Month: September 2019

Why Is the Colorado Governor’s Office Trying to Censor Rural News Outlets?

The press office for Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, has been trying to get media outlets within the state to remove two stories posted online because they object to the source.

Earlier this month, writer Derek Draplin reported that Polis had established a new office—the Office of the Future of Work—to research the state’s changing economy and workforce and make policy recommendations to the governor’s office. Draplin published the article in The Center Square, a nonprofit media outlet.

The factually accurate story (read it here) quotes Polis praising the creation of the office, as well as a Colorado GOP spokesperson mocking the creation of yet another regulatory bureaucracy with “undefined goals, broad powers, and a name straight from the brain of George Orwell.”

The Center Square offers its state coverage up for free reprints by other media outlets as long as they are appropriately credited. This is not an unusual arrangement; as advertising revenue bleeds away from local newspapers to the internet, small newspapers don’t have the manpower to cover many state or national stories on their own anymore.

But when two small Colorado newspapers, the Kiowa County Press in Eads, and the Chronicle-News in Trinidad, published the story, they heard from Conor Cahill, Polis’ spokesman, who asked them to take the articles down.

Cahill did not challenge any of the facts presented in the story. He, instead, objected to them having run news stories from The Center Square because he does not see them as an objective source of information. The Center Square is a product of the Franklin News Foundation, which offers state-level journalism and opinion pieces focused on fiscal responsibility and transparency. It used to be known as Watchdog.org but relaunched earlier this year under the new brand.

Cahill’s argument is that donors to Franklin News Foundation may come from libertarian or conservative backgrounds, and the fact that writer Draplin is also an editor at The Daily Caller, a right-leaning outlet, apparently taints everything The Center Square writes, even if the story is completely accurate. After the editors refused Cahill’s request and The Center Square reported what had happened, The Denver Post and even the Associated Press picked up the story. In an email to The Denver Post, Cahill explains his justification for reaching out to these newspapers:

“When we looked into this group and discovered that it was not an objective wire service, but instead a branded website funded by the Koch Brothers’ political organization, we were alarmed that it was being reprinted by reputable news outlets in the state. The people of Colorado deserve quality, objective news they can trust so they can make their own informed decisions. Newspapers can publish whatever they want to, anywhere they want, at their own prerogative, but the public is served best when articles by partisan organizations are placed in the opinion section or branded accordingly.”

When reached for comment by Reason, Cahill simply sent back the same quote.

What’s alarming here is that, again, he provides no evidence that anything written in the very brief news story is inaccurate, just written by a group that gets funding from people with an agenda might not match that of the governor’s office. Cahill is also implying that an organization with a political bent cannot also produce fact-based journalism. This would come as news to publications like Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and, well, Reason.

And without question, it’s most certainly not the place of the governor’s press office—whose role is to push forward Polis’ agenda to the media—to be weighing in on what “objective” journalism is. That’s especially true since Cahill, upon repeated request, cannot actually point to anything in The Center Square‘s piece that is factually inaccurate.

Cahill should maybe take a break from attempting to “work the refs” at his state’s smallest media outlets and read up on the Streisand Effect. Because of his attempts to control what local newspapers publish, the news story actually got even more coverage than it would have otherwise.

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Elizabeth Warren’s ‘Wealth Tax’ Is Punishment, Not Taxation

With four well-chosen words, Vice President Biden summed up the most important ideological dividing line in the Democratic presidential primary.

The comment came at the third of three fundraisers Biden held on Thursday, September 26, in Los Angeles County. Usually Biden sticks pretty tightly to his stump speech, and usually he keeps his schedule a bit lighter than three public events in a day. So perhaps it was the candor that comes with fatigue. Perhaps it was the intimacy that came with the unusually small event— a crowd of about 50. Or maybe Biden was hoping, even subconsciously, that someone would notice and get the message.

Biden joked with the well-dressed and apparently affluent crowd that they shouldn’t expect a tax cut from him. Then, according to the pool report from Matt Pearce of the Los Angeles Times says, came the four words that tell a long story: “But! No punishment, either.”

The clear, if implicit, contrast was with Sens. Elizabeth Warren (D–Mass.) and Bernie Sanders (I–Vt.). Warren and Sanders each have proposed a “wealth tax” that is accompanied by a punitive exit tax on anyone leaving the country to escape the wealth tax.

Democrats have been toying with these exit tax proposals for some time. The rates they float keep climbing. An expatriation tax already applies on those renouncing U.S. citizenship—they have to pay capital gains tax on the accumulated gains on their assets, reflecting a “deemed sale” at a mark-to-market price even on assets that have not been sold.

Sen. Charles Schumer (D–N.Y.) proposed an exit tax at a 30 percent rate in 2012. Hillary Clinton, as a presidential candidate in 2015, proposed an exit tax that would have hit corporations at the 35 percent corporate income tax rate that then applied. And, here in 2019, Warren and Sanders have both proposed exit taxes at the confiscatory rate of 40 percent, with the Sanders plan climbing to 60 percent on assets above $1 billion for individuals seeking to avoid his annual wealth taxes of up to 8 percent.

Biden is correct that threatening to seize 60 percent or 40 percent of the property of a member of an unpopular minority group who wants to leave a country is functionally not taxation, but punishment. The number of people subject to such a tax is small enough that it could be subject to the U.S. Constitution’s prohibition, in Article I, against a bill of attainder.

Whether the exit or wealth tax is, by definition, a tax or a punishment turns out to be one of the fundamental issues in whether it is constitutional. An opinion by Chief Justice Warren, discussing the Constitution’s Bill of Attainder clause in the 1965 Supreme Court case United States v. Brown, cited Alexander Hamilton: “If the legislature can disfranchise any number of citizens at pleasure by general descriptions, it may soon confine all the votes to a small number of partisans, and establish an aristocracy or an oligarchy; if it may banish at discretion all those whom particular circumstances render obnoxious, without hearing or trial, no man can be safe, nor know when he may be the innocent victim of a prevailing faction. The name of liberty applied to such a government would be a mockery of common sense.”

The clause, Justice Warren wrote, “was not to be given a narrow historical reading (which would exclude bills of pains and penalties), but was instead to be read in light of the evil the Framers had sought to bar: legislative punishment, of any form or severity, of specifically designated persons or group.”

Justice Warren quoted an earlier decision, United States v. Lovett: “Legislative acts, no matter what their form, that apply either to named individuals or to easily ascertainable members of a group in such a way as to inflict punishment on them without a judicial trial are bills of attainder prohibited by the Constitution.”

Justice Warren noted “It was not uncommon for English acts of attainder to inflict their deprivations upon relatively large groups of people, sometimes by description, rather than name.” In this case the description would be “billionaires.”

What an ironical historical twist it would be if a policy of President Elizabeth Warren ended up struck down on the basis of a precedent by Chief Justice Earl Warren—and on the basis of an accurate description by Vice President Biden that the proposed tax amounts to a “punishment.”

Beyond the legal questions, interesting though they are, are moral and prudential ones. Does economic success—which usually, if not always, involves hard work, risk-taking, and creating a product or service that many people find valuable enough to voluntarily pay for—deserve to be punished? The Democratic Party will have to answer in the coming primaries. Biden is on the correct side of it. His challenge will be to articulate a case that goes beyond his four words in Los Angeles, which were a fine start.

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So Sorry, Your Karma Ran Over Your Dogma

So Sorry, Your Karma Ran Over Your Dogma

Authored by Charles Hugh Smith via OfTwoMinds blog,

When dogmas lose their grip on believers, they collapse in spectacular fashion.

Karma covers a lot of ground, but it boils down to consequences: consequences not just from your actions but from your convictions, schemes, obsessions, and yes, dogmas.

The reason why Karma runs over Dogma is that nobody clinging to a dogma sees themselves as dogmatic. The true believer never sees their conviction as dogma, but as Revealed Truth, as self-evident, a view that is buttressed by all the other True Believers who surround the believer, reinforcing their conviction and soothing any nagging doubts by mocking, “debunking” or marginalizing heretics and critics.

In our society, the mass media serves as a soothing echo-chamber of dogmas. It must be true, the news anchor said it on TV, etc.

Dogmas generate power and profits. Trillions of dollars flow into a few pockets because people believe the dogmas that “you need a college diploma to succeed” and “America’s healthcare system is the best in the world.”

As evidence-based doubts seep in, those at the top of the “faith” who have the most to lose become increasingly fanatical and rabid, pushing an increasingly restrictive Orthodoxy on true believers and establishing an Inquisition to excommunicate or eliminate any heretical doubts or dissenting views.

As the increasingly detached-from-reality leadership senses their power waning, they double-down, exhorting the faithful to support the orthodoxy even as the orthodoxy reaches new heights of fanaticism.

As moderates drift away (or sneak away, loudly proclaiming their fealty to cover their escape), the leadership triples down, demanding unwavering loyalty of the remaining believers, who themselves triple-down by reassuring each other that they really are on the right track and the world is about to awaken to the correctness and righteousness of their cause.

The problem with dogmas is that they are detached from the real-world consequences of dogmatic convictions. So the dogma that a college degree is the difference between prosperity and poverty is running up against the reality that the actual difference between prosperity and poverty is the amount of student loan debt that’s crushing the graduates.

This reality is so dangerous to the student-loan-money-machine that the leadership has ramped up the propaganda that a college diploma is absolutely necessary if you don’t want to be homeless (an obvious falsity) and going through an Orwellian exercise of “lowering” tuition. (This is a fiction because the “lowered” tuition is nothing more than what the average student actually pays after the university’s shell-game of “tuition credits” and other flim-flam.)

Military dogmas get discredited on the field of battle, often in dramatic fashion. Financial markets (unless they’re manipulated, of course) also provide painful real-world feedback. Those predicting one side of the trade will eventually be proven correct or incorrect.

To an alarming degree, the U.S. is dominated by dogmas that benefit the few at the expense of the many, and by leaders who are doubling or tripling down to defend the dogma and their power. As already noted, dogmas support extractive systems that enrich the few by bamboozling the many. As the perverse consequences of dogmas start piling up, those paying the costs of loyalty/belief start wavering and then buckling under the weight of reality.

The leaders, safely protected from the consequences of their elitist dominance and fearing the loss of their wealth, power and prestige, ramp up the time-honored strategy of increasing demands for loyalty and public virtue-signaling, jacking up media propaganda in support of the orthodoxy, and moving to ban, shadow-ban, suppress, punish, discredit, demoralize, de-platform, demonetize and marginalize critics, i.e. heretics who challenge the status quo’s foundational dogmas.

When dogmas lose their grip on believers, they collapse in spectacular fashion. The much-derided biplane sink the status quo battleship, the stock market’s “permanent high plateau” crashes, and so on. (WeWork’s path from an IPO worth $50 billion to a cancelled IPO and insolvency in a mere six weeks is a timely example.)

Dogmas collapse first in the minds of believers, when they slowly awaken to the reality that the dogma no longer serves them, it only serves to prop up the wealth, power and prestige of their increasingly fanatic leaders. Propping up a failed system doesn’t actually fix what’s broken; it only guarantees the banquet of consequences will include shackles: the option to escape the consequences will no longer exist.

So sorry, but your karma ran over your dogma. 

The consequences and costs inexorably pile up, and neither Inquisitions to silence heretics nor virtue-signaling one’s loyalty will stop the trajectory over the cliff.

*  *  *

If you found value in this content, please join Charles in seeking solutions by becoming a $1/month patron of my work via patreon.com. New benefit for subscribers/patrons: a monthly Q&A where I respond to your questions/topics.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 09/30/2019 – 16:26

Tags
Religion Belief

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Who’s Right on Impeachment: Rand Paul, Justin Amash, or Jeff Flake?

Sen. Rand Paul (R–Ky.) says it’s a “fake witch hunt” (“BASTA!“). Rep. Justin Amash (I–Mich.) is in the same “impeachable conduct” camp he’s been in since May; adding such recent commentary as “Nearly every Trump ally’s defense has been an effort to gaslight America.” And now-retired Rep. Jeff Flake (R–Ariz.), from the much-hated temperamental center, has in this morning’s Washington Post charted out a third way between those two poles, arguing that “the president’s actions warrant impeachment,” but that Flake still has “grave reservations” about launching those proceedings, so instead wants elected Republicans to not endorse the president’s re-election because Trump is “manifestly undeserving of the highest office that we have.”

So which of these libertarian-leaning legislators, current and former, has the better argument? That’s the subject of this week’s editors’ roundtable edition of Reason Podcast, featuring Nick Gillespie, Katherine Mangu-Ward, Peter Suderman and Matt Welch. Is it possible or meaningful to separate out impeachment proceedings from articles of impeachment from a Senate conviction thereof? Are there important differences between Trump’s conduct and that of previous administrations? What is the role/position/rooting interest for those outside of the two corners? We talk through all of this and more, while fighting a losing battle against profanity, invoking Inception, and explaining how all art is basically a primer on management.

Audio production by Ian Keyser and Regan Taylor.

‘Rocking Forward’ by XTaKeRuX is licensed under CC BY 4.0

Relevant links from the show:

“Trump’s Civil War Tweet Is Bad. This Other Tweet May Be Unconstitutional.” By Elizabeth Nolan Brown

“Whether Trump Stays or Goes, We Need To Rein in Presidents and Congress,” by Nick Gillespie

“Did Trump Commit a Crime by Seeking a Ukrainian Investigation of Joe Biden? And Does It Matter for Impeachment Purposes?” By Jacob Sullum

“Evidence Increasingly Indicates Trump’s Ukraine Pressure Tactics Usurped Congress’ Power of the Purse—and that he may have Committed a Federal Crime in the Process,” by Ilya Somin

“Did the President Commit Witness Tampering?” By David Post

“Is Impeachment a ‘Constitutional Duty’?” By Keith Whittington

“Trump’s Ukraine Call Was an Abuse of Power—and This Time, He Can’t Claim Ignorance or Inexperience,” by Peter Suderman

“John Yoo Warns That Impeachment Would Undermine Presidential Power. That’s the Point.” By Jacob Sullum

“Whistleblower Report Alleges Trump Used Presidential Power for Personal Gain,” by Elizabeth Nolan Brown

“Congress Should Not Be Satisfied With Ukraine Call Transcript, Given the Trump White House’s History of Fiddling With Records,” by Eric Boehm

“Nancy Pelosi Announces Trump Impeachment Inquiry Over Ukraine Scandal,” by Billy Binion

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House Democrats Subpoena Giuliani Over ‘Scheme’ To Investigate Biden

House Democrats Subpoena Giuliani Over ‘Scheme’ To Investigate Biden

Congressional Democrats have subpoenaed President Trump’s personal attorney, Rudy Giuliani, for documents and other evidence in ‘two politically-motivated investigations’ – one of which they say constitutes election interference in next year’s US election.  

In a Monday letter from House Committee Chairs Adam Schiff (D-CA), Eliot Engel (D-NY) and Elijah Cummings (D-MD), Giuliani is ordered to hand over “text messages, phone records, and other communications,” related to his communications with the government of Ukraine, which Trump and Giuliani have admitted to asking for an investigation into former Vice President Joe Biden and his son Hunter. 

“The Committees are investigating the extent to which President Trump jeopardized national security by pressing Ukraine to interfere with our 2020 election and by withholding security assistance provided by Congress to help Ukraine counter Russian aggression, as well as any efforts to cover up these matters,” reads the letter. 

“Our inquiry includes an investigation of credible allegations that you acted as an agent of the President in a scheme to advance his personal political interests by abusing the power of the Office of the President,” the letter continues. “A growing public record, including your own statements, indicates that the President, you, and others appear to have pressed the Ukrainian government to pursue two politically-motivated investigations.” 

Developing…


Tyler Durden

Mon, 09/30/2019 – 16:05

Tags
Politics

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Safe-Havens Beat Stocks In Q3 As Global Policy Uncertainty Hits Record High

Safe-Havens Beat Stocks In Q3 As Global Policy Uncertainty Hits Record High

A flip-flopping quarter ended with global stocks flat but global bond yields collapsing…

Source: Bloomberg

Global equity and bond market values rose $1.23 trillion in September but ended Q3 little changed as stocks lost 1.25 trillion and bonds gained $1.8 trillion…

Source: Bloomberg

As global policy uncertainty soars to a fresh all-time record high…

Source: Bloomberg

On the quarter, Bullion and Bonds were bid – safe haven flows along with the dollar – as stocks underperformed, scraping out a very small gain…

Distracted? Entertained? What’s the difference?

Stocks

Year-to-date, Russia is outperforming China and US with EM equities underperforming…

In Q3, US equities scraped out a gain but China and Europe were lower (but we note Europe outperformed US and China in September)…

Source: Bloomberg

Chinese stocks scratched out a very modest gain in September, but fell for the second straight quarter (though the small-cap, tech-heavy ChiNext managed gains in Q3)…

Source: Bloomberg

European equities managed gains for the second quarter in a row, led by strong gains in Italy (Germany was down in Q3)…

Source: Bloomberg

In the US, thanks to a pumpathon today, The Dow and S&P were up for 3rd straight quarter (while Small Caps lagged most)…

Source: Bloomberg

On the month, US equities ended green (barely) with Nasdaq Composite rebounding today, to avoid a second monthly drop in a row…

Source: Bloomberg

US stocks were all higher on the day (month/quarter-end flows?) – ugly close for small caps though

Source: Bloomberg

Despite the quant carnage in momo exposure in September (worst monthly drop since Aug 2009), both value and momo managed modest gains for Q3…

Source: Bloomberg

Q3 gains were dominated by flows into Defensive stocks; Cyclical stocks lost in Q3 (but outperformed in September)…

Source: Bloomberg

FANG Stocks fell for the 3rd straight month in September, the worst quarterly drop since Q4 2018’s collapse…

Source: Bloomberg

 

Bonds

US Treasury yields crashed in Q3 (for the 4th straight quarter), dropping the most since Q4 2014…

Source: Bloomberg

But September saw US Treasury yields rebound notably from August – among the worst months since Dec 2016 (post-Trump Election)…

Source: Bloomberg

Despite steepening dramatically in September (biggest monthly steepening since Nov 2016 – Election), the yield curve collapsed in Q3 (for the 6th consecutive quarter)…and remains notably inverted…

Source: Bloomberg

30Y Yields fell today…

Source: Bloomberg

FX

Q3 was the best quarter for the dollar since Q2 2018…

Source: Bloomberg

The Dollar managed to ramp this week to end higher for the 3rd month in a row (highest monthly close since March 2017)…

Source: Bloomberg

With China closed for Golden Week, the dollar waited until Europe opened to be panic bid…

Source: Bloomberg

 

Source: Bloomberg

Before we leave currency-land, it’s worth noting that Q3 was an ugly one for cryptos with Litecoin down a stunning 57%…

Source: Bloomberg

September was mixed though with Ethereum and Ripple positive but Bitcoin (3rd monthly drop in a row) and Litecoin notably lower…

Source: Bloomberg

Commodities

Q3 was a big winner for silver (best quarter since Q1 2017) while WTI fell for the 2nd quarter in a row…

Source: Bloomberg

WTI plunged again today, dropping back below the pre-Saudi spike levels…

Source: Bloomberg

Despite a great quarter, September saw Silver suffer its biggest monthly loss since Nov 2016 (election)

Source: Bloomberg

Gold rose for the 4th straight quarter, ending Q3 at the highest since Q1 2013… But September was gold’s weakest month since June 2018 (after 4 straight months higher) after losing $1500 following multiple saves…

Source: Bloomberg

And the recent weakness should not be a surprise… It happens every Golden Week…

Source: Bloomberg

Silver outperformed gold in Q3 by the most since Q2 2016; but after a big drop, gold outperformed silver by the most since Oct 2018 in September…

Source: Bloomberg

Finally, we note that September saw the biggest surge in positive economic surprise data since Jan 2009…

Source: Bloomberg

Don’t forget, stocks are rising on fun-durr-mentals…

Source: Bloomberg

And let’s not forget what The Fed is doing everyday…

“probably nothing”


Tyler Durden

Mon, 09/30/2019 – 16:01

Tags
Business Finance

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Why Is the Colorado Governor’s Office Trying to Censor Rural News Outlets?

The press office for Colorado Gov. Jared Polis, a Democrat, has been trying to get media outlets within the state to remove two stories posted online because they object to the source.

Earlier this month, writer Derek Draplin reported that Polis had established a new office—the Office of the Future of Work—to research the state’s changing economy and workforce and make policy recommendations to the governor’s office. Draplin published the article in The Center Square, a nonprofit media outlet.

The factually accurate story (read it here) quotes Polis praising the creation of the office, as well as a Colorado GOP spokesperson mocking the creation of yet another regulatory bureaucracy with “undefined goals, broad powers, and a name straight from the brain of George Orwell.”

The Center Square offers its state coverage up for free reprints by other media outlets as long as they are appropriately credited. This is not an unusual arrangement; as advertising revenue bleeds away from local newspapers to the internet, small newspapers don’t have the manpower to cover many state or national stories on their own anymore.

But when two small Colorado newspapers, the Kiowa County Press in Eads, and the Chronicle-News in Trinidad, published the story, they heard from Conor Cahill, Polis’ spokesman, who asked them to take the articles down.

Cahill did not challenge any of the facts presented in the story. He, instead, objected to them having run news stories from The Center Square because he does not see them as an objective source of information. The Center Square is a product of the Franklin News Foundation, which offers state-level journalism and opinion pieces focused on fiscal responsibility and transparency. It used to be known as Watchdog.org but relaunched earlier this year under the new brand.

Cahill’s argument is that donors to Franklin News Foundation may come from libertarian or conservative backgrounds, and the fact that writer Draplin is also an editor at The Daily Caller, a right-leaning outlet, apparently taints everything The Center Square writes, even if the story is completely accurate. After the editors refused Cahill’s request and The Center Square reported what had happened, The Denver Post and even the Associated Press picked up the story. In an email to The Denver Post, Cahill explains his justification for reaching out to these newspapers:

“When we looked into this group and discovered that it was not an objective wire service, but instead a branded website funded by the Koch Brothers’ political organization, we were alarmed that it was being reprinted by reputable news outlets in the state. The people of Colorado deserve quality, objective news they can trust so they can make their own informed decisions. Newspapers can publish whatever they want to, anywhere they want, at their own prerogative, but the public is served best when articles by partisan organizations are placed in the opinion section or branded accordingly.”

When reached for comment by Reason, Cahill simply sent back the same quote.

What’s alarming here is that, again, he provides no evidence that anything written in the very brief news story is inaccurate, just written by a group that gets funding from people with an agenda might not match that of the governor’s office. Cahill is also implying that an organization with a political bent cannot also produce fact-based journalism. This would come as news to publications like Rolling Stone, Mother Jones, and, well, Reason.

And without question, it’s most certainly not the place of the governor’s press office—whose role is to push forward Polis’ agenda to the media—to be weighing in on what “objective” journalism is. That’s especially true since Cahill, upon repeated request, cannot actually point to anything in The Center Square‘s piece that is factually inaccurate.

Cahill should maybe take a break from attempting to “work the refs” at his state’s smallest media outlets and read up on the Streisand Effect. Because of his attempts to control what local newspapers publish, the news story actually got even more coverage than it would have otherwise.

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Ron Paul Asks: “Impeachment… Or CIA Coup?”

Ron Paul Asks: “Impeachment… Or CIA Coup?”

Authored by Ron Paul via The Ron Paul Institute for Peace & Prosperity,

You don’t need to be a supporter of President Trump to be concerned about the efforts to remove him from office. Last week House Speaker Nancy Pelosi announced impeachment proceedings against the President over a phone call made to the President of Ukraine. According to the White House record of the call, the President asked his Ukrainian counterpart to look into whether there is any evidence of Ukrainian meddling in the 2016 election and then mentioned that a lot of people were talking about how former US Vice President Joe Biden stopped the prosecution of his son who was under investigation for corruption in Ukraine.

Democrats, who spent more than two years convinced that “Russiagate” would enable them to remove Trump from office only to have their hopes dashed by the Mueller Report, now believe they have their smoking gun in this phone call.

It this about politics? Yes. But there may be more to it than that.

It may appear that the Democratic Party, furious over Hillary Clinton’s 2016 loss, is the driving force behind this ongoing attempt to remove Donald Trump from office, but at every turn we see the fingerprints of the CIA and its allies in the US deep state.

In August 2016, a former acting director of the CIA, Mike Morell, wrote an extraordinary article in the New York Times accusing Donald Trump of being an “agent of the Russian Federation.” Morell was clearly using his intelligence career as a way of bolstering his claim that Trump was a Russian spy – after all, the CIA should know such a thing! But the claim was a lie.

Former CIA director John Brennan accused President Trump of “treason” and of “being in the pocket of Putin” for meeting with the Russian president in Helsinki and accepting his word that Russia did not meddle in the US election. To this day there has yet to be any evidence presented that the Russian government did interfere. Brennan openly called on “patriotic” Republicans to act against this “traitor.”

Brennan and his deep state counterparts James Comey at the FBI and former Director of National Intelligence James Clapper launched an operation, using what we now know is the fake Steele dossier, to spy on the Trump presidential campaign and even attempt to entrap Trump campaign employees.

Notice a pattern here?

Now we hear that the latest trigger for impeachment is a CIA officer assigned to the White House who filed a “whistleblower” complaint against the president over something he heard from someone else that the president said in the Ukraine phone call.

Shockingly, according to multiple press reports the rules for CIA whistleblowing were recently changed, dropping the requirement that the whistleblower have direct, first-hand knowledge of the wrongdoing. Just before this complaint was filed, the rule-change allowed hearsay or second-hand information to be accepted. That seems strange.

As it turns out, the CIA “whistleblower” lurking around the White House got the important things wrong, as there was no quid pro quo discussed and there was no actual request to investigate Biden or his son.

The Democrats have suddenly come out in praise of whistleblowers – well not exactly. Pelosi still wants to prosecute actual whistleblower Ed Snowden. But she’s singing the praises of this fake CIA “whistleblower.”

Senate Minority Leader Chuck Schumer once warned Trump that if “you take on the intelligence community, they have six ways from Sunday at getting back at you.” It’s hard not to ask whether this is a genuine impeachment effort…or a CIA coup!


Tyler Durden

Mon, 09/30/2019 – 15:50

Tags
Politics

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Beijing Slams “Fanatical US Hawks”, Warns Of Economic Backlash After ‘Delisting’ Threat

Beijing Slams “Fanatical US Hawks”, Warns Of Economic Backlash After ‘Delisting’ Threat

Last week, leaked reports claimed that the Trump Administration was considering the forced de-listing of Chinese firms from American securities exchanges, sending markets lower into Friday’s close.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Geng Shuang

Now, following a hasty denial from the Treasury, Beijing has issued a response of its own: That any such “decoupling” between US and Chinese markets could unleash a wave of instability across the global economy, harming the US as much as China.

The Global Times published a piece on Sunday slamming Washington over “the latest attempt at a coupling.” In the report, the Chinese tabloid said banning Chinese firms from US exchanges “is expected to have significant repercussions for the Chinese and US economies, as well as their companies, in the future.”

The paper also slammed “some fanatical US hawks” for “seriously underestimating the development of China’s manufacturing industry and companies.”

“Some fanatical US hawks need to take a closer look at what the Chinese economy has achieved over the past 70 years, instead of devising crazy ideas about a US-China decoupling. Why? Because they are playing with fire and seriously underestimating the development of China’s manufacturing industry and companies.”

GT also dismissed the Treasury Department’s denial as a feeble attempt to reassure American markets: “US Treasury spokesperson Monica Crowley was quoted in a Saturday report as saying that ‘The administration is not contemplating blocking Chinese companies from listing shares on US stock exchanges at this time.’ The denial is likely only an attempt to reassure the market.”

Near the bottom of the GT editorial, its authors added a not-too-subtle threat about Chinese companies “restraining their business expansion in the US” should Chinese firms be de-listed.

“One of the possible consequences of the uncertain ban on Chinese listings is that US-listed Chinese companies may start considering contingency plans, or at least restrain their business expansion in the US, given rising uncertainties from the US-China trade war. US companies that have investments in China may also need to think about the same issues. In the end, the US will see its remaining growth impetus depleted by concerns over future risks and policy uncertainties.”

During a Monday press briefing, a spokesman from China’s Foreign Ministry offered a similar warning to Washington, though he used slightly less aggressive language, Reuters reports.

Chinese Foreign Ministry Spokesman Geng Shuang echoed the GT’s claim that de-listing would harm both the US and China.

“Exerting maximum pressure and even seeking the forced decoupling of China-U.S. relations will harm the interests of Chinese and American companies and people, create turmoil in financial markets, and endanger global trade and economic growth,” Geng said.

“This does not accord with the interests of the international community.”

Even if the Trump Administration ultimately abandons forced de-listing of Chinese firms as a trade-war tactic, US lawmakers could force his hand.

Back in June, lawmakers from both parties supported a bill that would force Chinese companies listed on American exchanges to submit to more regulatory oversight, or risk being forcibly de-listed. Beijing was presumably less than pleased by this, even though it doesn’t look like the bill will make it through both houses of Congress and the White House.

Of course, there’s still hope on both sides that a deal can be reached. Chinese Vice Commerce Minister Wang Shouwen has said that he hopes Beijing and Washington will resolve their trade dispute “with a calm and rational attitude” when the two sides meet again in Washington next week.

Whether any progress is made remains to be seen.


Tyler Durden

Mon, 09/30/2019 – 15:30

Tags
Business Finance

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Nomura Quants: “The Market Appears To Be Undergoing A Spontaneous Cooldown”

Nomura Quants: “The Market Appears To Be Undergoing A Spontaneous Cooldown”

One look at the relatively calm surface of the S&P500 in recent days would leave one with the impression that traders barely have a care in mind, and indeed global stock markets have been alternately advancing and retreating with opinions on the potential for resolution to US-China trade frictions – arguably the biggest marginal unknown – mixed, however neither extreme dominating.

And yet, as Nomura’s quant Masanari Takada writes, we have seen some signs of investors unloading stocks and in other ways adjusting their positions ahead of cabinet-level talks scheduled for 10-11 October. Meanwhile, a number of key indicators of the performance of the US and Chinese economies are lined up for release between now and the end of next week, the US manufacturing and non-mfg ISM in the coming days, and the FOMC minutes on 9 October. In fact, the economic and political news over these two weeks may well have much to say about how various classes of risk assets will perform over the remainder of the year according to Takada.

News flow aside, however, and one wouldn’t see it by simply looking at the calm surface of the market, global risk sentiment “appears to be undergoing a spontaneous cool-down” that Nomura’s model pictures as lasting from 20 September through 9 October. Cyclically speaking, “this cooldown may make the market react more strongly to negative news.”

Of course, this being a note about a quant’s take on the market, a view on what CTAs are doing couldn’t be too far away, and sure enough, according to Takada, as the risk rally has died down, “quick-moving trend-chasing CTAs have reduced the pace of their net buying of equity futures.” Whereas CTAs have spent the past month adding to their net long positions in S&P 500 futures, DJIA futures, and DAX futures alike, market indices have recently worked their way down towards the breakeven lines that Nomura estimates exist at around 2,970 for the S&P 500, 26,680 for the DJIA, and 12,300 for the DAX. “This has blunted the momentum behind CTAs’ upward pursuit of the market”, according to Takeda. On the other hand, CTAs have only recently started to shift their asset allocation away from bonds toward stocks, and there is a widely held bullish view that sees them continuing to add to their equity exposure through the end of the year, which is why a key question when deciding how stocks will trade in Q4, is whether CTAs will continue increasing equity exposure and reducing their bond exposure through the end of the year.

In offering its own answer to this key question, Takada says that he has gone through market data to extract the pattern in the cumulative change in CTAs’ relative exposure to equities (US stock futures, German stock futures, Japanese stock futures) and bonds (TY, JGB futures, Bund futures) for each year in the period 2009 through 2018.

Based on the correlation between this relative exposure and the OECD composite leading indicator, he then split the sample into high-growth years (when the YTD change in the leading indicator is positive as of June) and low-growth years (when the YTD change in the indicator is negative as of June). The pattern shows that CTAs tend to ramp up their buying of equity futures towards the end of each year, but in years in which the OECD composite leading indicator has spent the first half of the year trending consistently downward (as was the case this year), buying of bond futures has tended to pick up towards the end of the year.

So, all else equal, CTAs are far more likely to revert back to selling stocks and buying bonds.

That said, the stock market could easily take on a more positive tone if progress is made in the US-China talks and a resolution to the trade war starts to look more likely. In that event, Nomura would expect to see a stock market rally that bucks the historical tendency that has prevailed in years like this one. On the other hand, “a failure to wrap up the US-China tension would make it more likely that CTAs’ current buying of stocks and selling of bonds will ultimately amount to no more than a seasonal phenomenon”, according to Takada.

So how long will the current market bounce last?

In its answer, Nomura notes that the US stock market is still “experiencing a backswing from earlier optimism, albeit a mild one”, with the Japanese bank noting that it “gets a strong sense that investors are waiting for the release of key macroeconomic indicators and news on developments in the US-China talks.” As such, the dominant force in the market at the moment is probably speculators taking profits on their bullish positions in US equities, according to Nomura’s quant.

At the same time, discretionary global macro hedge funds and long/short funds are subtly downsizing their long exposure to US equities. Adding to the concerning picture, global macro hedge funds are at the same time closing out short positions in US bonds. For now at least, it seems that they are hitting the reset button on trades they had made premised on a rising stock market and rising bond yields.

And as most investor classes are phasing out their risk-on, bullish trades, CTAs meanwhile are putting a stop to their accumulation of long positions in equity futures, and are already exiting long positions in NASDAQ 100 futures in particular, as the index has undercut the trigger line that Nomura estimates exists at around 7,750.

In its conclusion, Nomura cautions that “with other hedge funds buying stocks at a slower pace now, we think conditions could soon prompt CTAs to begin paring their net long positions in S&P 500 futures and DJIA futures.”


Tyler Durden

Mon, 09/30/2019 – 15:12

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Business Finance

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