On Jan. 19, famous crypto skeptic and gold bug Peter Schiff claimed on Twitter that he has lost access to his Bitcoin wallet and that his password is no longer valid.
Schiff added that his BTC is now intrinsically worthless and has no market value. He also added that:
“I knew owning Bitcoin was a bad idea, I just never realized it was this bad!”
Getting to the bottom of the issue
After Schiff tweeted about his loss, the crypto community was quick to jump to the rescue. For example, co-founder and partner at Morgan Creek Digital Anthony Pompliano responding by asking if he forgot his password, to which Schiff has responded that, “My wallet forgot my password.”
Hi. My name’s Peter. I don’t know how to manage passwords.
Pompliano then asked Schiff to email him directly:
“The software just executes the commands that humans give it. It can’t ‘forget’ anything. Email me and I’ll try to help you recover the lost Bitcoin.”
However it looks like the BTC may indeed be gone for good, as Schiff responded:
“Eric Voorhees set up the wallet for me and even he thinks there is nothing I can do. But you’re welcome to try if you have any ideas.”
BTC price skepticism
Schiff is known for being an outspoken critic of cryptocurrencies. Just before the New Year, he claimed that unlike every other asset class, BTC was not rising toward the end of the calendar year.
In late November, Schiff claimed in a Twitter debate that the price of BTC would drop to $1,000 to “complete the pattern.”
“Reality Is Officially Here”: Nobody Buying Homes In Greenwich Is Paying Top Dollar Anymore
Today in optimistic real estate news…
…almost all housing in Greenwich is now selling for discounts to the sticker price. 90% of single family deals that closed in the fourth quarter were for less than what the seller was asking, according to Bloomberg. This marks the biggest percentage of deals dating back to mid 2017.
The average discount to the asking price was 9.6%, according to appraiser Miller Samuel Inc. and brokerage Douglas Elliman Real Estate.
But the best news is that the price cuts didn’t do much to improve sales, which fell by 12% from a year earlier to 117. However, they did contribute to a decline in Greenwich’s listings – the biggest decline since Q1 2017 – as owners refused to discount their properties.
Jonathan Miller, president of Miller Samuel said: “Reality is officially here. We’re getting to a point where they have to decide: Do they want to ever sell, or do they want to withdraw?”
Homeowners in the area are adjusting to the climate where even wealthy buyers have become sensitive to price. Wall Street bonuses have been on the decline and shoppers are showing less interest in oversized estates far from transit and retail. New tax laws that limit deductions have also acted as a headwind for the area.
Dealmaking hasn’t increased in any of the last five quarters, but low mortgage rates still have buyers on the prowl for value. Contracts at the end of the year pricked up slightly, which could suggest a stronger Q1 on its way. As of Dec. 31, there were 74 transactions pending, which is up 54% from the year prior.
David Haffenreffer, manager of the Greenwich office of Houlihan Lawrence: “At the right price there’s always an audience.”
“People are recognizing there are deals to be had,” he continued.
One section of town, north of the Merritt Parkway, saw deals jump 54%. The area is replete with sprawling estates set back from “winding two lane roads”. It was the largest increase for any neighborhood, but was the area where the buyers also got the largest discounts.
The neighborhood was also home to the biggest sale of the quarter, after the owners of an estate took a 45% haircut from a price they paid in 2010. The estate sold once belonged to Mel Gibson and sold last month for $13.25 million after being on the market for seven years.
Hedge Fund CIO: Once All Investing Becomes Passive, Then The Information Contained In Market Prices Will Be Meaningless
Submitted by Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management
Looking
“I look at historical relationships that appear to no longer operate as before,” said the investor. “I look at measures of valuation that are stretched to levels rarely seen,” he continued.
“I look at corporate share buybacks as the only meaningful inflow. I look at outflows from retail investors and the flags that this raises.”
“Then I look at the fact that global interest rates have never been negative like this. I look at the working population and it has never before aged and shrunk like this.”
“And I look at the world and just don’t know how anyone can be certain of anything.”
* * *
Anecdote:
“Start with what we know for sure,” said Big Foot, creeping quietly through global markets, trackers desperate to front-run his every step.
“If 100% of all investing is passive, then the information contained in market prices is meaningless,” continued the CEO of one of the industry’s largest investment firms. In 2009, assets in actively-managed mutual funds were 3x those of index-based funds/ETFs. In August 2019, US index-based fund/ETF assets surpassed actively managed assets. That trend continues.
With each incremental dollar that moves from active to passive management, roughly five more cents flow into equities (active managers hold 5% cash buffers while passive funds generally do not).
“We also know that if 100% of equity is taken private, then public markets would cease to exist.” The average institutional portfolio holds a 25% allocation in alternative investments. Of that allocation, private equity investments have surged to 25% of the assets, up from 18% in 2018. Private equity funds have $1.5trln in dry powder that will fail to pay fees unless their managers buy equity, which continues to appreciate.
US equity market capitalization is $35tlrn, a record 1.55x America’s $22.3trln annual GDP. “But what we do not know for sure is whether there comes a point well before 100% of all investing is done passively, or before all public equity is taken private, that the market price becomes meaningless,” said Big Foot.
You see, in a world where all investing is passive, how much would an incremental $1bln inflow move market prices up? How about a $1bln outflow? The price moves would become utterly extraordinary in such a world. And in a world where all public equity is taken private, PE managers would surely mark their holdings steadily higher, to ever more extreme multiples.
“Nor do we know whether we have already reached that point.”
One Dead As Speeding Tesla “Crashes And Bursts Into Flames” In California Intersection Saturday Night
No sooner do we report that the NHTSA is considering a petition to investigate 500,000 Teslas for unintended acceleration, than another Tesla driver winds up dead.
Police are in the middle of investigating what is being called a “single vehicle crash” involving a Tesla that “crashed and burst into flames” in Pleasanton, California.
The driver of the vehicle was killed, according to ABC 7. His identity has not yet been released.
The crash was reported on Saturday night at about 6pm local time at the intersection of West Las Positas Boulevard and Hacienda Drive.
The Tesla was going southbound and lost control near the intersection. It then crashed into a sign outside of an apartment complex before catching on fire.
The intersection was closed for several hours on Saturday night as a result of the crash.
“The car was going so fast, it actually took out a street signal,” the on-the-scene reporter says in her coverage.
Your move, NHTSA.
We will update this story as more information becomes available.
You can watch the news coverage of the event from the ABC feed here:
In 1971, Isaac Asimov wrote an extraordinary novel, The Gods Themselves, about a machine that generates unlimited energy for free, defying the fundamental economic principle known as scarcity. It is later learned that the Electron Pump is originating from a hole in space that connects parallel universes. Doomsday is nigh as it is discovered that galaxies will soon be destroyed and that the sun will metastasize into a supernova. The crux of the story is comparable to what is transpiring in California.
State lawmakers possess an infinite source of good intentions, using the eternal supply to pave roads to hell. Wielding the power of this limitless benevolence and munificence, politicians are regulating the lives of citizens while eviscerating their existence in the process. If this is goodwill, then we can only imagine what the state is capable of when it desires to ruin you or your business.
The Gig Is Up
In September, California’s Democratic governor Gavin Newsom signed into law AB-5, which requires most companies to reclassify freelancers and contingent workers as full-time employees. Doing this means such individuals would be eligible for a guaranteed $12–$13 state minimum wage, benefits, and protections under California’s immense code of employment laws. It went into effect on January 1.
“As one of the strongest economies in the world, California is now setting the global standard for worker protections for other states and countries to follow,” said Assemblywoman Lorena Gonzalez (D), the author of the bill, in a statement.
AB-5 was lauded by organized labor, but it turns out that laborers are not enthusiastic about it.
The law impacts about two-thirds of the state’s two million independent contractors; it does exempt many white-collar professionals, including architects, attorneys, doctors, and realtors. But childcare specialists, nurses, writers, and janitors are not afforded the same luxury. Truck drivers received a last-minute exemption after weeks of contentious battles, but they reportedly fled the state before the country bellowed “Auld Lang Syne.” As for the truckers who stayed behind, the California Trucking Association claims it is receiving calls from individuals who are leaving the state.
Freelance writers may be the next ones to wave goodbye to California. Moving forward, freelancers are limited to thirty-five submissions annually per client. As any writer will attest, it can be easy to reach this quota when you are submitting content to media firms, leaving you on a never-ending hunt for more companies that will accept your prose on the existential crisis in the age of deconstruction.
Decline in Clients and Projects
Just weeks after AB-5 became law, Vox Media announced that hundreds of freelance writers, primarily sports contributors for its SBNation.com website, would be given the pink slip. The irony behind this corporate decision is that Vox endorsed the bill and celebrated its passing. Now Vox is replacing them with twenty new full- and part-time staff members.
When Gonzalez was confronted with this on Twitter, she tweeted:
These were never good jobs. No one has ever suggested that, even freelancers. We will continue to work on this next year.
She further dismissed complaints, urging everyone to “educate” themselves on the benefits of AB-5.
One Twitter user summarized the thoughts of the many affected by this law: “Wow, you really suck at this.”
CNBC spoke with Jeremiah LaBrash, who earns half of his annual income from freelancing. Based in Los Angeles, the freelance cartoonist noticed the decline in potential clients and projects. When LaBrash submitted proposals to media companies, these employers turned him down when they learned he is from California. He told the business news network:
I’ve had them hire me and then come back and say they’re no longer interested. All of a sudden, someone I’ve never talked to says, “We’ve decided not to move forward.” I’ve never had that happen before this year.
My savings are stagnant. I really can’t look into buying a house. The housing market here is hard already.
Once again, the paternalistic central planners strive to make the decisions for adults. They failed to comprehend that a lot of freelancers enjoy being independent professionals, setting their own hours, and opting for freedom rather than a nine-to-five structure. The bill is marketed as a safety net, but the question is: what good is a safety net if you do not have any work?
Leave California or Bust!
When first reporting on the bill, Kelli Ballard at Liberty Nation wrote that the historic motto had been “California or bust!.” After years of big government encroachment, Ballard posits that it is now “Leave California or bust!.” It may not be that simple. The biggest concern is that other blue states will eventually adopt similar legislation to combat the $1 trillion national gig economy, proving that there is no escaping bad economics.
McConnell “Kill Switch” Rule Will Shut Down Impeachment If Dems Get Wild
Unfortunately for Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell, too many moderate Republicans have sided with Democrats in insisting that the impeachment trial proceed. If the shoe was on the other foot, and McConnell was able to win over more conservative and moderate Democrats, President Trump’s legal team would be able to easily win a vote to dismiss at the outset of the trial, effectively ending it before it could really begin.
But prtisan rancor aimed at the president and his allies in Congress remains at an all-time high. Even as Democrats bash the president for allegedly putting politics above doing what’s right for the country, they are proceeding with the impeachment charade, despite being doomed from the start.
After a frenetic holiday weekend of dealmaking, McConnell is apparently nearly finished drafting the rules of engagement for the impeachment trial.
According to a leak that was picked up by Axios and Brietbart, among others, McConnell is still planning to include a “kill switch” in the impeachment trial rules that would allow the president’s legal team to call for a dismissal if Democrats try to violate the rules or engage in any “shenanigans.”
The provision will allow Trump’s team to quickly push for a summary judgment or dismissal at any time. It comes after some Senators tried – and failed – to change the Senate rules to dismiss the charges because of Pelosi’s decision to delay transferring the articles of impeachment.
According to Breitbart, if McConnell succeeds in including the kill switch, he will have outmaneuvered Democrats and proved once again that he’s a better leader than Pelosi. Even though a few moderates tentatively sided with the Democrats and insisted there should be a trial, Republicans still have the upper hand – because the minute the Dems start to push the envelope, the moderate Republicans will return to vote with McConnell to dismiss.
The Republican leadership and President Trump himself have assented – and at times even welcomed – a trial. At this point, the American people have already seen the transcript of Trump’s July call with his Ukrainian counterpart, they’ve been told that the aid was eventually released, and even heard it from Zelensky himself that there was no quid pro quo involving opening an investigation into the Bidens.
And now, if the Dems try to do something extreme like include even more alleged “bombshells” from Lev Parnas or anyone else outside the framework for the trial, McConnell will be able to shut them down.
“If Schiff or the Democrats try anything untoward like they did in the House, the president and the Senate have the option to shut the whole thing down and blow it all up on them. That means Republicans hold the upper hand, and should things get crazy—while there are not currently enough votes to dismiss the trial or outright off the bat acquit Trump—after Democrat partisan gamesmanship there likely would be enough votes to dismiss the whole thing.”
Meanwhile, as the two sides battle over whether witnesses will be called, at least one of the lawyers who will be pleading Trump’s case to the Senate – Harvard’s Alan Dershowitz – told the Hill that he plans to argue that the articles of impeachment are invalid because they don’t include truly impeachable offenses, which would justify a Senate vote to end the matter.
But will Democrats see it that way? We’re not so sure.
So far, at least, the Dems and their supporters in the press have tried to imbue the proceedings with a dramatic flair. The media lapped it up when Cheryl Johnson, a black woman and the clerk of the House, delivered the articles of impeachment against President Trump on Martin Luther King Jr.’s real birthday.
A Black woman is delivering the articles of impeachment. For the white supremacist president. That’s all.
Most of these reports neglected to point out that the entire impeachment process will mostly be managed by Adam Schiff and Jerry Nadler, two old white men.
At least if McConnell has his way, the Dems will mostly be limited to transparent and ham-fisted melodrama. There’s plenty of evidence that the public’s perception of the president has been very little affected by the whole circus. If anything, the Dems excoriations of the president and his team have soured the public against them.
Even though Democratic strategists bet the farm that impeachment would help them defeat Trump in 2020.
JPMorgan: Maybe We Were Wrong About The Main Reason To Be Bullish In 2020
Readers will recall for much of 2019 we highlighted what we said was the market’s biggest paradox: one where the higher the market rose, the more money investors would pull out of equities, and allocate to bonds.
It culminated last June when , even as the S&P hit new all time highs, outflows over the last 6 months in dollar terms surpassed the previous record observed over any prior 6-month period.
Since then the market moved relentlessly higher hitting new record highs, buoyed in great part by the Fed’s announcement of repo liquidity injections at first, and subsequently by the return of POMO, as a result of the NY Fed’s monthly monetization of $60BN in T-Bills. And yet the paradox remained: investors continued to pull money out of equities and allocated it to bond and money market funds.
This lack of retail euphoria promptly was used by the major banks, most notably JPMorgan, as one of the catalysts behind the bank’s bullish outlook for 2020, with the bank arguing back in November that 2020 is likely to be the year of Great Rotation II, in a repeat of 2013 the year of Great Rotation I, which saw a sharp acceleration in equity fund buying and sharp deceleration in bond fund buying by retail investors globally.
There is just one problem: despite the market’s continued meltup, this has so far failed to materialize, and as JPM derivatives strategist Nick Panagirtzoglou writes in his latest Flows and Liquidity report, “is the flow picture over the past few weeks consistent with the Great Rotation II thesis? The answer is not yet” because whether one looks at YTD fund flows or the flows over the past month or two, the picture is of continued strong flows into bond funds and of only modestly positive flows into equity funds.
Why are the early January fund flows number important? Because as the JPM strategist explains, “January flows have added importance especially in years where a big flow shift is expected to take place. This is because January is typically a month when retail investors make their asset allocations for the whole year. Indeed, empirically there is a significant positive relationship between the full year equity fund vs. the January flow…. And during the previous Great Rotation year of 2013 when we had a big positive equity fund flow shift of the one we anticipate for this year, January saw a high share of almost 20% of the yearly equity fund inflow, i.e. much higher than its proportional 1/12 share.”
This, as Panigirtzoglou notes, “implies that the final fund flow numbers of weekly and monthly reporting funds for the month of January, which we are going to get in the second half of February, will be important in gauging whether the Great Rotation thesis is tracking or not for this year.”
Alas, as shown in the chart above, the trend so far is hardly a ringing endorsement of a second Great Rotation out of bonds and into stocks despite the market making new all time highs on a daily basis.
This in turn has prompted JPM to ask, just two months after positing its “Great Rotation II” thesis, that it may well be wrong about a great fund reallocation out of bonds and into stocks, and if that is the case what then, or as Panigirtzoglou humbly puts it, “what could make the Great Rotation thesis failing to materialize this year?”
To answer this question the derivatives expert says he needs to think about the factors for and against the Great Rotation thesis. In terms of the supporting factors, he had mentioned three main factors in our previous publication of November 22nd. This is what JPM said then:
1) Historical patterns based on previous year’s equity/bond performance and on previous year’s extremity in equity and bond fund flows, pointed to a big change in fund flows this year – at least according to JPM if not this website which has argued for years that the biggest buyer of stocks is not retail or institutional investors but corporate buybacks – with more than reversal of last year’s equity fund selling and collapse in last year’s record high bond fund buying. In particular, JPM had argued that in terms of equity fund flows 2018 looked more like 2011 or 2015, as they were all equity correction years. As a result, 2019 looked more like 2012 or 2016, and 2020 is likely to look more like 2013 or 2017. In other words, the cautious stance of retail investors in 2019 was likely in response to 2018’s equity market correction and given 2019 was a strong year for equities driven by bullish institutional investors, then retail investors should turn big buyers of equity funds in 2020.
2) An improving macro picture. Further signs of an improvement in the global industry cycle into 2020 should also encourage a rotation from bond funds to equity funds. The upward trajectory in orders and inventories since the flash PMIs of October 24th has been so far underpinning this improving macro picture. Next week’s flash PMIs will be important in gauging whether this improvement trend continues.
3) The third supporting factor JPM had mentioned is the global yield backdrop across asset classes. Following last year’s rate cuts by central banks, cash and bonds yield significantly less than before and significantly less than equities. So in the absence of negative surprises it would be difficult for retail investors or other asset allocators to ignore the yield advantage of equities and not accept ever higher equity weightings.
What about the factors against Great Rotation (which as regular readers may recall, we said would not happen around the time JPM made its “contrarian” call, for the simple reason that there is little impetus to keep selling bonds).
Here, JPM says that “the main risk or impediment” to its Great Rotation thesis stemmed from already elevated retail investor equity positions (as a reminder, earlier today we noted that virtually every investor class is now all-in stocks) that need to rise beyond previous equity cycle peaks for the Great Rotation thesis to play out this year. This impediment, JPM adds, “looks even bigger at the moment following the equity rally over the past two months.”
To illustrate this “challenge” to getting his key thesis for 202 right, Panigirtzoglou updates his position proxies for retail investors to incorporate more recent price and flow information including the last week’s release of quarterly reported fund flows for Q3 2019. This is how he explains the key indicator he is watching:
The retail investor position proxy is the share of equities in US domiciled or worldwide fund universe of equity, bond, hybrid and money market funds. The equity share in the fund universe is proxied by the AUM of equity funds plus the equity holdings of hybrid funds divided by the sum of the AUM of equity, bond, hybrid and money market funds. This share could
be considered as a proxy of how overweight equities retail investors are.
This proxy is shown in Figure 4 for funds domiciled in the US since 1996 and funds domiciled worldwide since 2005. This equity fund share, extrapolated to January 16th by the dots, looks even more elevated after the equity rally of the past few months and currently stands at record high levels for funds domiciled worldwide and very close to record high levels for funds domiciled in the US. Said otherwise, this confirms what we said earlier, namely that retail investors are indeed “all in” US stocks to a never before seen degree.
Another key metric to assess retail investors’ positioning is based on the NYSE Net Debit balance as a proxy for US individual investor leverage. In contrast to hedge funds who can get leverage more easily or cheaply via options and futures (and of course, repos, as we discussed extensively), individuals rely more on Federal Reserve Regulation T. This regulation, which governs customer cash accounts and the amount of credit that brokerage firms and dealers may extend to customers for the purchase of securities, stipulates that one can borrow up to 50% of the purchase price of securities that can be purchased on margin. This is known as the “initial margin”. NYSE rules also require equity in an account to be at least 25% of the securities market value, i.e., the “maintenance margin.”
Figure 6 shows this NYSE Net Debit balance calculated as the difference between margin debit balance minus the sum of total credit balances (cash account credit +margin account credit). This leverage proxy has been rising steeply over 2016-2017, and hit a record high of 1.5% in May 2018. Curiously, despite what Figure 4 above shows, this metric has declined significantly since then and the latest reading for November 2019 stands close to those seen previously at the end of 2016.
In other words, and contradicting the prior observations, the previous extremity in US individual investor leverage seen in Q2 2018 has been largely unwound. But, as the JPM strategist notes, “what is more striking in Figure 6 is that this metric declined last year despite strong equity market performance. This again shows how unwilling US retail investors were last year to leverage their equity bets.” This unwillingness likely indicates that leveraged US retail investors feel that their equity exposures and leverage are already elevated and are thus reluctant to add even with the equity market at historical highs. Incidentally, and this is not JPM but ZH talking, not adding when stocks are at all time highs is precisely what investors should be doing – instead of selling low and buying high as the dumb money has historically done, in this case we see the opposite, or what some may call, perfectly logical, reasonable behavior. It’s also why JPM is stumped…
In any case, back to the JPMorgan argument, which sees in this “unusual deleveraging” in NYSE margin accounts in a strong equity year, coupled with the “unusual selling” of equity funds and the record high buying of almost $1tr of bond funds last year, the possibility that retail investors are more motivated by rebalancing rather than responding to long term momentum. Once again, this is merely a way for JPM to feign shock that instead of unleashing animal spirits, a market all time highs is now nothing more than a logical signal for most investors to sell.
Well, if this is indeed the case, then Panigirtzoglou concludes that retail investors would be unwilling to accept even higher equity weighting from here “and our Great Rotation thesis would fail to materialize.”
Oops… because as the title summarizes, this is just a way for one of JPM’s most respected strategists to admit that just maybe he was wrong about the main argument for him to turn bullish on stocks in 2020.
* * *
So what would the implications be if the Great Rotation fails to materialize this year, according to JPM? As a reminder, the largest US bank had argued at the end of last year that retail flows would be crucial in determining the 2020 demand/supply balance for both equities and bonds. So if the Great Rotation fails to materialize this year, the implications would be important for both equities and bonds. For equities the implication would be that the equity market would remain at the mercy of institutional investors, which, as noted earlier are already all in, and have little room to push the equity market higher from here and instead leave it vulnerable to negative surprises.
In other words, in the absence of significant retail inflows, the equity market would be range bound rather than trending up. That, of course, ignores the elephant in the room: the Fed’s injections of roughly $100BN in liquidity between repos and QE4 each month. But since JPM also happens to be the biggest recipient of such Fed intervention, it is understandable why the bank would rather not discuss what the real reason for the stock surge in late 2019 and early 2020 has been.
As for bonds, the implication would be that the bond market would remain supported, producing at least coupon-like returns “and yield curves would fail to steepen by as much as we envisaged for this year.”
In all, as Panigirtzoglou summarizes, while he continues to believe that the Great Rotation still “has a decent chance of happening this year”, he admits that “the fund flow picture is not yet consistent with this thesis”… and is 100% consistent with our own thesis set forth in late November 2019, according to which JPM is dead wrong and that retail investors are now fully inert elements in a market dominated by the Fed and buybacks, and that what they do has absolutely no bearing – and has zero predictive insight – on the market.
We’ve all heard about at least some of this before. Thanks to Full Measure for producing this new segment reminding us about why this should tick us off. Independent journalist Sharyl Attkisson also provides an update about her own computer intrusion by the U.S. government in this video.
We begin with an examination of one of the worst abuses of government power that could happen in our society – Illegal spying on U.S. citizens.
Amid findings about egregious violations by our intelligence community, there’s a criminal investigation. And the court that approves surveillance on U.S. citizens has instructed the FBI to implement new safeguards as of this week. As our intelligence agencies face what may be their biggest scrutiny in decades, we examine how we got here.
Our examination of government surveillance controversies begins in 2001. Under FBI Director Robert Mueller, new rules were imposed to address FBI abuses.
FBI Agents had repeatedly gotten caught submitting false information to the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court to justify wiretapping or spying on U.S. citizens.
Unfortunately, increasing surveillance on non-consenting Americans by a variety of entities seems to be the new norm thanks to new and unsafe technology being forcibly installed throughout our communities (see 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7) and even on our homes.
Nadler Demands “All Witnesses Must Be Heard, Except Hunter Biden”, Chuck Todd Defends Parnas’ “Evidence”
NBC’s Chuck Todd reconfirmed his role in the ‘resistance’ this weekend as he clashed with Senator David Perdue (R- G.A.) on Sunday over the upcoming impeachment trial and whether Lev Parnas should testify.
Perdue told Todd on NBC’s “Meet the Press” that Parnas, a colleague of President Trump’s attorney, Rudy Giuliani, shouldn’t testify because his testimony would be considered “second-hand information.”
“This is a distraction,” Perdue said.
“This a person that’s been indicted. Right now, he’s out on bail. He’s been meeting with the House Intel Committee. If the House felt like this information was pertinent, I would think they would have included him.”
Todd fired back and said:
“How is it second hand? He was in Ukraine. He was doing the bidding,” adding that Parnas has key “material evidence that might help connect some dots.”
Perdue responded by saying Parnas is trying “to get his sentence reduced.”
Perdue defended Trump’s actions in Ukraine by indicating the administration was concerned about corruption involving an American citizen. He also rejected a suggestion by Todd that Trump was close to Parnas.
Parnas made the rounds on the mainstream media last week, stopping by none other than the Rachel Maddow Show Wednesday night to claim that he was sent to Ukraine at the order of Rudy Guiliani and Trump to uncover dirt on Joe Biden’s son, Hunter Biden.
The schizophrenia is astonishing.
In October of 2019, European businessman, Lev Parnas, who claimed to have “explosive information about corruption involving Hillary Clinton and Joe Biden”, was arrested at Dulles airport on “campaign finance violations.”
And, now, just three months later, Parnas is dropping impeachment bombshells on Trump.
Separately on Sunday, Nadler spoke with Brennan on CBS’s “Face the Nation” that “in any trial, all relevant witnesses must be heard,” except, Nadler added, for Hunter Biden, who should not be a witness in the impeachment trial because he does not know the allegations against the president.
.@RepJerryNadler suggests Hunter Biden should not be a witness in the Senate impeachment trial, adds that Chief Justice John Roberts should make a determination. “I’m saying that Hunter Biden has no knowledge of the accusations against the president.” pic.twitter.com/Uh7w5KJAtQ
Parnas – who is at best a secondary witness and worst desperate for a deal to avoid prison – should be a witness “as he can connect the dots;”
but Hunter Biden – who is absolutely at the center of the whole debacle with regard corruption and Trump’s decisions – shouldn’t be a witness because “he has no knowledge of the accusations.”
Once again the Dems ties themselves in circles after Pelosi slow-played the process – despite exclaiming how critical and urgent it was.
Senator Lindsey Graham (R- S.C.) held nothing back in his disgust at the political “malarkey” under way. In an interview with “Fox News Sunday” anchor Chris Wallace, graham blasted that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D- C.A.) had “orchestrated the trial of holy hell” against the president next week.
Graham said from day one, Pelosi and Democrats waged war against Trump.
“You took 48 days to impeach this president,” he told Wallace.
“You did not allow him to call any witnesses. He could not have a lawyer present during the House Intel Committee. This has been a partisan railroad job. And you’re asking for fairness in the Senate? You violated every norm of what we do.”
Graham ended the interview by saying once the impeachment trial is over, the nation can start healing.
“This has been a political hit job. This is political revenge. What they’re doing to the presidency is a danger to the institution itself,” he warned.
The impeachment trial starts Tuesday, and this will be one of the most crucial moments of the Trump presidency as the Democrats have gone all-in.
Trump tweeted last week: “I JUST GOT IMPEACHED FOR MAKING A PERFECT PHONE CALL!”
“This is a brazen and unlawful attempt to overturn the results of the 2016 election and interfere with the 2020 election, now just months away,” the legal team stated.
And one can’t help but feel the Trump legal team and Graham are right when the schizophrenic blinkered perspectives of the House managers’ media appearances (and liberal media acquiescence) is considered.
Eric Peters: Peter Navarro Was Right – Tariffs Have Spurred Growth, Not Hampered It
Submitted by Eric Peters, CIO of One River Asset Management
“Conventional economic models ignore how Trump’s tariffs boost investment and national security,” wrote Peter Navarro, the President’s Director of Trade and Manufacturing Policy.
His Jan 13th WSJ opinion piece, like most things Navarro publishes, provide real insight into Trump policy/thinking. But Navarro is an annoying hothead, so most people dismiss him.
I’ve condensed his piece: “Critics of Trump’s transformational trade policies continue to insist that the tariffs are hindering rather than helping the boom. Yet with each new tariff the economy remains robust, wages continue to rise, and inflation stays muted (while the economic losses for China continue to grow).
Tariffs have spurred growth, not hampered it. Why have the gloom-and-doom forecasters been so wrong? The errors come from flaws in traditional economic models. Anti-tariff analysts typically rely on static “partial equilibrium” models. While a tariff on steel might boost employment in that industry, for example, the price of steel would rise for car makers downstream, which would then suffer lower production and fewer jobs.
Each tariff shrinks total employment, depresses wages, and increases inflation—or at least that’s how these forecasts typically go. Yet what is missing from these forecasts is a ‘general equilibrium’ analysis of tariffs, which would assess the whole economy, with a concomitant ‘dynamic scoring’ of their effects, to account for the new investment tariffs induce. Over time this tariff-induced investment, along with lower taxes and sensible deregulation, will boost growth and job creation. Higher domestic production will also help offset any price hikes from the tariffs.
Trump’s imposition of actual tariffs has made the threat of tariffs more credible, and a variety of tariff threats have borne robust results. In addition to missing the upside of supporting American industries, critics overlook the ways the US has suffered under open trade. Expanded trade with China in the 2000s contributed to the loss of tens of thousands of American factories and millions of manufacturing jobs and the hollowing out of many communities. What followed was an associated rise in the rates of divorce, drug addiction, crime, depression and death, particularly among blue-collar men no longer able to support their families at a decent wage.
The national-security externalities associated with Trump trade policy may be even more consequential. A case in point is the tariffs being used as leverage to defend America’s technological crown jewels from being forcibly transferred to Chinese companies—from artificial intelligence, robotics and autonomous vehicles to quantum computing and blockchain. These industries comprise the core of the next generation of weapons systems needed to repel threats from rivals like China, Russia and Iran.
One must ask the anti-tariff forecasters: Where are the benefits of a freer and more secure American homeland counted in your models? An honest, modern analysis of the Trump tariffs would acknowledge the widespread market distortions that currently disadvantage American workers, parse the complex ways tariffs affect trade partners’ behavior, appropriately discount short-term price impacts, and dynamically score the many long-term positive effects.
