From An Industrial Economy To A Paper Economy – The Stunning Decline Of Manufacturing In America

Submitted by Michael Snyder via The Economic Collapse blog,

Why does it seem like almost everything is made in China these days?  Yesterday I was looking at some pencils that we had laying around the house and I noticed that they had been manufactured in China.  I remarked to my wife that it was such a shame that they don’t make pencils in the United States anymore.  At another point during the day, I turned over my television remote and I noticed that it also had “Made In China” engraved on it.  With Labor Day just hours in the past, I think that it is quite appropriate to write about our transition from an industrial economy to a paper economy today.  Since the year 2000, the United States has lost five million manufacturing jobs even though our population has grown substantially since that time.  Manufacturing in America is in a state of stunning decline, our economic infrastructure is being absolutely gutted, and our formerly great manufacturing cities are in an advanced state of decay.  We consume far more wealth than we produce, and the only way that we are able to do this is by taking on massive amounts of debt.  But is our debt-based paper economy sustainable in the long run?

Back in 1960, 24 percent of all American workers worked in manufacturing.  Today, that number has shriveled all the way down to just 8 percent.  CNN is calling it “the Great Shift”

In 1960, about one in four American workers had a job in manufacturing. Today fewer than one in 10 are employed in the sector, according to government data.

 

Call it the Great Shift. Workers transitioned from the fields to the factories. Now they are moving from factories to service counters and health care centers. The fastest growing jobs in America now are nurses, personal care aides, cooks, waiters, retail salespersons and operations managers.

No wonder the middle class is shrinking so rapidly There aren’t too many cooks, waiters or retail salespersons that can support a middle class family.

Since the turn of the century, we have lost more than 50,000 manufacturing facilities.  Meanwhile, tens of thousands of gleaming new factories have been erected in places like China.

Does anyone else see something wrong with this picture?

At this point, the total number of government employees in the United States exceeds the total number of manufacturing employees by almost 10 million

Government employees in the United States outnumber manufacturing employees by 9,932,000, according to data released today by the Bureau of Labor Statistics.

 

Federal, state and local government employed 22,213,000 people in August, while the manufacturing sector employed 12,281,000.

 

The BLS has published seasonally-adjusted month-by-month employment data for both government and manufacturing going back to 1939. For half a century—from January 1939 through July 1989—manufacturing employment always exceeded government employment in the United States, according to these numbers.

You might be thinking that government jobs are “good jobs”, but the truth is that they don’t produce wealth.

Government employees are really good at pushing paper around and telling other people what to do, but in most instances they don’t actually make anything.

In order to have a sustainable economy, you have got to have people creating and producing things of value.  A debt-based paper economy may seem to work for a while, but eventually the whole thing inevitably comes crashing down when faith in the paper is lost.

Right now, the rest of the world is willing to send us massive amounts of stuff that they produce for our paper.  So we keep producing more and more paper and we keep going into more and more debt, but at some point the gig will be up.

If we want to be a wealthy nation in the long-term, we have got to produce stuff.  That is why the latest news from Caterpillar is so depressing.  In addition to the thousands of layoffs that had been previously announced by the industrial machinery giant, it appears that a fresh wave of layoffs has arrived

Hundreds of mostly office employees received layoff notices at one of the largest Caterpillar Inc. facilities in the Peoria area this week, just as the company announced plans to close overseas production plants and eliminate thousands more positions.

 

A total of 300 support and management employees at Building AC and the Tech Center in Mossville this week received job loss notifications that included severance packages, 60 days notice and mandated Illinois Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act letters.

During this election season, you will hear many of our politicians talk about how good “free trade” is for the global economy.  But that is only true if the trade is balanced.  Unfortunately, we have been running a yearly trade deficit of between 400 billion dollars and 600 billion dollars for many years…

When you have got about half a trillion dollars more going out than you have coming in year after year that has severe consequences.

Let me try to break it down very simply.

Imagine that I am the United States and you are China.  I take one dollar out of my wallet and I give it to you and then you send me some stuff.

After a while, I want more stuff, so I take another dollar out of my wallet and send it to you in exchange for more products.

But that stuff only lasts for so long, and so pretty soon I find myself taking another dollar out of my wallet and giving it to you for even more stuff.

Ultimately, who is going to end up with all the money?

It isn’t a big mystery as to how China ended up with so much money.  And when we can’t pay our bills we have to go and beg them to let us borrow some of the money that we sent to them in the first place.  Since we pay interest on that borrowed money, that makes China even richer.

This is why I am so obsessed with these trade issues.  They truly are at the very heart of our long-term economic problems.

But most Americans don’t understand these things, and they seem to think that our debt-based paper economy can just keep rolling along indefinitely.

In the end, history will be the judge as to who was right and who was wrong.

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“It’s Probably Not Nothing”

In today’s edition of “it has to be seen to be believed” we show just two charts, the first from the latest presentation by Goldman’s Peter Oppenheimer (summarized here), which shows something stunning. In Goldman’s own words: “the sharp rise in the equity markets from both their 2009 and 2012 lows has almost entirely been driven by valuation expansion. Profits have been weak, particularly in Europe. Exhibit 2 shows that the 10-year rolling nominal earnings growth rate has collapsed to -1.8% in Europe and has fallen to record lows for the global equity market.

The second chart is from Capital Economics and is self-explanatory: it shows the % of all loans that are mortgage loans.

To summarize: a world where earnings growth has never been lower, and where another debt-driven housing crisis in China is looming.

Normally, we would say “it’s probably nothing” – after all central banks “got this”, only in this case it isn’t.

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“Last September Yellen Decided To Stay On Hold; Three Years Ago Bernanke Chose Not To Taper QE3”

Will she, or won’t she? That is the question everyone wants answered regarding whether Yellen will hike rates in two weeks time. To be sure, historical precedent is not on the side of the hawks: as Bloomberg’s Daniel Kruger reminds us, “Last September in ambiguous circumstances Yellen opted to stay on hold. Three years ago in September Ben Bernanke chose not to taper QE3 bond purchases.”

Still, while a September hike now looks implausible – in retrospect the perfect tell was Goldman’s conviction that the Fed will hike last Friday – Kruger also notes that over the next two weeks, markets enter one of those rare periods when traders can actually trade without constant jawboning from various important Fed members, or as he puts it, “the next two weeks present an opportunity to take a stand on interest rates without meaningful hand-holding from monetary officials. Between now and Sept. 21, when the central bank announces its decision, the calendar includes only regional Fed presidents. Members of Janet Yellen’s inner circle are absent. Data’s all that’s left.

However, in a world of 17-year-old hedge fund managers and Pavlov dog investors, does anyone even remember how to trade based only on “data”? Maybe handholding by the Fed is precisely what we all need in perpetuity?

Full note from Bloomberg’s Daniel Kruger

Without the Fed Holding Your Hand, Little Is Left

For those who think markets have become too dependent on the Fed, the next two weeks present an opportunity to take a stand on interest rates without meaningful hand-holding from monetary officials. Between now and Sept. 21, when the central bank announces its decision, the calendar includes only regional Fed presidents. Members of Janet Yellen’s inner circle are absent. Data’s all that’s left.

Most of the upcoming speakers have biases predisposed in favor of Fed action. We’ve heard their arguments. Yellen, William Dudley and Stanley Fisher did what they could at Jackson Hole to convince investors that officials may raise rates this month. So with no major data left after weaker nonfarm payrolls and ISM numbers clouding prospects of a rate hike, there’s little in the way that could shift market expectations significantly.

The futures market trimmed its view on the probability of a September increase to 24% from 34% after the August reading of the ISM non-manufacturing index was the weakest since 2010. Reports on retail sales and consumer prices have the potential to shift expectations back and forth.

The stand-out Fed speakers before the meeting include John Williams of the San Francisco Fed, who speaks this morning in Asia hours. He’s argued there’s a need for higher rates sooner rather than later. Eric Rosengren of the Boston branch comments on Sept. 9. He views growth as strong enough to warrant an increase.

Dogma isn’t going to convince investors when data doesn’t cooperate. Last September in ambiguous circumstances Yellen opted to stay on hold. Three years ago in September Ben Bernanke chose not to taper QE3 bond purchases.

Without the Fed to guide you, look to the numbers. That’s what will guide the Fed.

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“We Wired It” – New Emails Suggest Clinton Rigged Benghazi Hearing

Newly released emails from Citizens United suggest that Hillary's team attempted to rig the first Congressional hearing on Benghazi by feeding questions they wanted to answer to Democratic Senator Robert Menendez, who at the time was acting chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.  Per Fox News, Philippe Reines, founding member of the Clinton-aligned consulting group Beacon Global Strategies, wrote the following to Chelsea Clinton (aka "Diane Reynolds", aka "Energy") on the morning of the Benghazi hearings:

"We wired it that Menendez would provide an opportunity to address two topics we needed to debunk (her actions/whereabouts on 9/11, and these email from Chris Stevens about moving locations)."

 

Hillary

 

And wouldn't you know it, the first two questions that Menendez asked Hillary at the January 23, 2013 hearing were the exact same questions that Reines suggested were planted with the Senator's office in his email above.

"Can you give us your insights on the decision-making process regarding the location of the Mission.  And, as part of that, can you also in your response, you touched upon it in your opening statement, but what actions were you and your staff taking the night of September 11 and into September 12?"

The full Menendez Q&A session can be viewed below.

 

In 2013, the New Jersey senator was about to become chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, replacing John Kerry who was in line to replace Hillary Clinton as secretary of state.  Of course, since then Menendez was indicted on bribery charges in March 2015 in what prosecutors said was a scheme to trade political favors for luxury vacations, golf outings, campaign donations and expensive flights. Per the New York Times, the indictment, the first federal bribery charges against a sitting senator in a generation, puts Menendez’s political future in jeopardy as he faces a possible sentence of 15 years in prison for each of the eight bribery counts.

Philippe Reines is a founding member of the Clinton-aligned consulting group Beacon Global Strategies.  One of Beacon's senior counselors is former CIA Acting Director Mike Morell, who was responsible for heavily edited the controversial Benghazi talking points, which helped establish the administration’s initial flawed narrative about the attack.

How many plumes of smoke must be pointed out before an official fire is declared?

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“You Don’t Want To Be Riding This Horse When The Time Comes”

Submitted by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

Since the early 2000s, I’ve been describing a coming economic depression that will dwarf the one that began in 1929. But this is by no means guesswork or crystal ball gazing. Whenever a country (or countries) creates debt that is beyond the level that they can ever repay, an economic collapse is a near-certainty. Today, many jurisdictions, particularly, the US, EU, UK, Canada, etc. have created debt that is far beyond anything the world has ever seen. This assures us that the corresponding collapse will be of epic proportions.

Of course, I’m frequently asked, “When will it happen?” This is all but impossible to predict, but to be perfectly honest, back around 2006, I was guessing, “probably by 2012.” Although I predicted the minor crash of 2008, I felt that the bigger jolt that’s still coming would have been on our doorstep by now. Again, it’s not all that hard to predict the events if you do your homework, but predicting the timing is another matter.

However, I've continued to repeat my general principle that when an economic unraveling of major proportions is coming, significant events increase in frequency and severity.

I’ve never bothered to explain why I established this principle as a barometer, and maybe this bears explanation.

The principle is based on human nature. Most people, in any country, tend to assume that they have plenty of time to prepare for eventualities. As they get closer, however, they realise that they’re lagging behind and need to speed up the preparations. This is especially true if they happen to be arrogant, which is commonly the case with governments. They underestimate the timeframe necessary. They also fail to plan for delays along the way. For these reasons, as they get closer to the event, they almost always find that they have to speed up the process or they won’t be ready in time. By the time the actual event is about to take place, they tend to be falling over themselves, in a panic to get all their ducks in a row.

This means that as the lesser events leading up to the main event occur, they do so with greater frequency. Also, they increase in magnitude, as the biggest, least palatable steps are put off as long as possible.

But there’s one more factor that exacerbates this pattern even more. As long as everything seems to be working well, most everyone in the system remains complacent. But, as the events increase in both frequency and severity, each cog in the wheel gets increasingly nervous, and the closer we get, the more each cog is likely to become unglued and do things that are not in keeping with the overall plan. As a result, the situation becomes increasingly chaotic and unpredictable, as each middle manager, each civil servant, each politician, each banker, makes his own sudden moves to protect himself.

As a result, just prior to the main event (the crash), we can expect to be seeing big surprises on an almost daily basis – more bankers being charged with impropriety, more political leaders being ousted, more infighting amongst politicians and more members of the general public scrambling to safeguard their wealth.

Each of these individuals may have a plan as to what he is going to do and when, but his plan may get derailed as others make sudden dramatic moves, changing the field of play with ever-increasing frequency.

When this stage is reached, we should personally have already hunkered down for the storm. We should, in effect, be picturing the tornado on the horizon. We should have pulled in the laundry from the line, shuttered up the house, moved food and water into the root cellar, and now be waiting on the porch to see if we’re likely to be hit. At this point, we should only need to grab the kids and head for the cellar.  

In investment terms, this means that if we live in one of the jurisdictions listed above, we should already have gotten out of the markets, emptied our local bank accounts – except for three months of operating expenses, liquidated our local assets as much as possible, moved the proceeds to a jurisdiction that’s likely to weather the storm better, and invested in overseas real estate and precious metals. Further, it would be wise, if possible, to have prepared a bolt hole overseas, should we need to suddenly get on a plane due to riots, food and fuel shortages, government imposition of martial law, etc.

And we’re approaching that final stage at present. Dramatic events are now occurring weekly, and when they reach the daily level, we’ll see the same expression on our neighbours’ faces that we might have been seen on the faces of the Titanic passengers after the ship hit the iceberg. Each individual, each bank, each government will be out to save their own skin. Contracts, laws and treaties will suddenly be abandoned. There will be no coordination at this point. The collapse will be random, and it will be every man for himself.

What we shall witness will be the equivalent of watching a well-trained racehorse running down the track and suddenly, each of his legs panics and decides to do something different. The lack of coordination with this sudden development assures one thing only – that Crazylegs is going to go down hard.

You won’t want to be riding this horse when the time comes; you’ll want to already be out of the racing business.

In the last weeks and months prior to a crash, many people simply bury their heads in the sand and are not at all prepared. Many others get the gut feeling that something is radically wrong but can’t figure out what to do about it. This results in a loss of confidence in the system. People suddenly stop trusting their banking institutions, their governments and their currency. We’re now at that point. Each day, people trust the system less, and even if they don’t understand the severity of the outcome, their anger is rising steadily.

Historically, governments like to drag out the inevitable as long as they can. In particular, they like to get elections out of the way and get the new gang of pretenders in their chairs before a major conflagration is sparked off.

The UK will be looking at elections in October, the US in November. After January, all the flag-waving will be over, and the new gangs will be in their chairs. At any time after this, it would not be surprising to wake up one morning and discover that the odiferous effluvium has, in fact, hit the fan whilst we slept.

So, that’s it, then? We can place “Massive Economic Collapse” in our diaries to occur in February?

Unfortunately, identifying a date for such an event has always proven elusive, even for those who have been studying the situation closely for decades. We can do a fairly good job of describing the dominoes and even predicting a rough order in which they will fall, but an actual date is impossible to predict.

All that we can be certain of is that, when significant events begin to happen on a daily basis and are also increasing in magnitude (increased alleged terror attacks, fracturing financial institutions, increasingly draconian governmental edicts, etc.), we may well have run out of time to prepare. Whatever moves we need to make should already be in place at this point. When the fateful day does come, those who have not prepared will be scrambling for the exit doors, and we will not wish to be crushed in the panic. We’ll want to have already made our own exit quietly.

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Bill Ackman Goes Activist In Chipotle, Reveals 9.9% Stake

Many thought that having been squeezed between the terrible performance of his Valeant long and his Herbalife short, that Bill Ackman would quietly fade into the sunset. No such luck, and as he revealed moments ago in a 13D filing, the Pershing Square founder has just gone activist on Chipotle, revealing a 9.9% stake, announcing he is “intend to engage in discussions” with management and the board.  with the Issuer and Issuer’s management and board of directors, other stockholders of the Issuer and other interested parties that may relate to the governance and board composition, business, operations, cost structure, management, assets, capitalization, financial condition, strategic plans, and the future of the Issuer.

From the report:

The Pershing Square Funds purchased 554,213 shares of Common Stock for aggregate consideration (including brokerage commissions) of $224,491,131.

 

The Pershing Square Funds entered into over-the-counter forward purchase contracts providing for the purchase of 2,328,250 shares of Common Stock for a net purchase price of $974,342,953 (less rebate amounts for early settlement, if applicable).

The kneejerk response in the heavily shorted stock is, naturally, to soar some 7% in the afterhours session.

 

From the 13-D:

The Issuer is a leading fast casual restaurant company that the Reporting Persons believe has a strong brand, differentiated offering, enormous growth opportunity, and visionary leadership. The Reporting Persons believe that the Issuer’s Common Stock is undervalued and is an attractive investment.

 

The Reporting Persons intend to engage in discussions with the Issuer and Issuer’s management and board of directors, other stockholders of the Issuer and other interested parties that may relate to the governance and board composition, business, operations, cost structure, management, assets, capitalization, financial condition, strategic plans, and the future of the Issuer.

 

The Reporting Persons may also propose or take one or more of the actions described in subsections (a) through (j) of Item 4 of Schedule 13D, including but not limited to, solicitation of proxies, and may discuss such actions with the Issuer and Issuer’s management and the board of directors, other stockholders of the Issuer and other interested parties.

 

The Reporting Persons intend to review their investments in the Issuer on a continuing basis. Depending on various factors and subject to the obligations described herein, including, without limitation, the Issuer’s financial position and strategic direction, actions taken by the board of directors, price levels of shares of Common Stock, other investment opportunities available to the Reporting Persons, concentration of positions in the portfolios managed by the Reporting Persons, tax considerations for investors in the Pershing Square Funds, market conditions and general economic and industry conditions, the Reporting Persons may take such actions with respect to their investments in the Issuer as they deem appropriate, including, without limitation, purchasing additional shares of Common Stock or other financial instruments related to the Issuer or selling some or all of their beneficial or economic holdings, engaging in hedging or similar transactions.

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Ireland “Especially Exposed” To “International Shocks” Warns Central Bank

Ireland remains especially exposed to another financial shock because of the extremely high levels of public and private debt, the open nature of the economy, and Brexit, Irish Central Bank Governor Philip Lane has warned in a pre-budget letter to Minister for Finance, Michael Noonan.

Bank-of-Ireland-007

“Ireland is especially exposed due to the legacy of high public and private debt levels, the sensitivity of small, highly-open economies to international shocks and Brexit-related vulnerabilities,” Ireland’s Central Bank Governor said.

The letter was covered in the Irish IndependentIrish Times and Irish Examiner. This is something we covered in our interview with Max Keiser last week – see here.

There are many potential international financial and geopolitical shocks today which have the potential to derail the very fragile economic recovery or indeed contribute to a new global debt crisis.

Geopolitical risk remains very high. ‘Brexit’ has created a whole new set of risks to Ireland, the UK and the Eurozone itself. The Middle East remains a powder keg and tensions with Russia remain very real. There is the real risk of conflict and the consequent effect on oil prices, global markets and the global economy.

The governor’s warnings come in the wake of similar warnings from the former deputy governor of the Central Bank who warned in an op-ed in a leading international financial publication, Project Syndicate, that Ireland is at risk of another housing market crash.

There have also been warnings regarding deposit bail-in risks from the CEO of FDB, one of Ireland’s largest insurance companies. The insurance company has been moving cash out of Irish bank deposits and into bonds. In order to read more about Stefan Gerlach’s warning and Fiona Muldoon’s concerns –   read Deposit Bail-in and Property Crash Warnings In Ireland here.

These risks are set to impact savers and investors in the coming years. Ignoring them and pretending they have no financial implications for people’s personal finances is imprudent.

Today Dr Constantin Gurdgiev, Dr Brian Lucey, Eddie Hobbs, Jim Power, Cormac Lucy, Jill Kerby and others are all advocating diversification into gold again. Diversification remains important and an allocation to physical gold will again protect in the coming crisis.

 

 

Interview re Ireland’s Debt Crisis – Starts 12:24 – Watch here 

 

Gold and Silver Bullion – News and Commentary

Gold steady as September Fed rate hike prospects wane (Reuters)

G-20 agrees to look beyond low interest rates to spur global economy (MarketWatch)

Gold up as dollar slips after weak U.S. jobs data  (Reuters)

Gold holds steady as U.S. markets closed for Labor Day (Investing)

Hong Kong reports surge in volumes of smuggled gold and silver bars  (ScrapMonster)

Gold is getting ready for a super-spike (BusinessInsider)

Roberts and Embry Interview – GoldSeek Radio (GoldSeek)

G20 a success for China, but hard issues kicked down the road (Reuters)

Japan’s demand for ‘seamless Brexit’ is a timely warning against hubris (Telegraph)

Brexit ‘shock’ threatens to do far more damage to the European economy than to Britain (Telegraph)

Gold Prices (LBMA AM)

06 Sep: USD 1,330.05, GBP 997.94 & EUR 1,191.46 per ounce
05 Sep: USD 1,328.30, GBP 996.23 & EUR 1,189.49 per ounce
02 Sep: USD 1,311.50, GBP 987.95 & EUR 1,172.74 per ounce
01 Sep: USD 1,305.70, GBP 985.80 & EUR 1,172.13 per ounce
31 Aug: USD 1,314.45, GBP 1,000.30 & EUR 1,179.19 per ounce
30 Aug: USD 1,318.85, GBP 1,008.39 & EUR 1,180.90 per ounce
26 Aug: USD 1,324.90, GBP 1,002.95 & EUR 1,173.33 per ounce

Silver Prices (LBMA)

06 Sep: USD 19.60, GBP 14.70 & EUR 17.55 per ounce
05 Sep: USD 19.46, GBP 14.60 & EUR 17.43 per ounce
02 Sep: USD 18.75, GBP 14.15 & EUR 16.76 per ounce
01 Sep: USD 18.65, GBP 14.08 & EUR 16.73 per ounce
31 Aug: USD 18.74, GBP 14.27 & EUR 16.82 per ounce
30 Aug: USD 18.78, GBP 14.35 & EUR 16.82 per ounce
26 Aug: USD 18.67, GBP 14.15 & EUR 16.54 per ounce


Recent Market Updates

– Deutsche Bank Tries To Explain Failure To Deliver Physical Gold
– Physical Gold Delivery Failure By German Banks
– Avoid Paper Gold – “Gold Delivery” Refused By Gold Exchange Traded Commodity
– Debt Bubble in Ireland and Globally Sees Wealthy Diversify Into Gold
– “Why Case Against Gold Is Wrong” – James Rickards
– Obama To Leave $20 Trillion Debt Crisis For Clinton Or Trump
– Gold Bullion Averages Biggest Seasonal Gains in September Over Past 20 Years
– Gold Futures See Massive $1.5 Billion “Non Profit” Liquidation In “One Minute”
– Jim Grant Is “Very Bullish On Gold”
– Germans Warned To ‘Stockpile’ Cash In Case Of ‘War’
– Ireland’s Biggest Bank Charging Depositors – Negative Interest Rate Madness
– Rothchilds Buying Gold On “Greatest Experiment” With Money In “History of the World”
– Gold – “Mother of All Bull Markets Has Only Just Begun” – Grandich

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Chicago Sees Huge Spike In Murders Over Labor Day As Cops Stay Home In “Disrespect Of Police” Protest

Last week, we noted the risk of a violent Labor Day weekend in Chicago with the Fraternal Order of Police urging its rank and file members to deny overtime requests for the holiday weekend "to protest the continued disrespect of Chicago Police Officers and the killings of Law Enforcement Officers across our Country" (see "As Chicago Violence Soars, Officers Told To Stay Home In Protest Of 'Continued Disrespect Of Police'"). 

While it's unknown how many cops did choose to stay home and ignore overtime requests, there was a clear spike in violence over the long holiday weekend with a total of 65 people shot and 13 of them killed.  Chicago recorded a total of 481 shootings and 91 homicides in August which tied for the most the city had seen in a single month in 20 years.  In fact, according to the Chicago Tribune, the Labor Day weekend was the deadliest of the three holiday weekends of the summer with 13 killed versus 6 over the Memorial Day weekend 5 over the Fourth of July weekend.

Data from HeyJackass! shows a huge spike in violent crime on Labor Day with over 30 shootings and 10 homicides. 

Chicago Homicides

 

Chicago recorded a total of 481 shootings in August 2016 making it the most violent month in the city in 20 years.

Chicago

 

Total homicides for the year are up 44% YoY putting Chicago on track for over 750 homicides in 2016 which would be the most violent year in the city since the early 90s. 

Chicago

 

Meanwhile, violence continues to be concentrated in the south and westside neighborhoods.

Chicago

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Why Is Hillary Clinton Always Hiding Something?

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

One of the more disturbing revelations from this year’s U.S. presidential election, has been Hillary Clinton’s compulsive propensity to hide all sorts of things from the American public. While I appreciate one’s right to privacy as much as the next person, if you want to run for President of these United States, transparency and engagement with the public should be a top priority and requirement.

In this post, I want to highlight three troubling ways in which Hillary Clinton has been shamelessly and inexplicably hiding things from the public throughout her presidential run.

The first instance is one that came up frequently during the Democratic primary. That is, transcripts of the extraordinarily high priced speeches she gave to numerous corporations, including multiple Wall Street banks that were at the center of the 2008/09 financial crisis.

In a very popular post published back in May, I highlighted all her speeches from 2013-15, including the specific amounts earned. The total came to $21.7 million, but that’s just the tip of the iceberg when it comes to the Clintons leveraging public office to enrich themselves to oligarchic levels. For example, as CNN reported back in February:

Hillary Clinton and her husband, former President Bill Clinton, combined to earn more than $153 million in paid speeches from 2001 until Hillary Clinton launched her presidential campaign last spring, a CNN analysis shows.

 

In total, the two gave 729 speeches from February 2001 until May, receiving an average payday of $210,795 for each address. The two also reported at least $7.7 million for at least 39 speeches to big banks, including Goldman Sachs and UBS, with Hillary Clinton, the Democratic 2016 front-runner, collecting at least $1.8 million for at least eight speeches to big banks.

Given the extraordinary amount of money the couple earned over the past decade and a half, you’d think the public would have a right to hear what she actually said to many of these entities, especially the chronically corrupt TBTF Wall Street banks. Nevertheless, she refuses to release the transcripts.

For an idea as to why she might be hiding the content of these speeches, see: 

The Real Reason Hillary Clinton Refuses to Release Her Wall Street Transcripts

Hillary Consolidates Wall Street Support as Republican Financiers Shift to Clinton

Hillary Clinton is in Deep Trouble – “Hordes of Wall Street Executives” Descend Upon Philly

Hiding Wall Street speech transcripts is just one example of Hillary Clinton’s extreme secretiveness and shadiness when it comes to her lack of accountability to the American public.

Example number two relates to the extremes she went to hide her communications while Secretary of State. By now, everyone knows about her private email server and the FBI investigation that solidified what many of us already knew — she is above the law.

What you may not know, are some of the additional details surrounding her email affair courtesy of the FBI notes released on Friday ahead of a long holiday weekend. Let’s review a few of them courtesy of  Chris Cillizza’s article published in the Washington Post, 12 Things I Learned From the FBI Report on Hillary Clinton’s Private Email Server:

1. Clinton had 13 mobile devices during her four years at the State Department and five iPads.

 

2. Clinton never sought approval to conduct state business on her own private email server despite “an obligation to do so.”

 

3. Former secretary of state Colin L. Powell advised Clinton to keep it secret that she was using a BlackBerry to conduct official business.

 

4. A note sent to all State Department employees on Clinton’s behalf warned them against the risks of using personal email addresses for official business.

Yet she did it anyway.

5. The State Department, regularly during Clinton’s tenure, sent out notes warning of the dangers of using mobile devices not up to agency security standards.

Yet she did it anyway.

6. Clinton neither participated in conversations with her lawyers about how to determine which emails were professional and which were personal, nor did she provide them any guidance as to the locations of those emails.

 

7. Clinton told the FBI the decision to delete her personal emails was because she didn’t need them anymore, not because she was trying to avoid State Department, FBI or Freedom of Information Act requests.

 

8. Three weeks after the New York Times broke the story of the existence of Clinton’s email server, a number of Clinton’s emails were deleted.

 

9. The FBI found 17,448 work-related and personal emails that Clinton did not turn over to the State Department.

 

10. Clinton told the FBI that she was unaware that the “C” marking on emailed documents meant they were confidential.

 

11. Sidney Blumenthal, a longtime Clinton associate, sent the secretary of state 179 email memos during her time as the nation’s top diplomat.

For more on Mr. Blumenthal, see: How the Clinton Foundation Paid Sidney Blumenthal $10K per Month as He Gave Horrible Libya Advice to the State Dept.

12. Clinton was concerned that her email had been hacked.

But that’s not all. We also learned the following from The Boston Globe:

Clinton has repeatedly said her use of private email was allowed. But over a 3 ½ hour interview in July, she told investigators she ‘‘did not explicitly request permission to use a private server or email address,’’ the FBI wrote. They said no one at the State Department raised concerns during her tenure, and that Clinton said everyone with whom she exchanged emails knew she was using a private email address.

 

Clinton and her legal team deleted thousands more emails she claimed were personal and private. The FBI report details steps taken by Clinton’s staff that appear intended to hamper the recovery of deleted data, including smashing her old Blackberry smartphones with a hammer and using special software to wipe the hard drive of a server she had used.

As you can see, the American public views Hillary Clinton as dishonest and untrustworthy not because of sexism, but because she is an extraordinarily shady person.

These first two examples of Hillary hiding something we just reviewed relate to her going to great lengths to hide or obscure her communications. With respect to the first case, she continues to hide the comments she made in private speeches to the corporate titans who fund her campaign. In the second case, she has made it impossible for the American public to know precisely what she was up to as Secretary of State due to her brazen and unapproved decision to use a private email server.

While all of that is bad enough, Hillary continues to showcase her compulsive tendency to hide up to the current moment. What I’m referring to is that despite her being two months away from asking the American public to vote for her to be President, she continues to hide from the press and citizenry as a whole, while jet-setting from one of the nation’s most elite enclaves to another, pleading for additional oligarchs money in private fundraisers.

Let’s begin with her absurd and arrogant stance of refusing to hold press conferences. She hasn’t held one in 274, and if you’d like to keep track at home, click on the screen shot below for a live tracker.

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So we know who she’s not meeting with. Let’s now turn to Politico to find out who she is meeting with (privately of course):

When she’s speaking at a fundraiser, reporters camped outside can sometimes hear a muffled voice but can rarely make out her actual words. When she’s greeting voters at a coffee shop or on a rope line after a rally, the former secretary of state often looks right through the reporters hovering around her, like they don’t exist. And when she does acknowledge their physical presence, she smiles through the questions barked at her and encourages reporters to sample a coffee, or a chocolate, instead.

 

There are full days when the rotating pool of traveling press does not even set eyes on Clinton. In one instance last month, Clinton slipped out to Martha’s Vineyard from New York, ditching the pool of reporters assigned to cover her altogether.

 

Certainly, the past month has been somewhat out of the ordinary for the campaign — Clinton has been on a cash dash, spending the bulk of the end of summer at private, closed-press fundraisers rather than public events. (Twice, she popped up to call in to cable television programs.) But there has hardly been a halcyon period of accessibility since she launched her campaign 18 months ago.

The article’s author goes on to provide a few lowlights from the press’ recent experience attempting to cover an impossible to cover campaign.

They Paved Paradise and Put up a Parking Lot, Aug. 30: Clinton hit up three big fundraisers in the Hamptons. While she raked in the cash, the pool didn’t have much to report on. “Pool was unable to hear a word of HRC’s remarks at first cocktail party. She also took questions, which pool was also prohibited from hearing.”

 

At an evening fundraiser hosted by Jimmy Buffett, Clinton was inside dancing with Paul McCartney, according to attendees. Pool reporters were stationed about 400 yards away from the house, “among the parked cars.”

 

Basement Blues, Aug. 29: While Clinton entertained donors who coughed up $33,400 a head to attend a Hamptons fundraiser at the home of Jay Snyder, there was “no chance of your pool hearing Clinton here. We are being held in a quaint, but lovely guest house, while Clinton is in the main house.” Earlier in the day, there was a brief window at a fundraiser when the pool could hear Clinton’s remarks. That was quickly remedied. “Staff shooed us into a hidden room farther in the basement out of earshot.”

 

Exclusive Interview with a Caretaker, Aug. 28: Clinton attended four fundraisers in the Hamptons. In Bridgehampton, pool “had a funny exchange with the man who described himself as the caretaker of the house where we waited. He asked when we were leaving to go into the fundraiser and see her. We told him no, we aren’t allowed to do that. He seemed incredulous.” Pool reported no sighting of Clinton the entire day.

 

Chocolates, Questions, Aug. 25: Clinton popped into Hub Coffee Roasters after a rally in Reno, Nevada. There, she ignored questions about Donald Trump lobbed at her from the reporters in the coffee shop. Instead, she encouraged them to sample Dorinda’s Chocolates. “It’s really good!” she said.

 

Muffled Mumblings, Aug. 24: Clinton attended a full day of fundraisers in California, but at the end of a long day that ended at 10 p.m., “pool lost sight of the motorcade as it pulled into the hotel garage, marking a full day without a glimpse of Clinton.” While Clinton raised money at the estate of Laurene Powell Jobs, the widow of Steve Jobs, the pool didn’t even catch a glimpse of the house, instead “we have to hold at a nearby restaurant.” At a fundraiser earlier in the day, “pool could hear Clinton’s voice, but could not make out any exact words.”

 

 

The Wave, Aug. 23: In Burbank, California, as Clinton entered Justin Timberlake’s mansion for a fundraiser, pool reported that Clinton “waved to us.” Also, a Jennifer Aniston sighting.

 

Ignoring Questions, Aug. 17: Clinton ignored questions shouted at her about Trump’s campaign shakeup, while she took a tour of John Marshall High School in Cleveland, ahead of a rally there, one of her two public events of the past two weeks.

Indeed, Hillary Clinton’s obvious disdain for the American public as she panders incessantly to oligarchs has reached a level of such shamelessness, even the New York Times couldn’t ignore it. As the paper noted in its article, Where Has Hillary Clinton Been? Ask the Ultrarich:

At a private fund-raiser Tuesday night at a waterfront Hamptons estate, Hillary Clinton danced alongside Jimmy Buffett, Jon Bon Jovi and Paul McCartney, and joined in a singalong finale to “Hey Jude.”

 

“I stand between you and the apocalypse,” a confident Mrs. Clinton declared to laughs, exhibiting a flash of self-awareness and humor to a crowd that included Calvin Klein and Harvey Weinstein and for whom the prospect of a Donald J. Trump presidency is dire.

The above quote by Hillary, which the smug attendees found so humorous, is quite telling in a very troubling manner. For example, it reminds me a lot of what Obama reportedly said to a group of bank executives in early 2009:

“My administration,” the president added, “is the only thing between you and the pitchforks.”

Interesting, because as it turned out, Obama did indeed coddle, protect and further enrich financial oligarchs to previously unimaginable levels. All at the expense of the middle class. Indeed, Obama and Hillary’s comments both betray a particularly frank and shameless admission. That the role of a U.S. President is, in their eyes at least, to protect the financial, corporate and political elite from the people, and not the other way around.

Mr. Trump has pointed to Mrs. Clinton’s noticeably scant schedule of campaign events this summer to suggest she has been hiding from the public. But Mrs. Clinton has been more than accessible to those who reside in some of the country’s most moneyed enclaves and are willing to spend hundreds of thousands of dollars to see her. In the last two weeks of August, Mrs. Clinton raked in roughly $50 million at 22 fund-raising events, averaging around $150,000 an hour, according to a New York Times tally.

 

And while Mrs. Clinton has faced criticism for her failure to hold a news conference for months, she has fielded hundreds of questions from the ultrarich in places like the Hamptons, Martha’s Vineyard, Beverly Hills and Silicon Valley.

 

If Mr. Trump appears to be waging his campaign in rallies and network interviews, Mrs. Clinton’s second presidential bid seems to amount to a series of high-dollar fund-raisers with public appearances added to the schedule when they can be fit in. Last week, for example, she diverged just once from her packed fund-raising schedule to deliver a speech.

 

Mr. Berger, who joined Mrs. Clinton last month at a donor event in Miami Beach, said many of the individual conversations before and after she speaks at the gatherings are centered more on grandchildren than weighty policy matters. But when she has had a give-and-take this summer about issues, Mrs. Clinton, who has promised to “reshuffle the deck” in favor of the middle class and portrayed Mr. Trump as an out-of-touch billionaire, has almost exclusively been fielding the concerns of the wealthiest Americans.

This whole “we just talked about grandchildren” seems to be a calculated talking point. Recall, Loretta Lynch said she merely discussed grandchildren with Bill Clinton during their secret tarmac meeting days before the FBI cleared her in the email investigation.

To businessmen who complain to Mrs. Clinton that President Obama has been unfriendly to their interests, she says she would approach business leaders more like Mr. Clinton did during his administration, which was widely considered amicable to the private sector.

 

The campaign’s finance team is led by Dennis Cheng, previously the chief fund-raiser for the Clinton Foundation, and it employs a couple dozen staff members. Mr. Cheng, who attends the events with Mrs. Clinton, offers donors a number of contribution options that provide them and their families varying levels of access to Mrs. Clinton. John Morgan, a Florida lawyer and donor, described Mr. Cheng as “the master concierge.”

 

For a donation of $2,700, the children (under 16) of donors at an event last month at the Sag Harbor, N.Y., estate of the hedge fund magnate Adam Sender could ask Mrs. Clinton a question. A family photo with Mrs. Clinton cost $10,000, according to attendees.

 

Lady Lynn Forester de Rothschild, a backer of Democrats and a friend of the Clintons’, made sure attendees did not grill Mrs. Clinton at the $100,000-per-couple lamb dinner Mrs. Forester de Rothschild hosted under a tent on the lawn of her oceanfront Martha’s Vineyard mansion.

 

“I said, ‘Let’s make it a nice night for her and show her our love,’” Mrs. Forester de Rothschild said.

Indeed.

Finally, just yesterday Hillary begrudgingly decided to emerge from behind the comfortable confines of billionaires and their gated mansions to engage with some ordinary plebs in Ohio.

Here’s what happened.

But yeah, it’s all just conspiracy theory to ask any questions about her health.

via http://ift.tt/2cm6YvZ Tyler Durden

Bill Clinton Compares Himself to Robin Hood

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The newly released financial files on Bill and Hillary Rodham Clinton’s growing fortune omit a company with no apparent employees or assets that the former president has legally used to provide consulting and other services, but which demonstrates the complexity of the family’s finances.

Because the company, WJC, LLC, has no financial assets, Hillary Clinton’s campaign was not obligated to report its existence in her recent financial disclosure report, officials with Bill Clinton’s private office and the Clinton campaign said. They were responding to questions by The Associated Press, which reviewed corporate documents.

The officials, who spoke on condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to provide private details of the former president’s finances on the record, said the entity was a “pass-through” company designed to channel payments to the former president.

Under federal disclosure rules for spouses’ earned income, Hillary Clinton was only obligated to identify the source of her spouse’s income and confirm that he received more than $1,000. As a result, the precise amounts of Bill Clinton’s earned income from consulting have not been disclosed, and it’s not known how much was routed through WJC, LLC.

– From last year’s post: Introducing “WJC, LLC” – Bill Clinton’s Little Known Pass-Through Entity Used to Channel Consulting Fees

The man’s shamelessness knows no limits.

The Hill reports:

Bill Clinton said Monday that Republican attacks on his family’s foundation were “funny” and likened his actions as head of the organization to Robin Hood’s.

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