Dark horse presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii) has filed an eyebrow-raising lawsuit against Hillary Clinton for defamation over comments the former Secretary of State made on a podcast suggesting that Gabbard was a Russian stooge.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday morning in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York claims that Clinton’s comments have damaged Gabbard and democracy itself.
“Clinton had no basis for making her false assertions about Tulsi—and indeed, there is no factual basis for Clinton’s conspiracy theory,” reads Gabbard’s complaint. “Tulsi brings this lawsuit to ensure that the truth prevails and to ensure this country’s political elites are held accountable for intentionally trying to distort the truth in the midst of a critical Presidential election.”
In October 2019, Clinton appeared on the podcast Campaign HQ, where she, while not mentioning Gabbard by name, implied that the Hawaiian representative was being “groomed” by the Republicans to launch a disruptive third-party bid, something that would apparently delight the Russian government.
“She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far. And, that’s assuming [2016 Green Party candidate] Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset. Yeah, she’s a Russian asset,” said Clinton on the podcast.
When asked the following day if these comments were about Gabbard, a Clinton spokesperson said, “If the nesting doll fits.”
In November, Gabbard sent a letter to Clinton threatening her with a defamation suit unless she retracted her comments. With no retraction forthcoming, Gabbard is making good on her threat.
Her lawsuit asks that Clinton be made to pay damages, and, incredibly, that the court issue an injunction prohibiting the “publication or republication” of Clinton’s Russian asset comments.
This is not the first unconventional lawsuit filed by Gabbard during her presidential campaign. She also sued Google for violating her First Amendment rights after the company briefly suspending her Google Ads account following a July Democratic debate.
Obviously the First Amendment’s free speech protections don’t restrict the actions of private corporations. Gabbard’s Google lawsuit, Reason‘s Billy Binion noted at the time, was more about capitalizing on anti-Big Tech animus than making substantive legal claims.
The presidential contender’s lawsuit against Clinton similarly seems to be motivated by political considerations.
Gabbard has made opposition to U.S. interventionism—and the support it has among Clinton-style Democrats—the signature issue of her campaign. Her lawsuit gives her an opportunity to throw some spicy disses in that direction.
Gabbard, her lawsuit notes, is running for the same office that Clinton “has long coveted, but has not been able to attain.” The 2016 Democratic nominee is also referred to as “a cutthroat politician by any account.” (Tell us how you really feel, Tulsi!)
Ironically, for all the injury that she is claiming, Gabbard actually saw a poll bump after Clinton’s remarks. That’s because all publicity is good publicity when you are running a long shot campaign for president. Clinton’s comments got Gabbard’s name in the news, increasing her visibility to voters. The lawsuit seems like a calculated attempt to replicate that result.
Whether her lawsuit has any legal merit is something the courts will have to decide, a decision that will turn in part on whether Clinton was making a factual assertion, or if she was engaging in good old-fashioned political hyperbole.
Regardless of how the legal battle shakes out, one politician sung another over their rhetoric is not healthy. Democracy requires that people can say nasty, even untrue, things about their opponents and rivals without the fear of being dragged into court.
Should that become the norm, courts (not voters) will decide the acceptable parameters of political speech and debate.
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Quite a few of the most important sectors of the global economy are already “in a recession”, and yet somehow we are still supposed to believe that the economic outlook for the rest of 2020 is a positive one.
I am not buying it, and I know that a lot of other people aren’t buying it either.
The global economic slowdown that began last year is really picking up pace here in early 2020, and global financial markets are perfectly primed for a meltdown of epic proportions. Unfortunately, most people simply do not understand how badly the global economy has been deteriorating. For example, global auto sales have now fallen for two years in a row, and even CNN is admitting that the global auto industry has been in a “recession” for some time…
The global auto industry plunged deeper into recession in 2019, with sales dropping more than 4% as carmakers struggled to find buyers in China and India. The pain is likely to continue this year.
The number of vehicles sold across major global markets dipped to 90.3 million last year, according to analysts at LMC Automotive. That’s down from 94.4 million in 2018, and well below the record 95.2 million cars sold in 2017.
Here in the United States, people keep trying to tell us that the economy is in good shape, but last year auto sales fell here too…
Nonseasonally adjusted passenger car sales in the U.S. for 2019 declined 10.9% to 4.7 million units, versus 5.3 million units in 2018, according to an S&P Global Market Intelligence analysis.
Sales of trucks, minivans and SUVs for the year totaled 12.2 million units, up 2.8% from the 2018 figure of 11.9 million units.
The overall nonseasonally adjusted U.S. vehicle sales for the period fell 1.4% to 17.0 million units, versus 17.2 million units a year ago.
Very few analysts are expecting these trends to turn around in 2020.
And considering how important the auto industry is to the global economy as a whole, that has very serious implications for all of us…
Recession comes with big ramifications for the global economy. According to the International Monetary Fund, the car industry accounts for 5.7% of economic output and 8% of goods exports. It is the second largest consumer of steel and aluminum.
Meanwhile, we are experiencing a very deep transportation recession in the United States as well. The following comes from Wolf Richter…
Shipment volume in the US by truck, rail, air, and barge plunged 7.9% in December 2019 compared to a year earlier, according to the Cass Freight Index for Shipments. It was the 13th month in a row of year-over-year declines, and the steepest year-over-year decline since November 2009, during the Financial Crisis
How in the world can the U.S. economy possibly be in “good shape” with absolutely horrific numbers like that?
When the amount of goods being shipped around the country by truck, rail and air is steadily falling, that is a crystal clear indication that economic conditions are slowing down.
And one of the biggest reasons why a transportation recession is upon us is because it looks like we are in a “manufacturing recession” too.
US manufacturing took a turn from lousy to worse in December, according to the Manufacturing ISM Report On Business, released today, with employment, new orders and new export orders, production, backlog of orders, and inventories all contracting.
The overall Purchasing Managers Index (PMI) dropped 0.9 percentage points from November to 47.2% in December 2019, the fifth month in a row of contraction, and the fastest contraction since June 2009.
Overall, 2019 was the worst year for U.S. industrial production since 2015.
Across the Atlantic, things are even worse in Europe. The following comes from Zero Hedge…
The manufacturing downturn across Europe deepened in the last month of 2019 according to the latest survey data released on Thursday.
IHS Markit Eurozone Manufacturing PMI lost momentum last month, printing at 46.3, down from 46.9 in November, if modestly above the 45.9 expected. The PMI averaged 46.4 in 4Q, a seven-year low.
When will global authorities finally admit that we have a real problem on our hands?
How much worse do the numbers have to get?
This month, the Baltic Dry Index has been plunging dramatically. For those that don’t know, the Baltic Dry Index is a key indicator of where global trade is heading, and on Monday it plummeted to a nine-month low…
The Baltic Exchange’s main sea freight index hit a nine-month low on Monday, dragged down by falling rates of capesize and panamax segments as world trade continues to slump.
The Baltic Dry Index, which tracks rates for capesize, panamax and supramax vessels that ferry dry bulk commodities across the world, dropped 25 points, or 3.3%, to 729 (according to Refinitiv data), the lowest level since April 2019
This is not what a healthy global economy looks like.
Of course many of those in positions of authority will continue to insist that everything is just fine for as long as possible.
In fact, back in 2008 Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke kept telling us that a recession wasn’t going to happen even after the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression had already started.
Just like back then, all of the hard economic numbers that we have are all saying the same thing.
Both the U.S. economy and the global economy as a whole have been slowing down for quite a while, and it looks like big trouble is ahead of us.
That means that now is not the time to be spending lots of money, making big financial commitments or going into debt.
Those that are wise will be positioning themselves to survive the coming economic storm, but unfortunately most people are paying no heed to the warning signs.
Just like last time around, most people have tremendous faith in the system, and so they will be absolutely blindsided by the crisis that is coming.
In the end, multitudes will be expecting the government to bail them out somehow, but considering the fact that we are already 23 trillion dollars in debt that simply is not going to be possible.
Adam Schiff Caught “Mischaracterizing” Evidence Day One Of Senate Impeachment Trial
Rep. Adam Schiff (D-CA) was caught “mischaracterizing” evidence on day one, Tuesday, of the Senate impeachment trial.
The left-leaning Politicoclaims that Schiff released inaccurate information about a text message between Rudy Giuliani and Lev Parnas on July 3, 2019, about organizing a meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky.
Schiff’s report was sent to House Judiciary Chairman Jerry Nadler (D-NY) last week that summarizes “a trove of evidence from Lev Parnas, an indicted former associate of Trump’s personal attorney Rudy Giuliani,” Politico reported.
Watch Schiff make up more fake dialogue
It was bad enough he made up the President’s phone call in the House, now he’s fabricating what the president of Ukraine said (no pressure) in the Senate
The report claims in a text message conversation between Giuliani and Parnas, Parnas said: “trying to get us mr Z.” The remainder of the letter was redacted.
Politico added, “But an unredacted version of the exchange shows that several days later, Parnas sent Giuliani a word document that appears to show notes from an interview with Mykola Zlochevsky, the founder of Burisma, followed by a text message to Giuliani that states: ‘mr Z answers my brother.’ That suggests Parnas was referring to Zlochevsky, not Zelensky.”
A Republican aide told Politico that Schiff’s assumption that “mr Z” is Zelensky is ludicrous.
“The most charitable view of the situation is that [Schiff’s] staff committed the equivalent of Congressional malpractice by not looking more than an inch deep to determine the facts before foisting this erroneous information on his colleagues and the American public,” said one senior GOP aide.
“But given the selective redactions and contextual clues, it seems as though Chairman Schiff sought to portray an innocuous meeting with Ukrainian oligarch Mykola Zlochevsky as an insidious one with the President of Ukraine simply because both of their surnames start with the letter Z,” the GOP aide added.
“Mischaracterized”? Yeah right… It’s Schiff. He’s a liar. Schiff may have mischaracterized Parnas evidence, documents show https://t.co/KaCjfdVbMp via @politico
Sleazeball Schiff busted AGAIN! This dude simply cannot tell the truth. He’s allergic to facts. Don’t trust a word out of his lying mouth. https://t.co/S6XLdX54kK
Schiff has issued false information in Trump-related investigations before.
It was reported in September 2019 that Schiff fabricated the account of a July 25 call between Trump and Zelensky, to analogize the interaction to a scene from a mafia drama.
And last month, Schiff said during a Fox News interview that he wasn’t willing to admit wrong in his defense of the FBI’s FISA process: “I’m certainly willing to admit that the inspector general found serious abuses of FISA that I was unaware of.”
Trump responded by saying, “Schiff’s correcting the record memo has turned out to be totally wrong (based on the I.G. Report)! A very big lie. @MariaBartiromo And @DevinNunes has turned out to be completely right. Congratulations to Devin. The Fake News Media should apologize to all!”
Schiff’s correcting the record memo has turned out to be totally wrong (based on the I.G. Report)! A very big lie. @MariaBartiromo And @DevinNunes has turned out to be completely right. Congratulations to Devin. The Fake News Media should apologize to all!
Dark horse presidential candidate Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D–Hawaii) has filed an eyebrow-raising lawsuit against Hillary Clinton for defamation over comments the former Secretary of State made on a podcast suggesting that Gabbard was a Russian stooge.
The lawsuit, filed Wednesday morning in the U.S. District Court for the Southern District of New York claims that Clinton’s comments have damaged Gabbard and democracy itself.
“Clinton had no basis for making her false assertions about Tulsi—and indeed, there is no factual basis for Clinton’s conspiracy theory,” reads Gabbard’s complaint. “Tulsi brings this lawsuit to ensure that the truth prevails and to ensure this country’s political elites are held accountable for intentionally trying to distort the truth in the midst of a critical Presidential election.”
In October 2019, Clinton appeared on the podcast Campaign HQ, where she, while not mentioning Gabbard by name, implied that the Hawaiian representative was being “groomed” by the Republicans to launch a disruptive third-party bid, something that would apparently delight the Russian government.
“She’s the favorite of the Russians. They have a bunch of sites and bots and other ways of supporting her so far. And, that’s assuming [2016 Green Party candidate] Jill Stein will give it up, which she might not because she’s also a Russian asset. Yeah, she’s a Russian asset,” said Clinton on the podcast.
When asked the following day if these comments were about Gabbard, a Clinton spokesperson said, “If the nesting doll fits.”
In November, Gabbard sent a letter to Clinton threatening her with a defamation suit unless she retracted her comments. With no retraction forthcoming, Gabbard is making good on her threat.
Her lawsuit asks that Clinton be made to pay damages, and, incredibly, that the court issue an injunction prohibiting the “publication or republication” of Clinton’s Russian asset comments.
This is not the first unconventional lawsuit filed by Gabbard during her presidential campaign. She also sued Google for violating her First Amendment rights after the company briefly suspending her Google Ads account following a July Democratic debate.
Obviously the First Amendment’s free speech protections don’t restrict the actions of private corporations. Gabbard’s Google lawsuit, Reason‘s Billy Binion noted at the time, was more about capitalizing on anti-Big Tech animus than making substantive legal claims.
The presidential contender’s lawsuit against Clinton similarly seems to be motivated by political considerations.
Gabbard has made opposition to U.S. interventionism—and the support it has among Clinton-style Democrats—the signature issue of her campaign. Her lawsuit gives her an opportunity to throw some spicy disses in that direction.
Gabbard, her lawsuit notes, is running for the same office that Clinton “has long coveted, but has not been able to attain.” The 2016 Democratic nominee is also referred to as “a cutthroat politician by any account.” (Tell us how you really feel, Tulsi!)
Ironically, for all the injury that she is claiming, Gabbard actually saw a poll bump after Clinton’s remarks. That’s because all publicity is good publicity when you are running a long shot campaign for president. Clinton’s comments got Gabbard’s name in the news, increasing her visibility to voters. The lawsuit seems like a calculated attempt to replicate that result.
Whether her lawsuit has any legal merit is something the courts will have to decide, a decision that will turn in part on whether Clinton was making a factual assertion, or if she was engaging in good old-fashioned political hyperbole.
Regardless of how the legal battle shakes out, one politician sung another over their rhetoric is not healthy. Democracy requires that people can say nasty, even untrue, things about their opponents and rivals without the fear of being dragged into court.
Should that become the norm, courts (not voters) will decide the acceptable parameters of political speech and debate.
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Rose Mary Knick, the plaintiff in Knick v. Township of Scott, with her lawyers from the Pacific Legal Foundation. (Pacific Legal Foundation).
My forthcoming article, “Overturning a Catch-22 in the Knick of Time: Knick v. Township of Scott and the Doctrine of Precedent” (Fordham Urban Law Journal, symposium issue) is now available for free downloading at the SSRN website. The article is coauthored with Prof. Shelley Ross Saxer of Pepperdine University, a leading property law scholar. Here is the abstract:
The Supreme Court’s decision in Knick v. Township of Scott was an important milestone in takings jurisprudence. But for many observers, it was even more significant because of its potential implications for the doctrine of stare decisis. Knick overruled a key part of a 34-year-old decision, Williamson County Regional Planning Commission v. Hamilton Bank, that had barred most takings cases from getting a hearing in federal court.
Some fear that the Knick decision signals the start of a campaign by the conservative majority on the Court that will lead to the ill-advised overruling of other precedents. In this article, we explain why such fears are misguided, because Knick’s overruling of Williamson County was amply justified under the Supreme Court’s established rules for overruling precedent, and also under leading alternative theories of stare decisis, both originalist and living constitutionalist.
Part I of this Article briefly summarizes the reasons why Williamson County was wrongly decided, and why the Knick Court was justified in overruling it on the merits — at least aside from the doctrine of stare decisis. The purpose of this Article is not to defend Knick’s rejection of Williamson County against those who believe the latter was correctly decided. For present purposes, we assume that Williamson County was indeed wrong, and consider whether the Knick Court should have nonetheless refused to overrule it because of the doctrine of stare decisis. But the reasons why Williamson County was wrong are relevant to assessing the Knick Court’s decision to reverse it rather than keeping it in place out of deference to precedent.
Part II shows that Knick’s overruling of Williamson County was amply justified based on the Supreme Court’s existing criteria for overruling constitutional decisions, which may be called its “precedent on overruling precedent.” It also addresses Justice Elena Kagan’s claim, in her Knick dissent, that the majority’s conclusion requires reversing numerous cases that long predate Knick. Part III explains why the overruling of Williamson County was justified based on leading current originalist theories of precedent advanced by prominent legal scholars, and by Supreme Court Justice Clarence Thomas in his recent concurring opinion in Gamble v. United States. In Part IV, we assess the overruling of Williamson County from the standpoint of prominent modern “living constitutionalist” theories of precedent. Here too, it turns out that overruling was well-founded.
This article focuses on the stare decisis issues raised by Knick. Last summer, I published another article that explores the underlying merits of the decision, aside from the the issue of precedent.
Ironically, the article on Knick and stare decisis turned out to be substantially longer than the the piece focusing on the case as a whole! That’s because it took a lot of space to go over all the different major theories of precedent out there, and explain how they apply to Knick’s overruling of Williamson County.
If nothing else, I learned about the various theories of stare decisis in the process of writing this article. Shelley and I also got to consult with many of the leading scholars working in this field, who generously gave useful advice.
Among the many notable works on the subject of precedent, I recommend recent books by Randy Kozel and Bryan Garner, and this article by Larry Solum. In the Knick article, we also discuss major contributions by many other constitutional law luminaries, including the Volokh Conspiracy’s own Randy Barnett and Will Baude, and judges such as Elena Kagan, Antonin Scalia, and Amy Coney Barrett.
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IRGC Commander & “Soleimani Ally” Shot Dead By Masked Assassins On Motorcycle
An elite Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps (IRGC) commander has been shot dead by masked assailants in front of his house in southwestern Iran. Crucially, he was a mid-range to possibly top commander of the IRGC’s hardline domestic wing, the Basij militia, and a close ally of recently assassinated Quds Force chief Qassem Soleimani, reports state news IRNA on Wednesday.
The details clearly suggest that it was an assassination — at this point by an unknown entity or group — given two men riding a motorcycle drove by and essentially executed him in the street.
Reuters has described the slain Basij militia commander, Abdolhossein Mojaddami, as “an ally of Qassem Soleimani”— who was himself assassinated by US drone strike on January 3rd.
US media wing Radio Farda describes: Abdol-Hossein Majdami Head of Basij militia in Darkhoein rural district of Shadegan killed Jan. 22nd 2020.
“IRNA said that Abdolhossein Mojaddami, a Basij commander in the city of Darkhovin in the southwestern province of Khuzestan, was shot on Tuesday in front of his home by two men riding a motorcycle,” Reuters reports based on official Iranian state media quotes. “There was no immediate claim of responsibility for the attack, IRNA said.”
Two gunmen on a motorcycle, armed with an assault rifle and a hunting rifle, ambushed Mojaddami, IRNA reported. Other Iranian media said the gunmen’s faces were covered with masks and that four shots were fired.
During sporadic protests going back to November, when unrest was fiercest inside Iran following a dramatic government gas subsidy cut — which saw economic protests give way to broader anti-regime mass gatherings — hundreds were reported gunned down by Basij militia working in tandem with police.
Tehran authorities defended security services’ use of deadly force, claiming “rioters” were attacking banks, oil facilities, and government buildings.
Interestingly, the Khuzestan region witnessed severe unrest as protesters clashed with police in November, and has since seen sporadic anti-government activity. It’s also considered one of the key oil-producing regions of the country.
Of course, this latest killing also brings up the possibility of a foreign or external intelligence agency operation, though it remains speculation. One likely candidate alleged to enjoy US and Israeli covert backing is Mujahideen e Khalq (MEK), considered by Iran and many other countries as an active terrorist organization. Groups in Iran linked to the MEK have been previously known to be involved in political assassinations.
Essentially a paramilitary cult devoted to overthrowing the Iranian government, the MEK is under the tight control and leadership of the charismatic opposition leader Maryam Rajavi, and is suspected of previously conducting brazen targeted killings of high level Iranian figures, especially nuclear scientists and engineers for years, likely at the bidding of foreign intelligence services. Until a few years ago the MEK was a designated terror group by the US State Department, though delisted under the Obama administration.
Loonie Tumbles After Unexpectedly Dovish BOC Removes “Appropriate Rate” Language
And another central bank is getting ready to cut rates even as the world is supposedly “rebounding” from the 2019 growth scare.
Moments ago, the Bank of Canada held its overnight rate at 1.75%, in line with expectations, and highlighting the stabilization in the economy and trade but emphasizing the high degree of uncertainty and geopolitical tensions.
However, in a surprisingly dovish turn, the BOC revised its forward guidance, removing the “appropriate” rate language from final paragraph when referring to how Governing Council views maintaining the current level of overnight rate. The language as it now stands is “in determining the future path for the Bank’s policy interest rate, Governing Council will be watching closely to see if the recent slowdown in growth is more persistent than forecast. In assessing incoming data, the Bank will be paying particular attention to developments in consumer spending, the housing market, and business investment.” Here, the BOC dropped the line “Based on developments since October, Governing Council judges it appropriate to maintain the current level of the overnight rate target.”
The central bank also focused on Q4 weakness, noting that “job creation has slowed and indicators of consumer confidence and spending have been unexpectedly soft.”
Amid the dovish reversal, the bank also said growth will be weaker and the output gap wider in the near term than was predicted in October, and as a result its revised its growth estimate lower, now expecting Q4 2019 GDP growth to 0.3%, from 1.3% previously.
In listing the factors behind this slowdown, the BOC said that “the effects of global trade conflicts and elevated uncertainty may have spread beyond investment and exports, contributing to the slowdown in the labour market and weighing on confidence. This may have contributed to more cautious behaviour by households.” The central bank also pointed to “special factors” weighing on growth including strikes, adverse weather, production shutdowns and inventory adjustments.
And in a direct hint that Canada may soon experience its own negative rates, the BOC said that “Canadians have been saving a larger share of their incomes, which could signal increased consumer caution.” Well, we all know how central banks approach the problem of too much savings, and it rhymes with -IRP.
In kneejerk response to this surprisingly dovish statement, the loonie tumbled 100 pips, with the USDCAD kneejerking from 1.3040 to 1.3140.
Green is the buzzword of the day. And it seems everywhere you turn today there are only two topics that matter — Climate Change and impeaching Donald Trump.
Everything else has been put on the back burner, so to speak.
The annual convocation of oiligarchs known as Davos is underway and all that the dutiful media would report on was the intense focus on climate change.
President Trump, for his part, came into that room and did what he always does, step on the metaphoric duck and draw the ire of the globalist glitterati.
But nothing Trump said landed with any weight because The Davos Crowd is in the process of getting rid of America’s Loki anyway.
The Green economy is being touted by everyone now. It was one thing when it began with Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez and her insipid Green New Deal. When it was just her and the Justice Democrats pushing this it could be dismissed as a silly tactic to push the Democratic Party in the U.S. unacceptably left by a bunch of malcontent Bernie Bros.
But when it’s every major central banker in the world, including heads of major Federal Reserve Banks, it is quite another. When Greta Thunberg is speaking at both the United Nations and Davos, you know this is official policy.
And, as good as Mike’s article is it doesn’t get to the heart of the matter.
Because he doesn’t ask why? And, more importantly, why now?
Why is this now such a crisis that we have to alter the shape of the world economy to deal with the potential catastrophe of climate change?
Why won’t these tone deaf oligarchs finally come clean about the reality of the weather? The IPCC is adding the particle forcing data to their 2022 report which will fundamentally change their climate models to incorporate a small part of the real story of the sun’s effect on our weather.
And even that will force through a change in outlook that will make these decades of demonization of carbon dioxide look incredibly silly.
It can’t be because the weather has been so unbearable hot, because it hasn’t. Reality is a harsh mistress as there is record snowfalls all across the northern hemisphere. Bomb cyclones sweeping in to drop feet of snow across the northeastern U.S. that are literally unheard of.
It was a cold, wet spring which delayed plantings. It was an early winter which interrupted harvests. The more the data comes in the more the USDA is altering past crop reports to make the damage not look so bad.
And the corn prices coming out of the U.S. are something you have to pay attention to.
By the way, it isn’t just the U.S. Russia put in a hard export limit on grains for the first half of this year. The last time they did this was because of an incredibly weak harvest.
The priority of the ministry is the food security of the country, so it sees as important that favorable external conditions do not lead to shortages of grain in the domestic market, the ministry said.
Russian grain exports are so far down 18% this season compared with a year ago, and export prices for Russian wheat are currently at this season’s high.
Corn Prices in Chicago are still dormant, well within in recent historical norms. But that is likely because the USDA is still counting on 1.3 billion bushels of corn being salable that in reality isn’t. Keep an eye peeled there.
Ultimately, the market will suss this out but the reality is that the Grand Solar Minimum is here and it’s playing havoc with the weather in ways which are simply not reducible to ‘CO2 bad mkay!’
No matter what PTSD Greta and the Mighty Gore have to say about it.
So, again ask yourself the questions, “Why? And why now?”
It started with new ECB President Christine Lagarde who made the first central bank pronouncement about the need for tackling climate change through Green initiatives fueling monetary policy.
This will require tens of trillions in new spending programs to implement the changes needed to combat this problem head on. After her, it was Mark Carney of the Bank of England last week.
Martin Armstrong, who has also been warning about the colder planet and the grand solar minimum, picked up on Carney’s statement. And he comes close to the truth as to why this push for climate hysterics from the central bankers and The Davos Crowd.
Any investment in “green” companies has resulted in major losses. So there is no logic to what Carney is saying unless it is a cover-up for the pension crisis that is unfolding. Governments have ordered pension funds to buy government debts and then they take interest rates down to negative. The governments, without climate change, are ensuring that pensions will be worthless. It seems that he is using climate change as the excuse for the pension system failure.
But, I think Martin misses the critical point of Carney’s statement. Carney, like Lagarde, the Fed and Kuroda at the Bank of Japan are all in agreement now.
And when central bankers start coordinating their communication worldwide it is because they are getting ready to do something drastic. They know there’s something out there they can’t contend with.
Carney is helping to prep the ground for Lagarde to implement the green new deal as a Keynesian stimulus within the European Union. She will have to override Germany’s opposition to this while pushing for fiscal integration across the European Union.
But that won’t be hard, Germany’s economy is about to bring the house of Europe down.
She was put in charge of the ECB to enforce whatever plan they come up with to deal with tens of trillions in over-priced European sovereign debt that is beginning to rise in yield.
But, I think this goes even further than that. The Green New Deal is also an excuse for how they’re going to sell us on the amount of money they will need to print to deal with the next financial crisis. Last time they could blame it all on the greed of Wall St.
This was then turned into Occupy Wall St. and has given rise to the well-intentioned progressive Left that is rightfully (and righteously) angry that Wall St. was bailed out at the expense of the lower and middle classes, just like Karl Marx described.
It’s all horseshit but so what? What does the truth matter when there’s another generation to destroy when this thing blows up?
They can’t be the blame for it. These are humanity’s saviors after all.
They’ll blame Wall St. again this time and The Davos Crowd will try and use their cover as paragons of wokeness and serving the needs of the people to usher in the next attempt to protect themselves from the laws of economics.
The next crisis is one in sovereign debt. It will be bigger than the central banks.
They have been prepping the narrative for a couple of years now with MMT — Modern Monetary Theory — which is essentially print money until you drop. It comes in various disguises — Universal Basic Income, Earned Income Tax Credits and the Green New Deal.
But unlike the last crisis, the money won’t go to save the banking system but to save the broke governments. And you save governments by inflating away their previous liabilities, in this case the pensions and promises made during the last cycle.
Hence, the appeal to greenness and the spectre of the Climate Change Bogeyman. Honestly, it’s pathetic. But, unfortunately, it’s also working with a lot of people.
So, the answers to the questions I posed earlier are simple. Why now?
Because the crisis is already here and they have to have us prepared for it when it happens. That’s what the repo crisis is. That’s why the Fed is considering opening up their repo window to hedge funds.
It’s why the Trump administration is still complaining about a rising dollar while running a $1.3 trillion deficit and monetizing it through short-term treasury auctions.
It’s why there are more hundreds in circulation than singles. And it’s why we haven’t even gotten started yet.
Moreover, the response to the crisis has to happen before people really begin to question the whole nonsensical runaway greenhouse gas nonsense as they dig themselves out of snowfalls not seen in a hundred years.
When Mark Carney, a central banker, is showing us maps of Florida before and after a 9 foot rise in global sea levels, the whole climate change narrative hasn’t just jumped the shark, it’s carved it up and served it for dinner.
And since they’ve already destroyed one generation of savers, they have convinced the next one that it is good and virtuous to have less, to have lowered expectations, to eat bugs and fake meat and all the rest of it.
Because that is the reality of what’s coming. A colder planet, higher food prices as a percentage of a debased income and total surveillance over your entire life to ensure 100% tax compliance.
The truth is we went broke a helluva lot earlier than when we got woke.
Now the only question is, will you buy what they’re selling or protect yourself?
At an impromptu news conference from the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, on Wednesday, President Donald Trump threatened trade war with the European Union, fumed about teen activist Greta Thunberg, and offered a questionable analysis of impeachment proceedings. Trump also said he knew about injuries suffered by U.S. troops in Iran’s January 8 airstrike, but announced that no Americans were harmed because he didn’t think their injuries were serious.
The 11 injured service members showed signs of concussions and were, as of last week, being treated for potential traumatic brain injuries.
Trump told reporters this morning that at the time of his initial statements, he “heard they had headaches and a couple of other things.” Asked whether he considered potential brain trauma serious, Trump said he did not hear about this part until several days ago but still did not consider these to be “serious injuries relative to other injuries I’ve seen.”
On Davos itself, Trump touted all the world leaders he was meeting and all the deals he was supposedly making. Which translates roughly to “expect more tariffs.”
The European Union is “frankly, more difficult to do business with than China,” said Trump.
“I wanted to wait till I finished China. I didn’t want to go with China and Europe at the same time,” Trump told CNBC’s Joe Kernen. “Now China’s done, and I met with the new head of the European Commission…And had a great talk. But I said, look, if we don’t get something, I’m going to have to take action, and the action will be a very high tariffs on their cars and other things that come into our country.”
Much of the focus at this morning’s press conference was on impeachment proceedings, which began against Trump in the Senate yesterday. (The president admitted he’s been sneaking a peek at them when he can from Davos.) Congressional Democrats have no case because “we have all the material, they don’t have the material,” Trump said.
He repeated his assertion that his conversation with Ukraine’s president was “perfect” and that the impeachment proceedings are “a hoax.” Asked whether he still thinks climate change is a hoax, however, Trump said, “No, not at all.”
(Perhaps he’s just trying to boost his chances with Time magazine…Asked about a Davos speech by Thunberg—Time’s 2019 person of the year—Trump first asked how old she was and then commented “she beat me out for Time.”)
Trump also suggested that he still feels sorry for former President Bill Clinton over impeachment:
Trump addresses his past attacks on Ken Starr: "I didn't think that Bill Clinton should have been impeached, and I thought it was terrible. … In a certain way I was sticking up for Clinton, Bill Clinton, and I still feel that way." pic.twitter.com/80APl6Rju2
Impeachment to take longer. Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R–Ky.) announced revised rules for President Donald Trump’s impeachment trial in the Senate, after everyone complained about his initial plan, which would have seen much of the proceedings going on in the middle of the night.
“Both parties will now have 24 hours each over the course of three days to present evidence, as opposed to the two days that were originally allotted,” notesReason‘s Billy Binion. And:
McConnell also altered a rule that would have blocked House evidence unless the Senate voted to admit it. Now all relevant documents will be automatically entered into the record and barred only if the Senate votes to exclude them.
More evidence of corruption in Kamala Harris world:
How seriously did California attorneys general Kamala Harris and Xavier Becerra take the Orange County jailhouse snitch scandal? Four deputies were interviewed during an alleged 4-year investigation. Wild, important story by @JamesQueallyLAT and @melmason: https://t.co/FOG6lvpvRR
US Existing Home Sales Soar Near Fastest Rate In Two Years Amid “Dire Housing Shortage”
After tumbling to the lowest level since June, December existing home sales soared to their highest SAAR since Feb 2018
Existing home sales roise 3.6% MoM in December (rebounding from the 1.7% drop in November and well above the 1.5% jump expected).
At 5.54mm SAAR, this is the highest in almost 2 years.
Source: Bloomberg
The median sales price climbed 7.8% from a year earlier, the most since January 2016, to $274,500 as inventories declined for a seventh-straight month.
Total housing inventory at the end of December totaled 1.40 million units, down 14.6% from November and 8.5% from one year ago (1.53 million). Unsold inventory sits at a 3.0-month supply at the current sales pace, down from the 3.7-month figure recorded in both November and December 2018. Unsold inventory totals have dropped for seven consecutive months from year-ago levels, taking a toll on home sales.
“America is facing a dire housing shortage condition,” Lawrence Yun, NAR’s chief economist, said at a briefing in Washington.
“We need to build more.”
Looking across 2019, existing-home sales grew at a 5.34 million pace, the same as 2018.
Three of four major regions saw gains from the prior month, led by a 5.7% rise in the Northeast. The Midwest posted a modest decline.
First-time buyers made up 31% of sales, down slightly from 32% the previous month.
As CNBC’s Diana Olick noted, soaring prices are creating fears that eventually, buyers will be “choked out of the market.”
