Category: zerohedge

Authored by Joshua Krause via ReadyNutrition.com,

There are a lot of reasons why people prep for disasters, but there’s one reason that’s far more popular than the others. What people fear most when they think about what would happen if society collapsed, isn’t hunger, disease, or exposure. They fear what other people might do to them when the chips are down. They worry that members of their community might hurt or kill them to survive.

And though most preppers won’t admit it, I think most of us fear what we might be capable of in a bad situation. We don’t have to find out if we have enough food stocked up in our pantries.

However, it should be noted that there is an alternate view on what most people will do if society collapses. For historians who study disasters and social collapse, there is hope that people won’t automatically turn into savages if the grid goes down. A writer for Slate recently interviewed several experts on this topic, and here’s what they had to say:

And there are countless examples of people being altruistic and coming together during disasters; perhaps even more so than examples of people turning on each other.

 

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Amazon’s dominance of all things retail-related in the US is starting to effect on how packaged goods are marketed: Big Brands are starting to give up on expensive advertising campaigns because customers no longer see the value in expert branding. Now, thanks to Jeff Bezos and his algorithms, they're fixated at finding the lowest price available.

According to MarketWatch, as Amazon and Wal-Mart make bigger pushes into the packaged-goods categories, brand names are spending less on marketing and backing away from their original models, James Cakmak, an analyst at Monness, Crespi, Hardt wrote in a Monday note. The $800 billion consumer packaged-goods category includes name-brand detergents, foods and personal care items, with large companies such as PepsiCo Inc., Johnson & JNJ and Mondelez International Inc.

“We see these companies starting to give up, and that’s a bad thing for the industry, consumers and the country,” Cakmak said.

Amazon’s Prime Service, which attracted millions of customers by offering two-day shipping, comprehensive music and movie libraries, monthly deals and even discounts to customers on government assistance. According to estimates from Morningstar, nearly 79 million U.S. households now have an Amazon Prime membership, up from around 66 million at the end of last year – a number that rivals the total cable subscribers in the US.

In the past, packaged-goods companies were able to dominate their sector by controlling how the goods were distributed and placed on the shelf at retail stores. With prime presentation in stores, the companies would spend heavily on marketing, which made up 20% to 25% of their budgets, to influence consumers’ buying decisions.

Now, instead of fighting for shelf space, Cakmak says the companies appear to be scaling back spending. In his quarterly check with major advertising agencies, he found that consumer packaged-goods companies were spending less on marketing. More worrying were reports that these companies were more focused on protecting the bottom line, rather than investing in growth and new innovative strategies to combat the online models.

Packaged-goods spending is also suffering as Americans face stagnant wage growth and rampant inflation in housing, health care and tuition costs.

Cakmak says this trend will only intensify with Amazon leading this change as it increases its push into food and other goods, with its own private label brands and its recent bid for Whole Foods Market Inc. Wal-Mart is also playing a part, as it has shifted more into e-commerce with its acquisition of Jet.com in August 2016 and its discounts for online orders.

With their fixation on price, Amazon and Wal-Mart have commodified packaged goods, transforming the market into one that’s dependent more on pricing than on brand reputation.

“Now it’s all about price, especially as Amazon and Wal-Mart fight on a race to the bottom,” Cakmak wrote.

Let the deflationary race-to-the-bottom price wars begin.
 

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Authord by Jeff Thomas via InternationalMan.com,

“Welcome to America, where your assets are literally the government’s business, and freedom is anything but free.”—Claire Bernish, The Free Thought Project

For some time, I’ve been forewarning readers that, as the governments of the former “free” world unravel, they’ll introduce capital controls, both to continue to fund their failing policies and to limit the freedom of their citizenries.

I’ve envisioned this as a “pincer” of sorts.

First, it would be necessary to institute laws that allow authorities to confiscate the assets of anyone whom they “suspected” of a crime. (It’s essential to understand that an actual arrest is unnecessary, as that would allow the individual the opportunity to prove his innocence in a trial. No trial means he can never regain the confiscated assets.)

 

The second half of the pincer would be a law requiring the reporting of assets – a detailed declaration of all monetary holdings. (Of course, it would not be possible to keep such reporting thoroughly up to date, as it would be ever-changing. This would ensure virtually continual guilt through the failure to report.)

Civil Asset Forfeiture

In observing the US, we’re witnessing the completion of the pincer. The first half has been in place for some time, under civil asset forfeiture laws. It’s been described as a process in which law enforcement officers take assets from persons suspected of involvement with crime or illegal activity without necessarily charging the owners with wrongdoing.

That concept may seem odd to the reader, as, surely, if someone had committed a crime, the authorities would wish to charge him, then see to it that he was tried in court, so that he could be punished for his transgressions.

But what if the individual in question was not, in the traditional sense, a criminal; that a law had been written that would effectively define virtually all citizens as criminals? And what if the objective were not to prosecute offenders, but simply to rob them of their possessions?

In this light, civil asset forfeiture makes complete sense. First, the authorities decide that they want to take what they desire from others. Then they target an individual who possesses desired assets (i.e., home, car, business, bank accounts, wealth in a safe deposit box, etc.). They then detain the individual, state that he’s suspected of a crime (suspected drug dealer? Terrorist sympathiser? Possible tax cheat?) and seize his assets.

In this scenario, the authorities are actually advantaged by not charging the individual. He has no recourse, as he can’t demand his day in court for a charge that hasn’t been laid against him. Therefore, he can’t regain his assets, and they become the property of the authorities.

Although civil asset forfeiture never seems to appear on the evening news, it’s not because it’s a minor operation. Indeed, the total annual take now exceeds that of the annual total for burglaries by traditional criminals (those who rob others without a badge).

Declaration of Assets

Considering the severity of the above, it would be difficult to imagine that civil asset forfeiture laws are only half of the pincer, yet that’s exactly the case.

The other half is Senate Bill 1241, which is intended “to improve the prohibitions on money laundering, and for other purposes.” It requires that anyone travelling beyond US borders declare his assets in writing and in detail, plus provide ongoing access to all accounts held by the individual. In essence, it’s providing the government with a license to track your cash, cryptocurrencies, and other assets in perpetuity. Should, at any point, your declaration come into question as to its accuracy, the entirety of those assets could be seized, not just those that were unreported. In addition, you could face a prison sentence of up to five years.

The bill also seeks to curtail the individual’s right to travel outside the US. Whilst this may seem to be a less significant loss, as compared to the above, it serves the purpose of making it impossible for the individual to escape the clutches of his government by relocating to another country. He is, in effect, a trapped rat.

In addition, he’s a trapped rat who, having lost his assets to arbitrary confiscation, has been crippled economically. He can no longer defend himself, as he no longer has the means to pay an attorney.

How This Is Likely to Play Out

At present, asset confiscation is undertaken largely at a local level. Police go after many people at random. However, they also have the ability to target specific individuals that they know of, either for personal reasons or because they feel the haul would be substantial. Senate Bill 1241 places the robberies on a national level. It provides a database by which authorities can review possible targets, based upon their assets. It also allows the authorities the opportunity to go after those people who behaved in a manner deemed unacceptable to authorities.

For example, a national repository of information would allow authorities to target specific individuals who questioned the government or sought to live independently of governmental controls. Both Aldous Huxley and George Orwell described this concept as being central to the assurance that all citizens would be fully compliant with their rulers’ edicts, 100% of the time. One deviation from acceptable behaviour could result in a total loss of assets and freedom.

It would work like this: Like the FATCA legislation in the US, the premise is:

1. An individual is required to provide a detailed report of his wealth (however small).

2. The regulatory body chooses to regard the report as “in error,” or “incomplete.”

3. The law then allows all the assets to be confiscated, including those portions that were correctly reported.

Of course, we’d like to think that no reasonable government would abuse power in this way. Unfortunately, history shows that any government that issues a license to itself to rob its citizenry, invariably uses (and abuses) that license.

The beauty of such a system is that it need not be enforced often. Once people understand that, at any moment, they could lose everything and have no recourse whatsoever, they learn to keep their heads down and be compliant.

From that point on, fear of government is a constant, and the population is effectively under house arrest.

In the late eighteenth century, American founding father Thomas Jefferson reportedly stated, “When government fears the people, there is liberty. When the people fear the government, there is tyranny.”

When a country degrades to the point that the government can grip its people in the pincers of arbitrary loss of assets, with no chance of recompense through the justice system, it’s safe to say that people can plan on henceforth living in fear.

*  *  *

The pincer’s grip grows tighter by the day… Unfortunately, the coming global economic crisis will only make the bankrupt US government a more aggressive thief. If you haven’t taken steps to protect your money, it’s almost too late. This is a frightening truth. But if you act now, you can still do something about it. New York Times best-selling author Doug Casey and his team can show you concrete ways to protect your financial freedom. Click here for the details.

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With the shift in the "Russian collusion" narrative over the last 24 hours, which has seamlessly drifted away from Donald Trump (Senior) and now seeks to pin the Putin-Puppet tail on his son, Donald Trump Jr, it appears The New York Times is also once again shifting the narrative. Having admitted he took a meeting regarding potentially compromising information on Hillary as part of opposition research – just as the Clinton campaign did against Trump, only using Ukraine sources – NYT now reports that three people have told them that Trump Jr. was told the damaging information promised about Hillary Clinton was part of a Russian government effort to help his father's presidential campaign.

With Donald Trump Jr volunteering to cooperate with any and all intelligence probes into the original narrative (and lawyering up) – where the only compromising information was that an allegedly Kremlin-linked lawyer represented to having anti-Clinton information which she did not – the focus has now shifted on Trump Jr. taking the meeting "knowing" the source of the information was the Kremlin, at least according to what the three NYT sources allege.

Before arranging a meeting with a Kremlin-connected Russian lawyer he believed would offer him compromising information about Hillary Clinton, Donald Trump Jr. was informed in an email that the material was part of a Russian government effort to aid his father’s candidacy, according to three people with knowledge of the email.

 

The email to the younger Mr. Trump was sent by Rob Goldstone, a publicist and former British tabloid reporter who helped broker the June 2016 meeting. In a statement on Sunday, Mr. Trump acknowledged that he was interested in receiving damaging information about Mrs. Clinton, but gave no indication that he thought the lawyer might have been a Kremlin proxy.

 

Mr. Goldstone’s message, as described to The New York Times by the three people, indicates that the Russian government was the source of the potentially damaging information. It does not elaborate on the wider effort by Moscow to help the Trump campaign.

Once again, the NYT admits:

There is no evidence to suggest that the promised damaging information was related to Russian government computer hacking that led to the release of thousands of Democratic National Committee emails.

But, then prompts the narrative…

…the email is likely to be of keen interest to the Justice Department and congressional investigators, who are examining whether any of President Trump’s associates colluded with the Russian government to disrupt last year’s election. American intelligence agencies have determined that the Russian government tried to sway the election in favor of Mr. Trump.

Trump Jr.'s newly-appointed lawyer dismissed the Times' report in a statement to the newspaper.

”In my view, this is much ado about nothing. During this busy period, Robert Goldstone contacted Don Jr. in an email and suggested that people had information concerning alleged wrongdoing by Democratic Party front-runner, Hillary Clinton, in her dealings with Russia,” he said to The Times in an email on Monday. “Don Jr.’s takeaway from this communication was that someone had information potentially helpful to the campaign and it was coming from someone he knew. Don Jr. had no knowledge as to what specific information, if any, would be discussed.”

And yet, since the meeting touches on a question at the heart of several concurrent investigations into Russian collusion with the Trump campaign, namely whether Trump associates colluded with Russian officials or representatives, the latest narrative involving Trump Jr. extends the shelf life of the "Russia" story well into the foreseeable future, much to the delight of Adam Schiff, the ranking Democrat on the House Intelligence Committee, who on Monday suggested that Donald Trump Jr. may have been the first individual to become aware of the Russians’ intention to help his father in the 2016 presidential election.

“So if this is correct, the first person who may have found out that the Russians had decided not just to gather information about what the candidates’ positions might be or what they might do in office,” was Trump's eldest son, Schiff told Maddow.

 

“But they had made a decision to intervene to try to help a candidate, the first person who may have learned that was the president’s son, through this email because at that time, we couldn’t be sure whether this was going to go beyond the intelligence gathering operation.”

Three things, however, are problematic.

First, we know the meeting ended with nothing – implying that if indeed the Kremlin was the source of this intelligence gatherin operation, then they wasted a perfectly good meeting to build goodwill with Trump. Furthermore, the meeting took place one month before the alleged Russian hacking of the DNC and long before the Podesta emails were distributed on Wikileaks.

Second, those at the top of the campaign said they never heard about the meeting because it was inconsequential (The Kremlin obviously also denied knowledge of the meeting).

Third, NYT admits 19 paragraphs down that the author of the email that allegedly confirms the source is the Kremlin denies it.

But Mr. Goldstone, who wrote the email over a year ago, denied any knowledge of involvement by the Russian government in the matter, saying that never dawned on him. “Never, never ever,” he said. Later, after the email was described to The Times, efforts to reach him for further comment were unsuccessful.

 

In the interview, he said it was his understanding that Ms. Veselnitskaya was simply a “private citizen” for whom Mr. Agalarov wanted to do a favor. He also said he did not know whether Mr. Agalarov’s father, Aras Agalarov, a Moscow real estate tycoon known to be close to President Vladimir V. Putin of Russia, was involved. The elder Mr. Agalarov and the younger Mr. Trump worked together to bring a Trump Tower to Moscow, but the project never got off the ground.

 

Mr. Goldstone also said his recollection of the meeting largely tracked with the account given by the president’s son, as outlined in the Sunday statement Mr. Trump issued in response to a Times story on the June 2016 meeting.

Which means, that the New York Times found three sources who claim that the man who actually wrote the email is lying about the email he wrote, and that the president's son is also lying, and that (given the Kremlin was involved) the Russian government was clueless as there was no actionable information (Trump Kr walked out of the meeting). Unless, of course, the Kremlin was never involved in the first place, especially since nothing ever came out of the meeting, and Trump senior was likewise never involved, in which case it would merely come down to Goldstone boasting about his non-existent connections.

Still, the angle here is clear. By seeking to involve Trump Jr. in lieu of his father, the NYT article may potentially draw the younger Trump into special counsel Robert Mueller’s investigation of possible collusion between the Trump campaign and representatives of the Russian government. And, as Bloomberg reports, whether the meeting violated federal election law would depend on showing the younger Trump knowingly solicited or accepted information from the Russian lawyer, Natalia Veselnitskaya, that could be of value to the campaign. Since we know that no actionably information was revealed (suggesting either the Russian government knew nothing, or said lawyer had nothing to do with the Kremlin) the only question is whether Trump Jr. "actively solicited" a meeting which was pitched to him by a person, whose narrative differs from that of the NYT sources.

In short, the situation could be resolved quickly and effectively once the Goldstone's email is presented.  Incidentally, as Bloomberg also adds, "the election commission – which is frequently gridlocked along partisan lines – also could decline to act."

Finally, as The Caller reminds us, the Clinton campaign did the same thing with the Ukraine government that Trump Jr. is now being accused of doing with a Russian:

A veteran DNC operative who previously worked in the Clinton White House, Alexandra Chalupa, worked with Ukrainian government officials and journalists from both Ukraine and America to dig up Russia-related opposition research on Trump and Manafort. She also shared her anti-Trump research with both the DNC and the Clinton campaign, according to the Politico report.

 

Chalupa met with Ukrainian ambassador Valeriy Chaly and one of his aides, Oksara Shulyar, at the Ukrainian Embassy in March 2016 to talk about unearthing Paul Manafort’s Russian connections, Chalupa admitted to Politico. Four days later, Trump officially hired Manafort.

 

“The day after Manafort’s hiring was revealed, she briefed the DNC’s communications staff on Manafort, Trump and their ties to Russia, according to an operative familiar with the situation,” Politico reported. The Politico report also notes that the DNC encouraged Chalupa to try to arrange an interview with Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko to talk about Manafort’s ties to the former pro-Russia president of Ukraine, Viktor Yanukovych, whom Manafort previously advised.

 

* * *

After Trump’s shocking electoral victory, the Ukrainian government told Politico, “We have never worked to research and disseminate damaging information about Donald Trump and Paul Manafort.” But Andrii Telizhenko, a former Ukrainian embassy officer, told Politico that he was assigned to work with Chalupa.

 

“Oksana said that if I had any information, or knew other people who did, then I should contact Chalupa,” said Telizhenko “They were coordinating an investigation with the Hillary team on Paul Manafort with Alexandra Chalupa.”

And while we doubt this particular set of similarities will be featured in the press, we are confident that now that the "Russian collusion" story has gotten its latest boost of Adrenalin courtesy of Trump Jr, even as the similar narrative involving his father had gotten absolutely nowehere, the only topic across virtuall all media outlets for the coming week will be, you guessed it, Russia, something which will promptly drag Trump kicking and screaming on twitter, where he may finally say or do something that does have negative consequences.

via http://ift.tt/2sK1vW4 Tyler Durden

After multiple days of the New York Times and CNN rallying their progressive base around chants of ‘treason’ on the ‘startling’ revelation that Donald Trump Jr. would be so brazen as to take a meeting with someone offering opposition research on his father’s political opponent, research that, if you believe Trump Jr., turned out to be a giant “nothing burger” (to use CNN’s preferred language), a Republican Representative from Florida appeared on Wolf Blitzer to interject a little reality back into the latest narrative by pointing out that he, and most likely 99.9% of other politicians in Washington D.C., would have done exactly the same thing.

“Do I think it’s appropriate? I think I probably would have done the same thing.”

 

“I mean, it’s opposition research and you know, anybody that’s been in an election, you’re always looking to get the upper hand.”

 

“You know, keep in mind she wasn’t an official for the Russian government that way I understand it.  She’s a Russian lawyer.” 

 

“And if somebody comes to us and says, ‘Hey we’ve got information on an opponent,’ yeah, I think that’s an appropriate thing to do.”

Was it appropriate for Trump Jr to take Russia meeting? Rep. Yoho: “I probably would have done the same thing… it’s opposition research” http://pic.twitter.com/UfddUVu2nO

— The Situation Room (@CNNSitRoom) July 10, 2017

 

To that point, apparently members of the Clinton campaign were offered a sneak peak of that now infamous “Trump Dossier” last year, which was compiled by ex-British intelligence official Chris Steele and was allegedly sourced from several Russia-based contacts.  By the ‘collusion’ standards of the New York Times and CNN, isn’t this more than sufficient evidence to launch an investigation into whether the Hillary Clinton campaign ‘colluded’ with British and/or Russian intelligence to undermine the campaign of Donald Trump?

How about the anti-Trump Republican senators who allegedly ordered the original opposition study?  Shouldn’t they be investigated as well?

What about Trump’s ‘grab em by the pussy’ video, can we be certain that wasn’t stolen by a Russian intelligence official and shared with the Clinton campaign?

Or, did Clinton operatives collude with NBC to drop that very damaging piece of Trump ‘opposition research?’ 

Moreover, if an established media outlet, one that is trusted by the American public to deliver impartial news, colluded with members of the Hillary campaign to take out a candidate for President that they deemed less desirable…would that be better or worse for restoring faith in the American political system?

What about the efforts of Susan Rice and the Obama administration to spy on Trump campaign officials by turning the entire U.S. intelligence apparatus, and the FISA courts, into a political weapon?  Isn’t that more dangerous than a meeting with a random Russian lawyer that apparently yielded absolutely no information?

All very valid questions even though CNN would undoubtedly argue that we just committed treason by asking them. 

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Content originally published at iBankCoin.com

While everyone on Main street demonizes Goldman for doing God’s work, the greedy goblins from Morgan Stanley are, ever so quietly, outperforming Goldman at every turn — reducing them to a second rate investment bank.

Last quarter, Morgan’s bond desk beat out Goldman’s for the first time in six years — likely a result of inferior recruiting at the world’s ‘best’ investment bank. Over at the equities desk, Goldman posted a billion less in revenues than Morgan last year — the largest difference since 2013.

Operationally, both firms are struggling — one more than the other, however.

Ahead of earnings next week, Goldman is expected to show a trading desk decline of 16% to Morgan Stanley’s -4%.

Year to date, MS is crushing GS, +9.7% for the year, compared to Goldman’s -5.2%. Perhaps the brain drain to the Trump administration is taking a toll?

Either way, the two firms’ market caps are about to converge, with Goldman’s at 91 billion and Morgan’s approaching 85 billion.

During the last slump in financials, circa 2011, Goldman’s market cap bottomed out at $44b, about twice as large as Morgan’s. Since then, the craven misanthropes from Morgan have been busy little bees, catching up to their historical arch nemesis.

You’re almost there lads.

Look how horrible Goldman’s performance has been. Literally, everyone is laughing at their stock and income statement. Everyone.

via http://ift.tt/2u2J17r The_Real_Fly

Authored by Valentin Schmid via The Epoch Times,

When the economy started to cool in the beginning of 2016, China opened up the debt spigots again to stimulate the economy. After the failed initiative with the stock market in 2015, Chinese central planners chose residential real estate again.

And it worked. As mortgages made up 40.5 percent of new bank loans in 2016, house prices were rising at more than 10 percent year over year for most of 2016 and the beginning of 2017. Overall, they got so expensive that the average Chinese would have had to spend more than 160 times his annual income to purchase an average housing unit at the end of 2016.

Because housing uses a lot of human resources and raw material inputs, the economy also stabilized and has been doing rather well in 2017, according to both the official numbers and unofficial reports from organizations like the China Beige Book (CBB), which collects independent, on-the-ground data about the Chinese economy.

“China Beige Book’s new Q2 results show an economy that improved again, compared to both last quarter and a year ago, with retail and services each bouncing back from underwhelming Q1 performances,” states the most recent CBB report.

However, because Beijing’s central planners must walk a tightrope between stimulating the economy and exacerbating a financial bubble, they tightened housing regulations as well as lending in the beginning of 2017.

Has the Bubble Burst?

Research by TS Lombard now suggests the housing bubble may have burst for the second time after 2014.

“We expect the latest round of policy tightening in the property sector to drive down housing sales significantly over the next six months,” states the research firm, in its latest “China Watch” report.

One of the major reasons for the concern is increased regulation. Out of the 55 cities measured in the national property price index, 25 have increased regulation on housing purchases.

In Beijing, for example, some owners of residential real estate can no longer sell their apartments to private buyers—instead, they have to sell to businesses, because their apartment has been marked for business use by the authorities.

Other measures include higher down payments, price controls, and increasing the time until the unit can be sold again.

“First- and second-tier cities have enacted such draconian measures that it is nigh impossible to buy or sell a property,” states the report.

Credit Tightening

Although the central bank left its benchmark mortgage lending rate unchanged at 4.9 percent, banks have increased the rates they charge on mortgages to as high as 6 percent and, in some cases, have stopped giving out mortgages altogether because they have used up their quotas set by regulators.

The People’s Bank of China wants to lower the share of mortgage lending to 30 percent of new loans, which should influence new demand for housing.

“Unlike 10 years ago, when most Chinese households made a 50 to 70 percent down payment to buy a new apartment, more than 80 percent of borrowers in the past two years have put down 30 percent or less. With reduced mortgage funding availability, we believe it is unlikely that households will be able to finance their purchase through savings,” states the TS Lombard report.

So far, the slowdown in larger cities has been offset by more activity in smaller cities, which haven’t implemented as many tightening measures.

“Overall revenues and profits plunged in Tier 1 cities, with the slowdown concentrated primarily in the Beijing and Shanghai regions. Hiring stagnated, while cash ?ow worsened across the board,” the China Beige Book says.

However, TS Lombard expects smaller cities to follow the bigger cities with more restrictive measures for property buying, which will ultimately lead to a decline in housing transactions, if not prices outright.

“Property sales will decelerate notably in [the second half of 2017], with the monthly number of new residential housing transactions set to drop by 10 percent year-on-year, compared with a year-on-year rise of 8.3 percent in May.”

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As Democrats continue to defend an obviously failed Obamacare system, the effects of soaring rates and collapsing coverage options seem to be taking a toll on the number of people actually buying health insurance these days.  According to the “Gallup-Sharecare Well-Being Index,” the percentage of uninsured adults in the U.S. bottomed out at 10.9% in Q4 2016 but has since increased to 11.7% in just the first two quarters of 2017. 

 

For those keeping track, there are roughly 250 million adults in the United States.  Therefore, a 0.8% increase in the uninsured rate implies that roughly 2 million people have decided they’re simply not willing to continue absorbing Obamacare’s exorbitant annual premium increases. 

Not surprisingly, the biggest increases in the uninsured rate came from 18-34 year olds…you know, the people who don’t really need coverage but were forced to subsidize older, sicker people because of Obama’s view that “when you spread the wealth around it’s good for everybody”…apparently they’re no longer convinced that it was good for them. 

 

Now, while Democrats will undoubtedly blame Trump for the sudden increase in the uninsured rates, we’re going to go out on a limb and suggest it might just have more to do with soaring premiums that increased over 100%, on average, in just 4 years.

Per the chart below from the Department of Health and Human Services, the average individual purchaser of health insurance across the United States saw their premiums increase from $232 per month in 2013 to $476 per month in 2017, a ‘modest’ increase of over 100% in just a few years.  To put that into perspective, that’s nearly $3,000 per year and roughly 9% of what the median American earns each year.

 

And while it will make zero difference to those intent upon blaming the Trump administration, recall that 2017 rates were set in the summer of 2016, a time when most viewed Trump as a long-shot for the White House.

Meanwhile, as if a 100% average increase isn’t bad enough, residents of many states incurred even more devastating increases of over 200%.

 

But sure, it’s all Trump’s fault.

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From Ron Paul’s Liberty Report

No one should be surprised that neocons are unhappy with a ceasefire in Syria.

America working with Russia is a cardinal sin according to the neocon bible. Senator John McCain is very unhappy that Putin is “getting away” with this:

CBS reports:

“If you were Vladimir Putin, who I’ve gotten to know over the years, you’re sitting there and you got away with literally trying to change the outcome not just of our election. French election. Tried to overthrow the government of Montenegro, a beautiful little country,” McCain said.

 

“And there has been no penalty whatsoever,”

Speaking of getting away with things, and overthrowing governments, we know for sure that the U.S. overthrew the government of Iraq.

Was John McCain trying to stand in the way of what would become one of the biggest (if not the biggest) disgrace in American history?

?Or was John McCain saying stuff like this:

• “I am very certain that this military engagement will not be very difficult.”
• “I remain confident that we will find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq.”
• “I think most Iraqis would greet the removal of Saddam Hussein with relief and pleasure.”
• “There’s no doubt in my mind that we will prevail and there’s no doubt in my mind, once these people are gone, that we will be welcomed as liberators.”
•  “I think the victory will be rapid, within about three weeks.”
•  “…the major conflict is over, the regime change has been accomplished, and it’s very appropriate.

That’s just Iraq.

We can move around the world, from one U.S. military debacle to another, and reflect on all of McCain’s war-hungry prognostications.

The “penalty” for McCain?

He’s still Senator from Arizona 14 years later, and is regularly sought out by the American mainstream media for his opinions.

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

China has a peculiar habit of taking the latest and greatest financial innovation available, and then taking it too far. The latest example is the startup Sharing E Umbrella, which hoping to follow in the footsteps of successful bike-sharing startups, decided to – as the name implies – provide shareable imbrellas. There was just one problem: as the Shanghaiist writes only a few weeks after starting up operations in 11 cities across China, Sharing E Umbrella announced that it had lost almost all of its 300,000 umbrellas.

While the details are probably superfluous at this point, it all started with a 10 million yuan investment – arguably by a rich, if not too intelligent investor – into the Shenzhen-based company. The concept, at least in theory, was to create a “sharing” ecosystem similar to those that bike-sharing startups have used to great success. Customers use an app on their smartphone to pay a 19 yuan deposit fee for an umbrella, which costs just 50 jiao for every half hour of use. The South China Morning Post reported that company CEO Zhao Shuping said that the idea came to him after watching bike-sharing schemes take off across China, making him realize that “everything on the street can now be shared.”

Everything… except umbrellas as it turns out, although, in retrospect, that may not have been apparent. The reason for that is that a cornucopia of different companies have been able to take advantage of China’s sharing economy craze. While foreign enterprises like Uber and Airbnb have managed to make inroads in the Middle Kingdom, their Chinese rivals (Didi Chuxing and Tujia, respectively) have fared even better. And, with the help of mobile wallets and barcode scanners, Chinese residents can now rent anything from bikes to basketballs to cell phone chargers. Naturally, this has attracted many tech startups to experiment in Chinese urban centers.

However, as the Shanghaiist adds, some ideas have turned out better than others.

Sharing E Umbrella was among the latter. The company initially gave out their umbrellas at train and bus stops, but soon realized that getting users to return the umbrellas would be a problem. “Umbrellas are different from bicycles,” Zhao said. “Bikes can be parked anywhere, but with an umbrella you need railings or a fence to hang it on.”

There was another major difference: according to SCMP, CEO Zhao concluded that the safest place for an umbrella would be at the customer’s home, where it would be “safe and undamaged.” Unfortunately for the company, they would also be “unpaid, because apparently, customers skipped the final step of then returning the umbrellas, simply keeping them for themselves.

Each lost umbrella costs the company 60 yuan to replace, but Zhao has not yet given up hope. He reportedly plans to release another 30 million umbrellas by the end of the year.

There is another problem.

As pointed out by Sixth Tone, even if Sharing E Umbrella figures out a way to force its customers to return its products, for a business that depends on rain, finding a steady profit might prove challenging. China receives the most rain in the summertime, leaving little interest in the business during drier months. What’s worse, in regions with frequent rain, people are more likely to just buy their own umbrellas

Umbrella renting schemes aren’t the only sharing businesses suffering from problems with theft in China.

Last month, shared-bike startup Wukong Bicycles went out of business in Chongqing after nearly all of its bikes were stolen following just six months of operation. Shortly afterward, Beijing-based 3Vbike followed suit.

 

So even though it would be nice to grab an umbrella when walking home in a downpour, one thing seems clear: if sharing economy companies don’t change the way that they keep track of their products, they won’t stick around long — whether it rains or not.

And while the the umbrella-sharing economy may have died before it was even born, in an economy with $30 trillion in bank deposits, one just needs to wait a few hours for the next “extreme” financial engineering idea to emerge.

via http://ift.tt/2v5P1sI Tyler Durden