Tag: finance

Here Is Trump’s Blueprint For Lowering Drug Prices

With Trump set to unveil his vision for lowering drug prices as part of his “American Patients First” initiative, moments ago the department of Health and Human Services released a blueprint plan on drug prices.

While the full 44 page report is at the back here is the summary of how Trump hopes to lower drug prices:

  • Increased Competition
  • Better Negotiation
  • Incentives for Lower List Prices
  • Lowering Out-of-Pocket Costs

An quick skim of the plan, highlights the following section:

  • Considering fiduciary status for Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs)

And some more details from the Plan:

Increased Competition: 

  • Immediate Actions
    • Steps to prevent manufacturer gaming of regulatory processes such as Risk Evaluation and Management Strategies (REMS)
    • Measures to promote innovation and competition for biologics
    • Developing proposals to stop Medicaid and Affordable Care Act programs from raising prices in the private market
  • Further Opportunities
    • Considering how to encourage sharing of samples needed for generic drug development
    • Additional efforts to promote the use of biosimilars

Better Negotiation

  • Immediate Actions
    • Experimenting with value-based purchasing in federal programs
    • Allowing more substitution in Medicare Part D to address price increases for singlesource generics
    • Reforming Medicare Part D to give plan sponsors significantly more power when negotiating with manufacturers
    • Sending a report to the President on whether lower prices on some Medicare Part B drugs could be negotiated for by Part D plans
    • Leveraging the Competitive Acquisition Program in Part B.
    • Working across the Administration to assess the problem of foreign free-riding
  • Further Opportunities
    • Considering further use of value-based purchasing in federal programs, including indication-based pricing and long-term financing
    • Removing government impediments to value-based purchasing by private payers
    • Requiring site neutrality in payment
    • Evaluating the accuracy and usefulness of current national drug spending data
    • Investigating tools to address foreign government threats of compulsory licensing or IP theft that may be harming innovation and development, driving up U.S. drug prices

Incentives for Lower List Prices

  • Immediate Actions
    • FDA evaluation of requiring manufacturers to include list prices in advertising
    • Updating Medicare’s drug-pricing dashboard to make price increases and generic competition more transparent
  • Further Opportunities
    • Measures to restrict the use of rebates, including revisiting the safe harbor under the Anti-Kickback statute for drug rebates
    • Additional reforms to the rebating system
    • Using incentives to discourage manufacturer price increases for drugs used in Part B and Part D
    • Considering fiduciary status for Pharmacy Benefit Managers (PBMs)
    • Reforms to the Medicaid Drug Rebate Program
    • Reforms to the 340B Drug Discount Program
    • Considering changes to HHS regulations regarding drug copay discount cards

Lowering Out-of-Pocket Costs

  • Immediate Actions
    • Prohibiting Part D contracts from preventing pharmacists’ telling patients when they could pay less out-of-pocket
    • by not using insurance
    • Improving the usefulness of the Part D Explanation of Benefits statement by including information about drug price increases and lower cost alternatives
  • Further Opportunities
    • More measures to inform Medicare Part B and D beneficiaries about lower-cost alternatives
    • Providing better annual, or more frequent, information on costs to Part D beneficiaries

Of course, if Trump is indeed serious in his crackdown on pharma and drug companies, then the record IRR pharma companies reap through lobbying is about to crash.

Keep an eye on lobby spend to determine if Trump’s plan is just more fluff or has some hope of actually working.

Although judging by the market reaction, the plan does appear to have some bit:

  • BI NA HEALTHCARE SUPPLY CHAIN INDEX FALLS TO SESSION LOWS
  • CVS, EXPRESS SCRIPTS DIP TO SESSION LOWS ON PRICING BLUEPRINT
  • WALGREENS, CVS FALL TO SESSION LOWS AS TRUMP SPEAKS

Full plan below (pdf link):

via RSS https://ift.tt/2Kg8O0h Tyler Durden

Watch Live: President Trump Explains How He Is Putting “American Patients First”

Will President Trump accuse healthcare system CEOs of “getting away with murder” once again?

Senior administration officials have pre-empted Trump’s speech which proposes a sweeping effort to bring down US drug prices. Bloomberg reports that the blueprint, called American Patients First, is meant to increase competition and lower patients’ out-of-pocket costs. It would lift rules that prevent government programs from getting better drug discounts, push other developed nations with tighter price controls to pay more, create incentives to lower list prices and try to prevent drugmakers from gaming the system to extend their monopolies.

“One of my greatest priorities is to reduce the price of prescription drugs,” Trump said in a statement distributed by the officials.

As we detailed earlier, the plan is expected to:

  • “… aim to increase competition by ending ‘the gaming of rules’ by brand-name drug manufacturers that stymies the introduction of cost-saving generic and biosimilar drugs.

  • “… seek to improve negotiation within the Medicare program, but not by using the government’s clout to negotiate for Medicare as Trump has previously proposed. It would create unspecified incentives for lower list prices of drugs and would lower out-of-pocket spending by patients.”

  • Lobbyists and industry insiders think Trump will take particular aim at middlemen known as “pharmacy benefit managers” (PBMs) – who negotiate drug coverages, payments and rebates between insurers and drug makers. 

Here’s what PBMs are watching most nervously: Whether Trump aims at narrowing the spread between high list prices and the secret, rebate prices insurers actually pay by limiting rebates to a percentage of the list price. –WaPo

  • Trump is expected to knock “unfair” practices by other countries which negotiate their drug prices. “Right now it’s very unfair what other countries are doing to us,” Trump remarked at a meeting with pharmaceutical executives in late January, accusing countries of “global freeloading,” and saying that it’s “very, very unfair” that the U.S. pays so much more for drugs. 

  • At the January sitdown, Trump noted that the price for over-the-counter drugs such as aspirin, saying “The numbers we pay — I mean we have cases where, if I go to a drugstore and buy aspirin, the aspirin costs me less than what the United States pays for aspirin,” adding “So I can buy at a drugstore, the aspirin, for less money. … But we have to do something about that.”

White House Domestic Policy Council’s Katy Talento noted on Wednesday at an Independent Women’s Forum discussion that there’s “no ox that won’t be gored” in today’s 2 p.m. address. 

“This is a fearless president and he doesn’t know or care why things have always been done…It’s not like your typical Republican authorizing committee that protects this model that they helped write for decades,” said Talento.

However, market participants are not expecting dramatic change… and the Nasdaq Biotech Index is jumping today…

“We expect more rhetoric than reform,” Height Securities analysts wrote in a note on Friday. “The President’s bark will be worse than his bite as he blames all parties within the drug supply distribution chain” for high prices.

Watch Live at 2pmET…

via RSS https://ift.tt/2G4AQJH Tyler Durden

Toxic Gas, Massive Explosion Fears Mount As Lava Nears Hawaii Power Plant

There have been a number of powerful earthquakes since the volcano started erupting.

In Pahoa, the nearest village to Kilauea, some schools remained closed after the area was hit by a 6.9 magnitude earthquake on Friday, the biggest since 1975.

And while the destruction is already terrible, RT reports that the relentlessly advancing lava from the Kilauea volcano in Hawaii is now closing in on a geothermal power plant, prompting a frantic scramble to move tens of thousands of gallons of highly flammable chemicals.

Hawaii Governor David Ige revealed that an emergency task force is removing large amounts of pentane from the Puna Geothermal Venture plant after a new fissure opened up approximately half a mile from the facility on Wednesday.

It was estimated that an enormous explosion with a blast radius of approximately a mile (1.6 kilometers) could be unleashed if the fluid ignites.

There are still nearly 50,000 gallons of pentane stored at the site, according to Hawaii News Now.

“Everything is still on property, ” Magno said. “They moved it to high ground just in case any flowings would start going that style, give them a little more day. But their plans are made to get them out of there if it gets to that next level.”

A total of 15 new fissures have appeared on Hawaii’s Big Island since the eruption began. Geologists have warned that it may now be entering a more violent phase of explosive eruptions, the likes of which Hawaii has not seen in nearly a century.

As if that was not enough to worry about, as Reuters reports, Hawaii County authorities sent a text message to residents of the southeast corner of the island warning them of a wind change that would bring rising levels of sulfur dioxide gas, which can be fatal if inhaled in large quantities.

“It’s just horrible. You can’t breathe in there,” said evacuated resident Robynn Stagg, 58, who drove through the thick, orange sulfur dioxide haze earlier this week in a failed attempt to check on her home.

Hawaii’s governor has warned that mass evacuations may be required as more fissures open in the ground and spew lava and gas into semi-rural residential areas on the east flank of Kilauea, one of the world’s most active volcanoes.

“A mass evacuation of the lower Puna District would be beyond current county and state capabilities, and would quickly overwhelm our collective resources,” he said, adding in a separate post that he has signed a request for federal disaster assistance.

The Leilani Estates community remains in greatest danger, with 15 volcanic fissures so far having destroyed 36 structures, most of them homes, and forcing the evacuation of about 2,000 residents.

But as the eruption progresses, “other areas of the lower East Rift Zone may also be at risk,” the Hawaiian Volcano Observatory said in a bulletin.

“There is the potential for additional outbreaks,” Christina Neal, the chief scientist at the U.S. Geological Survey’s Hawaiian Volcano Observatory at Kilauea told a news briefing. “There are other communities, other residential neighborhoods that could, depending on the evolution of activity, be in harm’s way.”

Kilauea is the youngest and southeastern-most volcano on the Big Island. It has actually been erupting continuously since 1983, however, its previous activity was largely confined to remote parts of the coastline.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2rz1Xbw Tyler Durden

Pat Buchanan Asks “Are Bibi & Bolton In The Wheel House Now?”

Authored by Patrick Buchanan via Buchanan.org,

Brushing aside the anguished pleas of our NATO allies, President Trump Tuesday contemptuously trashed the Iranian nuclear deal and reimposed sanctions.

Prime Minister Theresa May of Great Britain, President Emmanuel Macron of France and German Chancellor Angela Merkel were put on notice that their ties to Iran are to be severed, or secondary sanctions will be imposed on them.

Driving the point home, Treasury Secretary Steve Mnuchin ordered Airbus to cancel its $19 billion contract to sell 100 commercial planes to Iran.

Who is cheering Trump’s trashing of the treaty?

The neocons who sought his political extinction in 2016, the royals of the Gulf, Bibi Netanyahu, and the Islamic Revolutionary Guard Corps. The IRGC had warned Iranians that the Americans were duplicitous.

When Trump finished speaking, Bibi launched strikes on Iranian bases in Syria, and flew to Moscow to persuade Vladimir Putin not to give the Iranians any air defense against Israeli attacks.

Iranian forces responded with 20 missiles fired at the Golan, which ignited a massive Israeli counterstrike Thursday night, a 70-missile attack on Iranian bases in Syria.

We appear to be at the beginning of a new war, and how it ends we know not. But for Bibi and National Security Adviser John Bolton, the end has always been clear — the smashing of Iran and regime change.

Tuesday, Trump warned that Iran is on “a quest for nuclear weapons,” and “if we do nothing … in just a short period of time, the world’s worst sponsor of state terror will be on the cusp of acquiring the world’s most dangerous weapon.”

And where is the evidence for this Bush-like assertion?

If Iran is on a “quest” for nukes, why did 17 U.S. intel agencies, “with high confidence,” in 2007 and 2011, say Iran did not even have a nuclear weapons program?

Saddam Hussein could not convince us he had no WMD, because the nonexistent WMD were the pretext, the casus belli, for doing what the War Party had already decided to do: invade Iraq.

We were lied into that war. And how did it turn out?

Why has the Foreign Relations committee not called in the heads of the U.S. intelligence agencies and asked them flat out: Does Iran have an active nuclear bomb program, or is this a pack of lies to stampede us into another war?

If Iran is on a quest for nukes, let the intel agencies tell us where the work is being done, so we can send inspectors and show the world.

Efforts to pull us back from being dragged into a new war have begun.

The Europeans are begging Iran to abide by the terms of the nuclear deal, even if the Americans do not. But the regime of Hassan Rouhani, who twice defeated Ayatollah-backed candidates, is in trouble.

The nuclear deal and opening to the West were the reasons the children of the Green Movement of 2009 voted for Rouhani. If his difficulties deepen because of reimposed U.S. and Western sanctions, his great achievement, the nuclear deal, will be seen by his people as the failed gamble of a fool who trusted the Americans.

Should Rouhani’s regime fall, we may get a Revolutionary Guard regime rather less to the liking of everyone, except for the War Party, which could seize upon that as a pretext for war.

What happens next is difficult to see.

Iran does not want a war with Israel in Syria that it cannot win.

Iran’s ally, Hezbollah, which just swept democratic elections in Lebanon, does not want a war with Israel that would bring devastation upon the nation it now leads.

The Russians don’t want a war with Israel or the Americans.

But as Putin came to the rescue of a Syria imperiled by ISIS and al-Qaida, to save his ally from a broad insurgency, he is not likely to sit impotently and watch endless air and missile strikes on Syria.

Trump has said U.S. troops will be getting out of Syria. But Bolton and the generals appear to have walked him back.

There are reports we are reinforcing the Kurds in Manbij on the west bank of the Euphrates, though President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has demanded that the Kurds vacate all Syrian border towns with Turkey.

Americans are also reportedly on the border of Yemen, assisting Saudi Arabia in locating the launch sites of the rockets being fired at Riyadh by Houthi rebels in retaliation for the three years of savage Saudi assault on their country.

Meanwhile, the news out of Afghanistan, our point of entry into the Near East wars almost a generation ago, is almost all bad — most of it about terrorist bombings of Afghan troops and civilians.

Is the foreign policy that America Firsters voted for being replaced by the Middle East agenda of Bibi and the neoconservatives? So it would appear.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2G7MiEj Tyler Durden

Here’s What To Expect From Trump’s 2PM Speech On Drug Prices

President Trump is expected to outline a “comprehensive” plan to tackle drug affordability in a major address on prescription drug prices at 2 p.m. today. In a Thursday night call with reporters, senior administration officials offered a preview of today’s “American Patients First” blueprint, outlining their general strategies.

The plan is expected to:

  • “… aim to increase competition by ending ‘the gaming of rules’ by brand-name drug manufacturers that stymies the introduction of cost-saving generic and biosimilar drugs.
  • “… seek to improve negotiation within the Medicare program, but not by using the government’s clout to negotiate for Medicare as Trump has previously proposed. It would create unspecified incentives for lower list prices of drugs and would lower out-of-pocket spending by patients.”
  • Lobbyists and industry insiders think Trump will take particular aim at middlemen known as “pharmacy benefit managers” (PBMs) – who negotiate drug coverages, payments and rebates between insurers and drug makers. 

Here’s what PBMs are watching most nervously: Whether Trump aims at narrowing the spread between high list prices and the secret, rebate prices insurers actually pay by limiting rebates to a percentage of the list price. –WaPo

  • Trump is expected to knock “unfair” practices by other countries which negotiate their drug prices. “Right now it’s very unfair what other countries are doing to us,” Trump remarked at a meeting with pharmaceutical executives in late January, accusing countries of “global freeloading,” and saying that it’s “very, very unfair” that the U.S. pays so much more for drugs. 
  • At the January sitdown, Trump noted that the price for over-the-counter drugs such as aspirin, saying “The numbers we pay — I mean we have cases where, if I go to a drugstore and buy aspirin, the aspirin costs me less than what the United States pays for aspirin,” adding “So I can buy at a drugstore, the aspirin, for less money. … But we have to do something about that.”

White House Domestic Policy Council’s Katy Talento noted on Wednesday at an Independent Women’s Forum discussion that there’s “no ox that won’t be gored” in today’s 2 p.m. address. 

“This is a fearless president and he doesn’t know or care why things have always been done…It’s not like your typical Republican authorizing committee that protects this model that they helped write for decades,” said Talento.

Health and Human Services Secretary Alex Azar said that Trump will go into ideas beyond what he laid out to congress during his budget request earlier in the year. 

“These include the high list prices set by manufacturers; seniors and government programs overpaying for drugs due to lack of the latest negotiating tools; rising out of pocket costs for consumers; and foreign governments free-riding off of American investment in innovation.”

Azar told a Senate panel on Thursday that Trump’s remarks would also address the fact that US drug manufacturers spend a disproportionate amount on developing new groundbreaking treatments which foreign governments can then take advantage of.

“Foreign governments, socialist, single-payer systems, get a better deal,” Azar said during a Senate Appropriations hearing. “Often that deal comes at the cost of rationing and access and patients who are suffering from cancer or HIV/AIDS or MS or rheumatoid arthritis they can’t get access to the medicines that you can here in the United States because that’s exactly what the socialist systems do.”

Spending on retail drugs grew only 1.3 percent in 2016, according to the actuary for the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services. Spending grew 12.4 percent and 8.9 percent in the two years prior. The slowdown is mainly due to less spending for drugs used to treat hepatitis C, fewer new drug introductions – and slower growth in prices for brand-name and generic drugs, analysts wrote in Health Affairs in December. –WaPo

“The competitive marketplace is acting to constrain overall cost growth,” Steve Ubl, president of the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, told reporters last week. 

Congressional Democrats led by Reps. Lloyd Doggett (D-TX), Peter Welch (D-VT) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD) laid out their own set of ideas they’d like to see implemented on Wednesday – insisting their ideas must be included in any “meaningful proposal” to lower drug prices. 

Their ideas include: Pouring pressure on the president to give some air time to cracking down on “pay-for-delay” deals (where a generic drugmaker agrees to wait longer to launch their copycat medication if the brand-name drug maker ends patent litigation) or allowing Americans to buy drugs from foreign pharmacies at lower prices. -WaPo

Dems also expressed doubt that Azar would actually crack down on the drug industry due to his previous work at Eli Lilly.

“There is no shred of evidence that tomorrow’s announcement will lead to one price decrease by Secretary Azar’s former colleagues in the pharmaceutical industry,” said Senate Finance ranking member Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).

What’s more, Trump’s detractors have dinged him over campaign rhetoric that the federal government should be able to negotiate lower drug prices directly with Medicare prescription drug plans. 

“On the campaign trail, he spoke like a populist,” said Sen. Chuck Schumer (D-NY). “He talked the talk, but he has failed — at least so far — to walk the walk.”

Watch how Trump will walk at 2PM today.

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

Alaskans Confused As NWS ‘Accidentally’ Issues Tsunami Warning

Just months after Hawaiian officials sent an ‘ICBM Launch’ false alert, sparking panic among citizens; The National Weather Service issued a ‘Tsunami Warning’ this morning, leaving Alaskans confused until the false alarm messages were sent out.

As BNO News reports, the incident happened just after 7 a.m. local time when a message from the Emergency Alert System appeared on TV channels in Alaska, advising that a tsunami warning was in effect.

“The National Weather Service has issued a TSUNAMI WARNING for the following counties or areas: Alaska, at 7:02 AM on May 11, 2018,” the message said.

The alert caused confusion among local residents. Jennifer Williams, the news director for KSRM, said the radio station was receiving calls from residents to ask about the warning.

The mistake happened during an internal test to determine transmission times for the dissemination of tsunami warnings, according to the National Tsunami Warning Center. “We are investigating this issue,” the center said.

KTVA reports that the Alaska State Emergency Operations Center (EOC)  says they are working with the Emergency Alert System vendor and the Tsunami Warning System partners to identify why a test message was transmitted as a warning event.

Friday’s false alert did not affect the entire warning system. The warning was not sent to mobile phones in Alaska and tsunami warning sirens were not activated. As a reminder, in February, a tsunami warning was accidentally sent through third parties to a number of people along the U.S. East Coast.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2I7J7Ck Tyler Durden

Watch The White House Respond When Questioned About Saudis Getting Nukes: “…But Iran!”

As if US policy in the Middle East hasn’t been chaotic and contradictory enough in recent weeks and months (or more honestly decades), White House Press Secretary Sarah Huckabee Sanders let slip a bombshell admission regarding Saudi Arabia and nuclear weapons during a Wednesday press briefing. 

Or perhaps it’s more important what she didn’t say regarding Saudi Arabia’s foreign minister announcing earlier that day that “his country stands ready to build nuclear weapons if Iran restarts its atomic weapons program.”

Image source: Getty via the Daily Express.

Sanders was asked by a reporter about the White House response to Saudi Arabia’s brazen statement declaring itself willing to pursue nukes. The exchange is as follows:

QUESTION:  Sarah, Saudi Arabia said that they would pursue a nuclear weapons program if Iran were to pursue a nuclear weapons program. Would they have the administration’s support in the event that that occurred?

MS. SANDERS:  Right now, I don’t know that we have a specific policy announcement on that front, but I can tell you that we are very committed to making sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.

Previously in the day on Wednesday Saudi FM Adel Al-Jubeir told CNN’s Wolf Blitzer that “we will do whatever it takes to protect our people. We have made it very clear that if Iran acquires a nuclear capability we will do everything we can to do the same.”

In a follow-up al-Jubeir was asked to state unambiguously that a nuclear armed Iran would mean the kingdom will work to produce its own nuclear capability, to which said firmly, “That’s what we mean.” So when Sanders was presented with this statement, all the White House Press Secretary could say is, “we are very committed to making sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.” 

And not even so much as a cautionary word from the White House regarding the Saudi FM’s bold declaration. No doubt, both the Iranians and Saudis took note of this exchange, though largely ignored across mainstream media as Al-Jazeera’s Mehdi Hasan observed: “Astonishing comment – the US has no policy on Saudi getting nukes? And yet it will be forgotten by tomorrow…”

And yet in response to the very next question Sanders reaffirmed that the US pullout of the Iran nuclear deal means “enormous sanctions” and “maximum pressure” will be put on Iran.

Sanders explained:

As the President said yesterday, he would like to see something happen, but we are 100 percent committed to making sure that Iran does not have nuclear weapons.  And that’s — until we see that happen, we’re going to continue to put maximum pressure, enormous sanctions on them.

All of the sanctions that were in place before the deal are back in place, and we are preparing to add additional sanctions that may come as early as next week.

Notably, Iran has never publicly declared intent to build a nuclear bomb, and yet, Saudi Arabia just did on one of America’s largest and most visible news networks. 

But it appears that both the White House and mainstream media merely yawned in response, content to quickly return to Iran’s supposed quest for world domination. 

As many commentators have already pointed out the obvious regarding US double-dealing and hypocrisy on nuclear proliferation, none of this bodes well for Trump’s impending negotiations with North Korea regarding its nuclear arsenal.

And not to mention that Wednesday’s White House press briefing just gave the Saudis the green-light to do whatever they want (though perhaps capability is another thing altogether), especially as the accepted US-Saudi-Israeli position appears to be that the Iranians were already in the process of secretly restarting their program—hence the claimed need to collapse the deal. 

It is quite possible that historians will look back on all of this as the week the White House triggered a Middle East nuclear arms race. 

via RSS https://ift.tt/2KeWE7N Tyler Durden

The 1970s All Over Again? Part 1: The Middle East Explodes

Authored by John Rubino via DollarCollapse.com,

For most Americans the geopolitical/financial crises of the 1970s happened so long ago that they’re about as relevant as the Revolutionary War or the Reformation.

But for seasoned citizens who were around back then and paying attention, the similarities to today are becoming both eerie and scary.

Consider:

In the early 1970s the Middle East was a hotly contested part of the world, with Russia (then called the Soviet Union) and the US (backed by Europe) maneuvering for control of the region’s oil. Israel was a source of outrage for its neighbors, with war always a real possibility. The Sunni/Shia rift was threatening to tear the Islamic world apart. AND government spending was soaring in the West, leading to highly experimental (read desperate) monetary policy at the Fed.

Given all those lit fuses, it’s no surprise that the powder keg eventually blew up, producing local wars, broader confrontations between nuclear powers, spiking oil prices and inflation. Here’s oil and US inflation during the decade:

Now fast forward to this week. Russia and the US are butting heads in Syria. The Sunni/Shia rivalry has become a shooting war between Iranian and Saudi surrogates with the principals not far from joining in. And Israel, after a long stretch away from center stage, is back with a vengeance:

Israel Strikes Meant to Thwart Iran’s Influence in Syria

(Wall Street Journal) – Israel’s blistering counterattack to Iranian rocket fire at its soldiers early Thursday shows the country is determined to dislodge Tehran’s forces in Syria from its border, despite the risk of a wider Middle East war.

In what the Israeli military called its largest-ever operation inside Syria, warplanes made dozens of strikes against key Iranian infrastructure, an overwhelming response after an Iranian unit in Syria fired about 20 short-range artillery rockets that Israel said were either shot down or fell short of a nearby military base.

The U.S. and Israel are increasingly concerned about Iran’s exploitation of the instability of Syria’s seven-year war to spread its influence, with officials saying they see its activities there as part of Iran’s efforts to project power in the wider region.

Israel’s military wants to prevent Tehran from building up military capabilities in Syria comparable to those in neighboring Lebanon, where it has nurtured the Shiite militia Hezbollah and helped it confront Israel militarily, according to Amos Yadlin, a former head of Israeli military intelligence.

“They will not let them duplicate Hezbollah,” he said. “They will not let them have an advanced military capability in Syria.”

Some analysts and officials see President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw from the multilateral nuclear accord on Tuesday a potential trigger for more violence, as Iran seeks to punish the U.S. and its regional allies through the proxies it controls.

Add it all up and history does appear to be rhyming. Which leads to the other reason why the 1970s were notable: Geopolitical instability begat monetary instability, which sent a tsunami of capital into safe haven assets.

This was the formative decade for millions of gold-bugs. To see it repeating is bittersweet to say the least.

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

Sarah Palin Speaks Out For Julian Assange After Ecuadorian Embassy Cuts Off Phone Calls, Guests

Julian Assange has been denied phone calls and visitors to the Ecuadorian embassy in London, where he and his cat share a 215-square-foot room.

The decision was made amid ongoing talks between the UK and Ecuador to decide the fate of the WikiLeaks founder, according to Foreign Minister Maria Fernanda Espinosa.

“He still has no access to the Internet and communications. There is a dialogue, there is a will and an interest to move forward in the solution of that matter,” said Espinosa, according to El Tiempo.

In March, the embassy cut off Assange’s internet access after Ecuador says he violated a written commitment “not to issue messages that might interfere with other states,” when he repeatedly criticized both the British government’s response to the poisoning of former Russian double-agent Sergei Skripal, as well as Spain’s dispute with Catalonia. 

Palin Defends Assange

Despite having her own emails hacked and leaked by WikiLeaks, former Alaska Governor  and 2008 McCain running mate, Sarah Palin, went to the mat for Julian Assange at a MAGA Coalition event Thursday night at the Trump Hotel, where she was a guest speaker. 

OANN’s Jack Posobiec asked Palin how she felt about Julian Assange’s situation at the Ecuadorian embassy, Palin gave a surprising reply:

“We do have a lot of history….he leaked, published somehow a few emails of mine and I was so ticked off–he was such a foe until I started figuring out where he was headed with his agenda with what he’s doing – is trying to provide people with information so that we can make better decisions for our own lives for the community, for our country, for the world and I really appreciate him more. I appreciate him so much I actually probably apologize to him for calling him out,” Palin said.

“He’s all about freedom. He wants people to have information. That’s power,” Palin concluded.

(h/t Cassandra Fairbanks)

Earlier in the week, Senator John McCain (R-AZ) said that he regretted picking Palin as his running mate in 2008. Palin said his comments were like a “perpetual gut-punch” whenever she hears them. 

“That’s not what Sen. McCain has told me all these years, as he’s apologized to me repeatedly for the people who ran his campaign,” Palin said, “some who now staff MSNBC, the newsroom there, which tells you a lot.”

(Lookin’ at you Steve Schmidt)

“I attribute a lot of what we’re hearing and reading regarding McCain’s statements to his ghostwriter or ghostwriters,” Palin explained. “I don’t know all the details of his condition right now. It happens to me also where people speak for me and a bell is rung, and you can’t un-ring the bell.”

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

European Stocks Surge To Longest Win Streak Since 2015 (As Economic Data Collapses)

European stocks are up seven straight weeks (the longest win streak since March 2015), accelerating into the green for 2018 this week…

All as European economic data surprises crash to their weakest since August 2011.

Once again – bad news is good news…

Draghi gets his excuse to keep doing “whatever it takes” and drone-like investors buy on his coat-tails.

via RSS https://ift.tt/2rH60Sn Tyler Durden