Market Volatility Jumps To 7 Year High As Global Economic Data Slumps

“There could be some fluctuations in stock market values as a result of the China trade dispute…” – The White House

Cliff…

For the first time since July, the global macro data surprise index has turned negative…

 

It was quite a week with massive swings pushing realized volatility to its highest since 2011

 

Futures show the equity market swings best as many out of cash session hours…

 

But the cash markets all ended red on the week…

 

As Gluskin-Sheff’s David Rosenberg notes, barely over 3 months into the year and already no fewer than 22 sessions with intra-day moves in the Dow of 400+ points. We had 1 all of last year. The only other time in the past have we seen so many 400 point moves bunched into such a short period — Oct 2008 to Jan 2009.

The Dow retraced 61.8% Fib of its Wednesday panic-bid… then rebounded back to 50%…

 

The S&P traded down to its 200DMA once again…

 

Trannies tumbled to their 200DMA – today was their worst day since Brexit (2016)

 

All major index vols jumped on the week after collapsing on Wednesday…

 

All major US equity indices went red for the year again…

 

Tech and Financials tumbled back into the red for the week today…

 

All the FANGMAN stocks ended red on the week…

 

TSLA stocks and bonds squeezed higher this week but stocks over-ran bonds…

 

Treasury yields ended the week marginally higher but tumbled today as bonds were bid when stocks tanked…

 

10Y yields dropped back below 2.80% once again…

 

Despite weakness today, the dollar index ended the week higher…

 

Crude tumbled on the week as Copper and PMs largely trod water…

 

Cryptos ended the week lower once again (despite a solid jump early in the week)…

 

Finally, don’t forget, there was a Black Friday before Black Monday…

via RSS https://ift.tt/2Jo9b9m Tyler Durden

America’s Credit-Card Fueled Spending Spree Hits A Brick Wall

Last month was bad, this month it’s the worst it’s been in almost five years.

Exactly one month ago we showed  that after the record debt-fueled spending spree in late 2017, US credit card usage in the first month of 2018 posted a sharp slowdown even as auto and student loan issuance maintained its feverish “drunken sailor” spending pace. Well, fast forward to today, when according to the latest NY Fed consumer credit report, the tapped out US consumer, whose personal savings rate recently hit an all time low, America’s credit card-fueled spending binge just hit a brick wall as total consumer credit was one of the lowest in the past three years.

Of note, with only $148 million in additional credit card borrowings in the month of February, this was the weakest month in revolving credit growth going back almost five years, to November 2013, the last month in which credit card borrowing declined (with the exception of the December 2015 series revision).

Still, even with the nominal increase of just $0.1BN, total revolving credit rose to a new all time high of $1.031 trillion.

The silver lining was to be found in the non-revolving credit data set – used to pay for just two things, autos and “college” – which with the exception of one definition change month, has not gone down since 2011, also hit a new all time high of $2.836 trillion, following the latest monthly increase of $10.6 billion, which however was also a slowdown to recent trends, and the lowest since September 2016.

What about its components? With everything else going for record highs, if at a far slower rate, we doubt it will be a surprise to anyone that both student debt and auto loans hit a new all time high in the quarter ending December 2017, with $1.491 trillion for the former, and $1.12 trillion for the latter (the next monthly update will take place next month, when the Q1 data is released).

Credit and auto loan debt aside, the sharp slowdown, and borderline negative print, in credit card debt is the latest red flag for the US economy, which as a reminder ended 2017 with a record 13-week annualized surge in credit-funded spending.

And now that the hangover from the holiday spending spree is over, and credit card companies demand payment, US consumers – those whose personal saving rate is already near record lows – have not only retrenched, but have substantially slowed down their credit card usage, which for an economy in which 70% of GDP is consumer spending suggests more negative surprises for Q1 GDP.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2qauoM5 Tyler Durden

Is Tesla The Biggest Loser In The Trade War?

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

A few years ago, Elon Musk said that Tesla could sell more cars in China than in America in the long term, because the Chinese market is just so huge.

Indeed, China is currently Tesla’s second-largest market in terms of revenues behind the United States. But the escalating trade war between China and the United States could complicate Tesla’s mission to successfully compete on the rapidly growing Chinese EV market where local EVs are also advancing at an impressive rate.

In the trade spat, China has just announced that it could add more tariffs on imported American cars, on top of an existing 25-percent import duty for foreign-made vehicles. For carmakers without local Chinese manufacturing—such as Tesla—more tariffs would render their cars even more expensive niche products.

On the one hand, Musk has praised China’s EVs policies. But on the other hand, he has also called on U.S. President Donald Trump to level the playing field for car tariffs between the U.S. and China—and he did this a couple of weeks before the current heated trade row.

Musk has been trying to reach a deal on a local Tesla factory in China, but reports have it that he refuses to allow China to own a piece of the plant.

Earlier this year, reports suggested that Tesla and China disagree over the future ownership of a Tesla factory in Shanghai, which means that without local Chinese production, the U.S. EV maker continues to face high import taxes that make its cars much more expensive than those of local rivals.

China insists that all vehicle-manufacturing plants should be joint ventures with local partners, and currently all foreign carmakers must have a Chinese partner to manufacture vehicles locally. But Tesla wants to have full ownership of the future factory. Producing Teslas locally could help Tesla sell its EVs cheaper in China, which is pushing for an aggressive adoption of EVs with policies for carmakers selling or importing vehicles. In what has been dubbed “the world’s biggest EV plan”, China is introducing a so-called cap-and-trade policy, under which all carmakers—local manufacturers or importers with more than 30,000 traditional car sales annually—must earn a score of at least 10 percent for zero or low-emission vehicles, beginning in 2019.

Theoretically, the huge Chinese market and the Chinese EV policies would have been the perfect ground for Tesla to beat its competition in China. But the 25-percent import duty and the growing possibility of Beijing slapping more tariffs on U.S. cars could slow down Tesla’s sales.

Last year, Tesla raised its revenues in China to US$2 billion, up from US$1 billion in 2016, its 2017 annual report shows. China is the second-largest market for the EV maker after the United States.

Now the escalating U.S.-China trade war could make things more difficult for American carmakers, and Tesla in particular. In the latest tit-for-tat, the U.S. proposed tariffs on products from sectors such as information technology, communication technology, robotics, and aerospace. China retaliated by announcing new tariffs on 106 U.S. products, including cars. If China follows through with this retaliation by slapping tariffs on cars and car parts, Tesla—without local production, unlike almost all other foreign carmakers including Detroit’s Big Three—will suffer the most, according to analysts.

“The jump in tax levy hurts Tesla the most as it had not yet started local production in China,” Cui Dongshu, the secretary general of China’s Passenger Car Association told Bloomberg. “For GM and Ford, they can always make up with China-produced ones.”

Barclays analyst Brian Johnson also thinks that Tesla will be the most hurt U.S. carmaker from the trade war. If China follows through with its promise to retaliate to the currently proposed U.S. tariffs, Tesla buyers in China may have to pay a 50-percent tariff.

“The tariff will add an extra premium on top of a vehicle price that was already ahead of the base U.S. price, related to transport costs and duties,” Johnson wrote in a note Wednesday, as carried by CNBC.

“And while these steep import tariffs are part of the upper-end luxury market (and in some respects add to the prestige factor for luxury cars), for lower-luxury vehicles than the Model 3, a 50 percent premium would be significant,” the analyst said.

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

Mueller Reportedly Has Evidence Trump Ally Lied About Meeting Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund Head

In an exclusive report by ABC that we believe is nothing short of a trial balloon warning of Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s next major indictment (or, alternatively, the turning of another valuable witness), the network reported that the special counsel has obtained evidence that Erik Prince, the brother of Education Secretary Betsy DeVoes, lied to Congressional investigators about the circumstances surrounding his meeting with Russian Sovereign Wealth Fund CEO Kirill Dmitriev.

According to leaks that emerged last year, Prince told the House Intelligence Committee that his meeting with Dmitriev during a trip to the Seychelles just days before President Trump’s inauguration was a chance encounter, and that he met with Dmitriev only at the behest of “one of the brothers” of United Arab Emirates leader Crown Prince Mohammed Bin Zayed al-Nayhan.

Prince

But according to George Nader, a Lebanese business man with a shadowy record that includes a 1991 conviction on child pornography charges in the US – for which he served only six months in a halfway house thanks to his role in helping to free American hostages in Beirut. More recently, Nader reportedly played a role in facilitating Trump’s trip to the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia last year.

Nader has become a key witness and cooperator in the Mueller probe. And while the full breadth and scope of what he’s told Mueller remains unclear, the information he provided about Prince appears to be damning.

Specifically, Nader reportedly told Mueller that he met with Prince in New York City a week before the Seychelles meeting to brief him on the encounter, then provided Prince with a dossier of information about Dmitriev.

Also, Nader told Mueller that he attended the meeting with Prince and Dmitriev. But during his interview with Congressional investigators, Prince only said that Dmitriev’s wife was in attendance.

Nader said the goal of the meeting would’ve been to establish a backchannel between the Russian government and the Trump administration.

Sources tell ABC News Nader met with Prince at New York’s Pierre Hotel a week before the Jan. 11, 2017 meeting in the Seychelles, and later sent Prince biographical information about Dmitriev, which, according to those sources, noted that Dmitriev had been appointed by Putin to oversee the state-run sovereign wealth fund.

Nader says he then facilitated and personally attended the meetings, including one between Prince and Dmitriev, at a resort owned by MBZ off the coast of East Africa, the sources told ABC News. One of the primary goals of the meeting, Nader told investigators, was to discuss foreign policy and to establish a line of communication between the Russian government and the incoming Trump administration, sources told ABC News.

Nader — who Prince said in a 2010 lawsuit deposition had once represented his military contractor business in Iraq — was not mentioned in Prince’s congressional testimony despite Prince being asked by lawmakers who was present. Prince said only that Dmitriev’s wife was there but she left after a few minutes while they discussed terrorism and oil prices.

A spokesperson for Prince told ABC News on Thursday that “Erik has said all there is to say to the committee and has nothing further to add.” Prince has said that the Seychelles meeting was leaked to the news media last year in an illegal “unmasking” of his identity in U.S. signals intelligence intercepts.

While this might look like an ironclad case of perjury on the surface, we imagine the truth is much murkier. For one, even if Prince did attend the meeting with the goal of establishing a channel between Trump and Russia, establishing such an informal line of communication wouldn’t have been illegal because it happened during the transition – when incoming administrations are expected to establish these types of relationships. If it had happened during the campaign, it would’ve become fodder for Mueller’s collusion investigation. But it didn’t.

The other question is, since attending such a meeting wouldn’t have been illegal, why would Prince have lied about it and risked a perjury charge to hide behavior that wasn’t even illegal.

The answer, we imagine, will be found somewhere in Nader’s past. His motivations for cooperating with Mueller remain mysterious, and his past criminal convictions raise questions about his credibility.

And if Mueller truly did have proof that Prince blatantly broke the law, we imagine he would’ve arrested him by now.

So, we imagine this will result in one of three things: Prince will soon be indicted, after being approached by Mueller, Prince will turn state’s witness or Nader – who was formerly employed by Prince at Prince-run military contractor Blackwater – is the one who is doing the misleading.

For what it’s worth, ABC says Prince has yet to appear before the grand jury Mueller set up to secure his convictions – so that would seem to eliminate option one.

Whatever’s missing here, we imagine we’ll learn more during the coming days and weeks.

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

Kudlow: US Tariffs Are “Not A Bluff”, China’s Response Is “Highly Unsatisfactory”

Echoing comments by Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin made during an early-afternoon interview on CNBC, National Economic Council head Larry Kudlow told a group of reporters at the White House Friday that China’s response to the first round of US tariffs announced was “highly unsatisfactory” and that, while he hopes the trade dispute doesn’t result in tariffs, that outcome remains a possibility.

That is in sharp contrast to Kudlow’s attempt on Wednesday to assuage the fears of nervous investors by promising them that the US will likely get a deal with China to avert the trade barriers threatened by both sides.

Still, a solution to the US-China trade spat could come within three months – but the Trump administration’s saber-rattling over trade barriers “is not a bluff”. And while the US isn’t currently in a trade war with China – any foreign policy “could go awry.”

Kudlow’s about-face notably comes as the White House has put its foot down on Friday and warned investors to expect some “some fluctuations” in the stock market as the trade dispute plays out.

He also raised the possibility that the US could provide a “list of suggestions” to China, per the Hill.

“The U.S. may provide a list of suggestions to China,” White House National Economic Council Director Larry Kudlow told a group of reporters at the White House, adding that resolving the trade dispute between Washington and Beijing is “eminently doable.”

These latest comments come after Kudlow gave a contentious interview with Bloomberg earlier Friday where he said that serious talks to avert a trade crisis “have not really begun yet” while clarifying that Trump had discussed the issue with Chinese President Xi Jinping and that other senior administration officials had discussed trade policy with their Chinese counterparts.

“Perhaps there will be some fruitful negotiations,” he said. “But I would say they have been unsatisfactory, so we will see”. The US is considering a second round of tariffs, but nothing has been decided yet.

But regardless of the outcome, Kudlow has insisted that “China is the problem” and that “President Trump is the solution.”

However, investors would have good reason to ignore Kudlow’s comments, as the advisor admitted that he first found out “last night” about Trump’s threat to slap tariffs on $100 billion in Chinese assets. Those followed China’s announcement of tariffs on $50 billion of US goods, including, crucially, the US soybeans, which China relies on to feed its livestock.

“This is not a trade war,” Kudlow said Friday. “This process, it may include tariffs at the end of the day. It may also not. It may be solved by negotiation,” according to Politico.

After Bloomberg hammered Kudlow about the White House’s “communication problem,” Kudlow’s admission that he was out of the loop regarding the latest round of tariffs prompted some twitter users to question whether Kudlow has as much influence with the president as the market believes…

 

 

via RSS https://ift.tt/2GEg74v Tyler Durden

Dow Dumps 600 Points After White House Warns “There Could Be Some Market Fluctuations”

“Kitchen sink”?

The White House warns…

“There could be some fluctuations in stock market values as a result of the China trade dispute…”

And The Dow dumps 600 points…

 

Pushing realized volatility to its highest since 2011…

 

And the S&P 500 is back near its 200DMA…

via RSS https://ift.tt/2uQfW0p Tyler Durden

Q4 2008 Vs Q1 2018… Apocalypse Then Versus Euphoria Now?!?

Authored by Chris Hamilton via Econimica blog,

I’d like to discuss the fourth quarter of 2008 vs. the first quarter of 2018.  The two quarters in which the US undertook the greatest increases in federal debt but supposedly represent entirely different outcomes (I’m excluding and smoothing out the Q3 2015 debt deluge after the Q1-Q2 debt ceiling debate).

The chart below shows total federal debt (red line) in perspective against real inflation adjusted GDP (blue line), the federal funds rate (shaded brown), and the 10yr Treasury yield (light blue shading).  It ain’t a pretty picture.

During Q4 of 2008, the US undertook $675 billion in federal debt, dropped the FFR essentially to zero, and saw the 10 year Treasury yield drop to 2.3% while real GDP fell by over $200 billion.

During Q1 of 2018, the US similarly undertook $625 billion in federal debt.  But conversely in Q1 hiked the FFR to 1.7%, the 10 year yield rose to 2.8%, and Q1 real GDP likely rose around $125 billion.

Since the completion of Q4 ’08, Federal debt has risen 97% (+$10.4 trillion) while real GDP has risen 19% (+$2.8 trillion).  Over this period, federal debt has consistently been rising 4x’s faster than inflation adjusted economic activity…and as Q1 2018 highlighted, this trend isn’t improving.

But looking at Q4 ’08 and Q1 ’18 Treasury holdings (side by side), something very strange has taken place.  In late 2008, as the financial and economic wheels were coming off and assets were abandoned for the comparative “safety” of Treasury’s…the domestic public added a then record $324 billion in US debt to their holdings.  However, in early 2018, as the stock market and housing markets were reaching euphoric highs…somehow the same domestic sources added a mind blowing approx. $750 billion in Treasury debt to their asset hoard?!?

The chart below shows the quarterly net issuance on the left and the change in holdings by the four sources of buying on the right.  What you will notice is a seemingly unbelievable surge in US Treasury holdings by the “domestic public”.  In Q4 ’08, outstanding Treasury debt rose by $676 billion and although the Federal Reserve took none of that (QE didn’t start until Q1 2009), the Intra-Governmental surplus (SS, etc.) ate up $77 billion (reducing marketable debt), foreigners (particularly China) scooped up $275 billion, and the domestic public (banks, insurers, pensions, etc.) was left to digest the remaining $324 billion.

Compare Q4 ’08 to Q1 2018; Federal Reserve holdings declined by $30 billion (and the Fed’s balance sheet is set to shrink by hundreds of billions annually through 2020) , the Intra-Governmental holdings fell by $16 billion as benefits paid out outpaced surplus revenue (likewise, this selling is set to accelerate as surplus turns to outright deficit), foreigners likely continued selling (foreign holdings, led by Chinese/Japanese selling, have declined by $65 billion from October through January) but the final Treasury TIC data won’t be available until this Summer…so I simply left foreign holdings unchanged.  This meant about three quarters of a trillion in net new Treasury debt was swallowed up by “domestic sources” in the first three months of 2018.  Further details on the situation are detailed here Who Will Buy Those Trillions of US Treasurys???

This amount of Treasury debt being ingested by “domestic” sources (particularly absent huge selloffs in other asset classes to raise the funds) is off the charts in its scale and simply very hard to believe.

Seems a deeper dive into who exactly those “domestic” sources are is in order.  Thanks to the Treasury Bulletin…we’ve got some idea.  As the chart below highlights since 2007, there are two sources doing all the heavy lifting.

Since QE ended in Q4 of 2014, Treasury debt has ballooned by $3 trillion, of which mutual funds and a grouping titled other have added over $2 trillion (taking in 70% of the net increase in Treasury debt).  For those wondering…according to the Treasury, “other” includes individuals, GSE’s, brokers/dealers, bank personal trusts and estates, corporate and non-corporate business, and other investors. 

The holdings of this group of “others” and mutual funds have mushroomed in size compared to those of insurers, banks, pension funds, or “private” investors.

So, consider…

  • Issuance of new debt will continue to rapidly outpace growth in economic activity (or the taxation to pay for any of this)

  • Traditional sources of Treasury buying are turning into secular sources of selling (Fed, IG, foreigners, Petro-Yuan, etc.)

  • Assets remain near record highs indicating there is little to no selling with which to fund the domestic Treasury purchases

  • Yields on US debt have risen but remain near long term lows and are at best break evens with inflation…and far below acceptable long term returns for most fund managers

It is hard to believe all of this adds up to anything more than state level fraud. 

That America’s ability to fund it’s massive deficits via the Treasury market and manage the interest paid on that rapidly growing pile of debt are no longer dependent on market participants…but likely being enforced by the very pointy end of American “diplomacy”.

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

Michelle Obama Mocks Trump, Says Hillary Was “Most Qualified Candidate In History”

Former first lady Michelle Obama took several shots at President Trump during a women’s leadership conference on Thursday – likening her husband’s presidency to “the good parent,” while saying of Trump “And now we have the other parent.” 

We thought it’d feel fun — maybe it feels fun for now because we can eat candy all day and stay up late and not follow the rules,” said the former first lady. 

Obama then transitioned into praise of Hillary Clinton – telling the audience the former Secretary of State was the “best-qualified candidate.” 

She wasn’t perfect,” said Obama “but she was way more perfect than many of the alternatives.

(except at stairs)

Obama also blamed low voter turnout for Trump’s victory in 2016 – saying that voters were not “willing” to turn out for Clinton. 

“We’ve got to be willing, when we do find qualified people, to vote for them,” Obama said. “And we didn’t do that in this election.”

“So I think people should be less … disheartened that me and Oprah don’t want to run, and more disheartened by the fact that Hillary Clinton, probably the most qualified person to ever seek the office of the presidency, lost. She lost.”

Let us count the ways

While Michelle Obama might be able to tuck Hillary’s loss into the rearview mirror and ignore the groundswell of support for Trump – Hillary Clinton has quite the running list of excuses…

Last month, Clinton told an audience in Mumbai, India that Trump voters came to the polls because they “didn’t like black people getting rights” or “women, you know, getting jobs.” 

“I would have to say, no, we did not deserve that,” said Clinton at the Saturday event, adding “He ran the first reality TV campaign and he was the first reality TV candidate.”  

“If you watch reality TV, you know it means that the person who is the most outrageous, the person who says the politically incorrect things, the person who’s insulting and attacking, drives big ratings,” said the failed presidential candidate. 

Hillary then called Trump voters racists and misogynists: 

…I won the places that represent 2/3 of America’s gross domestic product. So I won the areas that are optimistic, diverse, dynamic, moving forward. And his whole campaign “Make America Great Again,” was looking backwards.

You know, you didn’t like black people getting rights, you don’t like women, you know, getting jobs, you don’t wanna see that Indian American succeeding more than you are. 

Perhaps Clinton – whose “charitable” foundation paid top executive women $190,000 less than men, and had an average gender pay gap of $81,000 – forgot that black unemployment recently hit at an all time low under President Trump. But hey, all the racist Trump voters are why she lost…

* * *

And once again, we offer this handy list of reasons Hillary says she lost courtesy of the Daily Mail.

JAMES COMEY

Clinton is furious that Comey, then the FBI director, publicly revealed the re-opening of the secret email server investigation just before election day – and has said so time after time after time.

THE FBI  

Comey’s entire organization does not escape her wrath. 

‘The FBI wasn’t the Federal Bureau of Ifs or Innuendoes. Its job was to find out the facts,’ she writes in What Happened.

VLADIMIR PUTIN

‘There’s no doubt in my mind that Putin wanted me to lose and wanted Trump to win,’ she told USA Today in September last year while promoting What Happened. 

It was hardly a new theme. As early as December the New York Times obtained audio in which she told her donors: ‘Putin publicly blamed me for the outpouring of outrage by his own people, and that is the direct line between what he said back then and what he did in this election.’  

THE RUSSIANS

Putin’s entire apparatus gets a name-check. In May she told the Codecon convention how ‘1,000 Russian agents’ had filled Facebook with ‘fake news’.

She told NPR ‘my path toward November was being disrupted with Russians’.

WIKILEAKS 

The ‘transparency website’ is consistently ranked along with Comey by Clinton at the top of her blame list.

She told NPR : ‘Unfortunately the Comey letter, aided to great measure by the Russian WikiLeaks, raised all those doubts again.’

And she writes of its founder Julian Assange in What Happened: ‘In my view, Assange is a hypocrite who deserves to be held accountable for his actions.’

LOW INFORMATION VOTERS

‘You put yourself in the position of a low information voter, and all of a sudden your Facebook feed, your Twitter account is saying, “Oh my gosh, Hillary Clinton is running a child trafficking operation in Washington with John Podesta.”,’ she told the Codecon convention in May.

‘Well you don’t believe it but this has been such an unbelievable election, you kind of go, ‘Oh maybe I better look into that.”

THE ELECTORAL COLLEGE

‘We have an electoral college problem. It’s an anachronism,’ she told Vox. 

ANTI-AMERICAN FORCES

‘I think it’s important that we learn the real lessons from this last campaign because the forces that we are up against are not just interested in influencing our elections and our politics, they’re going after our economy and they’re going after our unity as a nation,’ she told Codecon in May.

‘What is hard for people to really accept – although now after the election there’s greater understanding – is that there are forces in our country – put the Russians to one side – who have been fighting rear guard actions for as long as I’ve been alive because my life coincided with the Civil Rights movement, with the women’s rights movement, with anti-war protesting, with the impeachment.

EVERYONE WHO ASSUMED SHE WOULD WIN

‘I was the victim of a very broad assumption that I was going to win,’ she told the Codecon convention.

BAD POLLING NUMBERS

Clinton says polls in key states did not serve her. 

‘I think polling is going to have to undergo some revisions in how they actually measure people,’ she told the Codecon convention.

‘How they reach people. The best assessments as of right now are that the polling was not that inaccurate, but it was predominantly national polling and I won nationally.’

BARACK OBAMA 

Clinton has two beefs with Obama: one of them being that he won two terms. Clinton says that succeeding an incumbent is almost impossible for a Democrat.

‘No non-incumbent Democrat had run successfully to succeed another two-termer since Vice President Martin Van Buren won in 1836,’ she writes in What Happened.

But she also says his response to the Russian campaign of interference wasn’t enough.

‘I do wonder sometimes about what would have happened if President Obama had made a televised address to the nation in the fall of 2016 warning that our democracy was under attack,’ she writes in What Happened. 

WHITE WOMEN

‘I believe absent Comey, I might’ve picked up 1 or 2 points among white women,’ she told Vox in September.

‘White woman… are really quite politically dependent on their view of their own security and their own position in society what works and doesn’t work for them.’

THE NEW YORK TIMES

The newspaper was blamed as early as May at the Codecon conference in Rancho Palos Verde, California.

She singled out its managing editor Dean Baquet – the paper’s most senior editor – and said of coverage of her email issue under his direction: ‘They covered it like it was Pearl Harbor.’

JOE BIDEN

Biden could have run against her and didn’t. But Clinton writes: ‘Joe Biden said the Democratic Party in 2016 ‘did not talk about what it always stood for—and that was how to maintain a burgeoning middle class.’

‘I find this fairly remarkable, considering that Joe himself campaigned for me all over the Midwest and talked plenty about the middle class.’

BERNIE SANDERS

‘His attacks caused lasting damage, making it harder to unify progressives in the general election and paving the way for Trump’s ‘Crooked Hillary’ campaign,’ she writes in What Happened.

‘I don’t know if that bothered Bernie or not.’

BERNIE BROS 

‘Some of his supporters, the so-called Bernie Bros, took to harassing my supporters online. It got ugly and more than a little sexist,’ she writes in What Happened. 

PEOPLE WANTING CHANGE

‘I thought, at end of day, people would say, look, we do want change, and we want the right kind of change, and we want change that is realistic and is going to make difference in my life and my family’s life and my paycheck,’ she told Vox.

‘That’s what I was offering. And I didn’t in any way want to feed into this, not just radical political argument that was being made on other side, but very negative cultural argument about who we are as Americans.’

MISOGYNISTS

Asked by CNN’s Christine Amanpour at the Women for Women International event in new York in May if misogyny was to blame she said: ‘Yes, I do think it played a role.’  

TELEVISION EXECUTIVES

‘When you have a presidential campaign and the total number of minutes on TV news, which is still how most people get their information, covering all of our policies, climate change, anything else was 32 minutes, I don’t blame voters,’ she told The View.

‘They don’t get a broad base of information to make decision on. The more outrageous you are, the more inflammatory you are, the higher the ratings are.’

NETFLIX

Hillary does not do Netflix and chill – or if she does, she doesn’t find it very relaxing.

‘Eight of the top 10 political documentaries on Netflix were screeds against President Obama and me,’ she claimed at the Codecon convention.

FACEBOOK

‘If you look at Facebook the vast majority of the news items posted were fake. They were connected to as we now know the 1,000 Russian agents who were involved in delivering those messages,’ she told Codecon.

TWITTER

Usually mentioned in the same breath as Facebook, the micro-blogging site is seen by Clinton as one of the reasons for her loss. 

She told the Codecon convention in may that Trump had a method in his tweets.

‘They want to influence your reality. That to me is what we’re up against, and we can’t let that go unanswered,’ she said.

CONTENT FARMS IN MACEDONIA

‘Through content farms, through an enormous investment in falsehoods, fake news, call it what you will – lies, that’s a good word too – the other side was using content that was flat out false,’ she told the Codecon convention in May. 

‘They were conveying this weaponized information and the content of it, and they were running, y’know there’s all these stories, about y’know, and you know I’ve seen them now, and you sit there and it looks like you know sort of low level CNN operation, or a fake newspaper.’

CAMPAIGN FINANCE

‘You had Citizens United come to its full fruition.’ she told Codecon in May.

‘So unaccountable money flowing in against me, against other Democrats, in a way that we hadn’t seen and then attached to this weaponized information war.

THE MEDIA

‘American journalists who eagerly and uncritically repeated whatever WikiLeaks dished out during the campaign could learn from the responsible way the French press handled the hack of Macron,’ she writes in What Happened. 

Now-president Macron had a massive tranche of his emails hacked and released shortly before the French voted. Many outlets did not report on their contents.  

STEVE BANNON AND BREITBART

‘Provided the untrue stories,’ she told the Codecon convention in May. 

THE DEMOCRATIC PARTY 

‘I set up my campaign and we have our own data operation. I get the nomination. So I’m now the nominee of the Democratic Party. I inherit nothing from the Democratic Party,’ Clinton said told the Codecon convention in May.

 ‘I mean, it was bankrupt. It was on the verge of insolvency. Its data was mediocre to poor, nonexistent, wrong. I had to inject money into it.’

THE REPUBLICAN PARTY

The Republicans were far better prepared for a campaign than the Democrats she claimed, when it came to money and data, telling the Codecon convention: ‘So Trump becomes the nominee and he is basically handed this tried and true, effective foundation.’ 

CAMBRIDGE ANALYTICA

The data-targeting firm ultimately owned by Robert Mercer, the billionaire Breitbart backer, and his family, is said to have targeted voters to drive them away from Clinton.

‘They ultimately added something and I think again we’d better understand that. The Mercers did not invest all that money for their own amusement,’ she told the Codecon convention.

WOMEN PROTESTERS

The massive demonstrations in Washington and other cities in the wake of the election were organized as an immediate response to Clinton’s shock defeat.

But that did not stop Clinton from writing in What Happened: ‘I couldn’t help but ask where those feelings of solidarity, outrage and passion had been during the election.’

MATT LAUER

The NBC Today show anchor quizzed both candidates at a ‘commander-in-chief forum’ on board Intrepid in New York. 

But Clinton – who went first in the back-to-back interviews, complained about Lauer focusing on her secret server and whether it raised questions over her trustworthiness.

‘Lauer had turned what should have been a serious discussion into a pointless ambush. What a waste of time,’ she writes in What Happened. She later delighted in his firing for sexual misconduct, saying in December: ‘Every day I believe more in karma.’ 

WHITE VOTERS

‘White voters have been fleeing the Democratic party ever since Lyndon Johnson predicted they would,’ she told Vox.  

DEMOCRATIC DOCUMENTARY MAKERS 

‘We’re not making the documentaries that we’re going to get onto Netflix,’ she told Codecon.

She was asked by the interviewer: ‘This is because Hollywood isn’t liberal enough?’

‘No, it’s because Democrats aren’t putting their money there,’ she replied. 

BENGHAZI INVESTIGATORS

The attacks on the U.S. diplomatic compound in the Libyan city of Benghazi on September 11, 2012, happened when Clinton was Secretary of State. It claimed four American lives, and was the focus of intense investigation by Congress.  

Clinton told the Today show: ‘Take the Benghazi tragedy – you know, I have one of the top Republicans, Kevin McCarthy, admitting we’re going to take that tragedy – because, you know, we’ve lost people, unfortunately, going back to the Reagan administration, if you talk about recent times, in diplomatic attacks.

‘But boy, it was turned into a political football. And it was aimed at undermining my credibility, my record, my accomplishments.’

VOTER SUPPRESSION

Suppressing her voters was named by Clinton as one of the major factors in her defeat in her interview on the Today show when she rattled off her laundry list. ‘What was at work here?’ she said.

‘In addition to the mistakes that I made, which I recount in the book, what about endemic sexism and misogyny, not just in politics but in our society, what about the unprecedented action of the FBI director,  what about the interference of an adversary nation, what about voter suppression?’ 

It was a return to a theme – she suggested it was a problem in Wisconsin in an interview in May with New York magazine.

‘I would have won had I not been subjected to the unprecedented attacks by Comey and the Russians, aided and abetted by the suppression of the vote, particularly in Wisconsin,’ she said. 

‘Republicans learned that if you suppress votes you win.’

MITCH McCONNELL

The Senate majority leader is accused of stopping the Obama administration from revealing what Clinton says the Russians were up to, helping tip the balance against her because he did not want a third successive Democratic term in the White House.  

‘Mitch McConnell, in what I think of as a not only unpatriotic but despicable act of partisan politics, made it clear that if the Obama Administration spoke publicly about what they knew [on Russia], he would accuse them of partisan politics, of trying to tip the balance toward me,’ she told the New Yorker.   

THE SUPREME COURT

Clinton claims the Supreme Court watered down the Voting Rights Act at the Codecon convention.

‘You had effective suppression of votes,’ she said.

‘I was in the senate when we voted 98-0 under a Republican president, George W Bush, to extend the Voting Rights Act and the Supreme Court says ‘oh we don’t need it any more’ , throws it out, and Republican governors and legislatures began doing everything they could to suppress the votes.’

Clinton appears to be referring to Second 4(b) of the Act being ruled unconstitutional by the court in 2013, because it relied on out of date data which meant it was not in line with the 15th Amendment. 

FATHERS, HUSBANDS, BOYFRIENDS, AND MALE BOSSES

Clinton says that James Comey’s actions in re-opening the FBI investigation allowed men to influence their wives or girlfriends.

‘Women will have no empathy for you because they will be under tremendous pressure – and I’m talking principally about white women – they will be under tremendous pressure from fathers, and husbands, and boyfriends and male employers, not to vote for ‘the girl’,’ she told NPR. 

THE INVISIBLE STATE

The newest addition to the list: named by her confidante Lanny Davis as the reason she lost at a reading of his book while Hillary nodded along in approval. 

via RSS https://ift.tt/2uPS39t Tyler Durden