Month: November 2019

Impeachment Is Both the Cause and the Effect of a Too-Powerful Presidency

By focusing all of its efforts on impeachment during a presidential campaign, Congress has given away the game: Its members are little more than pawns in a winner-take-all battle for the presidency and its vast and ever-growing powers. Worse, they seem to prefer it that way.

Impeachment is messy, like digging out the pit from an overripe peach. The formal process is difficult for Americans to comprehend. The criteria are blurry and debatable. It requires nearly everyone involved to perform some amount of hypocritical partisan contortionism. It’s the bluntest of instruments in politics, and that’s really saying something.

Because of this confusingly contingent nature of impeachment, many in Congress are currently extremely busy practicing “strategic silence.” They’re waiting to see whether the 58 percent of Americans who told Washington Post/Schar pollsters in early October that they support the impeachment inquiry will stick to their guns (and whether the number of likely Republican voters in their midst will grow larger).

But it is increasingly clear that, especially for party leadership in Congress, the game is worth the candle. The game is worth a whole candelabra, in fact. A chandelier, even.

Impeachments are becoming more frequent, with only one—of Andrew Johnson in 1868—in the first couple centuries of U.S. history and three (yes, we’re counting Nixon) in the last 50 years. It’s not a coincidence that the latter period has also seen unprecedented growth in the powers of the president and in the number of dollars and lives at his disposal.

Even the substance of the narrow matter at hand in 2019 demonstrates this dynamic. At issue in the impeachment inquiry—at least at press time, since these things have a tendency to develop quickly—is the implication of a quid pro quo offered to a foreign leader in a phone call with Donald Trump. Depending on your reading of the evidence, the president may or may not have intentionally given the impression that the price of U.S. military aid to Ukraine was some kind of dirt on a political rival, Joe Biden.

There are two ways to prevent this kind of alleged self-interested self-dealing from the White House. One option would be to elect a person of high moral character who also has a well-developed understanding of the rules and strictures that govern the office—someone who is inclined to respect those rules in letter and spirit as well as to honor the guidelines for transparency that allow other government officials and the press to verify the upright and noble exercise of his vast authority. We would then have to locate, nominate, and elect such a person every four to eight years unto eternity. We would have to trust not only that each president embodies all of these traits but also that he has surrounded himself with similarly virtuous characters. And we would have to assume that coming into possession of such powers is not itself corrupting. Good luck!

Another option would be to limit the power of the presidency. This approach is also difficult, but it can be done. In today’s case, the problem could have been avoided by the simple expedient of making it impossible for any president to control the disbursement of millions of dollars to foreign leaders at his own discretion, and by making that restriction on his authority so clear that favor seekers could have no plausible misunderstanding about who holds the purse strings.

There are matters that are genuinely the business of the executive, the all-important Supreme Court appointments among them. But it is not the case that, as Trump has asserted, “I have an Article II where I have the right to do whatever I want as president.”

In pursuing impeachment to the exclusion of all else, Congress has muddled the message about its own prerogatives and complicated its defense of them, all while dramatically reducing the time and energy available to actually exercise those prerogatives in a responsible manner.

Impeachment, at least as it is currently being practiced, does not restrict the vast powers of the president—it’s merely an attempt to wrest those powers from a particular man.

“As I learn more and more each day, I am coming to the conclusion that what is taking place is not an impeachment, it is a COUP, intended to take away the Power of the People, their VOTE, their Freedoms, their Second Amendment, Religion, Military, Border Wall, and their God-given rights as a Citizen of The United States of America!”

This was Trump’s analysis of those early October impeachment inquiry polls. And he wasn’t the only one floating the idea that impeachment proceedings would be somehow contrary to the democratic spirit. As Sen. Ted Cruz (R–Texas) told MSNBC’s Chris Hayes in October, “The fact that he shouldn’t have gone down that road is a long way from saying, ‘Therefore, he should be impeached and forcibly removed from office after the American people have voted in a presidential election.'”

But what is in fact contrary to the democratic spirit is the monarchical idea that the president alone is the embodiment of the power of the people, the lone defender of our rights. That’s a big job. And the Founders, in their great and unmatched wisdom, saw fit to distribute it across a rather large cast of characters. They gave the House the impeachment power in order to make coups unnecessary. The existence of elections cannot logically make impeachments a violation of the democratic process. Every president who has been impeached was, after all, voted into office first.

Trump could very well be re-elected post-impeachment. And any attempt by Congress at that point to prevent him from being sworn in a second time would indeed be undemocratic, unconstitutional, and unconscionable—an actual coup.

Rather than squabble over the presidency, Congress can and should reassert its considerable constitutional powers. It could start by reclaiming the sole right to declare war and rediscovering its lawmaking authority, the latter of which it has ceded to executive branch bureaucrats out of laziness, cowardice, and general ineptitude in the face of genuinely difficult work. But there’s little evidence the legislative branch has any intention of doing that.

If, at the end of all this, President Mike Pence sits behind the Resolute desk in the Oval Office, what has been accomplished? His presidential pen, phone, and Twitter account will still retain the same outsized power as his predecessors’. He will be just as tempted to abuse that power and just as alone in his burden. And if, on the first Tuesday of November, President Biden emerges victorious (or President Warren, or President Sanders, or even President Amash), we will still have the same destructive imbalance between the branches, the same motivation to go all-in on the battle for the presidency, and the same incentives to begin calling for  impeachment proceedings on the Wednesday morning after each Election Day, before the new president even takes office.

Impeachment is the hair of the dog after an all-night executive power bender. Sure, a Bloody Mary might make you feel better for a little while. But in the long run, it might be better to get off the sauce entirely.

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Trump Administration Loses a Sanctuary City Case—Yet Again

For over two years, the Trump administration has been trying to force “sanctuary cities” to assist federal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants by imposing various new conditions on federal grants to state and local governments that refuse to comply. And throughout that time, courts have repeatedly ruled against the administration’s plans, on the ground that only Congress can authorize conditions on federal grants to state and local governments. The executive is not permitted to make up his own conditions in an attempt to pressure states into doing his bidding.

The latest such defeat for the administration came yesterday, in a decision issued by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, addressing a lawsuit brought by the City of Los Angeles seeking to overturn the administration’s attempt to impose three immigration-related conditions on recipients of Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance grants for law enforcement agencies.

In 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions sought to cut Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant funds to state and local governments that fail to meet three conditions:

1. Prove compliance with 8 USC Section 1373, a federal law that bars cities or states from restricting communications by their employees with the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about the immigration or citizenship status of individuals targeted by these federal agencies.

2. Allow DHS officials access into any detention facility to determine the immigration status of any aliens being held.

3. Give DHS 48 hours’ notice before a jail or prison releases a person when DHS has sent over a detention request, so the feds can arrange to take custody of the alien after he or she is released.

The Los Angeles case addresses only the second and third conditions. But, like every other federal court that has reviewed the administration’s attempt to impose new conditions on the Byrne Grants, the Ninth Circuit struck down the conditions because “none of DOJ’s proffered bases for statutory authority gives the Attorney General or the Assistant AG the power to impose the notice and access conditions.” The conditions were not authorized by Congress, and therefore the president cannot impose them.

This latest ruling is nonetheless notable for two reasons. First, the opinion was authored by Judge Sandra Ikuta, a Republican George W. Bush appointee, and joined by fellow Bush appointee Judge Jay Bybee, often considered one of the most conservative judges sitting on any federal appellate court.

Some liberals have even called for Bybee’s impeachment because of his role in drafting the notorious “torture memos” in the Bush administration, which—among other things—advocated an extremely broad interpretation of executive power.  If your claims of executive authority are too broad to satisfy Judge Bybee, you may want to rethink them.  Yet such is the sweeping nature of the Trump administration’s assertions of executive power over immigration, that this is not the first time that Bybee ruled against them in a significant immigration-related case.

That said, it is not particularly surprising to see conservative judges ruling against the Trump Administration in a sanctuary city case. The “blue” jurisdictions bringing these lawsuits are relying on federalism principles long advocated by conservatives and enshrined in Supreme Court decisions authored by conservative justices such as Samuel Alito and the late Antonin Scalia. In previous sanctuary cases, conservative and liberal judges have largely ruled the same way—against the administration—with only very rare exceptions.

The second somewhat novel aspect of this case is Judge Kim Wardlaw’s concurring opinion, expressing the concern that the majority, though rejecting the two conditions, nonetheless gives the executive too much leeway:

I concur with the majority to the extent it holds that the challenged immigration conditions were not authorized by Congress, and are thus unlawful. But once the
majority concluded that the challenged notice and access conditions are not lawful “special conditions” or “priority purposes” and were thus beyond the powers granted by
Congress to the Department of Justice, it should have stopped, as in full stop. Everything else the majority writes about 34 U.S.C. § 10102(a)(6) is “unnecessary to the decision
in the case and [is] therefore not precedential.” Cetacean Cmty. v. Bush, 386 F.3d 1169, 1173 (9th Cir. 2004)….. In other words, the rest of the asides cast by the majority are dicta. In dicta, the majority finds vague, unidentified powers bestowed upon the DOJ in an illustrative 2006 amendment to a “duties and functions” statute in a different subchapter of the Act that established the Byrne JAG program. See Violence Against
Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-162, 119 Stat. 2960 (2006). This putative power grab not only unnecessarily portends a circuit
split, its analysis also stands contrary to every other court to have addressed the issue in a reasoned opinion….

[I]n dicta, unnecessary to its holding, the majority seems to adopt the DOJ’s “independent power” construction of § 10102(a)(6), writing in passing that “the Attorney
General and the Assistant [Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs] through delegation have the authority to impose special conditions on all grants and determine priority purposes for formula grants, as those terms are properly
circumscribed.”

Not surprisingly, the majority takes a different view, and argues that their interpretation of the discretion given to the executive is “narrow”and that Wardlaw has set up a “strawman” argument:

Because we interpret the terms “special conditions” and “priority purposes” narrowly, we agree with our sister circuits that § 10102(a)(6) does not give the Assistant AG broad
authority to impose any condition it chooses on a Byrne JAG award….

In opposition to our interpretation of § 10102(a)(6), the concurrence constructs a strawman argument. It ignores our actual interpretation of § 10102(a)(6), and instead accuses us of adopting a “sweeping characterization” of DOJ’s authority, Concurrence at 44, that allows the “essentially limitless” imposition of any conditions desired, Concurrence at 44–45…. Based on this strawman argument, the concurrence then accuses us of creating a split with our sister circuits, which have rejected
such a broad interpretation…..

While the concurrence has an easy time battering its strawman, the concurrence fails to explain how our actual ruling, that DOJ has the limited authority to impose special
conditions designed to meet needs for carrying out the Byrne JAG program, could abrogate or “subvert” Byrne JAG’s funding scheme….

To fully understand the dispute between the majority and concurring opinions, you will likely have to read the relevant sections of both opinions. The issues are not easily summarized in a blog post. But my bottom line is that the majority’s position does indeed interpret DOJ’s power “narrowly,” though Judge Wardlaw may well be justified in arguing that it should be interpreted even more narrowly still.

While the issues in this and other sanctuary cases may sometimes seem arcane, they have broader implications for federalism that go far beyond the specific issues at stake. If the administration can exploit vague statutory language like “special conditions” and “priority purposes” to impose all kinds of new conditions on recipients of federal grants—without any specific authorization by Congress, the president could use this power to pressure state and local governments to do his bidding on a wide range of issues.

The Byrne Grant cases are just one of several fronts in the ongoing legal battle over federalism and sanctuary cities. I provide a fairly complete overview in this recent Texas Law Review article, though it unavoidably omits a few developments that have occurred since it was published a few months ago. Most recently, the Trump administration has sought Supreme Court review of one of the issues in its challenge to California’s “sanctuary state” law.

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Trump Administration Loses a Sanctuary City Case—Yet Again

For over two years, the Trump administration has been trying to force “sanctuary cities” to assist federal efforts to deport undocumented immigrants by imposing various new conditions on federal grants to state and local governments that refuse to comply. And throughout that time, courts have repeatedly ruled against the administration’s plans, on the ground that only Congress can authorize conditions on federal grants to state and local governments. The executive is not permitted to make up his own conditions in an attempt to pressure states into doing his bidding.

The latest such defeat for the administration came yesterday, in a decision issued by the US Court of Appeals for the Ninth Circuit, addressing a lawsuit brought by the City of Los Angeles seeking to overturn the administration’s attempt to impose three immigration-related conditions on recipients of Edward Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance grants for law enforcement agencies.

In 2017, then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions sought to cut Byrne Memorial Justice Assistance Grant funds to state and local governments that fail to meet three conditions:

1. Prove compliance with 8 USC Section 1373, a federal law that bars cities or states from restricting communications by their employees with the Department of Homeland Security and Immigration and Customs Enforcement (ICE) about the immigration or citizenship status of individuals targeted by these federal agencies.

2. Allow DHS officials access into any detention facility to determine the immigration status of any aliens being held.

3. Give DHS 48 hours’ notice before a jail or prison releases a person when DHS has sent over a detention request, so the feds can arrange to take custody of the alien after he or she is released.

The Los Angeles case addresses only the second and third conditions. But, like every other federal court that has reviewed the administration’s attempt to impose new conditions on the Byrne Grants, the Ninth Circuit struck down the conditions because “none of DOJ’s proffered bases for statutory authority gives the Attorney General or the Assistant AG the power to impose the notice and access conditions.” The conditions were not authorized by Congress, and therefore the president cannot impose them.

This latest ruling is nonetheless notable for two reasons. First, the opinion was authored by Judge Sandra Ikuta, a Republican George W. Bush appointee, and joined by fellow Bush appointee Judge Jay Bybee, often considered one of the most conservative judges sitting on any federal appellate court.

Some liberals have even called for Bybee’s impeachment because of his role in drafting the notorious “torture memos” in the Bush administration, which—among other things—advocated an extremely broad interpretation of executive power.  If your claims of executive authority are too broad to satisfy Judge Bybee, you may want to rethink them.  Yet such is the sweeping nature of the Trump administration’s assertions of executive power over immigration, that this is not the first time that Bybee ruled against them in a significant immigration-related case.

That said, it is not particularly surprising to see conservative judges ruling against the Trump Administration in a sanctuary city case. The “blue” jurisdictions bringing these lawsuits are relying on federalism principles long advocated by conservatives and enshrined in Supreme Court decisions authored by conservative justices such as Samuel Alito and the late Antonin Scalia. In previous sanctuary cases, conservative and liberal judges have largely ruled the same way—against the administration—with only very rare exceptions.

The second somewhat novel aspect of this case is Judge Kim Wardlaw’s concurring opinion, expressing the concern that the majority, though rejecting the two conditions, nonetheless gives the executive too much leeway:

I concur with the majority to the extent it holds that the challenged immigration conditions were not authorized by Congress, and are thus unlawful. But once the
majority concluded that the challenged notice and access conditions are not lawful “special conditions” or “priority purposes” and were thus beyond the powers granted by
Congress to the Department of Justice, it should have stopped, as in full stop. Everything else the majority writes about 34 U.S.C. § 10102(a)(6) is “unnecessary to the decision
in the case and [is] therefore not precedential.” Cetacean Cmty. v. Bush, 386 F.3d 1169, 1173 (9th Cir. 2004)….. In other words, the rest of the asides cast by the majority are dicta. In dicta, the majority finds vague, unidentified powers bestowed upon the DOJ in an illustrative 2006 amendment to a “duties and functions” statute in a different subchapter of the Act that established the Byrne JAG program. See Violence Against
Women and Department of Justice Reauthorization Act of 2005, Pub. L. No. 109-162, 119 Stat. 2960 (2006). This putative power grab not only unnecessarily portends a circuit
split, its analysis also stands contrary to every other court to have addressed the issue in a reasoned opinion….

[I]n dicta, unnecessary to its holding, the majority seems to adopt the DOJ’s “independent power” construction of § 10102(a)(6), writing in passing that “the Attorney
General and the Assistant [Attorney General for the Office of Justice Programs] through delegation have the authority to impose special conditions on all grants and determine priority purposes for formula grants, as those terms are properly
circumscribed.”

Not surprisingly, the majority takes a different view, and argues that their interpretation of the discretion given to the executive is “narrow”and that Wardlaw has set up a “strawman” argument:

Because we interpret the terms “special conditions” and “priority purposes” narrowly, we agree with our sister circuits that § 10102(a)(6) does not give the Assistant AG broad
authority to impose any condition it chooses on a Byrne JAG award….

In opposition to our interpretation of § 10102(a)(6), the concurrence constructs a strawman argument. It ignores our actual interpretation of § 10102(a)(6), and instead accuses us of adopting a “sweeping characterization” of DOJ’s authority, Concurrence at 44, that allows the “essentially limitless” imposition of any conditions desired, Concurrence at 44–45…. Based on this strawman argument, the concurrence then accuses us of creating a split with our sister circuits, which have rejected
such a broad interpretation…..

While the concurrence has an easy time battering its strawman, the concurrence fails to explain how our actual ruling, that DOJ has the limited authority to impose special
conditions designed to meet needs for carrying out the Byrne JAG program, could abrogate or “subvert” Byrne JAG’s funding scheme….

To fully understand the dispute between the majority and concurring opinions, you will likely have to read the relevant sections of both opinions. The issues are not easily summarized in a blog post. But my bottom line is that the majority’s position does indeed interpret DOJ’s power “narrowly,” though Judge Wardlaw may well be justified in arguing that it should be interpreted even more narrowly still.

While the issues in this and other sanctuary cases may sometimes seem arcane, they have broader implications for federalism that go far beyond the specific issues at stake. If the administration can exploit vague statutory language like “special conditions” and “priority purposes” to impose all kinds of new conditions on recipients of federal grants—without any specific authorization by Congress, the president could use this power to pressure state and local governments to do his bidding on a wide range of issues.

The Byrne Grant cases are just one of several fronts in the ongoing legal battle over federalism and sanctuary cities. I provide a fairly complete overview in this recent Texas Law Review article, though it unavoidably omits a few developments that have occurred since it was published a few months ago. Most recently, the Trump administration has sought Supreme Court review of one of the issues in its challenge to California’s “sanctuary state” law.

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The Fed’s Liquidity Response Is Too Little Too Late – But That Was Always The Plan…

The Fed’s Liquidity Response Is Too Little Too Late – But That Was Always The Plan…

Authored by Brandon Smith via Alt-Market.com,

The globalists and banking elites have been running the “order out of chaos” scam for a long time, centuries in fact. One thing that practice does is make people of otherwise average intelligence appear brilliant. One thing that organized conspiracy does is make a group of highly vulnerable criminals appear omnipotent and untouchable. Ultimately, it’s all about time. The globalists have had lots of time to tune and refine their methods for manipulating the collective psyche of the masses.

They make mistakes often, but as long as no one confronts them directly and removes these people from the equation, they simply set up shop elsewhere under a different name using different masks and continue their insidious work. As long society is still stricken with ignorance and assumes that such conspiracies are “impossible”, the elites have a free hand to victimize the population further. As long as academic idiots misinterpret Occam’s Razor and insist that the evidence of conspiracy does not matter because it does not fit with their narrow notion of “the simplest explanation”, they prop up the banking cartel and allow it to thrive.

On the positive side, I see an awakening taking place among a subset of the population which is savvy to the games of the globalists. I believe this subtle wave of analytical samurai has the elites worried; they realize that time for them is, for once in history, starting to run out. One day soon, they may find themselves the direct targets of a revolution, and they don’t like that idea.

Hence, the globalists need a plan, a con game of epic proportions on top of one of the largest economic bubbles in recent history. The plan relies first on a tried and true weapon of the elites: Co-option of the people that oppose them. And how does one co-opt a movement? By taking over their leadership. Second, for global change the cabal needs a global distraction, or a firestorm of numerous distractions to keep the public enthralled or in fear. Third, they need to divert blame away from themselves by presenting the public with believable scapegoats.

When it’s all over, they want people dazed and shell-shocked, wondering how it happened and searching for anyone to point a finger at. The narrative will be that “it was a perfect storm of coincidences”, that it was “the evil of the political left”, or the “evil of the political right”. They want to turn public confusion into civil war, all while they sit back and enjoy the chaos from a comfortable beach chair and wait for the moment they can swoop in and act like saviors seeking to “end the madness”.

This process is happening today, and only the most blind have problems seeing that the world has gone over the edge of an ugly precipice.

Disinformation agents call it “doom and gloom”, because that is supposed to dissuade you from taking it seriously. But the facts are the facts. This is why I focus so much of my time on economics – While numbers and stats can be rigged, the effects of a financial crash cannot be hidden. It is undeniable, and all the critics of this information can do is try to trick people into not looking at it.

The reality is this: The US economy is in steep decline and this is an engineered event.

The Federal Reserve spent the better part of the past decade inflating what we now call the “Everything Bubble”, a bubble that spreads through almost every facet of the economy from equities to housing to GDP to employment to corporate debt, consumer debt and national debt. I don’t think anyone denies the existence of this bubble except the central banks and a few mainstream media outlets.

Jerome Powell, now the Fed chairman, warned back in 2012 that the markets had become addicted to Fed stimulus and that any tightening of liquidity by the central bank, including cutting the balance sheet or raising interest rates, would cause a sharp reversal or crash. As soon as Powell became chairman, he ignored his own warnings and tightened liquidity anyway.

People confused about why Powell would take such action knowing full well that it would trigger a crash should look into the history of the Bank for International Settlements and how it dictates the policy decisions of all its member banks. The BIS is the “central bank of central banks” and is the central global manager of all national central banks. Powell and the Fed board do not write policy alone, they merely carry out policy decision made by the BIS.

As Powell hinted at in 2012, the Everything Bubble was popped in 2018 by the Fed through rate hikes and balance sheet cuts. Once the avalanche is triggered there is no stopping it.  The rupture in fundamentals is ongoing.  Only stocks markets and certain rigged statistics remain in blissful levitation.

The plunge in stock markets in December was stalled as corporations stepped in with stock buybacks and China pumped billions in stimulus into the global system. However, stocks are not long for this world as buybacks are set to slow down and stimulus measures from various central banks are seeing limited gains.

  • US manufacturing has fallen to levels not seen in 10 years and has entered recession territory.

  • US housing starts fell sharply in September and new home building declined. This indicator usually precedes a fall in overall housing sales by a few months. This would mean a return to the plunge in housing sales last seen during the summer.  In other words, the recent pop in sales is a one off driven by lower mortgage rates, and is set to end.

  • US retail sales are following a similar pattern to housing markets, with a recessionary decline earlier this year, followed by a short term rebound, and now a return to negative territory as the trend reasserts itself.

  • Retail stores are closing at a record pace in 2019. Over 8500 stores are already closing this year, with a predicted 12,000 store closing by the beginning of 2020. This is often blamed on “online shopping”, but online retailer only account for around 14% of the total retail market. This hardly explains why brick and mortar stores are closing in droves.  Not only that, but major online retailers like Amazon are seeing declining profits, with projected holiday profits set to fall even further.

  • Corporate profits have tumbled in 2019 and earnings growth estimates have been drastically adjusted to the downside.  Only certain companies, like Apple, have come out of the fray untouched so far, but this is common during recession and depression level crisis events – a handful of corporations survive and consolidate while the rest collapse.

  • Corporate debt is at all time highs while cash holdings of most corporations are minimal; so much so that these companies are turning to the Fed’s repo overnight loans more and more to stay liquid.

  • Consumer debt is at all time highs, with American households owing a total of more than $13 trillion.

  • While there has been a recent steepening of the 3 month to 10 year yield curve as well as the 2 year to 10 year yield curve, this is actually a bad sign. A long term inversion of the yield curve is a sure signal of economic recession. When the yield curve steepens, this is the point historically in which a sharp crash in fundamentals and markets takes place.

In other words, the crash is happening now. Many analysts have wrongly assumed that that the Fed’s recent asset purchases indicate that they are seeking to “kick the can” on the crash. It’s much too late for that.  If the Fed wanted to stall the crash then they would have initiated full bore QE4 around 8-10 months ago just after the December plunge. International banks and central banks have been warning about dollar liquidity issues since mid-2018. The Fed continued to tighten and did not act until the past couple of months, coincidentally, right after multiple polls showed that a majority of Americans were becoming worried about a recession.

That is to say, the Fed kept liquidity conditions as tight as possible until the public finally became aware of the crisis.  The truth is, nothing has changed as far as liquidity is concerned.

The Fed launched asset purchases to make it look like they care about trying to fix the problem. However, the Fed’s repo stimulus and balance sheet increases are not enough to make any difference. Calling Fed repo actions “Not-QE” is a funny means pointing out that the Fed is not being straightforward about its intentions, but when comparing current repo loans and asset purchases to an event like TARP back in 2008, which by itself injected over $16 trillion in liquidity into the financial system (no audit of the other QE programs has yet been undertaken), the current stimulus is nothing but a drop in the ocean.

The Fed is definitely NOT being honest in its intentions, but not in the way many alternative analysts seem to think.  The Fed’s not trying to hide QE4 measures, the Fed is continuing to do the bare minimum necessary to appear as though they are taking action while actually accomplishing very little.

They clearly have no intention of kicking the can any longer. The Fed WANTED a crash, and now they have it. The reason why is perfectly logical: The central bank, under the control of globalists at the BIS, needs economic chaos to provide cover for what they call the “global economic reset”. Essentially, it is the controlled demolition of the old world order to make way for their “new world order”.

As I’ve noted in previous articles, they’ve done all his before and openly admitted to causing crashes in the past, including the Great Depression. After each of these financial crisis events, globalist institutions have been formed and leaps forward in global governance have been taken. The implosion of the Everything Bubble appears to be the last intended economic crisis event before total centralization is achieved.

This is not to say that they will be successful in their agenda; I happen to think that in the long run they will fail. But the fact remains that the current recessionary collapse, soon to become far more destructive than it already is, was caused by the central bankers, and they did it knowingly. The narrative of the “bumbling Fed” desperate to save itself or the system is delusional. The evidence simply doesn’t support this claim.

Fed officials publicly acknowledged what would happen if liquidity tightening was pursued. They did it anyway, and then told the public all was well. They have lied every step of the way, keeping the public completely in the dark and unprepared for the consequences.

At the same time, we have a supposedly “populist” president that attacks the Fed regularly while at the same time taking full credit for the bubble in markets.  Donald Trump boasts daily of his influence in markets, employment, GDP, etc. He does this even though he called the economic recovery ‘a bubble’ during his campaign. He now owns the health of the economy, and by extension he has given the central bankers and the globalist a perfect gift – He has set himself and his supporters up as scapegoats for the crash.  As he falls, he will discredit central bank critics for generations to come.

If you were wondering why the globalists stalled for ten years on crashing the system, now you know. If they launched the crisis a few years ago, they would have been blamed for it. Today, it’s hard to say. The growing contingent of liberty activists immune to the scam (and immune to the Kabuki theater involving Donald Trump) might be able to turn the tide enough to force the hand of the elites. Maybe they will have to back off of some of their centralization efforts, or drag out the economic downturn longer than they wanted. I suspect they have already had to do this on a number of occasions because of liberty analysts.

Ultimately, the crash is about us. It is about affecting changes to the public psychology, making us more receptive to extreme globalization. If they don’t care what we think, then why spend trillions of dollars and endless hours and manpower trying to influence our perception? They need the vast majority of us to consent to the “new world order”, otherwise they will have failed.

*  *  *

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Tyler Durden

Fri, 11/01/2019 – 23:45

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Millennials With Student Debt Are Getting Crushed The Most In These Ten Cities

Millennials With Student Debt Are Getting Crushed The Most In These Ten Cities

SmartAsset, a personal finance technology company, has published a new study that identifies certain US metropolitan areas with the highest student loan balances.

These cities are where millennials are struggling to make ends meet and can’t cover expenses. These hopeless folks have insurmountable debts, gig-economy jobs, record-high credit card rates, and no savings. Ahead of the next recession, this study provides important clues to the geographic regions where millennials will suffer the most financial distress.

The release of the study comes at a time when student loan debt has reached $1.6 trillion, has already become an important topic with presidential candidates ahead of the 2020 election, and when the next recession strikes, will financially paralyze a generation of millennials.

SmartAsset analyzed the top 25 metro areas most impacted by the student debt crisis and narrowed the list to ten.

Researchers used data from Experian, the Census, and the IRS to develop the list of where average student loan debt exceeds the median earnings of millennials.

According to the study, the top six metro areas hit hardest by the student debt crisis: Gainesville, Florida; Corvallis, Oregon; Durham-Chapel Hill, North Carolina; Morgantown, West Virginia; Eugene, Oregon and Greenville, North Carolina. The remainder are Ithaca, New York, Santa Fe, New Mexico; Hattiesburg, Mississippi; and Colombia, Missouri.

Student debt is the fastest-growing consumer debt in the country, with $1.6 trillion outstanding, cracks are already starting to appear with 22% of borrowers defaulting.

Millennials will be the most impacted generation in the next recession, and thanks to SmartAsset, the exact metro areas of this financial stress are now known.

 


Tyler Durden

Fri, 11/01/2019 – 23:25

Tags
Business Finance

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Survival Lessons From A California Fire Evacuee

Survival Lessons From A California Fire Evacuee

Authored by Adam Taggart via PeakProsperity.com,

As I type this, there are over 16 large wildfires currently burning across northern and southern California. Hundreds of thousands of residents have been displaced. Millions are without power.

My hometown of Sebastopol, CA underwent mandatory evacuation at 4am Saturday night. I jumped into the car, along with our life essentials and our pets, joining the 200,000 souls displaced from Sonoma County this weekend.

Even though I write about preparedness for a living, fleeing your home in the dead of night with a raging inferno clearly visible on the horizon drives home certain lessons more effectively than any other means.

I’d like to share those learnings with you, as they’re true for any sort of emergency: natural (fire, flood, hurricane, tornado, earthquake, blizzard, etc), financial (market crash, currency crisis) or social (revolution, civil unrest, etc).

And I’d like you to be as prepared as possible should one of those happen to you, which is statistically likely.

Your survival, and that of your loved ones, may depend on it.

No Plan Survives First Contact With Reality

As mentioned, I’ve spent years advising readers on the importance of preparation. Emergency preparedness is Step Zero of the guide I’ve written on resilient living — literally the first chapter.

So, yes, I had a pre-designed bug-out plan in place when the evacuation warning was issued. My wife and I had long ago made lists of the essentials we’d take with us if forced to flee on short notice (the Santa Rosa fires of 2017 had reinforced the wisdom of this). Everything on these lists was in an easy-to-grab location.

The only problem was, we were 300 miles away.

Reality Rule #1: You Will Be Caught By Surprise

There are too many variables that accompany an unforeseen disaster to anticipate all of them. Your plan has to retain enough flexibility to adapt to the unforeseen.

In my case, we were down at Parents’ Weekend at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, where my older daughter recently started her freshman year.

As the text alerts warning of the growing fire risk started furiously arriving, we monitored them closely, reluctant to leave the festivities and our time with our daughter. But once the evacuation warning came across, we knew it was serious enough to merit the 6-hour mad dash home to rescue what we could.

The upside of that long drive was that it gave us time to alter our bug-out plan according to the unfolding situation. We decided my wife and younger daughter would go directly to safety; that reduced the lives at risk in the fire zone down to just 1 (mine). And I used the phone to line up neighbors who could grab our stuff should I not be able to make it home in time.

The learning here is: Leave plenty of room in your plan for the unexpected. If its success depends on everything unfolding exactly as you predict, it’s worthless to you.

Reality Rule #2: Things Will Happen Faster Than You’re Ready For

Once an emergency is in full swing, things start happening more quickly than you can process well.

Even if developments are unfolding in the way you’ve anticipated, they come at an uncomfortably fast rate that adrenaline, anxiety and fatigue make even more challenging to deal with.

Just as The Crash Course chapter on Compounding explains how exponential problems unfold too fast to avoid once they become visible, it’s very easy to get overwhelmed or caught off-guard by the pace required to deal with a disaster.

The Kincade fire started at 9:30pm the night before I left Sebastopol for Cal Poly. When I went to bed that night it was a mere 300 acres in size. Two days later it was 25,000 acres. (it’s currently at 66,000 acres).

It went from “nothing to worry about” to “get out NOW!” in less than 48 hours.

Watching who fared well during the evacuation and who didn’t , those who took action early out of a healthy sense of caution had much more success than those who initially brushed off the potential seriousness of the situation.

Here’s how much of a difference timely action made:

The ‘evacuation warning’ advisory became a ‘mandatory evacuation’ order at 4am on Saturday night. My car was ready to go and I was on the road out of town within 5 minutes.

Several friends of mine left home just 45 minutes after I did. By that time, the fleeing traffic made the roads essentially immobile. My friends had to turn back to ride things out in their homes, simply hoping for the best.

So I’m reminded of the old time-management axiom: If you can’t be on time, be early. In a developing crisis, set your tolerance level for uncertainty to “low”. Take defensive measures as soon as you detect the whiff of increasing risk; it’s far more preferable to walk back a premature maneuver than to realize it’s too late to act.

Reality Rule #3: You Will Make Mistakes

Related to Rule #2 above, you’re going to bungle parts of the plan. Stress, uncertainty and fatigue alone pretty much guarantee it.

You’re going to forget things or make some wrong choices.

Case in point: as I was evacuating, the plan was to take a less-travelled back route, in order to reduce the odds of getting stuck in traffic. But, racing in the dark and checking in on the phone with numerous friends and neighbors, muscle memory took over and I found myself headed to the main road of town. Too late to turn back, I sat at the turn on, waiting for someone in the line of cars to let me in.

It then hit me that perhaps no one might. Folks were panicked. Would someone be willing to slow down to let me go ahead of them?

Obviously someone did, or I wouldn’t be typing this. But that mistake put everything else I’d done correctly beforehand in jeopardy.

So, as the decisions start to come fast and furious, your key priority is to ensure that you’re focused on making sure the few really important decisions are made well, and that the balls that get dropped won’t be ones that put your safety at risk.

Forget to pack food for the cat? No big deal, you’ll find something suitable later on. Miss your time window to evacuate, as my friends did? That could cost you your life.

Reality Rule #4: When Stressed, All You Care About Is People & Pets

A good bug-out plan covers preparing to take essential clothes, food & water, medications, key documents, communications & lighting gear, personal protection, and irreplaceable mementoes.

But when the stakes escalate, you quickly don’t care about any of those. It’s only living things — people, pets & livestock — that you’re focused on.

The rest, while valuable to have in an evacuation, is ultimately replaceable or non-essential.

I very well might have rolled the dice and stayed down at Cal Poly if it weren’t for the cat. But family is family, no matter how furry. I just couldn’t leave her to face an uncertain fate. And I believe strongly you’ll feel the same about any people or pets in your life — it’s a primal, tribal pull to take care of our own. If you don’t plan for it, it will override whatever other priorities you think you may have.

So prioritize accordingly. Build your primary and contingency plans with the security of people and animals first in mind. If there’s time for the rest, great. But if not, at least you secured what’s most important (by far).

Essential Bug-Out Resources

Beyond the universal rules above, my current experience as an evacuee has emphasized the out-sized importance of several essential resources for those bugging out. These are the things that have proved most valuable during and after the emergency evacuation.

I will share these in tomorrow’s post (update: this post Essential Bug-out Resources can now be read by clicking here). But before I do, I want to express my thanks for the many of you who have sent well-wishes and offers of assistance. Literally hundreds of friends, acquaintances and near-strangers have contacted me via email, text, social media and PeakProsperity.com over the past 72 hours. I’ve received offers to put up my family from folks throughout California and 4 other states. It has been a tremendous honor to be on the receiving end of such kindness.

So many of you who have asked “What can I do to help?”. Personally, I’m safe and being well-cared for where we’re currently staying.

But I’ll be honest: the gesture that would benefit me (and my business partner Chris Martenson) the most at this point would be for anyone with the means and interest to purchase a premium subscription to PeakProsperity.com.

The thrash that these fires are inserting into my bandwith is impacting PeakProsperity.com at an important time, when Chris and I are taking big strategic steps to substantially expand this website’s audience and offerings.

So if you want to help us with that mission, while enjoying valuable insight in return, please subscribe. Even just for a single month.


Tyler Durden

Fri, 11/01/2019 – 23:05

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Visualizing The Future Of 5G: Comparing 3 Generations Of Wireless Technology

Visualizing The Future Of 5G: Comparing 3 Generations Of Wireless Technology

Wireless technology has evolved rapidly since the turn of the century. From voice-only 2G capabilities and internet-enabled 3G, today’s ecosystem of wireless activity is founded on the reliable connection of 4G.

Fifth-generation wireless network technology, better known as 5G, is now being rolled out in major cities worldwide, and as Visual Capitalist’s Ashley Viens notes, by 2024, an estimated 1.5 billion mobile users─which account for 40% of current global activity─will be using 5G wireless networks.

Today’s chart highlights three generations of wireless technology in the 21st century, and the differences between 3G, 4G, and 5G networks.

5G: The Next Great Thing?

With over 5 billion mobile users worldwide, our world is growing more connected than ever.

Data from GSMA Intelligence shows how rapidly global traffic could grow across different networks:

  • 2018: 43% of mobile users on 4G

  • 2025: 59% of mobile users on 4G, 15% of mobile users on 5G

But as with any new innovation, consumers should expect both positives and negatives as the technology matures.

Benefits

  • IoT Connectivity
    5G networks will significantly optimize communication between the Internet of Things (IoT) devices to make our lives more convenient.

  • Low latency
    Also known as lag, latency is the time it takes for data to be transferred over networks. Users may see latency rates drop as low as one millisecond.

  • High speeds
    Real-time streaming may soon be a reality through 5G networks. Downloading a two-hour movie takes a whopping 26 hours over 3G networks and roughly six minutes on 4G networks─however, it’ll only take 3.6 seconds over 5G.

Drawbacks

  • Distance from nodes
    Walls, trees, and even rain can significantly block 5G wireless signals.

  • Requires many nodes
    Many 5G nodes will need to be installed to offer the same level of coverage found on 4G.

  • Restricted to 5G-enabled devices
    Users can’t simply upgrade their software. Instead, they will need a 5G-enabled device to access the network.

Global 5G Networks

5G still has a way to go before it reaches mainstream adoption. Meanwhile, countries and cities are racing to install the infrastructure needed for the next wave of innovation to hit.

Since late 2018, over 25 countries have deployed 5G wireless networks. Notable achievements include South Korea, which became the first country globally to launch 5G wireless technology in April 2019. Switzerland boasts the highest number of 5G network deployments, currently at 225 and counting.

To date, China has built roughly 350,000 5G sites─compared to the less than 20,000 in the U.S.─and plans to invest an additional US$400 billion in infrastructure by 2023. Chinese mobile providers plan to launch 5G services starting in 2020.

What Does This Mean For 4G?

4G isn’t going anywhere anytime soon. As 5G gradually rolls out, 4G and 5G networks will need to work together to support the wave of IoT devices entering the market. This network piggybacking also has the potential to expand global access to the internet in the future.

The race to dominate the wireless waves is even pushing companies like China’s Huawei to explore 6G wireless innovation – before they’ve even launched their 5G networks.


Tyler Durden

Fri, 11/01/2019 – 22:45

Tags
Technology Internet

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

Indiana Supreme Court Applies Eighth Amendment to Curb “Oppressive” Asset Forfeitures

Asset forfeiture.

In February, in the case of Timbs v. Indiana, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment applies to state and local governments (as well as the federal government) and that it constrains civil asset forfeitures. Civil asset forfeiture policies enable law enforcement agencies to seize property that they suspect might have been used in a crime—including in many cases where the owner has never been convicted of anything, or even charged. Abusive forfeitures are a a widespread problem that often victimizes innocent people and particularly harms the poor. The scale of this legalized robbery is staggering. In some years, federal law enforcement alone seizes more property through asset forfeiture than burglars steal throughout the nation.

The Timbs decision could potentially lead to tighter constraints on asset forfeiture. But the Supreme Court left one key issue unaddressed: what qualifies as an “excessive” fine in the asset forfeiture context? The federal Supreme Court remanded that question to the Indiana Supreme Court, from which the case had been appealed to the federal Supreme Court in the first place. Earlier this week, the Indiana court issued a decision laying criteria for what qualifies as “excessive.” Nick Sibilla of the Institute for Justice (the public interest law firm that represented the property owner before both the federal and state supreme courts), has a helpful summary in an article in Forbes:

To determine if a forfeiture would be “grossly disproportional” and unconstitutional under the Excessive Fines Clause, the Indiana Supreme Court devised a three-factor test. First, Hoosier courts will now have to consider the “harshness of the punishment,” which may include considering if the forfeiture would remedy the harm cause by the offense and to what extent, as well as property’s value and role in the offense.

Judges will also need to determine what effect forfeiting the property would have on the owner. After all, courts already consider a person’s economic resources when it comes to levying court costs and civil punitive damages.

“The owner’s economic means—relative to the property’s value—is an appropriate consideration,” Chief Justice Rush wrote. “To hold the opposite would generate a new fiction: that taking away the same piece of property from a billionaire and from someone who owns nothing else punishes each person equally.”

Second, courts in Indiana must determine the “severity of the offense,” which includes examining statutory penalties, the sentence imposed, and the harm cause by the crime. Finally, judges will also be required to consider an owner’s culpability and “blameworthiness for the property’s use as an instrumentality of the underlying offenses.” A forfeiture may be unconstitutionally excessive “if a claimant is entirely innocent of the property’s misuse.”

This test is likely to significantly curb abusive forfeitures in the state of Indiana, particularly in cases where the owner is in fact innocent of any crime, but merely had the misfortune of owning a car or other property that someone else allegedly used in the commission of some offense. The court emphasized that “if a claimant is entirely innocent of the property’s misuse, that fact alone may render a use-based… fine excessive.”

The court points out that “in recent decades, the absence of certain shields against the oppressive use of civil forfeiture has encouraged the widened use of aggressive in rem for forfeiture practices.” This decision will help change that.

At least for the moment, the new test will only apply in Indiana courts. But, as  the first state supreme court ruling on the subject to follow the federal Supreme Court’s decision in this same case, it could influence future decisions on the subject in other state and federal courts.

The latest iteration of Timbs comes on the heels of several other court cases enforcing constitutional constraints on asset forfeiture, including a South Carolina state court decision striking down that state’s civil asset forfeiture law and a federal court decision invalidating Albuquerque, New  Mexico’s system as a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

While a great deal of progress has been made through both judicial decisions and legislative reform, the struggle against asset forfeiture is far from over. Much work remains to be done.

Among other things, state-level reforms can often be circumvented by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ 2017 revival of the federal “equitable sharing” program, under which state and local asset forfeitures are “adopted” by the federal government.  The feds then share the proceeds with state law enforcement agencies—even in cases where state law otherwise prevents the latter from profiting from seized assets.

The Indiana Supreme Court decision may not even completely resolve the long-running case of Tyson Timbs’ land rover, the property at issue in this litigation, which has now dragged on for some six years. The state supreme court did not decide the issue of how its three-factor test applies to Timbs’ case, an issue that will now be resolved by the trial court, if the state continues its efforts to hold on to the vehicle. Prosecutors are still deciding whether they intend to keep pursuing the issue.

If they do choose to continue their Javert-like quest to keep the Land Rover, it seems highly likely that Timbs will prevail. The car is worth over $40,000, which is vastly disproportionate to the $10,000 maximum fine for Timbs’ offense of transporting some $400 worth of heroin that he planned to sell.

NOTE: Tyson Timbs is represented by the Institute for Justice, a prominent public interest law firm, with which I have longstanding connections, and for which I have done pro bono work on other property rights cases. I did not, however, have any involvement in this particular case.

 

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The Lebanese “Canary In The Mine” Is Signalling Mid-East Trouble Ahead

The Lebanese “Canary In The Mine” Is Signalling Mid-East Trouble Ahead

Authored by Alastair Crooke via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

There have been protests (mostly pointing up economic stress) across the region for some months: from Egypt to Iraq. But the Lebanese demonstrations have caught the global attention. And there is no doubting that the Lebanese protests represent a major phenomenon. We may ask whether they are essentially a local manifestation, reflecting only the well-attested Lebanese problems of corruption, widening disparities in wealth, nepotism and failing state structures, or do they signal something much deeper?

Lebanon, historically, has been viewed as ‘the bell weather’ – pointing up the general health of this region.

Well, if Lebanon is indeed such, we might conclude that the patient is presenting rather feverish symptoms. But that should not be so surprising. For, the region is already experiencing strategic ‘shock’ – and this condition is likely to be much aggravated by the additional psychological stresses of fast-approaching economic crisis. Of course, Lebanon is ‘special’ in its own distinct way – but ‘yes’, Lebanon precisely is giving warning of a turbulence quietly incubating across the Middle East.

The ‘strategic shock’ is represented by the collapse of long-established landmarks: the US is departing Afghanistan, and the Middle East. The Wolfowitz doctrine of US primacy across the region is drawing to a close. Yes, there will be push-back in parts of the ‘liberal’ western Establishment – and there will be periods of two US steps ‘out’ from the region, and with another ‘in’.

But the psychic reality of this incontrovertible ‘fact’ has seared itself into the regional psyche. Those who dined liberally from the cornucopia of power and wealth under the ‘old order’ are understandably frightened – their protective cover is being snatched away.

This shift has been signalled in so many ways: the US non-reaction to the Iranian downing of its drone; the US’ non-reaction to the 14 September Aramco strikes; the red-carpet laid down for President Putin in Riyadh – that the direction of US policy ‘travel’ is plain. Yet, nothing signals it more evidently than Secretary Pompeo’s recent message to Israel, during his last visit: i.e. you, O Israel, should feel free to respond to any threats to your security, from whatever source, and arising from wherever. (Translation: You (Israel) are on your own), but please don’t escalate tensions. (Translation: don’t place our American forces as ‘pig-in-the-middle’ of your disputes, as we want the withdrawal to proceed smoothly). Of course, Trump doesn’t want Congress snapping at his trouser legs, as he unfolds this controversial act.

If this be the message handed out to Israel, then of course, it applies – in spades – to the Lebanese élites who have dined so well under the previous regime – whilst their Lebanese compatriots succumbed to ever greater impoverishment. The Russian diplomatic and security achievement for Syria, as evidenced in the communiqué issued this week after the Sochi summit with Erdogan, upends the old landmarks across the northern tier of the Middle East. In Syria evidently, but Lebanon and Iraq too. The new reality demands new dispositions.

This might be ‘bad news’ for some, but the very moment of facing reality – of making hard choices (i.e. that the US can no longer afford, and the world will no longer finance, its global military presence) – may also have ‘its silver lining’. That is to say, the end to US occupation of part of Syria may concomitantly well unlock a political settlement in Syria – and upturn fossilised and corrupt establishments in neighbouring states too.

This – the uprooting of old, embedded landmarks – which leaves America and Saudi Arabia as waning stars in the regional political cosmos – is but one backdrop to events in Lebanon. An old order is seen to be fading. Might even the Ta’if constitutional settlement in Lebanon, which Saudi Arabia used to lock tight, and petrify, a Sunni-led sectarian establishment be now in play?

Again too, across the Arab world, there is a legitimacy-deficit staining existing élites. But it applies not just to the Middle East. As protesters peer around the world, through their smart phones, how can they fail to observe the low-intensity ‘civil war’ – the polarised protests – in the US, the UK and parts of Europe, waged precisely against certain élites. What price then, western ‘values’ – if westerners themselves are at war over them?

Of course, this dis-esteem for global élites is connected to that other powerful dynamic affecting the Middle East: the latter may not be in a ‘good place’ politically, but it is in an even worse place economically. In Lebanon, one-third of Lebanese are living below the poverty line, while the top one percent hold one-quarter of the nation’s wealth, according to the United Nations. This is not the exception for the region – It is the norm.

And intimations of global slow-down and recession are touching the region. We all know the figures: half of the population in under 25. What is their future? Where is there some ‘light’ to this tunnel?

The western world is in the very late stage to a trade and credit cycle (as the economists describe it). A down-turning is coming. But there are indications too, that we may be approaching the end of a meta-cycle, too.

The post-WW2 period saw the US leverage the war-consequences to give it its dollar hegemony, as the world’s unique trading currency. But also, circumstances were to give US banks the exceptional ability to issue fiat credit across the globe at no cost (the US simply could ‘print’ its fiat credit). But ultimately that came at a price: the limitation – to being the global rentier – became evident through the consequence of the incremental impoverishment of the American Middle Classes – as well-paid jobs evaporated, even as America’s financialised banking balance sheet ballooned.

Today, we seem to be entering a new cycle period, with different trade characteristics. We are in a post-general manufacturing era. Those jobs are gone to Asia, and are not ‘coming home’. The ‘new’ trade war is no longer about building a bigger bankers’ balance sheet; but about commanding the top-end of tech innovation and manufacturing – which is to say, gaining command of its ‘high peaks’ that, in turn, offer the ability to dominate, and impose the industry standards for the next decades. This – tech standards – is, as it were, the new ‘currency’, the new ‘dollar’ of the coming era. It is, of course, all about states maintaining political power.

So, what has this to do with the Middle East? Well, quite a lot. The new, global tech competition implies a big problem (as one Washington commentator noted to me). It is this: what to with the 20% of Americans that would become ‘un-needed’ in this new top-end tech era – especially when lower paid jobs are being progressively robotised.

Here is the point: This tech ‘war’ will be between the US, China and (to a lesser extent) Russia. Europe will be a bit-player, hard pressed to compete. If the US thinks it will end with 20% of population surplus to requirement, for Europe it likely will be higher; and for the Middle East? It does not bear thinking about.

The Middle East is still a fossil fuel fed economy (at time when fossil fuel is fast falling out of fashion, capital expenditure is paused, and growth forecasts for demand, are being cut). Even Lebanon’s economy – which has no oil – is (paradoxically) still an oil economy. The Lebanese either work in the Gulf, servicing the ancillary services to a fossil-fuel based economy and remit their savings to Lebanese banks, or work in the Lebanese financial sector, managing savings derived largely from this sector.

The point is, how will the region find a future for a young population that is out-running the continent’s water and (useful) land resources, if fossil fuel cannot be the employment driver?

It won’t? Then expect a lot more protests.


Tyler Durden

Fri, 11/01/2019 – 22:25

Tags
Politics

via ZeroHedge News https://ift.tt/36t9rzi Tyler Durden

Indiana Supreme Court Applies Eighth Amendment to Curb “Oppressive” Asset Forfeitures

Asset forfeiture.

In February, in the case of Timbs v. Indiana, a unanimous Supreme Court ruled that the Excessive Fines Clause of the Eighth Amendment applies to state and local governments (as well as the federal government) and that it constrains civil asset forfeitures. Civil asset forfeiture policies enable law enforcement agencies to seize property that they suspect might have been used in a crime—including in many cases where the owner has never been convicted of anything, or even charged. Abusive forfeitures are a a widespread problem that often victimizes innocent people and particularly harms the poor. The scale of this legalized robbery is staggering. In some years, federal law enforcement alone seizes more property through asset forfeiture than burglars steal throughout the nation.

The Timbs decision could potentially lead to tighter constraints on asset forfeiture. But the Supreme Court left one key issue unaddressed: what qualifies as an “excessive” fine in the asset forfeiture context? The federal Supreme Court remanded that question to the Indiana Supreme Court, from which the case had been appealed to the federal Supreme Court in the first place. Earlier this week, the Indiana court issued a decision laying criteria for what qualifies as “excessive.” Nick Sibilla of the Institute for Justice (the public interest law firm that represented the property owner before both the federal and state supreme courts), has a helpful summary in an article in Forbes:

To determine if a forfeiture would be “grossly disproportional” and unconstitutional under the Excessive Fines Clause, the Indiana Supreme Court devised a three-factor test. First, Hoosier courts will now have to consider the “harshness of the punishment,” which may include considering if the forfeiture would remedy the harm cause by the offense and to what extent, as well as property’s value and role in the offense.

Judges will also need to determine what effect forfeiting the property would have on the owner. After all, courts already consider a person’s economic resources when it comes to levying court costs and civil punitive damages.

“The owner’s economic means—relative to the property’s value—is an appropriate consideration,” Chief Justice Rush wrote. “To hold the opposite would generate a new fiction: that taking away the same piece of property from a billionaire and from someone who owns nothing else punishes each person equally.”

Second, courts in Indiana must determine the “severity of the offense,” which includes examining statutory penalties, the sentence imposed, and the harm cause by the crime. Finally, judges will also be required to consider an owner’s culpability and “blameworthiness for the property’s use as an instrumentality of the underlying offenses.” A forfeiture may be unconstitutionally excessive “if a claimant is entirely innocent of the property’s misuse.”

This test is likely to significantly curb abusive forfeitures in the state of Indiana, particularly in cases where the owner is in fact innocent of any crime, but merely had the misfortune of owning a car or other property that someone else allegedly used in the commission of some offense. The court emphasized that “if a claimant is entirely innocent of the property’s misuse, that fact alone may render a use-based… fine excessive.”

At least for the moment, the new test will only apply in Indiana courts. But, as  the first state supreme court ruling on the subject to follow the federal Supreme Court’s decision in this same case, it could influence future decisions on the subject in other state and federal courts.

The latest iteration of Timbs comes on the heels of several other court cases enforcing constitutional constraints on asset forfeiture, including a South Carolina state court decision striking down that state’s civil asset forfeiture law and a federal court decision invalidating Albuquerque, New  Mexico’s system as a violation of the Due Process Clause of the Fourteenth Amendment.

While a great deal of progress has been made through both judicial decisions and legislative reform, the struggle against asset forfeiture is far from over. Much work remains to be done.

Among other things, state-level reforms can often be circumvented by then-Attorney General Jeff Sessions’ 2017 revival of the federal “equitable sharing” program, under which state and local asset forfeitures are “adopted” by the federal government.  The feds then share the proceeds with state law enforcement agencies—even in cases where state law otherwise prevents the latter from profiting from seized assets.

The Indiana Supreme Court decision may not even completely resolve the long-running case of Tyson Timbs’ land rover, the property at issue in this litigation, which has now dragged on for some six years. The state supreme court did not decide the issue of how its three-factor test applies to Timbs’ case, an issue that will now be resolved by the trial court, if the state continues its efforts to hold on to the vehicle. Prosecutors are still deciding whether they intend to keep pursuing the issue.

If they do choose to continue their Javert-like quest to keep the Land Rover, it seems highly likely that Timbs will prevail. The car is worth over $40,000, which is vastly disproportionate to the $10,000 maximum fine for Timbs’ offense of transporting some $400 worth of heroin that he planned to sell.

 

 

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