You Bought A Lot of Overpriced Dogshit Stocks – Now What? (Video)

By EconMatters


We discuss Politicians on both sides of the aisle and the propensity for overpromising and under delivering, and what this means for the stock market longer term. Paper Profits do not count for much in the end. You can buy Dogshit Stocks at all-time highs, but then you are stuck with Dogshit Stocks at all-time highs in your portfolio. That usually ends well for investors!

© EconMatters All Rights Reserved | Facebook | Twitter | YouTube | Email Digest | Kindle   

via http://ift.tt/2mxUZBI EconMatters

Weak 3 Year Auction Tails Despite Highest Yield Since April 2010

In a somewhat surprising auction, despite trading special in repo this morning at -0.50%, traditionally an indicator of a squeeze into the auction, today’s sale of $24 billion in 3 Year paper tailed modestly, printing at 1.63%, 0.6bps wide of the When Issued of 1.624% at 1pm.The yield was the highest going all the way back to April 2010, and certainly higher than the 1.427% in February or the 1.229% six prior auction average.

The internals were likewise less than impressive, with the Bid to Cover dropping from February’s 2.782 to 2.740, under the 6 month average of 2.8. Additionally, indirects stepped from today’s auction, with the Indirect takedown declining from 57.2 to 49.4, if in line with the 6MMA of 50.66%. Direct bidders took down 8.4% leaving Dealers 42.2. Total bids of $65.8 billion for $24.0b in notes sold vs six previous auction average of $68.7 billion in bids for average of $25.6b in notes sold.

With the auction coming in rather light of expectations, there has been a modest bid for both the USDJPY, and correspondingly risk assets, as every development that is adverse for the Treasury complex is now immediately seen as positive for stocks.

 

via http://ift.tt/2mTI8uH Tyler Durden

America’s Desperate Mall Owners Turn To Grocers, Doctors & High Schools To Fill Empty Space

Once a shining beacon of American capitalism, malls around the U.S. are failing at an alarming rate due to a combination of shifting consumption patterns, years of underinvestment by mall owners and a spate of retailer bankruptcies over the past 12 months that have left large swaths of once prime real estate empty (see “Number Of Distressed US Retailers Highest Since The Great Recession“). 

Now, as the vacant square footage grows larger, mall owners are being increasingly forced to turn to non-conventional tenants to fill empty space.  Per the Wall Street Journal, the latest target of mall owners is yet another struggling industry, grocers, with everyone from Whole Foods to Kroger looking to snap up square footage at discount prices.

Natick Mall in Natick, Mass., is leasing 194,000 square feet of space vacated by J.C. Penney Co. to upscale grocer Wegmans Food Markets Inc., which is planning to open a store in 2018.

 

College Mall in Bloomington, Ind., plans to bring in 365 by Whole Foods Market in the fall.

 

Grocery giant Kroger Co., meanwhile, has purchased a former Macy’s Inc. location at Kingsdale Shopping Center in Upper Arlington, Ohio, and plans to build a new store in its place.

Malls

 

Of course, mall owners tout the defensive nature of grocers who are, at least for now, more immune to online retailers and the economic cycle than traditional retailers.  And while there may be some truth in those statements, they certainly overlook some major challenges associated with adding grocers to mall spaces including the fact that malls are typically intended to attract customers from a much larger radius whereas traditional grocery shoppers generally prefer more local options. 

Moreover, adding grocery stores as an anchor tenant is unlikely to help the other retailers in the mall.  Lets face it, grocery shopping is generally not a pleasant experience but rather a weekly chore that people generally like to do as quickly as possible…you’re not going to do your grocery shopping and then casually peruse the Express store while your ice cream melts in the car.

But supermarkets might not do much to lift other retailers in struggling malls, analysts said. Grocery shoppers, especially seniors, often are sensitive to the distance between their car and the store, and might not want to navigate busy malls with grocery bags in tow, or supermarkets with mall purchases in hand.

 

“You’re not going to buy a Louis Vuitton bag or a dress when you’re carrying your groceries,” said Jeff Edison, chief executive of Phillips Edison & Co., an owner and operator of grocery-anchored shopping centers across 34 states. His company’s neighborhood shopping centers are smaller and closer to customers, who typically live within 3 miles of a center.

 

“It’s a fine line how this strategy is implemented,” said Thomas Dobrowski, executive managing director of capital markets at real-estate services firm Newmark Grubb Knight Frank. “The addition of a grocery anchor is not necessarily complementary to the other stores, particularly fashion retailers.”

But grocers aren’t the only new tenants taking over cheap mall space.  As Market Watch points out, everything from doctors offices to high schools are moving into what used to be prime real estate.

Beneath some positive stats, shopping malls are facing serious problems that threaten their health, including a shift to non-retail tenants and forecasted rent declines, according to Wells Fargo analysts.

 

Wells Fargo stresses a need to look deeper at high mall occupancy rates. Occupancy for the fourth quarter of 2016 was 93.6%, near the 93.3% for all of 2015, according to data from the National Council of Real Estate Investment Fiduciaries, cited by the International Council of Shopping Centers. However, the type of tenants many malls have is shifting to a lower-quality occupant for the overall health of the retail-focused mall, the analysts said.

 

“[F]or example, there are far more ‘mom-and-pop’ stores, and some malls have repurposed space for non-retail uses such as doctors offices, town libraries and even a high school,” Wells Fargo said in the report published Sunday. “Mom-and-pop” retail in a mall setting may generally be seen as a more-vulnerable long-term tenant and less of a traffic pusher without big-name brand backing.

But we’re sure it will all work out just fine and wall street will go on buying those mall reits with reckless abandon…you know, because dividend yields.

via http://ift.tt/2naTF50 Tyler Durden

Fitch Predicts Drop In Oil Prices By 2017 As U.S. Shale Output Soars

Via Zainab Calcuttawala of OilPrice.com,

Oil bigwigs should take a step back before becoming too comfortable with the new oil price range according to Fitch Ratings’ newest market analysis.

“The recovery in US drilling activity will drive up shale oil production in the second half of 2017, offsetting a portion of recent oil price gains,” the credit rating agency’s report released on Monday says. “We therefore expect average oil prices for the year to be below those in January and February.”

In a stable market scenario, Fitch estimates that by the end of this year, oil prices will fall to $52.50, but then rebound to $55 and then $60 in 2018 and 2019, respectively. Long-term prospects for Brent barrels sit at $65 in this model.

A stressed, oversupplied market will mean a $40 barrel through 2019, however.

Since January, a 1.8 million-barrel global production cut led by the Organization of Petroleum Exporting Countries (OPEC) and joined by several other nations has kept prices between the $55-$60 range.

Compliance to the terms of the November deal by members of the bloc has been strong. Last week, new data showed that OPEC’s compliance stood at 94 percent.

But non-OPEC enthusiasm for the deal has been much talk, with moderate action. A February 23rd report puts compliance by the 11 NOPEC nations at a modest 60-66 percent.

Fitch cited the continuous increase of active oil rigs in the United States since May 2016 as key evidence for an impending price collapse. American production is set to top nine million barrels over the course of 2017, the analysts estimate, due to rejuvenated capital expenditure budgets and higher output capacity.

The total number of active oil and gas rigs in the United States is now 756, according to oilfield services provider Baker Hughes, which is 267 rigs above the rig count a year ago.

via http://ift.tt/2mTmEhA Tyler Durden

The Ever-Growing List of ADMITTED False Flag Attacks

Painting by Anthony Freda

Presidents, Prime Ministers, Congressmen, Generals, Spooks, Soldiers and Police ADMIT to False Flag Terror

In the following instances, officials in the government which carried out the attack (or seriously proposed an attack) admit to it, either orally, in writing, or through photographs or videos:

(1) Japanese troops set off a small explosion on a train track in 1931, and falsely blamed it on China in order to justify an invasion of Manchuria. This is known as the “Mukden Incident” or the “Manchurian Incident”. The Tokyo International Military Tribunal found: “Several of the participators in the plan, including Hashimoto [a high-ranking Japanese army officer], have on various occasions admitted their part in the plot and have stated that the object of the ‘Incident’ was to afford an excuse for the occupation of Manchuria by the Kwantung Army ….” And see this, this and this.

(2) A major with the Nazi SS admitted at the Nuremberg trials that – under orders from the chief of the Gestapo – he and some other Nazi operatives faked attacks on their own people and resources which they blamed on the Poles, to justify the invasion of Poland.

(3) The minutes of the high command of the Italian government – subsequently approved by Mussolini himself – admitted that violence on the Greek-Albanian border was carried out by Italians and falsely blamed on the Greeks, as an excuse for Italy’s 1940 invasion of Greece.

(4) Nazi general Franz Halder also testified at the Nuremberg trials that Nazi leader Hermann Goering admitted to setting fire to the German parliament building in 1933, and then falsely blaming the communists for the arson.

(5) Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev admitted in writing that the Soviet Union’s Red Army shelled the Russian village of Mainila in 1939 – while blaming the attack on Finland – as a basis for launching the “Winter War” against Finland. Russian president Boris Yeltsin agreed that Russia had been the aggressor in the Winter War.

(6) The Russian Parliament, current Russian president Putin and former Soviet leader Gorbachev all admit that Soviet leader Joseph Stalin ordered his secret police to execute 22,000 Polish army officers and civilians in 1940, and then falsely blamed it on the Nazis.

(7) The British government admits that – between 1946 and 1948 – it bombed 5 ships carrying Jews attempting to flee the Holocaust to seek safety in Palestine, set up a fake group called “Defenders of Arab Palestine”, and then had the psuedo-group falsely claim responsibility for the bombings (and see this, this and this).

(8) Israel admits that in 1954, an Israeli terrorist cell operating in Egypt planted bombs in several buildings, including U.S. diplomatic facilities, then left behind “evidence” implicating the Arabs as the culprits (one of the bombs detonated prematurely, allowing the Egyptians to identify the bombers, and several of the Israelis later confessed) (and see this and this).

The U.S. Army does not believe this is an isolated incident. For example, the U.S. Army’s School of Advanced Military Studies said of Mossad (Israel’s intelligence service):

“Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target U.S. forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act.”

(9) The CIA admits that it hired Iranians in the 1950′s to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its democratically-elected prime minister.

(10) The Turkish Prime Minister admitted that the Turkish government carried out the 1955 bombing on a Turkish consulate in Greece – also damaging the nearby birthplace of the founder of modern Turkey – and blamed it on Greece, for the purpose of inciting and justifying anti-Greek violence.

(11) The British Prime Minister admitted to his defense secretary that he and American president Dwight Eisenhower approved a plan in 1957 to carry out attacks in Syria and blame it on the Syrian government as a way to effect regime change.

(12) The former Italian Prime Minister, an Italian judge, and the former head of Italian counterintelligence admit that NATO, with the help of the Pentagon and CIA, carried out terror bombings in Italy and other European countries in the 1950s through the 1980s and blamed the communists, in order to rally people’s support for their governments in Europe in their fight against communism.

As one participant in this formerly-secret program stated: “You had to attack civilians, people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security”so that “a state of emergency could be declared, so people would willingly trade part of their freedom for the security” (and see this) (Italy and other European countries subject to the terror campaign had joined NATO before the bombings occurred). And watch this BBC special. They also allegedly carried out terror attacks in France, Belgium, Denmark, Germany, Greece, the Netherlands, Norway, Portugal, the UK, and other countries.

The CIA also stressed to the head of the Italian program that Italy needed to use the program to control internal uprisings.

False flag attacks carried out pursuant to this program include – by way of example only:

(13) In 1960, American Senator George Smathers suggested that the U.S. launch “a false attack made on Guantanamo Bay which would give us the excuse of actually fomenting a fight which would then give us the excuse to go in and [overthrow Castro]”.

(14) Official State Department documents show that, in 1961, the head of the Joint Chiefs and other high-level officials discussed blowing up a consulate in the Dominican Republic in order to justify an invasion of that country. The plans were not carried out, but they were all discussed as serious proposals.

(15) As admitted by the U.S. government, recently declassified documents show that in 1962, the American Joint Chiefs of Staff signed off on a plan to blow up AMERICAN airplanes (using an elaborate plan involving the switching of airplanes), and also to commit terrorist acts on American soil, and then to blame it on the Cubans in order to justify an invasion of Cuba. See the following ABC news report; the official documents; and watch this interview with the former Washington Investigative Producer for ABC’s World News Tonight with Peter Jennings.

(16) In 1963, the U.S. Department of Defense wrote a paper promoting attacks on nations within the Organization of American States – such as Trinidad-Tobago or Jamaica – and then falsely blaming them on Cuba.

(17) The U.S. Department of Defense also suggested covertly paying a person in the Castro government to attack the United States: “The only area remaining for consideration then would be to bribe one of Castro’s subordinate commanders to initiate an attack on Guantanamo.”

(18) A U.S. Congressional committee admitted that – as part of its “Cointelpro” campaign – the FBI had used many provocateurs in the 1950s through 1970s to carry out violent acts and falsely blame them on political activists.

(19) A top Turkish general admitted that Turkish forces burned down a mosque on Cyprus in the 1970s and blamed it on their enemy. He explained: “In Special War, certain acts of sabotage are staged and blamed on the enemy to increase public resistance. We did this on Cyprus; we even burnt down a mosque.” In response to the surprised correspondent’s incredulous look the general said, “I am giving an example”.

(20) A declassified 1973 CIA document reveals a program to train foreign police and troops on how to make booby traps, pretending that they were training them on how to investigate terrorist acts:

 

The Agency maintains liaison in varying degrees with foreign police/security organizations through its field stations ….

[CIA provides training sessions as follows:]

 

a. Providing trainees with basic knowledge in the uses of commercial and military demolitions and incendiaries as they may be applied in terrorism and industrial sabotage operations.

 

b. Introducing the trainees to commercially available materials and home laboratory techniques, likely to he used in the manufacture of explosives and incendiaries by terrorists or saboteurs.

 

c. Familiarizing the trainees with the concept of target analysis and operational planning that a saboteur or terrorist must employ.

 

d. Introducing the trainees to booby trapping devices and techniques giving practical experience with both manufactured and improvised devices through actual fabrication.

 

***

 

The program provides the trainees with ample opportunity to develop basic familiarity and use proficiently through handling, preparing and applying the various explosive charges, incendiary agents, terrorist devices and sabotage techniques.

(21) The German government admitted (and see this) that, in 1978, the German secret service detonated a bomb in the outer wall of a prison and planted “escape tools” on a prisoner – a member of the Red Army Faction – which the secret service wished to frame the bombing on.

(22) A Mossad agent admits that, in 1984, Mossad planted a radio transmitter in Gaddaffi’s compound in Tripoli, Libya which broadcast fake terrorist transmissions recorded by Mossad, in order to frame Gaddaffi as a terrorist supporter. Ronald Reagan bombed Libya immediately thereafter.

(23) The South African Truth and Reconciliation Council found that, in 1989, the Civil Cooperation Bureau (a covert branch of the South African Defense Force) approached an explosives expert and asked him “to participate in an operation aimed at discrediting the ANC [the African National Congress] by bombing the police vehicle of the investigating officer into the murder incident”, thus framing the ANC for the bombing.

(24) An Algerian diplomat and several officers in the Algerian army admit that, in the 1990s, the Algerian army frequently massacred Algerian civilians and then blamed Islamic militants for the killings (and see this video; and Agence France-Presse, 9/27/2002, French Court Dismisses Algerian Defamation Suit Against Author).

(25) In 1993, a bomb in Northern Ireland killed 9 civilians. Official documents from the Royal Ulster Constabulary (i.e. the British government) show that the mastermind of the bombing was a British agent, and that the bombing was designed to inflame sectarian tensions. And see this and this.

(26) The United States Army’s 1994 publication Special Forces Foreign Internal Defense Tactics Techniques and Procedures for Special Forces – updated in 2004 – recommends employing terrorists and using false flag operations to destabilize leftist regimes in Latin America. False flag terrorist attacks were carried out in Latin America and other regions as part of the CIA’s “Dirty Wars“. And see this.

(27) Similarly, a CIA “psychological operations” manual prepared by a CIA contractor for the Nicaraguan Contra rebels noted the value of assassinating someone on your own side to create a “martyr” for the cause. The manual was authenticated by the U.S. government. The manual received so much publicity from Associated Press, Washington Post and other news coverage that – during the 1984 presidential debate – President Reagan was confronted with the following question on national television:

At this moment, we are confronted with the extraordinary story of a CIA guerrilla manual for the anti-Sandinista contras whom we are backing, which advocates not only assassinations of Sandinistas but the hiring of criminals to assassinate the guerrillas we are supporting in order to create martyrs.

(28) A Rwandan government inquiry admitted that the 1994 shootdown and murder of the Rwandan president, who was from the Hutu tribe – a murder blamed by the Hutus on the rival Tutsi tribe, and which led to the massacre of more than 800,000 Tutsis by Hutus – was committed by Hutu soldiers and falsely blamed on the Tutis.

(29) An Indonesian government fact-finding team investigated violent riots which occurred in 1998, and determined that “elements of the military had been involved in the riots, some of which were deliberately provoked”.

(30) Senior Russian Senior military and intelligence officers admit that the KGB blew up Russian apartment buildings in 1999 and falsely blamed it on Chechens, in order to justify an invasion of Chechnya (and see this report and this discussion).

(31) As reported by the New York Times, BBC and Associated Press, Macedonian officials admit that in 2001, the government murdered 7 innocent immigrants in cold blood and pretended that they were Al Qaeda soldiers attempting to assassinate Macedonian police, in order to join the “war on terror”. luring foreign migrants into the country, executing them in a staged gun battle, and then claiming they were a unit backed by Al Qaeda intent on attacking Western embassies”. Macedonian authorities had lured the immigrants into the country, and then – after killing them – posed the victims with planted evidence – “bags of uniforms and semiautomatic weapons at their side” – to show Western diplomats.

(32) At the July 2001 G8 Summit in Genoa, Italy, black-clad thugs were videotaped getting out of police cars, and were seen by an Italian MP carrying “iron bars inside the police station”. Subsequently, senior police officials in Genoa subsequently admitted that police planted two Molotov cocktails and faked the stabbing of a police officer at the G8 Summit, in order to justify a violent crackdown against protesters.

(33) The U.S. falsely blamed Iraq for playing a role in the 9/11 attacks – as shown by a memo from the defense secretary – as one of the main justifications for launching the Iraq war.

Even after the 9/11 Commission admitted that there was no connection, Dick Cheney said that the evidence is “overwhelming” that al Qaeda had a relationship with Saddam Hussein’s regime, that Cheney “probably” had information unavailable to the Commission, and that the media was not ‘doing their homework’ in reporting such ties. Top U.S. government officials now admit that the Iraq war was really launched for oil … not 9/11 or weapons of mass destruction.

Despite previous “lone wolf” claims, many U.S. government officials now say that 9/11 was state-sponsored terror; but Iraq was not the state which backed the hijackers. (Many U.S. officials have alleged that 9/11 was a false flag operation by rogue elements of the U.S. government; but such a claim is beyond the scope of this discussion. The key point is that the U.S. falsely blamed it on Iraq, when it knew Iraq had nothing to do with it.).

(Additionally, the same judge who has shielded the Saudis for any liability for funding 9/11 has awarded a default judgment against Iran for $10.5 billion for carrying out 9/11 … even though no one seriously believes that Iran had any part in 9/11.)

(34) Although the FBI now admits that the 2001 anthrax attacks were carried out by one or more U.S. government scientists, a senior FBI official says that the FBI was actually told to blame the Anthrax attacks on Al Qaeda by White House officials (remember what the anthrax letters looked like). Government officials also confirm that the white House tried to link the anthrax to Iraq as a justification for regime change in that country. And see this.

(35) According to the Washington Post, Indonesian police admit that the Indonesian military killed American teachers in Papua in 2002 and blamed the murders on a Papuan separatist group in order to get that group listed as a terrorist organization.

(36) The well-respected former Indonesian president also admits that the government probably had a role in the Bali bombings.

(37) Police outside of a 2003 European Union summit in Greece were filmed planting Molotov cocktails on a peaceful protester.

(38) In 2003, the U.S. Secretary of Defense admitted that interrogators were authorized to use the following method: “False Flag: Convincing the detainee that individuals from a country other than the United States are interrogating him.” While not a traditional false flag attack, this deception could lead to former detainees  attacking the country falsely blamed for the interrogation.

(39) Former Department of Justice lawyer John Yoo suggested in 2005 that the US should go on the offensive against al-Qaeda, having “our intelligence agencies create a false terrorist organization. It could have its own websites, recruitment centers, training camps, and fundraising operations. It could launch fake terrorist operations and claim credit for real terrorist strikes, helping to sow confusion within al-Qaeda’s ranks, causing operatives to doubt others’ identities and to question the validity of communications.”

(40) Similarly, in 2005, Professor John Arquilla of the Naval Postgraduate School – a renowned US defense analyst credited with developing the concept of ‘netwar’ – called for western intelligence services to create new “pseudo gang” terrorist groups, as a way of undermining “real” terror networks. According to Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist Seymour Hersh, Arquilla’s ‘pseudo-gang’ strategy was, Hersh reported, already being implemented by the Pentagon:

“Under Rumsfeld’s new approach, I was told, US military operatives would be permitted to pose abroad as corrupt foreign businessmen seeking to buy contraband items that could be used in nuclear-weapons systems. In some cases, according to the Pentagon advisers, local citizens could be recruited and asked to join up with guerrillas or terrorists

The new rules will enable the Special Forces community to set up what it calls ‘action teams’ in the target countries overseas which can be used to find and eliminate terrorist organizations. ‘Do you remember the right-wing execution squads in El Salvador?’ the former high-level intelligence official asked me, referring to the military-led gangs that committed atrocities in the early nineteen-eighties. ‘We founded them and we financed them,’ he said. ‘The objective now is to recruit locals in any area we want. And we aren’t going to tell Congress about it.’ A former military officer, who has knowledge of the Pentagon’s commando capabilities, said, ‘We’re going to be riding with the bad boys.’”

(41) United Press International reported in June 2005:

U.S. intelligence officers are reporting that some of the insurgents in Iraq are using recent-model Beretta 92 pistols, but the pistols seem to have had their serial numbers erased. The numbers do not appear to have been physically removed; the pistols seem to have come off a production line without any serial numbers. Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as U.S. authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance.

(42) In 2005, British soldiers dressed as Arabs were caught by Iraqi police after a shootout against the police. The soldiers apparently possessed explosives, and were accused of attempting to set off bombs. While none of the soldiers admitted that they were carrying out attacks, British soldiers and a column of British tanks stormed the jail they were held in, broke down a wall of the jail, and busted them out. The extreme measures used to free the soldiers – rather than have them face questions and potentially stand trial – could be considered an admission.

(43) Undercover Israeli soldiers admitted in 2005 to throwing stones at other Israeli soldiers so they could blame it on Palestinians, as an excuse to crack down on peaceful protests by the Palestinians.

(44) Quebec police admitted that, in 2007, thugs carrying rocks to a peaceful protest were actually undercover Quebec police officers (and see this).

(45) A 2008 US Army special operations field manual recommends that the U.S. military use surrogate non-state groups such as “paramilitary forces, individuals, businesses, foreign political organizations, resistant or insurgent organizations, expatriates, transnational terrorism adversaries, disillusioned transnational terrorism members, black marketers, and other social or political ‘undesirables.’” The manual specifically acknowledged that U.S. special operations can involve both counterterrorism and “Terrorism” (as well as “transnational criminal activities, including narco-trafficking, illicit arms-dealing, and illegal financial transactions.”)

(46) The former Italian Prime Minister, President, and head of Secret Services (Francesco Cossiga) advised the 2008 minister in charge of the police, on how to deal with protests from teachers and students:

He should do what I did when I was Minister of the Interior … infiltrate the movement with agents provocateurs inclined to do anything …. And after that, with the strength of the gained population consent, … beat them for blood and beat for blood also those teachers that incite them. Especially the teachers. Not the elderly, of course, but the girl teachers yes.

(47) An undercover officer admitted that he infiltrated environmental, leftwing and anti-fascist groups in 22 countries. Germany’s federal police chief admitted that – while the undercover officer worked for the German police – he acted illegally during a G8 protest in Germany in 2007 and committed arson by setting fire during a subsequent demonstration in Berlin. The undercover officer spent many years living with violent “Black Bloc” anarchists.

(48) Denver police admitted that uniformed officers deployed in 2008 to an area where alleged “anarchists” had planned to wreak havoc outside the Democratic National Convention ended up getting into a melee with two undercover policemen. The uniformed officers didn’t know the undercover officers were cops.

(49) At the G20 protests in London in 2009, a British member of parliament saw plain clothes police officers attempting to incite the crowd to violence.

(50) The oversight agency for the Royal Canadian Mounted Police admitted that – at the G20 protests in Toronto in 2010 – undercover police officers were arrested with a group of protesters. Videos and photos (see this and this, for example) show that violent protesters wore very similar boots and other gear as the police, and carried police batons. The Globe and Mail reports that the undercover officers planned the targets for violent attack, and the police failed to stop the attacks.

(51) Egyptian politicians admitted (and see this) that government employees looted priceless museum artifacts 2011 to try to discredit the protesters.

(52) Austin police admit that 3 officers infiltrated the Occupy protests in that city. Prosecutors admit that one of the undercover officers purchased and constructed illegal “lock boxes” which ended up getting many protesters arrested.

(53) In 2011, a Colombian colonel admitted that he and his soldiers had lured 57 innocent civilians and killed them – after dressing many of them in uniforms – as part of a scheme to claim that Columbia was eradicating left-wing terrorists. And see this.

(54) Rioters who discredited the peaceful protests against the swearing in of the Mexican president in 2012 admitted that they were paid 300 pesos each to destroy everything in their path. According to Wikipedia, photos also show the vandals waiting in groups behind police lines prior to the violence.

(55) A Colombian army colonel has admitted that his unit murdered 57 civilians, then dressed them in uniforms and claimed they were rebels killed in combat.

(56) On November 20, 2014, Mexican agent provocateurs were transported by army vehicles to participate in the 2014 Iguala mass kidnapping protests, as was shown by videos and pictures distributed via social networks.

(57) The highly-respected writer for the Telegraph Ambrose Evans-Pritchard says that the head of Saudi intelligence – Prince Bandar – recently admitted that the Saudi government controls “Chechen” terrorists.

(58) Two members of the Turkish parliament, high-level American sources and others admitted that the Turkish government – a NATO country – carried out the chemical weapons attacks in Syria and falsely blamed them on the Syrian government; and high-ranking Turkish government admitted on tape plans to carry out attacks and blame it on the Syrian government.

(59) The Ukrainian security chief admits that the sniper attacks which started the Ukrainian coup were carried out in order to frame others. Ukrainian officials admit that the Ukrainian snipers fired on both sides, to create maximum chaos.

(60) Burmese government officials admitted that Burma (renamed Myanmar) used false flag attacks against Muslim and Buddhist groups within the country to stir up hatred between the two groups, to prevent democracy from spreading.

(61) Israeli police were again filmed in 2015 dressing up as Arabs and throwing stones, then turning over Palestinian protesters to Israeli soldiers.

(62) Britain’s spy agency has admitted (and see this) that it carries out “digital false flag” attacks on targets, framing people by writing offensive or unlawful material … and blaming it on the target.

(63) The CIA has admitted that it uses viruses and malware from Russia and other countries to carry out cyberattacks and blame other countries.

(64) U.S. soldiers have admitted that if they kill innocent Iraqis and Afghanis, they then “drop” automatic weapons near their body so they can pretend they were militants.

(65) Similarly, police frame innocent people for crimes they didn’t commit. The practice is so well-known that the New York Times noted in 1981:

In police jargon, a throwdown is a weapon planted on a victim.

Newsweek reported in 1999:

Perez, himself a former [Los Angeles Police Department] cop, was caught stealing eight pounds of cocaine from police evidence lockers. After pleading guilty in September, he bargained for a lighter sentence by telling an appalling story of attempted murder and a “throwdown”–police slang for a weapon planted by cops to make a shooting legally justifiable. Perez said he and his partner, Officer Nino Durden, shot an unarmed 18th Street Gang member named Javier Ovando, then planted a semiautomatic rifle on the unconscious suspect and claimed that Ovando had tried to shoot them during a stakeout.

Wikipedia notes:

As part of his plea bargain, Pérez implicated scores of officers from the Rampart Division’s anti-gang unit, describing routinely beating gang members, planting evidence on suspects, falsifying reports and covering up unprovoked shootings.

(As a side note – and while not technically false flag attacks – police have been busted framing innocent people in many other ways, as well.)

(66) A former U.S. intelligence officer recently alleged:

Most terrorists are false flag terrorists or are created by our own security services.

(67) The head and special agent in charge of the FBI’s Los Angeles office said that most terror attacks are committed by the CIA and FBI as false flags. Similarly, the director of the National Security Agency under Ronald Reagan – Lt. General William Odom said:

By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation.

(audio here).

(68) The Director of Analytics at the interagency Global Engagement Center housed at the U.S. Department of State, also an adjunct professor at George Mason University, where he teaches the graduate course National Security Challenges in the Department of Information Sciences and Technology, a former branch chief in the CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, and an intelligence advisor to the Secretary of Homeland Security (J.D. Maddox) notes:

Provocation is one of the most basic, but confounding, aspects of warfare. Despite its sometimes obvious use, it has succeeded consistently against audiences around the world, for millennia, to compel war. A well-constructed provocation narrative mutes even the most vocal opposition.

 

***

 

The culmination of a strategic provocation operation invariably reflects a narrative of victimhood: we are the
victims of the enemy’s unforgivable atrocities.

 

***

 

In the case of strategic provocation the deaths of an aggressor’s own personnel are a core tactic of the provocation.

 

***

 

The persistent use of strategic provocation over centuries – and its apparent importance to war planners – begs the question of its likely use by the US and other states in the near term.

(69) Leaders throughout history have acknowledged the “benefits” of of false flags to justify their political agenda:

Terrorism is the best political weapon for nothing drives people harder than a fear of sudden death”.
– Adolph Hitler

 

“Why of course the people don’t want war … But after all it is the leaders of the country who determine the policy, and it is always a simple matter to drag the people along, whether it is a democracy, or a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship … Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders. That is easy. All you have to do is to tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to danger. It works the same in any country.”
– Hermann Goering, Nazi leader.

 

“The easiest way to gain control of a population is to carry out acts of terror. [The public] will clamor for such laws if their personal security is threatened”.
– Josef Stalin

Postscript: The media plays along as well. For example, in 2012, NBC News’ chief foreign correspondent, Richard Engel, was kidnapped in Syria. NBC News said that Engel and his reporting team had been abducted by forces affiliated with the Syrian government. He reported that they only escaped when some anti-Syrian government rebels killed some of the pro-government kidnappers.

However, NBC subsequently admitted that this was false. It turns out that they were really kidnapped by people associated with the U.S. backed rebels fighting the Syrian government … who wore the clothes of, faked the accent of, scrawled the slogans of, and otherwise falsely impersonated the mannerisms of people associated with the Syrian government. In reality, the group that kidnapped Engel and his crew were affiliated with the U.S.-supported Free Syrian Army, and NBC should have known that it was blaming the wrong party. See the New York Times and the Nation’s reporting.

Of course, sometimes atrocities or warmongering are falsely blamed on the enemy as a justification for war … when no such event ever occurred. This is sort of like false flag terror … without the terror.

For example:

  • The NSA admits that it lied about what really happened in the Gulf of Tonkin incident in 1964 … manipulating data to make it look like North Vietnamese boats fired on a U.S. ship so as to create a false justification for the Vietnam war
  • One of the central lies used to justify the 1991 Gulf War against Iraq after Iraq invaded Kuwait was the false statement by a young Kuwaiti girl that Iraqis murdered Kuwaiti babies in hospitals. Her statement was arranged by a Congressman who knew that she was actually the daughter of the Kuwaiti Ambassador to the U.S. – who was desperately trying to lobby the U.S. to enter the war – but the Congressman hid that fact from the public and from Congress
  • Pulitzer prize-winning journalist Ron Suskind reported that the White House ordered the CIA to forge and backdate a document falsely linking Iraq with Muslim terrorists and 9/11 … and that the CIA complied with those instructions and in fact created the forgery, which was then used to justify war against Iraq. And see this and this
  • Time magazine points out that the claim by President Bush that Iraq was attempting to buy “yellow cake” Uranium from Niger:

had been checked out — and debunked — by U.S. intelligence a year before the President repeated it.

  • The “humanitarian” wars in Syria, Libya and Yugoslavia were all justified by exaggerated reports that the leaders of those countries were committing atrocities against their people. And see this

 

via http://ift.tt/2mBR737 George Washington

How the GOP Learns to Stop Worrying and Love a Democratic Program

So the House Republicans’ replacement for Obamacare is Obamacare Lite. If it passes, we’ll keep the same basic subsidy-and-penalty insurance framework we have with the Affordable Care Act. If it doesn’t pass—and there’s a good chance it won’t—we may well end up keeping the Affordable Care Act, full stop. Or perhaps we’ll get a different bill that rearranges the system, maybe makes it stingier, but doesn’t challenge its basic approach. What we probably won’t get is something radically different.

This often happens when Democrats enact a big expansion of the social-welfare state. Republicans protest noisily, but when a Republican becomes president the party makes its peace with it. Dwight Eisenhower conserved the New Deal, and in fact built on it. (Among other things, he expanded Social Security coverage, launched some big infrastructure projects, and birthed the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare.) Barry Goldwater called the results a “dime-store New Deal”—programs for a president who was less ambitious than Harry Truman but didn’t want to challenge the post-Roosevelt order. But Eisenhower was president and Goldwater wasn’t.

Similarly, Richard Nixon ratified the core elements of the Great Society. Yes, he pared back some of it. He accelerated the process, already underway before he took office, of clearing out its semi-radical side—all those activists who thought they’d take that “maximum feasible participation” talk seriously. But Medicare, Medicaid, food stamps, the expanded federal role in education: Nixon kept those in place, and so did Ronald Reagan. Call it the Great Society Lite, or maybe the Pretty Good Society.

Republicans have spent the last eight years denouncing Obamacare, first as a concept and then as a law. But they’ve denounced a lot of things over the years. As of now, Phil Klein writes, the Democrats “have won the central philosophical argument, and Republicans are reduced to fighting over the mechanics.” He’s talking about health care, but you can apply his words to more than that.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2mfeUDp
via IFTTT

US Consumer Spending Highest Since 2008 As Economic Confidence Hits Record High: Gallup

Perhaps it is the last hurrah of the Trump post-election euphoria  but according to Gallup there were two notable development in February.

First, Americans’ daily self-reports of spending climbed to an average of $101 in February. This, Gallup reports, was the highest average for the month of February since 2008, when spending averaged $106. The latest monthly average is up $13 from January’s figure, but still lower than December’s holiday-influenced $105.

Gallup notes that this is the seventh daily spending average of $100 or more that Gallup has recorded for any month over nine years of tracking Americans’ spending reports, and the only one in February since 2008. During that year – but before the global financial crisis in the fall – Americans’ monthly average spending exceeded $100 four times.

What makes the Gallup report even more surprising were previous reports that due to a delay in the payment of Tax refunds by the US Treasury, spending would be muted in the past month. The latest data not only refutes this assumption but suggests that the outcome was just the opposite of what many had expected.

Additionally, Gallup observes that since 2008, Americans’ spending in the month of February has generally been similar to their January spending, though it is common to see a slight increase in February after January’s seasonal, post-holiday drop. But the January-to-February increase in 2017 is larger than usual, with this year’s $13 bump outpacing the previous record $9 increases in 2008 and 2014.

That said, the spending spree was not uniform and was mostly thanks to wealthier consumers.  The increase in spending was slight — to $73 from $70 in January — among Americans living in households that earn less than $90,000 annually. The increase among higher earners was much larger. Consumers in households earning $90,000 or more annually spent significantly more in February than in January — $168 versus $142. This $26 month-to-month increase is one of the largest Gallup has found for this group in its nine years of tracking.

U.S. Consumer Spending, by Annual Household Income

Gallup’s bottom line: Americans’ views of the U.S. economy have improved markedly since Donald Trump’s election in November; and with stock market averages reaching new highs this year, they may be in a position to feel more comfortable than they have been in loosening their purse strings.

Yet while there is a distinct risk that disappointment with Trump policies could result in a sharp slowdown, while a market slump would lead to far lower spending, for now there is no wuch concern as confirm by the second notable Gallup observation, namely that economic confidence in the latest week hit an all time high: “Many Americans either gained or regained economic optimism last week, as Gallup’s U.S. Economic Confidence Index soared seven points to hit +16. This marks the highest weekly average in Gallup’s nine-year trend. The index has recovered the ground it lost over the week of Jan. 30-Feb. 5, when it fell from the previous record high of +14 to +8 and languished at that lower level for the next three weeks.”

One possible catalyst for the latest surge in confidence is Trump’s February 28 address to Congress.

Last week was an eventful one for the U.S. economy. President Donald Trump gave his maiden address to Congress on Feb. 28, emphasizing his key economic policy goals such as lowering the corporate tax rate. Those who watched the speech were generally pleased with it, and traders on Wall Street were decidedly upbeat: Stock markets rallied on Wednesday, and the Dow Jones industrial average closed above 21,000 for the first time in its history. Federal Reserve Board Chair Janet Yellen also spoke favorably of current economic conditions in a speech on Friday.

Gallup admits that it is is impossible to know which of these events played the most important role in boosting Americans’ confidence last week, “though it seems unlikely that Yellen’s remarks influenced the public much given her low name recognition.” Trump, meanwhile, commanded a large national audience, and his speech likely helped spark the stock market’s record-setting performance the next day.

And here, another interesting twist: while one would expect Republican confidence to soar, it was Democrats who showed the largest
improvement in economic confidence from Wednesday to Sunday of last
week,
the period after Trump’s speech and the stock market rally. Over
the seven days leading up these two events (Feb. 22-28), Democrats
registered an index score of -7; for the five-day period of March 1-5,
their score rose to 0. Republicans, on the other hand, showed modest
gains; their index score rose from +45 to +48 in the same time frame.

As Democrats, by and large, disapprove
of Trump’s job performance as president, this would seem to suggest
that other factors, such as the stock market rally, may have helped
shape economic attitudes last week.

Breaking out confidence between current condition and the future outlook shows another interesting divergence: in February, one-third of U.S. adults (33%) described economic conditions as “excellent” or “good,” while 20% rated them as “poor.” This resulted in a current conditions score of +13 for the month — a three-point increase from January’s score and a nine-year high for this component.

Meanwhile, opinions about the future trajectory of the economy soured last month. Less than half of U.S. adults (48%) said economic conditions were “getting better,” while nearly as many (45%) said they were getting worse — yielding a score of +3 for the economic outlook component. In January, the economic outlook component averaged +11.

Gallup U.S. Economic Confidence Index Components

Gallup’s conclusion:

Though confidence in the economy appeared to stall in the month of February after rising steadily throughout the past three months, it may have gained a second wind last week after Trump’s speech to Congress and the stock market’s strong performance.

Our take: markets continue to soar on consumer confidence, while consumer confidence – reportedly – is rising on all time highs in the stock market. This circular feedback loop, which is self-referential and illogical, works for time until eventually there is a snap (just like with the stock with the same ticker) and with the S&P now at the upper range of all Wall Street estimates, and even established organizations like the OECD warning that the market is “disconnected” from reality, the surge in confidence, and spending, may be about to come to an abrupt end, at the worst possible time for the Trump administration.

via http://ift.tt/2lTBYWo Tyler Durden

Now That He’s Found It, Rand Paul Really Doesn’t Like GOP’s Obamacare Repeal Bill

House Republican leaders on Monday night unveiled their plan to repeal and replace—or at least modify—the Affordable Care Act, and the bill is drawing negative reviews from U.S. Sen. Rand Paul.

Paul (R-Kentucky) took to Twitter and made an appearance on Fox News on Tuesday morning to slam the House GOP health care bill and predict its demise.

“This is Obamacare light. It will not pass. Conservatives are not going to take it,” Paul told Fox & Friends. He said the bill will “do nothing” to bring health care costs down or to restrict the steady rise of premiums.

On Twitter, the libertarian-ish senator offered a beat-by-beat takedown of the House Republican bill, attacking it for keeping several elements of the Affordable Care Act intact, including subsidies for buying insurance (which would become a refundable tax credit in the House GOP plan) and the so-called “Cadillac Tax” on top notch insurance plans (that 40 percent tax on employer-sponsored health care plans worth more than $10,000 is supposed to take effect in 2020, but would be delayed until 2025 in the House GOP plan).

“We should be stopping mandates, taxes, and entitlements, not keeping them,” Paul tweeted.

Paul was critical of the House GOP health care effort even before the bill was published. Last week, he led reporters on a search for the health care bill, crossing from the Senate side of the Capitol to the basement room on the House side of the complex where the bill supposedly was being drafted. He was turned away at the door by a House Republican staffer.

When a draft version of the bill leaked on Friday, Paul called the proposed tax credits “a new entitlement program.” The tax credits are shaping up to the be the most controversial part of the bill for many conservative members of Congress (read Peter Suderman’s analysis of the tax credits and the rest of the bill here).

Paul was first elected to the U.S. Senate in 2010, as part of a national wave of conservative and libertarian-minded Republicans who built their campaigns around opposition to the Affordable Care Act. Paul and Rep. Mark Meadows (R-North Carolina) stressed that history in a joint op-ed published Tuesday at Fox News.

“Republicans across America ran on repealing the Big Government takeover of our health care system that is ObamaCare. Opposition to ObamaCare helped the GOP win the House in 2010, the Senate in 2014, and the White House in 2016. Repealing ObamaCare has been a key facet of all our recent victories,” they wrote.

Paul and Meadows argue that the Affordable Care Act should be repealed, in full, before a replacement bill is passed. The House Republican plan is an attempt to repeal some parts of the law while replacing others simultaneously.

That approach, Paul and Meadows said, would be tantamount to “ObamaCare provisions dressed up in shiny new GOP-branded clothes” and “would mean the loss of too many conservative votes for passage.”

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2mTtIe8
via IFTTT

Snuggies Are Blankets, Not Clothes

Not priestlyLast week I interviewed Pietra Rivoli — a Georgetown University international business and finance professor, as well as the author of The Travels of a T-Shirt in the Global Economy: An Ecomonist Examines the Markets, Power, and Politics of World Trade — about bipartisan job protectionism and hostility to free trade in the age of President Donald Trump. Rivoli’s book uses a tourist t-shirt purchased in Florida to illustrate the inter-connectedness of the global economy, and how every trade agreement, tariff, or labor deal comes with international ramifications even for a seemingly minor item local a t-shirt.

The sleeved blanket/bathrobe hybrid known as the Snuggie is no different. Which is why a recent U.S. Court of International Trade decision rejecting the U.S. government’s insistence that the Snuggie is an item of clothing — instead (as its manufacturer Allstar Marketing Group has insisted) ruling the item to be a blanket — matters.

Judge Mark Barnett based his decision in part on the company’s marketing of the item as “the blanket with sleeves!” and the fact that it doesn’t close in the back. The defendant in the case, the U.S. Department of Justice, argued the Snuggie was more akin to “priestly vestments or scholastic robes,” according to Bloomberg BNA.

Ana Wanson explains in the Washington Post that the ruling was crucial for Allstar because the Snuggie is produced in China and is therefore subject to an import tariff. Blankets come with a tariff of 8.5 percent, but “pullover apparel” is pinched for 14.9 percent. That’s a difference worth taking the government to court over. As Wanson notes:

The Snuggie case and others like it show how companies may go to great lengths to avoid the barriers governments impose on imported products. President Trump has argued for even stiffer tariffs on products from countries that refuse to negotiate better terms of trade with the United States, like Mexico and China. He has also backed away from free trade deals that would slash tariffs among many countries, and expressed a desire for negotiating deals with countries one-on-one.

Read my interview with Rivoli, who says “companies and entrepreneurs often find creative ways to deal with all kinds of barriers,” here.

from Hit & Run http://ift.tt/2lAZNH9
via IFTTT

Vacant Homes Are A Global Epidemic (And Paris Is Fighting It With A 60% Tax)

Via Stephen Punwasi of BetterDwelling.com,

Runaway real estate speculation has been filling global capitals with vacant homes, creating artificial shortages in the world’s most sought after cities. The “shortage” has made local home owners wealthy overnight, but it comes at the cost of turning lively cities into empty shells. The city of Paris has decided it’s had enough, and implemented a tax in 2015. They didn’t quite get the results they wanted, so they’re now tripling the tax to 60%.

Paris’ Empty Home Problem

Paris has been trying to deal with vacant property owners for some time. Despite warnings that the city will have to take action, the number of vacant homes is growing. There’s now 107,000 vacant homes, representing 7.5% of all residential dwellings in the city according to France’s INSEE. Deputy Mayor Ian Brossat told Le Monde that 40,000 of those vacant homes aren’t even connected to the electrical grid.

Local developers have argued that more new construction is the solution. However Brossat argues “In a city as dense as Paris, where it is very difficult to build, controlling the occupancy of housing is strategic.” It appears the city believes they have 107,000 reasons more construction is not the solution.

Vacant Home Count

Total number of vacant homes, as reported by local governments.

Paris’ Vacant Tax Increase

Paris implemented a tax recently, but it didn’t quite produce the desired outcome. Starting in 2015 the city elected to tax vacant homes the equivalent of 20% of the fair market value of rent. On January 30 this year, they decided to triple that amount to 60%. The idea isn’t to punish those fortunate enough to own a second (or twelfth) home. They’re trying to discourage speculation and promote a healthy rental market.

Vacancy As A Percentage

Percent of homes vacant as a percentage of total homes as counted by local governments.

Empty Homes Across The World

Paris’ 107,000 empty homes might seem like a lot, but it’s becoming strangely normal around the world. New York City had a whopping 318,831 vacant units in 2015. It’s a hot topic in Sydney, where 118,499 vacant units were counted in 2013. Heck, London considers it a critical issue, and they “only” have 22,000 empty homes. There’s a massive numbers of vacant homes across the globe, but only Paris has decided to take aggressive action to tackle it.

Growing populations have barely put a dent in the vacant homes in  global real estate capitals. The amount of speculation has been scaling with demand, which is a curious paradox. This signifies an issue that’s more complex than just a basic supply and demand problem.

Is the Paris’ tax going too far, or not enough?

via http://ift.tt/2n1U762 Tyler Durden