Tonight’s edition of the Munk Debates promises to be a provocative, and potentially “explosive” confrontation between two polar opposites – Steve Bannon on one side and David Frum on the other – discussing the future of democracy and the rise of populism.
Steve Bannon, the former head of Breitbart News and former chief strategist to President Trump will be arguing for the resolution that the “future of western politics is populist, not liberal.”
Arguing the opposing side will be Canadian-American David Frum, Senior Editor at The Atlantic, former speechwriter for President George W. Bush and author of the recent book Trumpocracy: The Corruption of the American Public.
It promises to be an exciting debate, especially since as Canadian Press reports, chanting protesters successfully delayed the start of the debate. Police intervened outside the downtown venue with batons and reportedly made several arrests.
Debate organizers explained the delay by saying they anticipated protests and want to ensure everyone is safe.
Critics, who accuse Bannon of being a white supremacist, wanted the debate scrapped. Protesters, some holding signs deploring racism, yelled “Shame on you!” and “Nazi!” as people tried to get in, reducing one woman on her way into the debate to tears.
“We are going to work diligently as a group to make sure this is a safe evening,” said Rudyard Griffiths, the chairman and moderator of the debate. “That is going to require us to wait a little bit.”
The debate is slated to play out just ahead of the fiercely contested US midterm elections on Nov. 6.
Organizers said about 2,700 people paid to attend, while about 2,000 others were expected to watch via livestream.
The Saudi Air Force has unleashed a massive attack across the Sana’a Governorate over the last 48 hours, reports Middle East-based Al Masdar Newsciting Yemeni sources on the ground. This appears to be the Saudi response to the U.S. call for a ceasefire “in the next 30 days”announced by Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis and Secretary of State Mike Pompeo a mere two days ago.
According to the reports from Sana’a, the Saudi Air Force heavily bombarded the capital city and its surroundings, hitting a number of sites that allegedly have a Houthi presence. The string of airstrikes also hit civilian neighborhoods, including the area around Sana’a International Airport — all resulting in an unknown number of casualties. Given the timing it appears the Saudis are ready to unleash as many bombs as possible ahead of a potential US negotiated ceasefire suggested by Pompeo and Mattis; or alternately it could be the Saudis are now quickly escalating the war further to ensure a ceasefire cannot be obtained.
This comes as the Trump administration has released early details of a UN-brokered peace plan aimed at ending the war in Yemen, beginning with a ceasefire within a month along with talks to be held in Sweden.
Past airstrikes on Yemen’s capital of Sana’a via Reuters
Perhaps predictably, The Washington Post blames the rebels for not coming to the negotiating table, something which the Saudi coalition has certainly also refused to do over the past three years of war:
Friday’s assault comes two days after the United States called for a cease-fire and negotiations within 30 days to end the war. The fresh offensive could be designed to pressure the Houthis to come to the negotiating table, which the rebels have so far avoided.
Yemeni journalist Mohammed al-Qadhi described the significant uptick in fighing in a tweet Friday morning: “Fierce battles between forces backed by Saudi-led coalition and the Houthis have been going on for hours in the southern and eastern outlets of the Red Sea port city of Hodiedah, with huge blasts being heard and airstrikes,” he wrote.
This comes after both Mattis and Pompeo early this week for the first time called for a ceasefire to a war that the U.S. has had direct participation in as a key leader of the Saudi coalition, along with the UAE.
Thirty days from now we want to see everybody around a peace table based on a ceasefire, based on a pullback from the border and then based on ceasing dropping of bombs that will permit the (UN) special envoy, Martin Griffiths — he’s very good, he knows what he’s doing — to get them together in Sweden and end this war.
Pompeo followed by issuing a similar statement, saying, “The United States calls on all parties to support UN Special Envoy Martin Griffiths in finding a peaceful solution to the conflict in Yemen.”
The US defence secretary, James Mattis, told an audience in Washington that Saudi Arabia and its Emirati allies were ready for a deal and that the talks between the Saudi-led coalition and the Houthi rebels were being arranged by the United Nations special envoy, Martin Griffiths.
When asked on Tuesday at a Pentagon press conference whether the Saudi murder of journalist Jamal Khashoggi had anything to do with the new, unprecedented U.S. call for a ceasefire in Yemen, Secretary of Defense Mattis answered, “I’d separate it out from the Yemen situation. We will get to the bottom of it.” And yet it comes just as Washington and Riyadh’s relationship is under strain as international media scrutiny grows in the aftermath of the journalist’s October 2nd gruesome killing.
More pressure has also been put on Washington and Riyadh as the appalling extent of the humanitarian crisis in Yemen becomes clearer — or we should say that after Khashoggi’s killing the mainstream media actually decided to start looking into the clear war crimes committed there.
Meanwhile the Washington Post reports further the United Nations this month declared that as many as 14 million Yemenis — nearly half the population — are on the brink of famine. And another 3 million find themselves internally displaced while the bombs continue to fall.
Just hours after Robert Bowers, 46, opened fire on synagogue in Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania, killing 11 worshippers, the excommunication of Gab social media platform, which Bowers used to post his anti-Semitic rants, began in earnest.
As is widely known by now, Gab, the ad-free social media service that was/is devoted to “preserving individual liberty, the freedom of speech, and the free flow of information on the internet” – the exact things, incidentally, that the invisible comptrollers of the Internet fear the most – is facing an Internet sanctions regime when it became know that Bowers had posted an anti-Semitic rant over their platform.
Gab suffered coordinated sanctions by PayPal, the online payment service, and Joyent, the cloud computing server, two IT powerhouses that refused to continue business relations with the social media platform, even though Gab continues to cooperate with the authorities in the case. Later, Stripe, Godaddy and Medium also joined the boycotters.
Attacking a social media platform for the content that one of its users posted is almost the same as attacking the Ford Motor Company because one of its customers drove their Mustang around town with hateful messages smeared on the window. Gab, just like Twitter, Facebook and all the others, is simply a vehicle for disseminating messages; and, try as they might, they will not always be able to control what their millions of users will write on that vehicle at any given moment. Moreover, such an unpredictable scenario, where a maniac suddenly throws up a social media post just minutes before committing a horrific crime could have happened to any company.
Gab did not create Robert Bowers any more than Facebook, Twitter or Donald Trump did. And as the above post shows, hateful messages left on Gab were not significantly more numerous than that of Twitter, its powerful competitor who would love nothing more than to see its market challenger fall to a million arrows of public acrimony. Yet, it’s only due to sheer luck that Facebook and Twitter, judging by the unfathomable amount of hate speech that regularly features on their platforms, have not suffered the same sort of bad luck as Gab.
To prove the point, let’s play a game in the spirit of a Sarah Jeong ‘joke’. Let’s take one of her past white people Twitter comments and replace the term ‘white people’ or ‘white male’ with another racial identity, like Asian, Black or Russian. Does such a switcheroo reduce you to side-splitting laughter? Probably not. In fact, the ‘jokes’ are downright hateful. Who’s to say they could not have instigated violence against some white people?
Nevertheless, the New York Times, which hired Jeong, 30, as its lead technology writer despite a clear aversion to white people, offered up an apologetic rationale for her past flight from fancy by essentially blaming the very people she hurled vicious insults against:
“Her journalism and the fact that she is a young Asian woman have made her a subject of frequent online harassment. For a period of time she responded to that harassment by imitating the rhetoric of her harassers. She sees now that this approach only served to feed the vitriol that we too often see on social media.”
Today, Jeong still has her job, as well as an active Twitter account. There seems to be some sort of trend occurring here, and I am certainly not the first to notice it. We can all agree that hate exists on the internet and it can land on any social media platform at any time. Some of the platforms, however, are ‘more equal’ than the others and will not suffer industry-wide sanctions, and possible total excommunication, in the event some tragedy follows in the wake of a racist remark by one of their millions of users.
So here is where many individuals find themselves with relation to the IT giants: As more and more creators migrate for various reasons to alternative social media sites, like Gab, where there are no more racists, neo-Nazis or white supremacists than on the other more popular platforms, responsible users who do not subscribe to hate speech are at risk of losing their freedom of speech platform every time an act of violence occurs.
It needs to be remembered that every social media site has the ability to thwart an act of violence if they can recognize the would-be perpetrators in time. Gab did not create Robert Bowers, and his sick ideas would have fermented with or without the ‘enabling’ powers of Gab (whatever that means), or Facebook, or Twitter, or even the Internet. To think that by terminating alternative social media will suddenly remove hate speech or hate thought is a fool’s errand; better to get these services to work together with law enforcement to recognize and prevent acts of violence before they happen.
Here is a short list of the acts of violence that have been aimed at Trump supporters over the last several years, a nice place to start. In total, 613 known events.
The carving up of America between two radically diverse political camps, with Liberals aggressively cordoning off university campuses, classrooms and even restaurants from Conservatives, lacks just one separate room in this rubber-padded insane asylum. And that is a separate internet space, or matrix if you will, where law-abiding internet companies are not lumped into the same loony bin as some of the deranged customers who happen to use their services.
An entirely separate internet architecture needs to be created – pay services, hosting platforms, social media services – that are not bounds by the whims of the ‘free market,’ which as we have learned is not so free after all. In fact, it’s absolutely tyrannical. At the same time, IT companies – made up of men and women who subscribe to their own favorite ideologies, which more often than not are Liberal oriented – are no less susceptible to pursuing political agendas than the government, and to believe for a second they will not take advantage of a tragedy to oust a bothersome competitor from the marketplace would be shortsighted and plain stupid.
Since the internet is currently comprised of two separate and distinct people, from two separate universes, time to act like China and construct an entirely separate internet architecture. Personally, I see no other alternatives.
CNN’s Don Lemon pressed ahead on Wednesday with his claims that the “biggest terror threat in this country are white men,” asserting that the “evidence is overwhelming” that the statement is true, reports The Hill.
The CNN anchor’s comments have been condemned on the right, a fact Lemon noted during his Wednesday show.
“Earlier this week, I made some comments about that in a conversation with Chris [Cuomo],” Lemon said. “I said that the biggest terror threat in this country comes from radicals on the far right, primarily white men. That angered some people. But let’s put emotion aside and look at the cold hard facts. The evidence is overwhelming.” –The Hill
Lemon cited statistics from the Government Accountability Office that since Sept. 11, 2001 there have been 106 people killed by right-wing extremists in 62 different attacks, while Islamic extremism has killed 119 people in 23 different attacks. The CNN host then cited another story which showed “that for every eight deadly attacks by right-wing extremists,” only one had been committed by left-wing extremists.
“So people who were angered about what I said are missing the entire point,” Lemon said. “We don’t need to worry about people who are thousands of miles away. The biggest threats are homegrown. The facts prove that.”
On Tuesday, Lemon stated that “white men, most of them radicalized to the right” were the biggest terror threat.
CNN’s Don Lemon says white men are the greatest terrorist threat facing our country. pic.twitter.com/Ze0lBQgACj
“We have to stop demonizing people and realize the biggest terror threat in this country is white men, most of them radicalized to the right, and we have to start doing something about them. There is no travel ban on them. There is no ban — you know, they had the Muslim ban. There is no white-guy ban. So what do we do about that?”
Caption contest?
Don Lemon’s boyfriend looks like he’s being held hostage. Maybe because he’s holding hands with a racist, and he’s white. pic.twitter.com/CYBiqIhYui
Regarding the upcoming election on Tuesday November 6, 2018, there can only be one of three possible outcomes:
1.) Blue Wave
2.) Red Wave
3.) No Wave
The third result would, of course, be manifested as dramatic wins and losses for both Republicans and Democrats with either party coming out slightly ahead overall.
But given the perceived high stakes of this particular election as a referendum on President Donald Trump, the winners will be determined by those voters who fear the most. Certainly, there is much anger in this election, and that’s what happens: When people become scared, they get angry.
Trump supporters fear losing their nation to globalism, open borders, offshoring, and politically-correct fascism; which is just another name for Cultural Marxism.
Liberal Democrats on the other hand, don’t fear for America, per se, but rather their collective existence which requires everything mentioned heretofore that Trump supporters will vote against.
In other words, on Tuesday, some Americans will be voting for national sovereignty and to uphold the U.S. Constitution, whereas others will vote for a new world order, globalist orthodoxies, and economic redistribution by means of a powerful centralized government.
Regardless of who wins, however, there remains the possibility that the allegorical train has already left the proverbial station. Or stated another way, it may be America is already gone.
Consider the fact that U.S. Corporations are now fascist.
Four months after Donald Trump was elected, The Washington Post adopted its slogan “Democracy Dies in the Darkness”. That is, in fact, downright Orwellian because the Amazon.com titan, Jeff Bezos, attended the Bilderberg conference in Watford, Hertfordshire, England in June of 2013 and purchased the Washington Post four months later, in October 2013. Within six months, even the liberal Huffington Post reported concerns over Bezos’ collusion with the United States Central Intelligence Agency:
The Post is supposed to expose CIA secrets. But Amazon is under contract to keep them. Amazon has a new $600 million “cloud” computing deal with the CIA. The situation is unprecedented….
American journalism has entered highly dangerous terrain.
Of course, the Washington Post had been a CIA Mockingbird publication for some time, under the stewardship of its previous owner Katharine Graham. And, today, internet social media companies like Twitter and Facebook have also aligned with the Democrats, on behalf of the powerful, centralized state.
Even the world’s largest online search engine company, Google, uses the tagline “Don’t be evil”. It’s just another Orwellian mind-trick because the CIA made Google:
In reality, Google is a smokescreen behind which lurks the US military-industrial complex.
Therefore, it is no surprise that Republican candidates have had their ads censored by the online behemoth during this election season. As of this writing, the most recent example of the “Don’t be evil” company’s digital warfare on a GOP candidate took place on Tuesday October 30, 2018 when the following ad for Rep Marsha Blackburn (R-Tenn) was obviously deemed too effective for Google’s liking:
Hopefully, the reader will be able to view the 30 second video before Google’s YouTube platform takes it down.
In a free nation, when corporations like Nike go full Kaepernick, we don’t have to buy their shoes. And since Google really IS evil, we can just use another search engine. Even better, in a free country, entrepreneurs can start up competitive companies and let the free-market sort it all out, right?
Wrong.
The online platform Gab was an alternative to Twitter and now it’s gone. The excuse? A psycho shooting up a synagogue in Pittsburgh – although those who politicized that event obviously cared more for negating American’s First and Second Amendment rights than for those murdered. Gab says they’ll be back soon. We’ll see. In any case, in a free nation, their viability should never have been questioned, let alone challenged, over unrelated circumstances.
During Brett Kavanuagh’s Supreme Court nomination process, the Democrats also completely bared their collective asses and looked like rats and fools to common sense Americans. When polls began to show an energized Republican base about to neutralize any hope for a Blue Wave, the Orwellian Media quickly switched channels to show the slow-motion Latin American invasion. When that backfired as well, what happened next? Shock and awe anarchy committed by a Cuban-Caucasian Native American Deplorable and an Anti-semitic Caucasian Never Trumper.
Do you believe in coincidences?
Next, the Orwellian Media reported the mail-bomber, and synagogue shooter, as exemplifying the decline of America under Trump’s incendiary rhetoric and divisive politics.
In response, Trump doubled down on the Orwellian Media as the “enemy of the people”:
There is great anger in our Country caused in part by inaccurate, and even fraudulent, reporting of the news. The Fake News Media, the true Enemy of the People, must stop the open & obvious hostility & report the news accurately & fairly. That will do much to put out the flame…
….of Anger and Outrage and we will then be able to bring all sides together in Peace and Harmony. Fake News Must End!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 29, 2018
Whether or not the white Native-American mail-bomber was a patsy, or leftist operative, and even if the anti-Semitic synagogue shooter was a MK Ultra asset who answered his phone at just the right time – it doesn’t matter. What matters most is how these types of events are always politicized by the Political Left and morphed into mind-control by the Orwellian Media. They are, in fact, the enemy.
Undoubtedly, the puppetmasters manipulate their puppets by perception. But it only works for so long because reality is inevitable.
The science-fiction author, Philip K. Dick, once said:
Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, doesn’t go away.
Therefore, it’s always a mere matter of time before the puppetmasters are seen as lying manipulators. Or, at the very least, the luckiest bastards ever to have published photos of a pristine white van, plastered with strangely unfaded pro-Trump stickers, owned by a whiter than average homeless Indian who just sent pipe-bombs to all of the modern-day heroes of the American Democratic Party.
Immediately, cell phone news applications like “Flipboard” were sending out all of the right information to all of the left people: That the perp was a registered Republican, white-van-owner, and that…
A White Van Laden With Stickers Is at Center of Bombing Investigation…. One sticker has a Photoshopped image of President Trump standing on a tank, haloed by fireworks with an American flag behind him. “Dishonest Media,” and “CNN Sucks,” reads another one, the cable network’s logo affixed to it. And then there are the memes expressing support for the president and animosity toward his critics.
At the same time, CNN was calling the bomb recipients “Trump Targets” as the Orwellian Media breathlessly reported on how the incident had curtailed Republican enthusiasm in the midterms. Also that the mail bomb story had successfully diverted attention from the Kavanaugh fiasco and the Honduran Caravan coverage; both of which we’re perceived as galvanizing Republicans.
Republicans are doing so well in early voting, and at the polls, and now this “Bomb” stuff happens and the momentum greatly slows – news not talking politics. Very unfortunate, what is going on. Republicans, go out and vote!
— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) October 26, 2018
Call this blogger a paranoid tin-foil-hatter, but the whole Cesar Sayok Deplorable Mail-Bomber movie of the week seemed reminiscent of the Kavanaugh debacle. It was a classic in-your-face operation that screamed:
“Look what we can do whenever we want”.
At the same time, the failed bomb plot was perfect fodder to play as propaganda to the loony left who bought it all like they do Chinese junk on Black Friday.
When the conservative internet personality, Alex Jones, was banned from social media last summer, both he and the internet activist, Mike Adams, predicted false flags were coming prior to the midterms. Adams exclaimed:
For the last two months, I’ve been warning about the rising risk of a major false flag attack taking place before the mid-term elections. The aggressive, unprecedented PURGE of Alex Jones / InfoWars underscores the desperation of the totalitarian deep state that’s about to make a move to eliminate President Trump and / or steal the elections…..
The radical Left is escalating its violence across America, and the tech giants are dramatically escalating their censorship actions to silence all independent voices that might question any “official” narrative. It all points to something big about to come down — something so big that only the official narrative can be allowed to be heard or spoken.
Adams has since identified the process as first the “vilification” of Jones, then the “censorship”, and then the operation as transitioned into the “kinetic phase”. We were also warned how the media shock and awe would be blamed on Donald Trump. Without fail, all of it happened over the last several days and, conveniently, just prior to the midterms.
Adams’ prediction is also very chilling regarding the Honduran Caravan being turned into a kill zone in the days before the election. Remember, Trump said he would send in the military and the mob would NOT be allowed into the U.S. There are now reports of 15,000 troops gathering on America’s southern border. If Trump keeps the caravan out by force, the Orwellian Media will have a field day portraying Trump as Hitler and the illegal invaders as Jews queued up before the oven doors. At the same time, no questions will be raised as to how well-timed, coordinated, and sufficiently funded, was the caravan. And if Trump allows the mob to cross the border, then his word will be shown as no good to his base.
Tricky business, indeed.
Regardless, on any other week, NBC burying information that would have discredited Brett Kavanaugh’s accusers, and attorney Michael Avenatti being referred to the Department of Justice for investigation – would have been YUGE stories. But that’s exactly how the Orwellian Media works. They emphasize various propagandic narratives while simultaneously tossing any contravening reporting right down the memory hole.
It is nothing less than the electronic programming of the masses. Combine this with the censorship and memory-holed jettisoning of truth-tellers from online platforms, along with Google’s biased search engine reporting – and if there is a Blue Wave in a few days, these will be the reasons.
It seems heritage Americans, with their guns, now remain as the allegorical last man standing between the U.S. Constitution and all-out globalism.
Drive down any city street, in any neighborhood, prior to the vote on November 6, 2018, and you’ll see neighbors right next door to each other, and just across the street from one another, with opposing candidate signs in their windows and yards. This means these Americans are, literally, living and sleeping just yards away from their ideological enemies.
We are now in the soap box phase. On Tuesday comes the ballot box phase. Then, regardless of outcome, we will very possibly enter into the bullet box phase. Of course, that’s why the Orwellian Media requires endless news stories starring explosive projectile dispensers: To generate the necessary urgency to corner any criminals quickly followed by their immediate electronic prosecution, judgment, and sentencing.
The Democrats are afraid of guns, so they only want a powerful centralized state to have them. They also fear not being able to abort their babies, the weather (i.e. Climate Change), and transgenders losing their Obama-ordained bathroom privileges with your wives and daughters.
The Republicans fear the insanity of Democrats, the New World Order, and outcomes far more sinister than even Orwell imagined:
The pulp fiction horror writer, H.P. Lovecraft, once said:
The oldest and strongest emotion of mankind is fear, and the oldest and strongest kind of fear is fear of the unknown.
My whole life is about winning. I don’t lose often. I almost never lose.
The deck is stacked and the stage is set. Here’s what losing might look like: Nancy Pelosi as House Speaker, Adam Schiff as Intelligence Committee Chairman, and Maxine Waters as head of the House Committee on Financial Services.
Frightening prospects, indeed.
But even if Trump and the Republicans hold the line, it will have been just another battle in the long war.
The Pentagon and members of the US intelligence community have not-so-secretly agreed on a rough plan for an offensive cyberattack against Russia in the event the Kremlin interferes with the 2018 midterm elections on November 6, according to Yahoo! News, citing “current and former senior US officials” familiar with the plan.
In preparation for its potential use, U.S. military hackers have been given the go-ahead to gain access to Russian cyber systems that they feel is needed to let the plan unfold quickly, the officials said.
The effort constitutes one of the first major cyber battle plans organized under a new government policy enabling potential offensive operations to proceed more quickly once the parameters have been worked out in advance and agreed among key agencies. –Yahoo!
So far, national security officials have reported limited efforts by Russians to compromise political organizations and campaigns. There is concern, however, that “Moscow might unleash more aggressive interference” right before midterm voting begins, during voting, or while the votes are being counted, according to the report.
The plan is the first hacking offensive to be organized since President Trump signed an August Executive Order streamlining the approval process for such operations – effectively giving the Department of Defense additional prerogatives to prepare cyber-strikes. It also “preemptively addresses traditional intelligence community concerns that cyberattacks will compromise ongoing or future intelligence-gathering by exposing U.S. data-collection operations,” reports Yahoo!.
While the officials refused to provide specific retaliatory actions, administration officials said on an October 31 call with reporters that it would take more than “malign influence … trying to sway peoples’ opinion or the way people might vote,” adding “This is something that has happened since the dawn of the republic.”
Social media influence operations, widely used by Russia in 2016 and again over the past two years, were the focus of an indictment by the Justice Department of Russian national Elena Alekseevna Khusyaynova unveiled Oct. 19, in which she was charged with conspiring with others against the United States.
The senior official clarified that it would be direct interference — efforts to tamper with voting registration and recording votes — that would bring “swift and severe action.” The reason, the official said, is “that fundamentally wrecks the natural process that we have established in this country.” That official didn’t describe what the U.S. action would be. –Yahoo!
Russia was accused by the Department of Homeland Security of attempting to break into election systems of at least 21 states during the 2016 election, however there was no evidence of any alterations – while five of the 21 states told ABCNews that they were never attacked.
As we reported last September when word that the 21 states were being targeted, California Secretary of State Alex Padilla released a statement in response to the DHS, the whole thing was just a bunch of “fake news.” Padilla noted that after requesting additional information from DHS on the “hacks” it quickly became clear that their “conclusions were wrong” and that “California’s elections infrastructure and websites were not hacked or breached by Russian cyber actors.”
For years, the California housing market was on the cutting edge of “Housing Bubble 2” as we witnessed home prices in the state soar to absolutely absurd levels.
In fact, it got so bad that a burned down house in Silicon Valley sold for $900,000 earlier this year, and a condemned home in Fremont sold for $1.2 million. But now things have changed in a major way. The hottest real estate markets in the entire country led the way down during the collapse of “Housing Bubble 1”, and now it looks like the same thing is going to be true for the sequel.
According to CNBC, the number of new and existing homes sold in southern California was down 18 percent in September compared to a year ago…
The number of new and existing houses and condominiums sold during the month plummeted nearly 18 percent compared with September 2017, according to CoreLogic. That was the slowest September pace since 2007, when the national housing and mortgage crisis was hitting.
Sales have been falling on an annual basis for much of this year, but this was the biggest annual drop for any month in almost eight years. It was also more than twice the annual drop seen in August.
Those numbers are staggering.
And it is interesting to note that sales of new homes are being hit even harder than sales of existing homes…
Sales of newly built homes are suffering more than sales of existing homes, likely because fewer are being built compared with historical production levels. Newly built homes also come at a price premium. Sales of newly built homes were 47 percent below the September average dating back to 1988, while sales of existing homes were 22 percent below their long-term average.
At one time, San Diego County was a blazing hot real estate market, but now the market has turned completely around.
A combination of rapid mortgage rate increases and decreased affordability, San Diego County home sales collapsed 17.5% to the lowest level in 11 years last month, in the first meaningful sign that one of the country’s hottest real estate markets could be at a turning point, real estate tracker CoreLogic reported Tuesday.
In September, 2,942 homes were sold in the county, down from 3,568 sales last year. This was the lowest number of sales for the month since the start of the financial crisis when 2,152 sold in September 2007.
And it can be argued that things are plunging even more rapidly in northern California.
In the San Francisco Bay area, sales of new and existing homes were down 19 percent in September on a year over year basis…
Home sales in the San Francisco Bay area have been falling for months, but in September buyers pulled back in an even bigger way.
Sales of both new and existing homes plunged nearly 19 percent compared with September 2017, according to CoreLogic. It marked the slowest September sales pace since 2007 and twice the annual drop seen in August.
If a new real estate crisis is really happening, these are precisely the kinds of numbers that we would expect to see. If you still need some more convincing, here are even more distressing numbers from the California real estate market that Mish Shedlock recently shared…
The California housing market posted its largest year-over-year sales decline since March 2014 and remained below the 400,000-level sales benchmark for the second consecutive month in September, indicating that the market is slowing as many potential buyers put their homeownership plans on hold.
Existing, single-family home sales totaled 382,550 in September on a seasonally adjusted annualized rate, down 4.3 percent from August and down 12.4 percent from September 2017.
September’s statewide median home price was $578,850, down 2.9 percent from August but up 4.2 percent from September 2017.
Statewide active listings rose for the sixth consecutive month, increasing 20.4 percent from the previous year.
Inventory reached the highest level in 31 months, with the Unsold Inventory Index reaching 4.2 months in September.
September year-to-date sales were down 3.3 percent.
Of course a similar thing is happening on the east coast as well. At this point, things have cooled off so much in New York City that it is being called “a buyer’s market”…
New York City’s pricey real estate has become a “buyers market,” new data suggests, characterized by lowball offers and a rise in the number of properties staying on the market for longer.
The latest figures from Warburg Realty show that among higher-priced homes, New York City is in the throes of a “major shift” that reflects a cooling market, the likes of which hasn’t been seen in almost a decade.
In the final analysis, it is no mystery how we got to this point.
During the Obama era, the Federal Reserve pushed interest rates all the way to the floor for years, and this caused “Housing Bubble 2” to become even larger than the original housing bubble.
Now the Federal Reserve has been aggressively raising interest rates, and this is now busting the bubble that they created in the first place.
So if you want to blame someone for this mess, blame the Federal Reserve. The Federal Reserve has created huge “booms” and “busts” ever since it was created in 1913, and hopefully the American people will be outraged enough following this next “bust” to start calling for real change.
I have been calling for the abolition of the Federal Reserve for years, and there are many others out there that also want to return to a free market financial system.
History has shown that free markets work exceedingly well once you take the shackles off, and as a nation we desperately need to return to the values and principles that this nation was founded upon.
Everyone not named Franklin D. Roosevelt hates Daylight Saving Time. The constant back and forth is confusing, especially for those who have an early Sunday morning commitment. The Standard Time Act of 1918 gave the federal government power to oversee national time zones. That power was extended with the passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which allows the Department of Transportation (DOT) to set Daylight Saving Time for the entire country. Why DOT? Because “time standards are important for many modes of transportation,” or something like that. Despite decades of observance, however, more and more Americans are rebelling against the pointless concept.
Arizona, Hawaii, and territories like American Samoa and Puerto Rico have broken free of oppressive time changes. If a state wishes to follow suit, including those who choose to keep their state in the Daylight Saving Time zone year-round, it must seek approval from DOT.
In March, Florida signed off on the appropriately named Sunshine Protection Act. But thanks to the federal government, residents must wait on Congress to change federal law in their favor. They, too, will begrudgingly observe the time change this year.
Californians hoping to ditch the practice are planning to vote yes on Proposition 7, yet must similarly wait for congressional approval. Massachusetts is also considering a change to its laws, with more states following suit. The federal government still reserves the ability to deny a state’s request.
As more states begin to rebel against changing their clocks twice a year, an important question remains: Why do we still do this inane practice?
The century-old justifications related to farming, war, and light bulb conservation no longer apply in the modern world. We do this simply because we’ve always done it, except, of course, we haven’t always done it. In the case of Massachusetts, actual harm results from the practice. As you wind your clock back this weekend, and then find yourself gassed earlier than you should be come Monday afternoon, blame Washington, D.C.
The Baltic Dry Index, a composite of the Capesize, Panamax and Supramax Timecharter Averages, hit a one-month low this week, pulled down by weaker demand for Capesize vessels. The shipping index is widely viewed as a proxy for dry bulk shipping stocks as well as a general shipping market barometer.
Baltic Dry Index quote (data via Reuters Eikon)
In August, we first reported that freight data via Goldman identified global trade momentum was slowing since 4Q17, and that July readings suggested an alarming continuation, and in some cases acceleration, of this trend.
The deceleration in shipping rates has closely tracked a tightening in global financial conditions, particularly evident in EM data, which in turn has largely been a manifestation of the ongoing escalation in trade tensions between the US and China.
Now, fresh evidence from Reuters shows the cost of chartering commercial ships has collapsed even further. More specific, rates for container ships have sunk 24% from a multi-year peak while raw material vessel rates have fallen 10% from a five-year high, adding to the mounting evidence that slowing global trade could soon usher in a worldwide recession around 2020.
Container Rates Collapse
At the heart of the supply chain, dry-bulk vessels transport raw materials like grains, coal, ore, and cement while container ships complete the cycle by carrying finished goods from factories to consumers.
Around April, dry-bulk and container rates rocketed to multi-year highs as manufacturers pulled forward consumption to get ahead of the tariffs. The rates peaked in August and started a declined that found a bottom in September/October.
Baltic Exchange Indices Performance
“The flattening out of the Baltic dry index, corroborated by the container index as well, points to a slowing down of the global economy for sure,” Ashok Sharma, managing director of shipbroker BRS Baxi in Singapore, told Reuters.
Frederic Neumann, co-head of Asian Economic Research at HSBC in Hong Kong, said: “global trade is cooling off after a strong run over the last couple of years.”
Neumann said demand issues in Europe and China, emerging market stress, as well as trade war escalation, were all significant factors into the slowdown.
He then warned: “their [tariffs] full effect hasn’t kicked in yet.”
The Harper Petersen Charter Rate Index, which is published on a weekly basis, tracks rate levels in US Dollars of container ships, had dropped by about 25% from June when it was at a seven-year high to 516 points.
The Freightos Baltic Index, a global container index launched in Singapore in 2017, climbed to a record high in August but has since declined 5.4% to 1,583.
Shipping analysts told Reuters that declining container market rates tend to reflect changes in developed economies while emerging countries more influence bulk shipping markets.
“Now that the trade war is escalating… I have no doubt that this does have a negative impact on containerized trades,” said Ralph Leszczynski, head of research at shipbroker Banchero Costa in Singapore.
Leszczynski said the reversal in dry-bulk rates was partly due to damaging trends in emerging markets, where local currencies in India, Turkey, Brazil, Pakistan, and Indonesia have severely weakened against the US dollar this year, reducing their ability to import.
The most important take away from the report is the idea that developed world economies are slowing. The decline in container rates shows that, and it seems the worst has yet to come. Storm clouds are gathering for 2019, as President Trump’s trade war has entered the point of no return, the damage has been done, prepare for a global slowdown.
A Sacramento restaurant’s general manager recently decided to try something new and offer customers a cannabidiol-infused cocktail. Thanks to California’s marijuana regulations, though, he had to stop.
The Sacramento Bee first reported on Joel York’s creation, which consisted of “an infusion of pineapple, vodka, hop flowers,” and cannabidiol (CBD) mixed with lemon juice, triple sec, and sugar.
“It’s something that I’ve seen at other restaurants in L.A. and San Francisco on their social media or websites,” York tells Reason. He started selling it last month, charging customers at the restaurant he manages—R15—$10 per drink.
York didn’t break any laws in gathering the ingredients for his concoction. CBD comes from marijuana but does not contain tetrahydrocannabinol (THC)—the compound that gets you high—and it’s pretty easy to obtain legally in California. “I went to the local grocery store and bought it over the counter,” says York. “I didn’t show an ID or anything.”
But while buying and consuming CBD is legal, selling food or drinks infused with CBD isn’t. “CBD is an unapproved food additive and NOT allowed for use in human and animal foods per the FDA, and thus it is not approved in California,” the California Department of Public Health said. The California’s government’s cannabis website makes it clear this applies to alcoholic drinks as well. And a bill signed into law in September by Gov. Jerry Brown (D) further codified these rules.
After interviewing York about his drink, the Bee said it contacted the Sacramento Police Department for comment. Officer Marcus Basquez later told the Bee that police then came to the restaurant and had one of the managers take the infusion off the shelf.
York, for his part, doesn’t really have an issue with what happened. “They came in right away, told us to cease and desist,” he says. “I don’t want to insult ABC or the police department by going against anything that they want.”
York can’t sell the drink anymore, though thankfully, police did not issue any citations. Still, California should encourage these sorts of creations, not impede them. Marijuana infused-drinks—including cocktails and hemp beer—are often delicious. And if it’s legal to sell marijuana for recreational use in California, it should certainly be legal to mix alcohol with weed extract that won’t even get you high.
Then again, this is California, where residents can assume that everything which is not allowed is forbidden.
Everyone not named Franklin D. Roosevelt hates Daylight Saving Time. The constant back and forth is confusing, especially for those who have an early Sunday morning commitment. The Standard Time Act of 1918 gave the federal government power to oversee national time zones. That power was extended with the passage of the Uniform Time Act of 1966, which 
A Sacramento restaurant’s general manager recently decided to try something new and offer customers a cannabidiol-infused cocktail. Thanks to California’s marijuana regulations, though, he had to stop.