Boeing Shares Slide On Reports Of New 737 MAX Software Issue
Boeing shares were hit early on following reports that the Air Force’s top military officer has sent Boeing Co.’s new CEO a blunt reminder that the ill-fated 737 Max passenger jet isn’t the only troubled project he has to rescue. There’s also the company’s failure to provide a combat-ready refueling tanker, nine years after Boeing won a competition for the $44 billion project.
“We require your attention and improved focus on the KC-46” tanker, General David Goldfein, the Air Force chief of staff, warned in a letter four days before Dave Calhoun took over as chief executive officer of the company.
“The Air Force continues to accept deliveries of a tanker incapable of performing its primary operational mission.”
But things just got even worse on reports that Boeing has found another software issue with the 737. ABC News’ David Kerley reports that during testing audit last weekend the 737’s two flight computers weren’t talking to each other at startup. It is unclear how long the fix will take, but will be done as other return to service work is conducted.
Boeing tells CNBC that it is “making necessary updates and working with the FAA on submission of this change, and keeping our customers and suppliers informed.”
But that was enough to send the stock down once again…
If you like graphic reenactments of mass shootings, gun control, and rap, Eminem’s latest offering might just be for you.
Just after midnight, the Detroit rapper released a music video for his new song “Darkness” which portrays the 2017 Las Vegas shooting from the perspective of Stephen Paddock, who fatally shot 58 people attending a country music concert from his Mandalay Bay hotel room.
The video cuts between shots of Eminem rapping to the camera and a solitary Paddock, quaffing pills and alcohol before opening fire on the crowd below, and then ultimately killing himself as police burst through the door.
The lyrics transition (less than) seamlessly between a narration of Paddock’s final thoughts and overt messages about gun control, with lines like:
Finger on the trigger, but I’m a licensed owner
With no prior convictions, so loss, the sky’s the limit
So my supplies infinite, strapped like I’m a soldier
This heavy-handed message is reinforced at the end of the video when we see the rapper watching TV news about gun violence before he words “When will this end? When enough people care” appear on the screen. This is all capped off with an explicit exhortation to register to vote and “help change gun laws in America.” The webpage for the music video on Eminimen’s website also includes links to a number of gun control organizations.
The message for viewers is that if only they cared as much as Eminem and voted to make gun laws more restrictive, these atrocities would stop happening. Yet, mass shootings don’t continue to happen because Americans are fine with them. Mass shootings happen for the same reasons that most types of illegal violence happen, which is that twisted people are not easily deterred by laws and regulations.
And despite what gun controllers might say, there does not exist a handful of common-sense policies we can just adopt to stop these atrocities from reoccurring.
As Eminem’s song notes, there was nothing in Paddock’s background that would have flagged him as a person who would go on to be a mass murderer. The existence of would-be shooters who do not raise red flags with people in a position to stop them before they kill has led gun control advocates to argue that legislators should limit the types and number of weapons available to people, or pass blanket restrictions on everyone’s right to own firearms.
Yet mass shooters are often able to kill a lot of people with simple handguns and shotguns, not just so-called “weapons of war.” It’s true Paddock had 24 guns with him, some of which were equipped with bump stocks—a hack that increases a weapon’s rate of fire at the expense of its accuracy. Yet he was also in a locked hotel room above a dense crowd of unsuspecting people, and he ceased shooting over an hour before police stormed his hotel room. It’s entirely possible he could’ve killed and injured nearly as many people using guns that would remain legal under most of the gun control schemes that were proposed following his rampage.
What’s more, the emotionalism and policy action that Eminem says is missing from our reaction to these violent incidents was, in fact, on full display after the Vegas shooting, with the Trump administration issuing a legally dubious ban on bump stocks.
Perhaps what the rap artist wants then is an O’Rourkian mass confiscation of firearms, so that no one can own any weapon of consequence.
That preference presents a whole host of other civil liberties issues that Eminem’s fellow rappers seem to grasp much better: firearms are an effective tool for self-defense, particularly against the biggest gang in town, and laws that restrict them create more opportunities for racist police harassment and abuse.
“The right to bear arms is because that’s the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It’s to protect yourself from the police,” said rapper Ice-T in a 2012 interview with the New York Sun.
Or as Killer Mike said on Bill Mahar’s show in 2018, “African-Americans to align themselves with the gun-law lobby stop and have a conversation with your allies and say this: these laws are going to affect us worse and they are going to affect us first.”
America has a constitutionally protected right to gun ownership, and infringing on that right requires infringing on our rights to due process and to not be subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures. That nuance is absent from Eminem’s “Darkness” video.
Music is a powerful thing. Following a mass shooting, it can tell the stories of victims, provide catharsis for those who survive, and maybe even provide an emotional outlet for people otherwise tempted to commit violent acts. But we don’t see that in the video for “Darkness.” The victims of the Las Vegas shooting get little attention, save for a brief montage of faces toward the end of the video. Focusing on Paddock’s own psychodrama and then illustrating that with flashy first-person shots of him blasting away does more to sensationalize than to condemn him.
Here’s the full video:
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/375VU0B
via IFTTT
“Everywhere Euphoria”: Bank of America Warns Of “Echoes Of 2000”
With the S&P hitting daily record highs, the financial media has been flooded with analogies to January 2018 which was the last time that the market saw a similar “blow-off top” meltup, one which ended in tears in the first week of February when the negative gamma complex imploded as a result of massive vol selling and inverse VIX ETFs blew up overnight, sending the S&P lower by 10% in days. Perversely, that VIXtermination event removed what was traditionally a handbrake to market meltups and without a market manifestation of the retail “short vol” trade, it is quite possible that the current meltup will continue indefinitely.
Which is why the correct comp to the current market move may be not to Jan 2018, but to January 2000.
At least that’s the assessment of BofA’s chief investment strategist, Michael Hartnett, who writes in his weekly Flow Show that “Q1’2020 = Q1’2000” and notes that inflows to bond funds are annualizing at a remarkable $1tn in the past 2 weeks…
… resulting in echoes of 2000, with investor euphoria sending bond yields lower despite stronger global macro, such as a rebound in Asian export cycle, and a 30%+ surge in US mortgage applications.
But the clearest indication that this is the second coming of the tech bubble is the rampage of “trillion dollar babies“, the direct result of $12 trillion of QE “since Lehman” – in this case, Hartnett’s term, not ours:
… in addition to $1 trillion in stock buybacks past 5 years by top 20 US companies (amounting to $381,000 per employee), and resulting in APPL, MSFT, GOOG all worth >$1tn; meanwhile, the S&P 500 is just 5% away from becoming largest bull market of all time (3498) even as the Fed is now stuck and can never again allow stocks to drop as US financial assets (i.e., Wall Street) is a record 5.5x size of GDP (Main St). In short, the entire market is now “too big to fail.”
Looking at the market, Hartnett then divides assets into two categories:
The froth: assets that deliver “growth” & “yield”…palladium, global tech (SOX, QQQ, KWEB), CCC-rated HY bonds; record lows in IG & HY CDX…
The sloth: oil, commodity currencies, banks, materials, value all lagging.
And as long as “the sloth” refuses to rise, the market is telegraphing that there is no organic growth possible (i.e., inflation), that the Fed remains in charge of everything, and that growth will continue to trounce value, making a mockery of active investing.
Looking ahead, Hartnett sees more of the same, i.e., a “Rotation-less 2020” in which there is no Main St inflation, no rotation from IG→HY, US→EAFE, large→small, tech→banks, growth→value (EM the anomaly driven by “peak US$” belief), as a result price action implies new lows in government bond yields, which paradoxically means that a crash – which sends yields to new record lows – may well be bullish for stocks.
So how does one trade all of this? Two ways, first the bullish one.
As Hartnett puts it, “we stay irrationally bullish until peak Positioning & peak Liquidity incite a spike in bond yields & a 4-8% equity correction; sell into strength as MOVE Index <40, IG CDX <40, SPX approaches 20x (3500) all challenge Fed financial stability mandate.“
Unfortunately, judging by Neel Kashkari’s tweets today, the last thing the Fed is worried about is financial stability, which brings us to the second point, namely the end of the rally, which according to Hartnett will play out as follows:
Feb’18 & Oct’18 sell-offs driven by QT and combination of higher yields & lower stocks; best trading strategy was long cash, gold, copper; short credit, tech, private equity, oil…
Finally, on timing, Hartnett sees the above trading pattern repeat once we reach the top…. sometime in Q1 2020.
The infamous UK Police department Scotland Yard is refusing to reveal Prince Andrew’s location on the night that he is accused of being with Virginia Giuffre, one of the young girls trafficked by Jeffrey Epstein who was underage at the time she claims the Duke had sex with her.
Members of the royal family are regularly accompanied by police guards in their day to day activities and there are records of where and when the officers were sent—or at the very least a record of which officers worked on which day. If these records were to be made available investigators could easily determine where Prince Andrew was on the night in question, but police are saying that handing over such information could pose a threat to national security.
During his disastrous BBC interview, Andrew claimed that he was at a Pizza Express in Woking on the night then 17-year-old Giuffre (nee Roberts) says the pair visited a club and later had sex. If the Duke is indeed telling the truth, then his claims could be very easily corroborated by whichever guard was on duty at the time.
Unfortunately, Scotland Yard has not been willing to cooperate.
In a statement responding to the inquiry, Scotland Yard said that revealing information about the disgraced prince’s whereabouts on the night in question could “undermine the safeguarding of national security,”according to the Sun.
“It would allow those with a criminal intent to gain an operational advantage over the MPS and place those who the MPS have confirmed are afforded protection, as well as protection officers, and members of the public at risk,” the statement continued.
The investigation into Prince Andrew’s location on that night of the alleged crime is part of a case involving numerous Epstein victims who have been seeking justice for many years. As the Mind Unleashedreported last month, lawyers representing the victims have said they intend to subpoena Prince Andrew so he is forced to testify in court about his relationship with Epstein and his victims.
Andrew has already been caught in several lies since his appearance on BBC including a leak of private emails where he mentioned Virginia Giuffre by name despite claiming to have never heard of her during his interview.
Robotics will soon lead to widespread joblessness and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.
That was the resolution of a public debate hosted by the Soho Forum in New York City on January 6, 2020. It featured New York Times bestselling author Martin Ford, arguing the affirmative, versus Antony Sammeroff, spokesperson on economics and environment for the Scottish Libertarian Party. Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein moderated.
It was an Oxford-style debate, in which the audience votes on the resolution at the beginning and end of the event, with many “undecided.” The side that gains the most ground is victorious. Sammeroff prevailed in the debate by convincing 19.64 percent of audience members to come over to his side. Ford picked up 2.68 percent.
If you like graphic reenactments of mass shootings, gun control, and rap, Eminem’s latest offering might just be for you.
Just after midnight, the Detroit rapper released a music video for his new song “Darkness” which portrays the 2017 Las Vegas shooting from the perspective of Stephen Paddock, who fatally shot 58 people attending a country music concert from his Mandalay Bay hotel room.
The video cuts between shots of Eminem rapping to the camera and a solitary Paddock, quaffing pills and alcohol before opening fire on the crowd below, and then ultimately killing himself as police burst through the door.
The lyrics transition (less than) seamlessly between a narration of Paddock’s final thoughts and overt messages about gun control, with lines like:
Finger on the trigger, but I’m a licensed owner
With no prior convictions, so loss, the sky’s the limit
So my supplies infinite, strapped like I’m a soldier
This heavy-handed message is reinforced at the end of the video when we see the rapper watching TV news about gun violence before he words “When will this end? When enough people care” appear on the screen. This is all capped off with an explicit exhortation to register to vote and “help change gun laws in America.” The webpage for the music video on Eminimen’s website also includes links to a number of gun control organizations.
The message for viewers is that if only they cared as much as Eminem and voted to make gun laws more restrictive, these atrocities would stop happening. Yet, mass shootings don’t continue to happen because Americans are fine with them. Mass shootings happen for the same reasons that most types of illegal violence happen, which is that twisted people are not easily deterred by laws and regulations.
And despite what gun controllers might say, there does not exist a handful of common-sense policies we can just adopt to stop these atrocities from reoccurring.
As Eminem’s song notes, there was nothing in Paddock’s background that would have flagged him as a person who would go on to be a mass murderer. The existence of would-be shooters who do not raise red flags with people in a position to stop them before they kill has led gun control advocates to argue that legislators should limit the types and number of weapons available to people, or pass blanket restrictions on everyone’s right to own firearms.
Yet mass shooters are often able to kill a lot of people with simple handguns and shotguns, not just so-called “weapons of war.” It’s true Paddock had 24 guns with him, some of which were equipped with bump stocks—a hack that increases a weapon’s rate of fire at the expense of its accuracy. Yet he was also in a locked hotel room above a dense crowd of unsuspecting people, and he ceased shooting over an hour before police stormed his hotel room. It’s entirely possible he could’ve killed and injured nearly as many people using guns that would remain legal under most of the gun control schemes that were proposed following his rampage.
What’s more, the emotionalism and policy action that Eminem says is missing from our reaction to these violent incidents was, in fact, on full display after the Vegas shooting, with the Trump administration issuing a legally dubious ban on bump stocks.
Perhaps what the rap artist wants then is an O’Rourkian mass confiscation of firearms, so that no one can own any weapon of consequence.
That preference presents a whole host of other civil liberties issues that Eminem’s fellow rappers seem to grasp much better: firearms are an effective tool for self-defense, particularly against the biggest gang in town, and laws that restrict them create more opportunities for racist police harassment and abuse.
“The right to bear arms is because that’s the last form of defense against tyranny. Not to hunt. It’s to protect yourself from the police,” said rapper Ice-T in a 2012 interview with the New York Sun.
Or as Killer Mike said on Bill Mahar’s show in 2018, “African-Americans to align themselves with the gun-law lobby stop and have a conversation with your allies and say this: these laws are going to affect us worse and they are going to affect us first.”
America has a constitutionally protected right to gun ownership, and infringing on that right requires infringing on our rights to due process and to not be subjected to unreasonable searches and seizures. That nuance is absent from Eminem’s “Darkness” video.
Music is a powerful thing. Following a mass shooting, it can tell the stories of victims, provide catharsis for those who survive, and maybe even provide an emotional outlet for people otherwise tempted to commit violent acts. But we don’t see that in the video for “Darkness.” The victims of the Las Vegas shooting get little attention, save for a brief montage of faces toward the end of the video. Focusing on Paddock’s own psychodrama and then illustrating that with flashy first-person shots of him blasting away does more to sensationalize than to condemn him.
Here’s the full video:
from Latest – Reason.com https://ift.tt/375VU0B
via IFTTT
Robotics will soon lead to widespread joblessness and the concentration of wealth in the hands of a few.
That was the resolution of a public debate hosted by the Soho Forum in New York City on January 6, 2020. It featured New York Times bestselling author Martin Ford, arguing the affirmative, versus Antony Sammeroff, spokesperson on economics and environment for the Scottish Libertarian Party. Soho Forum Director Gene Epstein moderated.
It was an Oxford-style debate, in which the audience votes on the resolution at the beginning and end of the event, with many “undecided.” The side that gains the most ground is victorious. Sammeroff prevailed in the debate by convincing 19.64 percent of audience members to come over to his side. Ford picked up 2.68 percent.
Zelensky Rejects Ukrainian PM’s Resignation After Embarrassing ‘Mystery’ Audio Surfaces
At a sensitive moment that Trump-Ukraine dealings are being spotlighted in US politics and just before Senate impeachment proceedings move forward which the president has called a “hoax” — it just so happens that explosive wiretap recordings of top Ukrainian government officials are being mysteriously released to shake up the Zelensky administration.
No less than Ukraine’s prime minister has resigned after he was caught on an audio recording allegedly making disparaging comments about Zelensky’s ability to understand and form economic policy. According to the bombshell WSJ report Friday:
Ukraine’s prime minister tendered his resignation following the release of an audio recording in which he appeared to make disparaging comments about President Volodymyr Zelensky’s understanding of economics.
Mr. Zelensky’s office said the president is considering the resignation of Oleksiy Honcharuk, who has been in office since August.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky and the Prime Minister Oleksii Honcharuk. Image via Kyiv Post.
Honcharuk is allegedly caught in the recording saying his boss President Zelensky “has a very primitive understanding of economic processes.” The alleged recording surfaced earlier this week and immediately sparked controversy; however, it remains unclear as to the ultimate source of the audio’s creation and leak.
PM Honcharuk affirmed it is his voice on the audio, but suggested it was heavily edited to create a false impression. He said it was different dialogue from multiple government meetings strung together to present a falsehood, according to the WSJ.
“This content artificially creates the idea that my team and I do not respect the president,” Honcharuk explained in a statement on his Facebook page. “But this is not true.”
No decision yet from Zelensky on Honcharuk’s resignation. But he’s ordered Ukrainian law enforcement agencies to investigate how confidential government meetings were recorded and then leaked online. He gave a two-week deadline. https://t.co/3rfmPMEt8P
President Zelensky appears to be withholding judgement for now, and has reportedly ordered security services to investigate the origins of the tape, as well as how it was leaked online. The president has reportedly issued a two week deadline for Ukrainian law enforcement to the get to the bottom of it.
Honcharuk, himself relatively politically inexperienced like his boss former comedian Zelensky, was tasked with rooting out corruption in a country considered among Europe’s most endemically corrupt governments. He suggested Friday while tendering his resignation (Zelensky has initially rejected the resignation) that this is likely the work of his political enemies who hide “in the shadows”.
“Unfortunately, in a few months it is quite difficult to destroy criminal schemes that have been in place for decades,” he wrote. “Our opponents are accustomed to living in the shadows.”
The now embattled prime minister, seen as a key anti-corruption reformer, assisted in Ukraine’s securing tentative approval for $5.5 billion in loans from the IMF in December.
Ukraine’s reformers do the right thing again. After some dirty antireformer tries to expose PM Honcharuk with a mildly embarrassing tape recording, Honcharuk correctly offered his resignation & @ZelenskyyUa rightly turned it down. Well done!
Curiously, the WSJ report offers no suggestions as to the origins of the audio which swiftly brought Honcharuk down this week, but it obviously comes in a pressurized and explosive context for Kiev when both Western and Ukrainian domestic intelligence are no doubt scrambling to dig up information in the wake of the dramatic impeachment proceedings as well as Trump’s public accusations of Joe Biden and the Burisma affair.
So the question remains: in light of this mysterious wiretap and audio, are we perhaps witnessing yet more Washington deep state maneuvering in Ukraine?
Nearly 40% of countries across the globe will see some form of civil unrest or riots in 2020, according to a new study.
Political analyst firm Verisk Maplecroft predicts that 75 out of the world’s 195 countries will see some form of social disorder this year.
That’s an increase on the 47 countries, about a quarter of the world’s total, that saw civil unrest in 2019.
The report predicts that the intensity of unrest is likely to be higher than 2019 due to the danger of protesters being on the receiving end of human rights abuses by authorities.
The study names major countries such as Russia, China, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Thailand and Brazil that are all likely to experience major social disorder.
It also warns corporations that they will be seen to be siding with authoritarianism unless they act responsibly in the affected countries.
“Companies are at substantial danger of complicity if they employ state or private security forces that perpetrate violations,” states the report.
As we previously highlighted, the end of globalization may bring with it a tumultuous decade that causes commodities like precious metals and real estate to soar.
* * *
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“We Need A Full Investigation”: Bannon Accuses Pelosi, Schiff And MSM Of Colluding On 11th Hour Impeachment Bombshells
Former White House chief strategist Steve Bannon has called for a full investigation into coordination between Congressional Democrats and members of the media, after articles of impeachment against President Trump appear to have been deliberately ‘slow walked’ in order to coincide with two ‘bombshell’ developments in the Ukraine story.
“Why did they time this? Why did they wait?” asked Fox Business host Trish Regan.
“First off, Rachel Maddow should be a witness of fact now. She should be brought in,” replied Bannon – referring to the seemingly coordinated media blitz surrounding Lev Parnas, an indicted former Rudy Goiliani associate whose undated, hand-written notes appear to support the claim that President Trump pressured Ukraine into investigating Joe Biden for corruption.
“We ought to have all the emails and all the text messages between Schiff, between Nancy Pelosi, Phil Griffin at MSNBC News. We ought to bring the whole thing out. How did this get dropped? Why have they been working on this for so long? How did this just come about at the last second? She admitted she’s been working on this for months, and the House just got this. The Republicans didn’t even see this when the vote when down,” said Bannon, adding “This is now a complete farce.”
“I think there was collusion between MSNBC, Rachel Maddow, Lev Parnas’s attorneys, and the entire process.” -Steve Bannon
“So why did this not come forward earlier?” asks Regan.
“You know why, because they wanted to drop their “big reveal,” this was going be such a big bombshell. This is all total hearsay from a guy trying to talk his way into a lesser sentence because he’s already indicted. It’s so obvious what he’s trying to do.”
Adding to the collusion / ‘slow walk’ theory is the completion of a report by the Government Accountability Office (GAO) requested by Democratic Senator Chris Van Hollen, which found that President Trump’s pause of US aid to Ukraine violated the law. Of note, virtually every previous administration has received a similar nastygram from the GAO – just not the day after directly related impeachment articles were delivered to the Senate ahead of a trial.
