US PMI Plunge Confirms Near-Record Streak Of Disappointing Global Economic Data

Amid one of the longest streaks ever in disappointing global data surprises…

US ‘hard’ economic data continues to stagnate and ‘soft’ survey data begins to catch down…

 

After China’s dismal data overnight, and Europe’s PMI misses this morning, and following November’s slide, US flash PMIs for December notably disappointed, tumbling further…

  • Markit US Manufacturing plunged from 55.3 to 53.9 – the lowest since September 2017

  • Markit US Services dropped from 54.7 to 53.4 – the lowest since Jan 2018

It seems the ‘hard’ data was right after all…

 

Commenting on the flash PMI data, Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit said:

“Importantly, although growth remains relatively robust, momentum is being lost and is likely to continue to fade as we move into 2019. New order inflows hit the lowest since April of last year and expectations regarding future business growth have slipped to the lowest for two-and-a-half years.

“The surveys reveal greater caution in relation to spending amid uncertainty about the economic outlook, linked in part to growing geopolitical concerns and trade wars.”

“The weaker picture of current and future business growth has curbed appetite for hiring. Jobs growth inched down to the lowest for one and half years but remains consistent with non-farm payrolls rising in December by around 180,000.

“Price pressures have meanwhile cooled as lower oil prices feed through, yet rising tariffs remain a concern for many companies, keeping input cost inflation above the survey’s long-run average.”

And finally, Williamson notes,:

“The flash PMIs bring signs of the US economy ending 2018 on a softer note. With business activity expanding at the slowest rate for one and a half years, the surveys indicate that the pace of economic growth has faded to 2.0% in December, albeit closer to 2.5% for the fourth quarter as a whole.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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In Explosive Interview, Cohen Says Mueller Has “Substantial” Evidence Against Trump

Former Trump attorney and purported “fixer” Michael Cohen kicked off his PR campaign to win a lighter sentence on Friday (two days after a federal judge sentenced him to three years in prison) with a long-winded interview with Cohen’s favorite daytime TV personality – ABC’s George Stephanopouloswhere he tried to convince the public to believe his testimony about President Trump by claiming that he ‘flipped’ on the president, not to save his own skin, but to do right by his family and his country.

Cohen

Offering his most detailed accounting yet of the events that led up to his guilty plea, Cohen insisted that Trump had directed him to make the “hush money” payments to Stormy Daniels and Karen McDougal that have emerged as the center of the campaign finance allegations that prosecutors are seeking to trace back to the president.

Cohen: “Nothing at the Trump Organization was ever done unless it was run through Mr. Trump,” Mr. Cohen said. “He directed me to make the payments. He directed me to become involved in these matters.”

As one might expect given Stephanopoulos’s prior interviews with Cohen and other Trumpworld figures, interview was effectively set up to try and convince the audience that Cohen is a believable witness. But just in case some viewers still harbor doubts about Cohen’s integrity, he would like them to know that if they don’t believe him, the special counsel has “substantial” evidence corroborating his claims that has yet to be made public.

Cohen: “Because the special counsel stated emphatically that the information that I gave to them is credible and helpful. There is a substantial amount of information that they possessed that corroborates the fact that I am telling the truth.”

Asked why he was loyal to Trump in the beginning, Cohen said he “admired” Trump, and that his allegiance to the real estate developer was “a blind loyalty.”

Cohen: “No. No, it was a blind loyalty. It was to a man I admired, but I do not know the answer to it. And I am angry at myself. My family is disappointed that they’ve taught me, my mother, father, right from wrong. And I didn’t display good judgment.”

But that doesn’t excuse his actions, Cohen admitted, adding that he’s “angry with myself” because “I know what I was doing is wrong.”

Despite facing a substantial federal prison term, Cohen said that he now feels like he has “his freedom back” (that doesn’t exactly inspire confidence in Cohen’s claims that he is being 100% truthful by resulting to such obviously ridiculous platitudes). Yet, he’s still afraid of the president.

Stephanopoulos: Are you afraid of him?

Cohen: “It’s never good to be on the wrong side of the president of the United States of America. But some how this task has fallen on my shoulders and I will spend the rest of my life trying to fix the mistake that I made.”

Do you think President Trump is telling the truth about Russia?

Cohen: No.

Trump has changed since the days of the Trump Organization, where Cohen said he “had a lot of fun” working with Trump. Cohen believes the “pressure” of running the country is eating away at Trump, and that this has soured his attitude on a fundamental level. He said he “doesn’t recognize” the Trump of today.

Cohen: You know, I can’t give you a specific time that it went from point A to point B. It was just a change. I will tell you that the gentleman that is sitting now in the Oval Office, 1600 Pennsylvania avenue, is not the Donald trump that I remember from Trump Tower.

Stephanopoulos: … how so?

Cohen: He’s a very different individual.

Stephanopoulos: What’s happened to him?

Cohen: I think the pressure of the job is much more than what he thought it was going to be. It’s not like the Trump organization where he would bark out orders and people would blindly follow what he wanted done. There’s a system here, he doesn’t understand the system, and it’s sad because the country has never been more divisive. And one of the hopes that I have out of the punishment that I’ve received, as well as the cooperation that I have given, I will be remembered in history as helping to bring this country back together.

If Cohen could offer one piece of advice to President Trump, it would be to make good on his post-midterms promise to usher in an era of “bipartisan good feeling”.

Cohen: “Lay off Twitter, run the country the way that we all thought that you would, be able to take the Democrats, Republicans, bring them together and bring the country together instead of dividing the country.”

Then again, placing the blame solely on Trump for the partisan divide in Washington isn’t exactly fair.

While Cohen offered only praise for Trump’s tenure as a New York real estate developer selling the “greatest product ever created”,

Turning to the subject of Cohen’s “legacy”, Cohen said he hopes that he will be “remembered in history” for helping to bring the country back together. Though President Trump’s tweets accusing him of being a  turncoat and a “rat” are much more memorable than Cohen’s claims that he is telling the truth for the first time in his life.

Cohen: I think the pressure of the job is much more than what he thought it was going to be. It’s not like the Trump organization where he would bark out orders and people would blindly follow what he wanted done. There’s a system here, he doesn’t understand the system, and it’s sad because the country has never been more divisive. And one of the hopes that I have out of the punishment that I’ve received, as well as the cooperation that I have given, I will be remembered in history as helping to bring this country back together.

In comments to the Wall Street Journal, Rudy Giuliani called Cohen’s allegations “much ado about nothing.”

“Whether they talked about it or not, their talking about it can’t make it a crime,” Mr. Giuliani said of the hush-money payments, adding that “as far as I know, Cohen is not telling the truth.”

We now await an stream of angry tweets from President Trump.

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Mueller Mulls Middle East Meddling: Reason Roundup

Middle Eastern influence on U.S. politics and inauguration spending under investigation. “Yes, Democrats are right to feel good this week,” writes New York Times columnist Lisa Lerer, citing several new developments regarding President Donald Trump. “But sometimes, in politics, feeling too good can cause the worst falls.”

Some in the party worry that a rush to impeach Trump or too much focus on investigating him could distract from more pressing matters the newly Democrat-controlled House should tackle. “Last week, a group of incoming House freshmen sent a letter asking Democratic leadership to prioritize action on health care, immigration, infrastructure and other issues over investigations,” notes Lerer. But among the party’s superstars and base, the zeal to target Trump right away is strong.

And the number of Trump-adjacent actions under investigation keeps growing. Yesterday, The Wall Street Journal reported that federal prosecutors were looking into spending by Trump’s 2017 inauguration committee. The committee raised a record $107 million in donations. Now the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Manhattan “is examining whether some of the committee’s top donors gave money in exchange for access to the incoming Trump administration, policy concessions or to influence official administration positions,” the Journal reports.

Implicit exchanges of cash for access and influence are all over politics. But the Journal suggests there could be more to it than that, although the investigation is reportedly still in its early stages.

Meanwhile, special counsel Robert Mueller is apparently plotting “phase 2” of his investigation into foreign influence in U.S. politics. Mueller’s work thus far has probed potential ties between Trump and his associates with various Russian entities. Now the team is expanding its focus to consider Middle Eastern countries, too.

“In court filings that are set to drop in early 2019, prosecutors will begin to unveil Middle Eastern countries’ attempts to influence American politics, three sources familiar with this side of the probe” said, according to Erin Banco at The Daily Beast. “In other words, the ‘Russia investigation’ is set to go global.”

Mueller’s team is reportedly looking into interactions between U.S. figures and “influential individuals from other foreign governments, including the UAE, Saudi Arabia, and Israel.”

FREE MINDS

America’s War on Drugs never wanes, it just takes new forms. Confronted with a massive spike in fentanyl overdoses and deaths, the feds are pledging to take more state fentanyl cases to federal court, where mandatory minimum sentencing laws prohibit judges from issuing the lighter punishments available in state sentencing.

FREE MARKETS

Twitter turnaround. The company struggled to make money for years. Now it’s seeing growth as competitors’ momentum stalls. Twitter stock “has surged nearly 50 percent since the beginning of 2018, crushing competition from Facebook and Snap, and tracking for its best annual performance ever,” reports CNBC. And “advertising revenue grew by 29 percent in the September quarter, its third quarterly increase of more than 20 percent.”

“The knock on Twitter is that the daily average user growth has been slowing for the last few quarters, but keep in mind that they’re really focused on shutting down fake accounts, so I think a number like that is really important for Facebook where people might only log in once a day, but with Twitter it’s more about the user engagement,” Strategic Wealth Partners President Mark Tepper told CNBC yesterday.

QUICK HITS

• Read Ken White on why the Michael Flynn investigation and prosecution has (contra The Wall Street Journal) been business as usual for the FBI.

• A seven-year-old girl died of dehydration in Customs and Border Protection custody last week. From The Washington Post:

According to CBP records, the girl and her father were taken into custody about 10 p.m. Dec. 6 south of Lordsburg, N.M., as part of a group of 163 people who approached U.S. agents to turn themselves in. More than eight hours later, the child began having seizures at 6:25 a.m., CBP records show. Emergency responders, who arrived soon after, measured her body temperature at 105.7 degrees, and according to a statement from CBP, she “reportedly had not eaten or consumed water for several days.”

• Nearly 15,000 immigrant children are now being held in federal custody. “Most of migrant children are teenage boys from Central America who travel to the border alone,” reports NPR.

• Senior Wall Street executives say they’re avoiding young female colleagues out of fear of sexual harassment claims.

• A federal appeals court just struck down part of the Trump administration’s revised rules on the Obamacare contraception mandate. But the ruling only applies to residents of four states.

• Bomb threats seeking Bitcoin as ransom were sent to people in the U.S., Australia, Canada, and New Zealand.

• The federal deficit for November was around $205 billion, according to the Treasury Department’s latest announcement. “Federal spending in November was $411 billion, up 18 percent from the same month in 2017, while receipts were $206 billion, down 1 percent compared to November 2017,” reports Reuters.

• Some federal student loans will be forgiven for attendees of for-profit colleges that shut down. “The discharge of loans applies automatically to about 15,000 students who attended now-defunct colleges that closed between Nov. 1, 2013, and Dec. 4, 2018,” notes NBC News. Some $150 million total will be canceled.

• A Ukrainian court has found two state officials guilty of meddling in the U.S. 2016 election by leaking a ledger showing payments from former president Viktor Yanukovych and then–Trump campaign manager Paul Manafort.

• The attempt to repeal the repeal of a minimum wage raise for D.C.’s tipped workers is over.

• Cincinnati is the latest city to raise the smoking age to 21.

• Mario Vargas Llosa’s new book The Call of the Tribe is “a condensed history of three centuries of classical liberal thought, from Adam Smith to Jean-François Revel, that doubles as a kind of intellectual autobiography.” It’s not yet available in English.

• “Among the many questionable bits of the Terrorist Regulation,” reports Techdirt, “are that it will apply no matter how small a platform is and even if they’re not in the EU, so long as the EU claims they have a ‘significant number’ of EU users.”

Kamala who?

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Macquarie: “We No Longer Live In Conventional Capitalism; There Are No Recognizable Cycles”

Submitted by Viktor Shvets of Macquarie Capital

Is the coast clear? It is not safe; too many sharks out there

  • As in ‘Jaws’, the question is whether it is safe to go back into water?
  • A number of positive signals (China, Italy etc) are tempting investors back.
  • However, liquidity continues to drain and reflationary momentum is still weakening. It might all ‘turn on a dime’ but risks into ’19 remain high.

We never know what would break the camels’ back but…

‘Well this is not a boat accident! It wasn’t any propeller! It wasn’t any coral reef! And it wasn’t Jack the Ripper! It was a shark!’ As in ‘Jaws’, investors are now trying to assess whether there are sharks out there in the dark waters ahead, and what signals should they watch? Is it trade, politics, CBs, extraditions, retaliations, fiscal stimuli, spreads, private equity (arguably the single most overvalued and least liquid asset class), FX, oil or other uncertainties that could sink the boat? Who is selling and what does it mean? As we saw in ‘97-98 or ‘08-09, trying to anticipate whether it would be Russia, LTCM, subprime or Lehman’s PN business that would change everything is a fruitless exercise. We will know when we do. The value of a single signal by itself is limited, and the headlines that ‘we have just discovered the signal’ are not worth much.

Having said that, there is an underlying ‘heart beat’ that tells investors whether the general direction is towards a greater  disinflation or reflation. In a world dominated by asset prices, there is a need to generate more liquidity and debt than economies require. We no longer live in a conventional capitalism; there are no recognizable cycles, and late cycle arguments mean little, when public sectors determine their duration and strength.

In a modern economy, it is all about tax cuts, fiscal stimuli and manipulation of yield curves & rates. Indeed it makes sense, as generating excess liquidity & corralling volatilities is the only way to guide highly financialized economies. It does however lead to a Matrix world of random signals, turning what only days ago seemed solid into liquid.

…ultimately world does not work if liquidity drains & reflation slows

This brings us to the latest ‘signals’. First, we had Powell changing tune in space of less than eight weeks from ‘far from neutral’ to ‘just below neutral’, altering expectations of a tightening cycle, and pushing US$ lower. Second, we had a plethora of news regarding the trade war. China apparently agreed to buy a bit more US soybeans (~0.5m tons) and is willing to re-phrase and underemphasize its ‘China 2025 policy’. Third, it appears that the Italian populist Government is folding on its budget spending. It is enough to reflate sentiment and markets by lowering probabilities of more extreme outcomes.

Unless economies evolve in strongly positive or negative ways, it is this flow of random signals that drives markets, which in turn impacts economies in a complex and iterative process. However, at the end of the day, unless CBs reverse their contractionary stance, global liquidity would continue to drain, and unless China and US alter their policies, global reflationary momentum would weaken.

The world cannot function unless China and the US see ‘eye to eye’ and Eurozone avoids implosion. It is possible that we might find a middle ground, but it would require a miracle; at least in the absence of a greater dislocation.

We maintain that while China would like to find a compromise, it can never give up its state-driven model and EU is still facing a revolution in ’19. There are also uncertainties of a divided Congress that could either lower or raise US$ (depending on whether US accepts slower growth or stimulates).

Despite recent relief, direction remains disinflationary; the coast is not clear.

 

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US Manufacturing Output Disappoints, Stagnates For 2nd Month In A Row

On the heels of the dramatic slowdown in Chinese output, and after slowing in September and October, US Industrial Production was expected to rebound modestly in November and it did (but don’t get to excited yet).

The headline industrial production print rose 0.6% MoM (well above the 0.3% rise expected and a notable bounce back from the downwardly revised 0.2% drop in October)…

However, the gains were dominated by a surge in Utilities… (Utility output jumped 3.3 percent after rising 0.2 percent the prior month)

As Manufacturing growth stalled for the second month in a row…

Bloomberg notes that excluding autos, manufacturing output stagnated for the second time in three months. The industry may be settling into a somewhat cooler pace, consistent with projections that economic growth will moderate this quarter and into next year, as the boost from lower corporate and consumer taxes wanes.

The slowdown in factory output included a 0.2 percent decline in business equipment and a third-straight drop in construction supplies.

Notably, this ‘hard’ data is weaker than the signal from a separate report that showed the ISM’s factory index rebounded in November from a six-month low.

And finally, while INDUSTRIAL production has topped its previous peak, the gap between the INDUSTRIAL Average and production remains vast (but narrowing)…

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“It Doesn’t Smell Right:” Why Former Goldman Partners Are Freaking Out About 1MDB

Just two months ago, it appeared that (now former) Goldman Sachs Chairman and CEO Lloyd Blankfein had cemented his legacy as one of the most effective, shrewd and savvy leaders in the investment bank’s storied 150-year history.

That was before the indictments.

Since then, the DOJ has indicted two Goldman Sachs employees based in Southeast Asia – one of whom was a partner and top dealmaker at the firm – for their involvement in a scheme to defraud the people of Malaysia of $4.5 billion, the amount the DOJ alleges was siphoned out of 1MDB, a sovereign wealth fund that was seeded with some $6 billion in capital raised by Goldman in a series of bond offerings. Tim Leissner, the bank’s former top dealmaker in Southeast Asia and the employee who helped bring in the deal, said in an affidavit that the bank’s senior management was culpable for greenlighting the deal while ignoring concerns raised by the bank’s compliance department – and alleged that it was indicative of a firm-wide “culture of corruption.”

Blankfein

Shortly after Leissner’s arrest, media reports revealed that a “mystery” senior Goldman executive who attended meetings with former Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak (currently in prison awaiting a trial on corruption charges) and corrupt financier Jho Low (who is currently a fugitive from justice after being indicted in the US and Malaysia as the alleged mastermind of the scheme) was none other than Blankfein himself. To help secure the deal, Blankfein even invited Low to the bank’s 200 West Street headquarters for a private one-on-one sit down.

Previously, Blankfein had been credited with helping to rebuild the bank’s reputation following a 2010 settlement over charges that it knowingly mislead investors who purchased subprime mortgage bonds during the run-up to the financial crisis. Now, that reputation is in jeopardy, threatened by 1MDB to a degree that wasn’t present in the bank’s other post-crisis legal contretemps.

In a sign of how perception about Blankfein’s tenure is beginning to shift, Bloomberg reported that many of the bank’s former partners are seriously concerned about the deal. During a recent meeting of Goldman alumni at a hotel in Lower Manhattan, the 1MDB scandal seemed to dominate the conversation. And many are placing the blame for the scandal squarely at the feet of the executive.

Many see 1MDB as “the biggest threat to Goldman’s reputation” since the crisis.

It’s enough to shock the firm’s well-connected former partners, who gathered in a hotel near the bank’s Manhattan headquarters Wednesday night for their annual dinner. Though the group tends to pooh-pooh popular criticism, many veterans are disturbed that the firm allegedly ignored or missed red flags and are annoyed by the hit to its image, according to interviews with 10 former partners, including members of the powerful management committee. To them, it’s the biggest threat to Goldman’s reputation since the firm’s post-crisis makeover.

“That is a terrifying thing,” said Michael Dubno, who was chief technology officer before he left in 2005 and is now an inventor. “We were more careful, more clean – so whenever you see something like this it is very disturbing.”

While Goldman’s stock has largely shrugged off other scandals (like when Goldman was sued by a former Libyan investment fund), the losses sustained in the wake of 1MDB have stubbornly persisted. This has only served to validate former employees’ complaints that the bank should have practiced more strict oversight. 

In past years, when controversy arose over Goldman deals from Libya to Greece, outrage blew over. But the stock market and even some of Goldman’s staunchest defenders are treating this differently.

“It doesn’t smell right, but I just don’t know,” said Dennis Suskind, who hired Blankfein at Goldman’s J. Aron & Co. unit and was a partner. “The thing about the firm is that they should have been monitoring it closer.”

Two other former top partners said the amount of money Goldman Sachs made from relatively plain bond deals should have been a bright warning to its highest executives. A third partner, who sat on the management committee, was struck that the firm was the only one competing for such a fat payday. Goldman has said some of what it earned from the deals was fair compensation for the risk it was taking.

Unsurprisingly, a spokesman for the bank waived aside the complaints of the former partners as “backbiting” among former employees.

According to bank spokesman Jake Siewert, Blankfein got a standing ovation at a lunch last week from fellow corporate executives including Bloomberg LP founder Michael Bloomberg. “That public affirmation from our long-standing clients,” Siewert said, “is more meaningful than backbiting and second-guessing from former employees.”

And when asked two weeks ago what the 1MDB scandal means for Goldman, Blankfein deadpanned: “Well, it’s not good.”

But as the DOJ probes deeper into Goldman’s involvement and the role of senior executives in enabling the fraud, the next time Blankfein comments on 1MDB, he might be choosing a more serious tone.

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Clinton Foundation Whistleblowers Testify: “It Operated As An Unregistered Foreign Agent”

Via Sara Carter At saracarter.com

The Clinton Foundation operated as a foreign agent ‘early in its life’ and ‘throughout it’s existence’ and did not operate as a 501c3 charitable foundation as required, and is not entitled to its status as a nonprofit, alleged two highly qualified forensic investigators, accompanied by three other investigators, said in explosive testimony Thursday to the House Oversight and Government Reform Committee.

John Moynihan and Lawerence W. Doyle, both graduates of the Catholic Jesuit College of the Holy Cross and former expert forensic government investigators, gave their shocking testimony before congress based on a nearly two year investigation into the foundation’s work both nationally and internationally. They were assisted by three other highly trained experts in taxation law and financial forensic investigations. The forensic investigators stressed that they obtained all the documentation on the foundation legally and through Freedom of Information Request Acts from the IRS and other agencies.

Former Utah U.S. Attorney General John Huber, who resigned when he was appointed by former Department of Justice Attorney General Jeff Sessions to investigate the Clinton Foundation and the issues surrounding the approval to sell 20 percent of U.S. Uranium assets to Russia, declined to attend the hearing. Chairman Mark Meadows, R-NC, who oversaw the hearing stated that it was disappointment that Huber declined, leaving Congress in the dark regarding the DOJ’s investigation.

Investigations into the Clinton Foundation have always been plagued by politics but Moynihan wanted to make clear in his opening statement that this investigation was one of many his firm has conducted on nonprofits and had nothing to do with politics. 

Doyle and Moynihan have amassed 6,000 documents in their nearly two-year investigation through their private firm MDA Analytics LLC. The documents were turned over more than a year and a half ago to the IRS, according to John Solomon, who first published the report last week in The Hill.  

The investigation clearly demonstrates that the foundation was not a charitable organization per se, but in point of fact was a closely held family partnership,” said Doyle, who formerly worked on Wall Street and has been involved with finance for the last ten years conducting investigations. 

“As such it was governed in a fashion in which it sought in large measure to advance the personal interests of its principles as detailed within the financial analysis of this submission and further confirmed within the supporting documentation and evidence section.”

At the onset of the hearing, Moynihan wanted to make perfectly clear that the intention to look into the Clinton Foundation was not political but based on their work with the firm.

“At this point I’d like to answer two questions, who are we? We are apolitical,” Moynihan told the committee. “We have no party affiliation to this whatsoever, No one has financed us… we are forensic investigators that approached this effort in a nonpartisan profession, objective, and independent way…we follow facts, that’s all.”

“We have never been partisan,” he added, speaking on behalf of all five members of his group testifying to Congress. “We come from law enforcement and wall street where each of us has dedicated our entire lives and praised the rule of law doing the right thing pursuing facts. we follow facts. that’s all.”

“None of this is our opinion,” he went on state.

“I emphasize none of this is our opinion. These are not our facts. They are not your facts. They are the facts of the Clinton Foundation.”

He disclosed the reason his firm decided to take on the Clinton Foundation and the fact that they paid for the investigation out of their “own pockets.”

“Are you doing this for money,” said Moynihan to the committee. “Yes, this is how we make a living.”

Moynihan and Doyle swapped back and forth between there testimony and opening statement, making it clear they were working as a team. But the most shocking statements came from Moynihan’s statement as he read the laundry list of violations by the Clinton Foundation.

Moynihan stated “Foreign agent,” as he began to read from a long list of violations discovered during the course of their investigation.

The Clinton Foundation “began acting as an agent of foreign governments ‘early in its life’ and throughout its existence. As such, the foundation should’ve registered under FARA (Foreign Agents Registration Act),” he said. “Ultimately, the Foundation and its auditors conceded in formal submissions that it did operate as a (foreign) agent, therefore the foundation is not entitled to its 501c3 tax exempt privileges as outlined in IRS 170 (c)2.

Doyle, who was also outlining a litany of violations by the foundation, noted that currently there are approximately 1.75 million nonprofits in the United states that annually generate nearly 2 trillion dollars, which is 9 percent of the U.S. GDP.

Whose minding the store, looking out for the donors and minding the rule of law,” said Doyle.

“On that note, we followed the money so we made extensive spreadsheets of their revenues and expenses, we analyzed their income statements and we did a macro-review of all the donors, which its a very (jumbled) sort of foundation,” said Doyle. “Less than 1/10th of one-percent of the donors gave 80 percent of the money. So we follow the money.” 

Moynihan added that the foundation “did pursue programs and activities for which it had neither sought nor achieved permission to undertake.” 

Particularly, he noted the case of the Clinton Presidential Library in 2004. He noted that the foundation’s role before and after library was built was a misrepresentation to donors “of the approval organizational tax status to raise funds for the presidential library programs therein. In these pursuits the foundation failed the organizational and operational task 501c3 internal revenue code 7.25.3.” 

Additionally Doyle stated that the foundation’s intentional “misuse of donated public funds.” He stated that the foundation “falsely attested that it received funds and used them for charitable purposes which was in fact not the case. Rather the foundation pursued in an array of activities both domestically and abroad.” 

“Some may be deemed philanthropic, albeit unimproved, while other much larger in scope are properly characterized as profit oriented and taxable undertakings of private enterprise again failing the operational tests philanthropy referenced above,” Doyle said. 

Philip Hackney, a tax law professor at Louisiana State University, who is a former Exempt Organizations lawyer at the IRS, and Tom Fitton, president of the conservative government watchdog group Judicial Watch also testified at the hearing. Judicial Watch has been at the forefront of fighting the Clinton Foundation in court to access documents requested by FOIA. Hackney and Fitton testified during the first panel of the hearing.

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US Retail Sales Surge In November Amid Jump In Online Spending

With inflation ‘disappointing’, hope for the recovery was left on the shoulders of the American consumer once again and Retail Sales offered some optimism with better-than-expected (and upwardly revised) MoM gains.

The value of overall sales rose 0.2% after a 1.1% increase the prior month, but we note that YoY (unadjusted) saw a modest slowdown in growth…

 

But, sales in the so-called control group subset, which some analysts use to gauge underlying consumer demand, surged 0.9% MoM – smashing expectations of +0.4% – its biggest monthly jump in 12 months…

 

Under the hood, most sectors (9 of 13) saw increases in sales but there were drops in building materials, clothing stores, and gas stations (down 2.3% – biggest drop since May 2017).

The nonstore category, which includes online shopping, jumped 2.3%, the most in a year.

So, this “great” news will prompt Powell to hike next week and shift back to his 3 (or 4) hikes next year? Or is good news bad?

 

 

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Markets Are “Losing The Plot” After Greatest Week Of Market Outflows Ever

When discussing the deteriorating plight of the leveraged loan market last night, we noted that according to Lipper, US Loan Funds just saw a fourth consecutive, and record $2.5 billion outflow in the past week.

That was not all, however, because in the same report Lipper also found the largest outflows on record from stocks ($46BN), the largest outflows since December 2015 from taxable bond ($13.4BN) and Investment Grade bond ($3.7BN) funds, and the 4th consecutive week of outflows from high yield bonds ($2.1BN), offset by a panic rush into cash as money market funds attracted over $81BN in inflows, the largest inflow on record.

Brexit, Crexit, Bankxit

Picking up on these very troubling flow trends, in his latest Flow Show note, BofA’s Michael Hartnett, this time using EPFR source data, found nothing short of investor “Capitulation”, reporting that global equity funds saw outflows of $39 billion in the week to Dec. 12 – the largest ever weekly outflows from stock funds – comprising of $14.0BN in ETF inflows offset by $53.0BN in mutual fund outflows, $8.4 billion in IG bond outflows, and all-time largest week of equity & bond redemptions.

U.S. equity funds suffered redemptions of $27.6 billion, the second-largest weekly outflows on record and only behind the record outflows following the February VIX spike. The week of Dec 12 captured last Friday’s furtious plunge in the S&P which clearly sparked panic liquidation among investors, contrary to what JPM’s Marko Kolanovic was saying on that very day.

Elsewhere, European equity funds saw $4.5 BN outflows, with redemptions in 39 of the past 40 weeks. Looking at the UK, Hartnett sees another “Brexitas U.K. equity funds have seen record YTD redemptions, amounting to $9.8BN. 

Offsetting these outflows, traders tentatively allocated funds to Japanese and emerging-market equity funds, which saw $2.3BN and $0.2BN in inflows, respectively.

Hartnett also points out last week’s “Crexit“, which saw record IG bond fund outflows ($8.4bn); record Bank loan fund outflows ($2.4bn); HY bond outflows for 9 of past 10 weeks ($3.2bn); EM debt outflows for 10th week ($0.9bn); and 12th week of muni fund outflows ($0.7bn). In total, YTD has seen a record $63bn redemptions in HY+IG vs. $74bn inflows to stocks & $46bn inflows to govt bonds.

Drilling down by sector, Hartnett finally notes the “Bankxit” as a result of the fourth largest week ever of redemptions ($2.1bn) from financials, with the BofA strategist noting that US banks relative to SPX have completely unwound Trump election bull phase.

The negative sentiment surrounding U.S. stocks showed no signs of dissipating on Friday as S&P 500 futures fell again following dismal economic data from China and Europe, while trade concerns were fueled by Apple saying a Chinese ban on sales of the iPhone will force it to settle a licensing battle with Qualcomm an outcome that may end up harming the country’s smartphone industry.

Summarizing the above, Hartnett writes that markets are “Losing the plot” as it is rare for combo of such capitulation out of risk, capitulation into US dollar (CTFC long dollar position 1.5sd above norm – Chart 4) & Fed dovishness not to spark rally, and writes that “the only reason it would not is fear of “credit event” & “policy impotence.”

And should the Fed no longer be able to boost animal spirits, watch out below as a decade of artificial gains is promptly unwound.

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What Will Democrats Do With New California Supermajority? New at Reason.

If you needed more evidence that the California Republican Party is for all intents and purposes the equivalent of Monty Python’s dead parrot (it’s no more, it has ceased to be, it’s kicked the bucket, its metabolic processes have stopped, it is pushing up the daisies, it is an ex-party), then take a look at former Orange County Assemblyman and losing GOP gubernatorial candidate Travis Allen’s latest “take back California” effort.

Now a candidate for state Republican Party chairman, Allen is promoting a recall of yet-to-be Gov. Gavin Newsom. This is, as a character in the dead-parrot skit would add, “getting too silly.” Doesn’t Newsom first need to be inaugurated—and presumably do something really bad—before being recalled by the voters that just elected him? Nothing to see in this comedy routine. But if you’re serious about California politics, you needn’t even think about Republicans.

Thanks to an anti-Trump wave that crashed across California in the midterm elections, Democrats will now have legislative supermajorities. That means they can raise taxes and do as they please without any GOP support. Legislators were in Sacramento this month to get sworn in, but will return after the New Year to begin actual lawmaking. They’ve already begun introducing bills, which offer some insight into the priorities of the new Legislature, writes Steven Greenhut.

View this article.

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