Category: zerohedge

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

If you allow someone to pump hours of “programming” into your mind every single day, it is inevitable that it is eventually going to have a major impact on how you view the world.  In America today, the average person consumes approximately 10 hours of information, news and entertainment a day, and there are 6 giant media corporations that overwhelmingly dominate that market.  In fact, it has been estimated that somewhere around 90 percent of the “programming” that we constantly feed our minds comes from them, and of course they are ultimately controlled by the elite of the world.  So is there any hope for our country as long as the vast majority of the population is continually plugging themselves into this enormous “propaganda matrix”?

Just think about your own behavior.  Even as you are reading this article the television might be playing in the background or you may have some music on.  Many of us have gotten to the point where we are literally addicted to media.  In fact, there are people out there that become physically uncomfortable if everything is turned off and they have to deal with complete silence.

It has been said that if you put garbage in, you are going to get garbage out.  It is the things that we do consistently that define who we are, and so if you are feeding your mind with hours of “programming” from the big media corporations each day, that is going to have a dramatic affect on who you eventually become.

These monolithic corporations really do set the agenda for what society focuses on.  For example, when you engage in conversation with your family, friends or co-workers, what do you talk about?  If you are like most people, you might talk about something currently in the news, a television show that you watched last night or some major sporting event that is taking place.

Virtually all of that news and entertainment is controlled by the elite by virtue of their ownership of these giant media corporations.

I want to share some numbers with you that may be hard to believe.  They come directly out of Nielsen’s “Total Audience Report“, and they show how much news and entertainment the average American consumes through various methods each day…

Watching live television: 4 hours, 32 minutes

Watching time-shifted television: 30 minutes

Listening to the radio: 2 hours, 44 minutes

Using  a smartphone: 1 hour, 33 minutes

Using Internet on a computer: 1 hour, 6 minutes

When you add all of those numbers together, it comes to a grand total of more than 10 hours.

And keep in mind that going to movie theaters, playing video games and reading books are behaviors that are not even on this list.

What in the world are we doing to ourselves?

The combination of watching live television and watching time-shifted television alone comes to a total of more than five hours.

If you feed five hours of something into your mind day after day, it is going to change you.  There is no way around that.  You may think that you are strong enough to resist the programming, but the truth is that it affects all of us in very subtle ways that we do not even understand.

And as I mentioned above, there are just six giant corporations that account for almost all of the programming that we receive through our televisions.  Below is a list of these six corporations along with a sampling of the various media properties that they own…

Comcast

NBC
Telemundo
Universal Pictures
Focus Features
USA Network
Bravo
CNBC
The Weather Channel
MSNBC
Syfy
NBCSN
Golf Channel
Esquire Network
E!
Cloo
Chiller
Universal HD
Comcast SportsNet
Universal Parks & Resorts
Universal Studio Home Video

The Walt Disney Company

ABC Television Network
ESPN
The Disney Channel
A&E
Lifetime
Marvel Entertainment
Lucasfilm
Walt Disney Pictures
Pixar Animation Studios
Disney Mobile
Disney Consumer Products
Interactive Media
Disney Theme Parks
Disney Records
Hollywood Records
Miramax Films
Touchstone Pictures

News Corporation

Fox Broadcasting Company
Fox News Channel
Fox Business Network
Fox Sports 1
Fox Sports 2
National Geographic
Nat Geo Wild
FX
FXX
FX Movie Channel
Fox Sports Networks
The Wall Street Journal
The New York Post
Barron’s
SmartMoney
HarperCollins
20th Century Fox
Fox Searchlight Pictures
Blue Sky Studios
Beliefnet
Zondervan

Time Warner

CNN
The CW
HBO
Cinemax
Cartoon Network
HLN
NBA TV
TBS
TNT
TruTV
Turner Classic Movies
Warner Bros.
Castle Rock
DC Comics
Warner Bros. Interactive Entertainment
New Line Cinema
Sports Illustrated
Fortune
Marie Claire
People Magazine

Viacom

MTV
Nickelodeon
VH1
BET
Comedy Central
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Home Entertainment
Country Music Television (CMT)
Spike TV
The Movie Channel
TV Land

CBS Corporation

CBS Television Network
The CW (along with Time Warner)
CBS Sports Network
Showtime
TVGN
CBS Radio, Inc.
CBS Television Studios
Simon & Schuster
Infinity Broadcasting
Westwood One Radio Network

Fortunately, those enormous media conglomerates do not have quite the same monopoly over the Internet, but we are starting to see a tremendous amount of consolidation in the online world as well.  Just check out these numbers…

Overall, the top 10 publishers — together owning around 60 news sites — account for 47% of total online traffic to news content last year, with the next-biggest 140 publishers accounting for most of the other half, SimilarWeb found.

 

The biggest online news publisher for the U.S. audience was MSN, owner of MSN.com, with just over 27 billion combined page views across mobile and desktop, followed by Disney Media Networks, owner of ESPN and ABC News, with 25.9 billion.

The battle for the future of this nation is a battle for the hearts and minds of individuals.

And it is hard to see how things will be turned in a dramatically different direction as long as most of us are willingly feeding our hearts and minds with hours of “programming” that is controlled by the elite each day.

The good news is that there are signs of an awakening.  More Americans than ever are becoming disenchanted with the mainstream media, and this is showing up in recent survey numbers.  Here is one example…

Trust in the news media is being eroded by perceptions of inaccuracy and bias, fueled in part by Americans’ skepticism about what they read on social media.

 

Just 6 percent of people say they have a lot of confidence in the media, putting the news industry about equal to Congress and well below the public’s view of other institutions.

As Americans (and people all over the world) have lost confidence in the mainstream media, they have been seeking out other sources of news and entertainment.  This has greatly fueled the rise of the alternative media, and the dozens of websites all over the Internet where this article will ultimately be published are examples of this explosion.

You can only enslave people for so long.  Ultimately, they will want to break free of the chains that are holding them back and they will want to find the truth.

In this day and age, it is absolutely imperative that we all learn to think for ourselves.  If you find that you are still addicted to the “programming” that the giant media corporations are feeding you, I would encourage you to start unplugging from the matrix more frequently.

In the end, you will be glad that you did.

via http://ift.tt/1TMakXZ Tyler Durden

By now we all know that Goldman Sachs is the gift that keeps on giving to the Clintons. Whether it's paying millions out for speeches, investing in family member's failing hedge fund ventures, or donating hundreds of thousands to the Clinton Foundation, Goldman seems to be keeping a close relationship with the family.

What's a more fun development to watch (other than to see Lloyd Blankfein lose money invested with a Clinton son-in-law) is how persistent The Intercept is being with Hillary about Goldman. Every chance it gets, The Intercept has a reporter asking Clinton about Goldman related items, and of course they never get an answer.

Earlier this year The Intercept caught up with Hillary and asked if the transcripts of the speeches given to Goldman would be released. Clinton's response was just to laugh of course, because as we all know, those will never be released… on purpose anyway.

The Intercept: "Hi Secretary Clinton, will you release the transcript of your paid speeches to Goldman Sachs?"

Clinton: "Ha ha ha ha ha ha ha"

At a Clinton campaign rally in San Francisco last Thursday, The Intercept's Lee Fang caught up with Clinton again and this time wanted to ask about Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein's investment in her son-in-law Marc Mezvinsky's hedge fund Eaglevale Partners.

The Intercept: "Hi Secretary Clinton, do you know how much money Lloyd Blankfein invested in your son-in-law's hedge fund?"

After being ignored multiple times, Clinton's traveling press secretary Nick Merrill stepped to ask just what Fang was trying to find out more about.

Merrill: "Hey buddy how are you. What's your name?"

The Intercept: "Lee Fang"

Merrill: "Hi I'm Nick, I'm her spokesperson. What are you trying to find out more about?"

The Intercept: "I want to know how much money Lloyd Blankfein invested in Marc Mezvinsky's hedge fund. Do you know how much money Nick?"

Merrill: "I don't know has it been reported?"

The Intercept: "No it hasn't. Could you find out the amount for me?"

Merrill: "I don't know what the amount is. You wanna give me your contact information?"

The Intercept: "So you're gonna get back to me?"

Merrill: "I'll email you right now"

* * *

Of course Merrill never got back, but that's to be expected as the entire campaign continues to dodge any questions around the matter. The enjoyment that can be gained from watching The Intercept dog Clinton for answers is priceless however, and it's nice to see that Goldman is the gift that keeps on giving to Clinton, especially as an inconvenience on the campaign trail.

via http://ift.tt/20OpHkJ Tyler Durden

By the SRSrocco Report

Investors better be prepared as the next crash of the U.S. economy is coming.  This is not based on hype or speculation, rather due to the disintegration of the underlying fundamentals.  Matter-a-fact, the fundamentals are so completely AWFUL, that the next market crash will make 2008 look quite tame indeed.

To get the skinny on the lousy fundamental data, let’s first look at the Auto Industry.  The next series of charts come from the article, More Warnings–Unsustainable Auto Sales & Stock PE Ratios:

Ever since the supposed economic turnaround, the amount of outstanding auto loans has increased dramatically from less that $700 billion in 2010 to over $1 trillion in the fourth quarter of 2015.  According to Wolf Richter, quoted in the article:

“Deep-subprime borrowers are high-risk. Typically they have credit scores below 550. To make it worth everyone’s while, they get stuffed into loans often with interest rates above 20%. To make payments even remotely possible at these rates, terms are often stretched to 84 months. Borrowers are typically upside down in their vehicle: the negative equity of their trade-in, along with title, taxes, and license fees, and a hefty dealer profit are rolled into the loan. When the lender repossesses the vehicle, losses add up in a hurry.

When I was younger, the longest automobile loan an individual could get was 48 months.  However, you were considered to be a REAL LOSER if you had to finance an automobile that long.  Now, 84 months is becoming the norm….LOL.

This is just one factor that shows just how weak the economy has become if Americans have to finance a car for seven years.

Here is another chart from the article linked above.  It shows just how inflated the S&P 500 index has become:

According to Michael Lebowitz of 720 Global Research (quoted in the article):

Since October 1, 2011, the S&P 500 has risen 82% on the heels of a 0.75% decline in earnings. The price to earnings ratio over that time period has risen 83%, with price gains contributing 99% to the increase. Prices have risen substantially, while earnings have actually fallen. The chart below highlights the growing gap between earnings and the S&P 500.”

As we can see from the chart, the S &P 500  and earnings have been surviving on HOT AIR, especially since the latter part of 2014.  When QE (money printing) and zero interest rates no longer provided enough bounce in the markets, the Fed, Central Banks and the Plunge Protection Team stepped in a BIG WAY to keep the markets from crashing.

So, not only do we have a highly over-leveraged automobile financed industry, the broader stock market valuations are in bubble territory.  Unfortunately, this is only part of the story.  If we look at the disintegrating U.S. Energy Industry, the situation is even more dire.

The Coming Collapse Of The U.S. Energy Industry

Today I did an interview with Money Metals Exchange.  I will be putting out the interview when it’s published.  However, I discussed this energy subject matter during the interview.  When I first started the interview, I said the precious metals community was guilty of propagating hype and short-term surging price moves that never came true.  Thus, we have frustrated a lot of precious metals investors because the COLLAPSE of the Dollar, DEFAULT of the COMEX or much HIGHER gold and silver prices have not yet occurred.

So, am I guilty myself by putting out a new a headline that reads, “The Coming Collapse of the U.S. Energy Industry?”  No…. here’s why.

The situation in the U.S. Energy Industry is so AWFUL, I wouldn’t be surprised to see half of the industry go bankrupt over the next few years.  Of course, the U.S. Government could step in and either bail out or nationalize the energy industry, but this would stop the impending collapse.

Let’s take a look at this next chart.  The U.S. Energy Industry has added so much debt that it took nearly half of all its operating profits to just pay the interest on its debt in 2015:

While this was bad, it was even worse in the first quarter of 2016.  According to the article, Why Oil & Gas Companies Are Barely Scraping By, the U.S. Energy Sector paid 86% of its total profits just to service the interest on its debt.  Can you imagine that?

This chart from the article shows the huge change of interest payments on debt of the percentage of operating income in the U.S. Energy Sector:

Since 2000, the U.S. Energy Sector was paying (on average) between 10-15% of its operating income to service its debt.  However, that changed significantly in 2014 as the price of oil plunged.  The reason this percentage jumped over 20% in 1998 was due to the price of oil falling below $15 compared to $22 in 1996.

So, why is the U.S. Energy Sector interest on the debt so much worse now with the price of oil more than double the 1998 price??  Again, the average annual price of oil in 1998 was $15 compared to $33 in Q1 2016.  Why did the U.S. Oil and Gas Industry have to pay 86% of its operating income to service its debt during the first quarter of 2016 on the back of a $33 oil compared to 25% on $15 oil in 1998?

BECAUSE…. The U.S. Oil & Gas Industry has gone into massive debt to bring on very expensive energy supplies.

Here is one more chart from the energy article linked above:

This chart shows the U.S. Energy Sector maturing debt outstanding for each year.  According to the article:

While $5.1 billion of U.S. energy debt matures this year, $25.1 billion will mature in 2017. The number risies to $52.5 billion in 2020.

“There’s not a lot of this debt that comes due in 2016. But in 2017—that’s when the rubber will really hit the road. Now a lot of these companies are already looking to bankruptcy because people know that the bond position is untenable,” said Dicker.

As the article states, the outstanding U.S. energy debt that matures in 2017 ($25.1 billions) is five times what matures this year ($5.1 billion).  How can the U.S. Energy Industry pay back this debt when it can barely pay the interest on its debt currently?

And… to make matters even worse, U.S. oil production is falling rapidly:

U.S. domestic oil production peaked at 9.6 million barrels per day (mbd) in June 2015 and is currently at 8.7 mbd.  This is nearly a 10% decline in U.S. oil production in less than a year.  Some may think this huge decline is due to lower oil prices.  That may be partly true, however U.S. oil production was going to decline even with higher oil prices.

Which means, the U.S. Energy Sector will be in even more trouble as oil production declines further as the amount of debt that matures continues to increase over the next several years.  This is extremely bad news for the U.S. economy as it will have to import more foreign oil to make up for declining domestic production.

Of course, this means the market will have to react by offering 96 and 108 month payment plans to keep the automobile financing bubble from popping.  Furthermore, I would imagine the Plunge Protection Team will work overtime just to keep the markets from imploding.

As the fundamentals of the market continue to deteriorate, the precious metals offer the only real safe haven.  As I mentioned in a previous article, Something Big Happened In The Gold Market, mainstream investors flocked into Gold ETF’s in record numbers during Q1 2016:

Investors moved into Gold ETF’s in a big way during the first quarter of 2016 on a mere 2,000 point drop of the Dow Jones.  Why would investors move into Gold ETF in such a large degree as the market sustained a normal 15% correction??  Hell, in the first quarter of 2009, flows of gold into Gold ETF’s surged to a record 465 metric tons, but this was when the Dow Jones was crashing to its lows of 6,700.

I talk to several people in the industry, and the word out there is that mainstream investors are worried as hell about the markets.  I believe when the broader markets really start their NEXT BIG CRASH, investors will flow into gold and silver in record volume.

This is not a matter of “IF”, but “WHEN.”  However, if we go by the disintegration market fundamentals, that day will likely be sooner, rather than much later.

Lastly, if you haven’t checked out our new PRECIOUS METALS INVESTING page, I highly recommend you do.

Check back for new articles and updates at the SRSrocco Report.

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Submitted by Martin Armstrong via ArmstrongEconomics.com,

This is what happens when politicians think they are smarter than the great unwashed whom they rule over.

 

via http://ift.tt/1NUAM2w Tyler Durden

When it comes to Wall Street superstitions, few things – even fading the most recent Dennis Gartman call – beats the Barron’s front page article jinx: just when you think something will never happen, Barron’s confirms it on the cover, virtually assuring that it does.

In which case, be afraid bulls, be very afraid, because if past is prologue Barron’s just green-lit the next crash.

 

The Barron’s argument:

The current period of gain has lasted more than seven years and propelled the stock market averages to new highs. But since the peak of last May, the market has faltered, briefly touching double-digit lows early this year. Bears have begun to wonder whether the crash to which the market is always headed is just ahead.

 

 

Probably not.

Well, not anymore. In the article, author Gene Epstein unveils such quantitative pearls as:

[T]here has been just one market crash over the past 35 years that wasn’t accompanied by a recession: the 12-month decline of more than 20% from August 1987 through August 1988. Arithmetically, this crash would not have happened were it not for the largest one-day plunge in U.S. history: Black Monday, Oct. 19, 1987, when the market tumbled more than 20% in a single day, the only one-day bear market on record. The previous crash on a single day that was at all comparable ran in the low-double digits and occurred 58 years earlier, in October 1929.

 

if a one-day crash does strike every 58 years, the next one is due 58 years from 1987, or in 2045. So if we treat the Black Monday–induced crash as an outlier, we are left with just three market crashes over the past 36 years plus one near crash, all four coinciding with the past four recessions.

So smooth sailing for the next 30 or so years then? He then presents what he believes are various reasons why there will be no crash this time. Among these are: stocks valuations are “not too exuberant”; that the inflation-adjusted house price is not above previous peak; that the yield curve is not flat or inverted; and that the price of oil is not surging.

One can, of course, debunk each one of these reasons simplistically with the following rebuttals:

• According to Goldman the median stock has never been more overvalued;
• The average house price is not above the previous peak simple because the vast majority of Americans can no longer afford to purchase a house in the US (just ask the Millennials) whether due to lack of demand or due to tight credit conditions; instead potential young buyers are forced to rent, leading to an explosion in asking rents; or live with their parents (see “More Young Americans Live With Their Parents Than At Any Time Since The Great Depression“). Finally, when it comes to wealthy investors (mostly from abroad) lapping up $1+ million houses, the housing bubble has never been bigger;
• If one strips away the impact of the constant for the past 8 years Fed interventions, the yield curve, as visualized by the 3m5s OIS adjusted curve, is already inverted.
• As for oil, the argument is even simpler: the collapse in the prices was the result of a recession, one which hit China in 2015 when its actual, real GDP dipped negative. The only reason oil has rebounded according to many is as a result of China’s unprecedented injection of $1 trillion in new loans in the economy in the first quarter (in addition to the Saudi strategy of flooding the market with excess oil). And now comes the hangover.

But the simplest reason why the entire Barron’s article has scrap value at best is that not once does it mention the only thing that does matter, and which saved the market from its most recent crashes, namely central bank intervention as the only recourse left in this centrally-planned global market where as the central bankers themselves now openly admit, their only mandate is to keep asset prices buoyant.

Whether it is the “Shanghai Accord”, or the BOJ’s attempts at creative monetary policy a la NIRP (which ended up being a huge mistake), or constant Fed president jawboning, or hints of helicopter money, the fact simply is that there is no market left: there is simply frontrunning of central bank intentions to either push stocks higher or lower.

That’s it, and with every “policy failure” intervention, central banker credibility gets shorter and shorter, to the point where even the G-7 has to step in and say fiscal stimulus will be critical as monetary policy has lost power to push growth higher.

As such, in a “market” like this one, any attempts to predict future prices are not only naive and silly, but futile. It is, in fact, the same as saying that the market will crash just because Barron’s cover page says it won’t.

via http://ift.tt/1shM0Eh Tyler Durden

By EconMatters

On Friday Janet Yellen gave the go ahead to rate hikes, and this change in Monetary Policy (Tightening) in not currently priced into financial markets.

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While Obama was in Hiroshima in a historic trip as the first standing president of the only nation to have ever used a nuclear weapon during wartime, and warning about the dangers of nuclear power without offering an apology to Japan, Russian president Putin was in Greece seeking to resume where he left off one year ago, ahead of the turbulent Greece “referendum” and capital controls, following which the Greek people have turned increasingly against remaining in the Eurogroup, a shift Putin certainly hopes to capitalize on.

Tsipras commented on twitter:

Greek-Russian relations are an important element of our active, multidimensional foreign policy. We have upgraded our political dialogue 1/2

— Alexis Tsipras (@tsipras_eu) May 27, 2016

His presence in Athens marks the strengthening of our relations during the past year. 2/2

— Alexis Tsipras (@tsipras_eu) May 27, 2016

But it wasn’t the latest Greek pivot toward Russia that was the highlight of Putin’s trip: it was his latest warning that the Russian response to the most recent NATO provocation in Europe will be significant.

Recall that on May 12, in a dramatic development for the global nuclear balance of power, the United States launched its European missile defense system dubbed Aegis Ashore at a remote airbase in the town of Deveselu, Romania, almost a decade after Washington proposed protecting NATO from Iranian rockets and despite repeated Russian warnings that the West is threatening the peace in central Europe.

As we noted at the time, the US move was a clear defection from the carefully established Game Theory equilibrium in the aftermath of the nuclear arms race, one which explicitly removed a Russian “first strike threat”, thereby pressuring Russia to implement further nuclear offensive and defensive measures: “the precarious nuclear balance of power in Europe has suddenly shifted, and quite dramatically: despite U.S. assurances, the Kremlin says the missile shield’s real aim is to neutralize Moscow’s nuclear arsenal long enough for the United States to make a first strike on Russia in the event of war.“

And sure enough, making it very clear that this biggest yet provocation by the US and NATO is not forgotten, during a joint press conference with Tsipras in Greece, Putin warned Romania and Poland they could find themselves in the sights of Russian rockets because they are hosting elements of a U.S. missile shield that Moscow considers a threat to its security.

Putin, cited by Reuters,  issued his starkest warning yet over the missile shield, saying that Moscow had stated repeatedly that it would have to take retaliatory steps but that Washington and its allies had ignored the warnings.

“If yesterday in those areas of Romania people simply did not know what it means to be in the cross-hairs, then today we will be forced to carry out certain measures to ensure our security,” Putin told a joint news conference in Athens with Greek Prime Minister Alexis Tsipras. “It will be the same case with Poland,” he said.

“At the moment the interceptor missiles installed have a range of 500 kilometers, soon this will go up to 1000 kilometers, and worse than that, they can be rearmed with 2400km-range offensive missiles even today, and it can be done by simply switching the software, so that even the Romanians themselves won’t know.”

Putin did not specify what actions Russia would take, but he insisted that it was not making the first step, only responding to moves by Washington. “We won’t take any action until we see rockets in areas that neighbor us.”

“We have the capability to respond. The whole world saw what our medium-range sea-based missiles are capable of [in Syria]. But we violate no agreements. And our ground-based Iskander missiles have also proven themselves as superb,” continued Putin.

Further undermining the Pentagon’s provocative narrative, the Russian president said the argument that the project was needed to defend against Iran made no sense because an international deal had been reached to curb Tehran’s nuclear program. The missiles that will form the shield can easily reach Russian cities, he said.

“How can that not create a threat for us?” Putin asked.

He voiced frustration that Russia’s complaints about the missile shield had not been heeded. “We’ve been repeating like a mantra that we will be forced to respond… Nobody wants to hear us. Nobody wants to conduct negotiations with us.”

And since nobody will negotiate with Russia, the Kremlin will have to take offensive measures into its own hands: we already know what the first one will be. Recall what then-president Dmitiry Medvedev said in November 2008: “Russia will deploy Iskander missile systems in its enclave in Kaliningrad to neutralize, if necessary, the anti-ballistic missile system in Europe.”

Once Russian SS-26 tactical missile systems are again to be found on the borders of a Europe which suddenly as facing not only a a nuclear-armed opponent on its borders, but an ongoing – and in many cases malicious – immigrant influx within, then all bets about the peaceful future of the European continent, the main stated reason behind the creation of the EU and the Eurozone, will once again be off.

But not before NATO and the Pentagon respond in symmetric fashion and deploy more nuclear weapons of their own to Europe’s eastern borders, and aim them squarely at Moscow, as the precarious post-cold war game theoretical equilibrium is completely destroyed. At that moment the new nuclear arms race will have fully returned.

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Authored by StraightLineLogic's Robert Gore via The Burning Platform blog,

There are three ways for a person to obtain something of value from another person: receive it as a donation, steal it by force or fraud, or exchange for it. It’s not much of an oversimplification to say that the advance of civilization has hinged on its movement from the first two methods to the third. The right to exchange, and the right to promise as part of a future exchange—the right to contract—are now taken for granted, but those rights are delicate and a whole complex of rights, assumptions, and obligations are subsumed by them. Their intellectual foundations are being undermined as the equality of rights implicit in contract and exchange gives way to a regressive inequality of rights: servitude.

The essence of exchange is choice; it’s voluntary. Both parties have the choice of whether or not to transact, and neither will do so unless they subjectively value what they receive more than what they give up. That is not to say that there will be equality of resources, bargaining power, or negotiating skill between the parties, or that they will be equally happy with their bargain, only that both parties have the same choice to accept or reject the proposed transaction. Exchange embodies that equality of rights between parties, but not an equality of outcomes.

The right to exchange implicitly assumes that parties are the best judges of their own interests, and that such determinations will be respected by both the parties and those outside the transaction. The rights to exchange and contract are individual rights, and the obligation to fulfill one’s side of the bargain an individual obligation. A collective entity such as a business can contract and exchange, but either the members of that entity have agreed that they will, collectively, do so, or have, by their membership in that entity, recognized implicitly or explicitly the right of those directing the entity to do so.

The concept of a social contract is a contradiction in terms. With whom does a society contract? An entity cannot contract with itself. The notion has come to mean acceptance by the governed of the government, whatever its form. However, individuals have no choice to opt out of the collective entity known as society, as they would any other voluntarily chosen entity they joined, and the social contract supposedly binds not just those who were part of the society when the contract was made, but future generations. Thus, the term social contract wrongly connotes voluntary choice of an institution whose establishment has always been the product of chance and force, and has no meaning at all for the unborn who will nevertheless be compelled to live under the government so established.

Exchange evokes hostility because it is a private decision in which the resulting agreement excludes everyone but the two parties, and it increases, by their own evaluations, their wellbeing. As it increases wellbeing, a rational government will do all it can to protect the rights of its citizens to contract and exchange for any licit purpose. However, a government relegated to protecting private contracts and exchange is a government subjugated; there is no opportunity for the exercise of coercive power. When contracts are breached, the government’s role is adjudication and remedy, not coercion. Even that role is unessential; parties can agree beforehand to nongovernmental dispute resolution.

Nobody goes into government to refrain from exercising power. Governments ban certain contracts and exchanges, or dictate their terms in the name of regulation. They are humanity’s most rapacious and regressive institution; they arrogate to themselves the right to legally engage in theft. Outlawing or regulating certain exchanges furthers larceny as well; enforcement offers opportunities for extortion and accepting bribes.

Historically, there has been a virtually straight line relationship between the share of activity within a society demarcated by voluntary contract and exchange and the progress made by that society. Voluntary exchanges and the private choices they incorporate are, by definition, made only when they enhance wellbeing. Once a government “escapes” the subjugation of enforcing private agreements and choices, they constrict the scope of such agreements and choices and extract value by force, that is, involuntarily, from the citizenry. Notwithstanding the delusions and lies of their many proponents, constricting choices and theft cannot further progress, they only retard, stop, or reverse it.

Neither the relationship between donor and recipient nor between thief and victim is that of equals. The proper characterization for both is servility: recipients begging donors for donations and victims implicitly or explicitly begging thieves to spare some of their property or their lives. If a truth serum could be administered to ensure an honest answer, perhaps no single question would be more psychologically revealing than whether a person prefers relationships of servility or equality. A preference for the former is the most accurate marker for sociopathy available, and is not a bad one for psychopathy, either.

So runs the sociopathic, psychopathic scam known as government. The productive are robbed and just enough is doled out to the beggars to keep them quiescent and voting correctly. The rest lines the pockets of the sociopaths and psychopaths, the “served.” This can be the only result when exchange is replaced with theft and begging as the basis of social and commercial interaction. Collectivist hostility to exchange stems not from its misattributed flaws, but from deep-rooted psychological hostility to a process that involves free choice and confers equally to both parties the option not to engage in it. Exchange presumes that individuals are capable of directing their own lives, and protecting the freedom to contract and exchange enshrines that autonomy. Freedom, exchange, and equality of rights under the law are inseparable.

As exchange dies, the nation founded in revolution and independence descends into docile servility. Equality of rights under the law, a difficult but not impossible goal, gives way to a deluded and malignant drive for equality of outcomes. Exchange, contract, and freedom are inconsistent with equality of outcome. In order for voluntary exchange to occur, both parties must have something to exchange, which implies both parties have produced something and either retained it or exchanged it for something else of value. Productive ability is not equally distributed. Nor is the ability to benefit from exchange; some are better at it than others.

Spurious promises of equal outcomes implicitly rely on begging, theft, and the coercive power of the sociopathic, psychopathic scam. There has never yet been a government in which the government, especially ones devoted to “equality,” did not become, in Orwell’s words, “more equal” than its begging and enslaved citizenry. Keep that in mind the next time you hear a blowhard bastard bloviating bromides about the beauty and nobility of “service.” You’re to be served… as the next course.

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We showed you the "bored" Chinese workers who traded commodity futures for excitement – Now, it's time to meet North America's oil day-traders… moms-and millenials.

The recent volatility in crude oil has gotten the attention of people who do not list trading as their day job, but are randomly attempting to day trade oil anyway the WSJ reports.

Take for example Erika Cajic, a 45-year old full-time parent who took a shot at trading oil via UWTI.

When Erika Cajic woke before dawn one morning in early May and read that wildfires were breaking out in an oil-producing region of Alberta, she sat down on the family room couch with a cup of hot chocolate and her laptop and bought shares of an investment linked to crude.

 

The 45-year-old full-time parent of two in Mississauga, Ontario, like many investors, reasoned that the production outages would drive up the price of oil. By buying the VelocityShares 3x Long Crude Oil exchange-traded note, she tripled down on her hunch, as the product uses derivatives that aim to rise and fall at triple the daily change in oil.

 

Within about four days, she estimated she made about 500 Canadian dollars (US$384) on those trades after converting from U.S. dollars.

 

“The swings are gigantic lately,” she said of the product, known by its ticker UWTI, and the other energy products she has traded in recent months.

For Matt Krasnoff, an employee of LinkedIn, he just keeps his trades displayed on Yahoo Finance on his computer screen during the day and monitors his trades at work.

“I just thought, let’s throw a couple of hundred dollars in it…and try it out,” said Matt Krasnoff, 26, of New York, who bought shares of UWTI last year after hearing about it from a friend. “I just enjoy the risk and the thrill of the market in general.”

 

Mr. Krasnoff works at LinkedIn Corp. in New York and keeps a list of his investments displayed on Yahoo Finance on his computer screen during the day. He said he typically invests in technology companies that he is familiar with and reads articles about the industry and watches Twitter to stay up to date.

 

He ditched UWTI within a few months of trying it, after he lost money. “It was outside of the realm of what I knew…the last straw was realizing that I wasn’t informed enough,” he said.

 

Now, he says, he is going to stick to investing in what he knows, like tech.

CME estimates that crude oil has been its second most traded contract among retail investors this year after the S&P – such investors make up about 10% of the daily trading volume said Mark Omens, executive director of retail sales at CME.

 

Frederick Bailey, of Savannah, Georgia is inbetween jobs so he figured he would put some money into UWTI in January as crude broke $30 a barrel. Although at least Bailey had some dealings with ETF's in the past.

Frederick Bailey, 59, of Savannah, Ga., said he put a modest amount of money in UWTI in January as crude broke below $30 a barrel and rode it higher as oil prices rebounded. Mr. Bailey, who said he is between jobs, once worked at banks that dealt with exchange-traded funds.

 

Mr. Bailey also visits online chatter sites talking about oil, such as StockTwits, where one poster this week wrote: “…once again the crude been rude to this dude.”

It also appears that millennials in their spare time at their parents house are also fans of day trading crude oil and related products on their smart phone.

Grant Heimer, a 25-year-old in Dallas, trades stocks as a hobby and learned about commodity exchange-traded products from his friends last year, he said.

 

An energy-industry software consultant who studied finance in college, he has traded oil and natural-gas exchange-traded products a few times using a smartphone app called Robinhood.

 

“Oil just seemed to make a lot of sense to me,” said Mr. Heimer. He has never held a position longer than five days and still has most of his portfolio in stock investments. Most of his oil trades made money, he said, but not all.

 

“I’m not careless,” said Mr. Heimer. “It’s a very appealing thing to do for somebody like me who’s OK with a small risk and a short amount of time.”

Archna Jagtiani started trading on her own after the market came back after the crisis but her account had not recovered. She once traded exchange traded products but now trades futures, with a holding period of 15 minutes.

Archna Jagtiani, a 42-year-old who lives in the Chicago suburbs, started trading after the financial crisis. “After 2010 when the market was up…my account had not come back and I was just paying fees,” she said. “It’s better this way. I cannot blame anybody if I lose money.” She said she spends her days trading and tutoring kids in math after the market closes.

Ms. Jagtiani used to trade oil exchange-traded products, but a few months ago switched to buying and selling oil-futures contracts because of the quirks of holding some oil exchange-traded products for a long period of time.

“If oil goes from $43.50 [a barrel] to $43.70, you’ve made a hundred bucks,” she said of oil futures, which she holds for intervals as short as 15 minutes.

* * *

Well, while we're not saying that the "professionals" do any better, we suspect that the 'passive day-trading' as a hobby may not be the best idea for those looking to preserve any discretionary income that may be left over after paying the monthly bills.

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Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

The Patriot Act continues to wreak its havoc on civil liberties. Section 213 was included in the Patriot Act over the protests of privacy advocates and granted law enforcement the power to conduct a search while delaying notice to the suspect of the search. Known as a “sneak and peek” warrant, law enforcement was adamant Section 213 was needed to protect against terrorism. But the latest government report detailing the numbers of “sneak and peek” warrants reveals that out of a total of over 11,000 sneak and peek requests, only 51 were used for terrorism. Yet again, terrorism concerns appear to be trampling our civil liberties.

 

– From the post: More “War on Terror” Abuses – Spying Powers Are Used for Terrorism Only 0.5% of the Time

Ron Wyden, a Senator from Oregon, has been one of the most influential and significant champions of Americans’ embattled 4th Amendment rights in the digital age. Recall that it was Sen. Wyden who caught Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, lying under oath about government surveillance of U.S. citizens.

Mr. Wyden continues to be a courageous voice for the public when it comes to pushing back against Big Brother spying. His latest post at Medium is a perfect example.

Here it is in full:

Shaking My Head

The government will dramatically expand surveillance powers unless Congress acts

Last month, at the request of the Department of Justice, the Courts approved changes to the obscure Rule 41 of the Federal Rules of Criminal Procedure, which governs search and seizure. By the nature of this obscure bureaucratic process, these rules become law unless Congress rejects the changes before December 1, 2016.

 

Today I, along with my colleagues Senators Paul from Kentucky, Baldwin from Wisconsin, and Daines and Tester from Montana, am introducing the Stopping Mass Hacking (SMH) Act (bill, summary), a bill to protect millions of law-abiding Americans from a massive expansion of government hacking and surveillance. Join the conversation with #SMHact.

What’s the problem here?

For law enforcement to conduct a remote electronic search, they generally need to plant malware in?—?i.e. hack?—?a device. These rule changes will allow the government to search millions of computers with the warrant of a single judge. To me, that’s clearly a policy change that’s outside the scope of an “administrative change,” and it is something that Congress should consider. An agency with the record of the Justice Department shouldn’t be able to wave its arms and grant itself entirely new powers.

Let’s get into the details

These changes say that if law enforcement doesn’t know where an electronic device is located, a magistrate judge will now have the the authority to issue a warrant to remotely search the device, anywhere in the world. While it may be appropriate to address the issue of allowing a remote electronic search for a device at an unknown location, Congress needs to consider what protections must be in place to protect Americans’ digital security and privacy. This is a new and uncertain area of law, so there needs to be full and careful debate. The ACLU has a thorough discussion of the Fourth Amendment ramifications and the technological questions at issue with these kinds of searches.

 

The second part of the change to Rule 41 would give a magistrate judge the authority to issue a single warrant that would authorize the search of an unlimited number?—?potentially thousands or millions?—?of devices, located anywhere in the world. These changes would dramatically expand the government’s hacking and surveillance authority. The American public should understand that these changes won’t just affect criminals: computer security experts and civil liberties advocates say the amendments would also dramatically expand the government’s ability to hack the electronic devices of law-abiding Americans if their devices were affected by a computer attack. Devices will be subject to search if their owners were victims of a botnet attack?—?so the government will be treating victims of hacking the same way they treat the perpetrators.

 

As the Center on Democracy and Technology has noted, there are approximately 500 million computers that fall under this rule. The public doesn’t know nearly enough about how law enforcement executes these hacks, and what risks these types of searches will pose. By compromising the computer’s system, the search might leave it open to other attackers or damage the computer they are searching.

 

Don’t take it from me that this will impact your security, read more from security researchers Steven Bellovin, Matt Blaze and Susan Landau.

 

Finally, these changes to Rule 41 would also give some types of electronic searches different, weaker notification requirements than physical searches. Under this new Rule, they are only required to make “reasonable efforts” to notify people that their computers were searched. This raises the possibility of the FBI hacking into a cyber attack victim’s computer and not telling them about it until afterward, if at all.

A job for Congress?—?not the Justice Department

These changes are a major policy shift that will impact Americans’ digital security, expand the government’s surveillance powers and pose serious Fourth Amendment questions. Part of the problem is the simple fact that both the American public and security experts know so little about how the government goes about hacking a computer to search it. If a victim’s Fourth Amendment rights are violated, it might not be readily apparent because of the highly technical nature of the methods used to execute the warrant.

 

It is Congress’ job to make sure we do not let the Executive Branch run roughshod over our constituents’ rights. That is why action is so important: this is a policy question that should be debated by Congress. Although the Department of Justice has tried to describe this rule change as simply a matter of judicial venue, sometimes a difference in scale really is a difference in kind. By allowing so many searches with the order of just a single judge, Congress’s failure to act on this issue would be a disaster for law-abiding Americans.

 

When the public realizes what is at stake, I think there is going to be a massive outcry: Americans will look at Congress and say, “What were you thinking?”

By failing to act, Congress is once again demonstrating that it is not just useless, it’s also dangerously corrupt and incompetent.

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