Month: February 2019

Two weeks ago, when discussing one of the more fascinating observations of the current market and business cycle, using Goldman data we showed that while in the US earnings have been responsible for roughly half of the 303% rise in stock prices, in Europe valuation expansion has been the sole driver of the 111% growth in equity prices. In other words, Europe has seen no earnings growth over the past decade!

Now, in a follow up report, Goldman drills down on the components of earnings growth (or lack thereof in the case of Europe), which are two: either sales or margin growth. And here, too, there is a remarkable observation that makes the current business cycle unique: as Goldman’s Lilia Peytavin writes, this cycle has been unusual in that margin expansion has driven more than 60% of profit growth in both the US and Europe.  This contrasts with previous cycles, where revenue growth, a function of the  pace of nominal GDP growth, drove more than 70% of the rise in profits. The chart below shows the contribution of sales and margins to EPS growth (ex Financials) in the US and in Europe in the current cycle and in previous cycles. 

The stark contrast between the two regions is that US margins are about 280bp above their pre-crisis peak, compared with just 40bp for European margins. As a result, S&P 500 EPS stands 86% above its pre-crisis level, whereas SXXP EPS is just 7% above its pre-crisis peak, which goes back to what we disclosed two weeks ago, namely that Europe has had virtually no EPS growth.

The problem with European EPS relying entirely on margin expansion and not on sales growth is that margins – like in the US – are near all time high. According to Goldman, at the end of 2018, European margins stood at a record high level of 7.6% and as a result, Goldman does not expect them to rise further. Meanwhile, with economic growth slowing and wage growth picked up, it means that margins will most likely contract, and as a result Goldman cuts if 2019 European EPS forecast from 4% to 2%.

Which begs the question: why has earnings growth in the US been so much higher than in Europe. The answer is one word: technology. As we discussed most recently at the start of February, the US has been the outlier over recent years, as it has enjoyed strong profit growth. While a small part of this can be attributed to the boom in buybacks, more importantly, overall profit growth has been boosted by a boom in technology earnings.

Indeed, if one excludes US tech names, global profits are only moderately higher than they were prior to the financial crisis, while technology profits have moved sharply upwards (mainly reflecting the impact of large US technology companies), driven by a combination of strong sales growth and sharply rising margins (Exhibit 16).

In its latest note, Goldman delves a little deeper on this topic, and first answers the following key question behind the divergence: what are the sectors with lower margins in Europe than in the US? Not surprisingly, it is once again all about tech. With net income margins of 10%, Europe Technology is far from being as profitable as US Tech, which generates margins of 18%. Europe Tech has fewer Internet companies and more traditional software businesses, while Telecoms and Utilities are considerably less profitable in Europe than in the US. These two sectors accounted for about 20% of the SXXP market cap at the beginning of the century and now make up just 7% of the index. Furthermore, pre-2000, Telecoms was in a strong ‘growth mode’, with mobile usage soaring, while the sector now struggles to generate any profitability, with regulation being one of the main drags.

By contrast, Personal & Household Goods and Healthcare generate margins largely above their US peers. Luxury stocks, which are to Europe what Tech is to the US, are classified in Personal & Household Goods. The US Healthcare sector is very different from Europe’s, as Equipment & Services make up about 45% of it (comprising hospitals with low profitability), compared with 13% in Europe.

Meanwhile the gap between Europe and the US has been wide during this cycle, also because Europe has more cyclical sectors, which have been hit by the unusually slow economic recovery. Oil prices have fallen 6% per annum during this cycle, while they had risen sharply in previous recoveries, and the lack of inflation has kept interest rates around the zero lower bound. This has sharply impaired commodity-related sectors and the profitability of Financials.

What about unleashing major tax reform like in the US? Here too, Goldman pours cold water, writing that with an average forecast GDP growth of 1% in the Euro area in 2019, European governments are unlikely to meaningfully lower corporate tax rates. By contrast, lower taxes have boosted US margins tremendously in 2018. Margins surprised to the upside during the 4Q US reporting season (+82bp yoy), partly due to lower tax rates. The realized tax rate of the median company is 19%, compared with a projection of 21% at the start of earnings season. And while effective tax rates were similar in the two regions previously, this will no longer be the case.

One final reason why both revenue and margin growth is doomed in Europe is a consequence of the continent’s regulatory (and often socialist) environment: as restructuring projects are often ambitious, they are blocked at the offset: cost-cutting programs are challenged in sectors with regulation, unionization and government influence; this is particularly the case with politicians under pressure from populist groups.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2GSWPYI Tyler Durden

One week after PIMCO’s chief investment officer of global credit, Mark Kiesel, told Bloomberg that now is the time to start selling risk as “the market has priced in a lot of good news right now” and with all major asset classes overbought, the Pimco CIO “would be tilting the portfolio towards high quality Treasuries, agencies, investment-grade corporate bonds, owning less high-yield and owning less levered companies” adding that “this has been a situation where the rising tide has lifted all boats”, another financial icon has echoed this call. In its latest Global Perspectives note, private equity giant KKR, has issued a similar warning on publicly traded stocks: It’s time to sell the rally.

One month after KKR’s bullish turn paid off handsomely, with the firm turning tactically overweight US equities just in time to catch the best rally in the S&P since 1987, the private equity giant is now turning more cautious, saying equities are no longer cheap and investors should hold the same amount of U.S. stocks as suggested by benchmarks.

Commenting on his abrupt change in sentiment just one month after he turned bullish, Henry McVey, KKR’s head of global macro and asset allocation, wrote that “we are not bearish, but we do not think that public markets will continue to appreciate in a straight line from current levels if earnings growth continues to disappoint”. And, as McVey reminds, the equity upgrade in January was “based on our belief that investors were already pricing in a recession, ” he said. Now, “We think that fear is no longer being discounted in global equity prices, U.S. ones in particular.”

Here is the key excerpt from the firm’s extended monthly report:

Looking at the big picture, our macro framework suggests that risk asset prices are now more appropriately valued on an absolute basis as well as relative to financial conditions. One can see this in Exhibit 1. As such, we are downgrading our tactical overweight to U.S. Equities back towards an equal weight position. With the proceeds, we take our Cash position to an equal weight position relative to our benchmark of two percent versus our January 2019 allocation of one percent. To review, we had upgraded U.S. Equities from 300 basis points underweight in 2018 relative to our benchmark to a 100 basis point overweight position in January 2019 based on our belief that investors were already pricing in a recession (whether or not one actually occurred). Today, after a solid 10% move up in the S&P 500 since January 1, 2019, we think that fear is no longer being discounted in global equity prices, U.S. ones in particular. We are not bearish, but we do not think that public markets will continue to appreciate in a straight line from current levels if earnings growth continues to disappoint.

Looking at the bigger picture, McVey writes that overall, “the environment for many risk assets seems fairly balanced” as on the one hand, “economic growth trends are quite weak, and our forecasting models continue to point towards a notable deceleration during 2019.” As a reminder, in January 2018, KKR’s model predicted that a recession would hit by the end of 2019 with 100% certainty.

On the other hand, McVey counters that “central banks are now – without question – more dovish than most anyone in the investment community was thinking coming into this year.” More importantly, inflation – at least as measured by the BLS’ faulty methodology and then hedonically adjusted – remains low, which KKR believes now provides many global central bankers with some much needed “air cover” to be patient amidst record low unemployment rates in countries like the United States, Germany, and the United Kingdom.

KKR’s bearish call echoes not only Pimco but also strategists from Goldman who recently warned the equity rally is set to stall as concerns over a recession and Federal Reserve monetary tightening have evaporated, while all the good news have been priced in even as earnings growth remains scarce.

In addition to the firm’s reversal on equities, KKR made the following big picture observations on the global macro landscape:

1. In Terms of Ongoing Trade Tensions, Our Macro Work Underscores That China Has Been Preparing for This Type of Trade Slowdown for Some Time. To be sure, the current trade tariffs are creating some notable headwinds in China, but they pale in comparison to what the effect could have been a decade ago.
2. A Recent Trip to Europe Reinforces Our Strong Belief That Private Equity Will Meaningfully Outperform Public Equities During the Next Few Years. Our work shows that European public equity indices are structurally underrepresented in key growth markets like Technology and Business Services. At the same time, however, they are overweight cyclical industries such as Natural Resources and Financials, both areas that we believe face some significant long-term challenges in the years ahead. As such, despite heightened concern about Europe’s many challenges from our client base, we actually feel pretty good about the opportunity set for Private Equity to arbitrage these compositional shortcomings to the benefit of its investor base.
3. Portfolio Construction 101: Buy Shorter Duration Cash Flowing Assets Linked to Nominal GDP and Trim Positions in Longer Duration Sovereign Debt. Given the sizeable debt loads that many governments now carry amidst rising deficits, we think that there is a growing risk of a “crowding out effect” towards other asset classes, including U.S. stocks and credit securities. Of interest to us right now is that U.S. savers are being asked to step up and replace global central banks and international investors as more meaningful owners of U.S. Treasury Bonds — thereby reducing the availability of capital for individual investors to own other financial assets.
4. Given Where We Think the World Is Headed, We Believe Now Is the Time to Increase – Not Decrease – Flexibility Across Mandates. Importantly, we have the highest conviction about a more flexible approach in Liquid Credit. As many of our readers know, we did downgrade our tactical overweight to Levered Loans in our 2019 target asset allocation in January; however, we want to be clear: We were not making a major negative near-term call on the creditworthiness of Levered Loans, or we certainly would not have upgraded U.S. Equities at the same time. At the risk of stating the obvious, Public Equities actually sit below Levered Loans in a corporation’s capital structure.

For much more, read the full monthly report here.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2ECWWp8 Tyler Durden

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

If there’s one thing we know about Presidential hopeful Bernie Sanders, it’s that he loves breadlines… and Communists.

While Sanders didn’t quite make it during the 2016 election – arguably because he was robbed of his nomination by the Clinton campaign – Americans who believe in Constitutional rule of law, liberty and everything that makes this country great better wake up, because Sanders raised over $5 million within 24 hours of announcing his candidacy, suggesting that a massive segment of the U.S. population is supportive of what he stands for.

Well, they may think they know what Sanders stands for… The problem, of course, is that hardcore leftists reside in an echo chamber which has, through harassment and violence, shielded itself from any ideas or arguments that sit outside their very close knit, media supported narratives.

As an example, consider the following 1985 interview from Bernie Sanders.

During his State of the Union address President Trump warned Americans of the looming threat of socialism, much to the approval of the right and much to the dismay of the left.

What most forgot to mention is that Bernie isn’t your average everyday American socialist. He’s a straight-up Commie and loves the idea of Communism.

Watch him swoon over Communist leaders in this 1985 video:

🚨Uncovered video🚨@BernieSanders in 1985 praising the Communist Castro regime in Cuba and admitting on camera that he traveled to Nicaragua to advise the Ortega regime on how to successfully fight the United States. pic.twitter.com/qYtpvbVvCS

— The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) February 20, 2019

And here’s the Left’s darling explaining his disdain for JFK’s anti-communist Castro stance:

Video: @BernieSanders, University of Vermont, 1986, recalls his excitement watching Castro’s revolution “rising up against the ugly rich people.” & his sick feeling watching JFK speak out against communism in Cuba.

Also bashes the @nytimes for lying about communism. pic.twitter.com/OUqzLFbsvz

— The Reagan Battalion (@ReaganBattalion) February 21, 2019

For those of our readers who understands what this means for America, you might want to prepare yourself for breadlines and total impoverishment, because it’s coming should he or another one like him ever become President of the U.S.:

It’s funny that sometimes American journalists talk about how bad a country is because are lining up for food.

That’s a good thing…

Now, granted, we’ve taken that comment out of context. But likewise, Bernie has taken the argument out of context and attempted to create his own.

Because when we talk about the threat of socialist and communism, what we mean when we talk about “bread lines” is what’s happening in Venezuela, where people are literally eating stray dogs and cats to survive.

This is what a Commie bread line actually looks like:

Source: Starving Venezuelans Fed Up With Maduro: “We Want Food!”

In 2020, millions of Americans are going to vote for this man.

Anyone who speaks up against his socialist policies will be vilified for being an agent of a foreign government. How do we know? Because Hillary already told us their counter-strategy for combating the criticism that will be leveled against the extreme left:

.@Politico reports today: “A wide-ranging disinformation campaign aimed at Democratic 2020 candidates is already underway on social media, with signs that foreign state actors are driving at least some of the activity.” https://t.co/LjM14jluq8

— Hillary Clinton (@HillaryClinton) February 20, 2019

As a final note, we must mention that the next election will see a media narrative that paints socialism as “a good thing,” just as Bernie Sanders noted in the video above.

They’ll refuse to call it communism, arguing that the two political and economic systems are completely different.

When they do that, be sure to remember this quote from none other than Vladimir Lenin himself, who was very much a supporter of bread lines, wealth redistribution and the disappearing of political opponents (including their families).

“The goal of socialism is communism.”

-Vladimir Lenin

Never forget: socialism is just communism-lite.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Ubjse8 Tyler Durden

Yesterday we presented some thoughts from Credit Suisse and Deutsche Bank on the recent plunge in government bond vol, which according to the MOVE index has tumbled to all time lows.

However, it’s not just bonds where volatility has evaporated: in addition to equities in both developed and emerging markets, vol has also crashed in currency trading, as represented below by the Deutsche Bank CVIX FX vol index.

In light of this collapse in volatility across virtually all asset classes, it’s no no surprise, SocGen’s FX strategist Kit Juckers writes,  “that we’re fielding more questions that usual about why volatility is so low in the FX market. Nor is it all that surprising that FX carry strategies are back in vogue.”

As Juckes explains, there are four ingredients that combine to make this low volatility, carry-favourable environment:

• The first is the US interest rate backdrop. As Juckes explains, the peak in Fed Funds seems likely to be even lower than the downward-revised estimates of neutral real rates suggested, and there’s enough econometric work out there showing that how fed Funds behave through the cycle is the biggest driver of volatility.
• Secondly, major central banks’ monetary policy is going nowhere – the Fed is patient, the ECB is on hold and the BOJ may be even more on hold than either of them.
• Thirdly, the combined size of the fed, ECB and BOJ balance sheets is going to be bigger, for longer, than most would have guessed a few months ago.
• Finally, China is under pressure from the US to ensure yuan stability, which as Juckes notes “funnily enough is something that the Chinese themselves already seemed to favor.” In other words, if the world’s most important currency (possibly) is set to be stable, then the FX market will be quiet for a while. And carry hunters in FX will like owning the yuan, while bond investors will go on liking Chinese bonds.

So when will this “global goldilocks” period end? To the always skeptical Juckes, “all of this has an ‘Indian Summer’ feel to it – i.e., a late-cycle rally before wintery conditions return.” He then suggests that what ends the low vol period, will be the downside of the economic cycle, particularly in the US.

Despite the unexpectedly strong delayed Q4 GDP print earlier this morning, the slowdown is only just starting and quite a few economists are cutting their forecasts of slower US growth: already the consensus looks for 2.5% growth this year, slowing to 1.9% in 2020 and 1.8% in 2021. To Juckes, it would be a stretch to call that a downturn at all, and if the consensus is right, markets will go from early spring, to summer and back to spring without any kind of winter at all. And while SocGen finds this “absurdly over-optimistic”, the bank’s fx strategist concludes that “it won’t stop the carry party rolling on for a few more months.”

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Ejkzlm Tyler Durden

Authored by Tim Daiss via Oilprice.com,

Last year, President Donald Trump successfully convinced Saudi Arabia to help keep a lid on global oil prices by ramping up production. The Saudis acquiescence to Trump’s tweets at the time were likely appeasement to the president for placing fresh sanctions against Saudi Arabia’s middle eastern nemesis, Iran. Moreover, most concede that Riyadh was a deciding factor in swaying the president to withdrawal from the 2015 nuclear accord with Iran. Consequently, Saudi Arabia’s kowtow to Trumps’ tweets was a returned favor.

However, when Trump later granted waivers that allowed several countries to keep importing Iranian crude, oil prices started their nosedive during the last quarter of the year, catching Saudi Arabia flat-footed, and according to many accounts furious at the president for what they saw as a betrayal of trust.

Now, Trump is tweeting again about high global oil prices and asking OPEC+ to reconsider its oil production cut deal that was implemented at the start of the year. On Monday, the president tweeted “Oil prices getting too high. OPEC, please relax and take it easy. The world cannot take a price hike – fragile!”

However, in order to remove excess oil from global markets, particularly due to Trump’s Iranian oil exports waivers in addition to rampant U.S. production that just hit a once unthinkable 12 million barrel per day (bpd), it’s likely that Riyadh will think twice before appeasing the American president – who at the end of the day appears to lack in-depth knowledge of how global oil markets work

Pushing back against Trump

In fact, in an apparent rebuke of the president, Saudi Arabian Energy Minister Khalid Al-Falih said yesterday that oil inventories in the U.S. are “brimming,” and reducing that glut remains the main goal for the group, adding that the kingdom plans further curbs to output in March.

Oi prices this year have risen around 20 percent recouping much of the losses incurred in the oil price downturn from last October through December. Oil markets are also responding to another Trump intervention, this time fresh U.S. sanctions against not only Iran but Venezuela.

“All of the outlooks that I have seen tell us that we will continue, we’ll need to continue, to moderate production in the second half of this year,” Al-Falih said. Yet, he added that an easing of oil production cuts could still happen depending on the continuation of supply curbs in Libya, Venezuela and Iran. Extending the cuts won’t be “automatic,” he said.

“If we find out that the fundamentals are tightening by June, you can bet that I will be, just like we did last year, encouraging my colleagues within OPEC+ to ease” the cuts and not allow the market to tighten.

Trump’s quandary

The latest Trump tweets and Saudi Arabia’s lack of willingness to be pressured to act over those tweets shows that the president has not only lost leverage with Saudi Arabia in his efforts to keep oil prices, therefore gasoline prices, low as the 2020 presidential election cycle kicks in, but it also shows Trump’s lack of understanding of oil market fundamentals. In essence, for a U.S. president to use social media to try to sway a U.S. ally, and the world’s largest oil exporter, not only diminishes the office of the president but shows that U.S. shale oil production, which has been responsible for a re-positioning of oil market fundamentals, and alliances, also ushering in OPEC+, is not the power in global markets that many hoped it would be just a few years ago. As recently as two years ago, many were reporting that the U.S. would replace Saudi Arabia as the global oil markets swing producers, yet with the formation of OPEC+, namely Saudi Arabia and Russia, that has not yet materialized.

At the end of the day, it would be prudent for Trump to allow oil markets to evolve as they have for decades. Despite recent wild swings in prices to both the upside and downside, markets cycle and eventually return to equilibrium – albeit without Trump’s ill-timed tweets.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Xx155B Tyler Durden

Three months after Israeli police recommended that the country’s attorney general pursue charges against Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu over his alleged involvement in “Bezeq Walla Affair”, it appears an indictment is finally being handed down on Thursday, much to the longtime leader’s chagrin.

Since Netanyahu and his wife have become embroiled in multiple scandals over the past few years, seemingly all of which have yielded recommendations of prosecution, let us pause a moment for a quick refresher on the most serious allegations. The crux of the case is that Netanyahu and his wife accepted bribes from Shaul Elovitch, the owner of Israel’s largest telecoms firm, Bezeq. Elovitch also owns the “Walla” news website. The prime minister crossed a line when he allegedly fired Communications Ministry Director-General Avi Berger and hired ex-Netanyahu campaign manager Shlomo Filber in a bid to help guarantee special treatment for Elovitch and his companies. In exchange, Netanyahu and his wife purportedly struck a deal with Elovitch for favorable coverage on his news website.

In addition to the bribery and breach of trust charges stemming from Bezeq-Walla, Israel’s Attorney General Avichai Mendelblit said Thursday that he intends to indict Netanyahu for fraud and breach of trust in two other cases. All charges are pending a hearing where Netanyahu will be given a chance to respond, according to Haaretz.

The Israeli Shekel dropped on the news.

The indictments, which followed a three-year long investigation, mark the first time in Israel’s history that a sitting prime minister has been indicted, and come just six weeks before a general election (though Netanyahu is far from the first Israeli politician to face serious criminal charges).

A brief explainer of the charges can be found below:

Courtesy of Haaretz

In a last-ditch effort to block the announcement, Netanyahu’s Likud party petitioned the High Court on Thursday and put them off until after the April 9 election, but Justice Minister Mendelblit rebuffed this request, citing the “principle of equality before the law.”

Likud party leaders slammed the indictment as a “political hit job” and have claimed that the case is a “house of cards” that will soon collapse. Which brings us to our next point: Though Netanyahu has been hurt by the scandal, he still remains immensely popular in Israel. While the charges certainly aren’t good, they are a political obstacle that he can still surmount.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2IGF2FT Tyler Durden

Authored by Jeffrey Tucker via The American Institute for Economic Research,

An older woman and her middle-aged son were at a public restaurant for Thanksgiving. He spent the whole of the dinner flipping through his phone, without uttering a word. She did her best to maintain her dignity while looking past him and trying to pretend that this is what life is like. This tragic scene lasted until they paid the bill and left.

The scene was relayed to me by a senior in college who explains how her generation is figuring out the right and wrong ways to use new technology, correcting for the errors of their parents, who somehow allowed their lives to be drained by the newness of it all.

Zak Tebbal drew the perfect cartoon for how our relationship to our smartphones has changed over the last 10 years.

No one planned it. It just seemed to happen. The gadget scratched an itch. We have to know everything, to be in touch with everyone, to be everywhere at once. It’s an everything box, miraculous in its own way. Why are so many people creeped out these days that we seem to have turned over the whole of our lives to our smartphones?

It began with Facebook’s brilliant notification system. Your friends are contacting you, liking you, appreciating you, and surely you need to know that! Every application caught on. More buzzes, dings, alerts, reasons to stare and scroll. During this time, your device holds your primary attention, and interrupts anything else that is happening.

Hours and hours per day, adding up to a day or two in a week, a week in a month, and, ultimately, years and years of our lives, staring senselessly at things that matter maybe a little but not that much.

And at what cost? Disciplined reading, social engagement with those around us, our attention span, serious thought, and even our sleep. No one signed up for our lives to be put into total upheaval one step at a time, forsaking all human connection and conversation, and eschewing serious mental and emotional development, in favor of digital trivia 24/7. And yet, this is what it has come to.

And we are shocked to learn that all kinds of enterprises have an interest in what precisely we are doing. It’s the greatest marketing opportunity ever conceived, and we’ve tacitly approved of it all every step of the way.

Some users are starting to catch on. Now we are reading guides all over the internet on how to detox from our addictions. Back in 2011, I wrote a book called Beautiful Anarchy that celebrates the merits of all the platforms that many people now find oppressive, myself included. As a result, I’ve felt the need to come to terms with the change. Did I make a mistake? Why did I fail to anticipate how much of a burden it would all become?

The thesis of my book was not that we should allow digital platforms to rule our lives; it was that digital platforms aid in helping us curate a civilization for ourselves. It’s the curation part that has gone wrong. We just haven’t been very good at it. I’m confident that we’ll get there after fits and starts.

Is This Addiction?

I’m always suspicious of claims that we are addicted to this or that. Addiction sounds medical whereas what we are usually talking about comes down to bad habits. I had a bad habit of smoking. I did it for 30 years. Then one day something snapped. I didn’t want to be a smoker anymore. That was it, not even one more cigarette since that day. The human mind can overcome even biochemical urges.

Surely we can deal with information addiction so that we can regain control of our lives.

We are too quick to blame technology rather than ourselves. The apps we love specialize in getting our attention and drawing it away from other things. Good for them. This is their job, just as advertisers’ main job is to persuade us to buy the product. We don’t have to. If we are manipulated into feeding false wants, that’s not the advertiser’s fault; it is ours for going along as if we don’t really feel we have volition.

I’m thinking back to my childhood when I first developed a desire to have more stuff. I watched the ads incessantly on Saturday morning. I wanted everything: the Big Wheel, the Moon Boots, the Sit and Spin, Tonka Trucks, Sugar Smacks, Honey Comb, Hot Wheel Tracks, you name it. Every new toy had to be mine. I wanted every fun cereal. My parents bought me my favorite cereals and indulged my desires during the holiday season.

Then I gradually learned that this stuff was not all it was cracked up to be, and I gained control of the materially acquisitive part of my brain.

Which is to say: I matured. So too must we all with our digital devices.

Recall when cell phones first came out. It was like a miracle. We had our own phones rather than having to share the same phone in a household. No wires. We could talk to anyone from anywhere. Restaurants had early adopters sitting at tables alone yammering on the phone in a way that disturbed everyone around them.

It’s been years since I’ve seen such rude behavior. The court of taste and manners ruled against it. People have come to comply.

Now we have a different problem. We can’t get through a dinner with friends without half the guests checking their phones every few minutes. We have truncated conversations, stopping and starting because people can’t keep up with the line of thought. Tiny little buzzes are everywhere. You can see it in people’s eyes that they aren’t really there. They are thinking about their smartphones and applications.

This was happening to me, I admit. Then I entered into a social context in which constant smartphone checking was verboten. It took some discipline, but I eventually adapted, with happy results. If you absolutely must pull out the phone, it’s a simple matter of excusing yourself from the public space and then returning once your curiosity is satisfied. After a while, you realize that nothing is important enough to interrupt conversation with friends.

There still remained the problem of too many notifications. The fix was simple (once you figure it out), but it took active measures. I shut down several Slack channels. I deleted applications. Buzzfeed has no claim on my time. Neither does Wired. There is nothing on Snapchat that merits my immediate attention. Emails too can wait until a time convenient for me. I accepted only the most urgent ones, realizing that it is actually not important to know how many people are liking an Insta image.

With a few changes, I deleted 90 percent of my notifications and the constant buzzing came to an end. I got my life back rather easily actually.

Another way to put it is that I trained my device to act in accordance with a matured way of understanding its role. The providers of information services are trying to elicit from within me my seven-year-old inner self. I don’t fault them for that. It’s up to us to push back and behave like adults.

Economists have been arguing for a while about whether individuals make rational decisions or need nudges to make them behave in a way that is best for them in the long run. But there is a third option: we learn from mistakes and adapt our behavior in light of the consequences. We improve over time. Experience creates new principles and rules that we voluntarily adopt in our own best interest.

Every new technology comes with an awkward stage of adoption, during which time people get manipulated and break every kind of rule of propriety until they figure out a better way. This is where we are today. It’s not that the technology is failing us. It’s that we need to figure out how to become its master rather than the reverse.

The market forces that have put the whole of human knowledge in our pocket work best when we stop blaming technology and start taking responsibility for our own lives.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2H6Ycm3 Tyler Durden

HUD regional director and former longtime Trump Organization employee Lynne Patton has hit back at allegations – levied by Michigan Rep. Rashida “Impeach the Motherfucker” Tlaib during Wednesday’s hearing – that she was brought to the hearing as a “prop” to contradict Michael Cohen’s claims that President Trump is an inveterate racist.

During an interview with Fox & Friends Thursday morning, Patton asserted that, as a black woman born in Birmingham, Alabama (an epicenter of the civil rights movement during the 1960s), she would never work for a man who was racist. She also defended Trump’s economic record as president, saying that his policies have benefited minorities (evidenced by a drop in the unemployment rate for African Americans, which touched an all-time low under Trump).

“I was not there to represent an entire race of people. I was there to represent one man. One man who, nevermind having the lowest unemployment rate for blacks, hispanics, woman….who gave the largest federal disaster grant for Puerto Rico, passed historic prison reform bill in three decades, pardoning more people with disparate sentences than any other president in history…he’s also just created an urban council that’s going to funnel $100 billion of capital into urban communities through opportunity zones…he just made slain Medgar Evers home a civil rights historic monument…these are things the American public doesn’t hear enough about.”

What does bother people about the president isn’t racism, she said, it’s his ability to speak the truth even when it makes people uncomfortable: “I’ve said it before and I’ve said it again: The president doesn’t see color, race, religion, what he sees is success and opportunity…he doesn’t care what people think and he tells it like it is.” And through his companies he’s “been empowering women and minorities for years.”

Tlaib should apologize to Meadows, Patton said, for issuing such a smear in front of the public and Meadows’ colleagues.

Patton also responded to Tlaib’s claims in an Instagram post published Thursday:  In a caption to her post, she said: “Today a race card was played. But not by Congressman Mark Meadows. But rather by those on the House Oversight Committee who sadly placed more credence on the word of a self-confessed convicted perjurer, than that of a highly-educated black woman who rose up the ranks of one of the most recognized global real-estate companies in the world. That is not the resume of a prop.”

 

 

 

 

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Today a race card was played. But not by Congressman Mark Meadows. But rather by those on the House Oversight Committee who sadly placed more credence on the word of a self-confessed convicted perjurer, than that of a highly-educated black woman who rose up the ranks of one of the most recognized global real-estate companies in the world, spoke before 25 million people at the Republican National Convention and now successfully oversees the largest HUD program office in the country. That is not the resume of a prop. It is, however, the resume of someone who remains completely unfazed by the criticism of others and laser focused. Today was simply about one longtime employee disputing the testimony of another longtime employee who both know the President extremely well. Period. Since the release of my viral video in May 2015, those who know me can confirm that my steadfast narrative about the Trump family has not changed. The only one of us whose narrative has changed is the one facing significant jail time. Period. My presence today was to remind Michael Cohen that honesty and integrity still matter. I do not have an NDA. I do not have a book deal. What I DO have is the truth on my side. And when you have that, nothing else matters. 🇺🇸

A post shared by 🇺🇸 lynnepatton (@lynnepatton) on Feb 27, 2019 at 7:40pm PST

 

Watch the full Fox & Friends interview below:

In an interview with the Hill, Patton said that she’s known Michael Cohen for just as long as he has known President Trump, and that “it doesn’t take 15 years to realize somebody is a racist.” 

Lynne Patton: “I’ve known Michael Cohen for 10+ years. I’ve known the President for probably the same amount…Michael Cohen knows I know the truth & the truth is that it doesn’t take 15 years to realize somebody is a racist, unless of course they’re not.” https://t.co/cWURlDaToV pic.twitter.com/RLf4Q9qePt

— The Hill (@thehill) February 28, 2019

She added that she believed Cohen decided to testify solely to get a reduced sentence.”

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2Nxx8xs Tyler Durden

Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via Oilprice.com,

The U.S. shale industry responds only to oil price signals and is like “a market without brain”, BP’s chief executive Bob Dudley said on Tuesday.

“The U.S. is the only country that completely responds to market signals … like a market without a brain. It just responds to price signals,” Reuters quoted Dudley as saying at the ongoing International Petroleum Week conference in London.

“Unlike Saudi Arabia and Russia, which adjust their output in response to gluts or shortages in oil supplies, the U.S. shale market responds purely to oil prices,” said the CEO of the UK oil supermajor, which completed last year a US$10.5-billion deal to buy U.S. shale assets from BHP in what was BP’s biggest acquisition this century, and one that BP will rely on for boosting production and margins. 

The acquisition adds oil and gas production of 190,000 barrels of oil equivalent per day (boe/d) and 4.6 billion oil equivalent barrels (boe) of discovered resources in the liquids-rich regions of the Permian and Eagle Ford basins in Texas and in the Haynesville natural gas basin in East Texas and Louisiana, BP says.

The U.S. shale sector is sensitive to oil prices and drillers respond to them by adding or reducing working rigs, also because shale production is shorter-cycle and easier to switch on and off than complex conventional oil projects.

While OPEC and its Russia-led allies have been looking for two years now at supply and demand and adjusting production to avoid another oil glut similar to the one that crashed oil prices in 2014, U.S. shale has been benefiting from the OPEC/non-OPEC coordinated market action and the increase in oil prices over the past two years. Producers have been pumping record amounts of crude oil in the United States, which is already the world’s top oil producer ahead of Russia and Saudi Arabia.

U.S. crude oil production hit a record 12 million bpd in the week ending February 15, rising by 100,000 bpd from 11.9 million bpd in the previous week, EIA data showed last week.

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/2T5oKeD Tyler Durden