Month: September 2017

Amazon- Dual topping patterns possible says Joe Friday

Six weeks ago, Joe Friday shared that Amazon looked to have created a large bearish reversal pattern at a key Fibonacci extension level. See post HERE 

Below looks at an update of Amazon on a “Monthly” basis-

CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE

Below looks at Amazon on a weekly basis-

CLICK ON CHART TO ENLARGE

Joe Friday Just The Facts Ma’am– Amazon could be forming “dual topping” patterns over the past few months. What it does at dual support at (1), could become critical for the patterns at the stock!

If dual support would happen to give way at (2), it could encourage selling pressure and could impact the broad market.

 

 

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Unintended Consequences & Ugly Repercussions: It’s Getting Worse In Catalonia

As NakedCapitalism's Jerri-Lynn writes, the Catalonia crisis is accelerating, with Madrid’s crackdown increasing support for independence even among those previously not so disposed. This does not look like it will end well.

Spain will deploy police reinforcements to the northeastern region of Catalonia to maintain order and take action if a referendum on independence pledged by the Catalan government but deemed illegal by Spain should take place, officials said Friday.

AP reports that an Interior Ministry statement said the extra agents would provide backing for the Catalan regional police who are also under orders to prevent the staging of the referendum.

But protests continue to grow and Rajoy's actions only seem to solidify opposition…

"I feel the way people used to feel during Franco regime. Nothing less. Because Francoism is still alive," said protester Josep Selva, referring to Gen. Francisco Franco's military regime that ruled Spain between 1939 and 1978, three years after his death.

 

"The political reform of 1978 only legalized Francoism and disguised it as democracy," he said.

But, as WolfStreet.com's Don Quijones points out Madrid’s crackdown on Catalonia is already having one major consequence, presumably unintended: many Catalans who were until recently staunchly opposed to the idea of national independence are now reconsidering their options.

A case in point: At last night’s demonstration, spread across multiple locations in Barcelona, were two friends of mine, one who is fanatically apolitical and the other who is a strong Catalan nationalist but who believes that independence would be a political and financial disaster for the region. It was their first ever political demonstration. If there is a vote on Oct-1, they will probably vote to secede.

The middle ground they and hundreds of thousands of others once occupied was obliterated yesterday when a judge in Barcelona ordered Spain’s militarized police force, the Civil Guard, to round up over a dozen Catalan officials in dawn raids. Many of them now face crushing daily fines of up to €12,000.

The Civil Guard also staged raids on key administrative buildings in Barcelona. The sight of balaclava-clad officers of the Civil Guard, one of the most potent symbols of the not-yet forgotten Franco dictatorship, crossing the threshold of the seats of Catalonia’s (very limited) power and arresting local officials, was too much for the local population to bear.

Within minutes almost all of the buildings were surrounded by crowds of flag-draped pro-independence protesters. The focal point of the day’s demonstrations was the Economic Council of Catalonia, whose second-in-command and technical coordinator of the referendum, Josep Maria Jové, was among those detained. He has now been charged with sedition and could face between 10-15 years in prison. Before that, he faces fines of €12,000 a day.

The confiscation of ballots and other vital voting paraphernalia and the detention of key members of the referendum’s organizing committee, together with today’s decision by the Spanish Finance Ministry to completely block the regional government’s accounts — a move that would not be possible without full cooperation of both Spanish and Catalan banks — could be a major setback for Catalonia’s dreams of independence.

Without ballots, voter databases and ballot boxes, organizing a referendum is going to be a tough task, especially if Catalonia’s government no longer has access to public funds. But it will still try. It’s already launched a new website informing the public of the location of voting colleges on October 1. The site replaces dozens of other URLs that have been shut down at the behest of Spanish authorities.

Nonetheless, yesterday’s police operation significantly — perhaps even irreversibly — weakens Catalonia’s plans to hold a referendum on October 1, as even the region’s vice-president Oriol Junqueras concedes. But that doesn’t mean Spain has won. As the editor of El Diario, Ignacio Escolar, presciently notes, yesterday’s raids may have been a resounding success for law enforcement, but they were an unmitigated political disaster that has merely intensified the divisions between Spain and Catalonia and between Catalans themselves.

Each time Prime Minister Rajoy or one of his ministers speak of the importance of defending democracy while the Civil Guard seizes posters and banners related to the October 1 vote and judges rule public debates on the Catalan question illegal and then fine their participants, a fresh clutch of Catalan separatists is born.

In the days to come they will be swarming the streets, waving their flags, clutching their red carnations and singing their songs. For the moment, the mood is still one of hopeful, resolute indignation. But the mood of masses is prone to change quickly, and it’s not going to take much to ignite the anger.

Madrid is sending three ships with a total of 6,000 non-Catalan police reinforcements to Barcelona in the coming week. In reaction, the stevedores at Barcelona Port have voted not to provide any services to the ships, which they consider to be “ships of repression.”

If it spirals out of control, the conflict between Barcelona and Madrid could have ugly repercussions far beyond Spanish borders, as we warned in a 2015 article. Yet the European Union steadfastly refuses to mediate in the crisis, arguing that it must respect Spain’s constitution.

Given Brussels’ long-standing habit of meddling in others’ affairs, including toppling the elected leaders of Greece and Italy at the height of Europe’s sovereign debt crisis, it’s a poor excuse. And most of Europe’s governments (with the possible exception of the UK, which is already engaged in a gargantuan struggle with Brussels) refuse to support Catalonia’s separatist movement out of the fear — largely justifiable — that it could fuel separatist tensions closer to home.

But the crisis in Catalonia is not going to go away just by ignoring it.

In the last few weeks alone three major international newspapers — Le Monde, The New York Times and The Times — have called for Madrid to allow a referendum. And with Rajoy and his government seemingly determined to pummel Catalonia into submission, at just about any cost, the chances are that their ranks will grow.

And this is where Madrid is making arguably its biggest mistake. For a new country to be born, it must first be recognized. Thanks to years of sustained, non-violent protest and the often overblown reaction of the Rajoy government, Catalonia has already massively increased the positioning of its brand internationally. Ten years ago, most people in the world didn’t even know what or where Catalonia was. Now, it’s hogging the headlines of the front pages of the biggest newspapers.

“Do not underestimate the power of Spanish democracy.”

Read…  Catalonia’s Defiance of Spanish Authority Turns into Rebellion

*  *  *

Finally, as NakedCapitalism's Yves discussed earlier this week, Catalonia could exercise the nuclear option of defaulting on its debt– which would have serious consequences for itself and for the government in Madrid. Although this still looks to be a remote possibility, Madrid’s latest aggressive measures have made no headway in defusing that potential bomb.

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Using Negative Collectivist Generalities to Accuse Libertarians of Indulging Negative Collectivist Generalities

You can't unsee ||| YouTubeThere has been a lot of talk during this long and dreary summer, here and elsewhere, about the connections (or lack thereof) between libertarianism and the alt-right. There have also been plenty of distancing exercises as well, most notably around these parts Zach Weissmueller’s “What the Alt-Right Gets Wrong.” The broader discussion is becoming its own literary micro-genre at this point, generating not only epic Twitter feuds (Tom Woods vs. Nicholas Sarwark!) and eloquent examinations of fringe movements, but arguably at least part of this summer’s greatest academic/literary controversy.

I wish by no means to adjudicate the many ongoing disputes here, whether normie vs. libertarian, or paleo vs. cosmo (or even “Bionic Mosquito” vs. “Libertarian Neocons for McCain”!). But I do think it’s worthwhile to point out an unhelpful argumentative tic running through a lot of the discussion, and that is this: In a debate ultimately centered around whether and how much libertarianism has midwifed a movement that nurtures generalized antipathies toward collective swaths of people, essayists are using negative generalizations toward collective swaths of libertarians.

One example this week comes from John Ganz, who wrote a widely shared Washington Post piece titled “Libertarians have more in common with the alt-right than they want you to think.” Ganz mostly takes a tour through the grotesque (IMO) “Paleo” strategy of Murray Rothbard and Llewelyn Rockwell, Jr., of the late 1980s and early 1990s, drawing links to modern-day successors. Ganz knows enough about his subject to include the disclaimer, “Perhaps it’s not fair to lay blame for Rothbard the heretic at the feet of the mainline libertarian church, which attempted to purge him,” but ultimately he does not let such potential unfairness get in the way of a good generalization. Which is this:

The problem is that libertarian principles, which revolve [around] the abstract notion of self-interest, are really not principles at all; they have no content and allow anything to be attached to them. Abstract self-interest alone can provide no instructive rule of thought and can disqualify no particular course of action, because each person is free to concoct what is in their best interest, and because “aggression” can be and has been defined in a variety of spurious ways.

Step 1: Reduce all the various philosophical strands of libertarianism into a single vague thing.

Step 2: Declare that single small thing too simplistic and abstract.

Step 3: Confidently insert Mad-Libs phrases of ominous malevolence, such as, “It’s a quick step from here to full-on white nationalism,” and “the intellectual wasteland of libertarianism continues to provide a safe space for fascists.”

(Quick aside about that last crack: For an “intellectual wasteland,” libertarianism has coughed up a whole lot of Nobel laureates, celebrated authors, and thought-provoking carnie acts.)

While libertarians certainly over-index for interest in philosophy, celebrating such thinkers as John Stuart Mill, Adam Smith, F.A. Hayek, Ludwig von Mises, Ayn Rand, Rothbard, Milton Friedman, and Robert Nozick, among others, it’s important to note that A) the aforementioned eggheads and their followers frequently disagreed with one another, often vehemently; and B) even a disproportionate interest in philosophy does not remotely translate into a majority of those who champion “Free Minds and Free Markets” anchoring their ideological identities onto a single declarative sentence.

She's hot, she's sexy, and she's dead! ||| ReasonSo while there may be some people I’ve encountered who consciously tether their entire value systems to “the abstract notion of self-interest,” I would bet real Bitcoin that that amounted to a sliver of the 15 percent or so of Americans who are broadly libertarian. In fact, most people who tell me libertarianism is all about self-interest tend to be anti-libertarians (and I tend to contest their reductivism). I am not philosophically inclined, but any shortlist of my own ideological values would include individualism, the pursuit of happiness, equality in front of the law, private markets instead of state capitalism, democratic elections, freedom, human flourishing, peace, and love (because: hippie). I may be a walking advertisement for intellectual waste, but there’s zero wiggle room in even that brief list for anything resembling white nationalism or fascism.

As Ayn Rand perceptively wrote, “Like every other form of collectivism, racism is a quest for the unearned…It is a quest for automatic knowledge—for an automatic evaluation of men’s characters that bypasses the responsibility of exercising rational or moral judgment.” Collectivism, in other words, is not only wrong, it’s wrong—it’s both immoral and inaccurate. What’s weird is to see such inaccuracy—or at least negative collective assertions unbacked by supporting evidence—being used by libertarians to damn libertarians for being insufficiently anti-racist. And yet here we are.

At the Niskanen Center, Jacob T. Levy (Reason archive here) this week gives a finger-wag to colorblind libertarians: “Not to put too fine a point on it,” Levy writes, “those who proclaim their commitment to freedom have all too often assessed threats to freedom as if those facing African-Americans don’t count —as if black liberty does not matter.” Levy names the same villains Ganz does: Rockwell, Rothbard, the odious Ron Paul newsletters. Then he broadens the brief:

But there are ways to neglect black liberty that are subtler than the white nationalism of the Confederatistas. Think about the different ways that market liberals and libertarians talk about “welfare” from how they talk about other kinds of government redistribution. There’s no talk of the culture of dependence among farmers, although they receive far more government aid per capita than do the urban poor. Libertarians absolutely and clearly oppose corporate welfare, but they don’t do so in the paternalistic language that corporate welfare recipients are morally hurt by being on the dole. The white welfare state of the 1930s-60s that channeled government support for, e.g., housing, urban development, and higher education through segregated institutions has a way of disappearing from the historical memory; the degrees earned and homes bought get remembered as hard work contributing to the American dream. But too many libertarians and their market-oriented allies among postwar conservatives treated the more racially inclusive welfare state of the 1960s and 70s as different in kind. White recipients of housing subsidies hadn’t been imagined to become dependent, non-autonomous, or unfree. When the FHA was insisting that neighborhoods be segregated in order to be eligible for mortgage or building subsidies, it contributed a great deal to the racial wealth gap that persists to this day. No free-marketeers of the era felt the need to engage in brave, politically incorrect inquiries into the lower intelligence of new white homeowners that might explain their long-term dependence. But once the imagined typical welfare recipient was a black mother, welfare became a matter not just of economic or constitutional concern but of moral panic about parasites, fraud, and the long-term collapse of self-reliance.

Tellingly, there are no hyperlinks in this generalization-strewn paragraph. Is there really “no talk” among libertarians about “the culture of dependence among farmers”? I found several Reason links to the contrary, including a 1990 article headlined “Cultivating Independence,” and a 2001 article that began like this:

Why is there a stigma attached to using government-financed stamps to purchase food but no stigma attached to accepting government money to grow the food in the first place? American farm policy is filled with such stumpers.

Consider that federal cash payments to individuals — the program formerly known as Aid to Families with Dependent Children — were widely criticized for creating intergenerational dependency on the federal government and allowing people to maintain an idle lifestyle. Yet cash payments to American farmers are justified by some precisely because they promote intergenerational dependency on government and allow for an idle lifestyle.

*coughs* ||| Reason“Libertarians absolutely and clearly oppose corporate welfare,” Levy maintains, “but they don’t do so in the paternalistic language that corporate welfare recipients are morally hurt by being on the dole.” And yet the country’s oldest and most successful libertarian magazine has long been deliberately inverting the old “welfare queen” language when it comes to recipients of government largesse. A small selection from the archive: “Confessions of a Welfare Queen,” “Florida Finds That Not All Welfare Recipients Are Drug-Addled Pillbillies,” “Billionaire Welfare-Queen Liars,” “But These Welfare Queens Are Manly!,” and so on and so forth. I have little doubt that there are some self-styled libertarians who engaged in race-selective moral panic about welfare recipients, but if so, surely they could be located and hyperlinked, in order to advance the conversation beyond the gross generalization that “market liberals and libertarians talk about ‘welfare'” differently than “how they talk about other kinds of government redistribution.”

The point here is not that there isn’t fertile ground for self-examination about various libertarian intellectual variants, histories, and debates, particularly as regards race—there very much is, and below I list some links to a brief selection of the many such exercises in the Reason archive. But if we truly seek to broaden understanding (beginning with our own), rather than merely sort people into buckets marked “desirable” and “deplorable,” the more specificity, the better.

Some links:

* “Virtue vs. Libertinism or, a Reason debate on liberty, license, coercion, and responsibility.”

* “Are Property Rights Enough? Should libertarians care about cultural values? A reason debate.”

* “Racism, Civil Rights, and Libertarianism: Lessons from the Rand Paul controversy”

* “Libertarianism Is More Than Just Rejecting Force: The ‘thick’ and ‘thin’ of libertarian philosophy.”

* “A Tale of Two Libertarianisms: The conflict between Murray Rothbard and F.A. Hayek highlights an enduring division in the libertarian world.”

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“No News Is Bad News”: May Calls For 2 Year Exit “Implemention”, No Mention Of Early Departure

Theresa May’s speech has concluded, and while she did not confirm prior rumors that she may call for early EU departure prior to 2019, cable is lower on what has been called a “no news is bad news” speech, because as Danske Bank said, May’s remarks in which she confirmed that the UK will be leaving the EU, highlight the Brexit remains a headwind for the pound.

Among the key highlights of her speech, May said that there should be a transition phase to allow businesses, people, and public services to “adjust to new arrangements in a smooth and orderly way.”
The UK PM said that “access to one another’s markets should continue” on existing terms during transition and that the framework for this transition should be “the existing structure of EU rules” and regulations.

She also said that there will be a registration system for EU workers coming to U.K. during transition adding that the transition or “implementation” period will last “around two years” and should be agreed on “as early as possible.” 

Finally, May calls for a clear “double lock” guaranteeing transition but also guaranteeing that period will be “time-limited” so public knows “that this will not go on forever”

Cable has slumped 80 pips, having started its decline ahead of the speech, and bottoming around 1.35

As Bloomberg adds, May’s acknowledgment of the Brexit bill is perhaps helping the pound’s resilience, yet the lack of details is proving problematic for investors. While May said “the U.K. will honor commitments we have made,” Brits “want to continue working together,” and “would want to make an ongoing contribution to cover our fair share,” she sidestepped mentioning any amount and didn’t really say how that amount would be determined. All she did say was that she “would not want our partners to fear they need to pay more or receive less over the remainder of the current budget plan.”

Also, with cable slumping, both the FTSE100 and 10Y yields have rebounded on May’s speech.

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Second Largest Week Of Tech Inflows Ever

The tech scare, which hit earlier this summer, is long forgotten and clearly over because according to the latest EPFR data compiled by Bank of America, the past week saw the second largest week of inflows to tech on record ($1.0bn) and the largest week of inflows was late Jan’17.

Beside this surge into high-growth names, BofA observes that flows this week saw $5.6bn into bonds, $2.7bn into equities, offset by $18mn outflow from gold. The equity inflows were once again entirely thanks to ETFs at the expense of carbon-based traders: the 5th straight week of inflows ($2.7bn) saw $8.0bn into ETFs offset by $5.3bn outflows from mutual funds.

Some other observations:

  • Cyclical-on in sectors: largest inflows to materials in half a year, largest inflows to financials in 7 weeks.
  • End of QE: three potential Great Rotations post QE: asset, regional, style/sector; However, as BofA’s Michael Hartnett points out, flows show the regional rotation has been the only one that investors have acted upon ($5bn outflows from US equities YTD vs $117bn inflows to non-US equities)
  • Risk-on in bonds: HY & EM debt see inflows vs 1st outflows from Treasuries in 6 weeks
  • BofAML Bull &Bear Indicator: remains at 7.0 as improvements in flows & equity breadth offset by less bullish hedge fund positioning

Some more details on equity flows:

  • US: outflows 12 of past 14 weeks ($0.3bn)
  • EM: 5th straight week of inflows ($2.0bn)
  • Japan: first outflows in 10 weeks ($1.4bn)
  • Europe: inflows 10 of past 11 weeks ($1.8bn)
  • By style: biggest US value fund outflows in 17 weeks ($1.6bn), US growth outflows 8 of past 9 weeks ($1.7bn), tiny outflows from US small caps ($12mn)

By sector: inflows to energy ($0.3bn, 4th straight week), tech ($1.0bn, second-largest ever), financials ($1.1bn, largest in 7 weeks), consumer ($0.3bn, 4th straight week), healthcare ($0.6bn, 4th straight week), utilities ($0.2bn), materials ($0.3bn, largest in 26 weeks); outflows from real estate ($0.3bn)

Looking at the “cash on the sidelines”, BofA finds none there as Private Clients flows: equity allocation highest in 22 months (60.2%) while cash & debt allocations fall

It’s not just equities however, as bonds just had 27 straight weeks of inflows, with another $5.6bn added in the last week. The breakdown:

  • 39 straight weeks of IG bond inflows ($4.3bn)
  • Inflows to HY bond funds 3 of past 4 weeks ($0.2bn)
  • Inflows to EM debt funds 34 of past 35 weeks ($1.3bn)
  • 11th straight week of inflows to muni funds ($0.4bn)
  • Small outflows from TIPS funds ($0.1bn)
  • First outflows from govt/Tsy funds in 6 weeks ($0.5bn)
  • 6th straight week of outflows from bank loan funds ($0.1bn)

In short, retail continues to flood into the market as institutions take advantage to sell to “mom and pop”, who just can’t get enough, especially when it comes to ETFs.

Finally, here is BofA’s asset class “quilt” of total returns.

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077: The reason why ICOs have been going through the roof…

First it was Pets.com, and all the unbelievably stupid Internet businesses in the 1990s.

Investors were so eager to buy dot-com stocks, all you had to do was put an “e” in front of your business or product and you’d immediately be worth millions.

It didn’t matter that most of these companies didn’t make any money. Investors kept buying.

Later on after the dot-com bubble burst, another big craze developed in junior mining stocks– shares of small exploration companies looking for big mineral deposits.

The epicenter of the junior mining industry is in Vancouver, Canada, and the stock exchange there (TSX-V) throttled to record highs.

Shares of companies with literally no profits, no revenue, and no assets were worth tens of millions of dollars.

Then that bubble burst.

A few years later, a new hot craze developed– in cannabis companies.

The market has been flooded with companies (many of them curiously based in Canada’s poor climate and high cost structure) with plans to grow medicinal marijuana.

Their stock prices have soared, with valuations in some cases exceeding $1 billion.

Every time the bubble bursts with these big trends, most of the companies get wiped out.

Only a handful survive– primarily the ones who focused on building long-term, sustainable businesses instead of chasing a quick buck.

From the ashes of the dot-com bubble, companies like Amazon, Godaddy, eBay, etc. emerged in-tact and are still successful today.

Similarly, while many junior mining companies went completely bust, a handful are still operating and quite profitable.

And there will be a few extremely successful cannabis companies over the next several years who step over the remains of their innumerable, defunct competitors.

Clearly today’s big craze is crypto and blockchain.

Like the dot-com bubble in the 90s, you could add the concept of blockchain to just about anything and have a ‘business’ worth millions, no matter how idiotic the original idea.

(Someone will soon pitch me an idea for an app to publish grocery lists into the blockchain. It’s absurd.)

And like all the other big investment fads in the past, most of the companies in this space won’t exist a few years from now.

There are lot of reasons for that, starting with the fact that building a business is hard.

I’ve done it successfully a few times. And unsuccessfully more times that I care to remember: it’s incredibly difficult, so the odds are against most of these companies anyhow.

But more importantly, these big investment fads always attract people looking to make a quick buck. And that doesn’t work in the long-run.

Case in point: earlier this week a company called HIVE Blockchain Technologies went public.

It’s stock price is already up over 3x… since MONDAY, from an opening of 62 cents to $1.89.

Just prior to that, the company closed a private placement at 30 cents… and a few months ago the company was selling shares between 1 and 3 cents.

In other words, a handful of speculators made more than 600x their money in just a few months with a company that has ZERO revenue, simply because ‘Blockchain’ is so popular right now.

This has become the norm in the world of crypto and blockchain.

ICOs, another hot crypto fad, have been racking up huge returns of their own.

‘Tokens’ issued by crypto startups that have no profit or revenue are seeing similar gains of 2x to 10x or more in a very short period of time.

In the case of HIVE, the company is in the business of mining cryptocurrency.

And based on its current stock price, HIVE is worth close to $400 million.

Yet its own financial statements report that they have not generated a penny in revenue.

What’s more, the company’s “illustrative results” show that they -could- make around $7 million per year.

So investors are already paying 57x that amount before the company even gets started.

Even more curious, HIVE’s only real asset is its client relationship with a company called Genesis, one of the largest crypto mining companies in the world (and also a major shareholder in HIVE).

Genesis has more than a million customers who pay an up-front, flat-fee to have the company mine cryptocurrency on their behalf.

HIVE is now essentially a customer of Genesis.

So investors are essentially buying shares of HIVE at a price that’s 57x what the company says it -could- be making (but isn’t) by having Genesis mine cryptocurrency for them.

Seems like investors could save themselves the trouble (and forgo the 57x share price markup) by simply becoming direct customers of Genesis themselves.

Who knows… maybe HIVE is the real deal. Maybe it’s the rare eBay or Amazon that emerges from the bubble in-tact and successful.

But this is a pretty clear example of the irrationality that ensues every single time there’s some white-hot investment fad.

After a hiatus of many, many, many moons, I blew the dust off my microphone and recorded a new podcast about this topic.

It wasn’t so much a podcast as a heated rant against this ridiculous bubble… and a clear explanation of precisely WHY so many crypto assets are generating unbelievable returns.

You can download it here.

Source

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Don’t Fall for Jimmy Kimmel’s Cheap Zero-Sum Emotionalism: New at Reason

Jimmy Kimmel’s political rants could be written by any liberal activist.

David Harsanyi writes:

In recent months, late-night talk show host Jimmy Kimmel has taken to scaremongering his audience with well-worn Democratic Party talking points regarding health care insurance policy. Between yuks, he occasionally accuses Republicans of being would-be baby killers, which is treated as an important political development because, well, Jimmy Kimmel is famous.

This week, the comedian was back to explain why the new Graham-Cassidy Republican “repeal” bill is bad news. There were only two things wrong with his monologue: Almost everything he said was either completely untrue or highly misleading, and his simplistic emotional appeal was completely disconnected from the real world.

View this article.

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US Manufacturing “An Increasing Drag On The Economy” As PMI Drops For First Time Since March

Following a stronger-than-expected Eurozone PMI print this morning, Markit reports a mixed bag for preliminary September US PMIs with Manufacturing limping higher but Services missing expectations and slipping notably. After 5 straight months of gains, the US Composite PMI dropped back below pre-election levels.

As Markit notes, there were signs of underlying fragility in September, with new orders expanding at one of the slowest rates seen over the past year.

Latest data also indicated that new export sales remain close to stagnation.  

Despite the ongoing collapse of 'hard' economic data, 'soft' surveys continue to remain hopeful…

 

Commenting on the flash PMI data, Chris Williamson, Chief Business Economist at IHS Markit said:

“The US economy showed encouraging resilience in a month of hurricane disruption. Although the September surveys indicated a moderation in growth of business activity, the overall rate of expansion remained robust. Historical comparisons of the PMI with GDP indicate that the surveys point to the economy growing at an annualised rate of just over 2% in the third quarter.

 

“Similarly, the overall rate of job creation remained solid, historically consistent with non-farm payrolls rising by 180,000 in September.

 

“The biggest impact of Hurricane Harvey was evident in manufacturing supply chains, where resultant supply shortages were a key driver of higher prices. Supply delays were the most widespread in two and a half years, while input price inflation rose to the highest since 2012.

 

“The manufacturing sector, which was already struggling in August, consequently acted as an increasing drag on the economy, leaving services as the main growth driver. The survey is consistent with a slight deterioration in comparable official manufacturing output data.

 

“While repair work in the aftermath of Hurricane Harvey may boost short-term business activity in coming months, a drop in business optimism about the year ahead suggests that companies have become less confident in the longer-term outlook.”

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Damning Evidence Cuba Launched A Sci-Fi Weapon At US Diplomats

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

They mostly come at night – the attacks from Cuba. Mostly. And many victims never noticed anything odd while others noticed a strange vibration or sound.

It all started in the fall of 2016. Several of the affected diplomats were recent arrivals at the embassy, which reopened in 2015 as part of Barack Obama’s reestablishment of diplomatic relations with Cuba. The Daily Mail reported that one diplomat described being jolted awake in a Havana hotel room by a grinding, blaring cacophony. When he moved a few feet across the room, the noise stopped. When he got back into bed, the agonizing sound hit him again; as if, he told doctors, he had walked through some invisible wall cutting straight down the middle of his room.

Whether they heard anything or not, the consequences have been unmistakable – symptoms ranging from nosebleeds, nausea, dizziness and severe headaches to mild brain damage and permanent hearing or memory loss.

 

Oddly, as soon as some of the victims left Cuba, they stopped hearing noises. – Daily Mail

Or, as some say, maybe it isn’t as odd as we’d expect given the astonishing explanation that has surfaced as to why at least 21 U.S. diplomats, as well as others from Canada, have been brought low while serving in Communist Havana. Although America hasn’t officially pointed any finger at the likely culprit, Washington believes they were victims of a secret sonic weapon blasted their way by the Cuban government.

After months of investigation, U.S. officials concluded that the diplomats had been exposed to an advanced device that operated outside the range of audible sound and had been deployed either inside or outside their residences.

It was not immediately clear if the device was a weapon used in a deliberate attack, or had some other purpose.

No one has lost their life because of this “sci-fi sonic weapon,” but the effects have been dramatic. Months later, some of the victims are still struggling to concentrate or even recall common words.

This evidence of long-term mental damage has hardened the U.S. attitude against Cuba. Now, the repercussions are being felt in diplomatic shockwaves powering across the Caribbean sea in the direction of the Communist state. It may get real ugly real soon.

This scandal now threatens to derail all efforts made at improving relations with Cuba.

[Over] the weekend, the U.S. Secretary of State, Rex Tillerson, revealed the Trump administration was taking the controversy so seriously that it was considering closing its embassy in Havana.

 

Some U.S. senators have gone further, demanding that the government also kicks out every Cuban diplomat in America (the U.S. expelled two in May as a protest over the scandal). – Daily Mail

Several other experts are skeptical still as to this type of weapon’s existence. “There isn’t an acoustic phenomenon in the world that would cause those type of symptoms,” Seth Horowitz, a neuroscientist and author of the book “The Universal Sense: How Hearing Shapes the Mind,” told Business Insider via email. It “sounds like a science experiment,” James Carson, former head of the U.S. Interests Section in Havana, told The New York Times.

Toby Heys, the leader of Manchester Metropolitan University’s Future Technology research center is also skeptical.  He told New Scientist that it’s possible for something emitting infrasound (vibrations at a frequency below what humans can hear) to cause hearing loss. But Heys said that would require large subwoofers, making covert deployment unlikely.  Ultrasound devices, which operate above the range of human hearing, exist and could damage the ears, Heys said. But these sonic weapons would need to be directly targeted into the ear. “Overall, I would be pretty circumspect about the claims, to be honest — it is all very Philip K. Dick territory,” Heys said. “That said, we are living in a fairly surreal world right now.”

In the meantime, president Donald Trump and Secretary of State Rex Tillerson are taking these allegations of acoustic weapons very seriously.

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Trump Will Replace Travel Ban With Broader “Targeted” Restrictions: WSJ

After repeatedly asking the Supreme Court to overturn parts of appellate court rulings that have sought to limit the scope of the White House’s controversial travel ban as US judges have continued their unceasing assault on Trump’s order even after the Supreme Court granted a temporary stay, WSJ is reporting this morning that the administration has decided to scrap the travel ban in favor of more targeted restrictions that will affect a slightly larger number of countries.

The logic behind the decision is that it would be more effective to create specific travel restrictions that vary by country based on a number of factors – including cooperation with US mandates, specific threats posed by each country and other miscellaneous factors, according to WSJ’s anonymous sources. Considering the opposition the wholesale ban has faced, the decision is understandable.

Here’s more from WSJ:

“The Department of Homeland Security originally flagged 17 nations as failing to comply with standards, such as informing the U.S. of known terrorists and issuing reliable passports. Facing the prospect of being included in a travel ban, about half of those 17 nations made changes that brought them into compliance, the people familiar with the process said.

 

DHS then recommended travel restrictions be imposed or extended on the remaining countries. The specific number wasn’t available but it was about half of 17, according to one person familiar with the plan, which would put the total around eight or nine. Under the recommendation, travelers from one or two more countries could face additional background checks when seeking to travel to the U.S., but not a travel ban.

 

One person described the new system as being “tailored sanctions commensurate with their deficiencies” that takes into account the threat posed by the country as well as foreign policy implications of imposing restrictions.”

The new restrictions will be open-ended, unlike the existing ban, which included temporary restrictions to allow the US to improve its ability to vet travelers.  Countries can have restrictions added or removed at any time as various factors change. It wasn’t immediately known which countries would be affected by the new restrictions. The Targeted rules would affect eight or nine countries but it's not immediately known which countries would be affected. President Trump is set to make a final decision on the new restrictions. He could still opt to scrap them and stick with the existing ban, which faces a final ruling from the Supreme Court this fall.

via http://ift.tt/2fgqZp2 Tyler Durden