another site
In case you are wondering through Ukraine and come across a tank, the British embassy in Kiev has issued a handy pocket guide to indentifying whether it is Russian (bad guys) or Ukrainian (good guys)…
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#Putin still denying #Russia’s troops & hardware are in #Ukraine. Here’s a guide to help the #Kremlin spot its tanks: http://ift.tt/1HkFOOQ
— UK in Ukraine (@UKinUkraine) November 19, 2014
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1Aibcfb Tyler Durden
Almost exactly three years after NATO’s intervention in Libya
ended with what
we were told was a great victory, ISIS has reportedly taken
control of the Libyan city of Derna:
The black flag of ISIS flies
over government buildings. Police cars carry the group’s insignia.
The local football stadium is used for public executions. A town in
Syria or Iraq? No. A city on the coast of the Mediterranean, in
Libya.Fighters loyal to the Islamic State in Iraq and Syria are now in
complete control of the city of Derna, population of about 100,000,
not far from the Egyptian border and just about 200 miles from the
southern shores of the European Union….The Libyan branch of ISIS now has a tight grip on the city,
controlling the courts, all aspects of administration, education,
and the local radio. “Derna today looks identical to Raqqa, the
ISIS headquarters town in Syria,” [counterterrorist Noman] Benotman
told CNN.
Meanwhile, Marc Lynch, who supported the Libya war, has posted
some
reflections this week on how he got that call wrong. One
interesting point he makes is that NATO helped pave the way not
just for the present chaos in Libya, but for the present chaos in
Syria:
I had placed a great deal of emphasis on the
demonstration effects of an intervention. My hope had been that the
intervention would act to restrain other autocrats from unleashing
deadly force against protesters and encourage wavering activists to
push forward in their demands for change. Unfortunately, this only
partially panned out and had unintended negative effects. U.S.
cooperation with the Gulf Cooperation Council states in Libya
compelled it to turn a blind eye to the simultaneous crushing of
Bahrain’s uprising.The worst effects were on Syria. The Libya intervention may have
imposed a certain level of caution on Syrian President Bashar
al-Assad, leading him to search for just the right level of
repression to stay beneath the threshold for international action.
But that didn’t last for long and his violence quickly escalated.
Meanwhile, the Libya intervention almost certainly encouraged
Syrian activists and rebels—and their backers in the Gulf and
Turkey—in their hopes for a similar international campaign on their
own behalf. That unintended moral hazard probably contributed to
the escalation of Syria’s civil war.
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For ‘years’ the US stock market has traded on ‘fun-durr-mentals’ – tracking USDJPY tick for tick day in day out as algos tickle leveraged currency trades to ignote momentum in US equities and guarantee ‘proof’ in the recovery. The correlation, however, between USDJPY and stocks (US and Japanese) has begun to deteriorate rapidly since Kuroda unleased Godzilla QQE… and today it is very clear…
First Japanese algos broke…
And now US…
Maybe the divergence between stocks and VIX & HY Credit protection buyers in the last week did mean something after all as traders await some possible inconvenient truths in the fed minutes.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1uvYioR Tyler Durden
“Government,” as
Barney Frank and other progressives are fond of saying, “is just
another word for things we choose to do together.” Like rob people
blind. Sometimes the together-doing is highway robbery in the most
literal sense — as when police departments seize cash from
motorists who are never even charged with a crime. The euphemism
for that is civil asset forfeiture, and it’s gotten so out of hand
even hang-’em-high, law-and-order conservatives say it needs to
stop.
But sometimes, writes A. Barton Hinkle, the robbery is committed
not on the highways but for the sake of them — especially here in
Virginia. Just ask James and Janet Ramsey, who live near Oceana
Naval Air Station in Virginia Beach. Five years ago, the Virginia
Department of Transportation took a chunk of their property through
a controversial process known as quick take.
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Over the weekend we closed the chapter on the “mystery” of America’s collapsing labor force and the record 90+ million Americans out of the labor force.
As Pew reported, confirming what we had said all along, it has little to nothing to do with Boomers retiring – simply because under ZIRP they can’t afford to retire – and everything to do with Millennials staying in school because they can’t find the well-paying jobs they had expected, raking up $1.2 trillion (and exponentially rising) in government-funded student debt in the process. To wit:
More and more Americans are outside the labor force entirely. Who are they? According to the October jobs report, more than 92 million Americans — 37% of the civilian population aged 16 and over — are neither employed nor unemployed, but fall in the category of “not in the labor force.” That means they aren’t working now but haven’t looked for work recently enough to be counted as unemployed. While that’s not quite a record — figures have been a bit higher earlier this year — the share of folks not in the labor force remains near all-time highs.
You might think legions of retiring Baby Boomers are to blame, or perhaps the swelling ranks of laid-off workers who’ve grown discouraged about their re-employment prospects. While both of those groups doubtless are important (though just how important is debated by labor economists), our analysis of Bureau of Labor Statistics data suggests another key factor: Teens and young adults aren’t as interested in entering the work force as they used to be, a trend that predates the Great Recession.
But that’s just the beginning. Because as we have also covered on various occasions in the past, there is a just as important question of just what these “students” spend their money on. Among the items revealed: “A U.S. Middle District Court indictment alleges that Price spent much of the loan money on crack cocaine, cars, motorcycles, jewelry, tattoos and video games.” And iPhones of course, because someone has to indirectly provide US subsidies to the NSA’s favorite company (read “NSA Mocks Apple’s “Zombie” Customers; Asks “Your Target Is Using A BlackBerry? Now What?”).
Now we know one more thing that America’s young adults, of whom some 24% expect that their debt will ultimately be forgiven, are blowing Uncle Sam’s debt on. The answer: high-school level classes.
According to the WSJ, “college students are increasingly spending federal financial aid and taking on debt for high school-level courses that don’t count toward a degree, despite mounting evidence the courses are ineffective and may contribute to higher dropout rates.“
Shocking? Well not really: after all when student debt is easier to procure than subprime loans in 2005, and when nobody in government actually checks if it is used prudently, is there any wonder the same individuals who recklessly will spend money they can never repay on anything but their future, will spend it on the dumbest possible things? Perhaps it is more surprising that they used it for “noble” purposes in the first place.
The number of college students taking at least one remedial course rose to 2.7 million in the 2011-2012 academic year from 1.04 million in 1999-2000, federal data show. During the same span, the amount of federal grants spent by undergraduates enrolled in at least one remedial course rose 380%, after inflation, Education Department figures show. There was also a drastic rise in remedial students taking on student debt.
The one social class most “enslaved” by this “not quite free” debt handout? Poor, underprivileged students of course, those who can least afford to graduate with tens of thousands in debt.
The trends reflect a sharp rise over the past decade in enrollment at community colleges, which disproportionately serve low-income, minority and older populations. About 40% of students entering community colleges enroll in at least one remedial course, according to the Education Department; only about 1 in 4 of them will earn a degree or certificate.
“You clearly see that a big part of the problem is that students of color, first-generation students in low socioeconomic status are getting stuck” in remedial courses, said Eloy Oakley, president of Long Beach City College in Southern California. “They’re getting placed in these courses and they’re not coming out.”
Students are typically placed in remedial courses for English and math and because they score poorly on standardized tests. Federal law permits them to spend financial aid on as much as a year’s worth of remediation.
Ironically, the very classes this debt is spent to finance essentially assure that the student will never even succeed in graduating college:
Academics and senior officials within the Education Department increasingly view the remedial courses themselves as a major barrier to college completion, particularly among minorities. Many students become discouraged and could succeed without remediation, while others could benefit from shorter, more-targeted catch-up sessions, research shows.
Multiple studies have concluded that, for most students, remediation either hurts or has no effect on their odds of earning a college degree or certificate. The studies have compared the outcomes of borderline students—those just above and just below the cutoff for getting into college-level courses. In a 2012 National Bureau of Economic Research paper, two Columbia University researchers found that students who appeared to have been misplaced in remediation were 8% more likely to drop out than those who went directly into college courses.
As a result, some schools have finally started analyzing what the IRR of remedial schooling is: Long Beach City College is experimenting with how it assesses students and places them in remedial classes. Before 2012, it placed all students based on how they scored on a standardized test. Since then, the school has launched a program to place students from local high schools based on their grade-point averages, which officials believe are a better predictor of how students will perform in college-level courses.
Within the program, the share of first-year students at LBCC going directly into college-level coursework has tripled, to 39% for English and 32% for math. And the school finds that on average, students who would have been slated for remediation are performing as well as others.
Leangkheng Ouk, 20 years old, was slated to take remedial English and math at the school because she performed poorly on her standardized test, despite being a B student in high school. Under the new system, she went directly into college-level courses in 2012 and earned a 3.8 GPA before transferring this year. She now attends California State University, Long Beach, where she is on track to earn a bachelor’s degree in business management.
“I was glad they placed me in the higher courses actually on my level, so I don’t waste time and can be able to transfer in two years,” said Ms. Ouk, a Cambodian national and U.S. permanent resident who is the first member of her family to go to college. Ms. Ouk has used scholarship money, federal aid and wages earned from a part-time job to cover her education. “If I was placed in a remedial class I would have to stay in LBCC longer. I would have used my financial aid grants.
And now, after years of delays and long after the student loan bubble reached unprecedented proportions, the Government is finally deciding to “take a look”:
Now, the high dropout rate among remedial-education students—along with a sharp rise in student debt—is fueling debate about whether the government should be more stringent in awarding student aid. Critics—ranging from some think-tank academics and conservatives to a trustee of a community-college system in Texas—say aid should be targeted toward students who are better-prepared.
Keep in mind this is the same government that lied to “stupid” Americans to pass Obamacare. Then again, considering what these same Americans spend their unsecured, garnishable debt on, perhaps Dr. Gruber’s real and only crime was getting caught.
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1ub8yiV Tyler Durden
Last night the U.S. Senate could not muster the
60 votes that would have allowed debate and a vote on the USA
FREEDOM Act to proceed. For most privacy and liberty advocates, the
USA FREEDOM Act was a first step toward reining in the National
Security Agency’s (NSA) pervasive spying on innocent American
citizens. While this
version of the bill was far from perfect, it would …
…rein in the dragnet collection of data by the National
Security Agency (NSA), increase the transparency of Foreign
Intelligence Surveillance Court (FISA Court) decision – making,
provide businesses the ability to release information regarding
FISA requests, create an independent advocate to argue cases before
the FISA Court,and impose new and shorter sunsets on controversial
surveillance authorities.
The future Senate majority leader Sen. Mitch McConnell (R-Ky.)
strenuously opposed the bill declaring that passing it would amount
to “tying
our hands behind our back.” McConnell was able to keep 42
Republicans in line so that debate on the bill could not go
forward. Among those voting against debate, was Sen. Rand Paul
(R-Ky.). Politico
reported:
Opposition was led by Senate GOP Leader Mitch McConnell and
colleague Sen. Rand Paul, who both voted down the legislation,
though for different reasons. McConnell, like many Republicans,
voted it down because he believed the reforms went too far, while
Paul voted against the bill because it did not go far enough.Paul said immediately after the vote that he “felt bad” about
his vote against the motion.“They probably needed my vote,” he said, opposing Leahy’s bill
because it would extend the sunset provisions for the laws
authorizing surveillance. “It’s hard for me to vote for something I
object to so much.”
Although his single vote would not have been enough to open up
debate, Paul should nevertheless have heeded
the insight of the developer of radar Robert Alexander
Watson-Watt who explained, “Give them the third best to go on with;
the second best comes too late, the best never comes.” I am no
parliamentarian, but it appears that under
Senate rules because Paul voted with the prevailing side, he
could move to have the Senate reconsider the bill, although it
seems unlikely that he will do so.
Paul and the rest of his fellow citizens may well come to rue
the day that he allowed the perfect to get in the way of the merely
better.
See below Reason TV’s interview with NSA whistleblower William
Binney.
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If one were to look up the definition of hypocrisy, the image of BoJ head Kuroda should be front-and-center. Having tripled-down on his money-printing and ETF-buying largesse just last week, he came out swinging last night at the government’s fiscal irresponsibility blasting Abe’s policies by saying Japan’s fiscal health “is the responsibility of parliament and the government, not an issue for the central bank to be held responsible for.” Aside from the fact that he is directly monetizing all JGB issuance – thus enabling Abe’s arrogant fiscal stimulus plan (by issuing 30Y and 40Y debt), Bloomberg notes that “Kuroda is making it crystal clear the government has to tackle the debt problem and if fiscal trust is lost that’s not going to be on the BOJ.” The world has truly gone mad.
Seemingly paying the same lip-service as Bernanke and Yellen in the US and Draghi in Europe, BoJ’s Haruhiko Kuroda is carefully positioning the blame for lack of growth and economic chaos on the government’s lack of growth-oriented policies… and not the central bank’s enabling experiments… (via Bloomberg)
Bank of Japan chief Haruhiko Kuroda emphasized the onus is on the government to strengthen its finances after Prime Minister Shinzo Abe postponed a sales-tax hike and outlined plans to boost fiscal stimulus.
“It’s the responsibility of parliament and the government, not an issue for the central bank to be held responsible for,” Kuroda said when asked about risks to Japan’s fiscal health. The BOJ’s job is to achieve its inflation target, he said at a press conference in Tokyo.
Kuroda’s repeated comments at a press conference today on the importance of fiscal discipline indicate the governor is unhappy and may signal a change in strategy, said Credit Suisse Group AG economist Hiromichi Shirakawa.
…
“Kuroda is making it crystal clear the government has to tackle the debt problem and if fiscal trust is lost that’s not going to be on the BOJ,” said Shirakawa, a former BOJ official. “This is true, but he used to highlight that the BOJ and the government were working together. Abe might have created an enemy by postponing the sales-tax hike.”
* * *
So when Japan finally goes entirely tits-up, we now know, it was all Abe’s fault… and nothing to do with reckless money-printing and leveraged buying of the nation’s stocks by a maniacal central banker…
Is this not the same as a price-cutting drug dealer blaming the drug-addicted customer for not being able to afford better drugs?
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/14LlTtM Tyler Durden
Submitted by Charles Hugh-Smith of OfTwoMinds blog,
What do we do when the bubble economy cannot be reflated?
It is generally conceded that we are living in an era of Peak Everything: peak central bank omnipotence, peak powerless of the non-elites, peak wealth inequality, peak media-induced delusion, peak market-rigging, peak bogus official statistics, peak propaganda, peak bread and circuses, peak deception, peak distraction, peak sociopathology, peak central statism, peak debt, peak leverage, peak derealization–need I go on?
Few dare ask these questions as they raise a terrifying follow-on question: what do we do when the bubble economy cannot be reflated?
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/14LhuXB Tyler Durden
It was only a matter of time before America’s
economic grab for global imperium, embodied in tax laws and,
particularly, the Foreign Account Tax Compliant Act (FATCA), ran up
against somebody who might actually be able to push back. Not
content to roll those who reside within its own borders, the
federal government insists that U.S. citizens and even long-term
residents who now live abroad and may not have had a glimpse of
amber waves of grain in many years owe Uncle Sam a piece of the
take—and that financial institutions around the world must snitch
on them to ease the mugging.
Such a broad definition of those subject to the IRS’s tender
ministrations reaches far and wide. It reaches so far that American
tax authorities say Boris Johnson
(pictured), the mayor of London,
owes capital gains taxes to the land of his birth, even though
he hasn’t lived here since he was five years old.
The thing about Boris Johnson, who
says he won’t pay, is that he’s not your average pushover for
the thugs who keep the U.S. government fat and happy. He’s not just
the mayor of an important city, but he’s a player in Britain’s
ruling Conservative Party, and
discussed as a potential future prime minister of the
country.
Perhaps ironically, the U.K. was once forced to spin off an
important North American subsidiary partially over tax issues. That
subsidiary appears to have learned the wrong lessons from the
unpleasant incident.
All of which is to say, while the U.K.
knuckled under to U.S. demands that it act as a deputy American tax
collector, Johnson is pretty well positioned to put a hitch in
that arrangement.
The question is whether Johnson, as a connected poitical figure,
makes separate peace with the IRS, emphasizing that the IRS’s reach
applies only to the powerless. That might have some interesting
international ramifications. Or will he carve out a wider exception
that gives others a little relief from America’s official
muggers?
Or maybe the IRS will just exercise America’s imperial muscle
and try to make even Johnson turn out his pockets to demonstrate
its power.
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I’d like to share a little about my fundraising efforts for Veritaseum, one of the most exciting, disruptive and likely controversial start-ups in the FinTech space… ever.
Veritaseum is the company behind my brainchild, “UltraCoin”. For those who don’t know, UltraCoin utilizes the technology behind the Bitcoin blockchain to create unbreachable contracts and unbreakable promises which can then be programmed to mimic the functions of practically any business that entails the transfer of value… Essentially any business. it does so with more trust, more safety, more flexibility and less cost than any legacy situation that makes heavy use of middlemen that extract rents in exchange for questionable value add.
I believe that this “invention” is likely the economic and paradigm shredding equivalent of the advent of the Internet, simply on larger scale. First, there’s the sheet potential of scale for Bitcoin, and the precedent of its predecessor and compatriot in protocol-based disintermediation, the Internet…
Second is our patent pending value transfer technology embedded into the blockchain itself. It, in a nutshell, totally and absolutely disintermediates banks, brokerages and exchanges through the use of these programmable “unbreakable promises”…
Most with just slight modicum of imagination and insight would be hard pressed not to be exicted, or at the very least, extremely curious about these new technologies, products and services. This is particularly true since the financial services sector is so ripe for disintermediation – reference BitLicense Part 4: Fact- Bank Product Prices Rise Faster Than Income & ALL Other Expenses, Fact- UltraCoin Can Drop Bank Product Prices Dramatically.
Alas, I have received practically no attention from the traditional VC community and even less from the Bitcoin community, and this is despite a sterling track record of calling paradigm shifts such as this one, patents pending and the first functional product in the industry.
So, what is a middle-aged nascent entrepenuer to do? There actually is a meaningful pool of potential investors who do see value in what I described above. My ex-client and subscriber base. Many of my followers have taken it upon themselves to autonomously approach me for investment, including prominent UHNW families (globally known), technology entrepreneurs with recent liquidity events ($600M+), and long time readers who have connections. I’ll share the story of one such long time (since 2009) reader below.
Of the early seed investors, this British chap was actually the first to send in money. He called and said he heard me say i was starting a bitcoin-based company and said he wanted to invest. I told him I have another seed investment coming and I was closing the valuation in this round. He wired the money from overseas in less than 48 hours. I was impressed. He used to run a fund-of-funds marketing company and told me that he had many powerful contacts in the UK. I was reluctant at first, and uber-busy. I had just secured verbal commitments for $12 million (on a $4M round) when this chap finally convinced me to swin across the pond. I’ll be honest, I was reluctant. So, there I was, arriving at Picadilly Circus going down to the Royal Automotive Club where he arranged for me to stay and have my first introductory meeting with him and his associate.
This is olde English money, and quite a lovely place to boot. So, jet-lagged, and with much work to do in a place that doesn’t allow computer or cell phone use in any of the public areas (yes, quite old school) I meet in the dining area…
We go over the string of meeting that have been set up and the “Thought Leader’s dinner” that has been setup up on my behalf as the keynote speaker. The first two meetings were one’s that I set up myself from the states through my contacts from India and Wall Street banks. They third stop was to drop off some coins in the Thames River, just under London Bridge. Guess who caught them???
Expect one helluva show when this airs. That’s all I’ve got to say on that topic for now. After a couple of more meetings I headed over to the Cavalry & Guards Club on Piccadilly for the dinner. An interesting, old money club that is steeped in English military history.
The dinner began with quick tutorial on the history of the club and its importance re: the battle of Waterloo, etc. The dinner included over 40 extremely interesting people. Here’s the place setting before we got started – each and everyone of the invtees placed at the table appeared. Standing room only – and all to hear what yours truly had to say about Bitcoin’s investment potential.
The room was packed with brainpower – packed! Since they are big on privacy, I will not reveal names, but I can reveal statistics. Over $35 Billion dollars of assets under management directly controlled by the people sitting in those seats. Over $1.2 Trillion controlled by the corporate entities that they represented. Industries included banking, asset management, insurance, real estate, telecomm, energy, commodities trading and medical. Nearly half were successful serial entrepeneurs in their own right, with several having had their own multiple liquidity events. Even a member from the Bitcoin foundation was present. The vast majority were bitcoin skeptical. As for my presentation??? Let’s say there’s some big money, some olde money, and some money that many thought would never flow into this space any time soon that is quite anxious to investigate crashing the party.
Between Europe and the US, I plan on raising the largest investment to ever go into a distributed trust (the core tech behind bitcoin) ever!
via Zero Hedge http://ift.tt/1AhLIhP Reggie Middleton