Tag: news

After investing some $190 million in development via a public-private partnership project dubbed “Kortezh”, the Russian state has revealed that a new presidential limousine designed specifically for Russian President Vladimir Putin will soon enter mass production at a factory in the eastern region of Tatarstan, as the government hopes sales of the bulletproof limo will help offset some of that investment.

According to RT, the first mass market iterations of the Aurus will roll off the production line in 2020. The cars will be built at a factory owned by Russian carmaker Sollers, which is located in the special economic zone of Alabuga, Tatarstan Republic, according to the Trade Minister Denis Manturov.

The factory should be able to handle producing about 5,000 of the vehicles per year. The Aurus, as the limo is called, is currently being produced by the state-run Central Scientific Research Automobile and Automotive Engines Institute, which has an annual output of about 250 cars – far below the level needed to meet demand, according to the Russian state. The Aurus is presently being produced in a limo and a sedan model, with an off-road vehicle set to enter production some time in 2021-2022.

The project that led to the car’s development was initially intended to bolster Russia’s domestic auto industry by ensuring that more cars were produced in Russia using domestic parts. But it ran massively over budget during the five years it took to develop the car.

Putin debuted the car to the world when he rode in it during his summit with President Trump in Helsinki:

The car made its debut as a mass-market vehicle at the Manila International Auto Show earlier this year:

Maybe if sales are robust, the Aurus could inspire copycats: For example, maybe the Vatican would consider a mass-market version of the Pope Mobile.

via RSS http://bit.ly/2QbcH9k Tyler Durden

Authored by Jon Rappoport,

There is an obsession to say that everything is made out of something.

Who knows where it started? With the Egyptian pyramid builders? The Sumerians?

In the modern era, the fervor has reached a high point.

Physicists, biologists, and chemists are relentless in their pursuit of consciousness as a function of the brain. It has to be the brain. All those synapses and neurons and chemicals…and underneath them, the atoms and the sub-atomic particles…somehow these tiny particles conspire to produce consciousness and awareness.

Yet these same scientists deny that a sub-atomic particle carries any trace of awareness. The particles flow. They obey laws. That’s all.

So the experts are painted into a corner. They then speculate: “Well, you see, the increased ability to process information, the complexity of structure—naturally, this implies consciousness.”

No it doesn’t.

A Ferrari is complex. So is the Empire State Building. So is the IBM’s best computer. And? Where is the consciousness?

You, sitting there right now, reading these words—you understand the words; you KNOW you’re reading them; you’re not just processing information. YOU ARE CONSCIOUS.

If a physicist wants to say that you, knowing you’re reading, are just a phenomenon of atoms in motion, let him try, let him explain. Let him do more than bloviate.

Imagine you were the chief of a CIA section called Consciousness Covert Ops. What would you try to do, given that your motive, as always, is control?

You would try to convince the population that consciousness isn’t free and wide-ranging and powerful and independent. You would try to narrow the popular belief about consciousness.

What better way than to focus on the brain as the seat of all awareness?

“The brain functions according to laws. We’re discovering more and more about those laws. We can determine when the brain is malfunctioning. We’re learning how to correct those malfunctions.”

Indeed.

You’re spinning narrative about the brain as if it were a car that has to visit the shop. That’s what you want. You want to make people believe their brains need fixes, because, after all, you come out of the long tradition of CIA MKULTRA mind control.

When the brain comes into the shop, you can try to reprogram it. You can experiment. You can apply the latest technology. You can attempt to insert controls. You can place monitors in the brain, in order to observe it in real time.

At a more basic, yes, philosophic level, you want to eliminate any sort of movement claiming that consciousness is separate from the brain. You want to snuff that idea out. It’s counter-productive, to say the least. It could give rise to a renaissance of an old outmoded notion called: freedom.

What could be more free, more independent, more unique, more creative than individual consciousness that has a non-material basis?

You want to do everything you can to equate consciousness with the brain and, thus, the modern idea of the computer. Yes, the computer. Perfect.

“Consciousness is a computer operating at a very high level.”

“All computers can be improved.”

“All computers can malfunction. They can be repaired.”

And then, the ultimate coup:

“Consciousness? A very old idea that, in light of the progress of technology, has no merit. It’s really information processing. The brain handles that. The brain is a computer. We’re learning how to build a better brain…”

You’re shifting the focus of the old 1950s MKULTRA program, which mainly involved drugs and hypnosis, to a new arena. You’re coming at the territory inside the skull from a number of angles. You’re the next generation of Brave New World.

And right across town, the Pentagon and its research branch, DARPA, is deeply involved in a number of allied research projects. For example, the cortical modem, a little piece of equipment that costs about $10.

The gist? Insert proteins into neurons, and then beam photons into those proteins, thus creating image displays that bypass the normal channels of perception.

Virtual reality with no headset. The project is still in its early stages, but the direction is clear: give the “user” an image display beyond his ability to choose.

It’s touted as an overlay. The person, walking down the street, can still see the street, but he can also see what you give him, what you insert into his visual cortex. Of course, as the technology advances, you could take things further: block out physical reality and immerse the person in the virtual.

DARPA’s enthusiasm about this project, as usual, exceeds its current grasp, but its determination to succeed is quite genuine. And the money is there.

Think about this. Which way is a bright college student going to go? He can study ancient philosophy, in the least popular department on campus. He can read the Vedanta, and plow through its explications of consciousness. Or he can study biology and physics, and then try to land an entry job with the Pentagon, where he can fiddle with the human brain for fun and profit. This student has been thoroughly immersed in computers since he could crawl. He understands what they do and how they work. He’s been taught, over and over, that the human brain (consciousness) is a computer. So what path will he take?

Over and above everything I’m pointing out in this article, there is a human capacity called imagination. It’s the wild card in the deck. It’s the greatest wild card ever known. It is, in fact, the cutting edge of consciousness. It invents new realities. It releases gigantic amounts of buried energy. And it’s entirely an individual proposition.

I built my second collection, Exit From The Matrix, on that basis: the liberation and expansion of imagination. Not just in theory, but in practice. There are dozens of imagination techniques to work with.

Brain=computer=consciousness is the greatest covert op on the planet. It’s supported with major money and labs and journals and armies of psychiatrists and neurological professionals and physicists and the military.

And the op is completely false, because, again, the very scientists who push it are saying the brain is composed of sub-atomic particles THAT CONTAIN ZERO CONSCIOUSNESS.

Think about that.

They’re saying consciousness arises out of particles that have no consciousness.

via RSS http://bit.ly/2QahKqo Tyler Durden

With the decades-old practice of state-sponsored election meddling thrust into the spotlight after the 2016 US election, a growing number of people inside and outside of Taiwan have been warning that China is using increasingly sophisticated methods to attempt to destroy democracy on the island ahead of the January 2020 elections, according to the Nikkei Asian Review. 

In late november, Taiwanese local elections were cast into disarray amid accusations by government officials that online disinformation originating from Beijing had undermined voters’ confidence in President Tsai Ingwen along with the Democratic Progressive Party she belongs to. Following the loss of crucial mayoral elections to the China-friendly Kuomintang in November, Tsai stepped down as party chairwoman.

And after using Taiwan as propaganda guinea pigs, China may set its sights on US politics according to Yi-Suo Tzeng, acting director of the Cyber Warfare and Information Security division at Taiwan’s Institute for National Defense and Security Research. 

“As they accumulate knowledge and test their algorithms, I think within two years we will probably see China having the capability to use cybertools to intervene in the U.S. election,” Tzeng told the Review, though he characterized Beijing’s methods of exercising political influence in the US as “old school” but improving quickly. 

On Dec. 13, six sitting U.S. senators, including former Republican presidential candidates Marco Rubio and Ted Cruz, sent a letter to officials including Secretary of State Mike Pompeo and Treasury Secretary Steven Mnuchin urging a U.S. investigation of alleged Chinese attempts to influence Taiwan’s elections last month. They cited concerns for other democracies around the world.

In a report published before the local elections, Jessica Drun, a research analyst at SOS International in Washington, cataloged signs that China was becoming more adept at influencing Taiwanese social media. Drun’s findings included one instance of fake news connected to a Chinese IP address that may have prompted the suicide of a Taiwanese diplomat in Japan. She noted that the results of the hundreds of races decided in Taiwan would help China tweak its methods in the future.

“Chinese disinformation campaigns against Taiwan could be used as a blueprint against other democracies, particularly in sowing greater discord between segments of the population,” Drun said. –Nikkei Asian Review

“While any attempt against the United States would likely require a greater degree of sophistication, China has demonstrated a familiarity with popular Western social media networks, as well as an awareness of existing vulnerabilities within these systems, as brought to light in the 2016 U.S. elections.”

What’s more, Taiwan’s Justice Ministry announced in October that it was probing 33 cases where Taiwanese candidate allegedly received funding from Beijing – a claim which China has vehemently denied. 

“We have never interfered with Taiwan’s elections,” said Ma Xiaougang, a spokesman for China’s Taiwan Affairs Office, on October 31. 

That’s not true, according to the Nikkei, which notes that in 1996 Beijing made it clear that it it did not want the eventual winner of the island’s first presidential election – Lee Teng-hui, to win – going as far as launching missiles into Taiwanese waters to emphasize their wishes. 

And when the DPP won the presidency along with legislative control in 2016 – ending Kuomintang rule for the first time since it arrived after Japan’s 1945 surrender, several people have noted that Chinese President Xi Jinping’s decision to meet with then-Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou just months before the election, was likely an attempt by Beijing to bolster the Kuomintang’s image with the public. 

In the run-up to Taiwan’s recent local elections Beijing used a combination of tactics to keep Tsai and the DPP on the defensive. These include vast amounts of disinformation created by Chinese content farms, disruption of online debates by Chinese hackers and trolls, hacking of DPP social media accounts and government websites, and inflation of the popularity of Kuomintang candidates across online, broadcast and print media, according to a recent article published by the University of Nottingham’s Taiwan Insight.

Some of China’s efforts to sway Taiwanese media are open, others take place behind the scenes. –Nikkei Asian Review

China weaving itself into US Media

The Asian Review notes that China has become quite adept at inserting its views into American media. 

Inserts from the state-owned China Daily are included in publications including The New York Times, The Wall Street Journal and The Los Angeles Times. Politico has entered into a content sharing partnership with the South China Morning Post, whose editorial line has become increasingly Beijing-friendly. –Nikkei Asian Review

According to Chen Yonglin, a former Chinese diplomat who defected to Australia in 2005, compromising local media, along with current and former politicians, were a major part of Beijing’s strategy towards undermining democracies. 

To advance Beijing’s agenda, says Chen, “you don’t have to say the CCP is great, you just have to say the CCP is OK,” noting Taiwan’s former president Ma and former Vice President Lien Chan – both members of the Kuomintang, were useful tools in China’s propaganda efforts. In particular, Ma made headlines in Taiwan and China prior to the November election with his controversial “three noes” policy; no ruling out unification with China, no use of force against China and no support for Taiwan’s independence. 

China’s push to sway international opinion come under increasing scrutiny especially among the Five Eyes countries — Australia, New Zealand, Canada, the U.K. and the U.S. — these countries and others are seeking to learn from Taiwan, according to several Taiwanese officials. Over the past year, organizations and government departments held events in Taipei to discuss China’s assault on open societies, attracting journalists, analysts and officials from abroad.  –Nikkei Asian Review

While the impact of proven and suspected election meddling is difficult to gauge, the notion that “free and fair” elections have been compromised will continue to cast a cloud of doubt over global politics. We suspect that any outcomes that disagree with existing global paradigms will have been heavily “meddled in,” while victories by establishment candidates will magically be free from outside influence.

via RSS http://bit.ly/2Q5P6qA Tyler Durden

Authored by Tom Luongo,

The Russian ruble moved sharply this week as the global equity and commodities rout continues in the wake of the Federal Reserve raising interest rates.

Russia’s central bank over-reacted to a rise in inflation as the global economy moves towards a chaotic and politically dangerous 2019.

Oil prices are moving in sync with equities as the markets have entered a panic phase anticipating a global recession next year. Normally the Ruble is very strongly tied to oil prices. But as I showed in an article just before Thanksgiving, the ruble didn’t respond at all to a drop in Brent Crude from $80+ per barrel to around $60.

Amidst a 38% drop in the price of Brent Crude since October, the ruble has fluctuated in a 4% band around 67 to the dollar. This is shocking stability given the volatility in oil prices.

Ruble weakness from earlier this year was an over-reaction to heightened sanctions by the U.S. especially at a time where the threat of further sanctions on Iran and Venezuela’s collapse kept prices high.

Oil’s Outlook

And now it is catching up to this drop in oil prices with this week’s weakness. Oil prices are unsustainable above $65 per barrel amidst this level of supply.

They are equally unsustainable below $40 per barrel for just about everyone due to budget constraints (the Saudis) or debt-servicing (U.S. Frackers).

Since free-floating the ruble back in late 2014, Russia has been less and less affected by the fluctuations in oil prices. Because domestic costs are paid in rubles and income earned in dollars is offset by the weaker ruble.

It is government expenditures which suffer during waves of lower oil prices. But this year’s high prices have swelled Russia’s state coffers, running a 2.1% of GDP budget surplus this year.

Russia has an auto-budgeting system based on oil tariff revenues the budget will adjust based on anticipated oil prices.

And given the announced 1.2 million barrel per day cut from OPEC don’t expect the Russians to budget near $80 per barrel for 2019. That was a bearish signal, a sign of weakness.

Energy makes up the bulk of the country’s exports but that proportion is falling steadily as other industries mature. In 2017 oil/gas made up just under 60% of exports down from 69% in 2014.

They’ll likely be up as a percentage this year because of higher prices, but non-resource exports hit a record $147 billion this year, according to a recent statement from Andrey Slepnev, Chief Executive of the Russian Export Center.

That’s the important part.

The double whammy of increased sanctions (with threats of even more) and lower prices should have sent the ruble skyrocketing similar to what we saw this year with the Turkish lira.

I’m sure that’s been the hope on Capitol Hill.

But we haven’t and that speaks to the growing proportion of Russian trade settling outside the dollar. Russian exports continue to grow thanks to the weaker ruble and Putin’s continued growing stature as a statesman.

This is having the positive effect of opening up more markets for Russian goods and working with countries willing to skirt U.S. sanctions.

The Real Ideological War

Trump and Putin are locked in an ideological war of how to conduct trade now. And the shoe, nominally, is on the other foot. I have to marvel at Trump turning mafioso, punishing people for doing business with anyone but him while Putin pulls a Dale Carnegie looking for wins where he can get them.

Trump has his stick. Putin offers carrots.

It’s a sad commentary on what’s become of the U.S. that Trump believes he can bully his way to remaking America in his image. He talks a lot about America being respected again. But that’s not the sense I get when I look around the geopolitical game board.

In fact, it is the opposite. Trump may get obedience and he can choose to see deference to the U.S.’s power as ‘respect’ but it’s not. It’s resentment. And he should be smart enough to know this.

He’s undermining the one thing that makes the dollar the dollar. Stability and consistency.

Putin, on the other hand, chooses to ignore Trump where he can and make offers which tie Russia and its neighbors together in a web of trade. The hysterical neoconservatives here shout incoherently about “undo Russian influence.”

This is simply code for, “We want Russia poor, weak and incapable of defending herself so we can take it over.”

But the reality is that with each pipeline built between Russia and Europe, India and/or China the likelihood of war between them recedes. Viewed through that lens, Russia uses its energy resources to defend its future.

The West calls it ‘Pipeline Diplomacy,’ and our opposition to it stems from outdated ‘Great Powers’ theory of how to play the great game of geopolitics.

Because Russia knows all too well the belligerence of U.S. and European elites towards it. It’s been dealing with it for centuries. And Putin, as a student of history, knows that time is Russia’s greatest ally.

Stability Becomes Reserves

When looking at the geopolitical picture you have to look at the overall trend, the players at the table and where their motivations lie. For Russia the goal is an independent path which does not leave it at the mercy of U.S. political imperatives.

No one gets out of a conflict with the U.S. over trade unscathed, but that’s not the goal. The goal is minimizing the damage and building stronger local relationships which fell into disrepair after the fall of the U.S.S.R.

Prime Minister Dmitri Medvedev finally made it clear that Russian political leaders have turned a corner on their thinking.

He added that US sanctions have pushed Moscow and Beijing to think about the use of their domestic currencies in settlements, something that “we should have done ten years ago.”

“Trading for rubles is our absolute priority, which, by the way, should eventually turn the ruble from a convertible currency into a reserve currency,” the Russian prime minister said.

That’s what Putin’s endless meetings are all about, building trade across central Asia with the ruble as a viable alternative for the dollar.

The trend is clear. The West is broke. The endless hunt for taxes to shore up federal budgets will continue. The U.S. is interested solely in maintaining its power. This is really what Trump means when he says, “Make America Great Again.”

And he will do anything to achieve that goal, regardless of the secondary effects. This makes U.S. policy aggressive, violent and vindictive. And that is not the recipe for long-term economic or political stability.

This is what Trump and his national security team most fear, a Russia capable of building a parallel institutional system operating outside their control.

Because people respond to incentives. And each day that Trump makes using the dollar more expensive is another day where someone else makes the decision not to use them.

So, a stable ruble, unfazed by sanctions and wild swings in the price of oil, makes that decision that much easier. Each day that brings another small deal settled in rubles or another load of oil paid for in yuan and swapped for gold is another day closer to that reality.

*  *  *

Please support the production of independent and alternative political and financial commentary by joining my Patreon and subscribing to the Gold Goats ‘n Guns Investment Newsletter for just $12/month.

via RSS http://bit.ly/2GLjJ5g Tyler Durden

The Pentagon’s Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is seeking new designs for cooling super-hot leading edges of hypersonic vehicles as they rip through the air at more than five times the speed of sound.

In a mid-December press release, DARPA explained that hypersonic weapons traveling through the atmosphere at “incredibly high speeds” create “intense friction with the surrounding air,” which produces furnace-like temperatures, particularly at the leading edges or forward parts of the vehicle.

To address this thermal challenge, DARPA announced its Materials Architectures and Characterization for Hypersonics (MACH) program.

The press release describes the MACH program as an attempt to “develop and demonstrate new design and material solutions for sharp, shape-stable, cooled leading edges for hypersonic vehicles.” DARPA has plans to formally release the new program on January 22, 2019, in Arlington, Virginia.

“For decades people have studied cooling the hot leading edges of hypersonic vehicles but haven’t been able to demonstrate practical concepts in flight,” said Bill Carter, program manager in DARPA’s Defense Sciences Office.

“The key is developing scalable materials architectures that enable mass transport to spread and reject heat. In recent years we’ve seen advances in thermal engineering and manufacturing that could enable the design and fabrication of very complex architectures not possible in the past. If successful, we could see a breakthrough in mitigating aerothermal effects at the leading edge that would enhance hypersonic performance,” Carter said

According to DARPA, the MACH program will consist of two technical areas: The first will develop  thermal management systems that cool the leading edges through what they refer to as “advanced thermal design,” while the second will focus on next-generation hypersonic materials research, such as new coatings and high-temperature material that do not require cooling in the first place due to the nature of the materials.

The stakes are high, as China, the US, and Russia are each striving to be the first nation to develop hypersonic weapons.

The Pentagon views hypersonic weaponry as a game-changer that could give it — an edge on the modern battlefield. 

Hypersonic missiles are extremely difficult to detect and shoot down, even with the most advanced missile defense systems. 

While the US seems to be behind the hypersonic curve, Russia and China are also developing hypersonic missiles and, just yesterday, Russia claimed to have conducted another hypersonic weapons test – with the goal of deployment in 2019. 

via RSS http://bit.ly/2s8sqMZ Tyler Durden

Authored by Daniel Greenfield via Sultan Khish blog,

Venezuela, a failing socialist state, has gifted its people with the sixth minimum wage hike in one year. The 150% increase last week won’t help too much because inflation is up to 1.7 million percent.

Yes, you read that correctly.

Minimum wage hikes don’t help when your currency isn’t worth the cost of the paper it’s printed on. That’s literally true in Venezuela, which has tried switching to an even more worthless cryptocurrency.

Forget the #Fightfor15, in Venezuela it’s a fight to afford basic food supplies or even a cup of coffee.

The cost of a cup of coffee rose 285614% in a year and doubled in seven days. Under the new currency, you can grab a cup of the good stuff for 400 bolivars. Too bad that the minimum wage is 4,800 bolivars and 90% of the population is impoverished. It isn’t looking to buy a cup of coffee, but is starving because it can’t actually buy food. Alternatives have included eating zoo animals, pets and wild donkeys.

“Juntos: todo es possible”, the Obamaesque slogan of the regime declaring, “Together, anything is possible”, looms over a frightened starving population from billboards decorated with socialist icons.

The trouble is that anything really is possible. It’s possible to starve to death, to sit in the dark because there’s no power, to be unable to go to work because there’s no fuel, to be killed in food riots by government thugs, to have your savings wiped out, or to die of a treatable illness because there’s no medicine. Socialism has made “anything” possible in Venezuela. But all the possibilities are horrifying.

The regime’s other election slogan was, “Vamos Venezuela”. And Venezuelans are going.

10% of the population has fled Venezuela escaping through Simon Bolivar Airport, which has no water, no working toilets, no air conditioning and barely any power, where government thugs demand money and jewelry from passengers, or just marching on foot to escape the socialist mess any way they can.

Those Venezuelans who remain can’t find medicine, lack drinking water and can’t even afford to die.

The death rate in Venezuela is high. Between gang violence, outbreaks of disease and food riots, the corpses are piling up, and no one can afford to bury the dead.

Two years ago, a public cemetery charged 240,000 bolivars for a burial, while private cemeteries charged 400,000. The casket alone could cost 100,000 bolivars. Not that it matters because caskets have become hard to obtain due to shortages of wood and metal.

The number of zeroes may have changed with the new currency, but has become no more affordable.

Meanwhile, cemeteries, like every business, have seen employees vanish to wait on food lines or work in the black market, which means that not only can’t you bury the dead, but there’s no one to do the burying. Not only did socialism force Venezuelans to wait on line to buy food to live, they also had to wait on line after they were dead. Socialism is defined by the line. You are born into it and die on line.

After funerals became unaffordable, Venezuelans settled for cremating the dead. But the iron law of supply and demand quickly fell into place. As demand for cremation increased, so did the cost.

It wasn’t just the cost of a cup of coffee that doubled in a week: the cost of cremation rose 108%.

Major General Manuel Quevedo , the 2019 president of OPEC, is Venezuelan even as the country’s mourners can’t afford the cost of the gas with which to burn their dead.

Quevedo, a leftist Lenin-praising thug, was dispatched to take control of Venezuela’s collapsing oil industry, but instead dealt it a fatal blow. Protests were put down by force. Anyone who committed the crime of actually knowing anything about the industry was locked up and replaced by a regime loyalist.

The socialist thug ordered workers to denounce anyone who opposed the government. Instead, 25,000 workers out of 146,000 resigned last year. And it’s worse than the numbers make it look because many of those resigning are engineers and managers who can’t be replaced by hiring just anyone.

Under the socialist military regime, oil production fell 29% as drilling rigs lacked crews and fires broke out in refineries. Those workers that haven’t quit have been selling their uniforms in exchange for food.

Fuel shortages broke out in an OPEC nation as its former production of 2 million barrels of oil dropped to 1.2 million. The situation is now so bad that Venezuela will import 300,000 barrels.

Venezuela is so broken that one of the world’s top oil producers and exporters is now forced to import oil to be able to sell it at artificially subsidized low prices to its population and to repay Russia and China. The Maduro regime keeps touting Russian and Chinese deals as the answer, but the problem is that Venezuela only has one thing that Russia and China want, and it’s too socialist to even get at it.

With a worthless currency, Venezuela is paying America, Russia and China in crude and buying back barrels of oil because under military socialist control, its refineries are no longer functional.

It’s also trading natural gas for barrels of oil, and so Venezuela may have the eight largest gas reserves in the world, but the families of the dead can no longer manage to get natural gas to burn the bodies.

There’s no cooking gas, long lines at gas stations and no way to even cremate the dead.

In the final triumph of socialism, Venezuela’s energy industry has collapsed. There isn’t even enough gas left to burn the corpses left in the aftermath of the failed socialist experiment forcing loved ones to dump them in pits and mass graves.

You can’t live under socialism. You can die under it. But you can’t be buried under socialism.

Socialism killed Venezuela as it will kill any country given enough time. First, you run out of other people’s money. Then wage and price controls destroy the supply and demand of the marketplace. And when there’s nothing left in the stores, a government takeover will consolidate the destruction.

It happened in Venezuela. And it can happen here too.

Seven years ago, Senator Bernie Sanders wrote an editorial, claiming that the, “American dream is more apt to be realized in South America, in places such as Ecuador, Venezuela and Argentina, where incomes are actually more equal today than they are in the land of Horatio Alger.”

“Who’s the banana republic now?” he asked.

It’s the socialist dictatorship with no food, no power, no water, no hope and true income equality.

Incomes are more equal in Venezuela. Everyone, except the regime and its loyalists, has nothing. Not even a grave in which to bury the dead. That’s not the American dream, that’s the socialist nightmare.

via RSS http://bit.ly/2LzVeGS Tyler Durden

For those equity traders who think they’ve been plunged into the darkest circle of hell with all the recent violent moves in the S&P, we dare you to take one look at the chart below and say which is worse.

Ominously, the slide in leveraged loan prices – which have collapsed in the past 6 weeks as a result of the events we described recently in “Wheels Come Off The Leveraged Loan Market: Banks Unable To Offload Loans Amid Record Outflows” – has trekked steadily downward in the past month even when stocks and high-yield bonds rebounded as they did on December 26 and 27. The liquidation has been so furious, that the S&P/LSTA Leveraged Loan Price Index has not had a gain in any trading session since Nov. 1.

And as prices fell, they created a feedback loop whereby lower prices led to accelerating outflows, and said outflows resulted in even more liquidation sales.

Last week was no different, as investors continued to pull money out of U.S. leveraged loan funds at a historical pace, withdrawing $3.5 billion in the week ended Dec. 26 (split between $2.9BN in mutual funds and $626 million in ETFs), the third straight week of record setting withdrawals, following last week’s then-record $3.3 billion and $2.5 billion the week prior.

According to Lipper data this is the longest string of consecutive outflows exceeding $1 billion on record.

Much of the capital that had poured into leveraged loans this year – where demand was prompted by floating yields that offered protections against rate hikes – has reversed and loan funds now stand with less than $1 billion in inflows year-to-date following $13.4 billion in total fund withdrawals since November 21, according to Bloomberg calculations.

The sliding prices, together with outflows, will likely persist well into 2019, reflecting a reset of interest rate views lower, coupled with trade-war tensions, slowing growth and energy price declines. The bearish sentiment followed a rout in equities and high-yield bonds that began in early October.

The persistent downdraft in prices and fund flows has eroded what was formerly a standout among credits as loans are currently clinging to a 0.38 percent positive return for the year, according to the benchmark index. Leveraged loan returns had been above 4 percent this year through early October.

As Bloomberg reports, the outflow-induced volatility has made it more difficult for the biggest buyers of loans, collateralized loan obligations, to step in to fill the gap. The swooning prices are also scaring other institutional investors away with the CLO market effectively frozen in December.

“Normally, if you have retail outflows, CLOs would fill the gap, but with the exception of a couple of print and sprint, a lot of deals aren’t happening,” said Andrew Carlino, managing director and portfolio Manager of Bain Capital Credit. New CLO issuance has  slowed, and likely won’t fully come back till late January or even February, Brian Juliano, head of U.S. bank loan portfolios at PGIM Fixed Income, said last week.

Meanwhile, as very little trading activity occurs in the days preceding and following the Christmas day closure, some money managers sold loans in big chunks earlier this month in anticipation of the liquidity squeeze and to manage redemptions, adding further pressure to both prices and outflows. 

Finally, the collapse in demand has also crippled the primary market and hobbled efforts by banks to offload loans they’ve underwritten but not yet sold to investors. As we noted previously, lenders including Wells Fargo, Barclays and Goldman Sachs have taken the rare step of holding on to loans in hopes that they can resell them to investors next year when the market stabilizes, leaving banks stuck with about $1.6 billion of unwanted loans heading into 2019.

Yet despite clear signs the market has frozen up, some investors remain optimistic and claim the recent market softness is merely a buying opportunity, especially once volatility dissipates. 

“If you are a high-yield manager, loans yielding 8% is attractive,” Carlino said. “You are starting to see cross-over buyers and that will only increase. It’s only a matter of time before institutional investors and cross-over buyers come back to the market.”

Of course, that’s what the optimists said in late 2007 and early 2008, when the LSTA loan index was trading at indetical levels where it is now. 12 months later, during the depths of the credit crisis, it had imploded to 62 cents on the dollar, and only the Fed’s bailout of the financial system prevented it from going to zero. We hope this time will be different.

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Authored by Jon Street via Campus Reform,

America’s second oldest women-only college will begin accepting admission applications from transgender and “non-binary” candidates.

Stephens College in Columbia, Mo. made the announcement in a recent email to students. The college had been discussing the policy change since 2014, according to KOMU-TV.

The new policy will take effect beginning in fall 2019 and arrives not long after the Trump administration’s proposed changes to Title IX, which would not legally define “gender,”  thus limiting one’s gender identity to that of the sex assigned to them at birth: male or female. It is unclear what impact the proposed Title IX change, if implemented, could have on the new Stephens College policy. 

The U.S. Education Department and Stephens College did not respond to a request for comment in time for publication.

“Admission and continued enrollment in Stephens College’s undergraduate residential program will be restricted exclusively to women, including students who are legally identified as female and who self-identify as women; students who document an ongoing transition to female and who self-identify as women; and students who are legally identified as female but do not fit within the gender binary,” the Stephens College email read. 

Transgender and non-binary students who apply “will be required to prove that they identify and live as women through legal documentation,” according to an explainer released by the college.

“The world’s understanding of and definition of womanhood is changing. Stephens is evolving — just as it always has — to ensure that it continues to provide the extraordinary experience of a Stephens College education to all women who will seek and benefit from it,” a statement from the college read, according to the Columbia Missourian newspaper. 

The school further clarified that “because the College has expanded its definition of womanhood to include both sex and gender, it is logically consistent that it also acknowledges both sex and gender in its definition of manhood.”

As a result, current students who are transitioning into males will be permitted to finish their current semesters. After that, they will no longer be eligible to enroll in classes. Students who are currently transitioning to males while applying to Stephens College also are not eligible for admission.

As KOMU-TV noted, students’ reactions to the newly announced policy varied. 

“I like that trans-women are allowed here and they also accept that non-binary is a thing,” student Kasper Ramirez, a transgender male, said.  However, if Ramirez were to apply to the school today,

“I definitely would be denied. I would probably have to find a new college, which is really upsetting because I love it here.” 

Ramirez is currently enrolled, however, and therefore will not be impacted by the new policy. 

Another current student, Sally Russell, expressed concern with the change:

“We are required to live on campus, so how are the dorm arrangements going to go? If someone has male genitalia and is living within the women’s dorms, people have been really scared since a lot of people on campus have roommates and share bathrooms.”

Russell also wondered about current students who were admitted under the old admission policy but who are now transitioning to males.

“How are they going to feel being that they’re technically not supposed to be here, but they’re grandfathered?” the student said to KOMU-TV.

The country’s oldest women-only college, Salem College in North Carolina, reportedly considered a similar policy in 2013, although the proposal that was discussed did not specifically contain the word “transgender.” Asked by the Winston-Salem Journal at the time why it did not include “transgender” in the phrasing, Salem College spokeswoman Michelle Melton said, “does it need to be?” 

“The trustees have affirmed Salem’s mission to admit only women in its undergraduate traditional degree program. Salem will not discuss its students,” Melton added.

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Authored by Tim Daiss via Oilprice.com,

It seems that the Federal Reserve can’t get a break. For months, President Trump has been increasingly criticizing the Fed’s policy of incrementally increasing interest rates, a near-unprecedented move for an American president. After the most recent Fed move to hike interest rates by a quarter of a percentage point last week, Trump tweeted on Monday that the Fed was the “only problem our economy has.”

“They don’t have a feel for the Market, they don’t understand necessary Trade Wars or Strong Dollars or even Democrat Shutdowns over Borders. The Fed is like a powerful golfer who can’t score because he has no touch — he can’t putt!” Trump added in his tweet. Trump’s remarks sent the White House scrambling on damage control mode, trying to ensure both domestic and global markets that the president was not about to try to remove Fed chairman Jerome Powell from office. Stock markets plunged the next day as worries over U.S. leadership waned as well as other economic concerns. An Associated Press (AP) report said Trump’s latest tweet attacking the Fed was met with concern that any effort to diminish Powell or remove him as chairman could destabilize the economy.

Russian criticism

Now, criticism over Fed policy is coming from an unlikely place – Russia. The head of Russian oil giant Rosneft, Igor Sechin, said yesterday the slump in global oil prices was mostly linked to a fresh interest rate hike announced by the U.S. Federal Reserve last week.

“This factor is the main one, which has an impact on the price (of oil)…”

He added that he saw oil prices at $50-53 per barrel next year.

Not only is it noteworthy that the head of a foreign oil company would criticize the Federal Reserve, but it could open the floodgates for more criticism over Fed policy, second-guessing and angst over what should remain an institution undeterred by both domestic and international politics.

Another takeaway from Sechin’s comments is what is likely growing concern among not only Russian oil production companies, but Moscow itself, over oil prices that have plunged around 40 percent since hitting multi-year highs in October. Prices remain in the doldrums over concerns about the global economy, ongoing trade tensions between Washington and Beijing, though there is a temporary freeze on increased tariffs until at least March 2, slowing oil demand growth in 2019 and record oil production, mostly coming from the U.S., Russia and Saudi Arabia – the world’s top three oil producers.

Unknown variable

The unknown variable in the oil markets equation is how markets will respond in January going forward when the OPEC+ deal reached earlier this month to trim 1.2 million b/d will impact an anticipated oil supply overhang. So far, it appears that the market has largely discounted the oil output cut, signaling that more action could be needed, particularly from both oil production heavy weights Saudi Arabia and Russia. It also remains to be seen if U.S. shale oil production will continue on its record-setting pace into 2019.  However, it appears that U.S. production could push ahead despite prices for West Texas Intermediate (WTI) crude futures having settled in the mid-$40s price point, well below the oil production break-even price for a number of producers.

U.S. shale oil production

Baker Hughes reported a 9-rig increase for oil and gas in the U.S. last week – a turnaround from three losses in a row in the three prior weeks. The total number of active oil and gas drilling rigs in the country now stands at 1,080 according to the report, with the number of active oil rigs increasing by 10 to reach 883 and the number of gas rigs decreasing by 1 to 197. The oil and gas rig count is now 149 up from this time last year, 136 of which is in oil production rigs.

Dwindling state coffers

The stakes are high for not only the global economy, oil companies, and developing market economies (which seem to be most severely hit when equity and oil markets fluctuate too much as well as struggling with a strong U.S. dollar), but also for Riyadh and Moscow, since both are largely dependent on oil revenue for state coffers. While both countries are already seeing those revenues decline precariously over the last two months, it appears that Saudi Arabia could take the largest hit as its economy is less diversified than Russia.

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