Author: admin

Submitted by Jessica Rabe of DataTrek Research

With the beginning of golf season finally here, we’ll tee off today’s Story Time Thursday with a question for readers who play the sport: do you get more nervous about putting for birdie or par? As a golfer myself I’ll admit that as much as it’s rewarding to make a birdie, I take some comfort when trying to do so in knowing that I have one more attempt before shooting over par for any particular hole. Missing birdie is a bummer, but I’d rather play it safe so I can tap in for par rather than face a long, difficult putt back to stay even on a hole and potentially bogey.

Amateur thinking, I know… but it turns out this behavioral bias plagues even the likes of now five-time Masters champion Tiger Woods. We dug up one of our favorite golf studies to not only explain this phenomenon, but the important lessons it teaches for investing. So if you don’t golf, hang in there… But first, here’s the background and results of this highly cited study in the American Economic Review published in 2011:

• Chicago Booth Professor Devin Pope and Wharton Professor Maurice Schweitzer analyzed over 2.5 million putts attempted by 421 players in 239 PGA Tour golf tournaments between 2004 and 2009.
• The study found that golfers are “significantly less accurate” when putting for eagle or birdie versus putting for par or bogey. On average, golfers make birdie putts “2 percentage points less often than they make comparable par putts” because they focus more on the latter in order to avoid a loss.
• The professors discovered that although golfers should remain unbiased during any putting attempt, strokes for birdie were softer and less accurate than strokes for par. Ultimately, players “sacrifice success when putting for birdie to avoid difficult follow-up putts”. Sounds like someone I know… In any case, the disappointment of conceding a bogey outweighs the gratification of achieving a birdie.
• Consequently, this loss aversion cost the average golfer at least one stroke per tournament. As the latest Masters showed, one stroke can make all the difference in golf. Tiger beat out three other professional golfers by that small difference just a week and a half ago.

The study also showed how costly missing a putt can turn out. For example, had the 20 highest ranked golfers improved their scores by one stroke in 2007, they would have grossed an additional $640,000 on top of the $4 million in tournament earnings they received that year.

As for how all this relates to investing, a few points:

• The authors of the study concluded that “loss aversion persists in a market setting with intense competition, large stakes, and very experienced agents. Even the best golfers—including Tiger Woods—exhibit loss aversion.” No doubt capital markets also include those three characteristics, which can result in loss aversion even among the best investors.
• The professors also explained this loss aversion through the lens of the Nobel Prize-winning behavioral finance concept Prospect Theory. This theory suggests that people make decisions based on potential losses and gains rather than rational expectations of the outcomes. That’s why in golf, birdie putts often come up short in order to evade subsequent tough follow up attempts for par.

Likewise, there are many loss-averse implications in investing. For example, investors often take profits too early or cut losses too late. That’s why making and sticking to a plan with entry and exit points is so important. Doing so helps cut out irrational behavior stemming from our innate desire to avoid encoding a loss.Investors can also be more likely to buy losing rather than winning stocks, or sell winning rather than losing companies.

Of course, they should buy or hold onto stocks with positive price momentum and cut losses by selling stocks with negative price momentum.

Moreover, irrational investment decisions especially occur during extreme market environments. Many investors panic out of positions at suboptimal prices during market downturns, for example, or chase performance when a strategy has already lost its momentum.

In sum, the game of golf provides a mirror into behavioral biases also found in investing that often lead to irrational decision-making. Just like winning a major golf championship can come down to one stroke, as in the case of Tiger at the recent Masters, marginal trades can make all the difference when posting a profit or loss. That’s why learning how to manage these emotions can determine success whether it be in golf or investing. Small decisions out of fear of loss can result in big, adverse outcomes on the golf course or in the trading room.

Source: http://faculty.chicagobooth.edu/devin.pope/research/pdf/Website_Golf.pdf

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

It’s that time again.

In accordance with the ‘Open Skies’ treaty, which allows the US, Russia and 32 other countries to carry out inspections of others’ military infrastructure on their domestic territory, typically via spy plane, Russia carried out its latest reconnaissance flight over American territory this week.

A Russian Tu-214ON spy plane made a reconnaissance tour over the southwestern US, capturing images of military bases and nuclear and chemical weapons caches. On Wednesday, the Russian plane was spotted over Washington, DC conducting low-altitude surveillance (and probably scaring a few unsuspecting locals).

For more information about Treaty on Open Skies flights and data from previous flights, please see https://t.co/t7CXJikwDZ pic.twitter.com/L5lEsML7JO

— Flightradar24 (@flightradar24) April 26, 2019

The observation aircraft graced US skies after taking off from Rosecrans Air National Guard Base in St. Joseph, Missouri on Thursday. The flight reportedly lasted six hours and saw the surveillance aircraft fly over a series of US defense and storage facilities scattered over the territory of West Texas, New Mexico and Colorado. This year’s flight was the first time the new Russian aircraft had graced American skies.

The plane is reported to have flown over the Kirtland Air Force Base, home of the Air Force Nuclear Weapons Center, and functions as a nuclear storage site. In Colorado, the plane passed over the Pueblo Chemical Depot, one of the last two sites in the US with chemical munitions and materials.

Open Skies was signed in 1992, but did not come into force until 2002. The US and Russia are among its 34 members. According to the treaty, the flights must be monitored by officials of the home countries.

Tu-214ON is an updated version of the regular Tu-214. Its cockpit can fit two more people, which allowed the manufacturer to install more modern electronics. Its range has increased to a reported 6,500km (4,040 miles). The aircraft boasts three sensor arrays that include a digital photo camera, an infrared camera, and a TV camera complete with a sideways-looking synthetic aperture radar.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2GCHVn9 Tyler Durden

Authored by Mike Whitney via The Unz Review,

Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign?

Yes

Did the FBI place spies in the Trump campaign?

Yes

Do we know the names of the spies and how they operated?

Yes

Were the spies trying to entrap Trump campaign assistants in order to gather information on Trump?

Yes

Did the spies try to elicit information from Trump campaign assistants in order to justify a wider investigation and more extensive surveillance?

Yes

Were the spies placed in the Trump campaign based on improperly obtained FISA warrants?

Yes

Did the FBI agents procure these warrants based on false or misleading information?

Yes

Could the FBI establish “probable cause” that Trump had committed a crime or “colluded” with Russia?

No

So the ‘spying’ was illegal?

Yes

Have many of the people who authorized the spying, already been identified in criminal referrals presented to the Department of Justice?

Yes

Have the media explained the importance of these criminal referrals or the impact that spying has on free elections?

No

Is the DOJ’s Inspector General currently investigating whether senior-level agents in the FBI committed crimes by improperly obtaining warrants to spy on members of the Trump team?

Yes

Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign to give Hillary Clinton an unfair advantage in the presidential race?

Yes

Did the FBI spy on the Trump campaign to gather incriminating information on Trump that could be used to blackmail, intimidate or impeach him in the future?

Yes

Does spying pose a threat to our elections and to our democracy?

Yes

Do many people know that there were spies placed in the Trump campaign?

Yes

Have these people effectively used that information to their advantage?

No

Have they launched any type of public relations offensive that would draw more attention to the critical issue of spying on a political campaign?

No

Have they saturated the airwaves with the truth about “spying” the same way their rivals have spread their disinformation about “collusion”?

No

Do they understand that the country is currently embroiled in a fratricidal, scorched earth political civil war in which one side is determined to prevail at all cost?

No

Do they understand that the people who authorized the spying and who perpetrated the coup will do everything in their power to prevent that information from getting out?

No

Does it look like senior-level agents at the FBI, the CIA, the DOJ, the NSA and the Obama White House knew that there were spies in the Trump campaign?

Yes

Did these same senior-level agents at the FBI, the CIA, the DOJ, the NSA and the Obama White House cooperate in a plan to undermine and delegitimize the Trump presidency?

Yes

Did they use false or misleading information to infer the president was an agent of a foreign power?

Yes

Did they know this false and misleading information was unreliable, unverified raw intelligence that was paid for by the DNC and Hillary Clinton?

Yes

Was there a conspiracy to remove Trump from office or to sabotage his presidency through the dissemination of false information?

Yes

Does the use of spies, wiretapping, “unmasking”, strategically-leaked information to the media, and other forms of electronic surveillance suggest that there are organized elements within the permanent bureaucracy which no longer accept the democratic process?

Yes

Is it fair to say that these people are the enemies of free elections?

Yes

Is it possible for patriotic officials in the Justice Department and in the U.S. Congress to stand up to this powerful deep state apparatus, expose what happened during the 2016 presidential campaign, identify the perpetrators, and bring them to justice?

It is possible, but not likely.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UJ9EYb Tyler Durden

More details are out following North Korean leader Kim Jong Un’s first ever face-to-face talks with President Putin in the Russian Pacific port of Vladivostok on Thursday.

Kim reportedly told Putin that a state of hostility and tensions could easily return should Washington fail to show a more flexible position, signaling existing offers of US security guarantees for Pyongyang giving up its nuclear program would not be enough, according to Reuters.

Kim further said he welcomed Putin’s support, and photographs of the meeting showed warm and cordial relations. Putin had stated after the meeting that any US security guarantees ought to be backed by other nations involved in prior six-way talks on the nuclear issue, which involved Russia, the US, North Korea, South Korea, China, and Japan.

However, Kim also warned, “The situation on the Korean peninsula and the region is now at a standstill and has reached a critical point where it may return to its original state as the U.S. took a unilateral attitude in bad faith at the recent second DPRK-U.S. summit talks,” according to North Korea’s official KCNA news agency. “The DPRK will gird itself for every possible situation,” Kim added.

President Trump’s reaction to the Putin-Kim summit was positive, as he told reporters at the White House on Friday: “I think we’re doing very well with North Korea. A lot of progress is being made,” and crucially, he added:

“I appreciated President Putin’s statement yesterday. He wants to see it done also. I think there’s a lot of excitement for getting a deal done with North Korea.”

The six-way talks Putin referenced had ended in 2009, and had involved Russia; Putin offered this track as a way to build step-by-step trust, according to Reuters. 

“They only need guarantees about their security. That’s it. All of us together need to think about this,” Putin told reporters following the meeting. His emphasis was on the need for an international process ensuring every step, something however which didn’t stop the US from pulling out of the 2015 brokered JCPOA Iran nuclear deal.

North Korea’s KCNA also noted the Kim-Putin discussion also focused on advancing strategic communication and tactical collaboration related to peace on the Korean peninsula. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2UHsa33 Tyler Durden

Since the release of special counsel Robert Mueller’s redacted report, several questions have been asked as to why certain things were not investigated, and key players were never interviewed, according to President Trump. 

Isn’t it amazing that the people who were closest to me, by far, and knew the Campaign better than anyone, were never even called to testify before Mueller. The reason is that the 18 Angry Democrats knew they would all say ‘NO COLLUSION’ and only very good things!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) April 22, 2019

Perhaps the most glaring omission is Mueller’s failure to consider that the infamous “Steele Dossier” – which used Kremlin sources – could have been Russian disinformation itself. 

Asking that very question, the Wall Street Journal’s Kimberly Strassel opines on this “stunning omission.” 

Kimberly Strassel via the Wall Street Journal

Politicians keep reminding us not to lose sight of special counsel Robert Mueller’s broader assignment: to investigate Russia’s interference in the 2016 election. If only someone had reminded Mr. Mueller.

One of the biggest failures of the Mueller probe concerns not what was in the final report, but what was not. Close readers will search in vain for any analysis of the central document in this affair: the infamous “dossier.” It’s a stunning omission, given the possibility that the Russians used that collection of reports to feed disinformation to U.S. intelligence agencies, sparking years of political maelstrom.

The dossier—compiled by former British spy Christopher Steele on behalf of Fusion GPS, an opposition-research firm working for the Hillary Clinton campaign and the Democratic National Committee—fed to the Federal Bureau of Investigation and the media the principal allegations of the “collusion” narrative. It claimed Paul Manafort was at the center of a “well-developed” Trump-Russia “conspiracy”; that Carter Page served as his intermediary, conducting secret meetings with a Kremlin official and the head of a state energy company; that Michael Cohen held a clandestine meeting in Prague with Vladimir Putin cronies; and that the Russians had compromising material on Donald Trump, making him vulnerable to blackmail. The dossier was clearly important to the FBI probe. Its wild claims made up a significant section of the FBI’s application for a secret surveillance warrant on Mr. Page.

The Mueller report exposes the dossier claims as pure fiction. Yet in describing the actions of the Trump campaign figures the FBI accused, the report assiduously avoids any mention of the dossier or its allegations. Mr. Mueller refers to Mr. Steele and his work largely in passing, as part of the report’s description of how former FBI Director James Comey informed Mr. Trump of the dossier’s existence. The dossier is blandly described several times as “unverified allegations compiled” by Mr. Steele.

Once Mr. Mueller established that the dossier was a pack of lies, he should have investigated how it gained such currency at the highest levels of the FBI. Yet his report makes clear he had no interest in plumbing the antics of the bureau, which he led from 2001-13. Instead, he went out of his way to avoid the dossier and give cover to the FBI.

The special counsel had another, more pressing reason to look at the dossier: It fell within his core mission. Since its publication by BuzzFeed in January 2017, we’ve learned enough about Mr. Steele and Fusion GPS to wonder if the Russians used the dossier for their own malign purposes.

In the first telling, Mr. Steele was described by friendly media as simply a “former Western intelligence official” with a history at Britain’s overseas intelligence service. It turns out he worked in Russia. Mr. Steele spent his first years of service under diplomatic cover in Moscow, later in Paris. And in 1999 he was among 117 British spies whose covers were publicly blown by a disgruntled ex-MI6 officer.

The former spy, known to the public and therefore to Russia, also became known for sending reports to the U.S. government. Last year former Obama State Department official Jonathan Winer explained that in 2009 he became friendly with the self-employed Mr. Steele, and starting as early as 2013 ensured that “more than 100 of Steele’s reports” on Russia topics were shared with the State Department. Given that the dossier is largely based on Russian sources, some supposedly connected to the Kremlin, did the Kremlin know about this arrangement and see an opportunity to spoon-feed the U.S. government disinformation?

We’ve also learned more about Mr. Steele’s and Fusion’s connections to Russians. Mr. Steele sent a series of emails to Justice Department employee Bruce Ohr in 2016 inquiring about the status of a visa for Oleg Deripaska, an oligarch with Kremlin ties. Fusion GPS was working alongside Natalia Veselnitskaya, the Russian lawyer who arranged the infamous meeting with Donald Trump Jr. in June 2016. Fusion was hired as part of a team to help Ms. Veselnitskaya undermine Bill Browder, the man behind the Magnitsky Act, a law that imposes sanctions on Russians for corruption and human-rights violations.

How did Mr. Mueller spend two years investigating every aspect of Russian interference—cyberhacking, social-media trolling, meetings with Trump officials—and not consider the possibility that the dossier was part of the Russian interference effort?

Justice Department Inspector General Michael Horowitz and Attorney General William Barr may answer some of the questions Mr. Mueller refused to touch. Thanks to the special counsel we know Republicans weren’t playing footsie with Russians. But thanks to BuzzFeed, we know that Democrats were. America deserves to know how far that interaction extended.

Write to kim@wsj.com.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2L7vtBm Tyler Durden

The controversy over Saudi Crown Prince MbS’s alleged orchestration of the murder of Saudi dissident Jamal Khashoggi has largely subsided since the government insider-turned-critic walked into the kingdom’s consulate in Istanbul in early October and never walked out. But a new controversy is brewing over one of the kingdom’s most controversial practices: Its mass-beheadings of men convicted of ‘terrorism’ charges, typically members of the Shiite minority living in the eastern part of the kingdom.

Saudi Arabia has long practiced execution by beheading. But this year, the mass extermination of 37 of mostly Shiite men this week provoked condemnation from the UN and other human rights organizations, as several teenage boys were executed for crimes as seemingly petty a sending Whatsapp messages about government demonstrations.

One particularly disturbing case was recounted in the UK’s The Sun tabloid. Abdulkareem al-Hawaj was just just 16 when he was arrested. Just a schoolboy at the time, he was detained and accused of being a “terrorist” for sending texts online about an anti-government demonstration.

Before making his ‘confession’, Abdulkareem, a Shiite Muslim who was 21 at the time of his execution, was reportedly brutally tortured. With his hands chained above his head, he was beaten and electrocuted. Amnesty International denounced his trial as a farce, since he was denied access to proper defense counsel.

Police also reportedly threatened to kill his family if he didn’t confess to his crimes.

Abdulkareem al-Hawaj

But Abdulkareem wasn’t the only man executed this week over seemingly minor offenses committed when he was a teenager. Mujtaba al-Sweikat, was a teenager who was set to begin his studies at Western Michigan University when he was arrested for attending an anti-government protest.

Then just 17 years old, Sweikat was badly beaten after his arrest, including being repeatedly bludgeoned on the soles of his feet, before he “confessed” to crimes against the state.

Human rights organizations said he was tortured and convicted during a “sham trial.” His university tried to intervene, insisting that he had ‘great promise’, but the government ignored their protests.

Harriet McCulloch, deputy director of Reprieve, a human rights organization, insisted both young men were killed for sharing information about a peaceful anti-government protest.

“Many things can be used to justify a death sentence in Mohammed Bin Salman’s Saudi Arabia, including ‘disobedience against the King,'”

“preparing banners with anti-state slogans” and “incitement via social media” are also offenses that potentially carry the weight of death.

“Mujtaba al-Sweikat and Abdulkarim al-Hawaj were teenagers sharing information about peaceful protests on their mobile phones. Saudi Arabia’s western allies must act now, to prevent any more young people being killed for exercising their right to freedom of expression.”

Another young man, Munir al-Adam, was just 23, when he was arrested in 2012 at a government checkpoint. During his interrogation, his feet were so badly beaten that he was forced to crawl for days. After losing hearing in one of his ears, he was rendered completely deaf after the horrific torture.

He told a judge that he agreed to sign the confession because he was exhausted by the brutal and relentless torture.

The 37 murders were carried out in Riyadh, the Muslim holy cities of Mecca and Medina, central Qassim province and in the Eastern Province, the home of the Shiite minority. After being beheaded, one of the men was reportedly crucified, and his body was put on display as a message to other would-be dissidents.

That message? This is what could happen to you and your loved ones if you dare speak out against the crown.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IN1Ra9 Tyler Durden

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

Both new households and new businesses are in secular decline. Goosing the stock market and GDP doesn’t change this reality.

Everyone wants every cycle of expansion to last forever, but alas every cycle ends. The growth cycle that began in 2009 is finally coming to an end. The signs are everywhere, notwithstanding the torrid 3.2% GDP growth for the first quarter of 2019 (which as others have noted, is less than meets the eye.)

Gross Domestic Product (GDP) is the standard measure of expansion, but it is an imperfect metric. GDP can still notch gains while the majority of the economy is stagnating and assets are losing value.

Better guides to expansion than GDP are sales volumes, prices, profits, wage increases and sustained rises in new enterprises and households. All of these measures of expansion are stagnant, indicating that monetary and fiscal stimulus are no longer moving the needle.

Corporate profits are higher as a result of accounting gimmicks, not soaring sales or expanding gross profit margins. Stocks are being pushed higher by the old trick of lowering earnings estimates so that corporations can “beat by penny.”

In many once-hot real estate markets, sales are slowing while prices continued edging higher but at much slower rates than in the past. This is classic late-cycle activity: sales are declining as the pool of buyers has been drained while price increases have become marginal.

Global sales of pricey mobile phones and vehicles have slowed, indicating the exhaustion of the cycle is global. Again, this is classic late-cycle activity: trends that powered the narrative of “strong growth everywhere” are fading, despite attempts to hype some blip as a sign that strong growth is about to start up again.

New households and enterprises drive expansion. New households buy homes, furniture, home improvements, appliances and so on, while new businesses buy equipment, hire workers and sign on professional services such as accounting, insurance, etc.

Both new households and new businesses are in secular decline. Goosing the stock market and GDP doesn’t change this reality.

Prices are reaching unaffordable levels across the board: homes and rents in big cities are unaffordable, fine dining is unaffordable, property taxes are unaffordable, construction is unaffordable, autos and trucks are mostly unaffordable, fast food is increasingly unaffordable, college tuition is beyond-unaffordable, healthcare and healthcare insurance are insanely unaffordable– the list includes the vast majority of the costs of living. (Cheap TVs are getting a bit cheaper. Yea for low inflation!)

Rising prices are also classic late-cycle signs. To make a buck, everyone has to raise prices and cut what they can, and rising prices impacts sales.

As for the stock market: a blow-off top based on the misplaced confidence that strong growth is starting up again is also classic late-cycle action. The first doubts triggered the decline from October to December, and the sharp rebound this year once the Federal Reserve signaled “we’ll do whatever it takes” is very typical of the late-cycle topping process: price sags as doubts emerge about the aging expansion, then notches a nominal new high to assuage everyone that the long-in-tooth Bull is starting another multi-year expansion.

Those being paid to hype “the Bull market and the expansion will never end” narrative are experts at turning late-cycle blips into evidence that the cycle has plenty of room to run, but the more prudent observers are looking at the preponderance of evidence.

*  *  *

If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. New benefit for subscribers/patrons: a monthly Q&A where I respond to your questions/topics.

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

In January, 2016, the Obama White House summoned Ukrainian authorities to Washington to discuss several ongoing matters under the guise of coordinating “anti-corruption efforts,” reports The Hill‘s John Solomon. 

The January 2016 gathering, confirmed by multiple participants and contemporaneous memos, brought some of Ukraine’s top corruption prosecutors and investigators face to face with members of former President Obama’s National Security Council (NSC), FBI, State Department and Department of Justice (DOJ).

The agenda suggested the purpose was training and coordination. But Ukrainian participants said it didn’t take long — during the meetings and afterward — to realize the Americans’ objectives included two politically hot investigations: one that touched Vice President Joe Biden’s family and one that involved a lobbying firm linked closely to then-candidate Trump. –The Hill

The Obama officials – likely knowing that lobbyist Paul Manafort was about to join President Trump’s campaign soon (he joined that March), were interested in reviving a closed investigation into payments to US figures from Ukraine’s pro-Russia Party of Regions – which both Paul Manafort and Tony Podesta did unregistered work for, according to former Ukrainian Embassy political officer Andrii Telizhenko. 

The 2014 investigation focused heavily on Manafort, whose firm was tied to Trump through his longtime partner and Trump adviser, Roger Stone.

Agents interviewed Manafort in 2014 about whether he received undeclared payments from the party of ousted Ukrainian President Viktor Yanukovych, an ally of Russia’s Vladimir Putin, and whether he engaged in improper foreign lobbying.

The FBI shut down the case without charging Manafort 

Telizhenko and other attendees of the January, 2016 meeting recall DOJ employees asking Ukrainian investigators from their National Anti-Corruption Bureau (NABU) if they could locate new evidence about the Party of Regions’ payments to Americans. 

“It was definitely the case that led to the charges against Manafort and the leak to U.S. media during the 2016 election,” said Telizhenko – which makes the January 2016 gathering in DC one of the earliest documented efforts to compile a case against Trump and those in his orbit. 

Nazar Kholodnytskyy, Ukraine’s chief anti-corruption prosecutor, told me he attended some but not all of the January 2016 Washington meetings and couldn’t remember the specific cases, if any, that were discussed.

But he said he soon saw evidence in Ukraine of political meddling in the U.S. election. Kholodnytskyy said the key evidence against Manafort — a ledger showing payments from the Party of Regions — was known to Ukrainian authorities since 2014 but was suddenly released in May 2016 by the U.S.-friendly NABU, after Manafort was named Trump’s campaign chairman.

“Somebody kept this black ledger secret for two years and then showed it to the public and the U.S. media. It was extremely suspicious,” said Kholodnytskyy – who specifically instructed NABU not to share the “black ledger” with the media. 

“I ordered the detectives to give nothing to the mass media considering this case. Instead, they had broken my order and published themselves these one or two pages of this black ledger regarding Paul Manafort,” he added. “For me it was the first call that something was going wrong and that there is some external influence in this case. And there is some other interests in this case not in the interest of the investigation and a fair trial.”

Manafort joined Trump’s campaign on March 29, 2016 and became campaign manager on May 19, 2016. The ledger’s existence leaked on May 29, 2016, while Manafort would be fired from the Trump campaign that August. 

NABU leaked the existence of the ledgers on May 29, 2016. Later that summer, it told U.S. media the ledgers showed payments to Manafort, a revelation that forced him to resign from the campaign in August 2016.

A Ukrainian court in December concluded NABU’s release of the ledger was an illegal attempt to influence the U.S. election. And a member of Ukraine’s parliament has released a recording of a NABU official saying the agency released the ledger to help Democratic nominee Hillary Clinton’s campaign.

If the media continues to ignore the possible Ukrainian-DNC conspiracy in 2016 to find and create damaging information about Trump, Manafort and the Trump campaign, it will amount to corruption. For those of us still open to change, help us and cover it. You know it’s NEWS!

— Rudy Giuliani (@RudyGiuliani) April 27, 2019

Ignoring others, protecting Bidens

Kostiantyn Kulyk – deputy head of the Ukraine prosecutor general’s international affairs office, said that Ukraine also had evidence of other Western figures receiving money from Yanukovych’s party – such as former Obama White House counsel Gregory Craig – but the Americans weren’t interested. 

“They just discussed Manafort. This was all and only what they wanted. Nobody else,” said Kulyk. 

Another case raised at the January 2016 meeting involved the Bidens – specifically Burisma Holdings; a Ukrainian energy company which was under investigation at the time for improper foreign transfers of money. Burisma allegedly paid then-Vice President Joe Biden’s son Hunter more than $3 million in 2014-15 as both a board member and a consultant, according to bank records. 

According to Telizhenko, U.S. officials told the Ukrainians they would prefer that Kiev drop the Burisma probe and allow the FBI to take it over. The Ukrainians did not agree. But then Joe Biden pressured Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to fire Ukraine’s chief prosecutor in March 2016, as I previously reported. The Burisma case was transferred to NABU, then shut down.

The Ukrainian Embassy in Washington on Thursday confirmed the Obama administration requested the meetings in January 2016, but embassy representatives attended only some of the sessions.

Last Wednesday on Fox and Friends, Trump attorney Rudy Giuliani said “I ask you to keep your eye on Ukraine,” referring to collusion to help Hillary Clinton in the 2016 election.  

What’s more, DOJ documents support Telizhenko’s claim that the DOJ reopened its Manafort case as the 2016 election ramped up – including communications between Associate Attorney General Bruce Ohr, his wife, Nellie, and ex-British spy Christopher Steele, as Solomon writes. 

Nellie Ohr and Steele worked in 2016 for the research firm, Fusion GPS, that was hired by Clinton’s campaign and the Democratic National Committee (DNC) to find Russia dirt on Trump. Steele wrote the famous dossier for Fusion that the FBI used to gain a warrant to spy on the Trump campaign. Nellie Ohr admitted to Congress that she routed Russia dirt on Trump from Fusion to the DOJ through her husband during the election.

DOJ emails show Nellie Ohr on May 30, 2016, directly alerted her husband and two DOJ prosecutors specializing in international crimes to the discovery of the “black ledger” documents that led to Manafort’s prosecution.

“Reported Trove of documents on Ukrainian Party of Regions’ Black Cashbox,” Nellie Ohr wrote to her husband and federal prosecutors Lisa Holtyn and Joseph Wheatley, attaching a news article on the announcement of NABU’s release of the documents.

Politico reported previously that the Ukrainian Embassy in Washington assisted the Hillary Clinton campaign through a DNC contractor, while the Ukrainian Embassy acknowledges that it got requests from a DNC staffer to find dirt on Manafort (though it denies providing any improper assistance.” 

As Solomon concludes: “what is already confirmed by Ukrainians looks a lot more like assertive collusion with a foreign power than anything detailed in the Mueller report.”

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

The ‘patient’ Fed has been lamenting the “lack of inflation” for far too long. It is about to get its wish.

American food merchants are struggling to import fruits and vegetables from Mexico as wait times at port of entries along the Mexico–US border have surged because of a shift in Customs and Border Protection (CBP) personnel away from the port of entries to remote regions of the border to fight illegal crossings. As a result, shipments of food have dramatically declined in recent weeks, and the result is an imminent spike in imported food prices in the coming months that could put a sizeable dent in consumer wallets.

Fruit and vegetable importers that wholesale to grocery stores throughout the US, could inflate prices by at least 20% to 40% if the wait times continue, with avocado prices already soaring (see “Mexican Avocado Prices Explode By Most In A Decade After Trump Border Threat“).

After the avocado price surge, cucumbers, eggplants, bell peppers, squash, cherry tomatoes, watermelons, and most other fruit and vegetables imported from the tropics would be affected.

“(The) Mexican border, it’s one of the most important crossings to the United States,” said Joshua Duran, Amore Produce sales representative.

About 43% of all US fruit and vegetables originate from Mexico. In the last several decades, Mexico has become the top trading partner with the US. Much of the US-Mexico commerce involves mega-corporations that send products back and forth across the border as part of a critical segment of their supply chain that has increased since the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) took effect in 1994.

This month [April], distributor Amore Produce truck drivers hauling product from Mexico have experienced a 300% wait time at the various port of entries along the Mexico–US border, stuck in line for up to 15 hours.

“Now we are having a lot of problems in the border,” Duran said. “So, let’s say we used to have like five hours. We’re getting 10 or 15 hours to pass that truck to the United States…one or two (gates) are not enough to get all the entire trucks coming from Mexico and not only for produce, for all the products that people here in the United States get from Mexico.”

Increase wait times have depleted cold storage inventories of McAllen Produce Terminal Market, located just 20 minutes from the border. Duran said the importer cannot ship fresh produce across the country anymore becuase their truck drivers are waiting almost a day to move product across the port of entry – by the time it makes it to the US, the produce won’t make it fresh to the wholesaler.

“We couldn’t get it here and we couldn’t send it to the customers in the north,” Duran said.

Marabella Produce owner Alejandro Knight suggested that wait time increases have impacted his cold-storage levels in the last month. Knight said his warehouse is always at full capacity, but now, the floors are covered with empty pallets. Most of the produce Knight receives from Mexico is spoiled, thanks to wait time increases, warehouse workers have to immediately throw out the produce once it arrives.

“We cannot deliver a fresh product anymore if we have to wait for each load to cross, five to six days, it’s impossible to work like this,” Knight warned.

Knight said Mexican farmers are now “afraid” to export fruits and vegetables to the US because of extended wait times.

Salavador Contreras, an economist at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, said if wait times increase, it could inflate produce for everyday American consumers.

“It’s going to be felt at the grocery stores when we start paying more for limes and our avocados at the grocery store,” Contreras said.

If the wait times persist at the border, in the coming months Americans will be shocked by soaring prices in the produce section of their local grocery stores, a move that could reverse consumer sentiment right before an important election year. But at least the Fed will be delighted: it will have achieved some of that “symmetric” inflation overshoot it has been seeking for so long… and all thanks to Trump.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2XR8Nqa Tyler Durden

In the wake of last weekend’s devastating attacks, which killed a total of 253 people across more than six locations, including three churches and three luxury hotels, Sri Lankan President Maithripala Sirisena has vowed to leave no suspect’s home undisturbed as police round up every one in the country of 20 million with even a passing affiliation with Islamic fundamentalist groups.

Sirisena, whose government failed to act on an intelligence memo warning of the impending attacks 10 days prior, has been struggling to rebuild the public’s confidence, claiming that he never saw the memos while firing one of his defense ministers and pushing a police chief inspector general to quit (so far, he has refused).

Yet so far, the raids have been successful, as police have captured dozens of suspects and seized bombs, weapons and ISIS flags. However, violence has erupted that has caused the total death toll from the attacks to climb. On Friday, violence erupted during raids on suspected bomb-building sites and other terrorist strongholds. Police have said they believe some 140 members of ISIS are in the country, and that only 70 have been taken into custody.

According to Bloomberg, a total of 15 bodies, including six children, were recovered after a lengthy gun battle between military police and suspected Islamic militants linked to the bombings. The suspects were killed after police raided a house in Sainthamaruthu on Friday; earlier, police had said they believed four gunmen and a civilian had been killed. Police scoured the area after one of the bombings happened in nearby Batticaloa.

Three suicide bombers were among the dead, according to military spokesman Sumith Atapattu, who said they were suspected members of National Towheed Jama’at, the domestic group believed to have partnered with ISIS in carrying out the attacks. Unfortunately, suicide bombers detonating explosives has become a troubling theme during the raids. Earlier in the week, the daughter-in-law of a wealthy spice merchant whose sons were among the assailants in Sunday’s attacks killed herself, two of her children and several officers when they raided the family compound.

Earlier, two militants and one civilian were killed in a firefight between troops and suspected militants near Sammanthurai. The fighting erupted on Friday night after troops raided a safe house on a tip from police, encountering militants who set off multiple explosions and opened fire.

Since the raids began in the days after Sunday’s attacks, police have seized explosives, military uniforms, detonators, materials used to make suicide vests, and Islamic State flags. Some 10,000 soldiers have participated in the raids. The FBI has been assisting local police in the attacks.

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