Month: March 2018

Authored by Pepe Escobar via The Asia Times,

A number of pieces have to fall into place before the petrodollar moves into second place…

Few geoeconomic game-changers are more spectacular than yuan-denominated future crude oil contracts – especially when set up by the largest importer of crude on the planet.

And yet Beijing’s media strategy seems to have consisted in substantially play down the official launch of the petro-yuan at the Shanghai International Energy Exchange.

Still, some euphoria was in order. Brent Crude soared to $71 a barrel for the first time since 2015. West Texas Intermediate (WTI) reached the highest level in three years at $66.55 a barrel; then retreated to $65.53.

A series of petro-yuan “firsts” include the first time overseas investors are able to access a Chinese commodity market. Significantly, US dollars will be accepted as deposit and for settlement. In the near future, a basket of currencies will also be accepted as deposit.

Does the launch of the petro-yuan represent the ultimate deathblow to the petrodollar – and the birth of a completely new set of rules? Not so fast. That may take years, and depends on many variables, the most important of which will be China’s capacity to bend, tweak and ultimately rule the global oil market.

As the yuan progressively reaches full consolidation in trade settlement, the petro-yuan threat to the US dollar, inscribed in a complex, long-term process, will disseminate the Holy Grail: crude oil futures contracts priced in yuan fully convertible into gold.

That means China’s vast array of trade partners will be able to convert yuan into gold without having to keep funds in Chinese assets or turn them into US dollars. Exporters facing the wrath of Washington, such as Russia, Iran or Venezuela, may then avoid US sanctions by trading oil in yuan convertible to gold. Iran and Venezuela, for instance, would have no problems redirecting tankers to China in order to sell directly in the Chinese market – if that’s what it takes.

How to bypass the US dollar

In the short- to medium-term the petro-yuan will surely boost the appeal of the Belt and Road Initiative (BRI), especially when it comes to the House of Saud.

It’s still unclear in what capacity Beijing will be part of the Aramco IPO, but that will be a decisive step towards the fateful historic moment when Beijing will tell – or compel – Riyadh to start accepting payment for oil in yuan.

Only then the petrodollar may be at serious risk – along with the US dollar as the global reserve currency.

I have stressed before how, at the 2017 BRICS summit, Russian President Vladimir Putin went no holds barred supporting the petro-yuan, specifically challenging the “unfairness” of the US dollar’s unipolar dominance.

How to bypass the US dollar, as well as the petrodollar, has been discussed at BRICS summits for years now. Russia is now China’s largest crude oil supplier (1.32 million barrels a day last month, up 17.8% from a year earlier.) Moscow and Beijing have been forcefully bypassing the US dollar in bilateral trade. In October last year, China launched a payment system in both currencies – the yuan and the ruble. And that will apply to Russian oil bought by China.

Still, the whole petrodollar edifice lies on OPEC – and the House of Saud– pricing oil in US dollars; as everyone needs greenbacks to buy oil, everyone needs to buy (spiraling) US debt. Beijing is set to break the system – as long as it takes.

The petro-yuan as it stands does not provide access to Chinese oil markets. It starts as a great deal especially for Chinese companies who need to buy oil but would rather avoid the oscillations of foreign exchange. Nothing changes for the rest of the US dollar-dominated commodity planet – at least for now.

The game will really start to change when other nations realize they have found a real credible alternative to the petrodollar, and switching to the yuan en masse will certainly spark a US dollar crisis.

What the petro-yuan may be able to provoke in the short term is an acceleration of the next crises in treasuries and bond markets, which will inevitably spill out in the form of a crisis in global currency markets.

That pan-Eurasian resource basket

The game-changing aspect, for now, mostly has to do with the exquisite timing. Beijing has crafted an ultra-long-term plan and yet chose to launch the petro-yuan smack in the middle of a period of sharp deterioration in trade relations with Washington.

The answer to the geoeconomic riddle is bound to be The Golden Moment. Eventually gold will rise to a level where Beijing – by then totally in control over physical gold markets – feels ready to set a conversion rate.

The – Arabian – ‘petro’ side of the petrodollar equation should have been replaced long ago by a priceless, captured pan-Eurasian resource basket. That was what Dick Cheney dreamed of – centering his dreams on the energy wealth of Central Asia and Russia.

That did not happen. What we have instead is shrieking, manic Russophobia – more like a graphic indication of how precarious is the position of Western banking elites. On top of it, with the petro-yuan, China deploys the key weapon, incorporated into BRI, capable of accelerating the end of the unipolar moment.

Yet this is just the initial step in an ultra-high-stakes game. One should keep one’s eyes firmly focused on the interpolations between trade connectivity and technological breakthroughs. The petrodollar may be in danger but is far from finished.

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As Facebook scrambles to avoid a potentially devastating fine from the Federal Trade Commission, the company announced more measures on Thursday seemingly designed to appease Democratic lawmakers like Senator Mark Warner who are insisting that strenuous regulations are the only way to ensure that Facebook does everything within its power to prevent state actors from “sowing discord” by planting disingenuous advertisements and posts on the company’s platform.

According to the Verge, Facebook is now partnering with “third-party fact checkers” to investigate photos and videos published on the company’s platform – while also attempting to filter out fraudulent accounts.

This, of course, is only “one part of [Facebook’s] strategy for holding purveyors of “fake news” to account.

Here’s how it works:

• We use signals, including feedback from people on Facebook, to predict potentially false stories for fact-checkers to review.
• When fact-checkers rate a story as false, we significantly reduce its distribution in News Feed — dropping future views on average by more than 80%.
• We notify people who’ve shared the story in the past and warn people who try to share it going forward.
• For those who still come across the story in their News Feed, we show more information from fact-checkers in a Related Articles unit.
• We use the information from fact-checkers to train our machine learning model, so that we can catch more potentially false news stories and do so faster.

The company announced its plans on a conference call with journalists organized to keep them apprised of its efforts to combat tampering in the 2018 midterms. The contents of the call were later summarized in a blog post. The group of executives who spoke on the call included Alex Stamos, the company’s outgoing chief information security officer.

Stamos illustrated how the company is developing new methods for rooting out people making accounts under fake identities. It’s also cracking down on faked metrics used to make content appear more popular than it actually is.

“It’s important to match the right approach to each of these challenges” Stamos said on the call, according to the Verge, as Stamos explained how Facebook was applying different strategies based on each individual market’s needs.

Samidh Chakrabarti, Facebook’s product manager for civic engagement who was also on the call, explained that Facebook is now proactively looking for foreign-based pages producing political content that the company believes to be inauthentic. If a user is found in violation, they will be manually removed from the platform. This applies to everything from suspicious advertisements to misleading memes.

Now our work also includes a new investigative tool that we can deploy in the lead-up to elections. I’d love to tell you a little bit about how it works.

Rather than wait for reports from our community, we now proactively look for potentially harmful types of election-related activity, such as Pages of foreign origin that are distributing inauthentic civic content. If we find any, we then send these suspicious accounts to be manually reviewed by our security team to see if they violate our Community Standards or our Terms of Service, said Chakrabarti.

Facebook first piloted this tool in the Alabama special election, but has now deployed it to protect this year’s Italian election – and it will be used to “protect Facebook users” during this year’s midterms.

The new rules build on the ad-transparency measures introduced by the company late last year, which purported to show Facebook users the name of the organization funding the content, as well as any other pertinent information.

But those red flags were shown to entrench some people’s belief in false stories, leading Facebook to shift to showing Related Articles with perspectives from other reputable news outlets. As of yesterday, Facebook’s fact checking partners began reviewing suspicious photos and videos which can also spread false information. This could reduce the spread of false news image memes that live on Facebook and require no extra clicks to view, like doctored photos showing the Parkland school shooting survivors ripping up the constitution.

The news comes on the heels of a revelation earlier today that the company is ending its partnership with “third party” data providers including TransUnion and Experian who supply advertisers with even more specific data gleaned from real-life activities and other parties that aren’t Facebook.

But as CEO Mark Zuckerberg prepares to testify before two Congressional committees early next month, the company hasn’t said anything about its partnerships with third-party “affiliate marketers” who help hucksters sell dubious health supplements and other fraudulent products on Facebook’s platform.

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The Wall Street Journal published an article this morning that could be putting the cart a bit in front of the horse, suggesting that poor performance in gold miners could drag the spot price of the commodity lower, despite the fact that gold has outperformed the S&P 500 year to date by a factor of 1.4% to -2.6%.

The Journal suggests that with bond yields on the rise, investors are going to be more likely to allocate capital to treasuries instead of gold, reporting:

Higher interest rates tend to buoy Treasury yields and make gold less attractive by comparison. The dollar has also been rebounding, which has cooled some optimism for gold bugs, analysts said. A stronger dollar makes commodities denominated in the currency more expensive for overseas buyers.

Gold miners have underperformed despite a strong fourth-quarter earnings season and upbeat 2018 projections. One reason is that some of the companies still aren’t generating as much cash as miners of other metals such as copper, analysts said.

What’s the journal doesn’t mention is the major difference between gold miners in the spot price of gold: namely the fact that miners are companies with staff, management, administrative expenses and other variables that have nothing to do with whether or not the spot price of gold is usually bid or not. The assertion that miners are going to lead the price of gold lower versus looking at miners within a potential positive light due to the fact that they could actually be argued to be “underperforming“ the spot price of gold due to this price divergence may leave some of us scratching our heads.

The article goes on to note that several miners have actually exceeded their targets for this year due to the spot price of gold but that a key metric in free cash flow relative to market value continues to lag:

In 2017, gold prices had their best year since 2010, allowing many miners to repair their balance sheets. Barrick Gold, the world’s largest producer, said it paid down $1.5 billion in debt, exceeding its target, while Newmont Mining Corp. reported an 8% rise in production from a year earlier.

But the companies still haven’t caught up in free cash flow relative to market value, a commonly-used metric for evaluating performance, according to Citigroup research.

It isn’t unreasonable to think that gold may still lead the price of these miners going forward and that this divergence is simply an aberration that may actually signal a buying opportunity versus coming in in a decline in the price of spot gold.

No macroeconomic data has come more into focus over the last couple of months than the CPI number, as inflation continues to be the key metric watched by “economists“ as the bull market reaches its peak and stock market volatility has been undoubtedly on the rise.

Given that gold is not only a traditional hedge against volatility and “the system”, but also a hedge against inflation itself, it is more likely that the Wall Street Journal has the cart in front of the horse in this case.

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An alleged Mexican drug kingpin and five of his accomplices have just been indicted for smuggling enough fentanyl from Mexico into New York City “to kill millions,” officials announced Tuesday.

An undercover investigation by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, NYC Special Narcotics Prosecutor Unit, and local law enforcement agencies discovered that San José del Cabo resident Francisco Quiroz-Zamora, 41, known as “Gordo,” or “Fatso,” was the primary source of large fentanyl shipments to the New York City region.

In the first half of 2017, an undercover narcotics officer posed as a drug trafficker and successfully negotiated two large shipments of Mexican fentanyl from Quiroz-Zamora.

Quiroz-Zamora was arrested on November 27 when he arrived via Amtrak to the city’s Pennsylvania Station “to personally collect payment for drug deals he unwittingly negotiated with an undercover officer,” said NBC News.

“This investigation provides the American public with an inside view of a day in the life of a Sinaloa Cartel drug trafficker; including international travel, money pick-ups, and clandestine meetings,” Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) Special Agent in Charge James Hunt said in a statement.

“Quiroz-Zamora oversaw the delivery of multi-kilogram loads of fentanyl to New York, powerful enough to kill millions. The Strike Force and the Office of the Special Narcotics Prosecutor acted quickly and efficiently to seize the toxic kilograms before hitting the streets and arresting all conspirators, including the Kingpin,” Hunt added.

Quiroz-Zamora’s drug trafficking operations stemmed from San José del Cabo, a resort town plagued with cartel violence on the southern tip of Mexico’s Baja California peninsula.

NBC indicates Quiroz-Zamora was “charged with operating as a major trafficker, first-degree sale or a controlled substance and second-degree conspiracy.”

Further, Quiroz-Zamora’s accomplices (Carlos Ramirez, Jesus Perez-Cabral, Johnny Beltrez, David Rodriguez and Richard Rodriguez) were charged with “second-degree conspiracy, criminal possession of controlled substances in the first and third degrees, criminal facilitation in the second degree, and criminal possession of a firearm,’ said NBC.

Authorities told NBC that it was Quiroz-Zamora who “allegedly orchestrated two sales of fentanyl” to uncover agents in the first half of 2017.

This led to the arrest of Carlos Ramirez and the largest ever fentanyl seizure in New York City when DEA special agents seized 44 pounds of the potent synthetic opioid at the Umbrella Hotel in the Bronx.

Despite the operational setback of running a high-stakes drug trafficking business, Quiroz-Zamora negotiated another deal with undercover drug traffickers, which resulted in a tense police raid last August on a Manhattan condo — down the street from Trump Tower. The raid resulted in the arrest of Perez-Cabral, Beltrez, and Rodriguez.

“Agents conducted a search and recovered two large ziplock bags containing powder, 1,100 individual dose glassine envelopes stamped with the brand name ‘UBER,’ a loaded .25-caliber Beretta pistol and $12,000 in cash,” authorities said in a statement.

The arrests and indictments of the Mexican drug kingpin and five of his high-level colleagues was the result of a “long-term” investigation by a group of governmental agencies, including the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration, NYC Special Narcotics Prosecutor Unit, and the New York City Police Department.

“Fentanyl has been ravaging my county of the Bronx, killing people and shattering communities,” Bronx District Attorney Darcel Clark said.

“Tracing the source to its foreign origins and indicting the kingpin will help stem the flow of this high-profit poison to our city. I am pleased to work with our local, state and federal partners to target these major suppliers,” he added.

“In New York City and across the nation, fentanyl is causing untold tragedy as it pushes the number of overdose deaths ever higher. This indictment demonstrates our collaborative approach and commitment to tracking those at the top of the lethal supply chain and putting them out of business permanently,” Special Narcotics Prosecutor Bridget G. Brennan said.

Citywide, the drug was responsible for 44 percent of all overdose deaths. Across the river, New Jersey noticed a five-fold explosion in fentanyl overdose deaths in the last two years.

Drug overdoses killed more Americans in 2016 than the Vietnam War.

While authorities in New York City have thwarted a Fentanyl bomb from detonating across the boroughs, America’s opioid crisis is far from over as the drug overdose mayhem explodes across the homeland. Rome is burning.

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After an exuberant afternoon chasing US stocks higher, NKY futures are sliding into the Japanese open as Industrial Production and Consumer Price Inflation disappointed significantly, and the unemployment rate rose.

Tokyo CPI slowed from +1.4% YoY in February to +1.0% YoY in March (notably below the +1.3% YoY expectation) as it appears – in the words of Abe and Kuroda – “the deflationary mindset has not gone”…

And while disinflationary pressures return, Industrial Production rose just 1.4% YoY – the slowest since Oct 2016 – missing expectations of +2.3% and bouncing back only marginally after the 6.8% MoM collapse in January…

 

And the Japanese unemployment rate rose for the first time since May 2017…

 

And while Japanese cash markets willopen higher, futures are coming well off their highs..

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Submitted by The College Fix

A task force charged with improving diversity issues on Harvard’s campus recently finalized a decision to alter the lyrics of the school’s alma mater due to concerns that it was not sufficiently diverse.

The lyrics in question, “till the stock of the Puritans die,” was altered to read instead “till the stars in the firmament die,” according to The Harvard Crimson.

The excised line refers to the Puritans who played an important role in Massachusetts history. One of the earliest presidents of Harvard, Increase Mather, was a prominent Puritan in the early colony.

According to the diversity task force, the line in question “fails in its own aspiration to project a valuable Puritan commitment to education into the future.”

“The line reduces human experience to biology with the word ‘stock,’ and ties the commitment to education to ethnic lineage and to the rise and fall of racial groupings.”

University president Drew Faust praised the new lyrics, stating, according to The Crimson: “When it comes time to sing our alma mater, updated at the suggestion of the task force, I will proudly give voice to the song’s new final line—and its recognition that the pursuit of truth and knowledge belongs to everyone at Harvard, from all backgrounds and beliefs.”

The stars in the firmament are expected to last for roughly another 120 trillion years, after which, having exhausted all of their hydrogen fuel, they will either collapse into, or be swallowed by, black holes.

Read the whole report here.

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“I think overall we have been pricing in for Goldilocks and we are closer to Frankenstein to be honest,” warned Steen Jakobsen, Saxo Bank’s outspoken chief economist, during an interview with CNBC, and that divergence from reality could mean markets face a 25-30% correction from a potential sudden recession scenario.

Jakobsen cited several factors including growing credit-card loans (and soaring delinquencies), a widening fiscal deficit in the U.S., doubts over infrastructure spending plans, and a potential trade war.

“All the data we’ve seen over the last few weeks has basically been that the consumer is maxed out, we’ve seen that in credit card loans as well, so I think the consumer is done spending the money.”

The Saxo Bank economist appears to have noticed what we highlighted earlier in the month, that while the larger U.S. banks that dominate credit card issuance have focused on prime and super prime consumers post the Great Financial Crisis (GFC), and have enjoyed a prolonged period of low charge off rates concurrent with the Fed’s almost decade long ZIRP.

As TCW’s Chet Melhotra notes, it is America’s smaller banks – those not in the Top 100 by asset size – that have experienced in just the recent months a surge in charge off deterioration, which at 7.9% is on par with the last financial crisis!  In other words, to find where the next consumer credit crisis hides – and will erupt next – ignore the big banks and focus on the smaller ones.

 

And as we also noted here, judging by the collapse in household “buying plans,” the consumer is indeed “maxed out” as Steen notes.

 

As CNBC details, Jakobsen highlighted a “Goldilocks” scenario that he feels traders are mistakenly pricing in to markets, where fresh economic data are either not too hot or not too cold. Overall, the global economy is currently experiencing lower levels of unemployment and higher growth. Looking at 2018 in particular, many analysts hoped for strong global growth on the back of higher inflation and higher investment, but according to Jakobsen, these drivers “aren’t actually materializing.”

Instead, Jakobsen made a reference to the novel “Frankenstein,” arguing that the economy had been skewed by central bankers, who have injected trillions of dollars into the global economy to boost growth and investment.

Estimates for the first quarter of 2018 “started at more than 5 percent expected GDP (gross domestic product); we are now significantly less than 2 percent for the (first quarter) expected, so I don’t really see things happening in the growth area,” Jacobsen added.

“We’ve been at 2 percent exactly since the financial crisis, I don’t think we’re going to deviate from that,” he said.

And Jakobsen warns that in a scenario of a potential sudden economic recession, he sees a possible market correction of between 25 and 30 percent.

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Submitted by Priceonomics

Following the February 14th mass shooting at the Stoneman Douglas School in Parkland, Florida, a newly impassioned debate has erupted, as follows every mass shooting in the US, about how to prevent such events from reoccurring.

One side focuses on easy civilian access to military-style guns, such as the AR-15 semi-automatic rifle.  The other focuses on the individuals who perpetrate these acts, in particular their mental health.

We wanted to contribute to the conversation by analyzing the gun manufacturers, to understand: how many such guns are being produced, how much revenue and profit is generated from their sale.

We found there are currently at least 23 different models of AR-15 available for civilian purchase in the US, from 18 different manufacturers.  Of these, 15 are private companies, while 3 are publicly-traded. We found no clear correlation between mass shootings and changes in the gun manufacturers’ share price.  Two of the three companies have diversified into outdoor products, and changed their corporate names to deemphasize their firearm brands.

***

In the most deadly 12 mass shootings in the US in the past decade, a total of 270 people were killed.  In 8 of these shootings, an AR-15 style semi-automatic rifle was used.

Data source: Craft

The most commonly used AR-15 was the Smith & Wesson M&P15, manufactured by American Outdoor Brands Corporation, used in 3 of the shootings.  The next most commonly used AR-15 was the Bushmaster XM-15, manufactured by Remington Outdoor Company used in 2 of the shootings. 

***

We examined financial filings of the public gun manufacturers to understand how many such rifles are produced and how much money is generated from their sale.

Public Firearms Manufacturers – Key Data 

Data source: Craft. Due to different fiscal year ends, Sales, Profit and Firearms % figures are calendarized to represent results up to 31st December.      

The table shows that all 3 of the public gun manufacturers have a stock market value less than $1 Billion, and all three have experienced declining stock market value, sales and profits during the past year.

Since the launch of the March for our Lives movement, it will be interesting to see if demand for firearms increases, stoked by fears among gun enthusiasts that stricter regulation may be ahead.

 ***

The largest US gun manufacturers

American Outdoor Brands Corporation

Previously named Smith & Wesson Holding Corp, the company rebranded as American Outdoor Brands in 2017.  

American Outdoor Brands Corporation, Net Sales, 2015-17 ($ millions)

Share of Sales, 2017

 

AOBC’s Long Guns revenue doubled from 2015 to 2017.  In 2017, AOBC shipped 420,000 Long guns, of which 93% were to Consumers and 7% to the Professional channel such as law enforcement.  From these figures, we calculated that AOBC generated an average of $428 per long gun shipped.  The company employed 2,204 people as of May 2017, an increase of 19% from May 2016.

Vista Outdoor Inc.

Vista Outdoor was incorporated in 2014 as a combination of Alliant Techsystems and other brands and businesses, which were combined into two business lines — Shooting Sports and Outdoor Products.

Vista Outdoors, Net Sales, 2015-17 ($ millions)

In Outdoor Products, Vista has 35 brands including Camelbak, Serengeti, Bollé and Eagle.  In Shooting Sports, it has 12 brands including Savage Arms, which makes the MSR-15 semi-automatic rifle.  Approximately 54% of its 2017 sales were in Firearms.

Sturm, Ruger & Co., Inc.

Sturm Ruger was founded in 1949 and manufactures rifles, pistols, revolvers, accessories and castings, including the SR-556 semi-automatic rifle.  Unlike AOBC and Vista who have diversified into Outdoor Products, Ruger is a pure-play firearms manufacturer.

Sturm, Ruger; Net Sales, 2015-17 ($ millions)

The company had 1,838 employees as at December 2017, a reduction of 13% from the previous year.

Remington Outdoor Company

While not public, Remington publishes financial filings because it has publicly issued debt.  Remington was founded in 1816 and manufacturers Modern Sport Rifles under the Remington, Bushmaster and DPMS brands, as well as Ammunition, and Outdoor Products.

Remington; Net Sales, 2014-16 ($ millions)

Data source: Craft

On March 25th, 2018, Remington filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy, allowing it to restructure its $700 million debt while continuing its operations.  Its owner Cerberus Capital Management reportedly plans to cease ownership of the company following the restructuring.  As at March 30, 2017, Remington had approximately 3,500 employees, and is headquartered in Madison, North Carolina.

***

Shareholders in the leading gun manufacturers

This table aggregates the largest 5 shareholders in each of the 3 public gun manufacturers.

Data source: Craft, NASDAQ, institutional ownership, as at March 23, 2018 (RGR), (AOBC), (VSTO)    

From this we see, there is a very high concentration of ownership in a small number of shareholders.  For example, the top 5 shareholders in Vista Outdoors own 53% of the company.  In Ruger, the top 5 hold 47%, and in AOBC the Top 5 hold over one third of the company. Across all 3, BlackRock, the largest asset manager in the world, holds 13% of the combined shares of these 3 companies, while Vanguard holds 9%, and Fidelity 7%.  The 10 shareholders above hold 45% of the entire sector.

***

Share Price Movements Following Mass Shootings

We looked to see if there was any discernible pattern in gun manufacturer share price following the 12 most deadly mass shooting incidents of the past decade.  We compared each company’s share price 1 day prior to the mass shooting to its share price 5 trading days after.

Across the periods, the median 5 day share price change was +6% for AOBC, +3% for Ruger and -1% for Vista.  In total, 19 of the movements were positive and 11 were negative, roughly a 2:1 ratio of positive share price movements to negative.  One possible theory is that high profile shootings spur consumer demand for guns, due to fears that the events may lead to stricter gun controls, and increased future demand then results in higher share prices.

***

The gun manufacturers’ view

Following the Stoneman Douglas shooting, the largest shareholder in American Outdoor Brands Corporation, BlackRock, sent written questions asking about AOBC’s response to the shooting, in which one of AOBC firearms, the Smith & Wesson M&P15 was used.

AOBC published a response reaffirming its role in preserving the Second Amendment of the Constitution, and emphasizing that it is a fully law-abiding organization, which obeys each of the hundreds of regulations that apply to it at the Federal, State and Local levels.  AOBC wrote:

“While the vast majority of our products are used lawfully, we are aware that sometimes people engage in horrible, criminal acts with our products. However, calls for us to monitor the illegal use of our firearms are misguided, since doing so would be ineffective in preventing such misuse. In addition, such monitoring by us is not realistic or feasible. As a practical matter, it is no more realistic or feasible for us to monitor whether our legal firearms are used in criminal ways, than it is for a car manufacturer to monitor how often a drunken driver causes a tragic accident with one of their vehicles, or for a mobile phone company to monitor whether its mobile devices are used in terrorist activities.”

“We firmly believe that the best way to stop the criminal use of firearms and the violence associated with it, is to enforce the laws that already exist, and to focus stronger efforts on prosecuting those who break them.”

The vision of firearm manufacturers focuses on the fully legal use of their products for hunting, sport shooting and self-defense.  When it comes to criminal usage, the manufacturers believe deeply that they are not responsible.

***

Following the Stoneman Douglas massacre, the March for our Lives movement has renewed calls for two laws in particular: to ban weapons designated “assault weapons” including AR-15 style rifles, and large capacity magazines. While media attention has focused most heavily on the NRA on one hand and gun control advocates on the other, it is also helpful to examine the commercial organizations relevant to the debate, namely the companies that manufacture these firearms.

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China’s out-of-control Tiangong-1 (translated as “Heavenly Palace”) space station, carrying a “highly toxic” cargo, is expected to come crashing down to earth sometime on April 1st – however just where it will hit is still up for debate.

Over the past day, the European Space Agency, the California-based Center for Orbital and Reentry Debris Studies (CORDS) and other space junk watchers have begun to predict a more specific time when Tiangong-1 will likely break up into fireballs shooting across the sky, perhaps leaving some smaller bits to impact the surface.

As CNET reports, CORDS has zeroed in on early April 1, while the US military’s Joint Space Operations Center predicts an earlier re-entry at 5:52 p.m. PT Saturday, March 31, with a margin of error of 14 hours. ESA took a pass on declaring a specific time, saying instead it expects Tiangong-1 to reenter between early morning PT Saturday and Sunday Morning.

If you’d like to track the nine-ton school bus-sized station full of “highly toxic” chemicals, you can do so with the following real time tracker courtesy of Satview (please click on the image for the interactive map):

… or at the following websites:

• N2YO.com
• Stuff in Space (select TIANGONG 1)

Meanwhile, the Aerospace Corporation has put together an excellent video on the reentry:

Weighing in at 18,750 lbs, the two-module spacecraft – which as noted above means “Heavenly Palace” – lost contact with China’s space agency on March 21, 2016 after the completion of its extended mission, which included a six year service life that saw two manned missions to perform experiments for the larger multiple-module Tiangong station.

While most of the space station should burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere, thousands of pounds of debris is expected to survive reentry, with a 1-in-10,000 chance of hitting a populated area. 

That said, just where the station will hit is still anyone’s guess.  According to experts tracking the space station, it has the highest chance of crashing into cities along a narrow strip around latitudes of 43 degrees north and south.

While the list of possible targets include locations in Northern China, South America, Southern Africa, Northern Spain and the United States. Lower Michigan in particular is among the regions with the highest probability of a direct hit.

According to a FAQ about the Tiangong-1, the actual impact of the space station might not even be the most dangerous aspect of the reentry. Potentially hazardous materials including hydrazine, a highly toxic chemical used in rocket fuel, might survive re-entry. If humans or animals come into contact with large quantities of the substance, it can cause serious liver, kidney and central nervous system damage.

Mission Background (via the Aerospace Corporation):

• Tiangong-1 is the first space station built and launched by China.
• It was designed to be a manned lab as well as an experiment/demonstration for the larger, multiple-module Tiangong station.
• The spacecraft was launched aboard a Long March 2F/G rocket on 2011 September 30 UTC.
• There are 2 modules that compose Tiangong-1: A habitable experimental module and a resources module.
• It has a habitable volume of 15 cubic meters.
• Tiangong-1 is equipped with 2 sleep stations for astronauts.
• The first Chinese orbital docking occurred between Tiangong-1 and an unmanned Shenzhou spacecraft on 2011 November 2.
• 2 manned missions were completed to visit Tiangong-1: Shenzhou 9 and Shenzhou 10.

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Attorney General Jeff Sessions revealed Thursday that John Huber – Utah’s top federal prosecutor, will be paired with DOJ Inspector General Michael Horowitz to investigate a multitude of accusations of FBI misconduct surrounding the 2016 U.S. presidential election. The announcement comes one day after Inspector General Michael Horowitz confirmed that he will be investigating allegations of FBI FISA abuse. 

Sessions’ decision stops short of formally appointing a special counsel to investigate – noting in a lengthy letter written to Chairmen Grassley, Goodlatte and Gowdy, Sessions that regulations recognize “the Attorney General may conclude that the circumstances do not justify such a departure “from the normal process of the department,” and that he may instead determine that other “appropriate steps” can be taken…”

BREAKING: Attorney General Jeff Sessions notifies members of Congress he will not appoint second special counsel pic.twitter.com/jaVLkeTJkL

— Josh Caplan (@joshdcaplan) March 29, 2018

That said, Sessions says he will rely on Huber’s review to determine the need for a special counsel. 

“I am confident that Mr. Huber’s review will include a full, complete and objective evaluation of these matters in a manner that is consistent with the law and facts,” Sessions wrote.

“I receive regular updates from Mr. Huber and upon the conclusion of his review, will receive his recommendations as to whether any matters not currently under investigation should be opened, whether any matters currently under investigation require further resources, or whether any matters merit the appointment of a special counsel.”

Huber has also been looking at whether the FBI should have more thoroughly probed Hillary Clinton’s ties to Uranium One, a Russian nuclear energy agency. Still, it is worth noting that it was Barack Obama who appointed Huber to his position in 2015.

Sessions’ full letter can be seen below:

Meanwhile, IG Michael Horowitz confirmed that he will be investigating allegations of FBI FISA abuse on Wednesday. 

“The OIG will initiate a review that will examine the Justice Department’s and the Federal Bureau of Investigation’s compliance with legal requirements, and with applicable DOJ and FBI policies and procedures, in applications filed with the U.S. Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISC) relating to a certain U.S. person,” the statement reads.

The Department of Justice Office of the Inspector General announces the initiation of a review: https://t.co/dHKwXbDdvS pic.twitter.com/XxnDuL1vDl

— Justice OIG (@JusticeOIG) March 28, 2018

While the OIG’s current investigation and upcoming report – which led to former FBI Deputy Director Andrew McCabe’s firing, is focused on the agency’s handling of the Clinton email investigation. This new probe will focus on FISA abuse and surveillance of the Trump campaign. 

On March 1, House Intelligence Committee (HPSCI) Chairman Devin Nunes (R-CA) wrote in a letter to Attorney General Jeff Sessions that the FBI may have violated criminal statutes, as well as its own strict internal procedures by using unverified information to obtain a surveillance warrant on onetime Trump campaign advisor Carter Page. 

Sessions has come under increasing pressure to appoint a special counsel to investigate what President Trump referred to in late February as “potentially massive FISA abuse.” 

Why is A.G. Jeff Sessions asking the Inspector General to investigate potentially massive FISA abuse. Will take forever, has no prosecutorial power and already late with reports on Comey etc. Isn’t the I.G. an Obama guy? Why not use Justice Department lawyers? DISGRACEFUL!

— Donald J. Trump (@realDonaldTrump) February 28, 2018

And while many have noted that Inspector General Horowitz is significantly limited in his abilities to investigate, with Rep. Bob Goodlatte (R-VA) noting “the IG’s office does not have authority to compel witness interviews, including from past employees, so its investigation will be limited in scope in comparison to a Special Counsel investigation,” Sessions’ pairing of Horowitz with Huber keeps the investigation under the DOJ’s roof and out of the hands of an independent investigator.

Whether that’s a good thing or a bad thing has yet to be seen.

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