Attom Data Solutions has published its Vacant Property and Zombie Foreclosure Report that shows over 1.5 million (1,530,563) homes and condos vacant in 3Q19, which represents about 1.6% of the national housing stock. Attom examined county tax assessor data of 98 million single-family homes and condos for vacancies, foreclosure status, and owner-occupancy status.
During the quarter there were 304,000 homes in the process of foreclosure, with 3.2% “zombie” foreclosures, a situation that occurs when homeowners abandon a home after receiving a foreclosure notice.
The report showed a total of 9,612 zombie foreclosures nationwide.
New York had the most zombie properties (2,428), followed by Florida (1,634), Illinois (985), Ohio (891) and New Jersey (463).
The top 10 metropolitan areas with zombie properties are New York-Newark-Jersey City, NY-NJ-PA (1,566); Chicago-Naperville-Elgin, IL-IN-WI (534); Miami-Fort Lauderdale-West Palm Beach, FL (506); Cleveland-Elyria, OH (431); Tampa-St. Petersburg-Clearwater, FL (351); Philadelphia-Camden-Wilmington, PA-NJ-DE-MD (281); Albany-Schenectady-Troy, NY (174); Rochester, NY (172); Baltimore-Columbia-Towson, MD (171); and Jacksonville, FL (155).
The counties with the most zombie properties are Suffolk, NY (475); Cuyahoga, OH (392); Nassau, NY (322); Cook, IL (316); Broward, FL (181); Pinellas, FL (174); Palm Beach, FL (172); Miami-Dade, FL (153); Monroe, FL (143); and Duval, FL (131).
Zipcodes with the most zombie properties are 44105 in Cleveland, OH (57); 44108 in Cleveland, OH (54); 61605 in Peoria, IL (53); 44112 in Cleveland, OH (37); 14701 in Jamestown, NY (30); 11967 in New York, NY (28); 11520 in New York, NY (27); 11717 in New York, NY (27); 34668 in Tampa, FL (26); and 12078 in Gloversville, NY (26).
ATTOM’s 3Q19 report also found the highest levels of vacant investor-owned properties were in Indiana (8.8%), Kansas (6.7%), Minnesota (6.0%), Ohio, (5.9%) and Rhode Island (5.8%).
The zipcodes with the highest number of vacant investor-owned properties were in 29928 in Hilton Head Island, SC (4,941); 48505 in Flint, MI (2,828); 29582 in Myrtle Beach, SC (2,728); 29572 in Myrtle Beach (2,325); 48504 in Flint, MI (1,774); 48227 in Detroit, MI (1,733); 92262 in Riverside, CA (1,727); 48228 in Detroit, MI (1,670); 19132 in Philadelphia, PA (1,648); and 48224 in Detroit, MI (1.627).
“The blight of vacant, decaying properties facing foreclosure has declined dramatically across the United States – another good-news offshoot of the housing boom that’s gone on for eight years,” said Todd Teta, chief product officer with ATTOM Data Solutions.
“A handful of areas still face notable problems with homes abandoned by owners after they get hit with foreclosure claims.”
Maybe the chart below – which can only go up now – explains why President Trump is demanding the Federal Reserve cut 100bps and launch quantitative easing, and as of this week, trial ballooned several headlines of emergency payroll tax cuts. The administration has figured out that another housing bust is coming and will do anything to delay it.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2L8Uo4c Tyler Durden
Just when things seemed to be settling down a little bit, our conflict with China has suddenly escalated to a dangerous new phase.
This is not simply just a “trade war” any longer, and our relationship with China will never be the same again. As you will see below, President Trump just referred to Chinese President Xi Jinping as our “enemy”, and this is something that the Chinese are going to take extremely seriously. In China, the national leader is a representation of the government as a whole, and the government as a whole is a representation of the entire county. So to the Chinese people, what Trump just said will be interpreted as “the United States and China are now enemies”.
Of course for Trump everything would be forgiven tomorrow if the Chinese totally caved in to his demands and started saying all sorts of nice things about him, but for the Chinese what has transpired in recent months will be remembered for generations. President Trump has insulted their national honor over and over again, and that sort of thing may not mean much to us here in the western world anymore, but over in China their sense of honor is central to who they are as a people. After everything that has already been said and done, there will be no going back, and we are now facing a future in which the United States and China will be very bitter enemies.
In response to previously announced U.S. tariffs, China stunned global markets when it announced a new wave of tariffs on U.S. goods early on Friday…
The trade war between the U.S. and China escalated further Friday as Beijing announced a new set of tariffs on American products, sending the stock market plunging.
The China State Council announced it would impose tariffs ranging from 5% to 10% on an additional $75 billion in U.S. goods, according to state media outlet Global Times.
After Trump learned of this, he hit the ceiling, and he immediately went on a Twitter rant in which he pledged to hit Chinese goods with even higher tariffs…
For many years China (and many other countries) has been taking advantage of the United States on Trade, Intellectual Property Theft, and much more.
Our Country has been losing HUNDREDS OF BILLIONS OF DOLLARS a year to China, with no end in sight.
Sadly, past Administrations have allowed China to get so far ahead of Fair and Balanced Trade that it has become a great burden to the American Taxpayer.
As President, I can no longer allow this to happen! In the spirit of achieving Fair Trade, we must Balance this very unfair Trading Relationship.
China should not have put new Tariffs on 75 BILLION DOLLARS of United States product (politically motivated!).
Starting on October 1st, the 250 BILLION DOLLARS of goods and products from China, currently being taxed at 25%, will be taxed at 30%.
Additionally, the remaining 300 BILLION DOLLARS of goods and products from China, that was being taxed from September 1st at 10%, will now be taxed at 15%. Thank you for your attention to this matter!
Trump then tweeted that American companies “are hereby ordered to immediately start looking for an alternative to China, including bringing your companies HOME and making your products in the USA.” He did not immediately detail the authority he thought he could use to compel firms to leave China.
When I first saw that I could hardly believe what I was seeing, and you may have had the same reaction.
Can Trump actually do that?
Well, no, the truth is that he can’t.
He can certainly encourage U.S. businesses to leave China, but as CNN has pointed out, he doesn’t have the authority to unilaterally order all of our companies to leave an entire country…
Here’s the thing: Donald Trump can’t order American business to do anything. There’s a reason the business world is known as the “private sector” — because it’s not owned or controlled by the government (aka the “public sector.”) We don’t have state-run industry (or media). The President of the United States can’t “order” privately held business to do, well, much of anything.
And on top of everything else, President Trump posted another tweet in which he called Chinese President Xi Jinping our “enemy”. The following comes directly from Trump’s Twitter account…
As usual, the Fed did NOTHING! It is incredible that they can “speak” without knowing or asking what I am doing, which will be announced shortly. We have a very strong dollar and a very weak Fed. I will work “brilliantly” with both, and the U.S. will do great…
….My only question is, who is our bigger enemy, Jay Powell or Chairman Xi?
Any hopes for a trade deal with China during the Trump administration were already dead, but this has put even more nails in the coffin.
When the outlook for the U.S. economy was brighter, getting a trade deal with China done was not so critical for Trump, but now things have dramatically changed.
Top White House advisers notified President Trump earlier this month that some internal forecasts showed that the economy could slow markedly over the next year, stopping short of a recession but complicating his path to reelection in 2020.
The private forecast, one of several delivered to Trump and described by three people familiar with the briefing, contrasts sharply with the triumphant rhetoric the president and his surrogates have repeatedly used to describe the economy.
Things just continue to get even bleaker. U.S. manufacturing just contracted for the very first time since 2009, and the financial markets are starting to figure out that there aren’t any promising solutions on the horizon.
On Friday, the trade war turmoil greatly spooked investors and the Dow ended the day down more than 600 points…
The Dow Jones Industrial Average closed 623.34 points lower, or 2.4% at 25,628.90. The S&P 500 slid 2.6% to close at 2,847.11. The Nasdaq Composite dropped 3% to end the day at 7,751.77. The losses brought the Dow’s decline for August to more than 4%.
The major indexes also posted weekly losses for the fourth straight time. The Dow dropped about 1% this week while the S&P 500 pulled back 1.4%. The Nasdaq lost 1.8%.
As I noted at the end of last month, the stock market started to decline in July, and now it has fallen every single week here in August. Just like in “The Beginning Of The End”, we are potentially facing a scenario in which we experience great economic and financial turmoil during the second half of the year.
Over and over again, I have kept warning my readers that our relations with China were going to get progressively worse. We have been expecting this for a long time, but most Americans still do not grasp the implications of this crisis.
This conflict between the United States and China is going to change everything. An extraordinary amount of pain is heading our way, and our society is completely and utterly unprepared to handle it.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2znJcuR Tyler Durden
When it comes to unconventional proposal to control the weather, NBC News probably holds the prize with this gem, which we discussed back in January: “A last-ditch global warming fix? A man-made ‘volcanic’ eruption” to cool the planet. Scientists and some environmentalists believe nations might have to mimic volcanic gases as a last-ditch effort to protect Earth from extreme warming.”
Another just as ridiculous proposal to “control” atmospheric events emerged during the Eisenhower era, when a government scientist proposed detonating a nuclear bomb over the eye of a hurricane to counteract convection currents.
Why do we bring it up? Because according to an Axios report late on Sunday (which if capital markets weren’t collapsing and China wasn’t on the edge of invading Hong Kong would have been the top watercooler discussing point tomorrow, but as it stands will hardly make the top 10 most shocking weekend developments) President Trump “suggested multiple times to senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States.”
Is Axios just making stuff up to paint Trump in a crazy light? Perhaps: the publication cotes “sources who have heard the president’s private remarks and been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum that recorded those comments”, so yes, the left-leaning outlet may have simply brought us another example of “fake news.” On the other hand, if true it would be, as Mark Carney would call it “awesome” – after all what better way to lose the reserve currency status of the dollar than its sovereign nation randomly lobbing nukes across the globe… and why not its own territory.”
So what do Axios claim happened?
During one hurricane briefing at the White House, Trump said, “I got it. I got it. Why don’t we nuke them?” according to one source who was there. “They start forming off the coast of Africa, as they’re moving across the Atlantic, we drop a bomb inside the eye of the hurricane and it disrupts it. Why can’t we do that?”
Other (once again anonymous) sources told Axios that Trump has suggested multiple times to senior Homeland Security and national security officials that they explore using nuclear bombs to stop hurricanes from hitting the United States, according to sources who have heard the president’s private remarks and been briefed on a National Security Council memorandum that recorded those comments.
Asked how the briefer reacted, the source recalled he said something to the effect of, “Sir, we’ll look into that.”
Trump replied by asking incredulously how many hurricanes the U.S. could handle and reiterating his suggestion that the government intervene before they make landfall.
The briefer “was knocked back on his heels,” the source in the room added. “You could hear a gnat fart in that meeting. People were astonished. After the meeting ended, we thought, ‘What the f—? What do we do with this?'”
One reason: because this is an idea that’s been around for decades, and frequently floated seriously. That said, while Axios clearly is intent on making Trump look (even more) insane, there is no indication that the president is actually pushing ahead with the proposal to start nuking air masses.
Meanwhile, even Axios admits that “the idea keeps resurfacing in the public even though scientists agree it won’t work. The myth has been so persistent that the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, the U.S. government agency that predicts changes in weather and the oceans, published an online fact sheet for the public under the heading Tropical Cyclone Myths Page, titled “Why don’t we try to destroy tropical cyclones by nuking them?”
The page states: “Apart from the fact that this might not even alter the storm, this approach neglects the problem that the released radioactive fallout would fairly quickly move with the tradewinds to affect land areas and cause devastating environmental problems. Needless to say, this is not a good idea.”
Responding to the article, a senior administration official said, “we don’t comment on private discussions that the president may or may not have had with his national security team.” A different senior administration official, who has been briefed on the president’s hurricane bombing suggestion, defended Trump’s idea and said it was no cause for alarm. “His goal — to keep a catastrophic hurricane from hitting the mainland — is not bad,” the official said. “His objective is not bad.”
“What people near the president do is they say ‘I love a president who asks questions like that, who’s willing to ask tough questions.’ … It takes strong people to respond to him in the right way when stuff like this comes up. For me, alarm bells weren’t going off when I heard about it, but I did think somebody is going to use this to feed into ‘the president is crazy’ narrative.”
Axios also notes that 3 weeks after Trump’s 2016 election, National Geographic published an article titled, “Nuking Hurricanes: The Surprising History of a Really Bad Idea.” It found, among other problems, that:
Dropping a nuclear bomb into a hurricane would be banned under the terms of the Peaceful Nuclear Explosions Treaty between the U.S. and the former Soviet Union. So that could stave off any experiments, as long as the U.S. observes the terms of the treaty.
Whether this story is true or not, we doubt that hurricanes have much to worry about. Now, if we were Fed Chair Powell, we would be far more concerned.
Trump deciding who to nuke first: Iran or the Marriner Eccles building
Nothing calms the public quite like gunfire in heavily populated areas. Nevertheless, the U.S. Army has plans to do just that starting August 30th and continuing to September 12th in 21 select counties in North Carolina.
While exact locations are not being released, according to The Charlotte Observerresidents in the following counties should not be alarmed by gunfire, flares and helicopter activity that might be witnessed, as seen in the video below:
The 21 counties include Alamance, Anson, Cabarrus, Chatham, Cumberland, Davidson, Davie, Guilford, Harnett, Hoke, Lee, Montgomery, Moore, Randolph, Richmond, Robeson, Rowan, Scotland, Stanly, Union and Wake counties, officials said.
Efforts to calm the public ahead of time come after some past tragic incidents where at least one soldier died and mass panic ensued after a similar exercise was thought to be a real event.
This latest group of drills is part of “Robin Sage” which is a series of ongoing training exercises conducted out of the Fort Bragg military base. According to The Charlotte Observer, this year’s emphasis is being placed on unconventional warfare where “students will match wits with more seasoned soldiers, who will ‘act as realistic opposing forces and guerrilla freedom fighters,’officials said in a release.”
It’s not clear in the Observer‘s report if this series of drills has anything to do with a larger U.S. Army mission of preparing for close-combat warfare in megacities, but it does appear to have some of those elements.
As I reported in 2017, the Pentagon gave a very clear image of where they believe warfare is headed in the future as the world’s cities continue to swell and become pressure cookers for potential insurrection. It’s part of a program called “Thunderstorm Spiral.”
Drills such as “Unified Quest” run yearly by the U.S. Army also took a sharper turn in 2014 toward addressing the problem of combat in megacities – defined as cities with more than 10 million people, of which there already are nearly 25 and projected to total near 40 by the year 2025.
Solicitations for “meagcities combat units” have been issued by people as prominent as West Point scholar and former Ranger Instructor, John Spencer. His article on the topic is a must-read.
While military combat training is of course a necessity, it does seem to be a trend that these drills are moving closer and closer to heavily populated areas of the United States. That should be alarming enough.
As Morgan Stanley’s bearish US equity strategist, Michael Wilson writes, at this point, the argument between bulls and bears really comes down to one question–are we mid cycle or not, a question which Jerome Powell answered three weeks ago in a way that was not satisfactory to the market?
As Wilson notes, 4 months ago, the bulls were arguing that the Fed’s dovish pivot was all we needed because the underlying US economy was in very good shape, with some still suggesting the Fed could raise rates again later this year. When the global economy showed signs of weakness in April and May, the bullish narrative changed to Fed cuts offsetting concerns about trade tensions and spillover to the US economy and markets. There was little mention of any endogenous risk to the US economy at the time and so it was couched as an “insurance cut.” This led many to call for a meltup, and for a few weeks that call seemed correct, however that’s when the trade war with China escalated sharply, just as many had expected would happen.
Which brings us to today: with the Fed having cut 25bps last month and ending QT 2 months earlier than planned, the bulls are saying the Fed did not do enough and they are now behind the curve. They suggest that the Fed will quickly catch up and economy will be fine because we are still mid cycle and the consumer remains so strong. This, as Wilson sarcastically notes, “is what we call thesis creep in the investment world.”
Unlike such “thesis creepers”, Morgan Stanley’s view on the fundamental picture has been consistent all year. Consistently bearish that is. Here is Wilson again:
We’ve argued all along that the economy would continue to slow and that the second half recovery most were expecting would fail to materialize for a multitude of reasons. The most differentiated part of our view has centered around the US corporate profits recession that is now happening. If we are going to slip into an economic recession we believe it will be because this profits recession worsens to the point where companies will decide it is time to reduce head count. Part of our call this year was that companies would cut capex and inventory from bloated levels reached last year and that labor looked vulnerable at some point due to the rapidly deteriorating margins we expected. This call was not predicated on the trade situation getting worse although we never expected any grand bargain as some were forecasting.
As Wilson also cautions, at this point the evidence is clear that significant number of companies are now at a critical juncture where they need to make a decision on head count:
While we can’t say with any certainty whether companies will pull that lever or not, the probability of such an outcome has risen considerably and we have written about this extensively in prior notes. Perhaps the most compelling argument that companies are moving in this direction is the fact that hours worked have declined materially which is what typically happens before head count reductions occur in large numbers
This is shown in the chart below:
The bottom line, at least to Morgan Stanley, is that “it is very hard to argue mid cycle from the real data we are seeing, the fact that the unemployment rate is well below NAIRU, and profit margins and growth are outright declining on a y/y basis for the majority of companies, both public and private.“
It is not just the bank’s bearish assessment that leads it to conclude that Powell’s “mid-cycle” assessment is wrong: the market evidence is also compelling that “we are not mid cycle, or even late cycle, but rather, end of cycle”, according to Wilson, who notes that over the past year, markets have essentially traded as if we are heading into a recession. Exhibit A: Bond yield have fallen at a rate rarely seen outside of a recessionary outcome while the yield curve has been inverted for over 3 months continuously. Here, Wilson focuses on the Fed Fund-10 year curve as the most accurate reflection of what the bond market thinks about Fed Policy, something Chair Powell has cited himself. “On this score, the message is quite clear–Fed policy is too tight for the economy.”
Meanwhile, in the clearest indication that something is very wrong, the most interest rate sensitive parts of the economy have failed to rebound even though rates have fallen sharply over the past year suggesting this is not a cost issue for consumers, but an issue of weak demand. Of particular note is housing – the fact that housing related stocks have not been able to outperform since April as rates collapsed is once again indicative of the market’s view on whether we are mid cycle or not.
Another clear market signal that we are end cycle is the relative underperformance of cyclical stocks at this point in the cycle, while last week’s accelerated move lower in the performance of cyclicals/defensives was as striking as the blow off move in bonds, suggesting the market is likely getting more convinced of the recession outcome.
This can be seen in the next chart, the accelerative move lower by the ratio of cyclical/defensive stocks and 10 year Treasury yields is completely in lock step at this point and arguably even more than in early 2016, the last true recession scare. Here, Wilson reminds readers that back then he held the opposite view, claiming that we were actually mid cycle… and that turned out to be the case. However, as he cautions, it is different this time for numerous reasons, including the the output gap, unemployment gap, consumer confidence, capex cycle, inventory cycle, Fed cycle all of which are in a much different place than in early 2016.
So… what then?
Given that the markets and the general public are clearly well aware of the rising risk of recession…
… the natural question is what should an investor do at this point? Isn’t is too late to buy bond proxies or sell cyclical stocks? The answer to that question, according to Morgan Stanley, is probably, “yes”. However, in what is likely a mean reversion trade, at this stage it is likely that Defensives will outperform the other part of the safety barbell–Growth.
To this point, Morgan Stanley published a chart last week showing how growth stocks underperform defensives at the very end if a recession is going to get fully priced. In other words, while it may seem obvious that Defensive bond proxies and Growth stocks are where valuations remain egregious, Defensives tend to hold onto those valuations longer than Growth stocks as the growth / recession scare gets priced. As a result, Wilson’s advise to investors is to reduce their risk in the Growth bucket if they have outsized exposure there, in particular the expensive secular growth stocks.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2zp7mVK Tyler Durden
When the state constructs a new bike lane, school, or begins a new space mission, the natural inclination of the majority is to cheer this new endeavor as progressive. We possess one new structure or have accomplished one new task than before; society has moved forward, the thinking goes.
The state is responsible for truly technically impressive or beautiful accomplishments like the Apollo missions, the Moscow Metro, the Palace of Versailles, etc. that most would agree clearly produce benefits for society.
Confronted with these concrete and widely celebrated examples of government accomplishments, how can libertarians deny that state action is sometimes a benevolent force in society?
Opportunity Cost
Leaving aside moral considerations and focusing on utilitarian considerations, the answer revolves around opportunity cost and demonstrated preference.
Opportunity cost is the benefits that could have been obtained through the best forgone alternative to an actual employment of resources. If a slice of pizza costs two dollars, and a hamburger costs two dollars, then the opportunity cost of a slice of pizza is a hamburger, and visa-versa.
The resources of any given country are scarce, and the “economic question” that must be solved is, how should the limited resources available be applied to best satisfy people’s subjective preferences?
Even if, for example, the state builds a library that is beautiful, the books are neatly organized, the librarian is competent and cordial, the temperature is well-regulated, and the computers are state of the art, we still need to hold our applause.
In order to be able to celebrate the employment of resources by the state in a particular application, it’s necessary to consider the alternative uses that could have been possible with those resources. If there exists an alternative option that could have better satisfied subjective preferences, then the actual employment, even if it produced benefits, was a relative failure.
Voluntary Exchange and Demonstrated Preference
Now the question is: by what standard can it be determined which employment of resources is best, relative to the subjective preferences of consumers, in any given case?
In instances of voluntary exchange, every exchange is not only ex-ante mutually beneficial, it’s ex-ante the bestemployment of the resources being exchanged, from the perspectives of the respective property owners. This is called demonstrated preference, which Rothbard explains to mean, “simply this: that actual choice reveals, or demonstrates, a man’s preferences; that is, that his preferences are deducible from what he has chosen in action.”
For example, if Smith sells Jones a lamp for twenty dollars, we can know that of all of the alternative uses of the lamp Smith had available to him, such as using it to read, using it as a decoration, keeping it in storage, etc., selling it to Jones for twenty dollars was his most highly preferred option, because that is the option that he freely chose.
Likewise, Jones thought buying Smith’s lamp was the best of all possible uses available to him of his twenty dollars. Otherwise, he wouldn’t have executed that option.
Involuntary Exchange
On the other hand, sometimes exchange, production, and consumption are not conducted as a result of the voluntary decisions of all of the owners of the property involved, but rather under compulsion of physical force. Then, in the absence of demonstrated preference, it can never be known whether the act benefited any of the involved parties or caused them harm, let alone that it was the most beneficial employment of resources for every party involved.
Given that usually countless options are available to actors at any given time, if would be an astronomically unlikely coincidence for the state to happen to dictate what consumers would have voluntarily chosen to do at a particular moment in time anyway. In this way, it’s metaphysically possible for state action to be equally ex-ante beneficial to all parties involved as voluntary exchange, but never more.
Fundamentally, acts of taxation and regulation, due to their involuntary nature, sever the link between consumers’ subjective preferences and the way in which their resources are deployed.
The Seen and the Unseen
Behind every million dollar tax-funded high school, for example, there hides a million dollars’ worth of other goods and services that these taxpayers never got to purchase, but would have preferred over the high school. Perhaps these goods would have been a million dollars’ worth of flowers, food, board games, medical services, books, cutlery, home renovations, farming equipment, computer software, and math tutor services.
There’s nothing stopping taxpayers from funding a high school on their own and sparing themselves the deadweight loss of bureaucracy. It really is simply the case that if consumers want a high school, they can pay for one, and as private high schools demonstrate, they often do.
However, the state using taxation to build a particular high school can only divert funds from more highly valued opportunity costs to the lower ranked high school. Otherwise, no compulsion would have been necessary. Despite this undeniable and simple logic, in the U.S., tax-funded expansions of the government K-12 education system, among other interventions, are widely celebrated.
In terms of public opinion, part of the explanation is that the high school can be seen and cheered because it actually exists, whereas the lost opportunity costs, by their very nature as forgone alternatives, never occurred, as so mourning their loss requires abstract reasoning and imagination on the part of the public.
Frédéric Bastiat described this phenomenon in his classic work “That Which is Seen, and That Which is Not Seen.” Conspicuous state projects win the public relations war over quietly letting people spend their money as they actually wish to.
The interstate highway system, the Louvre, and the Sixth Fleet may be impressive, but they’re not cause for applause. Relative to the preferences of the taxpayer, no matter how grand and awe-inspiring a project the state completes, it will always and everywhere ex-ante fall short of voluntary exchange.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2zqzec5 Tyler Durden
A Georgia appeals judge was found shot dead on Saturday in a wooded area behind his Albany home, however officials do not believe it was a homicide, according to the Associated Press (via the Washington Times).
60-year-old Judge Stephen Goss served as a Superior Court judge in Albany for approximately 20 years, after which then-Gov. Nathan Deal appointed him to serve as a judge on the Georgia Court of Appeals in August 2018.
Goss brought “dignity and compassion to the delivery of justice all across this great state,” said Chief Justice Harold D. Melton, who noted that he was known nationally for his work on substance abuse and mental health treatment programs.
“His legacy is as great as our sense of loss,” added Melton. “Our court and this state’s judiciary express our profound condolences to the Goss family.”
Gov. Brian Kemp offered his support to the Goss family.
“A native Georgian, trusted counsel, and man of integrity, Court of Appeals Judge Stephen Goss will be sorely missed by countless people across our state and nation,” Kemp said in a tweet. “The Kemp family asks God to give comfort to his loved ones, friends, and colleagues in this difficult time.”
In 2002, Goss founded Georgia’s first felony mental health court and substance abuse treatment program in Dougherty County. It was one of the early programs of its kind in the country, according to his online bio. The program assists those with felony probation or pending felony charges, many of whom have a long history with substance abuse or diagnosed mental illness. For the past decade, the Dougherty County program has been a designated learning site for mental health courts, one of only four in the nation. –Washington Times
Goss was previously chairman of the Council of Accountability Court Judges of Georgia, serving on multiple state and national committees focusing on criminal justice. He is survived by his wife Dee – a middle school humanities teacher, and their three children.
At this time no foul play is suspected.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3240zgM Tyler Durden
The Sunday session already had a flash crashy feel to it, when the first casualty as said “feel” became reality was the Turkish Lira, which suddenly snapped, plunging as much as 15% (yes, fifteen percent against the dollar in a matter of seconds.
There was no news – besides the already tense sentiment that had dragged futures sharply lower – so it was either a fat finger or a macro fund getting stopped out at a huge loss.
More if we see it, but for now keep an eye on the yuan, which is also tumbling if not nearly as fast as the Lira. We expect a response from the US Treasury imminently, as Trump orders Mnuchin to intervene directly and start buying up billions of the the Chinese currency.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Zh8v1k Tyler Durden
As with most things about US foreign policy today, the irony of this situation is just too much to bear.
After Juan Guaidó, the self-styled ‘democratic president’ of Venezuela, declared himself to be Venezuela’s rightful ruler on January 23, 2019, he was quickly recognised by Washington DC and then dutifully by those nations subservient to US foreign policy dictates. For weeks, opposition ringleaders and pro-US mobs celebrated, believing that by some miraculous sequence of events – that the Maduro “regime” would fall within days.
Seven months later, Nicholas Maduro is still in power, and the Guaidó mobs have dissipated.
What’s worse, Washington’s “interim leader” Guaidó is now instructing his opposition followers notto participate in the upcoming legislative elections. In other words, he and Washington are shunning democracy altogether in Venezuela.
Maduro allies have suggested they’d like to hold an election for the National Assembly in January or earlier. The parliament’s term is officially set to end in December of 2020, and elections would normally be held a few months before that.
Guaido is the majority leader in the National Assembly, and has used that position to declare himself the rightful ruler of Venezuela. Guaido says the assembly will remain in place until Maduro is removed from power, arguing no free elections are possible until then.
It’s clear Maduro would like to replace Guaido with a parliament leader more friendly to his continued rule, and it was also raised as a possibility that fresh elections might resolve complaints about the manner in which Maduro won. So far its not clear either side is willing to move forward with that unless they are confident the outcome benefits them.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Zn6KKZ Tyler Durden
There was a distinct sense of foreboding that the Hong Kong situation is about to take a far worse turn for the worse during this weekend protest, the 12th in a row, which saw the HK police deploy water cannon on protesters, while three police officers who were allegedly chased and beaten by a mob of club-wielding protesters, pulled their revolvers, with one firing at least one warning shot toward the sky.
Police officers point their guns at anti-government protesters in Tsuen Wan on Sunday.
It was the first time a gun had been discharged since the protests triggered by the now-shelved extradition bill began almost three months ago. However, it won’t be the last, and to make sure it is positioned properly when the real shooting begins, China sent the strongest warning yet of using troops on Hong Kong’s streets where Beijing says protests have turned into a “Color Revolution,” a clear indication that China’s patience with Hong Kong’s insurrection has just about ran out.
“It’s not only China central government’s authority but also its responsibility to intervene when riots take place in Hong Kong,” the state-run Xinhua News Agency said Sunday in a commentary which was meant to prepare the local population for the inevitable intervention as it recalled comments by former top leader Deng Xiaoping saying Beijing has to act under such circumstances.
In Sunday’s commentary, Xinhua said Hong Kong’s protests have turned into a Color Revolution aimed at overturning the Special Administrative Region’s constitutional institutions, a signal it was ready to take further action. Previously, Chinese officials had described the protests as having some characteristics of a “color revolution.”
To confirm that it had dotted all of its legal i’s, Xinhua also said that Hong Kong’s Basic Law and Garrison Law have relative clauses on possible China intervention.
Echoing the Xinhua commentary was a tweet from the Global Times’ Editor in Chief, Hu Xijin, who took a break from commenting on the trade war between the US and China, to prepare the public for what was coming, saying “mobs violently smashed a police vehicle and attacked police officers. See how police exercised restraint in order to avoid bloodshed. Feel sympathy for Hong Kong police.”
Sunday, Hong Kong, mobs violently smashed a police vehicle and attacked police officers. See how police exercised restraint in order to avoid bloodshed. Feel sympathy for Hong Kong police. pic.twitter.com/J53u7GJvQ0
Protesters’ violent acts have pushed Hong Kong to an extremely dangerous edge, the city’s government said in a statement after a day full of violent clashes between demonstrators and the police where an officer fired warning shots in the air.
Two weeks ago, on August 13, President Donald Trump said reports from U.S. intelligence agencies showed the Chinese government was moving troops to its border with Hong Kong. A day earlier, Global Times, a Chinese tabloid run by the People’s Daily, reported that the Chinese People’s Armed Police were assembling in Shenzhen ahead of “apparent large-scale exercises,” where “numerous” armored personnel carriers, trucks and other vehicles of the paramilitary force were seen heading toward Hong Kong’s neighboring city.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2U3vB5p Tyler Durden
