Month: October 2016

Clinton Struggles To Contain WikiLeaks Damage As Voters Grow Weary Of The Constant Scandals

As we draw closer to election day, polling data, rigged or not, certainly seems to indicate that the presidential race is tightening.  In fact, just last weekend ABC released a poll that drew huge media attention on the Sunday talk show circuit as it showed Hillary opening up a 12-point national lead.  Now, just a few days later, that exact same poll shows only a 5-point lead.  That data seemingly proves one of two things, either the polls are indeed "rigged" to show a desired outcome or the daily drip of WikiLeaks emails is finally starting to take a toll on the Clinton campaign.

But the ABC poll isn't the only one tightening with most of the recent polls from the Real Clear Politics average showing only a modest lead for Hillary.

Polls

 

A similar tightening of the polls is occurring in Florida…

Polls

 

And even in Michigan, which has been a long-time democrat stronghold.

Polls

 

As The Hill points out, the damage from the daily barrage of WikiLeaks dumps may be finally starting to take their toll on voters.

Hillary Clinton has failed to effectively contain the damage from the release of thousands of campaign chairman John Podesta’s personal emails, giving new ammunition to Republican presidential nominee Donald Trump.

 

The fallout from the daily releases have raised concerns among Democrats that even if Clinton is elected president, the controversy will follow her into the White House.

 

Anyone with an Internet connection can dig into the thousands of pages of emails, which have revealed infighting among Clinton’s top advisers, as well as new details about the millions of dollars flowing into the Clinton’s charitable foundation and personal bank accounts.

Meanwhile, the mainstream press, after seemingly concluding that this race is a done deal, has finally decided they can no longer ignore the Clinton scandals. 

CNN’s Jake Tapper called the Wikileaks revelation around Brazile “horrifying.”

 

“Let me go to bottom line: There is no way under any circumstance the Clinton Foundation should not be operating if she becomes president," Chuck Todd, moderator of NBC's Meet the Press, told WGN Radio in Chicago on Thursday. “I just don't see how they can keep that going.

 

“She's got an opportunity, again, if she doesn't do half measures here, if they shut it down to at least limit the political damage,” he said.

Even Chris Matthews, who famously got the "thrill up his leg" listening to Obama speak back in 2008, admits that the "thrill is gone" with Hillary who will bring in "train loads of contributors" and "charge them by the hour" to sit in the Lincoln bedroom.   

"People don’t change because we swear them into the White House. They become that person big-time. And the Clintons were raising money like this hand over hand, hand over fist, back in 1996, using—we called it Motel 6. They were hoarding them in, pulling them in by train loads of contributors and then letting them sit in the Lincoln bedroom for a while and charging them by the hour. You can still vote for Hillary Clinton, but remember, you’re getting this as part of the package, because that’s been their pattern.”

 

And, the Trump campaign will continue to hammer on the daily WikiLeaks dumps through election day.

“The more e-mails Wikileaks releases, the more the lines between the Clinton Foundation, the Secretary of State’s office, and the Clintons’ personal finances are blurred,” Trump said at a campaign stop in Ohio on Thursday.

 

“If the Clintons were willing to play this fast and loose with their criminal enterprise when they weren’t in the White House, just imagine what they will do if they are given the chance to use the Oval Office to pad their pockets.”

Of course, with 11 days left until the election there is still plenty of time for new scandals…somehow we suspect the surprises aren't over.

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When Will Liberals Answer for Obamacare’s Failures?: New at Reason

Will Democrats take responsibility for Obamacare? Don’t hold your breathe.

David Harsanyi writes:

These days, there’s been a lot of discussion about conservative media’s culpability in creating unrealistic expectations and warped priorities among Republican voters. It’s a reasonable critique. My question: When are we going to have this conversation about the other side—you know, the one that enabled the passage of a massive partisan health care reform law that’s failed to deliver on almost all its promises?

No doubt, you’ll remember all those romantic charts and stories from the liberal smart set predicting Obamacare’s affordability and success. Remember the jeering aimed at conservatives who argued that state-run markets inhibiting genuine competition and increasing regulations would only spur costs to rise? “Lies,” liberals said.

In 2014, the Washington Post‘s E.J. Dionne asked a valuable question: “Is there any accountability in American politics for being completely wrong?” The answer: Of course not. Not for conservative talkers—and definitely not for liberal pundits who keep modifying the meaning of success.

View this article.

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Zimbabwe goes down the path of hyperinflation… again.

Some people just don’t learn.

After becoming the most famous case of hyperinflation in modern history roughly ten years ago, Zimbabwe is about to have another go at conjuring paper money out of thin air.

I’m sure this time will be different.

You know the story. Starting in the late 1990s, the Zimbabwe government’s policies under Robert Mugabe began to have some devastating effects.

He confiscated private property from established (mostly white) farmers and redistributed the land in very tiny tracts to his supporters, most of whom had no experience in farming.

Unsurprisingly, Zimbabwe’s once-booming agriculture exports collapsed almost overnight.

This destructive, authoritative control pervaded across nearly all industries, and by the early 2000s, the economy was in dire straits.

Unemployment and inflation skyrocketed.

In 2001 alone, retail prices doubled. But that was just the beginning.

Inflation rose so quickly that the government was having to constantly print new denominations of currency– thousand Zimbabwe dollar notes, then ten thousand Zim dollar notes… then million dollar notes… even trillion dollar notes.

By 2007, the hyperinflation was so bad that prices were doubling roughly every day.

My friends here in Zimbabwe tell me stories of going out for drinks at a bar; they’d drink a few beers for an hour or so, after which the bartender would inform them that the price of a beer had just increased by 50%.

People learned very quickly to spend money as soon as possible, and long lines formed at grocery stores as an entire nation desperately tried to turn their paper currency into something useful.

Even a simple loaf of bread became a store of value.

One friend told me how we would buy a loaf of bread in the morning with his spare change, and then sell it in the afternoon so that he would have enough money to pay the bus fare back home.

Some economists estimate that Zimbabwe’s hyperinflation peaked at more than 500 BILLION percent– an incomprehensible figure unless you’ve lived through it.

In 2009 it all ended. The government stopping printing money, and Zimbabwe became a ‘hard currency’ economy.

US dollars, euros, pounds, South African rand, and even Chinese renminbi have been circulating here ever since; merchants and consumers basically use whatever currency they can to engage in transactions.

Essentially there is no Zimbabwe dollar anymore.

But that hasn’t solved any of the country’s problems.

In the late 1990s, Zimbabwe’s GDP was roughly $30 billion. Today it’s just $13.5 billion, than $1,000 per capita.

Independent agencies estimate the unemployment rate here at over 80%, and the average worker makes just a few dollars per day.

It’s not hard to understand why. Taxes, fees, and absolutely insane regulations abound in Zimbabwe.

And even at age 92, Robert Mugabe still maintains dictatorial power and a tight (albeit arthritic) grip over the economy.

To give you an example, the mere possession of a radio in your car (if you’re lucky enough to be able to afford a vehicle) requires an annual fee of $50.

The same applies if you have a television set in your home.

Many imports have been banned outright (leading to major shortages given that domestic production is practically nonexistent).

And whatever few goods are allowed to be imported typically come with a tax bill of 100%.

A friend of mine is in the farming business here in Zimbabwe; every time he tries to invest and improve production, he’s punished with a string of exorbitant taxes on capital and equipment.

And it’s not just the taxes and fees… it’s the mountains of paperwork and bureaucracy that are required across dozens of offices and agencies.

This is literally the exact opposite of what any government should do, especially one that’s experiencing such a prolonged depression.

But apparently these politicians have memories like goldfish. Because their grand solution now is to go back to the roaring 2000s and start printing money again.

They’re calling them “bond notes”, and as you can imagine, the government has already promised that they’ll exercise restraint and print these new bond notes in very limited quantities.

Of course, that’s the same thing they said 15 years ago.

And it’s the same thing that every government and central bank says when they embark on an initiative to print money.

This is such typical thinking, and sadly not limited to Zimbabwe

People in power across the world, including in North America and Europe, rely on this incredibly limited playbook.

They think they can engineer prosperity by going into debt and conjuring money out of thin air.

They think they can legislate and regulate their way to a quality healthcare or education system.

And when the majority of their initiatives fail, or even have the exact opposite effect as intended, they don’t learn from their mistakes.

They simply print more money, pass more laws, and go deeper into debt.

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Trade-off

[Editor’s note: This letter was written by Tim Price, frequent Sovereign Man contributor and manager of the Price Value International.]

After the fall of France in 1940, Great Britain, under Churchill, fought on against the Nazis, virtually alone. Although she would ultimately be joined by the overwhelming military and economic might of the United States, for a period she fought more or less friendless, with her back to the wall. In the process of prosecuting the war, quite apart from the human toll upon her military and citizenry, Great Britain bankrupted herself. Her polity and economy would be irrevocably changed in the pursuit of final victory.

What was her reward? Early attempts at joining the European Economic Community were rebuffed. In November 1962, General de Gaulle hosted the British Prime Minister Harold Macmillan at Rambouillet, south of Paris. The French leader was unyielding, and the French ‘Non’ to British entry to the EEC came as a bitter blow. Andrew Marr in his ‘History of Modern Britain’ writes that

“At one point, Macmillan broke down in tears of frustration at the Frenchman’s intransigence, leading de Gaulle to report cruelly to his cabinet later: ‘This poor man, to whom I had nothing to give, seemed so sad, so beaten that I wanted to put my hand on his shoulder and say to him, as in the Edith Piaf song, “Ne pleurez pas, milord.”

Marr tells another interesting story about the birth of the EU, some seven years before the Rambouillet humiliation. Representatives of ‘the Six’ founding EU nations – France, West Germany, Italy, Luxembourg, Belgium and the Netherlands – met at a small coastal town in Sicily called Messina. Britain declined to send a minister but instead dispatched a middle-ranking civil servant, Russell Bretherton. At the end of the negotiations, so the story goes, Bretherton stood up and told the assembled politicians:

“Gentlemen, you are trying to negotiate something you will never be able to negotiate.But if negotiated, it will not be ratified. And if ratified, it will not work.”

Inaudible though it may be to the tin ear of Remoaners, the EU does not appear to be working today. Its immigration policy is a murderous disgrace; its banking system is teetering on insolvency; its economy is stagnating, with terrible consequences for the young and unemployed at its periphery; full steam ahead, cry its leaders, as impervious
to legitimate criticism as the RMS Titanic was to icebergs.

Now we see the full dynamism of this trading behemoth at work, as the Walloons – an ancient race of space monkeys that featured in several early episodes of ‘Doctor Who’– have done their best to scupper a trade deal between Canada and the 28 separate member states of the European “Union”. If this is an integrated economic bloc, we’d hate to see a dysfunctional bureaucracy of squabbling tiny-minded cretins.

Better off out would seem to be the order of the day. And still EU “leaders” like Donald Tusk nurse fond hopes that Britain might yet reverse its decision to leave, and elect to stay in the burning building instead.

Some hope. Brexit has conclusively delivered a hammer-blow to European competitiveness by facilitating a 16% devaluation of sterling – a currency depreciation that virtually every government on the planet has been trying to pull off but which the European “Union” is structurally incapable of delivering.

One country that has managed to conclude a trade deal with the European “Union” is Vietnam – a country of 94 million people, many of them young, and most well educated.

In a 2012 OECD assessment of maths, reading and science skills among 15 year-olds, Vietnam scored more highly than France, the UK, and the US. Vietnam is rapidly industrialising and becoming the destination for FDI across Asia. It is also highly competitive – its average monthly wages are one third those in China.

Yet its stock market is cheap.

The charts below show the p/e ratios for the stock markets of Vietnam, the United States, the UK and China.

Valuation opportunities: p/e ratio distributions for Vietnam, US, UK and China

valualtion-opportunities-vietnam-usa-uk-china

Fully half of the Vietnamese stock market trades on a p/e ratio of less than 10.If only there were some way of accessing this value. Happily, there soon will be. SSI Asset Management already manages the Vietnam Value and Income Portfolio, a specialised investment fund that is the single largest holding in our global value fund and that has delivered 33.8% returns in GBP since its inception in December 2015.

SSI will shortly be launching the Vietnam Value Income and Growth Fund in a UCITS format. The anticipated p/e of the fund is 10x, return on equity 20%, and expected dividend yield 5.1%.

Or you could invest in the euro zone: a failing economic and political bloc that is arguably already in a Depression.

Pay money. Take choice.

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Podesta Part 21: Wikileaks Releases Another 1,400 Emails; Total Is Now 35,594

With just days to go until the November 8 presidential election, the final countdown is now on, and Wikileaks continues its ongoing Podesta dump by unveiling another 1400+ emails in the latest Part 21 of its Podesta release, bringing the total emails released so far to exactly 35,594, leaving just 30% of the total dump left to go.

 

As reported last night, speaking via telephone to a conference in Argentina on Wednesday, Julian Assange claimed the ongoing releases had “whipped up a crazed hornet’s nest atmosphere in the Hillary Clinton campaign.” Assange also claimed that the campaign had attempted to hack the WikiLeaks servers.

Among the recent batch of released documents was the so-called “Rosetta Stone” of the Clinton Foundation: a confidential memo which laid out how Clinton’s consultancy Teneo was engaging in quid pro quo with corporate “donors“, a leak which has even made the front page of the WSJ. As usual we will go parse through the disclosure and bring you some of the more notable ones.

* * *

In a January 2015 email, Neera Tanden tells John Podesta “I’m not the diversity police but there is grumbling on the 4 white boys running next presidential cycle. So I recommend rolling out some people who look like the rest of America soon!” Podesta responds “Really, don’t you think I know that” to which Tanden counters: “Yeah I know you know it. But in case people feel intimidated in making direct comments to Hillaryland, I thought I’d let you know of grumbling I’m hearing directly. But maybe that was my mistake.”   

* * *

In another email from March 2015, Neera Tanden again emails Podesta with the following information:  “Israel is depressing. It’s a good lesson that the wing nuts are just ruthless in every country.” To which Podesta responds simply: “bad”

* * *

Developing.

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Facebook Faces High Profile Lawsuit Over Facial Recognition Technology “DeepFace”

Submitted by Mike Krieger via Liberty Blitzkrieg blog,

As the technology becomes increasingly ubiquitous and far more accurate, facial recognition and the lack of any laws or regulations around the practice is slowly starting to enter mainstream consciousness. It’s a very important issue that isn’t getting the attention it deserves.

For example, as I highlighted in the recent post, Half of American Adults Exist in a Government Accessible Facial Recognition Network:

Half of all American adults are already in some sort of facial recognition network accessible to law enforcement, according to a comprehensive new study.

 

Conducted over a year and relying in part on Freedom of Information and public record requests to 106 law enforcement agencies, the study, conducted by Georgetown Law’s Center on Privacy and Technology, found American police use of facial recognition technology is a scattered, hodgepodge network of laws and regulations.

 

“Looking at the sum total of what we found, there have been no laws that comprehensively regulate face recognition technology, and there’s really no case law either,” Clare Garvie, an associate at the CPT, told Vocativ. “So we find ourselves having to rely on the agencies that are using that technology to rein it in. But what we found is that not every system — by a long shot — has a use policy.” 

With that in mind, Bloomberg published an interesting article yesterday covering a couple of lawsuits against Facebook and Google regarding their facial recognition practices.

Here’s some of what we learned:

 

While millions of internet users embrace the tagging of family and friends in photos, others worried there’s something devious afoot are trying block Facebook as well as Google from amassing such data.

 

As advances in facial recognition technology give companies the potential to profit from biometric data, privacy advocates see a pattern in how the world’s largest social network and search engine have sold users’ viewing histories for advertising. The companies insist that gathering data on what you look like isn’t against the law, even without your permission.

 

If judges agree with Facebook and Google, they may be able to kill off lawsuits filed under a unique Illinois law that carries fines of $1,000 to $5,000 each time a person’s image is used without permission — big enough for a liability headache if claims on behalf of millions of consumers proceed as class actions. A loss by the companies could lead to new restrictions on using biometrics in the U.S., similar to those in Europe and Canada.

 

Facebook declined to comment on its court fight. Google declined to comment on pending litigation.

 

Facebook encourages users to “tag” people in photographs they upload in their personal posts and the social network stores the collected information. The company uses a program it calls DeepFace to match other photos of a person. Alphabet Inc.’s cloud-based Google Photos service uses similar technology.

 

The billions of images Facebook is thought to be collecting could be even more valuable to identity thieves than the names, addresses, and credit card numbers now targeted by hackers, according to privacy advocates and legal experts.

 

And just how good is Facebook’s technology? According to the company’s research, DeepFace recognizes faces with an accuracy rate of 97.35 percent compared with 97.5 percent for humans — including mothers.

 

Rotenberg said the privacy concerns are twofold: Facebook might sell the information to retailers or be forced to turn it over to law enforcement — in both cases without users knowing it.

Now here’s some history on Facebook and facial recognition.

Facebook v. Privacy Law

December 2005 — Facebook introduces photo tagging

 

October 2008 — Illinois adopts Biometric Information Privacy Act

 

June 2012 — Facebook acquires Israeli facial recognition developer Face.com

 

September 2012 — Facebook ceases facial recognition in Europe

 

2015-2016 — Facebook, Google, Shutterfly and Snapchat sued under Illinois biometrics law. Shutterfly settles confidentially.

 

May 2016 — Illinois lawmaker proposes excluding photos from biometrics law, then shelves bill after privacy advocates complain

 

October 2016 — Facebook makes second attempt to get biometrics lawsuit thrown out

 

The Facebook case is In re Facebook Biometric Information Privacy Litigation, 15-cv-03747, U.S. District Court, Northern District of California (San Francisco). The Google cases are Rivera v. Google, 16-cv-02714, and Weiss v. Google, 16-cv-02870, U.S. District Court, Northern District of Illinois (Chicago).

For prior articles on the topic, see:

Half of American Adults Exist in a Government Accessible Facial Recognition Network

The FBI Unveils its Controversial Facial Recognition Database with 52 Million Photos to be Stored

 

FBI Plans to Have 52 Million Photos in Facial Recognition Database by 2015

Retail Big Brother – Mannequins Are Now Using Facial Recognition Technology

Meet “BOSS”: The Department of Homeland Security’s Facial Scanning Program

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Why Big Pharma is Spending so Much Money to Defeat Marijuana Initiatives

Legal marijuana will poison children and cause more Arizonans to die in car crashes, according to scary television and online ads running across the state in advance of Election Day.

“Edibles that look like candy, marketed to kids,” warns one ad, with a voiceover meant to sound like a concerned mother. Other spots feature school principals and public officials from Colorado explaining why they believe legal weed has been a bad deal for their state. “Don’t repeat our terrible mistake,” says Wellington Webb, a former mayor of Denver.

The ads were created by Arizonans For Responsible Drug Policy, a group that’s encouraging voters to reject Arizona’s Proposition 205, which would allow people aged 21 and older to possess up to an ounce of marijuana and grow up to six plants in their own homes. Arizona is one of four states—along with California, Massachusetts, Maine and Nevada—that could vote to legalize recreational weed on November 8.

Despite the voices and faces in the ads, though, Arizonans For Responsible Drug Policy and similar groups urging “no” votes on marijuana legalization in other states are not funded by concerned parents and public officials. In large part, these groups are funded by pharmaceutical companies trying to protect their share of the market for painkilling drugs—and in Arizona, the biggest donor to the “No On 205” campaign is a company that’s been investigated for its role in overdose deaths.

That company, Arizona-based Insys Therapeutics Inc., is best known for manufacturing a pain relief spray that contains fentanyl, an opioid that’s been under heightened scrutiny for its role in several overdose deaths, including the high-profile death of Prince in April. As Reason previously covered, Insys Therapeutics in August made a $500,000 contribution to Arizonans For Responsible Drug Policy, the largest donation the group has received from a single source.

It’s not just happening in Arizona. According to a report from The Nation, Purdue Pharma and Abbott Laboratories, makers of the painkiller OxyContin and Vicodin, respectively, are among the largest contributors to the Anti-Drug Coalition of America. Meanwhile, the Pharmaceutical Research and Manufacturers of America, which advocates on behalf of drug companies, spent nearly $19m on lobbying in 2015, according to a report from The Guardian, which called PhaRMA “one of marijuana’s biggest opponents.” Federal lobbying data aggregated by Maplight shows that PhaRMA has spent more than $150 million on lobbying since 2008—a total that only includes federal lobbying efforts, not similar work done in state capitals, where PhaRMA is also active.

These companies and organizations are allowed to spend their money however they want, of course, including trying to influence the outcomes of elections. That’s the beauty of living in a free country. Still, it’s worth asking why they would be so keen to spend millions of dollars fighting marijuana legalization.

One big part of the answer is that states with legal marijuana—medical or recreational—have lower rates of drug prescriptions.

Ashely and W. David Bradford, a daughter-father pair of researchers at the University of Georgia, quantified the relationship between legal pot and prescription drugs in a study published earlier this year. They analyzed state-level prescription drug databases from 2010 through 2013 and found that doctors prescribed significantly fewer pharmaceutical drugs in states with legal medical weed.

The largest drop-off was for prescription pain-killers (with 1,800 fewer doses prescribed annually in states with medical marijuana laws), like the one made by Insys Therapeutics, but the Bradfords found a significant declines in prescriptions to treat depression, anxiety and seizures.

“The availability of medical marijuana has a significant effect on prescribing patterns and spending in Medicare Part D,” the Bradfords wrote. States with medical marijuana laws saved $165.2 million in Medicaid costs during 2013, they said.

Savings to a state is lost revenue to a drug company. No wonder Insys and others are willing to spend so much to keep marijuana illegal in is many places as possible.

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Malheur Occupiers Acquitted, Pence’s Plane Skids Off Runway, Soylent Recalled: A.M. Links

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Bureaucracy, Funding No Cure for Homeless Problem: New at Reason

California politicians are targeting homelessness. Watch out.

Steven Greenhut writes:

The county of Orange recently hired a homeless czar, Susan Price. She just released “An Assessment of Homeless Services in Orange County,” which offers a roadmap of current services. There’s nothing particularly wrong with its assessment or recommendations, as it calls for a more collective, regional approach to the problem. But there’s nothing particularly right about it, either.

The report calls for hiring a manager to “enhance” the Continuum of Care system. It wants to “improve regional coordination” by formalizing “protocols” for responding to homeless encampments. It wants to develop a “systemic navigation of services by diversifying the portfolio of services” and calls for more funding for shelters and housing assistance. It’s self-congratulatory at times.

Homeless activists focused on the funding part of it. “A recent report by the ACLU estimates that it would take $13 million a year to permanently house the chronically homeless population, and a total of $55 million a year to house the entire homeless population,” according to a report in The Voice of OC.

View this article.

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Q3 GDP Jumps 2.9% On Rise In Inventory And Exports, Offset By Weak Consumption And Investment

For once it appears that the Atlanta Fed, with its 2.1% Q3 GDP nowcast was overly pessimistic – although perhaps the November 8 election may have had something to do with it – and moments ago the BEA reported that in the third quarter, US GDP increased at an annual rate of 2.9%  according to the first “advance” estimate released up more than double from the Q2 real GDP of 1.4%, and beating Wall Street consensus of a 2.6% rise in the quarter. The move higher was driven by a jump in inventory accumulation and exports, while consumption disappointed, as Real Consumer Spending rose 2.1% Q/Q, far below the 4.3% spike in Q2 and missing estimates of a 2.6% print.

The rebound was driven by a jump in inventories which contributed 0.6% to the bottom line, while net trade added another 0.8%, up from just 0.1% in Q2.

On the other hand, personal consumption which was a major outlier in Q2, contracted notably, and rose by just 1.47% in Q3, down nearly by half from 2.88% in Q2.

Finally, th bleak capex picture remains, as Fixed Investment in the US has now declined for a fourth consecutive quarter, subtracting 0.1% from Q3 GDP.

The details:

The increase in real GDP partly reflected an increase in consumer spending on services, notably on housing and utilities and on health care, i.e., the tax known as Obamacare boosted the economy again. Spending on durable goods, notably on motor vehicles and parts, also increased. Exports of goods increased, notably in foods, feeds, and beverages and in industrial supplies and materials. Exports of services also increased. In addition, private inventory investment increased, as did federal government spending and business investment.

Offsetting these contributions to growth, residential housing investment, consumer spending on nondurable goods, and state and local government spending declined.

Personal income and saving

Real disposable personal income (DPI), personal income adjusted for taxes and inflation, increased 2.2 percent in the third quarter after increasing 2.1 percent in the second quarter. Personal saving as a percentage of DPI was 5.7 percent in the third quarter, the same as in the second quarter.

Third?quarter prices

Prices of goods and services purchased by U.S. residents—gross domestic purchases prices— increased 1.5 percent in the third quarter after increasing 2.1 percent in the second quarter. Prices of energy goods increased, while food prices decreased.

Excluding food and energy, gross domestic purchases prices increased 1.8 percent in the third quarter after increasing 2.0 percent in the second quarter.

* * *

Finally, on an annual basis, GDP rebounded fractionally from last quarter’s 1.3%, rising just 1.5% compared to a year prior.

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