Category: zerohedge

ABC, Fox News, and Rasmussen now have polls suggesting Donald Trump leads Hillary Clinton nationally and for the first time during this campaign RealClearPolitics 'tracker' has Trump with a 0.2pt lead – the unofficial "death cross" of Clinton's campaign as Wayne Allyn Root right remarks "Hillary is sinking faster than the Titanic." Voters are putting their money where their polls are too as bookies odds of a Hillary victory in November are tumbling.

Hillary's lead has gone as the blue line "death cross"-es below Trump's rising red line…

Source: RealClearPolitics

And the bookies' odds of a Clinton victory in November are sliding to 2-month lows as Trump's hit record highs…

Source: PredictIt

This comes as Mark Cuban said in an interview with NBC anchor Chuck Todd on "Meet the Press," that he would consider being the running mate for either Democratic presidential front-runner Hillary Clinton or presumptive GOP nominee Donald Trump.

He said he liked that Clinton “had thought out proposals.”

 

“That's a good thing because at least we get to see exactly where she stands,” he said. "But I think Sen. [Bernie] Sanders has dragged her a little bit too far to the left.”

 

And Cuban, who called himself an independent, said he would also be open to discussing a vice presidential spot with Trump.

 

“I’d have the same conversation for Donald,” he said. "I think Donald has a real chance to win, and that’s scary to a lot of people. But what's scary about it to me is that you can see him now trying to do what he thinks is right to unify the party.”

Either way America remains deeply divided…

And try as they might, The Donald does not fit neatly into the liberal/conservative stereotypes beloved by journalists, especially pinko ones. As CLSA's Chris Wood notes,

The pinko paper’s aggregate demand obsessed Martin Wolf stated this week: “Mr Trump is a misogynist, a racist and a xenophobe” (see Financial Times article “An elite at the mercy of its own creation”, 18 May 2016).

 

Meanwhile, the establishment media’s continuing efforts to disparage The Donald are likely to backfire in GREED & fear’s view because the electorate at large is fed up with politically correct discourse, most particularly white men. On the latter point, GREED & fear’s attention was caught by a poll this week which showed that Trump has a 53% support rating among whites whereas he only has 28% support among Hispanics and a mere 9% among blacks. This is an important point in a country which remains obsessed about “race”, and which politics remains strongly influenced by race, just as Britain remains obsessed by “class” even if no one wants to admit it.

 

Still if Trump’s lack of appeal outside the white world represents a formidable obstacle in an election, it does not mean it is impossible for him to win since whites, for now at least, are still the majority in America accounting for 66% of the voting-age population. This is why national polls are still showing the race to be very close (see above) while polls also show that Trump has a chance of winning key swing states such as Michigan and Florida.

 

Clearly all of the above should be seen in the context of the fact that the election is still six months away. Still it has to be said that The Donald looks a lot more energised than Hillary who also faces the irritation that Bernie Sanders has, for reasons best known to him, still chosen not to exit the race. Indeed Trump looks to GREED & fear to have all the momentum with establishment Republicans almost rushing to endorse him.

 

Remember Americans, more than most cultures, like a winner.

 

Meanwhile, Democrats are beginning to dare to hope that the continuing FBI investigation of Hillary’s emails will trigger an event which will force her to step down from the presidential race providing an excuse for Vice President Joe Biden to emerge as a last-minute candidate. They are hoping this because they believe, probably correctly, that Biden has better prospects against The Donald. Still the longer this takes to happen, assuming it happens at all, the longer The Donald has to build momentum.

Which leads nicely to Wayne Allyn Root's discussion, via Fox, on the collapse of Clinton…

I’ve predicted publicly for a year now that Hillary Clinton,   although a prohibitive favorite, still may never become the Democratic Party’s nominee.

Don’t look now, but at this moment Hillary is still far from a sure thing to become the Democratic standard-bearer. This week, she lost Oregon and barely squeaked by in Kentucky. Bernie has now won 11 of the last 14 primaries and caucuses.

I ask Democrats, is this your nominee? The winner of your presidential nomination has lost just shy of 80 percent of her races coming down the homestretch. If Hillary were a racehorse with that record, she’d be sent home.

Call me crazy but don’t presumptive nominees usually win about 80 percent of their races? This has to be the first time in history the leader of her party has lost 80 percent of them. I’m not sure you call someone like that a “leader” or “nominee.” Usually you call someone like that…“loser!”

Hillary is certainly still the favorite — if only because of the scam of superdelegates. The Democratic nomination is basically rigged. Because of those superdelegates Hillary already has the nomination locked up. But she appears to be crawling on her knees, over razor blades, towards the finish line.

First, while she’s the clear-cut delegate winner and we all know that everyone loves a winner, it’s gotta be downright frightening for Democrats that she still can’t put away a wild-eyed radical socialist from Vermont who wants tax rates as high as 90 percent and would add an estimated $18 trillion to the national debt.

Then, there’s the FBI. They are closing in. No matter how many times Hillary or her delusional aides claim the investigation is only a “security inquiry” it doesn’t change reality.

FBI Director Comey recently set them straight. Turns out the FBI doesn’t do “security inquiries.” Hillary is the subject of a “criminal investigation.”

Then there’s that millstone hanging around Hillary’s neck — Bill Clinton. Can you become president when your husband’s past behavior with women raises more questions every day? We’re about to find out.

The stories about Bill’s reckless and possibly criminal behavior keep popping out of the closet. First there’s the beautiful blonde “friend” who got $2 million from the Clinton Global Initiative and another $800,000 in government contracts with Bill’s help. Don’t we all wish we had friends like that?

Worse, there’s the new disclosure that Bill took 26 flights on a sex offender’s plane, an aircraft actually called “The Lolita Express.” It flew nonstop to “Orgy Island” where old men cavorted with young (13 to 15-year old) girls.Bill flew five times on this aircraft without his Secret Service detail. This isn’t a scandal, it’s a disaster for Hillary.

It’s already May and now the question is: Can Hillary crawl past the primary finish line? And if she does, will she be so crippled for the general election that she becomes a sitting duck for Donald Trump?

Have you seen the latest polls? Last week the experts were shocked to see Hillary tied with Trump. This week it got even worse. In the latest Fox News poll Trump leads Hillary.

I have close friends in high Democratic Party circles. Trust me, they are beginning to panic. They are starting to think about Plan B… and that doesn’t include either Hillary or Bernie being their nominee.

So let me lay out a very plausible scenario. What if Hillary’s approval ratings slide continues? What if over the next 60 to 90 days she finds herself down by 5 to 7 points to Trump? What if she goes down by double digits? Would the panic become hysteria?

What if the FBI recommends indicting Hillary over the email scandal — my law enforcement sources tell me this is a very real possibility.

But it gets worse. Have you heard that Russia claims to have 10,000 of Hillary’s hacked emails? They say they will release them. If this is the case, Hillary better stop worrying about the White House and start worrying about the Big House.

Would President Obama allow the Justice Department to indict his former secretary of state? I used to think “no.” But I now believe the answer to that question depends on only one factor — is Hillary beating Trump?

Every Washington insider knows that Obama has no love or loyalty for Hillary.

I’m betting if Obama senses Hillary is a sinking Titanic — and he still has time before the convention — he will throw her under the bus.

At this point, I would guess the president gives Hillary a choice that is no choice at all. Be indicted, lose the presidential race, and risk a long jail term, or announce to the world that your cough has become a real medical issue and you will have to decline the nomination, then receive a presidential pardon.

That means all her delegates become free agents and a new nominee can be substituted at the Democratic convention in July.

I’ve always predicted Obama would prefer Joe Biden or Elizabeth Warren as the nominee, or the combination of Biden/Warren. He may yet get his wish. But this much I know:

Hillary is sinking faster than the Titanic.

via http://ift.tt/1XKuKU2 Tyler Durden

Submitted by Mac Slavo via SHTFPlan.com,

Who exactly is the burdensome, broken and disturbingly unsensible welfare system being run for?

A new study found that both illegal and legal immigrants, who typically work low wage jobs, receive more in government assistance each year than struggling American families do.

via the Washington Examiner:

Illegal immigrant households receive an average of $5,692 in federal welfare benefits every year, far more than the average “native” American household, at $4,431…

 

The Center for Immigration Studies, in an analysis of federal cost figures, found that all immigrant-headed households — legal and illegal — receive an average of $6,241 in welfare, 41 percent more than native households. As with Americans receiving benefits such as food stamps and cash, much of the welfare to immigrants supplements their low wage jobs.

 

The total cost is over $103 billion in welfare benefits to households headed by immigrants.

Not only is this staggering cost a source of contention with American taxpayers, but it is something of a hidden boon for corporations who can get away with paying workers, many of whom are illegal, less money in wages because their livelihoods are being supplemented by welfare.

For traditional non-immigrant families, it is a double blow to an economy that has forced many native Americans on welfare as well while they watch good jobs slip away and an increasing number of desperate people from all backgrounds race to the bottom.

Though there are many employers benefiting from government largess, Walmart is the classic example of the company that pays its workers minimum wage, only to encourage them to apply for food stamps and other welfare benefits – which are largely then spent inside their own store walls.

But worse than the already over-sized dependence upon the federal government by new arrivals and undocumented immigrants, is that the pace set by the amnesty president who clearly wants to break the system Cloward-Piven style.

Obama is apparently calling for a huge increase in welfare benefits for minors, who according to the Washington Examiner, are often being used by their illegal immigrant parents for household income:

The new report follows another that found President Obama seeking $17,613 for every new illegal minor, more than Social Security retirees get.

While millions of average citizens are struggling and watching the American dream die in front of them, the government is doing all it can to break the back of the real economy, and hand off money from the dole to the very competing workforce that is undermining the effort of Americans just to make it and hold on to what they have.

Stay vigilant, the squeeze is on.

via http://ift.tt/1XKqnsi Tyler Durden

During the Oregon standoff, where a group of US citizens calling themselves the Citizens for Constitutional Freedom, seized control of a federal wildlife refuge in protest of harsh sentences being given to members of a ranching family for allegedly allowing fires set on their property to spread on to federal land, Ron Paul posed a question: Is the event isolated, or a sign of things to come?

It is becoming increasingly apparent that the Oregon standoff was the latter.

As the Washington Post writes, there is a significant movement among US citizens that are demanding that the federal government adhere to the Constitution, and stop what they see as systematic abuse of land rights, gun rights, freedom of speech and other liberties.

One example of this movement is a group in Oregon that calls itself the Central Oregon Constitutional Guard. The group refers to themselves as patriots, and is made up of people from all walks of life. The organization describes itself as a “defensive unit against all enemies foreign and domestic”, mainly because they believe the government is capable of unprovoked aggression against its own people.

Deep in the heart of a vast U.S. military training ground, surrounded by spent shotgun shells and juniper trees blasted to shreds, the Central Oregon Constitutional Guard was conducting its weekly firearms training.

 

“The intent is to be able to work together and defend ourselves if we need to,” said Soper, 40, a building contractor who is an emerging leader in a growing national movement rooted in distrust of the federal government, one that increasingly finds itself in armed conflicts with authorities.

 

Those in the movement call themselves patriots, demanding that the federal government adhere to the Constitution and stop what they see as systematic abuse of land rights, gun rights, freedom of speech and other liberties.

 

Law enforcement officials call them dangerous, delusional and sometimes violent, and say that their numbers are growing amid a wave of anger at the government that has been gaining strength since 2008, a surge that coincided with the election of the first black U.S. president and a crippling economic recession.

 

Soper started his group, which consists of about 30 men, women and children from a handful of families, two years ago as a “defensive unit” against “all enemies foreign and domestic.” Mainly, he’s talking about the federal government, which he thinks is capable of unprovoked aggression against its own people.

 

The group’s members are drywallers and flooring contractors, nurses and painters and high school students, who stockpile supplies, practice survival skills and “basic infantry” tactics, learn how to treat combat injuries, study the Constitution and train with their concealed handguns and combat-style rifles.

 

“It doesn’t say in our Constitution that you can’t stand up and defend yourself,” Soper said. “We’ve let the government step over the line and rule us, and that was never the intent of this country.”

Law enforcement officials and watchdog groups are branding such organizations as anti-government extremists of course, and even trying to marginalize the groups by giving them nicknames such as “Y’all Qaeda” and “Vanilla Isis”, and the groups have even earned the designation of “domestic terrorists.” Despite the attempts to downplay the groups, the number of like minded organizations has grown from 150 in 2008 to about 1,000 now, and estimates peg the number of supporters in the hundreds of thousands. The movement had been emboldened by the 2014 standoff at Cliven Bundy’s ranch in Nevada, where federal agents faced off with hundreds of armed supporters of Bundy in a dispute over the rancher’s refusal to pay fees to graze his cattle on federal land – the agents eventually stood down.

Law enforcement officials and the watchdog groups that track the self-styled “patriot” groups call them anti-government extremists, militias, armed militants or even domestic terrorists. Some opponents of the largely white and rural groups have made fun by calling them “Y’all Qaeda” or “Vanilla ISIS.”

 

Mark Potok of the Southern Poverty Law Center, which monitors extremism, said there were about 150 such groups in 2008 and about 1,000 now. Potok and other analysts, including law enforcement officials who track the groups, said their supporters number in the hundreds of thousands, counting people who signal their support in more passive ways, such as following the groups on social media. The Facebook page of the Oath Keepers, a group of former members of police forces and the military, for example, has more than 525,000 “likes.”

 

President Obama’s progressive policies and the tough economic times have inflamed anti-government anger, the same vein of rage into which Donald Trump has tapped during his Republican presidential campaign, said Potok and Mark Pitcavage, who works with the Anti-Defamation League and has monitored extremism for 20 years.

 

Much of the movement traces its roots to the deadly 1990s confrontations between civilians and federal agents at Ruby Ridge, Idaho, and in Waco, Tex., that resulted in the deaths of as many as 90. Timothy Mc­Veigh cited both events before he was executed for the 1995 Oklahoma City bombing that killed 168 people, and said he had deliberately chosen a building housing federal government agencies.

 

Now a “Second Wave” is spreading across the country, especially in the West, fueled by the Internet and social media. J.J. MacNab, an author and George Washington University researcher who specializes in extremism, said social media has allowed individuals or small groups such as Soper’s to become far more influential than in the 1990s, when the groups would spread their message through meetings at local diners and via faxes.

 

The movement received a huge boost from the 2014 standoff at Cliven Bundy’s ranch in Nevada, where federal agents and hundreds of armed supporters of Bundy faced off in a dispute over the rancher’s refusal to pay fees to graze his cattle on federal land.

 

When federal agents backed down rather than risk a bloody clash, Bundy’s supporters claimed victory and were emboldened to stage similar armed face-offs last year at gold mines in Oregon and Montana.

The latest confrontation that has taken place was in Burns, Oregon, where armed occupiers, led by Cliven Bundy’s sons, took over the headquarters building of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge. Ultimately, the standoff ended with multiple arrests, and even the death of the group spokesman Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, who was shot by the FBI after an incident at a roadblock in the area. BJ Soper, founder of the Central Oregon Constitutional Guard says he tries to be the calming voice of the growing movement, knowing there are many hot heads that fall within its ranks; a voice clearly much needed. After the standoff at the wildlife refuge, two members splintered off and went on to kill two police officers in Las Vegas, leaving a note saying “This is the beginning of the revolution.”

In January, dozens of armed occupiers, led by Bundy’s sons Ammon and Ryan, took over the headquarters buildings of the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge near rural Burns, Ore., an action that resulted in the death of Robert “LaVoy” Finicum, an occupier who was shot by state troopers.

 

Soper has been in the middle of all of it. He says he has tried to be a more moderate voice in a movement best known for its hotheads. He spent a month living in his RV at Burns, trying to talk the occupiers into standing down.

Two days after Soper’s last visit to the refuge, Finicum was killed in an operation in which the Bundys were arrested. An independent local investigation concluded that the shooting was justified, although the U.S. Justice Department is investigating several FBI agents for possible misconduct. Soper considers Finicum’s death “murder.”

 

That kind of talk is “a big deal,” said Stephanie Douglas, who retired in 2013 as the FBI’s top official overseeing foreign and domestic counterterrorism programs. “Free speech doesn’t make you a terrorist just because you disagree with the government. But if you start espousing violence and radicalizing your own people toward a violent act, the federal government is going to take notice.”

 

Shortly after the Bundy ranch confrontation, two of Bundy’s supporters who had been at the ranch, Jerad and Amanda Miller, killed two police officers and a civilian and also died in a Las Vegas shooting rampage. Police said the couple left a note on the body of one the officers they had shot point-blank.

 

It said: “This is the beginning of the revolution.”

 

BJ Soper has described his reasons to to start the Central Oregon Constitutional Guard as being simply that he used to be oblivious to everything that was going on, but after the Bundy Ranch incident, he decided to get more involved and make a difference. Soper’s understandable skepticism about the government gets rather intense, taking views quite outside the norm, entertaining that the government had a hand in 9/11, that the government is mandating vaccines that cause autism, and that the United Nations wants to reduce global population through a program called Agenda 21. All of which spurred Soper’s desire to create the group, and prepare his family for any possible scenario through weapons training and emergency food storage.

“I lived like 90 percent of Americans, oblivious to everything that was going on, from the time I was 18 until the Bundy Ranch happened,” he said. “I just said, ‘I can’t sit back and do nothing. I’ve got to get involved.’ I feel responsible for where we’re at, because I’ve done nothing my entire life.”

His response was to start his Central Oregon Constitutional Guard, which he said was partly to protect against the government, but partly a way to get back to a simpler America.

 

“As a kid, life was easy,” he says on the group’s website. “No worries. Very little threats. I would ride my bike around all over the neighborhood for hours on end. Play with friends and show back up for dinner without worry.”

 

Critics say such talk is naive nostalgia for a 1950s America that wasn’t ever really such a homespun paradise in the first place. And they say the groups that have sprung up in response are far more dangerous than Soper and others want to make them seem.

 

“The idea that he needs to face down the government with weapons I think is really, really wrong,” Potok said. “They don’t really say that, but I think that is what is right under the surface.”

 

Soper’s research also led him to some of the Internet’s favorite conspiracy theories, including a purported U.N. plot to impose “One World Government.” And Soper, like most in the patriot movement, became a believer.

 

He suspects that the United Nations, through a program called Agenda 21, wants to reduce the global population from 7 billion to fewer than 1 billion. He said the federal government may be promoting abortions overseas as part of that plot, and also may be deliberately mandating childhood vaccines designed to cause autism because autistic adults are less likely to have children.

 

Soper said he could not rule out the possibility that the U.S. government was behind the 9/11 attacks. He suspects that the government and the “medical community” have had a cancer cure for years but won’t release it because cancer treatment is too profitable for pharmaceutical companies.

 

“I’m not saying that’s the case,” he said, “but I like to look at all avenues.”

 

Soper knows those ideas sound crazy to many people, but, he said with a laugh, “It shows I just don’t trust my government.”

Alex McNeely, a 25 year old drywaller found the patriot group online, and joined the group to feel that he was helping defend the country. And in a textbook example of how words can cause many to take action, echoed the sentiment of many conservative pundits who claim Obama is a socialist who is trying to fundamentally change America. The group is conservative, and generally supports Trump, although anyone other than Hillary would suffice. One of the men indicted by the Bundy ranch case is Gerald DeLemus, who was New Hampshire co-chair of Veterans for Trump and was named by the Trump campaign as a New Hampshire alternate delegate to the Republican National Convention In Cleveland.

“There’s this D.C. mentality that if you stand up for your rights, you’re dangerous and anti-government,” said McNeely, who has an AK-47 assault rifle tattooed on his forearm. “But if I’m denied my rights, what else can I do? Am I just going to stand there and take it, or am I going to do something?”

 

In the Constitutional Guard, McNeely said, “I feel what we do is stand up for people who don’t have the means to stand up for themselves. I have an overwhelming desire to help people.”

 

McNeely considered joining the military when he graduated from high school, but he turned 18 the month Obama was elected in 2008, and, because of Obama’s “socialist” policies, “I wasn’t going to accept him as my commander in chief.”

 

“I don’t like that he wants to fundamentally change America,” McNeely said.

 

The group members are conservatives, do not like former secretary of state Hillary Clinton and generally support Donald Trump. Soper said he would prefer just about anyone over Clinton but would not cast a vote for president this year. He said he thinks casting his vote is “a waste of time” because Oregon’s politics are dominated by Democrats.

Everyone in the group keeps 30 days worth of food and emergency supplies on hand, and group members learn gardening and raising livestock. They camp, and learn survival tactics, including how to fashion a shelter, find food and water, and make a fire. The group is preparing for anything, and that includes economic collapse.

“I don’t know that it’s all that far-fetched that we have an economic collapse,” he said. “The dollar is a pretty scary investment anymore. China’s buying up all the gold. When people get hungry and thirsty and can’t feed themselves, they get desperate.”

Soper reiterates every chance that he gets that he does not want violence, however in his reality, he believes that if common sense doesn’t get restored in the government, people will get hurt.

“The last thing I want is violence” Soper said. “But I hope they see that if we continue down this path, we’re going to have more bloodshed in this country.”

As he writes his sheriff upon learning of the news that more people had been arrested in connection with the 2014 standoff at the Bundy Ranch, Soper airs his concerns, and ends the letter in a very dramatic fashion:

“People are being detained without due process” he said. “These are not our American values.”

 

“I pray we find some sense of it again, otherwise a very dark future awaits us, and it is not very far down the road.” Sheriff, he said, “People are going to die.“

 

As America becomes even more fragmented, more fractured, and more polarized, and, as both the GOP and Democratic primaries have shown, with ever more people calling for true change to take place, the establishment may be under pressure to finally act for change, even if the change is at first, very painful – something 8 years of relentless central bank intervention has desperately tried to prevent. If the government chooses not to act, a violent future may await America as the people themselves rise up once more to recreate what was once the freest and most admired nation on earth.

via http://ift.tt/20n476z Tyler Durden

Presented with no comment, via The Washingotn Post:

Authored by David Harsanyi, a senior editor at the Federalist.

A person need only survey the inanity of the ongoing presidential race to comprehend that the most pressing problem facing the nation isn’t Big Business, Big Labor, Big Media or even Big Money in politics.

It’s you, the American voter. And by weeding out millions of irresponsible voters who can’t be bothered to learn the rudimentary workings of the Constitution, or their preferred candidate’s proposals or even their history, we may be able to mitigate the recklessness of the electorate.

No, we shouldn’t erect physical barriers to ballot access. Let’s purchase more voting machines, hire additional poll workers, streamline the registration process, mail out more ballots for seniors and produce more “Rock the Vote” ads imploring apathetic millennials to embrace their civic duty.

At the same time, let’s also remember that checking a box for the candidate whose campaign ads you like best is one of the most overrated obligations of the self-governed. If you have no clue what the hell is going on, you also have a civic duty to avoid subjecting the rest of us to your ignorance.

Unfortunately, we can’t trust you.

Now, if voting is a consecrated rite of democracy, as liberals often argue, surely society can have certain minimal expectations for those participating. And if citizenship itself is as hallowed as Republicans argue, then surely the prospective voter can be asked to know just as much as the prospective citizen. Let’s give voters a test. The citizenship civics test will do just fine.

How many screeching proponents of the two major candidates would pass this quiz? Here are some of the questions, which run from easy to preposterously easy:

“If both the President and the Vice President can no longer serve, who becomes President?”

“There were 13 original states. Name three.”

“What is one right or freedom from the First Amendment?”

“What is freedom of religion?”

I have tempered confidence that at least a majority of the voting public could pass such a test — though I couldn’t say the same for a majority of presidential candidates. Certainly, this should be a breeze for citizens so intensely involved in the process that they feel compelled to plaster bumper stickers on their cars and attend the rallies of their favorite candidates.

Or am I being too optimistic? When Newsweek asked a thousand voters to take the official citizenship test a few years back, nearly 30 percent couldn’t name the vice president. More than 60 percent did not know the length of U.S. senators’ terms in office. And 43 percent couldn’t say that the first 10 amendments to the Constitution are known as the Bill of Rights.

Only 30 percent knew that the U.S. Constitution is the supreme law of the land.

In another study, by the Annenberg Public Policy Center, we learned that only 36 percent could name all three branches of the U.S. government. Only 62 percent knew that the U.S. Supreme Court was tasked with determining the constitutionality of legislation. Fewer than half of Americans knew that split decisions in the Supreme Court have the same effect as 9 to 0 decisions.

These are the people who pick the people who define the basic fabric of the legal system — and often our lives.

To be fair, the contemporary electorate is probably no less ignorant today than it was 50 or 100 years ago. The difference is that now we have unlimited access to information. As James Madison wrote, “A popular Government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a Prologue to a Farce or a Tragedy; or, perhaps both.”

And it literally takes seconds to learn about the fundamentals of our republic and the positions of candidates. If you forsake the power of information, you have no standing to tell the rest of us how to live our lives. Don’t vote.

Now, some of you will accuse me of peddling crass elitism. But I say the opposite is true. Unlike the many who depend on ignorant voters to wield and secure their power, I refuse to believe that working-class or underprivileged citizens are any less capable of understanding the meaning of the Constitution or the contours of governance than the supercilious 1-percenters. I believe this despite the widespread failure of public schools to teach children basic civics. It’s still our responsibility as voters.

Of course, we also must remember the ugly history of poll taxes and other prejudicial methods that Americans used to deny black citizens their equal right to vote. Any effort to improve the quality of the voting public should ensure that all races, creeds, genders and sexual orientations and people of every socioeconomic background are similarly inhibited from voting when ignorant. For the good of our democratic institutions.

via http://ift.tt/1TBYq4a Tyler Durden

One month ago, pro-European voices in Austria, and all of Europe, were suddenly muted when in the first round of the Austrian presidential election, Norbert Hofer head of Austria Freedom Party (FPO), described as a “Euroskeptic, right-wing, anti-immigrant party” crushed his opposition buoyed by a migration crisis that has heightened fears about employment and security across the continent, and gathered a whopping 35% of the vote leaving the other five legacy candidates far behind.

Austrian far right Freedom Party (FPOe) presidential candidate Norbert
Hofer during the final election rally in Vienna, Austria, April 22, 2016

Today, Austria holds the decisive run-off round between Norbert Hofer and former Greens leader Alexander van der Bellen, which according to preliminary opinions polls was set to be a close vote, although probably not that close.

Presidential candidate Norbert Hofer prepares to cast his ballot at the
polling station in his hometown Pinkafeld, Austria, May 22, 2016

According to Reuters, a far-right victory would resonate across the 28-member EU, where migration driven by conflict and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere has become a major political issue. Support for groups like the Euroskeptic, anti-immigration Freedom Party (FPO) has been rising in various countries, whether they have taken in many migrants in the recent influx, like Germany and Sweden, or not, like France and Britain.

Most are still far from achieving majority support. The FPO has been in government before, serving as a coalition partner in the early 2000s when it was led by the late Joerg Haider. But whoever wins the presidential election, it is likely to be a new high-water mark for Austria’s and Europe’s far right, all the more significant for being in a prosperous country with comparatively low, albeit rising, unemployment. 

In his last pre-election gathering, Hofer delivered another message with anti-Muslim overtones. “To those in Austria who go to war for the Islamic State or rape women – I say to those people: ‘This is not your home,'” he told a cheering crowd.

Later, Hofer sought to soothe international fears that he is a radical far-righter. The Austria Press Agency cited him as telling foreign reporters Sunday that he is “really OK,” and “not a dangerous person.”

Supporters of presidential candidate Norbert Hofer attend his final
election rally in Vienna, Austria, May 20, 2016

If Hofer wins, mainstream parties will also come under scrutiny for not recommending an anti-FPO vote. Many feel that would only have bolstered the FPO’s argument that it is taking on Austria’s deeply entrenched political establishment. As Reuters adds, “a far-right victory would resonate across the 28-member EU, where migration driven by conflict and poverty in the Middle East and elsewhere has become a major political issue.”

It would also be a huge boost to anti-immigrant, Euroskeptic movements in the other two key nations, Germany, whose AfD is now the third most popular party, and France, where the leader of the local National Front, Marine Le Pen, is the frontrunner for the French 2017 presidential election.

A victory for the Freedom Party in Austria would be mostly symbolic: the president traditionally plays a largely ceremonial role but swears in the chancellor and can dismiss the cabinet. “I have to work for one or two years and then everybody will see that I am OK, I am not a dangerous person,” Hofer, 45, told reporters after voting in his eastern hometown of Pinkafeld.

Hofer, deputy leader of the FPO, is known as the gentler face of the party but has only recently become a household name.

Austria took in 90,000 asylum seekers last year, more than 1 percent of its population, many of them shortly after it and neighbouring Germany opened their borders last autumn to a wave of migrants including refugees from Syria’s civil war. The government has since clamped down on immigration and asylum, but that failed to slow rising support for the FPO, which was already capitalising on widespread frustration with Austria’s two traditional parties of government.

While a Gallup poll for the Oesterreich newspaper last weekend found Hofer ahead by a 53-47 margin based on 600 people surveyed, the question is what do exit polls say. As Reuters reports, a projection will be published when the last polling stations close at 5 p.m. (1500 GMT), and the result is due to be announced after 7 p.m. A high number of postal ballots has raised the prospect of the result being unclear until Monday.

And while we wait, here is the first exit election estimate, which according to Austria’s ORF, has Hofer at 50.1% 49.9% for his rival from van der Bellen.

Some more reports.

First estimate have presidential elections #Austria too close to call. Hofer, right-wing, at 50,2% ; VdB, green, at 48,2. 2% margin error.

— VoxEurop (@VoxEurop) May 22, 2016

Männer vs. Frauen aus der ATV Wahltagsbefragung- #atvgrafik #bpw16 http://pic.twitter.com/FcgTXUM2zT

— Martin Thür (@MartinThuer) May 22, 2016

Es wird immer knapper 50,2 zu 49,8. Leckfettn. #atvgrafik http://pic.twitter.com/Ualf7qNog7

— Martin Thür (@MartinThuer) May 22, 2016

For the official rolling results, check back in a few hours.

via http://ift.tt/1NFagKo Tyler Durden

After the Fed tried to cause some more confusion with its decision to hike the interest rates by saying that a rate hike in June still is a possibility, we wanted to have a closer look at China which once again posted weaker than expected numbers.

We are very interested in all developments in China, as the country remains one of the largest net buyers of our favorite metal gold. Even though its economy is definitely growing at a (much) slower rate, the gold purchases haven’t been impacted, but the main question is whether these purchases are indeed to prepare the country for a total collapse of the financial system, or just to show the outside world the balance sheet of the central bank has some robust back-up assets that would allow it to print more money to try to support the economy.

Indeed, the Chinese export growth fell in April to a -1.8% YoY basis after seeing a sharp increase of in excess of 11% in March. Granted, the March-boost was very likely caused by the Chinese new year which resulted in a temporary export ‘stop’ during the new year, where after inventories were cleared out. So, okay, the lower export number didn’t really bother us that much, but what caught our attention was the fact the imports into China have been falling for 18 (!) consecutive months now which definitely is an indication of a crumbling domestic market.

That’s an important conclusion, and a first step in our central thesis in this article. Despite a declining export rate and a continuous freefall in the total amount of goods imported into China, the central government is sticking with its growth plan and wants to see the economy grow by 6.5-7% this year.

And that’s where everything is about to go completely wrong. There clearly isn’t a high demand for foreign products in China, nor is there a huge demand for Chinese products abroad, so the only way the growth numbers in the economy could be propped up is by making another giant flood of credit available. And now, several months (and even more than a year) since we started to warn about the Chinese problem, the data are finally confirming our suspicions.

Let’s have a look at the total debt in the Chinese economy (household debt + corporate debt + government debt).

Source: ABN AMRO

Yes, your first conclusion might indeed be there’s nothing wrong here as the majority of the debt increase has been the result of non-government credit expansion. But that’s another reason why you should never take any information or charts for granted, as China has quite a few government-owned companies, and the debt of those companies most definitely isn’t counted as government debt. Throw in the fact the Chinese household debt vs the GDP has more than tripled in the past 10 years, and you realize there’s a widespread bubble in all of the society’s layers.

Source: tradingeconomics.com

Of course, a 200% increase in the household debt to GDP ratio doesn’t sound too bad for a developing country, but keep in mind the GDP has also increased substantially. So whereas the net household debt was just $300B in 2006, this has increased to a stunning $4T as of at the end of 2015. That’s right, the amount of household debt in China has increased by 1233% in just 9 years. That’s an CAGR of 33.4% PER YEAR.

And then there’s one final chart we’d like to show, and that’s the investment growth in the country’s real estate sector. We have seen numerous reports about ‘ghost cities’, and it doesn’t look like the Chinese government is reducing the total investment in real estate and construction.

Source: ABN Amro

Indeed, whilst the private sector continues to slow down its investment in new real estate related projects, the government is stepping up the plate and has been increasing its investment sharply. Yep, we will see more and more ghost cities in China!

All in all, these charts explain why China has a serious problem at hand, and isn’t capable to render enough autonomous growth to offset these issues. Throw on top of that the renewed strength of the US Dollar, and one can easily see that a new storm is brewing, with another (possible violent) Yuan devaluation looming on the horizon.

And perhaps that’s the reason why China continues to buy more gold, to make sure it has gold as a back-up plan to keep at least some of its credibility and creditworthiness. China added in excess of a million ounces of gold in the first quarter of this year, and continues to purchase gold month after month. 

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Submitted by David Stockman via Contra Corner blog,

We are now in month 83 of this so-called recovery. Yet there are still 45 million people on food stamps——one out of every seven Americans. The median real household income is still 5% below its level in the fall of 2007. There are still only 71 million full-time, full-pay “breadwinner” jobs in the nation—–nearly 2 million fewer than when Bill Clinton was packing his bags to vacate the White House.

At the same time, we have had monetary stimulus like never before. There has been 90 straight months of virtually zero interest rates. The balance sheet of the Fed has been expanded by $3.5 trillion. For point of reference, that is 4X more than all the bond-buying during the entire first 94 years of the Fed’s history.

So something doesn’t parse, and that’s to put it charitably. The truth is, the Fed’s entire radical regime of ZIRP and QE constitutes a monumental monetary fraud.

It has not “stimulated” a wit the struggling main street economy of flyover America. Instead, it has showered Wall Street speculators with trillions of windfall gains and gifted the bicoastal elites with a false prosperity derived from financial inflation and government expansion.

Herein follows an initial bill of particulars. We show that the “recovery” narrative endlessly trumpeted by the Fed and its fellow travelers on Wall Street and in the financial media does not remotely reflect on the ground economic reality; it derives almost entirely from a narrow band of badly flawed and thoroughly misleading labor market indicators and other faulty “incoming data” from the Washington statistical mills.

To begin with the most obvious example, consider the graph below on industrial production of consumer goods. The whole point of ultra-low interest rates is obviously to induce households to borrow and spend, and thereby trigger a virtuous cycle of rising demand, increasing production, more jobs and income and even more consumer spending. That’s Keynes 101.

Yet after seven years of massive monetary stimulus, domestic production of consumer goods is still 9.1% below its pre-crisis peak, and at a level first reached in early 1999!

Never once in its post-meeting blather about a steadily “improving” domestic economy has the Fed noted this fundamental rebuke to its entire ideology.

After all, if you are priming the pump with trillions of inducements for households to borrow and spend, why has consumer goods production remained in the sub-basement of its historical trend line and “recovered” at such a tepid rate?

The disconnect between the mainstream recovery meme and the chart above is implicit in the latter’s construction. That is, the industrial production index is a physical measure of output, and as such is not distorted by the flaws in the primitive measures of inflation published by the BLS.

As we showed a few days ago, the annual rate of consumer inflation during the last five years has been all over the lot depending upon which measure used and which time period observed.

This is important because based on the regular CPI, the official data implies that real hourly wages have risen by nearly 1% per annum since this turn of the century. So all things equal, households should have more financial resources to purchase real consumer goods.

But we do not think the standard CPI accurately measures the true cost of living, and especially not the 25% weighting given to the phony OER (owners equivalent rent). And that’s to say nothing of all the other tricks embedded in the numbers such as hedonics, which implies that bureaucrats have the capacity to assess the subtleties of product quality and consumer utility.

Accordingly, we think that BLS sub-index for total consumer services is more representative of living costs because it puts a heavier weight on medical care, education, child care, transportation, housing rents and other services which households must contend with week-in-and-week-out.

As shown in the chart below, hourly wages of nonsupervisory workers have grown at 2.7%  per year since April 2000 compared to 1.9%  for the CPI. In the conventional rendering, this results in an annual gain in real wages of just under 1% annually.

By contrast, the CPI sub-index for services has rising by 2.7% per annum during the last 16 years, implying no gain in real wages at all. And even that includes the distorting impact of the OER. If you substitute the market based index for housing rents we display in the first chart above, it is likely that services purchased by the average household have been inflating at upwards of 3% per year during this century, meaning that real wages have been steadily shrinking.

Since the financial crisis there has been another significant jolt to household spending capacity in addition to the implicit shrinkage of real wages suggested above. Namely, most main street households have hit Peak Debt, meaning that their spending capacity is no longer being supplemented with incremental borrowings.

Needless to say, that is a dramatic change from the pattern of the previous 30 years as displayed in the graph below. In effect, the easy money policies of the Fed—-especially between Greenspan’s arrival in August 1987 and the 2008 financial crisis—–induced the household sector to perform a giant LBO on itself.

So doing, it ratcheted up its leverage ratio from a historically stable rate of about 80% of wage and salary income to nearly 220% by the peak in 2007.

Since then, the ratio has dropped significantly, but still remain far above what had been healthy levels prior to the post-1987 household borrowing binge. This has been called “deleveraging” by the commentariat, but its true import has been totally obfuscated by the all is awesome meme .

Still, the untoward implication is hard to miss if you focus on something other than the monthly deltas. To wit, during the household sector’s LBO between 1987 and 2008, total credit market debt outstanding erupted from $2.7 trillion to $14.3 trillion on the eve of the financial crisis or by 5.4X.

Since then, it has not increased by a single dime!

What that means is that we have a Say’s Law economy, not the Keynesian one jabbered about by our monetary politburo and the mainstream financial media. And when production and income is in the saddle, not the one time anomaly of bloated credit based consumption, you have fish of an entirely different kettle.

Stated differently, money pumping and artificially cheap credit no longer stimulates household spending because the latter are tapped out. Another potent indicator of that truth is the fact that housing construction still remains in the sub-basement of history, notwithstanding the lowest real mortgage rates ever recorded.

Indeed, new starts of single-family housing units after all of this alleged “recovery” are still lower than they were during all but four months prior to the financial crisis during the last 33 years. Yet, historically the whole point of Keynesian money pumping was to stimulate new housing construction.

The same holds true with respect to labor hours employed in the nonfarm business sector. Since the turn of the century, labor hours in the nonfarm economy have advanced at an anemic rate of just 0.4% annually. That is only one-fourth of the 2.0% rate which prevailed during the prior 16 years.

Needless to say, that radical downshift is not due to demographics. The adult population has actually grown from 212 million in 2000 to 252 million at present.

At the same time, it puts the lie to the alleged virtuous circle of Keynesian stimulus. There has been no pump-priming of consumption spending, production, jobs, income, and more of the same.

Indeed, the Fed’s balance sheet has grown by 900% during the last 16 years, while labor hours have risen by only 6.7%. There is self-evidently a big time blockage in the transmission mechanism.

The same is true for business investment spending. The classic argument for Keynesian stimulus has always included the notion that businessmen are somewhat slow-witted, and therefore need government inducement to increase capital spending and take advantage of opportunities for future profit.

Low interest rates were supposed to do just that, and presumably the record low rates on corporate loans and bonds during recent years should have accomplished that turbo-charging effect in spades.

But it hasn’t. Bubblevision is always telling you about whatever tiny change in nonresidential business investment occurred or didn’t occur during the most recent quarter. What it never, ever reports is the trend line of real net business investment after current period depreciation. The latter, of course, measures the capital resources consumed in the production of current GDP.

Owing to the laws of arithmetic, this crucial measure of business sector health and growth—–real net investment–can not rise unless current period CapEx exceeds current capital consumption. As shown below, that has not remotely been happening since the turn of the century.

In fact, real capital consumption has risen by 53% over the last 16-years, while real net investment is down by 17%.

There is plenty more evidence where these examples came from, but the larger point is clear. The US economy has a giant supply-side problem that can’t be alleviated by demand-side stimulus.

As we have demonstrated repeatedly, monetary stimulus is a one-time parlor trick. It only works when there is business and household balance sheet space left to leverage, thereby permitting spending derived from current production and income in the manner of Say’s Law to be boosted with spending derived from incremental borrowings.

Under conditions of Peak Debt, therefore, the Keynesian credit magic ceases to “stimulate” the main street economy. Instead, it never leaves the canyons of Wall Street, where it cycles in an incendiary spiral of leveraged speculation and the systematic inflation of financial assets.

The graph below summarizes that story succinctly. The broadest measure of the stock market—–Wilshire 5000 index——has risen by 125% since 1999. The real median family income has fallen by 7%. 

Stated differently, the bicoastal elites, who own most of the nation’s financial assets or who feed off the financial system and a debt-swollen central state in Washington, believe themselves to be in the pink of prosperity.

They do not understand, of course, that this is all a giant bubble which at length will burst in spectacular fashion, causing their own unearned windfalls to shrink in the process.

In the meanwhile, they may come to understand that the flyover zone of America has been left behind. The main street insurgency fueling Donald Trump’s shocking rise to the top of the Presidential race proves that much in spades.

via http://ift.tt/1WadN65 Tyler Durden

While Hillary continues to remind everyone that her nomination is a “done deal”, supporters of Bernie Sanders refuse to go quietly into the night.  Bernie’s supporters put so much pressure on establishment Senator Barbara Boxer that she suffered an unfortunate meltdown in Nevada recently; they plan to do the same at the Democratic National Convention in July as well.  

According to The Hill, Sanders supporters are planning a massive rally that could have as many as 30,000 participants, although organizers hope to have the number end up much larger. Permits for four demonstrations at the Philadelphia convention have already been secured, and now the focus is on getting as many people to attend as possible.

More from The Hill: 

Bernie Sanders’s supporters have secured permits for four demonstrations near July’s Democratic National Convention, according to a new report.

 

The events will rally support for Sanders’s message while Democrats select their presidential nominee in Philadelphia, according to The Wall Street Journal.

 

The Wall Street Journal on Friday reported that one permit authorizes an event consisting of four days of all-day rallies at FDR Park.

 

Philadelphia expects at least 30,000 participants; organizers are hoping the turnout is even higher. The park is located close to the Wells Fargo Center, putting it in close proximity to the convention’s epicenter.

 

The Wall Street Journal said that the other three events are scheduled for Thomas Paine Plaza, which is located a few miles from the convention’s venue. Philadelphia expects around 2,000 to 3,000 fans demonstrating for the independent Vermont senator at those events.

Just like in the case of the Republican race before it was made clear that Trump would win by a landslide, now it is the Democratic establishment’s turn to use every trick in the playbook to try and marginalize anyone who dares go against them, with the Nevada State Democratic Party warning recently that the demonstrations may be used to instigate “actual violence.” Which is even more ironic because until recently its was Trump supporters who were saying precisely that only to be laughed down by the media.

The claim of violence was quickly downplayed by Bill Taylor, one of the events organizers.

“We are marching,” he said. “If you’re planning on coming here with violence in mind, we don’t want you.”

The Democratic establishment will likely end up winning the push for Hillary as its nominee, but one major legacy has remained as a result of what already has been the most surreal presidential race in history: the voices of those who are not part of the establishment, and who want real genuine change to a broken system, are no longer silent and have understood they too can and will be heard.

via http://ift.tt/1TspaR4 Tyler Durden

A little over a year ago, GMO giant Monsanto was furious at the World Health Organization for linking glypshophate, the chief ingredient in weed killer Roundup, to cancer.  As a result Monsanto immediately demanded that WHO retract said report, saying that the report was biased and contradicts regulatory findings that the ingredient, glyphosate, is safe when used as labeled.

A working group at WHO said after reviewing scientific literature it was classifying glyphosate as “probably carcinogenic to humans.” Howeber Monsanto was relentless and said that “we question the quality of the assessment,” according to Philip Miller, Monsanto vice president of global regulatory affairs. “The WHO has something to explain.”

In retrospect it may have been Monsanto who had something to explain, which it did, indirectly, when last week another report was released, this time from the U.N.’s Food and Agriculture Organization (FAO), according to which Roundup’s glyphosphate is unlikely to cause cancer in  people. Continuing the explanation, diazinon and malathion, two other pesticides reviewed by the committee, which met last week and published its conclusions on Monday, were also found to be unlikely to be carcinogenic.

“In view of the absence of carcinogenic potential in rodents at human-relevant doses and the absence of genotoxicity by the oral route in mammals, and considering the epidemiological evidence from occupational exposures, the meeting concluded that glyphosate is unlikely to pose a carcinogenic risk to humans from exposure through the diet,” the committee said.

As Reuters itself notes, the conclusions appear to contradict the abovementioned finding by the WHO’s Lyon-based International Agency for Research on Cancer (IARC), which in March 2015 said glyphosate is “probably” able to cause cancer in humans and classified it as a ‘Group 2A’ carcinogen. This is when the alarm bells at Monsanto went off and, according to some, the company’s spending on favorable reports shot through the roof. The result was immediate.

Seven months after the IARC review, the European Food Safety Authority (EFSA), an independent agency funded by the European Union, published a different assessment, saying glyphosate is “unlikely to pose a carcinogenic hazard to humans”. The United States’ Environmental Protection Agency (EPA), which first assessed glyphosate in 1986 and has reviewed it several times since then, had also previously concluded it has “low toxicity for humans”.

In other words, whether or not a Monsanto compound is carcinogenic may depend on how much in “research funding” Monsanto has spent in advance to the writers of the study.

In any case, whether Roundup causes cancer or not, the opinion of millions of people around the world is already be made up, and as RT reports more than 400 simultaneous demonstrations around the world are voicing fury at US biotech leviathan Monsanto, which is now facing a hostile takeover from German pharmaceuticals company Bayer (a transaction which ha stunned analysts and shareholders who warn Bayer would need to take on too much debt and dilute equity holdings in its quest to acquire an embattled target).

But while Bayer may or may not end up being the new owner of Monsanto, it won’t matter to millions of people who will boycott the product regardless.

“The whole world hates Monsanto!” read the banners among a throng in Paris, marching to the sound of a drum band.

#Tomorrowland https://t.co/wPLLCrfz55 RT JuanMazaCalleja: Paris: People gathering to protest against #Monsanto, #… http://pic.twitter.com/O3rpXXvJoL

— Occupycentre Debout! (@Occupycentre) May 21, 2016

The crowd held up posters condemning the sale of the herbicide RoundUp, which may or may not lead to cancer in humans (depending on who one asks) and the development of genetically-modified crops.

#OMPSG https://t.co/L3cRGLOY4o Incroyable mobilisation marche contre #Monsanto et la transparence alimentaire Éti… http://pic.twitter.com/v9gJOqavNB

— Occupycentre Debout! (@Occupycentre) May 21, 2016

 

Environmentalist and leftist politicians, such as former presidential candidate Jean-Luc Melenchon, marched at the front of the column, but the impetus for the rallies was provided by another group.

Non aux pesticides dans nos vies ! #Melenchon http://pic.twitter.com/cE5iK0etnV

— gabriel Amard (@gabrielamard) May 21, 2016

The grassroots Nuit Debout has mobilized hundreds of thousands for labor reform protests in recent months, and many of the same demonstrators turned out to barrack the St. Louis-based giant in Lyon, Bordeaux and Lille.

La mobilisation pour dire #NON à #Monsanto se poursuit. Arrêt devant l’hôtel de ville de #Lyon pour prises de parole http://pic.twitter.com/lfArdgReEs

— Marc BOUCHAGE (@marcbouchage) May 21, 2016

Genetically-modified crops are banned in France, despite the European Union gradually loosening regulation on the varieties, as they become more popular across the world due to higher yields and greater disease resistance.

Sitting contre #monsanto a #paris http://pic.twitter.com/3HzFmoYJjx

— Louis RT France (@Louis_RTfr) May 21, 2016

Meanwhile, despite the latest UN report supposedly clearing Monsanto of any carcinogenic fault, Glyphosate, the active chemical in RoundUp and other leading herbicides, could still face a Europe-wide ban, after an EU committee failed to issue it with a new retail license, following protracted negotiations. A UN report published this month stated that it was not likely to be ingested in quantities sufficient to cause cancer in humans, but last year’s report by the UN cancer agency called for it to be recognized as a carcinogen that could cause non-Hogdkin’s lymphoma.

Monsanto March meeting at Union Square Park South today at 1 o’clock NYC http://pic.twitter.com/c3Y0prlrHN

— Time’s Up! (@nyctimesup) May 21, 2016

“Monsanto is killing me & you!” and “I am not your experiment!” read placards at a protest march through New York. More than 90 percent of US-grown corn, soybean and cotton is genetically-modified.

RT`s correspondent Caleb Maupin talked to some of the hundreds of activists gathered in the center of Manhattan to protest against Monsanto. People marched through the streets chanting, “No more Monsanto” and “Monsanto has got to go.” The demonstrators carried signs saying: “Ban glyphosate,” the herbicide which is suspected of causing cancer, and “Stop Monsanto.”

“I think it`s very corrupt and they have too much power over our government,” one of the rally`s participants told Maupin, referring to the biotech giant`s outreach.

“I`m tired of being lied to about what is in my food. We are getting sick, there`s cancer, there`re kids that are being affected, so we want to put a stop to that,” said another activist.

The safety of glyphosate, which is an active ingredient in Monsanto`s herbicide Roundup, has been doubted by many environmental organizations, including Greenpeace.

“If I were Monsanto right now, maybe a Monsanto executive gonna hear this, I would be worried. I would than change my life and come over to the right side of history. Amen,” another protester said.

Well-attended rallies also took place in Tokyo, across Germany and in Canada. Monsanto, which has repeatedly put out publicity campaigns to try and demonstrate that its product range is safe, issued a conciliatory statement to the protesters.

“The 22,000 people of Monsanto are committed to having an open dialogue about food and agriculture – we’re proud of the work we do, and we’re eager for people to know more about us,” said a Monsanto text sent out to the media. “We know people have different points of view on these topics, and it’s important that they’re able to express and share them.”

Marches against Monsanto have become a regular event over the past half-decade, but activists may soon need to find a new target for their anger, following Bayer’s proposed bid for the US company, which has a market cap of nearly $46 billion.

via http://ift.tt/1U7c4e9 Tyler Durden

By EconMatters

We delve into the implications of negative interest rates, and what they are really saying about the soundness of the financial system. In short we have too many rich people doing nothing productive with their wealth.

I am the opposite of a redistributionist, and the unintended consequences would be off the charts, but it would be interesting to see what Elon Musk could do with all this unproductive capital earning negative real rates around the globe being that he is always trying to push the envelope of the possible from a creativity standpoint.

Give me a “Bad-Ass” who fails in pushing the envelope over a “Passive Capital Hoarder” any day of the week.

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