Tag: news

Whirlpool Took Tariffs for a Spin, Ended Up With Tumbling Sales

Before the White House was slapping tariffs on Chinese imports, before its tariffs on imported steel and aluminum, the opening salvo in what would become President Donald Trump’s trade war was fired without hardly any notice. In January, the administration imposed tariffs on imported washing machines, with the duty ranging from 20 percent to 50 percent along a sliding scale.

That sounded like great news to the Whirlpool Corp., an American appliance manufacturer. “This is, without any doubt, a positive catalyst for Whirlpool,” CEO Marc Bitzer said on an investor conference call, according to The Wall Street Journal.

Almost every government intrusion into the economy will create winners and losers, but tariffs do so in espescially direct ways. And it was no accident that Whirlpool was a “winner” of the Trump administration’s first foray into trade protectionism. The company had lobbied hard for the trade barriers, telling the United States International Trade Commission that foreign companies like Samsung and LG were undercutting it on price. The tariffs would “create a level playing field for American workers and manufacturers,” Whirlpool officials told the commission. They would allow the domestic manufacturer to hire 1,300 more workers at its Ohio plant, the company said.

Now, the Journal reports, things look quite a bit different. Whirlpool’s share price is down 15 percent over the past six months. (Fellow washing-machine makers Samsung and LG have seen their stock prices fall as well.) Even with a boost from the new corporate tax rules, Whirlpool’s net income was down $64 million in the first quarter of 2018 when compared with the same period of the previous year.

Why? Because tariffs on steel and aluminum have increased the cost of Whirlpool’s raw materials, essentially wiping out the advantage it gained by having its foreign competitors penalized.

For consumers, it means the price of a new washing machine—whether made in Ohio, South Korea, or China—has jumped by about 20 percent in just a few months. That’s pretty much exactly in line with what analysts predicted in January when the tariff was announced.

“We have repeatedly stated that this tariff is a tax on every washing machine buyer in the U.S.,” a Samsung spokesman told the Journal. “Since the tariff was implemented, U.S. consumers have paid more for their washing machines across all brands.”

While the tariffs can be credited with pushing Sumsung to open a small manufacturing facility in South Carolina (LG is reportedly considering doing the same), the costs imposed on consumers seem to far outweigh the potential for new jobs. That’s something that economists have generally agreed on ever since the Trump administration started racheting up barriers to trade: Tariffs may create some jobs, but they’ll cause more to be lost.

Similar stories are playing out in other sectors of the economy where the Trump administraton has deployed protectionist policies. The 25 percent tariff on imported steel, for example, is raising prices and forcing layoffs, but it is not resurrecting steel towns in the Rust Belt.

When it comes to tariffs, the losers lose and often the winners lose too. And consumers lose most of all.

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Putin Invokes JFK and MLK Assassinations in Weird U.S./Russia Comparison

Russian leader Vladimir Putin responded yesterday to a question about the deaths of Russian dissidents with one of the strangest bursts of whataboutism yet: He invoked the assassinations of President John F. Kennedy and civil rights leader Martin Luther King Jr.

In a Fox News interview that aired hours after Putin’s joint press conference with Donald Trump, host Chris Wallace asked the Russian president why “so many” of his critics “end up dead or close to it.” Wallace specifically referenced the deaths of politician Boris Nemtsov, reporter Anna Politkovskaya, and former double agent Sergei Skripal.

Putin replied that “all of us,” including Trump, have political rivals, prompting Wallace to indicate that other politicians’ rivals “don’t end up dead.” An undeterred Putin offered this reply:

Haven’t presidents been killed in the United States? Have you forgotten about—well, has Kennedy been killed in Russia or in the United States? Or Mr. King? What—and what happens to the clashes between police and, well, civil society, and some—several ethnic groups? Well, that’s something that happens on the U.S. soil. All of us have our own set of domestic problems.

Though Russia’s constitution supposedly allows for freedom of speech, Russian officials have “great discretion to crack down” on views they don’t like, according to the human rights group Freedom House. And while Putin said Monday he is not “the kind of strongman” people portray him to be, many of his outspoken critics might say otherwise—at least the ones who are still alive.

Needless to say, the U.S. is hardly perfect. We do have our own “domestic problems,” including the police killings that Putin alluded to. Still, Americans are allowed to speak out against their own government without fear of death or prison.

And the invocation of the assassinations is bizarre. You can read it as a conspiracy theory that past U.S. leaders had King and Kennedy assassinated, but raising that idea in this context would imply that Putin has been assassinating his critics—not an unreasonable thing to suspect him of doing, but also not something he’s likely to confess on Fox News. Alternately, you can take it as a suggestion that Nemetsov and the rest were victims not of the state but of the same sort of general political turbulence that produces people like James Earl Ray and Lee Harvey Oswald. But in addition to being a dubious argument in general, that would be an especially curious way to contrast contemporary America and Russia, given that King and Kennedy were killed more than half a century ago. In any case, while the U.S. has seen its share of political violence over the last few decades, I think it’s safe to say that Russia’s had a lot more of it.

The Russian News Agency, meanwhile, is using Putin’s Fox interview to highlight Moscow’s alleged efforts to bring the culprits behind those political crimes to justice. That isn’t a surprising response: The state-run news outlet has little choice but to defend the nation’s leader. After all, the consequences for dissidence can be dire.

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Ilargi Meijer : Treason? Get A Life!

Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

Yeah, just keep ’em coming, right, so that when the last one falls flat on its face people will have already forgotten about it and instead focus on the new one. It’s been the modus operandi of the US MSM ever since Donald Trump emerged as an actual presidential candidate, and they haven’t let go.

They realize by now that it divides the nation, it costs them a large chunk of their potential readers and viewers, and creates chaos all around, but the bottom line is it makes them money. Because those people who fall into the echo chamber trap, tumble into it fast and furious, and will gladly pay to read yet another installment of how bad the man really is.

But it is getting out of hand, guys and gals, it is becoming a real and present danger to the -formerly- United States. The anti-Russia propaganda machine far predates Trump, but manufacturing an ever closer link between the two has proven to be a masterstroke of media genius.

That Vladimir Putin is an existential threat to the US and indeed the entire western world is a narrative taken straight out of Edward Bernays’ playbook. And it works like a charm. The problem is, it is also the biggest threat to peace anywhere on the globe that we have ever seen since WWII.

Putin is a patriot who came to the fore in mostly unexplained ways, named by American puppet Boris Yeltsin as his successor, only to save his country from US-induced plundering and restore Russia as a functioning country. Far from perfect, but functioning. Don’t forget that Russian life-expectancy fell by many years in the post-Gorbachev era. And then look now.

Yes, Putin uses some hard-handed tactics from time to time. He has no choice: the US threat to Russia is an ongoing one. There’s still a huge economic threat, of which US sanctions are but a minor part, there’s an intelligence threat, there’s NATO encroaching upon Russia’s borders.

Thus far, Putin has been able to counter them all. And his popularity among Russia’s population is far higher than that of any western politician. His people understand and recognize what he’s done and why he’s done it. He refuses for his country to be overrun and sold off to the highest bidders.

Just a few of the points of contention:

Crimea – The US tried to take away Russia’s only warm water port. Putin countered with what through non-western eyes was tactical masterpiece; no violence, no shots fired, an election that saw an overwhelming majority of Crimeans voted to (re-)join Russia.

Connected to Crimea is Ukraine. Putin had -and has- to protect Russian-speaking people in the region. Who were going to be under threat from the very dubious, neo-nazi linked government installed by the US after the coup. All Putin has been able to achieve so far is a very brittle stand still. But ‘his’ people in Eastern Ukraine have strong links to the Russian area just across the border. He’s not going to sell them out.

Connected to Ukraine is MH17. The Netherlands commemorates the victims of the shooting down again today. Several years of investigating have come up with no conclusive proof, even if they say it has. The problem is that the investigation was -is- led by The Netherlands itself. You don’t let the biggest victim conduct an investigation. What’s worse: the Ukraine was actively involved in the investigation, even when it was a potential culprit. Try to write that scenario into the plot of one of your favorite TV crime series. Won’t fly.

Then the novichok ‘events’ in the UK. Again, no evidence, but tons of allegations. And if Russia says it’s not guilty, everyone says and writes: of course they would say that. They get accused anyway. Still, no evidence is no evidence. the time that intelligence agencies were believed on their word is over. And they did it to themselves.

In the regard, it’s useful to see that Robert Mueller was one of the people who ‘swore’ that the Weapons of Mass Destruction ‘evidence’ against Saddam Hussein was real. We now know it was complete and utter fiction. Intelligence has overplayed its hand, and they won’t get it back for a long time.

People now realize they cannot be trusted. Well, not those who read and view the MSM, but then that’s sort of the entire point, isn’t it? That’s where the dividing line is being drawn. The CIA, FBI et al present a view of the world in concoction with the media that they think a sufficient number of people will swallow, and that’s really all they care for.

And boy, it is successful. The vitriol spewed over the Helsinki summit is something to behold. #TreasonSummit was a trending hashtag. For a meeting that was long overdue and aimed at calming down tensions. The by now very poorly named ‘social’ media play an ever bigger role in these things.

People can say whatever they want on them, without feeling they’ll ever actually be tested on their claims. One after the other, and each one trying to outdo the last. It all leads up to one particular worldview at the exclusion of all others. And again, that is very dangerous.

Mueller’s indictment of 12 Russians, which just happened to coincide with the first meeting of American and Russian presidents in an exceptionally long time, has been shot full of holes by many commentators, see for instance Adam Carter and Aaron Mate, but those views won’t make it to CNN or the NYT.

But despite the fact that the indictment is hollow and riddled with holes, it’s been a large part of why people call Trump a traitor for meeting with Putin. It ties together their opinions, carefully built along Bernays principles over the past two years. It’s a Matrix, it’s a trap. But then they throw in another story, of a 29 year-old Russian(!) girl arrested for allegedly setting up links between Russia and the NRA when she was 24 or so, and that replaces the Mueller indictment in most attention spans. And so the carrousel goes on. The torture never stops.

See, the idea is that you get yourself informed and then form your own opinion. Not that you let others pre-cook and pre-chew your opinions for you. Still, once you’re inside the deafening echo chamber, that’s what inevitably happens. Because there’s so much one-sided innuendo in there, your head aches and you just give up all resistance. Just to have a quiet moment.

And so very many Americans end up believing that indeed their president is guilty of treason. Because so many pundits claim that he is. But how many of them understand what treason really is, how serious an allegation it is? Is doesn’t really matter anymore, does it? Because all those others say he is, and they can’t all be wrong. And the echo chamber gives you a headache.

This is where I should say that somebody better do something about this, but it’s hard to see what. The divide has grown into a chasm. And that both sides are equally to blame for that doesn’t excuse either side’s wilful blindness. But yes, I hear you, it makes them money.

Still, if a US president can no longer talk to another president without being accused of treason, you’re in a scary predicament.

At some point you’re going to need real proof. And Bob Mueller is not going to get it for you. That’s what his indictment of the 12 Russians, as well as the moment he released it, makes abundantly clear. Mueller is -forever- going to hide behind the ‘Trust me, I’m the FBI’ line. Well, he betrayed you before. Wisen up. Demand evidence.

We know Mueller betrayed America when he made false claims over WMD. We have no evidence that Trump betrayed his country, we have only allegations. He may be a poor choice for president, but that’s not the same thing.

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NAACP Sues Connecticut to Stop ‘Prison Gerrymandering’

PrisonThe National Association for the Advancement of Colored People (NAACP) is suing Connecticut to stop the practice of counting prisoners as though they’re residents of the districts where they’re incarcerated, a practice that inflates the political power of some parts of the state at the expense of others.

Felons serving prison time generally cannot legally vote, but they still count in the census and for determining district boundaries. In Connecticut, they were counted in the state’s 2011 redistricting plan as residents of the prison facility instead of where they came from.

The NAACP lawsuit calls this “prison gerrymandering.” The end result is that prisoners, disproportionally black and Latino, end up being counted as residents in the rural areas where the jails are concentrated. This increases the population used to determine district boundaries of the prisoner-heavy areas without actually increasing the number of voters, and takes numbers away from the cities, like Hartford and New Haven, where these prisoners come from.

The suit notes that Connecticut’s laws don’t require that prisoners be counted this way; the state’s Reapportionment Commission made the choice. The lawsuit also notes that on the rare occasions when people in Connecticut are incarcerated yet also eligible to vote, they are required to cast ballots for races in their home districts, not the districts where they’re incarcerated.

The end result is a 10- to 15-percent variance in district populations. A state House district in Connecticut has an average of around 23,670 residents. In the districts with the prisons, about 1,000 to 2,000 people cannot vote due to incarceration.

The NAACP argues that this an unbalanced representation system violates the Equal Protection Clause of the 14th Amendment. The group is asking the United States District Court for the District of Connecticut to stop the state from using the 2001 plan.

It’s worth noting that the federal census does the same thing. In February the Census Bureau announced it would use a person’s “usual residence” for the 2020 count. That means where a person lives and sleeps much of the time, not his or her legal residence. So people who are incarcerated will be classified as being residents of the congressional districts where they are jailed.

Most states do the same thing too. Indeed, only four states—Maryland, Delaware, New York, and California—count prison inmates as residents of their home communities for redistricting purposes.

Read the lawsuit here.

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Rod Rosenstein Summoned To White House

Deputy Attorney General Rod Rosenstein was summoned to the White House Tuesday morning, four days after he indicted 12 Russian Intelligence officers for hacking the 2016 US election. The indictment came one business day before President Trump held a summit with Russian President Vladimir Putin in Helsinki, Finland.

It is unclear if Rosenstein met with President Trump, who is reportedly still in the residence and had not made an appearance in the West Wing.

Rosenstein’s White House appearance comes amid reports that members of the GOP House Freedom Caucus have drafted articles of impeachment for Rosenstein, calling it a “last resort,” as frustrations mount over the DOJ “slow walking” or delaying the delivery of documents vital to congressional investigations into the FBI’s conduct during the 2016 US election. 

On Monday, Freedom Caucus leaders Mark Meadows and Jim Jordan also urged DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz to investigate whether Rosenstein threatened congressional staffers with “subpoena” earlier in the year.  

“This notion Mr. Rosenstein threatened to use his official investigative powers as Deputy Attorney General to retaliate against rank-and-file staff members for sending written oversight requests raises concerns he has abused his authority in the context of this investigation,” the two Republican lawmakers wrote, in a letter obtained by Fox News.

The letter comes after Rosenstein apparently threatened to “subpoena” emails, phone records and other documents from lawmakers and staff on a Republican-led House committee during a meeting earlier this year, according to emails reviewed and first reported by Fox News.

The congressmen said in the letter that two witnesses can provide contemporaneous notes and sworn statements of the meeting where the alleged threats were made by Rosenstein. The deputy AG recently testified to the House Judiciary and Oversight committees and denied making any threats. –Fox News

Speculation also mounted last year that President Trump might fire Rosenstein, after FBI agents conducted raids at the home and office of his former personal attorney, Michael Cohen, according to The Hill. 

Meanwhile, Rosenstein has called for a unified approach to countering foreign meddling.

“When we confront foreign interference in American elections, it is important for us to avoid thinking politically as Republicans or Democrats and instead to think patriotically as Americans,” he said. “Our response must not depend on who was victimized.”

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WTF Chart Of The Day

Presented with little comment, but a lot of laughing-out-loud and scratching of heads…

AMAZON, FACEBOOK, ALPHABET ALL TRADING AT RECORD HIGHS

WTF1 – WTF does the Nasdaq know that bonds don’t?

 

WTF2 – WTF does it take to get the Nasdaq to close red if a collapse in NFLX won’t do it?

 

WTF3 – WTF would it take to actually chip away at NFLX’s double on the year if a 1 million subscriber miss won’t do it?

Overheard on CNBC: “It’s not a company that misses twice… The stock [up 90% YTD] just got a little bit ahead of the company’s fundamentals, but it is back in line now.”

BTFFSD!!

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Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Says Unemployment Is Low ‘Because Everyone Has Two Jobs,’ Which Is Not How Unemployment Rates Work

AOSAlexandria Ocasio-Cortex was roundly criticized on social media yesterday for supposedly botching a question about Israeli-Palestine relations during an interview with Firing Line‘s Margaret Hoover. But Ocasio-Cortez’s admission that she was “no expert on geopolitics” was much more satisfactory than her answer to a question about the unemployment rate, which she claimed was low merely “because everyone has two jobs.”

This is wrong for two reasons. First, people working multiple jobs has no distorting effect on the unemployment rate, which is calculated by taking the number of unemployed people and dividing it by the number of people in the labor force. The raw number of jobs being worked by Americans has no bearing on these numbers.

Second, everyone does not have two jobs. As Bloomberg View‘s Noah Smith points out, only about 5 percent of workers are moonlighting. This rate has actually dropped slightly over the last three decades.

Ocasio-Cortez continued: “Unemployment is low because people are working 60, 70, 80 hours a week, and can barely feed their kids.” Again, the number of overtime hours Americans are working has no impact on the unemployment rate.

Ocasio-Cortez blames profit-seeking “no-holds-barred capitalism” for the conditions in which people struggle to feed their kids. Hunger and poverty are indeed problems faced by millions of Americans—14 percent of U.S. households experience food insecurity. Under capitalism, though, world poverty has declined precipitously. Over the past few decades, the economic growth that global trade has brought to developing economies has helped lift a billion people out of poverty. Between 2001 and 2011, some 700 million people exited from extreme poverty worldwide.

“Capitalism has not always existed in the world and it will not always exist in the world,” said Ocasio-Cortez. But the scale of human suffering was inarguably greater in the era before capitalism, and would be again in any post-market era, if socialism’s failure rate is any indication.

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Trader Warns “No One Is Sweating The Small Stuff…” Or The Big Stuff

Having had 24 hours to settle back in from his well-earned vacation, former fund manager and FX trader Richard Breslow is no more enthused with the level of cognitive dissonance on show in the markets than he was yesterday.

“We like to think that disagreement is what makes healthy two-way markets. But when the differences are too profound things can grind to a halt. “

And that certainly is what it feels like now, the summer doldrums on the one hand and occasional liquidity gaps on the other, not withstanding. Making the situation even more extreme is that no one is really sweating the small stuff. Whether a number’s beat or miss matters or not is something we can all agree to disagree about and accept as passing noise.

Investors, however, are at loggerheads over the implications of really big, fundamental issues. Ones that can’t be ignored, nor, it would appear, satisfactorily understood.

Too bad, because your year may depend upon it.

Via Bloomberg,

What’s the significance of the rapidly flattening yield curve? You would think there has been enough experience with this issue for there to be some form of economic orthodoxy about the subject. Not anymore and not even close. If someone else tells me not to worry my pretty little head about it because it’s all terribly technical rather than predictive of anything, I may have to scream.

This week, we get two sessions of Fed Chairman Jerome Powell testifying on the economy. The dispersion of published views about what he’s likely to say is remarkably narrow. Yet, we simultaneously have responsible and respected economists arguing that the Fed should immediately cease and desist with their tightening plans and others finding even the current dots as too timid. Not exactly the one-and-a-half or two debate of quainter times.

Even the subject of trade wars and tariffs has people splitting hairs about how much they really cost and just how bad they might or might not be. Sometimes, side by side on the same editorial page. And what, if any collateral damage lurks out there. This is usually when both sides feel magnanimous by conceding that the other may be right but it isn’t their personal base-case scenario. That way you get to do what you want anyway while appearing to be open-minded.

Markets are moving, there’s money to be made, but I get the distinct impression that the majority of traders out there aren’t having a lot of fun doing it. Buying duration as a hedge might make a lot of sense but it isn’t what most people thought they’d be doing at this late date and at these yields. Although some of the latest year-end rate forecasts for the long end of the Treasury curve suggest it might be a reasonable idea.

It’s a complicated world. Perhaps one suggesting it’s worth keeping it simple.

You can’t look at the S&P 500 and not respect 2800 as the pivot. Close and clean.

Today’s important for the Bloomberg Commodity Index. Want to catch a falling knife? You may be getting just the set-up for it. Through yesterday’s low and all bets are off.

Emerging market currencies are also showing indecision after their drubbing. Is it worth one percent to take a flutter on the MSCI?

Lots of disagreement across the board. It seems that the only thing people can agree on is that Helsinki isn’t always the best of places to visit.

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Rand Paul Blames Criticisms of Diplomacy on ‘Trump Derangement Syndrome’

In the wake of Donald Trump’s meeting with Russian leader Vladimir Putin, Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) has accused the summit’s critics of “Trump Derangement Syndrome.”

The comment came during a Monday appearance with PBS’ NewsHour. Earlier in the interview, Paul argued that having a conversation, “even with our adversaries,” is beneficial for addressing the countries’ mutual interests. “It would be nice to have help from Russia on North Korea as far as denuclearization,” he told Judy Woodruff. “We have the Ukraine situation. So…I think that we won’t have any progress if we don’t have any conversations.”

Later, Paul addressed the meeting’s critics:

I think Trump is different, and he’s willing to meet with foreign leaders and, actually, I think you may get a breakthrough because of the meetings. And I think, if this were anybody else, if there weren’t such acute hatred for Trump, such Trump Derangement Syndrome on the left, I think, if this were President Obama—and it could have actually been President Obama early in the first term, when they were trying to reset our relations with Russia, that could have easily had a meeting like this—and the left and the media would have had a lovefest over President Obama.

Paul also published a defense of the president’s meeting in Politico, writing: “Politicizing international affairs is a dangerous game, but that hasn’t stopped far too many in Washington, who seem to have forgotten that a vital part of keeping America safe and secure is avoiding war through strong and consistent diplomacy, from playing politics.”

Trump tweeted a word of thanks to Paul on Tuesday morning after the senator made similar comments on CBS’ This Morning.

Earlier this week, Paul sparked a bit of outrage when Trump critics focused on a line from his Sunday interview with CNN’s Jake Tapper. Paul observed that the U.S., like Russia, has meddled in foreign elections, saying, “We all do it.” Though Paul made the statement in the midst of calling for stronger protections for the American electoral process, like Mother Jones‘ David Corn called Paul a traitor.

Bonus link: Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman, Nick Gillespie, and Matt Welch discuss Rand Paul’s Sunday comments on the Reason Podcast.

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Son Of Greek Billionaire Found Dead In Cleveland Hotel Room Surrounded By Cocaine

The son of a Greek billionaire was found dead at the Cleveland Marriott Downtown on Saturday night surrounded by three bags of cocaine, authorities and a police report confirmed.

According to police reports, Socrates S. Kokkalis, 34, died in a suspected drug overdose. An official cause of death will be determined by the Cuyahoga County Medical Examiner, cleveland.com reports. The medical examiner told News 5 that Kokkalis’ death was “untimely.”

Socrates Kokkalis Jr., 34

Police and an ambulance were called to his room about 2:45 p.m. Saturday for a report body found in the room, according to police report. Three baggies of cocaine were found inside the room, according to the police report. It appeared he died about 12 hours prior to being found, the police report says.

Kokkalis is the son of Socrates P. Kokkalis Sr., a Greek business tycoon, according to Bloomberg. The elder Kokkalis is the founder of Intracom, a Greek telecommunications giant and was accused in 2002 of being a spy for East Germany beginning in 1963. Intracom is the largest telecommunications company in southeastern Europe and has some 5,700 employees, according to the company’s website.

Kokkalis Sr is also the chairman of the Greek soccer team Olympiacos, where his son served as vice president of the team and was the executive in charge of business development for Intracom, according to the soccer team’s website. Kokkalis was also on the board of directors of Intralot Interactive, a Greek gambling technology company.

“His premature passing…left the entire Olympiacos family in mourning for the unexpected loss of our Club’s Vice-president B,'” the statement said.

A statement provided to CNN Greece by the Kokkalis Foundation translates to: “The Kokkalis family, with deep sorrow, announces the sudden death of Socrates S. Kokkalis, 34, during a business trip to Cleveland, USA, Saturday July 14, 2018”.

The Greek “Capital”  newspaper reported that the younger Kokkalis was in Cleveland on a business trip related to a sports betting project. Police interviewed the last two people to see Kokkalis. A business partner told police he last saw Kokkalis after dinner the previous evening at about 10:15 p.m. while the business partner was getting off the elevator to go to his suite for the night. The other person interviewed said he last saw Kokkalis exiting the elevator the previous evening after dinner.

Cleveland police’s specialized drug-overdose death unit, the Heroin Involved Dead Investigation team, responded to the hotel to help investigate.

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