Tag: finance

Authored by Simon Black via SovereignMan.com,

It was only a few days ago that the Japanese government’s Financial Services Agency published its oddly-titled “Annual Report on Ageing Society”.

(Like everything in Japan, English translations often hilariously miss the mark…)

This is a report that the Ministry of Finance puts out every year. And as the name implies, the report discusses the state of Japan’s pension fund, and its future prospects for taking care of its senior citizens.

Bear in mind that Japan has the oldest population in the world; Japan ranks #2 in the world for average age (46.9, just behind Monaco), #1 in the world for the greatest percentage of citizens over the age of 70, and #1 in the world for life expectancy.

In a nutshell, this means that Planet Japan has more people collecting pension benefits, for more years, than anywhere else.

Yet at the same time, Japan’s pension fund is completely insolvent. There simply aren’t enough people paying into the system to make good on the promises that have been made.

At present there are only 2 workers paying into the pension program for every 1 retiree receiving benefits in Japan.

The math simply doesn’t add up, and it’s only getting worse. Planet Japan’s birth rate is infamously low, and the population here is actually DECLINING.

So, fast forward another 10-15 years, and there will be even MORE people collecting pension benefits, and even FEWER people paying into the system.

This year’s ‘Annual Report on Ageing Society’ plainly stated this reality; it was a brutally honest assessment of Japan’s underfunded pension program.

The report went on to tell people that they needed to save their own money for retirement because the pension fund wouldn’t be able to make ends meet.

This terrified a lot of Japanese workers and pensioners.

So the government stepped in to quickly solve the problem… by making the report disappear.

Prime Minister Shinzo Abe apologized for the report, calling it “inaccurate and misleading.”

And Finance Minister Taro Aso– himself a pensioner at age 78 (though in typical Japanese form he looks like he’s 45)– simply un-published the report.

It’s no longer available for download on the website. It just went away. Finance Minister Aso-san followed that up by saying the report was inappropriate because it used words like ‘shortfall’.

I find this so incredible; it’s not like this pension problem is a tiny issue quietly lurking in the corner. This is an ENORMOUS challenge. And they’re pretending like it doesn’t exist.

It’s as if Godzilla is rampaging through Tokyo and everyone just plugs their ears singing “lalalalalala”.

Obviously this is not an issue that exists solely on Planet Japan. Most of the world has insolvent pensions.

Worldwide, the total public and private pension gap is tens of TRILLIONS of dollars. Nearly every government and corporate pension has made promises it cannot keep.

In the United States alone, the government’s own calculations estimate that Social Security is underfunded by $53.8 TRILLION.

And the problem isn’t getting any better. Birth rates keep falling, and for the first time, next year, the worker-to-retiree ratio will reach 2.7, below the necessary 2.8 workers to sustain the program.

Europe is no better off. For example, Greece and Russia have ALREADY had to make adjustments to their pension payouts.

It’s clear as day: pensions are promises that governments will not be able to keep.

Eventually, it’s a reality people are going to face. And most countries – like the US, Japan and most of Europe – willfully and dangerously chose to ignore it.

So here are the news: the younger you are, the more likely you’ll spend your entire career paying into a pension system that won’t be there when it’s your turn to collect.

That makes it even more important to save.

While every country has different rules, there are always ways to make sure you don’t become a victim of someone else’s stupidity.

Annuities in Australia, RRSPs in Canada and solo 401(k)s in the United Statesare just a few of these options that give you much more flexibility than a traditional retirement account.

You could buy cash-producing real estate or start a side business selling something on Amazon, and stuff all that extra income into tax-advantageous retirement funds.

Even if governments somehow find a miraculous way to save the system, you’ll never be worse off having set aside more money for retirement.

But it’s a near mathematical certainty that most government-sponsored retirement funds are going bust. Taking matters into your own hand is the obvious solution that absolutely everybody should consider.

And to continue learning how to ensure you thrive no matter what happens next in the world, I encourage you to download our free Perfect Plan B Guide

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2MNLnS1 Tyler Durden

A new report by The Intercept has unearthed some stunning quotes from Facebook’s lawyers as the controversial social media giant recently battled litigation in California courts related to the Cambridge Analytica data sharing scandal. The report notes that statements from Facebook’s counsel “reveal one of the most stunning examples of corporate doublespeak certainly in Facebook’s history” concerning privacy and individual users’ rights. 

Contrary to CEO Mark Zuckerberg’s last testimony before Congress which included the vague promise, “We believe that everyone around the world deserves good privacy controls,” the latest courtroom statements expose in shockingly unambiguous terms that Facebook actually sees privacy as legally “nonexistent” — to use The Intercept’s apt description of what’s in the courtroom transcript — up until now largely ignored in media commentary.

The courtroom debate was first reported by Law360, and captures the transcribed back and forth between Facebook lawyer Orin Snyder of Gibson Dunn & Crutcher and US District Judge Vince Chhabria.

The Intercept cites multiple key sections of the transcript from the May 29, 2019 court proceedings showing Snyder arguing essentially something the complete opposite of Zuckerberg’s public statements on data privacy, specifically, on the idea that users have any reasonable expectation of privacy at all. 

Facebook’s lawyer argued:

There is no privacy interest, because by sharing with a hundred friends on a social media platform, which is an affirmative social act to publish, to disclose, to share ostensibly private information with a hundred people, you have just, under centuries of common law, under the judgment of Congress, under the SCA, negated any reasonable expectation of privacy.

As The Intercept commented of the blunt remarks, “So not only is it Facebook’s legal position that you’re not entitled to any expectation of privacy, but it’s your fault that the expectation went poof the moment you started using the site (or at least once you connected with 100 Facebook “friends”).”

Judge Chhabria took issue with the “binary” nature of Facebook’s conception of privacy in stating, “like either you have a full expectation of privacy, or you have no expectation of privacy at all,” and put the following scenario to Facebook’s legal team:

If I share [information] with ten people, that doesn’t eliminate my expectation of privacy. It might diminish it, but it doesn’t eliminate it. And if I share something with ten people on the understanding that the entity that is helping me share it will not further disseminate it to a thousand companies, I don’t understand why I don’t have — why that’s not a violation of my expectation of privacy.

Snyder’s response was illuminating regarding Facebook’s approach to users’ privacy:

Let me give you a hypothetical of my own. I go into a classroom and invite a hundred friends. This courtroom. I invite a hundred friends, I rent out the courtroom, and I have a party. And I disclose — And I disclose something private about myself to a hundred people, friends and colleagues. Those friends then rent out a 100,000-person arena, and they rebroadcast those to 100,000 people. I have no cause of action because by going to a hundred people and saying my private truths, I have negated any reasonable expectation of privacy, because the case law is clear.

And more from The Intercept’s commentary, which concluded: “Using Facebook is a depressing party taking place in a courtroom, for some reason, that’s being simultaneously broadcasted to a 100,000-person arena on a sort of time delay. If you show up at the party, don’t be mad when your photo winds up on the Jumbotron. That is literally the company’s legal position.”

Repeatedly, Snyder blamed the users for their own surveillance throughout the metaphors and hypothetical situations presented:

This is why every parent says to their child, “Do not post it on Facebook if you don’t want to read about it tomorrow morning in the school newspaper,” or, as I tell my young associates if I were going to be giving them an orientation, “Do not put anything on social media that you don’t want to read in the Law Journal in the morning.” There is no expectation of privacy when you go on a social media platform, the purpose of which, when you are set to friends, is to share and communicate things with a large group of people, a hundred people.

And a another key question from what appeared an incredulous Judge Chhabria: “If Facebook promises not to disseminate anything that you send to your hundred friends, and Facebook breaks that promise and disseminates your photographs to a thousand corporations, that would not be a serious privacy invasion?“

Reflecting a viewpoint that Facebook considers almost no scenario at all a potential “privacy invasion,” Snyder responded:

“Facebook does not consider that to be actionable, as a matter of law under California law.”

Thus Facebook admitted in court that even when the company gives a user the impression it will not share private information which that user has not authorized for public view, should the platform violate this, it is still not illegal nor does it violate Facebook’s own standards. 

“If you really want to be private,” Facebook’s counsel said to the court, “there are people who have archival Facebook pages that are like their own private mausoleum. It’s only set to [be visible by] me, and it’s for the purpose of repository, you know, of your private information, and no one will ever see that.”

Essentially the argument conceded that in Facebook’s eyes sharing something with two friends by default authorizes the company to share it with 20, or 200, or 200,000 — or as The Intercept points out: “it’s Facebook’s official opinion that you’ve ‘negated’  your claim to any privacy whatsoever – from the moment you login to the site. 

Read The Intercept’s full damning report here, and access the full transcript of the courtroom proceedings here. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2RkS90f Tyler Durden

Authored by Ashley Viens via VisualCapitalist.com,

Gone are the days of turning stones into spears. With the advent of new technologies, we’ve learned to develop tools that not only make living faster and easier every day, but also improve the future of humanity as a whole.

Today’s Chart of the Week draws from the MIT Technology Review, which features Bill Gates’ predictions for the top 10 breakthrough inventions that will capture headlines in 2019.

Top 10 Breakthrough Technologies

1. Gut Probe in a Pill
These swallowable devices can detect and potentially prevent diseases that cause malnutrition and stunted growth in millions of children worldwide.

2. Custom Cancer Vaccines
Personalized cancer vaccines, targeting only the cancerous cells and leave healthy cells alone, could help ensure faster recovery times and pose fewer risks to patients.

3. Meat-free Burgers
Plant-based and lab-grown food products will ideally alleviate the environmental impact of the livestock industry.

4. Smooth-talking AI assistants
The AI assistants of the future will have even more human-like conversations to personally engage customers. Companies would see measurable benefits, with just one breakthrough here garnering a 5% jump in productivity.

5. Sanitation without sewers
Improperly drained sewage causes death in one out of every nine children. Sanitation that doesn’t require sewers would not only prevent exposure diseases but also help turn waste into useful products like fertilizer.

6. ECG on your wrist
While most medical ECGS have up to 12 nodes to detect abnormalities, today’s wearables typically have only one. An ECG on the wrist would help reduce the risk of heart disease by monitoring changes and patterns in daily life.

7. Robot Dexterity
Advancements in robotics will enable the natural dexterity required to complete a greater range of tasks, such as helping an ailing loved one out of bed, doing the laundry, or building toys.

8. Predicting Preemies
Premature births are the leading cause of death for children under five years old. Tests to detect the possibility of a premature birth could be available in doctors’ offices in as little as five years.

9. Carbon Dioxide Catcher
Carbon dioxide catchers filter out CO₂ from the air and capture it for other uses. These include synthetic fuel creation, CO₂ for soft drinks, and plant growth in greenhouses.

10. New-wave Nuclear Power
Traditional nuclear reactors produce ~1,000 megawatts (MW), while these proposed mini-reactors would produce tens of megawatts ─ making them safer, more stable, and more financially viable for potential users.

A Vision for a Better Future

The biggest takeaway?

Seven of the 10 breakthrough technologies stem from the healthtech sector.

While several inventions on this list are years away from becoming a reality, they continue to embody the vision and passion that humans share to create and explore.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WDX4u9 Tyler Durden

A total of eight US tourists have died suddenly under mysterious circumstances in the Dominican Republic, at least two of whom became violently ill after drinking from their hotel room minibars, according to reports. So far four American tourists have died at the Bahia Principe hotels and two at the Hard Rock Hotel and Casino in Punta Cana. 

The latest victim, 53-year-old Leyla Cox of New Brighton, New York, was found dead in her hotel room in June, her only son William Cox told the Staten Island Advance. Cox was traveling alone at the time.

“Her birthday was on June 9 and she passed away on June 10,” said William, adding “I am overwhelmed and confused and in shock.”

“I truly believe if my mother was not in the Dominican Republic, she would have been alive right now,” he said. “With everything going on in the news right now, we think she’s a casualty of what’s been happening.”

Cox says that he “has a right to be suspicious” and that the Dominican Republic has yet to release his mother’s autopsy report. He told the New York Post “the toxicology machines in the Dominican Republic are broken.“

“I’ve been trying to get her body flown back to the US, so we can do our own autopsy and our own toxicology report, But unfortunately that will cost a fortune. And I do not have anywhere close to that sort of money.”

“They’ve put me against a wall where I don’t have a choice, ‘I don’t know how she died. I don’t know where she died — I know it was in a hotel. I don’t know if she was in a room or at the bar.”

Another suspicious death was that of 60-year-old John Corcoran – a roofing company CEO and the brother of “Shark Tank” star Barbara Corcoran. Corcoran was the seventh tourist found dead in the Dominican Republic since last June in what some family members are now suggesting aren’t isolated events. 

Four were found dead at Bahia Principe resorts and two at the Hard Rock Hotel & Casino in Punta Cana, TMZ reported. It was unclear at which resort John was staying.

Three of the deaths were reportedly due to heart attacks, but one also lists an accumulation of fluid in the lungs, known as pulmonary edema, as a cause of death, TMZ said.

A Maryland Couple, Edward Holmes, 63, and Cynthia Day, 49, died in their hotel room and the cause of their deaths was listed as respiratory failure and pulmonary edema, according to reports.

The cause of death of the sixth tourist has not been revealed. –NJ.com

That said, Barbara Corcoran said in a statement on Instagram that her brother had an “existing heart condition and we believe he died of natural causes.” 

Meanwhile, The FBI is investigating, while the family members of other dead tourists plan to conduct their own autopsies. 

the family of Nathaniel Holmes and Cynthia Ann Day, who died at the Bahia Principe Hotel, La Romana, say they plan to carry out their own autopsies on their bodies. 

Their attorney Steven Bullock told People: ‘We are continuing to investigate the exact cause of death. The families are determined to find out what happened and why. At this time the cause of death remains a mystery.

‘We look forward to getting the FBI findings.’

An autopsy carried out in the Dominican Republic said Holmes and Day they both died of respiratory failure and pulmonary edema. Day also reportedly suffered from cerebral edema. –Daily Mail

On Thursday, an Atlanta couple, Vanessa McNelley-Neal and her husband James, said they fell violently ill while on vacation in the Dominican Republic and suffered a “very intense” sickness.

Tourist Jerry Martin of Plant City, Florida also says that he fell ill at Caribe Club Princess Beach Report & Spa in Punta Cana in May. 

“We were down at the pool when it hit, and I had to go up and just lay down and hold my stomach. It was on fire,” Martin told Fox 13. 

The country’s tourism minister, Francisco Javier García claims that the deaths are “isolated incidents,” telling the New York Times that the islands are perfectly safe for tourists. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/31xr6Ub Tyler Durden

Authored by Greg Piper via The College Fix,

Why is this Republican state acting like the Obama administration?

Republican lawmakers seem to have a better grip than their Democratic colleagues on the inherent censorship of so-called free speech zones and viewpoint-based security fees.

David French of National Review counted eight states that have passed campus free-speech bills in less than six months, most recently Texas. He has one major quibble with the new Texas law: its failure to define a phrase that dictates when students can be punished for disruptions.

The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, which French used to lead, added another concern: failure to specify an enforcement mechanism, whether for individuals or the state attorney general.

But those quibbles are nothing compared to the constitutional problems with a pair of Texas bills on campus sexual harassment that are on Republican Gov. Greg Abbott’s desk.

The two bills set a definition of sexual harassment that mirrors the Obama administration’sview of Title IX, and incentivize college employees to report anything that the most delicate person on campus might consider sexual harassment.

Judging the legality of speech ‘entirely on subjective listener reaction’

FIRE warned Abbott in a letter last week that “faculty and staff at Texas’s universities could be sent to prison for failing to report speech and conduct that does not even constitute sexual harassment” under the Department of Education’s proposed Title IX regulatory changes.

On Wednesday, FIRE responded to criticism from the bills’ biggest booster, the Texas Association Against Sexual Assault.

The definition bill (SB 212) literally says that “unwelcome, sex based” words constitute harassment if they are “sufficiently severe, persistent, or pervasive” to interfere with a student’s studies. What is “unwelcome”? Ask the most easily offended person on campus. (Remember the University of Oregon tried to kick out a female student for a sex joke to another female. Only FIRE’s intervention saved her.)

That three-option test in the definition also botches the Supreme Court’s 20-year-old definition of sexual harassment in an educational context, known as Davis. It must be “severe, pervasive, and objectively offensive” – all three elements – for a school to be on notice.

As FIRE tells the sexual-assault activists, they don’t even have to agree with its interpretation of the Davis standard to recognize the bill’s fundamental problem:

This definition is missing any kind of objective, reasonable person standard, instead conditioning the permissibility of speech (and the requirement to report) entirely on subjective listener reaction. Any definition of sexual harassment that lacks an objective component is unconstitutional.

Don’t take FIRE’s word for it. There is a long list of decisions where courts have found policies unconstitutional because they lacked an objective offensiveness component.

Can you imagine a subject more likely to cause offense than sexuality and gender? That’s FIRE’s question for the activists. “Without an objective requirement, students and faculty are held hostage to the personal feelings and opinions of their accusers, no matter how unusual or even unreasonable.”

Get ready for a flood of ‘unmeritorious’ complaints to the Title IX office

SB 212 is even worse because it includes the threat of firing and criminal penalties when employees fail to report “any and all expression that could conceivably satisfy” the bill’s uselessly broad definition of sexual harassment, FIRE wrote last week:

This in turn will flood institutional Title IX offices with unmeritorious complaints, including instances of speech plainly protected by the First Amendment or institutional promises of freedom of expression. Sifting through this avalanche will squander institutional resources that could be far better devoted to pursuing serious complaints intentionally brought to the attention of Title IX officers.

And the sexual-assault activists are wrong: The bill literally makes failure to report a Class B misdemeanor, which can earn up to six months in jail.

The second bill (HB 1735) also puts Texas in the awkward position of mirroring a Democratic White House whose actions it frequently went to court to block.

It has the same unconstitutional definition of sexual harassment, but it treats accused students in sexual misconduct proceedings as if they are guilty from the start, denying them fundamental due process. Several courts, including in Texas, have told colleges they must allow cross-examination and live hearings.

FIRE’s letter to Abbott even notes that the bill incentivizes false reporting: It requires colleges to let accusers drop the courses they share with accused students “without academic penalty.” If you’re struggling in class after the traditional “drop period,” you may be tempted to claim that a classmate sexually victimized you in order to get out unscathed academically.

It would be a shame if Gov. Abbott ruined the goodwill he received from protecting free speech on campus by, well, outlawing free speech on campus. Because that’s what these two bills would do.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IIcWai Tyler Durden

The head of Mexico’s immigration agency, Tonatiuh Guillén, tendered his resignation to President Andrés Manuel López Obrador on Friday, according to the Associated Press. It is unclear whether Guillén quit voluntarily or was asked to step down. 

The move comes after Mexico agreed to take serious measures to halt migration from Central America to the United States, in response to President Trump’s threat of escalating tariffs if Mexico did comply. 

Thus far, Mexico has committed to deploy some 6,000 National Guard troops to its southern border and frozen the bank accounts of 26 alleged human traffickers who were supporting or facilitating migrant caravans. According to Mexican Foreign Relations Secretary Marcelo Ebrard, the Guard deployment will be ready to go on Tuesday, while 825 immigration agents and 200 welfare department officials will join the effort. 

López Óbrador acknowledged earlier Friday that controls are lacking at dozens of migrant crossing points at the country’s southern border, and vowed to correct the situation. 

“We have identified 68 crossings like that, and in all of them there will be oversight,” said López Óbrador during a morning news conference. 

The president, who took office Dec. 1, attributed the problem to residual corruption at the National Migration Institute and the customs agency and noted that more than 500 immigration workers have been let go as part of a purge.

“We are cleaning house, but this work takes time,” López Obrador said. –AP

Mexico has taken steps over the past few months to step up enforcement in southern Mexico – seeing up highway checkpoints and more recently raiding a Central American migrant caravan to keep them from boarding the infamous northbound train known as “the beast.” 

Trump to step up asylum returns

Also on Friday, a Mexican immigration official announced that the United States would be doubling the number of asylum seekers it sends back to Mexico from El Paso, Texas. 

Luis Carlos Cano, a spokesman for Mexico’s national immigration agency in Ciudad Juarez, across the border from El Paso, said starting Thursday some 200 asylum seekers per day were being sent back, up from 100 previously.

Under pressure from U.S. President Donald Trump, Mexico agreed last week to expand the program, known as the Migrant Protection Protocols, which forces mostly Central American asylum seekers arriving at the U.S. southern border to remain in Mexico to await the outcome of their U.S. asylum claims. –Reuters

 The program, ‘Remain in Mexico’ has returned close to 12,000 people to Mexico since January.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WGpbcr Tyler Durden

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

If we look at these charts, it looks like only the top 10%, or perhaps the top 20% at best, might qualify as “middle class” by the metrics described below.

The conventional definition of working class is based on income and education:the working class household earns between $30,000 and $69,000 annually, and the highest education credential in the household is a two-year community college degree or trade certification.

The definition of the middle class is also based on on income and education, but adds financial security as a metric: the middle class household earns $80,000 or more, holds 4-year college diplomas or graduate degrees, owns a home, has a 401K retirement account and so on.

(My own definition is much more rigorous, as I reckon “middle class” today should have the same basic assets as the “middle class” held 40 years ago: What Does It Take To Be Middle Class? (December 5, 2013.)

But in some key ways, income and education are misleading metrics: the key attributes that actually define the working class are:

1. Stagnant incomes: incomes that over time barely keep up with real-world inflation or even lose purchasing power.

2. Income insecurity: wages, benefits and pensions are not as guaranteed as advertised.

3. Not enough ownership of financial capital to be meaningful. Financial capital excludes household items, vehicles, etc. Financial capital includes stocks, bonds, certificates of deposit, ownership of a profitable business, equity in real estate, precious metals, bitcoin, etc.

By meaningful I mean enough to:

— augment Social Security benefits in a way that greatly improves the household’s lifestyle and retirement options

— equity that is significant enough to fund college educations so one’s children do not have to become debt-serfs to attend college

— enough capital to fund (or help with) a down payment for a house, i.e. inheritable wealth that transforms the children’s lives while the parents are still alive

— income from capital, i.e. income isn’t dependent on a government agency or government transfer.

How many U.S. households qualify to be middle class if that means:

— the household income has outpaced real-world inflation over the past 20 years

— the household’s financial capital/assets have grown to become meaningful (as defined above) in the past 20 years

— the household doesn’t depend on government transfers for much of its income / spending

— the household income and wealth are not dependent on financial bubbles, corporate guarantees, local government pensions on the verge of insolvency, etc.

While tens of millions of households qualify as “middle class” based on college diplomas and income, far fewer qualify when wealth and financial security are the key metrics. Plenty of households earn well in excess of $100,000 annually, but their financial status is as precarious and threadbare as any working class household.

They don’t own enough assets or capital to move the needle, and what they do own is generally dependent on financial bubbles or speculative gambles.

Feeling like we belong to the “middle class” because we have a college diploma and make a good income offers up a false sense of pride and progress.If we’re realistic about the financial wealth and security of “middle class” households, most qualify as working class: stagnant incomes, precarious financial circumstances, very little meaningful wealth and even less meaningful wealth that isn’t dependent on the bubble du jour or promises that might not be kept.

If we look at these charts, it looks like only the top 10%, or perhaps the top 20% at best, might qualify as “middle class” by the metrics described above.

What sort of society do we have if the bottom 20% of households are poor, the next 60% are working class/precariat and only the top 20% (at best) have any of the core attributes of “middle class” financial security and wealth?

If we take off our rose-colored glasses, we have a much more stratified economy and society than we might like to believe: there’s the top 1%, the next 4% “upper middle class,” the next 10% “middle class,” the next 65% working class, and the bottom 20% poor, those largely dependent on government transfers.

The “middle” has eroded away, leaving the top 15% who are doing very well in the status quo and the bottom 85% who are struggling to maintain a meaningful sense of prosperity and progress.

Personally, I’m proud to be working class in terms of my skillsets and values. Labels mean nothing. What counts is having skills, drive, agency, curiosity, frugality, integrity, self-discipline and kindness. Those forms of wealth cannot be taken from you when the bubble du jour pops and all the phantom “wealth” vanishes like mist in Death Valley.

*  *  *

Pathfinding our Destiny: Preventing the Final Fall of Our Democratic Republic ($6.95 ebook, $12 print, $13.08 audiobook): Read the first section for free in PDF format. My new mystery The Adventures of the Consulting Philosopher: The Disappearance of Drake is a ridiculously affordable $1.29 (Kindle) or $8.95 (print); read the first chapters for free (PDF). My book Money and Work Unchained is now $6.95 for the Kindle ebook and $15 for the print edition. Read the first section for free in PDF format. If you found value in this content, please join me in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. New benefit for subscribers/patrons: a monthly Q&A where I respond to your questions/topics.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IJ2W0t Tyler Durden

Just after his trip to Tehran where he met with Iran’s president Rouhani as well as Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, during which a Japanese owned tanker was attacked in the nearby Gulf of Oman on Thursday along with another international vessel, Japan’s Prime Minister Shinzo Abe condemned the suspected attack in official statements. 

Speaking to reporters Friday he said: “Japan adamantly condemns the act that threatened a Japanese ship, no matter who attacked,” and further urged “all related countries” to avoid any “accidental confrontation” or an escalation of tensions. 

The Trump ally also spoke to the US president by phone on Friday, reportedly briefing him on his visit to Iran, Abe confirmed in his remarks, though without detailing what he conveyed to the White House. Trump had previously said during a Fox & Friends telephone interview that “it’s probably got essentially Iran written all over it.”

A number of media pundits and even mainstream news networks like CNN raised an unusual level of skepticism regarding the attacks being hastily penned on Iran by Washington as well as the UK. 

Meanwhile, the Russian Foreign Ministry issued its own statements amid broader calls in Europe for “constraint” in assigning premature blame. Russia accused the US of “stoking tensions,” according to the AP, based on Washington’s “Iranophobic” stance which seeks to “artificially” fuel tensions, according to the ministry statement.

Russia’s statement further condemned the attack incident but called for a “thorough and unbiased international probe.”

Importantly, Russia also thanked Iran for helping rescue 11 Russian nationals who had been aboard one of the tankers, which is a stark contradiction to the claims of US officials, who are now saying Iran had detained the crew. 

If the whole saga which began early Thursday morning weren’t already bizarre enough with competing claims and counterclaims concerning basic facts concerning what happened, now we have this bombshell assertion via Fox:

U.S. officials have told Fox News that the crew of one of the two stricken oil tankers damaged outside the Persian Gulf were detained by the Iranians Thursday after first being rescued by another merchant vessel.

The crew of the Front Altair was first rescued by the Hyundai Dubai, according to U.S. officials, but Iranian gunboats quickly surrounded the ship and demanded the crew be turned over. The captain ultimately relented and ordered his crew to surrender.

The report adds shockingly that “The 23 crew members are now being held in Iran. It’s not immediately clear what the next steps are.” It has been confirmed that the 11 Russian nationals are among the 23 crew members from the Front Altair that US officials are now claiming as being “detained” in Iran.

Iran’s Press TV had shown the crew members in footage in “full health” relaxing on couches – which apparently US officials are spinning as a “hostage video” of sorts. 

Video shows crewmembers of a tanker hit by suspicious blast in Sea of Oman who were saved by Iranian rescue teams and transferred to Jask port.#SeaofOman pic.twitter.com/XE2Nd5cynF

— Press TV (@PressTV) June 13, 2019

More via Fox:

Pictures and footage from Iran’s English-language Press TV showed the crew members, saying they are all in “full health”. The 23 crew members, who were apparently in the Iranian southern port town of Bandar-e-Jask, appeared to be watching a speech by Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei.

So essentially, the Russian Foreign Ministry is thanking Iran for “rescuing” its nationals from the boat while US officials are simultaneously claiming crew members have been detained. 

Could this unfolding drama in the Persian Gulf get any weirder at this point? Indeed there’s likely much more bizarre and brazen claims to come. 

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2KiLbs4 Tyler Durden

Authored by John Solomon via The Hill

If you read the newspapers, tuned into the cable TV pundits or received an email from one of the Democrats running for president, you’d swear Donald Trump was back to his treasonous ways. 

All that was missing was an annoying OMG text exclamation punctuating the unfounded claims that Trump might violate the law in 2020 by accepting intelligence on a political rival from a foreign country. The inference, of course, is that it would come from a hostile power such as  Russia or North Korea or Iran.

Actually, what Trump told ABC News’ George Stephanopoulos was that he’d consider taking intelligence dirt about a rival from a friendly ally. (Norway was the actual example he used.)

Sound familiar? That is EXACTLY what the Obama administration did in 2016. It’s something no one in the media or the political space grasped during the tsunami of breathless reaction that followed the interview.

In July 2016, the Obama administration accepted unsolicited information from Alexander Downer, an Australian diplomat who just happened to have helped arrange a $25 million government donation to the Clinton Foundation years before. Downer said that he had witnessed a Trump campaign aide, George Papadopoulos, bragging about some dirt that the Russians supposedly had on Democratic candidate Hillary Clinton.

Though Downer’s claim was reported two-plus months after the alleged event, and was only hearsay gathered at a London tavern, the Obama administration gave it to the FBI which, in turn, thought it was weighty enough to justify opening a counterintelligence case against the lawfully elected Republican nominee for president.

In other words, the Democratic administration accepted dirt from a foreign friendly and used it to justify investigating its GOP rival.

And then, OMG, they did it again just a few weeks later.

In October 2016, less than three weeks from Election Day, the Obama Justice Department approved a Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Act (FISA) warrant to spy on the Trump campaign through its former adviser, Carter Page. The primary evidence supporting the warrant? A dossier written by a foreign friendly named Christopher Steele, a retired MI6 intelligence agent from Great Britain. Of course, the Justice Department and the FBI forgot to tell the courts that Steele actually was working on behalf of the Clinton campaign, but that’s a small detail for the purpose of this column.

For the second time in three months, the Obama administration took dirt on Trump from a foreign ally — this time, from one in Europe — and weaponized it for a criminal investigation.

No offense, but the media really are giving Trump way too much credit for the idea he floated on ABC News. The real scandal is that he’s just plagiarizing a playbook already used by Obama, Clinton and those 2016 Democrats.

And every Democrat and media pundit who accuses Trump of treason for considering taking dirt from, say, Norway in 2020 has now, by extension, accused the Obama administration of committing treason in 2016.

Of course, you’d never know that from the way the media and politicians have treated it.

The whole episode reminds me of one of my earliest memories as a professional journalist.

When I first hit the presidential campaign trail as a reporter chasing the likes of Bob Dole,  Jesse Jackson, George H.W. Bush and a young Al Gore across the farm fields of Middle America in 1988, I stumbled across a silver-haired man at a greasy-spoon restaurant in LaCrosse, Wis. He was an old factory worker at the local brewery. A blue-collar company man who leaned Democrat.

I was sitting at the table across from him, obliviously banging on the keys of my Radio Shack Tandy 103 computer (a model now relegated to the Smithsonian’s heap-pile of technology) when he asked me the obvious: “You one of those reporters?”

“Yes, sir,” I answered politely.

“Do me a favor. Don’t dumb-down politics,” he said. “We’re smarter than you think.”

I’ve kept that sentiment close to my heart for three decades. And those looking to twist Trump’s ABC News interview into something it was not should take heed of the wisdom I was offered that day in LaCrosse.

American voters are a lot harder to fool than the political elite think.

John Solomon is an award-winning investigative journalist whose work over the years has exposed U.S. and FBI intelligence failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, federal scientists’ misuse of foster children and veterans in drug experiments, and numerous cases of political corruption. He serves as an investigative columnist and executive vice president for video at The Hill. Follow him on Twitter @jsolomonReports.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2IGXICb Tyler Durden

In a move that was expected yet will lead to fresh howls of outrage by Democrats demanding William Barr be drawn and quartered, late on Friday the Department of Justice released a 33-page legal opinion backing up Steven Mnuchin’s and the Treasury Department’s decision to reject a request by congressional Democrats for six years of President Trump’s tax returns.
 
“While the Executive Branch should accord due deference and respect to congressional requests, Treasury was not obliged to accept the Committee’s stated purpose without question, and based on all the facts and circumstances, we agreed that the Committee lacked a legitimate legislative purpose for its request,” wrote Steven Engel, an assistant attorney general in DOJ’s Office of Legal Counsel.

The document follows Steven Mnuchin’s rejection of a subpoena from House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Richard Neal (D-Mass.) last month, demanding Trump’s personal and business tax returns from 2013 through 2018.

When the Treasury Secretary rejected Neal’s request, he said that he did so upon the advice of DOJ, and that the Justice Department would publish a legal opinion with its advice. Back in April, Trump, who has agreed to “absolutely” release his returns once they are no longer under IRS audit, told reporters “Hey, I’m under audit. But that’s up to whoever it is. From what I understand the law is 100 percent on my side.”

Two months ago we quoted Steve Rosenthal, a senior fellow at the Urban-Brookings Tax Policy Center who testified before Congress in February about Trump’s tax returns, and who said that “[The] request tests Mnuchin’s oath of office: whether Mnuchin will faithfully execute the laws of the United States, or whether Mnuchin will bend to the will of the president.”

Fast forward to today when we know the answer: Mnuchin simply did what the DOJ advised. And while democrats will be furious, demanding Barr’s scalp, several republicans will be happy with the DOJ opinion, especially Rep. Kevin Brady who two months ago said that “weaponizing our nation’s tax code by targeting political foes sets a dangerous precedent and weakens Americans’ privacy rights,” adding “As you know, by law all Americans have a fundamental right to the privacy of the personal information found in their tax returns.”

The full, 33-page memo (link) is below.

via ZeroHedge News http://bit.ly/2WJ1PI3 Tyler Durden