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Via The Daily Bell

Adults should be able to identify as any gender they want. Modern science means they can even change their physical characteristics and take hormones, which will mimic the opposite sex.

I may not understand it, but it doesn’t affect me, so I should have no say in how another adult lives his, her, or its life.

Bathroom policies should be decided by business owners. If a public school has a bathroom policy you don’t like, pull your kids out. Public school is a terrible thing for children anyway.

But there is a dangerous cultural meme that kids can choose to change their sex. Children should not be indoctrinated into believing they should get a sex change before they hit puberty.

If your little boy acts like a little girl, please continue to love and support him. Let him identify as whatever gender he wants, but do not plant the idea in his mind that he can become the opposite sex.

Once you are an adult who can understand consequences, go right ahead and play Mr. Potato Head with your body parts.

But children are being brainwashed into thinking it is normal to get a sex change. Children have rights and deserve some degree of autonomy. The parents’ job is to protect their children and do what is in the child’s best interest.

A four-year-old doesn’t know what transgender is. A four-year-old can cross-dress, act feminine or masculine, and even express the desire to be the opposite sex. But parents should not take this as a sign that their child is transgender.

I remember dressing up as a girl when I was about four years old, (probably with the help of my sisters who applied the eye shadow and nail polish). Did that mean I was transgender? No, it meant I was a little kid playing.

(I also identified as a cat for some time, and believe it or not my parents did not get me species reassignment surgery.)

But what if my parents had been brainwashed by the media? Would they have discussed in depth transgender issues with four-year-old me? Would they have told me it was okay to choose my sex?

As a four-year-old, maybe I would have flipped a coin and decided, “Hey, yeah, now that you mention it, I do like wearing dresses! Sign me up for hormone therapy, and make an appointment for a sex change.”

As crazy as this sounds, some parents are reacting in this way.

Because of the increase in media exposure, and indoctrination at schools, kids are becoming confused. In Great Britain, there has been a marked increase in kids seeking help with their gender identity.

A total of 165 children aged ten and under were referred to the clinic last year, compared with 36 in the year of 2012 to 2013.

And last year 2,016 young people aged between three and 18 attended gender identity clinics, while just 314 did from 2012 to 2013.

Statistics suggest “as many as 98% of gender confused boys and 88% of gender confused girls eventually accept their biological sex after naturally passing through puberty.”

So when kids are referred to clinics, if they were simply counseled through a tough time, that would be a good thing. But the clinics take it much further.

Those referred under a psycho-social assessment for six months by a clinician, which is followed by an action plan involving counselling and, sometimes, a physical intervention.

Children who have began puberty can be prescribed a course of hormone blockers to suppress the changes associated with adult development.

And those aged 16 and over can be given cross-sex hormones, giving them the physical characteristics of the opposite sex.

Is it Child Abuse?

Let’s quickly run through the difference between gender and sex.

Sex is a biological trait. There is male and female, and some rare medically identifiable physical disorders.

Gender is a social construction which generally corresponds to a particular sex.

There are some kids who really do identify as the opposite gender, and will act accordingly. They should be loved and accepted, but they should not be given hormones and surgery. Since gender is basically made up anyway, they can act like the opposite gender without having to pretend they are the opposite sex.

Before some reasonable age at which a human is capable of making permanently life changing decisions, it is child abuse to give them sex change drugs and surgery.

It is not child abuse, in my opinion, to allow a child to act like whatever gender they want. Allowing a boy to wear a dress if he chooses is not child abuse. Allowing a boy to get sex reassignment surgery is child abuse.

You cannot even legally get a tattoo in the U.S.A. before age 18. The government says you are not responsible enough to drink alcohol until you are 21. But the media tells us that 10-year-olds can make a permanent, life changing decision. A four-year-old in Australia was given sex reassignment surgery!

The American College of Pediatricians urges healthcare professionals, educators and legislators to reject all policies that condition children to accept as normal a life of chemical and surgical impersonation of the opposite sex. Facts – not ideology – determine reality.

1. Human sexuality is an objective biological binary trait: “XY” and “XX” are genetic markers of male and female, respectively – not genetic markers of a disorder.

Maybe someday science will actually be able to transform a man into a woman, but right now it cannot. You can use hormones so that the body mimics the opposite sex. You can get surgery so that your body looks like that of the opposite sex.

But if you are born a male, you cannot get pregnant no matter how much treatment you receive. If you were born with two X chromosomes, you are and will remain biologically a woman.

Parents who play into the media’s lies about gender and sex identity are setting their children up for a life of depression and anxiety.

Rates of suicide are nearly twenty times greater among adults who use cross-sex hormones and undergo sex reassignment surgery…

Endorsing gender discordance as normal via public education and legal policies will confuse children and parents, leading more children to present to “gender clinics” where they will be given puberty-blocking drugs. This, in turn, virtually ensures they will “choose” a lifetime of carcinogenic and otherwise toxic cross-sex hormones, and likely consider unnecessary surgical mutilation of their healthy body parts as young adults.

The Tangled Web of Leftism

What happened to the mantra that you are perfect just the way you are?

We live in a society that tells unhealthy obese people that they shouldn’t be “body shamed” into losing weight.

But if you don’t feel comfortable with your natural biological sex, that is something worth changing?

Teach kids to act how they honestly want to act. If that means a boy wears a dress and a girl cuts her hair short, so be it! You can choose a “gender” without trying to change your sex.

No one is born with a gender. Everyone is born with a biological sex. Gender (an awareness and sense of oneself as male or female) is a sociological and psychological concept; not an objective biological one. No one is born with an awareness of themselves as male or female; this awareness develops over time and, like all developmental processes, may be derailed by a child’s subjective perceptions, relationships, and adverse experiences from infancy forward.

What does it even mean for a boy to “feel like a girl” anyway? This is a huge contradiction of the left. Gender is a social construct, but somehow you can feel like the “opposite”? Since gender is a social construct, who is to say what qualities correspond to which sex?

The extreme leftists have gotten their message mixed up. They say correctly that you can choose a gender, but then advocate “choosing” a biological sex to correspond. This, of course, is impossible. You can only mimic the opposite sex, not actually become it.

Kids need love, support, and a guiding positive influence who is open-minded enough to discuss complex issues. They do not need drugs, hormones, and surgery based on their gender identity.

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Earlier today, the ECB updated the list of corporate bonds it bought in the latest week. While no individual bond purchase amounts were given, the ECB has bought into 980 issuances with a total of €683bn in amount outstanding (from 245 issuing entities). For the week ending 21st Jul, bond purchases stood at €0.7bn across sectors, bringing total Corporate Sector Purchase Program holdings to €101.1 Billion, an increase of €720MM in the past week. The complete list of ISINs can be found here courtesy of UBS. According to Dealogic, for week ending 21st Jul, €8.8bn was issued in EUR IG space, of which €3.2bn was CSPP eligible. In the month of Jun, the central bank purchased €7bn of corporate bonds, versus €7.6bn in May. 85.6% of the €96.6bn total CSPP holdings were purchased on the secondary market.

Looking only at the CSPP, As Bloomberg adds, the ECB purchased at least 1 new corporate bond under its CSPP program during the week ended July 21. The number of securities currently held is 978; the ECB holds EU101.06BN of EU682.55bBN outstanding. Utilities remain the largest industry group with 258 securities. Additionally, the ECB bought a bond issued by Lietuvos Energija, its first Lithuanian bond.  Of note, 144 (~14.7%) of the 978 securities are negative yielding.

All of the above is the same dry, weekly update we disclose weekly. However, for the simplest visual summary of just how the ECB’s corporate bond purchases – now that the central bank owns 14.8% of all eligible European corporate bonds – have “impacted” the market since the corporate bond buying program was announced in March of 2016, here is just one chart from JPM:

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Having tried and failed to introduce his "impeach Trump" bill, Rep. Al Green won't give up that easy as The Hill reports he plans to introduce a bill that would prevent presidents from being able to pardon themselves.

Green's bill follows increasing reports from the 'fake news media' that Trump is considering using his power to pardon on himself or other members of his administration for any offenses related to the Russia probe, though Trump attorney Jay Sekulow has insisted that officials are not even discussing Trump’s ability to issue pardons.

“We’re not researching the issue because the issue of pardons is not on the table. There’s nothing to pardon from,” Sekulow said Sunday.

Nevertheless, Rep. Green said he believes that giving the president the power to self-pardon would make the leader “above the law,” making the United States, he believes, “a country of laws for all but the president.”

“To allow such would not only place the President above the law, it would make the President his own final judge, jury, and prosecutor,” Green said in a statement. “The President would in fact become the law.”

 

Green said he plans to introduce the bill because of “love for my country,” adding that the phrase “no one is above the law” is “the heart of American Jurisprudence,” according to his statement.

Before we get to this bill thought, the question is – Can he pardon himself? (via The Hill)

Most tantalizing, could Trump pardon himself? Few presidents have actually considered a self-pardon, and none has actually tried. If Trump is the first to go through with it, he should know that legal scholars are divided on the question.

 

On one hand, it is clear that the sparse constitutional language on clemency says nothing about a self-pardon, and the courts have never directly confronted the question. To legal scholars Robert Nida and Rebecca L. Spiro, writing in 1999, the president should be able to self-pardon, largely because the Constitution does not say he is forbidden from doing so.

 

On the other hand, law professor Brian C. Kalt argued in 1996 that a self-pardon is not allowed by the Constitution. He writes, “a presidential self-pardon … would only be plunder to take home after a career-ending disgrace …” and that the president’s self-pardon would continue to benefit him even after leaving office, and even if he is impeached. Moreover, a self-pardon would be inconsistent with our separation of powers system.

 

Both sides offer compelling arguments. However, I lean in the direction of Nida and Spiro. The courts have usually given the president a lot of leeway on clemency questions. It’s likely that a self-pardon would end up in front of the Supreme Court. From there, they could find a self-pardon appropriate or not. In fact, it’s entirely possible that they could rule that a self-pardon is permissible, and point out that the remedy for abuse of clemency is what the framers of the Constitution intended for any abuse of power: impeachment.

Full Statement from Rep. Green:

“At the heart of American Jurisprudence is the fundamental premise that “No one is above the law.” This includes the President of the United States of America.

 

“The presidential power to pardon is the power to forgive for the smallest federal offense to the most egregious federal crime. If this is true, no President should be empowered to self-pardon (forgive himself or herself).

 

“To allow presidential self-pardons would allow a President guilty of the federal crime of treason against the United States of America to forgive/pardon himself. To allow such would not only place the President above the law, it would make the President his own final judge, jury, and prosecutor. The President would in fact become the law. The United States of America would become a country of laws for all but the President.

 

“To permit the President to self-pardon would place the President above the law and beyond justice. Love for my country compels me to file legislation to prevent the President from being above the law and beyond justice.”

Of course this will go nowehere but will allow Green a few more minutes in front of the cameras. We do find it ironic how focused the congressman is on this topic when his party just announced a need to refocus away from Trump, away from Russia, and on what policies can do to actually help Americans?

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Two Chinese J-10 fighter jets intercepted a U.S. Navy surveillance plane flying over international waters in the East China Sea on Sunday, with one jet coming within 300 feet (91 meters) of the American aircraft, U.S. officials told Reuters.

The officials said that one of the Chinese J-10 aircraft came so close to the U.S. EP-3 plane, which is a modified version of the P-3 Orion spy plane, it caused the American aircraft to change direction. One of the Chinese interceptors flew under the EP-3 and appeared less than a 100 meters in front of the US spy plane, causing the crew “to take evasive action to avoid collision,” according to one official. Reuters adds that the Chinese jet was armed and that the interception happened 80 nautical miles (148 km) from the Chinese city of Qingdao.

After the “dangerous” intercept, the Pentagon said that the latest encounter between the aircraft was unsafe, but added that the vast majority of interactions were safe.

Previously China has warned the US about flying too close to its coastline and remains deeply suspicious of any U.S. military activity over contested territorial waters.

This was the third time in recent months that Chinese interceptors have warned off US spy planes flying off the coast of China. In Two months ago, as the US Navy sailed near disputed islands in the South China Sea, two Chinese Su-30 jets buzzed a P-3 Orion 150 miles southeast of Hong Kong in what US officials called an “unsafe intercept.” A week earlier, Chinese jets intercepted a US Air Force WC-135 Constant Phoenix “nuclear sniffer” plane over the East China Sea.

In April 2001, an EP-3E ARIES II collided with a Chinese J-8 fighter and had to make an emergency landing on Hainan Island. The crash killed the Chinese pilot. While the crew was repatriated in 11 days after Washington apologized for the incident, the plane remained in Chinese possession until July, when it was shipped back to the US in pieces. Reuters adds that that encounter soured U.S.-Chinese relations in the early days of President George W. Bush’s first term on office.

 

 

 

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Following his lengthy prepared remarks and closed-door hearings this morning, Presidential-son-in-law Jared Kushner is about to make a statement (presumably to front-run the leaks which will inevitably flow from the hearing).

He released a statement ahead of the testimony earlier today where he denied collusion and improper contacts in the four contacts he had with Russian representatives during the 2016 presidential campaign.

“I did not collude, nor know of anyone else in the campaign who colluded, with any foreign government,” reads a section of his statement.

 

“I had no improper contacts. I have not relied on Russian funds to finance my business activities in the private sector. I have tried to be fully transparent with regard to the filing of my SF-86 form [security clearance], above and beyond what is required. Hopefully, this puts these matters to rest.”

Whether his incoming comments will add on to the earlier statement remains to be seen.

Live Feed:

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Yesterday we pointed out that, in a somewhat shockingly frank interview with on ABC’s “This Week”, Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer said that Democrats, not Russia, were to blame for Hillary Clinton’s loss to President Trump.

“When you lose to somebody who has 40 percent popularity, you don’t blame other things – [James] Comey, Russia – you blame yourself.“

 

“So what did we do wrong? People didn’t know what we stood for, just that we were against Trump. And still believe that.”

 

Of course, over the past 12 months, Democrats have tried every strategy possible win elections aside from actually putting forth an agenda of ideas that resonate with voters.  At first there was the blame game in which Democrats pretended they didn’t have a philosophical disconnect from voters but rather were simply robbed of the White House by Russian hacking operations.

Then, when that strategy failed to inspire voters, Democrats simply threw an obscene amount of money at special election candidates like John Ossoff. Unfortunately, it wasn’t enough as Ossoff still lost…resulting in a devastating waste of $176 per vote, or roughly 7.6x more than what Karen Handel spent to actually win.  Oops.

 

So what do you do when your party is in complete disarray and not even the mainstream media’s 24/7, wall-to-wall bashing of your political opposition is sufficient for you to start winning elections?  Well, you roll out a whole new snazzy slogan and send Chuck Schumer and Nancy Pelosi to Berryville, Virginia to deliver an inspiring speech.

According to the Associated Press, the ‘new’ Democrat agenda will be focused on introducing all new strategies focused on “raising wages, lowering costs for families, and giving working Americans better skills for the 21st century economy.”  Unfortunately, while they boast a new way forward, the ‘new’ Democrat agenda looks a lot like the old one and seemingly focuses on increasing taxes, entitlements and other forms of government dependence while attacking and demonizing all wealthy individuals and corporations. 

The full title of the agenda is “A Better Deal: Better Jobs, Better Wages, Better Future.”

 

“The Democratic Party’s mission is to help build an America in which working people know that somebody has their back,” say documents accompanying the roll-out.

 

There are three overarching goals: raising wages, lowering costs for families, and giving working Americans better skills for the 21st century economy.

 

Detailed planks will be rolled out over time. On Monday, three are being unveiled:

 

—Lowering prescription drug prices. Suggestions include a new agency that could investigate drug manufacturer price hikes, and they would allow Medicare to negotiate directly for the best drug prices.

 

—Cracking down on corporate monopolies. Democrats would enact new standards to limit large mergers, and create a new consumer competition advocate.

 

—Creating millions more jobs. The agenda includes proposals for expanding apprenticeships and providing a tax credit to employers to train and hire new workers.

Chuck Schumer even posted an op-ed in the New York Times this morning specifically stating that “our better deal is not about expanding the government, or moving our party in one direction or another along the political spectrum.”  Ironically, in the very next sentence, he goes on to detail how his ‘jobs plan’ is dependent upon massively ‘expanding the government’ and veering way left on the political spectrum with policies like a federal $15 minimum wage.

We’ve already proposed creating jobs with a $1 trillion infrastructure plan; increasing workers’ incomes by lifting the minimum wage to $15; and lowering household costs by providing paid family and sick leave.

And here’s more of the same ole attacks from Chuck…

Right now, there is nothing to stop vulture capitalists from egregiously raising the price of lifesaving drugs without justification. We’re going to fight for rules to stop prescription drug price gouging and demand that drug companies justify price increases to the public. And we’re going to push for empowering Medicare to negotiate lower drug prices for older Americans.

 

Right now our antitrust laws are designed to allow huge corporations to merge, padding the pockets of investors but sending costs skyrocketing for everything from cable bills and airline tickets to food and health care. We are going to fight to allow regulators to break up big companies if they’re hurting consumers and to make it harder for companies to merge if it reduces competition.

 

Right now millions of unemployed or underemployed people, particularly those without a college degree, could be brought back into the labor force or retrained to secure full-time, higher-paying work. We propose giving employers, particularly small businesses, a large tax credit to train workers for unfilled jobs. This will have particular resonance in smaller cities and rural areas, which have experienced an exodus of young people who aren’t trained for the jobs in those areas.

Conclusion: Democrats still have no idea why they lost in 2016. 

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Is the bottom in for the dollar yet?

After hitting a 14 month low, the Bloomberg Dollar Index saw a modest gain of 0.1% as markets awaited this week’s FOMC meeting and kept a wary eye on Capitol Hill hearings which involve close members of the Trump administration. Quoted by Bloomberg, traders described flows as modest amid the elevated event risk we laid out earlier this morning. Besides another potential surprise from the suddenly dovish Fed, traders were keeping a weary eye on Capitol Hill hearings Monday and Wednesday that include Jared Kushner, Donald Jr and Paul Manafort, and what these could mean for Trump’s fiscal agenda. At the same time, the Fed is expected to keep rates and policies on hold, though it may elaborate on balance-sheet reduction or the timing of any future rate increases.

To be sure, negative sentiment against the dollar has been pervasive, and as we noted yesterday when looking at the latest CFTC Commitment of Traders update, net specs are now the most short they have been the USD doing back to 2013.

Worried that the decline in the USD may continue, Bloomberg writes this morning that FX traders are now paying the most in since October 2009 for options to protect against an extreme decline in the dollar against the euro over a six-month period: the 10-delta risk reversal, an indication of trader bias in the options market, reflects expectations that any move in the euro would be dramatic.

Additionally, traders are also piling into options contracts in anticipation of big moves in the euro-dollar exchange rate, eyeing the critical resistance level, the $1.1714 high from August 2015. According to Bloomberg calculations, traders bought more than $6 billion in options to sell dollars and buy euros on July 20 and 21, and an additional $3 billion to sell the greenback against the yen, according to DTCC data.

However, a more nuanced look at who is trading the dollar, suggests that the plunge may be ending.

Citi’s FX quant desk writes that as real money became strong net sellers of USD, hedge funds became aggressive net buyers for the first time in months “a sharp increase in conviction over previous weeks.” Looking at the 1-month cumulative investor flow, shown on the right hand side, this divergence became clear in the ladder half of last week, following the EURUSD reaction to the ECB meeting.

Some more context: USD is currently the second largest short position among real money investors in G10 overall, with both 1-week and 4-week net flow decidedly negative. So far in July, real money clients have been net sellers on 80% of days, a continuation of the long-term bearish run for the greenback.

On the other side of the real money, hedge funds were net buyers of USD last week, mostly due to a large amount of buying in response to USD depreciation in the immediate aftermath of the ECB meeting last week. Hedge fund flow on the day of the meeting was sharply against the EURUSD move, with hedge funds strong buyers of USD and sellers of EUR on the day.  Looking at current 4w aggregated flow, leveraged investors are likely long USD and short EUR, a sharp contrast from the significantly short real money positioning. 

According to Citi, “this divergence between leveraged and real money flow opens up the possibility that real money will follow, and we could see USD appreciation in the coming weeks.“

* * *

Finally, here is Bloomberg commentator Marc Cudmore, predicting that a Dollar bounce is imminent.

It’s the question on every trader’s lips because the answer influences the price of almost all other financial assets: When is the dollar bouncing? I see it making a short-term base this week.

Financial assets rarely sustain a straight line move even when it appears fundamentally justified. And dollar depreciation is certainly logical.

 

However, the last leg down has mainly been driven by the latest political turmoil and that’s a problem for bears. Apart from the macro consequences of Trump’s fiscal program being priced out (which already happened months ago), the direct impact of U.S. politics on markets this year has only ever been fleeting. So the latest ructions change little apart from negative headlines.

 

Euro strength has facilitated the broader dollar depreciation trade but that theme is also looking vulnerable in the short-term. Consensus has suddenly turned bullish on the euro at a time when the ECB just sounded unexpectedly dovish and EUR/USD is facing multi-year resistance at $1.1714.

 

For the Bloomberg Dollar Spot Index, both daily and weekly RSIs are looking stretched on the downside as we enter a week with an obvious potential catalyst in the FOMC meeting. Profit-taking will surely be too tempting especially as we get deeper into summer holiday territory.

 

A bounce of a couple of percent won’t derail the long-term macro downtrend that started in January. The U.S. still has a current-account deficit combined with a large debt pile that’s backed by negative real yields. And the currency remains expensive based on PPP metrics.

 

But those are long-term structural issues. For the next couple of weeks, the vulnerable side will be for dollar strength.

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