Category: zerohedge

First it was gold last week, then it was half of Nasdaq on July 4th, and now it's silver that is taking it's turn in the 'glitch' camp. As Japanese markets opened tonight, spot silver prices crashed around 6% in a few seconds only to instantly rip back higher…

It appears someone was in a hurry to dump over $450 million worth of silver futures…

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

If there were any actual crimes committed during the 2016 presidential election, then the origin of those crimes can be traced back to a single piece of hardware sitting at the DNC which housed the emails that were stolen and subsequently shared with WikiLeaks.  Ironically, despite the fact that they’re apparently sitting on perhaps the most critical evidence available to prove that Russia “hacked the election,” an allegation that has been hammered 24/7 on CNN for the better part of a year now despite a lack of actual tangible evidence to support the allegation, the DNC has completely refused to cooperate with the FBI, the Department of Homeland Security and/or Robert Mueller’s independent investigation.  Which begs one very simple question, why?

As the Washington Times points out, a cybersecurity firm called CrowdStrike, is the only organization that has been allowed by the DNC to inspect their email server…an inspection which quickly resulted in the very ‘convenient’ conclusion that Russia was the culprit of the hack…even though minimal details supporting that conclusion were ever revealed to authorities.

It is perhaps the key piece of forensic evidence in Russia’s suspected efforts to sway the November presidential election, but federal investigators have yet to get their hands on the hacked computer server that handled email from the Democratic National Committee.

 

Indeed, the only cybersecurity specialists who have taken a look at the server are from CrowdStrike, the Irvine, California-based private cybersecurity company that the DNC hired to investigate the hack — but which has come under fire itself for its work.

 

Some critics say CrowdStrike’s evidence for blaming Russia for the hack is thin. Members of Congress say they still believe Russia was responsible but wonder why the DNC has never allowed federal investigators to get a look at the key piece of evidence: the server. Either way, a key “witness” in the political scandal consuming the Trump administration remains beyond the reach of investigators.

 

“I want to find out from the company [that] did the forensics what their full findings were,” Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican who is leading the Judiciary Committee’s inquiry, told The Washington Times.

As you may recall, CrowdStrike is the very same ‘cybersecurity’ firm that attributed the Sony hack to North Korea…

In 2014, it investigated the Sony Pictures leak, the disclosure of a trove of sensitive and embarrassing internal emails and executive salary data apparently orchestrated by hackers sympathetic to North Korea, and who objected to Sony’s comic depiction of North Korean leader Kim Jong-un.

Unfortunately, that ‘hack’ was subsequently revealed to have been perpetrated by a Sony insider.

But, Crowdstrike’s hacking attribution analyses have been questioned before, as have their ties to Ukranian funders and the Clinton Foundation.

Mr. Alperovitch is also a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council, a Washington-based think tank focused on international issues that is partially funded by Ukrainian billionaire Victor Pinchuk, who reportedly has donated at least $10 million to the Clinton Foundation.

 

Late last year, the International Institute for Strategic Studies, a respected British think tank, disputed CrowdStrike’s analysis of a Russian hack during Ukraine’s war with Russian-backed separatists. CrowdStrike later revised and retracted portions of its analysis.

Meanwhile, the ultimate publisher of the DNC emails, WikiLeaks, has very publicly confirmed on numerous occasions that their source was, in fact, not a state actor.

HANNITY: Can you say to the American people, unequivocally, that you did not get this information about the DNC, John Podesta’s emails, can you tell the American people 1,000 percent that you did not get it from Russia or anybody associated with Russia?

 

ASSANGE: Yes. We can say, we have said, repeatedly that over the last two months that our source is not the Russian government and it is not a state party… Obama is trying to say that President-elect Trump is not a legitimate President.

Not surprisingly, all of the above has raised some very valid concerns on both sides of the aisle.

Both Republicans and Democrats say the DNC’s reaction to the hacking is troubling.

 

Jeh Johnson, who served as homeland security secretary under President Obama, told the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence last month that his department offered to assist the DNC during the campaign to determine what was happening, but Mr. Johnson said he was rebuffed.

 

“The DNC,” Mr. Johnson said at the time, “did not feel it needed DHS’ assistance at that time. I was anxious to know whether or not our folks were in there, and the response I got was the FBI had spoken to them, they don’t want our help, they have CrowdStrike.”

 

In January, Mr. Comey told the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence that the FBI issued “multiple requests at different levels” to assist the DNC with a cyberforensic analysis. Those requests were also denied.

All of which brings us back to our original question: If the DNC is in possession of actual tangible evidence that could prove once and for all that Russians hacked their servers and attempted to undermine the campaign of Hillary Clinton, why not share that evidence with investigators and enjoy the blissful vindication that its public release would provide?

Might it have something to do with this “purely coincidental’ meeting on a tarmac in Phoenix and/or Loretta Lynch’s ‘assurances’ that the FBI’s investigation (or, “matter” if you prefer) of Hillary Clinton “wouldn’t go too far“?

via http://ift.tt/2tS6PdG Tyler Durden

For some inexplicable reason, Ray Dalio still thinks the the world not only underwent a deleveraging, but that it was “beautiful.” Not only did McKinsey prove that to be completely false two years ago, but for good measure the IIF confirmed as much last week when it revealed that global debt has hit a record $217 trillion, or 327% of GDP:

And now, replacing one delusion with another, the Bridgewater head has penned an article in which he points that as the “punch bowl” era is ending – an era which made Dalio the world’s manager of the world’s largest hedge fund, and richer beyond his wildest dreams – he would like to take the opportunity to “thanks the central bankers” who have ‘inexplicably’ been “more maligned than appreciated” even though their aggressivey policies have, and here is delusion #1 again, “successfully brought about beautiful deleveragings.”

“In my opinion, at this point of transition, we should savor this accomplishment and thank the policy makers who fought to bring about these policies. They had to fight hard to do it and have been more maligned than appreciated. Let’s thank them.”

They fought hard to print $15 trillion in new money? Now that is truly news to us.

That said, we can see why Dalio would want to thank “them”: he wouldn’t be where he is, and his fund would certainly not exist today, if it weren’t for said central bankers who came to rescue the insolvent US financial system by sacrificing the middle class and burying generations under unrepayable debt. Still, some who may skip thanking the central bankers are hundreds of millions of elderly Americans and people worldwide also wouldn’t be forced to work one or more jobs well into their retirement years because monetary policies lowered the return on their savings to zero (or negative in Europe), as these same “underappreciated” central bankers created three consecutive bubbles, and the only reason the world is in its current abysmal socio-political and economic shape is due to the cumulative effect of their disastrous policies which meant creating ever greater asset and debt bubbles to mask the effects of the previous bubble, resulting in unprecedented wealth and income inequality, and which have culminated – most recently – with Brexit and Trump.

Thanks guys.

In fact, the only thing of substance in Dalio’s note is the realization that the era of musical chairs is almost over: “our responsibility now is to keep dancing but closer to the exit and with a sharp eye on the tea leaves.”

Dalio leaves off by, what else, echoing Yellen: “no big debt bubble bursting any time soon” (wait, wasn’t he just thanking them moments ago for fixing things?) although mercifully he doesn’t say “in our lifetimes”, however he at least realizes that a “big squeeze” is coming. We hope, for Bridgewater’s sake, that Dalio knows how to navigate capital markets as skillfully when there are no central banks to hold his hand.

His full LinkedIn letter below:

Central Banks’ Reversals Signal the End of One Era and the Beginning of Another

 

For the last nine years, central banks drove interest rates to nil and pumped money into the system creating favorable carries and abundant cash. These actions pushed up asset prices, drove nominal interest rates below nominal growth rates, pushed real interest rates on cash negative, and drove real bond yields down to near zero percent, which created beautiful deleveragings, brought about balance sheet repairs, and led to more conventional economic conditions in which credit growth and economic growth are growing in relatively good balance with debt growth. That era is ending.

 

Central bankers have clearly and understandably told us that henceforth those flows from their punch bowls will be tapered rather than increased—i.e., that the directions of policy are reversing so we are at a) the end of that nine-year era of continuous pressings down on interest rates and pushing out of money that created the liquidity-fueled moves in the economies and markets, and b) the beginning of the late-cycle phase of the business/short-term debt cycle, in which central bankers try to tighten at paces that are exactly right in order to keep growth and inflation neither too hot nor too cold, until they don’t get it right and we have our next downturn. Recognizing that, our responsibility now is to keep dancing but closer to the exit and with a sharp eye on the tea leaves.

 

Wonderful Monetary Policies

 

Generally speaking (depending on the country), it is appropriate for central banks to lessen the aggressiveness of their unconventional policies because these policies have successfully brought about beautiful deleveragings. In my opinion, at this point of transition, we should savor this accomplishment and thank the policy makers who fought to bring about these policies. They had to fight hard to do it and have been more maligned than appreciated. Let’s thank them.

 

As you know, looking ahead, we don’t project a big debt bubble bursting any time soon (because of the balance sheet repairs that have taken place), though we do see an increasingly intensifying “Big Squeeze” (see the Big Picture).

PS: We look forward to Dalio’s letter when the current tightening episode ends in a global recession and the biggest crash yet, and wonder if he will still be in the same grateful mood.

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

Authored by Mac Slavo via SHTFplan.com,

It’s no secret that people on the left have a disdain for our representative form of government. That’s why they threw such a big fit over the electoral college system after the last election. They don’t like the idea that laws and elections aren’t determined by the will of the majority, and they don’t recognize how dangerous that would be for everyone’s freedom (or worse, in some cases they know exactly how dangerous it would be).

But their hatred for our constitutional republic extends beyond the electoral college. They would prefer to live under a pure democracy, where the majority of the population can trash the rights of the minority. They would rather live under a system where individual rights are sacrificed for their twisted version of “the common good.”

Fortunately, that’s not the system we live under. In this country, your rights can’t be taken away just because most people think those rights are dangerous. That fact was made abundantly clear recently, when a judge in California filed a preliminary injunction against a law that would force gun owners to give up large capacity magazines that had been bought legally before they were banned. The injunction effectively prevents California from enforcing the law for the time being.

“The Court does not lightly enjoin a state statute, even on a preliminary basis,” Judge Benitez said in the ruling.

 

“However, just as the Court is mindful that a majority of California voters approved Proposition 63 and that the government has a legitimate interest in protecting the public from gun violence, it is equally mindful that the Constitution is a shield from the tyranny of the majority. Plaintiffs’ entitlements to enjoy Second Amendment rights and just compensation are not eliminated simply because they possess ‘unpopular’ magazines holding more than 10 rounds.”

Judge Benitez also feared that Proposition 63 would turn millions of law abiding citizens into criminals.

“If this injunction does not issue, hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of otherwise law-abiding citizens will have an untenable choice: become an outlaw or dispossess one’s self of lawfully acquired property,” he said in the ruling.

 

“That is a choice they should not have to make. Not on this record.”

But as you might expect, not everyone is pleased with the ruling. State attorney general and former Democratic representative Xavier Becerra was quick to criticize the ruling.

“Proposition 63 was overwhelmingly approved by voters to increase public safety and enhance security in a sensible and constitutional way,” Becerra said in a statement on the ruling.

 

“Restricting large capacity magazines and preventing them from ending up in the wrong hands is critical for the well-being of our communities. I will defend the will of California voters because we cannot continue to lose innocent lives due to gun violence.”

Of course, there’s no evidence to suggest that magazine capacity laws are in any way constitutional, nor is there any proof that they would actually reduce gun violence. In fact, anyone with any firearm expertise can prove that magazine capacity limits are no barrier for a criminal or mass shooter.

But that doesn’t matter to liberals like Xavier Becerra. He has his agenda, and he thinks the “will of California voters” trumps the fundamental rights of every resident in his state. Thank god we don’t live in a pure democracy, or we would have lost all of our rights long ago.

via http://ift.tt/2uw6B9I Tyler Durden

A series of fake news articles (see here, here and here), black mail of anonymous Reddit users who had the audacity to poke fun at them and a couple of undercover videos from Project Veritas revealing CNN producers admitting their own news is “mostly bullshit,” seems to be taking a toll on CNN’s ratings.

As The Federalist notes in the table below, for the week of June 26th – July 2nd, CNN’s primetime shows (Anderson Cooper and Don Lemon) managed to draw about 6% fewer viewers than multi-decade old re-runs of “Yogi Bear,” “Full House,” and “Friends” which air in the same time slots on Nick-At-Nite.

Sometimes it’s difficult to know for sure, but we think this is a bad trend…

(Source: AdWeek.com)

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Authored by Tsvetana Paraskova via OilPrice.com,

Syria’s army is advancing against ISIS militants in the central Homs province, and has encircled terrorists in the al-Hael oil field near the ancient city of Palmyra, Syrian state news agency SANA reported on Wednesday.

Army units are currently less than a mile away from the al-Hael oil field, and are closing in on ISIS militants in the field from the west, south, and southeast, SANA quoted a military source as saying.

Separately, Syrian Army forces have targeted ISIS hideouts west of the eastern city of Deir Ezzor, killing many terrorists.

Last month, the army recaptured the Ark oil field, some 25 miles northeast of Palmyra, from the Islamic State terrorists. The Ark region is of strategic importance to Syria’s economy as it has many oil wells, according to a field commander who spoke to SANA then.

On the larger front, the Syrian Democratic Forces (SDF), backed by a US-led coalition, are about to make ISIS give up its de facto ‘capital’ of Raqqa, in northern Syria. The terrorists claimed Raqqa as their ‘capital’ three years ago, but now the US-backed alliance of Kurdish and Arab forces is close to driving ISIS out of Raqqa as the Islamist militants are in retreat in both Syria and Iraq.

Coalition forces supported the SDF advance into the most heavily fortified portion of Raqqa, by opening two small gaps in the Rafiqah Wall that surrounds the old city, the U.S. Department of Defense said on Tuesday, quoting Combined Joint Task Force Operation Inherent Resolve officials.

“Conducting targeted strikes on two small portions of the wall allowed coalition and partner forces to breach the old city at a location of their choosing, denied ISIS the ability to use pre-positioned mines, roadside and car bombs, protected SDF and civilian lives, and preserved the integrity of the greatest portion of the wall,” the U.S. Department of Defense said.

via http://ift.tt/2tNF8my Tyler Durden

It has been a tough month for gold, tumbling over 6% from its early June $1300 highs, but options traders are now positioning for a rebound.

As Bloomberg notes, the cost of bearish over bullish contracts in the $33 billion SPDR Gold Shares exchange-traded fund has dropped to the lowest level since U.S. President Donald Trump’s election.

The precious metal slumped for the fifth time in six days today, with bullion for immediate delivery selling near the lowest price in two months.

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

It appears a trend is taking shape. Following a former Goldman HFT trader’s massive initial coin offering, another Wall Street-er has come to the dark side of virtual currencies. A former senior manager at consulting firm Bain & Company, is launching a Bitcoin fund, providing access to the cryptocurrency to some of the wealthiest families in Latin America.

Announced today, the newly formed Crypto Assets Fund, co-founded by former senior manager at Bain, Roberto Ponce Romay, is helping to raise $50m with the purpose of buying cryptocurrencies for family offices. Revealed exclusively to CoinDesk, Crypto Assets Fund (CAF) will invest directly in bitcoin, ether, zcash, ripple, litecoin and dash. As CoinDesk reports,

The first tranche of the fund, estimated to be valued about $10m, is in the final stages of closing, and is expected to be announced by the end of this month.

 

In interview, Romay explained that the purpose of the fund was two-fold.

• First, it was designed to give investors in some of Latin America’s more unstable economies a new way to hedge their investments, and…
• Second, it was meant to provide the opportunity to safely learn about these new stores of value for possible future investments.

According to Romay, as the fund’s investors are becoming increasingly familiar with the crypto-asset class, the CAF could eventually raise new funds that also include tokens sold as part of initial coin offerings, or ICOs.

“This fund is investor driven,” said Romay, who is now the director of investment banking boutique, Invermaster. “It is a simple strategy to give access.”

 

“The [investors] wanted to be exposed…”

Investment documents provided to CoinDesk further reveal details about how the British Virgin Islands fund intends to invest capital provided by its limited partners.

Based on previous growth trajectories of CAF’s crypto-assets, the fund lists a minimum target return of 26% per year for three years with an “expected” target return of 71%.

With volatility at record lows across so many asset-classes, is this the beginning of an exodus from Wall Street to Cyber street to take advantage of information-edges and noise?

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

Authored by Darius Shahtahmasebi via TheAntiMedia.org,

Generally speaking, people can be lumped into three main categories.

The first category consists of the typical apathetic, celebrity-idol worshiping citizen who watched Miley Cyrus twerk on stage at the VMA Awards in 2013 and gossiped with his or her friends for a straight week afterward. This group buys this sort of nonsense as a source of entertainment.

 

The second category is comprised of self-proclaimed academics who wrote overly-crafted opinion pieces claiming Miley Cyrus’ twerking – as one commentator put it – either “drew criticism from feminists for degrading her sex and from some pundits for ‘picking the pocket of black culture.’”

 

Then you have the third category – a lone, isolated group of individuals who pay zero attention to the celebrity world and realize that at the same time Miley Cyrus’ VMA stunt took full swing in the media, the Obama administration was attempting to bomb another sovereign nation into complete submission over unfounded allegations of chemical weapons attacks. As we now know, this military strike plan actually involved taking out Syria’s air defenses and air force, a strategy that would have required approximately 70,000 U.S. troops and led to countless Syrian deaths.

Hardly a small issue – an illegal invasion of a sovereign nation and an outright massacre of civilians — yet the media distracted us with a twerking buffoon whose only real achievement in life has been to see how accurately she can annoy the rest of us who hail from the isolated community of political dissidents.

And so it is today. The Trump show, otherwise known as “Keeping up with the Trumps,” is rife with this sort of mind-numbing entertainment. Every day, there is a new stage and new juicy developments in an investigation that is as close to finding any hint of Trump-Russia hacking collusion as Trump is finding the rest of his IQ. Every day, there is an infamous idiot from within the Trump administration hiding from reporters in bushes or making historically inaccurate comments that Hitler never gassed his own people.

Every day, there is a new tweet from the Donald himself. Every day, he shows us the depth of his intellect. Every day there is “covfefe.”

One of Trump’s most recent tweets shows the ultimate depths of American hypocrisy as he accuses the North Korean leader of having nothing better to do than fire missiles, a ludicrous statement coming from the commander-in-chief of the most violent military on earth, which fires missiles like there is no tomorrow.

And so begins the next analysis of Trump’s gift with the written word.

Is Trump a hypocrite for having a go at North Korea’s missile launches? Is Trump a moron? Is Trump trying to provoke North Korea and further manipulate the American people into denigrating this poor country (which has — let’s face it — suffered enough already).

The answer is simple: don’t get sucked into this debacle. Unless Trump tweets provide evidence of so-called Russian collusion – or unless he lays his plans for world domination and more Tomahawk strikes outright – it is not worth our time.

The media is benefiting from this cleverly crafted reality sitcom quite lucratively. But these same media outlets are completely complicit in helping you miss the real stories and keeping you in a perpetual state of entertainment.

None of these outlets are reporting on the stories that matter. In a flashback scenario reminiscent of how Miley Cyrus and the VMAs took precedence over Obama’s attempts to bomb Syria, the Trump administration has been striking that same country’s government multiple times over the past month or so and has been fomenting fresh allegations of chemical weapons attacks, gearing up for yet another strike.

Meanwhile, the media has all but buried a report by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh, whose investigation concluded that the Trump administration had no intelligence linking the Syrian government to an alleged chemical weapons attack in April. Trump ordered a missile strike, anyway.

All of this is the true meaning of “covfefe” – a complete waste of time that ultimately distracts the public at large from the truly defining issues of our era.

Don’t let them win. The groundwork and the propaganda campaign to rile up support for another attack on Syria are already underway, and the media, Trump’s Twitter account, and celebrity culture are taking us all for a ride. We are headed towards the most dangerous crossroads of our generation as Russia and the U.S. both vie to bomb ISIS’ last remaining stronghold in Deir ez-Zor, Syria, with complete polar opposite intentions.

The stakes in this battle are far too high to risk this war going unchallenged.

Don’t say we didn’t warn you, and don’t let Trump’s tweets and the corporate media lead you blindly into America’s next war of aggression against a sovereign government on unverified allegations.

via http://ift.tt/2tWZFp8 Tyler Durden

CNN’s perpetually ‘triggered’ White House correspondent, Jim Acosta, has just decided to publicly share yet another personal melt down over twitter.  Apparently Acosta is sad that he flew all the way to Poland and didn’t get to ask a question at the President’s press conference.  Moreover, Acosta seems to be of the opinion that any press briefing that fails to incorporate the views of CNN is, by definition, a “fake news conference.”

“Trump finally held a news conference overseas. But he took a question
from a friendly reporter and then attacked CNN as ‘fake news.'”

 

“Isn’t it a “fake news conference” to take a question from a reporter who is essentially an ally of the White House?”

 

“One of the questions came from a reporter who acknowledged he had just talked to WH about a job last month.”

Trump finally held a news conference overseas. But he took a question from a friendly reporter and then attacked CNN as “fake news.”

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) July 6, 2017

Isn’t it a “fake news conference” to take a question from a reporter who is essentially an ally of the White House? https://t.co/vD7DgAZXIv

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) July 6, 2017

One of the questions came from a reporter who acknowledged he had just talked to WH about a job last month https://t.co/45jABeralt https://t.co/kiquwvWIWe

— Jim Acosta (@Acosta) July 6, 2017

So, just to clarify, if Acosta’s definition of a “fake news conference” is one in which the President only takes questions from “friendly reporters”,  then isn’t it fair to say that almost every Democrat news conference for the past several decades has been “fake” as well?

Perhaps Mr. Acosta forgets that Obama refused to appear on Fox News for pretty much his entire presidency out of fear that he might actually be asked relevant questions.  He instead preferred to ‘pal around’ with the serious ‘journalists’ at CNN who are apparently enthralled by his “jeans game,” which we hear is getting “strong(er)”.

Obama’s jeans game gets strong(er) https://t.co/KMTrNGHDeB http://pic.twitter.com/Zp1E4JCeBj

— CNN Politics (@CNNPolitics) June 28, 2017

For those who missed it, below is a summary of Trump’s comments in Warsaw which apparently triggered Acosta.  Per The Hill:

“They have been fake news for a long time,” Trump said.

 

“They’ve been covering me in a very dishonest way. … What CNN, and others, NBC is equally is bad, despite the fact that I made them a fortune with ‘The Apprentice,’ but they forgot that.”

 

He said CNN has “really taken it too seriously and I think they’ve hurt themselves very badly.”

 

Trump went on to emphasize the importance of an “honest” press.

 

“What we want to see in the United States is honest, beautiful, free, but honest press. We want to see fair press; I think it’s a very important thing,” he said.

 

“We don’t want fake news. And by the way, not everybody is fake news. But we don’t want fake news. Bad thing. Very bad for our country.”

And here is the full press briefing from Poland (forward to the 12:30 mark for the CNN comments).

via http://ift.tt/2tNNw5L Tyler Durden