Month: July 2019

Tending Towards Maximum Perversity

Authored by EconomicPrism’s MN Gordon, annotated by Acting-Man’s Pater Tenebrarum,

Tending Towards Maximum Perversity

According to Finagle’s corollary to Murphy’s law, “Anything that can go wrong, will — at the worst possible moment.”  Taken a degree further, per O’Toole’s corollary of Finagle’s law, and the second law of thermodynamics, “The perversity of the Universe tends towards a maximum.”

Murphy’s law in action… not even Murphy himself was safe from it. [PT]

No doubt, the perverse effect of central planning on the economy is tending towards a maximum.  This tendency can be traced back well over a century, with the advent of the Fed and the federal income tax in 1913. Our purpose today, however, is to look back a mere decade. This offers an adequate sampling of O’Toole’s corollary of Finagle’s law in action.

For example, on June 1, 2009, General Motors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection; the fourth largest bankruptcy in U.S. history.  Of course, GM didn’t vanish from the face of the earth. Instead, Washington took 60 percent ownership and nationalized the company with a $50 billion taxpayer bailout.  President Obama remarked at the time:

“We are acting as reluctant shareholders because that is the only way to help GM succeed.”

In other words, we must destroy capitalism to save it.

At this juncture GM discovered it would need a bailout… [PT]

The truth is, real free market capitalism disappeared from American shores long before the GM bailout. Nonetheless, this event marked a significant milestone in America’s transformation to a more centrally planned economy. The last 10 years have borne out the consequences.

You see, June 1, 2009, also marked another significant economic event. At the precise moment GM was filing for bankruptcy, America was commencing a record economic expansion. Now, at 121+ months, it is the longest period of uninterrupted growth of the post-WWII era.

But what type of expansion is this, really?  After a decade of growth, shouldn’t the rising wealth tide have lifted all boats? That is typically how an economic expansion works.

Over the last decade, however, only the luxury yachts were lifted by the rising tide of cheap credit. The sloops, schooners, and practically every other boat, slipped beneath the surface. But that’s not all…

A Big Fat Goose Egg

The typical working stiff has seen the workplace become inordinately intolerable over the last decade.  At a time of supposed record unemployment, employees commonly perform multiple job functions. All the while, their pay has stagnated.

There is also little remaining workplace stability or job security. And because of the connectivity of email and smartphones, the workday never ends. It follows workers home and invades their private lives at the family dinner table. Calls, emails, text messages; the expectation is that you’re wired in at all hours.

Without question, the longest economic expansion in modern U.S. history has been a big fat goose egg. A decade of extreme fiscal intervention through massive deficits year in and year out and heavy handed monetary policy did little to benefit anyone but the crème de la crème.  For everyone else, they have little to show for their labors.

Central planning, like the GM bailout and the big bank bailouts via AIG, are what got us into this mess to start with. But that does not mean the President, the Fed, and the Treasury won’t try to keep the bogus expansion going with more of the same failed policies. Not when the alternative is to let an avalanche of debt cascade down in final destruction.

Over the last two weeks, the Fed has telegraphed it will cut rates at the FOMC meeting on July 30-31. Financial markets have already run ahead based on the rumor.  Clearly, money and markets have gone insane.

The difference between now and September 2007, the last time the Fed started a rate cutting cycle, is the Fed will be easing from a place that is already highly accommodative.

Assets held by the Fed and the Federal Funds rate, then and now. The Fed finds itself at a very different starting point compared to 2007, when the previous business cycle ended. Given the vast expansion of credit market debt since then, we should expect even more massive central bank intervention when the current bubble bursts (yes, when, not if). [PT]

Remember, for the 15 months leading up to  September 2007, the federal funds rate was 5.25 percent and the Fed’s balance sheet was at $900 billion. Still, zero interest rate policy (ZIRP) and quantitative easing (QE) didn’t prevent the S&P 500 from getting lopped in half.

Now the federal funds rate is close to 2.5 percent and Fed’s balance sheet is about $3.8 trillion. Heading into the next recession, the Fed has much less room to maneuver. A future QE program could take the Fed’s balance sheet to $10 trillion or more. Plus, with the federal funds rate at just 2.5 percent, the Fed will likely have to push rates below zero – into negative territory – to bail out financial markets.

Tending Towards Maximum Perversity

Massive monetary stimulus injections of QE and negative interest rate policy (NIRP) will take an economy and financial markets that are already grossly distorted and will disfigure them beyond all recognition. But that is just the half of it. The central planners at the U.S. Treasury are also behind the eight ball.

U.S. Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin – a Goldman guy – is running out of time to broker a debt ceiling budget deal with House Speaker Nancy Pelosi and her cohorts in Congress. If an agreement isn’t reached by next week, House Representatives will be AWOL until September 9.  By then, without a debt ceiling increase, Mnuchin will have run out of the fake money he needs to keep the nation’s lights on.

Lettuce not dwell on the nation’s debt too much… that will only be prone to invite ulcers, and who needs an ulcer? [PT]

At $22.5 trillion, the national debt is well past the point of no return. There is no way to repay it outright. Thus, an implied default through currency debasement is bound to be the government’s preferred option.

However, to keep up with exploding debt levels, new and extreme methods of currency debasement will need to be employed. After QE and NIRP fail to do the trick, the promise of Modern Monetary Theory (MMT) will be put to the acid test.

Per the tenets of MMT, U.S. government debt is not debt at all. Rather, it is money the government has spent that hasn’t yet been used to pay taxes. Therefore, the U.S. government can print all the money it needs to amplify the economy without care nor worry about debts and deficits.

The federal debtberg in all its terrible glory. MMT (a.k.a. warmed-over Chartalism) suggests that there is no limit to the growth of this pile that could possibly invite untoward consequences. This is precisely what the board of the German Reichsbank under Rudolf von Havenstein thought as well as it proceeded to monetize both treasury bills and commercial paper by the wagon-load after WW I. The eventual outcome of this policy was rather less salubrious than had been hoped. This excellent example of the triumph of hope over experience ultimately left the entire nation in abject poverty and wretched misery (of course modern-day MMT proponents will know how to “do it better”). [PT]

Should such overt dollar debasement lead to price inflation, MMT has just the solution. Raise taxes and issue bonds to remove the excess money from circulation. Taxes, you see, are not for funding government spending. They are for throttling back the money supply to attain the magical balance of growth and inflation.

If this sounds like maximum perversity to you, it’s because it is. What a delight to be tending towards it more and more each and every day.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32QEqn4 Tyler Durden

Nashville Neighbors Send ICE Packing. Let’s See More of That for All Sorts of Law Enforcement.

What if, when government agents showed up to hassle people for engaging in some activity that didn’t harm anybody but was officially disapproved, friends and neighbors turned out to send the agents packing? That’s what happened in the Hermitage neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday morning, where residents chased away Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who attempted to take custody of a long-term resident. It’s a frankly heroic model that bears emulation in a variety of circumstances involving enforcers of unjust laws, malicious officials, and the people over whom they claim to exercise authority.

“Neighbors say the man and his son were in a van parked in their driveway, with a white pickup truck driven by an ICE agent parked behind them, blocking them in. Soon more than a dozen neighbors were gathered outside the home, along with immigrant rights advocates, as the man and his son sat in their van, beginning a standoff that lasted several hours,” the Nashville Scene reports. “As the hours passed, witnesses say, neighbors brought food and water to the man and his son and also put more gas in the van so they could keep it running.”

Ultimately, the neighbors formed a human chain through which the man and his son walked from their van to their house. They’ve since relocated to a new home. The incident was captured on video and posted to Facebook.

To an extent, the success of this particular confrontation between good people and federal enforcers hinged on the fact that the ICE agents, as is usually the case, relied on the warrant version of Confederate money.

“An ‘ICE warrant’ is not a real warrant,” notes the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. “It is not reviewed by a judge or any neutral party to determine if it is based on probable cause. Because it is not issued by a judge, an ICE warrant does not give the immigration enforcement officer the authority to demand entry to a home or private space in order to make the arrest.”

ICE’s self-issued documents allege civil immigration violations and so also don’t authorize local authorities to make arrests in the absence of separate criminal violations. That’s a big part of why Metro Nashville Police was on the scene but only observed the confrontation and did nothing to intervene.

Which is to say, obstructing ICE comes with minimal risks.

There can sometimes be greater dangers involved in interfering with government enforcers of other unjust laws—restrictions on drugs, guns, consensual sexual activity, intrusive regulations, and confiscatory taxes, for instance. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t get in the way when the opportunity arises to help ourselves or others without assuming excessive risk.

“Political authority is an illusion,” writes the philosopher Michael Huemer in The Problem of Political Authority. “No one has the right to rule, and no one is obliged to obey a command merely because it comes from their government.” To the contrary, he continues, the same moral rules apply to governments as apply to everybody else, and government employees have no more right to roust people for behavior that annoys their bosses than does the prickly guy who lives on your street.

“The government and its agents do not have any kind of special immunity against defensive action,” adds Jason Brennan in When All Else Fails, building on Huemer’s argument. “When government agents commit injustice, they are liable to be deceived, sabotaged, injured, or even attacked, in the same way civilians would be.”

Examples of such active resistance abound, from the Whiskey Rebellion, to the Underground Railroad, through Prohibition, and the Stonewall uprising. In all instances, people actively obstructed law enforcement in ways great and small to protect their liberty and that of other people subject to unjust laws.

That such push-back against government enforcers remains effective is obvious not just from the ejection of ICE agents from a Nashville neighborhood, but from the buckets-full soaking of police officers in Harlem and Brooklyn this past weekend. To be clear, it’s not obvious what laws, good or bad, the police were enforcing—”officers were responding to an unruly crowd,” according to one report—and the New York City Police Department (NYPD) has yet to respond to my inquiries. But police meekly retreated in both cases without further action.

And pushback can have a larger impact beyond the immediate incident. Police departments across the country, as well as the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI, are facing recruitment shortfalls amidst complaints about low morale and resistance from the public at large.

“The American policing profession may be facing the most fundamental questioning of its legitimacy in decades,” wrote Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, in a 2017 organizational newsletter.

That crisis of legitimacy has a lot to do with exposure of abusive police conduct, made much easier by modern electronics and the internet facilitating the sharing of video evidence. Such incidents include the brutal and unjustified killing of Daniel Shaver by a Mesa, Arizona, police officer, the equally contemptible killing of Philando Castile by a Minnesota police officer, and litany of similar incidents nationwide.

On a larger scale, systematic problems worsen perceptions of government enforcers.

“Militarized policing is ineffective in decreasing crime and protecting police, and may actually weaken the public’s image of the police,” researchers found last year.

“Racial profiling and other types of biased policing undermine the public’s confidence and trust in law enforcement,” warned a recent report about the NYPD’s failure to deal with allegations of biased enforcement.

As the cherry on top, we have growing concerns about the law being used not to address perceived social problems, real or imaginary, but to punish political enemies who support the “wrong” policies and candidates, or who just won’t submit to the will of those in government office. Fighting for control of that government and its enforcers are dominant political factions that despise each other to the point of seeing each other as “evil” and wishing each other’s members “just died”, in the words of a paper published earlier this year.

Under the circumstances, it’s not hard to justify throwing some hurdles in the way of the government’s enforcement apparatus.

That doesn’t mean it’s safe to stand between government enforcers and their intended victims. In many instances it will get you arrested if not subject to violent assault. The good neighbors in Nashville were fortunate that ICE operates under constraints that don’t universally apply to law enforcement. But if the opportunity arises to protect your friends, neighbors, loved ones, or yourself from malicious officials and enforcers of unjust laws, you’re certainly justified if you do so.

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Nashville Neighbors Send ICE Packing. Let’s See More of That for All Sorts of Law Enforcement.

What if, when government agents showed up to hassle people for engaging in some activity that didn’t harm anybody but was officially disapproved, friends and neighbors turned out to send the agents packing? That’s what happened in the Hermitage neighborhood of Nashville, Tennessee, on Monday morning, where residents chased away Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) agents who attempted to take custody of a long-term resident. It’s a frankly heroic model that bears emulation in a variety of circumstances involving enforcers of unjust laws, malicious officials, and the people over whom they claim to exercise authority.

“Neighbors say the man and his son were in a van parked in their driveway, with a white pickup truck driven by an ICE agent parked behind them, blocking them in. Soon more than a dozen neighbors were gathered outside the home, along with immigrant rights advocates, as the man and his son sat in their van, beginning a standoff that lasted several hours,” the Nashville Scene reports. “As the hours passed, witnesses say, neighbors brought food and water to the man and his son and also put more gas in the van so they could keep it running.”

Ultimately, the neighbors formed a human chain through which the man and his son walked from their van to their house. They’ve since relocated to a new home. The incident was captured on video and posted to Facebook.

To an extent, the success of this particular confrontation between good people and federal enforcers hinged on the fact that the ICE agents, as is usually the case, relied on the warrant version of Confederate money.

“An ‘ICE warrant’ is not a real warrant,” notes the Immigrant Legal Resource Center. “It is not reviewed by a judge or any neutral party to determine if it is based on probable cause. Because it is not issued by a judge, an ICE warrant does not give the immigration enforcement officer the authority to demand entry to a home or private space in order to make the arrest.”

ICE’s self-issued documents allege civil immigration violations and so also don’t authorize local authorities to make arrests in the absence of separate criminal violations. That’s a big part of why Metro Nashville Police was on the scene but only observed the confrontation and did nothing to intervene.

Which is to say, obstructing ICE comes with minimal risks.

There can sometimes be greater dangers involved in interfering with government enforcers of other unjust laws—restrictions on drugs, guns, consensual sexual activity, intrusive regulations, and confiscatory taxes, for instance. But that doesn’t mean we shouldn’t get in the way when the opportunity arises to help ourselves or others without assuming excessive risk.

“Political authority is an illusion,” writes the philosopher Michael Huemer in The Problem of Political Authority. “No one has the right to rule, and no one is obliged to obey a command merely because it comes from their government.” To the contrary, he continues, the same moral rules apply to governments as apply to everybody else, and government employees have no more right to roust people for behavior that annoys their bosses than does the prickly guy who lives on your street.

“The government and its agents do not have any kind of special immunity against defensive action,” adds Jason Brennan in When All Else Fails, building on Huemer’s argument. “When government agents commit injustice, they are liable to be deceived, sabotaged, injured, or even attacked, in the same way civilians would be.”

Examples of such active resistance abound, from the Whiskey Rebellion, to the Underground Railroad, through Prohibition, and the Stonewall uprising. In all instances, people actively obstructed law enforcement in ways great and small to protect their liberty and that of other people subject to unjust laws.

That such push-back against government enforcers remains effective is obvious not just from the ejection of ICE agents from a Nashville neighborhood, but from the buckets-full soaking of police officers in Harlem and Brooklyn this past weekend. To be clear, it’s not obvious what laws, good or bad, the police were enforcing—”officers were responding to an unruly crowd,” according to one report—and the New York City Police Department (NYPD) has yet to respond to my inquiries. But police meekly retreated in both cases without further action.

And pushback can have a larger impact beyond the immediate incident. Police departments across the country, as well as the Internal Revenue Service and the FBI, are facing recruitment shortfalls amidst complaints about low morale and resistance from the public at large.

“The American policing profession may be facing the most fundamental questioning of its legitimacy in decades,” wrote Chuck Wexler, executive director of the Police Executive Research Forum, in a 2017 organizational newsletter.

That crisis of legitimacy has a lot to do with exposure of abusive police conduct, made much easier by modern electronics and the internet facilitating the sharing of video evidence. Such incidents include the brutal and unjustified killing of Daniel Shaver by a Mesa, Arizona, police officer, the equally contemptible killing of Philando Castile by a Minnesota police officer, and litany of similar incidents nationwide.

On a larger scale, systematic problems worsen perceptions of government enforcers.

“Militarized policing is ineffective in decreasing crime and protecting police, and may actually weaken the public’s image of the police,” researchers found last year.

“Racial profiling and other types of biased policing undermine the public’s confidence and trust in law enforcement,” warned a recent report about the NYPD’s failure to deal with allegations of biased enforcement.

As the cherry on top, we have growing concerns about the law being used not to address perceived social problems, real or imaginary, but to punish political enemies who support the “wrong” policies and candidates, or who just won’t submit to the will of those in government office. Fighting for control of that government and its enforcers are dominant political factions that despise each other to the point of seeing each other as “evil” and wishing each other’s members “just died”, in the words of a paper published earlier this year.

Under the circumstances, it’s not hard to justify throwing some hurdles in the way of the government’s enforcement apparatus.

That doesn’t mean it’s safe to stand between government enforcers and their intended victims. In many instances it will get you arrested if not subject to violent assault. The good neighbors in Nashville were fortunate that ICE operates under constraints that don’t universally apply to law enforcement. But if the opportunity arises to protect your friends, neighbors, loved ones, or yourself from malicious officials and enforcers of unjust laws, you’re certainly justified if you do so.

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Details Emerge About Jeffrey Epstein’s Mysterious 2007 Port Deal In St. Thomas

Back in 2007, when Jeffrey Epstein was under scrutiny and his finances were under pressure, the convicted pedophile cut a deal with New York real estate titan Andrew Farkas to be a partner in a small marina on Saint Thomas in the US Virgin Islands. This deal, according to Bloomberg, gave Epstein his entry into the world of luxury yachting, a business investment that would fit his lifestyle and the lifestyle of the wealthy that he spent decades courting.  It also aligned Epstein with a key figure in New York’s business and political scene, Andrew Farkas. Epstein was involved in the project semi-anonymously: for more than 10 years, public records of Farkas’s port company haven’t involved Epstein or mentioned his name. 

Farkas/BBG

And while the port deal was relatively modest for Farkas, it’s another example of an arrangement between Epstein and a wealthy partner that has stayed under wraps while public scrutiny of Epstein played out. Until recently, Epstein’s financial ties had been only traced to retail mogul Leslie Wexner.

The port deal also shows how Epstein maintained, and hid his finances during a personal crisis. The two formed the 50-50 partnership nearly a year after Epstein was in the news on charges of soliciting girls for prostitution. Federal prosecutors were still investigating Epstein at the time.

Civil litigation was stacking up from alleged victims and financial pressures were building at the time for Epstein. Meanwhile, his Virgin Islands refuge gave him both privacy and security. Some of the details of the partnership have emerged in an unrelated business lawsuit in California. However, some of the court records remain sealed and even Farkas’ own CFO and outside auditors are struggling to fill in the missing pieces.

Epstein and Farkas had interests that converged in St. Thomas. Epstein owned the nearby island of Little St. James and Farkas had a grand vision for his two-year-old marina business that was specializing in slips for mega yachts around the world. He was trying to build a major development on St. Thomas and was looking for more Caribbean property.

In 2007, Farkas acquired American Yacht Harbor, which was a 127 slip marina with a small shopping center on the east side of St. Thomas. The purchase was completed for an undisclosed price according to a 2018 deposition. It isn’t clear how the partnership that followed came to fruition. However, in late May of that year, Epstein bought half the ownership interest in the marina. Not even Farkas’s accountants know what he paid for his stake

Deeper ports were in demand at the time, as the wealthiest people in the world raced to acquire larger yachts. Farkas had told the New York Times in 2006 about the demand for multipurpose marina properties with residential, commercial and entertainment venues.

Curiously, Wexner’s own 316 foot yacht also had few docking options in the Virgin Islands in the early 2000‘s. Up until Epstein and Farkas’s venture launched their new port, Wexner could only dock 100 miles away on the Dutch island of St. Maarten.  As is known by now, Epstein had been comingling his finances with Wexner’s for decades and opening doors with money. He had already surrounded himself with business executives and politicians including Ehud Barak of Israel and former U.S. President Bill Clinton while cultivating the image of a philanthropist.

It’s still unclear how Epstein and Farkas first crossed paths. Farkas is a Harvard graduate and is the chairman of a school social organization that got tens of thousands of dollars in donations from charities connected to Epstein. One of Farkas’s uncles was friends with Epstein for decades. That Uncle, Jonathan Farkas, said in 2011 that he visited Epstein while he was under house arrest in 2011. 

Meanwhile, Epstein’s financial mysteries persisted, and his ownership stake was rarely discussed and only known by few. Company officials didn’t use his name when releasing public information about the marina and referred to him instead as a “passive investor”. 

He was seldom seen there despite leasing 3200 sq.feet of office space at the marina for his company. He also rented six boat slips, which were used primarily by construction and maintenance crews going from St. Thomas to Little St. James, where Epstein’s luxury compound was.

Meanwhile, Federal prosecutors bringing the case against Epstein continue to try and unravel his finances which form the basis for his shady professional and private relationships, and the marina will likely be a key hub in the multiple financial spokes that have emerged in recent weeks.

You can read Bloomberg’s full longform writeup on Epstein’s marina here.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MhiKuu Tyler Durden

Williams Warns, We’re “Entering A Period Of Perpetual Money-Printing”

Via Greg Hunter’s USAWatchdog.com ,

Economist John Williams says be careful what you wish for when it comes to Federal Reserve interest rate cuts.

Williams explains, “Unless you can get a good healthy consumer, you are not going to get a good healthy economy. It’s that simple...”

“I think the Fed recognizes that, but they want to get rates higher because that will help the banking system. It will help make lending a little easier and start to return the system to normal. The problem with them backtracking now is the Fed may not ever be able to go back and do what they did before. We may be entering a period of perpetual quantitative easing (money printing).

That changes the ballgame, and I am not sure where that’s going to go. It’s not as happy as it would have been if we had gone through a transition where bad parts of the banking system failed and you rebuilt and had a strong buildup from there with the economy and everything else…

Perpetual quantitative easing (money printing) is frightening, and it’s a new world. No one has ever seen anything quite like this.”

Williams says all his data is showing the economy is already faltering. Williams point out:

“If you believe the GDP numbers, the economy has expanded 25% since the Great Recession, but there is no other number that shows that…

I have been contending that we are heading into a new recession. What I am looking at in recovery is that the economy has never really recovered…

The Fed raised rates too much in too fast of a period of time. Had they stretched that over a couple of more years instead of trying to get things back to normal in two years, that might have worked better. What they did was effectively crashed the economy.”

Is there going to be a rate cut? What does Williams think the Fed is seeing right now? Williams says,

“I think the Fed is seeing the economy is turning down sharply and that they are in bad trouble with the economy. The way (Jay) Powell talked, and he is the Fed Chairman, indicated that.”

So, yes, Williams thinks the Fed will cut rates soon.

On top of that, Williams just had a research study where he asked USAWatchdog.com viewers to email him about the economic situation they see in their home towns all across America. A street level view from people in 33 states was sent in, and Williams found,

“It varies by state and it varies by region. The point is it is not uniform, and if you look at the responses, we had most that came in were negative. It was roughly 2.7 negative to one positive.”

So, yet another expert is warning of a slowing economy and money printing to try to fix it all—again. Williams warns,

“I can tell you why I would buy gold. You are seeing something here that is extraordinarily dangerous. It doesn’t have a happy ending for the traditional markets…

Back when the S&P downgraded the Treasuries, I believe in 2009, Alan Greenspan, who was no longer Fed Chairman at the time but was very vocal, said that was nonsense. He said there was zero risk of the U.S. defaulting on its debt because all the debt the U.S. owes is in dollars. We can print as many dollars that we want, and he’s absolutely correct…

The fact that you are making the bonds worthless by devaluing the currency I think is effectively a default, but not a formal default…

Greenspan said we can print any number of dollars we need, and that’s exactly what they did to the currency in Venezuela, Zimbabwe and the Weimar Republic. That gives you hyperinflation.”

Join Greg Hunter as he goes One-on-One with economist John Williams, founder of ShadowStats.com.

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via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Z8iMbO Tyler Durden

Iran Claims IAEA Chief Behind Nuclear Deal “Eliminated” By Israeli Intelligence

Iran state media has made bombshell sensational claims of a conspiracy assassination of the head of the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), whose death was reported early this week, prompting a firm denial from the powerful UN nuclear watchdog body. 

On Wednesday semi-official Tasnim news agency claimed Israeli intelligence “eliminated” Yukiya Amano, who was the Director General of the IAEA and oversaw the singing of the landmark 2015 P5+1 nuclear deal (JCPOA). Iranian sources allege the covert assassination was carried out on the powerful staunch supporter of the JCPOA in order to gain leverage to force Tehran into dealing with the Trump White House’s “pressure-talks” scheme, as Tasnim put it. 

IAEA’s Yukiya Amano previously Iran’s President Rohani in Tehran.

The 72-year old Amano, who was also a career Japanese diplomat, was considered a huge influence in seeing the Iranian nuclear deal through and ensuring its continued survival over and against recent Trump administration pressure. Trump had famously called the 2015 agreement brokered by the Obama administration “the worst deal ever negotiated” before ordering the unilateral US pullout. 

The UN nuclear watchdog chief died on July 18, with the family only disclosing his passing on late Sunday, but no details as to the cause of death were given; however, a UN statement said he was due to step down next March due to an unspecified illness. Meanwhile Iran provided zero evidence for its wild accusation, nor did the report suggest exactly how the alleged Israeli intelligence plot was carried out. 

The Iranian allegation made waves inside Israel and at the IAEA Wednesday, as the Times of Israel reports: 

The Tehran-based outlet, which defines its mission as “defending the Islamic Revolution against negative media propaganda campaign [sic],” cited unnamed “informed sources” who insisted that Amano, a Japanese diplomat who was extensively involved in negotiations over Iran’s controversial nuclear program, had been “eliminated” after refusing to buckle to “heavy pressure” from Jerusalem and Washington.

This prompted a firm denial from the IAEA, which told The Times of Israel: “[We] categorically deny these false reports. Director General Yukiya Amano passed away on 18 July as a result of his illness.”

Yukiya Amano, IAEA’s director-general, via EPA/Al Jazeera

The Tasnim report alleged further: “There is evidence that the Trump administration and the Israeli regime were constantly pressuring the Japanese diplomat to accuse Iran of violation of the 2015 nuclear deal.” The semi-official state outlet said Amano refused “to open a false case against Iran on the nuclear issue,” according to Tasnim’s sources.

The Times of Israel report indicated his likely cause of death as follows: “Two European diplomats, who spoke on condition of anonymity, said he had cancer.”

Also on Wednesday Iran again rejected the prospect of new negotiations with the White House “under any circumstances,” according to an interview with Supreme Leader Ayotallah Ali Khamenei’s Military Adviser Hossein Dehghan, cited in Al Jazeera.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YctoVJ Tyler Durden

“A Poster Boy for the Long-Sentenced, Non-Violent Drug Offender?”

Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation has the story, which he graciously allowed me to reprint.

Ann Coulter has this post on her website. She can be over the top at times, so I did some checking before posting on it myself. Ms. Coulter writes:

“Over the weekend, NBC News investigative reporter Leigh Ann Caldwell appeared on MSNBC’s ‘Kasie DC’ to tell the story of Bill Underwood, loving parent and prison mentor, who has already spent nearly 30 years in prison for a nonviolent drug crime. “

Ms. Caldwell reported:

“William Underwood, now 65 years old, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for a nonviolent drug-related crime. It was his first felony, but in the middle of the tough-on-crime era, the judge showed no leniency. With no hope of ever walking free again, Underwood has made the best of his time in prison, mentoring others and staying devoted to his children and grandchildren, as (his daughter) Ebony fights for his release.”

The segment is here. That is indeed what Ms. Caldwell says. Is it true? Does she care if it’s true?

Ms. Coulter again:

“Despite what I’m sure was an exhaustive investigation, I was suspicious of Caldwell’s characterization of Underwood’s crime. My rule is: If you’re not telling me why someone was sentenced to life in prison, there’s probably a reason you’re not telling me.

“All we got from Caldwell was: Here’s this great father behind bars; He just got caught up in something, we’re really not sure what it was—and here’s his daughter, Ebony, to tell us what a terrific father he is.

“Considering that she’s arguing for Underwood’s immediate release into the general public, it seems odd that Caldwell doesn’t know what he’s in prison for, nor does she have the slightest interest in finding out.”

Indeed. “We’re not really sure …”? It’s not hard to check. Ms. Coulter turned to Nexis and the press. She found a Newsday story from 1990 reporting:

“A rock band manager was convicted yesterday as the head of a vicious Harlem drug gang that prosecutors said carried out six murders, including the controversial slaying of a witness in 1983.

* * *

“William Underwood, 36, faces up to life in prison without parole for his conviction in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on charges of racketeering and operating a continuing criminal enterprise—the so-called federal narcotics ‘kingpin’ law.”

So our non-violent, drug-related first offender was a leader of a drug gang which had a witness against it “whacked,” at least according to Newsday.

But wait, there’s more. Ms. Coulter checked with The Newspaper of Record:

“In a 1988 article titled, ‘Brutal Drug Gangs Wage War of Terror in Upper Manhattan,’ The New York Times reported that Underwood’s heroin operation was ‘considered by law-enforcement experts to be the most dangerous drug gang in Harlem.’ All told, the gangs were ‘believed to be responsible for as many as 523 slayings in upper Manhattan in the last five years.'”

Personally, I would like to have some actual court documents, so I go to PACER. First, I have to make sure I have the right William Underwood. Ms. Caldwell reports that he has been in federal prison for 30 years. A PACER Case Locator search for federal criminal cases with a defendant named William Underwood and initiated between 1985 and 1992 turns up only one case: United States v. William R. Underwood, SDNY No. 1:1988-cr-00822. A search of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons inmate locator turns up only one life-sentenced William Underwood, again William R. Underwood. The other William Underwoods listed are not life prisoners and were all released long ago. We can have a high degree of confidence that this is the right guy.

A sentencing memorandum would be great. Unfortunately, due to the age of the case there isn’t too much available in the district court. Even the docket begins at the postconviction stage, and no documents are available until Underwood was down to the last-ditch FRCP 60(b) motion to reconsider the denial of the motion to vacate the sentence. (If that makes your head spin, welcome to the club.)  The judge’s decision is available here:

“In 1990, William Underwood was convicted of participating in and conspiring to participate in a racketeering enterprise, 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c) and (d); of participating in a narcotics conspiracy, 21 U.S.C. § 846; and of operating a continuing criminal enterprise, 21 U.S.C. § 848. At the time of his sentencing, the Sentencing Guidelines had been in effect for more than two years, but they only applied to crimes that occurred or continued after November 1, 1987. If sentenced under preguidelines law, Underwood faced a statutory penalty of imprisonment that ranged from 10 years to life. Under the sentencing guidelines, Underwood faced a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.”

The decision includes a citation to the Second Circuit’s decision on the original appeal, which is published. See United States v. Underwood, 932 F.2d 1049 (2d Cir. 1991) cert denied 502 U.S. 942 (1991).

“The government’s evidence at trial showed that from the 1970’s until his arrest in late 1988, Underwood supervised and controlled an extensive and extremely violent narcotics trafficking operation involving a number of murders and conspiracies to murder, a highly organized network for the street-level distribution of heroin and the importation of large quantities of heroin from Europe to the United States. The government presented the testimony of more than 50 witnesses, including a number of former members of Underwood’s street-level distribution organization, and introduced more than 250 exhibits.”

Id. at 1051.

The court of appeals does not detail the evidence of violence because it is not relevant to the issues Underwood argued on appeal. Nonetheless, the violent nature is right there on the face of an easily findable opinion. And NBC (unlike me) is in New York. They could easily have the paper record pulled from the archives and get the sentencing records if they cared about the truth.

So let’s compare what we know (and NBC could have known with minimal effort) with Ms. Caldwell’s description of the case: ” a nonviolent drug-related crime … his first felony ….”

“Nonviolent”? The racketeering and continuing criminal enterprise crimes are not inherently violent or nonviolent. They could be either, depending on the predicate acts. The court of appeals says the operation was “extremely violent.” False.

“Drug-related”? Yes, but so what? His drug offenses were accompanied by violent offenses. Calling the convictions “drug-related” in conjunction with the false “nonviolent” gives the reader a very wrong impression. Literally true but misleading in context.

“A … crime”? Singular. He was convicted of multiple crimes. False.

“His first felony”? The singular again is false. “First felon[ies]” would be literally true if it referred to his first felony convictions and completely false if it referred to the first felonies he committed. The predicate acts establish a long string of felonies. Ambiguous, with the false meaning being the one the viewer is most likely to take.

“But in the middle of the tough-on-crime era, the judge showed no leniency”? Given the judge’s finding of fact that Underwood’s continuing crimes extended past the Guideline’s effective date, the life sentence was mandatory under the then-binding Guidelines. The implication that the judge had discretion under the law but chose not to use it because of the “tough-on-crime” zeitgeist is false.

To call this shoddy journalism would be an understatement. What will NBC and its affiliate MSNBC do? Issue a retraction and apology? Pull the segment off the website? Fire the reporter? All of the above? None of the above?

How did a story like this ever get through? Once upon a time editors were supposed to catch sloppy work like this. Are there any Perry Whites left in American journalism? Now confirmation bias runs the show. If the story fits the approved narrative, fact-checking is optional.

I e-mailed Sen. Booker’s press people (here’s their press release) and the MSNBC “Kasie DC” people for their side, and hadn’t heard back from them.

I also e-mailed the author of an NJ.com article that reports on Sen. Booker’s proposal, and starts with “Convicted of a nonviolent drug crime, William Underwood of Tenafly has been in prison for around 30 years.” The author told me that he was just reporting Sen. Booker’s statement (though the “nonviolent drug crime” part was in the author’s own words, and not attributed as Sen. Booker’s assertion).

I should also note that some of Underwood’s defenders are arguing that the jury wrongly convicted him of running the drug conspiracy, and that in reality he had just been a minor drug dealer who had long left the business at the time of his conviction. But it seems to me that any coverage of the story that takes that view has to acknowledge that he was convicted of running a highly violent conspiracy, rather than just baldly labeling him a nonviolent offender.

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Ilhan Omar Told Somali Immigrant: Why Don’t We Deport You Back To “Where Ever You Came From”

Authored by Paul Joseph Watson via Summit.news,

Ilhan Omar once told a Somali immigrant to the U.S. “why don’t we deport you” after the immigrant suggested that Somali’s shouldn’t import their culture to America.

In a newly uncovered tweet from October 2012, Omar responds to a Somali immigrant to the U.S. who tweeted an article in which the mayor of Maine encouraged Somalis arriving in America to leave their culture at the door.

“We are citizens and can’t be deported,” tweeted Omar, adding, “why don’t we deport you to where ever you came from.”

Omar’s tweet is deliciously ironic given the controversy over her recent spat with President Trump, after Trump invited Omar to go back and fix her own country before complaining about America.

Rep. Rashida Tlaib also called for the deportation of then candidate Trump in 2015 when she tweeted, “Deport this asshole!”

So when anyone jokes that Omar or Tlaib should be deported that’s horrifically racist but it’s absolutely fine for them to do the exact same thing.

“It’s OK when we do it.”

As we reported last week, during a 2015 speech, Omar described Somalia as “our nation back home,” while failing to describe the United States in similar terms.

*  *  *

There is a war on free speech. Without your support, my voice will be silenced. Please sign up for the free newsletter here. Donate to me on SubscribeStar here. Support my sponsor – Turbo Force – a supercharged boost of clean energy without the comedown.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Gsmjut Tyler Durden

“A Poster Boy for the Long-Sentenced, Non-Violent Drug Offender?”

Kent Scheidegger of the Criminal Justice Legal Foundation has the story, which he graciously allowed me to reprint.

Ann Coulter has this post on her website. She can be over the top at times, so I did some checking before posting on it myself. Ms. Coulter writes:

“Over the weekend, NBC News investigative reporter Leigh Ann Caldwell appeared on MSNBC’s ‘Kasie DC’ to tell the story of Bill Underwood, loving parent and prison mentor, who has already spent nearly 30 years in prison for a nonviolent drug crime. “

Ms. Caldwell reported:

“William Underwood, now 65 years old, was sentenced to life in prison without parole for a nonviolent drug-related crime. It was his first felony, but in the middle of the tough-on-crime era, the judge showed no leniency. With no hope of ever walking free again, Underwood has made the best of his time in prison, mentoring others and staying devoted to his children and grandchildren, as (his daughter) Ebony fights for his release.”

The segment is here. That is indeed what Ms. Caldwell says. Is it true? Does she care if it’s true?

Ms. Coulter again:

“Despite what I’m sure was an exhaustive investigation, I was suspicious of Caldwell’s characterization of Underwood’s crime. My rule is: If you’re not telling me why someone was sentenced to life in prison, there’s probably a reason you’re not telling me.

“All we got from Caldwell was: Here’s this great father behind bars; He just got caught up in something, we’re really not sure what it was—and here’s his daughter, Ebony, to tell us what a terrific father he is.

“Considering that she’s arguing for Underwood’s immediate release into the general public, it seems odd that Caldwell doesn’t know what he’s in prison for, nor does she have the slightest interest in finding out.”

Indeed. “We’re not really sure …”? It’s not hard to check. Ms. Coulter turned to Nexis and the press. She found a Newsday story from 1990 reporting:

“A rock band manager was convicted yesterday as the head of a vicious Harlem drug gang that prosecutors said carried out six murders, including the controversial slaying of a witness in 1983.

* * *

“William Underwood, 36, faces up to life in prison without parole for his conviction in U.S. District Court in Manhattan on charges of racketeering and operating a continuing criminal enterprise—the so-called federal narcotics ‘kingpin’ law.”

So our non-violent, drug-related first offender was a leader of a drug gang which had a witness against it “whacked,” at least according to Newsday.

But wait, there’s more. Ms. Coulter checked with The Newspaper of Record:

“In a 1988 article titled, ‘Brutal Drug Gangs Wage War of Terror in Upper Manhattan,’ The New York Times reported that Underwood’s heroin operation was ‘considered by law-enforcement experts to be the most dangerous drug gang in Harlem.’ All told, the gangs were ‘believed to be responsible for as many as 523 slayings in upper Manhattan in the last five years.'”

Personally, I would like to have some actual court documents, so I go to PACER. First, I have to make sure I have the right William Underwood. Ms. Caldwell reports that he has been in federal prison for 30 years. A PACER Case Locator search for federal criminal cases with a defendant named William Underwood and initiated between 1985 and 1992 turns up only one case: United States v. William R. Underwood, SDNY No. 1:1988-cr-00822. A search of the U.S. Bureau of Prisons inmate locator turns up only one life-sentenced William Underwood, again William R. Underwood. The other William Underwoods listed are not life prisoners and were all released long ago. We can have a high degree of confidence that this is the right guy.

A sentencing memorandum would be great. Unfortunately, due to the age of the case there isn’t too much available in the district court. Even the docket begins at the postconviction stage, and no documents are available until Underwood was down to the last-ditch FRCP 60(b) motion to reconsider the denial of the motion to vacate the sentence. (If that makes your head spin, welcome to the club.)  The judge’s decision is available here:

“In 1990, William Underwood was convicted of participating in and conspiring to participate in a racketeering enterprise, 18 U.S.C. § 1962(c) and (d); of participating in a narcotics conspiracy, 21 U.S.C. § 846; and of operating a continuing criminal enterprise, 21 U.S.C. § 848. At the time of his sentencing, the Sentencing Guidelines had been in effect for more than two years, but they only applied to crimes that occurred or continued after November 1, 1987. If sentenced under preguidelines law, Underwood faced a statutory penalty of imprisonment that ranged from 10 years to life. Under the sentencing guidelines, Underwood faced a mandatory sentence of life in prison without parole.”

The decision includes a citation to the Second Circuit’s decision on the original appeal, which is published. See United States v. Underwood, 932 F.2d 1049 (2d Cir. 1991) cert denied 502 U.S. 942 (1991).

“The government’s evidence at trial showed that from the 1970’s until his arrest in late 1988, Underwood supervised and controlled an extensive and extremely violent narcotics trafficking operation involving a number of murders and conspiracies to murder, a highly organized network for the street-level distribution of heroin and the importation of large quantities of heroin from Europe to the United States. The government presented the testimony of more than 50 witnesses, including a number of former members of Underwood’s street-level distribution organization, and introduced more than 250 exhibits.”

Id. at 1051.

The court of appeals does not detail the evidence of violence because it is not relevant to the issues Underwood argued on appeal. Nonetheless, the violent nature is right there on the face of an easily findable opinion. And NBC (unlike me) is in New York. They could easily have the paper record pulled from the archives and get the sentencing records if they cared about the truth.

So let’s compare what we know (and NBC could have known with minimal effort) with Ms. Caldwell’s description of the case: ” a nonviolent drug-related crime … his first felony ….”

“Nonviolent”? The racketeering and continuing criminal enterprise crimes are not inherently violent or nonviolent. They could be either, depending on the predicate acts. The court of appeals says the operation was “extremely violent.” False.

“Drug-related”? Yes, but so what? His drug offenses were accompanied by violent offenses. Calling the convictions “drug-related” in conjunction with the false “nonviolent” gives the reader a very wrong impression. Literally true but misleading in context.

“A … crime”? Singular. He was convicted of multiple crimes. False.

“His first felony”? The singular again is false. “First felon[ies]” would be literally true if it referred to his first felony convictions and completely false if it referred to the first felonies he committed. The predicate acts establish a long string of felonies. Ambiguous, with the false meaning being the one the viewer is most likely to take.

“But in the middle of the tough-on-crime era, the judge showed no leniency”? Given the judge’s finding of fact that Underwood’s continuing crimes extended past the Guideline’s effective date, the life sentence was mandatory under the then-binding Guidelines. The implication that the judge had discretion under the law but chose not to use it because of the “tough-on-crime” zeitgeist is false.

To call this shoddy journalism would be an understatement. What will NBC and its affiliate MSNBC do? Issue a retraction and apology? Pull the segment off the website? Fire the reporter? All of the above? None of the above?

How did a story like this ever get through? Once upon a time editors were supposed to catch sloppy work like this. Are there any Perry Whites left in American journalism? Now confirmation bias runs the show. If the story fits the approved narrative, fact-checking is optional.

I e-mailed Sen. Booker’s press people (here’s their press release) and the MSNBC “Kasie DC” people for their side, and hadn’t heard back from them.

I also e-mailed the author of an NJ.com article that reports on Sen. Booker’s proposal, and starts with “Convicted of a nonviolent drug crime, William Underwood of Tenafly has been in prison for around 30 years.” The author told me that he was just reporting Sen. Booker’s statement (though the “nonviolent drug crime” part was in the author’s own words, and not attributed as Sen. Booker’s assertion).

I should also note that some of Underwood’s defenders are arguing that the jury wrongly convicted him of running the drug conspiracy, and that in reality he had just been a minor drug dealer who had long left the business at the time of his conviction. But it seems to me that any coverage of the story that takes that view has to acknowledge that he was convicted of running a highly violent conspiracy, rather than just baldly labeling him a nonviolent offender.

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Dismal Demand For Ugly, Tailing 5Y Auction

One day after a ugly 2Y auction priced with the first tail for 2019, moments ago the US Treasury sold $41 billion in 5Y paper in an auction that was even uglier.

The high yield printed at 1.824%, above the 1.791% in June and a 1bp tail to the 1.814% When Issued, the biggest tail since March. The bid to cover slumped from 2.35 to 2.26, far below the 2.39 six auction average, and the lowest bid to cover since December 2018.

The internals were just as ugly: Indirect demand slumped, with the takedown for foreign official investors dropping to just 53.4%, not only far below the 6 auction average of 58.8%, but the lowest since December 2015. And with Directs also showing little enthusiasm for today’s auction, taking down just 13.7%, or the least since December, that left Dealers holding 32.9% of the final allotment, the most since December.

Overall, and just like yesterday’s 2Y auction, another very subpar auction in every aspect, which however is surprising considering that it is certainly the market’s consensus that a recession will take place some time in 2020, and as such the yield on short-dated paper should only continue to slide. Unless of course, foreign investors have better things to do with their money, even as Dealer holdings of Treasurys continue to surge.

 

 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2MfVjlD Tyler Durden