An Associated Press photographer snapped several pictures of at least two M1 Abrams main battle tanks and several Bradley Fighting Vehicles on Monday on flat train cars in a railyard at the southeastern edge of Washington. These military vehicles will participate in President Trump’s July Fourth celebrations in Washington on Thursday.
President Trump confirmed the military vehicles would be present at the celebration on Thursday.
“I’m going to be here, and I’m going to say a few words, and we’re going to have planes going overhead, the best fighter jets in the world and other planes too and we’re gonna have some tanks stationed outside,” Trump said.
“You’ve got to be pretty careful with the tanks because the roads have a tendency not to like to carry heavy tanks, so we have to put them in certain areas, but we have the brand new Sherman tanks, and we have the brand new Abrams tanks,” Trump added.
As a correction to Trump’s “brand new Sherman tanks” comment, those tanks were most widely used during World War II and through the 1950s – have been out of service for decades.
Trump raised a few eyebrows when he suggested early last year that a military parade should be held in downtown Washington. By August, the DoD postponed the parade to 2019. So tanks in Washington for the celebration on Thursday could be a small extension of what Trump was trying to accomplish last year. Local government officials had objected to 67-ton tanks rolling down city streets because of the damage it could do to roadways.
Trump offered no specifics on where the tanks would be showcased, nor any other details if they will take part in parades.
The display of American firepower – part of tradition in nations such as Russia and China – is being referred to as a “Salute to America,” and will feature fireworks and a speech from Trump. We view this as a salute to the military industrial complex – in a time where the threat of war with Iran has recently surged.
Thursday’s celebration will also feature military demonstrations by the Blue Angels and F-35 stealth jets.
“We’re going to have a great Fourth of July in Washington, D.C. It’ll be like no other,” Trump said. “It’ll be special and I hope a lot of people come. And it’s going to be about this country, and it’s a Salute to America.”
“I’m going to say a few words, and we’re going to have planes going overhead, the best fighter jets in the world and other planes, too,” he said.
A Pentagon memo said the parade would “include wheeled vehicles only, no tanks,” adding that “attention must be given to reduce damage to local infrastructure.
Trump will be giving his “Salute to America” speech on the National Mall this Thursday, an unusual move by the President. Trump’s “Salute to America” with tanks, stealth jets, and fireworks could be an ominous sign that Washington is preparing for wartime.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XOq7jg Tyler Durden
How much wealthier would Illinois homeowners be, in total, if homes here had appreciated at the national average?
With help from the Research Group at Zillow, Wirepoints got the answer:
Illinois homeowners would be a stunning $269 billion wealthier if home appreciation here had just kept pace with the national average over the last ten years.
Here are the details: According to Zillow, the total value of all homes in the United States in May 2009 was $24.2 trillion. That increased to $32.4 trillion in May 2019, which is an increase of 33.9%. Over that same period, Illinois’ total home value increased from $907 billion to $945 billion, just 4.2%. Had Illinois homes appreciated at that national rate, they would be worth $1.21 trillion, which is $269 billion more than actual. Illinois homeowners lost out on over a quarter trillion dollars of appreciation.
The numbers are summarized below.
Zillow provided these numbers to us using a constant-stock methodology, meaning they looked at the same homes in each time period. So, none of the gain in total value over those ten years was due simply to more or fewer houses having been built in Illinois compared to the rest of the nation.
The numbers are for single family homes and condominiums; commercial real estate is not included.
That $269 billion is $1.3 million for every mile from here to the Moon. It’s $22,000 for every person in Illinois. It comes out to about $66,000 per house in Illinois.
That quarter-trillion dollars of missed appreciation is for the past ten years only. However, tens of billions more were probably missed in earlier years beginning around 2004. It was then that Chicago area home values began to diverge from the rest of the nation, according to Standard & Poor’s Case-Shiller index. The same trend probably emerged at the same time in the rest of Illinois.
For many Illinois homeowners, it’s much worse than a matter of limited appreciation. It’s about depreciation that has made their homes worth less than their mortgage balance. According to Attom Data Solutions, 16% of Illinois homes are “seriously underwater,” meaning that the mortgage balance is more than 25% above the estimated home value. Only four states have a higher percentage of seriously underwater homes.
The impact of these numbers go beyond the staggering direct impact on homeowners. First, is what’s called the “wealth effect.” Consumer spending increases as wealth accrues even on unrealized gains in stocks and real estate. Restaurant owners will tell you that business perks up when the stock market is soaring, and the stock market is where the wealth effect is usually discussed. The negative wealth effect works in reverse, too.
Home values have the same effect, and perhaps more quickly. According to research by the Joint Center for Housing Studies Harvard University, housing wealth effects are more immediate. Consumers spend about 5 1/2 cents out of every dollar increase in housing wealth or in stock wealth in the long run. It takes only about one year for spending from housing wealth to reach four-fifths of this long-run effect compared with several years for stock wealth, according to that research. If true, that would mean Illinois’ subpar home appreciation cut consumer spending by about $15 billion in the state over ten years.
Reduced home appreciation also makes the often-discussed retirement crisis more challenging. Home equity is the largest store of savings for most households and, according to the Center for Retirement Research, households entering retirement will increasingly need to tap home equity to maintain their living standards.
What happened?
The reasons why Illinois home values have underperformed are extensive and some are debatable – matters we’ve written about often on this site. However, property taxes surely top the list. Home values and mortgage qualification are driven primarily by affordability, measured by mortgage payments, insurance and property taxes. High property taxes directly reduce values. They average 2.2% in Illinois, about twice the national average and roughly tied with New Jersey for the highest. Many Illinois communities average over 3% or 4%. Chicago’s south suburbs average over 5%.
Those property taxes have effectively confiscated home equity. They represent a seizure of what is the primary store of wealth for most families, particularly working class families.
A quarter trillion dollars over ten years.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/301S5FM Tyler Durden
While all major powers and signatories to the JCPOA are cautioning Iran in the wake of its declared uranium enrichment ramp-up, there’s been mixed reaction and a blame game already emerging.
Early this week Israel’s Foreign Minister went so far as to say Israel may “act alone” to prevent Iran from acquiring nuclear weapons, while China’s reaction was very different, slamming US policy and its “maximum pressure” campaign as the “root cause of the current tensions,” according to Reuters. EU signatories, meanwhile, urged further dialogue and expressed “extreme concern” over Iran’s breaching the 300km uranium enrichment ceiling.
To be expected, Tel Aviv has remained the most bellicose in reaction to Iranian enrichment activity. Israeli Foreign Minister Israel Katz told Israel Army Radio that the Jewish state would not “allow Iran to obtain nuclear weapons, even if it has to act alone on that”.
File photo via TRT World
And Katz further told an international security forum in separate comments that Iran was on its way out of what he called the “gray zone”. “It should be taken into account that mistaken calculations by the (Iranian) regime … are liable to bring about a shift from the ‘gray zone’ to the ‘red zone’ – that is, a military conflagration,” he said in a speech, according to Reuters.
“We must be prepared for this, and thus the State of Israel continues to devote itself to building up its military might for the event that it will have to respond to escalation scenarios,” Katz added.
Additionally, even mainstream media reporting now acknowledges that Israel has long been on record as mulling a preemptive strike scenario, per Reuters:
Israel has long threatened to take preemptive military action to deny Iran the means of making nuclear weapons. Tehran says it has no such designs. One of its senior lawmakers warned on Monday that Israel would be destroyed within “only half an hour” should the United States attack Iran.
This followed President Trump’s condemnation that Iran was “playing with fire” in breaking prior terms of the nuclear deal, something Iran’s leaders have slammed as full of hypocrisy given it was the US which unilaterally pulled out of the 2015 deal in May a year ago.
Israel’s Foreign Minister next to PM Netanyahu, via Jewish Journal
However, China has grown bolder in its pushing back against threats and the “pressure campaign” out of Washington and Tel Aviv.
Only two weeks ago China urged the world tostand down from opening “Pandora’s Box” in the Middle East amid the soaring tensions in the Persian Gulf.
A top Beijing official, Chinese State Councillor Wang Yi, had specifically called on the United States to cease its “extreme pressure” campaign against Iran. Notably, this came after he met Syria’s foreign minister in the Chinese capital.
“We call on all sides to remain rational and exercise restraint, and not take any escalatory actions that irritate regional tensions, and not open a Pandora’s box,” Wang said. “In particular, the U.S. side should alter its extreme pressure methods,” Wang said.
But if indeed both the US and its ally Israel get bogged down in yet another lengthy Middle East quagmire, China and Russia would sit back and emerge the likely winners.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/325umGt Tyler Durden
All over the planet, nature is starting to behave in some very unusual ways. And unfortunately for us, a lot of the changes that we are witnessing in nature are quite detrimental for humanity. Of course the truth is that we haven’t exactly been too kind to the planet that we are living on. In fact, many would argue that we are in the process of absolutely devastating the Earth, and most of us don’t feel bad about that at all. So could it be possible that it is now payback time?
Let me give you just one quick example of how we are destroying the planet. According to a recent survey of U.S. beekeepers, an astounding 37 percent of all honeybee colonies were lost over the winter…
Every year since 2006, the University of Maryland’s nonprofit Bee Informed Partnership (BIP) conducts an annual survey to determine how many bee colonies were lost over the course of the year. The 2018–2019 survey asked 4,696 U.S. beekeepers to report how many colonies they lost, and the preliminary results of the survey suggest that things aren’t looking so good.
Of the more than 319,000 managed bee colonies in the survey, 37.7 percent were lost over the winter. This represents the largest die-off since the survey began, and a full 7 percentage points higher than the previous year. Having fewer honeybees is more than just an ecological problem, it’s also an economic one: Every year, honeybees contribute a nearly $20 billion value to U.S. crop production.
Of course we don’t have to look too far to find the culprit. We are the ones that are killing all the bees off, and in the process we are setting the stage for an unprecedented ecological disaster, because if all the bees suddenly vanished human civilization would not last much longer at all.
In the end, we will be held accountable for what has been entrusted to us, and it appears that we are starting to get what we deserve.
The following are 10 signs that nature has turned against humanity…
#1 In the middle of the country, farmers are freaking out because giant black vultures are literally eating their farm animals alive. And since the vultures are “federally-protected”, the farmers can’t do anything about it…
They’ll devour slimy newborn calves, full-grown ewes and lambs alive by pecking them to death.
First the eyes, then the tongue, then every last shred of flesh.
And there isn’t much defense against black vultures and turkey vultures, both of which are federally protected and cannot be killed without a permit.
#2 All up and down the east coast, Americans are becoming the victims of “flesh-eating bacteria” when they go into the water. Here is one recent example from Florida…
A woman who cut herself while walking along the water on the Florida beach she loved died after contracting necrotizing fasciitis, becoming the latest victim of the flesh-eating bacteria.
Lynn Fleming, from Ellenton, about 15 miles north of Sarasota, fell and cut herself while she was walking at Coquina Beach on nearby Anna Maria Island two weeks ago.
At this point things have gotten so bad that the CDC is telling people with open wounds “to avoid bodies of water, especially swimming pools and hot tubs.”
#3 For decades, cockroaches have been multiplying despite our best efforts to eradicate them with insecticides. But now they are developing resistance to our insecticides, and researchers are warning that this will make them “invulnerable”…
The day that squeamish humans—and exterminators—have long feared may have come at last: Cockroaches are becoming invincible. Or at least German cockroaches (Blattella germanica) are, according to a new study. Researchers have found that these creatures, which have long been a prevalent urban pest, are becoming increasingly resistant to almost every kind of chemical insecticide.
Not all insecticides are created equal. Some degrade the nervous system, whereas others attack the exoskeleton; they also have to be left out for varying amounts of time. But many insects, including cockroaches, have evolved resistance to at least one of the most commonly-used insecticides.
#4 Last week it was hotter in some parts of Europe that it has ever been before. In fact, in one region in France the temperature actually hit 114 degrees Fahrenheit…
Hundreds of firefighters battled on Saturday to contain wildfires in southern France as a stifling heatwave brought record-breaking temperatures to parts of Europe, killing at least three people in Italy.
In the Gard region, where France’s highest temperature on record was registered on Friday at 45.9 degrees Celsius (114 degrees Fahrenheit), scores of fires burned some 600 hectares (about 1,500 acres) of land and destroyed several houses and vehicles, emergency services said.
#5 Along the California coastline, temperatures have been so hot that mussels have actually been “roasting in their shells”…
A record-breaking June heatwave apparently caused the largest die-off of mussels in at least 15 years at Bodega Head, a small headland on the northern California bay. And Sones received reports from other researchers of similar mass mussel deaths at various beaches across roughly 140 miles of coastline.
While the people who flocked to the Pacific to enjoy a rare 80F beach day soaked up the sun, so did the mussel beds – where the rock-bound mollusks could have been experiencing temperatures above 100F at low tide, literally roasting in their shells.
#6 And of course the east coast is not being left out either. According to meteorologists, some portions of the east coast could see heat index values hit 110 degrees “as early as Wednesday”…
Another round of oppressive heat is already in the forecast this week for the East Coast with oppressive heat index values on the way for the parts of the Southeast by midweek. Heat index values could approaching 105 to 110 degrees in parts of the region as early as Wednesday.
Major cities from North Carolina to New Jersey will see a long stretch of temperatures at or above 90 degrees, which means another heat wave is on the way for cities like Philadelphia and Washington, D.C.
#7 Thanks to the unusually high temperatures, wasp nests are absolutely thriving across the southern United States. In fact, one expert anticipates that there will be dozens of “super nests” in his area this year…
Warmer winters contribute to these nests, Mr. Ray said. Most yellow jackets don’t survive the cold months because they freeze to death or have trouble finding food. They need a fair amount of sugar and carbohydrates, he said.
“The queens are the only ones who have an antifreeze compound in their blood,” Mr. Ray said. “So normally, a surviving queen will have to start a colony from scratch in the spring. With our climate becoming warmer, there might be multiple surviving queens producing more than 20,000 eggs each.”
#8 Meanwhile, the middle of the country is being absolutely hammered by the wettest year that it has ever experienced. And just when you thought that it couldn’t possibly get any wetter, more storms are scheduled to come rolling through…
But a new system was moving through the Northern Plains Sunday morning and already bringing some severe storms to Minnesota.
The system will attempt to bring some cooler air down from Canada, which will interact with the heat situated in the Midwest and spark storms across parts of the Plains and the Midwest, from Wyoming to Illinois.
#9 In recent months we have also seen unusually large hail absolutely hammer communities all over the country. For example, it is being reported that some portions of Montana were just hit with “baseball-sized hail”…
Thunderstorms that moved through southwestern Montana dropped baseball-sized hail in western Powder River County and golf ball-sized hail as the storm moved to the east.
The National Weather Service reports Wednesday night’s storm left behind broken windows and damaged crops.
Baseball-sized hail fell near Moorhead, a community about 35 miles southwest of Broadus, while Broadus recorded a 70 mph (113 kph) wind gust. Communities just north of Moorhead reported golf ball-sized hail.
#10 Needless to say, all of this wet weather has just continued to feed the unprecedented flooding that we have seen along our major rivers. At this point, we are being told that the horrific flooding along the Mississippi River may go beyond the end of the summer…
The 2019 Mississippi River flood fight is going to slog deep into the summer — and maybe much longer.
While communities north of St. Louis are beginning the expensive path to recovery after record-breaking winter and spring precipitation and runoff, people below the Missouri River are shoveling mud from their houses and praying for a dry spell.
The Lower Mississippi Valley remains in a flood crisis as high water continues to swamp streets, homes, businesses, sewage and water treatment plants, and farm fields, including across some of the poorest counties in the United States.
These are ten examples that have just been in the news during the past few days. If I wanted to cover all of the unusual events that we have witnessed so far in 2019 I would have to write an entire book.
The truth is that global weather patterns are dramatically shifting and our planet is becoming increasingly unstable. And no matter how hard humanity tries to find solutions, the reality of the matter is that things are going to continue to get worse.
We have passed the tipping point, and we are starting to experience the consequences for decades of exceedingly foolish decisions.
We have entered the time of “the perfect storm”, and everything that can be shaken will be shaken.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FNmL64 Tyler Durden
On Tuesday a San Diego military court found decorated Navy SEAL team leader Eddie Gallaghernot guilty of premeditated murder in the death of a teenage ISIS prisoner in Iraq in 2017.
The case stems from a 2017 Middle East deployment where the SEAL platoon led by Gallagher was engaged in a mission supporting Iraqi troops fighting to drive ISIS insurgents out of the city of Mosul. Gallagher was alleged to have killed the young ISIS fighter as he was being treated by US medical personnel.
Eddie Gallagher and his wife arriving at military court in San Diego on Monday. Image source: AP via CNN
However, last month the case took a dramatic turn after the court learned that the defendant couldn’t have fatally stabbed a captured 15-year-old ISIS fighter – based on a SEAL combat medic testifying under immunity that he was the one who killed the enemy combatant.
The medic claimed he had engaged in a “mercy killing” by holding his thumb over the wounded ISIS detainee’s trachea tube until he suffocated, and that Gallagher was not responsible, though the SEAL team leader did pause to pose in a photograph with the deceased.
On Tuesday Gallagher was acquitted on all but one charge by the jury made up of fellow active service members – posing with a corps in a photograph – which carries a max sentence of four months, of which he’s already served 201 days awaiting trial.
Gallagher’s defense portrayed him as an “old-school, hard-charging warrior” who was targeted by younger “millennial” SEALs who harbored “personal animosity” toward him.
Gallagher’s chief attorney, Timothy Parlatore, had presented a narrative to the jury of five Marines and two Navy sailors that SEALs who testified against the chief were lying in the hope of getting him kicked out of the Navy.
“This case is not about murder, it’s about mutiny,” said Parlatore during his prior opening statements, referring to Gallagher as a seasoned and decorated fighter leading a team of SEALs who were frightened in combat.
Navy SEAL Eddie Gallagher via SpecialOperations.com
“They didn’t want to get in the fight,” Parlatore said. “So they banded together to make a plan to get Edward Gallagher out of the fight, permanently” by reporting Gallagher to Naval commanders shortly after the 2017 incident.
Notably President Trump had issued a public statement in support of the controversial SEAL as he stood accused of murder, tweeting that he should be moved to a less restrictive environment instead of the Brig at Miramar base in San Diego, citing his past record of bravery in battle.
In honor of his past service to our Country, Navy Seal #EddieGallagher will soon be moved to less restrictive confinement while he awaits his day in court. Process should move quickly! @foxandfriends@RepRalphNorman
In total he had faced up to seven criminal counts, including: premeditated murder, willfully discharging a firearm to endanger human life, posing for a photo with a casualty, retaliation against members of his platoon for reporting his alleged actions, obstruction of justice, and the attempted murders of two noncombatants.
Sentencing for the ‘posing for a photo with a casualty’ charge is expected to be issued quickly and will likely be greatly reduced based on time served.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2FL2qOI Tyler Durden
Conditions at a Texas migrant detention center recently toured by Rep. Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez are nothing like what was described by the virtue-signaling Congresswoman, according to the President of the National Hispanic Christian Leadership Conference, Rev. Samuel Rodriguez.
AOC fights back tears, we’re sure
Rodriguez toured the same El Paso County facility as AOC, and said he was “full of indignation” and “shocked at the misinformation” regarding the conditions at border facilities, according to Fox News.
“I read the reports, saw the news clips. I just wanted to see what was actually happening in order to better enable our efforts to find a fair and a just solution to our broken immigration system,” Rodriguez, who has advised presidents Trump, Obama and George W. Bush on immigration reform. “To my surprise, I saw something drastically different from the stories I’ve been hearing in our national discourse. Even as a veteran of immigration advocacy in the U.S., I was shocked at the misinformation of the crisis at the border,” he added.
“We found no soiled diapers, no deplorable conditions and no lack of basic necessities,” said Rodriguez, who said that when he asked border agents if they staged the facility in response to the negative press: “They unequivocally denied it — we were witnessing the identical conditions the attorneys saw when they toured the facility days earlier.”
In fact, some told him the sources from whom the negative coverage originated “never toured the areas of the facility that we toured” and speculated they might have had political motivations.
The pastors left encouraged by the commitment and dedication of America’s Border Patrol and immigration officers, “many of which are Latinos, by the way.” He said one emotional Border Patrol agent turned to him and said, referring to the vilification: “Pastor Sam, what they’re saying about us is completely false. We care about these kids and have a passion for our calling.” –Fox News
NHCLC board member, immigrant and pastor Carlos Moran said “we, as evangelical leaders that serve in different segments, are very committed to helping children regardless of their status and we commend those officers that are trying their very best to serve and fulfill their duty at the border. However, we do call on our political leaders to set aside their personal agendas and begin focusing on resolving this immigration crisis.“
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2RQcQl9 Tyler Durden
After several unsuccessful attempts to put his preferred candidates on the Fed’s board, moments ago Donald Trump announced that he intends to nominate Christopher Waller, who is currently the Executive VP and Director of Research, at the St. Louis Fed, to the board of the Federal Reserve. Prior to his current position, Christopher served as a professor and Chair of Economics at Notre Dame.
….Prior to his current position, Christopher served as a professor and Chair of Economics at Notre Dame.
This is what we do know about Waller, from his St Louis Fed profile:
He received his B.S. in economics from Bemidji State University in 1981, and his M.A. and Ph.D. from Washington State University in 1984 and 1985, respectively. His principal research interests are monetary theory, political economy and macroeconomic theory.
Prior to joining the Fed as research director in June 2009, Mr. Waller served as a professor and the Gilbert F. Schaefer Chair of Economics at the University of Notre Dame. He was also a research fellow with Notre Dame’s Kellogg Institute for International Studies.
From 2006 to 2007, he served as the acting department chair for Notre Dame’s Department of Economics and Econometrics. From 1998 to 2003, Mr. Waller was a professor and the Carol Martin Gatton Chair of Macroeconomics and Monetary Economics at the University of Kentucky. During that time, he was also a research fellow at the Center for European Integration Studies (ZEI) at the University of Bonn. From 1992-1994, he served as the director of graduate studies at Indiana University’s Department of Economics, where he also served as associate professor (1992 to 1998) and an assistant professor (1985 to 1992).
However, the reason why gold is spiking after hours, is that shortly after tweeting the Waller nomination, Trump also confirmed the previously rumored nomination of Judy Shelton to the Fed board:
I am pleased to announce that it is my intention to nominate Judy Shelton, Ph. D., U.S. Executive Dir, European Bank of Reconstruction & Development to be on the board of the Federal Reserve Judy is a Founding Member of the board of directors of Empower America and has served on the board of directors of Hilton Hotels.
….Judy is a Founding Member of the board of directors of Empower America and has served on the board of directors of Hilton Hotels.
This is what Bloomberg reported back in May: “The White House is considering conservative economist Judy Shelton to fill one of the two vacancies on the Federal Reserve Board of Governors that President Donald Trump has struggled to fill. She’s currently U.S. executive director for the European Bank for Reconstruction and Development, and previously worked for the Sound Money Project, which was founded to promote awareness about monetary stability and financial privacy.”
Since President Trump announced his intention to nominate Herman Cain and Stephen Moore to serve on the Federal Reserve’s board of governors, mainstream commentators have made a point of dismissing anyone sympathetic to a gold standard as crankish or unqualified.
But it is wholly legitimate, and entirely prudent, to question the infallibility of the Federal Reserve in calibrating the money supply to the needs of the economy. No other government institution had more influence over the creation of money and credit in the lead-up to the devastating 2008 global meltdown. And the Fed’s response to the meltdown may have exacerbated the damage by lowering the incentive for banks to fund private-sector growth.
What began as an emergency decision in the wake of the financial crisis to pay interest to commercial banks on excess reserves has become the Fed’s main mechanism for conducting monetary policy. To raise interest rates, the Fed increases the rate it pays banks to keep their $1.5 trillion in excess reserves—eight times what is required—parked in accounts at Federal Reserve district banks. Rewarding banks for holding excess reserves in sterile depository accounts at the Fed rather than making loans to the public does not help create business or spur job creation.
Meanwhile, for all the talk of a “rules-based” system for international trade, there are no rules when it comes to ensuring a level monetary playing field. The classical gold standard established an international benchmark for currency values, consistent with free-trade principles. Today’s arrangements permit governments to manipulate their currencies to gain an export advantage.
Money is meant to serve as a reliable unit of account and store of value across borders and through time. It’s entirely reasonable to ask whether this might be better assured by linking the supply of money and credit to gold or some other reference point as opposed to relying on the judgment of a dozen or so monetary officials meeting eight times a year to set interest rates. A linked system could allow currency convertibility by individuals (as under a gold standard) or foreign central banks (as under Bretton Woods). Either way, it could redress inflationary pressures.
Judy Shelton is author of the 1998 book Money Meltdown; and previously she had concluded that “Central bankers, and their defenders, have proven less than omniscient.”
Following the (implied) news that Shelton is being nominated to the Fed board, gold spiked $10 from $1,425 to $1,435 in minutes,
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2KRGRAd Tyler Durden
Congressional lawmakers may need a primer on the meaning of a “budget.” As the average American family knows all too well, a budget is the way to determine what you can afford to spend. A family that exceeds its budget usually decides that it needs to eliminate wasteful spending.
But instead of cracking down on waste, some lawmakers want to double down. The wasteful program, in this case, is the Joint Strike Fighter, a warplane known as the F-35. The Trump administration, in its most recent defense spending request, asked for enough funding for 78 of these jets. As we’ll see, that was already a huge waste.
But lawmakers on the House Armed Services Committee want to spend even more than that. In the annual, must-pass National Defense Authorization Act, the committee:
“Authorizes $10 billion to procure 94 Joint Strike Fighter aircraft, an additional 16 aircraft above the administration’s request.”
Lawmakers say this spending will allow “the forces to modernize and equip themselves with the most advanced and capable fifth-generation aircraft.”
That would be great, if it was true. But the history of the F-35 tells a much different story.
First, let’s note that the entire program has been over budget almost since it was conceived in the 1990s. That’s partly because the military wanted one type of plane that could accomplish several different types of missions for three branches of the service. As the RAND Corporation later found, trying to build a one-size-fits-all platform meant spending more than building three separate platforms would have.
Over the years, the plane failed test after test, and had to be retrofitted at a cost of additional tens of billions of dollars. “The estimated total price for research and procurement has increased by $22 billion in current dollars adjusted for inflation, according to the Pentagon’s latest annual cost assessment of major projects,”Bloomberg reported back in April. “The estimate for operating and supporting the fleet of fighters over more than six decades grew by almost $73 billion to $1.196 trillion.”
Second, the military and contractor Lockheed rushed the F-35 into the air,building new jets before the prototypes had completed their shakeout flights. When new problems, with both software and hardware, inevitably cropped up, planes had to be taken out of service and fixed.
Finally, while they were good at running up a tab, the planes don’t deliver value for the money.
It’s not clear that the jet, when it does fly, is even effective. For example, the Air Force is using much older planes in some deployments, because it wants its jets to be seen (and therefore feared). The F-35 doesn’t effectively project force. Far from becoming an effective weapon, the F-35 is proving to be a fragile one that cannot accomplish its missions.
Before he took office, President Trump promised reform. “The F-35 program and cost is out of control. Billions of dollars can and will be saved on military (and other) purchases after January 20th,” he Tweeted. His administration isn’t exactly delivering, but it’s not too late for lawmakers to reconsider.
One committee staffer recently told reporters that lawmakers want to collect more information about the F-35 and other weapon programs. “It’s been a while since we’ve seen an independent cost estimate from the services.” If the military will provide fair information about the cost of the F-35, lawmakers could still enact a sensible budget that would slash wasteful spending on this plane.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2RP6RwD Tyler Durden
If it wasn’t apparent already, the state of California has effectively confirmed that Alphabet’s Waymo is the official front-runner in the battle to bring self-driving taxis to market. To wit, TechCrunch reported on Tuesday that the California Public Utilities Commission has granted Waymo permission to carry passengers in its self-driving taxis – so long as the cars remain within a limited geographic area (in this case, the South Bay) and have safety drivers at the wheel, ready to take over should some mishap occur.
So far, Waymo is the only autonomous car company that has received permission to carry passengers as part of the state’s pilot program.
The California Public Utilities Commission today granted Waymo a permit on Tuesday to participate in the state’s Autonomous Vehicle Passenger Service pilot. Waymo confirmed the approval. A statement from a Waymo spokesperson provides some hints as to how and where the company intends to use this permit.
“The CPUC allows us to participate in their pilot program, giving Waymo employees the ability to hail our vehicles and bring guests on rides within our South Bay territory,” the spokesperson said in a statement. “This is the next step in our path to eventually expand and offer more Californians opportunities to access our self-driving technology, just as we have gradually done with Waymo One in Metro Phoenix.”
For these reasons, this permit is a much bigger milestone than the permissions Waymo and other autonomous car companies received to test-drive in areas around Phoenix, Ariz. and NorCal. It represents the first real concrete step toward a commercially viable passenger-carrying business.
The company also received an exemption allowing it to hire third-party contractors to work as safety drivers in its fleet (though per TC, the drivers will all participate in Alphabet’s training program).
Instead, this gives Waymo permission to use its self-driving vehicles – which are the Chrysler Pacifica hybrid minivans and eventually the Jaguar I-PACE electric vehicle – to transport people. The company still faces certain restrictions. It can’t charge for rides and the vehicles must have safety drivers behind the wheel. Waymo will also have to provide reports to CPUC with information on total passenger miles traveled and safety protocols.
The CPUC also gave Waymo an exemption that will allow the autonomous vehicle technology startup to use a third-party company to contract out safety operators. Waymo argued in a letter requesting the exemption that while the company’s “team of test drivers will include some full-time Waymo employees, operating and scaling a meaningful pilot requires a large group of drivers who are more efficiently engaged through Waymo’s experienced and specialized third-party staffing providers.”
Waymo isn’t the first company to receive this type of permit from the California Department of Motor Vehicles, but it is the first major contender in the race to build self-driving taxis to receive one.
Waymo isn’t the first to receive the permit. Back in December, Zoox scored the inaugural permit from the CPUC. Pony.ai and and AutoX, which started as an autonomous delivery company, also have received permits.
Waymo has been testing self-driving vehicles in California for years. But its first ride-hailing service began in Arizona, a state with fewer regulatory hoops for companies to jump through.
The permit comes with some important restrictions: Waymo can’t charge passengers for rides, cars must remain within the testing area, and safety drivers must accompany every ride.
But when Elon Musk predicted earlier this year that a fleet of 1 million Tesla robo taxis would be prowling the streets of the US by next year, well, most just laughed it off. But as Tesla continues to lag in the autonomous vehicle race (Tesla’s autopilot technology has resulted in the deaths of several unsuspecting Tesla owners, and who could forget how Uber shuttered its autonomous vehicle testing in Arizona after one of its cars accidentally killed a vagrant), the vaunted distinction of being the first to the robo-taxi market might belong to Alphabet instead.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2LyUaoK Tyler Durden
Dave Barry is the author of approximately eleventy billion books and the recipient of exactly one Pulitzer Prize. For four decades he wrote a weekly column, syndicated from his home base at the Miami Herald, and he is the author of an annual, despairing, hilarious “Year in Review.”
Barry’s books formed the basis for a short-lived show about his life, Dave’s World, and his novel Big Trouble was made into a film of the same name. It’s the story of a group of miscreants who wind up inadvertently stealing a nuclear suitcase and hijacking a plane due to their own incompetence. The film was set to be released—inauspiciously—on September 12, 2001.
In June, Reason‘s Katherine Mangu-Ward sat down with Barry to talk about his new book, Lessons from Lucy, America’s strategic helium reserve (which Barry last discussed with Reason in 1994), jokes he can’t tell anymore, and his perennial vaguely libertarian campaign for the presidency.
