Tag: finance

Authored by John Whitehead via The Rutherford Institute,

“A patriot must always be ready to defend his country against his government.”

 – Edward Abbey, American author

Life in a post-9/11 America increasingly feels like an endless free fall down a rabbit hole into a terrifying, dystopian alternative reality in which the citizenry has no rights, the government is no friend to freedom, and everything we ever knew and loved about the values and principles that once made this country great has been turned on its head.

We’ve walked a strange and harrowing road since September 11, 2001, littered with the debris of our once-vaunted liberties.

We have gone from a nation that took great pride in being a model of a representative democracy to being a model of how to persuade the citizenry to march in lockstep with a police state.

Osama Bin Laden right warned that “freedom and human rights in America are doomed. The U.S. government will lead the American people in — and the West in general — into an unbearable hell and a choking life.”

These past 17 years have proven Bin Laden right in his prediction.

What began with the passage of the USA Patriot Act in October 2001 has snowballed into the eradication of every vital safeguard against government overreach, corruption and abuse. 

The citizenry’s unquestioning acquiescence to anything the government wants to do in exchange for the phantom promise of safety and security has resulted in a society where the nation is being locked down into a militarized, mechanized, hypersensitive, legalistic, self-righteous, goose-stepping antithesis of every principle upon which this nation was founded.

This is not freedom.

This is a jail cell.

Set against a backdrop of government surveillance, militarized police, SWAT team raids, asset forfeiture, eminent domain, overcriminalization, armed surveillance drones, whole body scanners, stop and frisk searches, roving VIPR raids and the like—all of which have been sanctioned by Congress, the White House and the courts—our constitutional freedoms have been steadily chipped away at, undermined, eroded, whittled down, and generally discarded.

Our losses are mounting with every passing day.

Free speech, the right to protest, the right to challenge government wrongdoing, due process, a presumption of innocence, the right to self-defense, accountability and transparency in government, privacy, press, sovereignty, assembly, bodily integrity, representative government: all of these and more have become casualties in the government’s war on the American people, a war that has grown more pronounced since 9/11.

Since the towers fell on 9/11, the American people have been treated like enemy combatants, to be spied on, tracked, scanned, frisked, searched, subjected to all manner of intrusions, intimidated, invaded, raided, manhandled, censored, silenced, shot at, locked up, and denied due process.

In allowing ourselves to be distracted by terror drills, foreign wars, color-coded warnings, underwear bombers and other carefully constructed exercises in propaganda, sleight of hand, and obfuscation, we failed to recognize that the true enemy to freedom was lurking among us all the while.

The U.S. government now poses a greater threat to our freedoms than any terrorist, extremist or foreign entity ever could.

While nearly 3,000 people died in the 9/11 attacks, the U.S. government and its agents have easily killed at least ten times that number of civilians in the U.S. and abroad since 9/11 through its police shootings, SWAT team raids, drone strikes and profit-driven efforts to police the globe, sell weapons to foreign nations, and foment civil unrest in order to keep the military industrial complex gainfully employed.

No, the U.S. government is not the citizenry’s friend, nor is it our protector, and life in the United States of America post-9/11 is no picnic.

In the interest of full disclosure, here are some of the things I don’t like about life in a post-9/11 America:

I don’t like being treated as if my only value to the government is as a source of labor and funds.

I don’t like being viewed as a consumer and bits of data.

I don’t like being spied on and treated as if I have no right to privacy, especially in my own home.

I don’t like government officials who lobby for my vote only to ignore me once elected. I don’t like having representatives incapable of andunwilling to represent me. I don’t like taxation without representation.

I don’t like being bullied by government bureaucrats, vigilantes masquerading as cops, or faceless technicians.

I don’t like being railroaded into financing government programs whose only purpose is to increase the power and wealth of the corporate elite.

I don’t like being forced to pay for wars abroad that serve no other purpose except to expand the reach of the military industrial complex.

I don’t like being subjected to scans, searches, pat downs and other indignities by the TSA.

I don’t like VIPR raids on so-called “soft” targets like shopping malls and bus depots by black-clad, Darth Vader look-alikes.

I don’t like fusion centers, which represent the combined surveillance efforts of federal, state and local law enforcement.

I don’t like being treated like an underling by government agents who are supposed to be working for me. I don’t like being threatened, intimidated, bribed, beaten and robbed by individuals entrusted with safeguarding my rights. I don’t like being silenced, censored and marginalized. I don’t like my movements being tracked, my conversations being recorded, and my transactions being catalogued.

I don’t like free speech zones, roving bubble zones and trespass laws that restrict Americans’ First Amendment rights.

I don’t like laws that criminalize Americans for otherwise lawful activities such as holding religious studies at home, growing vegetables in their yard, and collecting rainwater.

I don’t like the NDAA, which allows the president and the military to arrest and detain American citizens indefinitely.

I don’t like the Patriot Act, which opened the door to all manner of government abuses and intrusions on our privacy.

I don’t like the Department of Homeland Security (DHS), which has become America’s standing army in direct opposition to the dire warnings of those who founded our country. 

I don’t like military weapons such as armored vehicles, sound cannons and the like being used against the American citizens.

I don’t like government agencies such as the DHS, Post Office, Social Security Administration and Wildlife stocking up on hollow-point bullets. And I definitely don’t like the implications of detention centers being built that could house American citizens. 

I don’t like the fact that police departments across the country “have received tens of thousands of machine guns; nearly 200,000 ammunition magazines; thousands of pieces of camouflage and night-vision equipment; and hundreds of silencers, armored cars and aircraft.”

I don’t like America’s infatuation with locking people up for life for non-violent crimes. There are thousands of people in America serving life sentences for non-violent crimes, including theft of a jacket, siphoning gasoline from a truck, stealing tools, and attempting to cash a stolen check.

I don’t like paying roughly $29,000 a year per inmate just to keep these nonviolent offenders in prison.

I don’t like having my hard-earned taxpayer dollars used against me.

I don’t like the partisan nature of politics today, which has so polarized Americans that they are incapable of standing in unity against the government’s abuses.

I don’t like the entertainment drivel that passes for news coverage today.

I don’t like the fact that those within a 25-mile range of the border are getting a front row seat to the American police state, as Border Patrol agents are now allowed to search people’s homes, intimately probe their bodies, and rifle through their belongings, all without a warrant.

I don’t like public schools that treat students as if they were prison inmates. I don’t like zero tolerance laws that criminalize childish behavior. I don’t like a public educational system that emphasizes rote memorization and test-taking over learning, synthesizing and critical thinking.

I don’t like police precincts whose primary purpose—whether through the use of asset forfeiture laws, speed traps, or red light cameras—is making a profit at the expense of those they have sworn to protect. I don’t like militarized police and their onerous SWAT team raids.

I don’t like Department of Defense and DHS programs that transfer surplus military hardware to local and state police. I don’t like local police dressing and acting as if they were the military while viewing me as an enemy combatant.

I don’t like government programs that reward cops for raiding homes and terrorizing homeowners.

I don’t like being treated as if I have no rights.

I don’t like cash-strapped states cutting deals with private corporations to run the prisons in exchange for maintaining 90% occupancy rates for at least 20 years. I don’t like the fact that American prisons have become the source of cheap labor for Corporate America.

I don’t like answering to an imperial president who operates above the law.

I don’t like the injustice that passes for justice in the courts.

I don’t like prosecutors so hell bent on winning that they allow innocent people to suffer for crimes they didn’t commit.

I don’t like the double standards that allow government officials to break laws with immunity, while average Americans get the book thrown at them.

I don’t like cops who shoot first and ask questions later.

I don’t like police dogs being treated with more respect and afforded more rights than American citizens.

I don’t like living in a suspect society.

I don’t like Americans being assumed guilty until they prove their innocence.

I don’t like technology being used as a double-edged sword against us.

Most of all, I don’t like feeling as if there’s no hope for turning things around.

Now there are those who would suggest that if I don’t like things about this country, I should leave and go elsewhere. Certainly, there are those among my fellow citizens who are leaving for friendlier shores. 

However, I’m not giving up on this country without a fight.

I plan to keep fighting, writing, speaking up, speaking out, shouting if necessary, filing lawsuits, challenging the status quo, writing letters to the editor, holding my representatives accountable, thinking nationally but acting locally, and generally raising a ruckus anytime the government attempts to undermine the Constitution and ride roughshod over the rights of the citizenry.

Our country may be in deep trouble, but all is not yet lost.

The first step begins with you. 

1. Get educated. Know your rights. Take time to read the Constitution. Study and understand history because the tales of those who seek power and those who resist them is an age-old one. The Declaration of Independence is a testament to this struggle and the revolutionary spirit that overcame tyranny. Understand the vital issues of the day so that you can be cognizant of the threats to freedom. Stay informed about current events and legislation.

2. Get involved. Become actively involved in local community affairs, politics and legal battles. As the adage goes, “Think nationally, act locally.” America was meant to be primarily a system of local governments, which is a far cry from the colossal federal bureaucracy we have today. Yet if our freedoms are to be restored, understanding what is transpiring practically in your own backyard—in one’s home, neighborhood, school district, town council—and taking action at that local level must be the starting point. Responding to unmet local needs and reacting to injustices is what grassroots activism is all about. Getting involved in local politics is one way to bring about change.

3. Get organized. Understand your strengths and weaknesses and tap into your resources. Play to your strengths and assets. Conduct strategy sessions to develop both the methods and ways to attack the problem. Prioritize your issues and battles. Don’t limit yourself to protests and paper petitions. Think outside the box. Time is short, and resources are limited, so use your resources in the way they count the most.

4. Be creative. Be bold and imaginative, for this is guerilla warfare—not to be fought with tanks and guns but through creative methods of dissent and resistance. Creatively responding to circumstances will often be one of your few resources if you are to be an effective agent of change. Every creative effort, no matter how small, is significant.

5. Use the media. Effective use of the media is essential. Attracting media coverage not only enhances and magnifies your efforts, it is also a valuable education tool. It publicizes your message to a much wider audience. 

6. Start brushfires for freedom. Take heart that you are not alone. You come from a long, historic line of individuals who have put their beliefs and lives on the line to keep freedom alive. Engage those around you in discussions about issues of importance. Challenge them to be part of a national dialogue. As I have often said, one person at a city planning meeting with a protest sign is an irritant. Three individuals at the same meeting with the same sign are a movement. You will find that those in power fear and respect numbers. This is not to say that lone crusaders are not important. There are times when you will find yourself totally alone in the stand you take. However, there is power in numbers. Politicians understand this. So get out there and start drumming up support for your cause.

7. Take action. Be prepared to mobilize at a moment’s notice. It doesn’t matter who you are, where you’re located or what resources are at your disposal. What matters is that you recognize the problems and care enough to do something about them. Whether you’re 8, 28 or 88 years old, you have something unique to contribute. You don’t have to be a hero. You just have to show up and be ready to take action.

8. Be forward-looking. Beware of being so “in the moment” that you neglect to think of the bigger picture. Develop a vision for the future. Is what you’re hoping to achieve enduring? Have you developed a plan to continue to educate others about the problems you’re hoping to tackle and ensure that others will continue in your stead? Take the time to impart the value of freedom to younger generations, for they will be at the vanguard of these battles someday.

9. Develop fortitude. What is it that led to the successful protest movements of the past headed by people such as Martin Luther King Jr.? Resolve. King refused to be put off. And when the time came, he was willing to take to the streets for what he believed and even go to jail if necessary. King risked having an arrest record by committing acts of nonviolent civil disobedience. A caveat is appropriate here. Before resorting to nonviolent civil disobedience, all reasonable alternatives should be exhausted. If there is an opportunity to alter the course of events through normal channels (for example, negotiation, legal action or legislation), they should be attempted.

10. Be selfless and sacrificial. Freedom is not free—there is always a price to be paid and a sacrifice to be made. If any movement is to be truly successful, it must be manned by individuals who seek a greater good and do not waver from their purposes. It will take boldness, courage and great sacrifice. Rarely will fame, power and riches be found at the end of this particular road. Those who travel it inevitably find the way marked by hardship, persecution and strife. Yet there is no easy way. 

11. Remain optimistic and keep hope alive.  Although our rights are increasingly coming under attack, we still have certain freedoms. As I make clear in my book Battlefield America: The War on the American People, we can still fight back. We have the right to dissent, to protest and even to vigorously criticize or oppose the government and its laws. The Constitution guarantees us these rights. In a country such as the United States, a citizen armed with a knowledge of the Bill of Rights and the fortitude to stand and fight can still be a force to be reckoned with, but it will mean speaking out when others are silent.

Practice persistence, along with perseverance, and the possibilities are endless. You can be the voice of reason. Use your voice to encourage others. Much can be accomplished by merely speaking out. Oftentimes, all it takes is one lone voice to get things started. So if you really care and you’re serious and want to help change things for the better, dust off your First Amendment tools and take a stand – even if it means being ostracized by those who would otherwise support you.

It won’t be easy, but take heart. And don’t give up.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2NCB5mX Tyler Durden

Apparently somebody wasn’t using their head.

A cryogenics firm based in Scottsdale, Ariz. is in hot water after it mistakenly cremated the body of a renowned scientist, preserving only his head, against the wishes of the scientists’ surviving family. Now, the man’s son is hoping to sue the company for $1 million due to the “emotional distress” he suffered as a result of the mistake made by the. The firm, known as the Alcor Life Extension Foundation, has been freezing clients’ heads and bodies since 1982, according to the Daily Telegraph.

The company is facing a $1 million lawsuit after Kurt Pilgeram said he was sent a package from Alcor “which purportedly contained his father’s cremated remains, except allegedly for his father’s head,” which was being preserved in one of the company’ coolers.

Dr. Max More, founder of Alcor (courtesy of the Daily Telegraph)

According to legal documents, Pilgeram was “shocked, horrified and extremely distressed” when he learned the fate of his father’s body (we imagine he also wanted a refund for $120,000, the difference between the $200,000 the company charges for full-body preservation and the preservation of just a head)

The younger Pilgeram said having his full body preserved was extremely important to his late father. Meanwhile, Alcor, which is run by Dr. Max More, a British-born scientist, was obligated under an agreement to preserve all of his father’s remains “no matter how damaged” and that the company violated this agreement when it cremated him.

Dr. Laurence Pilgeram devoted much of his career to researching the aging process. He died back in 2015 at the age of 90 of what’s believed to have been a heart attack.

The Pilgeram family is now suing Alcor for $1 million.

“Mr. Pilgeram claims his father would never have paid for the service if he knew his entire body wasn’t going to be preserved,” the lawsuit states.

Alcor is presently responsible for preserving the remains of 159 individuals.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2NEIp1q Tyler Durden

Authored by Gordon Chang via The Gatestone Institute,

• China’s “social credit” system, which will assign every person a constantly updated score based on observed behaviors, is designed to control conduct by giving the ruling Communist Party the ability to administer punishments and hand out rewards. The former deputy director of the State Council’s development research center says the system should be administered so that “discredited people become bankrupt”.

• Officials prevented Liu Hu, a journalist, from taking a flight because he had a low score. According to the Communist Party-controlled Global Times, as of the end of April 2018, authorities had blocked individuals from taking 11.14 million flights and 4.25 million high-speed rail trips.

• Chinese officials are using the lists for determining more than just access to planes and trains. “I can’t buy property. My child can’t go to a private school,” Liu said. “You feel you’re being controlled by the list all the time.”

• Chinese leaders have long been obsessed with what Jiang Zemin in 1995 called “informatization, automation, and intelligentization,” and they are only getting started Given the capabilities they are amassing, they could, the argument goes, make defiance virtually impossible. The question now is whether the increasingly defiant Chinese people will accept President Xi’s all-encompassing vision.

By 2020, Chinese officials plan to have about 626 million surveillance cameras operating throughout the country. Those cameras will, among other things, feed information into a national “social credit system.”

That system, when it is in place in perhaps two years, will assign to every person in China a constantly updated score based on observed behaviors. For example, an instance of jaywalking, caught by one of those cameras, will result in a reduction in score.

Although officials might hope to reduce jaywalking, they seem to have far more sinister ambitions, such as ensuring conformity to Communist Party political demands. In short, the government looks as if it is determined to create what the Economist called “the world’s first digital totalitarian state.”

China’s President Xi Jinping is not merely an authoritarian leader. He evidently believes the Party must have absolute control over society and he must have absolute control over the Party. He is taking China back to totalitarianism as he seeks Mao-like control over all aspects of society. (Photo by Lintao Zhang/Getty Images)

That social credit system, once perfected, will surely be extended to foreign companies and individuals.

At present, there are more than a dozen national blacklists, and about three dozen various localities have been operating experimental social credit scoring systems. Some of those systems have failed miserably. Others, such as the one in Rongcheng in Shandong province, have been considered successful.

In the Rongcheng system, each resident starts with 1,000 points, and, based upon their changing score, are ranked from A+++ to D. The system has affected behavior: incredibly for China, drivers stop for pedestrians at crosswalks.

Drivers stop at crosswalks because residents in that city have, as Foreign Policyreported, “embraced” the social credit system. Some like the system so much that they have set up micro social credit systems in schools, hospitals, and neighborhoods. Social credit systems obviously answer a need for what people in other societies take for granted.

Yet, can what works on a city level be extended across China? As technology advances and data banks are added, the small experimental programs and the national lists will eventually be merged into one countrywide system. The government has already begun to roll out its “Integrated Joint Operations Platform,” which aggregates data from various sources such as cameras, identification checks, and “wifi sniffers.”

So, what will the end product look like? “It will not be a unified platform where one can type in his or her ID and get a single three-digit score that will decide their lives,” Foreign Policy says.

Despite the magazine’s assurances, this type of system is precisely what Chinese officials say they want. After all, they tell us the purpose of the initiative is to “allow the trustworthy to roam everywhere under heaven while making it hard for the discredited to take a single step.”

That description is not an exaggeration. Officials prevented Liu Hu, a journalist, from taking a flight because he had a low score. The Global Times, a tabloid that belongs to the Communist Party-owned People’s Daily, reported that, as of the end of April 2018, authorities had blocked individuals from taking 11.14 million flights and 4.25 million high-speed rail trips.

Chinese officials, however, are using the lists for determining more than just access to planes and trains. “I can’t buy property. My child can’t go to a private school,” Liu said. “You feel you’re being controlled by the list all the time.”

The system is designed to control conduct by giving the ruling Communist Party the ability to administer punishments and hand out rewards. And the system could end up being unforgiving. Hou Yunchun, a former deputy director of the State Council’s development research center, said at a forum in Beijing in May that the social credit system should be administered so that “discredited people become bankrupt”.

“If we don’t increase the cost of being discredited, we are encouraging discredited people to keep at it,” Hou said. “That destroys the whole standard.”

Not every official has such a vindictive attitude, but it appears that all share the assumption, as the dovish Zhi Zhenfeng of the Chinese Academy of Social Sciences said, that “discredited people deserve legal consequences.”

President Xi Jinping, the final and perhaps only arbiter in China, has made it clear how he feels about the availability of second chances. “Once untrustworthy, always restricted,” the Chinese ruler says.

What happens, then, to a country where only the compliant are allowed to board a plane or be rewarded with discounts for government services? No one quite knows because never before has a government had the ability to constantly assess everyone and then enforce its will. The People’s Republic has been more meticulous in keeping files and ranking residents than previous Chinese governments, and computing power and artificial intelligence are now giving China’s officials extraordinary capabilities.

Beijing is almost certain to extend the social credit system, which has roots in attempts to control domestic enterprises, to foreign companies. Let us remember that Chinese leaders this year have taken on the world’s travel industry by forcing hotel chains and airlines to show Taiwan as part of the People’s Republic of China, so they have demonstrated determination to intimidate and punish. Once the social credit system is up and running, it would be a small step to include non-Chinese into that system, extending Xi’s tech-fueled totalitarianism to the entire world.

The dominant narrative in the world’s liberal democracies is that tech favors totalitarianism. It is certainly true that, unrestrained by privacy concerns, hardline regimes are better able to collect, analyze, and use data, which could provide a decisive edge in applying artificial intelligence A democratic government may be able to compile a no-fly list, but none could ever come close to implementing Xi Jinping’s vision of a social credit system.

Chinese leaders have long been obsessed with what then-President Jiang Zemin in 1995 called “informatization, automation, and intelligentization,” and they are only getting started. Given the capabilities they are amassing, they could, the argument goes, make defiance virtually impossible.

Technology might even make liberal democracy and free-markets “obsolete” writesYuval Noah Harari of the Hebrew University of Jerusalem in the Atlantic. “The main handicap of authoritarian regimes in the 20th century — the desire to concentrate all information and power in one place — may become their decisive advantage in the 21st century,” he writes.

There is no question that technology empowers China’s one-party state to repress people effectively. Exhibit A for this proposition is, of course, the country’s social credit system.

Yet China’s communists will probably overreach. The country’s experience so far with social credit systems suggests that officials are their own worst enemies. An early experiment to build such a system in Suining county in Jiangsu province was a failure:

“Both residents and state media blasted it for its seemingly unfair and arbitrary criteria, with one state-run newspaper comparing the system to the ‘good citizen’ certificates issued by Japan during its wartime occupation of China.”

The Rongcheng system has been more successful because its scope has been relatively modest.

Xi Jinping will not be as restrained as Rongcheng’s officials. He evidently believes the Party must have absolute control over society and he must have absolute control over the Party. It is simply inconceivable that he will not include in the national social credit system, when it is stitched together, political criteria. Already Chinese officials are trying to use artificial intelligence to predict anti-Party behavior.

Xi Jinping is not merely an authoritarian leader, as it is often said. He is taking China back to totalitarianism as he seeks Mao-like control over all aspects of society.

The question now is whether the increasingly defiant Chinese people will accept Xi’s all-encompassing vision. In recent months, many have taken to the streets: truck drivers striking over costs and fees, army veterans marching for pensions, investors blocking government offices to get money back from fraudsters, Muslims surrounding mosques to stop demolition, and parents protesting the scourge of adulterated vaccines, among others. Chinese leaders obviously think their social credit system will stop these and other expressions of discontent.

Let us hope that China’s people are not in fact discouraged. Given the breadth of the Communist Party’s ambitions, everyone, Chinese or not, has a stake in seeing that Beijing’s digital totalitarianism fails.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2NGGrh0 Tyler Durden

As Whole Foods workers push back against the crushing demands of their Amazonian overlords, stories of more labor abuses perpetuated by the e-commerce giant – which has developed a reputation for ruthless efficiency – are coming to light.

The latest horror story was published on Tuesday by Business Insider, and purports to tell the stories of drivers for Amazon delivery subcontractors who complain about unsafe working conditions and pressure to deliver packages on time at all costs – even if it means speeding, peeing in bottles or delaying critical medical care.

In interviews over the course of eight months, drivers described a variety of alleged abuses, including lack of overtime pay, missing wages, intimidation, and favoritism. Drivers also described a physically demanding work environment in which, under strict time constraints, they felt pressured to drive at dangerously high speeds, blow stop signs, and skip meal and bathroom breaks.

Many of their accounts were supported by text messages, photographs, internal emails, legal filings, and peers.

BI reportedly spoke with 31 current or former drivers for its subcontracted “Amazon Flex” delivery service. These drivers have become a crucial part of its push to circumvent FedEx and UPS, and some of the stories that the organization managed to corroborate wold be unacceptable anywhere else.

The BI story began with one worker’s story about being told by their supervisor to drop off their packages before heading to the hospital after slicing his hand to the bone.

Zachariah Vargas was six hours into his shift delivering packages for Amazon.

He was about to drop off a package when he accidentally slammed the door of his truck on his hand. The door clicked shut, trapping his middle and ring fingers.

Once he freed his fingers, the blood began to pour. Both of Vargas’ arms started to shake involuntarily. The lacerations were deep. Vargas thought he glimpsed bone when he wiped away the blood.

Panicked, Vargas called his dispatch supervisor, who was working at a nearby Amazon facility.

He said he received no sympathy.

“The first thing they asked was, ‘How many packages do you have left?'” he told Business Insider.

When the employee pushed back, his supervisor, who operated out of an Amazon facility using Amazon equipment, even though they technically functioned as a subcontractor, gestured to an Amazon floor employee and issued a chilling warning.

The same manager ordered Vargas to unload his truck and pointed toward an Amazon official at the warehouse and told him: “Amazon is watching you. They don’t like when undelivered packages come back.”

But while these employees suffer abuses and indignities meted out by their mercenary bosses, Amazon is reveling in its “cost-effective” employment structure whereby it can utilize employee labor without taking responsibility for the employees.

For Amazon, paying third-party companies to deliver packages is a cost-effective alternative to providing full employment. And the speed of two-day shipping is great for consumers. But delivering that many packages isn’t easy, and the job is riddled with problems, according to interviews with 31 current or recently employed Amazon-affiliated delivery workers with experience across 14 third-party companies spanning 13 cities.

Given the company’s reputation for treating its workers like expendable meat puppets, it’s hardly a surprise that Sen. Bernie Sanders on Wednesday introduced the Stop Bad Employers by Zeroing Out Subsidies (Stop BEZOS) Act. The bill, which was named to implicate Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos, would tax corporations with at least 500 employees for the value of public assistance those workers receive.

* * *

But while Amazon contractors struggle to make ends meet, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos and the rest of the company’s board are heading to Washington for a series of meetings, dinners and even a widely hyped speaking engagement that have kick-started rumors that Washington DC will be the location of Amazon’s HQ2. The company, which launched the search a year ago, has reportedly been kicking the tires of different locations in the DC metro area, including towns in Maryland and Virginia, according to the Washington Post. 

Amazon has booked the Renwick Gallery for a 40-person dinner on Tuesday, though neither the museum or Amazon would offer any details about the event. On Thursday, Bezos is set to give a talk at the Economic Club of Washington that is expected to be its most popular event since Warren Buffett spoke there in 2012. Virginia Gov. Ralph Northam, Maryland Gov. Larry Hogan and D.C. Mayor Muriel E. Bowser are all expected to attend. Bezos will also deliver the keynote address at an Air Force conference at National Harbor on Sept. 19, which WaPo suggested could be tied to Amazon Web Services’ pursuit of a massive contract with the Pentagon that could be worth $10 billion over 10 years.

And despite the recent FAANG pullback, Amazon shares continue to hover just below $2,000 a share, leaving Bezos, the world’s wealthiest man, with a fortune of more than $150 billion.

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Unanimous expectations for tomorrow’s ECB policy decision – due at 7:45AM ET with a press conference at 8:30AM ET – is for the central bank to leave its three key rates and tapering schedule unchanged, while macroeconomic projections are set to see a minor downgrade to growth forecasts. During the presser, Draghi is set to be grilled on trade protectionism, concerns surrounding Italy and the Bank’s reinvestment policy.

Below is a full preview of what to expect tomorrow, courtesy of RanSquawk.

BACKGROUND

PREVIOUS MEETING: The July meeting saw little in the way of fireworks after the Bank reiterated their view that they expect key rates to remain at present levels at least through the Summer of 2019, and as long as necessary to ensure the continued sustained convergence of inflation. During the accompanying press conference, Draghi gave little away and pushed back on questions trying to get him to pin down an exact timeframe for the next rate move by the ECB. Furthermore, Draghi stated that uncertainties relating to the trade environment remain prominent, but the Euro area economy is solid and broad-based.

ECB MINUTES: The minutes from the meeting were equally uninspiring and provided the market with little in the way of traction with the account highlighting that the threat of protectionism and prominent trade tensions could weigh on confidence. Furthermore, policymakers were unanimous in maintaining the policy stance and were satisfied that the June decisions are well understood.

SOURCE REPORTS: The only noteworthy sources since the previous meeting came this week with people familiar with the matter suggesting that the ECB will marginally downgrade growth forecasts and see downside risks to growth due to weaker external demand; inflation outlook set to be unchanged.

ECB RHETORIC: Commentary from the Bank has also been quiet over the summer period with little in the way of market moving rhetoric. Some have placed focus on the recent comms from ECB’s Rehn who some view as a potential successor to Draghi next year, with the central banker recently suggesting that markets are correctly interpreting the ECB’s rate guidance. Elsewhere, the new(ish) VP at the Bank, de Guindos, stated that economic growth in the Euro area remains solid and broad-based whilst noting that risks surrounding the growth outlook are balanced, but uncertainties remain; something which appears to be in-fitting with the central narrative on the governing council. Finally, Nowotny has continued to stick to his hawkish stance by recommending that the ECB should focus on getting the deposit rate out of negative territory and is in favour of a faster pace of policy normalisation.

DATA: In terms of developments since the previous meeting, Q2 Q/Q GDP printed at 0.4% (ECB Exp. 0.5%) with Y/Y growth slowing to 2.2% vs. 2.5% seen in Q1. On the inflation front, July headline Y/Y CPI rose to 2.1% (highest since Dec 2012) from the 2.0% seen in June, whilst core CPI rose to 1.1% in July (highest since Sep 2017) but remains subdued overall, according to GS. Elsewhere, for soft data, UBS highlights that “the July and August PMIs indicate an unchanged pace of growth, at 0.4% Q/Q; this would imply a Y/Y rate of 1.8%. In terms of the FX rate, GS states that the EUR has risen around 1% on a TWI-basis. Finally, encouraging signs have been seen on the wage front with Q2 wage growth picking up by 2.2%.

CURRENT ECB FORWARD GUIDANCE (INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT)

RATES: We continue to expect them to remain at their present levels at least through the summer of 2019, and in any case for as long as necessary to ensure the continued sustained convergence of inflation to levels that are below, but close to, 2% over the medium term. (Jul 26th)

ASSET PURCHASES: We anticipate that, after September 2018, subject to incoming data confirming our medium-term inflation outlook, we will reduce the monthly pace of the net asset purchases to €15 billion until the end of December 2018 and then end net purchases. We intend to reinvest the principal payments from maturing securities purchased under the APP for an extended period of time after the end of our net asset purchases, and in any case for as long as necessary to maintain favourable liquidity conditions and an ample degree of monetary accommodation. (Jul 26th)

GROWTH/TRADE: The risks surrounding the euro area growth outlook can still be assessed as broadly balanced. Uncertainties related to global factors, notably the threat of protectionism, remain prominent. Moreover, the risk of persistent heightened financial market volatility continues to warrant monitoring. (Jul 26th)

INFLATION: The underlying strength of the economy confirms our confidence that the sustained convergence of inflation to our aim will continue in the period ahead and will be maintained even after a gradual winding-down of our net asset purchases. Nevertheless, significant monetary policy stimulus is still needed to support the further build-up of domestic price pressures and headline inflation developments over the medium term. (Jul 26th)

POTENTIAL ADJUSTMENTS TO ECB FORWARD GUIDANCE (INTRODUCTORY STATEMENT)

RATES: No changes expected given that the guidance was altered at the June meeting and there has been little in the way to alter their expectations for rate lift-off, particularly given that the forecast is towards the back-end of next year. Changes on this front are not expected until nearer the time of the first rate hike. Interestingly, SocGen have floated the idea of a potential Fed-style dot-plot but there has been little sign thus far of such a policy being implemented.

ASSET PURCHASES: Similar to rate guidance, given that changes were made on this front at the June meeting and there has been little reason for the ECB to make adjustments on curtailing bond purchases, this part of the statement is expected to remain the same. At this stage, only a major imminent economic crisis could deter the ECB from carrying on with their planned unwind.

GROWTH/TRADE: As stated above, this week’s ECB source reports suggested the Bank sees downside risks to growth due to weaker external demand. That said, a complete overhaul of communication is seen as unlikely as policymakers attempt to navigate their way out of their PSPP without incident. On the trade front, SocGen suggests that “the Governing Council is not expected to have a better picture of the risk of a trade war with the US,” whilst Morgan Stanley expect the issue of trade protectionism to be continued to be described as a ‘prominent risk’.

INFLATION: RBC “don’t expect Draghi’s central message on inflation to change much from the last meeting” with the ECB President due to downplay the importance of the recent performance for headline CPI given the struggles the Bank continues to face with core inflation.

WHAT TO WATCH OUT FOR

ECB STAFF PROJECTIONS:

• ECB JUNE 2018 HICP PROJECTIONS: HICP 1.7% in 2018 (Prev. 1.4%), 1.7% in 2019 (Prev. 1.4%), 1.7% 2020 (Prev. 1.7%).
• ECB JUNE 2018 GROWTH PROJECTIONS: GDP in 2018 2.1% (Prev. 2.4%), 1.9% in 2019 (Prev. 1.9%), 1.7% in 2020 (Prev 1.7%)

Growth: Overall, growth forecasts are set to see little in the way of material changes as per source reports. UBS argues that there is a possibility for a minor downward revision to the 2018 2.1% forecast given the failure of Q2 EZ GDP (0.4% Q/Q) to show the rebound that some had been looking for (including the ECB) to 0.5%. However, UBS tempers this by highlighting that upward revisions to prior GDP prints could act as an off-setting factor. 2019 and 2020 growth forecasts are largely seen as unchanged.

Inflation: Inflation projections are set to come in unchanged from the levels predicted in June (as per sources) with RBC explaining that given the cut-off period for forecasts, the energy weakness seen in mid-August will lead to a lower oil price assumption than in June. Furthermore, RBC anticipate the ECB using a slightly firmer trade-weighted exchange rate but ultimately don’t see either of these changes being of sufficient magnitude to impact the inflation profile.

PRESS CONFERENCE:

In a similar vein to the previous press conference, this week’s offering by Draghi could once again disappoint those looking for volatility. With the ECB seemingly on auto-pilot mode ahead of the conclusion of its PSPP programme and not expected to move on rates until “at least through the summer of 2019”, the topics for discussion are relatively limited.

It is unlikely that journalists will use this meeting as an opportunity to grill the ECB President on what exactly “at least through the summer of 2019” means given his resistance to such questions last time around. Furthermore, Draghi will also likely take a similar approach this time to any questions about his tenure despite continued speculation over who his successor could be next year.

Naturally, a bulk of the focus for the press conference could centre around the updated economic projections, trade protectionism and general economic commentary (as discussed above) with no immediate policy decisions expected.

That said, one matter that could be a line of inquiry at the conference could be the Bank’s view on reinvestments. More specifically, with the PSPP winding down during Q4, markets will require greater clarity on the ECB’s approach to reinvestments with speculation fuelled by reports in July over a potential “operation twist” mechanism. UBS believes that the “ECB has some flexibility to extend the duration of monthly PSPP purchases to at least partially offset the PSPP portfolio maturity decay”. However, the Swiss-bank concedes that such an issue faces “implementation constraints due to issue(r) limits, limited flexibility on capital key allocation and fragmented liquidity across the EGB markets are likely to prevent the ECB from formalising a duration target for the PSPP portfolio”. Overall, SocGen do not see this as a pressing issue and ultimately “see no material policy impact from these decisions”.

Focus continues to reside on Italy with the newly-installed government taking an increasingly conciliatory tone with regards to their budgetary intentions. Despite this seemingly new approach from the populists, a clash between the nation and the EU seems almost inevitable. Such a clash would lead to grave concerns over Italy’s fiscal discipline with worries also heightened by fears over the nation’s intentions for debt held at the ECB. Subsequently, journalists will likely probe Draghi on his views on the matter and what mechanisms the Bank has to counter any potential Italian crisis. However, Goldman Sachs expect “Mr. Draghi to avoid making any direct market commentary related to Italy or Italian policy proposals. With regards to ECB treatment of Italian debt, we expect Mr. Draghi to be nonspecific and refer to the general rules already in place.

MARKET REACTION:

See below for ING’s ECB scenario analysis chart

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Authored by Jacob Hornberger via The Future of Freedom Foundation,

After decades of warfare, the federal drug war has become a predictable cycle.

Drug dealer, drug gang, or drug user busted. DEA agents celebrate the bust. Newspaper reporters laud the DEA. Defendants prosecuted, convicted, and sent to jail.

And then?

Then, the cycle repeats itself. Drug dealer, drug gang, or drug user busted. DEA agents celebrate the bust. Newspaper reporters laud the DEA. Defendants prosecuted, convicted, and sent to jail.

And again and again and again. Month after month. Year after year.  Decade after decade. The cycle never stops.

Normally when one wages a war, he strives for victory. But no one ever defines what victory in the drug war would look like. The feds seem satisfied to simply engage in the same cycle, over and over again, into perpetuity.

Some proponents of the drug war say that if only the federal government really cracked down in the war on drugs, the war could be won. But what they fail to recognize is that over the years, the federal government really has cracked down.

The feds adopted mandatory-minimum sentences, which took sentencing discretion out of the hands of federal judges and imposed draconian sentences for drug-law violations.

They enacted asset-forfeiture laws, which enable the DEA to seize people’s money without charging them with any offense.

They bash people’s door down in the middle of the night, violently raiding their homes, oftentimes killing the inhabitants or their pets.

They arbitrarily stop, search, abuse, and humiliate people, especially African-Americans.

In some cases, they have even resorted to planting drugs on people.

None of it has brought victory. The cycle simply continues to repeat itself, over and over again. Drug bust, followed by prosecution, conviction, and incarceration, followed by a new drug bust, followed by prosecution, conviction, and incarceration.

Drug-war proponents might say, “Jacob, the problem is that we haven’t really, really cracked down. If we got the military involved and authorized our soldiers to fight this war like a real war, where they could raid people’s homes whenever they wanted, search whoever they like, and kill anyone suspected of violating drug laws, victory would finally be ours.”

Really?

Why hasn’t drug-war victory been declared in the Philippines? According to Human Rights Watch, the Philippine government has killed more than 12,000 drug suspects in the last two years of drug warfare. No arrests. No trials. No convictions. No incarcerations. Just straight-out killing.

Yet, still no victory! In fact, they continue to wage their war on drugs with even more ferocity. What gives with that? It’s pretty much impossible to crack down more than arbitrarily killing drug-war suspects outright. Doesn’t that imply that if the DEA and the U.S. military were given the same power here in the United States, killing tens of thousands of Americans would still not lead to drug-war victory?

Consider Mexico, where the military has long played an active role in the country’s drug war. According to the Guardian,

It is 11 years since the then president Felipe Calderón launched a militarised crackdown on drug cartels deploying thousands of soldiers and promising an end to the violence and impunity. But the bloodletting continues, the rule of law remains elusive and accusations of human rights abuses by state security forces abound. All the while, Mexico continues to race past a series a grim milestones: more than 200,000 dead and an estimated 30,000 missing, more than 850 clandestine graves unearthed. This year is set to be the country’s bloodiest since the government started releasing crime figures in 1997, with about 27,000 murders in the past 12 months.

Do we really want the federal government to go down Mexico’s road by bringing in the U.S. military to try to win the drug war? Why should we expect different results here?

If the objective of the drug war is stop people from possessing or distributing drugs, that objective has obviously not been achieved despite decades of warfare. Moreover, in the process of trying to achieve that objective, the federal government has unleashed massive death, destruction, ruination of lives, exorbitant spending, and loss of liberty and privacy. In fact, when we look back on this whole thing, the only thing the drug war has really accomplished is jobs for DEA agents, federal prosecutors, federal judges, and, yes, black-market drug dealers.

I say: Let’s just legalize drugs, which would, in one fell swoop, eradicate drug gangs and drug cartels, along with the necessity for DEA agents and federal prosecutors and federal judges whose jobs depend on the drug war. It would also keep drug use and drug abuse in the private sector, including rehabilitation, where they belong.

That would be a genuine victory.

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For the second time this month, two Russian long-range bombers were intercepted by US Air Force jets after NORAD scrambled the fighters off the Alaskan coast. The dangerous incident happened – perhaps symbolically – on Sept. 11, according to military statements. 

NORAD revealed the intercept on Wednesday evening :

The U.S. military said Wednesday that two Russian nuclear-capable bombers escorted by two fighter jets flew near Alaska on Sept. 11 before being intercepted by a pair of Air Force F-22 stealth fighter jets, according to a statement by the North American Aerospace Defense Command.

The Russian formation never entered U.S. or Canadian airspace, according to the statement.

The US military statement didn’t designate a precise location, but only mentioned the formation of Russian bombers and fighter jets were intercepted “west of mainland Alaska” by the American stealth aircraft at 10 p.m. ET Tuesday.

Previously this month, on Sept. 1, a similar formation of two bombers were intercepted by American F-22’s after they reportedly entered into the Alaskan Air Defense Identification Zone south of the Aleutian Islands.

And last May, another incident was reported in NORAD official statements. The timing of the incident is interesting, given the significance of 9/11 and the terror attacks over the skies of two major American cities which resulted in NORAD grounding all civilian aviation. 

The Russian MoD released this video the day after the intercept incident near Alaska:

Dos portacohetes estratégicos Tu-95MS de las Fuerzas Aeroespaciales en el marco de las maniobras #Vostok2018 realizaron vuelos planificados sobre las aguas neutrales de los mares de Barents, de Chukotka, de Siberia Oriental y el océano Ártico https://t.co/6sdQiEaO9c pic.twitter.com/hpFgSbTZSG

— Минобороны России (@mod_russia) September 12, 2018

Tuesday’s incident also comes as Russia launched its largest military drill since 1981, called Vostok-2018, which reportedly involves some 300,000 troops and over 1,000 aircraft, as well as thousands of Chinese soldiers and a smaller Mongolian contingent. 

And perhaps even more interesting is that a day after the intercept (Wednesday) Russia’s defense ministry (MoD) released a video on Twitter featuring two Tu-95 “Bear” bombers and a pair of fighter jets taking off from an airbase in eastern Russia, precisely as the same formation NORAD says it intercepted in its Wednesday statement. 

It is entirely possible that the Russian MoD’s tweet was meant to troll NORAD and the Pentagon, and it’s also possible though not certain that the aircraft depicted in the video were the exact same ones intercepted by the US Air Force near Alaska. 

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Authored by Caitlin Johnstone via Medium.com,

In an article last month titled “Facebook announces that fake accounts are now coming not just from Russia”, fauxgressive establishment apologia firm ThinkProgress falsely reported that I have been writing for an outlet that is alleged to be part of an Iranian propaganda campaign. I repeatedly broughtthis false claim to the attention of Casey Michael, the article’s author, telling him that ten seconds of research or any attempt to contact me would have shown him that the articles published by the outlet in question were just reblogs of earlier publications from my platform, but Michael ignored the many notifications he received from myself and my Twitter followers and went on merrily interacting with other posters. As of this writing, the article remains uncorrected.

In the article, Michael documented Facebook’s heroic efforts to shut down alleged Iranian propaganda outlets, ominously warning his readers that “Russia is by no means the only foreign adversary exploiting social media’s inherent openness.” In other articles for ThinkProgress, Michael is repeatedlyseen wagging his finger at Facebook and Twitter for not doing more to censor “Russian propaganda”, and in a July article titled “Facebook says both sides share fake news, defends Infowars’ presence on its platform  –  Mark Zuckerberg has an interesting way of prioritizing ‘high quality news’” another ThinkProgress author criticized Facebook for not censoring Alex Jones. Jones was censored by Facebook the following month.

So I think it’s understandable that those of us who have been warning of the dangers of internet censorship find it a bit funny to see ThinkProgress now complaining that it has been censored by Facebook.

Congratulations to everyone who 1) held up Bill Kristol and the Weekly Standard as a responsible, serious, admirable voice; and 2) urged Facebook to become the arbiters of who could & couldn’t be heard on the internet. This is just the start of your work: https://t.co/smtbjHpsH4

— Glenn Greenwald (@ggreenwald) September 11, 2018

ThinkProgress reports that its traffic from Facebook has been slashed by eighty percent due to a “fact check” by the Weekly Standard which, through a series of moronic mental contortions, found ThinkProgress guilty of reporting fake news about Brett Kavanaugh of all things. In a twist of irony which would be delicious if it weren’t so disgusting, the Weekly Standard is one of Facebook’s authorized “fact checkers”, and happens to be the brainchild of none other than bloodthirsty psychopath and rehabilitated #Resistance hero Bill Kristol.

ThinkProgress is part of a very large and diverse branch of progressive punditry whose ultimate job is to help centrist empire loyalists feel like leftist revolutionaries, and since 2016 one of the many appalling consequences of this bizarre environment has been the embracing of Iraq-raping neoconservatives like Kristol and Max Boot by Democratic Party loyalists. In a bid to stay relevant despite having been consistently wrong about literally everything in foreign policy for the last two decades, these murderous ghouls have repackaged themselves as a woke, cuddly alternative to the Trumpian faction of the Republican Party, and have been rewarded for their efforts with regular platforms on MSNBC and the Washington Post.

So with ThinkProgress getting censored by Facebook, you really couldn’t ask for a more clear-cut case of reaping what you sow. Nevertheless, it is wrong for anyone to be deprived of political speech, even if much of their political speech consists of attempts to silence the political speech of others.

And if there is anything more gross than political speech being regulated by Silicon Valley plutocrats and a NATO psyop factory, it’s political speech being regulated by Silicon Valley plutocrats, a NATO psyop factory, and Bill Kristol. ThinkProgress should not have its audience restricted.

It’s pretty simple: Facebook has a conservative media outlet serving as a fact checker of progressive content.

Alex Jones wasn’t the hill to die on. This is. https://t.co/U5SYeKsSS3

— Benjamin Dixon🌹 (@BenjaminPDixon) September 11, 2018

All the “let me help you cheer for the establishment while pretending to oppose it” pundits who celebrated Alex Jones’ coordinated de-platforming last month are falling all over themselves to spin this new development in a way that allows them to feel as though they aren’t being proven wrong day after day after day, but of course they are. Facilitating the censorship of anyone’s speech is facilitating the censorship of your own speech in the long run, and we’re not even having to wait long to see it this time around. In a corporatist system of government, corporate censorship is state censorship; the massive new media corporations being implored to regulate which political speech gets an audience and which doesn’t have extensive ties to secretive government agencies and a vested interest in maintaining the status quo.

I do not expect ThinkProgress to remain on Facebook’s restricted list for long; the real targets of internet censorship are not partisan outlets which prop up establishment politics and help legitimize America’s two-headed one party system. But that isn’t the point. The point is that Silicon Valley plutocrats, the NATO propaganda firm Atlantic Council, and the Weekly Standard should not be determining who gets an audience in the new media environment and who doesn’t. Nothing that has anything to do with Bill Kristol should ever have any power over anyone. If our choices are between letting people think for themselves and letting the guy who’s always wrong about everything determine what shows up in people’s news feed, the choice is obviously the one which doesn’t involve placing faith in the man who helped deceive America into butchering a million Iraqis.

*  *  *

The best way to get around the internet censors and make sure you see the stuff I publish is to subscribe to the mailing list for my website, which will get you an email notification for everything I publish. My articles are entirely reader-supported, so if you enjoyed this piece please consider sharing it around, liking me on Facebook, following my antics on Twitter, checking out my podcast, throwing some money into my hat on Patreon or Paypal, or buying my bookWoke: A Field Guide for Utopia Preppers.

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It’s another classic Wall Street bait-and-switch.

Despite the obvious flaws inherent in certain structured products targeted at retail investors – flaws that would become readily apparent to unsuspecting retail investors if they only bothered to scrutinize the fine print instead of blindly trusting their financial advisors – the big wirehouses rarely miss an opportunity to seduce investors with a high advertised yields, and myriad clauses that virtually guarantee they will pay more in fees than they earn in returns.

The latest example of this was on display in the Wall Street Journal on Tuesday in a story about “auto-callable notes” tied to the FANG stocks. The notes promise a large yield, but can be “auto-called” – i.e. the note is cancelled and investors are handed back their principle (minus a generous slug of fees) – if the stocks outperform, or underperform (the characteristics of each individual offering depend on the details laid out in their covenants). These note were supposed to help mom-and-pop investors reap any rewards associated with the stocks continuing their record run, while shielding them from the inevitable denouement. Or at least that’s what their financial advisors told them.

In reality, the bonds were almost always called before the end of their (often one-year) terms. In fact, many of the bonds issued during the first quarter didn’t make it to the second half, leaving investors with a tiny fraction of the advertised yield, alongside a mountain of fees that often eclipsed their paltry return.

In the first quarter of 2018, banks issued 275 FANG-linked auto-callable notes, totaling $499 million, according to mtn-i. By the end of August, 74% of them, or $326 million, had been redeemed, the Journal found, delivering fractions of the full-year coupons. They have paid 3.2% of their purchase price on average. Bank disclosures on these notes’ estimated initial values indicate fees and other costs totaled an average of 3.4%, according to the Journal’s analysis.

Here’s more from WSJ’s Ben Eisen:

The notes are often sold to mom-and-pop investors seeking higher-yielding alternatives to government debt, which is reliably safe. Offering documents say that buyers can earn fixed payouts of as much as 25% of the purchase price annually without taking on the risk of outright common-share ownership.

Yet many of these FANG-linked notes fail to produce returns anywhere near that stated range, according to an analysis of securities filings by The Wall Street Journal. Many times, the upfront fees banks collected were higher than the total returns earned by investors.

That is partly because the notes—dubbed “auto-callable” because a rise in the stock price contractually triggers their redemption—are often redeemed in less than a year, and sometimes in as little as a month. In many cases the auto-callable provision leads investors to earn scant returns and receive their money back long before the stated term of the investment.

Several bulge-bracket banks, including Citigroup, UBS and the Royal Bank of Canada have marketed issues of these auto-callable notes for the FANG stocks. And according to mtni, a London-based research shop, issuance of these products has doubled in the last year.

“These products give these great teaser yields, and I think people have been drawn to it,” Mr. Halpern said. Then, many of “these things will be called after the first quarter.”

The lure of these products is a testament to the craze surrounding the market’s most successful stocks, which have been responsible for practically all of the benchmark’s gains so far this year. But the notes come with huge risks attached – if the underlying stocks underperform too dramatically, investors can lose some or all of their principle along with the fees – with relatively little in the way of upside (the recent string of FANG losses may have produced some anxiety for some well-meaning investors).

Among called notes linked to just one stock, the underlying shares rose an average of 18% between the time the notes were issued and the time they were redeemed.

The popularity of these types of structured notes attests to the powerful lure of technology stocks, which have risen sharply in recent years. In 2018, Netflix is up 82%, Amazon is up 66% and Alphabet is up 12%, compared with a 4.6% rise in the Dow Jones Industrial Average.

But the notes are unlike common shares, which offer purchasers unlimited potential gains as well as the risk of total loss. They are also unlike U.S. Treasurys, which pay out periodic “coupons” and entitle holders to full repayment at maturity.

Instead, the notes offer gains up to a certain, specified threshold and protect against only certain, specified equity losses. Typically, if the linked stock or basket of stocks trades below a designated barrier—say, 75% of its initial value—when the notes mature, investors can lose a share of their principal on par with losses on the stock or basket.

One issue of auto-callables tied to Netflix carried a yield of 20+%, but after Netflix shares climbed 6% in a month, the notes were recalled, leaving investors with a coupon payment of 1.7%, 100 basis points less than the 2.7% in fees that were paid upon purchase. Some experienced asset managers say auto-callables can be helpful for managing risk when they’re tied to an index – but single-stock plays are too risky for most experienced investors to touch.

Which begs the question: How are financial advisors – who have a fiduciary interest to act in their clients’ best interest – allowed to sell these things with impunity?

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Authored by Tom Luongo via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

Sometimes when I step back from the overwhelming flow of geopolitical insanity I’m reminded of the old adage that coming close only counts in horseshoes and hand grenades.

To which, I always add, “And nuclear war.”

I’ve been watching the build up to the operation to liberate Idlib in Syria which includes the endless neocon and Israeli moral preening warning Assad against using chemical weapons with a sense of detachment.  And I keep thinking to myself, “Do they really think we’re that stupid?”

Three times the chemical weapons canard has been used to justify further aggression against Syria and three times a full-blown U.S. invasion has been averted. First by Vladimir Putin’s deft diplomacy and General Dunford’s refusal to implement a ‘no-fly zone’ in 2013 and then during the Trump years with ineffectual air strikes on Syrian airbases.

How much of that ineffectuality of those airstrikes were designed by Defense Secretary James Mattis to avoid a wider conflagration and how much was Russian EW/missile defense is anyone’s guess.

The truth most likely lies somewhere in the middle.

That is why everyone who is worrying about the U.S.’s blustering over Syria’s Idlib campaign needs to take a big step back and think the scenario through.

Because the neoconservatives and Israel are forcing the situation to its crisis point, thinking they can manipulate the headlines and the levers of power to still eke out a victory in Syria that will allow them to continue on their quest to destroy Russia first and conquer the rest of Asia after that.

And they are willing to blackmail us with the threat of WWIII over 50,000 head-chopping mercenaries to get their cookie. 

However, when you factor in the men actually in charge of the U.S. military chain of command, Trump and Mattis, and you realize the lengths to which Mattis’ field commanders have gone to avoid direct confrontation with Russian forces, you come to the conclusion that the men who will actually fight this war the neoconservative provocateurs and laptop bombardiers are clamoring for won’t actually pull the trigger.

The reasons for this are manifest.

First, the potential for the conflict to go nuclear is too high for rational men to take that chance.  Mattis and Russian Defense Minister Sergei Shoigu are hard-bitten, no-nonsense men.  Neither underestimates the other’s resolve to defend their men and national interests.

So, once the shooting starts expect it to get ugly quick.  Therefore it is unlikely to get to that point.

Second, there is no profit in that kind of escalation for the people who profit from war.  The banks and the military weapons makers thrive in low-intensity, frozen conflicts which keep sales flowing and governments indebted to pay for them.

In an age of nuclear weapons, proxy wars fought by mercenaries with drones are far more profitable than any large-scale invasions.  I hate to say this but from a discounted cash flow perspective Lockheed-Martin wants predictability to cover their quarterly dividends to shareholders more than they want to bring about the supposed Zionist plan for Greater Israel.

Sorry to burst everyone’s conspiracy theories.

Third and most importantly, the U.S. cannot afford a non-nuclear confrontation with Russia that punctures the illusion of U.S. military superiority.  Too much of the world’s confidence in the dollar itself rests in the U.S.’s ability to project power and defend its interests militarily.

This confidence is a mixture of that military capability and the U.S.’s traditional position of a country with an excellent legal framework within which to do business.  It is fashionable among geopolitical critics, myself included, to get caught up in the rhetoric and projection of a sclerotic and weakening United States, but legally it is still one of the best places on earth to do business.

But, as Martin Armstrong pointed out recently, Trump’s domestic opposition has openly declared sedition against him this week in the New York Times.  Former Secretary of State, John Kerry, is doing the talk show circuit calling for a constitutional crisis over Trump allegedly being unfit for office.  And George Soros is paying protesters to disrupt the confirmation hearing of Brett Kavanaugh to the Supreme Court.

If allowed to run its course to impeachment in the event of the Republicans losing control of the House in November, this would be a death blow to the U.S.’s reputation as a nation of laws rather than a nation of men.  The U.S. dollar would not recover from such a blow to its credibility, especially in light of Trump’s nearly-unhinged use of sanctions and threats of tariffs, weaponizing the dollar indiscriminately.

And this is why Vladimir Putin openly showed his hand to the world in March.  Strategically, he let everyone know that any confrontation between Russia and the U.S. would result in the U.S losing its status as the world’s pre-eminent military power.

This is why the neocons and the U.S./U.K. Deep State have been so adamant in accelerating its provocations against Russia.  They have to present us with the Faustian bargain of WWIII before Russia has these weapon systems fully deployed.

It’s also why Trump and Mattis are allowing them to have their head.  It feeds Trump’s “Art of the Deal” strategy for negotiations while also allowing him the opportunity to save face after Idlib is liberated regardless of whether another chemical weapons attack is staged.

I think we won’t see one here. 

The way out of Syria for the U.S. with its face-saved is to thunder and bluster, threaten fire and brimstone just like Trump did with Kim Jong-un and use that to explain why Assad showed restraint and didn’t use chemical weapons this time.

I can even see Trump tweeting something about three strikes and he would be out. 

Once Idlib is liberated Mattis will happily begin pulling vulnerable troops out of al-Tanf and Afghanistan.  That’s why I believe he went there to the surprise of the CIA house-organ Washington Post last week.

And then the neocon and Israeli muddying of the waters will move to the Geneva talks, but we’ll cross that Rubicon when it approaches.

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