After last week's surprise crude build (biggest in ~4 months) and builds across the entire complex, API reported a crude build of 942k barreles (just shy of expectations of +1.5mm) and while Cushing and Gasoline saw draws, Distillates saw a major 3mm barrel build (+275k exp). The initial reaction in crude was to extend the day's losses, back below $46.50…
API
Crude +942k (+1.5mm exp)
Cushing -620k
Gasoline -1.6mm (-1.25mm exp)
Distillates +3mm (+275k exp)
Another Crude build but the big news was a major Distillates build…
And the reaction in crude after a down day was an initial kneejerk lower…
Is Clinton’s Lead Over Trump as Large as Advertised?
Once upon a time, political polls tended to be pretty accurate (there were occasional exceptions to this rule, but they were few and far between). Recently there have been a few notable misses though. One that comes to mind is the Brexit referendum. Shortly before the vote, polls indicated the outcome would be a very close one, while betting markets were indicating a solid win of the “remain” vote. The actual result was around 52:48 in favor of “leave”, so this was quite a big miss.
Polarizing candidates – one of whom has already managed to confound election forecasters in the nomination race.
Another case that confounded even the most seasoned forecasters was the race for the Republican nomination. See for instance this article by Mish from January, in which he rightly berates famous election forecaster Nate Silver for vastly underestimating Trump’s chances to win. Silver held them to be around 12% to 13% at the time, which turned out to be a miss of truly monumental proportions. He kept missing the mark for many more months to come (essentially until the point in time when Trump had made the transition to “inevitable nominee”).
We currently follow press coverage on the presidential election only cursorily, for lack of time, and also because it seems both very superficial and one-sided. The mainstream media bias in this election seems astonishingly blatant. To quote Stefan Molyneux, there is apparently no mud one cannot sling at the orange-haired maniac. We are of course well aware that Donald Trump has an uncanny ability to put his foot into his mouth, but it seems almost as if little else is discussed (skim through a few MSM articles at random and see how much you learn about his policy proposals – good luck).
On the other hand, it is not as if Hillary Clinton were widely considered an angel. The woman has spent decades mired in scandals, from her credulity-stretching career as a cattle futures trader in the 70s, to the Whitewater affair, Travelgate, the harassment of women pointing fingers at her philandering husband, to the recent questions about the Clinton foundation, the gigantic speaking fees she gets for mouthing platitudes at corporate gatherings for 20 minutes a stretch, the e-mail server controversy (and not to forget, her sociopathic streak)… and we’re sure we have left a few things out.
In short, she is just as polarizing a figure as Trump is widely held to be. Then there is the fact that Donald Trump continues to draw huge crowds wherever he goes to speak, a feat Hillary Clinton is not known for. Perhaps this is merely a sign that Trump voters are more energized for their candidate – but that seems quite an important factoid by itself. Remember the Brexit post mortem in this context: the “remain” camp mainly failed because it was unable to create even the slightest bit of excitement for its cause.
All of this made us wonder why Hillary Clinton is so solidly ahead in political polls. Below is a chart of the NYT’s “national polling average”, which concludes that her current lead boils down to an “89% chance of winning the presidency”. Really? That sounds a bit like Nate Silver judging Trump’s chances to win the Republican nomination back in January, i.e., it is a bit hard to believe.
The NYT national polling average asserts that Clinton’s chance to win the election is 89%. That strikes us as wishful thinking along the lines of “Trump will never get the nomination” – click to enlarge.
If one looks at the list of polls the NYT uses to construct this average, one can see that Clinton’s lead actually varies quite widely among them. Some of the organizations and/or media conducting the polls either have a known political bias, or a known bias in this particular election. The reported size of her lead seems to be correlating rather closely with these known biases. This is slightly mystifying, is it not?
Voter Excitement
Most of these polls are conducted via telephone, but there is also an online tracking poll by UPI/CVoter. Its margin of error cannot be calculated because the participants are self-selecting, but UPI mentions a credibility interval of 3 percentage points (apparently based on the Bayesian approach to quantifying uncertainty). This particular poll has fluctuated in quite a wide range, but at the end of last week, Trump has overtaken Clinton again for the first time since July:
UPI online poll: it seems Trump is beating Clinton on the intertubes again – click to enlarge.
Once again, it is possible that Trump voters are simply more engaged and more likely to self-select for this poll. Trump certainly packs more internet punch than Clinton through his Twitter feed, Facebook and You-tube presence (even though his tweets occasionally land him in hot water). As noted above, Trump has something in common with the erstwhile Democratic rival of Clinton, Bernie Sanders: he is generating genuine excitement among his supporters.
We wonder what it takes for Democrats to get excited over the prospect of voting for a woman who bears a large share of responsibility for turning an entire country into a war-torn failed state overrun by terrorists and is showered with money by Wall Street (note: she not only gets serious money for her probably sleep-inducing speeches from the likes of Goldman Sachs, she has actually received 2,550 times more money from hedge funds than Trump).
Presumably many are clinging very strongly to the “lesser evil” fantasy, but surely they realize that she stands for business as usual (including more war) – the quintessential representative of the cronyism characterizing Washington.
What Might be Skewing the Polls?
One thing that occurred to us already during the nomination process was that certain Trump supporters were likely to refrain from identifying themselves as such, given the steady drumbeat of condemnation of their man in the media.
What we didn’t know was that the phenomenon actually has a name, which a friend recently pointed out to us. It is called the “Bradley effect” (you can read all about it here), named after the supposedly winning (but actually losing) candidate in the 1982 gubernatorial election in California. Even the exit polls turned out to be wrong in this case.
A short while ago we have come across another possible explanation. Below is a video in which Stefan Molyneux speaks with Bill Mitchell. It has to be pointed out that Mitchell is a Trump supporter, so his views are presumably colored by his own bias to some extent. Nevertheless, he presents very interesting arguments.
Apart from mentioning some of the things we discuss above (e.g. the enthusiasm Trump generates), and the likelihood that independents and currently still undecided voters will overwhelmingly vote for Trump (which incidentally would also be in line with the “Bradley effect”), he notes that there are certain technical problems with the polls.
Specifically, he points out that the polls are skewed because Democratic voters are generally oversampled and the results are not corrected for that. He mentions a few counter-examples that seem to confirm this (note that we have not fact-checked these assertions).
While the term “social mood” isn’t mentioned in the course of the conversation, Mitchell does point to it when he says that (we are paraphrasing) “Trump is just riding the wave of an already existing trend”. This trend is noticeable all over the world as we have previously discussed (see e.g. “Incumbents Swept from Office Around the World”). Here is the video – it is well worth watching:
Stefan Molyneux speaks to Bill Mitchell about the polls and Trump’s chances
Part of the “Bradley effect” would also consist of demographics that are thought to be overwhelmingly favoring Clinton containing more Trump supporters than is generally thought. And there may well be many who are prepared to reassess their views when Trump tries to reach out to them – which he appears to be doing of late, once again employing a theme tied to the current social mood.
Consider this brief video clip from a speech he recently delivered at a rally in Michigan, in which he explains why African-Americans should consider voting for him. His argument is basically: you have it bad now, so what do you have to lose? Better vote for change (in the form of Trump), instead of voting for the status quo again.
Trump asks African-Americans to consider voting for him
This idea may have unexpected appeal, considering that blacks have overwhelmingly voted for Obama and have lost a great deal of ground economically under his administration. During his presidency, black home ownership has declined from 46.1% to 41.9%, while black food stamp recipients have soared from 7,393,000 to 11,699,000 people. One statistic that was improving – namely unemployment, and specifically youth unemployment – has come undone again after the introduction of higher minimum wages, rising from 28.1% to 40.1% in a single month.
Conclusion
There seems to be a lot of smug certitude that Trump is definitely destined to lose the election. We are not so sure. At the very least we would think that the race between Trump and Clinton is far tighter than it appears according to recent polls. This bring us back to a point we mentioned last week: the market is not pricing in the “risk” of an election upset.
We happen to think that presidents cannot change as much as is widely thought, or as they would perhaps like to – the one area in which they can actually make a difference is foreign policy. This is probably also the main reason why Trump is vilified so extensively, as he has repeatedly stressed that he would alter the US approach to foreign policy, which is seen as a threat to the greatest racket of all time.
R&B singer and convicted domestic abuser Chris Brown was engaged in a standoff with the LAPD and a SWAT team at his Los Angeles house today after a woman called 911 to report that Brown had pulled a gun on her.
At the Democratic National Convention in Philadelphia, Triump the Insult Comic Dog was on hand to cover the event for Hulu (or, as he pronounces it, “Hooolu”). Along with Reason TV producer Alexis Garcia, I had the opportunity to participate in a bold experiment inside Triumph’s “Free Speech Booth,” where our very souls were tested. We could either say whatever we wanted to say or read a script about Goldman Sachs for a crisp $50 bill. Click above to see what we end up doing. We show up one after the other around the 2:30 mark.
Shortly after that harrowing encounter, I talked with Triumph’s creator, Robert Smigel, who created a series of tremendous videos for Saturday Night Livebeginning in 1996. Click below to watch that Facebook Live stream, which updates Walter Benjamin’s “The Work of Art in the Age of Mechanical Reproduction” for a time when a grown man can make a living and create a cult following with a foul-mouthed (and incredibly funny) dog puppet.
When a powerful, unelected federal official says we need to have an “adult conversation” about the limits of federal authority as contrasted with the civil liberties of the people he allegedly works for, hold on to your butts.
Whenever somebody declares the need for an “adult conversation” in the first place, they are suggesting that one hasn’t already been happening, and often accomplishes little but to raise the hackles. It is a deliberate insult against those with opposing views. In this particular case, the person invoking the term is FBI Director James Comey, and it’s pretty much directed at the entire tech sector and privacy advocates who have been pushing back (for decades) against government attempts to tamper with and weaken encryption.
There’s something remarkably telling about the man saying we need to have an “adult conversation” on encryption limits primarily because he can’t just get whatever he wants. Isn’t that the child’s argument? The government wants this information. Give us this information!
Of course, as always, it’s couched in terms of the alleged threat of the Internet going “dark” and federal investigators worried they’re not able to track down alleged criminals and terrorists. Comey complained about it at a tech symposium today. The Associated Press reports:
“The conversation we’ve been trying to have about this has dipped below public consciousness now, and that’s fine,” Comey said. “Because what we want to do is collect information this year so that next year we can have an adult conversation.”
The American people, he said, have a reasonable expectation of privacy in houses, cars and electronic devices — but he argued that right is not absolute.
“With good reason, the people of the United States — through judges and law enforcement — can invade our public spaces,” Comey said, adding that that “bargain” has been at the heart of the country since its inception.
This is what he thinks is an “adult conversation.” While Comey wants to present this is a reasonably as possible, recall that when they found a phone in the possession by a terrorist that was protected with a password, what the Department of Justice thought was the reasonable, adult response was to try to use the courts to conscript Apple and to actually force it to compromise its own security systems to give the government access to the phone’s contents. The government wants things! Give the government those things! This is the “adult conversation” Comey’s side is having right now.
No, privacy is not absolute, but just because they government has the authority to pursue information related to crimes doesn’t mean they’re guaranteed access to it. I’ll dredge up an old example: A suspect may take a box containing evidence to a crime and bury it somewhere out in the desert. The government absolutely has the authority to try to track down that evidence and use any number of tools to do so. But they can’t order the desert to cough it up for them or command some desert experts to track it down for them (though they can certainly hire them).
The “adult conversation” that’s actually already happening is trying to get people like Comey to understand that there’s no magical system where the Department of Justice (or any other government entity) can get access to information to encrypted data that doesn’t leave the whole system vulnerable.
The “adult conversation” is about trying to get authoritarian senators like Dianne Feinstein (D-Calif.) and Richard Burr (R-N.C.) to understand that the legislation they wrote to order tech companies to assist the government in cracking their own security was so bad—so childish, in fact—that it’s impossible to imagine any tech or privacy-minded adult trusting what they’ll suggest next. The “adult conversation” is “white hat” hackers showing how easy it is for a mistake to compromise the data of millions of computer users. The “adult conversation” is about understanding that oppressive governments will use these tools to punish and imprison their own citizens.
If Comey wants to have an “adult conversation,” we should maybe set encryption aside for now and talk about the absurdity of our government-sponsored drug war that will never, ever succeed any more than any other prohibition has ever succeeded and why the government still clings to the illogical, absurd (and childish) fantasy that illegal drug use can somehow be halted. Maybe if we had that “adult conversation” and brought it to its logical conclusion (ending this foolish war), we could actually then go back and determine how important it actually is for the FBI to be able to defeat encryption. Evidence shows the relentless drive to perpetuate this drug war is playing a major role in this encryption fight, not terrorism, as the feds would have us believe.
For more “adult conversation,” read Andrea Castillo’s piece today about how the feds clearly prioritize the ability to snoop on us over the need to protect us from hackers.
The scenic mountain resort of Jackson Hole in Wyoming played snowy host this weekend to the world’s major central bankers, meeting in conclave to discuss their latest victories over the world economy.
Thronged by adoring savers, the so-called Ja’ss Holes (the J is silent) were quick to point out that they were nowhere near running out of fatuous experiments with untested monetary policies or making it up as they go along.
“We still have plenty of tools,” remarked a spokesperson: “Janet Yellen, Mark Carney, Andy Haldane, Mario Draghi – does any remote, unelected bureaucracy anywhere in the world have a bigger set of tools?”
The theme of the meeting is “What, if anything, will be left when we have finished?”
Given the Fed’s stated intention not to surprise financial markets, it is believed that the next 25 basis point rise in fed funds will come, as it did last year, in December – but as part of its forward guidance policy, the decision will be announced by means of a ‘policy dove’ that will be released at the end of the weekend, after a ritual of Native American dancing and hallucinogenic drug-taking, and sent circling around the world with its message of peace and extremely modest monetary tightening.
In the event that the ‘policy dove’ is incapacitated or shot out of the sky, it will be replaced by a ‘policy Elk’ from the National Elk Refuge nearby.
Although official interest rates seem low, a spokesperson said that was only if you looked at them from the perspective of numbers.
Viewed more holistically, from the vantage point of a numeric base system yet to be invented, or one that operates only through color, rates could actually be regarded as quite high.
In any event, the US central bank would not find itself out of weaponry if a new recession caused by the US central bank were to hit.
The US Federal Reserve has already commissioned a fleet of B2 Stealth bombers to initiate the next stage of its economic policy, codenamed ‘Obliterate hope’.
The intention is to bypass the introduction of so-called ‘helicopter money’ and fast forward instead to the endgame of a long, vicious carpet-bombing of North America’s major cities using napalm.
A spokesperson for the European Central Bank pointed out that ‘Obliterate hope’ had already been a key plank of ECB policy across the euro zone for some time, especially in periphery countries.
Determined not to be outflanked by its US rival, the Frankfurt- based organization indicated that it had its own plans for weaponizing its existing QE program, codenamed ‘Project Bubo’.
The ECB, in conjunction with the European Science Foundation, is believed to be planning to tackle the longstanding ‘savings glut’ by means of reintroducing Europe to the Black Death.
Economists believe that such a step could be a key means of boosting productivity, among the survivors.
Speaking to reporters, Mark Carney for the Bank of England pointed out that by comparison with the efforts of the US and the EU, the next phase of UK central banking stimulus would have to reflect Great Britain’s now more modest role in the world, post-Brexit.
He acknowledged that a coordinated aerial bombardment of the UK’s major cities “was certainly desirable”, but that in these more straitened times we might have to settle for a posse of Team GB Olympians jogging from town to town and assaulting random businessmen with socks full of wet sand.
Central bankers acknowledge that they were slow off the mark dealing with the last property bubble, and they point out that they have gone beyond the call of duty to fuel the current one and ensure that its collapse will be even more spectacular, given that interest rates are forecast to be close to minus 280% by then.
With years of monetary accommodation having inflated bond, equity and property prices to unsustainable levels, developed world economies are now beset by low productivity and weak levels of investment and impaired prospects for banks, insurance companies, pension funds, savers and investors.
Ms Yellen, however, piloting an experimental nuclear-powered leisure cruiser, the ‘Permanent Liquidity’, was proud to announce that she “saw no signs of problems ahead,” shortly before steering her yacht into the Teton Glacier where it immediately foundered with all hands.
Observers suggested that its shattered debris would likely stay at the bottom of the Snake River “lower for longer”.
With hundreds of millions of dollars poured into presidential and congressional elections in the United States it can be difficult, even for mega donors like George Soros, to truly understand how much influence is being "bought." That's why Soros is pursuing a new strategy to dump millions into the campaigns of local district attorneys, a position which "exercises the greatest discretion and power in the system." So far, Soros has funneled $3 million into seven local DA races over the past year but his support is "expected to intensify in the next few years, thanks to longer-term planning and candidate recruitment." In general, Soros looks to fund progressive DAs running on platforms to "reduce racial disparity in sentencing" and support prison "diversion programs" for drug offenders instead of trials that could result in jail time. As Politico points out:
Prosecutorial discretion gives district attorneys a huge say in the charges and sentences that defendants face. But reform efforts have not traditionally focused on harnessing that power.
“They are often a very invisible part of the criminal justice system and the political system,” said Brenda Carter, director of the Reflective Democracy Campaign, an arm of the progressive Women Donors Network. “Many people can’t name their district attorney. It’s not an office people think about a lot.”
Carter’s group commissioned research in 2015 that found that 95 percent of elected local prosecutors in the U.S. are white and three-quarters overall are white men. It also highlighted a Wake Forest University study that found that a vast majority of prosecutors — 85 percent — run for reelection unopposed.
“I found that to be shocking, and I think people are waking up to the untapped potential for intervention in these seats to really change the day-to-day realities of criminal justice,” Carter said. “It’s been really gratifying for us to see the research taken up and run with by different groups around the country.”
So far, Soros has been quite successful with 6 out of 7 of his candidates ultimately winning their election bids. Alas, despite the fact that DAs "exercise the greatest discretion and power in the system" one Soros pick in Mississippi proved it's possible for even a DA to overstep their legal bounds. Hinds County, Mississipi DA, Robert Shuler, whose reelection campaign was funded by Soros, was recently charged by Mississippi's attorney general for "improperly providing information to defendants."
Soros has spent on district attorney campaigns in Florida, Illinois, Louisiana, Mississippi, New Mexico and Texas through a network of state-level super PACs and a national “527” unlimited-money group, each named a variation on “Safety and Justice.” (Soros has also funded a federal super PAC with the same name.) Each organization received most of its money directly from Soros, according to public state and federal financial records, though some groups also got donations from nonprofits like the Civic Participation Action Fund, which gave to the Safety and Justice group in Illinois.
Soros’ spending started on these races about a year ago, when he put over $1 million into “Safety and Justice” groups that helped elect two new district attorneys in Louisiana and Mississippi and reelect a third — Hinds County, Miss., DA Robert Shuler Smith — who has since been charged by the Mississippi attorney general with improperly providing information to defendants.
After the Louisiana and Mississippi races, Soros next piled money into two of the biggest jurisdictions in the country: Houston’s Harris County (his lone losing effort so far) and Chicago’s Cook County, where he funded one of several groups that helped Kim Foxx defeat incumbent state’s attorney Anita Alvarez in a high-profile primary campaign dominated by the 13-month delay between the police shooting of Laquan McDonald and the indictment of the police officer involved.
In late spring, $107,000 from a Soros-funded New Mexico super PAC helped Raul Torrez win his Democratic district attorney primary by a 2-to-1 margin in Albuquerque’s Bernalillo County. Torrez’s Republican opponent dropped out of the general election soon after, citing the potentially exorbitant cost of opposing the Soros-backed candidate in the general election.
But, for those of you worried that Soros isn't doing enough to "reshape the American justice system" please know that the plan is to "invest" far more in these races going forward. In fact, as Politico points out, the only hold back so far has been a lack of good puppetscandidates.
While Soros has spent heavily in 2015 and 2016, a broader national push into local prosecutor campaigns is expected to intensify in the next few years, thanks to longer-term planning and candidate recruitment. A Safety and Justice group has already organized in Ohio, according to campaign finance filings there. But it has not yet disclosed raising or spending any money.
“There’s been a realization that there’s not very much we can do this year, when you’re coming up to an election,” said Steele. “You have to have the right candidates. That’s a big piece of the puzzle and why I’m part of this conversation. … A lot of the conversations I’m having are about 2017 and 2018, about looking forward to next year in Virginia and other places.”
That means more local candidates should prepare for the shock of one of the biggest donors in American politics flooding their neighborhoods with ads.
Oddly enough, not everyone is pleased with New York billionaires meddling in local elections when they have no vested interest in the community.
Opponents of Soros’ favored candidates have laced into the billionaire, saying that his influence has wildly tipped the scales of local elections and even charging that he made residents less safe.
“As a candidate and citizen of Caddo Parish, if an outsider was that interested in the race, I wanted to know exactly what he had in mind for the criminal justice system if he were to win,” said Dhu Thompson, a Louisiana attorney who lost a district attorney race to a Soros-backed candidate, James Stewart, in 2015. Soros gave over $930,000 — more than 22 times the local median household income — to the group boosting Stewart.
“I know some of his troubling opinions on social issues, especially the criminal justice system,” Thompson said. “I’ve never known him as an individual who was very strong on some of our crime and punishment issues. I felt it was very detrimental to the safety of Caddo Parish, and that’s why I took such a strong stand against him."
That said, we're sure any objections to George's plan is derived from a simple misunderstanding of his motives. After all, last time someone said he wanted to "fundamentally transform" America it worked out pretty well, right?
It is no secret that earnings have gone nowhere over the past two years (and are set to decline for 6 consecutive quarters), while on a GAAP basis earnings as of 2015 were the lowest since 2010…
… which means that earnings growth has not been a factor behind the stock market’s recent ascent to all time highs. As a result, the conventional explanation to justify the S&P trading just shy of 2,200 is that the market has been the beneficiary of unprecedented multiple expansion. To be sure, as Goldman recently opined, the median stock multiple has never been more overvalue.
Indeed, if one left it at that, the answer would not be exactly wrong, however there is one more factor which is rarely discussed, and which – according to Deutsche Bank – explains virtually the entire equity rally of the past four years: the collapse of the equity risk premium as a result of plunging bond yields, which as a reminder, is the direct pathway by which central banks operate, by monetizing government, and now corporate, debt.
As Deutsche Bank’s Dominic Konstam writes over the weekend, “various Fed officials have raised the issue of financial stability in the context of the reach for yield and riskier products to make up for low rates. This is part of financial repression. The logic might be that once the Fed has normalized, elements of that reach for yield and risk would be unwound and this could lead to disruptive financial market volatility.”
Put in the simplest possible word, this means the Fed is worried that once rates go up as a result of renormalization and the lack of a central bank to frontrun, stocks will crash. As it turns out the Fed has ample reason to be worried. As Konstam explains, here’s the reason why:
We can illustrate this aspect of financial repression in terms of the equity market. In the post crisis world, all assets seem closely correlated to breakevens and real rates but with varying betas. We note that the equity market recently looks very expensive even to these rates through the shift in the beta on inflation expectations – so despite low inflation expectations, equities have done even better than otherwise warranted by low real rates. This shows up as a fall in the equity risk premium and defines well the hunt for yield in a repressive financial regime.
How does the decompsition of performance look visually: we can illustrate the extent to which this is unprecedented with the historical performance of the equity market. Decomposing equity returns into earnings growth, changes in P/E and changes in the risk premium shows that the bulk of equity performance is best captured by the shunt lower in equity risk premium.
In turn, this means that every push higher in yield, whether orchestrated by central banks, or due to exogenous events like a “taper tantrum” risks upsetting this precariously compressed ERP “spring”, leading to a violent market crash. Because if the ERP is responsible for 92% of the S&P500 move since 2012, or just over 800 points, that would suggest that central bank policies are directly responsible for approximately 40% of the “value” in the market, and any moves to undo this support could result in crash that wipes out said ERP contribution, leaving the S&P500 somewhere in the vicinity of 1,400.
In retrospect, it becomes obvious why the Federal Reserve is petrified about even the smallest, 25bps rate hike.
As Venezuela prepares for nationwide protests calling for the recall of its wildly unpopular President Nicolas Maduro scheduled for this Thursday, its socialist government is arresting activist leaders and opposition politicians.
At the height of the protests in late 2007, Goiceochea was quoted by the Washington Post as saying, “This is not a war of left and right,” adding, “We believe that Venezuela has to have democracy. Democracy means respect. Democracy means free expression. Democracy means saying what you want without repression.”
Goicoechea, who was awarded the Cato Institute’s 2008 Miltion Friedman Prize, was accused by the government of “possessing detonating cords for explosive devices,” according to Bloomberg. In a nationally televised address, Diosdado Cabello — called the “Frank Underwood of Venezuela” by The Atlantic and the Venezuela’s “No. 2 official” by The Wall Street Journal — cited the cash prize Goicoechea received from the Cato Institute as evidence that he was a paid agent of U.S. forces intent on stirring up a violent coup.
Ian Vazquez responds to Goicoechea’s arrest on the Cato at Liberty blog:
This is an old trick of the Chavista regime—distract attention from the severe political, economic and social crisis that it has inflicted on the country. Venezuela’s so-called Socialism of the 21st Century has produced shortages of everything from food and water, to medicine and electricity. Hunger is becoming widespread, the rate of violence is among the worst in the world, and the regime has become extremely unpopular. (We have commented on this downward spiral here, here, here, and here).
Yon won the Friedman Prize in 2008 for having led the student movement that played the central role in defeating the constitutional reform that would have given Hugo Chavez what at that time would have been an unprecedented concentration of political and economic power. One of Yon’s and the student movement’s central tenets is their advocacy of non-violence in the promotion of basic freedoms and democracy. Yon also offers an optimistic vision about the future and potential of his country (see his Friedman Prize acceptance speech here). That approach contrasts with the regime’s constant reliance on repression and force and helps explain its appeal to most Venezuelans. For the same reason, the government’s claim of terrorism on Yon’s part lacks any credibility. The idea that the Friedman Prize is awarded so that the recipient carry out specific tasks is also risible. The prize is given “to an individual who has made a significant contribution to advance human freedom,” and has no conditions attached to it whatsoever. It has been awarded to numerous freedom champions from around the world including prominent reformers and human rights and freedom of speech advocates.
If Maduro — who currently holds an approval rating of about 22 percent — is able to delay a referendum on his presidency past Jan. 10, he would be able to hand-pick his successor to finish the final two years of his presidential term, even if we were recalled. Venezuela’s national election council has hinted at, but not committed to, holding a referendum in February.