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Just minutes after headlines hit last night that Deutsche Bank confirmed it had tax returns that had been subpoena’d by US lawmakers probing the finances of President Trump and his family, MSNBC’s Larry McDonald immediately tweeted:

“A source close to Deutsche Bank says Trump’s tax returns show he pays very little income tax and, more importantly, that his loans have Russian co-signers.

If true, that explains every kind word Trump has ever said about Russia and Putin.”

This ‘triggered’ everyone on the left as the MSNBC anchor appeared to have the ‘smoking gun’ that so many leftists had hoped for after Mueller’s total failure.

Additionally, on his Tuesday night show, O’Donnell told colleague Rachel Maddow that a “single source close to Deutsche Bank has told me that the Trump – Donald Trump’s loan documents there show that he has co-signers. That’s how he was able to obtain those loans. And that the co-signers are Russian oligarchs.”

O’Donnell then said, “That would explain, it seems to me, every kind word Donald Trump has ever said about Russia and Vladimir Putin, if true, and I stress the ‘if true’ part of this.”

Of course, McDonald offered no proof or sourcing other than anonymous, prompting President Trump’s personal attorney to threaten that legal proceedings could be pursued if there’s no retraction or apology for stating that “Russian oligarchs” co-signed loans to Trump.

“The Program and Tweet make the false and defamatory statements that ‘Russian oligarchs’ co-signed loans provided to Mr. Trump by Deutsche Bank, and described these ‘co-signers’ as ‘Russian billionaires close to Vladimir Putin.’”

In his letter (read in full here), Harder characterizes these allegations as extremely damaging to Trump, and warned others against republishing the allegedly false statement.

“The only borrowers under these loans are Trump entities, and Mr. Trump is the only guarantor,” continues the demand letter.

“Numerous documents for each of these loans are also recorded, publicly available and searchable online. Thus, actual malice can easily be proven based on your reckless disregard of the truth and unreasonable reliance on an alleged ‘source’ who you will not even identify in your story and likely is seeking to mislead you and the public for political reasons or other ulterior motives.”

And now, after his original tweet suggesting Russian co-signers had been retweeted and liked 10s of 1000s of times, McDonald has backed away dramatically from the story…

“Last night I made an error in judgment by reporting an item about the president’s finances that didn’t go through our rigorous verification and standards process,” O’Donnell tweeted.

“I shouldn’t have reported it and I was wrong to discuss it on the air. I will address the issue on my show tonight.”

Last night I made an error in judgment by reporting an item about the president’s finances that didn’t go through our rigorous verification and standards process. I shouldn’t have reported it and I was wrong to discuss it on the air. I will address the issue on my show tonight.

— Lawrence O’Donnell (@Lawrence) August 28, 2019

Social media is enjoying this…

Wait… did @Lawrence just say “our rigorous verification and standards processs” at @MSNBC @maddow @NBCNews @TheLastWord pic.twitter.com/JCIYR8AXPG

— Rosie memos (@almostjingo) August 28, 2019

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32bog6Y Tyler Durden

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

Every morning here in Puerto Rico, I wake up around 6am as the sun rises over the ocean in front of my house. And I pretty much head straight to the gym.

Once there, one of my favorite medieval torture devices is a fairly new exercise bike called a Peloton.

In case you haven’t used one before, a Peloton is like any other stationary exercise bike. You pedal a lot, and it sucks.

The key difference is that Peloton bikes are connected to the Internet, and the company live streams classes directly to the integrated monitor on your bike.

So instead of going to a spinning class, you can simulate being in a class and having someone yell at you from thousands of miles away.

You might be thinking– can’t you get the same experience on a regular stationary bike while watching some YouTube videos?

Why yes, that would pretty much be the same experience.

But Peloton prides itself on building wellness, connectedness, and happiness– all the ‘ness’s’ that Millennials love. So it’s pretty popular.

And following in the footsteps of WeWork, Peloton formally filed paperwork yesterday to go public on the NASDAQ under ticker symbol PTON.

The company anticipates a share price that will value the company at roughly $8 billion.

Yet according to its filing, the company lost $195 million in the fiscal year ending June 30, 2019. That’s four times worse than the company’s $48 million loss in Fiscal Year 2018.

It’s normal for early-stage businesses to lose money at first. Rome wasn’t built in a day. But usually management can provide guidance about the light at the end of the tunnel.

Not Peloton.

Just like WeWork, Peloton expects to continue losing money for the foreseeable future, and acknowledges that they may never achieve profitability.

Peloton also provides the most absurd statements as its company mission. Just like how WeWork aims to ‘elevate the world’s consciousness’, Peloton claims that it “sells happiness”.

It’s SEC filing also contains a bunch of fluffy graphics showing off their diversity, community, and interconnectedness.

Then they go on and on talking about how they’re a technology company because they live-stream cycling classes.

After that comes Peloton’s financial statements… their awful, gruesome financial statements… that show no path to profitability.

And then the fine print: it turns out that, just like WeWork, Peloton is selling a different class of shares that come with limited voting rights.

Specifically, the founders and key insiders will have TWENTY TIMES the voting power as new investors who will own shares post-IPO.

It’s worth mentioning that these same founders and key insiders have handsomely rewarded themselves at shareholder expense.

Despite quadrupling losses in Fiscal Year 2019, founder/CEO John Foley paid himself a whopping $21 million in total compensation. That’s more money than the CEOs of Ford, Home Depot, and Cisco (an ACTUAL tech company) to name a few.

Peloton’s President/COO received another $21 million. And the company CFO earned nearly $11 million.

So, Peloton, while pretending to be a technology company, lost $195 million last year, yet paid its top three executives more than $50 million (up from $17.9 million in Fiscal Year 2018).

Those same executives have no plan to turn a profit. Yet they expect to sell shares to investors at an $8 billion valuation… while simultaneously limiting those investors’ voting rights.

I know what you’re thinking: SIGN ME UP!!

Seriously, this absurdity has become almost formulaic now. We’ve seen it over and over again. So anyone out there who wants to become a billionaire, just follow these simple steps:

Step 1: Find a product that people love… then make a slightly better version of it, and price it WAY BELOW your cost so that you lose money on every unit sold.

Step 2: Create a ridiculous mission statement. It doesn’t matter what you’re selling– your real mission is things like consciousness, happiness, and community. And use the word ‘technology’ a lot. No matter what you’re producing, always pretend that you’re a tech company.

Step 3: Raise money from investors at an obscene valuation on the basis that you’re a visionary tech company. Don’t bother forecasting profits and creating conservative pro-forma statements, from which investors can derive a sensible valuation of your business. Instead, let the investors imagine how profitable your company can eventually become.

Step 4: At a minimum, double your losses every year. And, as you continue to burn through investor capital, raise even more money at progressively higher valuations.

Step 5: At the peak of the stock market bubble, take your company public at twice your last valuation.  Reward these gullible investors with limited voting rights, and consolidate your power over the company as you steer it towards greater and greater losses while showering yourself with gigantic compensation packages.

Congratulations. You’re now a billionaire.

In some respects I have to hand it to these Peloton guys.

They’re selling a product that (a) is prone to intense competition over very fickle and fad-oriented consumers; and (b) few people will buy in a recession.

They probably recognize that there are multiple recession threats looming (which could easily threaten the entire company). And they can see that the stock market is still at its peak.

So what better time to cash in on peak investor insanity than right now? Get in before the market declines, before the recession hits. Their timing couldn’t be better.

Yet amazingly enough, this is what passes as an actual investment these days.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2NBT5gU Tyler Durden

USTR confirmed that additional tariffs will be put on China next week… and The Dow roars 400 points off the lows as bond yields hit record lows…

 

Chinese stocks went nowhere overnight…

Source: Bloomberg

European stocks dipped and ripped as Italy headlines spurred risk-on after US opened…

Source: Bloomberg

Italian markets ripped higher (yields and spreads lower) as signs of political agreements emerged (ITA 10Y yields tumbled to a new record low below 1.00%)…

Source: Bloomberg

US equities opened weak, then exploded higher into the European close, after which they went sideways…

 

All thanks to another VIX monkeyhammering…

 

Big surge in cyclicals relative to growth today…

Source: Bloomberg

The momentum of small caps versus blue chips is at levels not seen since the financial crisis. The ratio between the Russell 2000 and the S&P 500 has fallen to the lowest since March 2009, with RTY declining almost twice as much as SPX this month.

Source: Bloomberg

Dow remains tightly rangebound between the 100- and 200-day moving averages…

 

Major short-squeeze today…

Source: Bloomberg

Bank stocks outperformed today, despite a flattening curve…

Source: Bloomberg

Notably, from the US open, it appeared pension rebalancing was impacting markets with stocks suddenly bid and bonds offered, but that stopped ahead of the EU close and bond yields and stock prices began to diverge…

Source: Bloomberg

Pension rebalancing and last-second buybacks ahead of blackouts likely prompted the decoupling of stocks from bond yields.

 

Treasury yields slipped lower once again today…

Source: Bloomberg

10Y (and 30Y) yields closed at record lows…

Source: Bloomberg

The yield curve remains inverted (2s10s steepened very modestly but below 0 as 3m10Y flattened to new cycle lows once again…

Source: Bloomberg

The dollar index rallied once again, perfectly erasing the plunge from Trump’s tariff tantrum last Friday…

Source: Bloomberg

Cable crashed early on as BoJo pushed to suspend parliament but rebounded as various officials jawboned the tensions down…

Source: Bloomberg

 

Cryptos were a bloodbath today…

Source: Bloomberg

Pushing all cryptos red for the month (litecoin down a stunning 33% in August)…

Source: Bloomberg

As Bitcoin blew back below $10,000…

Source: Bloomberg

 

Gold was flat today as silver and crude rallied (silver leads the week)…

Source: Bloomberg

 

WTI spiked above $56.50 in early trading but despite a huge crude draw, oil prices slipped back intraday…

 

Gold was slammed once again from significant resistance…

Quite a different picture for silver over the same period…

 

Silver’s recent surge has erased all gold’s relative outperformance for 2019…

Source: Bloomberg

Silver in Yuan hit a new 3 year high…

Source: Bloomberg

 

And finally, the 30-year Treasury bond is yielding less than what the S&P 500 pays in dividends (on a trailing 12-month basis), something we’ve only seen in about three months over the past four decades.

Source: Bloomberg

It appears that Bitcoin has decoupled from the safe-haven from policymaker pandemonium trade…

Source: Bloomberg

Despite stocks rebounding and being only 4% from record highs, traders are piling into bets that The Fed will cut rates to negative before this is over…

Source: Bloomberg

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/30IpvKf Tyler Durden

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

With only 15 years until social security runs out of money, the solution to this failure is being ignored. When the benefits do get cut, they will drop by 25% around 2034 when there are too many people using the government Ponzi scheme and not enough paying into it, or taxes will be increased.

While writing for Market Watch Brent Arends said this is “the wall” Americans should be concerned about. It’s another, much bigger wall than the one under debate at the Southern border. One that few people are talking about. According to the Federal Reserve’s data, at most one-quarter of people who are currently nearing retirement are going to be able to shrug off any cuts at all in Social Security. Actually, it’s probably considerably less than one quarter.  The rest are going to be in some real financial trouble. Most have no passive income and next to nothing in private retirement plans. Far too many have hung their future on a Ponzi scheme.

The Fed looked at the balance sheets of those currently in their 50s who are nearing retirement. For the middle 50% of income earners, Social Security accounts for somewhere between 47% and 64% of their total retirement wealth. For those in the bottom 25%, it’s nearly all of it. They hold, on average, just $28,000 in private retirement plans. Even the figures at the top are not nearly as good as one would think.The top 25% of earners might look all right, but they are “averaged” in the Fed data, so they include billionaires as well.

No one knows if the government will demand higher taxes (more income theft) so the workers can pay for the Ponzi scheme, or if massive cuts to the program will be made. Unfortunately, no one is talking about the one solution that won’t cost anyone anything they don’t want to pay.  A completely voluntary system not run on force and theft: privatizing social security.

Social Security now has a $32 trillion shortfall.  Imagine being taxed enough (stolen from) to cover that! Not many want a solution because a free market solution would actually solve the problem proving the government’s incompetence and push it further toward being obsolete.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ZnG7dY Tyler Durden

Emerging market investors appear to be the most sensitive canaries in the global investing coalmine as they abandon ‘high growth’ opportunities in favor of safe-havens, sending broad-based emerging market currencies to record lows…

JPMorgan’s Emerging Market FX index just hit a new record low…

Source: Bloomberg

The various “pesos” are leading the most recent collapse…

Source: Bloomberg

Today sees new record lows for the Colombian Peso…

Source: Bloomberg

And fears that Argentine net foreign currency reserves are in a more dire situation than many people assume from looking at the gross figure, sent the peso plummeting back towards record lows…

“We think that the gross FX reserve figure overstates the BCRA’s ability to prop up the peso,” economist Edward Glossop writes in a note.

Capital Economics estimates the BCRA’s net FX reserves have fallen from $30 billion in mid-April to just $19 billion now

Source: Bloomberg

Where investors have stayed local, they have dramatically shifted to investment grade EM debt and away from high yield EM debt:

Source: Bloomberg

“Credit quality will matter, and I strongly prefer investment grade over high yield in emerging-market debt,” said Sergey Dergachev, senior portfolio manager at Union Investment in Frankfurt, who favors Indonesia, India, Egypt and Croatia. “I definitely see more volatility to come.”

But it seems the flood of capital is flowing from EM FX into dollars and from there into US Treasuries, as the long-end of the curve hits new record low yields.

In developing nations, “the balance of risks are skewed to the downside in the near-term,” said Patrick Wacker, a fund manager for emerging-market fixed income at UOB Asset Management Ltd. in Singapore.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2L40rIx Tyler Durden

Authored by Mike Shedlock via MishTalk,

Democrat candidates are lining up with numerous radical schemes to take your money.

Cornucopia of Schemes to Take Your Money

The Democrats are competing with each other with ideas to take your money and waste it.

For example, Senator Ron Wyden proposes taxing your money before you even have it.

Rethinking Capital Gains

Please consider Democrats’ Emerging Tax Idea: Look Beyond Income, Target Wealth.

Biden Plan

Former Vice President Joe Biden, the candidate most prominently picking up where Mr. Obama left off, has proposed repealing stepped-up basis. Taxing unrealized gains at death could let Congress raise the capital gains rate to 50% before revenue from it would start to drop, according to the Tax Policy Center, because investors would no longer delay sales in hopes of a zero tax bill when they die.

And indeed, Mr. Biden has proposed doubling the income-tax rate to 40% on capital gains for taxpayers with incomes of $1 million or more.

But for Democrats, repealing stepped-up basis has drawbacks. Much of the money wouldn’t come in for years, until people died. The Treasury Department estimated a plan Mr. Obama put out in 2016 would generate $235 billion over a decade, less than 10% of what advisers to Sen. Warren’s campaign say her tax plan would raise.

That lag raises another risk. Wealthy taxpayers would have incentives to get Congress to reverse the tax before their heirs face it.

Wyden Plan

Instead of attacking favorable treatment of inherited assets, Mr. Wyden goes after the other main principle of capital-gains taxation—that gains must be realized before taxes are imposed.

The Oregon senator is designing a “mark-to-market” system. Annual increases in the value of people’s assets would be taxed as income, even if the assets aren’t sold. Someone who owned stock that was worth $400 million on Jan. 1 but $500 million on Dec. 31 would add $100 million to income on his or her tax return.

For the government, money would start flowing in immediately. The tax would hit every year, not just when an asset-holder died. Mr. Wyden would apply this regime to just the top 0.3% of taxpayers, said spokeswoman Ashley Schapitl.

There are serious challenges. Revenue could be volatile as markets rise and fall. Also, the IRS would determine asset increases annually, requiring baseline values and ways to measure change. That’s easy for stocks and bonds but far more complicated for private businesses or artwork.

The rules would have to address how to treat assets that lose instead of gain value in a year, and how taxpayers would raise cash to pay taxes on assets they didn’t sell. Under Mr. Castro’s proposal, losses could be used to offset other taxes or carried forward to future years.

Warren Plan

The most ambitious plan comes from Sen. Warren of Massachusetts, whose annual wealth tax would fund spending proposals such as universal child care and student-loan forgiveness.

The ultra-rich would pay whether they make money or not, whether they sell assets or not and whether their assets are growing or shrinking.

Ms. Warren, who draws cheers at campaign events when she mentions the tax, would impose a 2% tax each year on individuals’ assets above $50 million and a further 1% on assets above $1 billion. Fellow candidate Beto O’Rourke has also backed a wealth tax, and it is one of Vermont Sen. Bernie Sanders ’ options for financing Medicare-for-All.

Won’t Stop There

Expect more and more radical ideas to pay for nonsense like the “Green New Deal”, an idea that will cost an estimated $51 to $93 trillion.

Elizabeth Warren backs the Green New Deal so she is the most desperate to raise the most money the fastest.

They claim this a tax only on the wealthiest citizens. It won’t stop there. It never does.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/32dFd0C Tyler Durden

A strange series of blasts at Gaza police checkpoints that rocked Gaza City Tuesday evening has resulted in a rare admission by the Hamas-run Palestinian territory’s health ministry that a prior statement blaming Israel for the new attacks was inaccurate. It now says Islamic State cells active in the strip are responsible. 

On Wednesday morning Hamas declared a ‘state of emergency’ amid a crackdown on both Islamic State supporters and renegade Salafist organizations after at least three Gazan police officers were reported killed in twin suicide explosions on separate checkpoints after motorcycles detonated at the sites. A handful of others were wounded in the attacks from the rival Islamist outlawed group. 

Currently “mass arrests” are underway according to local reports, yet Hamas officials are calling for calm while describing the attacks as an isolated incident. 

An Interior Ministry spokesman described that, “Mobilization of all police and security forces has been declared to follow-up on security developments in the aftermath of the two explosions.”

This comes at a moment of continued heightened tensions between Hamas and Israel after last May hundreds of rockets were launched from Gaza into Israel, with corresponding IDF retaliatory strikes, and as deadly incidents involving Palestinian clashes with Israeli security forces along the border increased. 

Starting in 2018 the Islamic State’s so-called “Sinai branch” declared war on Hamas, describing the Palestinian militant organization as “apostates”.

And now with a state of emergency declared, we could be witnessing the start of a low-grade civil war in Gaza as Hamas roots out more rival extremist elements. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3269UEA Tyler Durden