Tag: finance

Are Stablecoins A Solution For Every Unbanked Business Out There?

Authored by Dean Steinbeck via Hackernoon.com,

For most businesses, opening a bank account and getting access to a variety of services is a straightforward task.

But this is not the case for certain businesses that operate on the fringe of what is seen as acceptable by governments and society at large.

The burgeoning cannabis industry is a case in point. The industry is legal in a number of states in America, yet many of these businesses still can’t access the most basic of banking services.

It’s a big problem for an industry that is expected to grow to $16 billion in 2019. Business owners have had to think of imaginative and dangerous ways to store millions of dollars in physical cash.

The problem is that while the industry is considered legal in California and other states, most banks cannot offer these businesses services due to federal laws. Most commercial banks in America are insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation, which prohibits them from providing services to industries that are illegal at a federal level.

These companies are making millions legally, but they simply can’t find banks that will help them store and manage their money. They are crying out for basic financial services.

Fortunately, we are finally seeing the first real legal steps taken to address this issue at a state level in America, as the flourishing cannabis industry has been thrown a lifeline to address a lack of financial services.

Lawmakers in California have proposed a new bill that will allow cannabis-related businesses to pay state fees and taxes using stablecoins. The bill would take effect in 2020 if passed.

It will allow cities and counties to collect taxes and fees using stablecoins, which will then be converted into US dollars.

As California’s State Treasurer Fiona Ma told the US House Committee on Financial Services in February, many cannabis-related businesses have had to carry suitcases full of cash to their local tax authority offices in order to settle their quarterly accounts.

It’s a ludicrous state of affairs that needs a forward-thinking, digital solution that is already on hand.

How crypto aims to solve the banking problem

Crypto has long offered a solution to the inefficiencies and flaws with fiat currency and the banking system.

Bitcoin’s whitepaper gives one of the best descriptions of crypto’s intent.

“A purely peer-to-peer version of electronic cash would allow online payments to be sent directly from one party to another without going through a financial institution.”

This is the crux of what cryptocurrencies look to do. It gives people the power to make transactions of value directly between each other, without the need for a centralized authority to store their funds or facilitate these transactions.

Furthermore, many cryptocurrencies allow you to do this anonymously and quickly, without the need for centralized approval. The more difficult it becomes to win that approval in the traditional financial system, the greater the demand for a decentralized financial system grows.

While the benefits are clear, crypto is hard to accept by mainstream institutions because of the steep learning curve needed to understand how it works and the price volatility associated with most cryptocurrencies.

Many are put off by the technical aspects of the technology while most financial institutions are just too worried about the wild swings in value that have characterized the cryptocurrency markets over the past few years.

However, there is a crypto option that addresses many of these concerns and could well offer a gateway to crypto for mainstream institutions.

Stablecoins: A gateway to cryptocurrencies

Stablecoins have been part and parcel of the crypto landscape for a number of years. While they may be met with some skepticism by crypto veterans, stablecoins could provide the potential for mass user adoption of cryptocurrency.

For the uninitiated, stablecoins are cryptocurrencies tied to a stable asset or assets. This is intended to negate the price volatility that is associated with various decentralized cryptocurrencies.

Stablecoins are usually fixed to a fiat currency, like the US dollar, and offer an easier transition into crypto for the layperson because they can easily understand what a stablecoin is worth and don’t have to be concerned about wild price swings.

It’s also great for retailers because they can accept stablecoins without taking on unwanted currency risk –the possibility that your crypto holdings could appreciate or depreciate in value. Plus, they still have to pay their bills in traditional fiat currency, so until the ecosystem is entirely ready to accept crypto, stablecoins will bridge the gap.

What does this mean for Crypto Law Insiders?

As Insiders know, we try not to extrapolate too much from any one data point. But to be fair, even if this California bill does not pass, it’s a great sign of what lies ahead.

Businesses and lawmakers are starting to understand that crypto provides solutions that traditional fiat currencies don’t.

There is a powerful irony to governments accepting stablecoins as a solution to problems they themselves created. The more challenges regulators put up in the banking industry, the more fuel these regulators add to the fire for crypto solutions.

Governments are worried about cryptocurrencies challenging and replacing their fiat/banking systems. And to counter this, they’ve implemented unreasonable banking KYC/AML requirements to limit the growth of crypto-related businesses.

However, it is the overbearing banking KYC/AML requirements that are driving users to adopt crypto more rapidly because they are being locked out of the traditional banking ecosystem.

Laws like the one California is proposing are just the beginning.

Over the coming years, I expect stablecoins to grow exponentially as businesses that cannot access traditional banking systems seek solutions to their problems. And as the stablecoin ecosystem grows, others will be drawn into it.

Stablecoins will be the gateway into the world of crypto for millions of users.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2UVqhkw Tyler Durden

Houston Chemical Fire Reignites After Dangerous Benzene Spill

After five days of the nation being captivated by dramatic images of flames and smoke plumes hovering above the Houston area from the Deer Park petrochemical fire, which had initially triggered an emergency shelter-in-place order from city authorities when it began last Sunday, firefighters had finally extinguished the raging inferno on Thursday. 

But the Intercontinental Terminals Co. (ITC) chemical storage complex has again reignited late Friday afternoon, which once more sent a massive black cloud into the sky, reportedly visible from 20 miles away, and again potentially exposing residents to dangerous airborne chemicals as well as leaks into nearby waterways.

Image via KPRC Click2Houston

Harris Country officials now say multiple tank fires are once again raging uncontrolled, at two separate sections of the Houston area disaster site. Deer Park’s office of emergency management called the new smoke plume a “flare up” as part of “a developing incident.”

“The City of Deer Park is not issuing a Shelter-in-Place order at this time but we are monitoring the situation,” the emergency management official said.

Nearby schools had already been closed for days due to the original fire and parts of the Houston Ship Channel remained closed after a prior dangerous benzene leak at the plant due to the fire. Benzene is a known carcinogen which can cause devastating health effects based on various levels of exposure. 

Residents have become increasingly anxious over what the Houston Chronicle describes as “volatile compounds sitting in damaged tanks at the petroleum storage facility or streaming into nearby waterways.”

The Deer Park fire on March 19, via Bloomberg

Just when the nearly week-long emergency appeared to be under control, things could fast be getting worse again as containment crews are fighting back threats on multiple fronts, per Bloomberg:

The new blaze erupted just hours after a wall holding back almost a million gallons of toxic, flammable liquids collapsed, and just two days after the original conflagration was suppressed. Intercontinental Terminals Co., which owns the storage facility in suburban Deer Park, said the tank involved in the new blaze contained xylene, a toxic byproduct of the oil-refining process.

Area residents have told local media they’ve been extremely frustrated at ITC’s slowness at informing the public as to true extent and nature of the chemical leaks during their press conferences.

As of early Friday afternoon firefighters thought the blaze had been finally extinguished before it flared up again.

That anger was on display this week after ITC and city officials attempted to calm the public with messages of “everything is fine” as a blackened toxic cloud dominated the skyline for miles.  

ITC did confirm one of the first takes to catch fire had held 4.4 million gallons of pyrolysis gas, which is fuel blend containing benzene, xylene and toluene, and additional compounds. 

According to prior local reports: 

Officials said the components are in gas blend stocks used in the production of finished gasoline and base oil used for machine lubrication. 

NAPHTHA can cause irritation to eyes and the respiratory system. It affects the central nervous system and is harmful and even fatal if it is swallowed. 

XYLENE may also be fatal if it is swallowed and enters the airway. It can cause skin irritation.

City and environmental officials have throughout the ordeal assured residents that Harris County Pollution Control was conducing air quality monitoring tests of the area, but still cautioned residents to stay indoors throughout the ordeal if at all possible.

developing…

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YheZJi Tyler Durden

Ralph Nader: Greedy Boeing’s Avoidable Design And Software Time-Bombs

Authored by Ralph Nader via Counterpunch.org,

As internal and external pressures mount to hold Boeing responsible for its criminal negligence, the giant company is exerting its immense influence to limit both its past and future accountability. Boeing whistleblowers and outside aviation safety experts are coming forward to reveal the serial, criminal negligence of Boeing’s handling of its dangerous Boeing 737 Max airplanes, grounded in the aftermath of two deadly crashes that took 346 lives. Boeing, is used to having its way in Washington, D.C. For decades, Boeing and some of its airline allies have greased the wheels for chronic inaction related to the additional protection and comfort of airline passengers and airline workers.

Most notoriously, the airlines, after the hijacks to Cuba in the late Sixties and early Seventies, made sure that Congress and the FAA did not require hardened cockpit doors and stronger latches on all aircraft, costing a modest $3000 per plane. Then the 9/11 massacre happened, a grisly consequence of non-regulation, pushed by right wing corporatist advocacy centers.

Year after year, Flyers Rights – the airline passenger consumer group –proposed a real passengers bill of rights. Year after year the industry’s toadies in Congress said no. A slim version passed last year — requiring regulations creating minimum seat standards, regulations regarding prompt refunds for ancillary services not provided or on a flight not taken, and a variety of small improvements for consumers.

Boeing is all over Capitol Hill. They have 100 full time lobbyists in Washington, D.C. Over 300 members of Congress regularly take campaign cash from Boeing. The airlines lather the politicians with complimentary ticket upgrades, amenities, waivers of fees for reservation changes, priority boarding, and VIP escorts. Twice, we sent surveys about these special freebies to every member of Congress with not a single response. (See my letterand survey .)

That is the corrupt backdrop that at least two Congressional Committees have to overcome in holding public hearings into the causes of the Indonesian’s Lion Air crash last October and the Ethiopian Airline crash on March 10, 2019.

Will the Senate and House Committee invite the technical dissenters to testify against Boeing’s sequential corner cutting on its single sensor software that miscued and took control of the 737 Max 8 from its pilots, pulling down on the plane’s nose? Boeing’s sales-driven avoidance of producing effective manuals with upgraded pilot training was courting disaster as was outrageously leaving many of the pilots in the dark.

The Congressional Committees must issue subpoenas to critics of Boeing and the FAA in order to protect them from corporate and agency retaliation.

Moreover, the Committees must get rid of the grotesque self-regulation that allows Boeing to control the aircraft certification process for the FAA. This dangerous delegation has worsened in recent years because Trump and Republicans in Congress have cut the FAA’s budget.

Brace yourself. Here is how the Washington Post described this abandonment of regulation by FAA, endorsed by Boeing’s Congress:

“In practice, one Boeing engineer would conduct a test of a particular system on the Max 8, while another Boeing engineer would act as the FAA’s representative, signing on behalf of the U.S. government that the technology complied with federal safety regulations…”

“Hundreds of Boeing engineers would have played out this scenario thousands of times as the company sought to verify the performance of mechanical systems, hardware installation and massive amounts of computer code…”

So, citizens, watch out for bloviating Congressional Committee members castigating Boeing executives at the witness table before the television cameras and then doing nothing once the television broadcasts fade away.

Boeing’s 737 series started in 1967 and has had a good engineering safety record in this country. But Boeing was in a rush with its Boeing 737 Max 8. They had to catch up with the growing orders for a similar-sized passenger jet built by Airbus. Being in a rush meant a modification that added more seats (a key motivation), that led to larger engines that affected the aerodynamics of the plane that led to the inadequate, mostly uncommunicated software fix to the pilots. Step by step, top management pushed the engineers in ways that compromised their professional expertise and each slide set the stage for a deeper slide. Now, the press is reporting a criminal probe by the Justice Department. The Inspector General of the Department of Transportation is also investigating the FAA’s certification of 737 Max 8.

Years ago, aviation experts say, Boeing should have developed a brand new aircraft design for such intermediate distances. But Boeing dug in and compliant FAA officials dropped the ball. And President Trump has failed to fill three top slots at the FAA since January 2017.

That is why, after flight 302 crashed outside Addis Ababa, both Boeing and the FAA kept issuing statements filled with gibberish saying that the 737 Max 8 was safe, safe, safe—the malfunction-prone software time bomb to the contrary. A brand new plane, crashing twice and taking hundreds of lives, can’t be blamed on pilot error.

Caution: the grounding of the planes may receive a whitewash unless the media keeps light and heat on this corporate-government collusion.

Installing artificial intelligence replacing or overpowering human intelligence in ever more complex machines, such as modern aircraft or weapons systems or medical technology is the harbinger of what’s to come.  In a 2014 BBC interview Stephen Hawking, the famed theoretical physicist, said:  “The development of full artificial intelligence could spell the end of the human race.” And in 2018 Elon Musk said: “If AI has a goal and humanity just happens to be in the way, it will destroy humanity as a matter of course without even thinking about it. No hard feelings.”

At the wreckage near Bishoftu in a small pastoral farm field and in the Java Sea off Indonesia lie the remains of the early victims of arrogant, algorithm-driven corner cutting, by reckless corporate executives and their captive government regulators.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FluRSv Tyler Durden

UCLA Men’s Soccer Coach Resigns After Accepting $200,000 In Bribes In College Admissions Scandal

UCLA’s head men’s soccer coach, who was among those charged in the biggest college admissions fraud scheme in history, resigned on Thursday, according to Reuters. Jorge Salcedo was one of nine college coaches who were charged by federal prosecutors on March 12 in connection with the admissions scandal.

Salcedo is a former player for the US Men’s national soccer team who played professionally in both Mexico and in the United States. He had managed the UCLA Bruins as their head coach since 2004. 

Salcedo was charged for allegedly accepting bribes in exchange for designating admissions candidates as recruited athletes in order to help their chances of getting into the University. UCLA placed him on leave last week after learning he was charged with accepting up to $200,000 in order to help to students gain admission by posing them as recruited competitive soccer players.

According to the Daily Mail, he took a $100,000 bribe in order to get a woman named Lauren Isackson on the women’s soccer team roster. 

Isackson was given jersey No. 41 in 2017 on a team of all star players and required to stay on the side for at least one year, according to the report. Isackson’s father is the President of a real estate firm and reportedly spent more than $600,000 to get Lauren and her sister into both UCLA and USC. 

Isackson

They reportedly handed over 2,000 Facebook shares, worth about $250,000, in addition to donations, to scheme mastermind Rick Singer. 

The US has been fascinating with the admissions scandal ever since it first broke earlier this month as it demonstrated just how bifurcated the college applications process has become, segregating between the rich and powerful, and those who are not; it has also showed to what lengths Americans will go to cheat the system. Most recently, we wrote about how students were being encouraged to fake learning disabilities in order to cheat on college entrance exams. 

We also profiled one Harvard test-taking “whiz” that was responsible for helping students at the center of the scandal get high scores on admissions tests. Prior to that, we reported on the tipster who gave the SEC the lead on the admissions scandal. He was in the midst of being investigated for a pump and dump scam at the time. 

We also reported that the universities involved were now facing class action lawsuits from their students. Additionally, we reported on major tax implications that could be waiting for the parents involved – including potential civil tax fraud penalties and interest charges on any bribe amounts they wrote off. 

After the scandal was reported, we unveiled that William Rick Singer was the man who brokered and facilitated many of the bribes. 

Our original take on the entire scandal can be read here. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FxX48P Tyler Durden

Australia’s Gun Laws And Homicide: Correlation Isn’t Causation

Authored by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

In the wake of the March 15 New Zealand shootings, advocates for new gun restrictions in New Zealand have pointed to Australia as “proof” that if national governments adopt gun restrictions like those of Australia’s National Firearms Agreement, then homicides will go into steep decline.

“Exhibit A” is usually the fact that homicides have decreased in Australia since 1996, when the new legislation was adopted in Australia.

There are at least two problems with these claims.

  • First, homicide rates have been in decline throughout western Europe and Canada and the United States since the early 1990s. The fact that the same trend was followed in Australia is hardly evidence of a revolutionary achievement.

  • Second, homicides were already so unusual in Australia, even before the 1996 legislation, that few lessons can be learned from slight movements either up or down in homicide rates.

A Trend in Falling Rates

As noted by legal scholar Michael Tonry,

There is now general agreement, at least for developed English-speaking countries and western Europe, that homicide patterns have moved in parallel since the 1950s. The precise timing of the declines has varied, but the common pattern is apparent. Homicide rates increased substantially from various dates in the 1960s, peaked in the early 1990s or slightly later, and have since fallen substantially.

This was certainly the case in the United States. US homicides hit a 51-year low in 2014, falling to a level not seen since 1963. This followed the general trend: peaking in the early 1990s, and then going into steep decline. And yet, we can’t point to any new national gun-control measure which we can then claim caused the decline. In fact, the data suggests gun ownership increased significantly during this period.

Source.

Australia followed the same pattern, although national homicide data collection was spotty before the early 1990s:

Source: Standardized homicide rates per 100,000 population, four English-speaking countries, various years to 2012. See “Why Crime Rates Are Falling Throughout the Western World” by Michael Tonry.

Part of the reason that the collection of homicide data in Australia is so recent a phenomenon is because it has tended to be so rare. Politically, it simply wasn’t a national priority. Australia is a small country, with only a few more million people than Florida, spread out over an entire continent. In the relatively high homicide days of the early 1990s, Australia’s homicides totaled around 300. This means in a bad crime year, in which homicides increase by only 20 or 30 victims, it could swing overall rates noticeably.

This brings us to our other problem with using post-1996 homicide data as definitive proof of anything. The numbers are too small to allow us to extrapolate much. As data analyst Leah Libresco wrote in 2017 in The Washington Post:

I researched the strictly tightened gun laws in Britain and Australia and concluded that they didn’t prove much about what America’s policy should be. Neither nation experienced drops in mass shootings or other gun related-crime that could be attributed to their buybacks and bans. Mass shootings were too rare in Australia for their absence after the buyback program to be clear evidence of progress. And in both Australia and Britain, the gun restrictions had an ambiguous effect on other gun-related crimes or deaths…

This doesn’t stop many reporters in mainstream outlets from claiming that any decline in homicides can with certainty be attributed to whatever the most recent gun-control restrictions were.

But it rarely works in the opposite direction. For example, during the 1990s, many American states liberalized gun laws considerably, allowing more conceal-carry provisions and lessening controls in general. Needless to say, The New York Times doesn’t point to this and say “American homicide rates decreased in response to loosening of state gun laws.”

Of course, I’m not saying that these changes in gun laws by themselves indisputably “prove” that more conceal carry laws reduce homicides. But, if I subscribed to the same standards of rigor as most mainstream journalists, I’d likely have no scruples about doing this, in spite of what other factors ought to be considered.

Faced with a lack of evidence that 1996’s law caused Australia to follow the same trend in homicides as both the US and Canada, advocates for laws like Australia’s then fall back on the strategy of pointing out that Australia’s homicide rates are lower than the US’s. The problem with this strategy, of course, is that Australia’s homicide rates were not comparable to those in the US either before or after 1996. The causes of the difference in rates between the two countries obviously pre-dates modern gun regulation measures in both countries. (We might also point out that several US states — some of which have very lax gun laws — have very low homicide rates comparable to Australia’s.)

Attempts to explain this away have been numerous, and in many ways, justifying gun control policy has come down to endless attempts at using regression analysis to find correlations between gun policy and homicide rates. These can often be interesting, but their value often rests on finding the right theoretical framework with which to identify the most important factors.

Those who work in public policy, and who lack a good foundation in broader issues around criminality tend to just go directly to legal prohibitions as the key factor in homicide rates. But this isn’t exactly the approach taken by those who engage in more serious study of long-term trends in homicides.

Famed crime researcher Eric Monkonnen, for example, in his essay “Homicide: Explaining America’s Exceptionalism,” identified four factors which he thought most likely explained the higher rates in the United States: the mobility of the population, decentralized law enforcement, racial division caused by slavery, and a generally higher tolerance for homicide. Monkonnen concludes: “To assume that an absence of guns in the United States would bring about parity with Europe is wrong. For the past two centuries, even without guns, American rates would likely have still been higher.”

Monkonnen’s conclusions on this matter don’t necessarily make him laissez-faire on gun control. But they doillustrate his recognition of the fact that factors driving differences in homicide rates between two very different societies go far beyond pointing to one or two pieces of legislation. And if gun control laws are to be posited as the cause of declines in homicide, there need to be a clear “before and after difference” in the jurisdiction in which they are adopted. Comparisons with other countries miss the point.

Suicide Rates Are Back at Pre-1996 Levels

Perhaps recognizing that homicide rates haven’t actually changed all that much in the wake of 1996, some defenders of Australia’s gun legislation have tried to gild the lily by claiming that an additional benefit of legislation has been a decline in suicide rates. This is a common strategy among gun control advocates who often like to claim gun control is a suicide prevention measure.

For example, it’s not difficult to find media headlines proclaiming “suicide figures plummeted” in Australia after the adoption of the 1996 law. But Australia runs into a similar problem here as with gun control: suicide rates fell substantially during the same period in Canada, the US, and much of Europe.

Moreover, in recent years, suicide rates in Australia and the US have climbed upward again. There’s little doubt that suicide rates fell from 1995 to 2006, dropping from 12 per 100,000 to under 9 per 100,000. But after that, suicide rates climbed to a ten-year high in 2015, rising again to 12 per 100,000, or a rate comparable to what existed before the 1996 gun measure. In other words, suicides are back to where they were. But as recently as 2017, we’re still hearing about how gun control also makes suicides decline.

Overall, this is just the level of discourse we should expect from the media and policymakers on this matter. Even the flimsiest correlation to the passage of a gun control law is assumed to have been the primary factor behind a decline in homicides. Meanwhile, any easing of gun laws that coincides with declining homicides (as happened in the US) is to be ignored. In both cases, the situation is more complicated than reporters suggest. 

But don’t expect this to be a restraining factor on the drive for new gun laws in New Zealand. In Australia, the 1996 gun-control measure was passed only 12 days after the massacre used to justify the new legislation. New Zealand politicians look like they’re trying to take an even more cavalier attitude toward deliberation and debate. Meanwhile, in Norway, where Anders Brevik murdered 77 people in 2011 – 67 of them with semi-automatic firearms – the national legislature didn’t pass significant changes to gun control regulations until 2018. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2TZuxlJ Tyler Durden

The Wait Is Over: Mueller Report Delivered To AG Barr

Special Counsel Robert Mueller’s long-awaited report is complete, nearly two years after he was named to oversee the investigation into obstruction and collusion between the Trump campaign and Russia, and literally anything else that came up. 

The Department of Justice has notified the key lawmakers that Attorney General William Barr has received the report.

Barr has told congressional leaders he is “reviewing the report and anticipate that [he] may be in a position to advise [them] of the special counsel’s principle conclusions as soon as this weekend.”

Following a review, a debate will ensue between Barr, the White House and lawmakers over how much of the report will be made public. 

 

Developing…

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2uoNLTu Tyler Durden

White House Declares ISIS 100 Percent Eliminated In Syria

The White House announced on Friday that all of ISIS caliphate territory in Syria has been “100 percent eliminated”.

Spokeswoman Sarah Sanders confirmed in a press briefing that President Trump had been notified and briefed by US Acting Defense Secretary Patrick Shanahan while en route to Florida aboard Air Force One. Sanders confidently told reporters that ISIS’ “territorial caliphate has been eliminated in Syria.”

Trump showing Pentagon “before and after” maps while discussing the defeat of ISIS this week, via AP

US-backed SDF forces have for the past weeks been waging a fierce battle on Baghouz camp, which US coalition statements have described as the last holdout to the “most hardened” ISIS militants, numbering in the hundreds, in Abu Kamal District of Deir Ezzor governate near the Iraqi border. 

On Friday, en route to Florida aboard Air Force One, White House press secretary Sarah Sanders announced that ISIS’ “territorial caliphate has been eliminated in Syria.”

Sanders showed reporters a before-and-after map of Syria, indicating that ISIS no longer controlled any territory. — NPR

Previously in the week on Wednesday, Trump said that this last tiny ISIS enclave would be “gone by tonight.” Soon following this, reports indicated that the US-backed SDF “liberated all of Baghouz from the ISIS mercenaries”.

At a speech before a Conservative Political Action Conference Trump had noted that administration officials would make the announcement “probably today or tomorrow” that “we will actually have 100 percent of the caliphate in Syria.”

“The caliphate is gone, as of tonight,” Trump said, and added, “Pretty good. That’s pretty good, right?”

Stunning scenes have come out of Baghouz over the past weeks. 

But on Friday both the Syrian government and Russia’s Foreign Ministry downplayed such reports. At a moment the Pentagon claimed victory, Moscow officials said “the US announcement about the complete elimination of Daesh is not very convincing,” according to state-run media. Syria’s envoy to the UN, Bashar Jaafari, called Friday’s claims of a total ISIS defeat in Baghouz and the region a “bluff”.

Regardless, the scenes of coalition bombings, Kurdish-led advances, and terrorist mass surrenders have been stunning over the past week. It’s clear that ISIS is in it’s final days, not discounting the potential for an underground “endless insurgency” that may continue to rattle Syria and the region for years to come. 

But still the months-long question remains: when are US troops actually coming home as promised by Trump on many occasions? No one should hold their breath. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2JyyTw9 Tyler Durden

Google Influenced Midterm Elections, May Have Cost Republicans Seats: Study

New research reveals that Google built biases into its search results that influenced the 2018 midterm elections – possibly costing Republicans three congressional districts. 

First things first – the study was conducted by Dr. Robert Epstein – a San Diego-based Harvard Ph.D. who founded the Cambridge Center for Behavioral Studies. He’s also a Senior Research Psychologist at the American Institute for Behavioral Research and Technology (AIBRT), a UCSD visiting scholar, and served as editor-in-chief of Psychology Today. 

He also supported Hillary Clinton in 2016 (just like Google!).

Down to the findings: 

Epstein and AIBRT analyzed Google searches linked to three highly competitive southern California congressional races in which Democrats won, and found that Google’s “clear democrat bias” may have flipped the seats away from Republican candidates. According to the study, at least 35,455 undecided voters within the three California districts may have been persuaded to vote Democrat due to the biased Google search results. 

Epstein says that in the days leading up to the 2018 midterms, he was able to preserve “more than 47,000 election-related searches on Google, Bing, and Yahoo, along with the nearly 400,000 web pages to which the search results linked.”

Analysis of this data showed a clear pro-Democrat bias in election-related Google search results as compared to competing search engines. Users performing Google searches related to the three congressional races the study focused on were significantly more likely to see pro-Democrat stories and links at the top of their results.

As Epstein’s previous studies have shown, this can have a huge impact on the decisions of undecided voters, who often assume that their search results are unbiased. Epstein has called this the Search Engine Manipulation Effect (SEME). –Breitbart

Google executives and Democrats have disputed Epstein’s findings, apparently unaware that we can simply google documented instances of the Silicon Valley search giant’s overt bias surrounding elections, their ability to influence them, and their other efforts to hobble conservatives. 

“These are new forms of manipulation people can’t see,” said Epstein, who added that technology “can have an enormous impact on voters who are undecided. … People have no awareness the influence is being exerted.”

Reporting extensively on the work of Epstein is Breitbart News‘ senior tech reporter, Allum Bokhari, who notes that the latest findings “are based on modest assumptions, such as the assumption that voters conduct one election-related search per week.” In other words, the bias could be much more pronounced in reality. 

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YhCmSU Tyler Durden

18 Statistics That Prove That America Has Become An “Idiocracy”

Authored by Michael Snyder via The End of The American Dream blog,

What in the world has happened to us? 

Once upon a time, America had the greatest system of education on the entire planet, and our people were sharp, capable and extremely well informed.  Sadly, none of those things are true anymore.  In 2006, Mike Judge made a movie entitled “Idiocracy” in which an individual of below average intelligence wakes up after being asleep for 500 years thanks to a military hibernation experiment.  When he wakes up, he quickly realizes that he is now the smartest man in America, and that is not a good thing.  The film became an instant classic, but when I originally watched it I thought that such a thing could never actually happen in this country.  Unfortunately, I was wrong.  Since 2006 our nation has been “dumbed down” at a pace that is absolutely staggering, and it is difficult to see a positive future for America if this trend continues.

The following are 18 statistics that prove that America has become an “idiocracy”…

#1 One recent survey found that 74 percent of Americans don’t even know how many amendments are in the Bill of Rights.

#2 An earlier survey discovered that 37 percent of Americans cannot name a single right protected by the First Amendment.

#3 Shockingly, only 26 percent of Americans can name all three branches of government.

#4 During the 2016 election, more than 40 percent of Americans did not know who was running for vice-president from either of the major parties.

#5 North Carolina is considering passing a law which would “mean only scores lower than 39 percent would qualify for an F grade” in North Carolina public schools.

#6 30 years ago, the United States awarded more high school diplomas than anyone in the world.  Today, we have fallen to 36th place.

#7 According to the Pentagon, 71 percent of our young adults are ineligible to serve in the U.S. military because they are either too dumb, too fat or have a criminal background.

#8 For the very first time, Americans are more likely to die from an opioid overdose than they are in a car accident.

#9 One study discovered that one-third of all American teenagers haven’t read a single book in the past year.

#10 A recent survey found that 45 percent of U.S. teenagers are online “almost constantly”.

#11 Today, the average American spends 86 hours a month using a smartphone.

#12 Overall, the average U.S. adult “logs 6 hours, 43 minutes of total screen time daily”.

#13 In more than half of all U.S. states, the highest paid public employee in the state is a football coach.

#14 During one seven day period last summer, a total of 16,000 official complaints about human feces were submitted to the city of San Francisco.  And apparently the problem is very real because one investigation found 300 piles of human feces on the streets of downtown San Francisco.

#15 Every 24 hours, more than a third of all Americans eat fast food.

#16 Less than half of all Americans know which country used atomic bombs at the end of World War II.

#17 Even though we fought a war in Iraq for eight long years, 6 out of 10 young adults cannot find Iraq on a map of the Middle East.  And that same survey found that 75 percent of our young adults cannot locate Israel.

#18 Today, the average college freshman in the United States reads at a 7th grade level.

Sometimes it helps to go into the past to get some much needed perspective on the present.

A few years ago, an eighth grade exam from 1912 was donated to the Bullitt County History Museum.  To me, it is absolutely amazing what kids living in rural Kentucky were expected to know a little over 100 years ago.

You can find a copy of the exam right here, and as I looked it over I quickly realized that most college students would have an exceedingly difficult time trying to pass such a test today.

In fact, I think that I would have a very hard time getting a passing grade.  Here are just a few of the questions on the exam…

-Through which waters would a vessel pass in going from England through the Suez Canal to Manila?

-How does the liver compare in size with other glands in the human body?

-How long of a rope is required to reach from the top of a building 40 feet high to the ground 30 feet from the base of a building?

-Compare arteries and veins as to function. Where is the blood carried to be purified?

-During which wars were the following battles fought: Brandywine, Great Meadows, Lundy’s Lane, Antietam, Buena Vista?

If you would like to know the answers to all of the questions on the exam, you can find them right here.

In contrast, our system of education today is a total joke.  Most of our students have never learned how to communicate effectively, they are fed an endless stream of “tests” that consist of multiple choice, true/false and fill-in-the-blank questions, and when they get out of school most of them have absolutely no idea how to succeed in the real world.

Perhaps that helps to explain why our kids are in the bottom half of all industrialized nations when it comes to math and science literacy.

If we do not educate our children well, we will continue to fall behind the rest of the world, and it will be just a matter of time before we lose our status as a global power.

Of course that assumes that we actually have enough time left to turn things around.  At that rate that we are currently degenerating, we might not.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YgdtXN Tyler Durden

Bank Bloodbath Brings Down ‘Bull Market’ As Yield Curve Crashes

Bonds, Bullion, & The Greenback are all higher since The Fed threw in the towel… stocks are lower…

And despite the desperate efforts to talk up the economy, SHTF today…

Chinese stocks managed gains on the week, thanks to three big liftathons…

 

European markets were ugly all week…

 

US equity markets had their worst day since Jan 3rd – all ending the week lower…

 

Dow futures fell 500 points from the overnight highs…

 

As Bloomberg noted, you know things have gone a bit pear-shaped when utilities and tech are the top gainers, comfortably outperforming the broader market. But they took quite divergent paths to get there.

 

It appears the squeezers ran out of ammo…

 

Buybacks had a good week – until Friday, as the blackout window looms…

 

Big bank stocks have bloodbath’d this week (worst week of the year) as the hopes of higher rates and steeper curve evaporate…

 

But Regional banks were clubbed like a baby seal… the biggest weekly drop since Sept 2011 – after the USA downgrade

 

And bank CDS have started to creep higher…

 

Tesla had an ugly week…

 

Credit and equity protection costs surged on the week…

 

Yields collapsed around the world this week, with 10Y bunds going negative once again…

 

Global average sovereign yields plunged to lowest since April 2018…

 

US Treasury yields crashed this week… this is the biggest weekly drop in 5Y, 7Y, and 10Y yields since April 2017

 

For the first time since 2007, the spreads between 3m and 10y yields inverted – flashing the most-effective recession indicator since WW2…

 

And inflation breakevens plunged, despite a lack of oil confirmation…

 

The yield curve is now inverted to Fed Funds out to almost 10Y…

 

Notably, The Fed is now priced to be easier than The ECB in 2019…

 

The dollar index ended the week very marginally higher thanks to serious buying-panic in the last two days since The Fed…

The relative stability expected from an easing Fed has prompted a run into carry trades and USD remains a big player.

 

The Turkish Lira collapsed today as a surprise tightening by the Turkish central bank failed to stem a rout in the wake of an unexplained drop in official reserves.

“Today the unsustainable nature of state-owned banks being the only sellers of [US dollars in exchange for lira] over recent weeks became evident,” said Roger Hallam, chief investment officer for currencies at JPMorgan Asset Management.  

Bitcoin managed gains on the week but Bitcoin Cash outperformed…

 

Copper ended the week lower as China growth questions continued but WTI and PMs managed to hold on to gains despite the dollar ending higher…

 

Gold rallied for the 3rd week in a row…

 

WTI topped $60 intraweek, but ended back below $59…

 

Finally, we refer to Knowledge Leaders Capital Bryce Coward’s analysis of what happens next...

We’ve cataloged all 20 uninterrupted 15% declines in the post-war period and documented what has happened afterward, as well as the type of market environment in which those declines have taken place. By uninterrupted decline, we mean a waterfall decline of at least 15% without an intermediate counter-trend rally of at least 5%. Some bullet points describing the rallies following those declines are below:

  • The average counter-trend rally following a 15% waterfall decline is 11.9% (11% median) and it takes place over 21 trading days on average (median 11 days).

  • The rallies end up retracing 57% of the decline on average (median 52%).

  • Waterfall declines of at least 15% have only taken place in bear markets.

    • The average of those bear markets have a peak-to-trough decline of 33% (median 29%)

    • The duration of those bear markets is 284 trading days on average (median 139 days)

    • In 16 of 19 instances (excluding the decline we just witnessed), a recession was associated with the bear market

  • 100% of the time the low resulting from the waterfall decline was retested, and in 15 of 19 cases a new lower lower was made.

It’s different this time though…

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2YfJoaV Tyler Durden