Tag: finance

Authored by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

Before I get going, let me start out with the usual disclaimer. I’m not a Bitcoin expert, nor do I claim to be. I love people who live and breathe Bitcoin every day, and I have the utmost respect for all of you, but that’s not me. As you can tell from a quick glance at my website, my current focus revolves around the current political environment as well as the geopolitical implications of a declining U.S. empire. That said, I’ve been involved in Bitcoin since 2012, and I care deeply about it. In my opinion, globally interconnected humans functioning within decentralized systems of economics and political governance provide the best framework for the human species going forward. We have the tools, we just need the desire.

Today’s post is about an alt-coin that is about to fork from Bitcoin, led by a contingency in the civil war known as the big blockers. This piece is not meant for newbies, but is written for people who own Bitcoin and already have a good understanding of all the drama that’s been going on and may continue to periodically resurface after August 1. If you aren’t already up to speed on these things you should probably stop reading. The post will just sound confusing and won’t have much impact on your decision making anyway.

First of all, I don’t think there will be any debate around what the “real Bitcoin” is following the fork and creation of an alt-coin called Bitcoin Cash (BCC). This coin will be a pet project of big blockers wanting to both save face, and also potentially hurt the original Bitcoin (BTC). Only time will tell if some of those considered “bad actors” will try to target the original Bitcoin out of pettiness, but you should never underestimate what people with a lot of money/power and huge egos will do. History is replete with the ruins of the crazed actions of these types of individuals.

If you control your private keys, you should be able to access BCC sometime after August 1st. Some people are describing this as a dividend, although it seems more like an asset spinoff to me. Either way, BCC will have some sort of value on or around August 1st, and a market will start being made. So how should people concerned about potential bad actors on the side of BCC think about all of this? Let’s start with a few tweets from Whale Panda that I think are important to ponder.

Then when the 2x part of Segwit2x wont activate, they will dump $BTC hard and pump $BCC claiming it is the original/legacy #Bitcoin.

— WhalePanda (@WhalePanda) July 25, 2017

With that in mind, take a watch of this recent interview of Roger Ver. Roger is considered to be one of the largest holders of Bitcoin out there, and owns bitcoin.com.

That video definitely made me feel that Roger could act in a hostile way following the launch of BCC. I really hope he swallows his pride and doesn’t go down that route, but we can’t make that assumption. I think we absolutely need to prepare for the possibility that some bad actors will try to harm Bitcoin using BCC. Here are a few more tweets from Whale Panda.

Since I think Whale Panda is onto something, the most logical way to defend against the threat from a market psychology perspective is to hold onto your BCC even if you think it’s garbage. You have to understand that if bad actors want to make Bitcoin look bad and their alt-coin look good, price will be a huge part of their strategy.

It might make sense to not dump your BCC right away, which could let bad actors control the entire float. If you do that, they can then dump their BTC on the market while controlling all the BCC and ensure it goes up while Bitcoin drops. I’m not saying this is my assumption, I’m saying its possible. As such, hold on to your BCC to prevent them from executing this strategy. Then if BTC does drop as BCC rises, you have dry powder to take the other side of the trade. The risk in this strategy is that BCC crashes right away and never recovers and you lose that free money, but if that happens you’ll still probably benefit from a rising BTC price.

At the end of the day, everyone should do what they feel is right. I could be completely nuts here. I’m just putting all of this out there in the event some of you haven’t thought through this potential outcome yet. I at least want people to be aware of what might happen. I have no idea of the likelihood of such a scenario.

Personally, I hope Roger, Jihan and whoever else don’t go down that route. If they do, they will be rightly demonized and remembered as the egomaniacs who tried to kill Bitcoin. Sure float your alt-coin and let people choose, but don’t start playing nefarious games. If you do, the Bitcoin community will rally together like never before and it won’t be good for you. I ask that you stand down.

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Wynn Resorts, the casino and resort company controlled by billionaire mogul and former Trump political adviser Steve Wynn, booked a staggering gambling loss that one economist described as a “black swan” during the second quarter when one of its subcontractors in charger of keeping the casino stocked with high rollers lost money for a whole month.

The loss was revealed by Wynn during the company’s second-quarter earnings call earlier this week, when he described how Suncity Group, a junket operator that recruits high-roller clients for the casinos, brought in clients whose winnings cost the casino more than $10 million in April, according to Bloomberg.

"On Tuesday, casino billionaire Steve Wynn revealed that a junket operator in his Macau casinos – essentially a subcontractor – brought in clients whose winnings cost the casino more than $10 million in April, an astonishing swing for a business that can generate profit of as much as $50 million.

'We had probably the most unique statistical anomaly in my 50 years of doing this,' the founder and chief executive officer of Wynn Resorts told analysts on a conference call. 'And that is with enormous volume, one of our leading outlets lost money for the entire month.'"

The high-rollers made millions, Wynn explained, with the casino on the hook for it.

“The bottom fell out and all of the players won millions of dollars,” said the 75-year-old casino mogul.

According to Bloomberg, the loss occurred at the Wynn Palace baccarat tables. The Palace is Wynn’s new $4.2 billion resort on Macau’s Cotai Strip, a market teeming with high rollers. Macau has a system where junket operators like Suncity bring high rollers to casinos, front them cash and pay for private rooms. The casinos then pay the operators a commission based on the amount their clients bet.

Though the anecdote was clearly intended to amuse, it also contains some insight into the behavior of Wynn shares following the company’s Tuesday earnings release. The company’s stock dropped 4% despite the company beating on the top-line numbers as investors raised concerns about weakness in the company’s mass-market business, which tends to be more profitable – and more stable – than the VIP business segment.

Robert Hannum, a professor of risk at the University of Denver who was interviewed by Bloomberg, explained that a string of losses of this magnitude is extremely unlikely in baccarat, though the game does have some of the best odds for players.

“The odds are astronomically high,” he said in an e-mail. “Of course, black swans do occur and some might say that anything can happen in the casino business.”

In baccarat, the house advantage averages 1.2 percent – meaning a player can expect to lose $1.20 for every $100 bet over time. That’s compared with a loss ratio as high as $12 for slots. The inherent volatility of the casino business, a phenomenon with which President Donald Trump is well acquainted, has forced some resort companies to use creative accounting techniques to prevent a stretch of bad luck from ruining a quarter.

“The volatility of the business has prompted some casino operators to report their results on a hold-adjusted basis, meaning they also tell investors what revenue would have been had winnings been more in line with historical norms.

 

In January, Las Vegas Sands Corp. blamed one lucky gambler for contributing in part to a $15 million to $20 million shortfall at its new Parisian resort in Macau. On Wednesday, the company said the volatile high-end baccarat play contributed to a $100 million revenue bump at its Marina Bay Sands in Singapore.”

Wynn is becoming known for his antics during earnings calls. During the company’s Q1 2016 call, Wynn launched into an epic tirade about naked short-sellers before excoriating HFT firms for front-running orders and other market-rigging techniques, saying “have very little respect for the integrity of the trading on the exchange in most stocks.”
 

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The ferocious street riots during the G20 summit earlier this month in Hamburg have fueled the discussion about political extremism and violence in Germany. One talking point is centered on the question if the state and the police reacted adequately, and how extremism should best be countered in general.

Just days before the summit, German Federal Minister of the Interior, Thomas de Maizière, presented an annual report on extremist activities in Germany. As Statista's Dyfed Loesche points out, according to the domestic intelligence service (BfV), the overall number of politically motivated offenses is on the rise.

In total, there were 23,555 offenses on the right, 9,389 on the left, and 3,372 offences committed by foreign actors (such as the Kurdish PKK and their sympathisers) in 2016.

You will find more statistics at Statista

According to a recent survey by YouGov, 81 percent of Germans are under the impression that extremism is on the rise too. 78 percent of the respondents thought the state wasn't on top of the situation. Asked how the state should react, 61 percent thought stricter sentencing would be advisable, 46 percent also thought that extremist parties should be outlawed.

Just 3 percent thought the state was reacting correctly to extremism…

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Population growth is responsible for the majority of GDP growth…so a downturn in population growth matters…particularly when population growth shifts from wealthy or developing nations to the poorest.  I'm not describing something that may happen in the future…I'm describing what has already happened that is continuing to send progressively larger tsunamis swamping the world economy and has the central bankers doing everything and anything to try to sustain the unsustainable.

Which means, as Econimica's Chris Hamilton recently noted, the next business cycle recession will be unending and is very likely to run years into decades and perhaps a century or more.  A declining population already indebted with record debt and zero interest rates will consume less…meaning overcapacity and excess inventories will never be fully cleared before the next downturn…and on and on and on.

But the absence of a growing consumer base isn't just a US issue…this is a global problem.  The annual growth of the 0-64yr/old population of the combined OECD nations (most the EU, US, Canada, Mexico, Chile, Japan, S. Korea, Australia / New Zealand) plus China, Brazil, and Russia show the growth that has driven nearly all economic growth has come to an end…and begins declining from here on. 

And when importers are shrinking, exporters have no one to export to…and on and on and on.  The depopulation we are now facing is not simply a demographic issue that so many believe; the end of growth is the start of the SHTF scenario in which we now find ourselves.  While this situation offers short term nirvana to investors, the economic repercussions are ultimately disastrous.

And it may be about to get even worse.

As TheAntiMedia.org reports, According to a new analysis published Tuesday, sperm counts in Western men have plummeted nearly 60 percent over the last four decades. Though researchers say the specific drivers behind the trend will require further scientific investigation, current data suggest a link between the sharp decline and living in the industrialized world.

“The results are quite shocking,” Hagai Levine, an epidemiologist from the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, told The Guardian. Levine led the international team of researchers, who examined 185 individual studies conducted between 1973 and 2011.

The analysis, published in the medical journal Human Reproduction Update, additionally revealed that on average, Western men’s sperm concentration — the number of sperm within a semen ejaculate — is falling 1.4 percent a year. Added up, that calculates to an overall drop of more than 50 percent since the early 1970s.

“This is a classic under the radar huge public health problem that is really neglected,” said Levine. The team notes in its report that recent studies have shown an association between poor sperm counts and overall morbidity and mortality.

Unlike with Western nations, the team found no similar trend among the male populations of less-developed countries, such as those in Africa and South America.

“Therefore,” the team writes, “sperm count may sensitively reflect the impacts of the modern environment on male health throughout the life course.” Researchers acknowledge, however, that far fewer studies have been conducted in those nations and that more data needs to be compiled before a final conclusion can be drawn.

While the scientific community seems to agree that the Western trend is likely being driven by a confluence of factors, one member of the team, Professor Shanna Swan of the Ichan School of Medicine in New York, told the Independent that the lack of declining sperm counts in less-industrialized nations is something that can’t be ignored.

“The fact that the decline is seen in Western countries strongly suggests that chemicals in commerce are playing a causal role in this trend,” she said.

Just as startling as the trend, says Professor Richard Sharpe of Edinburgh University, is the fact that it shows no sign of slowing down. Speaking to The Independent, Sharpe, who was not involved with the research, said:

“As the authors point out, the continuous nature of the decline is of as much concern as the decline itself, given that we still do not know what lifestyle, dietary or chemical exposures might have caused this decrease.”

Calling the trend “real beyond any reasonable doubt,” Sharpe says that with more and more women wanting to have babies later in life when conception is considerably more difficult, there now exists a “double whammy for couple fertility” in Western societies.

“Therefore, looking ahead,” he said, “I can only conclude that couple infertility is set to increase. Hopefully, this new study will serve as a wake-up call for health and research authorities as well as for the public, and for young people in particular.”

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President Donald Trump’s decision to withdraw the US from the 12-nation Trans Pacific Partnership angered the Japanese, provoking fears of a bruising trade showdown between the world’s largest and third-largest economies. On Friday, the Japanese instituted a new policy that will do little to assuage those concerns.

After Japan signed a sweeping trade agreement with the European Union, a move that pundits warned would weaken the US’s position as a dominant player in the global economy, the country has taken another dramatic step clearly aimed at retaliating against the US: Japan said it would impose a temporary 50% tariff on frozen beef from the US and several other countries.

According to the Wall Street Journal, Japan’s decision to crack down on frozen beef imports was mandated by a 1994 global trade deal that would’ve been scrapped under the TPP. US trade groups are already warning about how the decision will negatively impact beef prices stateside.

“The U.S. Meat Export Federation said Japan’s move would have negative implications for both U.S. beef producers and Japanese restaurant chains that rely on frozen American beef. The group “will work with its partners in Japan to mitigate the impact” of the move as much as possible, said Chief Executive Philip Seng.

Under Japanese law, an additional tariff known as a safeguard is triggered when frozen-beef imports from all countries and frozen-beef imports from countries lacking free-trade deals with Japan – or “non-EPA countries” because they lack an economic partnership agreement with Japan – both increase by more than 17% from the same period a year earlier. The import volumes are reviewed each quarter.

US government officials couldn’t be reached immediately for comment.”

According to Japan’s Ministry of Finance, Japan imported 89,253 tons of frozen beef during the second quarter, with 37,823 tons coming from non-EPA countries. Both surpassed the “safeguard volume” initiated by the 1994 trade agreement. In Japan, frozen beef is widely used at restaurants to make hamburger patties and bowls of beef over rice, a popular fast-food item, according to WSJ. The safeguard duty affects around 12% of total beef supply in Japan, said Finance Ministry tariff official Koyu Izumi.

In recent months, frozen beef imports have been rising as merchants have sought to lock in prices before China resumes US beef imports as a part of a trade deal. China cracked down on US beef imports 14 years ago during a mad-cow diseases scare. But as beef grows in popularity among Chinese consumers, while memories of the scare have mostly faded, in the world’s second-largest economy are excited about the return of US beef to store shelves.

"American steak is delicious," said one user on China's Twitter-like Weibo service. "It doesn't have the mutton smell of domestic beef,” according to Fortune Magazine.
Japan also temporarily blocked US beef imports in 2003 after the mad-cow scare, but it resumed imports in late 2005, halted them again shortly afterward, then fully restarted them in mid-2006. The US exported $1.5 billion of beef to Japan last year, according to data from the US Meat Export Federation cited by Reuters.

Furthermore, while Trump's protectionist rhetoric has helped escalate tensions between the US and its partners, the US trade situation is improving. According to the latest reading on the US trade balance, released earlier this month, the US trader deficit shrunk in May. The trade deficit decreased in May 2017 from an unrevised $47.6 billion in April (revised). The most notable declines were seen in China and the European, where deficits declined by $2.6BN and $2.0BN respectively.

Several rival countries do have economic agreements with Japan that has exempted their beef imports from the restrictions, potentially granting them an opening to supplant US suppliers and increase their market share. These countries include as Australia, Mexico and Chile, according to Reuters. The wire service reported that Japan’s Finance Minister Taro Aso is calling foreign leaders of the affected countries to explain the increase in tariffs. But seeing as much of the US beef industry is centered on midwestern states like Nebraska that sided with Trump during the election.

We suspect Trump won’t let this go that easily.
 

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Authored by Paul Craig Roberts,

PCR Takes a Look at Today’s “Top Stories” on Bloomberg

“Jeff Bezos briefly overtook Bill Gates as the world’s richest person. A surge in Amazon shares Thursday morning in advance of its earnings report gave Bezos a net worth of $92.3 billion, surpassing the Microsoft founder’s $90.8 billion fortune.

 

 

In afternoon trading, Bezos remains ranked second on the Bloomberg Billionaires Index. Gates has held the top spot since May 2013.”

Amazon’s stock closed yesterday at $1,046 per share. Amazon’s profits do not support this extraordinary price. Apple, a very profitable company, has a share price of $150.56, an overprice itself.

What or who is making Bezos so rich from an online sales company? Note, amazon.com is just sales. It is not some new manufacturing technology that produces valuable output at low cost. amazon.com is what Walmart, Sears, and Macy’s do, the difference being that amazon.com is online and Walmart, Sears, and Macy’s are in physical locations where real merchandise can be experienced hands on and tried on for fit.

In other words, online purchases are convenient, but you don’t know what you are getting. Does it fit? What is the quality? And so forth. How many times do you send it back before you get what you want?

There are two answers to the question about who is making Bezos rich.

One is that Wall Street is betting that the collapse of US anti-trust law and regulatory authority – it is still on the books but not enforced, just look at the Big Banks – and the ability of Bezos to use his ownership of the Washington Post, the newspaper of the country’s capital, to support those who support him, ensure that amazon.com will be an online monopoly. Once this is put in place, amazon’s prices and profits will rise, and the extraordinary amazon.com P/E ratio will come into line with reality.

 

Another is that Bezos’ cooperation with Washington’s spy network over all Americans is paid for by the CIA’s many front companies driving up the price of amazon.com’s stock. As the price of amazon.com rises, so does Bezos’ wealth.

 

[ZH: perhaps there is another reason related to the latter…]

 

I don’t know that either of these answers is correct. What I notice is that Bill Gates who heads the largest digital technology company is on occasion second fiddle to Bezos who heads an online Sears or Macy’s.

Apple with a share price of $150 earned $52.9 billion during the second quarter of 2017. Earnings per share were $2.10.

Amazon.com earned $38 billion. Earnings per share were 40 cents.

Why is amazon.com’s price $1,046 per share and Apple’s price is $150.56 per share.

Apple’s earnings per share are 5.25 times higher than amazon’s, but amazon’s stock price is 6.9 times higher than Apple’s. What explains this?

The free market answer is that amazon.com, a company that sells other companies’ products, is more promising than a high tech leading manufacturing company of our time.

Does that make sense to you?

Keep in mind that it was Bezos’ government propaganda sheet, the Washington Post, that gave credibility to the shadowy organization, PropOrNot, an entity better hidden than an offshore money laundering operation, that produced a list of 200 truth-tellers which it libeled as “Russian dupe/agent.”

Monopolies are inconsistent with free market capitalism and with democracy. Monopolies and government bond together to create fascism.

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We’ve spent a lot of time of late discussing Europe’s new MiFID II regulations that will go into effect in January 2018 and require investment banks to charge institutional clients separately for trading commissions and research.  As we’ve noted (here and here), initial offer prices are coming in relatively high at around $450,000 per bank…all of which led us to the following conclusions:

Of course, the logical takeaway from these exorbitant offering prices, if they hold, is that institutional clients will ultimately be forced to consolidate their vendors…translation, so long to the small independent research shops.  Meanwhile, investment banks will be forced to control costs by trying to focus on writing reports that people actually read (vs. the 1% hit rate they have today).  All of which means that those shrinking analysts pools are about to completely collapse.

Alas, it seems that we may have been a bit premature in our prediction of an early demise for independent research shops, at least if Sidoti and Rick’s Caberet has anything to say about it.  In light of the new regulations that will undoubtedly disadvantage his research firm, Peter Sidoti has embraced a whole new, fundamental-transformed research business model that he hopes will save his business…charging the companies he covers for research about themselves.  More from Bloomberg:

With the future of equity research looking shakier than ever, one boutique U.S. firm is betting its turnaround on getting paid by a different customer: the company being covered.

 

As analyst budgets get slashed amid new regulations designed to reduce conflicts of interest, Peter Sidoti hopes that laying those conflicts out in the open with company-sponsored research can bolster his small-cap focused firm, Sidoti & Co. “The wheels came off” Sidoti’s trading-pays-for-research model about a year ago amid shrinking fees and the rise of passive investing, he said. Bring in new rules requiring direct payment for research, “and all hell breaks loose.”

 

Three companies — a strip-club operator, a pet products company and a chipmaker — pay Sidoti $40,000 a year for coverage by the firm’s 25 analysts. Ultimately, he sees one-third of the stocks his firm covers, now around 300, being paying customers. The sweet spot for research sponsored by companies is those with a market capitalization of under $300 million and which have one or no analysts covering them, Sidoti, the founder and CEO of the firm, said in an interview in New York.

Wouldn’t it be ironic if new regulations specifically designed to eliminate banking conflicts actually resulted in an even more conflict-ridden business model?

But, at least Rick’s CEO is happy with his coverage…

Adult entertainment and sports bar company RCI Hospitality Holdings Inc., which pays for Sidoti’s services, said that it is challenging for smaller companies to get quality, independent analyst coverage. “We believe Sidoti has contributed to our overall effort to increase the understanding of our business and financial model,” Eric Langan, RCI’s Chief Executive Officer, said in an email. The company, which operates the Bombshells bar chain, has seen its stock gain 92 percent since Sidoti started coverage. Pet-products company OurPet’s Co. and chipmaker Ixys Corp., which are also paying customers of Sidoti, didn’t respond to multiple requests for comments.

Sidoti defends it’s rather controversial business model by comparing it to Moody’s and S&P which employee similar funding strategies…unfortunately, the weaknesses in those funding strategies were exposed for all the world to see during the mortgage crisis.

“We think equity research is heading the same way as debt research,” Sidoti said, drawing a comparison with how debt-rating companies like Moody’s Investors Service and S&P Global Ratings are paid by issuers to produce reports. While this model has also been fraught with conflicts and controversy, especially in the aftermath of the financial crisis, Sidoti sees a new opportunity for the sponsored-research model arising from the European Union’s MiFID II rules.

While we jest, at least the conflicts in Sidoti’s business model are overt and open for the world to see…unlike the current model which pretends to be ‘independent’ but secretly favors the perpetual advisory fee generating companies they cover and give preferential treatment to their favorite hedge funds.

Finally, since we know that you really only clicked on this post to see a larger picture of the teaser image, here you go…Happy Friday.

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Authored by Kati Pavlich via Townhall.com,

The NFL took a massive ratings dive last year after a number of players, led by former San Francisco 49ers quarterback Colin Kaepernick, refused to stand for the National Anthem. At the time, NFL officials claimed they didn't exactly know why ratings were down and even used the 2016 presidential election as an excuse for why more people weren't watching. 

But according to a new survey from J.D. Power, NFL fans did in fact tune out in droves because of the disrespect and protest of the National Anthem before games. From ESPN: 

National anthem protests were the top reason that NFL fans watched fewer games last season, according to a new survey released by J.D. Power.

 

The pollster said it asked more than 9,200 people who attended either one football, basketball or hockey game whether they tuned into fewer games and why. Twenty-six percent of those who watched fewer games last season said that national anthem protests, some of which were led by Colin Kaepernick, were the reason.

 

After that, 24 percent of those surveyed who said they watched fewer games said they did so either because of the league's off-the-field image issues with domestic violence or with game delays, including penalties.

After being dropped from the 49ers last year, sports pundits and fellow players have accused anyone and everyone of racism for Kaepernick's failure to resign with another team. Turns out he's not only a bad quarterback, but a business liability. 

Patriotism is still winning in America and that's a good thing. Here's to hoping this season comes with more respect on the field from players who are privileged to live in the greatest country on earth.

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A few weeks ago we wrote a post entitled “How Hermitage Capital, Ziff Brothers And The Clinton Global Initiative Prompted The Trump Jr. Meeting.”  To make a long story short, there is a long-standing feud between the founder of Hermitage Capital, William Browder, and the now infamous Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, who met with Trump Jr. last summer.  Browder, on the one hand, lobbied in favor of the Magnitsky Act after being expelled from Russia under controversial circumstances while Veselnitskaya has made it her life’s mission to repeal the Magnitsky Act.

So, when Democrats decided to haul Browder before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, they likely expected the anti-Russian witness to confirm that Russian intelligence was behind the Summer 2016 meeting between Veselnitskaya and Trump Jr. and that the meeting really had nothing to do with the Magnitsky Act but rather was a carefully-plotted, nefarious attempt to collude with the Trump campaign to steal the 2016 election from Hillary Clinton. 

Unfortunately, at least for the Dems, he failed to deliver.  In fact, Browder delivered the exact opposite message from what the Democrats had hoped for as he confirmed that the Trump Jr. meeting was entirely linked to Veselnitskaya’s life mission of repealing the Magnitsky Act. 

But, Browder offered up an even more interesting tidbit of information, a tidbit that has been completely ignored by the mainstream media, that served to undermine the left’s entire ‘Russian collusion’ narrative when he confirmed that Fusion GPS, the now infamous firm behind the ‘Trump Dossier’, was actually being paid by….wait for it….the Russians.

While we’re certainly not experts on the intricacies of international espionage, it does seem weird that if your sole mission in life is to ‘collude’ with the Trump administration to defeat Hillary Clinton that you would simultaneously fund research intended to undermine the Trump campaign and then share that information with the FBI.

Here is the relevant exchange between Lindsey Graham and William Browder:

Graham: You believe that Fusion GPS should of registered under FARA, because they were acting on the behalf of the Russians?

 

Browder: That’s correct.

 

Graham: So, I just want to absorb that for a moment. The group that did the dossier on President Trump hired this British spy, wound up getting it to the FBI. You believe they were working for the Russians?

 

Browder: And in the Spring and Summer of 2016 they were receiving money indirectly from a senior Russian government official.

 

Graham: Okay. So, these are the people that were trying to undermine Donald Trump by showing the nefarious ties to Russia. Is that what you’re saying?

 

Browder: Well, what I’m saying with 100% certainty is that they were working to undermine the Magnitsky act and the timing of that.

 

Graham: But, the Fusion GPS products apparently as they hired a guy to look into Trump?

 

Browder: Yes.

 

Graham: Right.

 

Browder: Correct.

Ironically, as Sarah Sanders pointed out at yesterday’s White House press briefing, not a single reporter from the mainstream media, the folks that have reported on ‘Russian meddling’ 24/7 for the past year, bothered to ask a question about this new evidence that the Russians conspired to undermine the U.S. election….wonder why?

“You guys love to talk about Russia. There’s been nonstop coverage, and the one day that there might have been a question on Russia, there wasn’t. 

 

“Today there was public testimony that further discredited the phony dossier that’s been the source of so much of the fake news and conspiracy theories, and we learned that the firm that produced it was also being paid by the Russians.”

 

“This is yet the latest piece of evidence that vindicates what the president has said: that this is a witch hunt and a hoax. And it’s a shame that the president and the country have had to go through this charade continually. And hopefully this will help us move forward in that process.”

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Authored by MN Gordon via EconomicPrism.com,

On a warm Friday Los Angeles morning in spring of 2016, we found ourselves standing at the busy corner of Wilshire Boulevard and South Figueroa Street.  We were walking back to our office following a client wire brushing for events beyond our control.  But we had other thoughts on our mind.

Amongst a mob of pedestrians, we gazed up at the skeleton frame of what would become the Wilshire Grand Center.  For the first time in several years the buzz and hum of diligent building activity was eerily silent.  In fact, construction efforts were shut down for the day.

Sadly, less than 24 hours earlier a distraught electrician had taken a swan dive off the 53rd floor.  The man’s death prompted an immediate work stoppage and evacuation of the tower.  “It sounded like a bag of cement fell off the edge of the building,” one observer remarked.

Naturally, the sound of impact was far too grim for us to contemplate.  Instead, we wondered how time must have simultaneously slowed down and sped up for the jumper as they descended toward the ground.  Did they want a redo before it was game over?

We have a hunch that over the next couple of years, vast numbers of people are going to experience the rush that comes when time simultaneously slows down and speeds up.  Not because they’ve committed a base jump off a skyscraper – though some will.  Rather, it’ll occur at the precise moment they come to the rude realization that they’re broker than broke.

We’ll have more on this in just a moment.  But first some context is in order…

A Grand Ego Stroke

Several weeks ago the Wilshire Grand Center officially opened.  The building claims to be the new tallest building in Los Angeles, and tallest building west of the Mississippi.  But we have some reservations.

Because the top of the Wilshire Grand Center is actually about 18 feet shorter than the U.S. Bank Tower that’s several blocks away.  However, there’s a bizarre looking 100-foot spire at the building’s peak.  Apparently, this spire has a very determined purpose.

Per the Council of Tall Buildings and Urban Habitat – if you can believe there is such a thing – a spire is considered an architectural feature and is, thus, counted when measuring the building’s 1,100 foot height.  Tall buildings arbiters’ aside, we ain’t buying it.  But our opinion on the matter doesn’t matter.

Korean Air / Hanjin Group financed construction of the Wilshire Grand Center.  The claim that this is the new tallest building west of the Mississippi, regardless of spire gimmickry, offers Korean Air Chairman Yang Ho Cho a grand ego stroke.  We recommend that he enjoys it now before he rues it.

You see, the construction of marque skyscrapers has an uncanny track record of coinciding with the late stages of an artificial, cheap credit induced building boom.  If this holds true, the Wilshire Grand Center will forever be a monument to ZIRP, NIRP, and QE.  What’s more, there are several other new skyscrapers monuments that’ll be opening their doors real soon.  This can only mean one thing…

Views from a Top of the Skyscraper Index

The skyscraper index was first elaborated by Andrew Lawrence in January 1999.  The idea is simple enough.  The world’s tallest buildings are often completed on or around the onset of economic downturns.

What the skyscraper index does is it accounts for the long lead time that massive ego stroke projects like construction of the tallest building in the world take to come to fruition.  By the time these mega edifices are complete the free flowing credit that bubbled up their construction, and other bubbles throughout the economy, has nearly exhausted itself.  This is about the time the boom turns to bust and the economy slips into recession.

For example, the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, which is the tallest building in the world at 2,126 feet, was completed in 2008.  If you recall, this was shortly after the onset of the Great Recession.  The cheap credit that pumped up the Burj Khalifa was the same cheap credit that pumped up the U.S. residential real estate bubble.

At the moment, several other tallest building records that dwarf the Wilshire Grand Center are nearing completion.  The first being the Central Park Tower in New York, which upon opening its doors in 2019 will be the new tallest building in the United States at 1,550 feet.  The second being the Jeddah Tower in Saudi Arabia, which will be completed in 2020 and will be the new tallest building in the world at an insane height of 3,281 feet.

Based on the open date of the Central Park Tower and the Jeddah Tower, the Wilshire Grand Center may be an early indicator of the approaching panic.  The timing is hard to precisely pin down.

But what is clear is where the credit has come from to pump up these grand ego strokes.  It has come from precisely the same place where the credit that has boosted world stock indexes to record heights has come from.  Mass central bank balance sheet expansion and zero to negative interest rates.

These asset price inflation puffers are always fleeting.  Views from a top of the skyscraper index show a coming day when time simultaneously slows down and speeds up in a great manic panic.  This is the day the debt edifice crumbles.  Why wait to get your financial house in order?

via http://ift.tt/2vRn0Gq Tyler Durden