Army Selects QinetiQ & Textron To Build Robot Tank With Chain Gun
Earlier this month, as threats of World War 3 surged between the U.S. and Iran, President Trump boasted about his $2 trillion military spending spree. He said, “If Iran attacks an American Base, or any American, we will be sending some of that brand-new beautiful equipment their way…and without hesitation!”
Threats of war have receded this week but are still elevated. There’s a new report from Defense Blog that details how the U.S. Army is continuing rapid modernization efforts to prepare for the next conflict.
The U.S. Army CCDC Ground Vehicle Systems Center and the U.S. Army Next Generation Combat Vehicles Cross-Functional Team awarded QinetiQ North America and Textron last Friday with a contract to build four light (RCV Light) and four medium (RCV Medium) sized robotic tanks.
“The progress that our engineers, scientists, project managers, and leaders around Team Warren and the Army Modernization Enterprise have made in moving the RCV closer to reality is truly a heartening success story for Army modernization,” said Jeffrey Langhout, Director, Ground Vehicle Systems Center.
“That we can get this far already is a testament to the dedication and passion of the Army to giving our Soldiers the best capabilities possible. This is a great day for our Army, as we make another important step in learning how we can employ robotic vehicles into our future formations,” Langhout said.
The light and medium-sized RCVs will be part of the Army’s Robotic Campaign of Learning that will test the robots with ground troops. Testing is expected to conclude by the end of 2021 and could enter service by 2023.
“Robots have the potential to revolutionize the way we conduct ground combat operations,” said Brig. Gen. Ross Coffman, Director of the Next Generation Combat Vehicles Cross-Functional Team.
“Whether that’s giving increased firepower to a dismounted patrol, breaching an enemy fighting position, or providing CBRNE reconnaissance, we envision these vehicles providing commanders more time and space for decisions and reducing risk to Soldiers,” Coffman said.
The RCVs are the next generation of combat vehicles that will be offered in three variants: the light version will be transportable by rotary wing, and the two medium variants will be transported in C-130 or C-17 aircraft.
Defense Blog notes that RCVs will have artificial intelligence with 25 mm chain gun swiveling on top with sensors that will be used to track and kill enemy forces. The robot will be able to support fire teams and or keep pace with armored convoys.
The Democratic leaders may soon learn the wisdom of Oscar Wilde’s warning that “when the gods wish to punish us they answer our prayers.”
House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (D-Calif.) has so far delayed the submission of the impeachment of President Trump to the Senate to force a trial with witnesses. Senate Minority Leader Charles E. Schumer (D-N.Y.) has declared any trial of Trump without witnesses to be nothing less than the “most unfair impeachment trial in modern history.” Leaders of both parties know that impeachment often boils down to one unpredictable element: witnesses.
For those who have the votes, witnesses are an unnecessary risk. For those who don’t, they are an absolute necessity.
On Friday, Schumer insisted that “there is only one precedent that matters here: that never, never in the history of our country, has there been an impeachment trial of the president where the Senate was denied the ability to hear from witnesses.”
Put another way, Schumer does not have the votes and thus needs the witnesses. Schumer now wants to hear from the witnesses who never testified before the House, which rushed through an impeachment without seeking to compel testimony from key officials. One of those, former national security adviser John Bolton, said Monday he would testify before the Senate if subpoenaed.
In the Clinton impeachment trial 21 years ago, Schumer and the Democrats opposed hearing from witnesses. In that impeachment chapter, the Democrats had the votes. Lacking the votes this time, the unpredictability of witnesses now appeals to Schumer and his party. But only up to a point. Schumer has opposed the suggested Republican witnesses as a mere “distraction.”
One witness in particular could prove not just a distraction but a disaster: Hunter Biden.
In a conventional trial, Biden would be a relevant defense witness. Biden’s testimony would have bearing on a key question in an abuse-of-power trial. Trump insists that he raised the issue of Hunter Biden’s relationship with a Ukrainian energy firm to the Ukrainian president as part of an overall concern he had about ongoing corruption in that country. If that contract with the son of a former vice president could be shown to be a corrupt scheme to advance the interests of a foreign company or country, it might be Trump’s best defense.
Under Federal Rule of Evidence 401, courts will often review possible testimony under the standard of whether “it has a tendency to make a fact more or less probable than it would be without the evidence.” Even before the adoption of the Bill of Rights, Congress enacted a statute reaffirming the right of the “defense to make any proof that he can produce by lawful witnesses” in cases of treason and capitol cases. This right to present a defense has been repeatedly reaffirmed by the Supreme Court including in the 1967 opinion in Washington v. Texas, where the Court ruled that “the right to offer the testimony of witnesses and to compel their attendance, if necessary, is in plain terms the right to present the defense, the right to present the defendant’s version of the facts . . . Just as an accused has the right to confront the prosecution’s witnesses for the purpose of challenging their testimony, he has the right to present his own witnesses to establish a defense.”
Trump’s position is that he did not arbitrarily ask a country to investigate a possible political rival. Had Trump called for an investigation into Sen. Elizabeth Warren’s (D-Mass.) husband, for example, without a scintilla of proof of corruption, it would be entirely indefensible. However, the Biden contract was so openly corrupt it would have made Jack Abramoff blush. Even in the United States, lobbyists and companies will often give family members undeserved lucrative jobs and contracts to curry favor with powerful politicians. Overseas, it is standard operating procedure. Oleksandr Onyshchenko, a businessman and former member of the Ukrainian parliament, said Biden was made a director “to protect (the company)” from investigation by U.S. and Ukrainian officials. Even Hunter Biden admitted that the position was given to him because of his father. Hunter Biden was paid at least $50,000 a month and possibly more.
Biden stepped down from the Burisma board only when his father announced his candidacy in April 2019. Ukraine assured Trump that it was cracking down on corruption when, just a few months earlier, Biden had been receiving monthly retainers from Burisma.
If the Biden contract was an ongoing corrupt effort to secure influence and money from the United States, Trump’s reference to it in a discussion of corruption has a possible public purpose. While one can certainly conclude that self-dealing by the president is a plausible explanation, there is no question that the testimony of Biden would be relevant.
Schumer knows that neither Biden nor his contract will show well under the glare of a public impeachment trial. In addition to his glaring lack of relevant experience, the younger Biden has a checkered history – from drug addiction to being thrown out of the Naval Reserve – that would have led most companies to avoid him. The trial might also force the public to consider Joe Biden’s failure to ask about his son’s dubious foreign dealings. Joe Biden himself seems delusional in claiming, “No one has said my son did anything wrong.”
For the Democrats, witnesses are a dangerous game. The worse that Hunter Biden looks, the better Trump looks in raising the contract. That is the problem with asking for witnesses in a Senate trial. They can take you to places you might prefer not to go.
* * *
Jonathan Turley is the chair of Public Interest Law at George Washington University and served as the last lead counsel in an impeachment trial before the Senate in defense of Judge G. Thomas Porteous Jr.
Global Automakers Remain Cautious, Pessimistic As China Forecasts 2% Sales Drop For 2020
The mood in the Chinese auto market is one of pessimism.
And the global auto recession, being led by the world’s largest market in China, doesn’t look as though it’ll be turning around anytime soon. That’s because China is forecasting a 2% sales decline for 2020, as we first noted just hours ago when we pointed out the country’s nasty 7.5% sales decline for December.
Sales dropped 8.2% in 2019 due to a slowing economy, but also U.S. import tariffs and new emissions standards, according to Reuters.
The CAAM’s pessimistic outlook for 2020 is starting the entire global industry off on a cautious note. A decline in 2020 would mark the third year that sales have fallen, as they also declined 2.8% in 2018. This followed continual growth that had begun all the way back in the 1990s.
Industry analysts are banking on a sales recovery in small towns and easing trade war tensions to act as tailwinds in China this year. Shi Jianhua, a senior official at CAAM, said: “We have moved away from the high-speed development stage. We have to accept the reality of low-speed development. We had high-speed growth for a consecutive 28 years, which was really not bad, so I hope everyone can calmly look at the market.”
NEV sales were down 27.4% in December, which helped fuel an overall annual decline to 1.24 million units in 2019.
To make matters worse, Beijing slashed subsidies on EVs and NEVs this year – as we noted in the beginning of December – causing a huge dent in sales of plug-in vehicles. NEV sales also plunged 42% in November.
CAAM’s assistant secretary general, Xu Haidong said it was “not possible” for the country to sell the 2 million NEVs it targeted for 2020 back in 2017.
Since cutting production and shuttering factories last year, many auto manufacturers are cautious heading into 2020. Geely and Ford, for instance, have both said they expect fiercer competition to weed out weaker companies.
Ford said its China auto sales were down more than 25% for 2019, marking a third year of declines. Along with GM, who reported a 15% drop in 2019 China sales, it remained cautious on 2020.
Matt Tsien, president of GM China said: “We expect the market downturn to continue in 2020, and anticipate ongoing headwinds in our China business.”
The hypocrisy is unbelievable. In order to comply with United States sanctions on Iran, Facebook’s thought police have taken to censorship on behalf of the government. At the same time, President Donald Trump warns Iran not to use censorship.
It’s become painfully obvious that the ruling class wants to get us into another war, where the young and poor are shipped off to die while the politicians and government defense contractors get rich. And the hypocrisy is becoming noticeable. Backed by the ruling class, Big Tech’s censorship is nothing new, however, this time, it’s an excuse to propagate a war:
These massive Big Tech corporations are Thought Police for the US government:
Facebook and Instagram are removing posts expressing support for Iran’s top general Soleimani
They say it’s to comply with US sanctions, but how do posts violate sanctions? https://t.co/BthPuxgOBC
The International Federation of Journalists condemned the censorship effort as “unprecedented in the history of social networks and in conflict with the very innate actuality of media.” In its letter to Instagram, AoIJ Tehran noted that numerous Iranian state media accounts had been removed and 15 journalists had been censored recently, which goes against and freedom of speech principles.
“These massive Big Tech corporations are Thought Police for the US government: Facebook and Instagram are removing posts expressing support for Iran’s top general Soleimani,” journalist Ben Norton tweeted. “They say it’s to comply with US sanctions, but how do posts violate sanctions? –RT
The answer is: they don’t. The problem is that the war sentiment and the idea that slaughtering people for our freedoms in other countries is gone. The elitists that need a war to profit off of it can’t convince the public to fight and die for them unless they control the narrative.
That’s why speech is being censored.
Big tech is just another arm of the U.S. government.
Any support for Soleimani will be taken down by Facebook and Instagram to comply with the USA sanctions but Trump can tweet that Iran should not close down the internet because the world is watching. He wouldn’t understand the irony of his tweet. Free speech, censorship anyone?
Hypocritically, while Facebook was acting as “thought police” on behalf of the US government (the rulers who think they own everyone), Washington has been championing free speech and warning Tehran against restricting the Iranian people’s internet access. U.S. President Donald Trump personally addressed the anti-government protesters – in Farsi, mind you – reassuring them of his unwavering support, according to a report by RT.
Biden Campaign Woos Wall Street In Private Huddle With Bigwigs
Joe Biden’s campaign chairman Steve Ricchetti has been privately meeting with top donors from Wall Street over the last week in a bid to drum up support for the 77-year-old former Vice President’s run at the Democratic nomination, according to CNBC.
Ricchetti huddled with around 90 financiers on Wednesday at New York-based investment banking firm Evercore, in a pitch which reportedly swayed several big-money donors who apparently haven’t heard Biden try to string together more than a few sentences.
Attendees included Evercore founder Roger Altman, longtime investor Blair Effron, Blackstone Chief Operating Officer Jonathan Gray, Citigroup executive Ray McGuire, Centerbridge Partners co-founder Mark Gallogly, and former U.S. ambassador to France Jane Hartley, said the people, who declined to be named since the meeting was deemed private.
Ricchetti told the donors that he believes now is the time for them and their donor networks to get behind Biden as the first contests of the 2020 primary season are set to kick off in three weeks, according to people familiar with the matter. –CNBC
Biden, while still the Democratic frontrunner, is in an extremely tight race with Sens. Bernie Sanders and Elizabeth Warren – the former of whom has begun beating Biden in several polls. South Bend Mayor Bete Buttigieg is also a serious contender at this stage.
The meeting did not just include staunch supporters of Biden, such as Effron, who, along with businessman Marc Lasry, has decided to back Biden after first backing Sen. Kamala Harris. The group was described by one attendee as donors who were either “Biden-warm or Biden-not-so-warm.” McGuire, for instance, was another Harris backer and a member of her national finance committee. Gallogly, as CNBC first reported, had supported former Texas Rep. Beto O’Rourke but has since decided to support Biden. Harris and O’Rourke dropped out of the race last year.
After the meeting, many of the donors appeared ready to join Biden’s cause, the people said. –CNBC
Meanwhile, Biden’s campaign will hold a series of fundraising events which could bring in millions of much-needed dollars at this critical juncture in his bid for the White House.
Expect Warren and Sanders – who have raised money primarily through small contributions – to knock Biden for pandering to Wall Street. Buttigieg, meanwhile, is happy to take money from across the board.
Biden, Sanders, Warren and Buttigieg raised a combined $100 million in the fourth quarter. Trump and the RNC, meanwhile, have nearly $200 million on hand.
“A deeply disturbing account of the destructive potential of belief.”
– Ammar Kalia, reviewing BBC Four’s Storyville: Jonestown – Terror in the Jungle.
When it’s not trying to overturn legitimate plebiscites or shoving woke propaganda down the throats of its reluctant viewers, the BBC is still capable of showing half-decent documentaries. This correspondent recently caught the tail end of one such piece, Storyville: Jonestown – Terror in the Jungle. Being nine at the time of the original atrocity, we don’t remember any coverage of the story being aired, but 1978 was a different age, and wary parents might well have suppressed the news in any case.
Here are the facts. In 1974, the cult leader Jim Jones established the Peoples Temple Agricultural Project (“Jonestown”) in northwestern Guyana. The organisation purported to practise what it termed “apostolic socialism”. What became known as Jonestown would represent, to its believers, a socialist paradise and a haven from media scrutiny.
Temple members were originally worked six days a week, between 6:30 a.m. and 6:00 p.m., but after Jones’ health began to deteriorate, the schedule was relaxed to eight hours a day for five days a week – a regime adopted from North Korea. The settlers’ Hollywood movies were replaced by Soviet propaganda and documentaries about American social problems. Jones himself would often read to his parishioners news items from Radio Moscow and Radio Havana. Temple staff would “interpret” other material and help the congregation to “appreciate” Marxist-Leninist messages. Parishioners who misbehaved would be consigned to a 6 x 4 x 3 foot plywood box. Errant children would be consigned to the bottom of a well, sometimes upside down.
In 1977, former Temple members Tim and Grace Stoen began a campaign seeking custody of their five-year-old son, John. Eventually, Congressman Leo Ryan offered to assist them. By 1978, Jones was apparently taking significant quantities of Valium, Quaaludes, stimulants and other drugs. He was probably also suffering from chronic insomnia.
On November 14, 1978, Congressman Ryan arrived at Jonestown with a delegation that included representatives from the US embassy to Guyana, a number of journalists including NBC reporter Don Harris, and representatives from the ‘Concerned Relatives’ pressure group, including Tim and Grace Stoen.
After a few days at the site, the Ryan delegation left for the Port Kaituma airstrip with a small number of defectors from the Temple. They were intercepted by Temple members. A number of NBC employees were shot dead. Congressman Ryan was shot dead. A damaged Twin Otter plane and the survivors from the delegation were left behind on the airstrip.
Aides at the compound meanwhile prepared a large barrel of grape-flavoured Flavor Aid, a cheap knock-off of Kool-Aid, tainted with Valium, cyanide, chloral hydrate and Phenergan. Jones then urged Temple members to commit “revolutionary suicide”. Parents were encouraged to dose their children, then take the poison themselves. Reluctant parishioners were dispatched by armed guards. A total of 918 people, including many children, died, “voluntarily” or otherwise. Jim Jones was among them; he shot himself in the head.
Attending the recent MoneyWeek annual investor conference, this correspondent was struck by the apparent consensus amongst the event’s panellists that the world’s central banks were highly likely in 2020 to start implementing what is known as Modern Monetary Theory (MMT). MMT holds that any government that issues its own money can pay for goods, services and financial assets without a need to raise taxes or issue debt. It also holds that governments cannot be forced to default on debt denominated in their own currency.
It seems increasingly plausible that MMT will be the next iteration of macroeconomic planning from our monetary authorities, the central banks. We would argue that their previous policies of QE (Quantitative Easing) and especially ZIRP (Zero Interest Rate Policy) have led their respective economies into something of a dead end. Perhaps “Jonestowns” would be an appropriate analogy. With the cost of capital effectively at zero, profitless ‘concept stocks’ can secure almost unlimited funding, driving down profit margins for competitors that actually have credible and sustainable business models. Eventually the entire economy and financial system becomes zombified.
As Adam Smith could easily have said, there’s a great deal of ruin in a fiat money system. The rot has been setting in for years. Here, for example, is what the John Wilkes Club wrote about the system seven years ago:
..this shadowy financial engineering, eye-watering price volatility and the foisting of our debt on unborn generations seem to share some nebulous characteristic which is as instantly recognisable as it is hard to define – a certain grubbiness, the quality of something unpleasant that we have become resigned to living with.
The sense that the whole economy is a hostile and dishonest place, that there is no pleasure or virtue to be found in it, is so much a hallmark of the modern world that it might almost be its distinguishing feature. If there is a single culprit, the smoking gun is surely grasped in the pallid talons of the monetary system, now so far from being an organic social convention, evolved to meet real human needs, that we should hardly be surprised that we no longer expect it to promote basic social decency.
During the twentieth century, the nature of money itself was remorselessly inched away from being a real monetary commodity – the honest and logical medium of exchange which it had been since the very dawn of homo œconomicus – to being an arbitrary and elastic pile of government promissory notes backed by nothing at all. This was not brought about by our changing preferences as money users, but by a series of planned changes conceived on our behalf by progressive folk with reassuring credentials.
These were intelligent, often brilliant people whose misguided faith in the ability of human genius to transcend the limitations of inherited behaviours made them tragically susceptible to the insane schemes which so characterised the last century. At its least harmful, this ambition brought us those planned urban communities which seem to be based on Lord of the Flies; at its most, it brought us millions of corpses. Somewhere in between these two on the list of twentieth century mistakes lies the global non-system of fiat money which developed between 1913 and 1971.
We do not often quote Lord Keynes at the JWC, but here he is in 1923: “[t]he individualistic capitalism of today…presumes a stable measuring rod of value and can not be efficient – perhaps can not survive – without one.” It was the economists of his generation, however, who decided that they alone could calculate the correct monetary balance to ensure non-inflationary growth and implement it though the central bank, just as they alone could determine the just and efficient allocation of scarce resources and implement it through licensing, regulations and subsidies. The gold standard was out, and what Detlev Schlichter has wittily called the ‘PhD Standard’ was in.
They seem to have been glacially unconcerned that modern economic life – indeed, any social organisation more sophisticated than a primitive barter society – needs a sound accounting unit in order for long-term obligations or depreciation schedules to have any meaning at all, let alone to be accurately calculable. An exponentially expanding stock of paper or electronic units does not contain the information needed for any large or lasting enterprise to match off values, any more than jelly can be nailed to the wall.
Before, when money was a gold derivative, a pound note or dollar bill had been a kind of short position against a physical asset. Gradually, this easy calculation was replaced by a labyrinth of paper claims against paper whose expansion was not even readily susceptible to measurement, because the definitions of money and credit were now so close as to be virtually indistinguishable. How can the value of a money-market fund be anything but arbitrary when it becomes nothing more than an aggregation of short-term credit obligations?
Nevertheless, governments leapt at the new economic orthodoxy like pirates on an unexpected chest of doubloons. Here at last was the story they needed in order to float as much debt as they wanted: risk-averse savers holding money-balances were now effectively lending money to their governments rather than hoarding precious metals. The fiscal discipline which the successful system of commodity money had imposed on greedy and ambitious politicians was broken. Moreover, their weapons have become more sophisticated over time: any attempt to bet against government policy can now be taken down by unleashing irresistible firepower through the derivatives markets.
The automatic stabilising effects of inelastic commodity money are well known and need not be rehearsed here – suffice it to say that the inability to create more money makes the kind of trade and fiscal imbalances of 2013 self-correcting. Our main point here is that honesty and honour in contractual relationships is dependent on trust and therefore on certainty. The monetary system is a moral as well as an accounting frame of reference.
The three examples with which we began this post are merely topical instances of a much broader decline of social virtues in economic behaviour: manufacturers seeking profits in financial engineering instead of product sales, stock markets which seem to have nothing to do with the boring process of channelling savings into productive investments, and whole societies transferring to themselves the wealth of people who are unable to consent.
Our entire culture is pervaded by a moral turpitude in financial matters. Whereas in a hard money system the amount of savings sets an upper limit to the amount of borrowing, today’s imbalance between savers and would-be borrowers can be simply circumvented by governments and banks siphoning off purchasing power from others by inflating the currency. Never mind credit expansion and the business cycle: it is simply unethical to use human patrimony, built over years or generations of hard work, without the freely negotiated agreement of those who have built it.
Another imbalance – our multi-decadal trade deficits – shows how addicted first world countries have become to having prosperous lifestyles despite negative savings rates: a narcissistic, self-indulgent culture of entitlement by which the richest people in the world live beyond their means by forever extending the games they play with their elastic currencies, paying for foreign work with newly-created irredeemable paper.
Harry Schultz was surely right that the deterioration in economic attitudes in our society – indebtedness, lack of respect of the system and lazy moral relativism – is related to the meaninglessness of our medium of exchange. In contrast, a commodity money system limits debt, the scope for financial dishonesty and the ability to use currency and credit expansion to establish political control over others. Those limitations foster sound and ethical economic behaviour.
Our Georgian and Victorian ancestors correctly held commerce to be amongst the highest of the social virtues.. Not understanding that the monetary system in the twenty-first century is qualitatively different as well as quantitatively debased, we see the corruption and involuntary transfers all around us and feel grateful that the economic bureaucracy has the power to step in. Truly, it is the cure that is making us sick.
We give the last word on the intellectual credibility of MMT this week to Mr. George Hatjoullis who wrote the following to the editor of the Financial Times in November 2014:
Sir,
Adair Turner suggests some version of monetary financing is the only way to break Japan’s deflation and deal with the debt overhang (‘Print money to fund the deficit – that is the fastest way to raise rates’, Comment, November 11). This was precisely how Korekiyo Takahashi, Japanese finance minister from 1931 to 1936, broke the deflation of the 1930s. The policy was discredited because of the hyperinflation that followed.
NBA Stymies Spencer Dinwiddie’s Plan To Sell A Crypto-Bond Backed By His $34M Contract
An NBA player who is trying to create a new option for athletes receive a large chunk of their enormous contracts up front via securitization is being stymied by the NBA, which has said it’s still reviewing a revised plan from Brooklyn Nets’ Spencer Dinwiddie to sell a new crypto-bond on a proprietary platform he developed with a crypto-focused startup.
In many ways, the “Spencer Dinwiddie Bond” is a modern twist on a bond backed by musician David Bowie’s catalogue revenues.
That bond holds a special place in fixed-income market history, mostly as a novelty, but also increasingly as a way for musicians with valuable catalogues to try and generate money for investments or tax payments.
“Spencer Dinwiddie’s advisers provided us with new information regarding a modified version of their digital token idea, which we are reviewing to determine whether the updated idea is permissible under league rules,” the NBA said in a statement.
Yesterday, Dinwiddie retweeted a Forbes reporter who claimed that the “long awaited release of his SD8 securities-backed bond” would happen on Monday.
Right now, the plan is to only offer the tokens to accredited investors. But someday, Dinwiddie hopes to open sales to all.
I can’t wait to have a Reg A offering as well. The hoops we have to jump through now Make the process cumbersome. NDAs, KYC/AML, Accredited investors, cross reference with other approved lists etc etc. but soon we will have it for ALL! I promise https://t.co/l4E1U36LdD
Dinwiddie partnered with digital securities company Securitize, whose CEO, Carlos Domingo, tweeted that he was “extremely proud” to be Dinwiddie’s strategic partner.
At @securitize we are extremely excited and proud to be the digital transfer agent and technology partner for @SDinwiddie_25 and @DreamFanShares world’s first Professional Athlete Investment Security Token. Innovation takes courage, kudos. https://t.co/F7STPJfWaw
Dinwiddie announced his plans to launch a new investing platform called DREAM Fan Shares back in September. According to the press release, the platform was designed to be a “portal for supporters and fans who want to invest in the potential success of athletes and stars.”
He developed his SD8 tokens under his company SD8 LLC, and he reportedly plans to sell 90 of the tokens on his new platform.
Spencer Dinwiddie
The plan is for Dinwiddie to sell the SD8 bond tokens on DREAM. To entice potential buyers, Dinwiddie is offering access to revenues from his $34 million contract, in exchange for money up front, allowing him to put that money to work now.
However, the NBA initially expressed notable concerns over Dinwiddie’s plans, which included a “player option,” leading to investor dividends based on specific circumstances, Sprung said in a Jan. 10 article. The NBA warned Dinwiddie that his career might be at risk if he followed through with his plan without the league’s blessing.
The SEC has devised strict rules for celebrities dealing in cryptocurrency after the ICO frenzy of 2017 and 2018 led to thousands of gullible investors being swindled out of their money, followed by a bevy of lawsuits and even some criminal penalties. But Dinwiddie appears to be serious about his plans to revolutionize how athletes can financialize their contracts.
Dinwiddie’s plan has already been delayed once, and it’s still unclear whether the NBA will go along with it. But if they do, several other athletes have already expressed interest in following in his footsteps.
Of course, if a bunch of athletes get access to the bulk of their contracts up front, just imagine what such an infusion of wealth might do to asset prices.
December’s Slower Wage Growth Reflects Drop In Incentive Income
Submitted by Joe Carson, fomer Chief Economist & Director of Global Economic Research for Alliance Bernstein
The abrupt drop in average hourly earnings in December to a 3% gain, 50 basis points below the run-rate of the past year, is as much of a surprise as it is a puzzle. How can the wage data show a one-month plunge in earnings growth when the other parts of the labor report showed steady gains in new hiring (+145,000 in December) and no change in the unemployment rate (3.5%)? The answer could be a large drop in incentive or commission income due to soft holiday sales at a number of business establishments in retail and wholesale trade.
Earnings in the payroll employment report not only include regular wage and pay increases but also monthly bonuses and commission income tied to workers sales performance. It’s the latter component of earnings that might explain the sharp drop-off in the rate of earnings growth.
December’s data on wages show an exceptionally large deceleration in the retail and wholesale trade sectors. Wages in the two trade sectors combined posted an annual gain of 2.9%, off sharply from the 4.5% gain recorded one year earlier.
Payrolls of retail and wholesale trade account for nearly 20% of total payroll employment so the 160 basis points drop – from 4.5% to 2.9% in wage growth – would account for more than the 50 basis points deceleration – from 3.5% to 3.0% -in average hourly earnings.
The sharp slowdown in earnings growth in retail and wholesale trade occurred even though these businesses added 50,000 new workers in December. The addition of new workers suggests that these companies were not looking to cut labor costs in December so that raises the possibility that the reduction is earnings growth came from other parts of labor compensation.
Combined, November retail and wholesale sales were up a mere 2% from year ago levels, roughly half of the 2018 performance. Yet, sales at many of the high-profile retail establishments, such as general merchandise and clothing stores posted a decline of 1% -well off the 4% gain of one year earlier.
With reduced growth in sales, and declines in some areas, odds are relatively high that incentive or commission-base income dropped sharply in 2019 versus what was paid in 2018. None of this is meant to downplay the importance of commission income, only to point out its “lumpiness” and its sensitivity to sales performances.
Investors should be also mindful that sales are a good proxy for revenue growth -and the soft sales reports should be seen as a harbinger of weak Q4 profits in a number of businesses as well.
Here Comes Wikigate 2: NYT Claims Russian Hackers Successfully “Breached” Burisma
Color us skeptical, alt-right, conspiracy-wonk, Putin-puppets; but the transparency and timing of tonight’s “bombshell” report from The New York Times of an ‘alleged’ hacking by ‘allegedly’ Russian hackers of Burisma – the Ukrainian energy firm that VP Biden’s crack-smoking, energy-ignorant son was paid $50,000 per month as a board member – reeks so strongly of foundational narrative-building for something “embarrassing” that is coming, it is stunning just how dumb the deep state must think the American public really is. Actually, maybe not all that stunning.
According to Area 1, the Silicon Valley security firm that detected the hacking, Russian hackers from a military intelligence unit known formerly as the G.R.U., and to private researchers by the alias “Fancy Bear,” used so-called phishing emails that appear designed to steal usernames and passwords, to gain access to Burisma’s network.
Full Area 1 Report here:
Oren Falkowitz, a co-founder of Area 1, and previously a hacker at the National Security Agency, proclaimed in the report that “the attacks were successful,” even though it is unknown what the alleged hackers were attempting to discover.
“The timing of the Russian campaign mirrors the G.R.U. hacks we saw in 2016 against the D.N.C. and John Podesta,” the Clinton campaign chairman, Mr. Falkowitz said.
“Once again, they are stealing email credentials, in what we can only assume is a repeat of Russian interference in the last election.”
As The Mercury News reported, over the summer, Area 1 persuaded the Federal Election Commission to allow it to provide low-cost services to political campaigns, which would typically be a violation of rules designed to prevent businesses from currying political favor.
Additionally, and coming as no surprise to many, Mr. Falkowitz is a significant donor to Democrats; and even more intriguing, the company’s CSO – Blacke Darche – also worked at the NSA and most notably, Crowdstrike.
While NYT admits it is not yet clear what the hackers found, or precisely what they were searching for, that did not stop them speculating, based on more anonymous sources.
The Times, citing an American security official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity to discuss sensitive intelligence, claiming – without any proof – that the Russian attacks on Burisma appear to be running parallel to an effort by Russian spies in Ukraine to dig up information in the analog world that could embarrass the Bidens. The spies, the official said, are trying to penetrate Burisma and working sources in the Ukrainian government in search of emails, financial records and legal documents.
So-called “experts” reportedly claim the timing and scale of the attacks suggest that the Russians could be searching for potentially embarrassing material on the Bidens – the same kind of information that Mr. Trump wanted from Ukraine when he pressed for an investigation of the Bidens and Burisma, setting off a chain of events that led to his farcical impeachment.
All sounds very sinister!
The New York Times, thoughtfully asks Andrew Bates, a spokesman for the Biden campaign, what his thoughts are on the entirely unfounded story. His response is unsurprising to say the least…
“Donald Trump tried to coerce Ukraine into lying about Joe Biden and a major bipartisan, international anti-corruption victory because he recognized that he can’t beat the vice president.”
“Now we know that Vladimir Putin also sees Joe Biden as a threat.”
“Any American president who had not repeatedly encouraged foreign interventions of this kind would immediately condemn this attack on the sovereignty of our elections.”
Oh we are sure Putin is terrified of Biden!?
And the icing on the cake from the New York Times reporters, to ensure the dumbfounded reader is completely clear on what just happened (without any shadow of a doubt)…
The Russian tactics are strikingly similar to what American intelligence agencies say was Russia’s hacking of emails from Hillary Clinton’s campaign chairman and the Democratic National Committee during the 2016 presidential campaign. In that case, once they had the emails, the Russians used trolls to spread and spin the material, and built an echo chamber to widen its effect.
Repeat a lie often enough and it becomes true?
So, what are the Democrats preparing for? Another round of embarrassing leaked emails – Wikigate 2.0? And this story is designed to plant the seed that anyone who releases any of the “hacked” emails – which may or may not expose crimes by the Bidens (or Pelosis) is a Russian agent and must be shunned, censored, and generally disavowed by any and all Western media.
Or, you could choose to believe that the Russians – who allegedly were so dumb last time as to make it obvious it was them doing the hacking – have done it again… following the same pattern, and getting caught in their “meddling”? Oh wait, they have answer for that ‘conspiracy theory’ – that Russian hackers are “lazy”…
“The Burisma hack is a cookie-cutter G.R.U. campaign,” Mr. Falkowitz said.
“Russian hackers, as sophisticated as they are, also tend to be lazy. They use what works. And in this, they were successful.”
Which is odd. Given how terrified every establishment type was at the thought of Iranians hacking America’s most sensitive infrastructure in the last week, one might think that well-trained Russian hackers would be a little more adept. But then again, anyone who chooses to not believe the NYT story hook, line, and sinker – is clearly a puppet of Putin.
International Man: You have sounded the alarm on a coming financial crisis of historic proportions. How do Trump’s trade policies figure into your view that a crisis is coming?
David Stockman: Trump’s trade policies only create more risk and rot down below.
They’re just kicking the can down the road. With this latest move by the Fed, they have cut the interest rates three times and short-term rates are back at 1.55%. They’re pumping their balance sheet back up—it’s up $300 billion just since September.
The Fed has reverted to all of the things that have created the underlying rot—and that means when finally things break loose, it’s going to be far worse than it would have otherwise been.
Given that they’re kicking the can down the road, they’re building the pressure in the system to really explosive levels.
The trade chaos that Trump’s creating is probably the catalyst that will bring down the whole house of cards.
At end of the day, it’s about the Red Ponzi. The world economy would be not nearly as good as it looks had the Chinese not been borrowing like there’s no tomorrow and building regardless of whether its efficient or profitable.
This has kept the global economy inching forward on a totally artificial basis. You could track it; some people call it the “China credit impulse.” Every time they get into trouble, they turn on the printing press. That causes commodity prices to rise and industrial activity and trade to pick up. It shows up in the GDP numbers, and then everybody gets all excited.
The fear of recession that we had a while back has now abated. We’re back to another global reflation meme, but none of this is sustainable.
And yet that’s what has happened about three times since 2011. Each time, we have to remember the rulers in Beijing are digging themselves deeper into the hole. They’ve got an economy now that they claim is worth $13 trillion of GDP, but it’s got $40 trillion of debt on it. That’s just bank debt! I’m not even talking about the other forms of debt, such as trade debt, bond debt, so on and so forth.
It’s like nothing we’ve ever seen before. People should be fearful that this tower of debt is visibly wavering, as China is getting clobbered by Trump’s trade war.
Recently, exports to the United States were down 23% from the prior year.
Nothing like this has happened in a decade or longer. China’s investment in fixed assets, which has kept their whole economy going, is slowly grinding to a halt. The leaders there are desperately trying to keep the whole Ponzi going. That’s the heart of the risk.
Yet Trump is going right at it because of his primitive view that everybody else cheats and we have to teach China a lesson.
The trade problem in the world is real, but it’s a consequence of bad money, not a consequence of bad trade policies, stupid people doing bad negotiations, or stupid presidents who didn’t know what they were doing.
It was the dumb central bankers who didn’t know what they were doing and that basically created a global financial system that won’t correct these huge imbalances in capital and trade flows. It’s leading to a point of unsustainability and eventual crisis.
Whether President Trump knows it or not, in the guise of pursuit of MAGA [Make America Great Again], he is shaking the Red Ponzi to the core, and I think it’s very fragile.
The whole global economy is really dependent on China piling even more debt onto the $40 trillion pile they already have. Trump’s trade war is basically an economic cruise missile barrage aimed right at that gargantuan pile of unsupportable debt.
Therefore, I think there are very troubling times ahead.
International Man: What developments do you expect in 2020 that could lead to a crisis?
David Stockman: They’re all interrelated. How many times does the stock market rally because there was some type of TV headline about a trade deal? In fact, there is one every other day.
It’s going to become damn clear that there’s no fundamental trade deal, just an unstable truce. It’s going to become apparent that there is an ongoing deep, destructive war, not just on trade, but on technology, the whole military-political spectrum that has been unleashed and exacerbated by Trump’s trade policies.
It has very negative implications for the future—economically and otherwise.
The so-called “phase one” deal doesn’t amount to a hill of beans.
The $50 billion of farm exports, for example, is a complete pipe dream. But say China is going to buy $25 billion of our products by 2021. That’s where we started four years ago, and it’s way below the all-time peak of $28 billion back in 2013.
How’s that a deal?
All the other issues have been deferred.
China says they won’t manipulate their currency. But everybody in the world manipulates their fiat currency, and central banks are constantly doing that.
If this flimsy phase one deal actually gets signed, it’ll become evident to the market and the robo traders that this isn’t the end of a threat to future prosperity. It’s just a sign that this is going to be ongoing and will get bigger and more disruptive as time goes on.
They may get what they wish, which is a trade deal. That deal will only crystallize the fact that we’re in a world that’s coming apart at the seams, in terms of the global trading system and financial and capital flows.
International Man: What is your view on the future of the US dollar? Does that outlook change depending on the results of the 2020 election?
David Stockman: Trump is simply demanding that the Fed become more aggressive in the race to the bottom.
That’s dangerous, it’s destructive, it’s stupid.
Also, you’re competing with the likes of the ECB [European Central Bank], which now, has a new leader, Christine Lagarde, who is even crazier than was Draghi when it comes to money printing. And competing with Japan, which is basically drowning its economy with money printing.
The Bank of Japan’s balance sheet is 100% of GDP. It’s out of this world.
People don’t know, in historic times—and by that I mean anything before 1990—the balance sheets of central banks tended to be 2–4% of GDP. Now we’re in a totally different world.
If the US wants to compete with the BOJ [Bank of Japan] or the ECB or the people’s printing press of China, then go ahead, but you’ll never win. It’s a race to the bottom.
That is the real issue.
It’s not going to happen only to the US dollar; it’s what’s going to happen to the fiat currencies, generally. They’re all run by Keynesian central bankers. I think they’re all going to fall apart.
Fiat currencies are heading for a demise, because they’re based on principles and predicates that are, one, stupid, and, two, unsustainable over a long period of time.
Central banks are creatures of the state. They are agents, instruments of Leviathan.
Leviathan will fight—to the bitter end—any increase in gold’s role in the global economy or monetary system.
It will materialize only if there is a complete existential crisis and the whole central banking system breaks down and the world has to put itself back together.
Some people will recognize that one element of the reset and revamping needs to be the anchor that kept the monetary system stable for several centuries before 1971—which is gold.
That is a possibility, but how do you get from here to there?
The answer is a devastating crisis that is so powerful and destructive that the philosophy that drives everything today is completely discredited.
That’s pretty severe. It’s a valley of death that you don’t necessarily want to hazard, but it’s the only way to get from here to sound money, unfortunately.
International Man: The central banks of China, Russia, Turkey, and several European countries are buying massive amounts of gold. What do you think this means?
David Stockman: I think they’re hedging.
I think that intelligent people can see that this system of balance sheet expansion and interest rate repression—and $17 trillion in bonds trading with sub-zero yields a few months ago—isn’t sustainable.
Some central banks at least are trying to hedge their bets by reallocating their balance sheet to have a larger share of gold. As the crisis of what I call “Keynesian central banking” becomes more and more intensive and acute, more central banks will be buying gold.
Gold has a small trading value, or market cap, compared to something like a trillion dollars that turns over in the repo market every day. Or the five trillion dollars a day that turns over in the currency markets. Gold is a minor player, compared to that.
If central banks begin to really stock up on gold, what’s going to happen is people will try to front run them.
This is the whole secret of what’s been ongoing for the last 20 years in other markets. The reason bond yields have gone to rock bottom is the central banks have been buying the bonds. So, the smart traders are buying what the central banks are buying.
If the central banks are going to start buying gold, the same guys who have been buying the 10-year Treasuries or Bunds are going to start buying gold, and it’ll soar. The same way that bond prices have in last few years.
In other words, the world is awash with massive artificial liquidity created by the central banks. It’s in the hands of traders, who move in split-second intervals and attempt to leverage anything that looks like it’s going up. Especially if they can put it on leverage that costs nothing.
Maybe the next chapter is the whole system becomes unwound and the banks start buying more gold, and the front runners start buying more gold, and the price begins to multiply by breathtaking rates.
* * *
Unfortunately most people have no idea what really happens when a government goes out of control, let alone how to prepare… The coming economic and political crisis is going to be much worse, much longer, and very different than what we’ve seen in the past. That’s exactly why New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team just released an urgent new PDF report that explains what could come next and what you can do about it. Click here to download it now.
