This Is The Huge Anti-Trump Protest That Was Organized By… The Russians

From November 2016

Protesters demonstrating against the election of Donald Trump made their voices heard again Saturday – taking to the streets of New York for the fourth straight day. A crowd of over 5,000 people gathered in Union Square around noon, their ranks rapidly growing and spilling out of the park.

 

Hand-drawn signs floated above the crowd, carrying messages like “Love Trumps Hate,” “Unacceptable,” and “Dump Trump.”

 

 

Chants of “black lives matter,” “popular vote,” and “America was never great” rang from the sea of dissenters.

So which 'leftist', anti-Trump group organized these 1000s of people to protest against their democratically-elected President?

Simple.

As The Hill reports, sixteen thousand Facebook users said that they planned to attend a Trump protest on Nov. 12, 2016 organized by the Facebook page for BlackMattersUS.

The event was shared with 61,000 users.

“Join us in the streets! Stop Trump and his bigoted agenda!” reads the Facebook event page for the rally.

 

“Divided is the reason we just fell. We must unite despite our differences to stop HATE from ruling the land.”

There's just one thing… BlackMattersUS is a Russian-linked group.

How do we know the organizers are "Russians"?

Simple, "The Russians" said so…

The BlackMatters organizing group was connected to the Internet Research Agency (IRA), a Russian “troll farm” with ties to the Kremlin, according to a recent investigation by the Russian Magazine RBC.

 

Facebook has identified the IRA as the group responsible for purchasing 3,000 political ads on Facebook’s platform and operating 470 accounts that appear to have attempted to influence the perspectives of Americans during the 2016 elections.

So to clarify…

The Russians spent $100,000 and created 0.004% of social media content to influence the election… and then the same Russians continued to help President Trump by unifying black and white Americans to protest against him.

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Will America’s Prosperity Be Completely Wiped Out By Our Growing Debt?

Authored by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

The federal government is now 20.4 trillion dollars in debt, and most Americans don’t seem to care that the economic prosperity that we are enjoying today could be completely destroyed by our exploding national debt. 

Over the past decade, the national debt has been growing at a rate of more than 100 million dollars an hour, and this is a debt that all of us owe.  When you break it down, each American citizen’s share of the debt is more than $60,000, and so if you have a family of five your share is more than $300,000.  And when you throw in more than 6 trillion dollars of corporate debt and nearly 13 trillion dollars of consumer debt, it is not inaccurate to say that we are facing a crisis of unprecedented magnitude.

Debt cannot grow much faster than GDP indefinitely.  At some point the bubble bursts, and when it does the pain that the middle class is going to experience is going to be off the charts.  Back in 2015, the middle class in the U.S. became a minority of the population for the first time ever.  Never before in our history has the middle class accounted for less than 50 percent of the population, and all over the country formerly middle class families are under a great deal of stress as they attempt to make ends meet.  The following comes from an absolutely outstanding piece that was just put out by Charles Hugh Smith

If you talk to young people struggling to make ends meet and raise children, or read articles about retirees who can’t afford to retire, you can’t help but detect the fading scent of prosperity.

 

It has steadily been lost to stagnation, under-reported inflation and soaring inequality, a substitution of illusion for reality bolstered by the systemic corruption of authentic measures of prosperity and well-being.

 

In other words, the American-Dream idea that life should get easier and more prosperous as the natural course of progress is still embedded in our collective memory, even though the collective reality has changed.

The reality that most of us are facing today is a reality where many are working two or three jobs just to make it from month to month.

The reality that most of us are facing today is a reality where debts never seem to get repaid and credit card balances just continue to grow.

The reality that most of us are facing today is a reality where we work day after day just to pay the bills, and yet we never seem to get anywhere financially.

The truth is that most people out there are deeply struggling.  The Washington Post says that the “middle class” encompasses anyone that makes between $35,000 and $122,500 a year, but very few of us are near the top end of that scale

It’s also situation specific. “The more people in a family, the more money they typically need to live a comfortable middle-class lifestyle,” writes the Post. Likewise, the more expensive your area, the more you need to make to qualify. Overall, “America’s middle-class ranges from $35,000 to $122,500 in annual income, according to The Post’s calculation” approved by the Pew Research Center.

“The bottom line is: $100,000 is on the middle-class spectrum, but barely: 75 percent of U.S. households make less than that,” writes the Post.

In a previous article, I noted that the bottom 90 percent of income earners in the U.S. brought home more than 60 percent of the nation’s income back in the early 1970s, but last year that number fell to just 49.7 percent.

The middle class is shrinking year after year, and the really bad news is that it appears that this decline may soon accelerate.  In fact, one major European investment bank is warning that the U.S. economy will “slow down substantially” in 2018.

But we can’t afford any slow down at all.  As it is, there is no possible way that we are going to be able to deal with our exploding debts at the rate the economy is growing right now.  According to Boston University professor Larry Kotlikoff, we are facing a “fiscal gap” of 210 trillion dollars over the next 75 years…

We have all these unofficial debts that are massive compared to the official debt. We’re focused just on the official debt, so we’re trying to balance the wrong books…

 

If you add up all the promises that have been made for spending obligations, including defense expenditures, and you subtract all the taxes that we expect to collect, the difference is $210 trillion. That’s the fiscal gap. That’s our true indebtedness.

Where in the world is all of that money going to come from?

Are you willing to pay much higher taxes?

Are you willing to see government programs slashed to a degree that we have never seen before in U.S. history?

If your answer to both of those questions is no, then what would you do to solve the fiscal nightmare that we are facing?

According to Brian Maher, author Robert Benchley once sat down to write an article about this fiscal mess, and what he came up with sums up the situation perfectly…

Benchley sat at his typewriter one day to tackle a vexing subject.

 

He opened his piece with “The”… when the full weight of his burden collapsed upon his shoulders.

 

He abandoned his typewriter in frustration.

 

He returned shortly thereafter and resumed the task anew…

 

With only “The” to work with… Benchley immediately knocked out the article, presented here in its entirety:

 

“The hell with it.”

Unfortunately, we can’t afford to say that.

Our exploding debt is a crisis that we must tackle, and the first step is to understand that our current financial system was literally designed to create as much debt as possible Once we abolish the Federal Reserve, our endless debt spiral will end, but until we do our debt problems are only going to continue to grow until the system completely implodes in upon itself.

*  *  *

Michael Snyder is a Republican candidate for Congress in Idaho’s First Congressional District, and you can learn how you can get involved in the campaign on his official website. His new book entitled “Living A Life That Really Matters” is available in paperback and for the Kindle on Amazon.com.

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Watch Live: Social Media Lawyers Explain To Politicians How 0.004% Of Traffic Swung The Election

Nearly two months after Facebook first confirmed that it had identified some 3,000 paid posts that had been clandestinely financed by purported Russia-linked troll farms, the companys' general counsel, Colin Stretch, and his counterparts at Twitter and Google, are heading down to the Hart Senate Office Building for a long-awaited hearing hosted by the Senate Judiciary Committee’s subcommittee on crime and terrorism. According to the description on the committee's website, the hearing is meant to help lawmakers and the companies “find solutions” that will allow them to filter out attempts by foreign powers like Russia to influence US elections.

South Carolina Senator and former presidential candidate Lindsey Graham will preside over the hearings, which are expected to begin at 2:30 ET.

Watch the hearing live below;

By late Monday night, the contents of the prepared testimony for all three companies had already leaked to the press. And for anybody who’s been following the Russian interference narrative, the testimony contains few surprises.

As we reported yesterday, Facebook plans to testify that Russia’s $100,000 in ad spending may have helped their posts be seen by as many as 126 million people over more than two years (of course, some of this ads ran after the election).

Of course, while the 126 million headline number may appear astonishingly large – without context it appears to suggest that the Russian disinformation campaign achieved one of the highest marketing IRRs in human history – in context, it’s actually negligible.

That’s because Americans were fed a total of 33 trillion stories by Facebook via their news feeds, meaning the tainted Russia content represents just 0.004% of total stories circulated on Facebook’s platform.

Meanwhile, Google’s director of law enforcement and information security is preparing to testify that he has found 18 English-language channels with 1,108 videos uploaded, totaling about 43 hours of content, that originated with Russian operatives.

The company also found that two accounts linked to the Russian troll farm spent a total of $4,700 on search and display ads during the 2016 election cycle.

Meanwhile, Twitter is preparing to tell Congress this week that Russia-linked accounts "generated approximately 1.4 million automated, election-related tweets, which collectively received approximately 288 million impressions" between Sept. 1 and Nov. 15, 2016.

At one point in the testimony, Twitter's acting general counsel, Sean Edgett, wrote that the company "identified 36,746 accounts that generated automated, election-related content and had at least one of the characteristics we used to associate an account with Russia,” Business Insider reported.

That is far higher than the number of Russia-linked accounts Twitter initially disclosed to the Senate Intelligence Committee in a closed-door interview last month. Still, like Facebook, Twitter is preparing to emphasize in its prepared remarks that the nearly 37,000 accounts represented "1/100th of a percent (0.012%) of the total accounts on Twitter at the time." Meanwhile, roughly 9% of the tweets from the 2,752 IRA-linked accounts were election-related, Twitter said, and more than 47% of those tweets were automated.

Of course, Democratic lawmakers who have pushed this latest narrative have been unfazed by these numbers. Instead, they've maintained that any evidence of "interference" is too much. And while Facebook said yesterday that is was devising sophisticated tools to completely filter out disingenuous posts, it might be more effective if they just blocked people with their browser language set to Russian from paying for ads – or posting anything, really – on their platforms.

Perhaps the most frustrating aspect of today's hearing is that trio of Silicon Valley lawyers will get to do it all again tomorrow during a hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee. Ranking member Sen. Mark Warner – who recently introduced a law that would require social media companies to expand ad-related disclosures – has tweeted a series of questions he intends to ask:

 

 

 

 

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Republican Chair Of House Financial Services Committee To Retire

One of the most powerful and longest serving Congressmen, Rep. Jeb Hensarling (R-Dallas), won’t run for re-election next year according to the Dallas News. Hensarling – who chairs the powerful Financial Services Committee and has been a strong voice in regulating the financial industry – has represented Congressional District 5 in the Dallas area since 2003.

“Today I am announcing that I will not seek reelection to the US Congress in 2018. Although service in Congress remains the greatest privilege of my life, I never intended to make it a lifetime commitment, and I have already stayed far longer than I had originally planned,” Hensarling wrote to supporters today. A staunch Constitutional conservative, Hensarling has long believed that Congress was not a place for career politicians. Yet. his announcement comes as a surprise to those who felt that he would be in line for more influential leadership posts. But Hensarling said Tuesday he wanted to spend more time with his family.

“Since my term as Chairman of the House Financial Services Committee comes to an end next year, the time seems right for my departure,” he wrote in a statement. “Although I will not be running for reelection, there are 14 months left in my congressional term to continue the fight for individual liberty, free  enterprise, and limited constitutional government – the causes for which I remain passionate.”

He said he will continue the work of his committee until his term ends.

“Much work remains at the House Financial Services Committee in the areas of housing finance reform, regulatory relief, cyber security and capital formation to name just a few,” he said. “Furthermore, important work remains in the Congress as a whole – especially pro-growth tax reform. I look forward to continuing this work on behalf of the people of the 5th District of Texas and all Americans.”

Hensarling is the second North Texas congressman to opt against another term in Congress. In January Rep. Sam Johnson, R-Plano, announced that he would retire when his term ends next year.

According to The Hill, several GOP lawmakers and aides on the Hill, before Hensarling’s statement to the Dallas Morning News, had said there was an “expectation” that this will be Hensarling’s last term in Congress.

Hensarling has chaired the Financial Services panel since 2013, leading the House GOP fight against the strict Dodd-Frank Act finance rules passed after the financial crisis. The committee produced dozens of bills to restrict or eliminate major portions of Dodd-Frank. Many of those laid the foundation for Hensarling’s Financial CHOICE Act, the most ambitious attempt to reshape the Obama-era law. Hensarling has advanced a slew of other fixes to Dodd-Frank through the committee, several with major bipartisan support, earning high marks from the financial services industry. “He has had – and continues to have – a tremendous impact on the financial sector,” said a financial services industry lobbyist of Hensarling, calling him “the leader in Republicans efforts to reduce financial regulation under President Trump.”

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“Never Buying From You Again”: Best Buy Halts Sales of Some iPhones After Angry Customer Backlash

Best Buy just got an Uber-sized lesson in surge pricing, and how not to do it.

Hoping to capitalize on the (reportedly) pent up interest in the iPhone X, Best Buy, which also sells all iPhone models via carrier installment plans that let customers pay for the devices over several months, decided to hike the full, upfront price by $100, with the retailer charging $1,099 and $1,249 for the two iPhone X configurations; Apple’s pricing is $999 and $1,149.

Danielle Schumann, a spokesperson for Best Buy, tried to explain the fact that the company is overcharging for the iPhone X in a statement to Bloomberg, which courtesy of The Verge is included below for its sheer ridiculousness.

“Our prices reflect the fact that no matter a customer’s desired plan or carrier, or whether a customer is on a business or personal plan, they are able to get a phone the way they want at Best Buy. Our customers have told us they want this flexibility and sometimes that has a cost.”

In other words, Best Buy was under the impression that its customers would like to pay more to buy phones from it, as opposed to the cheaper retail cost offered everywhere else the iPhone X is sold.

That impression was dead wrong.

As Bloomberg reports today, Best Buy has stopped some sales of the iPhone X and iPhone 8 after consumers complained about the retailer charging a $100 premium on the already record expensive smartphones.

Fast forward to today, when a much less funny Danielle Schumann makes a repeat appearance:

“Although there was clearly demand for the un-activated iPhone X, selling it that way cost more money, causing some confusion with our customers and noise in the media. That’s why we decided a few days ago to only sell the phone the traditional way, through installment billing plans.”

By then it was too late, and last week consumers took to Twitter to slam the completely unwarranted surcharge: “Never buying from you again,” one Twitter user wrote. “Charging $100 premium due to demand is treating your customer like dirt.”

Whereas Best Buy would get rebates from carriers when it sold phones that are already set up to work on the carriers’ networks, it doesn’t get that money when devices are sold without carrier activation. And yet, Apple, carriers and some other retailers stick to the official pricing. Best Buy thought it was better, and the result is the blowback it is facing now.

Then again, perhaps it still hasn’t learned its lesson: a check on Best Buy’s website shows that the retailer is still selling older iPhone models, including the iPhone 7…. at a $50 premium.

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House Of Cards Production Suspended After Spacey Sex Assaut Scandal

One day after Netflix announced that it would end House of Cards after the upcoming 6th season, it appears that the blowback against Spacey has been far greater than expected and according to the Hollywood Reporter, production on the current, sixth season of House of Cards has been suspended indefinitely following the sexual assault claims made against star and exec producer Kevin Spacey.

“MRC and Netflix have decided to suspend production on House of Cards season six, until further notice, to give us time to review the current situation and to address any concerns of our cast and crew,” Netflix and producer Media Rights Capital said in a joint statement Tuesday.

The suspension comes two days after Star Trek actor Anthony Rapp alleged in that Spacey made sexual advances towards him when Rapp was 14 and Spacey was 26. Spacey immediately offered his “sincerest apology” to Rapp via Twitter and used his statement to deflect attention as flagrantly as possible, coming out as gay for the first time. By doing so he also managed to infurate the gay community, with his move immediately criticized by many in Hollywood as well as GLAAD.

As reported yesterday, on Monday, Netflix and MRC issued a statement saying they were “deeply troubled” by the allegations. Executives from both of our companies arrived in Baltimore Monday afternoon to meet with the cast and crew of the political drama “to ensure that they continue to feel safe and supported,” the statement continued. Spacey was not on set at the time, as was previously scheduled.

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Mexico’s “Legendary” Oil Hedging Desk Spent $1.25 Billion On 2018 Puts

Mexico’s "legendary" oil hedgers (profiled her emost recently one year ago and by Bloomberg in this exhaustive article) are confident that prices won’t linger above $50 a barrel, because this summer, which is why the world’s most-active sovereign oil-trading desk spent a near record $1.25 billion on put options to lock in export prices for next year, Bloomberg reported, citing data from the country’s Ministry of Finance.

The news is especially notable because, as we pointed out yesterday, with WTI prices holding at 6-month highs around $54 (and Brent at $60), hedge funds have never been more bullish on the entire energy complex, having accumulated a record 1.189 billion barrel equivalent long positions in the five major petroleum contracts (Brent, WTI (x2), RBOB, HO)…

Source: Reuters, John Kemp

…and that surge comes as oil analysts are following the trend and raising their oil-price forecasts.

Last year, Mexican hedging desk spent $1.03 billion to protect itself from a downturn in prices, according to data released in the quarterly budget balance. In recent years, Mexico has spent an average $1 billion buying the hedges. The hedge first appeare in 2001, when Mexico made a tentative showing, spending just $217.3 million on put options, a fraction of the approximately $1 billion a year it would spend later. In 2003 and 2004, with oil prices rising, the country opted not to hedge at all.  The strategy came into its own in 2005: Mexico has hedged every year since without interruption. Agustín Carstens, who later became head of the central bank, was finance minister when a massive $5.1 billion payout came in 2009; some government officials also refer to the annual oil bet as “the Agustínian hedge.”

As previously discussed, Mexico's uncanny ability to hedge ahead of major price moves has left rival traders marveling at the traders’ market-reading prowess, dubbing the desk a “legendary” participant in global commodity markets.

News of Mexico’s massive hedge – the mere "net" direction of which moves markets – comes as the narrative in the oil market has experienced a surprising shift since Mexico started buying up hedges, a shift that, ironically, would’ve made those options much cheaper if the traders had just waited. The Mexican finance industry proposed a 2018 public budget in September projecting oil exports revenue at $46 per barrel. Lawmakers increased that assumption earlier this month to $48.5.

Just a few of months ago, analysts and investment banks slashed their oil price forecasts as OPEC’s production cuts drew down the global oil oversupply slower than initially expected, and rising U.S. shale production capped any short-lived oil price gains.

But by the end of the summer, as OPEC and the IEA – once again – magically started reporting stronger-than expected global oil demand growth and an accelerated pace of inventory declines, the market sentiment began to change… just as the discussion of Aramco's mega-IPO started swirling again (and which, as a reminder, will simply not take place, if oil is not above a given threshold price). As 2018 and the November 30 OPEC meeting draw nigh, the cartel is said to be favoring a 9-month extension of the deal through the end of next year.

The possibility of such supply restriction throughout the whole of 2018 – combined with expectations of strong oil demand growth and concerns over few new sources of supply due to years of underinvestment after the 2014 oil price crash – has prompted some analysts to warn that fear of the glut will turn into fear of a supply crunch next year. Some investment banks expect the U.S. crude oil production in 2018 to underperform forecasts, which could remove some part of the cap on oil prices that American shale has kept since the start of this year.

The Mexicans, however, don't think so.

Circling back to the desk's hedging activities, Mexican Finance Minister Vanessa Rubio had previously revealed in mid-October that Mexico had completed its annual oil hedge for 2018.

We reported in June that Mexico’s trading desk had begun the process of checking with Wall Street banks for final rates on put options for next year. The hedging deal, conducted through a handful of banks, is typically the New York investment community’s largest annual oil deal. And, like any forward transaction, the government then has the option to sell oil at the price determined in the contract, or the higher rate determined by market supply and demand.

Mexico, via its state-owned oil company Pemex, is one of the few sovereign oil producers that hedges export prices. Other producers that have tried it, such as Ecuador, which hedged oil sales in 1993, have experienced losses that triggered a political backlash. More recently, oil importers Morocco, Jamaica and Uruguay bought protection against rising energy prices.

As Bloomberg pointed out, Mexican Finance Minister Jose Antonio Meade said in an interview in September that Mexico would likely expand its oil hedge marginally for 2018 as it liberalizes gasoline prices. Meade has said the cost of the hedge for 2018 would likely be about the same as last year, but on this, he miscalculated: This year’s hedge was roughly 25% higher. The Mexican oil hedge runs from the beginning of December until the end of November. The country has made money three times on the hedge since it started to lock-in prices every year in 2000, including a record payout of $6.4 billion in 2015 after oil prices crashed.

Given the price of the put options, the trading desk’s reputation as savvy operators could be at risk. If oil prices continue to climb, the whole hedge could expire worthless, possibly triggering the type of political fallout that other exporters who have tried the strategy have experienced. Right now, analysts at Jeffries see WTI at $55 a barrel by end 2018 and Brent at $58 – both well above the government's projections over the summer, when the hedging program was ongoing.

That said, Mexico isn't alone in bracing for a drop in prices.


Meanwhile, oil prices are on track to post their second straight monthly gain for the first time in 2017.

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The Government Continues Attempts To Take Down Bitcoin Through Nefarious Means

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

The government really dislikes it when people make a living by conducting moral business practices without paying for their permission to do so

This is all too evident when examining the most recent arrest of a man for selling Bitcoin.

According to local news media reports, a Michigan man named Bradley Anthony Stetkiw has been charged by local authorities for operating an unlicensed money transmitting business.

The charges have been filed in US District Court. According to an indictment released by Detroit TV news services WD-IV Friday, the 52-year-old ran an exchange through the LocalBitcoins website, conducting transactions at restaurants in the Bloomfield area

Stetkiw is alleged to have sold bitcoin without a license (paying for permission from the government) as part of a business venture for approximately two years.

After selling about $150,000 in bitcoin, the feds set up a sting operation to catch Stetkiw. He sold more than $56,000 worth of bitcoin to federal agents through six meetings. Authorities say that that volume of transactions makes him subject to federal anti-money laundering regulations.

The government is not alleging that Stetkiw harmed anyone or took any property. 

He’s in trouble for not paying to register himself as a business. According to the indictment:

Operating under the user name ‘SaltandPepper,’ Stetkiw bought, sold and brokered deals for hundreds of thousands of dollars in bitcoins while failing to comply with the money transmitting business registration requirements set fort in Title 31, United States Code, Section 5330.

Earlier this year, Detroit resident Sal Mansy plead guilty to the charge of operating an unlicensed money services business. He allegedly conducted $2.4 million-worth of transactions over a two-year period ending in July 2015.

Other arrests in Missouri and New York suggest actions against independent U.S. bitcoin sellers are becoming more commonplace.

These arrests also suggest what many have feared for years: the government is attempting to take down bitcoin using nefarious means since they cannot figure out how to regulate the cryptocurrency.

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Dying Malls Increasingly Rely On Taxpayer Handouts For Survival

America’s dying malls have been a frequent topic of discussion of late as these relics of the 80’s have been forced to convert once valuable high-end retail square footage into grocery stores, libraries and doctor offices just to keep the lights on.  Here’s just a small sampling of the recent carnage:

But, as Bloomberg points out today, one other funding source is increasingly emerging as a key financial sponsor in the efforts of commercial REITs to re-purpose their failing assets: taxpayers.

In Brookfield, Wisconsin, for example, the city is using tax-increment financing (TIF), a common tool for municipalities to subsidize development by putting property taxes from new projects into a fund that pays for building cost, to help rebuild the Brookfield Square Mall. Meanwhile, as if that weren’t enough, the city has also agreed to pay for remediation costs related an old Sears auto repair shop and to build a new convention center and hotel where the Sears once stood.

In this depressing landscape, there is at least one player still willing to take the risk: local governments hungry for tax revenues. Developers incorporating additions such as housing and parks in their plans are turning to public partners to help rehabilitate the aging retail meccas that dot the U.S. Public subsidies have been part of retail development for decades, but with landlords pouring billions of dollars into renovation to battle a wave of store closures, public-private partnerships are more urgent, and more fraught, than ever.

 

At the Brookfield Square mall in Wisconsin, the landlord, CBL & Associates Properties Inc., needed a new occupant for a fading Sears. CBL had been tinkering with the mix for the past few years. Earlier, in 2008, it completed a 20,000-square-foot expansion, adding grocery stores and restaurants and renovating the interior.

 

In the end, it found its tenant: the city of Brookfield.

 

The local government plans to step in to build a conference center and hotel. By creating a hub for small and medium-size conventions on 9 of the 29 acres currently occupied by Sears, the city hopes to boost CBL’s efforts to reinvent the property, the largest taxpayer in Waukesha County. The idea is a greater focus on entertainment, recreation and business, according to Daniel Ertl, director of community development for the city of about 38,000.

 

“The Sears store is really a shadow of what it used to be,” Ertl said. “We encourage CBL to continue to reinvent themselves. God knows where retail is going to be in 20 years.”

Mall

As Bayer Properties CFO, Jami Wadkins, who just secured all sorts of taxpayer-funded handouts to rebuild a failed mall in Alabama, points out, public funding is becoming an “important element of the capital stack of every developer.”

These expansive developments often secure additional public financing through various forms of tax arrangements and incentives, as well as infrastructure spending for things like parking garages. Such funding has become an important element of the capital stack for every developer, according to Jami Wadkins, chief financial officer of Bayer Properties, a real estate company that develops and manages retail real estate.

 

In Birmingham, Alabama, Bayer worked with the city government to transform the site of the Pizitz, a historic department store that closed in 1987. The Pizitz, which Bayer bought as a vacant building in 2000, was in a rundown neighborhood that lagged behind the revival occurring in other areas of downtown.

 

Numerous plans ended up on the scrap heap before federal and state aid was secured to build a mixed-use community, which opened in 2016. The development houses 143 residential units — now 90 percent occupied — a co-working space, a food hall and retailers, including Alabama’s first Warby Parker.

 

The project cost was $70 million, including public and private funds. Bayer was able to obtain a low-interest loan from the U.S. Department of Energy, as well as tax credits from the state. The city paid to refurbish the landscaping in the area, including the sidewalks and street lamps, according to Wadkins.

 

“If you can put a plan together for a city that doesn’t put the city at great risk, then they will invest with you,” Wadkins said. 

To conclude, perhaps no one summarized this lunacy better than Ronald Reagan who succinctly described the Government’s approach to economic affairs as follows:

“Government’s view of the economy could be summed up in a few short phrases: If it moves, tax it. If it keeps moving, regulate it. And if it stops moving, subsidize it.”

Malls are clearly now in the “subsidize it” phase of the Government’s economic plan.

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The One Thing About Tax Reform That NO ONE is Talking About

The One Thing About Tax Reform That NO ONE is Talking About

The markets have been gunning higher on the notion that the Trump Administration is about to unveil a huge tax reform plan.

However, the devil is in the details. And thus far the plan is focusing on corporate tax reform, with the notion that an employer will somehow “pass on” their savings to employees via raises.

First off, while the phrase “corporate taxes” is a great political prop, the reality is that nearly 50% of large corporations pay ZERO corporate income tax.

That is not a typo.

In 2012, the Government Accountability Office performed a study in which it discovered that 43% of companies with $10+ million in assets pay ZERO corporate income tax.

It’s not as if the other 57% are picking up the slack either.

It is well known that large corporations go above and beyond to avoid paying the full, required tax rate. As Forbes noted earlier this year, Apple pays a 25% tax rate (the official US corporate rate is supposed to be 35%).  Microsoft pays a 16% tax rate. Alphabet (Google) pays 19%. General Electric and Exxon Mobil appear to have paid no corporate income tax in 2016.

My point is this: pursuing corporate tax reform is a pointless exercise.  Few if any corporations pay anywhere near the official corporate tax rate of 35%.

So what tax reform should we be talking about?

Individual tax reform.

And why aren’t we talking about it?

Because any discussion of individual tax reform eventually leads to the elephant in the room: entitlements.

The US currently spends 65% of it budget on entitlement spending. Nearly half of American households receive some kind of Government assistance/outlay. Those households that DO pay taxes cover only some of this (which is why the US is running $500+ BILLION deficits every year).

The bond bubble is financing the rest of this.

As I outlined in my best-selling book, The Everything Bubble: the Endgame for Central Bank Policy, politicians promise, but bond markets deliver.

Put simply, the bond bubble is what has financed the enormous entitlement spending of Governments around the world.

Take away the bubble in bonds, which permits Governments to issue debt at rates WAY below the historic average, and most major countries are bankrupt in a matter of weeks.

Well guess what? The bond markets are already beginning to revolt. As I write this, the bond yields on FOUR of the largest economies in the world are rising, having broken out of their downtrends of the last few years. The bond markets for US, Japan, Germany and the UK are all in revolt.

And guess what is triggering this?

INFLATION.

Inflation forces bond yields higher as the bond markets adjust to compensate for the fact that future interest payments will be worth less in real terms.

Bond yields higher= bond prices lower. Bond prices lower= the bond bubble is in serious trouble.

The above chart is telling us in very simple terms: the bond market is VERY worried about rising inflation. And if Central Banks don’t move to stop hit now by ending their QE programs and hiking rates, we’re in for a VERY dangerous time in the markets.

Put simply, BIG INFLATION is THE BIG MONEY trend today. And smart investors will use it to generate literal fortunes.

Imagine if you'd prepared your portfolio for a collapse in Tech Stocks in 2000… or a collapse in banks in 2008? Imagine just how much money you could have made with the right investments.

THAT is the kind of potential we have today. And if you're not already taking steps to prepare for this, it's time to get a move on.

We just published a Special Investment Report concerning FIVE secret investments you can use to make inflation pay ou as it rips through the financial system in the months ahead

The report is titled Survive the Inflationary Storm. And it explains in very simply terms how to make inflation PAY YOU.

We are making just 100 copies available to the public.

To pick up yours, swing by:

http://ift.tt/2knowyr

Best Regards

Graham Summers

Chief Market Strategist

Phoenix Capital Research

via http://ift.tt/2zUn8X5 Phoenix Capital Research