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Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

After a 5.2 magnitude earthquake struck the Philippines, the Ring of Fire was put on alert. After dozens of earthquakes rocked Hawaii this month, followed by a volcanic eruption, many fear the Ring of Fire has become much more active, which has prompted scientists to warn California.

The recent and strong Philippines earthquake struck 113 miles from Davao, which is home to about 1.2 million people.  No tsunami threat has been issued for the Philippines, however, which is made up of more than 7,500 islands.  The lack of tsunami warning has slightly calmed the fears of those living in the vicinity of the quake, but those who reside near the Ring of Fire are on alert.

Hawaii’s Kilauea volcano, which could be set to unleash its biggest eruption yet in the coming week, along with the 5.2 magnitude earthquake in the Philippines has scientists looking more closely at the densely populated state of California. According to The Express UK, the Pacific Ring of Fire volcanoes are more explosive than the ones located in the island state of Hawaii. With Hawaii experiencing widespread devastation at the hands of the Kilauea volcano, geologists are now warning that California could be the next in line for an explosive eruption.

California, which sits on the volatile Pacific Ring of Fire, and is well overdue for a massive and devastating earthquake. The state is also now on volcano alert.  Scientists are warning that a volcanic eruption in the state is “due” according to their predictions.

The California Volcano Observatory (CVO) revealed that seven of the state’s 19 volcanoes are at high threat, with a three of those at “very high” risk of imminent eruption.  According to the CVO, these California volcanoes are more dangerous than Hawaiian volcanoes because they are blast volcanoes, which are more destructive. 

“What we would expect here, would be more like Mt. Saint Helens. More of an explosive eruption,” said Tim McCrink with the California Geological Survey.

“So that puts a lot of rock and dust and gasses in the air.”

Geologist Montgomery Brown said there’s a 25 percent chance another could blow within the next 30 years. According to Brown, that is “the same probability as a major San Andreas fault earthquake.” But some say the Hayward Bay fault line, which runs directly through the heavily populated San Francisco Bay Area in California could be even more dangerous than the San Andres. 

Dr. Margaret Mangan, who runs the CVO, added to the alert. 

“California is not only earthquake country, it’s volcano country too,” Dr. Mangan said.  Dr. Brian Hausback, a US geologist, told CBS:

“If one of these volcanoes decides to erupt, it will catch the world’s attention. These areas have high populations, infrastructure like power plants, and high level of air traffic in the area,” he said. 

 “There is no stopping a volcanic eruption. It is very likely that one of them will erupt in the near future, it is due.”

Alerts on Kilauea volcano still remain in place as well, with a “huge eruption” feared as the lava level in the volcano drops, indicating a build-up in pressure.  That pressure could very well explode into an eruption of massive magnitude.

The Ring of Fire appears to continue to come alive…

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One month ago, when discussing the most recent trends in the US subprime auto loan space, we revealed how despite a virtual halt in direct loans by depositor banks to subprime clients following the financial crisis, the US banking sector now has over a third of a trillion dollars in indirect subprime exposure, in the form of loans to nonbanks financial firms which in the past decade have become the most aggressive lenders to America’s sub-620 FICO population.

As we further explained, the banks’ total indirect exposure to subprime loans – not just auto loans, but also subprime mortgages, and subprime consumer loans – could be pieced together through public filings, and according to FDIC reports, bank loans to nonbanks subprime lenders soared this decade, with the following 5 names standing out:

• Wells Fargo: $81 billion, up from $13.4 billion in 2010
• Citigroup: $30 billion, up from $4.1 billion in 2010
• Bank of America: $30 billion, up from $2.8 billion in 2010
• JP Morgan: $28 billion, up from $10.4 billion in 2010
• Goldman Sachs: $22 billion
• Morgan Stanley: $16 billion

Visually:

But while the supply side of the subprime equation is clearly firing on all cylinders – as only the next crash/crisis will stop desperate yield chasers – things on the demand side are going from bad to worse, and according to the latest Fitch Autoloan delinquency data, consumers are defaulting on subprime auto loans at a higher rate than during the 2008-2009 financial crisis.

The highly seasonal rate for subprime auto loans more than 60 days past due reached the highest in 22 years – since 1996 – at 5.8%, according to March data; this is well over 2% higher than the comparable March default rate in the low 3%s hit during the peak of the financial crisis a decade ago.

The more recent April data, showed a delinquency rate of 4.3%, higher than the 4.1% last year, and the second highest April on record. Keep in mind, April is the “best” month of the year from a seasonal perspective as that is when the bulk of tax refunds hit, which are then promptly used to repay outstanding bills – it’s all downhill from there… or rather uphill as the chart shows ever higher default rates. 

And while delinquencies have been rising, the number of auto loans and leases to subprime borrowers has continued to shrink, falling 10% Y/Y according to Equifax. However, as we showed at the top, it’s not due to supply constraints at the nonbank subprime lenders, the slide in subprime loan volume is all on the demand side: auto-lease origination by subprime customers tumbled by 13.5%.

Meanwhile, as Bloomberg reports, the volume of bond sales backed by these loans are likely to remain the same because banks and credit unions don’t turn most of their loans into securities: “ABS is a fraction of the total auto credit market, which is mainly funded on balance sheets,” Wells Fargo analyst John McElravey told Bloomberg in an interview. “If the pullback from subprime is more from the balance-sheet lenders, banks, then maybe securitization keeps moving along.”

Not maybe: definitely. As the following chart show, the percentage of subprime securitization of all auto ABS as a share of total loans has not only surpassed th pre-crisis peak, it is at a new all time high.

Call it the latest “new (ab)normal” paradox: the underlying auto subprime loan market is shrinking fast, and yet the market for subprime auto ABS securitizations has never been stronger.

Subprime-auto asset-backed security sales are on pace with last year at about $9.5 billion compared to $9.6 billion a year ago, according to data compiled by Bloomberg. With new transactions from Santander, GM Financial, Flagship, and Credit Acceptance expected to hit the market this week, volume may exceed 2017’s total of about $25 billion.

And while it is safe to say it will all end in tears – again – as it did a decade ago, with the next recession the catalyst, the shape of the next crash will be very different. As we explained last month, this subprime bond market is vastly different from what it was even a few years ago, let alone during the last crisis as an influx of generally riskier, smaller lenders flooded into it in the post-crisis years, bankrolled by private-equity money and funded by big bank loans, pursued the riskiest borrowers in order to stay competitive.

“Neither banks nor credit unions have done ‘deep subprime’ lending,” Gunnar Blix, deputy chief economist at Equifax told Bloomberg. “That’s mainly done by smaller dealer-finance and independent finance companies” who rely almost solely on ABS for funding. According to Bloomberg, only about 10% of $437 billion of outstanding subprime auto loans have been securitized into ABS, according to Wells Fargo, which means that underwriters are generally massively exposed to the subprime auto loan crunch that is already playing out before our eyes, and which will be magnified exponentially in the next recession.

* * *

The latest subprime delinquency data seemed confusing, almost a misprint to Hylton Heard, Senior Director at Fitch Ratings who said that “it’s interesting that [smaller deep subprime] issuers continue to drive delinquencies on the index in an unemployment environment of around 4%, low oil prices, low interest rates — even though they are rising — and a positive economic story overall.” In other words, there is no logical explanation why in a economy as strong as this one, subprime delinquencies should be soaring.

Unless, of course the real, unvarnished, and non-seasonally adjusted economy is nowhere near as strong as the government’s “data” suggests.

Making matters worse, rising interest rates have made interest payment increasingly unserviceable for those subprime borrowers who are currently contractually locked up – hence the surge in delinquency rates – or those consumers with a FICO score below 620 who are contemplating taking out a new loan to buy a car, and suddenly find they could no longer afford it, an ominous development we first described one month ago in “Subprime Auto Bubble Bursts As “Buyers Are Suddenly Missing From Showrooms.“

And even if the subprime bubble hasn’t burst just yet, every incremental 0.25% increase in rates assures it is only a matter of time. For once, St. Louis Fed president James Bullard was not wrong when he warned this morning that he see Fed policy as the reason behind the flattening of the yield curve, saying that “it’s been the Fed, I think, that has flattened the curve more than worries by investors on the state of the global economy.“

“My personal opinion is the Fed does not need to be so aggressive that we invert the yield curve” he noted, adding that “I do think we’re at some risk of an inverted yield curve later this year or early in 2019,” and “if that happens I think it would be a negative signal for the U.S. economy.”

If he’s correct, it begs the question: why is the Fed seeking to crash the economy and, by implication, the market?

We’ll close with a quote from the last Comptroller of the Currency, Thomas Curry, who during an October 2015 speech said that “what is happening in [the subprime auto lending] space today reminds me of what happened in mortgage-backed securities in the run up to the crisis.” Since then it’s only gotten worse.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2wGqDn5 Tyler Durden

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

What’s happening to John McCain is tragic. It’s not something one should ever wish upon another human being. Nor is it decent, let alone useful, to wish that he would die. Wishing bad things upon someone because they did bad things is too close for comfort to what he himself did. But it’s good to remember that his brain tumor is not the most tragic part of McCain’s life on earth. And no, neither is his time as prisoner of war in Vietnam.

McCain’s main tragedy is that he didn’t learn the one lesson he should have learned about his time in Vietnam, and didn’t turn his back on warfare. Instead, he turned into the biggest and loudest pro-war campaigner in Washington for decades. Talk about a missed opportunity, a life wasted. If there was one person who was presented with the first-hand experience needed to turn against bloodshed, it was John McCain.

What’s more, during his time in the House and later the Senate, McCain completely missed out on a development that might yet have changed his mind. That is, wars became unwinnable. Something even that the US losing their war in Vietnam might have taught him. It entirely passed him by. McCain still never saw an opportunity to wage battle somewhere, anywhere on the planet, that he didn’t like.

That makes him a dinosaur and a fossil who should never have been allowed to remain in the Senate for as long as he did. At the age of 81, and after ‘serving’ for 35 years in Washington, it apparently becomes too difficult to see how the world outside changes, let alone to adapt to those changes. If you limit the time a president can serve, why not do the same for senators? Is it because those same senators would have to vote on that?

Moreover, if wars are unwinnable, but you incessantly call for new wars anyway, then regardless of moral issues about going to war in the first place, you have de facto become a threat to your own people and your own country that you purport to serve. Especially, and first of all, to the American soldiers you desire to send out there to fight those wars. But also a threat to the image of America around the globe.

When wars are unwinnable, there is no reason to fight them. Again, even apart from morals and ethics. You will have to find other ways to deal with ‘elements’ that feel and act less than friendly towards you. To find out what, it helps to realize that they understand it’s just as futile for them to attack you militarily as it is for you to attack them. It also helps to figure out why they are unfriendly.

What doesn’t help is to take yet another stab at Putin and say “Vladimir Putin is an evil man, and he is intent on evil deeds”, as McCain does in a forthcoming book. If that’s the best you can do, your best-by date has long since passed. That’s language fit for a 4-year old. And George W.

McCain’s father and grandfather were both 4-star US Navy admirals. Perhaps that partly explains his blindness to the evils of war, and the role the US has played in many conflicts, including -but certainly not limited to- Vietnam. It’s hard to imagine Apocalypse Now, Platoon or Full Metal Jacket being McCain’s favorite Hollywood classics.

And that is a bigger problem than it may seem. Because America has indeed been able to paint a vivid portrait for itself of why Vietnam was such an insane venture that should never have happened, and certainly not repeated. If your culture has the ability to put that in words and images, and as a nation you still don’t learn the lesson embedded in them, you’re pretty much lost.

Oh, and besides, you lost too, remember? You lost the war and the lives and limbs of tens of thousands of young Americans and over a million Vietnamese. To have been part of that and then turn around and strive to be Washington’s premier warmonger, that’s just totally bonkers. Or worse. Has McCain been promoting war all this time because he subconsciously wanted to redo Vietnam but this time not lose?

Unwinnable wars are bad news for the weapons industry. They will deny the existence of even such a concept as long and as strongly as they can. Because if you can’t win a war, why wage them? There will continue to be technological developments, but there’s no “throughput”. You can fire some missiles into some desert somewhere from time to time, and that’s it.

The military-industrial complex is happy only -because most profitable- if and when guns and missiles and jets constantly need to be replaced because they’ve been lost in a theater of war, along with young Americans. McCain knows this better than most. And he knows the captains of this complex, both the military side and the weapons producers. Far too well.

Being as beholden as it is to the arms makers and dealers, has made America lose whatever edge it once had militarily. In the US weapons are developed and sold to generate the largest profits possible; in Russia, they are developed to protect the country. This is largely why the American defense budget is 10 times larger than its Russian counterpart. All this happened on John McCain’s watch.

The entire narrative of “protecting and sharing our values” has become hollow propaganda. Because the US has engaged its military in more theaters of war and invasion than we can even keep track of anymore. The US armed forces don’t protect democracy or human rights around the world, they protect the financial interests of America’s elites, including the military-industrial complex. Does anyone believe John McCain doesn’t know this?

Unbeknownst to John McCain, the world has entered a whole new era. And this didn’t happen yesterday. Russia and China may have only recently announced new hypersonic missile technology, but it didn’t fall out of the sky. It does profoundly change things though. It ends all notions and dreams of American exceptionalism and unilateralism.

And America needs to learn that lesson. It will have to do it without John McCain. And it might as well, because McCain was incapable of changing, and of seeing the changes around him. But the American view of the world will have to change, because the world itself has.

Still, you’re right: the real tragedy is not that John McCain wasted his own life. It’s that he helped destroy so many others.

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As went the ‘horse-and-buggy’, so goes the great American banker…

As Blockchain Week begins, the streets of Manhattan see ‘Bankers Against Bitcoin‘ protesting that “Bitcoin ruined our business model,” and “give us back the remittance industry”…

Bankers against bitcoin. LOL #Consensus2018 pic.twitter.com/vzO4WknnyV

— Mario (@Token_Mario) May 14, 2018

 

And in case you were wondering, Genesis Mining CEO Marco Streng explains…

As you can probably tell, this protest is meant to be a joke.

But this joke today is going to be the reality in the very near future.

This protest is representative of what will happen to those industries and companies that fail to understand times have changed.

Legacy industries that have gone unchallenged for decades will soon begin to see their monopoly slip away.

The consumer abuse that’s been possible due to a lack of competition is over. The biggest competitor big banks have ever faced has arrived and it’s not a company or organization, it’s a decentralized technology.

It will soon no longer be possible to charge the poorest people in the world exorbitant fees to send money back home to support their families.

Industries like the lucrative $15 billion overdraft industry that enrich banks will soon disappear.

And all the middlemen who’ve built business models simply from being in the middle – will see their control slowly slip away.

These are just a few of the hundreds – if not thousands of examples of the industries blockchain technology will disrupt.

As Jamie Dimon once said “Silicon Valley is Coming to Eat Our Lunch”.

Well Jamie, and all the others who stand to be disrupted – Bitcoin will be coming for a lot more than just your lunch if you fail to adapt to the new world we live in.

Read more here…

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Authored by Sasha Lekach via Mashable.com,

Uber is flying high above its street-level ride-hailing business.

At its annual Elevate summit in Los Angeles Tuesday, the rideshare company detailed its aviation goals to launch electric flying taxis within the next five years.

The service, dubbed UberAir, aims to move rides to the sky, so Uber is partnering with the U.S. Army’s research arm and NASA to make it happen.

Uber’s partnership with the U.S. Army Research, Development and Engineering Command (RDECOM), within the Army Research Lab, is focused on researching the tech needed to propel the company’s electric vertical take-off and landing (eVTOL) aircraft.

UberAir wants to fly its vehicles up to 2,000 feet at 150 mph for short-haul flights, going as far as 60 miles on a battery charge. The service plans to fly demos of its four-passenger seat planes in Los Angeles and the Dallas area by 2020, ready for commercial use by 2023. 

Although the air taxi will initially be piloted, flights will eventually become autonomous.

IMAGE: UBER

As part of this $1-million partnership, spilt 50-50, the U.S. Army research team is working with Uber to develop quieter propeller technology. In a release, the Army said, “this is a concept for having two rotor systems placed on top of each other and rotating in the same direction.” Apparently this has never been deployed in a flying craft before. 

So Uber won’t necessarily be outfitting the military with aircraft, but this joint research could help the Army one day fly a fleet of unmanned air vehicles, or supply the tech for more efficient military aircraft down the track.

IMAGE: UBER

On the NASA side, Uber is expanding an agreement with the space agency. The new arrangement means Uber will share information with NASA about creating an “urban aviation rideshare network.” NASA wants to use this data for computer modeling and simulation in order to study how small aircraft like UberAir manage in crowded environments.

Previously, Uber had an agreement with NASA to research pilotless vehicle traffic management at low altitudes. 

Uber is moving way beyond cities, roads, and public transit, getting deep into aeronautical institutions, and possibly into defense contracting. But for now, its nascent aviation team is trying to establish itself as legit. Partnerships with the likes of NASA and U.S. Army sure help on that front.

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Lorenza Martinez, director of the Payment System of the Bank of Mexico, informed Reuters in a telephone interview last week that more than five Mexican financial institutions have recently observed “unauthorized transfers,” resulting in hundreds of millions of pesos stolen.

Cybercriminals siphoned 400 million of pesos ($20.4 million) out of Mexican banks, including the second largest bank: Grupo Financiero Banorte, by generating “phantom orders that wired funds to fake accounts and promptly withdrew the money,” sources close to the government’s investigation told Reuters. Sources explained how cybercriminals “sent hundreds of false orders to move amounts ranging from tens of thousands to hundreds of thousands of pesos from banks including Banorte, to fake accounts in other banks.” Once the funds landed in the fraudulent accounts, accomplices would then go to local branch offices around the country and drain the accounts.

Daily newspaper El Financiero said that these cybercriminals stole around 160 million pesos ($8.2 million) from Banco del Bajio and approximately 150 million pesos ($7.7 million) from Banorte. The remaining amount was spread across smaller financial institutions.

Hackers would have stolen 400 million pesos after the cyber attack in April. (Source: El Financiero)

Inter-bank orders declined in late April, as well as the lack of transparency on the part of financial regulators, which has stoked concerns that Latin America’s second-biggest economy fell victim to cyber attacks that have been disrupting Central Banks and financial institutions around the world.

“The authorities claim that in this cyber attack the SPEI was not violated, but that the “hacking” was through the system that the banks have with suppliers to connect with the SPEI.

One involved in the investigations ensures that it is not yet known exactly how the criminals operated, so there is no exact data yet of the amount stolen, information considered, it will be difficult for it to be revealed by those affected or by the authorities of the financial sector.

Market participants consider that the accounts in which the money was dispersed are located within the country, since in international transfers there are more alerts within the same institutions,” said El Financiero.

Another source told Reuters that these cybercriminals might have had inside assistance to complete such transactions. “In terms of the security of the bank’s offices, I think that is part of the analysis that each bank is doing,” Martinez said.

He also added that the SPEI interbank transfer system was not compromised, but third-party software connected to the payment network might have been. SPEI is comparable to the SWIFT’s messaging services used by more than 11,000 financial institutions in more than 200 countries.

El Financiero indicates that three years ago, at least three financial institutions in Mexico were victims of severe cyber attacks.

“Three years ago at least three banks in Mexico were victims of a “hack”, since the criminals detected a “vulnerability” within a part of their computer systems.

After entering a code in their systems, they proceeded to register third parties, “sowed” accounts in SPEI and made transactions for amounts similar to accounts in other open banks with the same name as the account holder. The money was then withdrawn early in the window by those customers. On that occasion, the affectation did not exceed 50 million pesos.”

El Financiero provides information with Bloomberg data showing Cybercrime is on the rise.

However, the location of where the cyber attack originated from is still unknown, it would not shock us if Mexican drug cartels are now diversifying their operations into cybercriminal units attacking Mexican financial institutions.

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Authored by James Howard Kunstler via Kunstler.com,

Lousy Deals and Turning Wheels

In that long ago yesteryear of 1979, before blogging, tweeting, twerking, hacking, posting, ghosting, doxing, and all the other Internet-enabled compulsions of the present day, a gang of inflamed young men, said to be students, invaded the US embassy compound in Teheran and took fifty-two American embassy personnel hostage — crossing an age-old line of geopolitical conduct that kicked off the epic conflict between global Islam and a USA-led West, still on-going as you read.

I followed the Iran Hostage Crisis avidly… the gibbering mullahs, the blindfolded captives, the rotating cast of double-taking prime ministers who lectured Jimmy Carter on the Nightly News, the rescue attempt fiasco that killed eight American soldiers out in the Persian desert. Oddly, what I remember most after all these years was the fact that the hostages ran out of dental floss and had to swap around between them the same recycled last strand for weeks on end — a ticket to periodontal hell, if ever there was one.

And then, as if by magic, Iran released the hostages on Ronald Reagan’s inauguration day and our splendiferous “morning in America” commenced.

What really began that day, of course, was the asset-stripping of this land and its people, leading to the political disorders of the moment. Forty years later it’s hard to say which nation is a bigger pain-in-the-ass on the world stage, Iran or the USA. But the net effect of all that mutual antagonism is a vast region from North Africa to Central Asia of failed states, ruined cities, and dead bodies.

I’m rather skeptical that President Trump will manage to get a new-and-improved “deal” with Iran after tearing up the old one put together by Mr. Obama, which may have not been of much value anyway. I don’t believe that anything in it would have really deterred Iranian technicians from developing a serviceable nuclear weapon. It’s just not that hard to do anymore, given the number of physicists trained all over the world since 1945.

Until recently, the Obama agreement gave the appearance of some cover in the long-running feud, an impression, at least, that the two sides could talk to each other, which has now been erased. What’s changed is a recognition that the agreement did nothing to stop Iran’s intervention in three of the current hot-spots of the region: Syria, Lebanon, and Yemen, where various contingents of Iranian-sponsored Hezbollah, Houthis, and even Iranian military regulars have carried the Shia battle flag in the ancient struggle to displace their Sunni adversaries, sponsored by Iran’s arch-enemy, Saudi Arabia – leaving wreckage everywhere. And, of course, let’s remember the Sunni factions include the savage ISIS and al-Qaeda gangs.

Which points to the elephant in the room with the 900-pound gorilla on its back: the fact that underlying all this terrible destructive action in that part of the world is a religious disagreement. (While, of course, underlying even that is a long emergency of human population overshoot and a desperate struggle for dwindling resources of all kinds.) It has surely been the dream of that aggressive American faction known as the Neocons, to up-end the entrenched mullahs who run Iran.

The theory, I think, is that religious maniacs are always and everywhere more dangerous than secular maniacs and, if we could only get rid of these apocalyptic whack-jobs, a country like Iran might be made a “normal” nation again. The Neocons also assume that a majority of Iran’s younger generations are good-and-goddam sick of the ruling mullahs, and eager for their own regime change. And so now the Trumpsters, apparently, are determined to squeeze Iran until something over there gives.

Is it too obvious to say that our previous efforts at re-engineering the various governments of the region have all ended in failed states? “Normality” may just be a mirage in the desert these days. What happened in the Islamic oil states was an historic anomaly, short-lived and catastrophic. What we’re witnessing is the slow-motion collapse of civilization at the margins. A corner of the world that was once emptier and quieter is on its way to being empty and quiet again, but not without a tragic convulsion of violence on the journey there. What’s happening on the margins these days will shortly move toward the center.

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Ever since President Trump took office, he has had to contend with leaky staff. From transcripts of his call with Mexican President Peña Nieto, to little leaks such as Trump ignoring the advice of national security advisors not to congratulate Russian President Vladimir Putin on his election win, to the seemingly monthly rumors of interpersonal feuds, imminent firings and upcoming plans – the Trump White House has been a veritable leak factory. 

In response, President Trump has come out with a serious warning for White House leakers after a callous comment about John McCain’s brain cancer made by communications staffer Kelly Sadler was leaked to the media last week. 

The so-called leaks coming out of the White House are a massive over exaggeration put out by the Fake News Media in order to make us look as bad as possible. With that being said, leakers are traitors and cowards, and we will find out who they are!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) May 14, 2018

After McCain urged the Senate to reject Gina Haspel’s nomination for CIA director, calling her refusal to acknowledge torture’s immorality “disqualifying,” Sadler reportedly said “[i]t doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway.“

After the controversy over the Sadler comment, White House Press secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders held a meeting with the communications team about leaks, which promptly leaked to Axios. 

Sources in the room on Friday told me senior leaders on the press team spent more time focused on the fact that Sadler’s now-infamous comment had leaked, than that it was said in the first place.

In an emotional speech in the Roosevelt Room, Sanders lambasted the press and communications team for the leak:

• Kelly Sadler’s comment was inappropriate, she said, according to a staffer in the room, but that didn’t justify leaking it to the press.
• Sanders told the team that Thursday should have been a great day for the White House, especially with the historic photos of Trump welcoming the hostages released from North Korea.
• But instead, that was overcome by saturation cable TV coverage about Sadler’s comment. In Thursday’s meeting of the White House communications and press team, Sadler said “It doesn’t matter, he’s dying anyway,” in reference to McCain’s decision to oppose Trump’s CIA nominee Gina Haspel. The Hill first reported the private remarks. Since then, everyone from McCain’s family to members of Congress to former Vice President Joe Biden has condemned the remark. –Axios

Former White House chief of staff, Karl Rove, blasted the leakers on Monday, telling FOX Business’ Maria Bartiromo “I’ve never seen a White House leak as much against itself as this one and these are people putting their own personal agendas above those of the country and the president that they serve,” adding “Frankly it’s ridiculous, it’s despicable, it’s reprehensible and it does not help anyone.”

Never seen a White House leak as much against itself as this one: Rove https://t.co/UywGMhZAgi @MorningsMaria @KarlRove @FoxBusiness

— Maria Bartiromo (@MariaBartiromo) May 14, 2018

On Sunday, Axios published an exposé on White House leakers entitled White House Leakers Leak About Leaking,” in which they go into the mind of your typical “traitor and coward” as Trump now calls them.  

The big picture: The leaks come in all shapes and sizes: small leaks, real-time leaks, weaponized leaks, historical leaks. Sensitive Oval Office conversations have leaked, and so have talks in cabinet meetings and the Situation Room. You name it, they leak it.

 

• My colleague Mike Allen, who has spent nearly 20 years covering the White House, says we learn more about what’s going on inside the Trump White House in a week than we did in a year of the George W. Bush presidency.
• This White House leaks so much that meetings called to bemoan leaks begin with acknowledgement the bemoaning will be leaked, which is promptly leaked…by several leakers in a smallish room. –Axios 

According to the report, leakers have a wide variety of reasons for doing what they do. Via Axios:

• “To be honest, it probably falls into a couple of categories,” one current White House official tells me. “The first is personal vendettas. And two is to make sure there’s an accurate record of what’s really going on in the White House.”
• “To cover my tracks, I usually pay attention to other staffers’ idioms and use that in my background quotes. That throws the scent off me,” the current White House official added.
• “The most common substantive leaks are the result of someone losing an internal policy debate,” a current senior administration official told me. “By leaking the decision, the loser gets one last chance to kill it with blowback from the public, Congress or even the President.”
• “Otherwise,” the official added, “you have to realize that working here is kind of like being in a never-ending ‘Mexican Standoff.‘ Everyone has guns (leaks) pointed at each other and it’s only a matter of time before someone shoots. There’s rarely a peaceful conclusion so you might as well shoot first.”

One key reason was ignored: cold hard cash, which is why doubt any of the leakers will be dissuaded by Trump’s tough talk.

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Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

On October 22, 1981, the national debt in the United States crossed the $1 trillion threshold for the first time in history.

It took nearly two centuries to reach that unfortunate milestone.

And over that time the country had been through a revolution, civil war, two world wars, the Great Depression, the nuclear arms race… plus dozens of other wars, financial panics, and economic crises.

Today, the national debt stands at more than $21 trillion– a milestone hit roughly two months ago.

This means that the government added $20 trillion to the national debt in the 37 years between October 22, 1981 and March 15, 2018.

That’s an average of nearly $1.5 BILLION added to the national debt every single day… $62 million per hour… $1 million per minute… and more than $17,000 per SECOND.

But the problem for the US government is that this trend has grown worse over the years.

It took only 214 days for the government to go from $20 trillion in debt to $21 trillion in debt– less than eight months to add a trillion dollars to the national debt.

That’s an average of almost $52,000 per second.

Think about that: on average, the US national debt increases by more in a split second than the typical American worker earns in an entire year.

And there is no end in sight.

At 105% of GDP, America’s national debt is already larger than the size of the entire US economy. (By comparison the national debt was just 31% of GDP in 1981.)

Plus, the government’s own projections show a steep increase to the debt in the coming years and decades.

The Treasury Department has already estimated that it will borrow $1 trillion this fiscal year, $1 trillion next year, and another trillion dollars the year after that.

They’re also forecasting the national debt to exceed $30 trillion by 2025.

To be fair, debt isn’t always bad. In fact, sometimes debt can be useful.

Businesses and individuals use debt all the time to shrewdly finance productive investments.

Real estate investors, for instance, often borrow most of the money they need to purchase a property once they determine that the rental income should more than cover the debt service.

In this way, when applied prudently, debt can actually help build wealth.

And the US federal government did the same thing in its early history.

It was an incredibly astute move on the government’s part, for example, to go into debt to finance the Louisiana Purchase back in the early 1800s, which dramatically expanded the size of the budding nation.

These days, however, the government flushes money down the toilet in the most wasteful ways imaginable, both big and small.

We’ve covered some of the more ridiculous examples in our normal conversations, from that $2 billion Obamacare website to the $856,000 that the National Science Foundation spent teaching mountain lions to run on treadmills.

Even the government’s more legitimate expenses are absolutely colossal now.

Last year the government spent HALF of its budget just to pay for Social Security and Medicare.

The situation is so dire that the government spends more than its entire tax revenue just on these mandatory entitlement programs, plus Defense and interest on the debt.

Even if you could eliminate entire departments of government, they would still be running a budget deficit and going deeper into debt.

The larger the national debt becomes, the more interest the government has to pay each year.

And interest payments increase even more rapidly as rates continue to rise… which is exactly what’s happening now.

A few years ago, the government paid less than 1.5% on its 10-year Treasury note. Today the rate has doubled.

This has a profound impact on Uncle Sam’s cash flow: they have to borrow MORE money just to pay interest on the money they’ve already borrowed… and spend a larger and larger share of the budget on debt service.

It’s a financial death spiral.

Think about it: if the government is having this much trouble making ends meet when they’re paying 2% interest on $21 trillion in debt, what’s going to happen when they’re paying 5% on $30 trillion?

It’s foolish to think that this trend has a consequence-free outcome. No nation in history has ever become prosperous by borrowing record amounts of debt to finance reckless spending.

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