Month: July 2014

Is the U.S. Government Trying to Stop Glenn Greenwald from Publishing His “Biggest Story”

Screen Shot 2014-07-01 at 12.19.04 PMIn May, I highlighted an excellent interview of Glenn Greenwald by GQ Magazine in the piece: Glenn Greenwald on the 2016 Elections – “They’ll Probably Have a Gay Person After Hillary.” There’s so much good stuff in that piece, I strongly suggest you go back and read it if you haven’t, but the relevant part to today’s post is the following exchange:

GQ: How much more is there to release—and what burden do you feel to get it out there?

Greenwald: We published the first article [about the NSA collecting Verizon phone records] while I was in Hong Kong last June and won’t stop until we’re done. I think we will end the big stories in about three months or so [June or July 2014]. I like to think of it as a fireworks show: You want to save your best for last. There’s a story that from the beginning I thought would be our biggest, and I’m saving that. The last one is the one where the sky is all covered in spectacular multicolored hues. This will be the finale, a big missing piece. Snowden knows about it and is excited about it. continue reading

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U.K. to U.S.: End the Haggis Ban

America’s chaps
across the pond are extending a sort of olive branch – one that’s
made of minced sheep heart, lungs, and liver. The government of the
United Kingdom hopes that trade talks this week will mark the end
of a longstanding U.S. ban on the Scottish delicacy haggis.

BBC reported
this weekend on the situation, and explained why Americans are
starved of this dish:

Environment Secretary Owen Paterson will raise the issue with
senior officials from the Obama administration this week.

Scottish producers had asked Paterson to take action when he
visited the Royal Highland Show in Edinburgh earlier this
month.

Haggis imports have been outlawed in the US since 1971.

The ban was put in place because the country’s food standards
agency prohibits sheep lungs – one of the key ingredients of haggis
– in food products. …

During his visit, Paterson will also ask for Scottish lamb to be
allowed back into America, following a ban imposed in 1989.

The U.K. government said it hoped the ban could be lifted as
part of an E.U.-U.S. trade deal, known as the Transatlantic Trade
and Investment Partnership, which is currently being
negotiated.

A
meeting between Paterson and Agriculture Secretary Tom Vilsack took
place yesterday, but so far “neither the Agriculture Department nor
the British Embassy responded with an update on how the meeting
went,”
explains The Washington Post.

This isn’t the first time the U.K. has petitioned the U.S. to
end the ban. Reason‘s Katherine Mangu-Ward highlighted
the last bid in 2010, which despite a great deal of promise, never
came to fruition.

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The Sham Boom

Submitted by Bill Bonner via Acting-Man blog,

A Trifecta of Disappointment

 

2014_Preakness_Stakes_stretch-1024x729

2014 Preakness Stakes in Baltimore, Maryland. Source: Wikipedia

 

“De hosses run down an den dey come back / Doo dah, doo dah

Bet my money on a bob-tail nag / Oh de doo dah day”

 

– “Camptown Races,” Stephen Foster

 

A trifecta of disappointment last week…

First, the inflation number came down the track faster than expected. Then GDP lumbered across the finish line, lower than expected. And finally, at the end of last week, the poor consumer practically broke a leg in the home stretch.

As you know, dear reader, the idea behind the Fed’s ZIRP and QE policies is to stimulate demand. More demand – meaning more consumers spending more money they don’t have on more things they don’t need – is supposed to be a good thing.

Fed economists have bet trillions of dollars on it. Not their money, of course. Each year, since 2008, they’ve put money on the consumer nag. And each year, he’s failed to win, place or even show up. Then the following year, they’ve doubled down… with the chant “the consumer is back.”

 

 

Ersatz Money

The US economy is 70% consumer spending, reason the geniuses at the Fed. So anything they can do to boost consumer spending will also boost the economy. This sort of simpleminded logic is either breathtakingly naïve or mind-bogglingly stupid. Consumers need to have money to spend before they can spend it. If the economy is working properly, they earn it from honest bussing and schlepping.

But suppose the economy is in a funk? Then what are they supposed to do? No problem, say the economists. We’ll just create it. This ersatz money is supposed to stimulate the consumer to spend… whereupon, businesses will spring to life. They’ll offer him a job, boost his wages… and then he’ll have real money to spend!

But wait. If the Fed can just create money to increase demand, why bother doing it the hard way? Why do you need to earn money to create demand when you can just create it?

This point has never been clarified. Nor have the feds ever noticed that consumer demand is the result of savings, investment, work, skill… and all the other things that go into producing a real product or service.

Consumer demand is not what causes those things to happen. In the abstract, demand is unlimited. But output is not. Nor has it ever been demonstrated that central financial planning works. And as of last week we have more evidence that it doesn’t …

 

Production and consumption

Production and consumption indexes – via Saint Louis Federal Reserve Research – click to enlarge.

 

A Sham Boom

What last week’s figures tell us is there is no real recovery. Just a sham boom created by EZ money. We’ve now got two months of figures for the second quarter. They tell us the same thing the first quarter’s numbers told us. Consumers aren’t spending like it was 2007. They’re spending like it was 2009… or 2010… or 2011.

In other words, they’re spending as though they were reasonable people who have realized how the system works. The Fed creates a world where its friends and cronies can borrow at below the rate of consumer price inflation. The 1% gets richer. The other 99% struggles to keep up with the bills.

As we have been warning, consumer prices are rising faster than the Fed admits. That leaves the typical household with less money to spend than the numbers suggest. We see the effect of it on consumer spending. The Fed pinched off savings, investment and employment. Now, it gets what you’d expect: low GDP!

Six years of “stimulating” the economy by giving it more of what it least needed has produced no real recovery… just more debt. It has also produced a corrupt money system in which almost every race is fixed. The 1% wins every time. The consumer is barely able to limp around the track.

 

what_the__1320435

Typical consumer on the race track

 

99percenter duck

99 percenter duck




via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1kaRlSP Tyler Durden

The Fed Has Failed… And Wasted Trillions of Dollars

The Fed Has Failed

 

The Fed has long believed that money printing or credit creation equals growth.

 

In an effort to prove this (and to prop up the insolvent big banks), the Fed has embarked on QE 1, QE 2, QE 3, QE 4, Operation Twist 1 and 2, and kept interest rates at zero for over five years.

 

All told, the Fed has spent nearly  $4 trillion.  To put this number into perspective, it comes down to a little over $12,000 for every man woman and child in the US.

 

The end result has been the single weakest recovery in over 80 years. Adjusted for real inflation, we’ve essentially flat-lined.

 

And now, we have a clear illustration that the Fed’s theories are totally false.

 

Below is a chart of Loans and Leases in Bank Credit for All Commercial Banks in the US. Note how credit growth shot up at the beginning of 2014. All told, we’ve seen over $200 billion in credit growth in the first half of 2014 (h/t Bill King).

 

 

 

Despite this growth, GDP growth has been an absolute disaster. Officially the GDP shrank at 2.9% in the first quarter of 2014.

 

The fact that the economy shrank like this, DESPITE all of the Fed’s interventions over the last five years AND the credit growth in the first quarter of 2014 is proof point blank that the Fed’s economic models are wrong.

 

The Fed is now tapering QE, but one could well make the argument that the Fed has wasted trillions of Dollars. There is no evidence from history that QE creates economic growth (see Japan and the UK). Moreover, the ‘70s debunked the Phillips Curve (the notion that high inflation cannot coincide with high unemployment).

 

In simple terms, the Fed has failed.

 

This concludes this article. If you’re looking for the means of protecting your portfolio from the coming collapse, you can pick up a FREE investment report titled Protect Your Portfolio at http://ift.tt/170oFLH.

 

This report outlines a number of strategies you can implement to prepare yourself and your loved ones from the coming market carnage.

 

Best Regards

 

Phoenix Capital Research

 




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In Major Announcement, FIRE Says It Will Sue Every College With a Speech Code Until Speech Codes Die Forever

FireThe Foundation for Individual
Rights in Education announced a major litigation effort
Tuesday against universities that maintain clearly illegal speech
codes.

With help from the law firm of Davis Wright Tremaine, FIRE is
suing several universities that manifestly and unconstitutionally
deprive their students of First Amendment rights.

“Universities’ stubborn refusal to relinquish their speech
codes must not be tolerated,” said FIRE President Greg Lukianoff
during a press conference.

For now, suits have been filed against Ohio University,
Iowa State University, Chicago State University, and Citrus College
in California. These universities have all trampled students’ free
speech rights, according to FIRE.

Lukianoff explained that FIRE would not hesitate to expand
the suits until all universities abandon their speech codes, which
were ruled unconstitutional decades ago but have endured at more
than 50 percent of colleges, according to the foundation’s
research.

An OU student provided an illustrative example at the
press conference. His student rights organization, OU Students
Defending Students, ran afoul of university administrators because
he created T-shirts for the organization that featured a risque
phrase (“We help get you off”).

“Unpopular speech at Ohio University is discouraged at
every turn,” said the student. “[Administrators’] efforts to create
a friendlier campus is undoubtedly doing the opposite.”

Lukianoff explained that FIRE has been reluctant to become
primarily a litigation organization, but its previous efforts
to persuade colleges to forego censorship have been inadequate, he
said.

During a Q and A session, Lukianoff was asked why he thoght now
was the time for such a litigation effort. He explained that the
massive expansion of college bureaucracy poses a grave threat to
students’ rights. There are now more administrators on campuses
than ever before—far more bureaucrats than teachers, in fact—which
has led to a “mindless application of ridiculous rules,” he
said.

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Record $189 Billion Injected Into Market From “Window Dressing” Reverse Repo Unwind

When we reported yesterday’s record reverse-repo surge, driven entirely by collateral-strapped financial entities scrambling to “window dress” their balance sheets for regulatory purposes, we said “Expect total reverse repo usage tomorrow to plunge by at least $150 billion as the banks will have fooled their regulator, which also happens to be the Fed, that they are safe and sound. Rinse, repeat, until the entire financial system collapses once again and people will ask “how anyone could have possibly foreseen this.” Moments ago the Fed reported the daily reverse repo use. It turns out we were optimistic: it wasn’t $150 billion, it was $189 billion. Following yesterday’s $339 billion allottment, today this number tumbled to just $151 billion, meaing nearly $200 billion in fungible cash had to quick find a new home away from the Fed.

Which, incidentally explains where the relentless buying in today’s market is coming from: today the Fed just released two months worth of POMO liquidity into the market in one day – money which had to find a parking spot until the next quarter end when the same window dressing exercise is repeeated.




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Growth Scare, What Growth Scare? Russell 2000 Screams To New Record High

Despite 2014 consensus GDP now languishing at 2.2% (below its 2.9% hope in March, and gas prices near record highs for the time of year; it seems the Q1 growth scare that saw small caps, momos, biotechs, and half the Russell 2000 collapse has been all but forgotten as the favorite index of short-squeezes and algorithmic ignition has just recovered all its losses and regained its all-time record highs from March. Mission accomplished? Bear in mind that over 600 of the Russell 2000 names are still 20% below their 52-week highs.

New record highs…

 

But a third of the Russell are still down 20% or more…

 

You can’t keep a good market down – or a bad one…




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The Circle Is Complete – Robots To Write The Earnings “Reports” Read By Robots

Has Skynet become self-aware? It seems the ‘robots’ that run the US equity markets (HFT/algo trading dominates what little volume there is left) have decided to cut out the middle man in the market as Associated Press reports this morning that it will employ the story-writing software by start-up Automated Insights to automate the production of U.S. corporate earnings stories. To be frank, given the copy/paste nature of most mainstream media ‘analysis’ of earnings, we thought this had already occurred but AP notes, “We are going to use our brains and time in more enterprising ways during earnings season.” Does that mean that anyone but Zero Hedge will be discussing cashflows or GAAP earnings? 

 

As USA Today reports, The Associated Press is going robotic.

The news service revealed Monday it will employ the story-writing software by start-up Automated Insights to automate the production of U.S. corporate earnings stories, the quarterly bane of the existence of many business reporters.

 

The AP typically produces about 300 earnings stories per quarter, requiring reporters to crunch data in the heat of wire-service deadlines. Soon they will be producing many, many more.

 

Using the software would allow AP to automate short earnings stories, typically 150 to 300 words, “in roughly the same time that it took our reporters,” says Lou Ferrara, the AP managing editor who oversees business news. The initiative will start in July.

 

Zacks Investment Research will comb through earnings statements and provide the data for the stories, which will conform to AP Style. Editors will read the articles before they are published, but the process will eventually be fully automated. By the end of the year, AP plans to provide up to 4,400 earnings stories per quarter, which its media clients can post quickly or use as templates to expand.

 

AP will continue to produce staff-written earnings stories for high-interest companies, such as Google and Apple.

 

Automation will free reporters to pursue more in-depth work, according to Ferrara. “We are going to use our brains and time in more enterprising ways during earnings season,” he told staffers in a memo.

 

AP is not eliminating jobs, and Ferrara says “most of the reaction (among AP staffers) has been very positive.” But the automated stories — as seen in an example copy provided by AP — are largely formulaic, and there are concerns about editorial quality. “There is a healthy dose of skepticism that the whole thing will work,” Ferrara says. “They’re journalists. I want them to be skeptical.”

It seems the circle is complete, machines write the stories that machines trade on; why not just do everything in binary – it’s not like humans have a chance to react anyway before the robots.




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Government Stops Glenn Greenwald from Publishing His Big Snowden Revelation … But Others Will Release ALL of the Snowden Docs

It’s been a dramatic day for whistleblowing news.

A month ago, Glenn Greenwald announced that he was going to publish his biggest story yet:  the names of those the NSA has been spying on.

Earlier today, Greenwald tweeted that he would finally publish the story tonight at midnight.

8 hours later, he tweeted:

After 3 months working on our story, USG [the United States government] today suddenly began making new last-minute claims which we intend to investigate before publishing

Many responded that it’s  a trap, and that the government is dishonestly and illegally censoring Greewald.

At the same time, Cryptome announced that all of the Snowden documents will be released in July … supposedly in order to avert a war.

As the Daily Register notes:

All the remaining Snowden documents will be released next month, according t?o? whistle-blowing site ?Cryptome, which said in a tweet that the release of the info by unnamed third parties would be necessary to head off an unnamed “war”.?

?

Cryptome? said it would “aid and abet” the release of “57K to 1.7M” new documents that had been “withheld for national security-public debate [sic]“.

 

The site clarified that will not be publishing the documents itself.

 

***

 

“July is when war begins unless headed off by Snowden full release of crippling intel. After war begins not a chance of release,” Cryptome tweeted on its official feed. “Warmongerers are on a rampage. So, yes, citizens holding Snowden docs will do the right thing,” it said.

 

“For more on Snowden docs release in July watch for Ellsberg, special guest and others at HOPE, July 18-20: http://ift.tt/TBeVRZ,” it added.




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