iftttwall

Just days after the Fed’s preferred inflation gauge disappointed once again in its reading for January, Amazon has handed Jerome Powell another excuse to keep interest rates on hold – or maybe even, as investors keep insisting, consider a cut.

Not long after it reported that Amazon’s Whole Foods would be raising prices on certain items at the insistence of vendors, who are struggling with higher transportation costs, the Wall Street Journal has returned with another Amazon “scoop”, this time reporting the exact opposite: The grocer once derided as “Whole Paycheck” will be cutting prices on hundreds of items in what WSJ described as “some of the broadest [price cuts] since Amazon bought Whole Foods for nearly $14 billion in 2017.” Citing internal WF documents, WSJ said the cuts would be implemented on Wednesday at the 480 stores, as competition between grocery chains heats up.

The average discount was reportedly around 20%.

Prices on more than 500 items, with more being added, are set to drop at Whole Foods stores across the U.S. on Wednesday, according to documents viewed by The Wall Street Journal. The products range from sliced salami to popcorn to cod fillets.

The cuts are some of the broadest since Amazon bought Whole Foods for nearly $14 billion in 2017, spanning many product categories across the supermarket. The e-commerce giant has tried to extend its own reputation for low prices and convenience to Whole Foods, to counter a sense among some consumers that shopping there required a “Whole Paycheck.”

Whole Foods is cutting as Wal Mart and Kroger have insisted on keeping prices low to try and hang on to their share of the $1 trillion market for groceries in the US. Kroger shares tumbled during the last hour of the trading day after the Whole Foods news hit the tape.

Meanwhile, the reaction in Amazon and Wal-Mart shares was relatively muted.

Further discounts of up to 10% on sale items will be offered to Amazon Prime members. During the weeks before the cuts, the news was kept under wraps at the company to prevent leaks, with most employees at the chain’s stores unaware of the cuts. Employees will work overnight on Tuesday to change out labels on impacted products, which will include more meat and poultry items then past rounds of cuts. Notably, WF is moving ahead with the cuts as Amazon prepares to open another chain of grocery stores aimed at more middle-market shoppers.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2I5GGPK Tyler Durden

The Trump administration is floating the idea of hiring a “border” or “immigration” czar who would coordinate executive policies across several federal agencies, according to TPM, citing three anonymous sources familiar with the discussions. 

Two candidates are reportedly under consideration; Former Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach and former Virginia Attorney General Ken Cuccinelli – both of whom have strong conservative views on immigration.

It has yet to be decided whether the post would be housed within the Department of Homeland Security or the White House.

White House press aides, Kobach and Cuccinelli did not immediately respond to requests for comment. –TPM

Trump, meanwhile, halted foreign aid to the Central American ‘caravan’ countries of Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador – and threatened last week to close the US border with Mexico. 

On Friday Trump accused the countries of ‘setting up’ migrant caravans,  per CNN. 

“We were paying them tremendous amounts of money. And we’re not paying them anymore. Because they haven’t done a thing for us. They set up these caravans,” Trump reportedly said. 

“At the Secretary’s instruction, we are carrying out the President’s direction and ending FY 2017 and FY 2018 foreign assistance programs for the Northern Triangle,” said a State Department spokesperson. “We will be engaging Congress as part of this process.”

Sounding angry and fed up, Pres Trump says Mexico has to stop illegal crossings into the US. If it doesn’t, he says he’ll shut the southern border for a long time. Also calls on Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador & Colombia to do more to stop caravans and drugs headed for US. pic.twitter.com/HkFALvqvMV

— Mark Knoller (@markknoller) March 29, 2019

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HPRDW9 Tyler Durden

In his most recent media appearance, Peter Schiff blasts the mainstream financial media and Fed policies, which he believes to be inflating the “biggest bubble yet”. Schiff appeared on the Quoth the Raven Podcast on Sunday and spent an hour and a half explaining his case as to why the United States is heading to a currency crisis.

Schiff On the Financial Media

Schiff led off talking about why he doesn’t get any mainstream financial media attention anymore, partly responding to recent comments by CNBC contributor Guy Adami that Schiff was “bad for TV”. 

“They abruptly cancelled my appearance a day before I was supposed to go on,” he said of a scheduled interview with Rick Santelli on CNBC. “They haven’t tried to book me since. Obviously Santelli’s team didn’t get the memo that Peter Schiff’s not allowed on.”

“I think they want to shield the audience from my perspective,” he continued. “Maybe they think they’re doing their audience a favor by keeping me off the air.”

Schiff On Gold

He continues the interview, explaining why he suggests his clients constantly keep 5-10% of their capital in gold. When asked about how he personally invests versus how he advises his clients, he explains why he is the most overweight gold miner stocks that he’s ever been. 

Schiff also says we will need a gold standard again, which he thinks is inevitable, much to the dispassion of the government. “When they choose gold, which is the right choice, it’ll only be because they’ve exhausted everything else that wouldn’t work. When they admit we need a gold standard, the party’s over”.

“Gold keeps government honest, which is why the government doesn’t want it,” he said.  

Schiff on the Fed’s Reversal

Schiff also talked at length about the Fed’s most recent decision to not raise rates again in 2019.

“The Fed did a reversal. A complete 180,” Schiff says about the Fed’s most recent minutes. “They’re never going to complete the normalization process,” Schiff recounts saying in late 2018 interviews. “I’m one of the only people out there saying the Fed is BSing, but the markets believed it.”

Schiff said either the Fed was deliberately lying in late 2018 when they said they would continue to taper and hike, or that they just didn’t know. Either way, Schiff believes that we are now in the midst of a bear market rally – not a bull market – as a result. 

“I said they were going to wait for an excuse to abort normalization because they couldn’t tell the truth. They can’t raise interest rates because there’s too much debt,” he says. “It has nothing to do with problems abroad, it has nothing to do with Brexit.” 

“This is permanent debt monetization,” he says. 

You can list to the full 90 minute podcast here:

Peter Schiff is Chairman of SchiffGold, CEO and Chief Global Strategist of Euro Pacific Capital, Inc, and host of The Peter Schiff Show. Peter is an economic forecaster and investment advisor influenced by the free-market Austrian School of economics. He is one of the few forecasters who accurately and publicly predicted the 2007 housing market collapse and subsequent 2008 financial crisis.

Visit www.schiffgold.com for more on Peter Schiff. 

Visit www.quoththeravenresearch.com for more on Quoth the Raven Research. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FL79iw Tyler Durden

Authored by Irina Slav via Oilprice.com,

A study has suggested Caucasian Americans’ diet is contributing significantly more to climate change than the diets of other demographic groups in the country. The study, published in the Journal of Industrial Ecology, said white people contributed the most to greenhouse gas emissions, at 680 kg of carbon dioxide equivalent annually, but added that the Black demographic had the highest contribution to land impacts related to food.

The study set out to “fill in the gaps” in research about how various dietary habits affect the environment along the whole supply chain from land resources to water and energy. It focused on three demographic groups – White, non-Hispanic Back, and Latino – since they represent 92.4 percent of the U.S. population and looked into their eating habits to glean some insight into the relation between these habits and what it calls the food-energy-water nexis.

The study’s authors note that the White population, as portion of the U.S. total, was 61.3 percent, with Latinx – a term the authors of the study call intersectional and non-binary to reflect the latest term trends in social sciences – accounting for 17.8 percent and the Black population accounting for 13.3 percent.

In light of these proportions it’s hardly surprising the White population’s diet was a greater contributor to climate change in terms of greenhouse emissions. However, the study also suggested that the White group’s diet was a greater contributor to climate change because of its higher consumption of what the authors call “environmentally intense” food items.

“Results indicate that Whites tend to consume the highest rates of environmentally intense food items, except for the apples food item, when compared to their Black and Latinx counterparts,” the authors wrote.

“Comparing Whites to Latinx, Whites consume significantly more than Latinx for five of the seven environmentally intense food items. This pattern remains the same for beef meat although the difference between Whites and Latinx beef meat is marginally significant.”

Whites yield the highest per-capita GHG and water impacts across all categories due to their consumption of environmentally intense food items in the vegetables, dairy, total grains, and water food groups, whereas Blacks yield the highest per capita land impact due to their consumption of land-intense food items in the fruit and “protein foods” foodgroups.

So, will AOC ban ‘white Americans’ next?

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Upj7Yy Tyler Durden

Last Friday we reported that Turkey slammed the door on Washington’s demands that it cancel its S-400 contract with Moscow in the wake of continued US threats that it will deny transfer of F-35s to Turkey over the Erdogan government’s plans to move forward with taking delivery of the advanced Russian anti-air defense system in July. 

This took place one day after four US senators introduced a bipartisan bill last Thursday to prohibit the transfer of the F-35 until the US can certify that Ankara will reject the S-400 deal. But Turkish officials reiterated their prior stance that it’s a “done deal” and that Turkey won’t back down. 

“We have signed a deal with Russia, and this deal is valid. Now we are discussing the delivery process,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu said on Friday during a press conference while standing beside his Russian counterpart. He added that “We have an agreement with Russia and we are bound by it.” Confirming Turkey is set to take delivery from the Russians in July of this year, Cavusoglu added that every aspect of Turkish defense purchases were legitimate and in accord with international law.

The foreign minister also noted that Ankara has met its obligations to Lockheed Martin, producer of the F-35 stealth fighter. “Turkey is also a partner in the F-35 project. Some parts are being made in here in Turkey. Turkey has fulfilled its responsibilities in this regard,” the minister said.

* * *

Fast forward to today when, with Erdogan still smarting from one of his biggest electoral losses in decades in local elections which saw the ruling AKP lose control over the capital Ankara and, most likely, Istanbul as well, Reuters reports that the US has followed through with its threat, and halted delivery of equipment related to the stealthy F-35 fighter aircraft to the Nato ally, “marking the first concrete U.S. step to block delivery of the jet to the NATO ally in light of Ankara’s planned purchase of a Russian missile defense system.”

According to the Reuters sources, U.S. officials told their Turkish counterparts they will not receive further shipments of F-35 related equipment needed to prepare for the arrival of the stealthy jet. The sources also said the next shipment of training equipment, and all subsequent shipments of F-35 related material, have been canceled.

As Reuters notes, “the disagreement over the F-35 is the latest of a series of diplomatic disputes between the United States and Turkey including Turkish demands that the United States extradite Islamic cleric Fethullah Gulen, differences over Middle East policy and the war in Syria, and sanctions on Iran.”

In March, a Pentagon official said that the United States had a number of items it could withhold in order to send Turkey a signal that the United States was serious about Ankara dropping its ambition to own the S-400: the F-35 was one of them.

Predictably, the U.S. decision on the F-35s will likely complicate Turkish Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu’s planned visit to Washington this week for a NATO summit.

In parallel, Washington is also exploring whether it can remove Turkey from production of the F-35. Turkey makes parts of the fuselage, landing gear and cockpit displays. Sources familiar with the F-35’s intricate worldwide production process and U.S. thinking on the issue last week said Turkey’s role can be replaced.

The United States and other NATO allies that own F-35s fear the radar on the Russian S-400 missile system will learn how to spot and track the jet, making it less able to evade Russian weapons in the future.

In an attempt to persuade Erdogan to drop its plans to buy the S-400, the United States offered the pricier American-made Patriot anti-missile system in a discounted deal that expired at the end of March. And while Turkey had shown interest in the Patriot system, it would not do so at the expense of abandoning the S-400 and extending Russia’s strategic ties with Turkey.

Meanwhile, Turkish Defense Minister Hulusi Akar in March said that despite the escalating diplomatic scandal, Turkish pilots were continuing their training at an air base in Arizona on the F-35, each of which costs $90 million, and that Ankara was expecting the aircraft to arrive in Turkey in November.

Last summer, a diplomatic rout between the US and Turkey led to a series of temporary sanctions which resulted in a collapse in bilateral relations between the two nations and culminated with Turkey’s economy sliding into recession, soaring prices and a collapse in the lira. Whether that painful episode repeats itself will depend on just how vocal Erdogan’s reaction will be when he learns that the the US has halted the F-35 shipment. Considering that the Turkish “executive” president is now scrambling to boost his popularity in the aftermath of the local elections, it is more than likely that the posture adopted by Erdogan will be aggressive to very aggressive, especially if he feels he has Putin’s backing. 

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

Submitted by Nicholas Colas of DataTrek Research

Facebook’s Mark Zuckerberg published an Op-Ed in the Washington Post over the weekend calling for greater government Internet regulation. Notably absent was any mention of breaking up the company. His implicit message: “one Facebook would be easier to control than lots of smaller competitors”. Fair enough, but we also wonder what Facebook has up its product development sleeve that allows it to so vocally call for increased regulation and the costs that will inevitably entail.

The bottom line is that Facebook is now actively asking for global government involvement in regulating the Internet. Right at the top of the second paragraph: “I believe we need a more active role for government and regulators.” He breaks down the issue into 4 suggested policy initiatives:

1. Consistent codification of what constitutes “harmful content”. Zuckerberg said “I’ve come to believe that we shouldn’t make so many decisions about speech on our own”. Companies like Facebook should follow policies set by governments that draw the line between “free speech” and that which is “harmful”.
2. A more detailed standard for what is acceptable in political advertising. Candidate ads are fairly well regulated, at least in the US. But Zuckerberg notes that “divisive political issues” have much less regulation and Facebook has seen “more attempted interference” in this arena.
3. A “globally harmonized framework” for effective data privacy and protection. Zuckerberg endorses the EU’s General Data Protection Regulation initiative, but only if it is widely and consistently applied across other regions.
4. Enhanced data portability protections. Users should have a transparent and regulated pathway to move personal information between platforms.

Now, it is easy to dismiss Zuckerberg’s comments as simply trying to get ahead of inevitable US regulation while simultaneously highlighting the obviously fractured nature of DC politics. Will this Congress or the next really come to an agreement on defining “harmful content” or rewriting the laws on political advertising? The short answer is obviously “no”. Ditto for harmonizing regulations on privacy or data portability with the European Union.

At the same time, we had three other thoughts about all this:

1. The harsher the regulation, the more protection it can afford companies in the future. The first US health warning labels on cigarettes appeared in 1966 (“Cigarette smoking may be hazardous to your health”). In 1998, the tobacco companies settled with US states for illnesses caused by their products, many of which predated those warnings. Anyone who picks up smoking now has very little claim against these companies – the warnings are right on every box.
2. Zuckerberg ignored the question of whether Facebook should be broken up, but there is a coded message in that omission. His implicit argument (at least to our reading): one big company called Facebook would be a lot easier to regulate than a bunch of smaller ones who wouldn’t care as much about the views of DC lawmakers.
3. If I were a Facebook board member or major shareholder, I would have one question for Zuckerberg: “All this is fine, but what’s your plan for making greater profits with these new constraints?” No doubt the Facebook management team has an answer for this, and it must revolve around new technologies and products not yet on public display. If incremental regulation can limit the future liabilities of government fines and/or the costs associated with compliance, then bring them on. Facebook is playing the long game here.

To read Mark Zuckerberg’s Op-Ed, click here

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2CPD151 Tyler Durden

Costco has reportedly decided to stop selling Roundup weedkiller after a federal jury in San Francisco awarded more than $80 million to 70-year-old California man, Edwin Hardeman, who was diagnosed with cancer after spraying the herbicide on his property for decades. 

According to the founder of Moms Across America, Zen Honeycutt, Costco will no longer carry Roundup or other glyphosate-based herbicides in their spring shipments. 

Moms Across America founder Zen Honeycutt, whose petition calling for Costco to stop selling Roundup has more than 150,000 signatures on Change.org, wrote on her website:

“I called the headquarters, and after two days of messages and calls, I did finally confirm with three people that Costco was not ordering Roundup or any glyphosate-based herbicides for the incoming spring shipments.“

Costco has yet to issue an official statement on the petition. However, in conversations with the administrative staff at various stores, Big Think has learned that the product was pulled off the floor this week per corporate orders — meaning, Costco’s removal of Roundup applies to “all locations.” –Big Think

Honeycutt’s group is now petitioning Home Depot and Lowe’s to pull Roundup from their shelves as well. 

“We call on Home Depot and Lowe’s today to step up as Costco has to protect us, your customers, and stop selling Roundup (and all glyphosate herbicides) now, due to its carcinogenic effects and lack of labeling,” reads the petition. “Everyone deserves to know! These products should not be sold to the public!”

Bayer – which acquired the Roundup brand in its $63 billion purchase of Monsanto in June of last year, plans to appeal last week’s verdict, and “vigorously defend” its product, according to Bloomberg. Since the transaction, Bayer has lost over 40% of its value according to Bloomberg. 

The company will continue to “vigorously defend” the herbicide, which it considers safe, Christian Hartel, a spokesman, said by phone from Bayer’s headquarters in Leverkusen, Germany. It plans to appeal the verdict and doesn’t view the ruling as a harbinger for others because each trial has different factual and legal circumstances. –Bloomberg

Bayer’s full statement on the jury’s verdict today in California glyphosate multi-district litigation trial to be posted shortly. Link to follow. pic.twitter.com/KhXxfcu9Af

— Bayer US (@BayerUS) March 27, 2019

Some aren’t so sure of Bayer’s strategy. 

“You can’t keep trying case after case after case and keep losing and say, ‘We’re not going to settle,” says trial lawyer Thomas G. Rohback of New York-based Axinn. If Bayer keeps losing Roundup cases, it “has to put the possibility of a settlement of these cases into the mix,” added Rohback. 

Third trial in Oakland

Bayer faces yet another trial in Oakland, California this year – however Bayer will be at a disadvantage over the two previous San Francisco federal court trials which allowed the company to split the case into two parts. 

Instead, the Oakland trial will permit lawyers to present jurors at the outset with their narrative about Monsanto Co.’s secret campaign to manipulate public opinion and bury evidence of Roundup’s cancer risks.

Jurors in Hardeman’s case first sat through weeks of scientific testimony to decide whether Roundup was a “substantial factor” in causing his illness before they heard any evidence that Monsanto ghostwrote influential studies and improperly leaned on regulators. Bayer countered that scientific studies showed the herbicide is safe and argued to the jury that damning emails were taken out of context. –Bloomberg

“It speaks volumes that not one Monsanto employee, past or present, came live to trial to defend Roundup’s safety or Monsanto’s actions,” said Hardeman’s lawyers. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YIq3PZ Tyler Durden

Authored by Andrew Korybko via Oriental Review,

The Mainstream Media went into a tizzy after reports emerged that Russia dispatched military aid to Venezuela over the weekend, sending two planes full of unspecified wares and accompanied by roughly 100 troops. The President of the National Constituent Assembly later confirmed the arrival but declined to describe its exact purpose, which led to foreign observers wildly speculating that Russia might be in the opening stages of a Syrian-like intervention in support of the democratically elected and legitimate government of Nicolas Maduro against the rising foreign-backed threat of regime change terrorists. That interpretation of events, however, is “jumping the gun” after a diplomatic source from Caracas told Sputnik that the visit was planned far in advance and is in no way connected to the threat of a foreign military invasion of the country.

That didn’t stop National Security Advisor Bolton from having a field day about this, though, since he quickly took advantage of the Mainstream and even Alternative Media’s speculative reports to articulate the modern-day “Monroe Doctrine” of “Fortress America” by declaring on Twitter that “The United States will not tolerate hostile foreign military powers meddling with the Western Hemisphere’s shared goals of democracy, security, and the rule of law.” He recently railed against Russia just the other week for its energy and mineral deals with Venezuela precisely because such arrangements help keep Maduro’s government afloat during this tough time of sanctions, so it’s entirely within his character to make a big public deal out of its military aid in order to fearmonger about “foreign plots” to the hemisphere while distracting from his country’s own.

Back to the reality of what’s probably happening, it’s actually commonplace for military trainers to accompany weapons shipments abroad in order to train the recipient’s armed forces in how to properly use their new equipment, and the reported presence of Russian troops in Venezuela doesn’t mean that the country is preparing for a conventional military intervention there like some suspect. In fact, not only does Russia lack the prerequisite of reliable access to Venezuela that would make such a scenario feasible in the first place, but the presence of its uniformed men on the ground halfway across the world wouldn’t be a deterrent to any conventional US strike against the South American country because America hasn’t let this stop them from regularly bombing Syria where there are many more Russian troops, equipment, and even official bases.

Russian Air Force personnel stand in front of a supersonic bomber aircraft upon landing at Maiquetia International Airport, just north of Caracas, on December 10, 2018

The Mainstream Media wants to promote the narrative of a Russian military intervention in Venezuela in order to fearmonger about Moscow’s global intentions and justify more robust US action there, while the Alternative Media is curiously hinting at the exact same narrative but for the totally opposite reason of misleadingly portraying these events as supposed proof that Russia “saved” Venezuela and got the US to back down. This case study interestingly proves that diametrically opposed information forces can sometimes share a unity of purpose in promoting “wishful thinking” narratives for totally different reasons, with the end effect inadvertently being that the global media environment becomes muddled and the average information consumer is made very confused because they wrongly assume that there must be some kernel of truth to what’s being said if both the Mainstream and many Alternative Medias are saying so.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2I0It8C Tyler Durden