Elon Musk’s feud with Tesla shorts is not business, it’s just personal.
After lashing out at some vast, anti-Tesla conspiracy (technically, he has a point, Tesla is the most shorted US stock for good reason) in the aftermath of last week’s earnings bizarre conference debacle Musk first warned shorts that “oh and uh short burn of the century comin soon. Flamethrowers should arrive just in time“, then followed it up just hours later with another taunt on the coming short squeeze which “Looks like sooner than expected. The sheer magnitude of short carnage will be unreal. If you’re short, I suggest tiptoeing quietly to the exit”…
Looks like sooner than expected. The sheer magnitude of short carnage will be unreal. If you’re short, I suggest tiptoeing quietly to the exit … https://t.co/A0Q90pSLKA
… on Monday afternoon, Musk decided to triple down, and has putting money where his trash-talking mouth is, revealing that on Monday he bought about $9.85 million worth of Tesla shares on Monday…
… his biggest purchase since March 2017.
Musk’s aggressive purchases which were surely leaked by the buying desk probably explains the wide intraday divergence between Tesla’s equity and its bonds: because while Musk was buying TSLA stock, he forgot to “dip his toe” in the company’s increasingly more distressed bonds.
For Musk, who is already Tesla’s largest shareholder with a stake approaching 20%, the Monday purchase was merely theatrical, and meant to strike fear among the shorts. The only question is whether it was funded with yet more margin loans from Morgan Stanley, as some humorously asked.
The long anticipated $tsla squeeze was Musk buying his own stock with margin loan? Almighty then.
Incidentally, this is not a joke: Elon Musk has personally borrowed $624 million in loans from various investment banks – first mostly Goldman, then mostly Morgan Stanley – as of a year ago to buy Tesla stock. And as we calculated last week, if one factors in his Boring investment as well as various other “sundry expenses”, the next public disclosure will likely have Musk at around $800MM in personal borrowings from banks…
… which as discussed last week, when applying to new collateral requirements instituted by Tesla’s Board, would require some $3.2B worth of stock. And with 13.775M Tesla shares pledged…
… that implies that at a share price below $232.30 (assuming a current balance of $800 million), Musk would face either a margin call or the need to post additional shares as collateral. (For context, in April, the stock dipped as low as the $244s). For more details please read “Will Elon Musk Be the Next CEO to Face A Margin Call Death-Spiral?”
In ancient Rome, a clerical class known as the haruspices trained in the inspection of the entrails of sacrificed animals for omens of the future. Today’s market commentators have replaced bird intestines with an equally fervent passion for equally unreliable forms of long-term divination.
“Bad Omen for Markets from First Signs of Yield Curve Inversion,” a recent Bloomberg report trumpeted. Two thousand years on, the vultures of clickbait clarion calls appear eager to forget that auguries are for the birds.
We would like to take a break from our usual analysis of investing through statistics, theory, and philosophy to look at the world of investing from a new perspective—cultural critique.
We have a rich academic tradition to frame our critique. Anthropology is the study of the societies and cultures of the only species known to believe that anthropology just might work. But unlike the questionably legendary and legendarily questionable anthropologists of yesteryear, we will not be studying cannibalism or mating rituals, but rather the practices and rituals of the Tribes of Wall Street through the lens of the late great Sigmund Freud.
While much of Freud’s early work on psychoanalysis and sociology has been debunked (sorry, mom), his work is still highly influential in the Ivory Tower. As structure for our analysis, we borrow the title of chapter three of his 1913 book Totem and Taboo: Resemblances Between the Mental Lives of Savages and Neurotics – Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thought.
Animism
Animism is the religious belief that objects, places and creatures all possess a distinct spiritual essence, not to be confused with the Internet of Things. According to Sir Edward Taylor in his 1871 work Primitive Culture, Animism is “one of anthropology’s earliest concepts, if not the first.” It is thus only fitting that it has since taken on a life of its own: while uncommon today in western civilization outside of baseball dugouts, groundhog sightings, and a few environmentalist scions of San Francisco, we find this belief system to be strikingly prevalent among our community of investors. Investors often assign a spiritual essence to the market itself.
Turn on any Bloomberg news update, read a Reuters market summary, or listen to an expert commentator invited to explain daily movements in markets, and a neutral linguistic anthropologist would find a heavy dose of this phenomenon used to explain market mysteries. The following Bloomberg headline may have been plagiarized from the Book of Genesis or Jonah: “The world’s biggest bond market has managed to gulp down a swelling deluge of issuance in recent months.” Somewhere an A.I. bot must be laughing: those chyrons hawking causal explanations don’t write themselves.
Magic
According to anthropology professor Pamela Moro (Ph.D. from Berkeley and author of Magic, Witchcraft, and Religion: an Anthropological Study of the Supernatural) “Magic” involves beliefs and behaviors in which the relationship between an act and its effect is not empirically or scientifically verified but, from a Western perspective, rests on analogy or a mystical connection.
We have written extensively on numerous instances of beliefs and behaviors on Wall Street with no empirical or scientific backing that fit this operational definition. Applications of the Capital Asset Pricing Model through discounted cash flow analysis are but one example of a ritualistic practice employed by the Tribe of Wall Street that “is not empirically or scientifically verified.” Worse than magic, these rituals have often been empirically invalidated, and most dangerous of all, the conjurers have cast aside their telltale top hats and capes (in favor of $2,295 Loro Piana zip-ups).
From the movie, The Wolf of Wall Street via The Kernal/Daily Dot
Indeed, there is evidence they may be no better than actual magicians. A recent investigative report on the use of psychics to forecast market movements found they may have done about as well as these more traditional, ritualistic models used within the Tribe of Wall Street: “On the whole, market forecasts from astrological and psychic sources don’t appear to have fared any better than those from more traditional methods of number-crunching and dart-throwing.”
Omnipotence of Thought
Freud’s “Omnipotence of Thought” phrase was inspired by a patient he dubbed the “Rat Man,” whom he diagnosed with Obsessional Neurosis on account of his fixation on unrealistic fears, fantasies and theories involving rats. The Rat Man believed his thoughts were so powerful that they could both change and provide insight into the future.
We find a good deal of this among the ritualistic obsessions of the Wall Street tribe members as they run amok in a rat race that never ends. There we find obsession with the power of ideas surrounding GDP growth, TAM (Total Addressable Market), Moats and Market Share, and Income Statement forecasts that have about as much empirical validity when forecasting price returns as rats have when guessing the going rate for cheese.
Indeed, the general belief in the power of the individual mind to foresee the ebbs and flow of time has given rise to a priest class since time immemorial, and the Tribe of Wall Street has employed many in its priesthood. While the Ancient Greeks consulted the Delphic Oracle when considering major political actions like the declaration of war, millions of Americans turn to the seers of Wall Street when making important financial decisions. Casual analyses are now revered like mystics’ mantras—an irony we can safely assume the Oracle of Omaha saw coming.
Yet some Americans, like Jack Bogle, are skeptical of the divination power of Wall Street’s prophets of profit. The renowned anthropologist E. E. Evans-Prichard famously rebutted such criticisms, arguing that outsiders rarely understand the societies they study. Non-believers like Bogle, he noted, are quicker to explain religion as an illusion while believers understand that mystical beliefs are an important “method of conceptualizing and relating to reality.” If an Excel model and a 100-slide PowerPoint presentation helps you conceptualize and relate to reality, Evans-Prichard might have argued, then go for it!
Evans-Pritchard noted that although many of the Azande people he studied decried individual witch doctors as cheats and liars, he never met a single tribesman who did not believe in witchcraft. If a particular diviner was proven wrong, it was because he did not practice his art well: the failure of the individual practitioner does not undermine or disprove the system as a whole.
Hocus Focus
And so we come full circle on our cursory tour of the anthropological disposition of many among the Tribe of Wall Street. After 10,000 years of Homo sapiens repeatedly displaying such predilections toward Animism, Magic and the Omnipotence of Thought, is it so unimaginable that the modern investment profession’s short 100-year history might reveal similar cultural affinities among the much younger Homo investicus? In an age when commentators can still make a living pulling the same old rabbits out of the same old hats, we should take care to ask how they got there in the first place, when half-truths breed faster than hares.
But why are such traditions so prevalent? In his 1972 book, Violence and the Sacred, the renowned French anthropologist René Girard argued that oftentimes these practices become “unformulated dogma to be accepted on pure faith,” because “whatever makes other things clear does not need, apparently, to be made clear itself.”
Perhaps more relevant to Wall Street, the anthropologist Bronislaw Malinowski noted a curious phenomenon in his 1948 study of the societies of the Trobriand Islands, Magic, Science and Religion. He found that “in the Lagoon fishing, where man can rely completely upon his knowledge and skill, magic does not exist, while in the open-sea fishing, full of danger and uncertainty, there is extensive magical ritual to secure safety and good results.”
If the investment profession is characterized by its need to cope with uncertainty, then it appears that Wall Street may be precisely the sort of culture where we would expect to find reliance on such unfounded beliefs.
This means that vigilance has never been more vital: as financial instruments grow more complex, and market movements remain just as inscrutable, it hardly takes a master magician to make your money disappear.
But for the skeptical investor, where there lurks superstition, there will always lurk opportunity. These misplaced myths inevitably lead to market mispricings, and we believe that understanding the Tribe of Wall Street’s conceptual weaknesses is the first step to exploiting the value of its wares.
Sylvia Bloom worked for 67 years as a secretary at the law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, and accumulated a personal fortune of more than $9 million.
Bloom did this by being “frugal” and “by shrewdly observing the investments made by the lawyers she served,” reports The New York Times, which broke the story Monday on its front page.
The story resonates in part because it reinforces a hopeful narrative, which is that wealth is a reward for virtues such as frugality, shrewdness, and patient savings. It helps, too, that the childless Bloom also left the bulk of her estate to charity—another virtue.
But one person’s heartwarming story could be another’s tale of insider trading and securities fraud, writes Ira Stoll.
Everything was calmly elevating just how the central banks want it… and then Iran headlines hit… “Don’t Panic”…
Stocks soared overnight and extended gains through the open with Small Caps (strong dollar) and Nasdaq (tech short squeeze) outperforming. Then when Trump headlines hit about tomorrow’s Iran decision, the S&P and Dow dumped to unchanged…the bounced…
Futures show the overnight hump and then buying panic at the open…
VIX closed with a 14 handle once again…
And Stocks caught down to bonds disdain for the morning exuberance…
Notably, the S&P 500 tagged below its 200DMA on Friday’s open and bounced and today it tagged above its 50DMA and rolled over…
All thanks to the biggest short-squeeze since Brexit…
The yield curve flattened once again today to a new low post-crisis…
And while stocks rallied, yields did not sell-off…and when stocks tumbled, bonds did not move…
Perhaps because every trader who can fog a mirror is now short bonds…
Although interestingly as the Fed balance sheet has accelerated lower (red line below inverted) so Bond yields and Bond vol has decoupled…
Emerging Market Debt continued to slide to fresh six-month lows, and judging by the dollar index trend and the liquidity stress’ lagged effect, there is a lot more to come…
The Dollar Index ended the day higher amid some swings (EUR weakness after a disappointing Sentix confidence print)… BBDXY crossed green for 2018 briefly before closing below the unchanged for the year level…
And as the US Dollar gains, so the Hong Kong version drops back to its lower peg band limit…
And the Mexican Peso is plunging…
And the Turkish Lira dropped for the 6th day in a row…
Oil prices were pushing notably higher – WTI above $70 – ignoring the dollar gains until news that Trump would make Iran decision tomorrow and everyone decided that was time to “sell the news”…
The rest of the commodity space leaked lower on the day…
Finally, we note that with the S&P 500 managing to barely scratch its head above water year-to-date, the picture remains ever-hopeful for 2018 EPS…
Rudy Giuliani’s headline-generating media tour these past few days has had two essential functions: 1) to deal (however clumsily) with the yawning chasm between Trumpworld’s initial serial denials about the Stormy Daniels payout and the discoveries to the contrary made in the unusually aggressive raids on attorney Michael Cohen; and 2) to wage a public relations campaigned aimed at pressuring special counsel Robert Mueller away from issuing President Trump a subpoena to testify.
It is that latter possibility that could be the first domino in what many fear may end up as a constitutional crisis. As such, it is of primary interest in the new edition of the Reason Podcast editors’ roundtable, featuring Katherine Mangu-Ward, Nick Gillespie, Peter Suderman, and me making unsound metaphors about the news of the week. Also under discussion are the latest in the Iran/nuclear deal (including Giuliani’s startling assertion Saturday at the Iran Freedom Convention for Democracy and Human Rights that President Trump is “as committed to regime change as we are“), plus Millennial non-affection for both major political parties, democratic socialist policies in Seattle, and (obviously) various references to Westworld.
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) thinks people in the U.S. who consume tacos and tequila on Cinco de Mayo are enganging in “textbook examples of cultural appropriation.”
The SPLC—an organization that ostensibly tracks hate groups but defines “hate” broadly enough that some vocal critics of extremism, such as Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Maajid Nawaz, have turned up on the group’s watchlists—sent the following tweet on the evening of the Mexican holiday:
Most of the festivities surrounding #CincodeMayo in the US are textbook examples of cultural appropriation, relegating the history and culture of Mexican people to novelty items. Mexican culture cannot be reduced to tacos, oversized sombreros and piñatas. https://t.co/kffsaJWPUJ
— Southern Poverty Law Center (@splcenter) May 5, 2018
The tweet links to an article at tolerance.org—an SPLC property—offering more thoughts on why such celebrations of Cinco de Mayo are offensive. Lauryn Mascarenaz writes:
Consider this example that shows how far the celebration of Cinco de Mayo has come from its original purpose of honoring Mexicans. In 2010, several white students decided to wear American flag T-shirts on Cinco de Mayo at a California high school with a history of racial tension between white and Mexican-American students. School officials asked the students to change their shirts, turn them inside out or go home. The students refused, and some of them later sued the school district. The U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals upheld the school’s decision, ruling that the T-shirts were not covered by the free speech protections enjoyed by students and that school officials had reasonable concern to believe that the T-shirts could prompt a “violent disturbance” or “substantial disruption.”
This incident has nothing whatsoever to do with cultural appropriation. Quite the opposite: The white students resisted Mexican culture, and were disciplined (to the detriment of all students’ free expression rights) for having done so. Tolerance.org thinks white students shouldn’t don U.S. flag t-shirts, and they definitely shouldn’t “claim as their own an aspect of a culture that does not belong to them,” so what should they do? Well:
Teach [students] the difference between cultural appropriation and cultural appreciation. They need to know where the line is. Cultural appropriation occurs when a person or other entity—a sports franchise, for example—claims as their own an aspect of a culture that does not belong to them. Doing so can, knowingly or unknowingly, deny the authenticity of that culture, particularly if it belongs to a marginalized group, and it can send harmful messages rooted in misinformation, prejudice and stereotypes.
But what is the difference? The post makes no attempt to offer one—nor does it explain why students couldn’t learn about Mexican history and eat tacos.
Some examples of what is commonly called cultural appropriation—but would be better described as cultural mockery—are indeed mean-spirited, offensive, and reflecting of real prejudice. But eating ethnic food and wearing ethnic clothing aren’t inherently problematic. By encouraging cross-cultural pollination, these kinds of cultural appropriation can actually undermine prejudice.
Mascarenaz writes that “in the United States, Cinco de Mayo has become politicized and promotes a misunderstanding of the day that pits Mexico against the United States, feeding an ‘us versus them’ mentality.” But doesn’t the act of forbidding vast swaths of people from enjoying certain cultural products also feed an “us versus them” mentality?
As Nick Gillespie wrote last week in response to the controversy over a white girl’s Chinese prom dress, charges of cultural appropriation rely on “brutally static definitions of culture that are spectacularly at odds with the ways in which individuals use motifs and materials from outside their immediate experience to define themselves.” This process isn’t always perfect, but it ought not be discouraged by an organization that claims to be fighting hatred and intolerance.
While many celebrated the record high US household wealth in the latest data from The Fed, what most missed was a record $1.0 trillion of credit card/revolving loans, a record $1.3 trillion of auto loans, and a record $1.5 trillion of student loans.
As we previously noted, among these, credit card and auto loans, in particular, have been experiencing accelerating delinquencies, but the very gradual increase in aggregated Net Charge-Offs has allayed any economist concerns about the state of the US consumer. But, a modest scratch below the surface, and a surprising discovery emerges.
While the larger U.S. banks that dominate credit card issuance have focused on prime and super prime consumers post the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), and have enjoyed a prolonged period of low charge off rates concurrent with the Fed’s almost decade long ZIRP (Read more detailed breakdown here.), the charge-off rates among the nation’s smaller banks, those outside the Top 100, have seen the charge-off rates soar.
And now, based on this month’s consumer credit data from the Fed, which saw an unexpectedly small increase in consumer credit of only $11.5BN, below the $15.2BN expected, and down from $13.6BN last month, it appears this reality is starting to hit home, as March consumer credit rose at the slowest pace since September…
… as outstanding credit card borrowings unexpectedly declined by $2.6BN, the most since the end of 2012, after a drop of just over $500MM last month.
As the chart below shows, the two consecutive months of credit card deleveraging means that the until recently relentless increase in revolving credit appears to have again hit a plateau. The last time this happened? August of 2008 (the sharp move in December 2015 was simply a data revision).
While it is painfully obvious, as Bloomberg adds, “the 0.9 percent annualized decline in first-quarter credit-card debt outstanding shows a waning appetite for borrowing after a 10.3 percent surge in the final three months of 2017.”
To summarize the results:
Total credit increased $11.6b (less than the expected $15.2b).
Revolving credit outstanding dropped $2.6b MoM, after a $515m decrease in Feb.
Non-revolving debt outstanding climbed $14.2b for a second month
The results are consistent with first-quarter data that showed household spending cooled following a strong run of gains. All that dis-saving (and credit-card-debt engorgement) managed to spike consumer confidence to near record highs…
It also confirms that with the US personal savings level once again near all time lows, and with households no deleveraging on their credit cards, the second quarter is about to get very ugly for the economy which is 70% driven by consumer spending.
There was a silver lining: non-revolving credit – auto and student loans – rose by a solid $14.2BN as household continued to just charge their assorted college-linked purchases not to mention car purchases. In fact, as the latest Fed data shows, both auto and student loans hit a new all time high of $1.52 trillion and $1.118 trillion, respectively.
And so, Americans may be going broke, but at least they’ll have a college degree and a car – both bought on credit – to show for it.
With the bulk of earnings season now behind us, one chart summarizes best the unprecedented divergence in surging EPS actual vs consensus:
Some more details on what has transpired so far, courtesy of BofA: as of Week 4, 409 companies, or 87% of S&P 500 1Q earnings, have reported. The remainder (chiefly Retailers/Tech) will be spread out over the rest of May/June, after which we’ll issue a final update.
Bottom-up EPS surged to $37.98 from $37.53 last week (led by Energy), now 5% above analysts’ expectations at the start of earnings season (biggest beat in three years) and 4% above our forecast.
In case it’s not clear, it has been an avalanche: all 11 sectors have seen earnings beat, led by Tech, Financials and Industrials, with 72% of companies beating on EPS, 73% on sales and 57% on both – the highest proportion of EPS and sales beats in BofA data history (since 2000). Digging deeper, tech saw the most beats on both (87%, a record high), followed by Health Care and Industrials (71% and 63%, both near-record highs).
With Q1 2018 earnings growth tracking +23% YoY – the best in 7+ years – BofA contends that this is more than just lower taxes, as the beat in pre-tax profits is tracking 3%, and growth in pre-tax profits is a healthy +13% YoY (suggesting ~10ppt of earnings growth is from tax reform). And sales are tracking +8% YoY (+9% ex-Financials), more than 1% above analysts’ expectations at the start of April (and nearly 4x the size of the average sales surprise in our data history since late 2011.
However, these amazing stats have not been sufficient, and the S&P continues to be flat for the year despite the best earnings season in 7 years. One reason, perhaps the biggest one as we discussed last night, is that according to various indicators, this is as good as it will get for earnings, and whether due to margin pressures, or contracting P/E multiples, it’s all downhill from here.
That also explains a striking observation: the market has not rewarded earnings beats this quarter, while severely punishing earnings misses.
As BofA summarizes, EPS and sales beats outperformed by 0.5ppt the next day, the third time in the last four quarters we’ve seen a sub-1ppt reward for beats, a late-cycle phenomenon. Meanwhile, misses have been slammed, lagging the market by 1.5ppt.
Putting this divergence in context, since 2000, beats/misses have outperformed/ underperformed by 1.6ppt/2.4ppt the next day.
And while most sectors have seen a muted reward for beats, beats have outperformed most within Telecom and Real Estate. Conversely, misses have been punished the most in Staples, Telecom and Health Care.
To summarize: yet another confirmation it is so late in the cycle, the market itself no longer believes these fantastic earnings can continue for more than one or two quarters at the most…
Lt. Colonel Oliver North has been tapped to be the next president of the National Rifle Association (NRA).
A Monday press release announced that the NRA’s board of directors had begun the process of naming North to lead the head the organization, following current president Pete Brownell’s decision to resign.
“Oliver North is a legendary warrior for American freedom, a gifted communicator and skilled leader,” said Wayne LaPierre, the NRA’s long-serving CEO of the NRA, in the press release. “In these times, I can think of no one better suited to serve as our President.”
According to the press release, the decision to elevate North—already an NRA board member—to the presidency came at the suggestion of LaPierre, who reportedly said the organization needed a “warrior” in the position.
North, a former Reagan administration official and current Fox News host, is best known for his central role in the Iran-contra scandal. The former Marine helped establish a covert network used to sell weapons to the Islamic Republic of Iran in the 1980s, the proceeds of which were then illegally funneled to the contra rebels fighting the left-wing government of Nicaragua.
North admitted to lying to Congress about his role in the affair. He was convicted in 1989 of three felonies, including receiving illegal bribes, destroying government documents, and obstructing a congressional investigation. His convictions were overturned in 1991.
Following the Waco stand-off of 1993, where 82 members of the Branch Davidian sect were killed following a failed attempt to serve a warrant on the group’s leader, David Koresh, on weapons charges, North offered a full-throated defense of the feds, criticizing “arm-chair critics…second-guessing law enforcement officers on the scene.”
North also ran an unsuccessful campaign for an open U.S. Senate seat in Virginia in 1994. During the campaign, North had his concealed carry license revoked by a state judge who determined he was “not of good character.”
Bowell’s resignation and North’s appointment came as a something of a surprise, all apparently happening this morning.
Although North is retiring from Fox News immediately—where he hosts the show War Stories—he will not assume the NRA presidency right away.
President Donald Trump is committed to regime change in Iran, said Rudy Giuliani, Trump’s newest controversial attorney (although perhaps not for long) and longtime informal advisor.
Speaking to reporters after a Saturday keynote to the Iran Freedom Convention for Democracy and Human Rights in Washington, Giuliani said “We got a president who is tough, who does not listen to the people who are naysayers, and a president who is as committed to regime change as we are.” In other words, pulling out of the Iran nuclear deal is now being conflated with regime change in Iran.
Giuliani says he’s been a supporter of regime change for “ten years,” that it’s the only way to peace in the middle east, and that it’s “more important than an Israeli-Palestinian deal.”
Rudy Giuliani advocates regime change in Iran: “I think it’s the only way to peace in the Middle East. It’s more important than an Israeli-Palestinian deal” https://t.co/Fpf6OgOlaC
The former Mayor of New York City, who was at one point under consideration for Secretary of State, pretended at one point in his speech that his notes were the Iran nuclear deal – ripping them up and spitting on them.
“With Secretary of State Pompeo now on his right hand and his national security advisor John Bolton… on his left side, what do you think is going to happen to that agreement, that nuclear agreement?” Giuliani asked.
Ok, so nuclear agreement has got to go – but let’s check with December, 2016 Trump to see what he thinks about regime change:
And with just five days to go before Donald Trump withdraws from the Iran nuclear deal on May 12, Iranian President Hassan Rouhani warned the US of “historic regret” if it pulls out from the nuclear deal.
“If the United States leaves the JCPOA, you will soon see the historic regret which the move will bring about for Washington”, Rouhani told a crowd in Sabzevar in northeast Iran.
Under the deal, technically known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), signed in 2015, the U.S. and other world powers agreed to lift some of the economic sanctions imposed on Iran in return for the latter agreeing to rein in its nuclear program. The biggest, impact, however was lowering the price of crude, as the global market suddenly had access to nearly 1 million in Iranian oil output; and one of the key reasons why the price of oil has spiked in recent weeks is the market’s growing confidence that Trump will dump the JCPOA.
Whereas Trump has called the pact “one of the worst negotiated agreements” he has ever seen, and has repeatedly threatened to pull the U.S. out of the deal and has to make a decision on whether he will do so by the Saturday deadline, Rouhani said Iran has been “loyal to its promises”.
On Saturday, we reported that former Secretary of State John Kerry and a group of his former State Department officials have been acting as unofficial diplomats in recent weeks – sneaking around the world trying to salvage the Iran deal he presided over ahead of its renewal deadline, the Boston Globe reported Friday.
In response, Trump tweeted on Monday “The United States does not need John Kerry’s possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran Deal. He was the one that created this MESS in the first place!”
The United States does not need John Kerry’s possibly illegal Shadow Diplomacy on the very badly negotiated Iran Deal. He was the one that created this MESS in the first place!
Sylvia Bloom worked for 67 years as a secretary at the law firm Cleary Gottlieb Steen & Hamilton, and accumulated a personal fortune of more than $9 million.
Rudy Giuliani’s headline-generating 
The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) thinks people in the U.S. who consume tacos and tequila on Cinco de Mayo are enganging in “textbook examples of cultural appropriation.”
Lt. Colonel Oliver North has been tapped to be the next president of the National Rifle Association (NRA).