Several Pilots repeatedly warned federal authorities of safety concerns over the now-grounded Boeing 737 Max 8 for months leading up to the second deadly disaster involving the plane, according to an investigation by the Dallas Morning News. One captain even called the Max 8’s flight manual “inadequate and almost criminally insufficient,” according to the report.
“The fact that this airplane requires such jury-rigging to fly is a red flag. Now we know the systems employed are error-prone — even if the pilots aren’t sure what those systems are, what redundancies are in place and failure modes. I am left to wonder: what else don’t I know?” wrote the captain.
At least five complaints about the Boeing jet were found in a federal database which pilots routinely use to report aviation incidents without fear of repercussions.
The complaints are about the safety mechanism cited in preliminary reports for an October plane crash in Indonesia that killed 189.
The disclosures found by The News reference problems during flights of Boeing 737 Max 8s with an autopilot system during takeoff and nose-down situations while trying to gain altitude. While records show these flights occurred during October and November, information regarding which airlines the pilots were flying for at the time is redacted from the database. –Dallas Morning News
One captain who flies the Max 8 said in November that it was “unconscionable” that Boeing and federal authorities have allowed pilots to fly the plane without adequate training – including a failure to fully disclose how its systems were distinctly different from other planes.
An FAA spokesman said the reporting system is directly filed to NASA, which serves as an neutral third party in the reporting of grievances.
“The FAA analyzes these reports along with other safety data gathered through programs the FAA administers directly, including the Aviation Safety Action Program, which includes all of the major airlines including Southwest and American,” said FAA southwest regional spokesman Lynn Lunsford.
Meanwhile, despite several airlines and foreign countries grounding the Max 8, US regulators have so far declined to follow suit. They have, however, mandated that Boeing upgrade the plane’s software by April.
Sen. Ted Cruz (R-TX), who chairs a Senate subcommittee overseeing aviation, called for the grounding of the Max 8 in a Thursday statement.
“Further investigation may reveal that mechanical issues were not the cause, but until that time, our first priority must be the safety of the flying public,” said Cruz.
At least 18 carriers — including American Airlines and Southwest Airlines, the two largest U.S. carriers flying the 737 Max 8 — have also declined to ground planes, saying they are confident in the safety and “airworthiness” of their fleets. American and Southwest have 24 and 34 of the aircraft in their fleets, respectively. –Dallas Morning News
“The United States should be leading the world in aviation safety,” said Transport Workers Union president John Samuelsen. “And yet, because of the lust for profit in the American aviation, we’re still flying planes that dozens of other countries and airlines have now said need to grounded.”
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HgALHO Tyler Durden
As the issue of reparations for victims of slavery rages within the Democratic party, and on cable news stations, we encounter a common problem: virtually no one is addressing the specifics of how such a reparations effort would be administered.
Who would receive these reparations payments? Who would pay them? How would guilt and victimhood be determined? As is usually the case with American policy debates, this “debate” offers little more than an opportunity for pundits and activists to grandstand on related issues such as poverty and race – while avoiding the central topic at hand. Support or opposition then becomes nothing more than a matter of affirming one’s political loyalties. The actual issue of reparations – and how they’ll be paid out – is mostly ignored.
After all, any decent legal system would provide for a victim of kidnapping and forced labor to obtain repayment for the time and labor stolen from him by the kidnapper. As Walter Block writes:
Justified reparations are nothing more and nothing less than the forced return of stolen property — even after a significant amount of time has passed. For example, if my grandfather stole a ring from your grandfather, and then bequeathed it to me through the intermediation of my father, then I am, presently, the illegitimate owner of that piece of jewelry. To take the position that reparations are always and forever unjustified is to give an imprimatur to theft, provided a sufficient time period has elapsed. In the just society, your father would have inherited the ring from his own parent, and then given it to you. It is thus not a violation of property rights, but a logical implication of them, to force me to give over this ill-gotten gain to you.
But here’s the rub: in order to do this with an eye toward justice, one must identify specific victims and specific perpetrators. Potentially, as Block suggests, one could envision a legal case in which the heirs of victims would be paid reparations by the heirs of the perpetrators. But again, we still encounter the problem of identifying specific persons (and heirs) involved. Reparations cannot be paid in the abstract, since, as Chris Calton has noted:
[L]ibertarian ethics are not based on abstract moral claims; they’re based on concretely identifiable property rights. When a violation of a person’s property rights takes place, restitution is the logical means of compensating the victim …
But in the real world [on matters of slavery] such a claim is incredibly difficult to prove. And failure to prove a legitimate property claim means that the currently recognized property title holds. Anything else would be committing a new injustice to give the illusion of correcting an old one.
In light of this, we can see that many of the currently proposed methods of paying out “reparations” are imprecise, vague, and consequently unjust. A program, for example, that forces all taxpayers (whether guilty or not of any relevant crimes) to pay reparations to a specific group of people raises several key problems that must be addressed:
1. What if a taxpayer is descended from people who didn’t even arrive in the country until after emancipation? That is, should a Japanese-American, whose immigrant ancestors arrived in the United States in 1910, be forced to pay reparations? How about descendants of Mexicans who arrived in the US in 1925?
2. What if the taxpayer has some ancestors who lived in the US before emancipation and some who arrived here afterward? Would that person’s “reparation tax bill” be pro-rated to match the fraction of his ancestry that shared antebellum guilt?
3. What if a taxpayer’s ancestors were abolitionists who opposed slavery?
4. What if a taxpayer has no ancestors who owned slaves?
The (Bad) Economics of Collective Guilt
In all of these cases, it’s hard to see how the person paying reparations is in any way actually responsible for the kidnapping, theft, assault, and other crimes perpetrated against actual slaves. Yes, many activists may claim that “everyone” is — in the vague abstract — “guilty” of slavery because one’s ancestor once bought cheap cotton dungarees in 1858, or once (even unwittingly) worked for a company that sold timbers to ship builders who built slaving ships. These arguments rely on the same twisted logic which would have us believe that people who buy gasoline are somehow morally responsible for the brutality of the Saudi Arabian dictators, or that a teenager who smokes a joint is responsible for terrorism like that perpetrated on 9-11. (Yes, the US government created an ad campaign saying exactly this.)
This everyone-is-guilty claim, in fact, is one invented by the slavedrivers themselves in an attempt to claim that all white Americans — including Northerners — somehow directly benefited from slavery, and thus all abolitionists were hypocrites. It was always a desperate and unconvincing argument, but by putting these claims forward, the slavedrivers of old helped pave the way for the modern-day reparations advocates.
In real life, the people responsible for slavery are only the people who directly owned, sold, or traded in slaves; and the politicians who pushed to preserve, spread, or defend slavery through legislation and the state’s police powers.
Slavery Suppressed Wages for Many Workers
Moreover, many non-slaves can be shown to have been negatively impacted by slavery because it acted to suppress wages. As historian Kerry Leigh Merritt describes in detail in her book Masterless Men: Poor Whites and Slavery in the Antebellum South, wage-earning, non-slaveholding whites in the South — who constituted the overwhelming majority of the population — received far lower wages than they would have had they not been forced to compete with slave labor by a legal system designed to favor the tiny minority of slaveowners. Nor were these effects limited to Southern whites only. The increased profitability of agriculture in the South — thanks to slavery — acted to divert resources from Northern agriculture and industry as well, thus lowering wages for at least some Northern workers. Moreover, capital that poured into the slave plantation could have been used to improve worker productivity through innovation in machinery and other capital. Instead, that investment was diverted away from improving free labor, and devoted to expansion and maintenance of the slave economy. Overall, the presence of slaves suppressed wages nationwide.
The fact that slaveowners and plantation owners indisputably benefited from slavery hardly means that white day laborers benefited as well. Yes, chattel slaves fared far worse than any other group. But that doesn’t mean those day laborers were — to use the modern parlance — “privileged” by the existence of the slave economy. In practice, it significantly lowered their income.
So, once again we are left with the problem of determining who is legally and morally responsible for paying out these reparations in any way connected to identifying truly guilty parties. In practice, it’s nearly impossible, although government being what it is, advocates for reparations are likely to simply demand that all the taxpayers foot the bill to pay one identifiable interest group, whether or not the taxpayers involved can be shown to have any direct involvement in the perpetuation or spread of slavery.
Ultimately, the issue shouldn’t even be regarded as a complicated one. If “reparations” are truly that, then they can only be based on handing over stolen property from the thief to the victim (or their heirs). So long as these specific individuals are not identified, then the policy being discussed has nothing to do with reparations. It’s just a wealth redistribution scheme.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Hi2FmE Tyler Durden
A Chinese navy fighter jet crashed Tuesday during a training mission in the southern island province of Hainan, situated in the South China Sea, which killed both pilots, according to the People’s Liberation Army-Navy.
The crash took place in Ledong County in the mountainous and heavily forested tropical province. The cause of the crash was under investigation.
No casualties were reported on the ground, and the Navy didn’t say in a statement published on Weibo what type of plane was involved.
Situated in the South China Sea, Hainan has multiple military installations that have been built up amid China’s flexing of its muscular might in the Pacific, according to the AP.
The incident follows another similar incident in January 2018, when at least 12 crew members died after a PLA Air Force plane, believed to be an electronic reconnaissance aircraft, crashed in Guizhou in the southwest of the country. Between 2016 and 2017, there were at least three accidents involving the Navy’s J-15 “Flying Sharks,” which have been attributed to an ongoing shortage of qualified pilots, according to the South China Morning Post.
According to several military commentators, China’s military expansion program, which includes the building of new aircraft carriers and purchase of new warplanes, has resulted in a serious shortage of qualified pilots. To fill the vacancies, the Chinese military has started a major recruitment drive while bolstering training programs for pilots.
Speaking on the sidelines of the ongoing legislative meeting in Beijing Feng Wei, a PLA pilot from the Western Theatre, said the military was currently intensifying its pilots’ training as increasing amounts of new equipment entered service.
“Personnel quality is the key to everything,” he added.
Video of the crash circulated on Chinese-language social media.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2HzDlYC Tyler Durden
Vice President Mike Pence is in discussions with a group of GOP senators on a deal that could lead to the defeat of a Democratic resolution to overturn President Trump’s emergency declaration to build a wall on the southern US border, according to The Hill.
The deal? If the GOP defeats the Democratic legislation, Trump will formally agree to rein in his power to declare future national emergencies.
Killing the resolution on the Republican-controlled Senate floor would spare the president a major embarrassment and avoid him having to issue the first veto of his presidency.
But there is some skepticism among GOP senators whether Trump will actually go through with it. And the plan is hurt by the fact that a bill to curb the president’s power to declare national emergencies won’t come to the Senate floor until after the March recess. –The Hill
On Thursday, Pence and a group of Republicans met to discuss the legislation to curb Trump’s power. In attendance were Sen. Mike Lee (R-UT) – who is sponsoring the proposed legislation, Sens. Thom Tillis (R-NC), Pat Toomey (R-PA), Rob Portman (R-OH) and Lamar Alexander (R-TN).
According to Lee’s measure, national emergency declarations would require a Congressional vote to extend beyond 30 days. In order for it to work, Senate Republicans say Trump would have to make a scout’s honor promise to sign Lee’s bill – something the president has yet to agree to do.
Meanwhile, at least two Republicans say they will continue to support the Democratic resolution to reject the National Emergency; constitutionalist Senator Rand Paul and Sen. Susan Collins of Maine.
“No, I think Congress should allocate the money and that’s a very strong belief. It’s also in the Constitution,” said Paul.
Among the half-dozen or so other Republicans who are thought to support the Democratic resolution are Marco Rubio (R-FL) and Mitt Romney (R-UT) – both of whom say they’ve made up their minds but have yet to announce their decisions.
“Other potential defectors include Portman, Toomey, Alexander and Sens. Johnny Isakson (R-Ga.), Jerry Moran (R-Kan.) and Todd Young (R-Ind.),” according to The Hill.
Tillis, on the other hand, told colleagues during a Tuesday lunch that while he thought Trump was within his power to declare a national emergency for $3.6 billion in additional wall funding, and he disagrees with the use of that power, he might be willing to change his mind and support the Pence proposal if Trump offers assurances that he would support future reform of the National Emergencies Act of 1976.
Sen. Lindsey Graham (R-SC) plans to vote against the Democratic disapproval resolution – and has predicted that it will get between 50 and 60 votes, which is enough to pass with a simple majority.
“It will probably get over 50 but less than 60, I think,” said Graham.
Republicans control 53 seats so the disapproval resolution will pass if four or more Republicans vote for it. All Democrats are expected to support it.
Paul, who has announced his support for the resolution, said the White House and GOP leaders are stepping up their pressure effort to keep Republicans in line.
“They’re being beaten upright, so if you see anybody that’s got blood dripping out of their ear, they may be changing,” Paul joked.
He said there is still “a significant number” of Republicans willing to vote for the disapproval resolution but added “there are a lot of people being bruised and beleaguered. We’ll see.” –The Hill
As of Tuesday afternoon, the Democratic disapproval resolution is the only matter expected to go to vote on Thursday.
“Right now, that’s the only thing that’s going to be voted on,” said Sen. Shelley Moore Capito (R-WV) after a lunchtime meeting with colleagues.
Because Lee wouldn’t be able to get his bill to the floor before the March recess – scheduled to begin Friday, any plan to trade votes on Thursday’s resolution will need to wait a few weeks.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2XUJEf7 Tyler Durden
Alabama educators are embarking on a new program to treat overdosing students amid the nation’s growing opioid epidemic, according to the BBC.
“Times have changed. Kids are getting things out of their parents’ cabinets. They don’t have to go out on the street, and they don’t know what they are taking,” says Shelby County school nursing supervisor Jan Cibulski.
The new program will include teachers, coaches and administrators as opposed to only school nurses.
Until the start of the year, the state – like most others – recommended school nurses administer the treatment, but now they are widening the training to other teaching staff, as the opioid epidemic spirals nationwide.
The medication – naloxone – is being included in schools’ standard emergency kits, alongside defibrillators and allergy-remedying Epipens.
For US teaching staff, the training could become another standard procedure, like shooting drills. Florida is considering a similar initiative. –BBC
The first training courses – held at a Career Technical Educational Center (CTEC) high school in Alabama’s Shelby County – will include an instructional video and life-sized dummies.
If a student appears to be overdosing, administrators are instructed to call 911 and perform mouth-to-mouth resuscitation, before pressing an Evzio auto-injector the size of a cigarette packet against the patient’s outer thigh through their clothes for five seconds.
It takes approximately one minute for the active ingredient – naloxone hydrochloride (a.k.a. Narcan) – to bind to opioid receptors in the brain – preventing the brain from flooding with dopamine.
The pocket-sized injector is pressed against the patient’s leg like a rubber stamp (via BBC)Evzio.com
Once a student has been injected with Evzio, educators are trained to expect them to pop up, confused and agitated.
How big is the problem?
While no child has officially overdosed in an Alabama school, administrators say it’s only a matter of time. In 2015 the state prescribed the most opioids for pain relief according to the CDC – while the BBC reports that the state is said to have more opioid prescriptions than people.
The non-mandatory scheme is available to every high school in the state. The costs are covered by a grant via the state’s department of public health.
Jennifer Ventress – nurse administrator for the state’s department of education – says there has been a “tremendous interest”, and around 21 local education agencies have signed up since the scheme was first unveiled in January.
If funding can be secured, it will be offered to elementary schools, too.
Amy Mason, a principal at Madison County Elementary School in Gurley, a tiny town in the state’s north, says she would definitely be interested. Her school takes pupils aged up to 13.
She had a wake-up call in 2015, when some of the older students were rushed to hospital after taking prescription drugs in the classroom. They did not overdose and the drug – Lyrica – was not classed as an opioid, but she says it was a career first for her and a sign of a widening problem. “The more training, the better it is for all involved,” she says. –BBC
Alabama Attorney General Steve Marshall said that he was initially hesitant to back the training program, as he worried it would lead to more drug use.
“I was talking to one of the doctors about that, and he looked at me and said, ‘Well, I can’t help them if they’re dead'” said Marshall in an interview with WAAY-TV. “That was an eye-opener for me.”
“We still use terminology about letting people hit the bottom, we have to change that. We don’t have the luxury of waiting. And there may be many bottoms, not just one,” said Selina Mason – a board member with drug awareness group Not One More Alabama.
As the mother of a son with addiction problems, Mason said “I carry naloxone in my backpack. If a loved one is an opioid addict, you need to have it in your home, in your car, in your purse.”
The US surgeon general gave the same advice last year, instructing at-risk Americans of carrying naloxone. The FDA is also considering a similar recommendation.
Naloxone also comes as a nasal spray
Florida, meanwhile, is considering a bill that would supply naloxone to schools. Introduced by state lawmaker Jason Pizzo (D), the bill remains under consideration.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2VTEPkq Tyler Durden
Optimism that the US and China will come to a “good” (growth-enabling) trade deal is virtually invisible across every capital market save US equities. Strange, but the data is clear enough on that point. Fed Funds Futures don’t believe such a deal is coming; nor does the Treasury yield curve. In the end, however, President Trump knows a strong 2020 US economy helps his reelection chances. And markets (equity markets, at least) know that he knows that.
* * *
“Prices lead fundamentals” is as close to a guiding principal as we have at DataTrek. Capital markets aren’t perfect indicators of the future, but ignoring their signals is a sure path to getting run over. We are reminded of Churchill’s quip about democracy: “the worst form of government, except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time”. Market prices are horrible predictors, except for “all the other forms” one might use.
Make no mistake: US equity prices don’t feel great as we make the sprint to the end of Q1 2019. For example:
The S&P 500 tried to get through 2800 earlier this month, but failed and now sits at 2743.
While we are not technicians by training or predilection, it is easy enough to see that the S&P topped out at 2800 no less than 3 other times in the recent past: October 16/17, November 7/8, and December 3 (falling short by 9 points, but close enough). Failing a 4th time earlier this month is a bad sign.
Last week’s 2.2% decline was the first real pullback of 2019, stoking our fears that much of 2019’s rally was just reversion to the mean after late 2018’s tax loss selling.
One year returns for the S&P 500 are basically zero (0.15%), which is better than EAFE non-US developed economy or Emerging Market equities (-9.9%/-14.5%) but still disappointing given last year’s +20% earnings growth and largely complacent rate environment.
When you cast an eye to near-future fundamentals and other market indicators, that uninspiring price action looks pretty well synced up with reality:
Not to be a broken record on the topic, but analysts’ earnings estimates continue to decline for 2019, heavily focused on the first half. Q1 estimates now forecast a 3.4% decline to last year and Q2 numbers will likely be negative in another week or two. FactSet is showing analysts’ consensus of just 0.2% growth there.
The latest FactSet Earnings Insight report out on Friday (link below) shows the source of the worst weakness in corporate earnings: S&P 500 companies with +50% of their revenues from non-US sources. Analysts who follow these firms expect to see 11.4% declines in earnings for Q1 2019 versus that 3.4% mean decline from the prior point. Credit a stronger dollar and softer international markets.
Over the last month Fed Funds Futures have zeroed in on their default scenario: the US central bank will be forced to hold off on raising rates through at least January 2020 because of weak US and global growth. Odds that the Fed will have to cut rates by then are now 25%, the same as flipping heads twice in a row. Entirely possible, in other words.
The difference between 2 and 10 year Treasuries has remained eerily quiet since December, banging around between 11 and 21 basis points. You know the drill here. Declining numbers (especially below 50 basis points) are the countdown clock to recession; rising numbers signal future economic growth. We haven’t seen this indicator hover just above zero so long since 1999, which is obviously not a positive sign.
“Ah, but once the US and China sign a trade deal global growth will reaccelerate, 2020 will be better, and all will be forgiven” is the strongest bull case at the moment. And that’s fair enough, as far as it goes. The hard thing about that logic is that it is only really visible in US equities. A stronger dollar is hurting Emerging Markets and the European economy is doing worse than anticipated, so any optimism about a “Trade Deal Rebound” is clouded by these other factors. And that rosy trade deal scenario is entirely missing from both bond and Fed Funds Futures markets, as noted above.
In the end, the US equity market’s optimism comes down to one point: President Trump would like to be re-elected and he knows a strong US economy would be immensely helpful to achieve that goal. US-China trade is the only lever at his disposal substantial enough to move the needle now that the House is in Democratic hands. Further, time is running short to assure that a resolution will filter through to the real economy and boost American labor markets/consumer confidence into Election Day 2020.
A powerful winter storm is forecasted “to intensify explosively” in the southwest US on Tuesday into Wednesday, unleashing a wide array of life-threatening weather hazards for tens of millions of Americans, reported Axios.
The impact area is expected from North Texas through the Dakotas and Minnesota is expected to be hit the hardest. The storm will likely qualify as a meteorological “bomb” — short for bombogenesis, which describes storms whose central pressure drops 24 millibars in 24 hours. The lower the pressure and the quicker it drops, the more powerful the storm. This could be one for the record books.
“A strong storm is poised to rapidly develop across the Plains this week, meeting “bomb” criteria (deepening of 24mb or more in 24 hours).
This will spread heavy rains, thunderstorms, and flooding risks into the central Plains into Wednesday, then spread snow into the Dakotas later Wednesday into Wednesday night.
This storm is particularly strong for this time of year in this part of the world. Data suggests this storm will be the strongest (via minimum central pressure) storm since at least 1979 to impact the central Plains. With a central pressure equivalent to that of a category 2 hurricane, wind, rain, and snow will all be threats.
This will spark heightened wind generation in the southern Plains, and combined with melting snowpack, offer significant flooding risks across the northern Plains and Upper Midwest. This will halt any progress farmers were making toward fieldwork in this part of the country,” Meteorologist and owner of Empire Weather LLC., Ed Vallee.
The bombogenesis will detonate over Central Plains and bring almost every weather hazard possible at once. Severe thunderstorms are expected to hit south Texas to eastern Nebraska on Wednesday, which includes the potential for tornadoes.
Meanwhile, in the plains of eastern Colorado and parts of Nebraska and Kansas, rain, freezing rain, sleet and heavy snow are forecast as the storm intensifies. Some areas may pick up more than a foot of snow as wind gusts to 70 miles per hour lead to blizzard conditions. The closures of entire interstates, including I-70 in Colorado, is possible.
Blizzard warnings have been posted from northeastern Colorado into southeastern Wyoming, as well as Nebraska and southwest South Dakota.
As the storm spins northeastward, it’s predicted to bring heavy rain on top of a deep snowpack in the Upper Midwest, with the potential for severe flooding in some areas.
Because of the storm’s low air pressure, it will generate a huge and powerful wind field as air rushes toward the storm center. High wind watches cover a vast region from South Texas to Iowa, and wind gusts of up to 70 miles per hour are possible in the hardest-hit regions, the National Weather Service warns.
The storm will affect the entire Central Plains, from the U.S.-Mexico border to the U.S.-Canadian border. Axios notes that it’s highly unusual to see a low-pressure system intensify so rapidly over land, since these type of storms are more common over tropical oceans.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2u6ZGos Tyler Durden
Jeremy Grantham, a market investor who is credited with predicting the 2000 and 2008 downturns, said that other investors should get used to more lackluster returns in the stock market in the next 20 years. Grantham says that the poor returns will “break a lot of hearts.”
Grantham told CNBC that after a century of handsome gains investors should get inured to lackluster returns in the stock market for the next two decades, according to Market Watch.
“In the last 100 years, we’re used to delivering perhaps 6%, but the United States’ market will be delivering real returns of about 2% or 3% on average over next 20 years,” the value investor and co-founder of Boston-based asset manager GMO told CNBC in a rare interview.
In spite of the stock market’s plunge in the latter portion of 2018, Grantham believes his prediction is correct because he views the market as still pricey.
“This is not incredibly painful, but it’s going to break a lot of hearts when we’re right,” Grantham was quoted as saying.
Grantham has been predicting a meltdown in stocks since last year. He has even said that not even the recent go-slow reversal by the Federal Reserve on rate increases and the European Central Bank’s decision to roll out a fresh batch of bank stimulus will push stocks significantly higher.
“You can’t get blood out of a stone,” he told the network.
“This will be limping along; three steps down, two steps back. It’s not a typical experience,” Grantham, who is famous for calling the last two major bubbles in the market, told CNBC’s Wilfred Frost.
“I was really hoping there would be a magnificent bubble ending to this, as there had been to the three great recent experiences,” he said. “It doesn’t look like it will and, therefore, you’re going to have a decline of a different nature.”
This is not great news for those who have a lot of faith in the current economy.
Over the past five years, the S&P 500 index has produced a compound annual growth rate of 8.1%, the Dow Jones Industrial Average has boasted a CAGR of 9.1%, while the Nasdaq Composite Index has registered a compound return of 11.4% over the same period, according to FactSet data. –Market Watch
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2EU2EBN Tyler Durden
Today at 4:15pm EDT, DoubleLine founder Jeff Gundlach is holding his latest live webcast open to investors and casual listeners, titled enticingly ‘Highway to Hell’, and which we assume will discuss either Brexit, the US-China trade deal, the long-term US debt picture or how this, latest asset bubble finally ends.
Readers can register and follow it live at this address, or clicking on the image below
As usual, we will grab and highlight the most interesting charts from Gundlach’s presentation as they come in.
via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2VO2Olc Tyler Durden
To resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel must first achieve defeat of the Palestinian movement.
That’s the resolution up for debate at the next Soho Forum, which takes places on Monday, March 19 at Subculture Theater in New York. Reason is proud to co-sponsor The Soho Forum, a monthly Oxford-style debate series that “features topics of special interest to libertarians and…aims to enhance social and professional ties within the NYC libertarian community.” In an Oxford-style debate, the audience is polled before and after the discussion. The winner is whichever debater pulled more people to his side.
Tickets cost between $12 and $24 and must be purchased online (go here now). Admission gives access to a free buffet of light food and access to a cash bar with wine, beer, and soft drinks. Enter the discount code “reason” and get 25 percent off your ticket price!
Elan Journo is a Fellow and Director of Policy Research at the Ayn Rand Institute. His latest book is What Justice Demands: America and the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict. He is co-author of Failing to Confront Islamic Totalitarianism, a contributor to Defending Free Speech, and editor of Winning the Unwinnable War. Follow him on twitter @elanjourno, Facebook: elan.journo and reach out at elanjourno.com.
For the negative:
Major Danny Sjursen is a U.S. Army strategist and former history instructor at West Point. He served tours with reconnaissance units in both Iraq and Afghanistan. He has written a memoir and critical analysis of the Iraq War, Ghostriders of Baghdad: Soldiers, Civilians, and the Myth of the Surge. He lives with his wife and four sons near Fort Leavenworth, Kansas. Follow him on Twitter at @SkepticalVet.
And here is information about venue and start time:
Cash bar opens at 5:45pm
Event starts at 6:30pm
Subculture Theater
45 Bleecker St,
NY, 10012
Remember to use the discount code ‘reason’ to get a 25 percent discount!
Each Soho Forum is recorded and released as a Reason TV video and a podcast (go here to subscribe to the Reason Podcast). Here’s video of last month’s Reason/Soho Forum debate, featuring fomer BB&T head John Allison and Moody’s Mark Zandi debating the cause of the 2008 financial crisis.
To resolve the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, Israel must first achieve defeat of the Palestinian movement.
