Month: February 2017

CNN’s political reporter Sara Murray has confirmed that CNN has been blocked from attending a White House press briefing this morning. Other reports note that The New York Times, LA Times, and Politico were also blocked. ABC, NBC, CBS, and FOX were allowed in but AP and Time have boycotted the event.

Today the White House is handpicking the news outlets they’re allowing into the gaggle with @PressSec. CNN was blocked from attending.

— Sara Murray (@SaraMurray) February 24, 2017

CNN, New York Times, the Los Angeles Times, Politico shut out of White House gaggle with Sean Spicer today. WHCA protesting

— Ram Ramgopal (@RamCNN) February 24, 2017

Looks like @BrianStelter was right when he pointed out Trump's comments today "we're gonna do something about the media" — CNN just blocked

— Jason Morrell (@CNNJason) February 24, 2017

Some boycotted the event due to CNN’s treatment…

AP and Time boycotted the gaggle today because of the way it was handled.

— Adrian Carrasquillo (@Carrasquillo) February 24, 2017

While many were allowed in…

ABC, NBC, CBS and FOX were all allowed in. https://t.co/joYrhveGXQ

— Sara Murray (@SaraMurray) February 24, 2017

Breitbart, Washington Times, One America Network got into the gaggle.

— Adrian Carrasquillo (@Carrasquillo) February 24, 2017

This follows President Trump’s earlier remarks At CPAC against fake news.

Trump at CPAC: "I wouldn't miss a chance to talk to my friends."

Trump literally skipped last year's conference: https://t.co/MHbptPcM2K http://pic.twitter.com/IXQg1sUqyl

— Kyle Griffin (@kylegriffin1) February 24, 2017

via http://ift.tt/2lC5bIC Tyler Durden

“Great men, even during their lifetime, are usually known to the public

only through a fictitious personality.” 

-Walter Lippmann

For many people, President Donald Trump presents an enigma.  

Our brains seek to put labels on other humans.  The labels we have readily available to us can come from nature (black, male, old, fertile, weak, etc.) and from nurture (liberal, Republican, foreign, racist, wealthy, ignorant, lazy, dangerous, etc.).  This labeling, categorizing, or naming, is part of the normal mental process of stereotyping, and is a valuable survival skill and evolutionary advantage, despite what you may have been taught.  

 

For some cognitive psychologists, stereotyping describes a value-neutral psychological mechanism that creates categories and enables people to manage the swirl of data presented to them from their environment.  This categorizing function was recognized in 1922 by Walter Lippmann, who first coined the term “stereotyping.” For him, this was a necessary, useful, and efficient process, since “the attempt to see all things freshly and in detail, rather than as types and generalities, is exhausting, and among busy affairs practically out of the question.”

 

http://ift.tt/2lDR9Vd…

 

When we do not have enough information to stereotype others, it can make us quite uncomfortable.  Is this person a threat to me?  A potential mate or friend?  Trustworthy?   So, our senses gather information to help our brains analyze the data to fill in the blank label.  We also work very hard at trying to fill in these blanks for other people, and even harder at changing them, especially the media, but that is a future topic.

Yesterday, I read an article on ZeroHedge describing how one of the world’s most successful investors allegedly used a financial ratio to analyze the data and then label Trump.

On one hand, there was RenTec’s chain-smoking billionaire founder (in 2015 alone he made $1.7 billion) Jim Simons, who had donated some $10 million to Hillary Clinton’s campaign, second only to Saban Capital. In a June 2016 interview with CNBC, Jim Simons said that “if you compare the presidential candidates using the Sharpe ratio, presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump is ‘not a good investment.'”

   

http://ift.tt/2kUWNVI…

 

This caused me to remember that I, too, had labeled Trump just a few days earlier.  

hedgeless_horseman   Feb 16, 2017 2:33 PM

   

“I do know one thing.  Donald Trump is not a libertarian.”

 

I asked myself, is that really true?  How did I come to that conclusion?  What is a libertarian?  This article is merely one attempt to answer those questions. 

I like to tell people that libertarian is the political label for someone that simply wants two things: 1) maximum freedom, and 2) minimum government, and who prioritizes those two over the other political values he or she may hold.  Years ago, I posted a much longer answer here on ZeroHedge in the form of the Libertarian Party Platform.  Unfortunately, the comments appear to have been lost in one of the many DNS/hacking battles fought by Sacrilege in defense of this good and valuable web site.  At the time of that post, I had learned of the The World’s Smallest Political Quiz, and had posted the link in the comments, along with my score, and an invitation for readers to take the test.  

Today, I invite you, dear reader, to join me in taking the test on behalf of President Trump, in the hope of determining if he is, or is not, a libertarian.  I provide links, below, to a small number of pertinent items that I feel support my answers.

The World’s Smallest Political Quiz

 

Government should not censor speech, press, media, or internet.

Based on Trump’s comments about Snowden and Manning, I am going with DISAGREE.

https://twitter.com/realdonaldtrump/status/457314934473633792?lang=en

http://ift.tt/2lE7OYy…

 

Military service should be voluntary. There should be no draft.

Based on Trump’s five draft deferments, one medical, I am chosing MAYBE.

http://ift.tt/2lE8RrD…

 

There should be no laws regarding sex for consenting adults.

Considering Trump’s actual statements and actions, I am picking AGREE for our POTUS.

http://ift.tt/2eDxTVZ

 

Repeal laws prohibiting adult possession and use of drugs.

This seems to be a clear DISAGREE.

http://ift.tt/2kUTDRZ…

 

There should be no National ID card.

This also seems to be a clear DISAGREE.

http://ift.tt/2jq7ez7

 

End “corporate welfare.” No government handouts to business.

This also seems to be a clear DISAGREE.

http://ift.tt/2lDZxEc…

 

End government barriers to international free trade.

This also seems to be a clear DISAGREE.

http://ift.tt/2lDZyYM…

 

Let people control their own retirement; privatize Social Security.

I am selecting DISAGREE for Trump, based on his campaign statements.

http://ift.tt/2lDXNKZ…

 

Replace government welfare with private charity.

It appears Trump would AGREE.

https://twitter.com/CNN/status/835156280029372416

 

Cut taxes and government spending by 50% or more.

Any actual tax cuts will likley not come close to 50%, and Trump says he is going to spend bigly, so I clicked DISAGREE for the President.

http://ift.tt/2lDQovu…

http://ift.tt/2lE6KUO…

 

Here is the result of my test.  Donald Trump is a Big Government Statist.

Statists want government to have a great deal of power over the economy and individual behavior. They frequently doubt whether economic liberty and individual freedom are practical options in today’s world. Statists tend to distrust the free market, support high taxes and centralized planning of the economy, oppose diverse lifestyles, and question the importance of civil liberties.

 

Apparently, I had already done a similar analysis in my mind, because according to this test, Donald Trump is the polar opposite of a libertarian.  This label fits with the personal interactions I have had with Donald Trump, years ago, at his then private home in Florida and on vacation in Aspen.  

It should be interesting to learn, below, how your answers on behalf of Trump are different from mine, and why.

I am looking forward to seeing many of you at the First ZeroHedge Symposium and Live Fight Club in Marfa this June…

http://ift.tt/2lHdZy8…

http://ift.tt/2lH9xz9…

 

Peace and prosperity,

h_h

via http://ift.tt/2lE47Cp hedgeless_horseman

Last September we confirmed that spontaneous pocket explosions were not a desirable feature for smartphones…well, at least not in the opinion of Samsung shareholders who lost nearly $20 billion in market value over just two days after reports first surfaced of the company’s new Galaxy Note7 randomly bursting into flames.

 

As it turns out, Samsung may not be the only smartphone manufacturer that pushed their batteries just a little too far as Brianna Olivas recently set Twitter ‘on fire’ after posting a video of her smoking iPhone 7 Plus.  The video almost immediately went viral and has received well over 1.25mm views and 27k retweets since being posted.  Per Mashable:

Brianna Olivas says her rose gold iPhone 7 Plus exploded and began smoking Wednesday morning when her boyfriend grabbed his phone and began recording. The video, which Olivas shared on Twitter later that day, shows smoke pouring out of one side of the phone and the iPhone’s case melting away.

 

Olivas says the trouble began the day before when her iPhone 7 Plus, which she bought from Sprint in January, wouldn’t turn on. She took the phone to an Apple Store where employees ran tests and told her everything was fine. The phone appeared to be working normally again.

 

That changed the next morning, she says, when her phone apparently caught fire while sitting on a dresser.

 

“The next morning I was asleep with my phone charging next to my head, my boyfriend grabbed the phone and put it on the dresser,” she said via a direct message on Twitter. “He went the the [sic] restroom … and from the corner of his eye he saw my phone steaming and [heard] a squealing noise. By the time he got over to the phone it had already caught fire, he quickly grabbed the phone and threw it in the restroom … as soon as he threw it in the restroom is [sic] blew up and more smoke started coming out of the phone.“

So my IPhone 7 plus blew up this morning ???? was not even using it, literally no explanation for this http://pic.twitter.com/sQ8CJt4Y69

— Bree? (@briannaolivas_) February 23, 2017

 

And here is the aftermath…

@briannaolivas_ http://pic.twitter.com/MLllo8DvSa

— Bree? (@briannaolivas_) February 23, 2017

 

Now the only question is whether Brianna just managed to blow up more than her iPhone 7 and the Twittersphere?

via http://ift.tt/2lBWpKK Tyler Durden

To those cynics who accuse the self-monitoring OPEC, and its various adjunct agencies, of lying that it has implemented last year’s agreed upon production cuts, China just released January crude import data, which validates this skepticism.

As JPMorgan writes, while IEA estimated the OPEC crude oil production fell by 1mbd to 32.06mbd in January, suggesting an initial compliance of 90% with the output agreement reached end 2016, the latest oil supply details released by China customs today suggest a reduction of supplies was not yet seen by China, the world’s largest oil importer.

In fact, quite the contrary: crude oil shipments from the 11 OPEC nations committed to a 1.2mbd output cut increased by 28% yoy, and more importantly, rose 4% from December 2016 – in a time when production was supposed to be declining – to 4.6mbd in January, accounting for 57% of China’s total oil imports.

Ironically, if anyone was cutting it was the non-OPEC nations, mostly Russia, who foolishly assumed that Saudi Arabia et al would be true to their word: non-OPEC countries led by Russia that also agreed to a cut boosted their January supplies to China by 40% yoy, but saw a 10% drop sequentially, in line contractual expectations. Comparing January 2017 levels with the 2016 average, China’s crude oil imports from the committed OPEC and non-OPEC producers gained 6%/13% respectively, while the country’s total oil imports gained 5%.

Some details:

• Saudi, Angola and Iran lead OPEC supply growth to China. According to the China Customs’ buy country oil supply data, Saudi Arabia boosted shipments to China by 19% yoy and 41% mom to 1.19mbd in January (16% growth versus the 2016 average). Imports from Angola increased by 63% yoy and 46% mom to 1.17 mbd last month (33% higher than 2016 average), while volumes from Iraq jumped by 43% yoy  and 12% mom to 0.83mbd (14% higher than 2016 average).
• Russia and Oman drive non-OPEC supply growth. Among the non-OPEC countries that committed to 558kbd production cut from January, Russia’s oil supply to China increased by 36% yoy but fell 9% mom to 1.09mbd in January (3% higher than 2016 average), and Oman supplies expanded by 47% yoy and dropped 5% mom to 842kbd (20% higher than 2016 average).

It becomes even more blatant when charted: while total OPEC supply to China rose to a 4 month high, the combined oil supply from Saudi Arabia, Angola and Iraq in January soared to the highest a year, quite the opposite one would expect if the countries were cutting production instead of merely seeking to grab market share.

And on a % basis:

So if indeed OPEC, or rather three specific OPEC members Saudi Arabia, Angola and Iraq have been violating the Vienna deal at the expense of other OPEC and non-OPEC members, who naively followed the terms of the production cut agreement, it would imply that OPEC has gained market share at the expense of non-OPEC. Sure enough, that is precisely what the next chart shows, which demonstrates that OPEC’s share of Chinese imports jumped from 50% to57% in January while that of non-OPEC predictably plunged.

Meanwhile, as the above sleight of hand was taking place, Saudi Arabia achieved precisely what it wanted: it has regained the position of largest crude oil supplier to China, once again surpassing Russia.

via http://ift.tt/2li87aK Tyler Durden

Submitted by Ryan McMaken via The Mises Institute,

In the wake of the Senate's confirmation of the appointment of Betsy DeVos, the protests from the left prompted Republican Congressman Thomas Massie to offer them a way to get rid of DeVos: eliminate the Department of Education. 

According to Massie, he'd been planning to introduce the bill for more than a year, and the controversy over DeVos appeared to be as good a time as any. 

There's no harm in Massie introducing the bill, of course, although as I've noted here, the odds of Republicans offering much help to Massie in passing the bill are pretty low. 

But as long as we're identifying cabinet-level agencies for the chopping block, why stop with the Department of Education? 

There are plenty of other Departments which oversee activities that could easily be done by state and local agencies, or which should just be reduced to their former less-exalted positions in the federal ecosystem. 

For starters, we'll just address some of the low-hanging fruit. Here are agencies that can be eliminated with relative ease, either because they are recently-created, redundant, or utterly unnecessary. 

One: The Department of Homeland Security, $51 Billion

Somehow, the United States managed to get along for more than 225 years before this Department was created by Congress and the Bush Administration in 2002. 

The Department quickly became a way for the federal government to spread federal taxpayer dollars to state and local law enforcement agencies, thus gaining greater control at the local level. The DHS administers a number of grant programs that have helped to purchase a variety of new toys for law enforcement groups including new weapons, and new technologies. Also included in this is the infamous military surplus program which is supplies tanks and other military equipment to police forces everywhere from big cities to small rural towns. The crime-free town of Keene, New Hampshire made sure its police received a tank through this program as have many larger cities. 

When the Orlando gunman opened fire in the Pulse nightclub in 2016, the police eventually rolled up in a tank — which did nothing to stem the bloodshed inside the club. 

Police claim they need these half-million-dollar vehicles from the DHS to deal with civil unrest. Never mind, of course, that every state already has a National Guard force specifically for that purpose. 

While the Department was created in response to the 9/11 attacks, the Department does nothing to address anything like a 9/11-style attack, and all the agencies that were supposed to provide intelligence on such attacks — the FBI for instance — already exist in other departments and continue to enjoy huge budgets. 

DHS also includes agencies that already existed in other departments before, such as the Federal Emergency Management Agency, and the agencies that handle immigration and customs. Those agencies should either be returned to the departments they came from or be abolished. 

And, few would miss the Transportation Security Administration — an agency that has never caught a single terrorist, but has smuggled at least $100 million worth of cocaine. 

Two: The EPA, $8.3 billion. 

It seems at least one member of Congress already beat me to this one, and a bill to "terminate the Environmental Protection Agency" was introduced on February 3. 

Created under Nixon in 1970, this agency largely exists today to push around small-time business owners, entrepreneurs, and mom-and-pop organizations that run afoul or some obscure federal regulation. More recently, The EPA dumped three million gallons of toxic sludge into a Colorado river, poisoning the Navajo Nation's watershed. Meanwhile, the agency is suing a city in Colorado because the city's storm drains aren't exactly right.  

Local property owners and local governments already have a large incentive to avoid the destruction of rivers and air used by local communities. In the modern era of nature-based recreation, destroying a mountain river — as the EPA has done — is an easy way to destroy the local economy. 

Moreover, most of the environmental cleanup we attribute to federal regulation today was simply the result of growing wealth in the US. As Americans became wealthier, they began to value clean air and water more than the jobs associated with the "dirty" industries. Does anyone seriously believe that the Cuyahoga River would start catching on fire again without an EPA? It's not going to happen.

Three: Department of the Interior, $14 billion

The most notorious agency within the Department of the Interior is the Bureau of Indian affairs. The BIA controls 55 million acres of land which is — to use the darkly euphemistic term employed by the Feds — "held in trust" by the US government. That means the Indian tribes can't control their own land unless a bureaucrat at the Department of the Interior says so. 

Given that the tribes should be totally independent of federal regulation, the BIA should be abolished immediately. Any relations between the tribes and US government should be handled by the State Department, which is the appropriate place to deal with organizations that are supposed to be governed primarily by treaties with the United States. 

The other main purpose of the Interior is the control of immense amounts of "public lands" including national parks. The Department is unnecessary here as well, given that public land should be administered by the communities that are economically dependent on those lands. Moreover, whether we like the idea of public lands or not, the chances of public lands being privatized — even after being made into state lands — is approximately zero. State parks, national forests, and national parks are very popular with voters and moving them from federal control to state control won't change this.1

Four: The Department of Agriculture, $153 billion

This is the most expensive of the Departments funded here — primarily because the USDA oversees the Food Stamp program — now known as SNAP — which costs more than $70 billion. The reason the SNAP program is in the USDA is that SNAP has always largely been a subsidy program for farmers. One of its original selling points was that it would get people to buy more food. SNAP could be rolled into the Department of Health and Human Services this afternoon, and virtually no one would notice or care. the USDA bureaucracy simply adds more cost. 

That wouldn't do anything to eliminate that $70 billion food stamp spending, of course. But it would make it much easier, politically speaking, to get rid of the remaining 80 billion of the USDA's budget. 

The rest of the USDA is composed of pork projects for farmers, researchers, and other corporate interests that continually receive the taxpayer's largesse. 

The USDA also administers its own affordable housing programs, even though several major programs for affordable housing already exist in the Department of Housing and Urban Development.  

The Problem with Cabinet Level Agencies 

A lot of what we've discussed here falls short of totally abolishing the government spending associated with these Departments. These are all extremely mild reforms and mere baby steps toward a more human-sized federal government. 

But ending cabinet level status for many of these agencies is a crucial first step in cutting these agencies down to size. It is likely not a coincidence that no cabinet-level agency, with the exception of the Postal Service, has ever lost its cabinet-level status, and certainly none have ever been abolished. 

When a government agency is lifted to the cabinet level, it gains political prestige, permanence, and direct access to the President. In other words, it makes that agency more easily able to lobby Congress, the White house, and to fight budget cuts. The fact that abolishing the Department of Education — without even abolishing all its programs — is now seen as some sort of wildly radical position — illustrates the power of the cabinet-level agency.

via http://ift.tt/2lBOixq Tyler Durden

The US oil rig count rose once again this week (up 5) to 602 – the highest since October 2015.

 

US crude production is surging – back above 9 million barrels/day in the last week – the largest since April 2016.

The lagged response to rig count builds implies considerably more production to come.

via http://ift.tt/2l89vvG Tyler Durden

Via The Daily Bell

 

STAFF NEWS & ANALYSIS

We Need a More Socialist Thomas Friedman … Not

By Daily Bell Staff – February 24, 2017

• 
• 

Milton Friedman had many ideas that I disagree with, and others that I think haven’t stood the test of time. But there’s no denying his influence over the world of economics; he was one of the field’s greatest popularizers and explainers. … For many Americans, the face of Milton Friedman is still the face of economics. -Bloomberg

No, we don’t need another Milton Friedman. We need a person who enunciates the real differences between socialism and free markets.

Friedman didn’t do that. On the big issues like central banking and taxation he was muddled at best. He was most eloquent and firm about smaller issues.

The result is a message that is not homogeneous or even well argued. His narrative is one that evades significant issues while celebrating minor ones.

More:

Economists now generally favor as much or more government intervention in the economy as the general public.

… Economics has also changed. The kind of simple supply-and-demand analysis that people learn in their Econ 101 courses — which economists call price theory — is no longer at the forefront of academic thinking. More complex theories are now the norm, and these new theories often require very different intuition and very different conclusions. Even more importantly, the whole discipline of econ has shifted away from theory and toward empirical studies.

We need a new Milton Friedman for this new age. Economics and the world have both changed, but public discussion is still too often based on the ideas of the 1970s and 1980s. Many writers are trying to remedy that situation, and educate the world about the new paradigms and the new ideas. But someone with Friedman’s academic pedigree — he won the Nobel in 1976, and was hugely influential within the discipline — would have more credibility than any writer.

This article doesn’t seem to want a Friedman after all, just someone who can promote “post-Friedman” ideas that are more socialist than not. Who are some candidates for this neo-Friedman role? The article lists Thomas Piketty and Joe Stiglitz as prominent economists who are also writers.

But Paul Krugman is closest to a modern-day Friedman  in the author’s opinion.

He is unrivaled in his ability to use economic theory, both simple and complex, to explain policy issues in a way the public can understand. Like Friedman, Krugman seamlessly integrates economic theory and political ideology ….

But still the author wants more. He believes the current crop, no matter how good, are too theoretical and not empirical enough.

He is looking for someone who will use real-life examples and illustrate concepts will real-life perspectives.

From our point of view, none of this will matter very much. Just because someone is empirical doesn’t mean they are correct. Just because economists are more socialist than ever doesn’t mean we should follow them.

The reason economics is held in low repute is not because of those who explain it but because of those who set its direction.

Even Friedman was not good enough. He advocate things like a steady state Federal Reserve. And he was the one who suggested to the federal government that prepayment of taxes would be a good idea.

Perhaps it was only supposed to last for the duration of the Second World war. Buy we are still living with it today.

We need someone like Murray Rothbard, but even more broad minded and willing to embrace a wide array of anarchical solutions and monetary possibilities, so long as they are private.

Conclusion: Socialism doesn’t work, The closer we can get to marketplace remedies for marketplace problems, the better.

‘The World Needs Globalization, It Needs Trade’ 

Republicans Reeling in Fed?

via http://ift.tt/2lBMdBZ TDB