Silver is down 1% year-to-date, while the dollar has tumbled 3.5% and gold has surged 4%, sending a possible warning signal to the broader market.
This dramatic divergence between gold and silver prices has sent the ratio of the two to multi-year highs.
The divergence between the two means prices for gold are 82 times those of silver, which is 27% more than the 10-year average.
As The Wall Street Journal reports,a higher gold-to-silver ratio is viewed by some investors as a negative economic indicator because money managers tend to favor gold when they think markets might turn rocky and discard silver when they are worried about slower global growth crimping consumption.
“There’s just not many people looking to buy silver at this point in time,” said Walter Pehowich, senior vice president at Dillon Gage Metals.
“There’s a lot of silver that comes out of the refineries, and they can’t find a home for it.”
The precious metals ratio last stayed above 80 in early 2016, when worries about a Chinese economic slowdown roiled markets, and in 2008 during the financial crisis. The ratio’s recent rise comes as speculators have turned the most bearish ever on silver and inventories in warehouses have risen, a sign there could be too much supply.
While investors have flocked toward gold with equity markets wobbling, money managers seeking safety or alternative assets haven’t favored silver.
“It’s not seeing great hedge demand because it’s just easy to go to gold,” said Dan Denbow, who manages the USAA Precious Metals and Minerals Fund . “Gold is a bit more predictable.”
As WSJ conclude, some analysts think silver’s underperformance is a negative sign for precious metals broadly because it is a less actively traded commodity, making it more vulnerable to bigger price swings on the way up and down.
For those who respect the rule of law and value America’s sovereignty, recent developments in California have been cause for dismay. The governor and several mayors there have thumbed their noses at our federal immigration laws, to the point where they are now actually tipping off illegal aliens about operations by federal immigration officers. Attorney General Jeff Sessions has announced a lawsuit against the state, but today’s judiciary has proven to be as infected with political partisanship as any other branch of government. It’s a frustrating mess.
Before you hurl a brick at your monitor or chuck your phone, there is good news.
A recent decision by the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Fifth Circuit strongly upheld Senate Bill 4, a law in Texas that requires all local police agencies in the state to honor immigration detainers issued by U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) and forbids cities, counties and local agencies from enacting or imposing non-cooperation or sanctuary policies.
Yes, America, sanity and state governments are not total strangers in some pockets of the country.
The Immigration Reform Law Institute submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in support of Texas in the appeals court case for some very specific reasons. The Supremacy Clause of the constitution is under attack in this country. Grandstanding governors and mayors seeking to burnish their open borders credentials are treating federal law as if it were an a la carte restaurant menu. America suffered the bloodiest war in its history over this issue and, as Attorney General Jeff Sessions recently commented, the matter has been settled. States must comply with federal law and if they do not, what we have is not a country but a loosely-affiliated group of de facto nation-states who are free to deviate from whatever laws they wish. This cannot and must not continue.
While the media gives it minimal coverage, violent crimes committed by illegal aliens continue unabated. One of the fastest-growing groups in America today is “angel” parents: those whose children lost their lives at the hands of illegal aliens. It should be noted that not all people here illegally are violent criminals, but it doesn’t change the fact that more and more innocent people are being killed by those who have no right to be in the country. Such violent offenders do not discriminate between those here legally or illegally as their victims. Illegal aliens in sanctuary communities have just as much a chance, and arguably more of a chance, to be victims of criminal aliens as anyone else. How is that being compassionate to anyone?
Simple deductive reasoning tells us that sanctuary cities and states act as a magnet to illegal aliens who may be wanted for previous criminal behavior. When it is known that criminal behavior is tolerated or even facilitated in a certain place, criminal behavior is likely to occur in that place. Pro-sanctuary politicians may preen about how empathetic they are, but the plain truth is that their defiance of federal immigration laws makes their communities decidedly less safe, and almost certain to create more angel parents. Because of this, California’s future is not nearly as bright as its opportunistic leaders would have us believe. Given the divergent paths of Texas and California on sanctuary policy, which one is more likely to thrive? Which one would you and your family rather live in? The answer is clear.
Texas Gov. Greg Abbot and Attorney General Ken Paxton, among others, deserve credit for taking the road less traveled with a bold stand against California-style sanctuary anarchy. Those who follow the Texas example will create safer, more prosperous communities for native-born Americans and legal immigrants alike.
Update: It will come as no surprise that following Trump lawyer Michael Cohen’s sent a fresh cease-and-desist letter to Stormy Daniels that her lawyer would fire one right back alleging in court that his personal attorney Michael Cohen defamed her by insinuating that she lied about an affair with Trump more than a decade ago.
Which remember she actually said herself three times and even signed a statement confirming it.
Daniels amended her existing lawsuit against Trump, adding Cohen as a defendant in the pending case.
Besides accusing Cohen of defamation, the amended complaint broadens Daniels’s contention that the confidentiality agreement was illegal, because it lacked Trump’s signature.
And finally we get the real meat of the litigation – as we detailed below:
The new complaint says the payment violated federal laws that impose limits on campaign donations and require those donations to be publicly reported.
Cue Maxine Waters’ cries of “impeachment.”
* * *
As we detailed earlier, following an eye opening60 Minutes interview which gave the CBS production its highest ratings in a decade, President Trump’s personal lawyer, Michael Cohen, sent a cease-and-desist letter to Stormy Daniels, demanding she apologize for fingering him as the person behind an alleged 2011 threat made in a parking lot.
Cohen’s lawyer fired back almost immediately after the Daniels interview with this letter saying allegation of goon threatening her was false >> pic.twitter.com/TWH2djrFPq
The letter accuses Daniels, whose real name is Stephanie Clifford, of making a false claim against Cohen – “namely that he was responsible for an alleged thug who supposedly visited Ms. Clifford, while she was with her daughter, and made an alleged threat to Ms. Clifford.”
The letter goes on to read “In truth, Mr. Cohen had absolutely nothing whatsoever to do with any such person or incident, and does not even believe that any such person exists, or that such incident ever occurred. You and your client’s false statements about Mr. Cohen accuse him of criminal conduct and constitute, among other claims, liber per se and intentional infliction of emotional distress.”
Cohen’s letter demands that Daniels and her attorney, Michael Avenatti refrain from making “further false and defamatory statements” and that they both retract and apologize for the claims made on 60 Minutes.
“A guy walked up on me and said to me, ‘Leave Trump alone. Forget the story,’” Daniels told Anderson Cooper. “And then he leaned around and looked at my daughter and said, ‘That’s a beautiful little girl. It’d be a shame if something happened to her mom.’ And then he was gone.”
Daniels said that while she never saw the man again, she would “100 percent” recognize him. “Even now, all these years later. If he walked in this door right now, I would instantly know.”
Of note, Cohen paid daniels $130,000 prior to the 2016 election, claiming he did so with his own money.
President Trump hinted at the interview Monday morning, tweeting “So much Fake News. Never been more voluminous or more inaccurate. But through it all, our country is doing great!”
So much Fake News. Never been more voluminous or more inaccurate. But through it all, our country is doing great!
Daniels’s lawyer, Michael Avenatti, previously teased the interview by tweeting a picture of what appeared to be a compact disc in a safe – hinting that he has video or photographic evidence of Clifford’s affair with President Trump.
“If ‘a picture is worth a thousand words,’ how many words is this worth?????” tweeted lawyer Michael Avenatti.
When asked about “what is the point of this tease” on The View Monday, Avenatti said “it wasn’t a tease, it was a warning shot to Mr. Cohen and to the President.”
When CBS Evening News‘ Julianna Goldman asked Avenatti if he had photos, texts or videos of her alleged relationship with Trump, he replied “No comment,” adding that Clifford just “wants to set the record straight.”
Sex sells
Stormy’s 60 Minutes interview gave CBS its highest ratings in nearly a decade, with 21.3 million viewers – second only to a November 16, 2008 interview with the Obamas that saw an audience of 24.5 million viewers – with all three segments devoted to the then-president-elect and his wife Michelle.
Although as Fox’s Greg Gutfeld said: “Finding out Donald Trump slept with a porn star is like finding out Mike Pence didn’t…”
The United States, the United Kingdom, and 13 European countries announced they’re expelling more than 100 Russian diplomats in response to a nerve attack against a former Russian spy in England. It’s the largest expulsion since the Cold War. The Russian consulate in Seattle has also been ordered closed.
The attorneys for Noor Salman, wife of Orlando Pulse nightclub shooter Omar Mateen, are calling for a mistrial after discovering that Mateen’s father was a confidential FBI source up until 2016 and argue that authorities pointed the finger at Salman as assisting Mateen to hide his father’s relationship.
An attorney for President Donald Trump’s attorney, Michael Cohen, hit back at the Stormy Daniels interview on 60 Minutes last night, denying claims that somebody in Trump’s orbit threatened her and her daughter if she came forward.
Senate Majority Leader Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.) announced he’d be introducing legislation to legalize hemp as an agricultural product and attempting to remove it from the controlled substances list. The bill’s co-sponsors are Sen. Rand Paul (R-Ky.) and Ron Wyden (D-Ore.).
Police say an Iraqi teen living in Texas with her parents was beaten and burned with hot oil for resisting an arranged marriage. The parents face felony charges.
Yeah, keep your eyes on the road, your hand upon the wheel
Keep your eyes on the road, your hands upon the wheel
Yeah, we’re goin’ to the Roadhouse
We’re gonna have a real
Good time
The Doors – Roadhouse Blues
Spending a week driving around a western state 1,700 miles from my stomping grounds in Pennsylvania provides a different perspective on the level of economic, social and political degradation impacting the country. With a daily commute along the crumbling, crummy, gridlocked deathtrap roadways into West Philadelphia, the squalor and decomposition of our civilization is self-evident.
I live in a corrupt state with the highest gasoline taxes, highest tolls, massively underfunded government pension liability, failing government run public schools, suburban sprawl dotted with ghost malls, vacant industrial parks, and urban ghetto shitholes plagued by drugs, murder, welfare mentality, excessive taxes, and left wing politicians.
Politically, the state is virtually split down the middle, with the urban enclaves of Philadelphia and Pittsburgh dominated by Democrats, rural areas dominated by Republicans, and suburbs capable of going either way – but leaning left. Trump won the state mostly due to the lack of enthusiasm for Hillary in Philly and Pittsburgh. If the Democrats weren’t so dysfunctional and beholden to the far left, a moderate Democrat would win the state easily.
The governor is a Democrat and the legislature is Republican controlled, so budgets are virtually impossible to pass, with the only predictable outcome being higher taxes, fees, tolls, and deferral of essential actions to address the billions in underfunded government pensions. The Federal prison has a wing just for corrupt PA politicians. At least life is predictable.
Living in the northwest suburbs, 30 miles from the City of Philadelphia, and commuting into the city on a daily basis for the last 12 years, has given me a good vantage point in assessing the state of the infrastructure, economic trends, and societal decay in my part of this exponentially delusional, debt dependent, chaotic country. The U.S. and my corner of PA. have supposedly been in the midst of an economic recovery for the last nine years.
The government data shows a declining unemployment rate, rising GDP, non-existent inflation, record corporate profits, low interest rates leading to a growing housing market, soaring consumer confidence, and a record high stock market. In the parlance of Jim Morrison, we’ve been at the Roadhouse having a real good time. We’re gonna need more than a beer to recover from the inevitable hangover.
My suburban slice of Montgomery County is prosperous and growing, based upon demographic and economic data produced by the government. The populace is mostly upper middle class white collar families. I’ve lived in the same house for 23 years, through the 2000 internet bust, the Greenspan created housing bubble, the 2008 Wall Street created financial implosion, and the supposed nine year economic recovery. Within three miles of my house we had two strip centers with 100% occupancy in 1995. For the last eight years one center has been 90% vacant and the other 50% vacant. Office buildings built in 2005 still have numerous vacancies. Entire 600,000 sq. ft. office parks remain unoccupied, except for weeds, rodents, mold and decay.
Grand government plans for new retail outlets never materialized. Numerous gas stations have been shuttered, rotting and weed infested testaments to better times. Numerous grocery stores, locally owned restaurants, and small businesses have gone belly up during these supposed good times. Imagine what will happen during the next official recession.
This Potemkin economic recovery is buttressed by unpayable debt, Federal Reserve easy money, fudged financial industry accounting, fake economic data, endemic political corruption, and a perpetual flow of propaganda from the corporate media spigot convincing the mathematically challenged masses all is well and going into debt to keep up with the Joneses is a brilliant strategy for success. If you ignore the fake news and false rhetoric from politicians, bankers and the media, you can see the continued economic deterioration with your own eyes and your own bank account.
You can tell what our society values and supports by observing your immediate surroundings. The only construction I see are new bank branches, new medical facilities, drug stores, new fast food joints (creating the need for new medical facilities), and new government buildings. The once teetering Wall Street banking industry is alive and well due to tens of trillions funneled their way by the Fed and feckless Washington political machine.
You can’t swing a dead homeless person without hitting a Too Big To Trust Wall Street bank branch. Why do we need these monuments to greed and hubris when you can make a deposit with your smartphone, pay your bills on-line, and use your debit or credit card for every transaction? It’s insane to waste money on thousands of branches. But, when you can get your money from the Fed for free, everything looks like a good investment.
The trillions flowing out of people’s bank accounts and into the coffers of the sick industry complex have enriched these corporations to such an extent; they feel the need to build palatial complexes and numerous outlets for their “legal” drug distribution. You know an industry is rolling in dough when they build high tech glass palaces with concierge service and upscale restaurants, to service sick people.
Those Obamacare premiums and insurance payments are going somewhere, and even after paying the corporate executives their obscene salaries and bonuses, there is plenty left over for the construction of medical Taj Mahals and lobbying corrupt slimy snakes in congress for more. Despite the extravagance of these medical facilities, the service still sucks, a Tylenol costs $25, the physicians are barely adequate, the mis-diagnosis rate is sky high, and the staff is surly and rude.
Local politicians build themselves new grand municipal buildings, even though there are vacant office buildings out the wazoo. New Social Security Administration buildings are constructed at an astounding pace, especially in the Democrat controlled urban ghettos. New Section 8 housing estates are built with union labor on the taxpayer dime. That is the common denominator in all the new building occurring in this country.
The funds for this frenzy of banking, sick care and government construction has materialized out of thin air by a privately owned banking cabal called the Federal Reserve in conspiracy with the Deep State. This entire engineered Potemkin recovery and building boom is built on a liquefying foundation of bad debt and lies. Let it roll, baby, roll.
My little piece of suburban paradise in this failing and falling empire of debt may be decaying slowly, but my daily commute into the putrid, dilapidated, crumbling ghetto killing field called Philadelphia is a different matter. This corrupt liberal bastion of unfunded government pensions, outrageously high taxes, overpriced union labor, criminal Democrat politicians, dreadful public schools, potholes that could swallow a small car, crumbling infrastructure, murder, mayhem, and an enslaved underclass of welfare dependent minorities, is much further along the track to collapse. This city has pockets of prosperity, but its death rattle is unmistakable. The decay is too far gone and debt too large to realistically reverse course, even if there was a will to do so – which there is not.
My week in Colorado further clarified my view the American empire is in decline, but it is a cascading decline with regions and cities at various stages of collapse. My relatively rural suburban enclave is probably fifty percent of the way there. Philadelphia is eighty percent of the way there. Colorado only appears to be twenty five percent of the way there. I would ponder much of the western U.S., excluding the liberal bastions in California and Washington State, is also further from collapse than the heavily urbanized debt burdened northeastern U.S.
Driving up I-25 to Fort Collins, down to Colorado Springs and west to Boulder and Breckinridge, presented a fairly broad view of the greater Denver area. The most conspicuous aspect of Colorado, from my perspective, is the vast picturesque expanse of open space as far as the eye can see. Every direction seems to be framed by snow-capped Rocky Mountains. It’s the diametric opposite to my daily commute through the 30 Blocks of Squalor in West Philly.
The beauty of the Colorado landscape is somewhat obscured by a seemingly never ending proliferation of retail malls along the entire expanse of I-25. They all look alike, bathed in a beige sandstone design. The malls are populated by the same national retail chains inhabiting the ghost malls on the east coast. They are still constructing new malls, something not done on the east coast for years.
It seems there are still a significant number of people with disposable income in Colorado. Their labor participation rate has actually increased as their unemployment rate has fallen. The plunge in the participation rate has produced fake unemployment levels on the east coast. From that perspective Colorado is in better shape than most of the country.
You can’t help but notice the weed dispensaries sprinkled across the countryside. The legalization of marijuana has certainly had a short term economic benefit, as it has generated jobs and a massive inflow of tax revenue into government coffers. The longer term negative impact is revealing itself by the inordinate amount of homeless addicts in downtown Denver, at interstate off-ramps, under bridge overpasses in Boulder, and loitering in public parks in college towns like Fort Collins. The seeds of collapse are already planted. The influx of liberals fleeing California and the east coast are already indoctrinating a formerly conservative self-reliant state with socialist, feminist, and nanny state philosophies. This was borne out by Hillary’s narrow victory in 2016.
The infrastructure is not in a state of disrepair. Instead of trash and garbage along its interstates, there are clean-up crews picking up tumbleweeds. Everything still has that new smell feel. You just don’t see dilapidated structures. There are no potholes. Stop lights always function. Traffic is heavy at peak times, but not gridlocked. With the best ski resorts, awe inspiring tourist attractions (Garden of the Gods, Red Rocks), the majestic Rockies, growing economy, lack of government pension liabilities, and the weed industry, Colorado will sustain itself far longer than the Democrat run putrefying urban ghettos on the east coast. Make no mistake, the American empire is in the midst of a cascading collapse, and it will reach Colorado eventually.
If ever the lyrics “The future’s uncertain and the end is always near” were more applicable, it would be this past week. The stock market plunged by almost 1,300 points (no tweets from Trump taking credit), Trump accelerated his trade war with the world, he replaced a warmongering general with a warmongering neocon psychopath, the first quarter GDP estimate continued to decline to below 2%, a bunch of useful idiots were manipulated by Soros, Bloomberg and other liberal billionaires to protest against their own rights, and Trump topped it off by stabbing his supporters in the back by signing a bloated Democrat/RINO $1.3 trillion spending bill funding left wing priorities while ignoring everything he supposedly stands for. The Deep State either has pictures, or he is just a wolf in sheep’s clothing with no moral compass or desire to fulfill the agenda he ran on. It was a profoundly disappointing week for Trump supporters, even as the financial markets and economy show unequivocal cracks.
As we enter the second half of this Fourth Turning, there is a lot of uncertainty regarding the specific events which will propel us towards its climax. We do know the events will be driven by the three catalysts of debt, civic decay, and global disorder. We’ve breached the $21 trillion national debt level, with Trump’s new budget poised to blast through $22 trillion in less than a year. The $200 trillion of unfunded liabilities looms in the foreseeable future. Corporate debt stands at an all-time high. Consumer debt stands at an all-time high. Global debt approaches $200 trillion. The coming financial dislocation will blow this powder keg of debt sky high. Matches are being lit on a daily basis.
Civic decay accelerates as gun grabbing left wing billionaires attempt to disarm the deplorables before the real conflict arrives. The Deep State wages war against the insurrection within their swamp. Surveillance agencies commit acts of treason. The Constitution is shit upon by those in power. An ongoing coup against the sitting president proceeds unabated. The citizens are treated as sheep being led to slaughter.
The few critical thinking dissenters are treated as criminals for exercising their First Amendment rights. The social media conglomerates, acting as the eyes and ears of the Deep State, lure the masses into willingly sacrificing their private information. There will be no compromise. The animosity between right and left has reached civil war levels. There is no middle. This will be a fight to the finish.
Trump has surrounded himself with neo-con war mongering philistines, while provoking nuclear powers, and embroiling our military in unwinnable conflicts across the Middle East. Trade wars, whether warranted or not, will ratchet up the intensity and antagonism. The Muslim hordes invading Europe are already provoking a political uprising across the continent. The North Korea problem is far from solved. Politicians across the globe facing unsolvable domestic issues will turn to foreign conflict as a way to distract the masses. Once the Rubicon is crossed the law of unintended consequences will rear its ugly head. The future of humanity hinges on the push of a button. Do you trust the current lot of feeble minded sociopaths to do the right thing?
The future may be uncertain but the end is always near.
Within the next decade the future will be revealed. I believe we are headed for harder times. There is no going back to better days. Trump is the catalyst for conflict, both domestic and international. He will not save this nation. It will be up to individuals across the land. It’s time to mentally, physically, and financially prepare for the bitter winter ahead. Keep your eyes on the road and your hands upon the wheel. In the meantime, follow Jim Morrison’s advice and get yourself a beer.
A full-court press weekend of press by WH officials (Mnuchin gushing hope) and sure enough… a big bounce in stocks…
China stocks rebounded in the afternoon session (National Team again?)
But European stocks bloodbath’d below Friday’s lows…
And once Europe close today, US equities exploded…
But everything started in US markets with the S&P 500 finding support perfectly at its 200-day moving-average…
The Dow was the first to erase Friday’s losses, followed by S&P and Nasdaq and Trannies into the close (Small Caps remained red from Thrusday)…
Nasdaq outperformed – up 3.25% today!! All started as Europe closed…
Today was the best day for The Dow in two-and-a-half years!! & 3rd Biggest Point Gain in History
Small Caps managed to get back into the green for 2018 today along with Nasdaq but Dow, S&P, and Trannies remain red.
VIX tumbled back to a 20 handle but the term structure remains inverted…
Big Tech was the big leader today with MSFT, AAPL, and NFLX soaring…all started as Europe closed…
Facebook hit new cycle lows into a bear market… then exploded higher to close green!!!
Banks rebounded nicely (but only JPM and GS managed to recover the Friday losses)…
Energy stock rebounded even as WTI/RBOB slipped…
But even as bank stocks jumped, bank credit kept screaming higher, tracking the lagged stresses in the dollar funding markets…
Given the giant moves in stocks, Treasuries were largely unimpressed with 30Y yields up less than 1bps…
G57
For some context – 10Y Yields traded in a 2-3bps range all day… This is the 22nd straight session that 10Y Yield have closed with a 2.8x% handle.
While stocks rebounded at the European close, the dollar index did not, tumbling to its lowest close since Feb 15th…
The ruble was also hit hard and Russian stocks sank as globally sychnronized diplomatic expulsions struck investor appetite…MICEX is at 6-week lows…but as the dollar kept sinking so the ruble rebounded to end the day higher…
It was an ugly day for cryptos with Bitcoin battered back below $8000 after headlines about Twitter banning crypto/ICO ads…
Dollar weakness sparked a bid in PMs (with silver leading) but crude and copper disappointed…
On Friday, President Trump signed the omnibus spending bill for 2018. The $1.3 trillion bill was so monstrous that it would have made the biggest spender in the Obama Administration blush. The image of leading Congressional Democrats Pelosi and Schumer grinning and gloating over getting everything they wanted — and then some — will likely come back to haunt Republicans at the midterm elections. If so, they will deserve it.
Even President Trump admitted the bill was horrible. As he said in the signing ceremony, “there are a lot of things that we shouldn’t have had in this bill, but we were, in a sense, forced — if we want to build our military…”
This is why I often say: forget about needing a third political party – we need a second political party!
Trump is admitting that to fuel the warfare state and enrich the military-industrial complex, it was necessary to dump endless tax dollars into the welfare state.
But no one “forced” President Trump to sign the bill. His party controls both houses of Congress. He knows that no one in Washington cares about deficits so he was more than willing to spread some Fed-created money at home to get his massive war spending boost.
And about the militarism funded by the bill? Defense Secretary James Mattis said at the same press conference that, “As the President noted, today we received the largest military budget in history, reversing many years of decline and unpredictable funding.”
He’s right and wrong at the same time. Yes it is another big increase in military spending. In fact the US continues to spend more than at least the next seven or so largest countries combined. But his statement is misleading. Where are these several years of decline? Did we somehow miss a massive reduction in military spending under President Obama? Did the last Administration close the thousands of military bases in more than 150 countries while we weren’t looking?
Of course not.
On militarism, the Obama Administration was just an extension of the Bush Administration, which was an extension of the militarism of the Clinton Administration. And so on. The military-industrial complex continues to generate record profits from fictitious enemies. The mainstream media continues to play the game, amplifying the war propaganda produced by the think tanks, which are funded by the big defense contractors.
This isn’t a conspiracy theory. This is conspiracy fact. Enemies must be created to keep Washington rich, even as the rest of the country suffers from the destruction of the dollar. That is why the neocons continue to do very well in this Administration.
While Trump and Mattis were celebrating big military spending increases, the president announced that John Bolton, one of the chief architects of the Iraq war debacle, would become his national security advisor. As former CIA analyst Paul Pillar has written, this is a man who, while at the State Department, demanded that intelligence analysts reach pre-determined conclusions about Iraq and WMDs. He cooked the books for war.
Bolton is on the record calling for war with Iran, North Korea, even Cuba! His return to a senior position in government is a return to the unconstitutional, immoral, and failed policies of pre-emptive war.
Make no mistake:the neocons are back and looking for another war. They’ve got the president’s ear. Iran? North Korea? Russia? China? Who’s next for the warmongers?
US economic growth expectations have slipped dramatically throughout Q1 as weaker-than-expected (real) macro data has spoiled the party (along with rising geopolitical risk). However, surveys of economic hope are hyped up on goldilocks-like hype – to an extent we have never seen before… ever.
As BofAML’s latest report shows, based on economic survey data, US economic growth should be (and should have been) up near 7%… a far cry from ‘reality’…
And perhaps even more worrisome is BofAML’s macro model divergence from the ‘micro’-economic surge in company’s earnings expectations (think tax cuts)…
In other words, profit bulls are now massively dependent on a sharp snapback in US GDP growth in Q2… just as the treade wars are hotting up.
To no one’s surprise, the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill that passed last week ditched the deep cuts the White House had proposed for the Department of Transportation (DOT).
In February, the administration released an “American Budget” that would have cut DOT’s discretionary budget by 20 percent, with the axe falling hardest on federal transit spending, Amtrak subsidies, and the $500-million-a-year Transportation Investments Generating Economic Recovery (TIGER) grant program. The latter would have been eliminated entirely.
The budget signed by the president on Friday instead triples spending on TIGER, boosts the money available for federal transit investments by $200 million, and sends an extra $400 million to Amtrak.
This doesn’t portend good things for the administration-backed infrastructure package. The current version of that proposal includes some promising decentralist and free-market reforms, as well as a great deal of unnecessary federal spending. Whatever survives the congressional sausage-making process is likely to include less of the former and a lot more of the latter.
“The biggest problem with this sort of authorization was there was really no policy considerations, it was really the same old money, money, money,” says Baruch Feigenbaum, a transportation policy expert for the Reason Foundation, which publishes this website.
Take TIGER. Started as a form of economic stimulus during the Great Recession, the program has become a highly politicized funder of local projects. Recipients include not just the collapsed pedestrian bridge at Florida International University but streetscaping projects in Akron, Ohio, and recreational boat ramps in Burlington, Iowa. There was no good reason to give such projects federal support, but legislators from those areas shepherded them through the process.
In addition to upping TIGER’s budget from $500 million to $1.5 billion, the 2019 omnibus bill contains no changes to ensure the program’s money is at least better spent.
Instead it increased the minimum amount required to go to rural areas from $100 million to $450 million while retaining language that calls for investments in a variety of transportation modes—all but ensuring more TIGER dollars that could fund major highway, rail, or port improvements will instead go to sidewalks in rural Florida.
Something similar can be said for the Capital Investment Grant program, a major funder of light rail and urban transit expansion projects. If the political will existed, it could easily be devolved state and local governments. Donald Trump proposed zeroing out the program over time by refusing to allot funding to projects that the feds weren’t already committed to.
Instead, the Trump administration has continued to ink grant deals—and the 2019 omnibus has now increased the program’s funding from $2.4 billion to $2.6 billion, with no added policy strings attached.
None of this should be surprising, says Feigenbaum, who says the presidential budget proposal was more of a “political document” than a policy proposal. More reform could have been achieved, he says, if the White House had followed through with more realistic plans.
“It’s one thing to say you want to get rid of all funding for transit, but that is not going to pass Congress,” he tells Reason. “What you have to do is come up with a metric folks might actually adopt, like we’re going to fund transit systems that have a better on-time arrival rate than other systems. We are going to switch funding to capital programs to operating programs.”
Trump’s better infrastructure ideas may likewise be derailed. Right now, his infrastructure proposal includes several liberalizing reforms—the package would remove federal restrictions on tolling interstates, on commercializing rest stops, and on privatizing airports. To grease the congressional wheels, it also comes with $200 billion in additional federal spending.
Getting this through Congress will require yet more compromises, says Feigenbaum, though “I don’t know how much is taking stuff out as putting stuff in.”
Congressional Democrats have touted alternative plans that include $1–2 trillion in additional federal spending. Meanwhile, a number of progressive critics have derided many of the liberalizing part of Trump’s infrastructure plan as a “scam.” Keeping as many reforms as possible while fending off yet more demands for federal spending would require deft politicking and a commitment of some serious political capital. The way transportation policy has shaken out under Trump so far, those probably aren’t in the cards.
President Donald Trump blindsided his own military leaders last year when he announced via Twitter that he would reverse course and reinstitute a full ban on transgender people serving in the military. Then he ordered the Department of Defense to perform an internal study to justify the decision.
That results of that study were sent to the president earlier this month. And on Friday, amid a whirlwind news cycle, the White House dropped a memo announcing that it’s moving forward with its plan based on the recommendations. Transgender people will no longer be able to serve in the military.
Well, sort of. Maybe. It’s all complicated.
First of all, the president’s attempt to suddenly halt and reverse the Obama-era Department of Defense’s transgender policy changes have been challenged in federal court. Court injunctions keep the military from booting out trans troops or keeping trans recruits from joining. So the military currently continues to accept enlistments from transgender folks.
The new orders from the White House are intended to replace the previous orders, and the Friday night memo officially “rescinds” them. As such, the Department of Justice is also asking the court to dissolve the previous injunctions as moot. There will most certainly be a new round of lawsuits attempting to block the new policy as well.
The new transgender ban has three main components:
Transgender folks can continue to join and serve the military if they’re willing to continue representing themselves as their biological sex and do not have a history of being diagnosed with gender dysphoria, the psychological condition of feeling discomfort or distress with being born as the opposite sex that you feel you are. It’s essentially the return of “Don’t ask, don’t tell,” but for transgender troops instead of gay ones. You can think of yourself as being transgender all you want as long as you don’t actually do anything to change how you represent your sex.
Transgender people who have or want to undergo any sort of transition are disqualified from the military, as are people who have been diagnosed with gender dysphoria. There’s an exemption for those who can demonstrate that they haven’t dealt with thoughts of gender dysphoria for three years prior to applying to join the military. This is similar to how the military approaches enlistments from people who have been diagnosed with depression or some other psychological condition.
Transgender people who are already in the military are exempt from these first two guidelines and can continue to serve, even if they pursue gender transition. But under new policies that cover all troops, they may not be deemed “non-deployable” for more than 12 months and remain in the military.
The third guideline is obviously intended to try to cut off several lawsuits at the knees. Several of the transgender people suing to block the ban are those already serving in the military who have “come out” as transgender and begun their transition with the expressed understanding that the Department of Defense is allowing it. Suddenly changing the terms of their service creates due process and contractual issues, and those have undergirded some of the lawsuits.
Yet allowing these people to stay in the military has the side effect of subverting the arguments for banning transgender people in the first place. The report from Defense Secretary Jim Mattis leans on the typical sawhorses of “military readiness” and “unit cohesion,” often the same arguments that had been used to keep gay people from serving. If transgender troops present problems for the military that justify banning them, won’t the problems be present in the troops they’re allowing to remain?
The report also points to the increased medical costs for accommodating transgender troops, which could run under $10 million. That sounds like a lot until you look at the omnibus spending bill that just passed. It budgets $600 million for Air Force satellites that the Department of Defense didn’t even ask for.
In some ways, this weird, middle-of-the-road response may actually be for the best. The military will develop more experience in sorting out whatever privacy issues develop between transgender troops and the rest of the unit, and over time all sides will grow more comfortable with the idea. Fundamentally, the end of the ban on gay troops succeeded because it did not have the impact on readiness or morale that people feared.
The United States, the United Kingdom, and 13 European countries announced they’re 
To no one’s surprise, the $1.3 trillion omnibus spending bill that passed last week ditched the deep cuts the White House had proposed for the Department of Transportation (DOT).
President Donald Trump blindsided his own military leaders last year when he