In light of the Podesta email revelations, as well as the daily farce that is CNN “objective reporting”, it will hardly surprise anyone, that the American public thinks the media wants Democratic presidential nominee Hillary Clinton to win by an almost 10-to-1 margin, according to a new poll.
According to a Suffolk University/USA Today poll, which asked “who do you think the media, including major newspapers and TV stations, would like to see elected president: Hillary Clinton or Donald Trump?” the answer was clear: of the 1,000 adults surveyed, 75.9 percent answered Clinton, while just 7.9 percent picked Trump. Just more than 16 percent of respondents chose either “neither” or “undecided.”
As the Hill notes, the Suffolk University/USA Today poll comes on the heels of an Associated Press/GkF poll last week showing that 56 percent of likely voters, including 87 percent of his supporters, believe the media is biased against Trump. In that poll, 51 percent of Clinton supporters said the media is biased in her favor, while just 8 percent said it’s biased against her.
Trump has repeatedly complained the media is against him. “It’s the greatest pile-on in American history,” Trump told ABC’s “Good Morning America” Thursday.
“I go to rallies and they’re starting to hate the media because they see it’s all a big lie. Not all, but a lot of it’s a big lie.”
It appears that the vast majority of Americans agree with Trump.
No matter which way you spin this, this is not good news for Hillary Clinton. We all know that she has had by far the worst week in her life, and yes, I believe that in her mind, this past week even dwarfs the scandals she faced in the 90s.
The corruption that has bubbled up to the surface can no longer be denied, not even by the Main Stream Media, which has up until this point been in the tank for Hillary. We are witnessing a full blown retreat of Democrats in the last stretch of this election cycle, as key supporters state that they can no longer vote for her.
The FBI’s renewed investigation into her email case has slapped her supporters in the face, and all but the most die-hard, blinded liberals cannot stomach the thought of voting for a candidate that is very likely to be under criminal investigation for much of her first year in office.
Not only will she be under active investigation for her first year, but there is a high probability that she will be found guilty of one crime or another. To deny this will only prove that you have your head buried in the sand and are living in an alternate delusional reality.
Let me state this one more time. The FBI WOULD NOT reopen this investigation into Hillary Clinton unless they had sufficient evidence that there was SERIOUS wrongdoing on her part. They would not put their reputation, nor risk the election in such a rash or foolish way.
As seen from the image above, the latest Google Trends (until they change their algorithm to protect Hillary) shows the exploding interest that people have in researching how they can change their already-cast votes.
Given the recent bombshell news, it doesn’t take a genius to figure out that these are people wondering how they can change their previously cast vote for Hillary Clinton. Whether it be to Donald Trump, or a third party candidate, it makes no difference, as it is a win for Trump either way.
The lies, deceit and corruption that surround Hillary may have finally caught up with her. Lord knows it’s been a long time in coming.
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Friday was one of those days where you walk away from the screen for a minute and come back to find a completely different market. All it took was the FBI finding a trove of new Clinton emails, thus breathing new life into the Trump campaign and throwing what was a foregone conclusion back into doubt. Stocks tanked and gold popped, illustrating Wall Street’s preference in the upcoming election.
It will be this way until the vote, especially if polls continue to tighten and the outcome remains uncertain. So there’s no point in obsessing over fundamentals for now. Nothing real will matter until we find out who gets to mess things up going forward. Sort of like the original Ghost Busters where the demon/god says “Choose the form of the destructor.”
In other words it’s a mess either way. Only the details of the mess are in question.
From here on out politics are only relevant at the extremes – major war, corruption scandal, martial law etc. Short of that, the fiat currency/fractional reserve banking world has such institutional momentum that it really won’t matter whether Trump is picking on bankers and building his wall or Clinton is protecting Wall Street and raising taxes. Debt will keep soaring as it has under every president since Reagan and jobs will disappear as machines replace people, thus bringing the end of the current system inexorably closer.
So it’s both dangerous to try to time this kind of uncertainty and, in the end, unnecessary. Crisis is coming and governments (whether left or right, populist or establishment) will respond as they always do, with easier money and more borrowing.
Here are three trends that matter vastly more than the name of the next US president:
(Talk Markets) – While concerns about China’s debt load, capital flows, and depreciating currency have been pushed to the back-burner in recent months, perhaps facilitated by a welcome rebound in global inflation – perceived by markets and global central bankers that monetary policy is finally working – it is worth a quick reminder of how we got here.
First, a quick trip through memory lane to remind us how much has changed in just the past year.
In a note by Morgan Stanley’s Chetan Ahya released on Sunday, the strategist reminds us that a little more than a year ago, the global economy was facing intense disinflationary pressures. Global commodity prices were declining significantly and the slowdown in China and other major commodity-producing EMs had led to some concerns that it could pull developed markets into recession and drag inflation down along with it. At the same time, in China, producer prices fell by almost 6%Y and the regime change in its currency management approach meant that China was no longer absorbing disinflationary pressures from abroad.
And while this seems like a distant memory today, thanks to China which has played a pivotal role in driving the global inflation cycle – this time on the upside – as the cyclical recovery has both lifted China’s own inflation and transmitted it globally, here is how this happened: the recovery in China has been driven by yet another round of debt indulgence. Debt in China has grown by US$4.5 trillion over the past 12 months, by far the highest amount of debt creation globally as compared to US$2.2 trillion in the US, US$870 billion in Japan and US$550 billion in the euro area. Indeed, China on its own has added more debt than the US, Japan and the euro area combined.
While we have shown the IIF’s forecast of Chinese debt countless times in recent months, here it is once again to put China’s unprecedented debt expansion in context:
(Telegraph UK) – Surging rates on dollar Libor contracts are rapidly tightening conditions across large parts of the global economy, incubating stress in the credit markets and ultimately threatening overvalued bourses.
Three-month Libor rates – the benchmark cost of short-term borrowing for the international system – have tripled this year to 0.88pc as inflation worries mount.
Fear that the US Federal Reserve may have to raise rates uncomfortably fast is leading to an increasingly acute dollar shortage, draining global liquidity.
“The Libor rate is one of the few instruments left that still moves freely and is priced by market forces. It is effectively telling us that that the Fed is already two hikes behind the curve,” said Steen Jakobsen from Saxo Bank.
“This is highly significant and is our number one concern. Our allocation model is now 100pc in cash. This is a warning signal for the market and it happens extremely rarely,” he said.
Goldman Sachs estimates that up to 30pc of all business loans in the US are priced off libor contracts, as well as 20pc of mortgages and most student loans. It is the anchor for a host of exotic markets, used as a floor for 90pc of the $900bn pool of the leveraged loan market. It underpins the derivatives nexus.
The chain-reaction from the Libor spike is global. The Bank for International Settlements warns that the rising cost of borrowing in dollar markets is transmitted almost instantly through the global credit system. “Changes in the short-term policy rate are promptly reflected in the cost of $5 trillion in US dollar bank loans,” it said.
Roughly 60pc of the global economy is linked to the dollar through fixed currency pegs or ‘dirty floats’ but studies by the BIS suggest that borrowing costs in domestic currencies across Asia, Latin America, the Middle East, and Africa, move in sympathy with dollar costs, regardless of whether the exchange rate is fixed.
Short-term ‘Shibor’ rates in China have been ratcheting up. The cost of one-year swaps jumped to 2.71pc last week, and the spread over one-year sovereign debt is back to levels seen during the Shanghai stock market crash last year.
These strains are not a pure import from the US. The Chinese authorities themselves are taking action to rein in a credit bubble. It is happening in parallel with Fed tightening, each reinforcing the other, and that makes it more potent.
Three-month interbank rates in Saudi Arabia have soared to 2.4pc. This is the highest since the global financial crisis in early 2009 and implies a credit crunch in the Saudi banking system. The M1 money supply has fallen 9pc over the last year.
(Economic Collapse Blog) – Do you remember the subprime mortgage meltdown from the last financial crisis? Well, this time around we are facing a subprime auto loan meltdown. In recent years, auto lenders have become more and more aggressive, and they have been increasingly willing to lend money to people that should not be borrowing money to buy a new vehicle under any circumstances. Just like with subprime mortgages, this strategy seemed to pay off at first, but now economic reality is beginning to be felt in a major way.
The total balance of all outstanding auto loans reached $1.027 trillion between April 1 and June 30, the second consecutive quarter that it surpassed the $1-trillion mark, reports Experian Automotive.
The average size of an auto loan is also at a record high. At $29,880, it is now just a shade under $30,000.
In order to try to help people afford the payments, auto lenders are now stretching loans out for six or even seven years. At this point it is almost like getting a mortgage.
But even with those stretched out loans, the average monthly auto loan payment is now up to a record 499 dollars.
Already, auto loan delinquencies are rising to very frightening levels. In July, 60 day subprime loan delinquencies were up 13 percent on a month-over-month basis and were up 17 percent compared to the same month last year.
Prime delinquencies were up 12 percent on a month-over-month basis and were up 21 percent compared to the same month last year.
In a quarterly filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, Ford reported in the first half of this year it allowed $449 millionfor credit losses, a 34% increase from the first half of 2015.
General Motors reported in a similar filing that it set aside $864 million for credit losses in that same period of 2016, up 14% from a year earlier.
These three things – soaring Chinese debt, disruptions in the money market, and the end of the auto loan bubble – matter vastly more than which party runs what part of the government.
When one or all (or some other problem like Deutsche Bank) blow up in 2017, deficit spending will soar, interest rates will be forced down (to the extent that that’s possible) and new rules will be imposed on whatever freely-functioning markets remain.
And so it will go until the old tricks stop working. Then the details will start to matter again.
Silver (and gold) pries are surging today as the dollar index tumbles by the most in 2 months. Silver futures have spiked almost 4% to their highest in a month to the 100-day moving-average.
The USD Index is tumbling – by all appearances – on Trump gains…
Sending Silver soaring to 1-month highs…
And key resistance at the 100DMA…
And while gold is rallying also, Gold/Silver has droped back below 70x…
Since the last FOMC meeting (9/21) the probability of rate hike by December 2016 has soared from under 50% to 76% today (ahead of tomorrow's Fed statement). At the same time, the US yield curve has steepened drastically (with 2s10s up over 20bps to 5-month highs).
Chart: Bloomberg
However, unlike the last 4 Fed meetings, the US yield curve is steepening into the statement…
Chart: Bloomberg
It seems something has changed this time. Whether it is technical pressure from Risk-Parity unwinds, or a growing concern of inflationary pressures building (as ISM/PMI pointed to this morning), it is clear bonds are starting to buy the Fed's jawboning… no matter economic data expectations remain weak at best.
A class action settlement pushed forward by both sides in response to the highly publicized New York Police widespread surveillance of Muslim residents has a federal judge demanding more before approving it.
Specifically federal Judge Charles Haight of the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York wants to make sure the participation of a non-police citizen in a proposed police-dominated committee that would evaluate the surveillance system would actually mean something.
In the wake of the Sept. 11 attacks, the New York Police Department began a practice of massive surveillance of Muslim residents of the city (and neighboring New Jersey). While the city very obviously had a need to track down potential terror plots, the NYPD’s actual practice resulted in widespread snooping involving the use of informants apparently untied to any actual threats. The city’s surveillance program drew lawsuits and failed to uncover any terrorist plots. The oversight committee would be part of the settlement for the suits.
The lawsuits prompted a look at previous guidelines to restrain unwarranted surveillance by the NYPD that were put in place in the ’80s. So none of this is a new problem—just new targets. The NYPD has a lengthy history of snooping on various groups (of historical interest, Haight notes in this ruling that the roots of the NYPD’s intelligence program are tied to snooping on Italian immigrants at the turn of the 20th century). This previous settlement put in place a system detailing among other things the circumstances by which police can engage in surveillance (suspicion of a crime), processes for approval for surveillance and expiration expectations when snooping fails to unearth relevant information.
The problem, Haight noted, is that a recent audit found that the NYPD wasn’t following the rules that are in place right now, even after those rules were loosened a bit after the September 11 attacks. The audit found that while police were following guidelines on seeking the appropriate permissions to engage in surveillance and the use of informants, in about half the cases the use of surveillance tools and informants continued after the initial authorization expired.
So the fact that the NYPD aren’t following guidelines right now prompted Haight to want to make sure this citizen in this proposed oversight board isn’t just for show. The proposal is for this citizen to be a lawyer with no connections (present or past) to the NYPD appointed by the mayor. Problem: The mayor would also have the authority to eliminate the position after five years. This citizen would also have only limited abilities to blow the whistle on any problems he or she comes across, turning to the police commissioner or reporting to the court if he or she thinks the police are “systematically and repeatedly” violating surveillance guidelines.
That’s not enough for Haight. He is suggesting that the citizen representative be allowed to communicate to the court with any concerns that come out of the committee’s work, not just evidence of widespread violations. And Haight suggests the citizen representative submit a quarterly report to the court. And rather just letting the mayor eliminate the position by fiat in five years, Haight suggests the mayor have to come to the court to make the case it was no longer needed.
So for now Haight is rejecting the settlement, without prejudice, giving the parties involved the chance to make changes for reconsideration.
The New York Civil Liberties Union (and several other civil liberties group) helped usher in this lawsuit. They reacted to the judge’s ruling: “The court’s ruling highlights safeguards we sought to secure but the NYPD refused to accept, and we hope it convinces the NYPD to establish additional protections against unwarranted surveillance. This development is an opportunity to put the strongest safeguards in place, and we are eager to discuss the court’s suggestions with the NYPD and the city. For the sake of New York Muslims and all New Yorkers, we urge that reforms are implemented as soon as possible.”
Read more about the case settlement here and the judge’s decision here.
And during a two-part debate he took part in with Green Party presidential candidate Jill Stein (Part 1 aired last night, Part 2 airs tonight), Johnson described moderator Tavis Smiley’s characterization that he increased New Mexico’s debt by more than double during his eight years as the state’s governor as “horseshit.” Watch the clip below:
Smiley didn’t directly cite his source for the debt figures, but he may have been referring to James Spiller’s article in National Review that “Johnson inherited a debt of $1.8 billion and left a debt of $4.6 billion, a rate of increase unmatched by the 22 governors in either party who have filed for presidential primaries in the past two decades.”
Though Johnson says “there is absolutely no basis in fact for that,” Reason‘s Brian Doherty wrote:
While Johnson had the veto and used it around over 700 times—he thinks that’s more than all his fellow governors at the time combined—the legislature ultimately has the power of the purse. On his way out Johnson vetoed an entire budget for 2003 but got overridden. What New Mexico spent during his administration was somewhat, but by no means ultimately, up to him.
As Johnson has repeatedly demonstrated this electoral cycle, he’s not the best communicator or extemporaneous public speaker, but he could have capitalized on his sure-to-be noteworthy use of an expletive on public television by explaining that he worked hard to battle the Democratic-controlled legislature’s tendency for what he believed was “profligate” spending, and that despite the increase in total debt managed to leave office with a reported $1 billion budget surplus.
It’s that time of year again. Time for vibrant fall colors, cool crisp morning air, and open enrollment in the Affordable Care Act (ACA) insurance exchanges – the government-regulated, state-based healthcare plans set up as part of the act. Since the ACA’s first open enrollment period in the fall of 2013, millions of Americans have opted-in to the government healthcare plan otherwise known as Obamacare. This year, however, represents a tipping point for the future direction of socialized healthcare in the United States.
Starting on November 1, those forced to turn to the federal government for healthcare coverage will experience a significant sticker shock. According to statistics released by ACASignUps.net, a tracker of ACA enrollment, unsubsidized healthcare premiums in Obamacare are expected to rise nationally by an average of 25 percent in 2017, with some states seeing increases of more than 50 percent. In addition to premium increases, Americans who select healthcare coverage through the ACA exchanges will also see significant increases in their plan deductibles—the out-of-pocket expenses prior to insurance coverage kicking in.
On top of the dramatic increases in premiums and deductibles, the number of insurance plans available to ACA enrollees are headed in the opposite direction. Insurance giants Aetna and United Healthcare as well as many smaller insurers have pulled out of the exchanges citing significant financial losses. At least five states will have only one health-insurance option while many others will see plan choices reduced or eliminated forcing some two million people to find new health-insurance plans. So much for, “If you like your healthcare plan you can keep it.”
But why now? Why is this happening—why the dramatic price increases and choice decreases associated with the ACA?
The insurance business is based on the assumption of risk spread throughout a population of individuals. The ACA has too much risk and too little population of healthy individuals to bear the cost. The more fundamental answer lies in forcing a union between market-based entities focused on meeting customer needs for profit (the insurance industry) and a government-subsidized, directive approach to that particular product offering (health insurance).
If we didn’t know it before, we now know that the current model of the ACA is not sustainable, even in the short-term, and the need to address its shaky foundational assumptions will fall to the next president early in his or her first term. The ongoing financial impact on the insurance industry, on the lives of the American people, and on the federal government won’t permit the problem to linger beyond that timeframe.
So which will it be? Greater market-based healthcare solutions or increased government control of healthcare? Only time will tell.
What we do know is the sticker shock of Obamacare is a clear signal we have reached a healthcare tipping point.
Wholesale gasoline prices are tumbling back from post-pipeline-explosion peaks after Colonial reports the resumption of Line 2 operations and confirms Line 1 will restart on Saturday (although they warn that projection may change).
As Bloomberg reports, Colonial response crews isolated fire, site access still limited and ability to predict repair schedule “very limited,” company says in a notice to shippers.
Pipeline schedules being updated to reflect noon restart Saturday, but projection may change when additional information is available.
Colonial will evalaute crossover of gasoline into Line 2.