Hours before he allegedly attacked shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, Patrick Crusius published a hate-filled diatribe in which he called Hispanics “invaders” and criticized the supposed takeover of the U.S. government by pro-immigrant corporations.
At least 20 people are dead in El Paso and more than two dozen others were wounded, according to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The alleged shooter, a 21-year old man, is in custody.
Law enforcement has not yet confirmed that the shooter wrote the manifesto, but NBC News (and others) report that multiple police sources indicated a connection between the document and the shooting.
In the four-page manifesto published on 8chan, the alleged shooter wrote that he was responding to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and called on others to similarly take up arms against “low-hanging fruit”—lightly guarded, soft targets. He lauded the lauded the man who killed 51 in a pair of Mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March—a shooting that was also accompanied by an anti-immigrant screed posted online.
The El Paso’s shooters alleged manifesto is racist, anti-corporate, anti-automation, and especially anti-immigrant, and it reflects a general hatred for many aspects of American society. Crusius hails from the Dallas area, according to police, but it seems likely that he targeted El Paso because the city has a large immigrant population.
The manifesto claims that he was acting in defense of his country, but gunning down innocent people as they peacefully shop is the act of a madman, full stop. That’s true whether the shooter wrote the manifesto or not.
President Donald Trump tweeted about the attack, and several 2020 Democratic candidates have renewed calls for gun control measures. It is unknown at this time whether the shooter’s weapons were purchased legally.
Texas is an open-carry state and Walmart allows customers to open-carry inside their stores in such states, as long as store staffers can verify proper documentation. At least one shopper told local media that he attempted to engage the shooter with his own firearm.
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Hours before he allegedly attacked shoppers at a Walmart in El Paso, Texas, Patrick Crusius published a hate-filled diatribe in which he called Hispanics “invaders” and criticized the supposed takeover of the U.S. government by pro-immigrant corporations.
At least 20 people are dead in El Paso and more than two dozen others were wounded, according to Texas Gov. Greg Abbott. The alleged shooter, a 21-year old man, is in custody.
Law enforcement has not yet confirmed that the shooter wrote the manifesto, but NBC News (and others) report that multiple police sources indicated a connection between the document and the shooting.
In the four-page manifesto published on 8chan, the alleged shooter wrote that he was responding to the “Hispanic invasion of Texas” and called on others to similarly take up arms against “low-hanging fruit”—lightly guarded, soft targets. He lauded the lauded the man who killed 51 in a pair of Mosque shootings in Christchurch, New Zealand, in March—a shooting that was also accompanied by an anti-immigrant screed posted online.
The El Paso’s shooters alleged manifesto is racist, anti-corporate, anti-automation, and especially anti-immigrant, and it reflects a general hatred for many aspects of American society. Crusius hails from the Dallas area, according to police, but it seems likely that he targeted El Paso because the city has a large immigrant population.
The manifesto claims that he was acting in defense of his country, but gunning down innocent people as they peacefully shop is the act of a madman, full stop. That’s true whether the shooter wrote the manifesto or not.
President Donald Trump tweeted about the attack, and several 2020 Democratic candidates have renewed calls for gun control measures. It is unknown at this time whether the shooter’s weapons were purchased legally.
Texas is an open-carry state and Walmart allows customers to open-carry inside their stores in such states, as long as store staffers can verify proper documentation. At least one shopper told local media that he attempted to engage the shooter with his own firearm.
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Harvard has formed an advisory board to begin moving forward with their plan to spray particles into the stratosphere to test the geoengineering method of dimming the sun…
No, we are not a satire site. We are not a conspiracy theory site. The information you are about to read is factually accurate and 100% real despite the ostensible ‘skeptics’ who claim otherwise. The controversial subject of geoengineering or weather modification – which was popularized, and oversimplified with the term “chemtrails” – is once again stepping from the shadows and into the light of public scrutiny. And it may soon be a reality as Harvard scientists plan first ever experiment to spray particles in the sky to dim the sun.
What was once a conspiracy theory is now the subject of congressional debate, peer-reviewed studies, and now a Harvard experiment. Harvard scientists will attempt to replicate the climate-cooling effect of volcanic eruptions with a world-first solar geoengineering experiment. The university announced this month that it has created an external advisory panel to examine the potential ethical, environmental and geopolitical impacts of this geoengineering project, which has been developed by the university’s researchers.
According to Nature Magazine, Louise Bedsworth, executive director of the California Strategic Growth Council, a state agency that promotes sustainability and economic prosperity, will lead the Harvard advisory panel, the university said on 29 July. The other seven members include Earth-science researchers and specialists in environmental and climate law and policy.
What was once a conspiracy theory will soon be a reality—any day now.
Known as the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx), the experiment will spray calcium carbonate particles high above the earth to mimic the effects of volcanic ash blocking out the sun to produce a cooling effect.
The experiment was announced in Nature magazine last year, who was one of few outlets to look into this unprecedented step toward geoengineering the planet.
If all goes as planned, the Harvard team will be the first in the world to move solar geoengineering out of the lab and into the stratosphere, with a project called the Stratospheric Controlled Perturbation Experiment (SCoPEx). The first phase — a US$3-million test involving two flights of a steerable balloon 20 kilometres above the southwest United States — could launch as early as the first half of 2019. Once in place, the experiment would release small plumes of calcium carbonate, each of around 100 grams, roughly equivalent to the amount found in an average bottle of off-the-shelf antacid. The balloon would then turn around to observe how the particles disperse.
Naturally, the experiment is concerning to many people, including environmental groups, who, according to Nature, say such efforts are a dangerous distraction from addressing the only permanent solution to climate change: reducing greenhouse-gas emissions.
The idea of injecting particles into the atmosphere to cool the earth also seems outright futile considering what scientists are trying to mimic—volcanic eruptions. If we look at the second largest eruption of the 20th century, Mount Pinatubo, which erupted in the Philippines in 1991, it injected 20 million tons of sulfur dioxide aerosols into the stratosphere. Scientists from the USGS estimated that this 20 million tons only lowered the temperature of the planet by about 1°F (0.5°C) and this only lasted a year because the particles eventually fell to back to Earth.
The Harvard team, led by scientists Frank Keutsch and David Keith, has been working on the SCoPEx project for several years but they haven’t always been in total agreement. In fact, as Nature reported, Keutsch—who is not a climate scientist—previously thought the idea to be “totally insane.” But he’s since changed his mind. As Nature reports:
When he saw Keith talk about the SCoPEx idea at a conference after starting at Harvard in 2015, he says his initial reaction was that the idea was “totally insane”. Then he decided it was time to engage. “I asked myself, an atmospheric chemist, what can I do?” He joined forces with Keith and Anderson, and has since taken the lead on the experimental work.
Adding to the questionable nature of this experiment is the fact that it is largely funded by none other than Microsoft co-founder, Bill Gates. Gates is no stranger to funding controversial experiments as he’s publicly funded many of them including one that would implant devices into babies to automatically give them vaccines.
While the Harvard team’s experiment may sound like something out of a dystopian science fiction movie, the reality is that it has long been on the table of governments and think tanks from around the world. In fact, just last November, a study published in Environmental Research Letters, talked about doing the exact same thing—geoengineering and planes spraying particulates into the atmosphere to curb global warming.
What’s more, that study echoed the sentiments of then-CIA director John Brennan when he addressed the Council on Foreign Relations in 2016, detailing a similar process of spraying chemical particulates in the atmosphere to cool the planet.
At the meeting, Brennan addressed instability and transnational threats to global security at a meeting with the Council on Foreign Relations. During his long-winded talk of threats to US interests and how the largely CIA-created ISIL threat is impacting the world, Brennan brought up the topic of geoengineering.
Another example is the array of technologies—often referred to collectively as geoengineering—that potentially could help reverse the warming effects of global climate change. One that has gained my personal attention is stratospheric aerosol injection, or SAI, a method of seeding the stratosphere with particles that can help reflect the sun’s heat, in much the same way that volcanic eruptions do.
Brennan went on to echo the calls from some scientists who have called for aerial spraying.
An SAI program could limit global temperature increases, reducing some risks associated with higher temperatures and providing the world economy additional time to transition from fossil fuels. The process is also relatively inexpensive—the National Research Council estimates that a fully deployed SAI program would cost about $10 billion yearly.
Again, this is not some conspiracy theory. Watch him say all of this in the video below starting at the 12:05 marker.
The extent to which Brennan talked about stratospheric aerosol injection shows that he and the CIA have likely been considering this for some time.
Although we are hearing more and more talk about geoengineering, it has been around for a very long time and not just in the realm of conspiracy theories. In fact, scientists have already suggested that it could be going on right now, unintentionally.
Researchers with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) are suggesting contrails from airplanes may be inadvertently geoengineering the skies.
Chuck Long is a researcher with the Cooperative Institute for Research in Environmental Sciences (CIRES) at the NOAA Earth System Research Laboratory at the University of Colorado in Boulder. At the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting in 2015, Long and his team released their paper, “Evidence of Clear-Sky Daylight Whitening: Are we already conducting geoengineering?” The analysis found that vapor from airplanes may be altering the climate through accidental geoengineering.
To be clear, no one here is claiming to be an expert on climate change or the effects of geoengineering. But one thing is clear and it’s the fact that there is still much to be debated and learned before humans deliberately begin altering Earth’s climate. Aside from doing nothing to curb carbon emissions, if we are so quick to jump on this method, it could set off a chain reaction that could prove to be catastrophic.
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Several weeks ago, we documented how murders in Mexico jumped in 1H19 to the highest on record, despite President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador’s initiative to reduce crime in the cartel-ravaged country. From January to June, there were 14,603 murders, versus the 13,985 homicides recorded in 1H18. At the current rate, Mexico is expected to register the most killings ever, surpassing the 29,111 record set last year.
In this report, we dive deeper into the cartel-led murder crisis that has notably expanded across the club scene in Mexico City.
Bloomberg notes that drug gangs in Mexico City have become more powerful than ever. They’re providing clubs and bars across popular parts of the city with an abundance of designer drugs, cocaine, and marijuana, fueling violent crime that has led to a tidal wave of murders.
Mexico City has always been known as an area that no American tourist should visit, considering murders and gang shootouts are extremely common in ritzy tourist areas.
The violence across the city has become so dangerous that the US State Department has placed a travel advisory for the city. The advisory warns: “violent crime, such as homicide, kidnapping, carjacking, and robbery, is widespread.”
Since President Lopez Obrador, a nationalist that leans to the left, took office in December, the murder crisis has become the number one spoken subject at gyms, cafes, bars, and offices in Mexico City.
Despite the president running on promises to reduce crime and make the economy more robust, murders have jumped 15%, and the city’s economy is faltering under the leadership of Mayor Claudia Sheinbaum, a political ally to the president.
Gunfights this summer have pumped bullets into wealthy neighborhoods. There was an uproar earlier this year when two men from middle-class families were kidnapped and murdered, and this forced Sheinbaum to call up the National Guard to hunt for narcos.
Large amounts of uncertainty surrounding the city’s murder crisis have left investors with a sour taste as the country as a whole is headed for an economic recession.
“Our clients are far more concerned,” said Gonzalo Nadal, who runs Mexico City-based risk consultancy ON Partners, whose clients include the American Chamber of Commerce of Mexico. “Some have expressed serious uncertainty” about whether to expand in the capital.
Sheinbaum said violent crimes had been grossly underreported by the previous administration who modified crime data. She published new statistics for last year that showed homicides were higher than previously thought before she took power.
Critics blame Sheinbaum and the president for the increased homicides. In the last six months, Mexico City has seen 898 murders, a figure that continues to rise.
The National Citizens’ Observatory, a group focused on security policy, said Mexico City has to reform and modernize their police departments, hire better-trained detectives that can use technology to make crime-fighting more effective, but the budget cuts instated by the president have made their jobs harder.
Last week the president said in an interview that his new initiatives to combat crime are addressing the causes of the murder crisis and National Guard is providing extra personnel to win the fight against cartels. “I don’t delegate this matter to anyone. I’m dealing with it directly,” he said.
Cartels over the last several years have formed a new dominance in the city is most evident in nightclubs and bars. Club owners have been forced to hire security and waitstaff chosen by the narcos themselves. Other owners are powerless against the narcos and allow their security guards to oversea narcotics transactions to keep the peace. However, there are times when all hell breaks out, and gang violence erupts in these establishments, and people are left dead.
“Organized crime groups force bars to sell or permit the sale of drugs,” Ernestina Godoy, the city’s chief prosecutor, said in an interview.
Last week, gunfire erupted at a luxury Mexico City shopping mall, called Plaza Artz mall, where a female assassin killed two Israeli men in an apparent cartel hit. Video footage shows the chaos inside a restaurant in the mall.
Alon Azulay/Benjamin Sutchi, Israelis, were assassinated July 24 at a restaurant inside the trendy Plaza Artz mall in Mexico City, may have been targeted because they attempted to defraud the Tláhuac Cartel
Emerging Markets Political Risk Analysis says the mall shooting could have been a turf war between two gangs, Union Tepito and Anti-Union Force. Both gangs are operating with help from cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation.
Prisoners, who are released from jail, often serve as narcos for cartels, Mexico City authorities said. More and more prisoners have been released since 2008 thanks to an overhaul in the criminal justice system. The city’s prison population has plummeted to 25,000 this year from more than 41,000 in 2012.
New federal data has shown homicides in the city have risen so quickly that killings per 100,000 people are only 23% below the national average. They were 33% below last year and 41% less in 2017.
Rafael Guarneros, who sits on a neighborhood crime-stopping taskforce in wealthy Condesa, an area in the Cuauhtémoc Borough of Mexico City, said that the president and mayor’s crime-fighting strategies are failing. A member of Guarneros’ task force, Cristina Vazquez, was killed by cartels in June after she reported a crime on her block to authorities. Hours after the murder, a man attempted to break into her apartment and was arrested. Local media reports indicate he’d been in and out of jail four times.
“Prosecutors don’t know how to send a criminal to prison and keep them there, or they just don’t want to,” Guarneros said. “This is Mexico City’s biggest failure.”
Mexico City is diving deeper into a murder crisis; cartels and narcos are overrunning the country as the nationwide murder rate hits a new record high, with at least 90 people murdered per day (doesn’t include drive-by shootings, kidnappings, extortion, and other serious crimes). The whole nationalist plan by the president to reduce crime and revive the economy is expected to end in disappointment as a recession is imminent.
With an economy headed south, the murder crisis is expected to deepen through 2H19.
Watch more in the documentary below:
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KehYNG Tyler Durden
The California Department of Corrections and Rehabilitation has scrubbed arrest records from Sen. Kamala Harris’s controversial tenure as the state’s top law enforcement official, according to the Washington Free Beacon.
The purge was conducted during a ‘routine website redesign,’ removing public access to several key incarceration reports.
Twice a year, the CDCR releases information about the number of new individuals incarcerated in the California prison system as part of its “Offender Data Points” series. These reports provide important information on demographics, sentence length, offense type, and other figures relevant to criminal justice and incarceration.
Until recently, these reports were publicly available at the CDCR’s website. A search using archive.org’s Wayback Machine reveals that as of April 25, 2019—the most recent indexed date—ODP reports were available dating back to the spring of 2009. As of August 2019, the same web page now serves only a single ODP report, the one for Spring 2019. The pre-2019 reports have been removed. –Washington Free Beacon
During the Democratic debates on Wednesday night, Rep. Tulsi Gabbard (D-HI) excoriated Harris’s record as California Attorney General, rattling off a laundry list of ‘inconvenient’ facts – such as the 1,500-plus Californians Harris sent to prison for marijuana-related offenses, blocking evidence that would have freed an innocent man from death row until forced to do so by the courts, and using prison inmates as cheap labor.
Harris did not refute any of Gabbard’s statements.
The now-scrubbed records were used by the Free Beacon in prior reporting – “specifically the finding thatmore than 120,000 black and Latino Californians were sent to prison while she was in the State A.G.’s office.”
A CDCR employee claims that the changes have nothing to do with Harris’s campaign, and were instead prompted by California law AB 434 which ‘sets standards for web accessibility.’
“Making our website fully compliant was a significant and ongoing undertaking. It required a redesign of the look and feel of the website, and a need to evaluate all of the thousands of documents and other files that were linked to our website,” said CDCR assistant secretary for communications, Jeffrey Callison, who added “While many documents that are not accessible can be remediated, it is a significant use of resources to do it across the board. Some older documents have been removed from our website but are still available upon request; others are temporarily removed while they are being remediated; and many others have already been remediated and are on our website.”
How incredibly convenient for Harris.
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A hugely significant revelation via The New Yorkerat the end of a week wherein the US took the dramatic step of sanctioning Iran’s top diplomat FM Javad Zarif:
Last month, amid a rapid-fire escalation in tensions between Washington and Tehran, the Iranian Foreign Minister, Mohammad Javad Zarif, received an unexpected invitation—to meet President Donald Trump in the Oval Office. The diplomatic overture was made by Senator Rand Paul, the Kentucky Republican, during a meeting with Zarif in New York on July 15th, according to American and Iranian sources and a well-informed diplomat.
Paul, it must be remembered, was handpicked by President Trump as his emissary to mediate with Iran after the Kentucky senator reportedly proposed the idea during a round of golf last month.
Image source: The Washington Post
The report describes that an intermediary initially extended an invitation to meet with Sen. Paul in New York as Zarif traveled to the US for scheduled UN meetings. Zarif is reported to have rejected the meeting after expressing concerns that it would be little more than a photo opportunity. Zarif had further expressed that he could not meet with Trump without approval from Tehran.
Though a surprising US overture, given the timing in terms of a “hot” and intensifying summer of drone shoot downs and “tanker wars” in the Persian gulf, the Iranians do doubt felt the meeting would be used by Washington to claim its “maximum pressure” campaign has brought Tehran to its knees.
On July 15th, Paul and his senior adviser, Doug Stafford, met Zarif at the elegant residence of Iran’s U.N. ambassador, on Fifth Avenue, a block from the Metropolitan Museum. In his decades as a diplomat, Zarif, who studied under Condoleezza Rice’s Ph.D. adviser, at the University of Denver, has built a modest rolodex with the private numbers of members of the House and Senate. “I always see people from Congress,” Zarif told me and a small group of journalists later that week, without naming names. But this was his first meeting with Paul, who is on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.
They spoke for an hour, exploring “alternative” means toward convincing the White House that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons, and ways to restart negotiations on equal footing.
Iranian Foreign Minister Javaz Zarif, now under US Treasury sanctions.
The report mentioned one of these ideas as follows:
During an hour-long conversation, Zarif offered Paul ideas about how to end the nuclear impasse and address Trump’s concerns. He later outlined some of them to our group of journalists and subsequently in more detail to me. “As a diplomat, I have to always think about alternatives,” he told us. Among them was the idea that the Iranian Parliament could codify, in law, a fatwa issued by Iran’s Supreme Leader, originally in 2003 and again in 2010, that forbids the production or use of nuclear weapons. “We consider the use of such weapons as haraam [forbidden] and believe that it is everyone’s duty to make efforts to secure humanity against this great disaster,” Ayatollah Ali Khamenei said, in 2010.
However, Zarif is also reported to have asserted, “But, if Trump wanted more, he would also have to offer more.”
Zarif suggested this could take the following form:
Zarif said that Iran could bring forward ratification of the so-called Additional Protocol, which is currently due to be implemented by 2023—potentially this year. The protocol, which has already been signed and ratified by a hundred and forty-six nations, allows more intrusive international inspections—on both declared and undeclared nuclear sites in member states—in perpetuity. “The Additional Protocol is a crucial means by which the world verifies that Iran is not pursuing nuclear weapons,” Daryl Kimball, the executive director of the Arms Control Association, told me on Friday. “If you don’t trust the Iranians, you want inspections in perpetuity.” By ratifying the protocol, Iran would forfeit one of the so-called sunset clauses in the 2015 deal, which had triggered deep skepticism among Republicans, some Democrats, Israel, and Saudi Arabia. In exchange, Zarif suggested, Trump could go to Congress to lift sanctions on Iran, as originally provided under the 2015 nuclear deal but not ratified in legislation. Both sides would then feel more secure in the commitments sought in the original deal.
At that point, The New Yorkerrelates, Sen. Paul floated the invitation directly, saying the Iranian FM should lay out these proposals before Trump in an Oval Office visit.
Paul told him the president authorized him to extend the invitation to the White House, which if accepted might have happened as early as this week, according to the New Yorker’s diplomatic source privy to the secretive discussions.
Crucially, it appears the unprecedented US Treasury actions against FM Zarif, announced Wednesday, were the result of the White House’s last ditch efforts at bringing Iran back to the table to “negotiate a better deal” – as Trump has wanted since pulling out of the 2015 JCPOA. Now, in dramatic fashion, this door appears permanently shut.
Image source: The New York Times
“Javad Zarif implements the reckless agenda of Iran’s Supreme Leader, and is the regime’s primary spokesperson around the world. The United States is sending a clear message to the Iranian regime that its recent behavior is completely unacceptable,” said Treasury Secretary Steven T. Mnuchin in making the designation announcement.
Meanwhile, Zarif on Saturday announced that the Islamic Republic will take further steps to reduce its commitments to the nuclear deal, according to Reuters.
“The third step in reducing commitments to [the nuclear deal] will be implemented in the current situation,” Zarif said. “We have said that if [the deal] is not completely implemented by others then we will also implement it in the same incomplete manner. And, of course, all of our actions have been within the framework of [the deal],” he added.
No doubt, the US-Iran crisis will only spiral downward from here, despite what appears dovish Senator Rand Paul’s best efforts to cool the soaring tensions.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KnDDSn Tyler Durden
For some time, I’ve been saying that the economy is in the “eye of the storm” and that when it emerged, the weather would be far rougher than in 2008. The trillions of currency units created since 2007, combined with artificially suppressed interest rates, have papered over the situation. But only temporarily. When the economy goes into the trailing edge of the hurricane, the storm will be much different, much worse, and much longer lasting than what we experienced in 2008 and 2009.
In some ways, the immediate and direct effects of this money creation appear beneficial. For instance, by not only averting a sharp complete collapse of financial markets and the banking system, but by taking the stock market to unprecedented highs. It’s allowed individuals and governments to borrow more, and live even further above their means. It may even create what’s known as a “crack-up boom”.
However, a competent economist (as distinguished from a political apologist, many of whom masquerade as economists) will correctly assess the current prosperity as an illusion. They’ll recognize it as, at best, a natural cyclical upturn – a “dead cat bounce.”
What we’re really interested in, however, are not the immediate and direct effects of QE – “Quantitative Easing”, and ZIRP – Zero Interest Rate Policy. As much as I love the way they fabricate these acronyms and euphemisms, what we’re really interested in is their indirect and delayed effects. In particular, how do we profit from them? What is likely to happen next in the economy? Which markets are likely to go up, and which are likely to go down?
What Now?
I’ve been looking for bargains, all over the world and in every type of market. And, yes, you can definitely find a stock here or a piece of real estate there that qualifies. But when it comes to any particular asset class, absolutely nothing – with the sole exception of commodities – is cheap at the moment.
You may ask, how that can possibly be? It’s almost metaphysically impossible for “everything” to be expensive, if for no other reason than that it raises the question: “Relative to what?” Nonetheless, we’re in a genuine economic and financial twilight zone, where nothing is cheap and everything is high risk. This is most unusual because there’s usually something on the other end of the seesaw.
The reason for this anomaly is worldwide “QE” on a completely unprecedented scale, by practically every government. So much money has been created in the recent years that it’s flowed into almost every sector of every market – stocks, bonds, and property. Even money itself is actually overpriced – the conundrum is that it’s maintaining as much value as it is, despite many trillions having been recently created around the world and much more to come.
Many people, and most corporations, are staying in cash simply because it allows you to move quickly (which is important when you’re sitting on a financial volcano), and it seems better to suffer a sure loss of perhaps 5% per year than an unexpected loss of 50% in some volatile market. Neither is a good alternative, of course. But I’ve thought about it and feel I can offer some guidance.
Again, an economist tries to see the indirect and delayed effects of actions. But this isn’t an academic exercise. So although we want to think like economists, we want to act like speculators.
A speculator sometimes profits from the immediate and direct effects of actions, but that’s not his real forte; almost everyone can predict those, so it tends to be a crowded playing field. Running with the crowd limits your profit potential – the whole crowd is unlikely to get rich. And it’s dangerous, because crowds can change direction quickly and trample the less fleet of foot.
Rather, the thoughtful speculator prefers to look for the indirect and delayed effects of politically caused distortions in the markets. Because the effects are delayed, we have more time to get positioned. And because far fewer people pay attention to what’s likely to occur over the horizon, versus what’s tucked up under their noses, the potential tends to be much bigger.
The speculator is a natural contrarian because few tend to share his viewpoint, and he rarely runs with the crowd. He’s always looking for something similar to silver in 1965, when the U.S. was controlling it at $1.29, or gold in 1971, when it was controlled at $35. Although politically guaranteed distortions are best, any kind will do – especially those caused by manias, when things rise way too high, or panics, when things fall way too low.
Rothschild’s famous dictum “Buy when blood is running in the streets” is the speculator’s motto.
This concept is especially critical at the moment. You have to decide – basically right now – how you’re going to play your cards over the next few years. If you don’t, you’re going to find yourself acting in an ad hoc way in what will likely be a chaotic situation. If that’s the case, you’re likely to wind up as financial road kill.
There are basically three realistic actions available to you: saving, investing, and speculating. I urge you to burn the distinctions into your consciousness. When people don’t fully understand the words they use, they can’t understand the concepts they convey; the result is confusion.
Saving
Saving means taking the excess of what you produce over what you consume and setting it aside. It’s basic and essential, because it creates capital. It is capital, in turn, that allows you to advance to the next level. An individual or a society that doesn’t save will soon find itself in trouble.
A major problem is looming, however, that transcends the fact that many, or even most, people don’t save. It’s that those who do almost always save in the form of some currency – dollars, euros, yen, etc. If those currencies disappear, so do the savings, devastating exactly the most productive and prudent people. That is exactly what I believe is going to happen all over the world in the years to come. With predictably catastrophic consequences.
Investing
Investing is the process of allocating capital to a productive business, in the anticipation of creating more wealth. You can’t invest, however, unless you have capital, which usually only comes from saving.
Investing necessarily becomes harder, more unpredictable, and less likely to succeed as government interventions – in the forms of currency inflation, taxation, and regulation – increase. And all three are going to increase vastly in the years to come.
In addition, as society reorders itself to different and lower patterns of consumption, most businesses will suffer serious declines in earnings, and many will go bust. Investing, which thrives in a stable, business-friendly atmosphere, is going to be a tough row to hoe.
Speculating
This is the process of capitalizing on government-caused distortions in the markets. In a free-market society, speculators would have few opportunities. But that’s not the kind of world we live in, so speculators will have many opportunities to choose from.
Sadly, speculators have an unsavory reputation among the unwashed. That’s true for several reasons. Their returns are often outsized, inciting envy. Their returns are often realized in times of crisis, which prompts the thoughtless to presume they caused the crisis. And since speculators usually act counter to the wishes of governments and counter to their propaganda, they’re made to appear anti-social.
In point of fact, I wish we lived in a world where speculation was redundant and unnecessary – but that would be a world where the state had no involvement in the economy.
As it now stands, however, the speculator is actually a hero, and something of an unloved good Samaritan. When everyone wants to buy, he stands ready to provide what others want. And when everyone wants to sell, he stands ready with cash in their hour of need. He’s a bit like a fire fighter – his services aren’t usually needed, but when they are, it’s typically a time of danger.
One mistake that novices make is to confuse a speculator with a trader, or worse, with a gambler. Again, let’s define our terms.
A trader is generally one who’s in the market for a living, a short-term player who tries to buy low and sell high, often scalping for fractions, typically relying on technical analysis or a read of the market’s mood at the moment. There are some extremely successful traders, but it’s a real specialty.
I’m disinclined to trade for two reasons. First, it’s necessarily very time and attention intensive, and therefore psychologically draining. Second, you’re always swimming upstream against lots of commissions and bid/ask spreads. A trader and a speculator are two very different things.
A gambler relies on the odds, or sometimes just luck, in an attempt to turn a buck. While luck and statistical probabilities are elements in most parts of life, they shouldn’t play a big part in your financial activities. People who think so are either ignorant or losers who want to attribute their lack of success to the will of the gods.
The years to come are going to be tough on everybody, but the speculator has by far the best chance of coming out ahead.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/3391Wft Tyler Durden
Bill Maher thinks that 2020 Democratic candidates are ‘blowing it’ – and he’d begrudgingly accept Joe Biden as his next president.
“All the Democrats have to do to win is to come off less crazy than Trump, and, of course, they’re blowing it. Coming across as unserious people who are going to take away all your money so migrants from Honduras can go to college for free and get a major in America sucks,” Maher said On Friday’s broadcast of HBO’s “Real Time.”
“Now, do I want Biden to be president? Not really. But Biden’s the only Democrat who beats Trump in Ohio. He’s like non-dairy creamer. Nobody loves it, but in a jam, it gets the job done,” Maher added.
Maher also slammed 2020 Democrats for heaping criticism on former President Obama – mocking the candidates for saying the ex-president who remains highly popular with Democrats “is not woke enough.”
“The Democratic candidates went after the president hard. Unfortunately, the president was Obama. … The guy with the 97% approval rating among the Democrats, his shit is not woke enough now. Trump saw that, he called Putin. He said, I got this one,” joked Maher.
Maher wishes for recession
During the guest segment of the show, Maher – who makes $6 million per year and has an estimated net worth of $100 million, revived his 2018 wish for an economic collapse in order to unseat President Trump.
“I’ve been hoping for a recession – people hate me for it – but it would get rid of Trump,” said Maher – to which New York Magazine business columnist Josh Barro replied: “Recessions are really bad. People lose their jobs and homes and we shouldn’t wish for it.”
“I know. It’s worth it,” said Maher.
Bill Maher: “I’ve been hoping for a recession – people hate me for it – but it would get rid of Trump.”
Josh Barro: “Recessions are really bad. People lose their jobs and homes and we shouldn’t wish for it.”
Maher, of course, would hardly be affected if the economy crashed – unlike tens of millions of low and medium income Americans whose lives would be immeasurably worse his dreams come true.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Zwz1j9 Tyler Durden
Ask an ornithologist why birds fly south in the winter. If the answer is “instinct”, then you actually received no answer at all. Saying birds fly south because it is “instinctive” provides zero insight into the governing mechanism or complexities of the behavior. Labeling an action is not the same as understanding the action.
Latter day central bankers – essentially politicians with PhDs – have furthered a mythology that by dialing one single policy rate higher or lower, that a trifecta of goals can be accomplished: steady growth, modest inflation, and “balanced” financial markets. Really, all that? But I guess if you are the institution that wields the interest rate hammer, every economic problem looks like a nail. But calling a policy “stimulative” does not necessarily make it so, nor is it even exactly clear what is being stimulated. The economy in aggregate is not a machine and the humans that are the soul of the system will not respond on cue just because the macro plan says that they should.
In my first year out of the cloistered halls of my alma mater, I got a schooling in the governing force of real-world incentives by the engineer across the hall. While he had less formal education than I (no four year degree), he grew up on a farm near Guyman, Oklahoma which, at least in his case, accorded him an honorary PhD in logic and commonsense.
The topic du jour (this was 1981) was that of the then recently repealed price controls on interstate shipments of natural gas. He explained that the income from his family’s farm derived mostly from extracting the gas that was below the ground rather than from harvesting the wheat which grew on top of it. During the time referenced, the catch was that any gas extracted could only be sold at the artificially low, Federally controlled price, a value well below that of the “true” North American price for gas. And, while gas extraction was still profitable, the farm managers evidently didn’t feel like they should be coerced into delivering their gas below the true market price. The result? The production valves were turned to the “off” position as the farm managers elected to wait out that period of “fiat” pricing of natural gas.
So, price controls turn out to be bad policy. Who knew? Still, an academic might throw his hands up and rail at the confounded irrationality of the farm managers. Didn’t they get it? Marginal revenue from selling the gas exceeded the marginal cost of production, so no one was “supposed” to shut the wells down. And, yet, production was shuttered. In the end, it was not the economist’s “logic” but rather the unobservable judgment call by the farm managers that called the tune. The real, live, breathing humans exercised their subjective judgment that production should halt even as a methodology based on objective factors said otherwise. And this illustrates the point: just because the economist believes he can model it, describe it, categorize it, does not mean that he can understand it or predict it. Tweak some dial, and you might get a certain set of first order responses. These responses will spawn a round of second order responses, and so on. The results will depend on a myriad of judgment calls which might—or might not—aggregate to some facsimile of what the central banker’s model says ought to happen. And, did anyone happen to say anything about costs? Economics is predicated on the idea that resources are always limited and to believe in a policy that brings benefits without associated costs is to see the world as populated by rainbows and unicorns.
What’s obvious on the farm is frustratingly murky to the Fed and its overseas kin. Central banking insists that interest rates are mere tools to be employed in the service of optimizing macroeconomic outcomes. But interest rates are prices. When the Fed places its thumbs on the price of credit, the natural balance between the needs of the borrower and the wants of the lender are disturbed. Perhaps this is why the central banker’s favorite descriptor for rate policy is to label it “stimulative.” No one could be against that! But is it fair to say that everyone’s outcome is being proportionately “stimulated?” Are there no costs associated with “stimulus?” And, what exactly do we mean when we say the economy is being “stimulated?” What activities are being facilitated that wouldn’t have happened otherwise?
Thought experiment: suppose by “stimulative” we mean that a thousand wells get drilled that wouldn’t have otherwise. The drilling of these holes was presumptively enabled by the artificially cheap credit that was used to finance the labor and buy the drilling equipment. Mainstream economic logic says this is all good: more wells drilled means more employment so more spending, and as everyone’s spending is someone else’s income, stimulus is the gift that keeps on giving. Ah, stimulus!
Now consider: if those wells strike it rich, new economic production is unleashed and a virtuous cycle has actually commenced. The result would be more GDP now and more GDP later. But, what if those artificially induced wells turn out to be all dry? No harm, no foul? Obviously, not. Those that provided the credit to drill the wells find their notes or loans to be worthless. In that event the bill for the supposedly “free lunch” of cheap credit at last arrives on the balance sheet of those who lent the funds. Instead of a miraculous growth tonic, “stimulus”, in this event, turns out to be little more than an intertemporal transfer of wealth away from the lender. The GDP that was initially created is now canceled out. Oh well, easy come, easy go.
Evidently, “stimulus” can mean very different things and can bring very differing results. How can the economist properly calibrate his “stimulus” model without the foreknowledge as to how many of these artificially induced wells will come up gushers and how many dry? Wait! You mean you can’t actually know what the costs and benefits of a policy are until after the fact? Great Scot! But that would mean that the long-term costs and benefits of “stimulus” can’t be tallied before the fact! And, if a mathematical model can’t predict how a flesh and bones farm manager will respond to price controls, how can we buy the notion that a central bank could predict the actions and interactions of many millions in response to a level or change in a fiat interest rate?
So, maybe, just maybe, when the Fed sees that credit creation is organically slowing, perhaps it ought to calculate that the slowing is for a good reason: possibly well drilling has grown expensive or perhaps there are few promising places to drill, or perhaps the lenders judge there to be too much already lent to the drillers. But rather than defer to the true experts, the central banker assesses a slowing, any slowing, of credit to be problematic. And, as less credit means less drilling means more “slack resource,” more “stimulus” is called for, whatever that means exactly. The central planner knows best.
Do we have any way to assess what the fruits of “stimulus” have been thus far? Perhaps the following charts provide some help:
Source: Citi, BIS, national central banks StatCan, WFE, Savills.
US and China are at constant 2009 $ and RMB, others are nominal. Uses household holdings of real estate as proxy where no direct market cap available.
Let’s ask ourselves: has the credit this cycle been used to drill productive wells, metaphorically speaking? Measured by income generated, it doesn’t look that way to me! Evidently, too much credit has been employed in “stimulating” asset prices. Alas, if asset prices “correct”, lots of debt will be written down, and what was understood as “stimulus” will be re-classified as mal-investments.
No household nor business can stay on a path of forever rising debt to income, nor can any society in aggregate. More and more stimulus – leverage – is ultimately a bridge to nowhere. Investors would do well to recall the down on the farm wisdom of Stein’s law: if it can’t go on forever, it won’t.
* * *
Tad Rivelle is Chief Investment Officer, Fixed Income, overseeing over $165 billion in fixed income assets, including over $85 billion of fixed income mutual fund assets under the TCW Funds and MetWest Funds brands.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2M0DLKE Tyler Durden
A group of New York City subway-riding good-samaritans grouped together on Thursday to bring what the Post called a “crazed subway maniac” to justice after he allegedly stole a cell phone and then shoved a person onto the subway tracks, breaking the victim’s hip.
Video of the incident shows about six commuters calling for police and preventing the man from leaving the subway platform after the incident, which occurred at about 10 AM on the F train platform at the Broadway–Lafayette station.
The attacker was identified as 41-year-old homeless man Nathaniel Brown.
The video shows him after pushing a man onto the tracks, agitated, trying to elude riders. At one point, he rips off his shirt and then tries to trade blows with a passerby. He tries to bull-rush his way up the stairs and off the platform, but another commuter makes his way down the steps and body checks him back onto the ground. As he tries to get up, another rider sweeps his ankle and knocks him back down.
Police showed up at about 10:15 AM and apprehended Brown, who wound up injuring an officer’s wrist during the confrontation.
Brown, meanwhile, was shouting “Allahu akbar” while he was being arrested.
Brown first robbed somebody of their cell phone on a No. 6 train at Spring and Canal streets earlier in the morning. Police recovered the phone on him and tracked it down to its rightful owner. Then, at the Broadway-Lafayette station, he got into an argument with a stranger before shoving him onto the tracks, fracturing the man’s hip. Brown then spat on a 25-year-old who tried to help the first victim. The man that was shoved onto the tracks was taken to Bellevue hospital.
The Post confirmed that the 30 year old works as an illustrator for the New York Times. He was wearing a full neck brace when he was visited in the hospital on Thursday.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/31ffsfK Tyler Durden
