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Senior editor, Ash Bennington, hosts Tony Greer, editor of The Morning Navigator Newsletter, to discuss the S&P 500 breaking record highs and the wild inflation trade. Tony considers where inflation is cropping up and how dollar weakness is connected to a dovish Fed. He also talks about the biggest market movers—bitcoin, FANG stocks, precious metals, and miners—and where the market may be headed should low interest rates persist. Ash and Tony explore what is happening in the housing market and what is influencing its activity. They top off their conversation by looking at the risks of momentum strategies to novice investors, ESG strategies catching fire, and Tony’s approach to position sizing. In the intro, Peter Cooper discusses the kick-off of the Democratic National Convention and the latest on CalPERS.

Authored by Frank Miele via RealClearPolitics.com,

The 2020 election could be the biggest gamble in the history of the United States, starting with the huge consequences at stake but made even more uncertain because of two huge question marks at the front and back ends of the voting itself.

Think of this election as a giant roulette wheel, except instead of red or black, you are betting on red or blue – Republican or Democrat.

Here’s how a Republican sees that gamble:

• If the spinning ball falls into a red slot, you get four more years of Donald Trump appointing conservative judges, empowering minorities through a strong economy, negotiating peace in the Middle East and fighting back against unconstitutional abuse of power represented by James Comey, John Brennan and James Clapper. 

• If the election result comes up blue, you get four years of President Kamala Harris – oops, I mean Slow Joe Biden – grabbing power back for the entrenched elites while at the same time weakening our economy, opening the door to illegal immigrants, raising taxes to bail out failed cities and states, and encouraging lawlessness by attacking the police.

Democrats, of course, would turn that equation on its head – worrying about four years of unregulated tweeting from Putin-puppet Trump and imagining a new era of hope and prosperity under the Biden-Harris ticket.

Either way, only a fool would call the winning color just when the wheel is set in motion, yet the polls and pundits have settled on Democrat blue as the prohibitive favorite, even before the two parties’ virtual conventions have been held. How can that be? We haven’t had a single debate yet, and thanks to COVID-19, we haven’t even seen any real campaigning for votes. When President Trump held a test rally in Oklahoma, he was roundly criticized for campaigning during the pandemic, and then mocked for not filling the arena thanks to — yep — the selfsame pandemic.

So if the major media and the Democrats are so certain that Trump is going to lose, what do they know that you don’t? It can’t just be the polls because, as everyone knows, the polls showed candidate Trump losing badly to Hillary Clinton consistently during the 2016 campaign. Whether it’s because of bias in the polls themselves or simply because of “shy” Trump voters rejecting participation in them or actively lying to confound the results, something causes Trump to underperform in these surveys.

I’m betting that Democrats are banking on two election provisions – one long-term and one specific to 2020 – that will skew the results toward Biden.

The long-term change in voting habits that could benefit Democrats is early voting. Let’s face it: Donald Trump is counting on winning the side-by-side comparison with Joe Biden. There will not be any better opportunity to highlight differences between the candidates than the three presidential debates, yet at least 16 states will allow early voting before the first debate, on Sept. 29, takes place. That means millions of votes could be locked in five weeks before Election Day, and before Joe “Big Gaffe” Biden gets to lose his train of thought, repeatedly, on a national stage.

Whether you agree with President Trump that the resulting election will be “rigged” or not, you still have to question whether there is something fundamentally wrong with encouraging people to vote before they have a chance to hear from the candidates — or from the Fourth Estate, if the press would ever do its job and fairly vet the candidates on both sides of the aisle.

Maybe Joe Biden won’t implode in the debates, maybe it will be President Trump who gets confused and starts to call God “the thing” the way Biden did back in March. But whoever starts to act like he has lost his crackers, the voters ought to be able to know it before they send in their ballots.

Of course, Democrats and their media allies have been encouraging early voting for decades, presumably on the assumption that uninformed voters will likely be safe votes for Democrats. But this year it’s more important than ever because if voters wait till Nov. 3 to cast their ballot, they will have had way too many chances to figure out that Biden is running on empty.

However, just in case even those early voters are informed enough to know that Biden wants to fundamentally transform America into a great big version of anarchist Portland or violent Chicago, the Democrats have an insurance policy.

This is where things get interesting. All-mail voting goes hand-in-hand with early voting since the ballots go out early and can be sent back early, thus contributing to the problem of voting prior to campaigning. But there is a more nefarious component to universal mail-in ballots, which President Trump has vigorously condemned.

Unlike absentee ballots or early voting, which require active participation by the voter, universal mail-in voting means that every registered voter will be sent a ballot whether they want one or not – heck, even whether they are alive or not.

Democrats argue that nothing can go wrong, but these are the same people who want to give illegal immigrants free health care and consider people throwing Molotov cocktails into federal courthouses “peaceful protesters.”

Fact of the matter is that cheating on mail ballots is child’s play. Here, off the top of my head, are four ways to monkey with the vote:


1) A hard-core Democrat union-rep mailman is collecting mail from households in a neighborhood that skews Republican. He dutifully collects the ballots left for him, but then dumps them in the trash or (smarter) burns them in his fire pit later that night. 
What is the protection against this happening? Or any of the remaining scenarios below?

2) A hard-core Democrat nurse’s aide making 10 bucks an hour decides to monkey-wrench the system that she thinks is exploiting her. When she collects the ballots from 120 residents in the nursing home where she works, she volunteers to drop them at the post office “to make sure they are secure,” but then heads home and buries them in the backyard.


3) A pizza delivery guy enters an apartment building with a large pepperoni and leaves with a carton of blank ballots that were left in the lobby for pickup by the residents. The pizza guy happens to be a member of antifa and he has no problem filling out all the ballots against President Trump and the Republicans. Even if the fraud is discovered, it is highly unlikely that all the ballots will be disqualified.


4) A Democratic campaign aide who is working to “get out the vote” in a neighborhood with a high proportion of older people knocks on doors and offers to help voters mark their ballots. Not a citizen? No problem. That’s been waived. Not sure who to vote for? How about that nice Democrat! And if you do happen to vote Republican, no problem — I will deliver it for you … right to the Dumpster!


You can think of more on your own. It’s not that hard.

But perhaps even more worrisome is the possibility that votes will not be counted on election night. Some states are allowing ballots to come in by mail for days after the official election. In some cases, the ballots need to be postmarked by Election Day, but in other cases the ballots will be sent out with prepaid postage, meaning there will be no postmark and no way to know if the ballots were mailed before or after the deadline.

Suppose the results on election night are inconclusive. Biden and Trump are both short of the majority of electoral votes needed to win, and close races are reported in Arizona, Colorado, Nevada, Minnesota, North Carolina and Michigan. Many ballots are uncounted, and it looks like the vote could drag on for weeks. Colorado and Nevada have universal mail ballots, so if either candidate needs those electoral votes for the win, they will target the states with lawyers, lawsuits, and protesters.

Imagine the chaos when peaceful protests turn into riots, and then boxes of uncounted ballots are mysteriously discovered in a county courthouse in Las Vegas. Imagine what happens when those ballots favor Joe Biden by a margin of three to one, giving him just enough votes to win Nevada’s six electoral votes and assure him of victory. Maybe for once Republicans would take to the streets and demand justice, or maybe not. Maybe they would just let Las Vegas decide what has been called the most important election in U.S. history with a coin toss.

Now, that would be a storybook ending to our tale, wouldn’t it? The biggest gamble in election history gets settled in the gambling capital of the United States. You pays your money and you takes your chance.

The battle for the future of ride-sharing businesses in the US will hinge this week on a critical decision from a California Judge regarding whether Uber and Lyft will be forced to comply with a restrictive new law in the state of California called AB5, a bill that is disrupting the livelihoods of some of America’s most vulnerable workers in the middle of a once-in-a-century pandemic.

AB 5, better known as California’s anti-freelancer law, as it’s written to establish numerous requirements that restrict companies’ ability to hire and compensate independent contractors. Uber and Lyft’s entire business model is built on the principle that its drivers are merely “freelancers”, who have no accountability to the company (other than complying with the ToS), and vice-versa: They can choose to work whenever they want.

However, critics on the left led by AOC and her fellow “Squad”-mates have singled out Uber and Lyft for depriving their workers of adequate and livable wages, and for demolishing industries like NYC’s yellow cabs, driving many drivers to suicide as the value of NYC’s taxi cab medallions plummeted.

With Uber & Lyft having appealed a California judge’s ruling that the two companies must comply with the new law, which would mean switching all of their drivers in California into full-time employees, a difficult process in the best of times, but an improbable ask during the middle of a recession. The economics, Lyft & Uber have argued, just wouldn’t make sense, and Uber CEO Dara Khosrowshahi has told the press that should the appeal be denied, Uber will likely need to shut down its service in the state, at least for a short time.

As the countdown to the decision continues, reporters and analysts are trying to game out what Uber and Lyft might do if the decision goes against them, as well as how the two companies might react other scenarios, since AB 5 likely isn’t going away any time soon.

The NYT reported Tuesday morning that one plan under discussion at Uber and Lyft would be to shift their operations to a franchise model, where they provide the software, and independent entrepreneurs provide the cars and the dispatch. It would effectively mark a return to black-cab fleets of old, as the NYT pointed out.

We could call it ‘the McRideshare’.

One option that both companies are seriously discussing is licensing their brands to operators of vehicle fleets in California, according to three people with knowledge of the plans. The change would resemble an independently operated franchise, allowing Uber and Lyft to keep an arms-length association with drivers so that the companies would not need to employ them and pay their benefits.

The idea would effectively be a return to the days of how groups of black cars were run. Lyft has presented the plan to its board of directors, one person said. Uber, which already works with fleet operators in Germany and Spain, is also familiar with the business model.

The paper added that some of the scenarios planned out during Uber’s corporate strategy sessions were given code-names from the “Super Mario Bros” video game franchise.

At Uber, many of the proposed ideas were code-named with the names of characters from the Mario Bros. video game, like Luigi, the people said. The Washington Post reported earlier on Project Luigi, which included the changes to Uber’s app that give drivers more control over fares.

Another option that policy teams at both of the companies floated was the franchise-like model, the people with knowledge of the plans said.

Under the proposal, Uber and Lyft would invite other businesses to establish ride-hailing fleets using their platforms. That could bolster the companies’ claims that they were simply tech companies that built sophisticated dispatch services and that providing transportation was outside their core business, protecting them from A.B. 5’s requirements.

At Uber, the effort drew inspiration from the company’s operations in Germany and Spain, where transportation rules have already forced it to work with fleets, Mr. Kallman said.

Lyft reportedly hashed out a different franchising plan that was based on the “FedEx” model.

Lyft based its plan on FedEx, which franchises some of its delivery routes to local operators, current and former employees said.

Uber and Lyft employees said the companies did not collaborate or share information about their plans with each other.

A franchise-like business can be challenging. Working with a fleet operator could increase costs because it introduces a third party who needs to be paid, potentially forcing Uber and Lyft to raise fares or reduce their service fees, current and former employees said. The companies would also likely have to surrender some control over driver behavior, leaving them more vulnerable to reputational damage if a driver harassed a passenger or a car was dirty.

But whatever model they choose, there will be obstacles. For instance, since Uber and Lyft have already decimated the black car industry, there aren’t really any dispatchers left to absorb all this new business.

Another hurdle is that few fleet operators in California are large enough to absorb Uber’s and Lyft’s business, partly because Uber and Lyft previously disrupted taxis, black cars and similar operations.

If it goes through, we might see another California gold rush – except for taxi cab drivers and dispatchers (because somebody needs to sit in the office and drink coffee all day).

Of course, even if Uber and Lyft do lose on Friday, they will get another shot in November when California voters will be asked to classify ride-share drivers as independent contractors permanently. The measure, called Prop 22, was also helped by DoorDash and is of major consequence to the growing “sharing economy”.

Authored by Jake Johnson via CommonDreams.org,

New research published Monday by the Institute for Policy Studies shows that the dozen richest American billionaires now collectively own more than $1 trillion in wealth, a finding one analyst described as “a disturbing milestone in the U.S. history of concentrated wealth and power.”

According to IPS, a progressive think tank, the 12 top U.S. billionaires have seen their combined wealth soar by 40%—or $283 billion—since the coronavirus began spreading rapidly across the U.S. in mid-March, sparking widespread economic shutdowns and mass job loss.

“During the first stage of the pandemic, between January 1 and March 18, the collective wealth of the Oligarchic Dozen declined by $96 billion,” wrote IPS researchers Chuck Collins and Omar Ocampo. “But their wealth quickly rebounded and surpassed their September 2019 Forbes 400 wealth level. The only exception is Warren Buffett, who is still $2 billion below his September 2019 wealth, but is currently worth $80 billion.”

Last Thursday, the billionaires’ combined wealth reached $1.015 trillion—the first time in U.S. history that the collective net worth of the top 12 American billionaires has topped the trillion-dollar mark. According to IPS, Tesla and SpaceX CEO Elon Musk has seen his wealth jump by $48.5 billion since mid-March, making him the “biggest pandemic profiteer” of the group.

“This is simply too much economic and political power in the hands of twelve people,” Collins, director of IPS’ Program on Inequality and the Common Good, said in a statement.

The dozen wealthiest U.S. billionaires and their respective net worth as of August 13 are listed below:

• Jeff Bezos—$189.5 billion
• Bill Gates—$114.1 billion
• Mark Zuckerberg—$95.5 billion
• Warren Buffett—$80.6 billion
• Elon Musk—$73.1 billion
• Steve Ballmer—$71.5 billion
• Larry Ellison—$70.9 billion
• Larry Page—$67.4 billion
• Sergey Brin—$65.6 billion
• Alice Walton—$62.6 billion
• Jim Walton—$62.3 billion
• Rob Walton—$62.03 billion

“The total wealth of the Oligarchic Dozen is greater than the GDP of Belgium and Austria combined,” said Ocampo. “Meanwhile, tens of millions of Americans are unemployed or living paycheck to paycheck, and 170,000 people have died from Covid-19 in the United States.”

Chrystia Freeland isn’t quite a household name in the US, although her profile expanded substantially after leading trade talks with both the EU and the US and Mexico. But that could soon change as the avowed Russophobe has just been sworn in as Canada’s Finance Minister in PM Justin Trudeau’s latest cabinet reshuffle.

Freeland, a former Rhodes Scholar who previously handled Canada’s Foreign Policy portfolio as Trudeau’s Foreign Minister (and trade minister, among other positions, as well as being an MP), has become the first woman to hold the title of Finance Minister in Canada; she is also a deputy prime minister.

Interestingly enough, Canada’s Globe & Mail, a Liberal-leaning national broadsheet and one of Canada’s most popular newspapers, made no mention of the scandal-plagued departure of Bill Morneau, the Liberal Party politician who resigned today amid a scandal over his failure to repay a charity for associated travel costs (you can read more about that at the BBC).

But by elevating Freeland once again, Trudeau is sending a sign to Russia, and to the broader foreign policy establishment, that as President Trump tries to dismantle the national security and foreign policy “consensus” in the US, his Canadian colleague is doubling down on it.

Ironically, Trudeau is now preparing to try and “prorogue” Canada’s parliament, though the context is slightly different from when Boris Johnson prorogued the British Parliament, effectively shutting it down, as it will effectively act as a “reset” for his agenda following a string of scandals that have roiled Canada’s Liberal Party.

For those who haven’t followed our coverage of Freeland’s rise in Canadian politics, Matthew Ehret once said that “Freeland has become a bit of a living parody of everything wrong with the detached technocratic neo-liberal order which has driven the world through 50 years of post-industrial decay.”

Here’s more from that post.

Freeland Promotes the New Global Elite

Freeland has made it clear that she understands well that there is a fundamental difference in cultural identities of the “new rich” relative to the older oligarchic families which she serves. In the 2011 Rise of the New Global Elite, she describes it as follows: “To grasp the difference between today’s plutocrats and the hereditary elite, who “grow rich in their sleep” one need merely glance at the events that now fill high-end social calendars.”

Freeland then breaks down the categories of “new plutocrats” into two subcategories: the good, technocratic friendly plutocrats who are ideologically compatible with the New World Order of depopulation, such as Bill Gates, Warren Buffet, George Soros, et al and the “bad” plutocrats who tend not to conform to the British Empire’s program of global governance and depopulation under the green agenda.

In Freeland’s world “good oligarchs” are those who adhere to this agenda, while “bad oligarchs” are those who do not. Trump is a terrible Plutocrat, and – Viktor Yanukovych was a good plutocrat until he decided to not sacrifice Ukraine on the altar of the collapsing European Union and chose to throw Ukraine’s destiny into the Eurasian Economic Union in October 2013.

We imagine Bill Gates and George Soros will be thrilled.

Authored by Daisy Luther via The Organic Prepper blog,

It’s undeniable that we’re heading into an economic crisis, but how bad are things really? Pundits are making comparisons to the Great Depression based on unemployment numbers, looming evictions, and unprecedented lines at food banks. But does our situation actually compare to the worst economic downturn in the industrialized world?

This video analysis by Brian Duff compares our current-day crisis and the one that began in 1929 and the similarities are pretty alarming. Also, this is a new YouTube channel I strongly recommend. It’s going to have some incredible information – trust me when I tell you that you’re going to want to subscribe and give him a “like.”

(Don’t forget to subscribe to this channel. You won’t regret it.)

The biggest difference I see between these two eras – and this is the thing that will be our downfall – is that we are now a nation of consumers instead of producers.

Back in the 1920s and 1930s, people had the skills required to do things like producing food, preserving their harvests, and building structures, to name a few. In our current time, skills like this are few and far between outside the preparedness and homesteading world.

This lack of skills will carry over into a much more dependent populace in our current day and age. Our government will not be able to continue providing for people as this crisis snowballs. We’ve already seen widespread shortages that began as the pandemic began to become a reality here, and those really haven’t resolved themselves. Essentials from China have remained limited, as predicted.

I think we can all imagine what will happen once the access to food, resources, shelter, and money becomes even more limited.