Venezuela Central Bank Begins Shipping 18 Tons Of Gold To UAE

Venezuela has sold and shipped three tons of central bank gold to the United Arab Emirates (UAE) on January 26 and is preparing to ship 15 more tons, according to Reuters. At today’s spot price of $1,320 per ounce, the sale will total roughly $760 million USD. 

The shipment constitutes 11% of Venezuela’s current gold reserves, and follows the export last year of $900 million of unrefined gold to the UAE and Turkey.   

 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2RwrmMQ Tyler Durden

Powell’s “Caving To The Market” Means “The Practice Of Hedging Has Been Dealt A Body Blow”

Bonds up, stocks up, yield curve up, gold up, oil up, dollar down… what else would you expect after The Fed dropped the biggest hint that the tightening cycle is over…

Remember, despite all the bullshit that this is a “pause”, as Raoul Pal noted:

The Fed have never, ever “paused” a full hiking cycle. The always end up cutting. Each cutting cycle has led to a recession except mid 1990’s and 1987. Odds are in favour of the Fed having gone too far already and the stock market figuring it out in due course… “

But, as former fund manager an FX trader Richard Breslow notes, the outcome of the FOMC meeting and subsequent press conference by Chairman Jerome Powell was significant in a way additional to the obvious.

It was one of those rare instances when, if you knew what was going to happen and positioned for it in the most basic, logical and straightforward way, you would have made money. Straight across the board. It takes a bit of digging to find much of anything that didn’t react in textbook fashion. No one needed to have gotten lucky in picking their spots.

Via Bloomberg,

The committee itself undoubtedly liked how markets reacted. But traders need to take into consideration one caveat. It isn’t at all clear that every asset class will continue to move in lockstep. And once that happens, the story will evolve from, “They are super dovish. You know exactly what to do” to the more market troubling, “Just what do they know that we don’t?” I foresee future discussions with bereft investors about why stacked trades was no way to construct a balanced portfolio. It is clear to me that an unfortunate bi-product of this market cheering move is that the practice of hedging has been dealt a body blow. More’s the pity.

As to why the FOMC did what they did, I’m sure the persistent level of inflation not being quite at the arbitrarily selected target level had something to do with it. But less than advertised. More a convenient excuse. The stock market can take a lot of the credit. That debate should be laid to rest. It’s reality. Much has been made of the first quarter GDP jinx, but that’s measurement error being given too much weight. And if they were influenced by others, it was less from Washington officials and much more from big-name investors. I have mixed emotions about that source of suasion.

I will stipulate, however, that one thing that has clearly worsened domestically is government dysfunction. With the ongoing effects uncertain. Powell didn’t avoid mentioning this, which wasn’t entirely expected.

But, I can’t help believing that the overriding motivation was that this is a Fed taking its role as the world’s central bank very much to heart. Someone has to reassert American leadership. And lend a helping hand. Look around the world and try to identify where the engines of growth are. The global economy just doesn’t have the momentum of the recent past.

Those who are now even more resolute in their weak-dollar forecasts should remember that there will be a lot of foreign investors who would love to feast on U.S. assets on an unhedged basis if they thought the dollar had fallen to levels that make doing so a good bet. And wasn’t it an interesting coincidence that just after USD/JPY slid back below 109, the BOJ’s Deputy Governor Masayoshi Amamiya took the opportunity of a press conference to talk about additional easing tools they could deploy if needed and that short-term currency moves happen.

This morning, Europe was even less nuanced. They published a euro-zone fourth-quarter GDP number of 0.2% and, with their GDP miss, the Italian government confirmed they are in a technical recession. Nevertheless, there is no shortage of people who think the euro is a screaming buy on the new Fed stance.

I’m not going to dwell on China other than to say the yuan should be watched closely as a dollar barometer as it has now risen versus the dollar to just below resistance. Let’s see how the trade talks go.

It will be important in handicapping when and if the Fed will hike again to be cognizant of just what data they are dependent upon.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2CUE8zC Tyler Durden

Democrats Hate Wealthy Candidates…When They’re Not Democrats

||| WBUR“Howard Schultz is a jackass,” Philippe Reines, the longtime Democratic communications specialist and former Obama administration deputy assistant secretary of state, told Axios this week. “He’s arrogant and wealthy—and those people tend to not see the world as it is.”

Reines is nothing if not experienced with wealthy political candidates who have a reputation for arrogance. He worked early in his career for Jane Harman, one of the richest members of Congress. He’s the co-founder of Beacon Global Strategies, a Washington defense/security consultancy that traffics in international murk and represented at least three 2016 presidential contenders. And Reines’s longtime boss Hillary Clinton (who incidentally thought highly enough of Schultz to have tabbed him as potential Secretary of Labor), was estimated to be worth $15 million when she ran for president in 2016, padded in part by charging the likes of Goldman Sachs $225,000 per speech. (Clinton’s husband Bill was worth an additional $80 million, it was estimated at the time.)

Democratic revulsion at candidates’ wealth, on splenetic display all week, has been nakedly situational in the 21st century. Four years after nominating John Kerry, one of the richest presidential candidates in U.S. history (estimated net worth $200 million, and that’s not counting his much richer wife), Democrats spent their 2008 national convention lambasting John McCain’s seven houses. “I suppose if you’ve got seven, maybe eight houses, the economy looks fundamentally sound to you,” candidate Barack Obama said on the campaign trail. “But if you’re having trouble making the mortgage payment…then the economy looks awful different.”

As evidenced by the “For the 99.8% Act” unveiled today by Sen. Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.), as well as the “tippy-top” tax envisioned by Sen. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.), soaking—and insulting—the rich is all the left-of-center rage this cycle. “Democrats should do the pragmatic thing in 2020,” New York magazine’s Eric Levitz advised this week, “and wage a vicious class war.”

||| ReasonIf so, snipers are going to first have to take out some of the party’s own 2020 presidential candidates. The estimated worth of Michael Bloomberg, for example, is $47.6 billion, good for 14th place on the planet. Former Rep. John Delaney, whose 2020 bid touts campaign finance reform, was estimated as the sixth wealthiest member of the previous Congress, with a net worth of $92.6 million. Tech entrepreneur and robotophobe Andrew Yang, who likes to warn against the wealth gap, is firmly on the other side of it. Self-help guru and Oprah Winfrey spiritual adviser Marianne Williamson—what, you didn’t realize she was running?—is so salt-of-the-earthy that she announced her candidacy this week at the Saban Theatre in Beverly Hills. Join the evolution, indeed.

But the real challenge in any proper class war is figuring out where exactly to draw the battle lines. Sure, Bloomberg and his lesser-known fellow richies in the field will be among the first against the wall, but what about Beat poet Beto O’Rourke and his estimated net worth of $9 million? Elizabeth Warren may talk a good anti-1-percent game, but she ain’t part of the 99. Yes, Bernie Sanders is on the lower end of the Senate’s wealth scale, but does he really need all three of those homes?

Complicating any class-war plans is the fact that the 13 richest congressional districts in the country, and 41 of the top 50, are now represented by Democrats. The presidential voting preference among the top 4 percent flipped Democratic in 2012 for the first time in a half-century, and hasn’t looked back since. If there’s a party of the rich, it’s not the GOP.

So enjoy the wealth-bashing primary season while it lasts, Jacobin friends! Soon enough the party of John F. Kennedy (estimated net worth: $100 million) and Howard Schultz’s very favorite Democrat of the past 50 years, Franklin Delano Roosevelt ($60 million), will get back to the business of attracting rich voters and donors and candidates by insisting that they’re only going after people precisely as rich as Howard Schultz and Donald Trump.

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Bombshell Report About Americans Helping UAE Hack Phones Is a Warning Against Compromising Encryption

Encryption notificationReports of former U.S. intelligence officers helping the United Arab Emirates spy on journalists and government critics should inspire some serious introspection among Western government leaders who want to compromise citizen cybersecurity in the name of fighting crime and terrorism.

Reuters reported yesterday that a handful of former United States intelligence officers, including former National Security Agency (NSA) analysts, have been working for a clandestine team in the UAE to help the authoritarian government spy on its enemies and rivals. The targets included not just rival foreign government officials (like Qataris) but human rights activists critical of the government. The targets even included Americans.

“I am working for a foreign intelligence agency who is targeting U.S. persons,” former NSA analyst Lori Stroud told Reuters. “I am officially the bad kind of spy.” Stroud left the NSA in 2014—partly due to her role in recommending whistleblower Edward Snowden as a contractor to the NSA in 2013 and what ultimately followed—and went to work for the UAE.

She joined a program called Project Raven, which she initially thought would be defensive counterterrorism efforts intended to protect the UAE from hackers and threats. Then she very quickly learned otherwise. This was an aggressive program to infiltrate and hack the UAE’s enemies.

Project Raven exploited a security flaw with iPhones that allowed them to install malware on it without the user knowing or even having to do anything. The tool, named Karma, didn’t allow snooping on the calls themselves, but did allow hackers to collect photos and location information and harvest saved passwords.

It should not come as a surprise that the UAE is attempting to hack into the phones of dissidents and activists. Apple actually released an emergency update for its iPhones in 2016 because of malware tools the UAE had been using to try to breach the phone of a human rights advocate in the country.

The Reuters report provides us with another reason why voters should reject government calls to compromise cybersecurity in the name of fighting crime and terrorism.

To be specific, I’m referring to the constant insistence by government officials and law enforcement leaders that phones and online communication platforms and apps should have some sort of back door, or mechanism for the government to bypass encryption. In America, in the United Kingdom, and in Australia, we have political leaders and heads of law enforcement and intelligence operations insisting that tech companies must help them compromise security to keep criminals and terrorists from “going dark”—using encrypted communications to hide from surveillance.

Privacy experts and tech companies habitually warn these leaders that you cannot compromise cybersecurity in such a way that only the “right” people have access to the communications of only terrorists. Any key that can be used to bypass encryption is inevitably going to find its way into the wrong hands and be used against good people. These bad actors could be criminals looking to engage in identity theft or scams. Or they could be dangerous governments like the UAE looking to punish human rights activists with the help of American alumni of the NSA.

Somebody alert Australia’s Parliament that their anti-encryption legislation could actually kill people.

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Negative Gamma And The Demise Of Optionsellers.com

Authored by Erik Lytikainen via RealInvestmentAdvice.com,

Brett Freeze, one of my financial market mentors, has several rules that summarize his core trading beliefs.  His first rule is “never, ever be short gamma.”

More simply, the rule could read “never sell uncovered options.”  Anyone who has received a margin call on their uncovered option positions understands intimately why this is a prudent rule.  Options are a leveraged bet on an underlying security, so when price moves against the option, the financial losses and margin calls can happen quickly and are virtually unlimited.

For Optionsellers.com, a hedge fund that had to shut down in late 2018, selling uncovered options was the explicit strategy.  It is in their name, after all.

In hindsight, we might conclude that naked selling of options is better handled by machine-driven market makers (banks/brokers).  The market makers instantaneously can hedge their exposure with other options positions and long/short positions in the underlying security.  The market makers can not only instantaneously lay off risk, they can also respond to volatility more quickly, and adjust positions accordingly. The market makers limit their risk in a way that most individuals and hedge funds cannot.

I am not attempting to arm-chair quarterback the demise of Optionsellers.com, nor do I want to “kick anyone while they are down.”  We all make mistakes, and none of us enjoy failure, especially in the public square.  I sincerely wish the best for the principals and investors in Optionsellers.com, and hope all matters are resolved with fairness.  I had an account with MF Global when it went under, so I understand the feeling of bewilderment many investors must feel.

It has been said that wisdom is learning from the mistakes of others, so our intention here is to understand what happened, and learn from it.  As a starting point, retail traders might consider Brett Freeze’s rule #1 – “never ever be short gamma.”

Gamma Squeeze

Options traders closely watch the value of delta and gamma. Delta is a measure of the volatility of an option price, and gamma is a measure of the volatility of delta.  In my daily report, I publish the value at which delta and gamma will be neutral for a given security.  We define “gamma neutral” as the price level at which the total options market gamma would equal zero.

Over the past several months, there have been two high-profile occasions where neutral gamma spiked far from the value of the underlying security.  The first time coincided with the collapse of optionsellers.com in mid-November 2018, and the second time was the stock market declines before Christmas 2018.  We intend to cover the S&P gamma in another article.

The simple explanation for the collapse of Optionsellers.com was that the fund was net short natural gas options, and the price in the natural gas (NG) market spiked.  In options parlance, the fund was short gamma and the market moved violently in the opposite direction.  Optionsellers.com was not the only fund that was short the options market at that time, of course.  The natural gas options market was as a whole sitting on the wrong side of the boat the time that the price surge occurred, and we can see that in the data that I publish each morning.

With the options market tilted net short, the spike in November natural gas prices turned into an old-fashioned short squeeze.  Optionsellers.com and the many net short NG traders had to cover their positions.  Short covering plus momentum long trading equals “squeeze” and in this case it became an eye popping upward move.

The chart above shows the underlying natural gas futures price in green, the point of neutral delta in red and the point of neutral gamma in blue.  For reasons that can be explained by order flow, the red and green line will tend to converge on or before the options expiration date (black box.) The blue and the green line will also tend to converge, but if the blue line moves way out of range in the other direction, then we can see a short or a long squeeze of one kind or another, such as in mid- and late-November.

Final Thoughts

These are advanced topics, and I have learned considerably from interacting with many of my readers and subscribers.  If you would like to join in this discussion, please drop me an e-mail at admin@viking-analytics.com, and/or visit my page on Price Magnets at  www.viking-analytics.com to learn more.

I have no specific knowledge of anything related to the Optionsellers.com recent demise other than what has been openly published on the internet.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2HIIj7i Tyler Durden

Bernie Sanders Proposes 77% Estate Tax For Billionaires

Jumping on the “tax the rich” bandwagon, senator Bernie Sanders has proposed to expand the estate tax on wealthy Americans, including a rate of up to 77% on the value of estates above $1 billion.

Sanders, who is considering a fresh run for president, said in a statement his plan would apply to the wealthiest 0.2% of Americans, with Bloomberg reporting that his proposal would set a 45% tax on the value of estates between $3.5 million and $10 million, increasing gradually to 77% for amounts more than $1 billion. The current estate tax kicks in when an estate is worth about $11 million.

If enacted, the legislation would raise up to $2.2 trillion in estate taxes from the families of all 588 billionaires in the U.S. with a combined net worth of more than $3 trillion, according to a summary of the plan.

Sanders’s plan comes as potential other challengers to President Trump eye progressive tax ideas intended to reduce income inequality. One such proposal comes from Senator Elizabeth Warren who is seeking an annual 2% tax on households worth more than $50 million. Sanders, who ran in the Democratic primaries against Hillary Clinton in 2016, hasn’t yet confirmed whether he’ll run in 2020.

While the estate tax exemption was $3.5 million as recently as 2009, in 2017 the GOP tax overhaul increased the exemption to $11 million through 2025, and some Senate Republicans are renewing an effort to repeal the tax entirely.

As Sanders and Warren are seeking to reduce income inequality by breaking up concentrations of wealth among top earners, other Democratic candidates are urging legislation toward the lowest income brackets. California Senator Kamala Harris, who launched her presidential campaign this week, introduced legislation this month to create a $3,000 refundable tax credit for low-income individuals. The bill includes non-binding language that proposes funding the tax credit by repealing parts of the 2018 Republican tax cut and assessing a fee on large financial institutions.

Meanwhile, polls show that Americans are becoming more receptive to the idea of increasing taxes on the wealthy. After Democratic Socialist Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez floated a 70% top tax rate on incomes of $10 million or more, a recent poll found that a majority, or 59% of Americans would be in support of such a tax.

Of course, boosting taxes on the rich is nothing new: bBack in 2012, when Europe’s populist tensions were first emerging, France’s socialist president Francois Hollande decided to harness the unhappiness of the proletariat (and distract from what would soon be one of the most disastrous presidencies in French history), and passed a 75% tax on earnings above €1 million as part of his election campaign.

Supported by socialists everywhere, the reform quickly prompted accusations of an anti-business agenda, sparked an exodus of high-profile personalities (France’s richest man, Bernard Arnault, the chief executive of luxury group LVMH, took out Belgian nationality, and the actor Gérard Depardieu also moved across the border to Belgium before obtaining Russian citizenship), sent local stocks tumbling as investors pulled out of France, and local real estate prices plunged.

While initially the supertax saw broad popular support, the resulting slump in the economy prompted a quick reversal in public opinion. “The reform clearly damaged France’s reputation and competitiveness,” said Jorg Stegemann, the head of the executive search firm Kennedy Executive. “It clearly has become harder to attract international senior managers to come to France than it was.”

Despite the backlash Hollande clung to the principle of the supertax even after it was dismissed by the country’s highest court, fearing a revolt by his leftwing allies. The tax was subsequently adjusted to a 50% rate payable by companies after the constitutional council ruling in December 2012. The final nail in the coffin came from the former investment banker who is now France’s president, Emmanuel Macron. A former economic adviser to Hollande, Macron described the supertax as “Cuba without the sun.”

Worse, it was the workers who were hit the hardest: tax lawyer Jean-Philippe Delsol, author on a book on tax exiles called Why I Am Going To Leave France, said that many high earners had agreed with their companies that salaries would be limited during the two years the tax rate applied, and they would “come to an arrangement afterwards.”

Worst of all, however, French finance ministry studies showed that despite all the publicity, the sums obtained from the supertax were meagre, standing at €260m in 2013 and €160m in 2014, and affecting 1,000 staff in 470 companies. Over the same period, the budget deficit soared to €84.7bn. And so, two years after it was introduced, on January 1, 2015 the French 75% tax quietly disappeared into the history books.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2CZ9RPY Tyler Durden

Virginia’s Fairfax County Has Finally Decriminalized Keeping Hedgehogs as Pets

Spectators at a Fairfax County Board of Supervisors meeting last week were on pins and needles as a long-running and emotional debate finally came to an end: Local lawmakers in the Virginia jurisdiction voted to strike down a ban on keeping hedgehog as pets. The Board also lightened restrictions on hermit crabs and chinchillas, which previously required permits.

Why the reticence toward hedgehogs, those harmless mammals that spend the vast majority of their days curled tightly in the fetal position? It’s not because their quills are too dangerous for public exposure. Rather, it’s because they are “exotic animals”—ones that welfare advocates say are misunderstood.

“That is the perfect recipe for people to think it would be fun to own one,” said Christina Anderson, a member of the Fairfax County Animal Services Advisory Commission, who testified in favor of the hedgehog ban. “Nothing could be further from the truth.”

Chris Schindler, vice president of field services for the Humane Rescue Alliance, echoed Anderson’s sentiments, arguing that the bristled beasts are no walk in the park. “People get them and then realize there’s more to caring for them,” he said. They are built to forage and are nocturnal, added Schindler, the latter of which could keep some unassuming owners awake at night.

But hedgehog devotees say those concerns are misplaced. “Hedgehogs can be cared (for) through widely available products, through education and through an effort to remind people that when they take on an effort to care for an animal, whatever that animal is, they have a responsibility,” said Mike Bober, President of the Pet Industry Joint Advisory Council.

My sister Molly, who used to own one of these spiny critters, agrees.

“They only need to go to the vet once per year (assuming they’re in good health), eat once per day, bathe once per month, and have their habitats cleaned once per week,” she tells Reason. “They love to explore, play with small toys, and they’re easy to dress up, if you’re into that kind of thing.”

Several other locales have hedgehog bans on the books, including California, Pennsylvania, Hawaii, and New York City. Those laws make up just a fraction of the restrictions placed on domesticated animals across the country. Owning a Quaker parrot is illegal in quite a few states, pet ferrets are prohibited in California, Hawaii, and D.C., with a slew of other states requiring permits. Many species of bat are federally protected, which means those cave dwellers are a no-go if you’re looking for your next winged companion. (Good luck if one gets into your home; if it happens to be on the Endangered Species List, as some bats are, you need to get it out alive.)

While Fairfax County just became a haven for hedgehogs, they are still outlawed in neighboring Washington, D.C. The nation’s capital was poised to lift the restriction last year, but backed down after the Humane Rescue Alliance pressed them to reconsider.

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9 Dead As ‘Polar Vortex’ Leaves 11 States Colder Than North Pole ; Hell (Literally) Freezes Over

Midwesterners continue to struggle with the lingering effects of the dreaded ‘Polar Vortex’.

The coldest location in the U.S. on Thursday was Cotton, Minn., where the temperature reached minus 56 °F. The coldest location in the U.S. on Wednesday was Norris Camp, Minn., where it was minus 48 °F, with a wind chill of minus 65 °F.

The sub-zero Arctic-style temperatures across much of the region, including cities like Chicago, Kansas City and Detroit, has turned deadly, as  USNews reports that authorities are  attributing at least nine deaths to the record-cold.

The medical examiner’s office in Milwaukee, where temperatures plunged to minus-42 degrees, confirmed on Tuesday the death of a 55-year-old man found dead in his garage.

Authorities in Michigan confirmed two weather-related deaths on Wednesday, including a former city council member found near his home and a 70-year-old man who had been out in the elements in just his underwear. Detroit experienced wind chills as cold as minus-32 degrees Wednesday.

A 22-year-old man was found dead in Rochester, Minnesota, on Tuesday, WCCO-TV reported. Police say Ali Gombo likely died from hypothermia. In Iowa, a student was found unresponsive outside in cold temperatures where the wind chill reached minus-51 degrees. He later died at the hospital, according to the Press-Citizen. Classes at the University of Iowa were canceled Tuesday through Thursday due to the extreme weather. An 82-year-old man was found outside in Peoria, Illinois, on Tuesday after he fell trying to get inside his house, the Journal Start reported.

Parts of Lake Michigan have frozen…

The deep freeze resulted in the coldest temperatures in the US in recent memory. And as it plunged southward, temperatures plummeted lower than 20 degrees below zero (Farenheit) from North Dakota to northern Illinois during the morning hours of both Wednesday and Thursday.

On Thursday morning, 11 states – North Dakota, South Dakota, Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, Illinois, Indiana, Michigan, Ohio, Vermont and New Hampshire – across the Midwest and northern New England recorded temperatures lower than the northernmost point in Alaska and the North Pole. 

In Winnepeg and Manitoba, the temperature dropped so low it neared the surface temperature of Mars, making the Canadian cities likely contenders for the coldest places on Earth.

The coldest spot in Canada on Wednesday was Key Lake, Saskatchewan, with an air temperature reading of -47.2 Celsius (roughly -52.6 degrees Fahrenheit). In International Falls, Minnesota, temperatures fell as low as -45 degrees Celsius (-49 degrees Fahrenheit).

Pole

 

In a sign that Mother Nature does indeed have a sense of humor, one reporter pointed out that Hell (the one in Michigan) has literally frozen over.

Additionally, Axios reports that Chicagoans reporter hearing loud noises and banging overnight, likely as a result of a “frost quake,” or a cryoseism, per local WGN-TV, which occurs when a sudden drop in temperatures causes underground water to freeze and expand, causing the ground to crack.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UvZZ7E Tyler Durden

Kamala Harris Hopes You’ll Forget Her Record as a Drug Warrior and Draconian Prosecutor: New at Reason

As she begins her 2020 presidential campaign, Sen. Kamala Harris is trying to position herself as a reformer who tirelessly works to correct the abuses of the criminal justice system. But the California Democrat has one big problem: her long record as a law-and-order prosecutor.

Harris’s new memoir, The Truths We Hold, makes no mention of her past as an old-school drug warrior, a defender of dirty prosecutors, and a political opportunist who made life more dangerous for sex workers. Harris doesn’t apologize for her previous stances, even those she now disavows; instead, she’s decided to try to convince voters that she’s always been a progressive prosecutor.

Here are some parts of her record that Harris is hoping you’ll forget in the run-up to 2020.

Click here for full text and downloadable versions.

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Trump Warns “Either Very Big Deal With China Or We’ll Postpone”; Says No “Shutdown Deal” Without Wall

With the second day of trade talks between China and the US drawing to a close, President Trump said he would either strike a very big trade deal with China or “postpone” it, but it was not clear precisely what he was referring to.

“This isn’t going to be a small deal with China. This is either going to be a very big deal, or it’s going to be a deal that we’ll just postpone for a little while,” Trump told reporters at the White House, without elaborating.

Earlier on Thursday, Trump tweeted that trade “meetings are going well with good intent and spirit on both sides. China does not want an increase in Tariffs and feels they will do much better if they make a deal”, although he later qualified by saying that there would be no deal unless China opened it economy to “manufacturing, farmers and other US businesses and industries.”

While the world’s two largest economies are trying to strike a deal on trade by March 1, to avoid a planned increase in the tariff rate imposed on Chinese imports by the United States, the market has already priced in a favorable outcome even though as Rabobank’s Michael Every speculated, “with the Fed having delivered unto Trump what is Trump’s, and the Dow over 25,000, does he really need that easy deal, or can he let his team push back harder?”

Separately, during the same press conference, Trump said he would not accept a deal to avert another government shutdown without money for his long-desired border wall, pushing back on Democrats who stressed their opposition to a wall.

“If they’re not going to give money for the wall…it’s not going to work,” Trump told reporters in the Oval Office.

Trump said he would wait to see if Congress can come up with an agreement before the Feb. 15 funding deadline before he decides whether to declare a national emergency in a bid to build the wall on his own.

Citing what he said is a threat posed by a new migrant caravan making its way toward the U.S., Trump claimed that “Nancy Pelosi will be begging for a wall.” Earlier on Thursday, Speaker Nancy Pelosi said that Democrats remain adamantly opposed to wall funding, but could provide money for new fencing and other barriers in a spending bill.

“There’s not going to be any wall money in the legislation,” Pelosi said during her weekly press briefing in the Capitol. “However, if they have some suggestions about certain localities where technology, some infrastructure [is appropriate], … that’s part of the negotiation.”

Trump also said that “if walls are immoral, maybe we should take down all the walls that are built right now. You will see a mess like you’ve never seen before.”

Despite the temporary reopening of the government last Friday, the president cast doubt on bipartisan spending talks, arguing earlier in the day that Republicans were “wasting their time” by engaging with Democrats who oppose wall funding. While Trump has previously said he would be open to calling structures along the border “steel slats” or a “barrier,” he said Thursday he would return to demanding a wall.

“Lets just call them WALLS from now on and stop playing political games! A WALL is a WALL!” Trump tweeted.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2HFayDF Tyler Durden