Month: October 2016

The way that economic data is presented, we often think of inflation as a singular number representing a general increase in prices.

For example, it might be reported that nominal GDP growth was 3%, and that inflation was 2%. Since the inflation represents a rise in price levels, we subtract it from the nominal rate to get a real GDP growth of 1%.

But in reality, as Visual Capitalist’s Jeff Desjardins explains, price changes do not affect products and services in such a uniform and simple fashion. In the above example, all goods aren’t increasing in price at a 2% rate – that’s just an average. What really happens is that there is a full spectrum of price changes: some goods end up falling in price, while other goods get more expensive.

 

WHAT’S ACTUALLY GETTING MORE EXPENSIVE?

This week’s chart looks at the change in prices of consumer goods since 1996, using data provided by Mark J. Perry of AEI’s Carpe Diem blog.

Here’s his original chart, which is also very telling:

The average price increase, as shown by the CPI (Consumer Price Index), is 55% over the last 20 years. Meanwhile, the prices of individual sub-categories have a much wider variance.

The good news is that the price of technology is generally getting cheaper. Software, TVs, wireless, and new cars have all come down in price relative to the CPI. Clothing, toys, and furniture are also way more affordable than they were 20 years ago.

The bad news? Most of the above items are not the ones that really matter to most of us. The things we actually need to live healthy and fruitful lives – education, food, healthcare, childcare, and housing – are all skyrocketing in cost.

Tuition costs have soared 197%. Textbooks have more than tripled in price, going up 207% since 1996.

Taking care of our loved ones is more expensive. Healthcare and childcare costs have risen almost as much: 105% and 122% respectively.

Meanwhile, basic necessities such as shelter and food have increased at rates higher than the CPI as well. Housing costs are 61% higher and food is 64% more expensive.

Source: Visual Capitalist

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Submitted by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

There is so much in innuendo and guesses and biased opinion floating around on this ‘morning after’ the Comey bombshell that the only option we have is to read and watch a ton of stuff and see what sticks. One thing that definitely should stick was published late last night by Paul Sperry for the New York Post.

He scores a solid and massive point that looks as damning for the FBI itself (or at least the superiors), as it does for Hillary Clinton. It is, in that regard, perhaps telling that one of the alleged reasons whispered for FBI director Jim Comey to come forward on Friday is that he feared details of the probe would otherwise be leaked to the press.

Sperry’s point: the emails that are at the center of Friday’s announcement that Hillary Clinton ‘s entire email server investigation will be re-opened -whether formally or not is moot-, were obtained by seizing devices from Anthony Weiner in relation him sexting to a 15-year old girl.

And seizing devices was exactly what was never done in Hillary’s case, though “agents assigned to that case knew Abedin hoarded classified emails on her electronic devices.” They were seized neither from Hillary nor from her closest aide Huma Abedin, who now probably- and probably rightly- fears that she may be thrown under the bus at the first convenient moment.

Hillary doesn’t appear to know what exactly is on the Weiner/Abedin device, but her staff is undoubtedly preparing a defense based on Hillary denying she knew anything about what emails Huma kept and/or sent. Such a defense may well be useless, depending on the contents of the mails. But by now it’s full blown panic danger control in the campaign.

While at the FBI the mood may now be that a second consecutive investigation that would end in a second consecutive ‘dismissal’ would be unacceptable to -a lot of- agents. Something Comey is undoubtedly painfully aware of. His ‘own people’ may have given him an ultimatum: either you do it right this time, or we will.

A few bits from Paul Sperry’s piece:

On page 3 of their 11-page report, the agents detail how they showed Abedin a classified paper on Pakistan sent from a State Department source which she, in turn, inexplicably forwarded to her personal Yahoo email account — an obviously unclassified, unencrypted, unsecured and unauthorized system. The breach of security was not an isolated event but a common practice with Abedin.

This is one of those things that Hillary will likely try to plead innocence on. Not that that should be good enough: the server, illegal as it may have been, was still her responsibility. That either she herself or Abedin would play fast and loose with the confidentiality and classification of the material involved, on top of using a server whose very existence played fast and loose with the law, is the kind of thing that disqualifies her from public office, let alone the presidency.

Hillary’s ‘defense’ has been ‘I made a mistake’, and that was enough for her, for Comey, and for the entire American media. It’s still hard to believe. And it certainly doesn’t look like it will be enough a second time. Just imagine what some FBI agents must have thought when they found out, and when Comey subsequently decided to hush the case.

“She routinely forwarded emails from her state.gov account to either her clintonemail.com or her yahoo.com account,” the agents wrote. Why? “So she could print them” at home and not at her State Department office. Abedin contended that she “would typically print the documents without reading them” and “was unaware of the classification.” Uh-huh.

 

The FBI also pointed out that “the only person at DoS (Department of State) to receive an email account on the (clintonemail.com) domain was Abedin.” “Multiple State employees” told the FBI that they considered emailing Abedin “the equivalent of e-mailing Clinton.” Another close Clinton aide told the FBI that “Abedin may have kept emails that Clinton did not.”

The phrase “the equivalent of e-mailing Clinton” says a lot about how closely the two worked together. And that in turn says something about the odds that Huma acted alone, without Hillary knowing.

In her April interview with the FBI, Abedin incredulously maintained that she “did not know that Clinton had a private server until about a year and a half ago, when it became public knowledge.” [..] .. another witness told agents that he and another Clinton aide with computer skills built the new server system “at the recommendation of Huma Abedin,” who first broached the idea of an off-the-grid email server as early as the “fall (of) 2008.”

 

So if you believe Abedin, she didn’t know the private clintonemail.com server that hosted her huma@clintonemail.com account even existed until she heard about it in the news. Comey was a believer; he didn’t even bother to call her back for further questioning. Case closed.

Yes, Huma knew the server existed, long before she admitted knowing it. That’s a bold faced lie. But wait, didn’t she get immunity? Apparently perhaps not officially (?!), but FBI agents seriously suspect she did:

During research, FBI assets and federal law enforcement sources concluded the only way Abedin could have walked away from the probe without criminal charges was because her legal team struck a secret immunity deal with Justice. “She has a deal in place or (FBI Director James) Comey and (Attorney General Loretta) Lynch let her just walk out the door,” a FBI source said.

Wait a minute! Anybody seen Loretta Lynch lately? Did she know Comey would make his announcement Friday? She’s his boss…

If Huma knew the server existed when she said she did not know, it’s 99% sure Anthony Weiner knew it, too. Which is important in more than one way. They shared at least one device, which means he had access to classified material. That in itself is highly illegal. And in the -year long- first stage of the probe, FBI agents knew this, or could have suspected it, and asked Huma for details. Apparently, that didn’t happen.

Perhaps even more important, Weiner is a huge and obvious risk as a blackmail target. For all we know, he may have already provided classified files to parties threatening to go public with photos he sent exposing his weiner to underage girls.

Was the clinton email server hacked? So far the word is there’s no proof of that, but… Did Huma delete and/or bleach-bit information on her devices the same way Hillary did? We can’t know, because despite Huma’s obvious untruths, these devices were not seized for the earlier investigation.

Why? We can only guess. But to quote Hillary from last night (albeit on a slightly different topic): “your guess is as good as mine, and that’s not good enough”.

What we do know is that, obviously, there is still enough material left for the FBI to re-open the case. They may have found as many as tens of thousands of mails belonging to Huma (well, actually, to the US government) on Weiner’s laptop.

[..] Abedin’s role in this caper begs for fresh scrutiny. Making false statements to a federal agent is a felony. So is mishandling classified information. By forwarding classified emails to her personal email account and printing them out at home, Abedin appears to have violated a Classified Information NonDisclosure Agreement she signed at the State Department on Jan. 30, 2009, in which she agreed to keep all classified material under the control of the US government.

Classified emails sent to an unprotected server and printed out at home. How dumb exactly is Huma Abedin? And how dumb does all this make Hillary?

Let’s see if Comey puts the screws to Abedin and leverages her for information on her boss. If he agrees to cut another immunity deal, we’ll know the fix is still in.

Will the media propaganda caravan now turn on Hillary to save its face? I would predict perhaps not immediately, since they bet a lot on their horse. But give it a few days and they may conclude it’s high time to cut their losses. And so may a lot of other parties involved.

The thumbscrews put on Huma this morning by the campaign must be hurting. Can she cut another immunity deal or will she end up under the bus?

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Each week the CEO of Avondale Asset Management, Scott Krisiloff, publishes some of his observations from commentary provided by public company executives during earnings calls.  Despite expectations for the usual rosy outlooks, Krisiloff notes that he was surprised to find that “comments from consumer facing businesses were somewhat troubling.”

In particular, among the large consumer-facing businesses, both McDonalds and Brinker (Chili’s) warned of reduced discretionary expenditures by consumers on the back of “broader macroeconomic issues of consumer confidence” and a “slight squeeze” on consumer budgets with gas and healthcare costs rising.  Meanwhile, staffing giant Robert Half noted that seasonal upticks in hiring generally experienced in September and October failed to materialize this year.

Visa (Payments):  “On the negative side, the global economy is not improving. Geopolitical tensions are high. The U.S. election is a wild card, and we continue to watch the impact of Brexit. ”

 

McDonald’s (Fast Food):  “I think there are broader macroeconomic issues of consumer confidence and just uncertainty of wage increases, the slight squeeze on discretionary spend with gas prices aging back up and healthcare costs going back up. So, I think those are sort of things that we see affecting customers and basically the spare cash they have in their pocket”

 

“In Canada…We now have dual point service and self-order kiosks in almost 90% of our traditional restaurants.”

 

Brinker (Casual Dining):  “Just as we said last quarter, these continue to be challenging times across casual dining. We’re already seeing some of the weaker players struggle with their viability in this choppy environment… there are some examples of concepts that are shrinking.”

 

DuPont (Chemicals):  “I mean, it looks like all forecasts say that housing is dropping off…not significant, but it looks like there’s a little bit of a rollover off of kind of that 1.1 million to 1.2 million starts…And then on the auto side of the business, it looks like auto builds are going to be down in the couple percent range going into next year.”

 

Catepillar (Equipment OEM):  “The decline for construction is particularly North America…The problem we find ourselves in, I think, is the larger projects, the infrastructure, the infrastructure spending is maybe not quite as robust as housing would be right now, and that’s a bigger sweet spot for us.”

 

Robert Half (Staffing):  “in September, we didn’t see the lift we typically get, instead, it was sequentially about flat. And then again, traditionally we get even more lift yet again in October and we didn’t see that lift either…clearly [clients] remain cautious with little sense of urgency. It’s in part due to macro uncertainty, in part due to election uncertainty. They cite budget pressures, they cite cost control measures… the general trends that I described also apply to tech…which is where we had seen most of our growth, that’s now where our growth is most under pressure…I’d say Accountemps we saw more softness in the accounting operations positions and those are the ones that are typically more client demand sensitive, more client volume sensitive. So it’s consistent that if you were to see softness in accounting due to macro conditions you’d see it in accounting operations”

 

Simon Property Group (Mall REIT):  “I think what unfortunately what I think a number of retailers, they’ve not invested in their product, okay. Or they’ve chased the holy-grail of internet sales to the determent of what they should be doing with the physical product, as still people want to go physical shopping. And when they go physical shopping, you’ve got to have a nice physical environment.”

 

UPS (Logistics):  “when you look at the ecommerce market, it could be one in five or one out of every six packages that are shipped to a consumer get returned…Those packages are highly profitable. First of all, many of those packages get dropped off and don’t have to be picked up because the consumer finds it more convenient to drop them off at UPS stores or UPS Access Points or hand them to a UPS driver. So there’s very little cost when it comes to pick-up. And then obviously, the deliveries are going back to businesses, and we could be delivering tens or hundreds of packages back to these businesses. So it’s a highly profitable B2B delivery with very little pick-up cost.”

 

On the international front, Apple warned of the risks related to a the strong dollar, Lloyds dampened fears related to Brexit and both GM and United Technologies raised concerns about China.

Apple (Consumer Electronics):  “we’re a company that generates two thirds of our revenues outside the United States…at some point, the strong dollar becomes the new normal and we need to work with that.“

 

Lloyds Banking Group (British Bank):  “In terms of our business trend see the referendum, there has been no significant impact in any of our consumer markets. In the corporate sector, we have seen some impact as businesses have deferred elements of their investment and borrowing both pre-and post-referendum, given the uncertainty. However, the aggregate volume effect has been relatively limited.”

 

General Motors (China tax incentives driving volume) (Autos):  “Obviously, this year the industry is running stronger than we expected, because of some uncertainty around the purchase tax incentive, if that was to end and the government was to announce an end to that, our planning assumption would be that – there could be some volatility in maybe the first quarter and second quarter of next year”

 

United Technologies (Conglomerate):  “new equipment orders on a sales basis in China were actually down 10% in the quarter. A tough market right now”

And, with that, we can once again confirm that the Obama “recovery” is fully intact.

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Authored by Paul Craig Roberts via Strategic-Culture.org,

I am now convinced that the Oligarchy that rules America intends to steal the presidential election. In the past, the oligarchs have not cared which candidate won as the oligarchs owned both. But they do not own Trump.

Most likely you are unaware of what Trump is telling people as the media does not report it. A person who speaks like this…

…is not endeared to the oligarchs.

Who are the oligarchs?

Wall Street and the mega-banks too big to fail and their agent the Federal Reserve, a federal agency that put 5 banks ahead of millions of troubled American homeowners who the federal reserve allowed to be flushed down the toilet. In order to save the mega-banks’ balance sheets from their irresponsible behavior, the Fed has denied retirees any interest income on their savings for eight years, forcing the elderly to draw down their savings, leaving their heirs, who have been displaced from employment by corporate jobs offshoring, penniless.

 

The military/security complex which has spent trillions of our taxpayer dollars on 15 years of gratuitous wars based entirely on lies in order to enrich themselves and their power.

 

The neoconservartives whose crazed ideology of US world hegemony thrusts the American people into military conflict with Russia and China.

 

The US global corporations that sent American jobs to China and India and elsewhere in order to enrich the One Percent with higher profits from lower labor costs.

 

Agribusiness (Monsanto et.al.), corporations that poison the soil, the water, the oceans, and our food with their GMOs, hebicides, pesticides, and chemical fertilizers, while killing the bees that pollinate the crops.

 

The extractive industries—energy, mining, fracking, and timber—that maximize their profits by destroying the environment and the water supply.

 

The Israel Lobby that controls US Middle East policy and is committing genocide against the Palestinians just as the US committed genocide against native Americans. Israel is using the US to eliminate sovereign countries that stand in Israell’s way.

What convinces me that the Oligarchy intends to steal the election is the vast difference between the presstitutes’ reporting and the facts on the ground. 

According to the presstitutes, Hillary is so far ahead that there is no point in Trump supporters bothering to vote. Hillary has won the election before the vote. Hillary has been declared a 93% sure winner.

I am yet to see one Hillary yard sign, but Trump signs are everywhere. Reports I receive are that Hillary’s public appearances are unattended but Trumps are so heavily attended that people have to be turned away. This is a report from a woman in Florida: 

«Trump has pulled huge numbers all over FL while campaigning here this week. I only see Trump signs and sickers in my wide travels. I dined at a Mexican restaurant last night. Two women my age sitting behind me were talking about how they had tried to see Trump when he came to Tallahassee. They left work early, arriving at the venue at 4:00 for a 6:00 rally. The place was already over capacity so they were turned away. It turned out that there were so many people there by 2:00 that the doors had to be opened to them. The women said that the crowds present were a mix of races and ages».

I know the person who gave me this report and have no doubt whatsoever as to its veracity. 

I also receive from readers similiar reports from around the country. 

This is how the theft of the election is supposed to work: The media concentrated in a few corporate hands has gone all out to convince not only Americans but also the world, that Donald Trump is such an unacceptable candidate that he has lost the election before the vote. 

By controllng the explanation, when the election is stolen those who challenge the stolen election are without a foundartion in the media. All media reports will say that it was a run away victory for Hillary over the misogynist immigrant-hating Trump.

And liberal, progressive opinion will be relieved and off guard as Hillary takes us into nuclear war.

That the Oligarchy intends to steal the election from the American people is verified by the officially reported behavior of the voting machines in early voting in Texas. The NRP presstitutes have declared that Hillary is such a favorite that even Repulbican Texas is up for grabs in the election. 

If this is the case, why was it necessary for the voting machines to be programmed to change Trump votes to Hillary votes? Those voters who noted that they voted Trump but were recorded Hillary complained. The election officials, claiming a glitch (which only went one way), changed to paper ballots. But who will count them? No «glitches» caused Hillary votes to go to Trump, only Trump votes to go to Hillary.

The most brilliant movie of our time was The Matrix. This movie captured the life of Americans manipulated by a false reality, only in the real America there is insufficient awareness and no Neo, except possibly Donald Trump, to challenge the system. All of my life I have been trying to get Americans of all stripes—academics, scholars, journalists, Republicans, Democrats, right-wing, left-wing, US Representatives, US Senators, Presidents, corporate moguls and brainwashed Americans and foreigners—out of the false reality in which they exist. 

In the United States today a critical presidential election is in process in which not a single important issue is addressed. This is total failure. Democracy, once the hope of the world, has totally failed in the United States of America.

* * *

And following today's FBI headlines, the manipulation is about to go to '11' to ensure the Oligarch's president-of-choice wins in November.

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In November 2012, the central bank-watching world was rocked when instead of Paul Tucker, a three decade veteran at the Bank of England replacing outgoing governor Mervyn King as many expected, the new head of the central bank was revealed to be former Goldmanite Mark Carney, something we had anticipated previously despite realizing that the optics of Goldman dominating European politics and finance, left quite a bit to be desired.

 

However, four years later, in the aftermath of the Brexit revolution that has swept from power virtually everyone that was part of the political group that onboarded Carney in 2012, Carney may be calling it a day. According to several British newspaper, such as The Times and Mail Online, Mark Carney’s “self-imposed deadline” for declaring whether he will stay in office beyond 2018 is fast approaching, and the central banker may decide to step down as soon as next week.

Cited by Bloomberg, the 51-year old Canadian may announce his decision “within days” at his next scheduled public appearance on Thursday, when the BOE announces its policy decision and the governor holds a press conference in London. The BOE did not have an official statement, and instead referred to a previous statement that Carney would make his decision public by the end of this year.

During his testimony at the House of Lords this week, Carney hinted that he may soon depart the top BOE post: “I don’t want to bind … (pause) … the Bank of England two years’ hence.“

As for next steps, he may return to his native Canada for family reasons, the newspapers reported.  

“Like everyone, I have personal circumstances which I have to manage,” Carney said during the testimony. “This is a role that requires total attention, devotion and I intend to give it for as long as I can.“

The BOE governor has been criticized for his negative outlook on the consequences of Brexit. PM May, former Foreign Secretary William Hague and former Justice Secretary Michael Gove have made comments in recent weeks that undermine the central bank’s independence – at least according to Bloomberg – impacting the local currency and recently pushing sterling to multi-decade lows.

Ironically, even though the BOE held an emergency televised press conference a day after the
Brexit vote, pledging an extra 250 billion pounds of
support for the financial system, since then, various economic
indicators have shown the U.K. economy remains resilient, with UK GDP printing a much better than expected 0.5% for the third quarter. Carney’s
critics have accused him of trying to reverse the referendum’s decision
through gloomy economic predictions.

Here is Tory politician Rees-Mogg suggesting earlier this month that Carney isn’t fit for office: “On every occasion he wants to talk down the economy and find doom and gloom, which doesn’t seem to me to be the job of the governor of the Bank of England. He never seems to want to recognize the result of the referendum and get on with it. It looks like he is a sore loser.“

To be sure, it may be just a case of delayed manifestations. As the following Bloomberg chart reveals, according to official forecasts (which these days are best known for being wrong), the UK is facing a dramatic risk of stagflation in the coming years.

Somewhat ironically, as Bloomberg’s Mark Gilbert writes, “assaults on [Carney’s] independence are contributing to the pound’s persistent weakness and the accompanying rise in U.K. government bond yields. Asked what would happen if central-bank independence was subverted, Carney said “if it were to be called into question, one would expect to see a risk premium for U.K. assets.” And asked subsequently if he’s seeing anxiety in financial markets, he said “markets have taken note of the comments.”

The irony, of course, is that “persistent weakness” in one’s currency is precisely what central bankers have been trying to achieve throughout the current period of extraordinary monetary policy, as such recent events involving Carney may be perceived as an unmitigated success.

Carney’s depsture is not set in stone: As Bloomberg News’ Svenja O’Donnell reported on Wednesday, the prime minister’s office sought to reassure Carney that her criticism of the “bad side effects” of monetary policy in a speech earlier this month was clumsy, and that she wants him to remain.

Although it may be too late. As Gilbert concludes:

When Carney took over at the Bank of England in 2013, Avery Shenfeld, the chief economist of Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce, described him to me as the Ringo Starr of central banking: “He may not be the best drummer in the world, but he’s joining the best band.” Back then, the economy was humming at a sufficient pace for Carney to warn in June 2014 that interest rates might have to rise.

Of course, that whole “rate hike” fear did not last too long, and now that things have gone south may be the perfect time for Carney to move on: just as every aspect of the (un)conventional central banker toolkit has been confirmed to be failure, and a thoroughly new approach to monetary policy is needed.

Who knows, perhaps the BOE – with little to lose – will be the first modern central bank to retain an “Austrian” goverenor… although we won’t be holding our breath.

As for Carney, should he indeed announce his depart this week with the UK in far worse shape than how he found it, we are confident Goldman Sachs will be happy to open one extra executive chairman position just for him on very short notice.

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Following yesterday's FBI headlines, James Freeman's question to Democrats "doesn't Hillary Clinton embarrass you?" seems even more appropriate…

Authored by James Freeman, originally posted at The Wall Street Journal,

Donald Trump wears his character flaws on his sleeve. Hillary Clinton seeks to prevent documentation of hers, even when the law requires it. Yet despite her best efforts, facts about Mrs. Clinton that are now public should trouble voters more than any of Mr. Trump’s remarks.

Not that it’s easy for Republicans to appear on a ballot with Mr. Trump, especially since media folk spend days after each controversial remark demanding responses from other GOP candidates. The objective is to force them to endorse or condemn Mr. Trump and suffer the consequences.

Fair enough, but reporters don’t force down-ballot Democrats to take a position on each new Clinton email revelation. The result is wall-to-wall media coverage focused on whether GOP voters can possibly support their candidate. But why should Republicans have all the fun? Democratic voters have every right to be ashamed of their nominee.

We’ll review some of the reasons in a moment, but first let’s consider the importance of party loyalty in this year’s presidential election. In recent polls, Mr. Trump often leads among independents. But he generally trails overall because Mrs. Clinton enjoys stronger support among Democrats than Mr. Trump does among Republicans—or because pollsters don’t believe Republicans will turn out and therefore include many more Democrats than Republicans in their survey samples.

Clearly Mr. Trump needs more Republicans to support him. This could happen if holdout Republicans break his way or if some Democrats decide they can’t stomach another era of Clinton scandals.

History says it will probably have to be the former. Bill Clinton rallied his party and survived an impeachment vote in the 1990s not by disproving the charges against him, but by dedicating himself to partisan goals. Once he agreed to abandon entitlement reform, Democratic support in the Senate was rock solid.

Similarly, at the final debate last week Mrs. Clinton made no effort to embrace centrist policies. She called for higher taxes, expanded entitlements and an activist Supreme Court to impose strict limits on liberties enumerated in the Bill of Rights. Mrs. Clinton is speaking exclusively to the left wing of her party. Mr. Trump, for his part, deviates from many Republicans on trade and immigration but has otherwise embraced a growth agenda of lower taxes and regulatory relief for an economy that sorely needs it.

Beyond policy considerations, voters across the political spectrum should consider what it would mean to ratify Mrs. Clinton’s institutionalization of political corruption. We now know from emails published by WikiLeaks that before Mrs. Clinton formally launched her campaign, she arranged for the king of Morocco to donate $12 million to Clinton Foundation programs.

What’s significant about the Morocco case is that for years the Clintons peddled the fiction that donors write checks simply to support wondrous acts of Clintonian charity. But that cover story isn’t available here. Mrs. Clinton’s trusted aide Huma Abedin put it in writing: The Moroccans agreed to the deal on the condition that Mrs. Clinton would participate at a conference in their country.

Panicked Clinton-campaign aides persuaded Mrs. Clinton to avoid such a trip before launching her candidacy—and the foundation got the king to settle for Bill and Chelsea Clinton. But the record is clear. The king wanted the access, influence and prestige that all strongmen crave from legitimate democracies.

This wasn’t the first time the Clintons satisfied such a desire while collecting megadonations. When it comes to human rights, Kazakhstan’s dictator, Nursultan Nazarbayev, makes Morocco’s king look enlightened. In power since 1991 and never freely elected, Mr. Nazarbayev must have enjoyed the sensation of Mr. Clinton endorsing him to lead an international election-monitoring group in 2005.

The Kazakh strongman knows how to return a favor, and he granted valuable mining concessions to Clinton Foundation donors. The donors then built a global uranium powerhouse that was eventually sold to the Russians in a deal that required the 2010 approval of a U.S. government committee that included Mrs. Clinton’s State Department. To put the cherry on this sundae, the Clintons violated their promise to the Obama administration by failing to publicly identify all the foundation donors.

A cache of emails, recently made public via a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit filed by the Republican National Committee, exposes another fiction at the heart of the Clinton Foundation. Clinton aides have long asserted that nobody received preferential treatment from Secretary Clinton’s State Department as a result of foundation donations. Yet emails show the State Department giving special access to “FOBs” (Friends of Bill Clinton) or “WJC VIPs” (William Jefferson Clinton VIPs) identified by foundation staff.

WikiLeaks has revealed a draft 2011 report on Clinton Foundation governance from the Simpson Thacher & Bartlett law firm. The document notes that the foundation had a conflict-of-interest policy for directors, officers and key employees and a separate conflict-of-interest policy for other employees. “It appears that neither policy has been implemented,” reported the lawyers.

Of course not. Conflict of interest is the Clinton business model. And political influence is the product. That’s how Hillary and Bill managed to gross more than a Rolling Stones tour by delivering speeches. Looking at how successful Mrs. Clinton and her husband were in monetizing her position as secretary of state, why would any voter, of any party, want to see how much revenue she can squeeze from the Oval Office?

Voters who wish to reject the Clintonization of America’s governing institutions have a choice on Nov. 8. They can feel good about themselves by writing in the name of a third-party candidate. Or they can do right by the country by selecting the only person who can stop the Clintons: a very flawed candidate named Donald Trump.

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Just as we warned 5 months ago, the decision to bulldoze the migrant camp in Calais known as "The Jungle" has had consequences for the rest of France. Specifically, the so-called 'scenes from the apocalypse' have got worse as Thomson Reuters reports, French authorities are seeing a "big" increase in the number of migrants sleeping rough in Paris.

As we pointed out just a few weeks ago, the Paris you know or remember from adverts or brochures no longer exists. While no part of Paris looks like the romantic Cliches in Hollywood movies, some districts now resemble post-apocalyptic scenes of a dystopian thriller. This footage, taken with a hidden camera by an anonymous Frenchman in the Avenue de Flandres, 19th Arrondissement, near the Stalingrad Metro Station in Paris as well as areas in close proximity, shows the devastating effects of uncontrolled illegal mass immigration of young African males into Europe.

But, since the demolition of the Calais "Jungle" camp in the last few days, the number of migrants sleeping rough on the streets of Paris has risen by at least a third since the start of the week when the "Jungle" shanty town in Calais was evacuated, officials said on Friday. As Reuters reports,

Along the bustling boulevards and a canal in a northeastern corner of Paris, hundreds of tents have been pitched by migrants – mostly Africans who say they are from Sudan – with cardboard on the ground to try and insulate them from the autumn chill.

 

While the presence of migrants there is not new, it has grown substantially this week, Colombe Brossel, Paris deputy mayor in charge of security issues, told Reuters.

 

"We have seen a big increase since the start of the week. Last night, our teams counted 40 to 50 new tents there in two days," Brossel said, adding there was now a total of 700 to 750.

 

This means there are some 2,000-2,500 sleeping in the area, up from around 1,500 a few days before, she said.

Of course, officials remain in denial – presumably believing this surge is just coincidence…

France's asylum chief Pascal Brice said the arrivals in Paris did not mean there had been a wholesale movement from the Jungle to the capital.

 

"There might be some movements at the margins (towards Paris) but what is crucial is that those 6,000 people have been protected," he told Reuters.

 

 

Between the Stalingrad and Jaures metro stations in Paris, migrants who spent the night camped out on the median strip of a major road, with traffic passing on either side, had scattered on Friday morning, many carrying their tents while police patrolled the centre of the boulevard.

 

Migrants and officials said police checked ID papers and asylum requests and later let the migrants return to the central strip of the avenue where they put their tents back up.

 

"There's a lot of new people here," said Mustafa, 21, from Darfur, as he waited on the side of the road.

 

Ali, also from Sudan, said: "I see more people than before. People came yesterday and before yesterday from Calais."

Finally, as we noted previously, Paris Mayor Hidalgo, who has threatened to file a lawsuit against the American media outlet Fox News for reporting about Muslim no-go zones in Paris, seems to have no qualms about turning parts of northern Paris into ghettos for illegal migrants.

"Paris will not avoid taking responsibility while the Mediterranean becomes a graveyard for refugees," she said. "I do not want to look at myself in the mirror in 10 or 15 years and say: 'You were mayor of Paris and you are guilty of not helping people in danger.'"

Hidalgo added that "Europe and France are not living up to their history when they fail to treat outsiders with dignity."

Hidalgo's project has been welcomed by some, including pro-migration charity groups, and has infuriated others, such as French Housing Minister Emmanuelle Cosse. She said there already are enough refugee shelters in Paris and that Hidalgo's announcement would only serve to draw more illegal migrants to the city.

In an interview with Europe 1 radio, Cosse said that "migrant camps are not the solution" because they amount to the establishment of migrant ghettos where integration becomes impossible. Cosse said that more than 1,000 additional illegal migrants had arrived at the Jardins d'Eole in the week since Hidalgo's press conference, bringing the total number of migrants there to 2,300.

A political analysis by the center-right Le Figaro postulates that Hidalgo's plan for a migrant camp is just the latest in a series of provocations in which she is attempting to establish her left-wing credentials as part of a strategy to win leadership of the Socialist Party. The report says she believes President Hollande will lose his bid for reelection in 2017, and that his defeat will pave the way for a leadership battle between Hidalgo and French Prime Minister Manuel Valls. According to Le Figaro, Hidalgo is determined to become the Socialist Party candidate for President of France in 2022.

A report by the French public radio channel France Inter describes the rivalry between Hidalgo and Valls as "war unto death."

Hidalgo's quest to become the first female president of France may be derailed by the head of the anti-immigration National Front party, Marine Le Pen, who is now one of the most popular politicians in France.

According to an opinion poll published by Le Monde on June 1, 28% of those surveyed said they would vote for Le Pen in 2017, compared to 21% for former president Nicolas Sarkozy and 14% for Hollande. The poll also shows that on a scale of 1 to 10, Hollande's approval rating is at 2.1.

The National Front party has accused Hidalgo of putting the concerns of migrants ahead of those of French citizens. In a statement, the party said that the number of homeless people in Paris had increased by 84% between 2002 and 2012, but that Hidalgo has shown little interest in alleviating the problem:

"It is absolutely scandalous that Paris Mayor Anne Hidalgo uses taxpayer money to house illegal migrants. Migrants should not be housed in hotels or in modular homes within migrant camps. They should be in detention camps waiting to be taken back to their country of origin.

 

"Anne Hidalgo's project is characteristic of a political class that is more concerned with migrants than citizens, a political class that has forgotten that the main role of leaders is to care above all for their own people first."

Meanwhile, efforts by French police to tear down makeshift migrant camps have become like a game of whack-a-mole. More than 20 camps have been dismantled in Paris over the past 12 months, but each time they are rebuilt within weeks.

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Via Dana Lyons' Tumblr,

For just the 2nd time in 10 years, both stocks AND bonds are hitting 3-month lows.

This week, stocks began to exhibit some of the weakness of which our models suggested they were at risk. It hasn’t been manifested in the large-cap averages as much yet as they continue to hold within their recent months-long range. However, as we covered this week, small-caps and mid-caps have each exhibited potentially significant breakdowns. And another broad index that we can add to that list is the NYSE Composite. In early October, it broke its post-February Up trendline, softening up its rally support. And today, we see the index breaking below its September-October lows to set a 3 and a half-month low.

If we switch asset classes, we see an odd thing about this new low in stocks. Jumping to the bond market, we see that yields, specifically the 10-year Treasury yield, are hitting 5-month highs. Now, as bond prices move opposite yields, it strikes us as odd that bonds would also be hitting multi-month lows along with stocks. In recent years, bonds have been a reliable haven in the midst of stock weakness. To see both assets at new lows is certainly a change of character for the market.

 

So this development is different. But is it bad different? Well, certainly if one has a balanced portfolio of stocks and bonds, it is bad different at the moment. But is it a bad different signal going forward? And for which asset class?

Intuitively, it would strike us as a red flag for the bond market since stock market weakness in recent years has been a reliable buoy for bonds. Thus, this change of character would seem to reflect the bond market more so than stocks. And the fact that bonds have dropped in the face of stock market struggles would seem to bode poorly for the bond market.

But if you know us at all, you know that “intuitively” is not a sufficient investment strategy to us. We prefer a quantitative, measurable approach. Thus, let’s take a historical look at other times that saw stocks and bonds hitting 3-month lows at the same time. As it turns out, since 1965, there have been just 34 such prior unique occurrences, encompassing 118 days. This is just the 2nd occurrence in 11 years (June 24, 2013).

 

As yields were on an inexorable rise until 1981, it should be no surprise that 19 of the 34 unique occurrences, and 78 of the 118 days, occurred prior to 1982. The phenomenon has been much less frequent during the post-1981 secular bull market in bonds, particularly recently. Just 4 other occurrences, and 7 total days, occurred within the past 20 years. So this is indeed a rare development.

But what about the implications, if any? Looking at the prior occurrences, we do see a slight tendency for below-average performance in stocks and bonds in the short-term following such occurrences.

Median returns in the NYSE were negative over almost every period from 1 day through 3 months. The first few days were especially weak with stocks advancing just one third of the time. Bond yields tended to continue their rise up through a month later. After that, they tended to give back their gains.

Returning to stocks, looking more closely, much of the weak tendency following these events can be traced to the earlier portion of the look-back period. For example, in the short-term, 18 of the 22 occurrences prior to 1984 saw negative 2-day returns. Bonds also saw losses 2 days later 17 out of 18 times prior to 1981. Looking further out, 13 of the 15 events prior to 1978 saw negative 3-month returns in the NYSE. That’s not a shock considering the mid-60′s to mid-70′s saw a handful of brutal bear markets in stocks (and bonds, for that matter).

More recently, returns have not been as consistently negative. In fact, the last 4 occurrences (in August 1999, May 2004, October 2005 and June 2013) all generally saw gains from 1 week to 1 year later. This recent trend certainly deserves to be weighed a bit more heavily than events occurring 50 years ago (though the market cycle may turn out to be not too dissimilar than that of the mid-60′s-early 70′s)

On balance, it is difficult to use this prior evidence to construct a reasonable bullish or bearish argument for either stocks or bonds following their coincident 3-month lows. The preponderance of events saw weakness afterward, but the most recent events did not. Thus, we have a hard time leaning either way based on this signal. But, as hard as we might try, we can’t seem to shake our intuitive feeling that this is more of a negative signal for bonds than anything else.

At a minimum, let’s just say that if this trend continues, all stock and bond investors are going to be pretty disappointed.

*  *  *

More from Dana Lyons, JLFMI and My401kPro.

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Just yesterday we wrote about the very curious ABC / Wapo poll which seemed to show Hillary’s blow-out 12-point lead from last Sunday get cut in half in a matter of just two days.  But the ABC/Wapo enigma continues to grow today as their latest poll shows the presidential race has now tightened to just 2 points, which is within the margin of error.  Ironically, these new results do not reflect the latest FBI bombshell as polling was concluded on October 27th and it still includes an 8-point sampling advantage for democrats.

METHODOLOGY – This ABC News/Washington Post poll was conducted by landline and cellular telephone Oct. 24-27, 2016, in English and Spanish, among a random national sample of 1,148 likely voters. Results have a margin of sampling error of 3 points, including the design effect. Partisan divisions are 37-29-29 percent, Democrats-Republicans-independents.

So what happened?  For months we have argued that these goal-seeking reports (aka “Polls”) can be easily manufactured to show whatever results are desired by simply “tweaking” the sample pool.  WikiLeaks even exposed a handy guide 37-page poll-rigging guide on how to “include ethnic ‘oversamples’ as required” to manufacture the desired poll numbers.  But, with today’s latest ABC / Washington Post poll, the real “smoking gun” admission is revealed as the pollsters admit that the narrowing of their polling results are “not mainly about people shifting in their candidate preference” but about how their sample pool was constructed.

“Changes in the poll’s latest four nights compared with the previous four are not mainly about people shifting in their candidate preference, but about changes in who’s intending to vote.”

So that’s how you manufacture inane results like this:

 

Now, while ABC / Wapo claim that the 10-point swing (in less than a week) was driven by changes in “who’s intending to vote,” we find it quite curious that their own data shows just a 2-point swing in people who said they were “certain to vote” on 10/23, when the poll reflected a 12-point Hillary lead, and 10/27 when the lead had collapsed to just 2 points.  So, are we really expected to believe that a 2-point swing in voter intentions somehow translated to a 10-point swing in the poll results?  Not likely…something tells us it had a little more to do with including “ethnic ‘oversamples’ as required.”

 

So, now that ABC / Wapo have effectively declared their own poll utterly useless, the question is what were their motivations for skewing their polling data?  We have a couple of ideas:

–  Trump is simply experiencing a huge surge in momentum…seems odd to have this kind of surge on minimal news (remember the poll was taken prior to the recent FBI disclosures).

 

–  ABC / Wapo pollsters got a slap on the wrist from the Hillary campaign for getting a bit overzealous on their manufactured 12-point “lead” which could have resulted in lower voter turnout for Hillary.

 

–  ABC / Wapo reviewed early voting stats and realized their polls were in now way reflective of reality and decided they’d rather not lose ALL credibility (though may be too late for that).

Anyway, those are a couple of our ideas…what say you?

Below the full polling results from ABC / Washington Post

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