they attempt to drive the engine according to their own twisted ideals, leading to disaster and the end of the supposedly safe environment which the central planners had originally claimed was the benefit of central planning. Thus, the central planning model is an inherently self destructive and foolish one.
At bottom, the only viable purpose of any central government is to safeguard individual liberty. All other claims and supposed benefits are irrelevant. Infrastructure, food and water, health, education, public security, etc: All of these issues can be provided for voluntarily at a local level by common people without the aid of a central authority. The original intent of the U.S. Constitution and Bill of Rights was to LIMIT government to the job of ensuring the continuance of a free citizenry. One could certainly argue that that role has been lost; not because of the constitution itself, but because of the lack of vigilance needed to defend the integrity constitution. One could also argue that the very nature of a federal government is one of inevitable corruption; many of the founding fathers did as the document was drafted, after all.
I will say that the constitution and the Bill of Rights are representations of natural law and inherent conscience, and it has taken elitists over two centuries to mostly dismantle them. At this point, a complete end to any form of federalization may be called for, but the founders certainly tried their best to create a government system that could be controlled by the people.
It was war, of course, that was used to dismantle constitutional protections…
Most of the outside or foreign threats we face today as a nation (threats often used to rationalize centralized government and standing armies) or have faced in the past century were directly or indirectly CREATED by our own government apparatus and by the banking class through covert means. Funding and training of Americas future enemies has been a grand pastime for the power brokers and politicians that reside in this very country. Without such people and the structures they exploit, it is not outlandish to suggest that the past hundred years could have been a period of peace and prosperity rather than mass death through engineered war, state culling, and mass enslavement through artificial debt constructs.
In a culture where vigilance is encouraged rather than labeled paranoia, in a culture where productivity is enabled rather than obstructed, in a culture where free thought is treated with interest rather than disdain, government holds no value.
The only people who understand the true nature of government and still value the existence of an overreaching state are the people who would like to take advantage of the unchecked power such a state affords. We often call these people “elitists.” They often call themselves elitists. Big government serves only the interests of these elites. Everyone else is either a hapless victim of it, a useful idiot in service of it, or a revolutionary opposed to it.
When a government becomes a power mechanism for a select few, it has lost all relevance. When a government like ours here in America violates the tenets of individual liberty despite its constitutional mandate, in the name of “protecting” individual liberty, that government no longer serves any purpose. Even further, when a government’s policies are designed only to ensure its own continued dominance rather than the freedom and prosperity of the citizenry, that government becomes separate from the people and is, by extension, an enemy to the citizenry.
Governments and the elites behind them retain control over populations through the use of central planning. Central planning is essentially a bureaucratic structure that bottlenecks productivity, resources, academia and ideas until all progress and expression require approval. That is to say, central planning is a machine that turns rights into privileges. It also sets up bureaucracy as the final arbiter of who is considered an authority in any particular field and who is a “layman.” These designations are not based on individual ability, intelligence or accomplishment. Rather, they are based on subservience and the level of blind faith in the establishment each person is willing to display in order to attain professional status.
Some of the most ignorant people in any given field or profession are often those deemed “experts” by establishment institutions, from politics, to law, to medicine, to economics, to science, to history, etc. The sad fact is mainstream experts are rarely the most knowledgeable, but they are the most indoctrinated.
As central planning gains ground, it moves away from more subtle institutional dependencies into full-bore tyranny. The line between permission and despotism is razor-thin, and this is where we in the U.S. stand today. Most nations around the globe are socialized nations, with central planning as the very foundation on which their societies stand. For the most part, these cultures are disarmed and servile with a modicum of perceived freedom that is treated as a privilege granted by the state rather than an inborn right of natural law. Yes, many societies have “freedoms,” as America does; but the difference is that these societies can have their freedoms confiscated at any given moment on the whim of the political elite. They have no recourse to obstruct such an action and no power to remove the offending system that rules over them when they finally get fed up.
In the U.S., central planning is surely prevalent and socialization is on a fast track. But Americans, whether they know it or not, still retain the ability of independent response — as we saw at Bundy Ranch, for instance, or in the defense of shopkeepers in Ferguson, Missouri, despite threats from government. We will lose our advantage of independent action if we allow the following changes to occur within our culture without a fight.
Disarmament
A disarmed population is utterly useless, philosophically and organizationally impotent, and easily ruled. Take a look at simpering weakling societies like the U.K., which prohibits anyone under the age of 18 to purchase plastic knives and punishes victims of crime for physically defending themselves. Governments that seek to undermine personal liberty ALWAYS disarm their respective populations if they can get away with it. In America, the only reason we have not yet been disarmed is because the establishment understands that revolution would immediately follow any attempt and that revolution would be seen as justified. I believe ultimately that disarmament in the U.S. will not be fully attempted until after a national crisis has been triggered.
Centralized Health Standards
The real purpose of Obamacare was not to provide universal health insurance. Such a task is utterly impossible in an economic system that is in the midst of decline with an aging population and reduced profit opportunities for the young. Socialism works only as long as there is someone from whom to steal money and resources. No, the purpose of Obamacare was to bond the healthcare industry to government in such a way as to make it an official appendage of the state.
Already, we have seen the push for the use of doctors as government informants, the issuance of forced vaccinations regardless of religious orientation or philosophical objection, increased taxation in the name of “harmonization” of care, etc. Beyond all this, the system must continue to perpetuate its own usefulness. And, I have no doubt that one day we will see such things as mandated health appraisals of individuals up to and including psychological health, as well as restricted care based on age, life habits or even ideological orientation. If the state can have your flight status restricted merely for your political beliefs, then why not one day have your access to medical care restricted?
Population Planning
We have heard it said many times that people should be required to attain a “license” before they are allowed to have children, but who gets to decide who is eligible for the “privilege” of children? Well, under a population planning scenario the state and its central planners do, of course. And what makes such people so ethically competent as to deserve this power over the right to family? Not a thing. In many cases, bureaucrats are the most psychopathic and unintelligent people in any given society.
Some people might argue that this kind of development is unthinkable in America and not a legitimate concern. But already in the U.S. we have seen instances of Child Protective Services abducting children belonging to parents with political conflicts with the existing establishment and living habits outside of the mainstream. We also live in a system in which many parents are forced by law to hand over their children to state-controlled schools for half of every weekday (as home-schoolers are attacked as aberrant child abusers). We are only a short step away from a world in which having a child invites as much government intrusion and restriction as rearing a child.
Overt Militarization Of Police
Yes, many people would claim that overt militarization of police has already occurred. I would say that they haven’t seen anything yet. We do not yet live in a country where jacked out cops with armor and M4 carbines stand on every street corner 24/7, but it won’t be long before this becomes our everyday environment. With politicians openly suggesting extreme measures to combat “lone wolf terrorists,” up to and including internment camps for “disloyal Americans” (thanks for at least being honest about your intentions, Wesley Clark), all it would take is one large-scale attack to inspire enough confusion in the population to provide cover for a full-blown police state. Central planning survives and thrives through fear. Fear is defeated through preparedness, planning and mindset.
Resource Management
A person cannot plan or prepare for crisis if he is not allowed to manage his own resources. In Venezuela today, the government has locked down all food production and is rationing out necessary supplies through sophisticated electronic tracking due to economic crisis. Make no mistake, America is just as vulnerable to financial disaster as any Third World nation, if not more so. Resource management will be the inevitable result. In fact, the Obama administration has already positioned itself for resource management through his National Defense Resources Preparedness Executive Order. Government officials will call preppers “hoarders” and argue that no one person should be allowed to have more than he needs. Once again, the argument will be that the self preservation mentality of individuals actually harms the collective.
Centralized Economy
We already have a centralized and socialized economy for the most part, but private trade and production are still possible. Central planning is designed to wipe out alternative forms of trade and subsistence so that all people can be made dependent on the singular state. As in Venezuela, we should expect that economic declines will be used as a rationale for a clampdown on individual trade. The only way to fight these kinds of measures is for average people to become avid producers and be willing to fight back physically against confiscation and government-controlled rationing.
Beyond trade controls, centralization will culminate in economic “harmony” through multilateral currency schemes, ending in a one-world currency. A single currency system by default calls for a single economic authority, and this by default calls for a single political authority. A one-world currency is not only a fiscal coup for central planners; it is also a stepping stone toward world government.
Cashless Society
A cashless system is a kind of unholy grail for central planners because it allows for total control of economic trade. Electronic-based currency systems can be dictated from the comfort of a computer, and savings can be erased or limited arbitrarily. Cashless systems also allow banking structures to operate without the normal consequences of supply and demand fundamentals. Today, even in our massively corrupt financial system, one cannot get around the concrete effects of diminishing demand, endless debt obligations and criminal fiat creation. We are seeing these effects vividly so far in 2015, just as we saw then in 2008. In a completely cashless system, though, debts can vanish, capital can be stolen and shifted away from the public in a more precise manner, taxes can be excised without waiting for taxpayers to comply, and demand can be artificially generated with digital fiat directed to the correct accounts without any trail to follow.
Of course, there will be damages. But, those damages will be foisted upon the general public incrementally until Third World living standards become normal, and no one will be the wiser after a couple of generations. Control of the population would be absolute, while any dissent could be met with immediate financial reprisal, as activists are sentenced to starvation.
The examples listed above may be measured as extreme, but every single one has support within our existing government structure either legally or through actual programs already being implemented. The speed at which they might occur is an unknown, but the desire for them by central planners is absolutely certain. There is no good or benevolent form of central planning. There is no scenario in which the system will not be abused because such power concentrated in the hands of any group of human beings invites abuse. Therefore, the only prudent course, the only solution to the absolute terror of complete state power, is to reduce government down to a shell of its current size or to remove its existence entirely and focus on localized systems and independent trade and infrastructure development. If the federalized state as an edifice no longer exists, then it can no longer be exploited by evil people.
- Meet Wesley Edens, The New "Subprime King"
In early March, something terrible happened and almost no one noticed.
Springleaf, the subprime lending unit of AIG (the poster child for misjudging credit risk via CDS) bought OneMain, another subprime lender that’s been relegated to Citi’s Citi Holdings trash bin for years. We called it a “match made in subprime hell.” And we were right.
Both Springleaf and OneMain are in the personal loan business, which means they lend relatively small amounts to borrowers who use the money for all manner of things. Some of these loans are then run through Wall Street’s securitization machine. The result: paper which generally falls into the always treacherous “other” or “esoteric” category of the consumer ABS space. So far, 2015 has seen about $10 billion in supply and total issuance of consumer ABS backed by “other” credits should come in at around $30 billion for the year – that’s up sharply from just $13.2 billion in 2014. As we discussed in detail when the deal first hit the wires, Springleaf and OneMain have together spearheaded the unlikely re-emergence of ABS backed by subprime personal loans. In 2013 for instance, Springleaf did a $604 million ABS deal backed by nearly 200,000 personal loans (average FICO 602) with maturities ranging from 2-4 years and carrying fixed rates as high as 35%. Springleaf was back at it not four months later, contemplating another $400 million ABS deal. In 2014, the company set up two VIEs for the purpose of selling almost $900 million in ABS backed by consumer loans, and in February, the company priced a $1.16 billion deal. For its part, OneMain did a $760 million deal in April of last year (backed by quite a few unsecured loans) followed by a $1.2 billion dollar deal around three months later. The company went on to do 2015’s first securitization backed by consumer loans, a January deal that was upsized to $1.2 billion.
The important point here is that before Springleaf and OneMain’s efforts these deals were dead. As we said more than two years ago, “one thing that was hardly ever sold even in the peak days of the 2007 credit bubble were securitizations based on personal-loans, the reason being even back then everyone’s memory was still fresh with the recollection that it was precisely personal-loan securitization that was at the core of the previous, and in some ways worse, credit bubble – that of the late 1990s, which resulted with the bankruptcy of Conseco Finance.”
Earlier this month, Springleaf disclosed that the deal for OneMain may be delayed because unsurprisingly, the Justice Department has “expressed potential concerns.” In what might very well be an effort to put a friendly face on what otherwise looks like an attempt to create a subprime lending powerhouse with some $14 billion in possibly-toxic receivables, Wesley Edens, chairman and co-founder of Fortress Investment Group, which has a majority stake in Springleaf took advantage of a profile piece in WSJ to remind the world that it’s “not a shameful thing helping people finance themselves” – even at 26%. Below are some notable excerpts from the piece. Consider Edens’ comments along with what we’ve said above, and draw your own conclusions.
Wesley Edens still rues his decision not to bet against subprime mortgages before the financial crisis. That left Fortress Investment Group LLC, the private-equity and hedge-fund firm where he is co-founder and co-chairman, exposed to big losses that sank its stock price below $1.
On Wall Street, the best way to get over a losing trade is to bounce back with a winner. Mr. Edens is enjoying a surprising whopper: subprime loans.
A resurgence in loans to Americans with scuffed or limited credit is giving Fortress one of the largest financial windfalls in the history of the private-equity industry.
The New York company’s majority stake in subprime lender Springleaf Holdings Inc. has ballooned in value to $3.5 billion—putting the firm’s gain at more than 27 times Fortress’s original investment of $124 million in 2010. Buying the stake was Mr. Edens’s idea.
The giant gains have helped offset recent stumbles by Fortress in its “macro” hedge-fund business—and made Mr. Edens the new subprime king.
“It’s not how I want my epitaph to read,” he says of the label, “but it’s not a shameful thing helping people finance themselves. It’s not a bad thing.”
Today’s expanding subprime-loan market is different from the last one. This boom is fueled largely by auto loans, credit cards and personal loans, which appeal to borrowers straining under the limp economic recovery and puny wage gains.
More than one-third of all auto, credit-card and personal loans from the start of January to the end of April went to subprime borrowers, according to the latest available data from credit-reporting firm Equifax Inc. That is the highest percentage since 2007.
Lenders made 53.7 million auto, credit-card and personal loans in the first four months of 2015, up 46% from 2010. Originations of personal loans, like those made by Springleaf, are up 22% in the same period.
Mr. Edens and other Fortress executives are pushing hard to get even bigger in subprime lending. In March, Springleaf agreed to pay Citigroup Inc. about $4.25 billion in cash for the bank’s OneMain Financial unit.
If the deal is completed, Springleaf would become the largest lender focused on subprime in the U.S., with about 2.5 million customers and 2,000 branches.
Mr. Edens says Springleaf won’t contribute to a new subprime meltdown no matter how big it gets. The reason: Unlike lenders who sank during the financial crisis, Springleaf says it verifies each applicant’s income and won’t make the loan unless it is sure the borrower can pay it back.
“Lending to people without great credit wasn’t the problem,” he says. Instead, too many Americans got too much credit from lenders based on inflated real-estate values.
“A lot of people live paycheck to paycheck, and if they don’t have financing it’s not good for the country,” Mr. Edens adds. “This is a more humane way of people dealing with credit.”
Springleaf makes secured and unsecured personal and auto loans of as much as $25,000. All the loans have fixed interest rates. The average loan is about $4,300 and usually is repaid in 19 months. The company sees a potential market of 120 million Americans who need cash.
The average interest rate on Springleaf’s loans is 26%. Consumer advocates criticize the high rates on many subprime loans and say lenders often pile on additional fees with products such as credit insurance. Many borrowers have to get new loans to pay off old ones, consumer advocates argue.
Springleaf says high interest rates are needed because about 6% of its borrowers default each year.
Springleaf has benefited from banks’ skittishness about subprime personal loans. At the end of the second quarter, the company had 958,000 customer accounts, up 11% from a year earlier.
Now the company is expanding in auto lending and other areas, though it has no current plans to make mortgage loans. Springleaf has told investors it will target customers with FICO scores of 500 to 750, especially those with scores of less than 699.
- Is The Currency War Over? China Revalues Yuan 0.05% Stronger
Heading into the China session, offshore Yuan signaled a 1% devaluation was on the cards. Of course, all media eyes were focused on the disaster in Tianjin but after 3 days of what was supposed to a 'one-off' adjustment, The PBOC has in fact surprised with a modestly stronger fix at 6.3975 from yesterday's 6.4010 Fix. That leaves the CNY Fix devaluation to a 4.60% loss in 4 day. Of course, its a bit hypocritical of Americans or Europeans to regard the Chinese as mean and nasty and currency warriors because they're letting their currency adjust against a constantly-devaluing dollar and euro. The US has been devaluing the dollar for years, but that's a-ok for Wesrern commentators, apparently. It appears – judging by the opening devaluation and closing intervention – that China is as set on crushing the herd of one-way carry traders as any export-enhancing currency debasement.
- *CHINA SETS YUAN REFERENCE RATE AT 6.3975 AGAINST U.S. DOLLAR
- *PBOC YUAN REFERENCE RATE STRENGTHENS 0.05%
Offshore Yuan signalled some further devaluation was coming… no matter how much The PBOC denies its 10% goal…
Note the last 2 days have seen intervention at the close of the day – shaking out as many carry traders as possible…
Chinese stock futures are rising modestly after the week-long drift lower..
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Finally, here is an interesting Austrian perspective on why China devalued the Yuan (via The Menger Center's Paul-Martin Foss),
Taking a look at this chart of the Dollar/Yuan exchange rate, you can understand why the Chinese government took the action that it did. The chart is denominated in yuan to dollars. The more yuan per dollar, the weaker the yuan and the stronger the dollar; the fewer yuan per dollar, the stronger the yuan and the weaker the dollar. You can see that the yuan has been continuously strengthening over the past ten years. Remember that as a currency strengthens, exports from that country become more expensive. A good that cost 100 yuan back in 2005 would mean a dollar cost of a little over $12. A 100-yuan good today would cost over $16. That’s why the Chinese government originally tried to keep the yuan pegged to the dollar, so as not to make the exports it relied upon for economic growth more expensive abroad. But after much pressure from the US and other Western countries, the government depegged the yuan, allowing it to trade in a narrow band and appreciate against the dollar.
Remember the dynamic that was going on, too. Chinese firms would export to the United States. US importers would pay Chinese firms in dollars. Those dollars would come back to China, where the exporters wanted to change them into yuan. Now what to do with all those dollars? Well, the Chinese government used them to purchase US Treasury bonds. Of course, the US wanted to take advantage of this, so the Federal Reserve created even more money out of thin air, increasing the money supply, with more and more of those dollars going overseas to purchase Chinese goods. And then the Chinese government would soak up more of the US government’s debt. Cheap goods and our debt is covered? That’s a win-win in any government’s book.
Take a look at the chart of the M2 money supply, the broadest money supply measure the Fed still publishes.
As the M2 money supply increases (devaluing the dollar), it seems that the yuan strengthens against the dollar. If you look at the actual data behind these charts, there’s a -0.91 correlation between M2 and the yuan/dollar exchange rate over the past 10 years. If you strip out the new pegging period from mid-2008 to mid-2010, there’s a -0.96 correlation from mid-2005 to mid-2008, and a -0.85 correlation from mid-2010 to today, which rises again to -0.96 if you remove the data from the interventionist period beginning in early 2014. Yes, correlation doesn’t equal causation, but these numbers aren’t mere coincidence. The US government wanted to take full advantage of the dollar’s position as the world’s reserve currency, exporting dollars to China in exchange for cheap consumer goods, while simultaneously making US exports of capital-intensive goods to China cheaper.
Any American reactions to China’s devaluation moves must be seen as hypocritical. Just as the US government took advantage of the Bretton Woods system to print more dollars than it had gold, it has engaged in a similar beggar-thy-neighbor policy with respect to China, exporting devaluing dollars to China in exchange for Chinese-made goods. It is perfectly understandable that China would rather not have its monetary policy guided by decisions made in Washington. All the hand-wringing in Washington is just for show. American politicians wanted to enjoy the benefits of inflation, getting something for nothing, and they don’t want it to stop. So they try to paint China as the bad guy for reacting to loose American monetary policy. It goes without saying that none of this would be an issue if we could just get government out of the money creation business. But that’s a story for another day.
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As The Mises Institute's Ryan McMaken sums up:
China has devalued the Yuan for the third day in a row. For many, this has aroused fears of a currency war. But, its a bit hypocritical of Americans or Europeans to regard the Chinese as mean and nasty and currency warriors because they're letting their currency adjust against a constantly-devaluing dollar and euro. The US has been devaluing the dollar for years, but that's a-ok for Western commetators, apparently. Now, as Frank Hollenbeck has pointed out, devaluing the currency to favor exporters is a bad idea, but that's nevertheless what Europe, the US, and Japan have been doing for years – unofficially. The fact that China is now trying to get in on the game is just the expected outcome of the current global monetary race to the bottom…
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So China rattled its monetary sabre… wobbled a few EMs, crushed European carry trades, and flexed its muscles by not turning up at today's 30Y auction in the US… message sent loud and clear?!
- Neocon 'Godfather' Warns Against "Too Much Transparency" In Government
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
Although he’s attempted to distance himself from it in recent years, there is little doubt about the role American political scientist, Francis Fukuyama, has played in popularizing the cancerous ideology know as neo-conservatism.
In case you harbor any doubts, he was one of the signatories to Bill Kristol’s infamous open letter to George W. Bush on September 20, 2001, which amongst other things, argued for military involvement in Iraq. A move that ultimately manifested in 2003, and represents one of the greatest foreign policy blunders in U.S. history. Here’s the Iraq section from that letter, signed by Mr. Fukuyama:
We agree with Secretary of State Powell’s recent statement that Saddam Hussein “is one of the leading terrorists on the face of the Earth….” It may be that the Iraqi government provided assistance in some form to the recent attack on the United States. But even if evidence does not link Iraq directly to the attack, any strategy aiming at the eradication of terrorism and its sponsors must include a determined effort to remove Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq. Failure to undertake such an effort will constitute an early and perhaps decisive surrender in the war on international terrorism. The United States must therefore provide full military and financial support to the Iraqi opposition. American military force should be used to provide a “safe zone” in Iraq from which the opposition can operate. And American forces must be prepared to back up our commitment to the Iraqi opposition by all necessary means.
Of course, what Mr. Fukuyama is most famous for, is the ridiculous assertion in his book, The End of History and the Last Man, that the worldwide spread of liberal democracies and free market capitalism of the West and its lifestyle may signal the end point of humanity’s sociocultural evolution and become the final form of human government.
Not only is such a concept infantile on it’s face, but it has already been proven completely wrong. Not only have all Western liberal democracies morphed into grotesque neo-feudal, surveillance state panopticon oligarchies since he wrote the book, but we are seeing a dramatic spread of ISIS throughout the Middle East, ironically birthed from the unnecessary war he encouraged.
I still don’t know why Mr. Fukuyama is celebrated, other than perhaps to serve as some flimsy celebrity-intellectual backing for the status quo’s favorite pastimes — war mongering and authoritarianism.
In case you still harbor any doubts about who this guy is, and where he is coming from, he recently wrote an Op-ed in the Financial Times arguing that too much government transparency is a bad thing.
It is clear that there are vast areas in which modern governments should reveal more. Edward Snowden’s revelations of eavesdropping by the National Security Agency has encouraged belief that the US government has been not nearly transparent enough. But is it possible to have too much transparency? The answer is clearly yes: demands for certain kinds of transparency have hurt government effectiveness, particularly with regard to its ability to deliberate.
The problem with the Freedom of Information Act is different. It was meant to serve investigative journalists looking into abuses of power. But today a large number of FOIA requests are filed by corporate sleuths trying to ferret out secrets for competitive advantage, or simply by individuals curious to find out what the government knows about them. The FOIA can be “weaponised”, as when the activist group Judicial Watch used it to obtain email documents on the Obama administration’s response to the 2012 attack on the US compound in Benghazi.
In Europe, where there is no equivalent to the FACA or the Sunshine Act, governments can consult citizens’ groups more flexibly. There is, of course, a large and growing distrust of European institutions by citizens. But America’s experience suggests that greater transparency requirements do not necessarily lead to more trust in government.
Oh yes Francis, and look how well Europe has turned out.
- The College Bubble 2.0
On Monday, we got some color on Hillary Clinton’s $350 billion plan to make college more affordable. As we recently noted, students and former students across the country owe more than $1.2 trillion in college loans – doled out by our government in the name of helping high school graduates further their education, and as Bill Ackman so eloquently put it earlier this year, "there’s no way they’re going to pay it back." But at this point, extra funding is backfiring. Half of young graduates are either unemployed or only working part-time, which is a startling sign that the jig is up. In conjunction with the poor economy, new technology, developing markets killing jobs, and the massive increase in applicants with degrees, the value of college degrees is drastically falling in the economy of today. College is in a bubble, and it is going to pop soon…
The following video should open a few more eyes to the startling crisis facing today's young adults and the American higher education system…
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And as we recently noted, one hedge fund is attempting to take advantage of that, hoping for the next "Big Short."
These worries showed up earlier this year when Moody’s put billions in student loan-backed ABS on review for downgrade. Many of the deals in question are sponsored by loan servicer Navient, which was spun off from Sallie Mae in 2014.
Now, one Boston-based hedge fund is building a short position on what it says is "runaway inflation in post-secondary education" by shorting the likes of Navient and other names tied to to the student loan bubble.
Here’s Bloomberg with more:
FlowPoint Capital Partners, the $15 million hedge fund co-founded by Charles Trafton, is betting against companies such as student-loan servicer Navient Corp. to profit from what it calls a college bubble bursting in slow motion.
The Boston-based firm is building positions against stocks of textbook publishers, student lenders and real estate companies that focus on college housing, Trafton said in an interview. Changes in the more than $1 trillion student loan market could hurt companies such as Navient, Sallie Mae and Nelnet Inc., according to a July investor letter from the firm.
Businesses "levered to runaway inflation in post-secondary education are susceptible to growth and margin shocks," the firm wrote in the letter.
So there, ladies and gentlemen, is one way to trade the bubble if you believe expecting the nation's graduates to somehow fork over $1.2 trillion is unrealistic in a job market where landing a gig as "head bartender" is sometimes the best one can hope for if you happen to have majored in anything other than petroleum engineering.
We wonder how many hedge funds are hard at work with Wall Street creating customized deals full of the worst student loan credits they can find with the sole intention of betting against them.
- Greek Parliament In Eleventh Hour Discussions On Bailout- Live Feed
Greek lawmakers are now set to vote on the final draft of the country’s third bailout program. If the proposal doesn’t clear parliament, eurozone finance ministers will likely delay implementation of the ESM program, setting up the possibility that Athens will be forced to tap the remaining funds in the EFSM for a bridge loan in order to make a €3.2 billion payment to the ECB next week.
More from Bloomberg:
Greece will be forced to accept a bridge loan if lawmakers don’t approve the country’s bailout before a meeting of euro-area finance ministers later Friday, Finance Minister Euclid Tsakalotos says in parliament.
Euro-area finance ministers late won’t sign off on plan if it hasn’t yet been passed through Greek parliament.
As a reminder, the MOU includes around 40 new laws, including what Kathimerini describes as “a barrage of new taxes.” Here’s a rundown:
A diesel fuel tax for farmers going from 66 euros per 1,000 liters to 200 euros/1,000 liters from October 1, 2015, and to 330 euros by October 1, 2016. Farmers’ income tax to be paid in advance will rise from 27.5 percent to 55 percent. Income tax for farmers is set to rise from 13 to 20 percent for 2016 and to 26 percent for 2017.
Freelancers will be subject to a gradual increase from 55 to 75 percent in advanced tax payments for income earned in 2015, increasing to 100 percent in 2016. The 2 percent tax break for single payments on income tax is also being abolished from January 1, 2015.
Private education, previously untaxed, will be taxed at 23 percent, including the tutoring schools (frontistiria) that most Greeks send their children to but excluding preschools. Reduced value-added tax rates for islands are to be abolished completely by the end of 2016, with enforcement staggered across three groups of islands from October 1, 2015 to January 1, 2017.
As we noted earlier, expect some MPs in Tsipras’ coalition government to vote against the deal (incidentally, Panagiotis Lafazanis announced the formation of a new “political movement” today), but between the PM’s call for an end to Syriza infighting earlier this month and the support of opposition parties, the bailout will likely pass.
Live feed:
Full bailout documents
- Don't Look Now, But The Subprime Auto Bubble May Be Bursting
Well, it’s official: the cat is out of the bag on what’s “driving” (no pun intended) record US auto sales.
Anyone who frequents these pages is by now well-versed in the idea of “originate to sell.” It’s the dynamic that helped create the housing bubble and it’s now in full effect in the auto loan space.
The concept is simple. When demand is strong for paper backed by a particular type of asset, Wall Street obliges by cranking up the securitization machine. Thanks in part to the Fed-induced hunt for yield demand for auto loan-backed ABS has been strong. Supply should come in at around $125 billion this year – that’s up 25% from 2014 and accounts for more than half of total consumer loan-backed issuance. Here are the latest projections from BofAML:
In this environment, competition among lenders keen on getting in on lucrative securitizations heats up – the more fierce the competition, the less scrupulous the underwriting and before you know it, you’ve got tens if not hundreds of billions in paper floating around backed by loans to underqualified buyers.
It doesn’t take a securitized products strategist to figure out what happens next (although as Ben Bernanke showed us in 2006, it is apparently far too complex for a PhD economist). Borrowers who never should have been given loans in the first place start to default and the ABS collateral pools quickly transform from collections of pristine credits to steaming cesspools.
We’ve talked until we’re blue in the face about the lunatic terms being extended to buyers in the auto market, but the following bullet points (derived from Experian’s Q1 data) are always worth recapping:
- Average loan term for new cars is now 67 months — a record.
- Average loan term for used cars is now 62 months — a record.
- Loans with terms from 74 to 84 months made up 30% of all new vehicle financing — a record.
- Loans with terms from 74 to 84 months made up 16% of all used vehicle financing — a record.
- The average amount financed for a new vehicle was $28,711 — a record.
- The average payment for new vehicles was $488 — a record.
- The percentage of all new vehicles financed accounted for by leases was 31.46% — a record.
That’s the story and it’s one we’ve told before, but just so it’s clear that everyone else is now catching up, here’s Bloomberg with a summary of a new Nomura note:
Losses on car loans taken out by bad-credit borrowers are continuing to climb, thanks in part to the flood of rookie auto finance companies that have entered the market in recent years. You can see the rise in subprime borrowers struggling to make car payments in monthly data on bond deals sold on Wall Street. So-called subprime auto asset-backed securities (ABS) bundle together car loans and then sell them to big investors.
July reports show that annualized net losses on such bonds—a measure of the cost of bad debt—rose 1.45 percentage points over the past year to reach 6.6 percent last month, according to Nomura analysts.
What’s driving the rise? Nomura has an idea.
“The significantly weaker performance in the subprime auto sector is being driven by an increase in issuance from the lesser established issuers,” researchers led by Lea Overby said in a report.
Smaller, newer bond issuers fueled 37 percent of the sales of subprime bonds last year, up from 27 percent in the previous year, according to Nomura’s figures.
As the small upstarts fight for market share, the concern is that they’ll lower their standards too much and drag established lenders with them, inviting even greater trouble down the line. Many of the new players are backed by the biggest private-equity firms, which are under pressure to produce relatively quick returns.
For those curious to learn more about these “small upstarts” who may be “lowering their standards too much,” look no further than “Meet Skopos Financial, The New King Of Deep Subprime,” excerpts from which are included below.
* * *
Texas-based Skopos Financial has both raised and lowered the bar at the same time by setting a new standard for what counts as questionable collateral while simultaneously proving that in a NIRP world, investors are willing to plumb the FICO depths for yield.
Via Bloomberg:
Skopos Financial, a four-year-old auto finance company based in Irving, Tex., sold a $149 million bond deal consisting of car loans made to borrowers considered so subprime you might call them—we dunno—sub-subprime?
Details from the prospectus show a whopping 20 percent of the loans bundled into the bond deal were made to borrowers with a credit score ranging from 351 to 500—the bottom 6 percent of U.S. borrowers, according to FICO. As a reminder, the cut-off for “prime” borrowers is generally considered to be a credit score of around 620. More than 14 percent of the loans in the Skopos deal were made to borrowers with no score at all. That means the Skopos deal has a slightly higher percentage of no-score borrowers than the recent subprime auto securitization recently sold by Santander Consumer, which garnered plenty of attentionfor its dive into “deep subprime” territory.
Who is Skopos Financial you ask? We’ll let them tell the story in their own words:
In 2011, Skopos Financial opened its doors with one goal in mind making tough, deep subprime auto loans easier to finance for dealers.
Leveraging our sophisticated, patented iLender technology and visionary management team, Skopos provides a streamlined process for franchise dealers to finance customers with low credit scores.
As an indirect auto lender, Skopos offers solutions for car buyers with no credit, low FICO scores, or a previous bankruptcy, repossession or foreclosure. And the best part is the speed. Skopos’ dealers enjoy fast underwriting, fast approvals and fast funding.
Yes, the “best part is speed.” We suppose the process is quite efficient considering there appear to be no underwriting standards whatsoever.
As for the “visionary” management team, have a look at the following profiles which seem to indicate that at least for some industry veterans, Santander Consumer isn’t quite subprime-y enough (note that there’s a Countrywide link in there as well for good measure):
- Gold, The Fed, Exter’s Pyramid – When John Exter Met Paul Volcker
Submitted by GoldCore
Gold, The Fed, Exter’s Pyramid – When John Exter Met Paul Volcker
We have a fascinating dialogue with many readers. One of our readers living in the U.S. has first hand experience of people involved at the highest levels of the Federal Reserve. He is very concerned about the astronomical levels of debt in the U.S. and internationally and the fact that this debt continues to balloon in a completely unsustainable way.
With his permission, we are publishing his recent email to me (mark.obyrne at goldcore.com) in its entirety. It is about a private meeting between ex-New York Fed Vice President John Exter and ex Fed Chairman Paul Volcker. We have added a few images in order to help understand the gravity of the building financial and monetary risks of today.
Hi Mark,
While reading your piece last week on the US Federal debt having reached $18 trillion, it brought back my memory of a visit John Exter and I had with Fed Chairman Paul Volcker, back in 1981. It was a instance I’ll never forget!
John and I had a mutual billionaire widow client whose husband had been a Washington DC real estate magnet. He had died suddenly and she decided she wanted to have a part of her assets in physical gold and mining stocks. I recall she set the allocation at $50 million.
The widow had us travel to DC for a morning consultation followed by a luncheon. It was early April 1981 and 91 day US Treasury Bill rates were near 18%.
Our luncheon ended around 1:30 PM and we had a few hours to kill before our flight back to New York.
John Exter and Paul Volcker knew each other having been at the New York Fed as Vice Presidents and John decided he’d phone Volcker to see if he could see us before our return flight. Volcker took the call, said he would cancel his afternoon engagements and to come right over to the Fed. We got to the Fed and there were 36? high lumber piles of one foot long 2?X4? pieces all around Volcker’s office and the offices of his staff. Sky high interest rates had turned the construction industry down and the masses of unemployed construction workers were mailing Volcker the 2X4 pieces with nasty messages written on them in protest of the high rates.
John and I were at the Fed in a private conversation with Volcker for nearly three hours and in fact we nearly missed our flight because we stayed so long.
US Federal debt, in 1981 was rising through the $1 trillion level and I remember Volcker lamenting over the situation and asking John what he would recommend to get a handle on Federal spending. John gave Volcker a stern lecture on the Fed’s expansionary policies and told him the Fed would eventually end up destroying the whole American economy and the dollar because the Fed had become a prisoner of it’s own expansionism and it was something it couldn’t stop. John and Volcker discussed all the pitfalls of Keynesian and monetarism and Volcker didn’t rule out an eventual collapse of the dollar and second deflationary depression. I remember Volcker asking John when he would begin dropping short term rates and John commented that rates would have to drop soon or else the economy would fall off a cliff. It’s interesting that it wasn’t long after our session that rates started to come down.
The meeting was an experience of a lifetime for me to be sitting there in Volcker’s office listening to one gold standard economist central banker conversing with a Keynesian economist central banker. John Exter spelled out his scenario for Volcker and warned him of how badly the Keynesian experiment would end if it went on for an extended period of time. Volcker just sat there and listened and showed his concern.
Here we are 33 years later with US Federal Debt of $18 trillion with the country’s GDP at $17 trillion. A pretty disturbing situation, to say the least!
Volcker has joined my old club The Pilgrims of the United States which is based out of New York. I’ve been a member for nearly 40 years but don’t get back for meetings and events because of the travel distance. I hear Volcker goes to all the events and a fellow Pilgrim friend has approached him at meetings and when the late John Exter’s name is mentioned Volcker stops and has nothing but kind things to say about him.
Thought you’d be interested in learning of my anecdotal experience.
Best regards,
—————-
When reading this, some will say that this was in the past and these are different times and may not understand this warning from our recent history. However, it offers a lesson from the past that has significant relevance for today. The debasement of currency has ended in economic debacles in every single country, in every single instance throughout history.
Today, we see currency debasement internationally on a global scale – this has never happened before and has never been seen throughout history. The uber Keynesians attack those who warn about monetary risks and proclaim that none of the ‘goldbugs’ warnings have come to pass. Except of course, possibly the worst financial crisis that the world has ever seen and meager, unsustainable recovery.
We would caution that ‘yet’ may be the appropriate word here and we should all be vigilant and focus on the long terms risks – not the short term panaceas, tentative recoveries and massive asset bubbles of today.
- This Is One Way China Deals With Its Massive Auto Excess Inventory
Inventories of US autos in China recently exploded, as sales collapsed, leaving 1000s of vehicles gathering dust in Chinese ports… such as Tianjin. With credit collapsing – except for buying stocks on margin – it appears the Chinese have found an alternative way to drawdown that inventory…
With inventories at record levels…
And inventories-to-sales flashing recession red. One wonders if Automaker management 'hopes' for some more apocalyptic scenarios in global ports to drawdown this stack of vehicles that no one is buying.
- Oil Flash Crashes To Gundlach's Geopolitically "Terrifying Levels"
Forced liquidation… capitulation … contract roll… or “liquidity provision” gone awry? You decide.
As Nanex puts it “you said you needed to go faster to provide liquidity. This chart determined that was a lie.”
* * *
And don’t forget: in a January interview with FuW, DoubleLine’s Jeff Gundlach explained his concerns about the oil market not being “unequivocally good” for everyone…
Question: The crash in the oil market is already causing jitters in the financial markets around the globe. What is your take on that?
Gundlach: Oil is incredibly important right now. If oil falls to around $40 a barrel then I think the yield on ten year treasury note is going to 1%. I hope it does not go to $40 because then something is very, very wrong with the world, not just the economy. The geopolitical consequences could be – to put it bluntly – terrifying.
Gundlach is right historically… large and rapid rises and falls in the price of crude oil have correlated oddly strongly with major geopolitical and economic crisis across the globe. Whether driven by problems for oil exporters or oil importers, the ‘difference this time’ is that, thanks to central bank largesse, money flows faster than ever and everything is more tightly coupled with that flow.
So is the 50%-plus YoY drop in oil prices about to ’cause’ contagion risk concerns for the world?
- Behind The Scenes Of The Donald Trump – Roger Stone Show
Submitted by Mark Ames, and originally published on Pando,
It was just after liftoff on the flight from San Francisco to New York that Roger Stone’s face appeared on the back of Seat 9D, looking straight at me.
Gah! Did my Virgin America flight crash? is Roger Stone’s satellite-fed face my eternal punishment? The power of Christ compels you! The power of Christ compels you!…
But it was just CNN, a more familiar kind of Hell, and a deadlier one. Not what you want on your exit row TV monitor when you’re nursing a tequila hangover: Stone was giving a Big Exclusive interview to a bright white CNN bot named Poppy Harlow, a Heathers type who famously grieved on-air for the Steubenville rapists, “who had such promising futures, star football players”…
The big story: Trump fired Roger Stone from his campaign, or Roger Stone quit, depending on whom you believed (which, if you believe either Trump or Roger Stone, please contact me—I have a new Florida Swampland real estate app to sell you).
Somehow I’d missed the earlier news that Roger Stone—Dick Nixon’s dirty trickster, fascist fan of Roy Cohn, lobbyist for some of the worst dictators in the world—was running Trump’s campaign until last weekend. Or maybe I blocked it out—maybe I didn’t want to know, a sign of just how far I’ve reassimilated myself back into mainstream America’s comforting amnesia bubble.
The problem is, I know the Roger Stone story a bit too viscerally well. I even had a brief brush with Mr. Stone during the last presidential election cycle. He responded to a post mortem I wrote on Gary Johnson’s fraudulent 2012 run for president on the Libertarian Party ticket—a political swindle that Stone managed, and whose presence led me to dig deeper into the cesspool of modern third party fake-politics.
After my article came out in NSFWCORP [now owned by Pando], Roger Stone tweeted this compliment at me, calling me “asshole”:
@MarkAmesExiled Many, many thanks for spelling my name right, asshole.
— Roger Stone (@RogerJStoneJr) November 9, 2012
Now to most ordinary folks, a political operative calling a journalist “asshole” looks rather offensive, even scandalous. It’s considered part of his charm, among journalists who tend to come from a pampered class that is easy prey to the charms of a vicious DC thug whose peculiar bluff—“telling it like it is,” crude, macho, is “refreshingly reckless” by the chickenshit standards of most of today’s journalists…
If you know where Roger Stone comes from, it’s the closest thing to a compliment his species is capable of. Imagine a real life Repo Man guy, only without any of the lower-middle-class fun or the punk rock soundtrack—a monumentally sleazy, pro-business, Republican Party/Chamber of Commerce sewer rat version of the Harry Dean Stanton character, the only version that could possibly thrive in this cheerless, unheroic version of America that we’re stuck in.
Roger Stone’s involvement in Trump’s run for office today is good news for anyone interested in politics who’d like an early-season bullshit cleanser. The more you know about Stone’s (and Trump’s) history, the harder it is to trust the surface, and even harder to trust the margins of that surface – those spaces on the left and right where we’re told each election season are where the real politics are at –but in fact are so rotten and so easily manipulated you almost wish you didn’t know.
The three main takeaways you need to keep in mind in the Roger Stone-Donald Trump story are:
- Roger Stone’s dirty tricks specialty is manipulating voter fractures, and weaponizing anti-establishment politics to serve the electoral needs of mainstream Republican candidates;
- Roger Stone and Donald Trump have been working together since the mid-1980s, mostly on sleazy campaigns to help Trump’s casino business, but also in politics;
- Roger Stone and Donald Trump worked together in at least two major “black bag” operations manipulating anti-establishment politics to help the mainstream Republican presidential candidate;
First let’s start with a brief history of Roger Stone’s dirty tricks—although “dirty tricks” is one of those euphemisms that makes it sound almost fun, rather than depressing and vile. Stone got his start as a hippie-bashing Young Republican college student in the early Nixon years. He eagerly volunteered to work for Nixon’s CREEP (Committee to RE-Elect the President) operatives, who set up and funded a number of illegal campaign operations in 1971-2 to make sure that Nixon won the 1972 election.
Political spooks are a lot like government spooks and their buddies in the underworld—they boast and bullshit a lot, and some of them, like Stone, ham it up as a bluff to swooning journalists. So it’s hard to know exactly which dirty tricks the young Roger Stone was personally responsible for, but the Nixon CREEP team that he was recruited to work for definitely was responsible for destroying the 1972 candidacy of Sen. Edward Muskie of Maine, the candidate that the Nixon team feared the most.
The way they destroyed Muskie will be useful for us today, because Muskie comes from one of the lily-white New England states vulnerable to attacks from the race-focused left, a strategy we’ll see more of in our time.
One of young Roger Stone’s first dirty tricks for CREEP was sending a campaign check for $200 to liberal Republican congressman (and Wilson Sonsini co-founder) Pete McCloskey on behalf of the Young Socialist Alliance, and then forwarding a copy of the receipt to the publisher of the largest daily newspaper in New Hampshire, the Manchester Union-Leader. (Stone was supposed to write the check on behalf of the Gay Liberation Front, but he was too chickenshit about having his name associated with radical gays.)
Other tricks he and his team were involved in—installing their own mole as Muskie’s personal driver, who then passed on all sorts of confidential documents back to the CREEP team, which then leaked some of them, inciting paranoia in the Muskie staff.
The main thing is that Nixon and his team wanted Muskie out, the Democrats divided, and an unelectable leftist to emerge from the rubble as Nixon’s opponent. What’s painful to swallow is how successful they were in manipulating that outcome.
It was Pat Buchanan who laid out the Nixon ‘72 strategy in a memo titled “Muskie Watch,” advising that the GOP attacks should “focus on those issues that divide the Democrats, not those that unite Republicans.” Buchanan argued:
“It should exacerbate and elevate those issues on which Democrats are divided—forcing Muskie to either straddle, or come down on one side or the other.”
Another 1971 Buchanan memo reads,
Maintain as guiding political principle that our great hope for 1972 lies in maintaining or exacerbating the deep Democratic rift.
That “deep Democratic rift” referred to the far-right populist wing of the party in the South, led by George Wallace; and the left multiracial wing of the party, represented then by black congresswoman Shirley Chisholm, and by McGovern, who wound up winning the nomination.
Buchanan argued that having Wallace—Alabama’s symbol of segregation—run from the far-right in the 1972 Democratic primaries (but not run in November as a third party candidate, which would hurt Nixon) would divide the Democratic Party, and turn voters off. Lo and behold, they succeeded in convincing Wallace to run in the Democratic primaries in a dirty quid pro quo, and Wallace was doing a good job of dirtying and dividing the Dems until a real-life Travis Bickle stuck his pistol out from a crowd and popped Wallace’s spinal cord.
Another Nixon strategy was funding a black left run against the Democrats and against Muskie. Thanks to an amazing, deep-researched piece on Roger Stone on a site called italkyoubored.com, I came across some incredible passages that are a kind of open black box for contemporary politics—unless of course you think Nixon was an exception, and all those bad folks were punished and banished from our peaceable kingdom.
In an October 5, 1971 memo, Pat Buchanan—co-founder of the American Conservative magazine & Nixon’s favorite killer, the kind of guy Roger Stone dreamed of becoming (and one day, destroying)—wrote:
Top level consideration should be given to ways and means to promote, assist, and fund a Fourth Party candidacy of the Left Democrats and/or the Black Democrats….There is nothing that can so advance the President’s chances for reelection – not a trip to China, not four and a half per cent unemployment – as a realistic black…campaign….We should continue to champion the cause of the blacks within the Democratic Party.
As luck should have it, Muskie was hounded at his Florida hotel room during the primaries there by “angry” black picketers—who were secretly under Nixon’s White House supervision—demanding, angrily, that Muskie agree to name an African-American vice presidential candidate. [Source: Rick Perlstein’s “Nixonland”] And just as Pat Buchanan and Nixon hoped – even pledging money to fulfill that hope – New York Democrat Shirley Chisholm announced her independent run for president, the first African-American woman to ever do so. In secret Nixon White House files, Chisholm’s candidacy was part of “Operation Coal”—one of several operations under the rubric “Operation Gemstone” which culminated in the bugging of Watergate, the Democratic Party campaign headquarters.
It’s depressing to think it came out of White House conferences like this, recorded in the secret Nixon tapes:
SEPTEMBER 14, 1971: THE PRESIDENT, HALDEMAN [CHIEF OF STAFF], AND COLSON [WHITE HOUSE SPECIAL COUNSEL], 12:37-1:32 P.M., OVAL OFFICE
Nixon continues to rage about the IRS and his friends. Colson then joins the conversation, offering his special contributions to White House dirty tricks.
COLSON
Well, Bob Brown has some friends who are going to have signs around the Muskie rallies, [saying Carl] Stokes [the black mayor of Cleveland] for vice president. This raises the point—
HALDEMAN
I will hope the hell that Watts do go ahead with a black president candidate.
PRESIDENT NIXON
So do I.
HALDEMAN
In fact, Buchanan has come in with a suggestion that may make a lot of sense which is that — he says if we’re going to spend $50 million in this campaign, then 10 percent of it, $5 million, ought to be devoted—
PRESIDENT NIXON
To the fourth party.
HALDEMAN
—to financing a black—
COLSON
Shirley Chisholm and Julian Bond.
PRESIDENT NIXON
Do you think that the blacks will vote for a black party?
HALDEMAN
Some.
COLSON
A lot of them will especially if—
HALDEMAN
Just to show that the Democratic party has no one…But Pat’s point is we’ve got to get a viable candidate — only if they get a viable candidate. If they get a Julian Bond—
PRESIDENT NIXON
Well, let me suggest this. Might — $5 million would finance Eugene McCarthy.
HALDEMAN
Well, that’s Howard Stein is working on that. There’s a good story in the U.S News, Newsweek, or something. Stein has outlined the McCarthy plan which is that he is not going to enter the primaries but he’s going to do a major speaking tour next year will go to the convention as people — the Democratic convention as the people’s candidate. If, as is expected, he’s rejected by the convention, he will then go to the fourth party. The problem is that it’s too late then go to a fourth party. You have — it takes time to get a fourth party qualified…[Remember, Wallace? Wallace did a superb job. That’s why with a black party you’ve got to get started (inaudible), so they get qualified for—]
PRESIDENT NIXON
All right, Bob. Put that down for discussion — not for discussion but for action. They should finance and contribute both to McCarthy and to the black thing.
COLSON
That’s a helluva lot—
PRESIDENT NIXON
We’re recognizing that McCarthy — the black won’t take any votes from us. Just like the damn Democrats contributed to [George] Wallace in Alabama. They did, you know. Jesus Christ, they were praying for Wallace to win that primary.
HALDEMAN
Yeah.
COLSON
That’s a helluva lot better use of money than a lot of things.
PRESIDENT NIXON
Oh, we spent — waste money on all sorts of things.
HALDEMAN
Okey-doke. What he’s saying is, you know, instead of some television commercials—
PRESIDENT NIXON
Absolutely.
HALDEMAN
—we can do this.
COLSON
Or billboards.
HALDEMAN
Because we’re going to need the television commercials.
[Excerpts from “Abuse Of Power: The New Nixon Tapes,” by Stanley Kutler; h/t to italkyoubored—M.A.]
With bizarre attacks and pressure mounting on all sides and Muskie growing increasingly paranoid and peeved, Nixon’s dirty tricksters wound up destroying him in one of those weird insignificant little episodes that somehow get weaponized, go viral, and destroy the candidate. A Nixon CREEPer, maybe Roger Stone, sent a phony letter to the editor to the big New Hampshire newspaper on the eve of the all-important early primary there, claiming to be written by a Muskie supporter who claimed, falsely, that he’d met Muskie in Florida (where Nixon’s White House paid blacks to picket Muskie’s hotel), and asked Muskie how he could possibly understand the problems that black Americans face given the fact that his home state Maine has so few minorities.
The fake letter, published on the front page of the Union-Leader, claimed that Muskie rudely responded that Maine did have its minorities: “Not blacks, but we have Canucks”—and at this, according to the fake letter, Muskie burst out laughing.
As Rick Perlstein writes in Nixonland, the smear hit Muskie from two sides—pissing off blacks, but also New Hampshire’s sizable French Canadian community. As Perlstein explained, “Muskie thought of them [French Canadians], evidently, as New England’s niggers.”
Shortly afterwards, Muskie had his alleged meltdown in front of reporters—as snow fell on his face, he lashed back at the Nixon White House, but some national reporters mistakenly described the melting snowflakes on Muskie’s face as tears, and described his anger as a “breakdown.” Muskie was finished. Sort of like how Vermont front-runner in 2004, Howard Dean, was finished off by the one-two of Dean’s screechy “woo!” gesture, and Al Sharpton accusing Dean of being anti-black during the debates.
As it turns out, Al Sharpton entered the 2004 Democratic primaries on the payroll and orders of Roger Stone, who directed Sharpton’s attacks from the race politics-left against Howard Dean. And as the New York Times revealed that year, it was Donald Trump who took credit for introducing Al Sharpton — a one-time FBI informant — to his old friend and lobbyist, GOP dirty trickster Roger Stone.
But I’m getting ahead of myself here. Let’s go back again to Roger Stone, young eager NixonJugend. After Nixon was tossed out, Stone found work as National Chairman for the Young Republicans, and doing black bag jobs for Reagan in the 1980 election against incumbent president Jimmy Carter. Stone’s proudest achievement in that election was working with Joe McCarthy’s henchman, Roy Cohn, and a mobster named Fat Tony Salerno to bribe New York’s biggest third party, the Liberal Party, to put on the ballot that election’s most popular third party candidate, John Anderson. Decades later, Stone still remembered Roy Cohn fondly:
He didn’t give a shit what people thought, as long as he was able to wield power. He worked the gossip columnists in this city like an organ.
Roger Stone wanted to get the main third-party candidate on the New York state ballot. John Anderson was one of those earnest midwestern centrist Republicans who’d pass for liberal Democrats today. Conventional wisdom at the time held that Anderson drew votes from fellow Republican Reagan, but private polling, and Roger Stone’s experience running “third party patsies” told him the real story: Anderson drained votes from the Dem Party president, Jimmy Carter.
Stone’s problem was that John Anderson waited too long to get his name on New York state’s ballot. So working with Roy Cohn and Fat Tony, the Reagan campaign official bribed Liberal Party leaders to get them to place Anderson’s name on the ballot for them. Here is how Stone tells his story to the Weekly Standard:
Stone, who going back to his class elections in high school has been a proponent of recruiting patsy candidates to split the other guy’s support, remembers suggesting to Cohn that if they could figure out a way to make John Anderson the Liberal Party nominee in New York, with Jimmy Carter picking up the Democratic nod, Reagan might win the state in a three-way race. “Roy says, ‘Let me look into it.’” Cohn then told him, “’You need to go visit this lawyer’—a lawyer who shall remain nameless—‘and see what his number is.’ I said, ‘Roy, I don’t understand.’ Roy says, ‘How much cash he wants, dumbfuck.’” Stone balked when he found out the guy wanted $125,000 in cash to grease the skids, and Cohn wanted to know what the problem was. Stone told him he didn’t have $125,000, and Cohn said, “That’s not the problem. How does he want it?”
Cohn sent Stone on an errand a few days later. “There’s a suitcase,” Stone says. “I don’t look in the suitcase . . . I don’t even know what was in the suitcase . . . I take the suitcase to the law office. I drop it off. Two days later, they have a convention. Liberals decide they’re endorsing John Anderson for president. It’s a three-way race now in New York State. Reagan wins with 46 percent of the vote. I paid his law firm. Legal fees. I don’t know what he did for the money, but whatever it was, the Liberal Party reached its right conclusion out of a matter of principle.”
[In retrospect, Stone] seems to feel pretty good—now that certain statutes of limitations are up. He cites one of Stone’s Rules, by way of Malcolm X, his “brother under the skin”: “By any means necessary.” “Reagan got the electoral votes in New York State, we saved the country,” Stone says with characteristic understatement. “[More] Carter would’ve been an unmitigated disaster.”
In other words, Roger Stone is boasting about buying American democracy, using the mob and third party candidates. It’s funny, because during last week’s GOP debate, Trump bragged about buying off half the GOP candidates as well as Hillary Clinton and Nancy Pelosi, and gaining all the access he wanted by giving them cash…and he also refused to rule out running as a third party candidate.
* * * *
In 1988, Roger Stone was a Big DC lobbyist, working for Black, Manafort & Stone, whose list of dictator-clients included Zaire’s Mobutu, deposed dictator Ferdinand Marcos, Somalia’s deposed dictator, and the apartheid-backed Angolan death squad thug and witch burner, Jonas Savimbi. Stone got partial credit in creating the most notorious racist political ad in modern times to help elect George Bush Sr in 1988 — the Willie Horton ad, used to frighten white American voters into believing that a President Dukakis would open up the prisons and jails on weekends, allowing sexually-charged black criminals to run wild in white suburban neighborhoods, raping and strangling white women for kicks.
By this time, Trump had already started working with Roger Stone. Both were big fans of Roy Cohn; both enjoyed talking like Goodfellas characters in public and watching the normals swoon over their macho act. But more than anything, both were interested in cashing in on the booming casino business.
Sometimes this meant buying favors from politicians to get casinos opened; sometimes it meant running dirty campaigns to get rival casinos closed. This is what happened in 2000, when Trump and Stone were fined $250,000 for setting up a fake “family values” front group in New York, the Institute for Law and Society, to run a series of racist ads against a planned Indian casino in the Catskills that Trump feared would drain business from his casinos in Atlantic City.
So Trump and Stone whipped up anti-Indian racism to protect Trump’s business. The ad they ran featured a dark photo of a hypodermic needle and drug gear, and the text warned:
The St. Regis Mohawk Indian Tribe proposes to open a gambling casino at the Monticello Race Track in Sullivan County.
How much do you really know about the St. Regis Mohawk Indians?
Are these the new neighbors we want? The St. Regis Mohawk Indian record of criminal activity is well documented. This proposed Monticello Indian Casino will bring increased crime and violence to Sullivan County.
That year, 2000, was a busy year for the Donald Trump-Roger Stone partnership.
Stone had been hired by the George W. Bush campaign to carry out two major black bag jobs that we know of: Sabotaging the Florida recount vote, using a mob of “angry” Cubans and Republican “preppies” to storm a Miami-Dade recount and stop it in its tracks, which Stone — hired for the job by James Baker — succeeded in doing.
How Roger Stone and Donald Trump destroyed George W. Bush’s potential rivals in 2000 is less well known. That year, George W. Bush faced two known threats, and Roger Stone was tasked with neutralizing them: Pat Buchanan, whose 1992 run nearly crippled Bush’s father in the primaries; and Ross Perot’s Reform Party, which drained enough votes in ’92 and ’96 to ensure Clinton victories.
So in the lead-up to the 2000 election, Roger Stone cleverly cajoled Pat Buchanan into taking control of Perot’s Reform Party, then used his friend Donald Trump to run a rival campaign against Buchanan for the Reform Party candidacy—only to drop out of the race, and attack Buchanan’s Reform Party as a cesspool full of Hitler lovers and racists. Stone inserted moles like William Von Raab, secretly funded by Trump, into Buchanan’s campaign, according to the Village Voice.
The operation wound up destroying the Reform Party’s brand and burying it for good, stinking it up too much for a late entry by Ross Perot. The Reform Party’s chairman, Pat Choate, called the “Trump/Stone operation” a “Republican dirty trick” meant to “disgust people and drive them away from the Reform Party. They were doing everything in their power to make a mess.”
The point, however, is that it worked: The Reform Party and Pat Buchanan caused no damage whatsoever to George W. Bush’s election bid in 2000, unlike Ralph Nader’s effect on Al Gore’s run.
After neutralizing the Reform Party and blocking the Florida recount with his hired “Brooks Brothers mob” Roger Stone was rewarded by President Bush by being put in charge of the Bush-Cheney 2000 transition team’s Indian Bureau Affairs appointments. Even in this, Trump did a solid for Stone, signing his name on a fake letter written by Stone in order to sink the nomination of the “wrong” Indian tribal leader who wasn’t Stone’s man. The fake Trump letter ensured that Stone’s man, Neal McCaleb, was given the job as head of Bush’s Indian Affairs Bureau instead. The Indian leader whose nomination was killed by the Trump-Stone letter later complained to the Village Voice,
“I don’t know why Trump did that,” says Martin, who’d never spoken to Trump. “I don’t think he and I have ever been in the same city at the same time.
In early 2004, with former Vermont governor and articulate antiwar candidate Howard Dean electrifying Democrats and antiwar voters and posing a potentially deadly threat to the Bush campaign, Roger Stone secretly funded and staffed Al Sharpton, and sent him into the Democratic Party primaries to smear Howard Dean and suck the life and joy out of his campaign. It worked.
Again, quoting the great Village Voice reporting by Wayne Barrett from 2004:
While Bush forces like the Club for Growth were buying ads in Iowa assailing then front-runner Howard Dean, Sharpton took center stage at a debate confronting Dean about the absence of blacks in his Vermont cabinet. Stone told the Times that he “helped set the tone and direction” of the Dean attacks, while Charles Halloran, the Sharpton campaign manager installed by Stone, supplied the research. While other Democratic opponents were also attacking Dean, none did it on the advice of a consultant who’s worked in every GOP presidential campaign since his involvement in the Watergate scandals of 1972, including all of the Bush family campaigns.
The Times quoted Trump in 2004 taking credit for introducing Al Sharpton to Roger Stone. But it was Barrett’s merciless reporting on Sharpton’s “blackface bucks”—the legions of race-baiting Republicans who donated cash and resources to Sharpton’s anti-Howard Dean run—that is something worth re-reading today, as we’re already seeing stunts like using black Tea Party activists to play the same old racism card and thereby sabotage and suck the life out of another popular Vermont candidate, Bernie Sanders….
The last thing white liberals and lefties want to be caught doing is criticizing any black political leader, even if that leader is a rightwing mole and FBI snitch like Al Sharpton. As Barrett reminded readers in 2004,
Sharpton and Stone are, in a sense, brothers under the skin, outlandish personalities too large to be bound by the constraints that govern the rest of us. Stone was the registered agent in America for Argentina’s intelligence agency, sucking up spy novels; Sharpton was a confidential informant for the FBI, wiring up on black leaders for the feds. Stone is a fashion impersonator, dressing like a hip-hop dandy; Sharpton, having shed his gold medallion and jogger suits, now looks like a smooth banker. Stone was involved in Watergate at the age of 19; Sharpton was a boy-wonder preacher. Stone’s mentor from the days of his youth was Roy Cohn; Sharpton’s was James Brown. Sharpton is a minister without a church; Stone is almost as rootless, having left the powerhouse Washington firm he helped form years ago. Each reinvents himself daily, if not hourly, as if nothing in their past matters.
In their latest incarnations, Al Sharpton is an MSNBC black liberal and Democratic Party loyalist; Roger Stone is a Libertarian prankster fighting the two-party stranglehold; and Donald Trump is a right-wing populist shaking up the system because by gum, he just doesn’t care and he doesn’t need to care.
That’s one, very dumb, very gullible way of putting it.
Another way of putting it is this: Donald Trump and Roger Stone have spent the past few decades conning the public by exploiting fractures — anti-establishment politics, and anti-establishment outrages. Until now, there’s been a consistent logic and purpose to every single sleazy black bag “Trump/Stone operation”: elect the mainstream Republican candidate, and enrich Trump and Stone.
Do you really think this election is any different?
- What Happens Next?
The last three times Asian currencies collapsed against the US Dollar at this rate, the global financial system was shaken to the core. With China piling on this time, we wonder – what happens next, as a tsunami of deflation is exported towards the shores of the "we'll hike no matter what" Fed's American shores…
What happens next?
Note: USDollar strength relative to Asian currencies is indicated by a lower index – i.e this chart implies an USD per "Asian currency" rate – how many USDollars can an "asian currency" unit buy?
A glance at the chart and one might wonder if this time is different… and we break the 18 year trendline.
With Q3 GDP estimates tumbling, we leave it to SocGen's Albert Edwards to sum up what happens next…
We have long believed that we are only one misstep from outright deflation in the west with core inflation in both the US and eurozone at just 1%. We expect the acceleration of EM devaluations to send waves of deflation to the west to overwhelm already struggling corporate profitability and take us back into outright recession. As investors realise yet another recession beckons, without any normalisation of either interest rates or fiscal imbalances in this cycle, expect a financial market rout every bit as large as 2008.
His conclusion: "Low growth (and low inflation) to prompt more QE – everywhere!"
h/t SocGen's Albert Edwards
Chart: Bloomberg
- What China's Devaluation Means For The Future Of The Dollar
Submitted by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,
As the saying goes, “Fool me once, shame on you. Fool me twice, shame on me.”
(… to which George W. Bush famously added after flubbing the aphorism on live TV, “can’t fool me again!”)
For months, despite every shred of data pointing to a weaker economy, China’s currency has been strengthening.
This was really counterintuitive. When an economy is weak, its currency tends to suffer.
But that didn’t happen in China.
Even when China’s stock market suffered one of the biggest crashes in history a few weeks ago, the currency barely moved.
None of this made any sense.
Just look at Greece– problems in that single nation, one of the smallest economies in Europe, dragged down the currency used by 18 other nations in Europe to its lowest level in more than a decade.
But when problems broke in China, the renminbi actually got stronger. And party bosses insisted that they would not devalue their currency.
Fool me once.
Yesterday they showed the world what their promises really mean: nothing. And in a surprise announcement, they devalued the renminbi by roughly 2%.
2% might not sound like very much. But in currency markets, especially for a major one like China’s, 2% is a huge move.
Curiously, in the very same announcement, Chinese officials stated that they would not devalue the currency again, and that Tuesday’s move was a one-time thing.
Fool me twice.
Less than 24-hours later they did it again — a second devaluation that saw the renminbi tumble to as low as 6.57 per US dollar, a 6% decline in roughly 36 hours.
Again, this is a steep drop for a currency, and I expect that there’s more to come.
All of this raises an interesting question about the future of the US dollar.
Because if an economy as large and powerful as China’s has had to concede defeat, does this mean that “King Dollar” will rule forever?
No chance.
Remember that the dollar’s strength is derived from its status as the primary global reserve currency.
Nearly every government, commercial bank, and central bank in the world holds US dollars in reserve, and the dollar is used as the primary currency in global trade.
Whether in Saudi Arabia or South Africa, a barrel of oil is priced in US dollars. Even jets manufactured in France and sold to European airlines are priced in US dollars.
But this status is by no means written in stone. The US dollar is not the first global reserve currency, and it won’t be the last.
We can go back in time to the Byzantine solidus, or the Venetian gold ducat, or the Spanish dollar, or the British pound, and see that no reserve currency lasts forever.
Especially when its fundamentals are so poor.
The US government is insolvent. Its major institutions and pension funds are insolvent. The central bank is borderline insolvent.
These are not any wild assertions; their own financial statements admit their insolvency.
Which means that there’s nothing underpinning the dollar’s reserve status except confidence.
And confidence is very fickle. Like a high school popularity contest, it wanes and it booms.
Right now that confidence is on an upswing, primarily because every other major option looks really bad.
The euro is acting out its Oedipal complex. Japan is a complete fiscal disaster spending over 25% of tax revenue just to pay interest. And China is rapidly deteriorating.
Sure there are some outliers like the Swiss franc that are in better shape. But the market for Switzerland’s currency is far too small to absorb trillions of dollars in global capital flows.
In the beauty pageant of major currencies, the US dollar is clearly the least ugly at the moment.
And I think anyone owning dollars should look at this as a gift.
Right now we have a tremendous opportunity to sell what’s expensive and buy what’s cheap.
The dollar hasn’t been this expensive in years. And many non-dollar assets haven’t been this cheap… ever.
Here in Turkey, the lira is at its lowest level in history. The South African rand is at its lowest level in history. We wrote about Indonesia’s rupiah on Monday.
I’m looking at real estate in Colombia at the moment where US dollar buyers can pick up high quality property for less than the cost of construction.
In Chile, the cheap exchange rate and slowing economy helped our fund to recently close on a farm at $4.3 million that cost $10 million less than two years ago.
In Australia there are a number of junior mining stocks that are trading for less than the amount of cash that they have in the bank.
There are countless deals like this all over the world… especially if you’re buying in US dollars.
It’s foolish to expect that any reserve currency will last forever.
And it’s even crazier to expect a reserve currency with such pitiful fundamentals as the US dollar to last forever.
But markets are not orderly and efficient. They are chaotic.
Which means that, on rare occasions, enormous opportunities present themselves to buy high quality assets on the cheap.
That opportunity is now.
- From $1,300 Tiger Penis To $800K Snipers: The Complete Black Market Price Guide
Late last year, we said that “hookers and blow” were set to lift Britain over France as the world’s fifth largest economy.
And we weren’t joking.
As The Telegraph noted when the figures were released, “the Centre for Economics and Business Research said Britain’s acceleration was boosted by the inclusion of sex and drugs to UK growth.”
France, on the other hand, has taken the moral high ground by “refus[ing] to comply with EU rules because it does not consider [drug use and prostitution] to be ‘voluntary commercial activities'”.
“Voluntary” or not, failing to include the illicit activities which drive the world’s shadow economies could lead to material miscalculations. And besides, even if one wants to argue that illegality is impossible to measure, surely making an honest attempt to come up with an accurate representation of economic output is preferable to the BEA’s now standard practice of simply “adjusting” the real data in order to get a goalseeked outcome. As WSJ put it last June, “if drug sales aren’t counted in a place where people spend half their income on drugs, one could conclude, wrongly, that the population saved half its money.” The U.N. made a similar argument back in 2008 when it contended that “accounts as a whole are liable to be seriously distorted” if governments refuse to include all transactions.
Fortunately for anyone looking to get a read on the going rate for the various goods and services which comprise the world’s black markets (and in some countries serve as a much needed boon for GDP), Havocscope has a price list for everything you’ve ever wanted to buy (and everything you wouldn’t touch even with Mario Draghi’s hands) from someone in a dark and smoky back alley.
First, a bit on Havocscope’s methodology:
Data listed within Havocscope’s website is collected from credible open-source documents such as newspapers, government reports and academic journals. The source for the figure is clearly listed on each data post. This allows users to see where the information has come from, judge the credibility of the source, and pursue further research if necessary.
That seems fair enough, and so, without further ado, we present current price lists for a veritable smorgasbord of illegal goods and services.
AK-47 and Other Guns on the Black Market
- Afghanistan$1,500
- Afghanistan-Kabul$1,500 for US issued Night Vision Googles
- Australia$15,493 in Sydney
- Average price of AK-47 worldwide$534
- Canada$2,000 for handgun, $600 to rent
- Europe$400 to $900 for Rocket Launchers and AK-47s
- Iraq$800, with Osama Bin Laden’s favorite model for $2,000
- Iraq-Bullets$0.15 to $0.45 per bullet
- Iraq-Rocket Launcher$100, $50 per grenade
- Mexico-AK-47$1,400 on US border/$3,000 in South
- Mexico-Gernade$100 to $500 for M67 Grenade
- Niger Delta-AK-47$75
- Philippines$120 for .22 Caliber Magnum Black Widow
- Profit in the U.S.$500 for selling AK-47 to Drug Cartels
- Somalia$400 for Russian AK-47, $600 for North Korean AK-47
- Sudan$86 for AK-47, $33 for child
- Syria$2,100 for AK-47, $2,000 for RPG
- Thailand$2,600 for gun
- United States$400 in California’s black market
- United States-Small Pistol$20 to $100 in Dallas, TX
- United States – Straw PurchaserUp to $500 per gun
Bribes
- Afghanistan – Election Bribes$1 to $18 per vote
- Afghanistan – Police Bribe$100,000 to be Police Chief
- Afghanistan Average Bribe Amount$214 in 2012
- Africa – Bribe Payments of Govt Officials$20 to $40 Billion
- Amount of Bribes Paid Worldwide$1 Trillion per year
- Bangladesh – Bribes Paid per Household$86
- Businesses – Rise in Market Value from Bribes$11 for $1 in bribe
- Cambodia – Bribes for Fishing Permit$50
- Cambodia – Bribes to Operate Fake License Shop$2.50 per day
- Cambodia – Citizens Paying Bribes to Receive Services72%
- China – Bribe to become a City Assemblyman$44,000
- China – Bribes to Education Officials$10,000 for School Admission
- China – Bribes to Rail Ministry$14,897 for job as Train Attendant
- China – Impact of Bribes on Drug Prices20%
- Companies Asked to Pay Bribes Worldwide28%
- Croatia – Average Bribe Payment$300
- Czech Republic Average Bribe Amount$248 to $497
- Education Corruption1 in 6 students pay bribes
- Greece- Bribes Paid by Families$2,500 to Public Officials
- Guatemala – Bribes from Drug Traffickers$2,500 to Public Officials
- Haiti – Bribe to Border Official for Human Trafficker$400 per immigrant
- Illegal Loggers$25,000 to $50,000 in bribes for permits
- India – Bribe to Sell DVDs$0.18 to Police
- India – Bribes to Police to Sell Water$0.18 to Police
- India – Families Paying Bribes4 million families
- Indonesia – Bribe to Chief Justice$250,000
- Indonesia – Bribe to Oil Regulator$600,000
- Indonesia – Bribes to Prison Guard$500 to use cell phone
- Indonesia – Businesses Paying Bribes60%
- Iraq – Bribes to Prison Guards$100 to Take a Single Shower
- Ivory Coast – Bribes at Traffic Checkpoints$300 Million
- Kenya – Bribes to Customs and Port Officials$5,797 per shipment
- Kenya -Average Bribes Paid Per Month16
- Mexico – Amount of Bribes Paid$2.75 Billion in 2010
- Mexico – Average Bribe Paid$14
- Mexico – Bribes Collected by Police65% less than $6,000
- Mexico – Bribes Paid by Drug Cartel to Police$1.2 Billion Per Year
- Mexico – Sinaloa Cartel Boss to Escape Prison$2.5 Million
- Nigeria – Bribes Accepted by Government Workers$3.2 Billion
- Nigeria – Bribes Paid by Shell$2 Million in bribes, $14 Million in profit
- North Korea – Bribes to Border Guard by Defector$6,000
- North Korea – Bribes to Inspectors$2,000 per visit
- Pakistan – Bribe to Police from Artifact Smuggler$10.62 per day of digging
- Pakistan – Bribes Paid by Smugglers$1,200 to Police Chiefs
- Peru – Bribe to Stop Logging Investigation$5,000
- Romania – Bribe to Receive Brain Surgery$6,500
- Romania – Bribes Paid Per Day$1 Million
- Romania – Bribes to Hospital For Employment$40,000
- Russia – Average Bribe Paid$189
- Russia – Bribes to Forest OfficialsCases of Vodka
- Russia – Business Bribe$10,000
- Russia – Education Admission Bribes$1 Billion
- Russian -Amount of Bribes Paid$5.9 Billion in 2010
- South AfricaTraffic Police Ask for Most Bribes
- Thailand – Bribes to Police to Allow Human Smuggling$160 per migrant
- Thailand – Kickback and Bribes to Officials25-35% of project value
- Thailand -Impact of Bribes on Economy$3.3 Billion
- Ukraine – Bribes to Police$1,000 from brothel owners
- United Kingdom – People who Paid Bribes1 in 20
- United States – Bribe to Border Agent$15,000
- United States – Bribes to Prison Guard$5,000 to pass meth
- United States – Bribes to TSA Screener$2,400 for each suitcase
- United States – Corruption At Workplace60% believe common
- Vietnam – Bribes to Forest Official$2,300
Prices of Computer Hackers and Online Fraud
- AdWords$1,000 to drain competitors AdWords budget
- Botnet – Canada$270 for 1,000 computers
- Botnet – France$200 for 1,000 computers
- Botnet – Russia$200 for 1,000 computers
- Botnet – United Kingdom$240 for 1,000 computers
- Botnet – United States$180 for 1,000 computers
- Botnet – Worldwide$35 for 1,000 computers
- Credit Card – Premium Card with Big Balance$250
- Credit Card and Social Security Number$5
- DDOS a Website$911,000 for gambling website
- Doxing Someone$25 to $100
- Email Addresses – Gmail$200 for 1,000
- Email Addresses – Hotmail$12 for 1,000
- Email Addresses – Yahoo$10 for 1,000
- Facebook Likes$15 for 1,000
- Facebook Spam$13 for page with 30,000 fans
- Hacked Webcam of Boy$0.01
- Hacked Webcam of Girl$1
- Hacking Classes$75
- Online Bank Account – EU4 – 6% of account balance
- Online Bank Account – USA2% of account balance
- Online Extortion$50 to $15,000 in Sextortion Blackmail
- Online Funds to CashCommission between 9% to 40% of Amount
- Online Game Hackers$16,000 per month in China
- PayPal Account6 to 20% of account balance
- Remote Administration Tool$40 for Blackshades
- Stolen Health Insurance Information$1,200 to $1,300
- Twitter Followers$15 for 10,000 Fake Followers
- Website Traffic$1 for 1,000 fake visitors
Cost to Hire a Hitman
- Argentina$3,749 to $5,555
- Australia$13,610 to $83,000
- BoliviaBetween $4,000 to $15,000
- ColombiaBase Salary of $600: $2,000 to $4,000 per hit
- France – Monaco$330,000
- India – MumbaiBetween $35 to $900
- Italy – Mafia Hitman$3,700 for kneecapping, $27,000 for hit
- Mexico – Ciudad Juarez$85 to Minors
- Mexico – Police Chief$20,832 to target Police Chief
- Mexico – Sinaloa$35
- Mexico – Teenage Boys$10,00 to $50,000 per killing
- Mexico – Teenage Girls$1,000 for 2-Week Salary to 16 year old girl
- Philippines Death Squad$110 per hit
- Spain$27 to $69,000
- United States and United KingdomFew hundred to $25,000
- United States Soldier$5,000 by Juarez Drug Cartel
- United States Soldier – Group of Snipers$800,000 for group of 3
Exotic Animals for Sale
- Abalone$52 per kilogram
- African Grey Parrot$2,000
- Arowana Fish$20,000
- Australian Lizard$7,500
- Baby Elephant in Thailand$7,000
- Bear – Complete $4,500 in Taiwan
- Bear Bile$200,000 per pound
- Bear Paws$50 for set of 4
- Black Cockatoo$31,000 in Australia
- Butterfly (Queen Alexandra)$8,195
- Chimpanzee (Live)$50
- Clouded Leopard$5,700 in China
- Dog Meat$29 in Vietnam
- Elephant$28,200
- Elephant Tusk$1,800 in Vietnam
- Frog Legs$11 for a dozen pairs in France
- Geckos from New Zealand$1,300 in Europe
- Geckos in the Philippines$2,300
- Gila Monster$1,500
- Gorillas$400,000
- Iguanas$10,600
- Ivory$850 per kilo in Asia
- Ivory with Carvings$3,000 per kilo
- Komodo Dragon$30,000
- Leopard$5,000
- Leopard Tortoise$403
- Monkey in Europe$123
- Monkey in Thailand$55
- Orangutan$45,000
- Owl$250 in India
- Pangolin$1,000
- Pangolin – Meat$300 per kilogram
- Pangolin – Scales$3,000 per kilogram
- Panther$5,000
- Ploughshare Tortoise$4,000
- Polar Bear Skin$7,760 to $9,930
- Puppies trafficked from Ireland$255 to $1,275 in the UK.
- Rhino Horn Dagger$14,000
- Rhino Horns$65,000 per kilogram
- Rhino Horns (Crushed for medicine powder)$10 in Vietnam
- Shark Fins$100 per kilogram
- Sloths$30 in Colombia
- Snake Venom$215,175 per liter
- Snakes (Banded kraits)$2,190 in India
- Snow Leopard Pelt$1,000 in Afghanistan
- Spotted Salamander$103 on the Internet
- Tiger (Dead)$5,000
- Tiger (Live)$50,000
- Tiger – Baby$3,200
- Tiger Bone$2,000
- Tiger Bone Wine$88
- Tiger Penis$1,300
- Tiger Remains$70,000 in China
- Tiger Skin$35,000
- Tortoises$10,000 in Madagascar
- Totoaba Fish – Bladder$200,000 in China
- Turtle – Chinese Golden Coin$20,000
- Turtle Eggs$1 in Costa Rica
Organ Trafficking Prices and Kidney Transplant Sales
- Average paid by Kidney Buyer$150,000
- Average paid to Seller of Kidney$5,000
- Kidney broker in the Philippines$1,000 to $1,500
- Kidney broker in Yemen$60,000
- Kidney buyer in China$47,500
- Kidney buyer in Egypt$20,000
- Kidney buyer in Israel$125,000 to $135,000
- Kidney buyer in Moldova$100,000 to $250,000
- Kidney buyer in Singapore$300,000
- Kidney buyer in South Africa$200,000
- Kidney buyer in Thailand$10,000
- Kidney buyer in United States$120,000
- Kidney buyers in Saudi Arabia$16,000
- Kidney seller in Bangladesh$2,500
- Kidney seller in China$15,000
- Kidney seller in Costa Rica$20,000
- Kidney seller in Egypt$2,000
- Kidney seller in India$1,000
- Kidney seller in Israel$10,000
- Kidney seller in Kenya$650
- Kidney seller in Moldova$2,500 to $3,000
- Kidney seller in Pakistan$10,000
- Kidney seller in Peru$5,000
- Kidney seller in Romania$2,700
- Kidney seller in Thailand$3,000 to $5,000
- Kidney seller in the Philippines$2,000 to $10,000
- Kidney seller in Turkey$10,000
- Kidney seller in Ukraine$200,000
- Kidney seller in Vietnam$2,410
- Kidney seller in Yemen$5,000
- Kidney Traffickers in Turkey$10,000 profit
- Kidney Transplant Operation – China$15,200
- Kidney Transplant Operation – Europe$32,000
- Liver buyer in China$21,900
- Liver seller in China$3,660
- Lung seller in EuropeAsking price of $312,650
Fake ID Cards, Driver Licenses, and Stolen Passports
- Average Price of a Stolen Passport for Sale$3,500
- Black Market Driver License – New Jersey$2,500 to $7,000
- Black Market Passport – Nepal$6,961
- Black Market Passport – Peru$1,750
- Black Market Passport – Sweden$12,200
- Black Market Passport and Visa – Australia$15,000
- Blank Stolen Passport – UK$1,642
- Fake Green Card$75 to $300
- Fake Birth Certificate – Cuba$10,000 to $50,000
- Fake Car License Plate in Cambodia$4.50 to $10
- Fake Driver License – California$200
- Fake Driver License – Confiscated in New York1,450 in 2012
- Fake ID Card – Malaysia$771 (includes smuggling)
- Fake ID Card – New York$160 in 90 min
- Fake ID Confiscated – Arizona2,064 from students in 2010
- Fake ID Confiscated from China1,700 in 3 months at one airport
- Fake ID from China$300 for 1, $400 for 2
- Fake ID Papers for Residency – USA$2,500 per set
- Fake IDs for Sale – United States$0.1 Billion ($100 Million)
- Fake Passport – Australia$806
- Fake Passport – China$10,000 to $25,000
- Fake Passport – China (Alter Photo)$3,500 to $5,000
- Fake Passport – Egypt, Germany, Morocco$6,830 to Syrian Refugees
- Fake Passport in Thailand – Basic$245 in 2 hours
- Fake Passport in Thailand – Higher Quality$1,000 to $1,250
- Fake Passports in India$294
- Fake Social Security Card$75 to $300
- Lost or Stolen Passport Reported11 Million in 2010
- Passport Selling – Thailand$200
- Stolen ID to buy Health Insurance$1,250
Cocaine Prices
- Kuwait$330 per gram (User Submitted)
- United States$300 to $8 (UN) |$30 (User Submitted) per gram
- Australia$300 per gram
- Japan$269.5 per gram
- Egypt$205.5 per gram
- Ukraine$189.6 per gram
- Denmark$180 per gram (User Submitted) | $89 per gram (UN)
- New Zealand$179.3 per gram
- Moldova$155.4 per gram
- Norway$154.45 per gram
- Saudi Arabia$133.5 per gram
- Romania$132.5 per gram
- Estonia$127.2 per gram
- Iran$126.3 per gram
- Jordan$126.3 per gram
- Cyprus$119.2 per gram
- Philippines$119 per gram
- Pakistan$118.7 per gram
- Latvia $112.6 per gram
- Montenegro$111.2 per gram
- Sweden$110.6 per gram
- Greece$110.3 per gram
- China$106.9 per gram (Hong Kong)
- Finland$106 per gram
- Czech Republic$104.8 per gram
- Croatia$99.4 per gram
- Austria$97.3 per gram
- Indonesia$96.5 per gram
- Switzerland$95.6 per gram
- Bulgaria$94.9 per gram
- Ireland$92.7 per gram
- Italy$91.6 per gram
- Serbia$88.2 per gram
- Germany$86.9 per gram
- Thailand$86.0 per gram
- Zimbabwe$80 per gram (Crack)
- Israel$80 per gram
- Poland$53 per gram
- France$79.5 per gram
- Spain$79.5 per gram
- Albania$79.5 per gram
- Lithuania$78.9 per gram
- Turkey$78.2 per gram
- Hungary$72.1 per gram
- Belgium$67.1 per gram
- United Kingdom$61.5 per gram
- Portugal$61.0 per gram
- Netherlands$58.7 per gram
- Cuba$56.7 per gram
- Lebanon$40.0 per gram
- South Africa$32.7 per gram
- Nigeria$32.5 per gram
- El Salvador$24 per gram
- Paraguay$20 per gram
- Costa Rica$17 per gram
- Guatemala$13.3 per gram
- Brazil$12 per gram
- Haiti$10 per gram
- Chile$8.8 per gram
- Venezuela$9.3 per gram
- Honduras$9.2 per gram
- Dominican Republic$8 per gram
- Argentina$5.9 per gram
- Ecuador$5.0 per gram
- Peru$4.5 per gram
- Bolivia$3.5 per gram
- Colombia$3.5 per gram
Ecstasy Pills Prices
- Myanmar$68.1 per pill
- South Korea$56.0 per pill
- Norway$44.1 per pill
- Montenegro$41.7 per gram
- Egypt$40.2 per pill
- United States$35.5 per pill
- Japan$33.65 per pill
- Vietnam$32.5 per pill
- Australia$32.1 per pill
- Thailand$29.65 per pill
- New Zealand$28.7 per pill
- Philippines$27.5 per pill
- Chile$25 per pill
- Costa Rica$25 per pill
- Ecuador$25.0 per pill
- Colombia$22.6 per pill
- Italy$22.0 per pill
- Dominican Republic$21 per pill
- Singapore$20.25 per pill
- Finland$19.9 per pill
- Switzerland$19.1 per pill
- Romania$18.9 per pill
- Sweden$16.2 per pill
- Malaysia$16.0 per pill
- Jamaica$14.5 per pill
- Spain$13.6 per pill
- Greece$13.2 per pill
- Cyprus$13.2 per pill
- Honduras$13.0 per pill
- Brazil$12 per pill
- Israel$12 per pill
- Czech Republic$10.5 per pill
- Zimbabwe$10 per pill
- Austria$9.7 per pill
- Venezuela$9.4 per pill
- Turkey$9.3 per pill
- Indonesia$9.0 per pill
- Denmark$8.9 per pill
- Bulgaria$8.8 per pill
- Germany$8.7 per pill
- France$7.9 per pill
- Latvia$7.5 per pill
- Guatemala$6.6 per pill
- Ireland$6.6 per pill
- Estonia$6.6 per pill
- Iran$6.2 per pill
- South Africa$5.8 per pill
- Belgium$5.7 per pill
- Cambodia$5 per pill
- Portugal$5 per pill
- Hungary$4.8 per pill
- United Kingdom$4.8 per pill
- Lithuania$4.6 per pill
- China$4.5 per pill
- Netherlands$3.9 per pill
- Croatia$3.3 per gram
- Serbia$2.65 per pill
- Poland$1.7 per pill
Heroin Prices
- Brunei$1330.4 per gram
- New Zealand$717.4 per gram
- Japan$683.6 per gram
- Georgia$650 per gram
- Australia$500 (User Submitted-Perth)|$50.4 per gram (UN)
- Sweden$276.5 per gram
- Denmark$213.6 per gram
- United States$200 (UN) | $110 (User Submitted) per gram
- Ireland$198.7 per gram
- Estonia$190.75 per gram
- Norway$169.1 per gram
- United Arab Emirates$165.0 per gram
- Finland$159.0 per gram
- South Korea$140.0 per gram
- Latvia$132.5 per gram
- Moldova$126.3 per gram
- Bangladesh$125.0 per gram
- Ukraine$123.9 per gram
- Singapore$123.9 per gram
- Philippines$108.8 per gram
- Cyprus$106.0 per gram
- Indonesia$98.95 per gram
- Austria$97.3 per gram
- Thailand$83 per gram
- Italy$80.6 per gram
- Spain$80.4 per gram
- Costa Rica$77.2 per gram
- Lithuania$76.6 per gram
- Croatia$72.9 per gram
- El Salvador$69.0 per gram
- China$66.9 per gram
- Nepal$64.6 per gram
- United Kingdom$61.5 per gram
- Romania$55.05 per gram
- Bulgaria$54.3 per gram
- France$53.0 per gram
- Poland$53.0 per gram
- Czech Republic$52.3 per gram
- Netherlands$50.8 per gram
- Brazil$50 per gram
- Guatemala$49.0 per gram
- Hungary$48.1 per gram
- Germany$48.0 per gram
- Switzerland$47.8 per gram
- Myanmar$47.1 per gram
- Portugal$46.7 per gram
- Greece$46.3 per gram
- Saudi Arabia$42.2 per gram
- Jordan35.1 per gram
- South Africa$35.0 per gram
- Belgium$31.8 per gram
- Turkey$31.1 per gram
- Albania$30.5 per gram
- Israel$28.0 per gram
- Zimbabwe$27.1 per gram
- Serbia$26.5 per gram
- Montenegro$23.6 per gram
- Egypt$22.35 per gram
- Dominican Republic$21.0 per gram
- Iran$20.2 per gram
- Colombia$20.1 per gram
- Lebanon$15.0 per gram
- Ecuador$13.0 per gram
- Venezuela$11.6 per gram
- India$10.93 per gram
- Malaysia$8.88 per gram
- Nigeria$6.8 per gram
- Honduras$5.3 per gram
- Cambodia$5.0 per gram
- Pakistan$3.0 per gram
- Afghanistan$2.4 per gram
- Kenya$1.9 per gram
Meth Prices per Gram
- Australia$641.4 per gram
- New Zealand$573.9 per gram
- South Korea$562.0 per gram
- Switzerland$286.7 per gram
- Philippines$214.1 per gram
- Indonesia$203.8 per gram
- Saudi Arabia$199.7 per gram
- Singapore$184.25 per gram
- Japan$125.3 to $683.6 per gram
- Afghanistan$105 per gram
- Germany$89.2 per gram
- United Kingdom$88.45 per gram
- China$72.9 per gram
- Malaysia$52.7 per gram
- Czech Republic$52.3 per gram
- Finland$45.9 per gram
- Spain$30.5 per gram
- South Africa$27.0 per gram
- Sweden$25.3 per gram
- Ukraine$25.0 per gram
- Austria$16.7 per gram
- Hungary$14.4 per gram
- Myanmar$13.6 per gram
- Latvia$13.2 per gram
- Honduras$13.0 per gram
- Lithuania$12.7 per gram
- North Korea$11 per gram
- Moldova$5.0 per gram
- Bangladesh$4.5 per tablet
- United States$3.0 to $500.0 per gram
- Cambodia$1.6 per gram
- Laos$1.0 per tablet
Profits from the Business of Crime and Illegal Jobs
- Afghanistan – Taliban$200 Million a year from Opium
- Antique Looter1 percent of final sale price
- Asian Massage Parlor – New Jersey, United States$108,000 per year
- Asian Massage Parlor – Washington DC, United States$1.2 Million per year
- Assassin – Colombia$600 monthly retainer, $3,000 per hit
- Assassin – Mexico$3,000 to teenagers
- Bootlegger – Pakistan$4,000 per year
- Bride Trafficker Broker – Cambodia$1,500 per bride
- Child Beggar – Pakistan$1.88 to $2.36 per day
- Child Beggar – Thailand$20 per day
- Child Begging Ring – China$40,000 per year
- Child Begging Ring – Saudi Arabia$15,000 per month
- Cigarette Smuggler – Mali$200 per trip, $2,000 if cocaine
- Cigarette Smuggling – USA$500,000 from One Run
- Cigarette Truck Unloader – Indian Reservation, USA$200 per truck
- Coal Mining – Mexico$25 Million by Los Zetas
- Coca Farmer – Peru$9,860 per year, $1,554 growing coffee
- Cockfighting – Management of Matches$2,000 a day
- Cockfighting – Prize Money for Winning Rooster$15,000
- Counterfeit Dollars – Peru$20,000 for every $100,000 in fakes
- Counterfeit Drug Seller$450,000 based on $1,000 investment
- Crystal Meth Smuggler – Indonesia$311 per trip
- Custom Officials – Mexico$1 Million per shipment passed through
- Driver License Broker – Afghanistan$10,000 per year
- Drug Dealer – Rio de Janeiro$15 Million in Favelas
- Drug Mule – Indonesia$15,000 to swallow 76 capsules of heroin
- Drug Mule – Panama$5,000 per trip
- Drug Mule – Paraguay Local$200 per trip
- Drug Mule – Paraguay Tourist$3,970 per trip
- Drug Mule – Teen in Mexico$50 to $100 per trip across border
- Drug Smugglers – Guatemala$600 Million to $800 Million per year
- Extortionist – Guatemalan Prison $6,000 a week
- Extortionist Gang – Colombia$100,000 per month
- Fake Degrees – Europe$50 Million per year to 15,000 customers
- Fake Degrees Online Website$5 Million in 9 years
- Fake Viagra Seller- South Korea$0.84 per tablet
- Football Match Fixing Syndicate$15 Billion per year
- Gambling Runners – Singapore$1,957 per day handling bets
- Gold Smuggler – India$33.50 for 10 grams
- Gun Straw Purchasers – United States$500 per gun for Mexican Drug Cartel
- Heroin Dealer – Ireland$694 per week
- High Class Escort – Florida, United States$80,000 a month
- Human Smugglers – Indonesia$1 Million per boat to Australia
- Human Smugglers – South Korea$2,500
- Human Trafficker – Canada$79,380 per year
- Human Trafficker – New York City$100,000 per year
- Human Trafficker – United Kingdom$77,000 per year
- Human Trafficker – Vietnam$470 to move victim to China
- Kidnappers – Virtual Kidnappers$1,000 to $3,000 per ransom
- Legal Brothel Owner40 to 50 percent of sex workers earnings
- Logger – Madagascar$1.33 per kilo for illegal timber
- Marijuana Plant – United States$2,200
- Meth Trafficking – Thailand$168 per trip
- Money Launderer – Mexico15 cents to each dollar laundered
- Money Mule – United Kingdom8 percent of cash laundered
- Oil Thieves – Nigeria$6,098 per day
- Online Dating Scammers – Ivory Coast$13,000 a month
- Online Drug Dealer$3 Million for Top Seller on Silk Road
- Online Extortion$500 to $15,000 in “sextortion”
- Online Game Hacker$16,000 a month in China
- Online Streaming Website$4.4 Million for largest sites
- Opium Farmer – Afghanistan$4,900 vs $770 for wheat farmer
- Opium Farmer – Myanmar$6 per day vs. $1.20 for rice
- Opium Farmer – Students$15 to $20 per day during season
- Organ Trafficker – Turkey$10,000 profit
- Passport Seller – Thailand$200 to sell own passport
- Pickpockets – Barcelona, Spain$6,132 per week
- Pimp$67,200 per year
- Pirate – Somalia$30,000 to $75,000 per hijacking
- Pirated Book Seller – Mumbai, India$2 per book
- Pirated DVD Seller – Los Angeles$50,000 a month
- Pirated DVD Seller – Mexico$2 Million per day
- Pirated Movie Uploader$1 to $2 per 1,000 views
- Poppy Farmer – Afghanistan$10,000 per year, $120 if wheat
- Prison Guard – United States$3,000 to $5,000 Smuggling Contraband
- Prostitute – Brazil$100,000 (High-End Prostitute)
- Prostitute – Calcutta, India$1.85 a day
- Prostitute – Cannes, France$40,000 a night
- Prostitute – Jamaica$470 per day
- Prostitute – Java, Indonesia$952 per month
- Prostitute – Kuwait$570 per month
- Prostitute – Male Prostitute in LondonHigh of $49,000
- Prostitute – Orange Country, California$700 a day
- Prostitute – Pennsylvania, United States$20,000 a week
- Prostitute – South Korea$70 per session
- Prostitute – UgandaUp to $500 a night
- Prostitute – Washington, DC$500 per day
- Prostitutes – Filipino Women in Japan$150 Million a year
- Ransomware$5 Million a year
- Roma Thief$7,000 a month
- Spam Sellers – Russia$60 Million a year
- United States Workers$2 Trillion Not Reported to IRS
- Navajo Nation Vows To Hold EPA Accountable As Colorado River Poisoner Identified
Having admitted responsibility for the poisoning of Colorado's Animus River, Mining.com reports The EPA has now been forced to admit that there was 3 milion gallons of toxic wastewater – triple their previous estimates. While EPA leadership held a press conference yesterday taking responsibility, it appears they are pointing the blame finger at the contractor, who they have now chosen to identify as Missouri-based Environmental Restoration which is one of the largest EPA emergency cleanup contractors. It is the main provider for the EPA’s emergency cleanup and rapid response needs in the region that covers Colorado, as well as in several other parts of the country – awarded $381 million in federal contracts since 2007. As the river slowly returns to normal (on the surface), The Navajo Nation, with many residents along the river, declared a state of emergency this week, vowing to hold the EPA fully responsible for its spill, and have demanded that the EPA provide the affected tribes with water until the river is once again usable.
The EPA Admits the Colorado River spill was three times bigger than expected… (via OilPrice.com, by Cecilia Jamasmie via Mining.com)
EPA says that about 3 million gallons of toxic wastewater, triple previous estimates, have poured from an old Colorado gold mine into local streams since last week.
The U.S. Environmental Protection Agency said Sunday the spill caused accidentally by one of its clean-up teams working at an old Colorado gold mine has tripled in volume.
The leak, containing high concentrations of heavy metals such as arsenic, mercury and lead, is now estimated to have reached about three million gallons of toxic wastewater, triple than originally estimated.
According to the first statement released by the EPA, the contaminated water was hiding out behind debris near the Gold King Mine entrance, where the crew was working with heavy machinery. The mine waste poured out into a nearby creek, eventually leading to the Animas River where the spill spread.
These images, courtesy of the Environmental Protection Agency, show the mouth of the Gold King Mine tunnel (left), and the channeled runoff on the mine dump (right).
The discharge was still flowing at the rate of 500 gallons per minute yesterday, four days after the spill began at the Gold King Mine, the EPA added.
Image courtesy of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The agency has been diverting the ongoing release into two newly built settling ponds where the waste was being treated with chemicals to lower its acidity and to filter out dissolved solids before being discharged to Cement Creek.
Image courtesy of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
The federal unit has also set up a website to provide constant updates on the situation.
EPA reiterated the spill does not threaten local sources of drinking water and the main contaminants responsible for the leak’s mustard-like colour are unlikely to be dangerous.
Image courtesy of U.S. Environmental Protection Agency.
Still, recreational activity on the affected waterways has been suspended until the orange-coloured plume has fully dissipated.
And now The EPA appears to be trying to distance itself from the actual event. As The Wall Street Journal reports, the previously unnamed contractor involved in the spil has now been identified (by the EPA) as Missouri-based Environmental Restoration LLC…
The EPA, which was overseeing the servicing of the mine, had previously said an unnamed outside contractor was using heavy equipment when it accidentally triggered a breach in the abandoned Gold King Mine, letting out wastewater that had built up inside it.
“Environmental Restoration LLC was working at the direction at EPA in consultation with the Colorado Division of Reclamation, Mining and Safety,” an EPA official said on Wednesday.
…
According to various government documents, Environmental Restoration had signed an agreement to provide emergency protection from pollutants from the Gold King Mine, near Durango, Colo., in the southwestern part of the state. The spill has fouled the nearby Animas River, turning its water mustard yellow in the initial several days after the spill on Aug. 5.
The money to fund the Gold King Mine cleanup comes out of EPA’s Superfund budget, according to Scott Sherman, a former deputy assistant administrator at EPA during the George W. Bush administration who oversaw Superfund and other waste programs.
Environmental Restoration is one of the largest EPA emergency cleanup contractors. It is the main provider for the EPA’s emergency cleanup and rapid response needs in the region that covers Colorado, as well as in several other parts of the country. It worked on the cleanup for some of the highest-profile disasters in recent history, including the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina, the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attack ground zero cleanup, and the Deepwater Horizon Gulf of Mexico spill remediation, according to the company’s website.
From October 2007 through this month, Environmental Restoration has been awarded $381 million in federal contracts, according to government procurement data compiled on USAspending.gov. The vast majority—more than $364 million—of that total was for work for the EPA.
Which makes you wonder, when revenues are all spoonfed by the government no matter what, just how 'careful' are you going to be? As we noted yesterday, this disaster was entirely foreseeable.
And, as TheAntiMedia.org reports, The Navajo Nation has vowed to hold The EPA accountable…
The Navajo Nation declared a state of emergency this week after the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) revealed they were responsible for not one, but three million gallons of toxic mining wastewater spilled into the Animas River in Colorado. According to the EPA, the contamination is composed of cadmium, arsenic, lead, aluminum, and copper.
Navajo Nation President Russell Begaye vowed to hold the EPA fully responsible for its spill, saying “The EPA was right in the middle of the disaster, and we intend to make sure the Navajo Nation recovers every dollar it spends cleaning up this mess and every dollar it loses as a result of injuries to our precious Navajo natural resources.”
According to Indian Country Today, “Residents along the San Juan River have been warned to stay away from the waterway. It is closed until further notice and should not be used to water crops or feed animals.”
The Navajo Nation has demanded that the EPA provide the affected tribe(s) with water until the river is once again usable. It is currently unclear whether or not the agency will comply with this demand. Civil lawsuits now seem to be the restitution to recover damages from this spill since it is highly unlikely the EPA will pay any upfront fines for the leak, according to a former EPA official.
Navajo Nation President Begaye has “instructed Navajo Nation Department of Justice to take immediate action against the EPA to the fullest extent of the law to protect Navajo families and resources.”
Other damages to the local recreation economy and ecosystem are expected to add up, though the extent of the damages is not known at this time.
This is just the most recent case where Native American land was polluted, not to mention where their basic necessities and rights were violated by the federal government. In many of these instances, little to nothing was done to compensate them for the damage.
The Navajo Nation is no stranger to environmental negligence at the hands of the federal government and greedy corporations, which make their money extracting resources from native lands. For decades, uranium was mined from their land. According to the EPA,
“Today the mines are closed, but a legacy of uranium contamination remains, including over 500 abandoned uranium mines (AUMs) as well as homes and drinking water sources with elevated levels of radiation. Potential health effects include lung cancer from inhalation of radioactive particles, as well as bone cancer and impaired kidney function from exposure to radionuclides in drinking water.”
Despite the EPA’s claims to the contrary, this contamination is yet to be legitimately addressed even though the last uranium mines were shut down in 1986. In fact, the uranium industry is still trying to open new mines in or near Navajo land, despite the fact that the mess remains from previous mining operations. The Navajo Nation is still fighting for it to be cleaned up and to attain compensation for the countless victims who have fallen ill from radiation exposure.
Currently, Native American Indians face another dire threat to their environment and resources from Big Oil interests and their in-pocket politicians, who are pushing for the construction of the Keystone XL Pipeline. The controversial pipeline is facing heavy opposition from indigenous groups because it would pass through reservation land in the U.S., extracting oil from prized native areas in Canada. While much is made from both the right and left about the pros and cons of the pipeline, these politicians and interest groups have so far disregarded the Native Americans’ concerns about the project.
The bottom line is that there are many environmental problems afflicting Native Americans and their land, and much of the time, these issues are neglected and even sustained by the people who cause them. Most times, complaints about these abuses fall on deaf government ears.
The EPA’s toxic spill into the Animas River serves to highlight the continued abuses that indigenous populations in North America have suffered at the hands of governments and moneyed-interests since Europeans first “discovered” the Americas.
* * *
Summing it all up…
It's not illegal when the government does it. pic.twitter.com/TehP7tCYne
— Dean Clancy (@DeanClancy) August 13, 2015
- Released Hillary Clinton Emails Reveal… She Was Reading A Book On How To Delete Emails
Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,
As I’ve said many times before, the best part about Hillary Clinton running for President, is that she’s so unbelievably corrupt and shady, not a week goes by without a new scandal or embarrassment. It makes the insulting charade of U.S. elections at least somewhat comical.
In the latest gaffe, we learn (through her own emails), that she asked to borrow a book titled, Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better.” Chapter Six of this book is titled, “The Email That Can Land You In Jail,” which includes a section titled: “How to Delete Something So It Stays Deleted.”
You can’t make this stuff up.
From ABC News:
The last batch of Hillary Clinton emails released by the State Department included one from Clinton asking to borrow a book called “Send: Why People Email So Badly and How to Do It Better,” by David Shipley and Will Schwalbe.
Clinton has not said why she requested the book, but it includes some advice that is particularly interesting in light of the controversy over her unconventional email arrangement at the State Department and her decision to delete tens of thousands of emails she deemed to be purely personal.
Take, for example, Chapter Six: “The Email That Can Land You In Jail.” The chapter includes a section entitled “How to Delete Something So It Stays Deleted.”
The chapter advised that to truly delete emails may require a special rewriting program “to make sure that it’s not just elsewhere on the drive but has in fact been written over sixteen or twenty times and rendered undefinable.”
But Shipley and Schwalbe warn that deleting emails could lead to future legal troubles.
Here’s a screenshot of the email from ABC:
Smell blood yet Bernie?
Bernie Sanders Takes the Lead from Hillary in Latest New Hampshire Poll
* * *
For related articles, see:
So Yeah, Hillary Clinton Did Send Classified Emails From Her Private Account After All
Hillary Clinton Blasts High Frequency Trading Ahead of Fundraiser with High Frequency Trader
Cartoons Mocking “Goldman Rats” and Hillary Clinton Appear All Over NYC
Arizona State Hikes Tuition Dramatically, Yet Pays the Clintons $500,000 to Make an Appearance
- Goldman Is Officially A Bank: Bailed Out Hedge Fund Will Allow Muppets To Give Their Savings To Lloyd Blankfein
The last time former Goldman employee and then Treasury Secretary Hank Paulson bailed out the hedge fund known as Goldman Sachs, and its closest peers (but not its biggest fixed income competitor Lehman Brothers of course), even the traditionally confused American public pushed back on the structure of the bailout which converted the Goldman holding company into an FDIC-insured company, which led many to ask: just where are Goldman’s deposits?
The answer, of course, was nowhere, so perhaps in anticipation of the logical pushback against its second, upcoming bailout which would see the taxpayer-backed depositor insurance company once again provide trillions in cash to banks as well as the glorified hedge funds such as Goldman, the firm moments ago decided to do something it has never done before: become an actual bank with checking accounts and such.
It did so by announcing moments ago it would acquire GE’s Capital Bank’s online deposit platform, as in online checking accounts, including $8 billion in deposits and $8 billion in brokered CDs, thereby providing Goldman with a virtually costless source of $16 billion in funds. Costless, because under ZIRP, Goldman pays precisely zero interest for the unsecured liability also known as a deposit.
Goldman Sachs Bank USA (“GS Bank”) announced today it has entered into an agreement with GE Capital Bank (“GECB”) to acquire GECB’s online deposit platform and assume GECB’s approximately $8 billion in online deposit accounts and $8 billion in brokered certificates of deposit for an expected total of approximately $16 billion of deposits at closing. GS Bank will acquire no financial assets in the transaction other than cash associated with the deposit liabilities.
“This transaction achieves greater funding diversification and strengthens the liquidity profile of GS Bank by providing an additional deposit gathering channel. The establishment of this channel represents the advancement of a key funding objective for the firm,” said Liz Beshel Robinson, Treasurer of The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc.
Scott Roberts, President of GECB, said: “We are pleased to transition our depositor relationships to GS Bank, a large, stable institution with a focus on customer service. I am personally excited at the prospect of joining GS Bank, along with my team, to work towards a seamless transition of depositor accounts and to assist in managing the platform going forward.” “We look forward to welcoming and serving GECB’s online deposit customers at GS Bank with the high standard of service they have come to expect. We also look forward to working with our new colleagues from GECB,” said Esta Stecher, Chief Executive Officer of GS Bank.
As part of the transaction, GS Bank will extend offers of employment to substantially all of GECB’s employees dedicated to supporting the online deposit platform. As GECB’s deposit platform is online only, the transaction does not include the purchase of any physical assets.
Of course, when the next systemic crash does come, anyone holding more than the FDIC insured maximum will be promptly bailed-in alongside all other unsecured creditors, which is why we doubt Goldman will have much success in gathering zero-cost depositor capital despite the bank’s desire for “greater funding diversification” (one may wonder why Goldman needs said diversification now… rhetorically).
Or perhaps we are wrong: just look at Greece – instead of taking every opportunity to empty out the local banks, the domestic savers who clearly have no idea that all the Greek government has done is to buy a few months of time, are once again eager to put their money in the same banks which just a few weeks ago refused to give money to its rightful owners.
Maybe Goldman is merely betting that when it comes to human stupidity, it truly is infinite. In which case, it probably made the right decision. Otherwise, well, step aside Spiderman Towel…
… it’s time for the Blankfein Towel.
- Oilpocalypse Beats Buyback Bonanza – Traders Sell Everything
Another Yuan devaluation, PBOC propaganda, dismal European data, flat US retail sales and recessionary US inventory data… everything must be awesome!! But then again…
Summing up today: Sell bonds, sell emerging market stocks, sell gold, sell silver, sell US Dollars, sell crude oil, sell European bonds… and Sell VIX… BTFD In US Equities… but once the AAPL buybacks stopped… Sell Stocks too!!
Still could be worse, could be SHAK management trying to dump a secondary on the greater fools…
On the day, stocks tanked after the "good" retail sales news but quickly rallied back helped by weak inventories data…things went very quiet for a few hours before the late day saw a wave of selling hit stocks…
A reminder of what the "good" news looked like…
"Retail sales were very strong" pic.twitter.com/4giKgQ3yEL
— zerohedge (@zerohedge) August 13, 2015
Leaving only The Dow marginally higher on the day…
On the week…Nasdaq pulls back to unch with Small Caps red…
Finally Energy stocks started to leak back to credit and oil reality..
Energy stocks catching down to reality…
VIX picking back up again after testing 13.00…
Energy credit risk hit new record highs…
Credit markets were weak all day…
Treasury Yields rose for the 2nd day, leaving all but 2Y higher on the week… (a weak 30Y auction with a 1.8bps tail sparked late weakness)
The US Dollar index limped very modestly higher on the day as EURUSD tested back down to 1.1100 before bouncing…
Commodities were mixed despite a flat dollar (copper rallied marginally as the rest were hit)…
As WTI was hammered to new 6-year lows… this will be the 9th wek in a row of falling prices…
Charts: Bloomberg
Bonus Chart: Offshore Yuan suggests another 1% devaluation in the Yuan Fix tonight…
- These 11 CEOs Are The Most Overpaid Relative To Their Employees
Earlier this month, we learned that the average employee at 10 legendary “Unicorn startups” is valued at somewhere around $8 million. These startups include Uber, Airbnb, Snapchat, Palantir, SpaceX, Pinterest, Dropbox, Wework, Theranos, and Square.
These “businesses” are valued at a combined $165 billion courtesy of the largely arbitrary and completely ridiculous methodologies employed by founders and their enthusiastic VC backers. Nevermind the fact that between them, they generate but $4 billion in revenue.
Meanwhile, employees at real businesses are worth far less. Take McDonald’s for instance (which, even in its diminished state, still brings in more revenue in three months than all of the Unicorns listed above pull in over the course of a year – combined) where the enterprise value per employee is a paltry (by comparison) $200,000.
But while the value per employee may vary widely across corporate America and Silicon Valley, one thing is constant – a vast disparity between the average worker and the C-suite.
As we noted at the end of June, CEOs in the US are back to making an average of 300 times what their employees make and although that’s short of the all-time high set near the peak of the dot-com bubble, we aren’t far from the top.
Now, Bloomberg is out with a new study based on their own calculations and while it seems that their computation methods are predisposed to understating the case compared to the Economic Policy Institute’s figures (shown above), the data still suggests that for at least three American CEOs, the gap between their compensation and that of their employees is even wider than the 303:1 ratio from the preceding chart.
Here’s Bloomberg’s list:
More color:
McDonald’s might have some explaining to do.
The fast-food chain has one of the highest ratios of CEO pay to that of the company’s average worker, at 644 to 1, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. Under a requirement approved last week by the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, public companies such as McDonald’s will have to disclose a similar metric annually, handing new ammunition to critics of C-suite pay packages.
McDonald’s former chief executive officer isn’t even close to topping the list of highest-earning U.S. execs last year, but that doesn’t matter. The figure the SEC is requiring measures CEO pay against the median compensation of all employees, an unfavorable ratio when your workforce includes a lot of burger flippers and fry cooks.
Some companies where top managers earned millions more last year than the $7.3 million paid to McDonald’s Don Thompson (who stepped down in March) actually have lower ratios. Examples include JPMorgan Chase and hospital operator Community Health Systems, both of which have pay gaps exceeding 200 to 1, which are still among the widest of all U.S. companies.
To be sure, estimates relying on data that are currently available will probably differ from what companies report when the SEC rule kicks in two years from now. For instance, the SEC is allowing companies to omit a limited percentage of workers overseas, where wages might be lower.
Bloomberg estimated average worker pay by identifying businesses’ reported salaries and benefits expenses, and dividing that by the total number of workers.
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