Hillary Clinton is still refusing to rule out running for president despite already missing the filing deadline for the New Hampshire primary.
During an appearance on Britain’s Graham Norton Show, Clinton was again asked about her presidential aspirations.
Clinton was quizzed as to why she included a story about a U.S. women’s soccer star who retired on the tagline “forget me.”
Hillary said the intention of the words were to “make way for new people” and “get off the stage.”
However, when asked by Norton, “Are you saying ‘Forget me’ now?” – Hillary responded, “Not yet.”
She then said she was aware of the presidential rumor mill and had been “deluged” with questions about running again.
“Right now, I’m not, at all, uh, you know, planning that, I’d have to make up my mind really quickly,” she said, “because it’s moving very fast.”
Back in October, long time Clinton advisor Dick Morris insisted that Hillary will become the Democratic nominee because she believes “she was put on Earth to be President.”
“Make no mistake. She wants it,” said Morris. “She’s planning on it. She’ll do everything she can to achieve it.”
Earlier that month, Clinton teased another presidential run, despite having already failed twice, telling PBS Newshour, “Obviously I can beat him again.”
She also fanned the flames of speculation when she tweeted at Trump, “Don’t tempt me.”
The odds of her getting the nomination are fading however…
Source: Bloomberg
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Education Secretary Betsy DeVos today outlined an overhaul of the federal government’s student lending programs, aiming to excise political influence and streamline a tangled bureaucracy.
Congress, of course, will have to approve any changes. But lawmakers should seize the opportunity to pass some reforms. Whether or not you like what DeVos is pitching, the current system has some serious problems.
At the center of the secretary’s proposal is a plan to spin off the Federal Student Aid (FSA) program from the Department of Education into a new, independent agency that would be run more like a bank. With more than $1.5 trillion in outstanding loans to more than 42 million borrowers, the FSA is the nation’s largest consumer lender. DeVos argues that the number of unpaid loans—there are more than 11 million student loans in default, and 43 percent of all federal loans are “in distress”—is evidence that the program is not serving students’ or taxpayers’ best interests right now.
“Congress never set up the U.S. Department of Education to be a bank, nor did it define the secretary of education as the nation’s ‘top banker.’ But that’s effectively what Congress expects based on its policies,” DeVos told a crowd at the Federal Student Aid annual conference in Reno, Nevada. “FSA’s mission is to serve students and their families, but its structure is set up to serve politicians and their policies.”
DeVos believes the problem lies in the patchwork of overlapping programs that have been foisted on the FSA since it was created in 1965. When graduates start repaying their federal loans, they are faced with eight different repayment plans, each with different income requirements. There are at least 30 deferment options and 14 loan forgiveness programs. Each comes with its own websites, administrators, and forms to be filled out. It’s a tangled, confusing mess created by decades of well-intentioned efforts at making it easier for students to repay their loans—but it has probably had the opposite effect.
DeVos’ plan does not appear to address the biggest problem with student lending: the role that federally subsidized loans have played in inflating the cost of higher education in recent decades. Spinning off the FSA into an independent agency could reduce the federal government’s role in paying for Americans’ college educations, but that’s certainly not a guarantee. And while the impulse to reduce unnecessary duplication in existing government programs is a worthy one, creating new government agencies carries costs of its own.
Politically speaking, DeVos’ proposal is probably best understood as an attempt to head off a national student loan forgiveness program by giving Congress an alternative. The student loan crisis has led many progressive politicians—including several top candidates for the Democratic presidential nomination—to call for wiping out all student debt and making college “free.” But this would mostly benefit people who can already afford to pay for college in the first place, and it ignores the fact that most college grads end up making a huge return on their investment. It would do nothing to stop rapidly growing costs, and it would be financially unsustainable without massive tax increases.
DeVos, meanwhile, would transform the FSA into an independent agency that would report directly to Congress. The details of the plan remain sketchy, but the agency would be able to make loans and write its own rules for repayment plans and forgiveness options without having to obey Congress’ demands or administer dozens of overlapping programs.
DeVos is right that the current status quo of federal student lending is broken. It clearly isn’t working for students, and taxpayers will feel the pain if it leads to the creation of a multi-trillion-dollar new entitlement program for “free” college. Her alternative isn’t perfect, but let’s hope it starts a broader effort to untangle the student loan bureaucracy. Maybe Congress could even consider the unintended consequences of having federal student lending in the first place.
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The chase of a suspected car thief turned deadly after California cops used a carotid restraint on the driver. Then the deceased man, 52-year-old David Glen Ward, turned out to be the rightful owner of the vehicle.
According to a statement released by the Santa Rosa Police Department (SRPD), a vehicle theft occurred in an unincorporated part of Sonoma County on November 24. The theft was being investigated by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO), and the suspect, who was not Ward, was reportedly armed.
In the early hours of November 27, an off-duty SRPD detective thought he saw the stolen vehicle and called in a report to the sheriff’s office. SCSO Deputy Jason Little responded, as he was the closest to the scene. Followed by Sebastopol officers Andrew Bauer and Ethan Stockton in their patrol vehicles, Little located the vehicle in question and attempted to make a traffic stop. According to the statement, the vehicle initially stopped, then fled. The officers pursued. The seven-minute chase ended when the driver of the vehicle, Ward, came to a stop.
Now joined by Deputy Charlie Blount, the officers approached the vehicle and told Ward to open the door. According to the police statement, he did not: He put his hands up, continued to lower them when the officers were out of view, and finally rolled the window down. When the officers attempted to remove him through the window, the statement claims, Ward bit both of the deputies.
The officers used personal body weapons to strike Ward and deployed a taser through the window. The latter was apparently ineffective. Standing outside the driver’s door, Blount then placed an arm inside the vehicle and around Ward’s neck. He then “attempted to administer a carotid restraint.” This, the statement explains, is “a way of controlling a combative person by placing pressure on the carotid artery, which causes the person to lose consciousness.”
The officers then broke the passenger window open, entered through the passenger door, and removed and handcuffed Ward. In a call to dispatch, another deputy who had arrived on the scene said that Ward did not appear to be breathing. Someone administered CPR. Ward was transported to the hospital and died about an hour later.
Law enforcement has since identified Ward as the registered owner of the vehicle he was driving. An official cause of death has not yet been identified, but the hold is surely a leading possibility.
Sgt. Juan Valencia, an SCSO spokesperson, told the San Francisco Chronicle that a carotid restraint differs from a chokehold because, when properly used, it does not constrict the airway. (SCSO’s use of force policy states that a deputy must first complete approved training before administering the carotid restraint “due to the potential for injury.”) Earlier this year in another part of the state, activists called on the San Diego Police Department to abandon the practice, arguing that the potential for the maneuver to become a chokehold is too high. Law enforcement pushed back, arguing that it was an effective policing tool. The department ultimately decided to continue the practice, but instituted policy changes following a review.
The SRPD will conduct an investigation while the Marin County Coroner’s Office tries to identify the cause of death. The four officers initially involved in the arrest are on administrative leave.
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Mystery S&P Put Buyer Makes $31 Million Profit In 24 Hours, Covers Half Of Position
Yesterday we reported that a mystery trader, who was expecting a sharp drop in the market over the next 6 weeks, bought 16,000 January 2,980 S&P puts, spending $32 million to protect against a 4.5% drop in the index at 9:44am on Monday morning, about 15 minutes before the latest dismal Manufacturing ISM sent stocks tumbling.
One day later, that specific put is once again one of the most active ones, and it now appears that the same put buyer is back, only this time he is covering about half of his position, selling 8,221 puts.
Today’s trade took place at $37.60, which means yesterday’s trader who bought his original batch of 16,000 puts at $19.80, has basically doubled his money…
… and in what is probably a smart move, he has covered half his original position, making a $30.9 million profit on the 8,221 puts sold, as his original $32 million position rose in value to $60.2 million.
It also means that he now has what is effectively a free, costless hedge, protecting him from any major market selloff.
The chase of a suspected car thief turned deadly after California cops used a carotid restraint on the driver. Then the deceased man, 52-year-old David Glen Ward, turned out to be the rightful owner of the vehicle.
According to a statement released by the Santa Rosa Police Department (SRPD), a vehicle theft occurred in an unincorporated part of Sonoma County on November 24. The theft was being investigated by the Sonoma County Sheriff’s Office (SCSO), and the suspect, who was not Ward, was reportedly armed.
In the early hours of November 27, an off-duty SRPD detective thought he saw the stolen vehicle and called in a report to the sheriff’s office. SCSO Deputy Jason Little responded, as he was the closest to the scene. Followed by Sebastopol officers Andrew Bauer and Ethan Stockton in their patrol vehicles, Little located the vehicle in question and attempted to make a traffic stop. According to the statement, the vehicle initially stopped, then fled. The officers pursued. The seven-minute chase ended when the driver of the vehicle, Ward, came to a stop.
Now joined by Deputy Charlie Blount, the officers approached the vehicle and told Ward to open the door. According to the police statement, he did not: He put his hands up, continued to lower them when the officers were out of view, and finally rolled the window down. When the officers attempted to remove him through the window, the statement claims, Ward bit both of the deputies.
The officers used personal body weapons to strike Ward and deployed a taser through the window. The latter was apparently ineffective. Standing outside the driver’s door, Blount then placed an arm inside the vehicle and around Ward’s neck. He then “attempted to administer a carotid restraint.” This, the statement explains, is “a way of controlling a combative person by placing pressure on the carotid artery, which causes the person to lose consciousness.”
The officers then broke the passenger window open, entered through the passenger door, and removed and handcuffed Ward. In a call to dispatch, another deputy who had arrived on the scene said that Ward did not appear to be breathing. Someone administered CPR. Ward was transported to the hospital and died about an hour later.
Law enforcement has since identified Ward as the registered owner of the vehicle he was driving. An official cause of death has not yet been identified, but the hold is surely a leading possibility.
Sgt. Juan Valencia, an SCSO spokesperson, told the San Francisco Chronicle that a carotid restraint differs from a chokehold because, when properly used, it does not constrict the airway. (SCSO’s use of force policy states that a deputy must first complete approved training before administering the carotid restraint “due to the potential for injury.”) Earlier this year in another part of the state, activists called on the San Diego Police Department to abandon the practice, arguing that the potential for the maneuver to become a chokehold is too high. Law enforcement pushed back, arguing that it was an effective policing tool. The department ultimately decided to continue the practice, but instituted policy changes following a review.
The SRPD will conduct an investigation while the Marin County Coroner’s Office tries to identify the cause of death. The four officers initially involved in the arrest are on administrative leave.
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After a decade of unprecedented growth and seemingly endless investments, the writing is now on the wall: the Great American Shale Boom is slowing down and this could have some grave consequences both the industry and the financial markets.
A total of 32 oil and gas drillers have filed for bankruptcy through the third quarter, with the total number of bankruptcy filings since 2015 now clocking in at more than 200.
Unlike Phase 1 of the oil bust that featured shale production declining due to an epic global price collapse, the current slowdown is being driven partly by industry-wide core operational issues, including declining production due to wells being drilled too close to one another as well as production sweet spots running out too soon.
Yet, the most important underlying theme precipitating the collapse is a growing financial squeeze as banks and investors pull in the reins and demand that shale drillers prioritize profitability over production growth.
The shale industry has been built on mountains of debt and the day of reckoning is finally here.
As many company executives who hoped to drill their way out of debt are belatedly discovering, trying to squeeze a profit from shale-fracking operations is akin to trying to draw blood from stone with the industry having racked up cumulative losses estimated at more than a quarter of a trillion dollars.
From the Permian of the Southwest to the Eagle Ford in Texas and the Bakken of central North America, the future is looking decidedly bleak for shale companies that racked up the most debt and expanded too aggressively.
Bingeing on debt
Chesapeake Energy Corp. (NYSE:CHK) is widely considered the posterchild of debt-fueled shale investments gone woefully wrong. A decade ago, the company’s deceased CEO, Aubrey McClendon (aka the Shale King), was the highest paid Fortune 500 CEO. McClendon had a rather unusual modus operandi: instead of trying to sell oil and gas, he was essentially flipping real estate using borrowed money to acquire leases to drill on land, then reselling them for 5x- 10x more.
He was unapologetic about it, too, claiming it was far more profitable than the drilling business.
McClendon’s aggressive leasing tactics finally landed him in trouble with the Oklahoma authorities before he was killed in a car crash shortly after being indicted.
He left the company that he founded in a serious liquidity crunch and corporate governance issues from which Chesapeake has never fully recovered–CHK stock has crashed from an all-time high of $64 a share under McClendon in 2008 to $0.60 currently.
The shares plunged 30% in early November after management fired a warning that the company was at risk of defaulting on an important leverage covenant, something that would trigger the entire balance immediately coming due:
‘‘If continued depressed prices persist, combined with the scheduled reductions in the leverage ratio covenant, our ability to comply with the leverage ratio covenant during the next 12 months will be adversely affected, which raises substantial doubt about our ability to continue as a going concern.’’
Unmitigated disaster for shareholders
Yet, if shale companies are having it rough, shale investments have been nothing short of disastrous for individual shareholders and investors.
As Steve Schlotterbeck, former CEO of largest natural gas producer EQT, has attested:
“The shale gas revolution has frankly been an unmitigated disaster for any buy-and-hold investor in the shale gas industry with very few limited exceptions. In fact, I’m not aware of another case of a disruptive technological change that has done so much harm to the industry that created the change.”
According to Schlotterbeck, the scale of value destruction has been mind-boggling with the average shale company obliterating 80% of its value (excluding capital) over the past decade.
Chesapeake and the 200+ companies that have gone under should serve as a cautionary tale for an industry that’s big on promises and loves to finance its big ambitions on borrowed dimes with little to show for it in the way of profits.
Yet, the vicious cycle of high debt, high cash burn and poor returns refuses to go away. Starved for cash, energy companies have devised a new instrument with which to court investors and continue bankrolling their operations: shale bonds. These companies are now floating asset-backed securities wherein producers transfer ownership interests to investors with proceeds from the wells used to pay off the bonds.
A good case in point is Denver-based oil and gas company Raisa Energy LLC, which closed the first shale bond offering in September. Raisa will pay nearly 6% interest on the best quality wells, with higher rates offered on riskier assets.
After years of low interest rates, fixed-income investors are finding junk bonds increasingly attractive and might find the lure of shale bonds irresistible. But these bonds are a potentially high-risk investment considering that modeling future production remains an inexact science due to the complex geology of shale basins.
Investors will only have companies’ estimates when trying to model potential returns, never mind the fact that there are literally thousands of shale wells that are pumping well below forecasts.
To get a better grasp of the underlying risks, consider Whiting Petroleum (NYSE: WLL) whose June 2018 unsecured bonds recently traded as low as 57.8 cents on the dollar.
It’s not just retail investors getting torched in this shale snafu.
Bloomberg has reported that former shale billionaires Farris and Dan Wilks have seen their Permian shale investments decimated in the latest oil bust.
Energy independence
As Schlotterbeck deadpanned:
“Nearly every American has benefited from shale gas, with one big exception–the shale gas investors.”
No one can deny that the US shale industry has been highly beneficial to the country in a number of ways. For starters, it has helped to lower gas and energy prices for the consumer while freeing the nation from over-dependence on oil imports. Indeed, in November, the US posted its first full month as a net exporter of crude oil in 70 years, with Rystad Energy predicting the country is only months away from achieving total energy independence.
But unless these companies can figure a way to drill profitably and stem the ballooning debts, this is going to continue being a race to the bottom with investors at the bottom of the totem pole paying the highest price.
Appeals Court Hands Trump Loss, Rules Banks Must Turn Over Financial Records To House Democrats
The Second Circuit Court of Appeals on Tuesday said that Deutsche Bank and Capital One must comply with a subpoena from the Democrat-controlled US House of Representatives demanding the financial records of President Trump and his children.
“The Committees’ interests in pursuing their constitutional legislative function is a far more significant public interest than whatever public interest inheres in avoiding the risk of a Chief Executive’s distraction arising from disclosure of documents reflecting his private financial transactions,” the three-judge panel ruled in a 2-1 split decision.
In August, Trump filed an appeal to block Deutsche Bank and Capital One from providing the records, after a New York district judge declined to block the subpoenas issued by the House Intelligence and Financial Service committees in April amid their investigations into foreign influence.
In October, Deutsche Bank said in a letter that while it has some of the records the House seeks, they don’t have Trump’s tax returns.
We imagine Trump will appeal to the Supreme Court next.
The big picture: Trump is currently engaged in court battles with both House Democrats and the Manhattan district attorney over subpoenas ordering his longtime account firm Mazars USA to turn over his tax returns. He has appealed both cases to the Supreme Court, where the Deutsche Bank and Capital One case is likely to end up as well.
Trump’s arguments that he is protected from criminal prosecution while president and that the House’s investigations into his financial dealings “serve no legitimate legislative purpose” have both been struck down by judges and appeals courts.
The overarching theme from the judges who have presided over these cases is that Trump’s tax returns are a matter of “public interest.”
Trump Unveils Next G-7 Meeting Will Be Held At Camp David
One month after Trump unleashed the latest round of outrage after he said next year’s G-7 summit would take place at his Doral golf resort in Florida, sparking angry accusations that this was just another (potentially impeachable) example of self-dealing, and forcing Trump to promptly drop this plan, moments ago the president unveiled the G-7 meeting would instead take place at the historic Camp David secluded traditional presidential retreat in Maryland, which had originally been speculated to be the G7 venue all along.
“It’s nearby. It’s close. it will be at Camp David, which is a place that people like,” he said in response to a reporter’s question at the NATO summit in London.
The summit is scheduled to take place from June 10 to June 12 next year.
It’s no secret that Trump has traditionally not been a big fan of the woodsy charms of Camp David, the secluded traditional presidential retreat in Maryland. Before winning the presidential election, he told a reporter:
Camp David is very rustic, it’s nice, you’d like it. You know how long you’d like it? For about 30 minutes
At first glance, it would appear that five months of pro-democracy protests in Hong Kong had produced a stunning triumph.
By September, the proposal of city leader Carrie Lam that ignited the protests — to allow criminal suspects to be extradited to China for trial — had been withdrawn.
And though the protesters’ demands escalated along with their tactics, from marches to mass civil disobedience, Molotov cocktails, riots and attacks on police, Chinese troops remained confined to their barracks.
Beijing wanted no reenactment of Tiananmen Square, the midnight massacre in the heart of Beijing that drowned in blood the 1989 uprising for democratic rights.
In Hong Kong, the police have not used lethal force. In five months of clashes, only a few have perished. And when elections came last month, Beijing was stunned by the landslide victory of the protesters.
Finally, last month, Congress passed by huge margins in both houses a Hong Kong Human Rights and Democracy Act that threatens sanctions on Hong Kong authorities should they crush the rebels.
When President Donald Trump signed the bills, the protesters now had the U.S. as an ally, and the Chinese reacted viscerally.
An enraged Foreign Ministry declared:
“The US … openly backed violent criminals who rampantly smashed facilities, set fire, assaulted innocent civilians, trampled on the rule of law and jeopardized social order.
“This so-called bill will only make the Chinese people … further understand the sinister intentions and hegemonic nature of the United States. It will only make the Chinese people more united and make the American plot more doomed to failure.”
Thus do the Hong Kong protesters appear victorious, for now.
Sunday, black-clad masked protesters were back in the streets, waving American flags, erecting barricades, issuing new demands — for greater autonomy for Hong Kong, the release of jailed protesters and the punishment of police who used excessive force.
This confrontation is far from over.
Instead, it has escalated, and the U.S. government, having given up its posture of benevolent neutrality in favor of peaceful demonstrators for democracy, has become an open ally of often-violent people who are battling Chinese police inside a Chinese city.
On Monday, China retaliated, suspending visits to Hong Kong by U.S. military planes and Navy ships and declaring sanctions on the National Endowment for Democracy, Freedom House and half a dozen other U.S. agencies that promote democracy for interfering in the internal affairs of China.
And there is another issue here — the matter of face.
China has just celebrated the 70th anniversary of the Revolution where Mao proclaimed, “China has stood up!” after a century of foreign humiliations and occupations.
Can Xi Jinping, already the object of a Maoist cult of personality, accept U.S. intervention in the internal affairs of his country or a city that belongs to China? Not likely. Nor is China likely to accede to demands for greater sovereignty, self-determination or independence for Hong Kong.
This would only raise hopes of the city’s eventual escape from its ordained destiny: direct rule by Beijing when the 50-year China-U.K. treaty regarding the transfer of Hong Kong expires in 2047.
For Xi to capitulate to the demands of Hong Kong’s demonstrators could cause an outbreak of protests in other Chinese cities and bring on a crisis of the regime.
Xi Jinping is no Mikhail Gorbachev. He is not going to let his people go. He is not going to risk a revolution to overturn the Maoist Revolution he has served his entire life.
A ruler committing the atrocities Xi is committing today in the concentration camps in the Uighur regions of China is staying his hand in Hong Kong only so the world and the West cannot see the true face of the ideology in which this true believer believes.
In providing moral support for protesters in Hong Kong who desire the freedoms we enjoy, America is on the right side. But to align the U.S. with the protesters’ cause, and threaten sanctions if their demands are not met, is to lead these demonstrators to make demands that Hong Kong’s rulers cannot meet and China will not allow.
We should ask ourselves some questions before we declare our solidarity with the protesters engaging the Hong Kong police.
If the police crush them, or if China’s army moves in and crushes the demonstrators whose hopes were raised by America’s declared solidarity, then what are we prepared to do to save them and their cause?
Are we willing to impose sanctions on Beijing, such as we have on Venezuela, Iran and Vladimir Putin’s Russia?
Some of us yet recall how the Voice of America broadcast to the Hungarian rebels of 1956 that if they rose up and threw the Russians out, we would be at their side. The Hungarians rose up. We did nothing. And one of the great bloodbaths of the Cold War ensued.
Are we telling the protesters of Hong Kong, “We’ve got your back!” when we really don’t?
Tech War: Trump Admin Considered Nuclear Option In Banning Huawei From US Banking System
A trade deal between the U.S. and China becomes less likely by the day… A decoupling of the world’s largest economies is underway.
Sources told Reuters that the Trump administration considered banning Huawei from using the U.S. financial system as a nuclear option to crush the company.
The strategy by the White House National Security Council was to place China’s Huawei Technologies Co Ltd. on the Treasury Department’s Specially Designated Nationals (SDN) list. This would’ve meant Huawei would’ve been barred from the U.S. financial system and banned from using U.S. dollars in transactions, along with prohibiting it from transacting with any U.S. entities or persons.
One source, who supports the move, said Huawei could be placed on the SDN list in the coming months, depending on trade war developments.
Considering President Trump’s statements on Tuesday morning of how a trade deal might be delayed until after the 2020 election, it seems that Huawei could be imminently placed on the list.
Another source said White House officials drafted a memo and held several meetings on the issue, which shows the extent the Trump administration is willing to damage China’s economy in the trade war.
Instead of the nuclear option, President Trump opted to blacklist Huawei on trade over the summer, which forces U.S. suppliers to obtain individual licenses to do business with the Chinese company. But this leaves the door open for Trump to use the nuclear option to pressure China into signing a deal.
Annie Fixler, a cyber expert at the Foundation for Defense of Democracies think tank, told Reuters that placing Huawei on the SDN list “would have broad, widespread implications for Huawei across the globe.”
Fixler noted that banning the company from using dollars in the global financial system would be devastating for the company. It would also open the doors for Beijing to unleash countermeasures on U.S. firms, like Apple, etc…
Huawei understands that more sanctions are coming, and the trade war could quickly deepen in 2020. To avoid having their assets frozen in the U.S., the company has announced that it will shift a U.S. research center to Canada.
“The research and development center will move from the United States, and Canada will be the center,” Huawei’s CEO Ren Zhengfei told Toronto’s Global and Mail newspaper.
Judging by the headlines on Tuesday from the Trump administration, the likelihood of a trade deal between the U.S. and China before the 2020 election is slim. This means that an escalation in the trade war could be seen as soon as Dec. 15.
