Category: zerohedge

Authored by Nicholas Colas via DataTrekResearch.com,

Today we update our statistical work on the relationship between bitcoin’s price and the S&P 500.

 The notion that bitcoin is a “Stub” asset (the riskiest piece of a capital structure) in global capital markets is getting some traction lately. The idea, in a nutshell, is that crypto currencies are increasingly part of the financial mainstream (numerous haters notwithstanding) and their fortunes are inherently tied to the risk tolerances that support all assets.

Higher price correlations should therefore follow, even if bitcoin remains a very volatile asset.

Short-term price correlations (measured in 10 day rolling averages) during the recent selloff in US stocks absolutely exhibit a high degree of linkage, but we need to call out a few caveats as well:

• The 10-day historical correlations between bitcoin and the S&P 500 reached 0.79 on February 6th, right in the middle of the sharp decline in US stocks. For those of you with a statistical bent, that is an R-squared (coefficient of determination, rather than correlation) of 62%. Not bad for a one-variable model, to be sure.

• This 10-day measure also shows that the relationship between bitcoin and stocks declined rapidly in the days that followed. By February 21st they had turned negative. As of today, the correlation was just 0.37.

• It is also worth noting that 10-day price return correlations between bitcoin and the S&P have been high several times in recent years, and long before it was widely followed by the financial press. Examples include: February 22, 2016 (0.77 correlation), July 14th 2016 (0.80), April 21st, 2017 (0.81), and September 8th (0.80).

• Bottom line: high short-term correlations between bitcoin and stocks are nothing new. (And one word of explanation: financial services professionals typically refer to correlations in percentage terms, even though they are obviously an index between -1.0 and +1.0. We follow that convention in our other work, but we find that bitcoin gets a lot of attention from math/stats people who are real sticklers about percentages reflecting R-squared data. In deference to them, we use their convention in this note.)

Now, over the longer term, there is a statistical story about bitcoin and US stocks being increasingly tethered to the same market appetite for risk. The data here:

• We’ve included two charts below. One shows the 90-day correlation between the S&P 500 and bitcoin, the other highlights the correlation between US large cap Tech stocks (using the XLK exchange traded fund) and the crypto currency.

• With this longer-term timeframe, you can see that bitcoin now shows a much higher correlation to US stocks than for much of the last 2 years (the graph starts in January 2016). The lift-off point was in August 2017 when bitcoin went from a history of almost complete non-correlation to a 0.10 correlation coefficient and (more recently) 0.25-0.30.

• Statistically minded people will note that this translates only to a 6-9% R-squared. Markets people will look at the chart and say “the trend is not the friend” of considering bitcoin as a non-correlated asset going forward.

• Since bitcoin is a technology as well as a crypto currency, a comparison between it and US large cap Tech stocks is also worth a look. The data shows essentially the same relationship between bitcoin and US stocks, although a modestly tighter fit during last Fall.

The upshot here is twofold:

• Bitcoin seems to track US stocks when they fall (witness earlier this month) more than when they rise. That makes sense to us. A sudden shift in risk tolerances pulls capital out of all risk assets. The same thing happened with gold during the Financial Crisis, when the yellow metal was down in 2008 along with everything else.

• Over time, bitcoin’s price will be set not by equity prices but by its own fundamentals. The long run correlations show that well enough, and it makes intuitive sense as well.

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The Broward County State Attorney’s office launched over 66 misconduct investigations by Sheriff’s deputies going back to 2012, reports Journalist and Fox News contributor Sara Carter.

Many of the claims against officers – ranging from drug trafficking to kidnapping, happened under the watch of beleaguered Sheriff Scott Israel, whose office is now under investigation over allegations that his deputies failed to allow first responders to treat patients at Stoneman Douglas High School following the Feb. 14 massacre which left 17 dead, and that several deputies failed to enter the school to defend the children during the shooting – with reports of a “stand down” order emerging over the last 24 hours.

Israel has defiantly pushed back against criticism, refusing to step down in the wake of what many believe to have been a preventable incident. 

Over the weekend Israel fought back on calls for his resignation saying the actions of his deputies were “[not] his responsibility” when they failed to enter the high school that was under siege by Nikolas Cruz, 19. Police responded to calls regarding Cruz over 45 times over a seven-year period, although Israel disputes the report, stating his office only received 23 calls during that time frame.  The FBI also received a detailed call on Jan. 5,  warning that Cruz had posted disturbing images of slaughtered animals and comments on his Instagram saying he wanted to kill people, according to reports. The FBI stated on Feb. 16, that the tip was not forwarded to the FBI Miami Field Office. –Sara Carter

Israel’s office under fire

The existence of 66 BSO internal investigations came to light in a civil suit filed by the family of an African-American IT engineer, Jermaine McBean, who was killed in 2013 by Broward Sheriff’s deputies responding to a call that McBean was walking around with a weapon which turned out to be an unloaded air rifle resting on his shoulders, according to witnesses.

The officer who shot him was indicted for homicide, which was later dismissed and is now under review by the state Supreme Court – however the shocking number of internal investigations into BSO deputies for a wide variety of criminal behavior has become extremely relevant in light of recent events.

“Approximately 66 BSO (Broward Sheriff’s Office) deputies and other employees, including supervisory personnel were arrested for, charged with, and/or convicted of crimes that run the gamut from Armed Kidnapping, to Battery, Assault, Falsifying records, Official Misconduct, Narcotics trafficking, and other crimes involving dishonesty and violence in the years immediately proceeding 2013 when Jermaine was killed. Most of the offenses on the list occurred in the years 2012-2013,” according to court records filed against Israel and the Broward County Sheriff deputy defendants.

“Often the cases against BSO (Broward Sheriff’s Office) employees are resolved by guilty pleas resulting in short or no period of incarceration and a chance for the criminal record to be cleared after a period of time.”

Two months after McBean’s shooting, Sheriff Israel awarded two of the deputies the prestegious Broward Sheriff’s Office “Gold Cross Award,” however he later said they should have received them under mounting criticism. 

The deputy who shot McBean, Peter Peraza, was eventually suspended more than two years after the incident and indicted for homicide. A local judge dismissed the indictment on Florida’s “stand your ground” law in Aug 2017 – however the Florida Supreme Court has taken the case on review, vacating the court’s lower order.

The criminal section of the Department of Justice’s civil right’s division now has an open investigation into McBean’s death, Schoen said. Israel is always shifting blame and the “buck never stops with him,” Schoen said. The most current Brady list has not yet been made available and those numbers are expected to increase, he added. –Sara Carter

Florida’s Stand Your Ground law was ruled unconsititutional last July, as Miami-Dade Circuit Judge Milton Hirsch ruled that it allowed lawmakers to overstep their authorities – and that the state Supreme Court should have crafted the law in the first place. 

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The biggest financial fraud in India’s history just got bigger.

On Monday, Punjab National Bank disclosed that a fraud previously believed to be $1.7 billion had swollen to $2 billion as the true extent of the fraud is still coming into focus.

But the impact that this now-$2 billion fraud has had on the shares of PNB and other state-run Indian banks is having a wide-ranging impact across the country’s financial system, according to Bloomberg.

Foreign banks, worried about the systemic lapses that the scandal has exposed, have become unwilling to lend money to smaller Indian firms – causing massive disruptions in trade finance. All of this pressure has hammered the Indian rupee, which is on track for its first monthly drop since September. This is largely because India’s economy, like the US, runs a trade deficit, and depends on capital inflows to function.

Foreign capital comes through foreign funds’ purchases of Indian stocks and bonds, local exporters’ sale of foreign-currency earnings and dollar loans from foreign banks. India is one of the world’s biggest users of trade funding worldwide, according to the ICC Global Survey 2017.

The fraud was purportedly masterminded by Nirav Modi and his uncle Mehul Choksi, both of whom are on the run.

The two men worked with a PNB employee named Gokulnath Shetty, who recently retired. Shetty would issue fraudulent letters of undertaking to help companies create by Choksi and Modi apply for loans through the foreign branches of other Indian banks. The fraud continued as, when it came time to repay the loans, Shetty would issue still more LoU’s to cover the balance.

Citigroup Inc., Deutsche Bank AG, Standard Chartered Plc and HSBC Holdings Plc are among banks reducing exposure to these transactions, used by smaller companies to access short-term dollar funding, said people with knowledge of the matter. As questions are raised about the creditworthiness of guarantees from Indian state-run banks, rates have risen by as much as 0.5 percentage point for some types of financing, the people said, asking not to be identified as the details are private.

Spokesmen in Mumbai for Deutsche Bank, HSBC and Citigroup declined to comment. “We continue to support our clients on transactions that meet our internal controls and standards,” a spokesman for Standard Chartered said by email.

If doubts about the safety of Indian firms continue to grow, some firms may soon be forced to pay a full percentage point above Libor, compared with 0.5 percentage point before the PNB fraud was disclosed. As Bloomberg points out, the interlinked nature of global trade means trust is a crucial component of these transactions.

The one silver lining is that at least larger Indian companies, which have direct access to funding from foreign lenders and don’t rely on interim guarantees, haven’t been affected by the credit crunch.

Possibly making matters worse, PNB has blamed other banks for negligence by failing to detect the fraud, though the fact that the bank’s internal controls weren’t connected to SWIFT – the international banking telecommunications system – making it much more difficult to detect the fraud.

So the real question is: Will India’s banking regulators finally act to install meaningful controls? Or will the fallout from this short-term finance crunch continue to worsen until it blossoms into an acute capital-flight crisis.

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Welcome to the exciting new world of Bitcoin.

A cryptocurrency strip club called ‘The Legends Room’ has become the first of its kind in Las Vegas, where strippers wear temporary QR tattoos as a wallet to process bitcoin payments. This new feature provides patrons and strippers with an anonymous, decentralized payment solution for transacting naughty services, usually bought with cash or credit cards — that often leaves a money trail.

The cryptocurrency strip club opened in May 2017 by martial arts trainer Nick Blomgren, who dreamed up the scheme to use cryptocurrency payments so patrons can keep their visits secret from loved ones, said Las Vegas I-TEAM.

“We came up with an idea probably about a year and a half ago of how we could turn this Bitcoin into something. So we were brainstorming. First, we were thinking about a fight company because I own a mixed martial arts gym. I was like well that would work better in a strip club. It’s the best place to spend it if you don’t want your wife to know or you don’t want your boyfriend to know,” said Blomgren.

He added that cryptos could be the next big thing; “Some people had the dot.com era and if you didn’t jump on then, you missed the boat. Well, I don’t feel I missed the boat this time, I got on the ground floor of something that’s going to be huge.”

Patrons who have a cryptocurrency wallet can directly scan the QR tattoos on the dancers’ body — they can also pay through traditional forms of payment i.e., cash or card.

Blomgren offers a substantial perk for patrons who wish to transact cryptocurrency in his club, that is a 20 percent discount on all club services.

Vanessa Murphy, an I-Team field reporter, had a fascinating conversation (documented below) with one stripper, who claims to have been in the crypto game for over 5-years. The stripper tells the reporter, “cryptocurrency may be the future for adult entertainment workers.”

Vanessa Murphy, I-Team Reporter: “How often do customers want to pay with Bitcoin?”

Brenna Sparks, adult entertainer: “Oh, quite often.  Like the people that come here, they are like really into crypto. I feel like it’s very smart. They are really into that.”

The dancer whose stage name is Brenna Sparks, says she became interested in cryptocurrency when she was just 19 years old. She’s now 26 years old.

“It’s peer to peer.  It’s anonymous, and it’s instant,” Sparks said.

Sparks says she and her friends think cryptocurrency may be the future for adult entertainment workers.

“I’m not going to name names, but there are certain banks that… will shut down your account and actually deny you from having an account because we work in the adult entertainment industry, said Summer Chase, adult entertainment worker.

The club’s DJ, known as Saint Clare, says part of her deal at the Legends Room is that part of her paycheck is cryptocurrency.

“When I first heard about the concept, I thought wow this is really something different, you know,” DJ Saint Clare said.

Vanessa Murphy, I-Team Reporter: “Do you check your account a lot?”

Brenna Sparks, adult entertainer: “I do (laughs).  It’s fun though. Once you invest, it becomes an everyday thing.”

And lastly, The Legends Room has its own cryptocurrency called LGD issued on Ethereum platform.

“In the beginning, it was like a lot of bitcoin guys came in, a lot of LGD members came in and wanted to use their LGD to see if they can buy anything here at the club because nobody really thought that the club existed in the beginning,” explained Blomgren.

“So now it’s, it’s become like curiosity. Let’s go down there and see if we can use our cryptocurrency.”

 

 

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Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

As with mostly anything that comes out of a US government-funded “think tank”, the findings don’t directly pin the blame on America for destabilizing other countries but they come close enough in proving a clear link between the US military and Hybrid Wars, though of course without presenting this relationship in a negative light or implying that the Pentagon is responsible for it.  

Sputnik reviewed a recently published book by the RAND Corporation in an article titled “US Military Aid Increases Odds of Civil War, State Repression in Recipients”, which reported that the “think tank’s” study on “U.S. Presence and the Incidence of Conflict” purportedly proved that there’s a scientifically verifiable correlation between the US military and certain types of conflicts. Upon skimming through the lengthy 152-page source document, that’s indeed the case, but the finer details revealed in the project’s findings deserve to be touched upon more in depth. Readers who don’t have the time to consult the original material might find it easier to go through the 2-page bullet point research synopsis instead, though they still won’t be getting the full picture.

Having said that, interested individuals should start by drawing their attention to Chapter 4, which concentrates on the “Empirical Assessment of U.S. Troop Presence and Interstate Conflict Behavior”. This is what the researchers concluded about the topic after conducting a complex statistical analysis using their unique methodology:

* U.S. Troop Presence Near Potential Target States Is Associated with a Lower Likelihood of Interstate War

 * U.S. Troop Presence Near Potential Initiator States Is Associated with a Lower Likelihood of Interstate War

 * U.S. Troop Presence in Potential Target States Is Associated with a Greater Likelihood of Low-Intensity Militarized Behavior

 * U.S. Troop Presence Near Potential Initiator States Is Associated with a Greater Likelihood of Low-Intensity Militarized Behavior

 * U.S. Troop Presence in Target States Is Associated with a Greater Likelihood That a Potential U.S. Adversary Will Initiate High-Intensity Militarized Behavior

 * Nearby U.S. Troop Presence Is Associated with a Lower Likelihood of High- and Low-Intensity Militarized Behavior by U.S. Allies

 * Nearby U.S. Troop Presence Is Associated with a Greater Likelihood That the United States Initiates High- and Low-Intensity Militarized Behavior

Basically, while US troop presence seemingly deters the incidence of international war, it actually contributes to “a greater likelihood of low-intensity militarized behavior”, which is just a euphemism for Hybrid War. The author described what this entails in his book on the general topic and subsequent multi-volume series detailing over 45 country studies related it whose scenarios could be advanced in order to disrupt, control, or influence China’s Silk Road projects through the exploitation of preexisting identity conflict variables in the targeted states. As it relates to the RAND study, there’s a clear relationship between US troops in “Lead From Behind” proxy states and an outbreak of Hybrid War in the theater, though the organization of course portrays this as not being related in any way do the US’ own policies but instead as a reaction to the so-called “potential US adversary” that was being targeted all along.

Either way and regardless of who initiates it (or as is probably case, if the targeted state proactively defends itself after being provoked, possibly through a false flag “rebel”/terrorist raid into its borders), more often than not the end result of a nearby US troop presence is nevertheless a category of conflict that is best described according to the author’s Hybrid War model.

Looking further, similar insight can be gleaned from Chapter 6 of the RAND Corporation’s study on the “Empirical Assessment of U.S. Presence and Intrastate Conflict Behavior”, which delves more deeply into the nuances of Hybrid War inside of states that are either hosting US troops or receiving military assistance from the Pentagon. Here’s what they claim to have discovered:

* U.S. Troop Presence Is Not Associated with Increased State Repression

 * U.S. Military Assistance Is Associated with Increased State Repression

 * U.S. Troop Presence Is Not Associated with the Likelihood of Anti-Regime Activities

 * U.S. Military Assistance Is Associated with Increased Anti-Regime Campaigns During the Cold War

 * U.S. Troop Presence Was Associated with Less Intrastate Conflict During the Cold War and More in the Post–Cold War Period

 * U.S. Military Assistance Was Associated with Increased Intrastate Armed Conflict During the Cold War

The first thing to notice is that there’s a clear distinction between US troops and military assistance, as well as the Cold War and post-Cold War eras. According to the 10 people involved in writing this report, the presence of US troops doesn’t generally make a difference one way or another whether the host government resorts to heavy-handed measures in dealing with unrest or not, nor does it apparently have an effect on provoking the rise of anti-government movements in those countries. Nowadays, though, deployment of US forces abroad is associated more with intrastate conflict in the post-Cold War period than beforehand, though this might be due to the Pentagon’s “Global War on Terror” focus on the “Global South” (“Third World”) countries that function coincidentally or not as the transit states along China’s Silk Road networks (a.k.a. the prime targets of Hybrid War).

US military assistance, however, has an altogether different effect on the battlespace, with the report writing that it actually increases what they term as “state repression” in the recipient states. During the Cold War-era, this was presumably dispatched in order to prevent or respond to communist insurgencies, but it seems to have had a circular effect of feeding these conflicts. The statistical analysis curiously doesn’t account for this happening in the present in the present day despite admitting that it does lead to more “state repression”, but the reason for this is probably because the comparatively  more advanced military and surveillance technologies employed today are much more effective at detecting “threats” in advance and proactively eliminating them, even if they’re not necessarily the “terrorists” that US-allied governments nowadays have a tendency of labelling them as.

Despite recognizing this possibility, it shouldn’t be discounted that the penultimate finding of “U.S. Troop Presence [Being] Associated with Less Intrastate Conflict During the Cold War and More in the Post–Cold War Period” might not entirely be because of where the Pentagon chooses to deploy, which could be in reaction to an outbreak of terrorism in any given country but one that was prepared to occur beforehand by the CIA and other intelligence agencies whose activities aren’t included in the RAND Corporation’s analysis. Accordingly, the criteria that they use for defining “intrastate conflicts” should be examined as well, as they define this in the context of their study as being “anti-regime campaigns in which domestic opposition groups initiate a coordinated and sustained campaign aimed at achieving maximalist goals against the incumbent regime, have a clear organizational structure, and include at least 1,000 participants” or “full-scale civil wars”.

While they importantly clarify that their definition does indeed include “campaigns [that] employ…non-violent tactics…since even nonviolent movements can radicalize or escalate their tactics”, which is a clear allusion to Color Revolutions and their predisposition to morph into Unconventional Wars in accordance with the author’s Hybrid War theory, this still prevents the study from incorporating some levels of modern-day terrorism that fall below their stipulated threshold of being an “intrastate conflict”. The relevance that this has to the analysis is that the “think tank’s” conclusions might be fundamentally flawed and therefore (whether deliberately or not) paint an inaccurate picture of the relationship between US military assistance and intrastate armed conflict in the post-Cold War period (the so-called “Global War on Terrorism”), thus hiding the Pentagon’s true relationship to anti-Silk Road Hybrid Wars.

In any case, despite its possible flaws and academic limitations (to say nothing of the culture of pro-Establishment “political correctness” that permeates such institutions), the RAND Corporation’s study is still an insightful document that inadvertently proves that there is a correlation between the US military and Hybrid War. As the clichéd saying in this field goes, “correlation doesn’t prove causation”, and while this is “technically” true in the confined “scientific” context of the research, the takeaway that objective observers should have from this report is that it nevertheless amounts to another piece of evidence in building the argument that such a relationship does in fact exist. When the findings from this report are incorporated into other analyses like what the author demonstrated in this article, the pertinent conclusion is that there are statistical grounds for suspecting the US military’s involvement in whatever Hybrid War that it’s accused of complicity in.

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US data has been ugly in recent weeks, disappointing to its weakest in 4 months…

European data has been gravely disappointing as Draghi tries to pull the region out of QE.

And tonight we get confirmation of Asia’s demise as first Japan and then China show signs of serious economic slowdowns.

First Japan, which saw retail sales plunge 1.8% – 3 times worse than expected, in January – the biggest plunge since Feb 2016…

But then Japanese Industrial Production crashed 6.6% MoM – its biggest collapse since the 2011 tsunami!

And then China data hit…

Even allowing for the lunar new year’s distortions, Chinese PMI data is a disaster, piling on to the disaster that saw 1st Tier home prices sink most since 2015, and Anbang Insurance bailed out by regulators (due to liquidity concerns).

While some suggested pollution curbs (or regulatory efforts to control debt and leverage) could be blamed for the declines, consensus economists were likely fully aware of the calendar and the government policies and still drastically misplaced their optimism.

The Manufacturing PMI fell to 50.3, compared with a 51.1 forecast in Bloomberg’s economist survey and 51.3 the prior month.

Under the hood in manufacturing, both imports and new export orders contracted (readings below 50), and input and output price growth slumped, with small enterprises dominating the collapse.

The Non-Manufacturing PMI slipped to 54.4 from 55.3 the prior month, the statistics bureau said Wednesday.

Selling prices contracted, as did employment, new export orders, and work backlogs

The Composite index covering both services and manufacturing stood at 52.9, versus 54.6 in January. Numbers above 50 indicate improving conditions

The Steel Industry PMI sunk to 49.5, below 50, signaling a contraction as output collapsed.

*  *  *

All of which has crushed the hopes and dreams of the global synchronous recovery narrative – as global macro data surprises have collapsed into the negative and lowest since Sept 2016…

All of which was nothing but China’s massive credit impulse flooding through the global economy…

Coming later tonight is Indian PMI, Malaysian inflation, Thailand trade data and Hong Kong GDP figures… so there’s still hope?

 

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CNN claims just 35% of American adults approve of how Trump is performing.

Rasmussen Reports found 49% of respondents approve of the president.

And RealClearPolitics shows that on ‘average’ 41.3% believe Trump’s doing a good job.

So the question, as The Daily Caller’s Robert Donachie asks is “Why Is CNN’s Approval Rating For Trump 15 Points Lower Than Rasmussen’s? “

CNN is skewing polling data to show the majority of Americans disapprove of the way President Donald Trump is handling the presidency.

The network published a poll Sunday that claims 35 percent of American adults approve of how Trump is performing as president. Those results are in stark contrast to a Monday Rasmussen Reports poll that found 49 percent of respondents approved of how the president is managing the White House.

What accounts for a roughly 15 percentage point disparity?

The Daily Caller News Foundation obtained a full copy of CNN’s poll, which was conducted in conjunction with SSRS, a survey and market research firm. The data include a breakdown of respondents by age, party affiliation, income and other demographic factors. It also includes the methodologies used in conducting the poll, although some information is missing, like how CNN/SSRS chose to sample respondents.

After a review of the CNN data and methodologies, TheDCNF found a number of factors that could account for the 15-percentage-point disparity between CNN’s and Rasmussen’s results.

Oversampling Democrats And Independents

CNN polled a total of 1,016 adults from Feb. 20–23 nationwide and had respondents self-identify their political affiliations. Thirty-three percent of respondents identified as Democrats, 44 percent as Independent or members of another party and 23 percent as Republicans.

The spread of political ideology could be a problem here, because it might not be an accurate representation of how U.S. adults would describe themselves politically. Looking at the most recent Gallup polling on how Americans self-identify politically, CNN’s figures are off as much as 14 percentage points for Republican representation.

Forty-four percent of U.S. adults self-identify as Democrat or independents who lean Democrat, according to a December 2017 Gallup poll. Roughly 37 percent of Gallup respondents self-identified as Republicans.

 Polling All Adults Versus ‘Likely Voters’

CNN polled the opinions of “adults,” ages 18 and up, however, Rasmussen polled “likely voters.”  Choosing one method or the other can lead to different results.

Polling “adults” includes a significant number of respondents in a given sample that either rarely or never vote. Adults that are not politically active, or rarely politically active, are less likely to follow public policy debates as closely as those who are committed voters.

Using “likely voters,” some argue, like Kyle Kondik, managing editor of “Sabato’s Crystal Ball,” is a better barometer for measuring presidential approval ratings.

“If I were to start doing a poll of presidential approval, I personally would do registered voters,” Kondik told TheDCNF in July 2017. “If you’re looking specifically at trying to figure out the electoral effects, you’re probably better off doing registered voters or likely voters.”

Historically, national polling houses use “adults” rather than “likely voters” when polling presidential approval.

For example, Gallup polled Trump’s approval rating using “adults” instead of “likely voters” from January 2017 to July 2017. Gallup’s approval rating was consistently below Rasmussen’s results, sometimes as much as 11 percentage points.

Reuters polled both “adults” and “likely voters” on their approval of the president since Trump took office in January 2017 and the results exhibit the same pattern. Respondents who voted in the 2016 presidential election cycle had more favorable views of the president than respondents who chose not to vote, the news agency found.

Rasmussen, unlike CNN, also does polling on a rolling basis, a factor the polling house argues makes their results even more accurate. CNN polls Trump’s approval rating every month, collecting data from respondents over a three-day period and reports the findings.

“Our poll is ongoing. The presidential tracking number that you see every morning at 9:30, it is a rolling survey of three nights,” Francis Coombs, managing editor at Rasmussen, told TheDCNF. “That is 500 likely U.S. voters, every night. You tend to see continuity, or slow, incremental ups and downs in the results.”

“These snapshots, like CNN does, where they drop in and survey for a specific period. You don’t see any context or continuity. It really doesn’t give you a measure of how the president is doing, regardless of who is in office,” Coombs told TheDCNF. “Polling American adults means just anybody. Anybody who answers the phone is included in CNN’s poll.”

Polling presidential approval in a snapshot manner can also skew results, like following a national tragedy or big news event.

Other Potential Errors

CNN did not provide TheDCNF enough detail about how they sampled respondents to provide an accurate critique of their methods, but there is some information that could call the poll’s results into question.

CNN and SSRS did not, independent or otherwise, respond to multiple requests for comment regarding how they chose to pick their random samples.

Here is everything TheDCNF was provided in terms of methodology:

A total of 1,016 adults were interviewed by telephone nationwide by live interviewers calling both landline and cell phones. Interviews were conducted in English and Spanish. Interviews were conducted February 20-23, 2018. Among the entire sample, 33% described themselves as Democrats, 23% described themselves as Republicans, and 44% described themselves as independents or members of another party.

All respondents were asked questions concerning basic demographics, and the entire sample was weighted to reflect national Census figures for gender, race, age, education, region of country, and telephone usage.

Results for the full sample have a margin of sampling error of +/-3.7 percentage points. For the sample of 909 registered voters, it is +/-3.9 percentage points.

Crosstabs on the following pages only include results for subgroups with enough unweighted cases to produce a sampling error of +/-8.5 percentage points or less once adjusted for design effect. Some subgroups represent too small a share of the national population to produce crosstabs with an acceptable sampling error. Interviews were conducted among these subgroups, but results for groups with a design-effect adjusted sampling error larger than +/-8.5 percentage points are not displayed and instead are denoted with “N/A.”

The CNN poll has a margin of error of plus or minus 3.7 percentage points, which is nearly one percent higher than a typical margin of error for a poll with a sample size of 1,000 and a 95 percent confidence interval. Typically, a sample of a similar size with the same confidence interval will have a margin of error of plus or minus 2.5 percentage points.

Other potential errors include the use of “live interviewers.” If an interviewer’s intonation or inflection was different, some of the results could be called into question. Similar errors could stem from a question being worded differently in an interview.

Another point of concern with having a live interviewer, as opposed to a recorded, robotic interview like Rasmussen uses, is that respondents might feel the need to curb their responses or lie. FiveThirtyEight has pointed out a number of reasons using live interviewers can cause varying results between polls.

CNN and SSRS did not respond to requests for comment as to how they guarded against interviewer biases.

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The NFL is down one official pizza sponsor, as Papa John’s International Inc. announced on Tuesday that they were ending their relationship of nearly a decade. The pizza company will instead focus marketing efforts on star players and its 22 partner teams within the league, new CEO Steve Ritchie said on a fourth quarter earnings call.

The decision followed an internal decision to make sweeping changes to the company’s marketing strategy, and comes on the heels of strained relations over comments made by the former CEO, John Schnatter – who slammed the league in November over sagging ratings. Schnatter also said that NFL Commissioner Roger Goodell fumbled the ball in his handling of the ongoing controversy over players kneeling during the national anthem.

In November, the company pulled its ads from the NFL amid Schnatter’s criticisms: 

“The NFL has hurt us by not resolving the current debacle to the players’ and owners’ satisfaction,” Schnatter said on a November conference call before his departure.

“NFL leadership has hurt Papa John’s shareholders.”

“The NFL and Papa John’s have made a mutual decision to shift from their official league sponsorship to a focus on partnerships with 22 local NFL teams, presence in broadcast and digital media, and key personalities in the sport,” both organizations said in a joint statement.

The sponsorship’s demise comes during a slump at the pizza chain. The company posted a 3.9 percent decline in North American same-store sales last quarter, sending the shares tumbling in extended trading on Tuesday. Papa John’s pledged to reverse the decline by improving its loyalty program, hiring a new public relations partner and revamping its marketing. –Bloomberg

Shares were off as much as 8.5% to $51.55 in after-hours trading on Tuesday amid adjusted earnings of 65 cents per share on revenue of $467.6 million, missing expectations.  

“We know our potential is so much greater than our results, and we are taking significant steps to reinvigorate our record of profitable growth and value creation,” said Ritchie in a statement.  

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Authored by Celine Ryan and Brandon James via Campus Reform,

San Diego State University is offering a course dedicated exclusively to the topic of removing Donald Trump from office.

The one-unit course–“Trump: Impeachment, Removal, or Conviction?”–will be offered in March and is set to be taught by Professor John Joseph Cleary. The required text for the course is Allan Lichtman’s The Case for Impeachment, a book published in response to Donald Trump’s election that advocates for the President’s removal from office.

“Focus will be on the two constitutional grounds: impeachment and removal (25th Amendment), and the possible charges of the independent counsel, the powers of the president,” and “a history of the creation of [the presidency] and the comparison of divine right and rule of law leadership.”  

The curriculum will also address “grounds for impeachment, removal, or indictment,” such as “conflict of interests, foreign emoluments, climate change, racism, religious bias, improper influence, nepotism, and a host of crimes, including conspiracy, false statements, and obstruction of justice.”

The course will be offered through SDSU’s Criminal Justice program which is a part of the school’s College of Professional Studies and Fine Arts.

The course was one of four one-credit courses featured in an email sent to students Monday, which advertised them as a way to get the last credit necessary for a degree for just $221.

The courses do, however, require students to attend two marathon 15-hour class sessions spaced roughly one week apart.

Prof. Cleary did not immediately respond to Campus Reform‘s request for comment. This article will be updated if and when a reply is received.

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Millennials are on a crash course with the grim reaper. This generation is apparently the smartest generation to ever roam planet earth, however, they can hardly manage their health. Something is amiss here… It turns out, millennials are set to become the fattest generation on record – with three-quarters projected to be obese by the time they reach forty, new research shows.

Despite all the modern technological advances and fancy health-trends circulating social media channels, the majority of millennials are overweight. Perhaps, overindulgence of the Western culture should be blamed… After all, Venezuelans lost an average of 19lbs in weight, as their fiat system crashed and burns. Maybe the Western millennial will have a day of reckoning when their fiat currency tumbles and inflation rears its ugly head, until then, the peak overweight millennial is still ahead.

New research from the Cancer Research UK states more than seven in ten millennials (born 1980s-1990s) are projected to become overweight between the ages of 35-44. Even the baby boomers (born 1945-55), which are criticized for stripping the economy of productivity managed to be around five in ten at the same age.

“Being overweight is the UK’s biggest preventable cause of cancer after smoking, but most people don’t know about this substantial risk. If more people become aware of the link it may help spare not just millennials, but all generations from cancer,” said Alison Cox, Cancer Research UK

Cancer Research UK warns being overweight as an adult can contribute to at least thirteen different types of cancers including “breast, bowel and kidney cancer, but only 15% of people in the UK are aware of the link.”

“The government must play a part to help people make healthy food choices. We’re campaigning for a ban on junk food adverts before the 9pm watershed to protect young people from advertising tactics which all too often promote fattening foods,” Cox added.

Professor Linda Bauld, Cancer Research UK’s fat expert, said: “Research shows that our evolving environment has a vital role to play in the obesity crisis. Clever marketing tactics by the food industry and greater access to unhealthy food are all likely to have contributed to the rise in obesity rates.”

“Extra body fat doesn’t just sit there; it sends messages around the body that can cause damage to cells. This damage can build up over time and increase the risk of cancer in the same way that damage from smoking causes cancer,” she cautioned.

“While these estimates sound bleak, we can stop them becoming a reality. Millennials are known for following seemingly healthy food trends, but nothing beats a balanced diet. Eating plenty of fruit, vegetables and other fibre filled foods like wholegrains, and cutting down on junk food is the best way to keep a healthy weight. ”

Cancer Research UK is now warning its citizens that the fat millennial generation is jeopardizing the country’s survivability.

Our advice to millennials: Put down the avocado toast and realize your generation is not just fat and broke, but you are jeopardizing the national security of your nation. As we highlighted above, the Venezuela diet is coming to Western countries once the fiat system crumbles. Until then, peak fat millennial is still ahead of us.

via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/2GLGj91 Tyler Durden