Month: March 2017

Below looks at the DAX index from Germany over the past decade. The DAX index looks to be creating a bullish continuation pattern, that the Power of the Pattern feels, is important to investors in Europe and the St

CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE

The lower left of the chart above reflects what an ideal “Cup & Handle” pattern looks like. These patterns historically take place in bull markets and are viewed as “continuation patterns.”

Below looks at the DAX/SPY ratio over the decade and why the ratio could be forming an important pattern too.

CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE

Since the lows in 2003, the DAX has been much stronger than the S&P 500. Since 2008, the ratio has traded sideways, reflecting that the DAX and S&P have been traded off being stronger than another, no clear winner. At this time the ratio could be forming a reversal pattern (bullish inverse head & shoulders pattern) near the bottom of a 6-year trading range.

Joe Friday Just The Facts; A breakout above the top of the Cup & Handle pattern would send a bullish price message to the DAX. Strength in the DAX has historically been a positive for stocks in the states.

Bulls in Germany and the States have fingers crossed that the DAX breaks above 2015 highs!

 

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Chuck Grassley, Chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, would very much like to understand why Hillary Clinton and 6 of her closest “research aides” may still have access to classified State Department information despite FBI Director Comey’s assertion that they were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information.”

And, after sending numerous requests to John Kerry’s State Department that ‘shockingly’ fell on deaf ears, Grassely has sent a letter to Secretary of State Tillerson asking why Hillary’s security clearance hasn’t yet been revoked given that “any other government workers who engaged in such serious offenses would, at a minimum, have their clearances suspended pending an investigation.”

I have repeatedly asked the State Department whether Secretary Clinton and her associates had their clearances suspended or revoked to which the Obama Administration refused to respond. Recently, the State Department informed the Committee that six additional Secretary Clinton staff at State were designated as her research assistants which allowed them to retain their clearances after leaving the Department.

 

Director Comey stated that Secretary Clinton and staff were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” and “there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information…”

 

Any other government workers who engaged in such serious offenses would, at a minimum, have their clearances suspended pending an investigation.  The failure to do so has given the public the impression that Secretary Clinton and her associates received special treatment.

Fox News corespondent Ed Henry covered the situation this morning on Fox and Friends:

“We’re learning from Republican Sen. Chuck Grassley that she and six staffers in 2013 retained clearances where they still had access to top secret and classified information, Why? They were titled ‘research assistants.’ So the assumption on Capitol Hill is it was because she was writing her memoirs and saying, ‘Look, I still need access to this information in order to go through what happened in Syria, what happened with Russia. But obviously think back to what James Comey said in how Hillary Clinton handled classified information.”

 

“He obviously believes something needs to be done about this.  The only positive for Chuck Grassley at this point is, there’s no longer a Democrat at the State Department, obviously. You got Rex Tillerson, so if you have these documents on why she retained these clearances, and for example does she still have a clearance today? A lot of former officials get to keep these clearances for years — when they’re consultants … some of them like to retain it because they say I was in the middle of all of these important issues. I need to keep abreast of it. Been then some of these folks in Washington — they say drain the swamp.”

Hillary Clinton and 6 aides had access to classified State Department information after she left office, lawmaker says | @edhenry http://pic.twitter.com/hJzHUaD7zC

— FOX & friends (@foxandfriends) March 31, 2017

 

Something tells us that the current State Department regime may be more responsive to Grassley’s request for information.

The full text of Grassley’s letter can be read below:

* * *
March 30, 2017

VIA ELECTRONIC TRANSMISSION

The Honorable Rex W. Tillerson
Secretary
U.S. Department of State
Washington, D.C. 20520

Dear Secretary Tillerson:

The Bureau of Diplomatic Security is the administrative body within the State Department that handles security clearance investigations, suspensions, and if needed, revocations.  During the course of the Committee’s investigation into Secretary Clinton’s mishandling of classified information and the impact of her private server on the Freedom of Information Act, on February 16, 2016 then-Assistant Secretary of State for Diplomatic Security Greg Starr met with Committee staff.  Assistant Director Starr informed my staff that Secretary Clinton’s security clearance, and those of her staff, had not been suspended or revoked because Diplomatic Security was waiting until the FBI concluded its criminal investigation before beginning an administrative review.  On March 24, 2016, Committee staff met again with Mr. Starr and asked the same questions and received the same responses.  I have repeatedly asked the State Department whether Secretary Clinton and her associates had their clearances suspended or revoked to which the Obama Administration refused to respond. Recently, the State Department informed the Committee that six additional Secretary Clinton staff at State were designated as her research assistants which allowed them to retain their clearances after leaving the Department.

On July 5, 2016, Director Comey announced that “[a]fter a tremendous amount of work over the last year, the FBI is completing its investigation and referring the case to the Department of Justice for a prosecutive decision.”[2]  Director Comey stated that Secretary Clinton and staff were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” and “there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information…”[3]  Director Comey said.

There is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about the matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation.[4]

However, Director Comey did not recommend criminal prosecution.  In announcing that decision, he also noted that “[t]o be clear, this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences.  To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions.”[5]

It is unclear what steps the State Department has taken to impose administrative sanctions.

Any other government workers who engaged in such serious offenses would, at a minimum, have their clearances suspended pending an investigation.  The failure to do so has given the public the impression that Secretary Clinton and her associates received special treatment.

Please provide answers to the following questions:

1. Does the State Department agree with the FBI’s finding that Secretary Clinton and her staff were “extremely careless in their handling of very sensitive, highly classified information” and that “there is evidence of potential violations of the statutes regarding the handling of classified information…”?
2. Does the State Department agree with the FBI’s finding that “[t]here is evidence to support a conclusion that any reasonable person in Secretary Clinton’s position, or in the position of those with whom she was corresponding about the matters, should have known that an unclassified system was no place for that conversation”?
3. Does the State Department agree with the FBI’s finding that despite not recommending criminal prosecution, “this is not to suggest that in similar circumstances, a person who engaged in this activity would face no consequences.  To the contrary, those individuals are often subject to security or administrative sanctions”?
4. As a result of the FBI investigation, has the State Department begun a security review due to the mishandling of classified information by Secretary Clinton and her colleagues and associates?  If so, which individuals’ clearances are part of the review?  If not, why not?  Please explain.
5. As a result of the FBI investigation, has the State Department suspended or revoked Secretary Clinton’s clearance or that of any of her colleagues or associates, to include her subordinates at State and her attorneys?  If so, which individuals?  If not, why not?  Please explain.

Please number your answers according to their corresponding questions.  I anticipate that your written response and the responsive documents will be unclassified.  Please send all unclassified material directly to the Committee.  In keeping with the requirements of Executive Order 13526, if any of the responsive documents do contain classified information, please segregate all unclassified material within the classified documents, provide all unclassified information directly to the Committee, and provide a classified addendum to the Office of Senate Security.  The Committee complies with all laws and regulations governing the handling of classified information.  The Committee is not bound, absent its prior agreement, by any handling restrictions or instructions on unclassified information unilaterally asserted by the Executive Branch.

Thank you in advance for your cooperation with this request.  Please respond to this request by April 13, 2017.  Should you have any questions, please contact Josh Flynn-Brown of my Judiciary Committee staff at (202) 224-5225.  Thank you for your cooperation.

Sincerely,

Charles E. Grassley
Chairman
Committee on the Judiciary

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Things are going from bad to worse in Brazil where, contrary to what the stock market suggests, the economy continues to disintegrate.

Earlier today, the government reported that the labor market deteriorated further in February, with the unemployment rate surging to a record high (and higher than expected) 13.2%, resulting in 13.5 million unemployed workers (up from 10.4mn a year ago). The national unemployment rate printed at 13.2% in the 3-month period ending in February, up from 10.2% a year ago, and 7.4% two years ago. In seasonally adjusted terms the unemployment rate rose to 13.1% in February, from 12.9% in January and 10.1% a year ago.

Employment declined 2.0% yoy in the 3-month period ending in February and the economically active labor force expanded 1.4% yoy (slightly higher than the 1.3% yoy increase of the working age population). The labor force participation rate did not change from either January or a year ago.  Formal salaried employment in the private sector contracted 3.3% yoy, while employment in the informal sector rose 5.5% yoy. Self-employment declined 4.8%. By sector of economic activity, industrial employment retrenched by 4.3% yoy (-511 thousand jobs), and employment in the construction sector declined 9.7% yoy (-749 thousand jobs).

There was some good news on the wage front where average real wages rose by 1.5% yoy in February: with average real wages of the self-employed down 2.5% yoy and of those working in the formal sector of the economy up 0.6% yoy. However, the overall real wage bill of the economy declined 0.2% yoy in February driven by the retrenchment of employment (-2.0% yoy).

According to Goldman Sachs, looking forward, the labor market is likely to deteriorate further as the economy is yet to show signs of minimal positive growth to absorb new entrants into the labor force and with that stabilize the unemployment rate. Some analysts hope that the labor market dynamics will stabilize during 2H2017, and to start to recover towards the end of the year, however that hopeful take has yet to be validated.

The economy depression has taken a big hit on president Temer’s popularity, whose government was rated “Good/Very Good” by only 10% in a just released CNI/Ibope Poll, compared to 13% in the previous survey conducted in December. On the other side, Temer’s government was rated “bad/terrible” by 55% vs 46% in previous poll; rated “average” by 31% vs 35% previously.

Temer’s personal approval rating dropped to 20% vs 26% previously, while his personal disapproval rating rose to 73% vs 64% previously. Furthermore, 79% of respondents don’t trust Temer vs 72% in previous poll, and at the same time only 17% trust Temer vs 23% previously.

Should these trends continue, less than one year after the Rouseff impeachment, Temer himself may soon have to worry about a political overhaul of his own.

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Authored by Raul Ilargi Meijer via The Automatic Earth blog,

We are witnessing the demise of the world’s two largest economic power blocks, the US and EU. Given deteriorating economic conditions on both sides of the Atlantic, which have been playing out for many years but were so far largely kept hidden from view by unprecedented issuance of debt, the demise should come as no surprise.

The debt levels are not just unprecedented, they would until recently have been unimaginable. When the conditions for today’s debt orgasm were first created in the second half of the 20th century, people had yet to wrap their minds around the opportunities and possibilities that were coming on offer. Once they did, they ran with it like so many lemmings.

The reason why economies are now faltering invites an interesting discussion. Energy availability certainly plays a role, or rather the energy cost of energy, but we might want to reserve a relatively larger role for the idea, and the subsequent practice, of trying to run entire societies on debt (instead of labor and resources).

 

It almost looks as if the cost of energy, or of anything at all really, doesn’t play a role anymore, if and when you can borrow basically any sum of money at ultra low rates. Sometimes you wonder why people didn’t think of that before; how rich could former generations have been, or at least felt?

The reason why is that there was no need for it; things were already getting better all the time, albeit for a briefer period of time than most assume, and there was less ‘want’. Not that people wouldn’t have wanted as much as we do today, they just didn’t know yet what it was they should want. The things to want were as unimaginable as the debt that could have bought them.

It’s when things ceased getting better that ideas started being floated to create the illusion that they still were, and until recently very few people were not fooled by this. While this will seem incredible in hindsight, it still is not that hard to explain. Because when things happen over a period of decades, step by step, you walk headfirst into the boiling frog analogy: slowly but surely.

At first, women needed to start working to pay the bills, health care and education costs started rising, taxes began to rise. But everyone was too busy enjoying the nice slowly warming water to notice. A shiny car -or two, three-, a home in the burbs with a white picket fence, the American -and German and British etc.- Dream seemed to continue.

Nobody bothered to think about the price to pay, because it was far enough away: the frog could pay in installments. In the beginning only for housing, later also for cars, credit card debt and then just about anything.

Nobody bothered to look at external costs either. Damage to one’s own living environment through a huge increase in the number of roads and cars and the demise of town- and city cores, of mom and pop stores, of forest land and meadows, basically anything green, it was all perceived as inevitable and somehow ‘natural’ (yes, that is ironic).

 

Damage to the world beyond one’s own town, for instance through the exploitation of domestic natural resources and the wars fought abroad for access to other nations’ resources, only a very precious few ever cared to ponder these things, certainly after the Vietnam war was no longer broadcast and government control of -or cooperation with- the media grew exponentially.

Looking at today’s world in a sufficiently superficial fashion -the way most people look at it-, one might be forgiven for thinking that debt, made cheap enough, tapers over all other factors, economic and otherwise, including thermodynamics and physics in general. Except it doesn’t, it only looks that way, and for a limited time at that. In the end, thermodynamics always beats ‘financial innovation’. In the end, thermodynamics sets the limits, even those of economics.

That leads us into another discussion. If not for the constraints, whether they emanate from energy and/or finance, would growth have been able to continue at prior levels? Both the energy and the finance/political camps mostly seem to think so.

The energy crowd -peak oilers- appear to assume that if energy would have been more readily available, economic growth could have continued pretty much unabated. Or they at least seem to assume that it’s the limits of energy that are responsible for the limits to economic growth.

The finance crowd mostly seems to think that if we would have followed different economic models, growth would have been for the taking. They tend to blame the Fed, or politics, loose regulation, the banking system.

Are either of them right? If they are, that would mean growth can continue de facto indefinitely if only we were smart enough to either make the right economic and political decisions, or to find or invent new sources of energy.

But what kind of growth do both ‘fields’ envision? Growth to what end, and growth into what? 4 years ago, I wrote What Do We Want To Grow Into? I have still never seen anyone else ask that question, before or since, let alone answer it.

We want growth by default, we want growth for growth’s sake, without caring much where it will lead us. Maybe we think unconsciously that as long as we can secure growth, we can figure out what to do with it later.

But it doesn’t work that way: growth changes the entire playing field on a constant basis, and we can’t keep up with the changes it brings, we’re always behind because we don’t care to answer that question: what do we want to grow into. Growth leads us, we don’t lead it. Next question then: if growth stops, what will lead us?

Because we don’t know where we want growth to lead us, we can’t define it. The growth we chase is therefore per definition blind. Which of necessity means that growth is about quantity, not quality. And that in turn means that the -presupposed- link between growth and progress falls apart: we can’t know if -the next batch of- growth will make us better off, or make our lives easier, more fulfilling. It could do the exact opposite.

And that’s not the only consequence of our blind growth chase. We have become so obsessed with growth that we have turned to creative accounting, in myriad ways, to produce the illusion of growth where there is none. We have trained ourselves and each other to such an extent to desire growth that we’re all, individually and collectively, scared to death of the moment when there might not be any. Blind fear brought on by a blind desire.

As we’ve also seen, we’ve been plunging ourselves into ever higher debt levels to create the illusion of growth. Now, money (debt) is created not by governments, as many people still think, but by -private- banks. Banks therefore need people to borrow. What people borrow most money for is housing. When they sign up for a mortgage, the bank creates a large amount of money out of nothing.

So if the bank gets itself into trouble, for instance because they lose money speculating, or because people can’t pay their mortgages anymore that they never could afford in the first place, the only way out for that bank, other than bailouts, is to sign more people up for mortgages -or car loans-, preferably bigger ones all the time.

 

What we have invented to keep big banks afloat for a while longer is ultra low interest rates, NIRP, ZIRP etc. They create the illusion of not only growth, but also of wealth. They make people think a home they couldn’t have dreamt of buying not long ago now fits in their ‘budget’. That is how we get them to sign up for ever bigger mortgages. And those in turn keep our banks from falling over.

Record low interest rates have become the only way that private banks can create new money, and stay alive (because at higher rates hardly anybody can afford a mortgage). It’s of course not just the banks that are kept alive, it’s the entire economy. Without the ZIRP rates, the mortgages they lure people into, and the housing bubbles this creates, the amount of money circulating in our economies would shrink so much and so fast the whole shebang would fall to bits.

That’s right: the survival of our economies today depends one on one on the existence of housing bubbles. No bubble means no money creation means no functioning economy.

What we should do in the short term is lower private debt levels (drastically, jubilee style), and temporarily raise public debt to encourage economic activity, aim for more and better jobs. But we’re doing the exact opposite: austerity measures are geared towards lowering public debt, while they cut the consumer spending power that makes up 60-70% of our economies. Meanwhile, housing bubbles raise private debt through the -grossly overpriced- roof.

This is today’s general economic dynamic. It’s exclusively controlled by the price of debt. However, as low interest rates make the price of debt look very low, the real price (there always is one, it’s just like thermodynamics) is paid beyond interest rates, beyond the financial markets even, it’s paid on Main Street, in the real economy. Where the quality of jobs, if not the quantity, has fallen dramatically, and people can only survive by descending ever deeper into ever more debt.

 

Do we need growth? Is that even a question we can answer if we don’t know what we would need or use it for? Is there perhaps a point, both from an energy and from a financial point of view, where growth simply levels off no matter what we do, in the same way that our physical bodies stop growing at 6 feet or so? And that after that the demand for economic growth must necessarily lead to The Only Thing That Grows Is Debt?

It’s perhaps ironic that the US doesn’t appear to be either first or most at risk this time around. There are plenty other housing markets today with what at least look to be much bigger bubbles, from London to China and from Sydney to Stockholm. Auckland’s bubble already looks to be popping. The potential consequences of such -inevitable- developments are difficult to overestimate. Because, as I said, the various banking systems and indeed entire economies depend on these bubbles.

The aftermath will be chaotic and it’s little use to try and predict it too finely, but it’ll be ‘interesting’ to see what happens to the banks in all these countries where bubbles have been engineered, once prices start dropping. It’s not a healthy thing for an economy to depend on blowing bubbles. It’s also not healthy to depend on private banks for the creation of a society’s money. It’s unhealthy, unnecessary and unethical. We’re about to see why.

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Is Joe Biden an "agent of Putin"? Given his not-unusual foot-in-mouth-frankness at an eent Thursday night, one might think The Democrats will be calling for a probe of his connections to Russia soon…

As CNN reports, former Vice President Joe Biden on Thursday indirectly knocked Hillary Clinton's failed 2016 campaign at a Thursday event, suggesting that the former secretary of state failed to talk to middle-class voters.

"What happened was that this was the first campaign that I can recall where my party did not talk about what it always stood for — and that was how to maintain a burgeoning middle class," Biden said during an appearance at the University of Pennsylvania.

 

"You didn't hear a single solitary sentence in the last campaign about that guy working on the assembly line making $60,000 bucks a year and a wife making $32,000 as a hostess in restaurant."

 

"And they are making $90,000 and they have two kids and they can't make it and they are scared, they are frightened."

Despite calling half the nation 'deplorable' and beyond help, Clinton did attempt to speak to working class voters on the campaign trail, including through multiple bus trips through Pennsylvania, Ohio, Kentucky and West Virginia. But the overarching message of her campaign, especially at the end, (and The Democrats since), was more often anti-Donald Trump than policy messaging toward these voters.

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Via The Daily Bell

Space tourism industry has a chance to show benefits of less regulation

If space truly is the final frontier, then it won’t be long until the first pioneers are making the journey, as several companies race to take paying passengers out of the Earth’s atmosphere and beyond. And true to form, right on its heels will be the regulators, red tape lassos in hand.

But like any brand new industry, the slight head start of the businesses will give them the opportunity to show the high standards that can be accomplished absent government control — and with any luck, they can do it in a way compelling enough to cast doubt on the “necessity” of regulation.

A March 20 article in Quartz about space tourism details the thus-far minimal regulatory burden on the burgeoning industry and questions how passengers will be protected without the “benefit” of tight regulations.

The first spaceflight participants will be guinea pigs in an experiment that asks: Just what does it mean to be safe in space when the government isn’t in charge?

The obvious answer, to those who believe in the power of market-driven incentives, is that space tourism will likely be safer with minimal government intervention than it would be with tight regulations and oversight, since the companies will police themselves, as Blue Origin Executive Erika Wagner says in the article.

Wagner recently told an audience at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, ‘ . . . in terms of us having a safe place in the market, we take that seriously, we want to put our own families on board, we take that very seriously. So we are holding ourselves to internal standards.’

The case for strict government regulation is built on some faulty beliefs about humanity and behavior. It assumes that people in business are at their core unconcerned about other people and are motivated solely by profit. It assumes in contrast, that those people in government are the complete opposite, motivated only by altruism and never by self-interest. On this questionable foundation is built the assertion that the people in government must regulate the people in business so that the interests of customers and the public at large are protected.

It is easy enough to strike down these arguments. First, this stark divide between the values of businessmen and politicians does not exist. Good or bad personality traits can be found within any group, and I would argue that you’ll actually find disproportionately more politicians on the self-interested end of the spectrum than in other career paths, because politics either attracts or creates those kinds of people.

In any event, there is not a neutral ruling elite that can sit above the fray, benevolently handing down edicts to keep the otherwise-evil businesses in check. Politicians and regulatory agencies have a dog in the fight too, be it money, connections, political pressure, or desire for power.

But for argument’s sake, let’s assume the worst of businesses and the best of government. Even in this case, the goal for both parties is the same: safe space travel. At their most altruistic, regulators want it because they don’t want people to die. At their worst, space travel businesses want it because death and injury is bad for business.

Any company, whether they are building and flying rockets or simply selling sandwiches, needs to have customers to stay in business. Blue Origin, SpaceX, Boeing and Virgin Galactic — all companies planning to fly people out into space — won’t be able to keep customers if people aren’t flying back to Earth intact.

And unlike the mistakes of a sandwich shop, which might never make the front page news, in a pioneering industry like commercial space flight, you can bet every potential customer on earth would hear about the company’s missteps. As safety risks increase, customers will decrease, and if that balance gets out of whack, the company will fail.

Not all customers desire the same level of safety. And that’s OK. When regulations are minimal, companies can cater to whatever customer base they want. Riskier or more expensive products or services will  have a smaller customer base than those that are safer or cheaper.

Perhaps each space tourism company will use this formula to choose a different niche; companies could advertise that they tested their spacecraft the most, or offer the least expensive weightlessness experience, or orbit the earth the fastest.  In this way, less regulation gives the consumer more choices, while regulation would restrict some of these options, eliminating the preferences of some customers while simultaneously crippling those niche businesses.

“Minimal” Regulation

What does “minimal” regulation look like in the space tourism industry? Right now, it’s governed by the Commercial Space Act, which establishes the Secretary of Transportation as the governing authority. The Secretary has the power to grant launch licenses to rockets, which can include requirements on crew training and medical standards.

The license holder must inform crew and passengers in writing about the risks involved in space travel, and let them know that the United States Government has not certified the launch vehicle as safe for carrying crew or space flight participants. The Secretary can also restrict rocket design features or operating practices that have resulted in serious or fatal injury or a high risk thereof.

By many standards, that amount of regulation is already too much. It’s not that these rules are especially onerous or illogical; it’s just that they are unnecessary. Crew members and paying customers are voluntarily participating in space flight — a non-essential service, moreover — through the company. Therefore, customers and employees should work directly with the company to ensure a satisfactory experience. The company can then meet those demands or lose those customers and workers. They can cut out the middleman of regulation because there is no one to protect; all parties are already satisfied, and customers are signing up in droves. According to the article, Virgin Galactic has accrued 700 paid passengers since 2005.

The article cites Uber as a close example of how the space travel industry could expect to pave its own way:

Because the slate is still blank for how the federal government will treat the space business, the earliest companies will be in a position to set the tone, much as Uber’s regulatory battles laid the groundwork for the still tetchy relationship between cities and ride-hailing apps.

This is a fitting analogy, but frustrating if space tourism goes the way of ride-hailing apps. Because Uber and others like it are another example of a business in which regulators tried to fix problems that didn’t exist. Everyone involved was already happy. And yet because of pressure from the highly-regulated taxi companies, politicians implemented regulations to handcuff ride-sharing companies as well, under the guise of consumer protection.

In my home state of Massachusetts, for example, a bill regulating ride-sharing companies required Uber drivers to complete a two-part background check, carry insurance coverage of at least $1 million, and have their vehicles get a second safety inspection in addition to the annual inspection required of all registered cars. And—perhaps the biggest affront— the law required the companies to pay 20 cents per ride to the state, which will fund public transportation, including the taxi industry. The bill was signed into law last August, adding Massachusetts to the long list of states that punish and restrict the ride-sharing app companies while buoying their competitors.

Yet Uber and other ride-sharing app companies have largely survived the onslaught of regulations because the service they offer is so attractive, not only from a practical standpoint, but also a symbolic one. It gives both customers and drivers freedom and self-determination, the ability to set their own hours, choose their own route.

And that’s just ground transportation. It’s hard to imagine a more freeing experience than blasting off in a rocket to outer space, quite literally extricating oneself from earthly cares. So while we will likely see a shorter leash on space tourism companies as the industry matures and regulators catch up, these pioneering companies have a chance to demonstrate that they can be self policing. They can prove that private industry can safely, astonishingly, and beautifully launch people into the final frontier — and bring them home again.

A new age is dawning. Will governments be left in the dust?

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Via The Daily Bell

If you are flying a jet, and approaching a thunderstorm, is it better to go through the thunderstorm, or to fly above it, safely out of range? The thunderstorm exists, and is dangerous; you cannot change that. But what you can change is how you interact with that storm, and therefore how it affects you. Avoiding the danger still requires recognizing the storm, to understand it’s scope, and trajectory.

Last week The Daily Bell posted three articles about fear. Some readers may have mistook this for promoting fear; did The Daily Bell jump on the the mainstream media “be afraid” bandwagon? But take a closer look, and you will see that two of the articles were actually calling out the use of fear as a tool for control, and the third was alerting you to a real concern.

You could say two were trying to stop the mainstream media from dragging you into the thunderstorm, an the third was trying to help you recognize the nature of the storm, in order to avoid it.

Warning: The Media is Trying to Kill You certainly sounds like it would be promoting fear. But the article was actually about the influence the media has on humanity to the extent that their reporting on things like suicide and murder can actually increase suicides and murders. It was a warning about the amount of power the media can exert over people through their reporting. The article actually warned not to let the media scare you into taking the action they want (being engulfed in the thunderclouds).

Another article was sarcastically titled, 3 Exciting New Ways to Destroy Humanity That Everyone is Talking About. In it, we were actually pointing out how ridiculous the three scenarios were that the media was promoting as possible extinction events for humanity. We assumed the title would be understood as a joke; as if it was exciting and popular to discuss the end of humanity. The scenarios discussed, while possible, had no basis in reality. The point was despite their unlikelihood, that didn’t stop the media from reporting them in a way which spreads fear of those events, even giving absurd percentage chance of the extinction events occurring, making them seem like a plausible threat (the fear of lightning striking you at any moment).

But a third article was actually warning about something that should be on your radar. What Everyone Should Know About the New Quarantine Regulation, was meant to inform you about a threat to your rights. The government has granted itself the power to ignore due process under certain circumstances, when they deem the public health to outweigh your individual rights (recognizing the storm gathering around a supposed epidemic).

This all brings up an interesting point: when should we report things which should be kept on your radar, without going too far to end up promoting fear, and keeping you pinned down by the storm?

Media “Fear Porn”

When the mainstream media makes up a percentages for the likelihood of different cataclysmic events wiping out humanity, that is what is called “fear porn” as at least one commenter put it. Some people, apparently, get a rise out of the doom and gloom. They love a good thunderstorm.

Another mainstream article I would classify as “fear porn” is an article from Bloomberg called Fears Grow of Terror in U.S. With Weaponized Civilian Drones.

(Like this one!)

Does the article ever give evidence of these supposedly growing fears? No, not unless you think the opinion of the Deputy Director of the National Counter-terrorism Center is a good indicator of U.S. fears. He is the only person the article talks about being fearful of private drones being used in terrorist attacks.

And why is he fearful of this? Of course one possibility is that he is not fearful of this, he simply wants everyone else to be fearful of it. But another possibility is that because he has been involved in the U.S. effort to spread fear and terror via drone bombings, he sees this as a threat. He is in the midst of the storm. It’s like how power-hungry people who nefariously undermine their opponents are paranoid that they will be targeted in the same way.

Clearly the government wants you to be scared of personal drone attacks, even though it has never happened inside the U.S. before. But why?

And here is where the line becomes blurred between rejecting all fear mongering and making sure we stay abreast of their tactics for control.

We should be aware that when the government starts to promote fear of a certain event, they themselves may be planning to exploit those fears for more power. Do they want people to clamor for more regulation of private drones? Do they want the public to be primed for a false flag carried out with a personal drone?

This is like yet another article we have recently published called Another DHS “Exercise” Planned: The Risk of Terrorism Drills Becoming Reality. If we can recognize patterns seen in government, we can stop the events we fear from happening. We are not trying to spread fear of possible false flag attacks from government, rather recognize the danger in order to prevent them. If we see the storm on the horizon, we can fly over or around it, rather than through it.

Government fear plays into their goals; get citizens to accept their protection and safety net in order to maintain power and control.

Unless you think The Daily Bell is part of a government PSYOP (which apparently some readers do believe) then anything we share that seems fearful is only intended to warn of actual dangers, and not attempted to influence your behavior to run to the government for salvation. I don’t think that would work on the healthy skeptics who read The Daily Bell.

I think Daily Bell readers are far past the point of allowing the government to scare them into certain behaviors, so this probably wouldn’t be the most efficient use of CIA resources.

Nefarious Conclusion

I think the behavior most at risk of being induced among The Daily Bell readers is a paranoia about just how much control the government has, which can paralyze any productive action that would give power back to the individual.

Sometimes if we feel overwhelmed by the evil powers that supposedly dominate the earth, we may become depressed, and give up all hope of progress.

Keep in mind how incompetent the government is in almost any area. Do we really think they excel when it comes to the total control many fear they have, coupled with their uncanny ability to keep it under wraps?

In reality, the government probably wants us to think they have more control than they really do. It is like the South Park episode where Bush wants people to think he carried out 9/11 so that they will fear him, giving him more power, when in reality (in the South Park episode) he had nothing to do with it.

So remember that: among our demographics, the government may benefit more from the fear that they are all powerful megalomaniacs bent on world domination, even if such is not entirely the case (or even if their world dominance is more segmented and less organized than we are sometimes led to believe).

So the real question is, to what extent should we inform you of actual threats, and at what point does this have the opposite effect of promoting the fear we want to avoid influencing behavior?

We want to help you fly above the storm, which requires alerting you to where lightning is striking, and in what direction the storm is moving. And we want to alert you to these dangers without dragging you into the thick of the turbulence.

We try to strike a balance, but sometimes we miss. Let’s have a discussion in the comments below. Tell me what you think is the proper scope of reporting on fear, versus avoiding fear mongering.

What is your subconscious telling you about your surroundings? Intuition is real.

If you are flying a jet, and approaching a thunderstorm, is it better to go through the thunderstorm, or to fly above it, safely out of range? The thunderstorm exists, and is dangerous; you cannot change that. But what you can change is how you interact with that storm, and therefore how it affects you. Avoiding the danger still requires recognizing the storm, to understand it’s scope, and trajectory.

Last week The Daily Bell posted three articles about fear. Some readers may have mistook this for promoting fear; did The Daily Bell jump on the the mainstream media “be afraid” bandwagon? But take a closer look, and you will see that two of the articles were actually calling out the use of fear as a tool for control, and the third was alerting you to a real concern.

You could say two were trying to stop the mainstream media from dragging you into the thunderstorm, an the third was trying to help you recognize the nature of the storm, in order to avoid it.

Warning: The Media is Trying to Kill You certainly sounds like it would be promoting fear. But the article was actually about the influence the media has on humanity to the extent that their reporting on things like suicide and murder can actually increase suicides and murders. It was a warning about the amount of power the media can exert over people through their reporting. The article actually warned not to let the media scare you into taking the action they want (being engulfed in the thunderclouds).

Another article was sarcastically titled, 3 Exciting New Ways to Destroy Humanity That Everyone is Talking About. In it, we were actually pointing out how ridiculous the three scenarios were that the media was promoting as possible extinction events for humanity. We assumed the title would be understood as a joke; as if it was exciting and popular to discuss the end of humanity. The scenarios discussed, while possible, had no basis in reality. The point was despite their unlikelihood, that didn’t stop the media from reporting them in a way which spreads fear of those events, even giving absurd percentage chance of the extinction events occurring, making them seem like a plausible threat (the fear of lightning striking you at any moment).

But a third article was actually warning about something that should be on your radar. What Everyone Should Know About the New Quarantine Regulation, was meant to inform you about a threat to your rights. The government has granted itself the power to ignore due process under certain circumstances, when they deem the public health to outweigh your individual rights (recognizing the storm gathering around a supposed epidemic).

This all brings up an interesting point: when should we report things which should be kept on your radar, without going too far to end up promoting fear, and keeping you pinned down by the storm?

Media “Fear Porn”

When the mainstream media makes up a percentages for the likelihood of different cataclysmic events wiping out humanity, that is what is called “fear porn” as at least one commenter put it. Some people, apparently, get a rise out of the doom and gloom. They love a good thunderstorm.

Another mainstream article I would classify as “fear porn” is an article from Bloomberg called Fears Grow of Terror in U.S. With Weaponized Civilian Drones.

(Like this one!)

Does the article ever give evidence of these supposedly growing fears? No, not unless you think the opinion of the Deputy Director of the National Counter-terrorism Center is a good indicator of U.S. fears. He is the only person the article talks about being fearful of private drones being used in terrorist attacks.

And why is he fearful of this? Of course one possibility is that he is not fearful of this, he simply wants everyone else to be fearful of it. But another possibility is that because he has been involved in the U.S. effort to spread fear and terror via drone bombings, he sees this as a threat. He is in the midst of the storm. It’s like how power-hungry people who nefariously undermine their opponents are paranoid that they will be targeted in the same way.

Clearly the government wants you to be scared of personal drone attacks, even though it has never happened inside the U.S. before. But why?

And here is where the line becomes blurred between rejecting all fear mongering and making sure we stay abreast of their tactics for control.

We should be aware that when the government starts to promote fear of a certain event, they themselves may be planning to exploit those fears for more power. Do they want people to clamor for more regulation of private drones? Do they want the public to be primed for a false flag carried out with a personal drone?

This is like yet another article we have recently published called Another DHS “Exercise” Planned: The Risk of Terrorism Drills Becoming Reality. If we can recognize patterns seen in government, we can stop the events we fear from happening. We are not trying to spread fear of possible false flag attacks from government, rather recognize the danger in order to prevent them. If we see the storm on the horizon, we can fly over or around it, rather than through it.

Government fear plays into their goals; get citizens to accept their protection and safety net in order to maintain power and control.

Unless you think The Daily Bell is part of a government PSYOP (which apparently some readers do believe) then anything we share that seems fearful is only intended to warn of actual dangers, and not attempted to influence your behavior to run to the government for salvation. I don’t think that would work on the healthy skeptics who read The Daily Bell.

I think Daily Bell readers are far past the point of allowing the government to scare them into certain behaviors, so this probably wouldn’t be the most efficient use of CIA resources.

Nefarious Conclusion

I think the behavior most at risk of being induced among The Daily Bell readers is a paranoia about just how much control the government has, which can paralyze any productive action that would give power back to the individual.

Sometimes if we feel overwhelmed by the evil powers that supposedly dominate the earth, we may become depressed, and give up all hope of progress.

Keep in mind how incompetent the government is in almost any area. Do we really think they excel when it comes to the total control many fear they have, coupled with their uncanny ability to keep it under wraps?

In reality, the government probably wants us to think they have more control than they really do. It is like the South Park episode where Bush wants people to think he carried out 9/11 so that they will fear him, giving him more power, when in reality (in the South Park episode) he had nothing to do with it.

So remember that: among our demographics, the government may benefit more from the fear that they are all powerful megalomaniacs bent on world domination, even if such is not entirely the case (or even if their world dominance is more segmented and less organized than we are sometimes led to believe).

So the real question is, to what extent should we inform you of actual threats, and at what point does this have the opposite effect of promoting the fear we want to avoid influencing behavior?

We want to help you fly above the storm, which requires alerting you to where lightning is striking, and in what direction the storm is moving. And we want to alert you to these dangers without dragging you into the thick of the turbulence.

We try to strike a balance, but sometimes we miss. Let’s have a discussion in the comments below. Tell me what you think is the proper scope of reporting on fear, versus avoiding fear mongering.

What is your subconscious telling you about your surroundings? Intuition is real.

via http://ift.tt/2oj6Oxj TDB

So much for speculation the various Congressional Intel Committees will jump at the chance to give Mike Flynn immunity – the same way they rushed to give all of Hillary Clinton’s staffers immunity – to help him “turn” against Trump and spill the beans, as so many have speculated. According to a report by NBC’s Bradd Jaffy, the Senate Intel committee is “not receptive” to Flynn’s immunity request “at this time” as it would be “wildly preliminary.”

Senate Intel Cmte is “not receptive” to Flynn’s immunity request “at this time” — “wildly preliminary,” sources tell @kasie @KenDilanianNBC

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) March 31, 2017

That said, as Jaffy adds, “that doesn’t mean the intel committees wouldn’t consider granting immunity down the road. Their investigations are just getting started.”

That doesn't mean the intel committees wouldn't consider granting immunity down the road. Their investigations are just getting started. https://t.co/RS2mAlqdXX

— Bradd Jaffy (@BraddJaffy) March 31, 2017

However, judging by the initial reticence, there may be little “there” there.

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