• Europe shares, oil snap four-day losing streaks (Reuters)
• Oil rallies as Canada fire and Libya violence threaten supply (Reuters)
• How Trump Won—and How the GOP Let Him (WSJ)
• Hedge Fudge Managers Lose Their Swagger (BBG)
• Turkey Premier Said to Give Up as Erdogan Tightens Grip (BBG)
• Health Insurers Struggle to Offset New Costs (WSJ)
• Judge says Clinton may have to testify in email lawsuit (Reuters)
• Trump’s deportation plan could slice 2 percent off U.S. GDP (Reuters)
• A Cartel and a Briefcase: How Drug Cash Moves on a River of Gold (BBG)
• Big-Spending Fracking Family Behind Cruz Won’t Back Trump (BBG)
• China’s Great Commodity Bubble Loses Air Before It Can Burst (BBG)
• Abortion provider Planned Parenthood sues Kansas over plan to cut funding (Reuters)
• Look Out, Loonie, Canada May Have Just Peaked (BBG)
• Bass Says Investors Would Avoid China If They Knew Bank Risk (BBG)
• Tribune Publishing Rejects Gannett Bid (WSJ)
• Truce takes hold in Aleppo but fighting goes on elsewhere in Syria (Reuters)
• The Unloved Business That’s Saved Big Oil From Low Energy Prices (BBG)

 

Overnight Media Digest

WSJ

– The U.S. Justice Department warned North Carolina officials that it considers the state’s new bathroom law a violation of the Civil Rights Act. (http://on.wsj.com/1To3Taf)

– Tesla Motors plans to ramp up annual production to a half-million vehicles, two years earlier than planned, but will do so without its two top manufacturing executives. (http://on.wsj.com/1To3wfG)

– Tribune Publishing Co’s board of directors rejected an unsolicited acquisition offer from Gannett Co , calling the bid “opportunistic”. (http://on.wsj.com/1To3vIO)

– Former Republican senator, 82-year-old Bob Bennett of Utah, one of the first incumbents ousted in a national wave of anti-incumbent sentiment in 2010, has died, his assistant said. (http://on.wsj.com/1To3p3V)

 

FT

* Trinity Mirror is set to shut down its new national newspaper called The New Day, just two months after launching it as it seeks to cut its losses.

* Liberty Global, which also owns Virgin Media, is evaluating a potential contribution of up to 500,000 pounds ($724,550) to a campaign to keep Britain in Europe.

* Airbus is developing humanoid robots in partnership with French and Japanese researchers with a purpose of being able to use them alongside humans on its assembly lines and inside aircraft.

 

NYT

– Tesla Motors said it was confident it could accelerate production to meet high demand for its forthcoming Model 3 electric vehicle, despite the departure of two top manufacturing executives. (http://nyti.ms/1T2C7Gs)

– U.S. Federal safety regulators said long-term exposure to environmental moisture and wide temperature fluctuations caused airbags made by Takata to rupture violently. (http://nyti.ms/24z88I7)

– Tribune Publishing sent a letter to Gannett saying its board had unanimously rejected the $815 million takeover offer, which included debt and other liabilities and represented a significant premium above Tribune’s share price. (http://nyti.ms/1rWgFam)

– Chinese company Xintong Tiandi has won the right to sell its leather goods under the iPhone trademark after years of legal back-and-forth with Apple, according to an article in Chinese state news media. (http://nyti.ms/1VKKPtk)

– The European Central Bank on Wednesday announced an end to the 500-euro bank note, worth roughly $575, in a move aimed at hampering cash transactions by drug dealers and money launderers. (http://nyti.ms/1W9dSXo)

 

Britain

The Times

– Executives at Royal Bank of Scotland Group Plc faced accusations of taking home “obscene” pay packets and being “glorified civil servants” at a stormy annual meeting. (http://bit.ly/1W8QBVt)

– EDF’s former finance chief tried to persuade the French energy giant to postpone plans to build an 18-billion-pound nuclear power station at Hinkley Point, Somerset, for at least three years, he told French MPs yesterday. (http://bit.ly/1W8QJ7q)

The Guardian

– The mining group BHP Billiton Plc and its partner Vale SA are facing a 30-billion-pound claim from Brazilian prosecutors over an iron ore mine dam collapse last year that released a torrent of toxic mud, killing 19 people and leaving 700 homeless. (http://bit.ly/1W8QQjl)

The Telegraph

– BT group Plc is to unveil a multibillion-pound network upgrade programme, including laying ultrafast fibre-optic broadband lines to around two million homes and businesses. (http://bit.ly/1W8Qvgt)

– Intercontinental Exchange Inc has walked away from its attempt to break up the London Stock Exchange’s 21-billion-pound merger with Deutsche Boerse AG, removing one of the major hurdles to the deal. (http://bit.ly/1W8QAB1)

Sky News

– The New Day newspaper is to close after just nine weeks of circulation. The daily newspaper, published by Trinity Mirror Plc, is to be publishing its final edition on Friday. (http://bit.ly/1W8OUHt)

– Royal Dutch Shell Plc has reduced its key investment forecast by a further 10 percent or $3 billion after announcing a sharp drop in first quarter profits amid the depressed oil price environment. (http://bit.ly/1W8QpFK)

The Independent

– Housing analysts have slammed a 100-percent mortgage launched by Barclays Plc as “crackers”, saying the first mortgage since the crisis not to require a deposit will help people buy property they can’t afford. (http://ind.pn/1W8QLw6)

via http://ift.tt/1ToN0MK Tyler Durden

While UBS agreed to pay $1.5 billion to quickly settle charges that the bank manipulated LIBOR, trader Tom “Libor is too high, ‘cos I’ve kept it artificially high” Hayes wasn’t so lucky however. Alas, Hayes’ pockets weren’t that deep and he was the scapegoat UBS chose to offer up to the masses in the wake of the scandal, eventually being found guilty and sentenced to 14 years in jail (later reduced to 11 years).

Hayes, who was the first individual convicted at trial for manipulating what until recently was the world’s most important rate, is now looking to the generosity of the public to help fund his appeal. As Bloomberg reports, the 36 year-old has opened a Fundrazr page in hopes of raising £150,000 enough money to pay for an appeal through with the Criminal Cases Review Commission, an independent organization set up to investigate suspected miscarriages of justice in U.K. courts. According to his lawyer Karen Todner, “Tom’s family are now in possession of fresh evidence, some of which Tom requested in his trial but which UBS and the prosecution did not supply. We believe Tom has a strong case, which our submission to the CCRC will demonstrate.”

Given the fact that evidence was presented showing UBS actually had a “guide to publishing Libor rates” during his trial and he was still convicted, we suspect that nothing will be able to help the former trader at this point. The fund has raised £3,635, although we’re going to go out on a limb and say the trader who cost people and firms a lot of money with his rigging activities, won’t win much of sympathy in the court of public opinion, although there is a possibility some of his former superiors who got away scott-free thanks to his incarceration may feel generous and decide to “tip” him. Anonymously of course.

via http://ift.tt/1UBkT28 Tyler Durden

While markets remain relatively subdued ahead of tomorrow’s nonfarm payrolls report, after several days of losses in US stocks, which have taken “sell in May” to heart and pushed the S&P500 to three week lows, overnight markets ignored the latest weak data out of China where the Caixin Services PMI was the latest indicator to disappoint (dropping from 52.2 to 51.8), and instead focused on crude, which rebounded from yesterday’s post inventory-build lows and briefly printed above $45/bbl over uncertainty related to the impact of Canada wildfires on production and how long will last. The bounce in WTI has meant Brent briefly traded at parity with West Texas for the first time in 6 weeks. 

It “would appear to be related to outages in production related to the wildfires in Canada – uncertainty of the extent of the outages and how long they will persist,” says BNP Paribas energy strategist Gareth Lewis-Davies.

“Move today has to be seen in the context of the last 5 days and we have only recovered half the losses we have seen in that period.”

Emboldened by the rise in oil, European stocks rose for the first time in a week as commodity, energy producers lead the rebound from the biggest four-day drop since February, while S&P500 futures rose 0.3%, and was back over 2,050.

As we noted yesterday, Turkish equities and bonds continued to fall amid a political showdown between the president and prime minister.  Turkey’s 10-year bond yields climbed to a one-month high, while the Borsa Istanbul 100 Index dropped 1.6 percent, declining for a fifth day. The clash between Davutoglu and Erdogan threatens to usher in an era of political uncertainty, raising questions ranging from the president’s bid to coalesce power through a constitutional amendment or early elections to the future path of economic policy. The lira gained 1.4 percent after the steepest selloff in eight years yesterday.

Despite the attempt at a rally, sentiment was mixed: “There’s still a very cautious feeling to markets,” said William Hobbs, who helps oversee about $150 billion as head of investment strategy at the wealth-management unit of Barclays Plc in London. “The world is growing and is likely to grow a bit quicker as we go through the year and inflation returning and that’s simply not priced in at these levels.”

“The market has been in a consolidation phase as its previous rally, which was based on a rebound in commodity prices and signs of economic stabilization, is starting to taper off,” Audrey Goh, a strategist at Standard Chartered, told Bloomberg. “We are also going into the summer months, when the market tends to be weaker.”

Among companies moving in early U.S. trading, Tesla Motors Inc. climbed 3.6 percent after the electric-car maker reaffirmed its deliveries forecast and pulled ahead its plans to produce 500,000 autos annually. Fitbit Inc. tumbled 13 percent after the maker of wearable fitness trackers gave a profit forecast that fell short of the lowest analysts’ estimates.

Market Wrap

• S&P 500 futures up 0.3% to 2052
• Stoxx 600 up 0.3% to 333
• FTSE 100 up 0.2% to 6127
• DAX up 0.3% to 9862
• German 10Yr yield up 1bp to 0.22%
• Italian 10Yr yield up 1bp to 1.52%
• Spanish 10Yr yield up less than 1bp to 1.61%
• S&P GSCI Index up 1.3% to 352.2
  MSCI Asia Pacific down 0.2% to 128
• Nikkei 225 closed
• Hang Seng down 0.2% to 20485
• Shanghai Composite up 0.2% to 2998
• S&P/ASX 200 up 0.2% to 5279
• US 10-yr yield up 2bps to 1.8%
• Dollar Index up 0.17% to 93.34
• WTI Crude futures up 2.9% to $45.07
• Brent Futures up 2.4% to $45.70
• Gold spot down less than 0.1% to $1,279
• Silver spot up 0.3% to $17.42

Top Global News

• Tribune Board Rejects Gannett’s $815 Million Takeover Bid: Company unveils standalone plan to bolster LA Times globally
• Goldman, HSBC Said Among Banks on Saudi Exchange IPO Shortlist: JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley also said to be considered for IPO that could raise more than $500m for 30% stake
• Tesla’s Musk Sleeping Near Factory Floor to Spur Manufacturing Progress: Co. now sees reaching 500,000- vehicle production in 2018, two years earlier than before
• Turkey PM Said to Give Up as Erdogan Pressure Insurmountable: Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is expected to step down this month after losing power struggle with President Erdogan
• Synacor More Than Doubles After Winning AT&T Web-Hosting: Contract with carrier will be worth $100m annually
• Camping World Said to Aim to Raise $350m in IPO: New York Times

Looking at regional markets, Asia stocks traded mostly lower amid holiday-thinned trade and following the losses seen on Wall St. where US stocks declined to 3-week lows, while the region also digests further softer data from China. However, outperformance in energy and financials have capped losses in ASX 200 (-0.2%) after WTI crude futures reclaimed USD 44/bbl while banks were underpinned following NAB’s earnings. China saw mild pressure with the Shanghai Comp (-0.2%) negative after Chinese Caixin Services & Composite PMI figures were weaker than prior, although further liquidity injections by the PBoC helped stem losses. As a reminder, Japanese and South Korean markets are closed for public holiday.

Asia Top News

• China Fertilizer Maker to Default on Bonds Amid Debt Woes: Inner Mongolia Nailun investors opted for early note repayment
• Yuan’s Losing Streak Signals PBOC Break With Stronger Dollar: Chinese currency may have to drop more quickly vs USD: analyst
• Fears of China Unrest See Investment Firms Evicted to Preempt It: >1,000 such cos. have failed, with more to come
• Philip Lowe to Replace Stevens as RBA Governor From Sept. 18: Lowe inherits post with diminished interest rate ammunition
• National Australia Earnings Rise as Bad-Debt Charges Decline: 1H cash profit A$3.31b vs est. A$3.356b
• Packer Cuts Macau Stake, Stoking Crown Buyout Speculation: Australia’s Crown to reduce Melco stake to 27% from 34%

Today has seen a quiet start to the morning amid numerous market closures in Europe due to Ascension Day allied with participants remaining cautious prior to the US jobs report tomorrow. As such, volumes have been somewhat on light side, with equities trading modestly higher while notable outperformance has been observed in the FTSE MIB in the wake of source reports that the Italian Treasury is considering investing in the Italians bank rescue fund. Alongside this, similarly to trade overnight, Europe has been bolstered by gains in energy names with WTI crude breaking above USD 45.00/bbl.

European Top News

• Brexit Uncertainty Drags U.K. Economy to Near Stagnation: Services PMI drops to 52.3 from 53.7, below estimates and weakest since February 2013
• Centrica Falls Most in More Than a Year on Equity Sale Plan: Company plans to sell 350 million shares to fund acquisitions
• Repsol Beats Estimates on Surprise Profit From E&P Business: Results reflect lower exploration costs, efficiency savings
• BT Profit Beats Expectations, Helped by EE Wireless Purchase: Company targets investing GBP6b in network upgrades
• Barclays Sells 12.2% Stake in African Unit for $879 Million: Stake bought by money managers; Barclays now owns 50.1%

In FX, Australia’s dollar strengthened 0.5 percent versus the USD. The nation’s retail sales increased 0.4 percent in March from the previous month, while the trade deficit was smaller than economists forecast. Reserve Bank of Australia Deputy Governor Philip Lowe will replace Glenn Stevens as head of the monetary authority in September.

The greenback strengthened 0.2 percent to 107.21 yen, building on a 0.6 percent advance over the last two days. The Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index held near a one-week high after the probability that the Fed will raise interest rates this year climbed back above 50 percent. U.S. employers added at least 200,000 workers for a third month in April, according to a Bloomberg survey of economists before data on Friday.  Russia’s ruble climbed 1 percent and the Mexican peso gained 0.7 percent as oil advanced. South Africa’s rand rose 0.6 percent, rebounding from a four-week low.

In commodities, Heading towards the North American crossover, WTI and Brent crude futures continue to extend on its overnight gains with WTI making a break above USD 45.00/bbl. One factor for consideration in regards to the recent upside in oil prices over the past couple of days, is reports of a Canadian wildfire in the Fort McMurray region in which some of Canada’s large oil producers are situated, including Canada Oil Sands. As such, around lmin bpd of Canadian Oil Sands production capacity could be affected.

Additionally, Libyan supply disruptions have also added to the strength in oil prices as officials warned that output may decline to around 120k bpd. To put this in some context, Libya currently produces 310k bpd and have a total capacity of 780k bpd. Elsewhere, gold prices have been pressured by the continued recovery in the greenback allied with the modest upside in European equities, subsequently sapping demand from the safe-haven. Elsewhere, copper and iron ore prices were subdued amid holiday thinned trade overnight.

Following yesterday’s data deluge, the sole two events on the US calendar are Jobless Claims and Challenger job cuts, while the Fed’s Bullard & Kaplan speak. Earnings wise we’ve got 30 S&P 500 companies set to report including Merck, while in Europe we’ve got 15 Stoxx 600 companies due to release their latest quarterlies

* * *

Bulletin Headline Summary from RanSquawk and Bloomberg

• Today has seen a quiet start for European equities which have spent much of the session in modest positive territory.
• Crude prices remain elevated amid reports of supply disruptions in Libya, alongside wildfires in Canada potentially harming oil production within the region.
• Today’s highlights include US Jobless Claims, Challenger Job Cuts, EIA Natural Gas, ECB’s Visco, Fed’s Bullard & Kaplan.
• Treasuries lower in overnight trading as global equity markets mixed, oil rallies and precious metals drop; economic data today includes jobless claims which are close to four decade lows.
• The European Central Bank will discontinue production of the 500-euro ($575) banknote in a move that risks tensions with euro-area citizens worried the institution is encroaching on their freedoms
• U.K.’s Purchasing Managers Index dropped to 52.3 from 53.7 in April, its lowest level in more than three years; Britain goes to the polls in a series of local and legislative elections that will deliver a new mayor for London, continued nationalist government in Scotland and the voters’ first verdict on Jeremy Corbyn’s leadership of the Labour Party
• China’s authorities, seeking to forestall potential social unrest due to growing failures of investment firms and online lenders, are ordering many to break leases and close their storefronts on busy streets
• Speculators who traded 1.7 trillion yuan ($261 billion) futures in a single day last month have retreated as fast as they advanced. Trading volumes across the nation’s three biggest exchanges are more than half of what they were at their peak on April 22 and back to levels similar to a year ago
• Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu is expected to step down after losing a market-roiling power struggle with President Recep Tayyip Erdogan, clouding the country’s economic prospects and imperiling its relations with the European Union
• Philip Lowe is set to replace Glenn Stevens as governor of Australia’s central bank, inheriting an economy grappling with the onset of disinflation that forced policy makers to cut interest rates to a record low this week
• Sovereign 10Y yields mixed, Greece rallies 19bp; European and Asian equity markets mixed (Japan closed); U.S. equity- index futures rise. WTI crude oil rallies, precious metals lower

US Event Calendar

• 7:30am: Challenger Job Cuts y/y, April, no est. (prior 31.7%)
• 8:30am: Initial Jobless Claims, April 30, est. 260k (prior 257k)
• 9:45am: Bloomberg Consumer Comfort, May 1 (prior 43.4)
• 10am: Freddie Mac mortgage rates
• 10:30am: EIA natural-gas storage change
• 11:30am: Fed’s Bullard speaks at Santa Barbara Conf.
• 7:15pm: Fed’s Bullard, Kaplan, Lockhart, Williams speak at Stanford

DB’s Jim Reid concludes the overnight wrap

Before we look closer at the rest of the data and price action yesterday, there’s been some data out of China this morning first for us to digest. The private Caixin services PMI for April has softened a touch to 51.8, after printing at 52.2 in March. That largely matches up with the 0.3pt decline in the official reading over the weekend and means that the composite was down half a point this month to 50.8.

Bourses in China have been volatile this morning and have largely swung between gains and losses, but as we type the Shanghai Comp is little changed. Elsewhere the Hang Seng (-0.40%) is in the red for the fourth consecutive session, while the Kospi (-0.49%) is also weaker along with the ASX (-0.25%). Markets in Japan remain shut until tomorrow, while the Yen is unchanged. Just staying with China, overnight our China Chief Economist Zhiwei Zhang published a note highlighting the hidden risks in the financial sector. Zhiwei highlights that China’s recent credit boom has made the financial sector more fragile and monetary policy less effective. He takes a look at what is a widening gap between rapid bank credit growth and moderate M2 growth and that of the credit expansion going to non-bank financial institutions, much of this is in the form of investment rather than loans which are less transparent and potentially more risky. Zhiwei has revised up his probability of the scenario of growth dropping below 6% for 4 consecutive quarters over the period of 2017-19 from 20% to 25%. A link to the note is attached here.

Back to yesterday. It all felt a bit déjà vu in markets with the price action virtually matching that of Tuesday. In Europe we saw the Stoxx 600 close – 1.12% to finish at the lowest level in nearly a month, while markets in the US also edged lower but slightly less so. The S&P 500 ended -0.59% meaning it’s been down in four of the last five sessions. It felt like it was the same culprits yesterday weighing on sentiment too with energy and financials stocks largely leading the bulk of bourses lower. Indeed the Stoxx 600 Banks index was down -1.48% yesterday and has tumbled 9% now in the space of just four sessions. The S&P 500 Energy index was down -1.30% yesterday and is down 4% over the same period.

Credit markets are also having a tougher month in May so far. In the US CDX IG was another 2bps wider yesterday and has now weakened for five consecutive sessions. The iTraxx Main index is also 5bps wider from where we closed April. Meanwhile there was the usual volatility in currency markets in and around the batch of data releases. Ultimately it concluded with a second consecutive stronger day for the US Dollar though with the Dollar index up +0.25% (it’s now up +1.5% from Tuesday’s 18-month low). The Yen traded in another big range but ended up a touch weaker. Finally the closing level for WTI (+0.30% at $43.78/bbl) masked what was actually an intraday range of nearly 4% (it has rebounded 2% this morning though), while it was another rough day for the majority of base metals too (Copper -1.08%, Zinc -0.53%, Iron Ore -5.24%).

Touching on that US data in a bit more detail, in terms of the components of the ISM services reading, employment, new orders and prices paid all rose last month, although there was a slight decline for business activity and new export orders (albeit from recent highs). The spread between the two ISM series is now back to 4.9pts (after being 2.7pts and 3.9pts in March and February respectively) and the most since January. Meanwhile, the March trade deficit narrowed a touch at $40.4bn (vs. $41.2bn expected) and narrowing nearly $7bn from February. The final services PMI was revised up 0.7pts to 52.8 and so resulting in a composite print of 52.4 which is a gain of 0.7pts from March and the second consecutive monthly increase. Elsewhere, factory orders rose a bit more than expected in March (+1.1% mom vs. +0.6% expected), Q1 nonfarm productivity weakened slightly less than expected (-1.0% qoq vs. -1.3% expected) and unit labour costs rose +4.1% qoq. That fall in productivity is the second consecutive negative quarterly reading and leaves YoY growth in productivity at a fairly subdued +0.6%.

The end result of all that data was for the Atlanta Fed to revise down their Q2 GDP forecast by a tenth to 1.7%. That’s still above the forecast of our US economists however who expect only a mild rebound from the weak first quarter and currently have growth pegged at 1.0%.

Elsewhere, during the European session yesterday the main focus was on the release of the remaining PMI’s. For the Euro area we saw the final April services reading revised down a very modest 0.1pts to 53.1, with the composite print of 53.0 effectively unchanged versus the prior two months. Across countries we saw marginal downward revisions to Germany and France while Italy was the positive surprise as its services reading printed ahead of expectations (52.1 vs. 51.9 expected; 51.2 March) much like its manufacturing data earlier in the week. Wrapping up the data, Euro area retail sales declined sharply in March and by more than expected (-0.5% mom vs. -0.1% expected).

Before we look at today’s calendar and just staying in Europe briefly, political fragility has been a big theme of late and we can add Turkey to that list with the news that the power struggle between Turkey’s PM Davutoglu and President Erdogan looks set to end with Davutoglu giving up his premiership. The FT highlighted that despite Erdogan occupying a largely ceremonial post, he has continued to demonstrate enough power to largely influence most aspects of government. According to Bloomberg, Davutoglu’s AK Party is to hold a leadership contest within two weeks with the current Premier not expected to be a candidate. The Turkish Lira weakened nearly 4% yesterday while equity markets in Turkey were generally off at least 2%.

Looking at the day ahead, after the packed calendar that we had yesterday, today looks fairly sparse by comparison. This morning in Europe the only release of note is the April services and composite PMI’s for the UK which is worth keeping an eye on in light of the soft manufacturing print earlier in the week, while in the US the sole release is the latest weekly initial jobless claims data. Away from the data we’re due to hear from the Fed’s Bullard this afternoon (scheduled for 4.50pm BST), while it might also be worth keeping an eye on Japan PM Abe’s press conference today too (due at 2.00pm BST). Earnings wise we’ve got 30 S&P 500 companies set to report including Merck, while in Europe we’ve got 15 Stoxx 600 companies due to release their latest quarterlies.

 

via http://ift.tt/1Zh2wyu Tyler Durden

 

 

 

 

A Big Bank Suggests WEALTH Taxation

Written by Jeff Nielson (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)

 

 

 

There is a two-word phrase which is virtually never heard within the vacuous propaganda machine known as the mainstream media: “wealth taxation”. There are very obvious reasons for such conceptual censorship.

 

To begin with, the corporate media is merely one of the subsidiaries of the financial crime syndicate which readers know as “the One Bank”. The One Bank exists for one purpose, to steal wealth. Any form of wealth-taxation would effectively claw back significant amounts of these ill-gotten gains; therefore, discussion of this concept is verboten.

This is why we have an “income taxation” system, the most inefficient, complex, and economically destructive form of taxation system which could be inflicted upon us. We have income taxation for one, and only one reason: it provides a taxation “free ride” for the Ultra Wealthy, the proprietorsof the One Bank.

How, then, is it possible that Deutsche Bank, one of the Big Bank tentacles of the One Bank, could have recently and openly suggested implementing wealth taxation? It is both a putrid and delicious display of irony.

Our governments have already been bankrupted, and our public treasuries have been emptied (via the “bank bail-outs” of 2008). The masses have already been virtually squeezed-dry of their wealth. Our overall standard of living has already plummeted by more than half. The Middle Class is virtually extinct , having devolved into the Working Poor. But the bankers’ masters are still hungry.

Thus, their psychopathic minions have been encouraged to dream up new-and-innovative ways to steal more. One form of systemic theft which has been gaining momentum is “the negative interest rate”: borrowers literally stealing from lenders (and savers). It is in this context that we see the two-word phrase which is a “four-letter word” to all bankers: wealth taxation.

…the ECB and BoJ should move more strongly toward penalizing savings via negative retail deposit rates or perhaps wealth taxes.

Here it is necessary to point out the extreme perversity which is implicit in this suggestion. Why is a Deutsche Bank mouthpiece suggesting “negative retail deposit rates or perhaps wealth taxes”? The answer is to (supposedly) stimulate our economies.

Of course, another, obvious way to characterize negative interest rates on bank deposits is as a tax on bank deposits. That is why negative interest rates are suggested interchangeably along with wealth taxation – they are both a form of taxation.

Do you “stimulate” an economy by raising taxes? No (but with a caveat). Thus any and every time we see a banker, or politician, or mainstream drone suggesting negative interest rates as a means of “stimulating our economies” they are lying. It is merely an utterly absurd pretext to supposedly justify more, naked stealing.

In fact, we already have a general, systemic “tax” inflicted upon everyone (except the Ultra Wealthy). It’s called inflation. Every time that corrupt central banks print up a new unit of their fiat currency funny-money, they create inflation. That is the (correct) definition of inflation.

Here we get more lies and perversity. The bankers, and central bankers in particular, lament that we don’t have enough inflation, because we supposedly need more inflation to “stimulate our economies”. Let’s put aside the first, obvious lie: the ludicrous/mythical “inflation rates” fabricated by our corrupt governments. Let’s deal, instead, with the second lie.

Does inflation “stimulate our economies”? We can answer that question by simply looking back in time, to when we had lots of (official) inflation: the 1970s. In the 1970s, did all the inflation created by our central banks stimulate our economies? No. In fact, it was labeled stagflation, and it was universally recognized that inflation (like any tax) does not stimulate our economies. Thus whenever a banker claims that “we need more inflation”, he/she is also lying.

This brings us to the delicious aspect of Deutsche Bank’s ironic suggestion. Because the Big Bank’s foot soldiers are being encouraged to think of more ways to steal-via-taxation, it was only natural that one of those foot soldiers would eventually blurt out the taboo words “wealth taxation”. What makes this deliciously ironic is that unlike the tax of negative interest rates, and unlike the tax of inflation, wealth taxation would actually serve to stimulate our economies, if we used it to replace our destructive/inefficient income taxation system. How? Why?

First we require a quick summary of the destructiveness of income taxation. We officially dwell in “capitalist” economies: nations whose economic growth is derived from profit. What does income taxation do? It taxes profit. It taxes it in the form of wages. It taxes it in the form of dividends and capital gains. It taxes profit in any-and-all forms from our basic commerce.

In other words, income taxation discourages people from increasing their incomes. It discourages people from reaping dividends and capital gains. It discourages people from generating profits in their business enterprises. This is good for our economies? No. How do you destroy any capitalist system (or at least cripple it)? Tax income.

Conversely, by definition, wealth taxation is the broadest form of taxation in existence: everything is taxed. Because wealth taxation is all-inclusive, any wealth taxation system would automatically have a lower tax rate than any other form of taxation system we could imagine. It is thus less punitive on wages, less punitive on dividends and capital gains, less punitive on profit. Because it is all-inclusive, it replaces all these other forms of taxation.

Income taxation is selective taxation. Worse, as previously noted, it is a form of taxation which automatically under-taxes individuals at the top of the wealth totem-pole. This is a matter of simple arithmetic.

For a poor person (someone with little-to-no-wealth), their annual income is virtually equal to their total wealth. Thus, taxing income provides the maximum “bite” on the wealth of the poor. For the average billionaire, his income is (at most) no more than roughly 1% of his total wealth. Tax that income, even at 100%, and the billionaire hardly notices.

Income taxation is a free ride for those on top. Income taxation is more and more punitive, the farther you descend on the wealth totem-pole. Do our societies benefit, as a whole, from providing a free ride for those on top, light taxation for the rest of the Rich, and extremely punitive taxation for the majority?

No. As a matter of elementary economics, what do we know about the wealth of the wealthy, and in particular, the Ultra Wealthy? They hoard it, almost all of it. Because the Oligarch Trillionaires have been allowed to steal most of the wealth from our societies, most of that wealth (our wealth) is now hoarded. It is idle, useless capital – in a capitalist system. We see how our economies are literally starving to death from lack of capital, via a U.S. chart which is familiar to regular readers.

 

 

More and more and more wealth is being sucked (illegally) into the hoards of the Ultra Wealthy, via their Big Bank crime syndicate. Less and less capital is circulating in our economies. How do we reverse the economic starvation of our economies? Tax that stolen wealth.

Unlike the Ultra Wealthy, every time a dollar enters the hands of a poor person, they spend almost all of it. That stimulates our economy. Every time a dollar enters the hands of a Middle Class person, they spend most of it. That stimulates our economies. Every time a dollar enters the hands of a rich person, they hoard almost all of it. No stimulus. No benefit for our economies, in any way/shape/form.

As already noted, introducing wealth taxation would reduce the tax rates for those on the bottom. Conversely, a wealth tax would (for the first time in the history of our societies) tax the Fat Cats in a meaningful way. How much of our wealth are the Fat Cats hoarding? How much of our wealth have they stolen? A single headline says it all.

U.S. Wealth Inequality – top 0.1% worth as much as the bottom 90%

This must be restated, in order for the full monstrosity of this truth to be comprehended. In any average roomful of 1,000 Americans, the one Fat Cat would hold as much wealth as 900 of those people combined. That’s a lot of stolen wealth, as certainly the Fat Cat didn’t earn as much as the other 900 people.

Income taxation fully taxes the wealth of the bottom-90%. Income taxation doesn’t even touch the equal amount of wealth held by the Fat Cat. Introducing wealth taxation would thus double the size of the tax base. For the Fat Cat, this means paying a meaningful level of taxation, for the first time ever. For the bottom-90%, who would no longer shoulder the tax burden alone, it means lower taxes.

Lower taxes for the bottom-90% means more dollars in the hands of the poor. Lower taxes for the bottom-90% means more dollars in the hands of the Middle Class. That stimulates our economies. Since the stolen wealth of the Fat Cats just sits in idle hoards, taxing (i.e. liberating) that stolen wealth would have no detrimental impact on our economies. Wealth taxation is win/win.

Income taxation destroys our economies. Hidden taxation, in the form of inflation, destroys our economies. Hidden taxation, in the form of negative interest rates, destroys our economies. Wealth taxation (i.e. a flat wealth tax, universally imposed) would stimulate our economies.

The genie has now been let out of the bottle.

The question is: are any of the bottom-90% even paying attention?

 

 

 

Please email with any questions about this article or precious metals HERE

 

 

 

A Big Bank Suggests WEALTH Taxation

Written by Jeff Nielson (CLICK FOR ORIGINAL)

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Submitted by Mike "Mish" Shedlock

Another Deadlocked Election Coming Up In Spain?

After six months of failed coalition attempts, Spain’s King Felipe dissolved parliament and announced new elections. I reported on this last week, but the official document dissolving parliament was signed today. New elections are on June 26. Will the results be any different?

There are 350 seats in Spain’s parliament. Courtesy of the BBC, the 2015 election went like this (blue highlights mine).

Party Leaders

• PPOE – Former Prime Minister Mariano Rajoy
• PSOE – Pedro Sanchez
• Podemos – Pablo Iglesias
• Ciudadanos – Albert Rivera

Coalition Problems

• PSOE and PPOE could have formed a coalition, but the result would not have been stable. The party leaders do not get along and the left and right generally don’t mix.
• The three leftists parties could have formed a coalition, but Podemos is eurosckeptic and in favor of letting Catalonia have a vote on independence. The other two leftist parties are staunch nationalists as well as staunch euro supporters.
• Ciudadanos ruled out forming a coalition with Podemos for philosophical reasons noted above.
• Ciudadanos was formed as an anti-corruption party and wants nothing to do with Mariano Rajoy and his totally corrupt PPOE Popular Party either.

Clash of Ideas

The Financial Times explains the blame game as follows.

• Mariano Rajoy, the acting prime minister and leader of the conservative Popular party, has repeatedly blamed the Socialists for refusing to form a grand coalition under his leadership. “What happened over the past four months must not repeat itself. Vetoes are bad for democracy,” the prime minister said on Monday.
• Pedro Sánchez, the Socialist leader, has in turn attacked the anti-austerity Podemos movement for turning down his proposal for a Socialist-led government with the centrist Ciudadanos party.
• Podemos, meanwhile, has lashed out at the Socialists for declining its invitation to form a leftist government.

“A poll by Metroscopia, published in the El País daily over the weekend, gave the PP 29 per cent of the vote, far ahead of its closest rival, the Socialists, with 20.3 per cent.”

Podemos IU Alliance

Let’s complicate the matter further. Podemos just announced an alliance with Izquierda Unida (IU) United Left.

IU received 3.68% of the vote in 2015.

Via translation from El Pais, please consider Podemos Seeks to Unite All Forces Left of PSOE.

Podemos “We Can” has launched new operations in three communities (Catalonia, Galicia and Valencia) to gather support for the upcoming elections. Now, Podemos seeks to expand these agreements not only IU but a whole series of forces to the left of the PSOE with good territorial projection.

In short, Podemos is going after that block of “other” voters in the above chart. If current results hold, Podemos will oust PSOE from the number two spot.

Political Setup

1. No party is going to achieve a majority.
2. PSOE and Podemos unlikely to reach 50%
3. Ciudadanos will not enter a three-way agreement with PSOE and Podemos
4. If PSOE and PPOE can muster up 50% combined, there will be intense pressure by the king to form an unstable “grand coalition”
5. If PSOE and PPOE cannot muster up 50%, another failed election is in store.

Budget Analysis

Spain’s budget is way out of control. No matter who gains control, huge budget cuts are coming up. Won’t that be fun?

I expect an unstable “grand coalition” forms. If so, I doubt it lasts a year. PPOE will not like the budget cuts but will have to keep voting for them for the coalition to “work”.

Podemos is waiting in the wings for the upcoming collapse.

 

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According to a recent survey, the majority of people in Germany view the news media as simply a pillar of the government and the powerfully elite. Only one third of the respondents think that the German news media is truly independent, while the majority view the government and parties as having control over particular policies, and the lobbyists and advertisers having control over the economic news.

More than half of the respondents viewed the news media as controlled by the “powerful” in the country, a view which manifested in recent years in the wake of going through crisis after crisis as the media began to be viewed simply as part of the system, or, the Fourth Estate.

Another major issue brought forth by the respondents is that the media reports only the problems, never presents any solutions, and when it came to consequences of political decisions very little reporting was done on the impacts those decisions had on the people.

It’s apparent that the German people know their history (e.g. Joseph Goebbels), and have a healthy skepticism for the media. It would behoove everyone to have a bit (a lot) of skepticism about what the media tells them each day, as there are undoubtedly agendas that don’t include simply reporting the truth.

Of course, when even the president of the European Union admits to lying, what hope is there for ever discovering the facts?

Of course, telling the truth in a world hell-bent on papering over issues and serving as many agendas as possible is a very difficult and unpopular thing to do. Sadly, there are even media outlets out there who try to take out any of their competition trying to do so.

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Submitted by Giulio Meotti via The Gatestone Institute,

On March 11, 2004, 192 people were killed and 1,400 wounded in a series of terrorist attacks in Madrid. Three days later, Spain's Socialist leader, José Luis Rodríguez Zapatero, was elected prime minister. Just 24 hours after being sworn in, Zapatero ordered Spanish troops to leave Iraq "as soon as possible."

The directive was a monumental political victory for extremist Islam. Since then, Europe's boots on the ground have not been dispatched outside Europe to fight jihadism; instead, they have been deployed inside the European countries to protect monuments and civilians.

"Opération Sentinelle" is the first new large-scale military operation within France. The army is now protecting synagogues, art galleries, schools, newspapers, public offices and underground stations. Of all French soldiers currently engaged in military operations, half of them are deployed inside France. And half of those are assigned to protect 717 Jewish schools. Meanwhile, French paralysis before ISIS is immortalized by the image of police running away from the office of the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo during the massacre there.

French soldiers guard a Jewish school in Strasbourg, February 2015. (Image source: Claude Truong-Ngoc/Wikimedia Commons)

You can find the same figure in Italy: 11,000 Italian soldiers are currently engaged in military operations and more than half of them are used in operation "Safe Streets," which, as its name reveals, keeps Italy's cities safe. Italy's army is also busy providing aid to migrants crossing the Mediterranean.

In 2003, Italy was one of the very few countries, along with Spain and Britain, which stood with the United States in its noble war in Iraq — a war that was successful until the infamous US pull-out on December 18, 2011.

Today, Italy, like Spain, runs away from its responsibility in the war against the Islamic State. Italy's Defense Minister Roberta Pinotti ruled out the idea of Italy taking part in action against ISIS, after EU defense ministers unanimously backed a French request for help.

Italy's soldiers, stationed in front of my newspaper's office in Rome, provide a semblance of security, but the fact that half of Italy's soldiers are engaged in domestic security, and not in offensive military strikes, should give us pause. These numbers shed a light not only on Europe's internal terror frontlines, from the French banlieues to "Londonistan." These numbers also shed light on the great Western retreat.

US President Barack Obama has boasted that as part of his legacy, he has withdrawn American military forces from the Middle East. His shameful departure from Iraq has been the main reason that the Islamic State rose to power — and the reason Obama postponed a military withdrawal from Afghanistan. This US retreat can only be compared to the fall of Saigon, with the picture of a helicopter evacuating the U.S. embassy.

In Europe, armies are no longer even ready for war. The German army is now useless, and Germany spends only 1.2% of GDP on defense. The German army today has the lowest number of staff at any time in its history.

In 2012, Germany's highest court, breaking a 67-year-old taboo against using the military within Germany's borders, allowed the military to be deployed in domestic operations. The post-Hitler nation's fear that the army could develop again into a state-within-a-state that might impede democracy has paralyzed Europe's largest and wealthiest country. Last January, it was revealed that German air force reconnaissance jets cannot even fly at night.

Many European states slumber in the same condition as Belgium, with its failed security apparatus. A senior U.S. intelligence officer even recently likened the Belgian security forces to "children." And Sweden's commander-in-chief, Sverker Göranson, said his country could only fend off an invasion for a maximum of one week.

During the past ten years, the United Kingdom has also increasingly been seen by its allies — both in the US and in Europe — as a power in retreat, focusing only on its domestic agenda. The British have become increasingly insular – a littler England.

The UK's armed forces have been downsized; the army alone is expected to shrink from 102,000 soldiers in 2010 to 82,000 by 2020 – its smallest size since the Napoleonic wars. The former head of the Royal Navy, Admiral Nigel Essenigh, has spoken of "uncomfortable similarities" between the UK's defenses now and those in the early 1930s, during the rise of Nazi Germany.

In Canada, military bases are now being used to host migrants from Middle East. Justin Trudeau, the new Canadian prime minister, first halted military strikes against ISIS, then refused to join the coalition against it. Terrorism has apparently never been a priority for Trudeau — not like "gender equality," global warming, euthanasia and injustices committed against Canada's natives.

The bigger question is: Why does anyone choose to fight in a war? Civilized nations go to war so that members of today's generation may sacrifice themselves to protect future generations. But if there are no future generations, there is no reason whatever for today's young men to die in war. It is "demography, stupid."

Spain's fertility has fallen the most — the lowest in Western Europe over twenty years and the most extreme demographic spiral observed anywhere. Similarly, fewer babies were born in Italy in 2015 than in any year since the state was founded 154 years ago. For the first time in three decades, Italy's population shrank. Germany, likewise, is experiencing a demographic suicide.

This massive deployment of armed forces in our own cities is a departure from history. It is a moral disarmament, before a military one. It is Europe's new Weimar moment, from the name of the first German Republic that was dramatically dismantled by the rise of Nazism. The Weimar Republic still represents a cultural muddle, a masterpiece of unarmed democracy devoted to a mutilated pacifism, a mixture of naïve cultural, political reformism and the first highly developed welfare state.

According to the historian Walter Laqueur, Weimar was the first case of the "life and death of a permissive society." Will Europe's new Weimar also be brought down, this time by Islamists?

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The government pretends that it’s giving the surviving 9/11 masterminds a fair trial, and that justice will prevail.

The truth may be a wee bit different …

Kangaroo Court Show Trials

Buzzfeed reported yesterday:

The Defense Department has farmed out to a private company much of the criminal investigation and trials of the men accused of plotting the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon, according to federal records and sources affiliated with the trials who spoke to BuzzFeed News.

 

What’s more, the government has hired the same firm, SRA International, to serve both the prosecution and defense teams, sparking concerns of a conflict of interest that could undermine the integrity of one of the most significant terrorism cases in modern history.

Sound a little odd?  It’s not the only fishy thing about the 9/11 trials …

In 2008, the former chief prosecutor for Guantanamo’s military commissions disclosed that the trials have been rigged to prevent any possibility of acquittal.

Specifically, the head of the Guantanamo tribunal — who is actually in charge of both prosecuting and defending the suspects — told the former chief prosecutor:

Wait a minute, we can’t have acquittals. If we’ve been holding these guys for so long, how can we explain letting them get off? We can’t have acquittals, we’ve got to have convictions.

In addition, three other Guantanamo prosecutors — Maj. Robert Preston, Capt. John Carr and Capt. Carrie Wolf — “asked to be relieved of duties after saying they were concerned that the process was rigged. One said he had been assured he didn’t need to worry about building a proper case; convictions were assured.”

Another former Guantanamo prosecutor resigned, saying in a sworn declaration that the government pulled all sorts of shenanigans in one case.

The head of the tribunal also said that — even if the defendants are somehow acquitted — they may not be released from Guantanamo.

No wonder the American Bar Association, “which the Pentagon had said would help arrange such representation, has refused to participate because it objects to the trial procedures.”

And no wonder the defense attorneys who have agreed to represent the defendants say that the process is completely unfair. See also this interview.

Both the 9/11 Trials and the 9/11 Commission Investigation Were Based on Unreliable Evidence Produced by Torture

The CIA videotaped the interrogation of 9/11 suspects, falsely told the 9/11 Commission that there were no videotapes or other records of the interrogations, and then illegally destroyed all of the tapes and transcripts of the interrogations.

9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton wrote:

Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

The chief lawyer for Guantanamo litigation – Vijay Padmanabhan – said that torture of 9/11 suspects was widespread. And Susan J. Crawford, the senior Pentagon official overseeing the military commissions at Guantánamo — the novel system of trials for terror suspects that was conceived in the wake of the 9/11 attacks — told Bob Woodward:

We tortured Qahtani. His treatment met the legal definition of torture.

Moreover, the type of torture used by the U.S. on the Guantanamo suspects is of a special type. Senator Levin revealed that the the U.S. used Communist torture techniques specifically aimed at creating false confessions. (and see this, this, this and this).

And according to NBC News:

• Much of the 9/11 Commission Report was based upon the testimony of people who were tortured

• At least four of the people whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators information as a way to stop being “tortured.”

• One of the Commission’s main sources of information was tortured until he agreed to sign a confession that he was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ

• The 9/11 Commission itself doubted the accuracy of the torture confessions, and yet kept their doubts to themselves

In addition, one of the two main "sources" of information for the 9/11 Commission Report – Abu Zubaydah – was touted by the government as one of Al Qaeda's top 3 leaders … an Al Qaeda mastermind, general,  and terror coordinator. But the government was later forced to admit that Zubaydah wasn't even connected with Al Qaeda at all.

Zubaydah was also literally nutty as a fruitcake years before 9/11, and yet the CIA kept on torturing him until he totally lost his mind and became like a brain-dead, trained dog. And the government touted his information gained from torture as if it were vital fact.

The other main "source" for the 9/11 Commission Report – alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed – said that he gave the interrogators a lot of false information – telling them what he thought they wanted to hear – in an attempt to stop the torture. We also know that he was heavily tortured specifically for the purpose of trying to obtain false information about 9/11 – specifically, that Iraq had something to do with it.

9/11 Commissioners Slam Blatant Obstruction of Justice

The 9/11 Commissioners publicly expressed anger at cover ups and obstructions of justice by the government into a real 9/11 investigation:

• The Commission’s co-chairs said that the CIA (and likely the White House) “obstructed our investigation”

• 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that “There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn’t have access . . . .”

• 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said “We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting”

• 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: “It is a national scandal”; “This investigation is now compromised”; and “One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up”

• The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) – who led the 9/11 staff’s inquiry – said “At some level of the government, at some point in time…there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened“. He also said “I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described …. The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years…. This is not spin. This is not true.”

And the Co-Chair of the official Congressional Inquiry Into 9/11 – and former head of the Senate Intelligence Committee – has called for a new 9/11 investigation.

Some examples of obstruction of justice into the 9/11 investigation include:

• An FBI informant hosted and rented a room to two hijackers in 2000. Specifically, investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House. As the New York Times notes:

Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence ….The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.

• The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Official Congressional Inquiry into 9/11 said that Soviet-style government “minders” obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses

• The 9/11 Commissioners concluded that officials from the Pentagon lied to the Commission, and considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements

• The tape of interviews of air traffic controllers on-duty on 9/11 was intentionally destroyed by crushing the cassette by hand, cutting the tape into little pieces, and then dropping the pieces in different trash cans around the building as shown by this NY Times article (summary version is free; full version is pay-per-view) and by this article from the Chicago Sun-Times

• As reported by ACLU, FireDogLake, RawStory and many others, declassified documents shows that Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001

So how much do we really know about the 9/11 defendants?

via http://ift.tt/1Y9VdZs George Washington